Social Media Round-up of the Week – 22 July

Welcome back to our weekly instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. In case you missed what happened over the past week, here’s a run-down of our top seven:

1. Netmums, a popular online forum for mothers and Mumsnet’s biggest rival, has attracted more than 500 unpaid bloggers to write for the site in just over a fortnight. A further sign that parenting sites are becoming increasingly popular and powerful groups to be reckoned with, Netmums, a UK site founded in 2000, at roughly the same time of its better known rival Mumsnet, launched its new bloggers network on July 1 and has been inundated with both enthusiastic mums and dads wishing to write about their experiences ever since.

2. In a move reminiscent of one done by Facebook in 2009, Twitter is close to completing an $800 million funding deal that will include a second part in which around $400 million of the total will be used to cash out current investors and also employees. According to several sources close to the situation, the complex transaction could be completed within two weeks.

3. Google’s latest offering ‘ Google Plus’ is steadily gaining ground in the social networking space, so far dominated by Facebook , with the internet giant’s social network attracting about 20 million visitors in the initial three weeks and nearly half of these visitors hailing from US and India . According to estimates by research firm ComScore, Google Plus had 19.93 million unique visitors between June 29 and July 19 period.

4. Facebook should have access restricted to people older than 18, some Australian politicians say in response to concerns over online bullying that led teenagers to commit suicide. Australian top law enforcement officials, attending a two- day forum that began yesterday, discussed proposals from South Australia’s Attorney General John Rau that would require Facebook to verify the ages of people creating accounts or force the website to guarantee parents access to their children’s accounts.

5. Google announced in a blog post that the company will discontinue Google Labs – an online testing environment where users can play with prototypes. Bill Coughran, Google’s senior vice president for research and systems infrastructure, said the company has learned a lot by launching very early prototypes in the labs. But he added that the company’s “greater focus is crucial if we’re to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead”. Perhaps the company is looking to invest more time and money in Google+ as it looks to capitalise on a successful first few weeks.

6. Facebook is the most hated of online social, search and news sites, according to the newly released annual e-business report by American Customer Satisfaction Index and Foresee Results, a customer experience analytics firm.

Here’s the new ratings:

Google 83
Bing.com 82
FoxNews.com 82
Ask.com 80
Yahoo! 79
MSN 78
Wikipedia.org 78
ABCNews.com 77
USAToday.com 76
AOL 75
CNN.com 74
MSNBC 74
YouTube.com 74
NYTimes.com 73
HuffingtonPost.com 69
Facebook.com 66

7. Our latest infographic (above) is a comparison of Google+ and Facebook.