And I'd love Google to build on their Public Data explorer. There is so much need and value for a business and the wider public for a central data repository that has good cutting and display options. And a business could easily pay for a private corner to link to these data sets. If this Public Data tool had been a bit further ahead I suspect it could have taken a chunk the massively growing space now being filled by Tableau and other BI solutions.
It's still fun for making silly correlations, though.
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0289n8t%2C%20...
Perhaps there is indeed hope that a generation of people are becoming more aware of their options with regards to privacy and anonymity online.
Or perhaps it can more accurately be attributed to a switch to Snapchat or other social media providers.
Baidu seems essentially equivalent to Google, AliPay to PayPal and Weibo to Facebook.
As for differences, I noticed were how heavily integrated AliPay (and all the payment methods) were with the regular Chinese banking system, needing a local bank card to verify any account.
Also interesting how they handled file sharing. Baidu Pan seems to be the Chinese alternative to torrents or P2P.
Really though, the biggest take away I got was the inconceivable amount of information that isn't displayed to Westerners in search. The Chinese internet, with over 700m users, must be enormous but your average Western internet user doesn't see any of it.
Since they have separate entries for Twitter and the others, listed as "Social network" vs. just simply "search term" this has to imply some difference in what they include as searches.
So perhaps all permutations of searching for things on Twitter, and others, are lumped into the main search term.
* Git vs. Mecurial vs. Subversion
* Slashdot vs. Hacker News
* GitHub vs. SourceForce
Google+ is different in that the URL is plus.google.com, so I think "plus" would be the misfire in that case.
How Facebook Squashed Twitter: https://stratechery.com/2016/how-facebook-squashed-twitter/
The Reality of Missing Out: https://stratechery.com/2016/the-reality-of-missing-out/
The exception to all this is Twitter bots (but not MS' Tay), which are probably the most entertaining, unique, and valuable accounts that could not be mirrored on another site with the same effectiveness.
I used to be a really loyal fan.
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=4chan%2C%20reddit%2C...
I never really understood what made these pictures so much more valuable than another official and unofficial nude images of celebrities. It had a profound effect on the sites linked above, though, from administration to the mentality of regulars.
Yahoo included it in a $4.5B markdown on it a couple months ago. http://qz.com/608497/yahoo-just-admitted-it-badly-overpaid-f...
> The value of Tumblr’s tangible and intangible assets amounted to just $353 million, according to Yahoo’s accounting. Tumblr also had $114 million in liabilities.
Tumblr has three phases, the gen Y (25-35 yo) has already cycled out and the gen Z (15-25 yo) are on it because it's not Twitter and not Facebook. It will decline just like Myspace boomed then declined.
Drop Instagram and WhatsApp in there and they're the best buys.
What's more interesting is how Reddit came to be the new Craigslist for both gen Y and gen Z.
Oh, try putting in Snapchat. Since Snapchat only has dark content they're not shown to be any bigger than Reddit although I peg them at maybe half the growth rate of Instagram.
Wait it out another two product cycles and they'll sharing clear content, then maybe we can finally see if the Facebook vs Snapchat duel is really real.
Your conclusions don't match with how people use these products and I say this as an avid user of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit.
For example, to describe Reddit as the new Craigslist is completely off base. Reddit is the new Vbulletin forum software. Reddit is where vast and varying communities form around different topics and they all happen to have the same format but that's all that they share in common.
Would it not be in danger of becoming something like LiveJournal? Where the users are an ever narrower segment of a slightly older demographic group, with no growth.
As even the least-tech-savvy becomes more aware of faster ways of accessing the websites, and browser software starts to pre-empt user intention more and more, this kind of convoluted search starts to drop off.
Not sure if that theory holds water, or is in any way necessary.
> As even the least-tech-savvy becomes more aware of faster ways of accessing the websites
I'm not sure that happens. From observation, people tend to stick to the first way they figured out how to do something on their computer. Searching for "Facebook" from Google is very standard practice. Further, browsers _encourage_ search over direct address input. I've tried to show people many times how to visit sites directly... it doesn't help them so they understandably ignore the advice.