Google Domination? This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what's hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What's New This Week?

Google+ Project Takes on Facebook: This week Google launched a new project that's similar to a social platform and is in direct competition with Facebook. You can read more about the first impressions of this new platform here and here. Watch the introductory videos below to learn about Google+ features: Sparks and Circles.

Google Analytics Now Tracks Twitter, Facebook and +1: Google's free social monitoring dashboard just got better. Google Analytics has a new section for Social Plugin Tracking where you can add a bit of code to your site, and then track Facebook Likes, Tweets, Google+1's and statistics for your other social plugins. NOTE: You must select the New analytics option in Google Analytics (see upper right corner when logged in) to see this.

Google +1 Goes Global:  Don't be confused, the Google +1 button is not the same as the Google+ project above.  The Google +1 is the little social bookmarking button that was launched in English a couple of months ago and is now rolling out in other languages.

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StumbleUpon Lets You Create Widgets to Highlight Your Stumbles: Now you can share your stumbles on your blog or website, thanks to the new StumbleUpon widgets.

Monster Launches Professional Networking App for Facebook, BeKnown:  BeKnown allows Facebook users to establish a professional network on Facebook where they can “grow their professional network, enhance their online professional identity and discover enriching career opportunities.”

Formspring Reaches 25 Million Users in 18 Months: This makes Formspring one of the fastest-growing websites. Check out the infographic below.

Here's a social media resource worth noting:

Social Media Quickstarter: “is a step-by-step guide that offers short tutorials for getting up and running on the most popular social media networks and includes actionable tips, best practices and case studies” created by Constant Contact.

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What social media news caught your interest this week? Please share your comments below.

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