Flickr photo by Steve Rhodes

The Pentagon is gearing up for a looming social media war–battles the military envisions will be won by being one step ahead of Twitter- and Facebook-powered insurgencies.

For the Pentagon that means developing social media tools that combine the code-breaking know-how of its intelligence services with the propaganda skills and manipulation techniques of its Pys-Ops group. On top of all that, the Pentagon hopes it can revolutionize the analysis of social media trends and conversations.

It’s all part of the Defense Department’s new Social Media in Strategic Communication program, which the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) first announced a few weeks ago.

DARPA, the Pentagon’s secretive research agency, is offering a $42 million contract to the company that can go where no social media tracker has gone before. DARPA posted a request for proposals in July that basically says don’t bother applying if your idea is nothing more than the next step in social media analytics. In other words, it means creating social media analytics light-years ahead of anything on the market or even on the drawing board. Following the trending topics on Twitter ain’t going to cut it. Read more

Flickr photo by Stuck in Customs

If you follow the major online influencers (yeah, I’m talking about you, Scoble, Brogan, Kawasaki, Rowse et al) you’ve noticed that all of them are gaga over Google+. For sure, G+ is a fascinating platform with tremendous potential. Google took some of the best features of Facebook and Twitter and rolled them into an easy to use (if difficult to fully understand) social media network.

But despite its upside, G+ is far from perfect. And while those smart guys in Menlo Park will surely be adding features and improving things in the coming days, weeks and months, here are the Top 10 reasons Google+ will fail:

10. Here come the spammers

9. Two words: Google Wave

8. Privacy? What privacy?

7. No search. No hashtags.

6. You’re in my “Friends” circle. I’m in your “Asshats” circle.

5. Keeping your circles organized is a lot like trying to keep your sock drawer organized, but only if you have 1,000 pairs of socks in 100 different drawers.

4. Search, e-mail, chat, maps, YouTube: Do you really want Google to have this much control over your life?

3. Cat gifs

2. It’s Google’s way or the highway.

1. I’ve got to use Picassa. Really?

Just two years ago did anyone think that Facebook would be going head-to-head against Google for ruler of the Web? Google? Of course. The Internet giant had no peers in the search engine business, it’s Gmail had become the dominant email provider and it had added blue-chip tech start-up YouTube to its lineup, not to mention the even bigger purchase of Double-Click in 2007 (here’s a list of all of Google’s acquisitions)

The question wasn’t whether Google was king but whether any company could challenge its supremacy in the forseeable future. While Facebook isn’t in Google’s league when it comes to estimated market value, it has carved out a niche in social media that Google has, so far, failed miserably at tapping.

Now, it seems the gloves are off. Mashable’s Ben Parr writes about the heavyweight tilt in “Facebook vs. Google and the Battle for Identity on the Web.” Parr says that it’s Facebook’s 500 million users and the who knows how many more million Google users who are going to end up the losers:

Facebook won’t be using Gmail contacts anytime soon and don’t hold your breath for Facebook Connect on Google. These moves are to be expected from two companies that are essentially at war, but it’s the average user that has to take the extra steps to upload his or her Gmail contacts into Facebook to get started that is really impacted. It’s about the millions of users that won’t get the benefits of Facebook integration in Google or Gmail. It’s about a war that is only going to get uglier.

In a few years, the lines will be drawn between Facebook and its allies and Google (and whoever is willing to join it). Digital walls to data portability will go up if companies are forced to choose sides. If things keep going in the direction they are headed now, that is the likely outcome.

Flickr photo by laverrue.

Take Thomas E. Weber’s little Facebook experiment for what it’s worth — some interesting insights into how FB decides what to put into your news feed. I wouldn’t go so far to say that Weber’s piece on The Daily Beast has “cracked” the code. Some of what he reports are things most habitual FB users already know — that the “most recent” part of your feed seems to be arbitrarily put together and that your visibility increases the more people comment on your posts.

The Daily Beast set out to crack the code of Facebook’s personalized news feed. Why do some friends seem to pop up constantly, while others are seldom seen? How much do the clicks of other friends in your network affect what you’re shown? Does Facebook reward some activities with undue exposure? And can you “stalk” your way into a friend’s news feed by obsessively viewing their page and photos?

To get the answers, we devised an experiment, creating our own virtual test lab within the confines of Facebook and tracking thousands of news-feed items over a period of several weeks. The focal point of our experiment: Phil Simonetti, a 60-year-old Facebook newcomer who allowed us to dictate and monitor his every move.

Besides the lack of earth-shattering revelations, there are few problems with Weber’s test. His sample size was fairly small and the “experiment” took place only over a few weeks. It also seems that he relied more on the collection of anecdotal evidence, rather than a data set that could be scientifically analyzed.

Still, it’s an interesting read, even if a little pointless considering that it seems Facebook changes its algorithm and interface depending on which way the wind is blowing.