Google Acquires Zagat

Google has purchased Zagat, popular restaurant review site, for an undisclosed sum that is estimated at less than $66 million.  Google made the purchase to improve its local products. As stated in the Google blog, “Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering—delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.”

Facebook Testing Page Recommendations
Facebook is testing a Page recommendation widget, which prompts users to write a recommendation for a Page. Facebook is hoping this widget will make it easier for friends of reviewers to find and connect with Pages.  When questioned about the widget, Facebook responded by saying “We’re always testing new features with small percentages of users to provide us feedback to help improve the service. The tests inform many of the improvements we make to the site and help shape new products.”  Facebook is also testing friend’s filters in the news feed: http://mashable.com/2011/09/08/facebook-news-feed-changes.

Twitter’s Active Users

We finally have a pulse on how many active Twitter users there are. Typically, Twitter likes to share number of users, which is currently around 200 million, rather than active users. This week, Twitter finally broke the news that there are over 100 million active twitter users logging in at least once a month and 50 million active users logging in everyday. Adding to these stats, Mashable explained that “Twitter now hosts roughly a billion tweets every five days, 230 million tweets every day, and has hit a new record for tweets per second: 8,900.”

Smartphone Satisfaction
Apple should be grinning over the recent study completed by J.D. Power and Associates on Smartphone satisfaction. The study, which surveyed 6,898 Smartphone owners, found that Apple Smartphone’s had the highest customer satisfaction. Criteria included overall satisfaction, performance (35%), ease of operation (24%), Smartphone features (21%), and physical design (20%). Apple scored 830 points based on a 1,000-point scale. The industry average, for comparison, was 788 points. HTC was the closest to Apple with 801 points. See the full study here.

Smartphone Usage

Speaking of Smartphone’s, how is the average consumer using them? According to a recent study by Pew Research, Checking in on apps like Foursquare are at the bottom of the list. The survey, which was conducted on 2,277 adults, found that 92% of Smartphone users send and receive texts whereas only 12% checkin on geolocation services. View the charts below to see how Smartphone activities rank:

-Anna (@alucas9)

Foursquare & Zagat:

Last week, Foursquare teamed up with Bravo! TV. This week, they’ve partnered with Zagat (a restaurant review and rating website). Users can now follow Zagat on Foursquare, and get insider tips and reviews on restaurants located in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston. There’s also a Zagat foodie badge that can be earned by dining at Zagat rated restaurants.

Tweet Growth:

A month ago, we saw stats that Twitter wasn’t growing. This week, there’s new stats out saying it is. The newest study, done by Pingdom, looked at the amount of Tweets being generated, and took into account all Tweets, including those form third-party Twitter applications. There was the key findings of the study (via Pingdom):

• December 2009 was the first month Twitter processed more than one billion tweets (with 1.036 billion tweets)
• January 2010 had 16 times as many tweets as January 2009
• The activity on Twitter has doubled since August 2009
• January 2010 saw more tweets per day (39.5 million) than the whole of September 2008

Google Buzz:

Most of you have probably heard some buzz around the web about Google Buzz. This week, Google introduced Google Buzz, a new social tool that allows you to share updates, photos, videos, and more…all via Gmail. You can share items publicly with the world, or privately with friends, and you can also connect Buzz with other sites such as Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, and Twitter. Watch this video to learn more about Google Buzz.

Google Buzz Kill?:

Not all the buzz surrounding Google Buzz is positive. Articles such as What’s Wrong and How to Fix it, Google Buzz Privacy, and Google Buzz? More Like Buzz Kill, shed light on some of the issues with Google Buzz. A major concern was that privacy settings were too complicated to change, so on Thursday, Google fixed that issue. As for Google Buzz in general? The verdict is still out on whether it will catch on.

Bonnaroo:

If you know Dean Browell (@dbrowell) or follow him on Twitter or Facebook, you probably know the entire Bonnaroo line-up. Why? A.) because well…he loves Bonnaroo B.) Because Bonnaroo was very savvy about how they spread the word about their line-up. Bonnaroo used MySpace to slowly trickle out the news of whose performing at Bonnaroo. Announcements began and 12pm on Tuesday, and didn’t end till 9 pm, which meant people were abuzz all day about specific bands that had been confirmed. This kept Bonnaroo in Twitter trending throughout the day, kept people talking about Bonnaroo, and got everyone even more excited about the upcoming festival.

-Anna (@alucas9)