According to a new report by the PewResearch centre, that combined both response data and log data and combined those, Facebook users on average receive more friend requests, likes, messages, and phototags than they themselves give away.This phenomenon is explained by a number (20 to 30% ) of users who are far more active than the average user, furthermore, these ‘PowerUsers’ seem to have picked up a speciality; meaning that power users are likely to be exceedingly active in one of the areas, either likes or messages etc. rather than be overly active in all of the areas.

Furthermore women are 3 times more active in updating their facebook status than men are.

The survey also didnt find any evidence of Facebook decline, rather they found a correlation between the number of friends you have on Facebook and your height of activity.

Pinterest has been around for a while, but is growing more rapid lately. Some people find that surprising I think it all has to do with their invite and sign up procedure. Pinterest was, and still is, by invite only, this means that while starting out with a small group of people to work and test with, growth is only as big as the groups you started out with and the invites they send out. This gave Pinterest the time to get feedback, test, and optimize its features.

The larger the number of users, the more invites they will send out and the bigger numbers of growth it will generate. Slow at the start, allowing for feedback and optimization processes, faster now, generating a big fan base. The other good thing about this invite only signup process is the word of mouth principle that is generating interested users that most of the time are already introduced to the pinterest features by the ones that invited them. Add to that the brilliant way in which Pinterest users are guided through their sign up while being pointed out the features and lay of the land at the same time and you have great potential for stickyness.

Pinterest lets you ‘pin’ stuff on digital boards pretty much like real life moodboards. Playing into feminine habits of collecting pictures of themes like weddings, houses, interior designs and recipes, no wonder that 70% of the pinterest user base is female. Pinterest lately also started suggesting boards and people to follow according to your interest as well as adding the gift ‘button’ indexing every pin that has a price in its comments. But that is not why I really like Pinterest. The visual boards just also come in handy visually bookmarking your finds. This is how it works; you get to ‘pin’ a picture of choice from a URL and add a note to it. The picture is than added to a board named and categorized by you. This works beautifully for visual minded people like me. I can bookmark visually, which means I get to retrieve things lot faster than going through tags and text just because I usually remember things in pictures.  I also use Pinterest for searching things. Already when looking for things I tend to prefer Google image search over normal, it giving not as much results is the only drawback. Pinterest lets me search by themes and pictures and that works for me. Needless to say, I’m going to stick with Pinterest for a while.

A week of total exhaustion and total excitement , never seen so many highs and lows due to cramped spaces, exhaustion and lots and lots of inspiring people.

Where I first meant to go along on the StartupBus as support and reporter, I ended up in a StartupBus team. There already was a special vibe going on when some of us started working on the site via Skype 2 days before the bus departed. The intensity of the bus just makes you want to participate and dive into the vibe. Three days of building, trying to focus, frustration and refocussing gives you a short version of actual startup problems with real people. My team, Saskia Videler and Steven Beeckman were the ones I spoke most with during the three days in the bus. Tight quarters and no where to go, with only one thing on your mind, no distractions, just the product, the milestones, and most important the wifi (If there is any you start doing what you need to, if there isn’t, you prepare to be ready for the next precious dose)

One spectacular ride with too many kilometers in to little time, far too short meets with other interesting entrepreneurs from all over Europe and far to little sleep have made this trip something I will never forget. (You can see my reports here in Dutch) Still to tired and with Startupbus vibes we arrived at leWeb, even bigger than two years ago and with far more show and professionalism than ever before. More interesting people and far to many to be able to talk to every one. I ran from lounge to stage to stage and back to the bus to try to catch up with all the buzz going on. One great party and again far too less sleep the week ended in a blur of bliss in the Thalys back to Amsterdam.

Below my sketchnotes of my favorites on LeWeb 2011

Featured image; breakfast at Google Zurich with local entrepreneurs

After a very exhausting 3 days in the Startupbus, you can see some footage of that at Fastmovingtargets [Dutch] I still managed to focus on some of the speakers that interested me.

Joanna Shields of Facebook who was telling about her view on the future of facebook and frictionless sharing. Mike McCue of Flipboard introducing the new iPhone app. Erik Schmidt of Google with some Android news aswell as his view on the future of networks ; scalable platforms. Kevin Systrom of Instagram with his vision they are at the beginning of where they want to be.

In little less than a week it will be that time of year again; LeWeb conference in Paris will start. A full 3 days of inspiring speakers from all over the world speaking about innovation and tech. This years theme; social-local-mobile. I will be attending and will keep you updated with sketchnotes on the speakers, both here and on my Flickr account. I am leaving for Paris soon, actually I am leaving for Paris this sunday.

No straight journey from Amsterdam to Paris but through Europe in three days in a bus full of enthusiastic entrepreneurs that do not know eachother but are going to be building some great startups during that trip. Its the Startupbus , an adventure that will take us from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, Berlin, Zurich and than on to LeWeb Paris. I will be, apart from giving support, making a daily (video) report that can be seen on FastmovingTargets.

Recently I started reading “The lean startup” by Eric Ries.  (Amazon link) I like the idea and the concept, and since I am helping startups and entrepreneurs a lot in visualizing their concepts and ideas, I decided to learn more about it.

If I am getting into a subject, listening to the author explaining things is always a useful thing. So I listened to some interviews with Eric Ries where he explains his Lean startup ideas. Today the part where Eric Ries explaines over and over again that; ‘metrics are also just people” stood out to me. They are people, they do different things from what they say they will do, and also, they are people not just numbers, you can ask them stuff. You can ask them why!? they didn’t like it.

Just now, the Rockstart accelerator program launched. A Rockstart initiative that gives startups, both tech and non tech a change to accelarate by giving them means, housing and knowledge.

Means by means of a small starting injection capital, housing by providing them with an inspirational working space in the centre of Amsterdam and knowledge by means of 100 mentors from all kinds of disciplines that are there for them to consult whenever they need to as well as workshops with other great names.

A great concept, trying to really give starting entrepreneurs with a great idea and the will to work hard a head start in growing their business. As one of the mentors I will be giving advice and insights where ever needed to the teams. I will keep you posted.

Fast moving Targets is an initiative from Erwin Blom and Wessel de Valk, who wanted to create a crossmedia platform about technology, innovation, communication and media. Their goal is to inform, detect and show what is going on around us, not only for us as users, but also with us as users.

Some time ago they asked me to help with the design and, more important, the information flows, I dragged Timan Rebel in for the technical realization and behold; here it is; Step one of an ever developing Fast Moving Targets. I’ve learned a lot in technical project management during this summertime project. I had a chance to become an actual Scrum master, learned how to master pivotal.  I used whiteboards and blackboards filled with drawings of all sorts of content that needed to fit in somewhere on the platform. There is a lot to be done still, user story’s to be added, technical tweaks, design improvements, format enhancements, but the essence is there. A platform for and by us users to learn, see, help, watch, read and share new and inspiring things in the world of technology, media and communications around us. Everybody (well everyone that can read Dutch that is) can help or contribute forming Fast moving targets.

I’ve been using Google+ for a while now and I am absolutely loving it. It has openness en collaboration, it has the same easy commenting structure FriendFeed used to have in the early days, and somehow for me it feels more natural to use than Facebook. But that doesn’t mean that the two can’t co-excist. There is a lot of debate going on on Google+, will it win from Facebook, will it win from Twitter. I don’t know if it needs to.

Yes it is true, there can be only three or so social networks that we can divide or devote our precious attention to. But that is per person. Where I am ooh and aahing over G+ someone else might be far more happy with the ‘staying in touch stream’ system FaceBook is providing for them and yet another will stick to MySpace for some reason or other. I don’t think there needs to be one big winner, or better still; I think it will work out better for everyone if there is something left to choose. For now I am choosing Google+ over Facebook, but that is my personal taste, and even that can change, as will G+ in time. For those willing to give it a try right now, here is a cheat-sheet with some handy hot keys and tips.

I’ve been trying out the new Google+ for about a week now. At first I was a bit sceptic, the buzz was there, everyone wanting an invite felt a bit like both the Wave and the Buzz introduction. Look how that turned out. So I approached with some aloofness; just another Facebook look-alike, even the ‘stream’ and +1 stead of ‘like’. Still I started playing with it for a bit. The ‘circles’, that proof to actually work very efficient. Checking out the ‘picture’ part. The ‘hangout’, which is a Google-talk feature that lets you video chat with groups of friends. Sparks, that I am not really sure about yet . Than I realized, this is much more than just another Facebook look-alike. This is Google tying together the web. They already had all the good services that I use every single day in place. Now they are tying it together with a solid social addition that looks good and is integrated in all of their existing services. Notifications that I can take care of in a drop down feature from the top menubar present in all of the Google services without actually going to Google+ is a big advantage. Suddenly it is everywhere. I use gMail, Google talk, Google docs and Google calendar every single day  and all those services add to the experience by showing the menu bar up top. I imagine that the Chrome browser with extra share and other possibilities will only add to this experience.

Having an Android phone I installed the Google+ app. This app is a far better experience than any Facebook app I have had so far on my phone. I love how checkin’s work perfectly within the app. Although I do not understand why the location is often off by more than several hundred meters while my Google maps app is scarily accurate. I can imagine that I even will consider using picasa as the dedicated place for my pictures instead of the current Flickr or iPhoto in the cloud, because of the improved features and good integration with all of the other services. Smart move there Google, offering me more space and offering to auto upload all of my phone’s pictures and Video’s the moment I make them to be stored online. Huddle is another Google+ phone addition, it lets you message groups of friends at  the same time, using your circles.

Its like every service is enhancing the experience. Making it, for me at least, not so much a Facebook vs Google+ battle but rather a Google vs Apple thing. (Even if that is Apple and Oranges) Will I still buy that much desired iPhone this fall, or do I stick to my Android because of the great Google+ integration, Yes I know there will be an iPhone app soon, but still, here Android has the advantage. Is safari ‘it’ or will Chrome enhance the Google+ experience enough for me to decide it is worth the switch. Time will learn, for now, I have put aside my sceptisism and however this will turn out; Google did a pretty good job tying togehter the web with a social line that is extremely well thought out. The Google+ experience and I’m loving it so far.