Google Plus is catching on. 11% in Canada

Canada has 11% active users

There are now 2.8 million people in Canada using Google Plus actively (11%) So by Christmas we should be seeing network effects. Already every other person who has joined Facebook is also on Google plus, but they are not active. There are even quite a few people who have deleted their Facebook account but most just sign into both places. I now have 333 followers on Google Plus and only 82 on Facebook.  I haven't deleted my Facebook account because I like to see first hand the tactics Facebook is using to get monies from people. I like their latest one -- putting advertising right into your stream and putting more and more ads up until you only get advertising on your stream.  Mind you, Facebookers can pay $7 / month to get rid of that kind of advertising so I guess according to Mark it is OK. What the users can't pay Facebook to make go away is their user's profile that they can sell to advertisers and that is where the 20 billion valuation comes from. I have been helping people who still want to be on Facebook install a cookie deleter so they can browse Facebook without Facebook knowing everything about them.

Facebook's Security Alert Statement got me upset.

A lot of people do not see the long term consequences of lying or cheating. Most short term thinking occurs prior to our 19 birthday, but with some men it may take until they are 25 years old. I was surprised to see Facebook resort to lying yesterday in order to keep their users from switching to Google Plus.  Their error pop up (see image) shows that the link you clicked on will take you off of Facebook's site and you might never come back so they have to warn you not to leave. In reality Google+ is safer than Facebook because it doesn't display 3 party ads. I realize it is a fight for eyeballs between Facebook and Google, but lying about the other guy's products usually makes you loose. I think what happened is Facebook was loosing a lot of accounts so they turned off the "Security Alert". A mistake made by a young CEO. I sure hope the walled garden approach by Facebook doesn't work for them. 
The making of walled gardens is archaic. It didn't work for CompuServe and AOL so why will it work for Facebook?  We need an Open Internet. I think the winner will be the one who includes all that the Internet provides WD TVLive will beat Apple TV, Linux will beat Windows and Mac OS. You can see this already -- the #1 phone sold is Android based. The #1 encyclopedia is Wikipedia. 
You know what the worst part is ... they blamed their lie on someone else, namely Norton. 

Facebook going public is what Google Plus needs!

Facebook went from being worth $112 billion to $68 billion in 2 days.  Social media isn't the advertising darling of the 21century, at least not enough to part investors with their monies. With over 90% of Facebook's revenue coming from advertisement and Facebook having to imitate Google in order to keep their audience, it will be a interesting play for dominance in the Social Media space in the next few years.
When Google Plus increased the size of the pictures in the post stream, Facebook had to follow suit but this means that Facebook doesn't have as much screen space for advertising.  Facebook only gets one click with over 2000 impressions and the smaller the ad the lower the number of clicks. In my mind Facebook will be another Myspace with just the younger generation joining and posting because of narcissistic tendencies and the sharing of pictures can be done on any website. My friend Roz is already doing this through her blog and she gets to keep the advertising revenue.