If you’re a reasonably social media-savvy person, you’ll no doubt have heard of (and perhaps used) Klout, an innovative online service for measuring online influence via social media.  Klout’s unique selling point is their own calculation of influence, the Klout Score.  While it’s not exactly new to the social sphere, having been on the go in some shape or form since 2008, Klout have recently been engaging in a substantial push to increase the scope of their offering by adding many more social networks and features.

A couple of months ago I posted an article titled Vizualize.Me - your CV as an infographic in a single click, regarding an interesting new visualisation service which, using data from your LinkedIn profile can generate an entire, graphical representation of your CV in a single click.  At the time of writing the post, the service was gearing up to launch their private beta, with a public beta soon to follow.  Unfortunately, I didn’t quite make the cut for the private beta but the public beta is now live!  So, I’ve been straight in and created a visualisation of my CV (below) from my LinkedIn profile.

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the lack of mobile support for the Windows Phone 7 OS from Google+.  The fledgling social network launched with a native app for Android, closely followed by iPhone, however users of any other mobile OS had to settle for using their phone’s web browser to view the mobile web site.  A visitor to the site, John B left an extremely helpful comment pointing out that he had discovered a workaround to this issue.

If anything I’m probably a little late in writing this post as everyone and their dog seems to have used Google+, had their fun and either dismissed it as a fad that won’t last or seen something they like and accepted it as the new contender.  I’m definitely the latter.  I was initially disappointed by the “stream” interface and very nearly wrote it off then and there as a straight Facebook rip-off.  This definitely would have been a mistake and I’m glad I persevered.  You see, there are two things that I feel separate Google+ from the other social networks out there: Integration and Flexibility.  Let me elaborate:

I was lucky enough to get hold of an invite for Google+ earlier today thanks to one of the guys at work and some creative invitation methods.  I’ll cover my impressions of the new social media platform in another post but I wanted to cover an initial stumbling block separately first.  Naturally, after playing about with all the features and inviting half the office, we all decided to take a look at the mobile version of Google+.

There’s a fair mix of handsets in the office, covering iPhone, Android, Blackberry and my own, Windows Phone 7.  Google have already launched a native Android application for +, as expected, while other platforms have to settle for accessing the platform via the mobile web app, available at google.com/+.  While others were able to access the web application without any problems, I ran in to a bit of an issue with WP7.

Last night Google launched their own contender for Facebook’s crown.  Google+ is the search giant’s newest concept to tackle “Zuck” and Co. at their own game and even take it further.  The move surprised a large number of people in the search and social media industries, despite a number of glaring (at least in hindsight) indications.  There was a suprising lack of information around the launch, not even the usual industry gossip around such an announcement.  Naturally, the web has since exploded with the news.

So, what is Google+ and what does it mean to you and me?

Vizualize.Me are gearing up to launch their infographic resume (CV to you and me)  over the coming months.  The private beta is due to kick off in July, with a public beta soon to follow at the beginning of August.  This innovative service takes your LinkedIn profile data and turns it into a collage of charts, visualisations and colours encompassing your employment history, qualifications and skills, all in a single click.

Self-confessed social “anti-network” site OneTrueFan has recently launched a new API, currently in beta, which provides a staggering level of access to their “Fanalytics” data.

OneTrueFan works via a combination of Facebook/Twitter integration and a custom browser add-on, which tracks your browsing behaviour.  By tracking which pages you visit, what content you share and what you post about, OneTrueFan can compare and rank all their users and offer valuable insight into users’ online behaviour.