If you still haven't heard, Google has launched their own social network service called Google+, to challenge Facebook. Despite being still under private beta testing, the new service has managed to garner more than 100 million users. I was sent an invite by Mike and so, I signed up out of curiosity - probably a good portion of the 100 million users did the same.

My first impression was that Google+ looks much cleaner and less cluttered than Facebook. I felt the real killer feature was a something called "circles", which basically lets you put your friends into groups so that personal feeds will not be shown to work colleagues, for example. Although a relatively simple feature, it is something lacking on Facebook - they tried to implement it by calling them Groups, but it just isn't seamless enough. Alas, technology alone is not enough because there's not much point in Google+ being technologically more advanced yet my friends are still on Facebook.

Being an SEO amateur, I wondered how much Google+ will affect the search rankings of a website. I mean, experts like SEO Company, have already confirmed that Google takes into account Twitter and Facebook mentions, when ranking websites. The fact that Google are encouraging webmasters to implement the GooglePlus button on their website is further signs that all these social signals will become a significant factor soon.

It's quite logical if you thought about it because there's only so much that computer algorithms can do to filter the bad sites from the search results. But humans can definitely do a better job by "voting" up the quality sites above all the noise.

Now I wonder, will Bing launch their own social network service soon?

Mike tried to sell me the idea of participating in an MLM recently. He reasoned that one shouldn't always depend on just the full-time job because everything's so uncertain these days. And with the prices for petrol, property, food and everything else going up, it certainly doesn't hurt to have more money in your pocket.

He does make some sense. I mean, just look at all the crises that have been hitting us non-stop - Asian Financial crisis in 1997, tech bubble in 2002 and the sub-prime crisis in 2008, which we've yet to recover. And that's not even looking at the disasters in between like SARs, etc.

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My TOEFL test is coming up soon and I've been burying myself deep in English books, magazines - anything I can get my hands on to familiarize myself with North American English. Thank God for my lecturer too! I've been attending a TOEFL class at ICON+ at Shaw Centre in Orchard.

For anyone else preparing for the test, here are some tips provided by my lecturer for the TOEFL iBT Independent Speaking section:

1. DON'T skip any part of your instruction for the Independent Speaking Task. Keep in mind that you are very often asked to do more than just one thing. For instance, you may be asked to discuss two different viewpoints and then state your own:
‘Some students would rather write a paper than take a test. Others would rather take a test instead of writing a paper. Which option do you prefer and why? Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.’

2. DON'T address only one viewpoint. You are expected to discuss both of them, provide supporting reasons and examples and finally to state your preference.

3. DON'T elaborate excessively supporting examples. Unfortunately, you do not have much time for that. Be brief and concise.

4. DON'T let quiet breaks appear in your response. Whenever you need some extra time to think about what you want to share next, use fillers such as ‘Well’ and ‘ How shall I put it’.

5. DON'T hesitate to join a test preparation course, if you feel you need some professional guidance to achieve TOEFL score that would satisfy you.

You can also find some tips here regarding the TOEFL Listening sections.