The phrase "a social layer which" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing a specific aspect or component of a social structure or system.
Example: "In urban studies, researchers often analyze a social layer which influences community interactions and relationships."
Alternatives: "a social stratum that" or "a social segment that".
For some, Google+ is not so much a social network as a "social layer" which links together all the search giant's products from mail, maps and documents to YouTube, search and apps.
TweetPhoto also added a social layer which allows you to tag, favorite and comment on photos but also see who favorited and commented on your own photos.
The idea of visualizing the content in your inbox, or even adding a social layer (which is something the team also has in mind) has been tried before many times by a number of startups, ranging from old-school Gmail add-ons like Xoopit from the Web 2.0 days, to overly ambitious email platforms like the quickly bankrupted Fluent.
The idea of visualizing the content in your inbox, or even adding a social layer (which is something the team also has in mind) has been tried before many times by a number of startups, ranging from old-school Gmail add-ons like Xoopit from the Web 2.0 days, to overly ambitious email platforms like the quickly bankrupted Fluent.
Versus' new social layer, which it's calling Vegas, is launching in beta today.
Knee-jerk Google defenders tend to say things like "Google+ can't possibly fail, it's just a social layer on top of Google," which may be true but it's also nonsense.
But, if nothing else, they are attractive targets for a certain, very large strategic acquirer that is absolutely desperate to get social networking right or Apple, which could use a social layer that's embedded into iOS.
In June, Tango announced the debut of its content platform, which lets developers add a social layer to their apps as a way to port users' "social graph" to mobile games.
Interestingly, speakers seemed to agree that Google+ is just as much an identity system, which ranks reputations of authors for example, as it is a social layer over Google's products.
These days there's a lot of disingenuous chatter about how G+ is just a "social layer on top of Google," and was never intended as a direct competitor for Facebook; which is, of course, revisionist nonsense.
This is not the first time Apple has tried to implement a social layer around music, after all – it tried and failed before with its earlier social network called Ping which shut down a few years ago.
