How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today Remember three years ago, when Microsoft paid a quarter-billion dollars for 1.6% of Facebook and the exclusive right to run banner ads across Facebook.com? Tell the truth, how many of you thought that was a killer business decision? I can’t say I did at the time. But as that deal is about to expire in 2011, Facebook’s status as a revenue juggernaut is rarely questioned any more. In fact, I have been mulling over data from both companies, and I’m ready to declare in public my belief that Facebook will be bigger in five years than Google is right now, barring some drastic action or accident. What do I mean by bigger? Google’s 2010 revenues will be $28 billion, give or take a billion. Facebook has figured out its business model, and wants to keep it out of the public eye as long as possible. Facebook’s second-mover advantage affords the company the luxury of offering both types of Internet money-making product: Advertising and Commerce. But it’s not just Madison Avenue. Games. Inbox.
#newtwitterceo By all accounts Twitter is on a roll. We’ve redesigned our web site to great user feedback. Our user and usage numbers are growing at a rapid clip all around the world. We’ve launched an early, but successful, monetization effort. And, many top engineers, product designers, sales people and other key folks have joined our quickly growing team. In fact, there are 300 people working at Twitter today—compared to about 20 when I took the CEO job two years ago. The challenges of growing an organization so quickly are numerous.
New Data: Articles Published in the Morning Shared More on Facebook It’s been a while since I last published Facebook sharing data and I was waiting to gather a large enough sample set to produce this graph. I analyzed the average (interquartile mean to be specific) number of times articles were shared on Facebook based on the time of day they were published and I found that Facebook sharing seems to peak on articles that are posted in the morning, 9AM EST specifically. I’ve previously found that ReTweeting peaks a few hours later in the day so the takeaway here I think is to publish your articles in the morning and then Tweet about them later in the day. Another interesting data point here is the volume of stories posted at different hours. Notice the light gray bars at the bottom of the chart, they peak two hours after the “sharing peak”. If you’re curious about my methodology, read this.
s Monday Mashup #43 / we are social Content creation in the age of social networking A new study from Forrester sheds some new light on the field of participation and content creation levels in social media in 2010. As you may already know, every year Forrester updates its Social Technographics profiles, classifying social network users across different types (outlined in the table above). Even though social networking overall is on the rise with ‘Joiners’ massively on the rise across the board, it seems that this year the ‘Creators’ category has remained static (it’s actually declined very slightly in the US, Europe, China and Australia). Another interesting development is the addition of ‘Conversationalists’ to the list of existing profiles “to capture the short, rapid conversations that are now taking place on Twitter and through Facebook status updates”. Facebook tells us more about liking Facebook have just released some interesting stats on the use of the “Like” button. Will London claim the Super Swarm badge?
BREAKING: Putting Solar on the White House! Just in time to give the Global Work Party a White House-sized boost, the Obama administration announced this morning that they are going to put solar panels on the First Family's living quarters, returning to a tradition begun by president Jimmy Carter and abandoned by Ronald Reagan. It's a great win for your efforts over the last months–everyone who wrote letters, signed petitions, and turned out for the Solar Road Show as we rolled down the east coast from Unity College towing one of the Carter panels. We were disappointed that day that the White House wasn't prepared to go solar, but very happy that they took our suggestion to look into the matter seriously. Solar panels on one house, even this house, won't save the climate, of course. The first account of the day's news, from Associated Press reporter Dina Cappiello, noted the efforts of 350.org to make this happen.
iPad spends 20% of time in bed High performance access to file storage Among the interesting stats turned up by a new study of iPad usage is that 20 per cent of users' iPad time is spent in bed. That nugget was buried in a blog post by Stephen Baker, the NPD Group's VP of industry analysis, discussing his research group's just-released "iPad Owner Study." "It is obvious that the iPad form factor makes people feel warm and cuddly," writes Baker. Considering that a recent Nielsen survey discovered that 63 per cent of iPad owners are under 35 — significantly younger than owners of an Amazon Kindle or the study's representative netbook — we can only hope that a goodly chunk of that iPad bedtime time is spent with apps such as Naim Cesur's iKamasutra XL or an iBooks download of Violet Blue's Lust. Speaking of lust, the NPD survey also revealed that early iPad adopters are more satisfied than those who puchased theirs after the initial rush — satisified with their iPads, that is. In bed.
Social media and the Rutgers suicide »» Corruption on social web, ethics »» Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow} I’m sure you were disturbed, as I was, by the story of a young man who committed suicide when his sexual encounter was secretly captured on a video and posted on the Internet. The tragedy is doubly sobering for me because it occurred at Rutgers University where I begin a social media teaching assignment in a few weeks. I have read no fewer than three blog posts blaming the social web for this incident and after three it was time for me to stop reading. Humans have an incredible capacity for evil. The social web shines a bright light on whatever humans are already doing, both good and bad. Awhile ago I wrote a post predicting that by the end of 2011 there would be a social media crime or crisis that would force the channel to be legislated to some degree, probably around privacy. In probably the best-known case, a 13-year-old girl hanged herself in 2006 after she received messages on MySpace — supposedly from a teenage boy — cruelly dumping her.
Rumor: iLife '11 to be 64-bit, iOS compatible iLife, the software suite that is included on every Mac and is made up of iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD, hasn't been updated to a new version since January, 2009. That, of course, is making many of us in the Apple world curious about when the next version of the suite will appear on the market. Many Mac pundits believe the next edition will be iLife '11, and we've already seen several of the rumored release dates fly past without sign of the new iLife. Now some sharp-eyed Apple fans have noticed that there's a book listed on the German Amazon site with the title "iLife '11: Digital pictures, movies, music and more" and a release date of December, 2010. The translated description notes that the suite is entirely 64-bit, and that iPhoto will receive integration with social networking. iWeb has been "rewritten" from the ground up, and iDVD is no longer included with the suite. The book is written by Uwe Nerger, who has no other published titles to his name. [via AppleInsider]
Graphene Just Won Two Guys the Nobel. So What the Hell Is It? Bump Is A Social Network For Your License Plate | Autopia A new social networking tool is trying to turn your vehicle’s license plate into an all-in-one identifier that acts as an E-mail address, phone number, shopping rewards card and even an IP address. Bump.com, the brainchild of entrepreneur Mitchell Thrower, uses license plate recognition technology to allow businesses and government services to connect with drivers and drivers to connect with each other. Thrower says it should be in a public beta by Thanksgiving, just in time for drivers stuck in holiday traffic to send messages to one another. “The license plate has never given the consumer anything,” said Thrower, who calls the automobile the “last wall that separates us from a communications standpoint.” “It works like a cookie,” said Thrower, except it uses the license plate as a physical marker for a camera that can read up to five plates per second at up to 150 miles per hour. Bump users can also communicate with other drivers by scanning license plate numbers with a smartphone app.