May 30, 2012
Bloggers & Brands: Maintaining Credibility – Wed. 6/6, BlogWorldExpo
Maintaining your editorial direction and integrity, while collaborating with brands on their campaigns and goals is no easy task. Join us for a discussion and sharing of experiences with an expert and experienced panel of bloggers; Helena Stone of Chip Chick, Amy Oztan of Selfish Mom and Jenna Langer of Livefyre, as we focus on how to maintain your credibility with your audience when working with brands.
Wednesday, June 6th
3:45-4:45pm
Room – 1A14
Jacob Javits Convention Center, NYC
Bloggers Riding the Line: Maintaining Credibility with Your Audience while Working with Brands
Working with brands is a great way for bloggers to make money, broaden their exposure, and gain professional recognition. But can bloggers maintain their credibility with their audience while working with a company whose primary interest is promoting a product? In a word, yes. But it takes perseverance and a willingness to ride and hold the line between brand needs and audience expectations.
Join us for an engaging panel discussion moderated by the CEO of Technorati, Shani Higgins. In this session you’ll learn techniques for maintaining credibility with your audience while reviewing products and providing sponsored complimentary content. You’ll hear from bloggers who’ve struggled with this very subject and who’ve come out on top. You’ll even hear from bloggers who’ve faltered and learned from their experience. So join us and see for yourself what it takes to ride the line.
Questions for the panel? Leave them in the comments and we’ll do our best to ask them.
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May 29, 2012
Is a Facebook Browser in the Works?
With Yahoo! debuting its mobile browser (and PC-based browser plugin) Axis yesterday, rumors have emerged today that Mark Zuckerberg has his eye on what might be Facebook’s first major post-IPO acquisition.
According to Stuart Miles of Pocketlint.com, sources have told him that Facebook has opened up its now $16 billion filled pocketbook and has put some serious consideration into snapping up Opera Software. If the company is unfamiliar to you, they’re the makers of the Opera browser, now in its 12th iteration and still grabbing market share with each passing year.
According to Miles’ sources, Facebook is interested in redesigning the web-browsing tool to serve their over 900 million user accounts in finding what they want online. If this rumor holds water, the social networking powerhouse would move from a destination point to the entire damn road for some.
According to Wikipedia, since 1996 Opera has amassed over 200 million users worldwide, particularly on mobile platforms – a plus for Facebook, which has been tentatively seeking a greater presence on hand-held devices. Reworking the Opera browsing interface to provide support for instant sharing, gaming and other integrated Facebook features would propel the small, can-do browser into hundreds of millions of phones and homes.
A Facebook-Opera mashup, if integrated search is included, would also immediately give intermittent number one browser Google Chrome and competitors Firefox and Internet Explorer a run for their search money (and advertising dollars).
What are your thoughts? Is this a smart move, or a major disaster for Opera lovers? Would you consider using a Facebook browser with integrated plugins to make your social sharing easier?
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May 20, 2012
Microsoft’s So.cl Now Online
So.cl; the Microsoft social media site that accidentally went online a few months ago, is now officially live and inviting you to try out their new service. You can join the service as long as you’re 18 years and older, and have a Facebook or Windows Live account.
Microsoft’s So.cl, pronounced “Social” is a product of Microsoft’s research lab Fuselabs. The site offers enhanced features such as Explore, Feed, Post, Video Parties and the ability to share any web content.
It looks like Microsoft has indeed created its own social network to compete with the likes of Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest. The timing of the launch is perfect, since Microsoft silently launched So.cl two days after Facebook became a public company.
If you remember, Microsoft invested $240 million, or 1.6% stake in Facebook in 2007, which is now reportedly worth anywhere between $250 million to $1.6 billion. One thing that any user of So.cl needs to remember is that all your data on so.cl are public by default, unless of course you change them as private via the SETTINGS section.
To join So.cl, just click here and visit here for more information about the service.
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May 18, 2012
Facebook IPO Launches at $38 Per Share
The Facebook IPO has been the talk of the town for the last month, with the flotation set to be one of the biggest Wall Street has ever seen.
Facebook announced that the IPO will be priced at $38 a share, valuing the company at over $100 billion. The flotation will raise approximately $16 billion for the company.
Facebook is expected to begin trading this week at approximately 11am on the NASDAQ. They will use the stock ticker “FB”.
They are on track to sell over 400 million shares as part of the IPO, with 60% of those expecting to be bought by insiders and other existing shareholders.
If the company release more shares via over-allotment it could raise over $18 billion, ranking it 2nd in the biggest IPO in US history, behind only the $19.7 billion that Visa raised in 2008.
“It’s about what we expected,” Josh Brown of Fusion Analytics told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” show. “I think the stock opens up at a premium from there.”
“It will probably be a positive for the market overall tomorrow,” Brown added. “This is a really dreary atmosphere, but something like a Facebook could really make people feel a little bit better about wading back into some NASDAQ names.”
The offering means that Facebook need to earn approximately $115 in profit from each of the 512 million active users it currently has to justify the valuation. The site currently earns approximately $1 in profit from each of these active users.
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May 16, 2012
GM Scraps Facebook Ads Stating Ineffective Returns
The hype surrounding Facebook’s IPO shows little sign of slowing up, with it still heavily oversubscribed, yet doubts remain over the long-term viability of their commercial model.
Recently it emerged that more Americans access the site via their mobile phones than via their computer, with the mobile version of the site much less commercial than the full version.
A hammer blow was struck for the Facebook advertising model today as car giant General Motors (GM) declared that they were scrapping their Facebook ads because they were not delivering results.
The decision by GM puts the spotlight on the effectiveness of advertising on Facebook. A study by TNS last year found that over 60% of Facebook users didn’t want to be bothered by adverts, whilst the click through rate on Facebook adverts is notoriously low, often hitting just 0.05%.
On Friday, Facebook is expected to sell shares in an initial public offering that could put a market value on the company of as much as $104 billion, with executives spending much of the past fortnight convincing investors that it’s worth this sky high valuation.
GM has taken the decision that it is better served by utilising its (free) Facebook Page rather than continuing with advertising on the site.
GM’s decision raises questions about the ability of Facebook to sustain the 88% revenue growth achieved in 2011. Facebook said last month its first-quarter ad revenue was down 7.5% from the previous three months. Facebook blamed “seasonal trends” for the decline, as well as a greater number of users from outside the U.S., where ad rates are lower.
Such claims are not new however. Earlier this month the US division of Kia Motors questioned how valuable their Facebook ads were, although the company will still increase its spending on Facebook this year.
“Companies in industries from consumer electronics to financial services tell us they’re no longer sure Facebook is the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget—a shocking fact given the site’s dominance among users,” said Nate Elliott, an analyst at market research firm Forrester, in a company blog post on Monday.
Research earlier this year suggested that most of the value from Facebook advertising comes subliminally, with researchers believing that we are aware of ads that are aligned with our interests, even if we don’t realise it.
Is the GM departure a sign that they don’t get Facebook or that Facebook advertising really doesn’t work?
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May 13, 2012
More Time is Spent on Facebook Mobile than Facebook Website
Whilst the Facebook IPO remains heavily oversubscribed, an enduring challenge for the company will be to monetize their mobile traffic. At the moment the mobile version of Facebook only carries limited advertising.
So news this weekend that Americans are spending more time on Facebook Mobile than they are on the main website should be the wake up call they need.
Facebook users who access the site via both mobile and computer seem to heavily favor access on the move. A total of 441 minutes per month is spent using Facebook via a mobile phone, compared to just 391 minutes per month accessing the classic full website. These figures come from a recent report from comScore.
The figures will be of major concern for Facebook. Whilst the full version of the website typically has between 4 and 7 adverts per page, the mobile version has just a couple per day. So the mobile version brings in very little money compared to the main website.
The challenge for Facebook will be how to monetize the mobile interface as with smaller screens there is significantly less real estate within which to place adverts without ruining the user experience.
There have been suggestions that Facebook will be entering the search engine market as a means of diversifying its revenue, but with Google dominating that industry such a move would represent a long-term project.
Cracking the mobile problem remains a more pressing concern however. With phones becoming more powerful it seems inevitable that users will access Facebook more and more from their mobile device. Currently 78 million Americans access Facebook mobile, spending on average 7.3 hours a month there.
This compares to 160 million Americans accessing the Facebook website, spending just 6.5 hours a month on the site.
Facebook has already tried monetizing mobile with Sponsored Stories, ie news feed items that companies have paid to place in your news feed. Whilst these are less intrusive than banner ads, there is nevertheless a fine line between seeing one of these now and then and them becoming a nuisance.
With shareholders to please, the challenge is on for Facebook to get it right sooner rather than later.
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May 11, 2012
Facebook’s IPO Already Oversubscribed
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was criticized yesterday for wearing a hoodie to a meeting with investors, but that doesn’t seem to be affecting the popularity of their upcoming IPO.
Reuters reveal that institutional demand for the flotation remains very strong, with more demand for stocks than the available supply.
The news will please Facebook bosses, who are hoping to raise $10.6 billion from the flotation, where more than 337 million shares will go on sale for between $28 and $35 each.
It is expected that if demand remains strong that this price range may rise to allow Facebook to cash in on the popularity of the offering.
One large institutional investor had put in a major order for shares on Wednesday and was calling around syndicate desks trying to acquire more, a second source familiar with the IPO’s progress told Reuters, declining to be identified because the details are not public.
Facebook shares are expected to begin trading on the 18th May after what is expected to be the largest tech IPO ever seen.
Facebook has 900 million users and whilst most of its income thus far has come from advertising, there is every indication that it will soon move into search, either with its own search engine or by increasing its relationship with Bing, the Microsoft owned search engine.
They will also have to find a way to monetize the increasing number of users that access the website from their mobile phones. Facebook, which makes most of its money from advertising, began offering limited ads on the mobile version of its service only recently.
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May 10, 2012
Is Social Proximity More Important Than Geographic Proximity in Sales?
Are sales territories based on geographic lines still the best way to go about dividing B2B sales leads? What if, instead of the sales representative who happens to be closest, companies evaluated the prospects social graph to find out if any representatives have a professional connection to them instead? Does this idea of social proximity trump the fact that someone else might happen to be closer or simply share the same area code? In an article on Social Proximity in Selling Power, Al Campa, Reachable CEO, answers some of these questions and also tells us about some tools that his company has developed to help leverage social connections for sales, recruitment and business networking.
It’s argued that social proximity, the distance socially you would have to travel to get connected to someone else, is far more important to sales engagement than geographic proximity or simply matching zip codes. This coupled with a new LinkedIn Sales Navigator product, video communication (Skype), presentation sharing (webex) and collaboration platforms galore designed to jump over any geographic hurdles, the notion of having connections to more people socially has arguably become the most important factor to not only getting more sales, but recruiters getting more talent, and business professionals establishing more connections.
According to Campa, Reachable’s research has shown, “that having an existing relationship with an account or prospect makes the likelihood that you’ll be able to engage that prospect or account three to four times higher.” You might not be able to say that if you just happen to share the same zip code as someone. In fact, even with all the information sales people have out there about people via Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and businesses via Hoovers, Google or Reuters, Campa says sales performance hasn’t improved; cycle times are the same, close rates aren’t improving, because the information salespeople need to succeed is not on Twitter or Facebook. The critical insight as he puts it, rather than background information, is “the key to engaging prospects and closing sales.” This information can only come from a trusted source inside the company, which is where the Reachable solutions comes in.
What Reachable does, simply, is allow professionals and organizations to leverage their collective relationships and extend their professional networks to reach more people. The service consolidates your contacts from social networks as well as email contacts, and other sources and combines it with their database of upwards of 65 million professionals to create an extended network that enables you to amplify your reach. As quoted in a SmartPlanet article, Campe said Reachable was like, “LinkedIn on steroids.”
You can also leverage contact information from trusted members of your sales and executive teams through ShareGroup, which let’s you use another persons network as if it were your own. Contact information isn’t shared but can be requested through the contact owner. This lets users take advantage of the collective company network while keeping privacy for contacts in place. Reachable also integrates with several popular CRM programs including Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM On-Demand, to help users of these popular services take advantage of the Reachable network. Users don’t have to leave the CRM programs to take advantage of Reachable, which uses a proprietary algorithm to rank leads, contacts, and opportunities by the strength of user relationships from within the CRM system.
Reachable is available in an entry-level version for free, which allows you to see up to 100 connection paths. Beyond that there is a professional edition which starts at $49/month per user.
Originally posted 5/10/12 on Technorati by Geoff Simon.
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May 7, 2012
Hangouts On Air: Google+ Just Rolled Out Your 15 Minutes of Fame
“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
In an introspective-extroverted iPerson age of inwardly caressing status updates and look-what-I’m-doing-now image streams, Andy Warhol’s famous 1968 quote continues to unwittingly guide the direction of social sharing. With today’s new feature roll-out, Google’s Plus network has albeit made Warhol’s dream (or our nightmare) a reality.
Provided a year ago to a limited number of participants, Google+ rolled out its social-enhanced video conferencing feature in a much more broad form, known as Hangouts On Air. This beefed-up version of the popular social video sharing system allowed users to broadcast their lives well beyond the initial 10 person limit – in fact, to the whole wide world.
Today, Google has released Hangouts On Air to the masses, allowing anyone with a Plus account to choose to either share a Hangout with a few close friends, or with anyone who cares to watch them bake a cake, plant a garden, talk about their business, or teach their dog new tricks.
Google’s product integration has not been forgotten, either. Broadcast your band’s local concert on Hangouts on Air, and expect the system to save the broadcast to your YouTube account, so the band’s growing list of fans can make comments on the video for months to come.
Whether or not this leads to your 15 (or much more) minutes of fame is entirely up to your skill-set, willingness to be seen by anyone online, and desire to apply yourself in an entertaining fashion. Whereas previously you could share how to make a souffle in a small Hangout, now you can venture an actual live broadcast schedule, and use Google+ to entice millions of viewers to tune into next week’s flan demonstration. It’s all up to you.
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May 4, 2012
LinkedIn Buys Slideshare for $119M
LinkedIn are widely regarded as the premier social network for business people, and that reputation has been enhanced this week with the news that they have purchased Slideshare for $119 million.
Slideshare is a site that allows users to upload presentations, documents and videos. Think of it like a YouTube for PowerPoints. As with YouTube the site allows users to take content from SlideShare and embed it into sites around the web, so is a hugely popular method for thought leaders to spread their knowledge far and wide.Slideshare for $119 million.
SlideShare has already got an app on LinkedIn that allows users to embed presentations from their account into their LinkedIn profile, so a more formal tie up with LinkedIn was a natural fit.
In a press release to announce the move, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said:
“Presentations are one of the main ways in which professionals capture and share their experiences and knowledge, which in turn helps shape their professional identity,”
“These presentations also enable professionals to discover new connections and gain the insights they need to become more productive and successful in their careers, aligning perfectly with LinkedIn’s mission and helping us deliver even more value for our members. We’re very excited to welcome the SlideShare team to LinkedIn.”
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May 2, 2012
Facebook Adds New Life-Saving Tool Feature
Social network giant Facebook just announced the addition of a new feature called Organ Donor to their Facebook Timeline.
According to a report, Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg was inspired by his medical-student girlfriend to add organ donor status to Facebook to alleviate the shortage of organ donors for patients desperately in need of life-saving transplants.
On its own Facebook sharing organ donor status page it says:
“More than 114,000 people in the United States, and millions more around the globe, are waiting for the heart, kidney or liver transplant that will save their lives. Many of those people – an average of 18 people per day – will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need. Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis.”
Facebook users can add their organ donor status by going to their Facebook Timeline and clicking “Life Event.” Then click “Health & Wellness,” followed by the new “Organ Donor” option. Users can include the date and location of when they registered as an organ donor.
Facebook also provides an app link on their site that will direct organ donor participants to their state’s donor registry if they haven’t registered yet as an organ donor.
Finally a great move from Facebook that is going to benefit many people with their health and one that will make you proud to be a part of.
First published 5/2/12 on Technorati by Dan Reyes.
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