Posts tagged facebook

I meant to write this short post for a week at least, since I noticed that my foursquare check-ins were not displayed on my facebook profile anymore, despite my 2 accounts are connected.

Recently Allfacebook posted a poll to see what people thought about the future on foursquare and facebook places and one of the comments was interesting (if true, which I can’t say):

From what i have read about the Facebook Places API, Foursquare checkins will become Facebook Places checkins. So both can survive if this works.

That would definitely be a neat implementation, whereas not displaying my check-ins anymore is just lame and not very fair. I’m pro openness and freedom to choose what to use, and I don’t see I real reason why facebook should ‘censor’ foursquare. They have completely different numbers and foursquare core audience is much more niche, so why playing bad cop and stop displaying their content?

However, the poll ended with the following result: 42% prefers foursquare (and I can infer that they think/hope it’ll prevail), 31% goes for facebook places, while 16% think they can both survive and coexist and 11% just hate ‘this location tracking nonsese’ (full article here). Personally I think that both services can exist and hopefully interact with each other. Lets’ wait and see…

I was reading a bunch of blog posts and articles saved from the past couple of days and I found myself thinking of a potential strategy to further monetize Facebook as a platform. Let’s call it FbSense. Got it already? There’s a twist anyway, so it’s worth keep reading :)

AdSense made Google the ginormous company it is today. Facebook is the new kid on the block in the online ads business and I don’t see a reason why they shouldn’t roll out their own flavour of AdSense using their Ads platform. In fact I would be surprised if they weren’t busily working on this, taking Google face to face on its own home turf.

According to comScore last August Facebook surpassed Google (its overall network, therefore including YouTube, GMail and the lot, not just the search engine) in terms of US time spent by people per month, wow. Microsoft with their MSN, Yahoo! and all the internet giants follow a new leader now.

However, what I just dubbed FbSense is too simplistic and may not guarantee me a position in the highest ranks of Facebook :)

The real deal would be revenue sharing a la AdSense even within Facebook itself, inside Pages. What?? Wouldn’t it be cannibalising their own revenues? Yes, in a way… but just in a way. Brands of all sizes and shapes are already investing time and money to engage users, reach new audiences, profile people smarter and all sorts of other things using Facebook pages. And more will come, more brands, more strategy, more planning, more money, more of everything. Google simply can’t do that. Unless they create some google.com/brandname page to display… to display… to display what? Certainly nothing where people spend 40 million minutes per month interacting with. Surely something could be done around YouTube and profile pages do indeed exist, but they don’t have the reach - currently and prospectively - of Facebook Pages.

Monday Note recently published some stats about the top 15 pages (for number of likes), available here. Ok, these pages are property of Facebook and an integral part of their core service/platform, but their success depends heavily on the efforts put into them by brands, so rewarding page owners with a rev share on the ads displayed/clicked on their Facebook page wouldn’t be anything strange. I personally see it as a way to foster a virtuous cycle and stronger relationships with brands/companies/artists/etc, which become even harder to break. All this goes to the long term competitive advantage of Facebook and its ecosystem.

Does it make any sense?

For some unknown reason (unknown to myself too) I didn’t pay any attention to the rumours about a film on Facebook in previous months. The subconscious idea of it being a cheesy and over hyped thing with no connection to reality probably put me off it.

However, after being invited to the private screening in London (details here) I checked the actual trailer of the film and I started to get interested about it. After all it didn’t have any of the negative traits I was subconsciously expecting.

Then today I intercepted a tweet by LoveFilm and I suddenly realised that The Social Network is a) directed by David Fincher (wow, one of my favourites) and b) written by Aaron Sorkin (double wow as both A Few Good Men and my favourite TV series, The West Wing, come straight out of his pen… well, possibly keyboard).

So now I’m totally excited about The Social Network (and gutted I won’t be able to make the private screening in London) and I really hope that the Fincher-Sorkin duo delivers an epic film. Fingers crossed

(Source: lovefilm.com)

“Social commerce will be big and disruptive,” Ethan Beard (Director of Platform Marketing at Facebook) said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, referring to the use of social media tools and content–such as user profiles, customer ratings and reviews, user recommendations and wish lists–to make online shopping a more social experience.

At Wishpot we’re well prepared to embrace “Facebook Shopping” prime time with our Social Commerce platform for retailers. Bring it on!

Interested?

(Source: socialcommercetoday.com)