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Facebook Hits 750 Million Users; Zuckerberg Yawns
During today’s ongoing product announcement at Facebook headquarters, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg somewhat casually mentioned that the site now has 750 million users … and also mentioned that he doesn’t care. Zuckerberg said Facebook didn’t bother to report when it hit the 750 million mark because it’s a metric that really doesn’t matter. “You […]
Facebook To Announce “Awesome” New Feature At Press Event Next Week
Earlier this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that his company would be launching something “awesome” next week. Not just big talk, it seems. A press invite just went out. There are no details about what Facebook will be covering at the event next Wednesday. We’ll be there and live blogging it, when it starts […]
Retail Study: 1 Facebook Fan = 20 Visits To Your Website
A UK based study by Hitwise analyzed data from the top 100 retailers to find how much additional web traffic was generated by each Facebook fan. The metrics showed that each fan of a Facebook page produced an extra 20 visits to the website. In order to generate this number, Facebook traffic was analyzed and compared […]
Report: Only 3% to 7.5% of Fans View Posts From A Facebook Page
Recent findings from PageLever revealed the reach of your Facebook Page may be far less than you think. The data shows an average of 7.49% of fans view posts on a daily basis. Pages with the largest fan-base are performing the worst while pages with fewer likes are performing the best. Currently, pages with over one million likes […]
Facebook Launching New Features To Enhance ‘Places’
This week Inside Facebook revealed that Facebook was planning on bringing a few new features to their Places product. Facebook Places launched almost a year ago, a product which has seen decent usage to date. The new features that are reportedly launching should make it much easier to market places, especially for those with small […]
A Portrait Of Who Uses Social Networks In The US (And How Social Media Affects Our Lives)
Did you know that out of all social networking users 92% partake in Facebook, 29% participate on MySpace, 18% are on LinkedIn and Twitter is the least utilized network with just 13% usage? Or that males on LinkedIn nearly double the number of females, yet female usage of Twitter almost doubles male usage? Today Pew […]
Buoyed By Facebook, Social Media Sites Hit All-Time Traffic Highs In May
While Facebook gets the lion’s share of attention, the overall adoption of social media is also lifting several sites to all-time traffic levels and there’s no sign that this will change anytime soon. According to a new comScore report, LinkedIn, Twitter and Tumblr — in addition to Facebook — all hit new highs for U.S. […]
Facebook IPO Coming In 2012, Could Be Worth $100 Billion
Everyone knows that Facebook is going public. When was the only question. Now it appears that it will be early next year. Facebook apparently is being compelled go public by an obscure SEC rule that requires companies with 500 or more shareholders to start disclosing financial information even if they haven’t gone public. Thus Facebook […]
Report: Facebook’s Traffic Down In The U.S. And Canada
Facebook is creeping towards the 700 million user mark, but Inside Facebook reports that Facebook’s U.S. and Canada based traffic and growth dropped in June. This marks the second straight month of lower growth in these areas for Facebook which is an unusual occurrence. The United States lost nearly 6 million Facebook users (down to 149.4 million […]
Survey: Facebook Is The Most Popular Site To Market On For Local Business Owners
The results of a MerchantCircle survey targeting small business owners showed the prominence of social media in the local marketing mix, especially marketing on Facebook. When asked which marketing channels the businesses leveraged, the most popular answer was “the creation of a profile on a social network” with 40.9% of the vote. The creation of […]
How Facebook Enables The Google Social “Scraping” It’s Upset About
I wrote a very long examination of the issues that Facebook employed a PR firm to publicize, about how Facebook feels Google may be violating privacy with its Google Social Search product. Here’s a shorter look, especially from the angle of how Facebook itself has enabled Google to do what Facebook is now complaining about. […]
Facebook Launches “Social Deals” To Challenge Groupon & LivingSocial
After several months of anticipation Facebook is launching its second deals program: Social Deals. The new effort more closely resembles Groupon-style daily deals, with several twists. The original “Facebook Deals” is now being called “check-in deals” to distinguish it from the new program. Check-in deals are free to users; they’re mobile centric and operate like […]
Google’s Larry Page, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Make 2011 TIME 100 List
Two of the biggest names in search are on the 2011 TIME 100 — the magazine’s choices for the most influential people in the world: Google CEO Larry Page and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In the short Zuckerberg essay, April Capone – the mayor of East Haven, Conn., tells the story of how she donated […]
Updated: Is “FaceSense” Forthcoming?
Facebook is testing new ad targeting options that display creative beside content that is contextually relevant, similarly to Google’s AdSense but with one important difference — ads would be targeted in real time as conversations are happening on the social network. Irina Slutsky reported the test in AdAge earlier this week. Facebook confirmed to me […]
Official: Facebook Not Testing Web Search Box, Says Malware Might Be To Blame
Facebook is not testing a second search box on its website and says anyone who sees such a thing might be the victim of malware or some other kind of third-party app. Earlier today, an article on All Facebook showed a user-submitted screenshot that included a second search box adjacent to the regular search at […]
Report: Google Still Web’s Dominant Traffic Driver, But Some Niches See Facebook Gaining
A wide-ranging report out today paints a rosy picture for the future of search and search ads, and more specifically for Google to continue its dominance of the search landscape. But there are small niches where Google’s position as a dominant traffic driver might be taking a hit. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney released a 30-page […]
Facebook Asking App Developers To Stop Using Google AdSense
The Inside Facebook Blog reports that some Facebook developers are receiving emails from Facebook to remove the Google AdSense ads they have on their apps. They posted a screen shot of one developer stating this in the developer group on Facebook. Here is a screen shot: Facebook issued a deadline of last month to remove […]
Facebook Patents Social Search (Courtesy Of Friendster)
Has Facebook patented social search? It appears so, according to a patent awarded earlier this year by the USPTO. The patent, written the same year Facebook was founded, has been previously discussed but escaped our notice until now. Originally filed in October 2004 and awarded this past February, the patent is for a system that […]
Microsoft & Facebook No Longer Friends After Employee Poaching Accusations
Kara Swisher reports Microsoft is considering taking legal action against Facebook for allegedly poaching their employees. Facebook recently hired Microsoft’s global ad sales head Carolyn Everson. That sparked a deeper look at how Facebook may be going after Microsoft’s talent. And Microsoft may potentially use legal action to prevent Everson from working at Facebook. It […]
Google Doesn’t Sign Up As Facebook Ad Provider
As of today, Facebook developers aren’t allowed to monetize their apps with ads from Google AdWords. And that news has many developers upset with some talking about abandoning Facebook altogether. The problem seems to be about Google’s decision — conscious or otherwise — to not accept Facebook’s advertiser agreement, which includes a variety of rules […]
Comments Made On Facebook To Appear On Sites
Content sites that once benefited from raucous discussion in comments have complained that some of the conversation has been drained off by social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Facebook today announced changes to its Comment Box widget that will plug the hole a little and keep at least some of the comments next to […]
Bing Integrates Facebook Likes Further Into Its Search Results
Bing announced that it has integrated Facebook Likes within its regular search results, similar to a move that Google made with social “shares” from Twitter and other services last week. Facebook Likes Previously Separated In October, Bing added Facebook Likes to the bottom of its search results page. If you searched for something that one […]
Google Drops Facebook Sync On Nexus S: Google/Facebook Battle Continues
TechCrunch reports Google has intentionally dropped the phonebook data sync from Facebook. The reason Google cites is because Facebook contacts “cannot be exported from the device” and thus do not allow users to “control their data” as freely as Google would like. This topic has been going on for months, starting back in November when […]
Facebook Organizes Its Search Results
Reflecting the growing number of content types on its platform, Facebook has changed its search results display — the drop-down that appears as soon as users begin typing in the Facebook search box. The new display is organized into different content types, replacing the old version which showed results in a straight list format with […]
If Google Is The New Microsoft, Facebook Is The New Google
One can guess that Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak probably doesn’t “Like” Facebook anymore, the website that now topples governments. (I apologize but I couldn’t resist.) Back in the US the Facebook enemies or, more precisely, “frenemies list” is also growing says a piece in the the Wall Street Journal. The article discusses Facebook’s broad ambitions and […]
Facebook’s 2010 Metrics: Dominant & Still Growing, comScore Says
Total unique Facebook visitors in 2010? Up 38 percent. Average daily Facebook visitors in 2010? Up 69 percent. Total Facebook page views in 2010? Up 71 percent. Overall time spent on Facebook in 2010? Up 79 percent. The list could go on and on. In fact, it does. Here’s a look at comScore’s estimates for […]
Study: Facebook Ad Click-Throughs Declining
Click-through rates on Facebook ads only averaged 0.05% in 2010, down from 0.06% in 2009 and well short of what’s considered to be the industry average of 0.10%. That’s according to a Webtrends report that examined 11,000 Facebook ads, first reported upon by ClickZ. Meanwhile, the price of those clicks is increasing, rising from $0.27 […]
Schmidt Downplays Google’s Competition With Facebook, Apple & Well … Almost Everything
Speaking today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, outgoing Google CEO Eric Schmidt deflected suggestions that Google is in competition with the likes of Apple and Facebook, and rejected speculation that those fights are the real reason that Larry Page is taking the CEO’s chair. As Forbes reports, Schmidt told journalists that his […]
Twitter’s New Year Tweet Record Shown In Stunning Video
Twitter started 2011 with a new record: 6,939 tweets were sent at four seconds after midnight in Japan. Twitter says that TPS rate (tweets per second) is more than double the previous high of 3,283 TPS during Japan’s World Cup soccer/football win over Denmark last summer. In a blog post detailing the new record, Twitter […]
Facebook Funding Subject Of SEC Review: Report
Perhaps not surprisingly, the SEC is reportedly looking into the recent Goldman Sachs Facebook investment. The Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the situation,” reports that the SEC is in the early stages of an inquiry over rules concerning the dividing line between public and private companies. Goldman Sachs created a “special purpose vehicle” […]
Data: StumbleUpon Beats Facebook As Top Social Referrer
Facebook and Twitter are getting most of the ink, attention and money of late in the social media world. However StatCounter indicates that the venerable StumbleUpon has now become a larger social media referrer than either Facebook or Twitter. Here’s the data, showing StumbleUpon with a 43 percent share of social media referrals, while Facebook […]
Facebook’s Goldman Investment An IPO Delaying Tactic?
There’s a fascinating discussion developing around the question of what the Goldman Sachs $450 or $500 million investment means for a future Facebook IPO. Does it mean it’s around the corner? Alternatively does it do the opposite and delay an IPO a year or more? At the center of the debate is an obscure SEC […]
With So Much Money Is A Facebook Search Engine Inevitable?
The news broke yesterday that Facebook was getting a whopping $500 million from Goldman Sachs and existing investor Digital Sky Technologies at a valuation of $50 billion. None of this has been confirmed by the company but it’s being very widely reported. Apparently the Goldman investment will enable the company’s most wealthy clients to “get […]
What If Google Had Bought MySpace (And What If They Do)?
AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes reports that MySpace is considering significant layoffs — perhaps up to 50 percent of its 1,000 person staff. We also know (and she repeats) that the site could be sold by News Corp. because of recent poor performance. (News Corp’s attitude implies that it had nothing to do with that decline.) Reading […]
Paul Allen Refiles Patent Suit Against Google, Facebook, Yahoo & Others
As expected, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has re-filed his patent infringement lawsuit against some of the biggest companies on the web. The suit alleges that 11 companies have infringed on technology developed in the 1990s by Interval Licensing (AKA Interval Research Corporation), one of Allen’s companies. The 11 companies named in the suit are Google, […]
Gender And Tech Companies: Where Are The Women?
Google’s Marissa Mayer is profiled in a Q&A interview in Newsweek. It’s both about her past and about women in technology — why there are so few of them in Silicon Valley engineering roles. Mayer says she never really encountered any obstacles as a female computer science/math student at Stanford. She also discusses Google’s early […]
Bing Expands Use Of Facebook ‘Likes’ In Search Results
One of the many Bing announcements today focused on an even deeper integration of Facebook data into Bing’s search results and rankings. For a couple months now, Bing has integrated “liked” content from Facebook into its search results in a distinct content area like this: But soon, Bing says it will show (to U.S. users […]
Mark Zuckerberg Named TIME Magazine Person Of The Year
TIME Magazine has named Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year. Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, arguably one of Google’s biggest threats in 2011. Facebook has made a search deal with Microsoft Bing this year, which we expect to be expanded in the future. There has been a lot of controversy between Google and Facebook. […]
Judge Grants Google’s & AOL’s Motion To Dismiss Paul Allen Lawsuit
A district court judge in Seattle has granted motions filed by Google and AOL to dismiss a Paul Allen patent infringement lawsuit against those two companies (and others). Judge Marsha Pechman agreed with both Google and AOL, who said that Allen’s lawsuit was too vague. Allen’s patent infringement complaint “failed to identify the infringing products […]
Facebook 101: Understanding When & How To Use Basic Features
This simple guide will break down the different objects on Facebook and a high level overview on how they can (or cannot) be used for marketing. Features tips on hoow to use Profiles, Fan Pages, Groups, Events, Place Pages & more for marketing your business, organization or events.