photo credit: woodleywonderworks

So you create a Facebook Fan Page and have 200,000 fans in two weeks. How do you get the benefit out of this? Well this is a 100 percent opportunity to become an ‘entrepreneur’ (in good faith).

The dilemma is – can a famous Facebook page become a real startup?

We have two kinds of people here;

1.Intentional – who form a Facebook page or open an account with Twitter before launching a website (bona fide startup.

2.Unintentional – who form a Facebook page, get massive number of fans and then decide to launch a website with the same idea

In both cases, the biggest question is whether the popularity of a Facebook Page can be easily harnessed to build a standalone website. The obvious advantage is that Facebook has a huge number of users who are very active (Trust me – Facebook is extremely engaging). If a user becomes a fan of your page, then updates you post on your page will automatically show up in the user’s profile. Building an audience through Facebook is comparatively easier.

Now the problem is that users might be reluctant to visit your website when they can get all updates from Facebook (user friction)

It will be a long way before a Facebook page can turn in to a sustainable and profitable business.

Econsultancy explains the topic elaborately in this post by citing an example of Secret London

As a standalone website, Secret London will have to convince its users to visit and use yet another website. That means far more

PS: My friend launched a Facebook Fan Page yesterday and has above 300 fans already – she is already thinking on the same line

photo credit: Spencer E Holtaway

My definition of a ‘startup’ was quite clear until recently when I saw Facebook being awarded the ‘Best Overall Startup of the Year’ by TechCrunch.  Yes all of us love Facebook and Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) but will you categorize Facebook as a Startup? The Crunchies awards have raised a debate and questions like what is a startup and when does a company stop being a startup have started gaining heat.

These are the exact questions that came into my mind as well – when does a startup 'stop being a startup' and becomes a business/company. What criteria’s define a startup?

Is it defined by:

1.    Time? – the number of years into existence
2.    Valuation? – post billion dollars you’re not a startup?
3.    Staff size? – the number of employees
4.    Profitability?
5.    Traffic? (probably number of views per month)

If we talk about Facebook; it has been into existence for five years, 500+ million dollar funded ‘company’ and a staff of around 1000 employees.(Source: Crunchbase)  I wouldn’t classify Facebook as a startup considering these points.

A startup starts with the intent to build X. Once they build X, they become a business that sustains and grows X (Facebook falls exactly in this category of sustaining and growing its product).

X may be a product, a service or may be a new approach to an existing problem. Once they move from the first stage of building to having to sustain it, it becomes a business (and doesn’t remain a startup).

Fore more information on this topic you can check:

http://bx.businessweek.com/facebook/view?url=http%3A%2F%2Frashmisinha.com%2F2010%2F01%2F09%2Fwhat-is-a-startup-is-facebook-still-one%2F

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/10/congratulations-to-the-crunchies-winners-facebook-takes-top-prize-for-second-year/

Facebook is a revolution in the social networking and Web 2.0 world but it cannot be categorized as a startup (not anymore). TechCrunch could probably rename the award as ‘The Best Overall (Web/Software) Product’.

Introduction

This whole 2.0 thing has been notoriously gaining popularity for the past some time – Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Business 2.0 and now, Intranet 2.0. Many say it has become like a fashion to add 2.0 to anything that’s some what different from its ancestors. But this is not the case. There’s remarkable difference between 1.0 and 2.0 and we have been talking about them. In the same series, this time we will try to figure out the anatomy and structure of Intranet 2.0.

Intranet as you all are aware of is private version of Internet. With the development of Web 2.0, Intranet has also undergone some changes. Let’s just give you a hint what we will be talking about in Intranet 2.0 through the following example.

Serena Software, a vendor of enterprise change management software having employee strength of 800 Facebookpeople and working from 18 different countries across the world, has replaced its traditional intranet with Facebook as a front end linked to a low-cost content management system behind the firewall. According to the Company President and CEO, Jeremy Burton, the company organizes Facebook Fridays and encourages employees to find fun and personal connections in the work place.

Read more…

I may be the only one or maybe one of you caught wind of this last few weeks or have thought it reasonable given the Facebook and Microsoft developments of late. Well Google, out-bidded by Microsoft, is out to seek a share of the social networking profit.

But wait?

I thought Google already had its own social networking site Orkut, is it? Though the Times is reporting that all of these smaller social networks are trying to take down Facebook (or at least cut away at its fast growth rate), it seems that what has been created is just a market of social networks. The ones that are more user-friendly, visually-enticing or gathered a large audience during start up and early promotional phases are the ones that will dominate the market. The other, small networks are available but seem to fill the void of niche markets. Unless you belong to a certain subset or want to identify yourself in a way that Facebook or MySpace don’t allow (or both of these lose their coolness factor), then why have 2, 3, or more social networking memberships?

So what is the entire buzz about?

Microsoft enters the splash by acquiring stake in Facebook?

Microsoft paid US $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook that values the hugely popular social networking site at $15 billion. Facebook allows users to set up personal web pages and communicate with each other, turned down an offer from Microsoft’s rival Google, which was also keen to invest the site.

Microsoft will also sell Internet ads for Facebook outside the United States as part of the deal. Microsoft already provides banner advertising and links on the US site.

Facebook soon hopes to become an advertising magnet by substantially increasing its current audience of nearly 50 million active users. Facebook. The company expects to make a profit of $30 million this year, so on conventional valuations a $15 billion price tag looks expensive.

Why Microsoft Needed Facebook & Google Didn’t

After weeks of speculation , finally Microsoft won the battle over Facebook, with Google second, and Yahoo nowhere to be seen. While it may seem that Google’s lost momentum–by not partnering with Facebook, I see it more as a sign that Microsoft knew Facebook was its only hope.

Let me explain that to you in detail.
Social networks are hot, right now. It doesn’t really matter which one you prefer–MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, or Dogster–social networks are the next evolutionary step in the growth of the internet. Now that we’ve all learned to check our email, order online, research restaurants, and read news, we’re starting to use the web to connect with each other. We’ve realized that we enjoy making connections, sharing our random thoughts with our mates. Social networking is the second generation Internet.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, social networks have to be perceived as cool, exciting, trendy places to hang out at. But, just like the rich kid in school, Microsoft has enough money to buy itself some friends–or in this case, a network of friends. For Microsoft, the only choice was to buy a piece of a popular social network.

Then there’s Google. Along with Apple, Google has one of the best brands in the world. A brand that can make us all dribble and pander after their every announcement.
If Google really wants to build a popular social network, it can. A social network that already has all of the pieces in place: email, instant messaging, blogs, image and video sharing. If Google really wanted to own a social network, it could take the $240M it just saved and put that towards building a most excellent one. A few rumors, closed beta invites, and denials of competing with MySpace later, and the whole world’s going crazy over Google Connect.

So I think, Microsoft had no hope other than to buy into an existing social network that was popular enough that even the “Windows Live” couldn’t slow it down. Google, on the other hand, knew it didn’t have to partner with Facebook at any cost, they could bide their time and decide whether they want to build their own social network.

How will Microsoft make use of Facebook network?

Microsoft is building and acquiring technologies and expertise to challenge Google for a pot of online advertising revenue that Johnson pegged at $40 billion and growing. Earlier this year, it paid $6 billion for Seattle digital-advertising shop aQuantive, which came with technology to better serve and track online advertisements.

More than just an expanding stream of online-advertising revenue, the Facebook deal represents a chance for Microsoft to tightly bind itself and its technology to the en vogue world of social networking.
Social networks, including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Google’s Orkut and many more, have skyrocketed in popularity. People spend hours building and updating personal Web pages with photos, videos, links. They stay in touch with friends, classmates and co-workers by visiting pages, which include all manner of add-on Web applications for sharing musical tastes, sending instant messages and virtually anything else.

A new Microsoft tool for making hybrid Web applications will allow programs to be published directly to Facebook pages. Facebook supports Microsoft’s new Web video platform, Silverlight, which competes with Adobe Flash. And Microsoft and Facebook have worked on other tools for software developers. Microsoft is building its own technologies, such as mapping and advertising systems, and letting third-parties use them. Facebook, on the other hand, invites developers to build applications and provides a venue for distribution to its users.

The future looks bright for Microsoft as we all know that Facebook is one of the most premium properties online today from a social-networking standpoint. This deal represents a major advertising syndication win for Microsoft.

Some Related Articles:

Microsoft acquires equit stake in Facebook
Facebook sells $250m stake to Microsoft
Microsoft acquires minority stake in Facebook
Microsoft expands advertising partnership
Microsoft contracts an agreement with Facebook

Immediate results, instant gratification, instant riches. Today thousands of online marketing products promise the same things and try and make money. And every minute, someone out there purchases a new product right before the price goes up. The new product, which inevitably is going to change the way we do Internet marketing. If you don’t purchase instantly you are going to get left in the dust while early adopters make all of the money.

Internet marketing is like a treasure hunt because the treasure may or may not actually be at the end, depending on whether you believe in it all.

The process needs to be revealed. The process needs to be flexible enough for personal modifications. And the process needs to guide a person through to profits.

The Marketing power of Internet sites

With the rise of individual voices and the eroding effectiveness of mass marketing techniques, it’s no wonder that so many marketing and communications disciplines are enamored with cracking the code on influence, specifically influence among people.

For example to market a book, an old-school form of media, we turn to a couple of the newest: video file sharing and online social networking, create a video spot for YouTube and our own Web site on MySpace.com. YouTube and MySpace, gives us an access to 30 million people, so you can well imagine how many potential customers we can line up with Internet. The reason why this technique is translating into sales is that videos are a lot visible to a large number of people.

Read more…

I have discussed a lot on social networking sites, their advantages, disadvantages, business approach, growth etc. By now, we all know that by joining a social networking service, users create personal profile and allow friends to contact them. This self-managed administrative service at times provides limited control or unlimited control over their profile visibility.

There has been an explosion in the size and number of social networking sites, resulting in some privacy issues. Today users manage more than one social networking sites, juggle between different passwords for each of them, leading to the inability to conveniently share profile across networks.

Various social networks are currently attempting to address these convenience issues, but this raises new privacy concerns and makes users even more insecure over their information.

I would like to address these privacy, security, and user convenience issues in online social networking and look out for some solutions on the same. Let me start with highlighting the social network privacy issue by explaining you the same.

Social Networking Privacy?

Cyberspace privacy is a lot different from the constitutional freedom and privacy that goes hand in hand. Whenever a huge number of people join any social network, serious privacy concerns are certain to emerge.

On the other hand, privacy in cyberspace is a whole different animal. Whenever a critical mass of people join a network community, serious privacy concerns inevitably emerge.
This platform is a channel of personal information online that positions a lot of site members at risk by displaying their private information publicly. It isn’t too late for us to look out for solutions and effectively try and apply it.

As social networking sites like as MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster have emerged as the most established forums for keeping in touch with old friends and meeting new ones. This change of information among friends have also lead to a major disadvantage of breaching information as users are releasing that their private information is being circulated far more than they would like.

In September 2006, Facebook’s recently introduced News Feed feature spurred additional privacy concerns from users. Over 700,000 users signed an online petition demanding the company discontinue the feature, stating that this compromised their privacy.

Who access your information on the social networks?

The easy way to share information online, a big advantage of social networks, but are we aware of who is accessing it?
There are a number of users who intend to share information with friends and family, find its way into the hands of the authorities, strangers, the press, and the public at large.
For example, job recruiters are looking to these sites as well as performing more traditional background checks on potential employees. Performing a search using these sites may provide a lot of unedited information about a person.

The search tools provided by each site easily effects our information. Like MySpace allows the general public to search its database of members, using search terms such as a name, e-mail address, or school. This search if further filtered down to a particular country of even postal code.

This search can be filtered down to a particular country or even to a postal code. At times if users don’t change their privacy settings, searchers can view their full profile such as occupation, hometown, marital status etc.

If users included in the search results have not changed their privacy settings from the default level, searchers can view their full profiles. These profiles may include personal information such as occupation, hometown, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and religion, as well as photos of users, and their friends or family.

One the other hand Facebook carries a more limited search feature. Users must be registered with the site to conduct a search, and can only view the profiles of those in their network, or of those already on their list of contacts. Some profiles viewed in this way include cell phone numbers and postal addresses. E-mail addresses always appear on Facebook profiles.

Friendster also restricts searches to members. However, members can view other users’ full profiles, whether they are on the member’s contact list or not. Notably, if the person searched for does not turn up in the Friendster database, the Friendster search engine provides a direct link to a data broker, which offers to search for the person.

Hence, there is a possibility that any one of a user’s several hundred “friends” can download this information and use it wherever and however they wish. In fact, access can extend beyond friends and members. Users need to realize that prospective employers, job recruitment agencies, law enforcement, and members of academic staff, can gain access to photographs, comments and information posted on profile pages, whether or not this information comports with the image you would like to portray to the world outside the network.

How can users prevent this problem?

Social networking’s been growing like crazy over the past year or so and companies everywhere have been scrambling to jump on the bandwagon either as advertisers or as creators of social networking sites themselves.

To the users, the good news is, social networking sites are working on progressive privacy policies. Several answers which cover many of the above-mentioned concerns should be addressed.

As good business dictates a significant online presence, we as consumers should demand more severe privacy regulations.

A lot of users are disheartened to know their information that they place online for their friends and family is viewed by people away from their interest.

Once we publish our information online, we have very little control over it. In this case right privacy settings can prevent your information to be showed to all. If the default settings are set at a higher level, users can immediately have more control.

For example if you being a user don’t want every detail of your profile available to those outside your network of friends, or did not want to allow photographs on your profile page to be downloaded can regulate their privacy settings accordingly.

Privacy and Security: How far is too far?

Concerns about security and privacy on the Internet will continue to influence social networking trends.

The September, 2006 release of Facebook’s News Feed and Mini-Feed features and the ensuing reaction among Facebook users prove an excellent point about the future of social networking: users do not like it when websites sacrifice user privacy for “improved” features. Facebook users were outraged by the features, which allowed other people in the network access to continuously-updated feeds of information about them. Development in social networking technologies will likely be tempered with an undercurrent of caution. In a world where identity theft is facilitated by easy access to personal information and employers judge potential employees by analyzing their social network profiles, users will be uncomfortable with features that readily offer up too much of their personal information. Video networking could face similar roadblocks if users decide that they do not want to share their physical appearances on the Internet.

Conclusion

The future of social networking is very much up in the air. Unforeseeable technological developments and the unpredictable nature of the course of trends in popular culture make predicting the next big thing in social networking very hard. Movements toward consolidation, niche markets, video networking, and increased mobility all seem viable, but only time will tell whether these or other features come to popular fruition.

So it is nobody but the users who will have to take care of the information they decide to display online.

In the youth culture of social networks, the worst thing is to grow old and boring. I doubt if the Facebook whirl will continue for very long. I recently took a look at the new Plaxo Beta about a month back and I agree that Plaxo does have some advantages; they have a user base of 15 million and the new features directly address the challenges Facebook will have in moving to the business community. Read more…

There goes another website for all the Digg fan boys and techno geeks – Pownce, a website and desktop application that allows users to send music, photos, messages, links, and events to friends. When you send your file, link, message, or event you have the ability to broadcast it to your entire list or message people individually.

File size is limited to 10mb per file sent, or for twenty dollars yearly you can sign up for a “pro” account, which allows you to send files up to 100MB. (Note: the pro account also makes it so you won’t see ads and you get a special badge next to your name)

Review:
In few recent articles I read, people claimed that Pownce might be a Twitter killer, but I don’t agree to the same. Yes Pownce is a lot similar to Twitter as it has desktop applications. But I guess it is based on communication of information not information communication. Its impossible to block or remove unwanted spammers or e-stalkers. Lack of SMS and RSS feeds breaks the communication chain. May be all these are very minor flaws but do we want to see too many of them?

On the other hand, re-locating people on Pownce is very easy, with an added plus of the friends of friends feature. This is something Facebook and a few others could do with looking at.

One major pet peeve I have about social networking or social bookmarking or microblogging websites is that they do not allow us to use our e-mail address book to see if friends are already on the site. Pownce doesn’t allow you to check for that, plus their search is rather clumsy.

Overall, Pownce is a nice site and application but the functionality can be questioned until they make some changes, this site is just for early adopters and not all that practical.
Send To Friend

There was a rush of high school students pouring in after Facebook opened to everyone last year September. This resulted in a huge number of high school teens registering for Facebook. Despite the rise of high school teens enrolling on Facebook was still framed as being about college.

I believe that this is indeed a change taking place, but it’s not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now indistinct. Some teens are flocking to MySpace while the others are flocking to Facebook. What they choose is kind of sticky because it seems it primarily has to do with opting for something different to break the monotony.

The other reason for this is the ideal substitute provided by Facebook after MySpace dangerously estranged “good” kids. Parents weren’t nearly as terrified of Facebook because it seemed “safe” thanks to the network-driven structure.

I suspect that this will be received with criticism, but my hope is that the readers who encounter this essay might be able to help me think through this. In other words, I want feedback on this piece.

I won’t say that Facebook is the next Google. It is a whole new religion- not just a space copy for people. The first thing to check when one gets online in the morning and before they go to bed. It’s addicting no doubt.

I recently signed in and just can’t stop exploring it. So many features, such a classic layout, the navigation is very well made too. There are loads of opportunities there for the smart marketer.

• You can build, or hire someone to build, little applications that Facebook users can add to their own Facebook pages. Custom applications can ‘go viral’, passing from user to user, very quickly. If a user adds, say “Trips” to their pages, then all of their Facebook friends will see that one of their friends is now using the same application. They, in turn, may use it. After that, their circle of friends see it and do the same, and so on.

• Blog import: You can import your blog to Facebook and then anyone in your Facebook circle of friends will see it.

• Rubbing elbows: The site offers a lot of opportunities to network and connect with lots of players in their given industries.

Learn about Facebook, folks. Sign up today, and spend a few minutes playing with it each day. It will pay off in the long run. Even if Microsoft buys them, this site has dug in its feet deep as a networking and marketing tool.