I want my Facebook friends and fans back!

If you use Facebook you must have noticed that you’re not seeing as much updates from brands you ‘liked’ or even from some of your closest friends and family members. How is that possible?

Since last August, when Facebook began testing a newer ‘News Feed’, status updates now reach on average just 15% of a page’s fans. The reason is simple; Facebook wants more of your money as FB 'Master-Mind Advertising Director', Gokul Rajaram, explains; “if you want to speak to the other 80 to 85% of people who signed up to hear from you, “sponsoring posts is important.”

Sponsoring posts is important? Let’s do some math and discover why it is so important. I’ll take Oman Collective Intelligence’s FB page (even though is not the best example as, unlike most businesses, it is not my primary channel) and I’ll assume that I update my status daily, just as most businesses do.

Look at this screenshot below and you'll see that one of my previous updates reached 305 people, just over 20% of my fans, while in theory it should have reached them all.

As you see from the next screenshot in order to reach all my fans I'll need promote my post and pay $5 per day.

If you multiply $5 into 30 days my monthly ‘investment’ for a ‘sponsored story’ would be $150, while for the whole year would be $1,825. Now, you can imagine how much that amount would increase if I had tens of thousands of fans and/or if I wanted to post more than once daily. I would need hundreds of thousands of $$$$$.

So why do we need to pay for something we used to get for free? Most importantly, why can’t we access our friends any longer? The answer is simple, 86% of Facebook’s current revenue comes from advertising with its primary ‘social’ ad product now generating $1 million in revenue per day, about half of which comes from mobile. Facebook is greedy and wants more of it.

Personally I'll never pay for promoting a story and I'll look into more creative options to suggest to some of the brands I assist on social media. There is another aspect though which concerns me, and should concern Facebook too, and that is product quality, i.e. improving Facebook. The beauty of social media is that is done by people, managed by people, written by people, and all those people exchange information, enjoy conversations and interact. Having lots of ads, therefore a strong corporate presence on people News Feeds, won't make FB as genuine as it is supposed to be and will put lots of people off.

Call it capitalism, call it extortion, call it betrayal, call it monopoly...or simply call it Facebook. Take it or leave it.

Scary marketing

This stunt might be staged, or faked if you like, but the video is still generating quite a lot of buzz. Created by advertising agency SuperHeroes from Netherlands this ambient marketing aims at showing how realistic the new LG IPS monitors are. I won’t spoil the surprise, watch the video.

No more secrets for Google

For the first time Google released photos of its top secret data centers. On “Where the Internet lives”, you’ll get a never-before-seen look at the technology, the people and the places that keep Google running.

"These colorful pipes are responsible for carrying water in and out of our Oregon data center. The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled."

"Thousands of feet of pipe line the inside of our data centers. We paint them bright colors not only because it's fun, but also to designate which one is which. The bright pink pipe in this photo transfers water from the row of chillers (the green units on the left) to a outside cooling tower."

"Blue LEDs on this row of servers tell us everything is running smoothly. We use LEDs because they are energy efficient, long lasting and bright."

"Server floors like these require massive space and efficient power to run the full family of Google products for the world. Here in Hamina, Finland, we chose to renovate an old paper mill to take advantage of the building's infrastructure as well as its proximity to the Gulf of Finland's cooling waters."

"This is a closer view of the backup tapes in our tape library. Each tape has a unique barcode so our robotic system can locate the right one."

"Each of our server racks has four switches, connected by a different colored cable. We keep these colors the same throughout our data center so we know which one to replace in case of failure."

"A rare look behind the server aisle. Here hundreds of fans funnel hot air from the server racks into a cooling unit to be recirculated. The green lights are the server status LEDs reflecting from the front of our servers."

"Denise Harwood diagnoses an overheated CPU. For more than a decade, we have built some of the world's most efficient servers."

"Inside our campus network room, routers and switches allow our data centers to talk to each other. The fiber optic networks connecting our sites can run at speeds that are more than 200,000 times faster than a typical home Internet connection. The fiber cables run along the yellow cable trays near the ceiling."

Too see the full gallery of photos click on this link.

Felix Baumgartner and RedBull Stratos establish social media record!

Felix Baumgartner, codename B.A.S.E. 502, broke the sound barrier during his world-record freefall a few days ago reaching a maximum velocity of 833.9mph (1,342km/h). His freefall had a distance of 119,846ft (36,529m).

Everyone knows that by now.

But Felix also established a social media record as far as I know.

• Nearly 7.3 million watched live on YouTube as he sat on the edge of the capsule moments before jumping.
• Again on YouTube his highlight video has been watched so far by nearly 4.5 million people, nearly 46,000 likes and 9,500 comments.
• After he landed, Red Bull posted a picture (above) of Felix on his knees on the ground to Facebook, generating about 220,000 likes, 10,000 comments and more than 30,000 shares in less than 40 minutes!
• The same picture on Felix’s Facebook page has nearly 47,000 likes, 3,000 comments and 2,800 shares.
• On Twitter, half the worldwide trending topics had something to do with the jump; including a special tweet from NASA: "Congratulations to Felix Baumgartner and RedBull Stratos on record-breaking leap from the edge of space!"
• His personal Facebook page gathered more than 1 million likes in a few days. The page also has a great engagement rate; 25%.

The video below shows the fall as he saw it.

If you’re planning a launch or campaign on social media you now know what to do!

Facebook testing the 'Want' button

Facebook, with the assistance of a few selected companies, is currently testing a new feature called Collections which will enable companies to share information about their products and make eventual sales.

Facebook's Collections test comprises of three actions being tested separately, the company said, naming them as ‘Want’, ‘Like’, and ‘Collect’. Through Collections users, or fans, will be able to create wishlists of retail products they want to buy.

Basically, in addition to liking products, users when clicking on ‘Want’ will flag images of products they want to purchase or that are in the process of ‘collecting’. Those notes will then be visible to the users' friends on their Timelines and there will be a ‘Buy’ link for each product in a Collection that links to a place to buy it offsite.

Seven pilot retailers, including Pottery Barn, Victoria's Secret, Neiman Marcus, Michael Kors, Smith Optics, Wayfair and Fab.com, are in testing now. I visited some of them but could not see any Want button so I assume it is only being tested in the US market.

E-commerce is where Facebook seems to be heading by offering its 1 billion users a way to buy products for their friends. Facebook however said that it won’t charge any fee for any transaction.

So you think you can dance. By Coca-Cola

As part of its ongoing campaign of spreading fun and happiness Coca-Cola has come up with another fun idea. So after the highway cinema, the happiness truck, the happiness machine and the Coca-Cola wave the fizzy drink brand brought the dance machine to Korea.

The machine combines a Microsoft Kinect motion controller, a webcam and a simple dancing game, driven by a large screen depicting a popular Korean pop boy band.

All you have to do is stand on the spot, shake your booty, shout, cheer and show as much passion as possible for free Cokes. Simple and fun. Thumbs up!

 

Sex? No thanks, i'm blogging

Haven't you tweeted about the breakfast you just had? Hasn't your favourite brand just updated its status on Facebook? Haven't you Instagrammed a pic of yourself on your way to work? Haven't you checked-in on Foursquare at work? Am i not writing a blog post?

Social media has become an obsession. It's all about social media; social media has infiltrated our lives, whether we like it or not.

Researchers say the urge to hit sites like Facebook and Twitter can be as powerful as the need for sex or cigarettes. There have been many surveys and studies in the past; the latest study, done by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, says that checking social media pages is one of the strongest temptations in modern society.

205 participants, ranging from ages 18 to 85, wearing recording devices were monitored for an entire week to measure their ability to resist common daily desires, namely the urge to check their social media pages or mobile devices.

Overall, food, sleep and sex were the strongest desired, however when it came to resistance to desires, social media was the weakest link. The lead author of the study, Wilhem Hofmann, said that desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not cost much to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist.

Is it true? Now you can tweet, like, share, forward this blog post :)

Facebook reaches 1 billion users but...

You heard it, Facebook reached 1 billion users. It was in the air but still a huge number to achieve, hats of to the FB Team. The question is, can anyone compete with Facebook? And, most importantly, will anyone be able to overtake Facebook?

I put together a list of top 10 social networks at global level and their users; you’ll see a few unfamiliar names:

1. Facebook: 1,000,000,000+
2. Twitter: 555,000,000+
3. Qzone: 531,000,000+
4. Tencent Weibo: 373,000,000+
5. Saina Weibo: 250,000,000+
6. Google+: 170,000,000+
7. Renren: 170,000,000+
8. Linkedin: 150,000,000+
9. VKontakte: 133,000,000+
10. Pengyou: 131,000,000+

Qzone? Weibo? Renren?? Who are they? Let's find out:

Qzone is a Chinese social networking website created by Tencent in 2005. It allows users to write blogs, keep diaries, send photos and listen to music. Some of its services, as well as the mobile version, are not free.

Tencent Weibo is a Chinese microblogging platform launched by Tencent in 2010. Users may broadcast a message including 140 Chinese characters at most through the web, SMS or smartphone.

Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging platform launched by SINA Corporation in August 2009 and very similar to Tencent Weibo (and Twitter). They say its functionality beats Twitter (threaded comments, groups, audio messages and direct video uploads).

Renren, formerly known as Xiaonei Network, is a Chinese social networking service that exists as the Chinese remake of Facebook.

VKontakte, or VK, is a European social network service popular among Russian-speaking users around the world. It is especially popular in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Belarus, Israel, and USA. Very similar to Facebook.

Pengyou, similar to Renren, is a Chinese real-name social platform.



So if someone is to beat Facebook that someone will have to be the Chinese. Watch out Mr. Zuckerberg, the attack has only just started!

Instagram beats Twitter

Following my previous post about the rise of ‘visual media’ I’m posting here a few stats from the latest comScore report (done for the US market) which states that Instagram, for the first time ever, had more daily mobile active users than Twitter. Last August Instagram had 7.3 million daily mobile users while Twitter had ‘only’ 6.9 million.

Other data, probably more relevant, shows that users spent more time on Instagram than Twitter.

Both photo-sharing app and micro-blogging site have been growing in the past months however Instagram is growing at a much faster pace if you consider that in March it only had 886,000 daily active visitors.

And guess who is laughing about all this...