Excerpt from this very insightful blog post:

So by now, you’ve heard endlessly about the Facebook/Goldman quasi-IPO. What is its larger significance?

Consider, for a moment, a historical contrast. When Google IPO’d, it explicitly refused to play by Wall St’s rules—instead, issuing equity in a relatively open Dutch auction:

“…Among other things, Google issued a firm warning to speculators hoping to make a buck by quickly flipping their shares, a hallmark of many hot technology IPOs in the past. Instead, Google hopes to place its shares in a way that avoids the typical investment banking strategy of intentional underpricing—and the volatility that frequently follows.

“Our goal is to have an efficient market price—a rational price set by informed buyers and sellers—for our shares at the IPO and afterward,” the filing states. “Our goal is to achieve a relatively stable price in the days following the IPO and that buyers and sellers receive a fair price at the IPO.”
To make that sharper:
“…According to its filing, Google seems willing, eager even, to start off life as a publicly traded company on the right foot, hoping to steer clear of some of the sweetheart dealmaking that characterized the last wave of go-go IPOs. Instead, Google plans an auction of its shares to raise up to $2.7 billion; a process open to all bidders.”
Today, we have Facebook—not challenging Wall St’s rules, but, instead, endorsing and subscribing to them. Facebook’s quasi-IPO is a deal with Goldman to build an SPV through which high-net-worth investors can essentially buy blocks of Facebook equity…

read the whole thing on Bubblegeneration

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good read

By Priya Ramesh (@newpr)

Happy New Year! I am sure you are tired of the “Top ten trends in 2011” blog posts that most of us forget anyways in less than ten days so let me take you through a different route with this one I am writing from Bangalore, the Silicon Valley capital of India where I have spent the last two weeks on vacation with family and friends. One consistent theme that I noticed during this vacation is that Facebook has redefined our social interactions. From my aunts, nephews and childhood friends to new business contacts in India, no one asked for my email or phone number anymore but definitely asked me, “Are you on Facebook?” No doubt, the Social Network has brought a paradigm shift in how we communicate and maintain relationships but the bigger message to marketers is how Facebook is rewriting the rules of advertising and search and how that affects your brand in 2011. Here’s why you should treat Facebook more seriously in 2011:

Chances of customer engagement higher on Facebook than on any other social network:  The 2010 Facebook usage report shows that over the past year its 500 million users uploaded more than 2.7 million photographs shared one million links and ‘Liked’ 7.6 million pages every 20 minutes. Take a look at what 20 minutes on Facebook looks like:

Shared links: 1,000,000 every 20 minutes
Tagged photos: 1,323,000
Event invites sent out: 1,484,000
Wall Posts: 1,587,000
Status updates: 1,851,000
Friend requests accepted: 1,972,000
Photos uploaded: 2,716,000
Comments: 10,208,000
Messages: 4,632,000
Likes: 7,657,000

Facebook moving from “atrocious” clickthrough rates to higher conversions: Analysts predict that the six-year-old company will report $2 billion in revenue in 2010 and close to twice that in 2011. The bulk of that revenue is predicted to come from selling ads.  Facebook ads are not for everyone and there is a huge gap between brands like Starbucks (17.5 million Likes) and Coca Cola (18 million Likes) that are considered benchmarks in Facebook engagement and millions of other brands that struggle to increase clickthrough rates. Having said that, Craig MacDonald, writing for Search Engine Watch, stated he estimated pay per click marketing providers are planning to spend between 10 and 20 percent of their budgets for the year on Facebook campaigns.

He explained that, while last year clickthrough rates for Facebook promotions were “atrocious” and there were virtually no conversion rates, the site is now onpar with major search engines for returns on investment. MacDonald noted the key factors that make the service appealing to marketers are that it is “huge, it’s global and it’s growing”, adding the sites performance on a dollar-for-dollar basis is the same as Google’s. 

Search and Shop on Facebook to gain momentum in 2011: BusinessWeek (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2010/tc20101217_877527.htm) recently confirmed senior execs at the Palo Alto based social network have met in the past month with more than 20 companies, to help retailers set up shop on its pages and build tools that let Web users interact while buying. Facebook is adding e-commerce features to attract users, keep them logged-on longer and generate higher advertising sales. Companies like P&G and Delta Airlines are investing heavily on Facebook e-commerce, and this is just the start of what’s to redefine how we search and shop online.

There is a good reason why 500 million chose to join Facebook and more than half of them log-in every single day to update their status. Now as digital marketers we need to think smartly about how to get your brand mentioned in those status updates, Likes, comments and discussion threads to ensure when someone searched for you on this growing social network, you DO have a favorable wall to show off.

Good luck Facebooking (yes that’s officially a verb now) in 2011!

Image courtesy: Time magazine.

I could not believe what I found out yesterday, when a friend of mine became a fan of the facebook fanpage “the norwegian olympic curling team’s pants”. Guess how many fans this page has?! 550.000+ and counting. Unbelievable. Imagine what the web could do for your product?

Facebook is all about sharing, and The Gap has an ingenious promotion on the Baby Gap tab of their Fan Page. The simple splash image has a link to one of their photo albums where fans can upload pictures of their babies wearing their favorite Gap denim gear.

The Home Depot has built a bit on the shareability of Facebook actions with their DIY Gifts app. From Home Depot’s Fan Page, you can grant the app access to share your gift purchases with the recipient and your friends. While this approach may not work for everyone, it’s a step toward increasing consumer visibility on Facebook — a growing trend.

Some companies go all out when it comes to their Facebook presence, integrating fully fledged mini-websites right into their Fan Pages. Adidas sneakers is a good example. They’ve added a multimedia content hub under the tab “Your Area” that offers photos, videos, and events based on your region. The site is built entirely in Flash and isn’t all that interactive, but it offers a rich media experience without ever leaving the boundaries of Facebook.

Dell’s Design Studio page is another example of a full-tilt Flash site inside Facebook. This one lets you browse and tweak custom artwork for your new laptop before linking you over to the corporate site to complete the purchase. You can also share your design choices with friends, all without connecting a single Facebook app to your account.

Walgreens does it very simply. Their landing page is a nice branded splash image that simply touts their “Exclusive Offers for Our Facebook Fans.” Their promotions are in their updates, but this simple, static custom page encourages users to become fans without any bells or whistles. They leave the deals to the built-in functionality of Facebook, and your business can too.

Nachdem ein Monat vergangen ist, ist es nun wieder an der Zeit, die Rangliste der Facebook-Fanseiten von Medien-Marken im deutschsprachigen Raum zu erstellen. Die Rangliste ist natürlich weit davon entfernt, komplett zu sein. Daher freue ich mich sehr über Hinweise auf Fehlendes – vielen Dank schon vorab dafür!

Eine sortierbare Version dieses Rankings finden Sie im MedientrendsWiki. Dort können Sie die Marken nach den Bereichen Buch, Presse, TV, Radio, Internet und Personen sortieren und rangieren.

Es lässt sich natürlich trefflich darüber streiten, was eine “Medien-Marke” ist. Da ich letztlich irgendwie entscheiden muss, ist die Auswahl auch ein Stück weit subjektiv. Dies umso mehr in einer Zeit, da alle Unternehmen und Marken Teil der Medienwelt sind/werden.

Platzierung / Name / Anzahl Fans

1. Rammstein 502198 Fans
2. Tokio Hotel 392651 Fans
3. Scorpions 190562 Fans
4. Kraftwerk! 82715 Fans
5. Stromberg 76186 Fans
6. Kai Pflaume 64722 Fans
7. TV total 62285 Fans
8. MTV Germany 62033 Fans
9. Peter Fox 60878 Fans
10. Tracks 52277 Fans
11. usw…

Die komplette Liste mit 717 (!) Einträgen bei Leander Wattig

You might be sick of hearing this from me, but strongly believe that Facebook is the next Google. It took me a while to “get religion,” but now I have it. Just as Google brought a simple way to search the web, my observation is that Facebook is poised to do the same for organizing and - this is key - centralizing social content

Google will continue to dominate “pull.” But Facebook will aggregate content, make it social and rule “push.” Using our social circle it will surface content that we care about just when we want it - and allow us to comment on it all. As more people use Facebook to connect, share and create, a network effect takes over - and the system get even smarter.

[…]

@luebue comments:

Steve, as you know I am very often with you in your predictions and analysis - but here I feel you might be wrong. First: as the web is hiding more and more within apps (not only on the iPhone, I am sure this is just the beginning) and become more and more embedded in services, I think there will be no room for a centralization anymore. And second: FB is a silo. And silos are very attractive on the short run, but not on the long run. See AOL.

I see the point that FB is - now! - the operating system for our social lives. But I am sure it will not be for ever. And between playing farmville and organizing meetings with friends on one hand - and consuming news and other stuff on the other, there will be a difference for a long time.

The splinternet thing is much more convincing for me.

pretty interesting discussion, he? I think,  Wolfgang is theoretically right BUT we are lazy people. And lazy people not always go with the best but the most comfortable solution. For example, to set-up and manage and check a perfectly working google reader/twitter, etc. is quite cumbersome. It is so much easier to friend up or fan the page of my favorite blogs and have it directly delivered to the one stream I always check, and that one is definitely on facebook (mobile, too)

So it all depends on us and our laziness is key.

[…]

Und bei der Gelegenheit kann ich gleich auch mal ein paar Dinge aufschreiben zu Friendschaft, Freundschaft und sozialen Netzwerken.

• Wer Friendschaften grundsätzlich ablehnt, hat ein in Zukunft größer werdendes Problem. Denn die so genannten “schwachen Bindungen” (vgl. Mark Granovetter, “The Strengths of Weak Ties“) machen den persönlichen Wert (hier keinesfalls monetär gemeint) eines sozialen Netzwerkes aus. Das gilt nicht nur beruflich, wo über die “schwachen Bindungen” die wichtigsten Kontakte zustande kommen – sondern auch privat. Die meisten Lebenspartnerschaften ergeben sich per Vermittlung über schwache Bindungen.

• Wer auf der anderen Seite aber Friends mit Freunden verwechselt, wird vermutlich böse enttäuscht. Friends helfen eher nicht beim Umzug, Friends sind nur selten alarmiert, wenn man zwei Wochen verstummt, Friends können wesentlich schlechter zwischen den Zeilen lesen als Freunde. Friends sind eher digitale Nachbarn. Das macht weder Friends noch Nachbarn zu schlechten Menschen, es sind eben nur keine Freunde im klassischen Definitionssinn.

• Allgemein bitte ich darum, die penetrante Frage nach dem “Warum?” zu allen möglichen Sozialen Netzwerken und Plattformen nicht mehr zu stellen. Die einzige mir sinnvoll erscheinende Antwort darauf lautet “Weil Menschen es wollen”, was aber meistens nicht die Art von Antwort ist, die eine wertvolle Diskussion eröffnet.

 

Herr Lobo, prädikat sehr wertvoll. Ich bin gerne ihr Fan, diese unsägliche 5000er Grenze nervt aber auch.

[…]

But something bigger is going on here…Facebook is eating the web.

Yes, Facebook is becoming the web for millions and millions of people. As I have written before, there’s already a wealth of amazing things you can do within the site without ever leaving. What’s more, as I also speculated, the site giving rise to headless media companies like Zynga that don’t need a web site to succeed.

In short, I believe Facebook is unstoppable. They aren’t just the next Google. They’re the next web.

Here’s where I see things shaping up from here.