Building the future in Mobility: Facebook

Continued from the blog: Facebook needs to change the game

• 500 out of 900 million Facebook users are using Facebook through mobile devices
• In March, the average Facebook mobile user engaged with the social network for more than 7 hours, according to comScore

Going forward Facebook is expected to capitalize on mobility through advertising as it prepares for its IPO. That’s stats provided above give a lot of head-down time to which Facebook has to respond. Mark Zuckerberg’s, top priorities going forward is to transform Facebook’s mobile and advertising experiences and further integrate online apps into the platform

The big question is how the company can make more money with advertising on mobile. You can bet Facebook will figure it out considering advertising is the reason Zuckerberg and other insiders are about to become extremely rich.

For users, more advertising on mobile is somewhat of a drag, but there’s utility involved as well. A lot of what we’re doing on and with our mobile devices is being tracked by scads of application developers and device makers who aim to improve their products and marketing activities because they know what we like, where we go and how we spend our money. Needless to add, Facebook wants that data, too.

The ads we’ll be seeing on mobile will increasingly be highly relevant and the time is coming when we’ll get offers and ads pushed to our phones the minute we step over a retailer’s threshold at the mall.

Facebook is “just getting started” with its mobile app. As Facebook collects more data, such as location and which friends “like” certain products mobile ads will be better targeted to users.

Facebook’s initial public offering is set for this week and media outlets are stirring up a frenzy, reporting on everything from whether the company is overvalued at $96 billion to which character traits propel Zuckerberg to give speeches to groups of big-shot investors wearing a hoodie sweatshirt. Facebook’s mobile future is also getting a lot of attention.

Facebook needs to now change its game

Zuckerberg and the FB gang have been great aat connecting 900 million dots. Its time they take the game to a different level- monetizing the dots.

A $95bn IPO may not be top of the mind for Mark Zuckerberg who is intent and focused on getting the social strategy for Facebook right. However, to many analysts and investors, the valuation is stretched and raises a spec of concern and doubt on the ability of the FB network to make money that is commensurate with the expectations.

Interestingly enough, a positive indicator that can provide FB the fillip is that Premium “Social” ads such as sponsored stories, “likes”, comments and other endorsement of brands’ activity have increased 26% y-o-y. Typically Premium ads make up for 25% of FBs ads. The concern area is a drop in CPC (Cost per Click) for the standard ads by an equivalent 26%. Overall CPC rates have gone up 23% across both categories. Another cause of concern is that Click thru rates have also gone down by 6%.

1. The dichotomy between standard and premium ad pricing trends reflects FB’s attempt to move away from keyword targeted “direct response” advertising – the so called plain vanilla marketplace ads towards getting big brands to buy “social” campaigns. The company’s re-orientation around large brands and away from the smaller ones may the driver of the difference and a definitive forward move to justify the stretched valuations in terms of revenues.

2. Facebook also needs to prep up its mobile presence. With 55% of Facebook users accessing the site from their mobile phones, the Facebook mobile become a key access point which FB cannot miss. The FB app on mobile today is just about a decent experience for sociaal networking. How Zuck can add the “brands” angle to this is the key challenge for FB. FB has been acquiring small time smart-ups expectedly to build on the mobile presence. But acquiring is one thing, executing is quite another. We havent seen much from FB in terms of exploring mobile for brands.  

3. The other interesting rumour doing rounds is Facebook search. Fundamentally different from Google in terms of generation of leads through social network anchors – likes, location, friends. That indeed is aa very interesting angle to search given that word of mouth and social networks are big influencers.

Facebook’s success ride has beeen phenomenal. Thats got it this far… a $95 bn IPO vaaluation. However, FB will have to change a few things around fundamentally if it were to justify a $100bn valuation and how it wants to poistion itself in the future. The ingredients are all there… how they mix them around and create the dish out of it.. is worth watching out for.

Google+ is not about “being social”. It is Google’s next level of Monetization

The Jury is divided on G+. However G+ is adding up numbers very very impressively.

My opinion about G+ is that it really mashes features from Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Stumbleupon,Tumblr well currently. What adds glory to the effort is the slick UI and UX. Interestingly most of the properties on G+ are Products from Google that are already available. So for now, it is old wine in revised packaging.

Going forward a lot of product developments are expected in G+ is expected in quick time. Surely LinkedIn type Professional networking is sometime soon. Gaming is yet another big piece. LBS would be yet another. Collective Buying is yet another.

Given all these features,G+ has good reason for traffic: Features and enhancements, engagements and experience layer over the basic layers of social networking, feeds, groups, chats, recommendations and discussions. There would be some missing pieces like social games which will also get integrated at some level. That will deliver the “stickiness” piece.

And then… Where there is traffic, Brands will have to be. The features in G+ support Brand conversations and other brand integrations possibly to higher known levels than that which is happening currently. Brands fancy that kind of experience, engagement and involvement with consumers.\

Thus G+ is Google’s best effort in terms of extending its competency of monetizing things from the search domain to the social domain. Prior to G+, Google had search results but no means of profiling who had done the search. With G+, Google leaps that lack of understanding in terms of profiles. End of the day its all about targeting users and profiling better, to monetize the effort.And no one monetizes better than Google does. With Google’s strength in native properties such as Search, Location, Mobile, Content, Media and Video; integration of chatter, conversation and networking will make this a huge next gen tool… possibly Google’s next Billion Dollar babe.

Why i love Google+?

Contd from earlier post

After a decade of playing with social communities, the Google+ plus interface is possibly the best. From a design perspective, it’s very squeaky clean, making Facebook’s interface look a little dated. However, it packs all the features that people like on their Networking space. The Circles with its drag and drop feature, cute aligning of friends, easy categorization and intuitive use is the best. While other social networks attempt to categorise contacts into different groups, Google+ has nailed it.

The content piece or Sparks as it is called, allows the user to follow items of interest quite like Twitter where one may follow content creators and their links. This might be the earliest avatar of the Web 3.0 where the Sparks could throw up recommendations based upon an individual choices and profiles. Sparks would learn from Google products (e.g. Google Search) as well as what is being shared via Google+ and through +1.The videocam chat is called the Hangout.

Google+ also allows for some degrees of privacy protection. The privacy link displays useful tips about how to protect what is being shared. Even better, each time the user posts content, he gets to choose what circle he would be sharing information with. While there has been criticism about Google+ revealing that they plan to retire private profiles at the end of July. Privacy — deciding whom the user shares different posts with — seems to be top of mind on Google+. That’s a relief after Google’s earlier debacle with Google Buzz, which had arrived unsolicited and initially created circles of friends automatically based on whom they’ve corresponded with on Gmail. Unlike Facebook, which allows users to maintain a private account that won’t show up in searches, Google+ will keep some basic information, such as user name and gender, public.

Unlike Twitter, which forces a 140 character limit, Google+ Stream posts comments allow for more space and more content being shared and allows for a threaded view on topics, comments, recommendations and others.

The Huddle allows a clique kind of environment for specific larger group conversations without other eavesdropping. Thats new considering that FB doesnot incorporate a multi user chat and Twitter allows group, but the chat is visible to public.

The Picassa integration into Photos is another feature which emphasizes sharing. Fortunately and to many people’s relief it has a level of provacy setting where it asks permissions group wise.

From the looks of it Google had actively and simultneously planned for the Android App based integration and the services runs very intutively on the Android devices. The key feature as with the web version is that it has a brilliant interface and great user experience for the users.

Google+: The new “Big Boy” in all things “social”

Facebook has 750 million users with about half of them logging into the social network on every given day. Google+, is 2 weeks old and looks to be in a hurry to break the 10 million mark. It could also break the 20 million user number if Google keeps the invitation button active. The numbers do provide evidence that there’s demand for another sizable social network–and that Google isn’t necessarily forever doomed to fail in trying to launch it. Google+ is already expected to cross the 100 million user base the fastest in history. So torrential was the response to Google+, that it ran out of disc space. Even Google had not anticipated that kind of response.

So then, Why is Google+ the new “big boy” in the “social” block?

Firstly, Google+ is extremely well executed and users are already smitten. Personally, I see Google’s attempt at Google+ not as anything ground breaking except the neat manner in which it has been packaged.+1 recommendations, Gmail, Chat, Calendar, Documents, Photos, Reader, YouTube, Books, Videos, and all other Google properties successful or otherwise re-packaged in an extremely fluidic user experience which leverages the social context between groups of people enabling sharing, creating, discussing and more. For sometime now, Facebook has been snubbing Google’s nose for the laters inability to claim the social space. Google’s answer takes learnings from Facebook, Twitter and even Linkedin (Something about Google+ Business). Its seamless integration with other Google services, from search to online documents, makes it easier to share things online.

The whole console which features best of social networking, friends circles, social circles, social buzz, videos, photos and others makes for a heady cocktail and the User experience adds the special something. An interesting move this, Google+ could be Google’s definitive move into things social.

To be continued

Is Google’s “Search” feature vulnerable to Facebook’s “Social”?

Over more than a decade Google had the most impressive dataset the world had ever seen; the most sophisticated algorithm to make sense of it; an audience of a billion users expressing their interest; and more than a million advertisers bidding furiously to reach those consumers at just the right moment.But is its crucial search feature vulnerable to Facebook?

Google is vulnerable precisely because its dataset is, as it stands is “dead.” Its search algorithm analyzes the pages and links that users have left behind, but it has almost no first-hand knowledge of any of the users who created this content. The users are all anonymous. Facebook, on the other hand, has created a platform that knows more than 600 million people, complete with identity, interests, and activities online.

If Google’s business has been built on choosing which Web pages, out of all those in the universe, are most likely to appeal to any given (but anonymous) query string, think about this: Facebook already knows, for the most part, which pages appeal to whom—specifically and directly.

And, even more powerfully, Facebook knows each of our individual and collective behavior patterns well enough to predict what we’ll like even without us expressing our intent.

This key difference could give Facebook a tremendous advantage in search when it eventually decides to move in that direction.

And that’s the real threat of Facebook and other social companies to Google. Eventually, users will realize they can get a lot of the information they need — particularly shopping recommendations — without ever conducting a search.

Google is the past, rooted firmly in AltaVista.com-type methods. Google is anchored in brute force solutions, and Facebook operates on a membership basis. Facebook is, like it or not, the future of information access: gated, incomplete, social, and essentially cut loose from precision and recall unless intermediated through friends.

In a future where search and discovery is intermediated by social, Google looks to be off guard. Even Eric Schmidt agrees!

Read earlier posts on the same subject:

Facebook and Google on collision course (Part II)
Traffic, Stickiness and Engagement: Facebook steals the march over Google
The debate on Searchability versus Sociability of the Net: Facebook versus Google
Facebook and Google on Collision course

What are people talking about on Twitter?

AN interesting infographic of social conversations on Twitter courtesy my Infographics

Domination Facebook style!

The caption says it all: It’s A Facebook World … Other Social Networks Just Live In It – TechCrunch. The map substantiates:

The world is turning blue, Facebook’s color. Facebook has monopolized in two years with leadership in 119 out of 134 countries and has led to the exit of 8 Social Networking portals from the original 17. 30% of Facebook (205 million users out of the 700 million) are Europeans.

However, there is also an interesting reverse trend that Facebook Is Losing Users In The Countries Where It Took Off First. While Facebook continues it inexorable rise in Asia, LatAm, Africa and other places, its user-ship has seen a decline in US, Canada, UK, Norway and Russia thus suggesting that there is a saturation point beyond which users begin to burn out of service. While there are seasonal fluctuations in users, what is increasingly being established is that growth tends to halt once 50% usage is reached in each country.

However that does not knock out the steam out of Facebook which is increasingly leveraging mobile networks and feature phones to target users who aren’t on Facebook yet. However what looks to be a concern is whether a juggernaut such as Facebook will be able to live upto its $100 billion hype or will the cookie crumble.

Facebook and Google on collision course (Part II)

Reliving an earlier post about the rivalry between Google and Facebook.

When Google was born, its advantage stemmed from its ability to collect and analyze superior data. While other publishers looked myopically at each page on the Web as a standalone realm, Google found that the link relationships between those pages held more valuable relevance data than the pages themselves. All of a sudden, the isolated views of players like AltaVista and Yahoo began to look one-dimensional. And ownership of what is now the $20-billion-plus search advertising market was cemented.

Google was envied, loved, hated, and revered. The vast digital empire that Eric Schmidt commanded has one of the most intricate monopolies of all time, the most impressive dataset the world had ever seen; the most sophisticated algorithm to make sense of it; an audience of a billion users expressing their interest; and more than a million advertisers bidding furiously to reach those consumers at just the right moment. Google had perfected its game: increasing returns to scale. Google’s business strength was simply taken for granted; so much so that even deep-pocketed competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft stopped trying to outdo Google’s massive scale and core algorithmic know-how. Google competed on being smarter. It was. And it won. And that’s why Google was unstoppable.

And then Facebook happened! Facebook focused on enabling social connections, not on search. And yet, in the process, Facebook created a platform that knows 700 million people, complete with identity, interests, and activities online. The company’s relentless and organic expansion—from an application to an emergent social operating system—has enabled it to know its users, not only on the Facebook.com domain, but also on other sites, as they travel throughout the Internet.

If Google’s business was built on choosing which Web pages, out of all those in the universe, are most likely to appeal to any given (but anonymous) query string, Facebook already knows, for the most part, which pages appeal to whom—specifically and directly. Facebook’s data allows it to do more than just guess what its customers might be interested in; the company’s data can help it know with greater certainty what its customers are really interested in. And this key difference could potentially give Facebook a tremendous advantage in search when it eventually decides to move in that direction. While Google has amassed an incredible database consisting of the fossilized linkages between most Web pages on the planet, Facebook possesses an asset that’s far more valuable—the realtime linkages between real people and the Web.

Facebook knows each individual and collective behavior patterns well enough to predict what users will like even without actively expressing intent. Facebook can apply science that is analogous to what Amazon uses to massively increase purchase likelihood by suggesting and responding to every minute interactive cue. Whereas Amazon relies on aggregate behavior, Facebook adds in the intimate patterns of each individual—along with their friends and the behavioral peers they’ve never met all around the world. And each of them is logged in and identified as a real person.

A break-up of its subscribers is something that Google will draw a nought about.

Google’s revered and unparalleled dataset is increasingly dating itself outshined by the freshness of the living, breathing organism that is the social Web. Google has almost no first-hand knowledge of any of the users who created this content—or those who are searching for it. Despite the fact that Google goes to great lengths to keep its index fresh by indexing pages that often change every hour, or even every few minutes, and despite its efforts at realtime search (including searching the Twitter firehose), its dominant dataset is dead, while the Web is—each day more so than the last—vibrantly and energetically alive.

In reality, it’s Google’s recognition that Facebook has the same kind of advantage over Google that Google is used to having over its competitors. Thus Google it appears is scared of Facebook and justifiably so. Google has tried adding dimensions to the itself and bridge the gap between social web and the search generation web. That’s where it launched its +1.But, if the truth be told, it will take far more than +1 to measure up to the whole new human dimension of the Internet. After all, the human organism is home territory for Facebook and utterly foreign turf for Google’s algorithmic machine.

Facebook:Closing in on 700 million subscribers

If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous one globally just behind China and India. It would be marginally smaller than the combined populations of the 3rd,4th and 5th Populous nations: US, Indonesia and Brazil and would be larger than the combined populations of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Russia and Japan. This is an absolute jaw dropping milestone and one of the largest revolutions in the history of mankind… socially networking diverse communities and individuals. This then raised a question around the more effective nature of Web: Whether it was Social led or Search led ? By making the web social, Facebook was undermining the kind of Internet: Google!

The countries that contributed most to the growth were emerging countries, especially Brazil, Indonesia and India. Brazil and India are interesting because they’re huge and have other social networks. If Facebook dominates there, it can grow that much faster and dominate that much more.

The incredible and inexorable rise of Facebook has given a hallow effect to Social Networking as a tool of customer engagement and social change. Others like Linkedin have had huge valuations and bumper IPO listings on the premise and promise. The valuations are currently so stretched that deliveries of such high expectations look to be a steep ask…and thus the apprehension of another bubble similar to the Dotcom bubble in 2000. Facebook listing through an IPO is one of the most awaited events waiting to happen in the equity markets. Facebook is also putting in other enablers in place that take its core proposition around Social networks to new highs.

Facebook has registered a 99% users CAGR in last 3 years. A Phenomenon because no other company in recent history has had such a run as FB.