Kameir

The social media world keeps turning blue with the exception of Eastern Europe and the Eastern parts of South America. This makes FaceBook the only startup that actually (almost) achieved world dominance since it launched on February 4th, 2004 – only six years ago! And didn’t we all go for world dominance at one point or the other?

Map created using Google Insights for Search. Unlike Google Trends, Google Insights for Search provides a visual representation of regional interest on a country’s map. It displays top searches and rising searches that may help with keyword research. Results can be narrowed down with categories that are displayed for each search terms.

Poll: Will FaceBook rule the World? Vote here.

FaceBook founder Mark Zuckerberg is at age 26 (!) one of the world’s youngest billionaires, but he iss not keeping it all for himself. By signing on to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s initiative called the “Giving Pledge,” Zuckerberg agreed to give most of his wealth to charity. Mark also donated an undisclosed amount to the open social network project Diaspora as well as $100 million to Newark Public Schools. He spoke about the Newark donation on the Oprah show , explaining his dedication to help fix the public school system.

The Giving Pledge, however, is a completely different ball game. Along with 57 other multi-millionaire and billionaire families and individuals, including Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Carl Icahn, by signing the pledge Mark Zuckerberg promised to give more than half of his wealth to charity, either during his lifetime or after his death.

“People wait until late in their career to give back. But why wait when there is so much to be done? With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts,” said Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement.

According to Forbes’ estimate, Mark Zuckerberg is worth $6.9 billion, which makes him the 35th most wealthy Americans. Although many consider him to be the world’s youngest billionaire, he recently lost that title to Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who is only eight days younger than him and whose worth is currently estimated at $1.4 billion.

Facebook is a social network service and website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.

As of July 2010 Facebook has more than 500 million active users, Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics. The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic

year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website’s membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.
A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace. Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade “best-of” list, saying, “How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers’ birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?” Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors.

Companies that still rely on old media reporting tools are unable to react to potential damages to the brand in a timely fashion. This might be most prominently showcased by online consumer reactions to brands which quickly became viral. According to some observers, this damages do not only have a long term negative impact on the brand itself but might also be able to significantly effect a company’s valuation.

You have probably seen it. But by the way of a short summary: Dave Carroll had his Taylor guitar destroyed by the United Airlines’ passenger baggage handlers during a flight in 2009. United repeatedly declined to reimburse the musician for the damage. So he wrote a song decrying their customer service and their brand. After releasing the song on YouTube the video promptly went viral before the airline could react. By the time of this writing the ‘United Breaks Guitars’ video has been aired by most mayor TV stations and was watched more than 9.6 Million times on YouTube alone.

The damage to United’s brand was undeniable. According to some columnist the mishap actually cost United $180 million, or 10 percent of its market cap (The Times, July 22nd 2009): “..within four days of the song going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines’ stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall, and it plunged by 10 per cent, costing shareholders $180 million.”

“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

Google anounced today that the company is buying anti-piracy software company Widewine. Widevine provides digital media solutions for the delivery of digital entertainment to any device. Hundreds of service providers use Widevine’s multiplatform DRM and video optimization solutions for securing high quality video and audio.

Widevine is a privately held corporation headquartered in Seattle, WA, funded by Constellation Ventures, Cisco Systems, Charter Ventures, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP), Pacesetter Capital Group, The Phoenix Partners, TELUS (NYSE: TU) and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

Here’s the prepared statement he released today (12/3/2010):

Widevine is excited to announce that we have agreed to be acquired by Google.

For many years, Widevine has enabled consumers to access digital entertainment content. Through a combination of content protection and video optimization technologies, we’ve provided consumers with the highest quality Internet video experience while giving them freedom to watch on a variety of devices. With the recent growth of Internet video and network connected devices, it is increasingly important for technology to provide consumers with the capability to watch what they want, when they want, where they want.

By working with Google, we are even further committed to the consumer Internet video experience and to the needs of content owners. Widevine will continue to supply the industry with leading video optimization and content protection solutions. We are excited to have access to Google’s vast resources as we continue to improve our products, support our customers, and meet the future needs of consumers, content owners, service providers and device manufacturers everywhere.

Social Media by know is a very much over-used term, specifically by those who don’t seem to use it much (just like Web 2.0 – crinch!). Almost every online agency now touts social media as one of their specialties. But it seems that there is very little actual planning and measuring going on; no accountability and no ways to measure ROIs is offered.

Decision makers that ultimately give the go-ahead to invest in social media marketing are (or: should be!) concerned with the bottom line. Just like any other investment, it is essential that a social media strategy includes mechanisms to assess actual business value / ROI. This can be in form of a value placed on increased product/service awareness, actual sales (leads) and/or cost savings due to a reduction in support staff due to social media tools. ROI can only be obtained if there is a stated goal for the social media campaign. Regardless of how value is determined, social media should be validated just like any other marketing channel.

It is encouraging is that more companies are looking more seriously at the challenges and opportunities of social media participation. Others understand that social media is not a destination, but rather an indication of consumer behaviors aided by technology. Successful social media marketing is not about the tools, it is about the people involved; remember social media is about the C’s:  Conversation, Connections, Community, Consumer, Control, Creative, Collaboration and Content.

Participate in Poll: Are you measuring Social Media ROI?

Email me if you have questions on how to measure Social Media ROI.

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses web-based technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogues. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein also define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” Businesses also refer to social media as consumer-generated media (CGM). A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. By applying a set of theories in the field of media research (social presence, media richness) and social processes (self-presentation, self-disclosure) Kaplan and Haenlein created a classification scheme for different social media types in their Business Horizons article published in 2010. According to Kaplan and Haenlein there are six different types of social media: collaborative projects, blogs and microblogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual communities. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms.