Samsung: Facebook Has Huge Impact On Device Sales, Electronics Industry Growth (video)

March 23, 2011

At a press event today, Samsung Electronics gave a brief overview of some of the key technologies and driving forces that the Korean company is working on these days.

To kick off the lunch event, Vice President Jim Elliott described how mobile computing has reached a key inflection point within the electronics industry.

Mobile Computing to be 10X Desktop Computing

Mobile Computing to be 10X Desktop Computing

“We’re expecting more than 10 billion units of sales of these connected devices or mobile Internet devices over the next decade. This is an order of magnitude over the desktop Internet era which helped propelled the growth of the last decade,” said the Samsung executive.

These connected devices are GPSes, laptops, tablets, all integrated seamlessly to the cloud. “There is a tremendous amount of back-end infrastructure that is needed to drive all these connected devices seamlessly as people look more and more to the cloud to power this data transfert.”

Samsung sees Facebook driving the growth of the entire electronics industry

The Impact of Facebook on the Electronics Industry Keeps Growing

Interestingly, for Samsung, Facebook is now the new killer app that is driving the whole electronics industry. The social network is having a huge impact on connected device sales as more than 200 million people are accessing it a mobile device. And according to Facebook, people that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active than non-mobile users.

“In the past, a lot of times it was when a new operating system launched that really spurred PC sales, now it’s social networking and particularly Facebook is so impactful on people’s usage patterns and daily lives and this is having a huge impact on infrastructure and device sales,” adds Elliott.

For the Samsung executive, social networks are also the driver for Internet usage, even more popular than e-mail!

Web 3.0 traffic has a huge impact on Internet traffic load

“Think about the traffic, the load impact that this has on the Internet, on the backbone to move this around. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, about 31K petabytes per month needed to drive these pictures, videos… 1 petabyte is 13.3 years of HD video.”

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[Video] SecondMarket To Launch IPO Lock-Up Shares Marketplace

July 27, 2010

SecondMarket CEO Barry Silbert wants to completely disrupt the financial industry.

Wall Street should be wary of this financial startup that is trying to bring the financial industry upside-down.

New York City-based SecondMarket’s 14,000 participants manage over $1 trillion in investable assets and include global financial institutions, hedge funds, private equity firms, corporations (Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga…) and high net worth individuals.

At the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford today, SecondMarket CEO and Founder Barry Silbert unveiled his company’s plan to launch a marketplace to buy and sell IPO Lock-Up Shares.

“When a company goes public you have 6 months of a lock up [when you can't sell your shares],” Silbert said. Adding that banks hated his idea because they control those shareholders for 6 months and “they extract every last penny out of these transactions.”

Silbert also told the audience of entrepreneurs and investors how he finds new market ideas.

“If they [the banks] puke all over the table, we know that is the market that we want to get into because they’re making so much money off of the spread and the opacity that we know we can completely disintermediate that market.”

It’s getting personal!

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Zynga: On The Verge Of Being The Next Big Thing

July 26, 2010

There has to be mention of anything that is successful, especially in the Silicon Valley which is why I will be doing a dissection of Zynga, the social gaming giant that has seen an exponential growth. Yes, it is, in my opinion far more successful than Twitter. At least in terms of successfully generating revenue.

I wouldn’t have thought of Mark Pincus’ brainchild see such phenomenal growth when he launched the startup a couple of years back. Especially with absolutely pointless and no brainer games in the form of FarmVille, Mafia Wars and an entire chain of virtual playgrounds. The 44 year old CEO has transformed a virtual existence into a name which is valued at over $4.5 billion and has the attention of everyone back in the Valley as well as abroad. It has piggybacked on Facebook, but as it grows there have been reports of the social game developer to actually become more independent and perhaps even bid farewell to Facebook. I am not sure if this is going to happen, because I don’t see a point in people specifically playing Zynga games outside the premises of Facebook.

But lets keep that out for now and highlight a few numbers that show its growth:

  • Zynga has over 100 million users, the number which it has crossed in less than 2 years
  • Estimated revenue worth $500 million for 2010
  • Has almost 1,000 employees, the numbers which have tripled in a year [375 last year]
  • FrontierVille, the latest game in the Zynga armory amassed 20 million users in just a month of its release [in June]

Those are just snippets to summarize the overall growth of Zynga. What’s interesting here is the fact that Zynga is selling successfully whatever it is creating. People buy anything, from four chickens costing $5.60 to a tractor that you can purchase for $3.50. All these methods of purchases have evolved, starting from credit cards and PayPal accounts to the latest Facebook Credits. Whatever way you look at it, Zynga is speedily moving towards being the next biggest thing.

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Facebook Benefits More When Users Share Less Information, CEO says

May 26, 2010

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at this morning media event on privacy

This is sort of counter intuitive, especially after forcing its users to open more of their personal information.

But let’s give Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg the benefit of the doubt and listen to why he thinks more (open user information) is actually less (revenues) for his company.

“There’s this idea going around that somehow, if people share information more, that we can use it better for ad targeting. And it’s actually the opposite!

First of all, advertisers don’t get any information from the system…

We target all the ads ourselves. Advertisers come to us and say ‘here is what I want to advertise to this set of people.’ We take the ad and we show it to the persons we think are interested in it…

So because of the way the system works it doesn’t matter with who you are sharing information with. You could share with your friends, openly with everyone and it doesn’t affect the ads at all!

And the only reason why we recommend the settings that we do is we think they’re the best settings for the balance between sharing and people finding you on the service.”

Convinced? Check out Zuckerberg’s comments in its entirety below.

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Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg In A Conversation (video)

October 16, 2009
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg speaking at the Churchill Club hosted by PARC in Palo Alto

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg speaking at the Churchill Club hosted by PARC in Palo Alto

Here are video excerpts of some of the topics Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group, discussed at the Churchill Club last night:

  1. the importance of women in the workplace;
  2. what it takes to be a leader;
  3. the tight relationship between Sandberg and Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg;
  4. the Friendfeed acquisition;
  5. the importance of newspapers in the rapidly changing traditional media landscape;
  6. and why she loves working in high-tech, even if she’s not a “techie.”

Sandberg’s anthology to keep women in the workplace and change “the home” so men and women really “equally” share domestic chores:

What it takes to be a leader:

Why Sandberg feels sometimes “old” when working so closely with Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg:

Friendfeed was only the second company Facebook acquired. Here’s why:

The Facebook COO thoughts on the importance of newspapers in the rapidly changing traditional media landscape:

And why she’s grateful to be in high-tech:

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Facebook Says Click Through Rates Do Not Match Those At Google

August 12, 2009

Facebook’s self-serve ad program is younger and less tested than the AdWords program fueling Google’s growth.

It also doesn’t produce the click-through rates the search giant sees on ads running alongside its search results.

Ads need to be reviewed with click-through rates fall below 0.05 percent, says Facebooks Sarah Smith

Ads need to be reviewed with click-through rates fall below 0.05 percent, says Facebook's Sarah Smith

Facebook Online Sales Operations Manager Sarah Smith declined to provide the range of click-through rates the social network sees on ads its customers buy at auction.

But don’t expect them to equal the rates Google gets with its flagship AdWords, she said Wednesday at the Search Engine Strategies conference.

The range varies widely, she added. But when they get to 0.05 or 0.04 percent, it is time to review or replace an ad.

Smith said successful campaigns can have click-through rates as low as that, but keyword prices need to be low as well.

Ads on Facebook also seem to degrade within two weeks, with click-through response falling. “I think two weeks is the max you want to run your ad” before changing the image it uses, she said.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Search Engines See Search Competition From Social Networking

August 11, 2009

Online search is a splintering market, and social networking appears to be a big reason why.

Three billion searches are conducted each month on You Tube and a billion are launched on Facebook. Twitter is getting its share.

So how is a traditional search engine going to remain relevant?  Search engines are spending a great deal of effort better understanding the intent of searchers and figuring out how to deliver better results.

People search for events on Twitter and for people on Facebook, says Hitwises Heather Dougherty

People search for events on Twitter and for people on Facebook, says Hitwise's Heather Dougherty

All things equal, they probably produce the best results.

But social sites are having success in special niches. For instance, a lot of Facebook searches are for people, according to Heather Dougherty, direct of research at Hitwise. This would make sense since it a network connecting people.

LinkedIn attracts business searches and Twitter sees “a lot of event-driven searches and people-driven searches,” Dougherty said Tuesday at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose.

The Iran election was one such event. “Real-time search will have a strong impact,” she said.

In this changing environment, searchers engines better keep looking over their shoulders. Users could find they turn elsewhere depending on the information they seek.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

FriendFeed: A Watercooler 2.0

August 10, 2009
FriendFeed has a simpler and lighter user experience than Facebook, says FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor

FriendFeed has a simpler and lighter user experience than Facebook, says FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor

Jackpot for social sharing site FriendFeed, as neighbour Facebook said today it acquired the 12-persons, less than 2-year old company for – according to the Wall Street Journal – an amazing $50 million in both cash and stock-options.

It so happened that late last week we talked to FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor about his company at the Lunch 2.0 event hosted by Kosmix; and that one of the questions that came out was how his service is different from Facebook:

“We’ve just optimized the experience to be a little simpler [than Facebook]. We’re not a full-fledged social network: you don’t put your relationship status, you don’t get to list your mom, your dad, your sister and every single one of your friends. It’s a very simple model. You just subscribe to the people you’re interested in and you get a stream of what they’re sharing and you can comment on it. It’s very lightweight,” told Taylor.

FriendFeed wants to use your friends to filter your information

Another feature that Taylor mentioned – and I wished Facebook had – was email integration. Yes, that old email thing. “So everytime my mom posts something, it’s sent to me by email and I can comment by just replying to the email. It sort of fits in the workflows of our users, so they don’t need to change their behaviour. They don’t need to go to FriendFeed.com every single day… they can just treat it like a mailing list!,” added Taylor.

On Twitter, Taylor thinks that FriendFeed is a lot more richer as users can attach and share virtually anything like photos and videos, while not sacrificing the real-time aspect of the service.

Another thing that came out was the already international stature of FriendFeed:

  1. The site is already translated in 12 languages by professional translators;
  2. 64% of the users come from outside the U.S.;

Finally, FriendFeed’s vision is to use your friends to help you filter the ever growing growth of information you’re receiving from the Internet. “The product that really works well for people, isn’t there yet. We’re trying to develop it, I think we’ve done some interesting things but we have a lot to do,” explained Taylor.

As of revenue model, which is frankly less important now as the startup integrates inside Facebook, Taylor mentioned advertising of course but inside your friend’s feed.

Here’s a video excerpt of our conversation with FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor:

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More Experimentation With Online Ads

August 3, 2009

The need is clear: the Internet requires a new type of ad for the next stage of Web 2.0 (or Web 3.0, you attach the number).

An online campaign from JiWire rewards people with Wi-Fi access

An online campaign from JiWire rewards people with Wi-Fi access

Display ads work well for search engines and adequately for static Web sites. But real-time, interactive social networks and video sites require something different.

Companies such as Facebook, Twitter and You Tube continue to experiment. You Tube, in fact, claims it is finally making some progress. Users have begun to accept pre-roll ads, and the site’s search pages are soaking up an inventory of more traditional postings.

Experimentation outside the majors continues. JiWire, a company that earns its living selling ads at Wi-Fi hot spots, is rolling out an ad that promises an immediate payback

In short, not only is it potentially lucrative for the advertisers and JiWire, it rewards consumers – who are typically business travelers – killing time in an airport or hotel. If they watch a 30-second spot, they get 20 minutes or so of free Internet access.

JiWire, which groups the ads under its Ads for Access program, says it ran a test campaign for Hyatt Place hotels in the first quarter. One third of people attempting to go online clicked on the ad and 68 percent of those watched the 30-second viewing, which included a virtual tour of a hotel, says David Staas, senior vice president of marketing.

“We think that’s exceptional,” compared with the 0.1 percent conversion rate of a typical Internet ad, says Staas. The test was conducted at major airports in the U.S., including JFK and O’Hare.

Among the ads’ big advantages: advertisers got the attention of consumer for an extended period of time.

JiWire says more campaigns are prepared to roll out. While the ads may prove to be successful brand awareness tools, they accomplish a second goal. They engages consumers at a time when many people are adept at ignoring the ads they see as they search for information or conduct business.

Rewarding consumers for their time spent may be the new formula advertisers have been looking for.  It will be interesting to see how it does.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Let The Facebook Fantasy Football Begin

July 31, 2009

FanSection is proof of Facebook’s potential as a sports arena.

Its roster of Facebook pages set up for major sports teams boasts more than 20 million registered users, with sites like the one it developed for Dallas Cowboys fans attracting more visitors than the team’s own official page.

FanSections Fantasy Football 2009 kicks off; fantasy baseball is under development

FanSection's Fantasy Football 2009 kicks off; fantasy baseball is under development

FanSection says it is now beginning to push its sport franchise into casual gaming – an activity that attracts an estimated 30 million Facebook members.

On Saturday, it will officially kick off the draft of its Fantasy Football 2009. A fantasy baseball game is under development.

So far, FanSection’s 600 Facebook applications and pages have had a social focus. “Discussing games is the big thing people are doing,” says General Manager of fantasy sports Bryan Bennett.

Now it is hoped casual gaming will encourage more active interaction. Fantasy Football 2009 was released in beta on July 1, and the basic game will be free to play. A premium service will include live game-day scoring and cost $4.95for the season.

As many as 20 people can play together in a private league.  So as they say on the gridiron:

Good luck, gentlemen. Let the Facebook games begin.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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