Is Facebook Stalled on the Railroad Tracks?
July 22, 2010
Legal hassles may be escalating. The Google is – slowly, I admit – gearing up for a social push. And according to an article “Are We Reaching Peak Facebook”? in Future Tense, written by Jeff Horwich, we might be seeing the beginning of the decline of Facebook. It seems to be the social media site had a terrible June and only had growth that approached the population size of Minneapolis. That’s 330,000 people that month alone.
If the tone here sounds snide, read on…it’s not necessarily so. Facebook had a May where they logged in almost 8 million new users. The dip seems to be a result of the some users getting disgruntled with some of their policies and some other hash media attention, but to think they are hitting the brick wall is a little fanciful. Bad attention for Facebook only has a temporary effect. They’ve been able to listen for any trains approaching in the past and step away to let problems pass. That could account for the fact they are matching Orkut in India and Brazil.
Rob Starr, July 22, 2010
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Big Surprise Department: Adolescent Attention Spans Ding Facebook
July 20, 2010
In the world of high technology and IT, sometimes the obvious gets overlooked for the sophisticated. According to two sources in an article called Why Many Teens Are Moving On From Facebook in emarketer.com, one fifth of the teenagers on the social networking site have lessened their using habits as of April.
That kind of information doesn’t bode well for a large portion of Facebook customers. Still, the ship might be sinking, but a little more slowly than other social media sites. MySpace has reported that 22% of teens had stopped using the service and Utube and Twitter has a 15% abandonment rate to speak of.
Still, this is more bad news for Facebook who have been hit with a series misfortunes lately that included some bad press. However, the experts don’t think all this has anything to do with the privacy issues that were raised in the spring of 2010.
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2010
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The Flux in Free Search
July 16, 2010
I liked the good old days when the azure chip crowd and the data satraps would point out that Google was number one in Web search. For most people, the idea that Google.com was the number one place to go when looking for information was okay. Life was simple and the PageRank method generated useful results for most queries. Something was working if two thirds of the search traffic went to the Mountain View outfit, right?
Now something is changing, and I am not sure I like the shift.
First, I read Fast Company’s article “Twitter Now the World’s Fastest Growing Search Engine.” The key factoid comes from Biz Stone (great name for sure). He suggested that Twitter fields 800 million search questions per day or 24 billion queries per month. Google, according to my addled estimates is in the billions per day. The key point is that Twitter continues to gain search traction. Twitter is an information utility. Each time the addled goose writes a goose-based post like this one, we fire it out to Twitter. Believe it or not, people tweet about our articles. Yesterday our Yahoo story was fired around. I am not sure if that helps or hurts Beyond Search, but it is interesting to me.
Second, I read the New York Times’s “Friending the World” article in my hard copy paper on page B-1 and B 8. You may be able to snag a peak at this url under the article title “Facebook Makes Headway Around the World”. Don’t honk at me if you have to pay. The point of the write up is that Facebook is getting big and fast. In India, where Google’s Orkut was the big dog, Facebook is sniffing at Google’s chicken korma. What happens if Facebook’s search starts gaining traction?
My view is that Google may find itself having to work hard as it did in the 1998 to 2003 period. With free search appearing to be in flux, Google may have to take prompt action to deal with the upstarts Facebook and Twitter. My hunch is that these two services continue to grow because people like the addled goose figured neither had much of a change in a Googley world. As I say on my About page, I am often wrong. Perhaps this is an instance of how the addled goose cannot see the 20 somethings accurately?
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2010
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Facebook Now a Springboard
July 14, 2010
Those us in the Internet marketing aren’t surprised, saw it coming, will all now stand in a line and scream ‘I told you so’ to all those who thought that the social media frenzy might have just been a fad.
According to an article in ReadWriteWeb.com, Gigya, a company that provides social optimization platforms for firms that want to take advantage of these new tools, Facebook is the most common jumping off point for people logging in to other sites from social media. The gap that was widening last January is getting bigger too. Presently Facebook accounts for 46 percent of logins from social media.
Strange how the real competition from Google is coming from social media and not Bing. Maybe it’s time real innovators start targeting that site for some competition since Facebook is the preferred starting point for surfing when it comes to social media.
Rob Starr, July 14, 2010
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Germany Dings Facebook
July 11, 2010
Maybe Germany has lost its patience with American companies. First, the country failed to see the innocence of the Googlers who were suck down broadcast Wi Fi data. Now Facebook is in the barrel. “German Officials Launch Legal Action against Facebook” makes clear that German authorities are not amused by Facebook. For me, the key passage in the write up was:
“We consider the saving of data from third parties, in this context, to be against data privacy laws,” said Johannes Caspar, head of Hamburg’s Data Protection Authority. Mr Caspar said he had received a number of complaints from people who had not signed up to Facebook, but whose details had been added to the site by friends. He accused Facebook of saving private data of non-members without their permission, to be used for marketing purposes.
Fun loving Californians often find their Bay to Breakers enthusiasm inappropriate for some folks. Like Google, Facebook will have to deal with what probably looks like an annoyance from Silicon Valley.
Good Bullenbeisser. Good boy.
In my experience, German officials may demonstrate some of the characteristics of the Bullenbeisser. Under slung jaw. Tenacious grip. Single mindedness. Oh, stubborn. Sometimes mean. Probably indifferent to adults running naked in the California sun.
Stephen E Arnold, July 11, 2010
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Search Facebook Posts with Adtelligence
July 6, 2010
We learned about Adtelligence, a Facebook search engine. Still in beta, the system provides access to certain Facebook content.
The system is available without charge. The search function looked like this on July 4, 2010. If you don’t see the search page, scroll down or try the direct link http://www.facebook.adtelligence.de/en.
There is an RSS feed and a snippet of code so you can put Adtelligence search results on a Web site or blog. The company is seeking beta testers.
Stephen E Arnold, July 6, 2010
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Facebook on a Chocolate High
June 27, 2010
Today (Saturday, June 26, 2010) I had a short conversation with a person who argued that the Internet was Google. I would have agreed in 2006, but since that fateful year when Google when ga-ga, the company has lost its magic touch. I know the company is a money machine and ranks among the world’s superpowers in power and influence, but the excitement has shifted. Google is more of a Wal-Mart and is starting to look to me more like a Microsoft-inspired operation. The person with whom I spoke was not happy when I suggested that Facebook was the big gun in the Internet.
I think the reason I was playing like an avid Facebook friend was my recollection of “One Billion Facebook Users: The Road Ahead”, an article that appeared in Online Social Media. The argument in the short item was:
Mark Zuckerberg has been quoted as saying “that Facebook estimates of ($1.14 billion) just in revenue this year 2010 could be achieved”. One of the reasons contributing to this, could be that Facebook have become the top US publisher of display ads on the web. It appears that display ads in the first 3 months of the year captured users, and produced a 16.2% of the market share, double that of the previous year of 7.5%.
If we assume that Mr. Zuckerberg is on the beam, Facebook could mean big trouble for the Google and maybe Apple. The reason is that Microsoft seems to be comfortable with the Zuck’s creation. If Microsoft can find a way to cheerlead Facebook into bleeding ad revenue from the Google, that’s a plus. In fact, a slower Google could find itself pressure by the Cartier advertising approach of Apple on the high end and by the Zuck’s “better Google” approach.
If Facebook’s traffic keeps on growing * and if * the Facebook search system works reasonably well, Facebook may have done something not even the Googlers thought possible.
Stephen E Arnold, June 26, 2010
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Booshaka: Search Engine for Facebook Posts
June 3, 2010
FreshEgg’s take in “Booshaka – The Social Search Engine” is a lackluster one. While the concept is novel: searching all public Facebook posts (and pages, etc.) for keywords, it fails to help deliver tangible results compared to the almighty Google archives. The author’s few example queries yield a lot of “noise” – mostly glimpses into personal lives of users who haven’t messed with their privacy settings. “I cannot see George McDougal from Townchester influencing my decision to purchase a product from his personal rants.” And who would? Booshaka may not be for solid product advice, but instead for seeing who’s talking about Lady Gaga, and what they think of her (she happens to be a popular topic on the splash page). Don’t let Booshaka tarnish your idea of social search, it still has some serious refining to do. Just our opinion.
Samuel Hartman, June 3, 2010
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Kill Facebook Day, Ho Hum
June 1, 2010
Short honk: I like the use of the word “kill” when talking about services available via the Internet and much loved by those younger than I. If the story “Quit FB Day Goes Bust” is accurate, the anti Facebook crowd will need to find another way to tame the Facebook juggernaut. The privacy card did not seem work based on the Facebook Day report. Let me be clear. I am not sure if Facebook will survive. There are too many unpredictable currents in the digital atmosphere. Look at Google. The company behaves as it did before the WiFi problem. Countries are trying to put leg irons on Googzilla and not have much luck. Facebook may be an even more significant disruptive force if you are a believer in social media as the next big thing.
If the story is accurate, privacy is not the issue the change a deep and fast moving current of user activity. Perhaps aggressively monetizing Facebook may be the environmental factor that erodes the foundations of Google? On the other hand, Orkut and Diaspora may displace Facebook with alternative that behaves in a similar manner? Will the behavior of those who operate the service be different from Facebook’s actions?
Stephen E Arnold, June 1, 2010
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400 Million Users and One Scull in the Closet
May 21, 2010
I seem to be reading a lot about legal eagles and their “matters”. Microsoft tackles Salesforce. Google is struggling with Viacom and who knows who else? Now Facebook’s founder is shadowed by circling birds of prey. Navigate to “Facebook CEO’s Latest Woe: Accusations of Securities Fraud.” Here is the passage I found interesting:
The real question here is why Facebook’s lawyers haven’t succeeded in making this lawsuit go away. Before, ConnectU’s founders were just after a piece of the Facebook pie. Now, the stakes keep getting higher as the case drags on. An actual finding of securities fraud would make it difficult for Zuckerberg to remain Facebook’s CEO if it were to go public. However unlikely that is, why take the risk?
With Facebook maybe pointing the way to a different approach to search and retrieval, a boat anchor has been hooked to the Facebook scull.
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2010
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