Facebook’s casual attitude toward its users’ privacy is not recent news. However, security specialist Ron Bowes has shown just how shockingly easy it is to snap up user information from Facebook.
Bowes has set up a website after crawling through the Facebook online directory. The open access directory lists all the users who have their profile security preferences set to public. Facebook enacted a universal privacy reset last year, enabling both search engines and netizens to access the profile pages of its users.
Despite the backlash from privacy-conscious users and consumer rights advocates, some members of Facebook remain unaware that their private information has been released online. Or had tried to reset their profiles to private, but found the process too complicated.
As a result, the Facebook open directory contains 171 million entries, relating to more than 100 million individual users. Bowes compiled all this information into a torrent that can be downloaded from his website. The torrent file itself contains user account names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers and each user’s profile page.
Yet given Facebook’s sketchy history with user privacy, this is hardly surprising. In January, the site’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared that with the advent of social media, the age of privacy is over. His sentiment is that people have more important things to worry about then who can access their user information.
Given that Facebook boasts 500 million users (and still growing), it appears Zuckerberg may be right.
So the first question is: have you changed your privacy setting on Facebook yet?
If not, then the second question is: is it because you don’t actually care?
“Skippable” ads are being introduced by YouTube later in the year. This new format will enable users to skip the pre-roll ads that are included within the video, whilst advertisers won’t be charged a cent for skipped ads. According to Google’s senior product manager, Baljeet Singh.
YouTube began studying skippable ads late last year. “We’ve been playing around with it for the last three quarters and seeing really great results… skip rates varied dramatically based on the quality of the ads.” Mr. Singh said.
Here is an example of an ad playing and the option to skip on the top right hand side of the video.
Skip Youtube Ads
YouTube also offers users a choice of ads they can see within a video, particularly in longer videos.
Youtube ad selection
Based on strong data correlating skip rates with ad quality, Google will encourage companies to create higher quality ads suited for their audience and hence improve effectiveness by this user option to skip.
However for the moment, Singh says that YouTube is still “experimenting” with more models for YouTube and its focus is still behind advertising.
How do you think this will impact on your viewing experience?
As more businesses become aware of the potential of advertising online, the more mainstream it could potentially become. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global Entertainment and Media Outlook for 2010 to 2014, Internet as an advertising medium is set to become the second largest in the U.S. behind television.
As a result of the global recession:
The online ad business, excluding mobile ads, is set to expand to $34.4 billion in 2014 from $24.2 billion in 2009, according to the report, which PwC plans to release Tuesday.
Newspapers, meanwhile, continue to suffer from a decline in advertising revenue. According to numbers released by the Newspaper Association of America earlier this year, print advertising revenue dropped 28.6% in 2009 to $24.82 billion. The PwC report estimates that print advertising in newspapers will hit $22.3 billion by 2014.
Based on the PwC report, it predicts that advertising across video, email and interactive media will reach $6.6 billion in 2014 from $4.7 billion in 2009. And with the launch of new mediums such as Google TV, this could grow the segment further because of the low costs of producing ads.
In addition, advertising on mobile phones are set to grow as wireless networks are upgraded and more phones are becoming internet enabled. According to the Pwc report, Mobile advertising in North America is predicted to quadruple from $414 million in 2009 to $1.6 billion in 2014.
Adobe Flash looks great on websites and provides hours of entertainment in the form of online games.
It is also is unsearchable on Google and unusable on your iPhone.
This can be frustrating when you don’t want to download apps, but want to play “free” games online. It can also be annoying when you are building a website that would best display in Flash. But as all web developers and SEOs know, Google doesn’t read Flash, and Apple has shown how cool HTML5 is.
So does this mean they Google and Apple are intent on shunning Flash developers?
This may have been considered unlikely in the past, as Google and Adobe have been recorded as saying that they would try to work together to accommodate Flash in Google’s search engine results. The first such announcement of intended collaboration was made two years ago, and only seven months ago there were rumours of Google providing new SEO-friendly resources for Flash developers.
So should we be expecting another announcement in the near future? Perhaps not, if the demo on Apple’s website showcasing HTML5 is anything to go by.
Whether this is Steve Job’s attempt to make up from the iPad’s failure to load the Wall Street Journal is unknown. But if you spend some time on Apple’s site, it becomes clear that HTML5 is actually really cool. It delivers Flash-style effects without the SEO restrictions, can embed massive amounts of text using CSS3, and the “typography demo” is truly revolutionary.
So whether Google and Apple both had HTML5 in mind when refining their algorithm or their mobile devices is yet to be known, but it does seem likely. Once again however, only time will tell.
The competition for social media supremacy online is heating up between Google and Facebook, as both are realising the potential long term revenue stream of that market.
The Basics
Google created Google Friend Connect to allow people to become a member of a network. But the benefits of using this service were not as clear cut. Then came Google Buzz, which again was integrated with Gmail but has not been widely adopted. Then came Google Wave which would allow complete engagement with Google profiles and most websites.
Facebook Connect allows you to leave a comment on any sites that have this function enabled. If someone decides to leave a comment, it will copy the profile picture and then provide a link to your profile on Facebook.
Social E-Commerce
The next step is obviously doing business via the web of social networks. Based on Forrester reports, there are 5 eras of social media, with the final step set to begin in 2011. This is termed “social commerce”, where social networks become part of the buying process.
Virtual products are profitable (Facebook gifts, smartphone applications, elements from the game Second Life). The market has the potential to exceed $1 billion in just the USA alone. China’s larger population and social networks is worth and estimated $5 billion.
Streamlining the Social Media Buying Process
The next step is for Google and Facebook to create simple e-commerce platforms for anyone to purchase any product with a one-click stop shop process like Amazon.
The only thing I would be concerned about is security, which needs to be more secure than it is right now.
Would social network would you feel more comfortable purchasing products over, the Facebook platform or the Google platform? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
The latest comScore figures show that in the first quarter of 2010, Facebook became one of the largest display advertisers on the web. It served about 176.3 billion ads compared to Yahoo who could only serve 131.6 billion banner ads. These figures were only measured on display ads within the company website and not through external networks.
According to The Wall Street Journal,
By revenue, Facebook has a long way to go to catch up to its more established rivals. The social-networking site earned more than $500 million in revenue in 2009 and is forecasting revenue of more than $1 billion in 2010, according to people familiar with the matter. Yahoo earned $6.5 billion in revenue in 2009, mostly from advertising.
Still, Facebook served more ads as people spent more time on the site and loaded more pages. The growth also reflects increased demand from both small and large advertisers, says comScore Chief Marketing Officer Linda Abraham.
Although this is still early stages for Facebook in terms of being a proven advertiser that converts, there are a growing number of small businesses that have invested into it for promotional purposes, and affiliate marketers have also invested a budget into it as the site’s audience continues to increase. Similar to the early stages of Google Adsense, the cost of advertising is still cheap so the opportunity to run a successful campaign is cost effective.
For more information on how E-web Marketing can help you create a successful online campaign that will help a cost effective return on investment, contact us now.
Many of us use Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, and many of us also look for job opportunities online. Sites like Mycareer and Seek have a huge database of client’s and would be thought of by myself and many others as the number 1 place to look for a new job.
What the large majority of the online population don’t do, is left field of the norm, but quite possibly could become more and more effective and used. This idea isn’t creating a website, or a twitter post for potential employers to see. It’s creating an Adwords campaign targeting the employers directors.
Alec Brownstein, a copywriter, has created a brilliant way to capitalise on the ego of creative directors. Alec created 5 Ad word campaigns for 5 potential employers.
His ad read:
“Hey, [creative director's name]: Goooogling [sic] yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too”
Did it work?
You bet it did. Alec received interviews for 4 of the 5 targeted companies, and received 2 job offers, and is now working for Y&R New York.
So the next time you are looking for a job, think outside the box, it might just work!!
Newly added and improved left-hand navigation for Google search has been released and according to Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience,
Quote:
“We’ve added contextually relevant, left-hand navigation to the page. This new side panel highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query. Over the past three years, we’ve launched Universal Search, the Search Options panel and Google Squared, and it’s those three technologies that power the left-hand panel.”
These things in more detail:
1. Universal Search – is an option that scours all search results (including images, videos and maps) and integrates them into the main results. For example, if you just wanted to see the newest blog post about a keyword, you can switch it to a particular result.
2. Search options panel - was a tool introduced last year but allows you to grab the latest result for any result you are searching for. This tool can be very useful for market research or product research, especially if there is a new product launch, you can find out who else is blogging about it and if there isn’t anyone else blogging about it, your post may be the first in the search results (providing that your page is properly optimised as well).
3. Google squared – is a Google lab tool that helps you find and compare related terms or concepts. Again this is a good tool for market research as it may provide a list of related terms that are horizontally and vertically relevant.
Check out the video below for a full explanation of the changes.
The roll out begins today throughout the US and then globally across 37 languages.
A recent advertising effectiveness study released by Nielsen and Facebook outline a positive relationship between earned brand awareness (naturally earned traffic) and paid media (such as sponsored Ads on Facebook). The study found that both paid and earned media can’t be planned separately just like Google Adwords and organic traffic (through SEO).
When developing the strategy, marketers and agencies should consider:
• How will the paid media investment drive earned media volume?
• Who will be seeing the paid ad (target audience)?
• What’s the pass-along factor? What will motivate consumers to share it?
• How will they ensure that their main message remains a part of the conversation?
• What does the organic impression look like?
• What are the goals of the campaign?
• What are other ways we can measure the effect of paid and earned media across
multiple platforms beyond Facebook?
These are some very important questions to have answered before you start any online marketing or social media campaign. Most businesses fail to plan and hence tend to be shooting in the dark with results being ‘hit and miss’.
Marketers and agencies cannot continue to plan paid and earned media separately. We’ve seen
campaigns that have driven high traffic volume to social experiences, only to have the
communication stop there. On the flip side, there are wonderful social experiences out there that have little traffic because there has been no paid media support.
In order to effectively utilise marketing through social media, the communication needs to continue beyond just driving traffic to the website E.g. Facebook and Twitter icons on your website.
There is a myth that traffic helps with rankings. Although we don’t know exactly what Google’s ranking factors are, based on our experience, it has nothing to do with traffic. Engaging in social media has nothing to do with SEO, in fact it is another avenue to engage and grow that customer base who end up on your website having found you through high rankings for specific search terms. There are essentially 2 parts to the equation: driving traffic to the website and engaging users through continued interaction resulting in long term customers.
For those already using both paid and organic media strategies, do you think it is more effective for your online marketing campaign?
For full details on the article, read the 360i report.
Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced the newly developed features and products of Facebook. Most notably docs.com, which is an online document editor and viewer like Google Docs but connects directly to Facebook and uses all of the new social features. This allows users to share documents with friends on Facebook, edit them with input from friends and also find out what documents friend’s have uploaded onto Facebook via their profile.
Microsoft already have document collaboration solutions for the corporate market so this partnership will ensure that there are more functionality available for the user as compared to Google Docs.
Facebook is moving towards creating an interconnected web where links and pages are related and shared online. Their vision can be described as:
…one connected to Facebook’s brain via hooks — and four of those hooks are expected to be unveiled at f8:
* Facebook Connect 2.0 with auto-login features
* Facebook Presence Bar
* Share/Like buttons
* Facebook Location
The main benefits can quickly be seen for students and other Facebook users outside of the corporate environment.
What do you think about Facebook wanting to integrate every aspect of the user experience into one place?
