• Sergey Brin on the Future of Google

    Sergey Brin popped in at O'Reilly Publishing's Web 2.0 Summit last week, and the Google co-founder took a few minutes to discuss Google (then) just-announced search deal with Twitter , efforts to find revenue streams through social networks, pending new technologies, and even Microsoft's Bing (Brin says he uses the search service). Here he is talking to John Battelle , via Fora.tv:

  • Facebook's Status as a Business Gets a Thumbs Up as Revenue Starts to Outpace Costs

    September 2009 should go down as an historic turning point for social media, as Facebook is now bringing more money in than it is paying out. That doesn't necessarily mean that is is profitable yet, as Douglas MacMillan writes in BusinessWeek : Rather, the cash it generates from advertising and other forms of revenue now exceed the cost of servers and other capital expenditures required to keep Facebook running. One-time costs, like the reported $50 million acquisition of Friendfeed last month, and operational expenses like personnel, are not included in this equation. Outside investments in the company, like the $200 million it raised from Digital Sky Technologies in May, are not accounted for either. Facebook has never disclosed its revenues, but board member Marc Andreessen recently told Rueters that the site is on track to generate over $500 million in revenues this year. The same day it announced its cash flow milestone, Facebook said it has added 50 million users in the past two months — bringing its total user base to 300 million and its signup rate to roughly 806,000 users per day. That’s a huge amount of traffic to support, and the site’s accumulating stockpile of photos, videos, and other content requires an ever greater number of expensive servers. This was a serious problem for Facebook as recently as March, when my colleague Spencer Ante reported that it was seeking $100 million in debt financing directly related to server costs. Now, it appears that economies of scale are working in the company’s favor: the more members it attracts, the less it has to pay to support each one. Read the full article here . And listen to, or download, Marketplace radio's coverage of the news here .

  • From the Mind of Seth Godin: "Bandwidth-Sync Correlation"

    Seth Godin posted this graph earlier today: Godin writes: On the horizontal, they rank from asynchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are separated in time--like a letter) and synchronous (meaning the creator and the responder are in real time proximity to each other--like a phone call). Up and down, I've charted the quality of the medium. Quality in terms of density of information exchanged. The 140 characters in Twitter is about as low density as you can get other than a stop light. A movie, on the other hand, is loud and bright and two hours long and there's audience reaction and it is edited and designed to evoke a response. It very neatly shows the relationship between a medium's power and how interactive it is. Godin explains more here .

  • Twitter Touted for Small Biz

    The growth of the social media tool Twitter has been one of the leading tech and media stories of the last year. But skeptics abound as the business model for Twtter seems elusive, secret, or nonexistent. As Twitter's founders play their cards close to the vest, some businesses have found a great deal of utility in the tool. Small Business Trends writers have frequently highlighted the potential value of Twitter to small business owners--most recently giving it a key mention in their list of 16 Things You Can Do Yourself to Create Word-of-Mouth for Your Business . Zane Safrit writes: Join the millions of people who’ve looked like fools at least once in their life. It’s a party. And join them as they connect with millions of customers, prospects, partners, vendors, ideas, innovators solutions. And the New York Times is getting in the act. In today's paper, Claire Cain Miller profiles some small business owners who drank the Twitter Kool-Aid and are seeing big results after relatively little effort: “We think of these social media tools as being in the realm of the sophisticated, multiplatform marketers like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s , but a lot of these supersmall businesses are gravitating toward them because they are accessible, free and very simple,” said Greg Sterling , an analyst who studies the Internet’s influence on shopping and local businesses. Small businesses typically get more than half of their customers through word of mouth, he said, and Twitter is the digital manifestation of that. Twitter users broadcast messages of up to 140 characters in length, and the culture of the service encourages people to spread news to friends in their own network. Read Mom-and-Pop Operators Turn to Social Media here .

  • Breaking Down the Three Levels of Social Networks

    Search and social networking giants from Facebook to Microsoft are acting as social scientists, examining user behavior and how we all interact with others online. The ultimate goal is to try to figure out what ads will make us click, read, and buy. Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd breaks social networks into three different categories: "personal networks", "behavioral social networks", and "articulated public networks." She explains the groups in this video from BusinessWeek ( click here to view ) :

  • GM Execs Blog their Restructuring

    Many a keyboard was pounded yesterday as bloggers, reporters, analysts, and countless others wrote about General Motors as it filed for bankruptcy. But in this day and age, a company doesn't need to just sit idly by while others write its narrative. GM is going straight to the hungry news consumer itself--with a new blog. GM's Fastlane Blog is allowing (pushing?) executives to communicate its restructuring plans with the general public--or at least the part of the general public that seeks it out. For example, CEO Fritz Henderson wrote a post yesterday in which he announced more interactivity: We’re committed to open communications and I am personally putting a high priority on transparency. One way we’ll do this is by launching a series of live web chats on this website. I’ll kick things off later this week for one hour on Thursday, June 4 at 3 p.m. EDT. Following me, a steady stream of GM leaders from throughout the company will host additional chats, about two a week, on whatever topics are of most concern to you. The blog is set up to compliment a site called re:invention , which is full of videos that tout the new GM approach.

  • Twitter Founders Discuss the Future of Twitter

    Here's a strong two on two matchup from D7: All Things Digital conference . Tech journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher in the Wall Street Journal corner. Biz Stone and Evan Williams in the Twitter corner. The four of them try to get to the core of the matter: what's the future hold for Twitter, and how will Twitter affect the future:

  • Fred Wilson on Industries In Danger of Being 'Disrupted'

    Venture capitalist Fred Wilson , principal of Union Square Ventures , is among the most active participants in social media. So he understands better than most the power of the Internet to both build up and knock down industries. He spoke recently at Google 's Mountain View, CA offices about this power--"disruption." The most contemporary example of a "disrupted" industry is the news industry, and newspapers in particular. Several daily papers have shut down their printing presses so far this year. And the biggest papers are having trouble figuring out what to do with upstarts like Twitter and Facebook. Wilson shows this slide in his talk to illustrate how quickly Twitter has grown in unique visitors on the Web: In the talk, Wilson considers what industries might be next. Consumer finance, education, and energy top his list. Here's his talk: Wilson's slides are all available here .

  • Protecting Your Brand in Web 2.0 World

    Kern Lewis , president of small business marketing consultancy firm GrowthFocus , says marketers need to stop fretting about how little control they have over how messages spread in the viral, social media-driven world of Web 2.0. In reality, customer "have always been in charge" or how brands develop, he says, "the feedback loop is just a lot faster now." Customers can spread negative opinions about a product or company more quickly and widely than ever before, so brand managers need to know the digital turf better and they need to be quick. At Forbes.com , Lewis shares some advice at how to act on feedback. He says "be vigilant," "be active,' and "be honest": Given all the mud being slung at corporate America these days, honesty and clarity have never been more important. If you make a mistake, own up to it and demonstrate that you are taking steps to fix the problem once and for all. Remember: Giving customers what they paid for is nice. Demonstrating your commitment to quality and improvement will keep them coming back. And that's what building a strong brand, in any age, is all about. Read How to Maintain a Brand here .

  • BlogHer Survey on Women and Social Media

    BlogHer —“the online community for women”—surveyed women on their use of online, social media, and it makes clear that if you are a business owner trying to reach female customers, you better have an online marketing strategy. Or as Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends puts it, the BlogHer report “may cause you to re-think your entire marketing outreach.” The report estimates that 79 million American women are online, and 42 million of them participate in social media activity at least weekly—“social media” being defined as Blogs, message boards/forums, status updates (Twitter) and social networks like Facebook and MySpace. The breakdown among those four areas looks like this: Even more instructive is this diagram of the influence and reach of different social media activity: You can read the report here . And read Anita Campbell’s reaction at Small Business Trends here .

  • State of Small Business Webinar

    Roy Dunbar , CEO of Network Solutions , Anita Campbell , of Small Business Trends , and other thought leaders on small business matters participated in a webinar last week on the "State of Small Businesses in the US." Small Business Trends is sharing some of the key strengths and weaknesses of small business in the US today. Among the strengths: resiliency and customer service get high marks as two areas in which small business owners succeed compared to large corporations. They come up short in areas like getting the capital they need to implement their ideas, and in "embracing technology." In particular, webinar participants felt that too many small business owners are missing opportunities provided by social media tools: Only 12 percent of small businesses are currently using any kind of social media. [ Surfy Rahman] again urged the importance of these areas, telling tales of his own use. His partner has a blog that gets a ton of hits. They use it to announce future events and to keep clients up to date on what’s going on. They’re on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc. Even more impressive, he noted that 45 percent of their reservations now take place online via the iPhone’s Open Table application . That means without that app, they’d lose almost 50 percent of their customers. That’s astronomical and something you can’t afford. Read the full report here .

  • Twitter and User Retention

    Twitter has fast become a popular tool for a lot of business owners—following in the footsteps of other social media sites like Facebook. But one question mark remains about its long term utility: does it retain users? David Martin of Nielsen charts Twitter’s retention rate against the retention rates of Facebook and MySpace, and argues, that with more than 60 percent of Twitter users dropping out a month after joining, the long term prognosis is not good: Twitter is still something of a fledgling, and surely some other sites that eventually lived up to Twitter-like hype suffered from poor retention in the early days. Compare it to the two heavily-touted behemoths of social networking when they were just starting out. Doing so below, we found that even when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today. Martin concedes that it is too early to really know how Twitter will fare. After all, Oprah just introduced the service to her millions of viewers on Friday. But if Martin's analysis is on the mark, Oprah will need to bring loyal users to Twitter in order for it to keep its momentum and prove a useful tool for businesses. Read Martin's original post here , and an update here .

  • Forrester's Five Eras of The Social Web

    According to social media researchers at Forrester, the Era of Social Relationships is coming to a close, we are nearing the sweet spot of the Era of Social Functionality, and the Era of Social Colonization is just starting. And each era takes us closer to the long awaited era where social media meets its commercial potential. In the Era of Social Commerce--start date 2011--social communities will be in the driver's seat and "define future products and service." Take a look at the different eras and the social media group and Web dynamics: The Era of Social Commerce is projected to start in 2011, but Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang says brands need to prepare for that period now. Brands, he says, need to "prepare for transparency," "focus on customer advocates," develop a "community platform" to take advantage of social networks as a means of conveying customer information, and: Shatter your Corporate Website: In the most radical future, content will come to consumers –rather than them chasing it– prepare to fragment your corporate website and let it distribute to the social web. Let the most important information go and spread to communities where they exist; fish where the fish are. The full report is available only to Forrester clients, but Owyang provides an overview here .

  • 'New York Twimes?' Umair Haque on Why the New York Times Should Acquire Twitter

    In the If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them , Umair Haque , director of the Havas Media Lab , suggests the New York Times merge with or take over the social media networking site Twitter. As several daily newspapers have closed up shop this year, much of the blame for revenue declines has been put on their inability to make up for losing the classified business to online sites like Craigslist. Is Twitter a threat? On Harvard Business Review, Haque writes that "nothing is more timely than Twitter." And "timely" used to be the bread and butter for news organizations. But technology has greatly affected the whole notion of timely. Here is what Haque says acquiring Twitter would provide the Times: 1. Viral distribution Twitter is fast becoming a viral distribution platform for not just the NYT 's news — but everyone's content. Record labels have spent a decade fighting an unwinnable war against viral distribution — file-sharing — and have destroyed their ability to create value in the process. Newspapers are making the same mistake — and acquiring Twitter would turn the tables. It's the 21st century's paperboy. 2. Context Distribution, by itself, is so industrial era. As we've discussed, next gen channels are really circuits. The tremendous amounts of context floating around on Twitter could help the NYT rebuild detailed information about people, products, services, and news. 3. Relational capital Use that info to target people and saturation bomb them with ads? That's so lame. A better idea is to use the knowledge on Twitter as a way to let companies build real, meaningful relationships with people — relationships that are opt-in, multi-threaded, and always-on, like Comcast is starting to do. 4. Business model experimentation Where's the business model? Everywhere. Here's one: charge companies for the right to talk back to people on Twitter enriched by NYT content. Here's another: charge other content providers for the right to distribute via Twitter. Here's yet another: charge advertisers for the right to discuss products and services with people via Twitter. The point is that the NYT could experiment with literally hundreds — like I say: business models happen . This is more modest proposal than it is actual advice from Haque, but it does point to one way that a big old media company might rethink its strategy. And it points to just how social media is changing the playbook for business (more on that throughout the week--stay "tuned"). Read the article here .