This week Facebook announced the launch of a new feature – Facebook Places. Much like the mobile application Foursquare, Facebook Places will let you “check in” to your current location via Facebook on your smart phone. It will display your location updates to all of your Facebook friends.
You may find yourself asking – doesn’t this same application already exist with Foursquare, Gowalla and others? Why yes, yes it does. However, the Facebook Places application is also going to allow your friends to check you in to places, whether you like it or not.
Of course you can alter your Facebook privacy settings to disable the ability for other users to check you in, but the Facebook default settings will indeed allow your friends to check you in.
Facebook Places does allow businesses to “claim” their venue and provide updates to users who check in via the application (exactly like Foursquare).
While it may seem Facebook is simply duplicating an application that already exists by another provider, what the real concern is here is how Facebook is increasingly making moves to become a one-stop-shop for online and mobile activities.
For example, more people upload photos to Facebook than competing photos services like Kodak Gallery, Snapfish or Shutterfly. Facebook also has the Marketplace application which aims to compete with Craigslist. Businesses now consider their Facebook fan page as vital, if not more, than their company website. The addition of Facebook Places is another intentional move to gobble up competing online players.
Can Facebook extinguish enough competitors to ultimately become the singular destination for online and mobile sharing? What do you think?
If you’re a foodie, you have a login for restaurant reservation website OpenTable. If you’re gadget savvy, you may also have their mobile app on your smartphone. The popular reservation service has seen great success thus far in 2010, confirmed by their recently quarterly earnings announcement.
In a post by Erick Schonfeld of TechCruch, he reports “OpenTable is installed in 14,128 restaurants and seated 15.6 million diners last quarter, up 27 percent and 52 percent, respectively.” Not only is OpenTable becoming the go-to source for reservations, but users are also raising their level of engagement with the site.
Schonfeld wrote, “Those diners have now written more than 7 million restaurant reviews. As a point of comparison, Yelp has a total of 12 million reviews across all local businesses, and CEO Jeremy Stoppleman considers the those reviews to be Yelp’s single most important competitive advantage.”
Digest that for a second. Yelp, which reviews all types of businesses, not just restaurants, has 12 million reviews, and OpenTable, which exclusively provides restaurant information has 7 million?
OpenTable clearly understands the value of creating a site users want to spend time on, not just log in and log out. By allowing customers to write reviews of their dining experiences the site becomes about something more than just reserving your table.
Additionally, OpenTable is hopping on the “group buying” bandwagon and offering a new weekly special they are calling “Spotlight.” This will operate the same way Groupon, LivingSocial and BuyWithMe do, and offer specials like “$25 dollars for $50 dollars worth of food at Grill 23.”
As RaceTalk commented in a post last week, the group buying concept entices customers to try places they normally wouldn’t because they are being offered a discounted price (recession, anyone?). Additionally, the sites incorporate social media channels allowing users to post their purchase on Facebook, Twitter and more. Some sites also offer referral bonuses to customers who bring in new users.
Should OpenTable decide to incorporate social media sharing on their site and explore referral bonuses, the company’s growth potential is exponential. OpenTable is paying attention to emerging trends and adapting quickly.
Social Media Michelin awards OpenTable three stars!
A new trailer is out for the upcoming Facebook movie, “The Social Network” is out. This trailer gives much more information then the first preview, which was only audio. Scenes from the newest make it appear very similar to Ben Mezrich’s book, which the movie is based on.
The film will be released October 1, and based on Facebook’s widespread popularity, it would be no surprise to see the movie become a box office hit. It’s star-studded cast of Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg (“Zombieland” & “Adventureland” should also help with ticket sales.
Ironically, “The Social Network” can’t be advertised on Facebook itself, because that would violate the company’s API. However, people can still post the movie trailer to their personal pages.
We’ve been talking a lot about Facebook this week. The site hit 500 million users on Wednesday and has become a sheer force in our digitally obsessed society. Earlier this spring Facebook made the “Like” button universally available across the world wide web, not just on their own site. Brands and businesses have incorporated the “Like” functionality into their own websites to visually demonstrate customer support. While there was a great deal of buzz about the expanded reach of the “Like” button, there has also been a storm brewing around the concept of a “Dislike” button.
I for one would like to see Facebook add a “Dislike” button. If I can express my support for something so easily, why can’t I express my opposition or distaste? There are nearly 3.2 million people that agree with me who belong to a Facebook group called “Dislike Button.”
There are a few obvious reasons why Facebook has held off: first, there is potential for bullying and hurtful use of the proposed “dislike” button. While I would like to think Facebook users are capable of using the “dislike” button wisely, I am sure there are users that would be abusive.
A second reason is highlighted in a new column by Mashable founder and CEO Pete Cashmore for CNN. In his most recent column, Cashmore explains that the “dislike” button opens door for users to negatively impact the brands and businesses that use Facebook for marketing and promotions. He writes:
“Facebook will never add a Dislike button because it would damage the company’s relationships with brands, businesses and web publishers — these groups are essential for building both web traffic and ad revenue.”
While Cashmore makes a strong point that Facebook does not want to alienate the primary source of its revenue, Facebook has also been known to respond to strong user feedback.
Who do you think will win this debate? Are you on team Like or Dislike?
Today Facebook announced that it has reached 500 million users in just about six years of existence (it’s hard to imagine how we kept tract of friend’s birthdays before Facebook).
Facebook also launched Facebook Stores, which shares personal user stories from around the world.
Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, posted a video announcing today’s news (watch it below).
Over the past few months the “cool” thing to do has been to complain about Facebook. There was an uproar over privacy settings, ongoing criticism about advertising, and now the American Customer Satisfaction Index reports that Facebook ranks terribly low in customer satisfaction.
First, privacy. I’ve used Facebook since the fall of 2004 and consider myself a typical user. I have never had any privacy issues with Facebook, as I actually took the time to carefully go through Facebook’s privacy settings and set them. No, it’s not one click of a button, but it allowed me to customize privacy settings for groups of people, and even specific users – which is exactly what I wanted. This whole process took about 5 minutes, and I went pretty in-depth. Complaining that it will take 5-10 minutes to manage privacy settings is like complaining that your seat belt doesn’t automatically buckle when you go into your car. Take the time, and make sure everything is done right.
Second, advertising. Almost every single site has advertising – or sponsors. It’s their way of making money. If you don’t like the advertising, overlook it. Besides, the video clips played during shows on Hulu is so much more annoying then Facebook ads.
The funniest part of advertising and sponsor complains is that for years and years, Facebook was attacked for not having a solid revenue strategy in place. Now that they are making money from advertising, their advertising model is attacked. It’s a no-win situation.
Third – the customer satisfaction survey. MSNBC’s headline yesterday was, “Facebook hated as much as airlines, cable companies.” Seriously? Airplanes are so bad these days that airlines are adding Wi-Fi so passengers are able to go on Facebook during their flight in hopes of making it through hours of stale air in a cramped seat. And cable companies are trying to enhance their offerings by integrating Facebook! To me, it sounds like Facebook is wanted…
In a recent blog post, Socialnomics author Erik Qualman shared updated figures on Twitter’s presence in the online search game. Twitter has officially edged out Yahoo! and Bing in number of monthly searches. See graphic below:
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Twitter founder Biz Stone shared that Twitter now has over 800 million search queries per day, which is a 33% increase from the last time he shared search figures in April (2010).
On his blog, Qualman writes, “We have indicated all along that Twitter & Facebook would be bigger search competition for Google than Yahoo and Bing. The fact that this is coming to fruition so soon is astounding. Social search and social commerce are becoming reality and it’s a great thing to see. Keep in mind we haven’t even mention YouTube and its social search activity.”
To the people who say social media is a fad, or that these sites are unimportant for business I say, think again. Consumers are searching for your products and services on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and if you are not there, they will find another provider.
“The Social Network” won’t be in theaters until October, but the so-called Facebook movie has a trailer (below) that will leave viewers wanting more. In the film Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, while Justin Timberlake (Sean Parker) also has a staring role.
The movie is based on Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” an account of the birth and growth of Facebook. Mezrich was unable to interview Zuckerberg during his research (because he was not given access) and filled in a lot of details by speaking with third parties and Zuckerberg’s current list of enemies (i.e.: Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins – both whom filed lawsuits against Facebook)
For the pro-Zuckerberg Facebook story, RaceTalk blogger Kyle Austin recently reviewed David Kirkpatrick’s new book, “The Facebook Affect.”
Last night Racepoint Group hosted an event about social media and its return on investment (ROI). As social media continues to become a larger focal point in public relations and marketing campaigns, it’s critical to understand how to articulate it’s value to clients.
Last night’s event centered around a panel discussion with three social media experts: Larry Weber, Chairman of Racepoint Group, Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics and Mike Volpe, VP of Inbound Marketing for HubSpot.
After Larry Weber’s opening remarks, Qualman shared how he first dipped his toe into the digital space by sending a company-wide email instead of the standard hard copy memo. View his story here:
Volpe was up next and shared with the group the origins of his marketing career and the way tracking and reporting on ROI is evolving. Watch him provide tips here:
The evening was full of tremendous ideas and recommendations. The five big takeaways from the panel were:
1) Social media is not about technology. It’s about human interaction. It’s about sharing information and making connections. People who are intimidated by the technology aspect of engaging in social media should not view the applications as a hurdle. It’s simply the current mechanism to maintain relationships and reach out to new people.
2) When it comes to tracking social media, its important to focus not only on the quantitative (number of followers, number of re-postings) but also the qualitative. We need to take into account engagement and tone. Qualman said, “If social media is so trackable, we should just have robots running things. The human element is necessary here.”
3) Everyone and anyone can be a content creator, a publisher, a media property. As we shift away from traditional print and broadcast media, both we and our clients have the opportunity to get innovative and create and distribute our own content. Additionally, content creation should not be isolated to the PR and marketing staff. Volpe shared that, “50% of HubSpot employees have written posts for the HubSpot blog.”
4) Although much of PR and marketing is based in the written word, we need to start thinking more visually. We need to tell stories through pictures and videos. We need to make our content more authentic and dynamic.
5) On a personal level, Volpe stated, “The new resume is what comes up in Google when I type in your name.” As digital and social media continue to play an increasingly vital role in our PR and marketing efforts, we too have a digital and social persona, and that is now what employers are most interested in.
Thank you to Erik Qualman and Mike Volpe for joining us at Racepoint Group last night and providing such pragmatic, realistic, useful and inspiring guidance on the social media ROI frontier. Be sure to follow @equalman and @mvolpe on Twitter for real time updates on their social media adventures. You can also view all the live commentary during the event with the #smroi hashtag here.
Live many other “reviewers,” I recently wrapped-up reading an advanced copy of David Kirkpatrick’s “the facebook Effect” (Simon & Schuster) that is now on newsstands nationwide. The first thought that came to mind in wrapping up was, “that was detailed” followed by “it’s the de-facto Facebook biography from here on out.” It was truly a great read.
I had joked with David awhile ago that he better get better access to Facebook for his book than Steve Levy is getting with Google right now for his book and he undoubtedly delivered. Levy, it seems, would have to live with Larry and Sergey year round to match the access it appears Kirkpatrick got to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The former Fortune scribe, who is also launching his own conference / media company (more on that another day), has always gotten executives to open up and he clearly used that quality to bring some new Facebook stories to light throughout the book.
Others have covered the ins and outs of the book, which really gets at Facebook’s social and cultural significance, but I was most interested in the new rocks he turned over in looking at Facebook’s affect on the media. Here’s a few of the juicy nuggets. Go buy the book for more!
