Tag Archives: socialnetconomy

Facebook’s new users decline after the launch of Google+, while the two companies fight a new “War of the Roses”

It seems Google+ and Facebook have started some sort of “cold war”, with Google preventing a former employee (now with Facebook) to add more people to his circles, and Facebook blocking Google+ ads on its social network, while media and social media experts start showing their preference by publishing either too positive or too negative articles about G+.  Some independent forums also are not liking some form of censorship in G+.

Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in "The War of the Roses" (1989)

While the new “War of the Roses” goes on, I was wondering how Google plus is affecting – or may be affecting- current and forthcoming marketing efforts.

While some sources say that a good number of companies are in line waiting to build their company pages on Google+, I was thinking of those whose marketing dollars have been invested in Facebook already:

- Is there any risk companies should evaluate when deciding about their social media marketing dollars?

- Are there countries where Facebook-based marketing campaigns could be at risk?

- are there countries whose Facebook campaigns are “safer” and not impacted by a migration of fans to G+?

In order to answer these questions, I started comparing some figures about Facebook users growth by Country, and compared the last two weeks of June (before G+ was launched) with the first two weeks of July (when G+ was launched).

Analysis by SocialNetConomy, 2011

Interesting enough, in the past two weeks, while Google got 10 million new registered users since its launch, Facebook’s new users grew less than the previous 2 weeks. As shown in the picture above (SocialNetConomy, 2011), out of the 213 Countries where Facebook is present, new users registrations declined by some 3.4 million during the past two weeks.

Which Countries got the biggest decline?

The figure below represents the top 20 countries in Facebook (those with the majority of users, regardless of the Internet penetration in that Country). Top 20 countries decline, in terms of new Facebook registrations as a total, is slightly over 2 million.

Analysis by SocialNetConomy, 2011

Some countries slowed down more than others – and there is some confirmation in the recently launchedunofficial Google+ statistics website.

Analysis by SocialNetConomy, 2011

Data show a vast majority of countries experienced a slowdown – between 0.2 % and 1.3% of their overall Facebook users base for the top 20 countries. The table shows the difference between the number of new users registered in the June 15-June 30 (2011) timeframe, minus the number of new Facebook users registered in the the past two weeks (July 1- 15, 2011, after G+ launched).

The table shows the top 10 “declining countries” (additional data are available on request).

Suggestions to marketers investing on Facebook:

We are still at the beginning of G+ vs Facebook, but surely something more to consider on the marketers’ plate is how to keep people engaged on the platform they invested on. This could also be a good reason for Facebook to get closer to those brands whose pages may be keeping their fans on Facebook and that may keep Facebook growing. It could be a win-win if thhey manage to get closer to each other and become more “social”.

Facebook to announce something “awesome” next week – is it really about Skype?

As you will recall, at the beginning of last week, while Google was creating the buzz around its forthcoming Google+, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was going to announce something awesome next week.

Mashable, one of the most followed news portals around new tech and social media, yesterday announced the “awesome” news was about the integration of the Skype Video chat with Facebook. While surely this would definitely be a good improvement for Facebook, I don’t see it being that “awesome”. So I decided to investigate a bit further.

This is why I believe it may not be just that:

Facebook and Microsoft started a long-lasting relationship back in August 2006, when they signed an exclusive agreement which made Microsoft the exclusive advertising platform for Facebook. This deal was worth 900M$  and it was for 3 years. In 2007 Facebook and Microsoft Corp. announced that the two companies were expanding their advertising partnership till 2011 and that Microsoft was taking a $240 million equity stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation.

In 2008 Facebook implemented Microsoft’s Live search in its pages and in 2009 the two companies announced a further integration with Bing. While Facebook was integrating search with social network, Google launched its first OS: Chrome (2008). In 2009 Facebook purchased FriendFeed, somehow similar to twitter, but not as “followed” as the original.

Big things happened in 2010.

Bing search service started to mine anonimized data from consumer usage of Facebook’s (recently introduced) Like buttons, and Microsoft signed a partnership with Bing, and then added Facebook into Outlook. [Question to self: will Google use anonimized data for our searches while we are logged in on G+?]

In the meantime, some other partnerships didn’t go through: Apple and Facebook didn’t find any agreement for Ping, Apple’s music-social-network on iTunes, and Microsoft and Twitter didn’t partner on Bing (Twitter recently announced an agreement with Yahoo Japan). Apple made it to Twitter though, and the next iOS will have Twitter already integrated. And still during these times, Google had again social network troubles, with Buzz (its first attempt was Orkut, only successful in Brazil).

2011, so far, seems an year of surprises, or at least the year of the truth:

-          Facebook hires: starting with Orkut’s business development person, and going to Microsoft’s global ad sales head Carolyn Everson – which was about to turn into a possible legal action, till the most recent hacker who jailbroke the iPhone and PS3 seem actually going to mark another milestone in the Facebook story. Facebook also buys some software companies, such as Sofa.

-          Microsoft buys Skype for 8.5B$. Definitely a big thing for Facebook, after the integration with Live Messenger, definitely Skype would have been the next one. So not really awesome I would say- at least not such a surprise, we all knew it was coming. It would be awesome if we could share videos in real time – a true real live feed and video, from our mobile – which is the most used way to upload pictures on Facebook- made possible through the integration of Skype and Facebook. This would also make sense if we keep in mind the Seattle-based team who developed this “awesome” thing is definitely focused on mobile-related technologies and applications.

(Click to enlarge- this has been adapted from http://www.flickr.com/photos/michperu/3702942040/ )

-    In the meantime, Google launches updated profiles in February and then more recently Google +, integrating and enhancing its previous unsuccessful social attempts and its successful apps, and tapping into common users for gathering feedback, while creating great expectations by limiting the access to a few users only.  [I’m one of the lucky ones- see my preliminary thoughts here]

So now, what shall we expect as forthcoming awesome announcements? Surely the Skype one is a big thing, but let’s try and think about what we could really call awesome (and surprising):

-          Not sure you noticed, but LinkedIn is looking more and more like Facebook. I just noticed in the past couple of days how comments on LinkedIn and Facebook look so incredibly similar in terms of shape, colors and available links (Like-Comment-Share). And not sure you noticed, while Facebook was testing quietly its own LinkedIn app (BranchOut) since a while using LinkedIn API with no issues, as soon as Monster announced its own Facebook app (BeKnown) quite loudly, LinkedIn closed its API quickly – to both apps. What if the “awesome” announcement was an integration of Facebook and LinkedIn? After all, they are the two big ones in the social space.

-    Another big thing could be a “Triangle”, with Facebook, Microsoft and Apple all together.

I would definitely call awesome an announcement about Facebook being implemented into the next iPhone5. After all, each of them has a good reason for competing with Google this hard battle -and a triangle, on a funny note, would be the perfect opponent to Circles ;-)

  • Google’s Chrome OS didn’t make Microsoft its best friend
  • Google’s Android apps are Apple’s apps biggest enemy
  • Google’s “Plus” social network now seems a much serious obstacle to Facebook’s growth

While waiting for the announcement to become official and for the next big things coming to our browsers and our phones, it’s good to consider that all that happened during these past 4 years of strategic partnership between Facebook and Microsoft, and all that Google and Apple made during these past 4 years,  are depicting an interesting scenario for a number of markets, not only the social networks one:

-    the advertising market – think about how Facebook has changed it and how Google+ can add our personal habits to all already know information about our searches, all company websites traffic and all other G-apps that we use every day- and don’t forget about related implications on all those sectors who are increasingly “socializing” their marketing strategies. A lot has been said about Facebook and privacy: shall we worry about Google and privacy? Google may know too much about us: our circles, how we influence them, what we look for, how we purchase, where we click, how our websites are performing and what are our Internet habits, other than our life habits, what are the files we share for work and for fun, what we like to play and what we want to read. Think about applying advertising to Sparks and to Circles we influence. G+ may be 1984.

-          the mobile phones market – once upon a time there was RIM’s Blackberry, whose aim was to increase workers’ productivity, and today the mobile war is moving to Apple’s OS and Android, with Microsoft gaining shares, with less focus on productivity and more on internet traffic (on social networks… somehow killing productivity). Don’t forget about mobile carriers and their increased revenues coming from data. Here the battle is more interesting between Google and Apple.

-    the OS market, with Google launching its Chrome OS in 2008 and openly declaring war to Microsoft (and Apple)

-    the app development and gaming market – just think about Facebook’s revenues with Zynga and about the recent announcement that Google+ will soon launch games on its platform, not to mention Microsoft’s Live meeting gaming platform. Did you know people on Facebook install 20 million applications every day?

-    the social networks market – just think about MySpace. Or just about Facebook’s revenues. Then add Google and Apple’s Ping. And don’t forget about LinkedIn and Twitter.

-    the cloud: Google did not invent it, but definitely contributed to make it become one of the biggest thing under the spotlight. Apple recently spoke about the iCloud. Microsoft’s Office 365 is there too.

Whatever it will be, we will surely be impacted. Not sure about you, but I am happy I am here witnessing these happenings.

These are my thoughts. What’s your take?

Google+ vs Facebook: Is It Just About Social Network?

Taking advantage of the LinkedOut situation this morning (LinkedIn returned a 500 error), I managed to spend some time on Google+.

The move about having users being able to get on G+ only by invitation it’s surely been a nice marketing move. And the fact that LinkedIn was not working today, has been a fortunate coincidence. Let’s see now if G+ will work. I am curious to see if there has been any drop in Facebook traffic in these days, after G+ launched, or if there will be more drop in the US GDP once G+ will get bigger.

I still think one of the most interesting differentiating factors of G+ is “Circle+”. Interesting enough, it took less time to have an app (which also grants visibility to its source code) making Facebook have this same funcionality than it took to Google to open its doors to users.

Here are my initial thoughts about G+, summarized by section:

click to enlarge

G+ and Privacy: isn’t Google going to know too much about us?

[more about this can be found in this more recent post here]

We heard already about some concerns about privacy settings on Google. And I am sure we all remember about all the issues facebook went through during its 7 years, with regard to privacy.

As a start, here are the available Privacy settings on G+ as of today, 7/1/2011 (I am sure they will change them=:

Someone sees this Google move as a way to compete with Twitter, rather than with Facebook. Personally, I don’t see Google+ as a way to take either of the two (Twitter and Facebook) out of the Social Networks game.I see Google becoming more and more the owner of our data, our identity, and becoming the most powerful marketing weapon.

Surely, many of those who claim to be sick of Facebook – mainly because of the fact they don’t like their life to be so visible to their friends- will be happy they will have another option. But I am not sure those who tell they are sick of having others knowing so much about them will be happy to share even more.

Companies who turned their marketing dollars into Facebook will like this G+ even more than those who were hoping for a decline of Facebook.

Talking about marketing, I haven’t seen any ads (so far). I am sure the drop in banner clicks, as also reported in a recently published article, wasn’t a big surprise to Google, who knows basically everything about almost every website, if we consider the traffic that goes through its search engine, its emails, its analytics and its adwords, to mention a few. Surely we should not forget about other apps like docs and chats. Do they keep a copy of all our data?

Consider this: Google knows all banners performance for a huge number of companies, knows their website traffic, from and to inside pages and other websites. But what Google was missing, and why Google – IMHO- was keen to enter the social media market, is “who” was performing these actions, what are the habits of “clickers”, what is what today is called “digital body language”.

The social side of the equation was Google’s missing link for the ads battle. This is how Facebook started making the big bucks (I am referring to the deal with Microsoft). So now the game is not about Social Media – or at least not only. And I would expect some news to come up from Microsoft and its ads network.

What’s your opinion? Who is going to win this marketing battle?

Is the US Economy impacted by Facebook fans?

Yesterday FED cut its forecasts for U.S. economic growth. It’s been just a few days after ComScore, echoed by Mashable, reported some figures about the time spent online in the US.

A question came across my mind: is Facebook impacting the US Economy?

Surely, Facebook is the last, more powerful B2C marketing resource of the last two years. Surely, Facebook is helping a huge number of companies getting more clients and making profits.

However, partially as a joke and partially because I was curious to see if I could find a link between the most recent economic crisis (did you realize we are in mid 2011 and regardless of all the governments efforts it’s still on?) and the impact of Social Networks, I decided to investigate a bit more and compare Facebook’s success and gross domestic product (GDP) drop.

I started this analysis for the US, since more data are available for this region. Mind the font color red and green to find similarities.

According to ComScore, time spent online on top websites (US data) is overall growing if we analyze the period going from December 2009 and December 2010. During that period,time spent on Facebook went from about 7% to about 12.3%, according to ComScore.

In a more recent analysis ComScore stated that Facebook counts about 160M monthly visitors. Added to the 40M of MySpace, they represent over 1/3rd of the US population. Enough to influence the economy.

The highest growth in Facebook traffic in the US happened between September 2008 and November 09, when it went from about 40M visitors/month to about 120M. And then again between February and August 2010, with another 30% increase.

Unique visitors on Facebook and MySpace

What happened to the US economy during the same time?

There’s been a huge fall in the US ISM manufacturing index in the second half of 2008 and then again (yet smaller) at the beginning of 2010. Maybe just a coincidence.

More interesting is the GDP change over the previous quarter, based on official data by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

Starting from the second half of 2008, there has been an marked drop in the US GDP, taking from 14,470 billions of dollars to about 14,035 billions of dollars in the second quarter of 2009. The US GDP got back to over 14,470 billions of dollars only in the first quarter of 2010.

Another small decline appears in the second quarter of 2010.

Is this again just a coincidence?

The importance of being Social.

Do we really need to measure how “social” we are? Can we trust those measuring our “Online Sociability”?

It seems the more social we are on the web, the better for our pockets: from discounts to jobs, the social media score can help us in many ways.

Two interesting articles have been published today around this topic: the first one on TechCrunch and the second one on Mashable.

These articles reminded me of another article that I read a couple of years ago, when Facebook started to become the most modern, inoffensive and aggregating phenomenon that we all know today. At that time, in fact, like it still happens today, a good number of journalists, economists, universities and governments were analyzing Facebook. I am sure many of you will remember a few articles mentioning the Dunbar’s number, coming from a study saying that our brain cannot handle more than 150 friends (applicable to Facebook friends as well). Too bad I have over 500 on Facebook. And some of my friends are still amongst those who don’t want to be on Facebook because “they don’t do what all others do”- I still think 600M people cannot be wrong.

TechCrunch published an article - a few hours ago – about a new startup, Labels.io, that combines what – allow me to summarize it this way- Klout (or PeerIndex) and recruitment websites do. This way recruiters know if you are really a good match for that social media position you just applied to or you can have a preview of available jobs that match your online score. (For the record, no jobs available in Italy yet).

The article continued with a quick profile of those social score measurers.

Later on today, Mashable published an article about a new Facebook-gating system based on Klout scores, which unveils discounts and perks to Facebook users, depending on their Klout score.

The interesting thing is that websites such as Klout, PeerIndex and Labels.io are all at their early stages and they are all based on algorithms and scores that we (or at least those who made them “famous”) cannot verify. Yet a few respected news sources and blogs often refer to klout scores or PeerIndex numbers.

A while ago I tested Klout and connected my 500+ Facebook friends to my twitter handle. Well, guess what? those friends “lifted” my Klout score by 5 points!

How does your Klout score look like? Is this just a new way companies have found to get some of those data about users, profiles and buying habits that Facebook has collected over the past few years? Is this a new way to get more spam?

I still remember the days when your sociability was measured by your attitude to play sports and work in a team, and we all made sure we had sports and team playing on your CV. It was just yesterday.