Is Facebook crossing the line..??

A controversial article about facebook being used as a mean to blaspheme Prophet Muhammad in Pakistan

It brings out an interesting debate about freedom of speech, respect for other cultures and religion as well as media censoring.

via The Economist.

Comments on Video: "Building an E-Commerce Web Site"

Link to the Video...

I think It's a good way to inform how to plan and develop your enterprise communication channel through the web, going from what kind of technology to be used as to content recommendation...It's like a business plan glidepath but for a website...

Great examples on sources for designing a web site and its pros and cons, the one that I liked the most is templatemonster.com, it shows a great variety for pretty much any kind of business that you would like to promote.

One fact that I kept thinking (Step 5. Implementation and Maintenance) was that annual maintenance cost are similar to development cost...I would say that this could be a problem for small-medium enterprises with limited budget in terms of having good annual maintenance over the years.

Seems really important to have the right design for a web site to get your business goals, and make sure that every visitors feels very comfortable on it, that's why some sites (google, yahoo, bing and others) have developed customization or ad-hoc design for every kind of visitors, for example google gadgets as part of their applications.

Also from a cost point of view, differences are very clear between: basic level website, standard level website, premium level website; but I have a question on this....what exactly does it mean basic or standard or premium level....could we have some examples?

In terms of the production of the video, I think it's a well done work. Design of slides are very powerful, slides time are well managed, screen video very informative and great music and voice over options.

Blog Comments doesn't count for Revenues

Are companies really measuring the return on resources allocated to maintain and update social networking sites for marketing purposes...??

Just imaging small-medium size companies trying to emerge in these tough times focusing besides its core business on posting "exciting" news (24/7) for their customers or consumers and, because of a segmented world that we live in, numerous social networks has to be tackled: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Blogging, Podcasting, YouTube, among others.

Expert blogger, Rich Brooks, comment on his post (Mar, 09, 2010. Social Networking: are you spread too thin?), a few assessment question and tips about if your business is well fitted for social networking.

I would say the common mistake for companies entering the social networking world to expand its newsletter platform, is understanding the real reason for developing such newsletter: do you just want just to be on facebook? (recognition), do you want to customize your existing relationship with your customers?, do you want to expand your customer base with referrals?, who is your audience? what are the "benefits" for being a subscriber?....these and other questions should be addressed before entering in the newsletter and online PR world.

Of course, the benefits of being visible in social networks are higher than the costs, if it's done the right way. According to e-marketer, Social Network demographic and usage, "By 2014, nearly two thirds of internet users, or 164.9 million people, will be regular users of social networks".

Finally, as the title of this article says Blog Comments doesn't count for Revenues, but social network campaigns well managed, count for Value and potential customers as well as revenues in the future. Companies need to deliver value in every tweet, facebook update or blogg comment. Online users can surely disconnect easily with social networks if they (consumers and customers) don't see the value on the information they are getting.

Even though Blog Comments doesn't count for revenues, valuable comments, ideas and great thoughts sure will catch attention from customers and potential subscription for your future ideas...

Federico L.

Sources:

The Secret Ingredient of Social Media Is...

http://www.fastcompany.com/1600378/the-secret-ingredient-of-social-media-is

Social Media Marketing: Are You Spread Too Thin?

http://www.fastcompany.com/1577319/social-media-marketing-are-you-spread-to-thin

The Big, Awkward Problem of YouTube Fees

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/big-awkward-problem-youtube-fees?nav=inform-rl

How Search Engines Work?

http://vimeo.com/11904502

The New Republic's $30 Paywall

The New Republic, the American political magazine, is banking on a new subscription plan: They are putting up a $30 paywall starting April 7.

Some content on TNR.com will be available for free, including blog posts, online-only columns and some features. But most long-form magazine articles will be kept behind a paywall.

TNR will offer three premium pay plans:
$29.97 for access to all online content.
$39.97 for a year's subscription to the print edition, digital and e-reader versions, plus online access.
$44.97 for TNR Society, which provides home delivery of the print edition, Web access, online archives, and insider newsletters, articles, and invitations to high-profile events.

The New Republic has a million unique visitors each month. Traffic increased by 30% and total ad revenue tripled during the first quarter, according to the magazine.
But the magazine plans on risking some of those ad dollars and traffic for bundled pricing plans.

Editor Frank Foer said in the release: "Our long-form journalism is the product of intensive reporting and extensive editing, an incredible investment of time and resources. When it appears in print, we put a price tag on it-and we're committed to doing the same online.

Privacy Concerns May Crash the Facebook Ad Party

Posted By: Debra Aho Williamson

By many accounts, Facebook has been on an advertising bender in 2010. comScore just reported that the social network accounted for 16.2% of all display ad impressions in Q1, delivering more than 176 billion ads. Yahoo!, the next in line, delivered 136 billion. TBI Research, an offshoot of the Business Insider blog, wrote back in April that “Facebook is gaining an increasing share of online ad spend by major brands–at the expense of large portals like Yahoo, AOL, and MSN.”

eMarketer’s own recent conversations with industry insiders also indicate very positive marketer momentum on Facebook. For many companies, Facebook represents the ultimate combination: a mass audience that can also be sliced, diced, segmented and targeted in myriad ways.



But the brewing debate over privacy has the very real potential to derail all of that heady growth, just when marketers and consumers are truly getting engaged with social media marketing. And that should have Facebook—whose business model is built on advertising revenue—extremely concerned. It could be one reason why the company has called an internal privacy summit for Thursday afternoon.

The common refrain among privacy advocates and many bloggers has been that privacy and Facebook are like oil and water—a feeling that perhaps even extends to Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who in a January interview with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington said, “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” Infographics by The New York Times and IBM Research developer Matt McKeon provide a compelling picture of the changes that have taken place at Facebook over the past few years.

I keep a pretty close watch on my own privacy settings on Facebook, and I’ve repeatedly been flummoxed by the information presented to me as I navigate the site and other Websites that have deployed Facebook’s new social features, such as the “Like” button or “Instant Personalization.”

One day I logged into Facebook and saw a message informing me that all of my interests, previous jobs and other bio material were now being turned into mass community pages. I found it humorous that there was no community page for Al Gelato, the now-defunct ice cream shop where I worked back in college. But I was peeved to see that if I didn’t participate in this new community page feature, then whole sections of my “Info” tab would now be blank—including that cheeky reference to Al Gelato as well as other things I liked or participated in that I didn’t want the world to know about.

On a visit to Yelp this week, I saw Instant Personalization in action. A message splashed across the top of the page read, “Hi Debra. Yelp is using Facebook to personalize your experience.” There were three options: to “learn more” (clicking this link took me to a page on Facebook offering details on Facebook’s new personalization offerings), to say “no thanks” (which immediately opted me out of the personalization) or to click an “x” to close the message and continue with the personalization. But upon closer read of the “learn more” link, I learned that even if I opted out, my public information would still be accessible to Yelp if my friends agreed to use the features. It left me wondering: what public information? How would it be used? Which friends used the features? Is there any way to know?

If understanding how my data is used is this convoluted for me, what about average consumers? As Dave Morgan, founder of behavioral targeting firm Tacoda and now chairman of Simulmedia put it in a MediaPost blog this week: “Who reading this blog can tell the rest of us in common, plain language about all of the data Facebook collects, and what it does — and doesn’t do — with that data? I can’t.”

I predicted last December that marketers would spend $605 million worldwide to advertise on Facebook this year. More recently, estimates of 2010 ad spending on Facebook have risen to $1 billion or more. That heady growth is in true jeopardy if Facebook cannot get its privacy issues resolved.

There is much that consumers do not know about how their information is used when they interact with brands on Facebook—or even when they merely mention a brand in passing, in a status update. Although Facebook has said that the “Like” button, Instant Personalization and other new features are not aimed at marketers, they actually are. Although Facebook’s public policy vice president Elliott Schrage told The New York Times,”We don’t share your information with advertisers. Our targeting is anonymous,” it makes it very difficult, or impossible, for consumers to know what IS shared.

Marketers on Facebook are on the cusp of something truly exciting: a critical mass of engaged consumers who are willing to participate, share and spread the word about their brand interactions. But if there was ever a time to assure consumers that their information is safe and secure, and to make sure that their experiences are positive, that time is now.