Facebook buys WhatsApp

Social network giant Facebook grows by acquiring Whats App, a messaging service for smartphones with 450 million users. The purchase price is set to $19 billion. Approximately $4 billion paid in cash, the rest is to be paid in Facebook shares.

WhatsApps founder Jan Koum will thus become a major shareholder in Facebook. He will also take place in the social network's board of directors.

Facebook have likely made the acquisition because they lack an operating system of its own, such as Google's Android or Apple's iOS. With its own operating system, Facebook can now pre-install apps, and programs and by doing so bring up the use of its own products.

Facebooks previous attempts to market it 's own user OS Home, which could be installed to Android, fell flat and become a flop. Facebook is now seemingly trying to redeem this venture.

After the announcement Facebook 's stock fell 4.4 percent, signaling that the market apparently doesn't share Zuckerberg's interest in WhatsApp. 

Snapchat Playing it Cool

I recently wrote about how SnapChat may spell the fall ofFacebook. Now I don’t want to pat my own back here, but it seems as though Mark Zuckerberg is reading my blog and taking notes (probably not, but fun still) since Facebook recently announced plans for acquiring SnapChat.

However, since founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy also seem to be avid subscribers to the Social Gnome, they coldly, shrewdly, and wisely turned down that offer. What happened next? Zuckerberg upped the ante. But Spiegel and Murphy would not have any of it, turning down the 3 billion dollar offer.

23-year-old Spiegel, has yet to comment on the information, but according to the Wall Street his plan is to start bringing in bids from potential buyers first next year. It is hoped that Snapchat will have grown even larger at that time, and thus have become worth more money. Snapchat has today only been around for about two years, and if the net-worth increases along the same tangent it has so far, it would be worth (crude calculations) an estimated 3,75 billion in May and 4,5 in November of 2014.

This however is all conditioned on several things but the two most important factors would be;

1.  Facebook themselves just copying the app and incorporating their “FaceSnap App” into their existing library. We all know they do have the resources, and building such an app is NOT a 3 billion dollar investment. What Snapchap is offering Facebook here is a kick start, where Facebook would not have to invest in building a community nor brand awareness.
2. Fad dying off and users leaving SnapChat. And if this happens SnapChap will not even be worth the time of day. It has happened before with immensely popular sites and applications. The social Internet is moving fast, and so is its users.

However, Facebook are not alone in trying to acquiring Snapchat; several different companies have shown interest. As of right now Snapchat has no sales what so ever, simply relying on its users. No ads, nothing; just investors and evaluations. With such a volatile income base, it shows Iceman guts to pass by an offer that would make the founders economically independent. 

And as of right now, Speigel and Murphy are playing it cool.

WeChat overtaking Facebook?

What is WeChat?

Reading the first news of this social challenger giving Facebook a run for its users, your first question will probably be; What is WeChat? And why haven't I heard of it before?

We know it's not Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. In fact, it’s a company that most people in the west never heard of. WeChat is a smartphone app, developed by Tencent in China, to send voice messages, snapshots and emoticons to friends.

Something that is already done by most smart phone, you might say, but that has not stopped the app from gaining massive ground.

WeChat's popularity has grown dramatically since its launch in 2011. Tencent announced in September 2012 that its users had increased about to 200 million. The vast majority are in China, though WeChat has since been launched across Asia, and have already established subscribers in both the US and the UK.

So what are is Tencent doing to sail past Facebook? First, it has managed to differentiate its product with some killer features that keep users coming back for more. On the messaging side, users can “hold-to-talk” and send free walkie-talkie style messages that bypass the need for voicemail. Yet what keeps its network growing are fun discovery features that can connect users locally and across continents.

WeChat has neatly fused together the open approach of social networks such as Twitter, where anyone can follow anybody, and more closed networks such as Facebook, which rely on mutual friend connections. Another neat option with WeChat is the ability to talk to any WeChatter around the world by simply shaking the phone. The app will then connect to another user also shaking their phone at the exact moment. That feature alone is enough for me to want to try it.

So will this knock of Facebook as the prime social network of choice? Mobile use is up, and by 2014 more people will connect to the Internet from their phones, than from desktops. Also, China is on a broad technological advancement, which surly affects the development of social technology. 

However WeChat will overtake Facebook is to early to tell, but it is clear to me that Facebook needs to react. Othewise the king just might fall.

Facebook Indecisive on Violent Content

It all started in May of this year when Facebook users found a video uploaded to the social network, depicting an actual beheading. A temporary ban on graphic content was then imposed in May following complaints regarding a huge number offensive materials. Facebook also removed the reported videos and said it was reviewing its policy on this type of graphic content.

Recently the company started to relax its stance. Last week Facebook announced that they will allow violent content such as beheading to be published, provided the intent is to raise awareness rather than celebrate violence. As an example, a graphic video of a woman's beheading that sparked outrage this spring was originally removed from Facebook under the May ban. This video was then allowed to return to the site as the ban was lifted.

As one may expect, this turn of events did not sit right with the public. The change in policy, first reported by the BBC, drew a wave of protest from Facebook users and others on Twitter, and Facebook was forced to again revise it. 

In a statement Facebook talked about how the site welcomes people sharing their experiences and promoting awareness of world issues. This they say sometimes means that graphic videos or content is shared which highlight subjects pertaining to human rights violations or terrorism.

A spokesperson for Facebook said it will allow users to post violent videos that appear to condemn the actions depicted. "If the video were being celebrated, or the actions in it encouraged, our approach would be different," a spokesperson told CNNMoney.

This means that Facebook is are not really sure themselves how to react to this. A very recent video depicts a man beating his two daughters with an electrical wire as punishment for them twerking. To my knowledge, this video is still live, however to Facebooks defense, most of the comments concerning this are negative. The up-loader has yet to comment on this which to me indicates that he is not taking a stand against it. 

Facebook is right (in theory anyhow) not to play the judge on whats right and wrong, whats inhumane and whats graphical information. I do think that a inappropriate flag needs to be installed, something that clearly indicates for the user that the material is graphic and should be viewed with caution. If it still turns out to be just sadistic, then please go ahead and remove it. 

Login of Choice

It is almost universal now that we will be on a site wanting to comment on something and we are given the chance to login using our Facebook accounts. This avoids the need for creating a whole new account on this new website with all your details already stored. Well, many of us take that route and of course other social media sites have caught on and started to offer the same service.

Now that everyone else is in on the act Facebook is starting to lose its dominance as the Login site of choice with a very noticeable shift in the past year. Around this time last year Facebook accounted for 54% of the Login With activity, but just 12 months on that stat has dropped to 45%. This is a drop of almost 10% and it would appear that Google+ is the main site breathing down Facebook’s neck.

Google+ is the 2nd most popular site for Logging in with at 33% of the overall share at present. It would appear that Google+ picked up the vast majority of the 9% shift. However indicators do show that Google+ has stagnated a little over the past 3 months in terms of growth.

Sudanese BlackOut

War-torn country Sudan shut down Internet access for all its citizens yesterday.

Renesys a company that, among other things, monitors traffic flows on the Internet, wrote in a blog post yesterday that it is the largest international disruption in Internet traffic since Egypt did a similar thing in the February Revolution of 2011.

The reason why the Internet has been shut down by the Sudanese authorities are the riots that occurred after the government has announced that it will remove subsidies on fuels such as gasoline. This has led to widespread riots and at least six persons have been killed in these. Twitter and other online services has been used by protest groups to coordinate their protests, and it is this possibility authorities now believe they have blocked.

Iran becoming social ..?

At the risk of getting too political, this story is just too important to leave unmentioned. It has been the case for several years now that Iran has been a source of concern for the world at large under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was for so long a country shut off and secretive to the outside world and notably missing from the social media age. Currently, even under new President Hassan Rouhani, social media giant Facebook is still blocked from the populous of Iran but there are rumblings that this could soon change.

Apparently, even though Facebook is still banned from Iran’s internet services, there has been a recent influx of top ranking Iranian cabinet members to the site. Around 15 ministers have recently opened Facebook accounts as has in fact the President himself following his recent election victory and inauguration. The pages of these ministers can be viewed via the people of Iran via what is know as Proxy servers which are technically illegal in the country. Newspapers and the world at large are seeing this seemingly small move as a sign that the long closed of country of Iran is about to open up. This could create a great sigh of relief considering the nuclear posturing that became so much a way of life under Ahmadinejad.

Is this the new line for Iran? Leave your comment below!

Living like a LODDER

I recently went on a vacation with a few close friends of mine to northern Sri Lanka. My friends are avid kite surfers, and I have long since wanted to try this new fad, but residing in artic Sweden limits my options for most any water-sport quite drastically. For this reason, and with the added opportunity to spend some good time with excellent company, I packed my bags and left for Sri Lanka.

Before we go deeper into the social media nature of this post, there is a few things that needs to be said about kite surfing first. The sport combines elements from wakeboarding, surfing, paragliding and acrobatics to form a very addictive extreme-pastime. Once you have mastered the arts of controlling the kite, and you are able to surf back and forth, the next thing is to start practicing on your tricks. A kite is not a transport vessel, nor is there any credit given to the fastest kite surfer. Rather than that onlookers will gasp at the one who jumps the highest, or pulls of the most daring stunts. Kite-looping seems to be the main focal point. 

Adding to this, the untouched part of the Sri Lankan nature, the jungles, and its people, makes for a lot of very good and beautiful photo opportunities. Needless to say; we took a ton of pictures during our trip, most of which ended up on our shared DropBox folder (amassing some 3 GB in total), but some of them also found their way out on the social scene.

Now, after the mandatory heavy retouching, obligatory #nofilter, as well as comrade-tagging, the photo was posted on Instragram and/or Facebook, instantly followed by offline haggling, bartering, and finally complying.

As you all surely already know, a post’s popularity on any social network is determined in part by how many “likes” it gets. If a post gets a high number of likes, it will reach a larger scale of the entire network, and the poster will become more influential. This is core, old news.

Consequently, nights in our hut, in the remote wildernesses of Sri Lanka, consisted of getting the rest of the group to like your photo, while at the same time making sure no other photo got more likes than your own. This is a tricky business, especially in a closed group of friends, and immediately triggers back-stabbing, connivance, and deception. Often a person fishing for likes would formulate set rules for how the other would get liked back; effectively making the other person “Like on Demand” or LOD, for short.

Quickly the word LOD, and the affiliated person the “LODDER”, became regular practice for the trip. “Don’t be such a damn LODDER Erik. Just like what you truly like!” was a standard façade statement, often utilized by con-artist Jesper, covering the heavy LODDING taking place behind the scenes. 

LOD carried on all through the Sri Lanka trip, and got more and more intense by each passing day. LODs could be traded for small favors; borrowing sunblock, fetching the next rounds, even throwing the occasional game of Settlers of Catan - just to name a few examples. Paying for LODDING was not far away. Obviously you didn't want to be caught as a LODDER, LOD was synonym with swindling, not something you wanted to be public with. This also carried over the Sweden as we got home; we would send PMs on Facebook, encouraging the other to comment or like certain pictures to raise it to the top of the feed, again with a re-comment or re-like not far away.

This whole social experiment does not come without some reflections. I know there must be professional LODDERs out there, I just cannot see any social media campaign run today that does not employ some fact catalysts to get posts flying, even though no one would ever admit to doing so. What our Sri Lankan LODDER Experiment also have shown us is that as soon as you know the post has traded likes - a LOD post - you lose all respect for it. And the higher the percentage of known LOD the less likely I am to actually fall for it. If I knew that the status update of a company with 1000 likes got 500 of those like directly from LOD, all my respect and trust for that company would go out the window.

The question here is naturally; is LOD and the employed LODDER already an Internet norm, and if so is this to be expected as the next evolution of online marketing? Word of mouth marketing has long since proven itself as a powerful tool; social media likes is a marginalized, but still influential version of that. Would you trust companies, political campaigns, or think tanks that had a LODDER on its staff? 

In the words of Jesper: “Don’t be such a damn LODDER. Just like what you truly like!”

Facebook Marketing Success

I’ll be honest. I am getting so tired of reading article after article of people writing about how marketing on Facebook is a waste of time. Whether you are a B2C or B2B company it doesn’t matter. If you are not getting results from Facebook you need to change your strategy plain and simple. While it does take a bit of time, effort and budget there is no doubt Facebook is effective and should be at or near the top of your company’s digital marketing plan.


Tips for creating a successful Facebook page:

1. Understand Facebook’s EdgeRank System
If you want to be successful using anything you need to first learn how to use it. By creating new posts that best follow the EdgeRank criteria you can guarantee that it will be seen by the most possible people. Updates are key: post regularly, include videos, photos and links, have clear call to actions, and post content relevant to your audience. Essentially, the more engagements your post get the longer they stay in the news feed. (read more here: How to EdgeRank)

2. Content is Still King
It all comes down to producing good content. No one is going to engage with your posts and you will have trouble building a quality Facebook community if you are not consistently posting content that is relevant and interesting to your network. No, this does not include posting cute puppy pictures or grumpy cat photos. Those tactics are short lived and will not provide long term Facebook success. Plus that is not what your company is about so why post it? It is good to mix in some funny posts or off topic items once in a while, but you will want to make sure the majority of your posts are related to your company or industry.

3. Sponsored and Promoted Posts
Going the free route will only take you so far. Sometimes it helps to get a little boost by trying out the Facebook paid advertising options. If you have a smaller budget try out the Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts. These two options keep users on Facebook rather than sending to external sites and this is the preferred method of Facebook. Sponsored stories are great since those are essentially word of mouth recommendations from friends. So if a friend checks in somewhere or ‘Likes’ a page your brand can sponsor those posts so their friends will also see and be likely to ‘Like’ it as well. Promoted Posts are also great when you have an important announcement or content that you want the most amount of people to see and engage with. This option allows you to stay at the top of news feeds longer and when people engage with it their friends will also see it as well.

4. Test, Test and Test!
In marketing you can never keep doing the same thing over and over again. You have to constantly switch things up and test your strategies and Facebook is no different. Test different kinds of posts between text, pictures, video, links, polls etc… See which one’s your followers enjoy engaging with more and also what kind of topics resonate most with them. When you try out the paid advertising options test out different budgets, tactics and see which ones provide the best results. Over time you will find the winning formula that works best for your brand or company.

To me there is no doubt Facebook is a viable and effective advertising option that should not be ignored. Next time you read an article about how it does not work for someone don’t jump to conclusions - give it a fair shot, it will pay off!

Hell Really is Other People

You know social media gives us an awful lot when it comes to staying connected. We can see things like where our friends are or have been recently on a host of platforms. This is, of course, all well and good but what if you have a lot of time-demanding friends you would just like a break from? It can so easily happen that you are out running errands and run into every damn person you know. This turns an hour of errands into several hours of catching up and blowing your free time with chit chat.

Well, as seems to be very normal these days, a university project may be the answer to ensuring a little alone time. While pursuing his Master’s degree in Telecommunications at NYU, Scott Garner conceived an idea for an app. This app is based on anti-social media rather that social because it was designed to help you avoid friends. Known as “Hell is Other People”, this app allows you to link up your FourSquare account. This will then tell you if your friends are or have recently been in a place that you plan to go. Using a simple color code system orange indicates places friends have checked in while green shows a safe area where you will likely not meet someone you know.

This really seems like an interesting concept because some days you just don’t want to be around other people. Garner, the app’s creator, admits freely that he is somewhat anti-social and that taking part in this project has helped him understand himself a great deal.

Rise of SnapChat - Fall of Facebook?

After a slow start, including a failed phone-app, Facebook's mobile revenue finally got wind in their sails during the early summer months. In the first quarter of this year, mobile revenues rose up to 30 percent of the company’s total revenue, from having been almost non-existent a year earlier. But now the future may still not be really is so bright. The reason for this being a new generation of mobile applications, which are currently overwhelming users.

It started with the simple message apps, where Whatsapp excels with 250 million users, and competition is increasing. From Asia Wechat, Line and KakaoTalk are growing stronger, making names for themselves also in the west.

But the rocket in this context are the image and messaging app Snapchat, which has taken the younger generation by storm. Snapchat has the odd property that the images that are sent, are automatically deleted after 10 seconds. This, on one hand made it extremely popular in a privacy perspective, but on the other got Snapchat singled out as a stronghold for sending sex chats and images.

Snapchats popularity is enormous. According to Mary Meeker, renowned analyst, venture capitalist and net guru, one third of all photos shared online this year passes through Snapchats network. 200 million photos are now shared with Snapchat every day, according to the company. In February, the figure was a mere 60 million.

Meanwhile Snapchat just brought in new capital, valuing ​​the company which started as late as 2011, to 800 million USD. It's more than what Facebook finally paid for Instagram almost a year ago; that affair ended with a price tag of 715 million USD. Mark Zuckerberg's company made an attempt to copy the self-destruct Snapchats pictures with the Poke app, but to no success. Instagram recently also added a function to capture short video clips, this to meet the threat of another newcomer, Twitter-owned Vine.

The fight will (as usual) be decided by who pulls in the biggest bucks. Facebook still have some substantial mobile revenues, while neither Snapchat nor Vine, so far, have any income to speak of.

Facebook vs Samsung

You don’t stay in business since the late 1930s by being reckless and backing a losing prospect. This is certainly the case with Samsung who has been around for decades and has no designs on failing now. A couple of years ago if Facebook had come to the company offering to collaborate on an FB centric mobile handset perhaps Samsung would have given it serious thought. However, when Mark Zuckerberg suggested such a project to Samsung big wigs at a recent meeting he was met with a resounding and deafening NO.

Oh, and how wise Samsung is to say no so clearly because it is very evident that cell phone consumers do not want an FB cell. I mean, the HTC One, which was Facebook’s first attempt at making their own cell phone was a massive, unmistakable failure. This was just a few months ago and Zuckerberg is looking to try again so soon? The batteries are barely cold on those HTC failures and they are approaching a tech giant like Samsung to try again.

The honest truth, and Zuckerberg needs to realize this, is that it wasn’t that the first phones were bad. In fact, many reviewers were impressed with the HTC Ones as phones. The problem was that they were just too Facebook focused and no one really wants that much FB. If your life revolves around Facebook so much that you would want it displayed so prominently on your cell phone you probably never leave the house so why do you need a mobile device? The answer is you don’t, and that is why a Facebook centric phone will not work. Bullet dodged, Samsung.

How to EdgeRank

Ever wondered how Facebook always seem to know what´s best for you, and how to target you for those ads just you want? If this algorithm (left) is clear to you, then you can stop reading now. If not, here’s how to decipher this important calculation. 

The method has been dubbed “Facebook's Edge Rank”, and is an algorithm that determines what content appears in users' news feed. An Edge is basically everything that "happens" in Facebook. Examples of Edges would be status updates, comments, likes, and shares.

Facebook looks at everything published - status updates, links, images, video etc. - as "objects." Each object then receives an over-all point-ranking (an EdgeRank if you may), determines whether the object will be displayed in the user's personal news feed. An object's EdgeRank is based on several factors, where only three factors are officially known: the relationship between the creator and the user, the interaction with the object (how many likes, comments, etc.) and immediacy (time-decay parameter).

Affinity: is a one-way relationship between a User and an Edge.

Weight: is a value system created by Facebook to increase/decrease the value of certain actions within Facebook.

Time-Decay: refers to how long the Edge has been alive; the older it is the less valuable it is.

Objects with high EdgeRank appear in the "Top News" feed. Objects with low EdgeRank may not appear at all. Unlike Google's PageRank, which remains the same from user to user, each EdgeRank is based on the individual Facebook users who may (or may not) see the object in their news feed.

If a Brand generally has low EdgeRank objects, then the Brand's updates will be seen by less people. This means that their Facebook marketing budget is less effective than it could be. Brands that are succeeding with high EdgeRank objects are leveraging their Facebook budget by multitudes. The difference between leveraging and being punished by EdgeRank is substantial, and your brand will ultimately be judged by your ability to engage your content. Some Brands have natural success such as the NBA and NFL due to their media rich content, and highly engaged audience.

Tracking your EdgeRank is vital to anyone who wants to run a Facebook marketing campaign, since it is probably the only way to get an actual reading on the campaign’s penetration. Combining EdgeRank with a strong Analytics monitoring will yield a successful Facebook campaign!

Heres a quick tutorial:

#Facebook

Facebook announced yesterday that it is bringing hashtags to its service, thereby fixing a broken link that so far prevented 1.11 billion users from associating themselves with celeb gossip, breaking news, and popular memes. The company says hashtags have become “a vital part of popular culture” and since it has seen users using them on the social network organically, it has decided to actually implement the feature.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #. The # symbol has long been an important part of the micro-blog Twitter, letting users connect to shared interests and trends. Now Facebook wants to catch up.

- To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what's happening or what people are talking about, said Greg Lindley, responsible for introducing hashtags to Facebook, in a statement.

 
The new feature means Facebook users can now:

• Search for a specific hashtag from your search bar. For example, #NFLFinals, #Steelers or #HeinzField. 
• Click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as Instagram. 
• Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results. 

Obviously the update is a sign of the increasingly intense competition between Facebook and Twitter. If the hashtags hit it off and become popular as on Facebook as it is on Twitter, Facebook may just become the important tool for all live monitoring of any event. 

Needless to say this is a long overdue update for Facebook. Users with linked Instagram accounts have long tormented Facebook with endless hashtag streams, which in essence is the best thing that could happen to a Big Data collector as Facebook. Users have been feeding structured, searchable data for months, Facebook have just chosen to ignore it. This small update will add tremendous value to the company, especially since it feeds itself. Get your stock options ready - Facebook will rise again!

Facebook no more

Despite growing stock values which some feel are being produced by inflated ad revenue projections, Facebook may be on the decline. The reason being that recent studies indicate that the key teenage demographic may be turning their backs on FB in favor of other sites. It was earlier this year that the company itself warned investors that their younger users are actively using other sites such as Twitter and and Tumblr. Well, research has now proved that warning true and also outlined some of the key reasons.

In a report compiled by Pew Research it would appear that the teen crowd is jumping ship in favor of sites that are more real and authentic. This used to be Facebook for many youngsters but the site has changed greatly and now the teens are getting irritated. The drama, watchful parents and the “too-old” adults are apparently driving the youngsters away to sites where these elements are less prevalent.

The younger crowd is favoring Twitter and Tumblr because they are essentially less social. They do not have to interact as much as they do on Facebook. Drama is a big issue for many who just don’t want to be part of the stresses and strains of other’s lives. Let’s face it, teens are really only worried about what’s going on in their own or their favorite celebs’ lives. So they don’t really want to watch drama unfold with their friends or family, I mean that’s just soooo embarrassing, right?

Facebook Engagement

Ever asked yourself; “Why is nobody visiting our Facebook page?”. You are not alone. One of the hardest marketing segments to understand for small businesses is social media, and but default so is Facebook. Honestly, most business do not understand Facebook at all.

The main concern seems to be the uncertainty of not knowing if the Facebook Page should perform better or not. Should we get more follower/likes, or have we reached the market we can reach through this channel? Is our online market segment already saturated? The answer to these questions is most likely; no, you can always increase your following base. The nice thing about online marketing is that is far much cheaper than regular marketing (should be a no brainer everyone by now), which gives you an enormous room for experimenting. And often just growing your online presence, increasing the frequency on your updates, will yield a tremendous return in fan-following – almost regardless the content!

This Infographic by Quintly shows a report of the average engagement pages get based on their number of Fans/Likes in April 2013. Look for the correct bracket to figure out if your Facebook-page is performing above or below average.

While this will definitely not determine what kind of engagement your page should be getting because of course, your case is unique and you could be way higher or lower, at least gives you an idea of what’s normal out there for pages with similar sizes.