Facebook Delivers an Outstanding Performance In these days it's trendy to collaborate, share data and information over the Web and the big differentiator of Facebook came when Facebook opened their platform letting information structure emerge instead of imposing structure.

Facebook does not impose any limitations on how services show their value proposition and make money. It's like an operating system, businesses can run full applications on top of Facebook leveraging the social graph or just connect with their customers.

With 7.5% time spent in a community, communities capture a respectable share of user's overall online time. From the OPA:

There is several ways to get orientation, currently Facebook leverages 21.428 additional applications. They can be selected from several categories and sortet according to selected criteria like 'Recently Popular, Most Activity, Most Active Users and Newest' and of course they can be searched.

There is Adonomics™, Facebook Analytics and Developer Service. I'm quoting from their site: 'There are 930,295,450 installs across 21,492 apps on Facebook with over 200,000 developers currently evaluating the platform.' They offer free services like 'Top Applications, Top Companies and Top Developers' and help to grow engage and monetize an application as well as to track application growth, activity, and valuation.

Of course there is also a typical Web 2.0 app rating style called AppRate, a Community-Driven Facebook Applications Reviews and Ratings site with daily reviews and ratings of Facebook applications.

Overall, Facebook and its community provide excellent services, transparency and an outstanding performance with business models for an open Platform and applications like:

• Contextual, displayed, targeted and linked advertising
• RSS advertising
• Sponsoring and donations
• Affiliate programs and merchandising
• Social Commerce (recommendations, reviews etc.)

Hard times for competitors!

• Facebook Sets Trend for Distributed Networks
• Facebook's Open Platform a Serious Trend for Future Marketing
• Facebook as an Open Platform

Labels: bizdev, facebook, networking, web2.0

  ¶ 'Facebook Delivers an Outstanding Performance' posted by eA : 3:38 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Facebook Sets Trend for Distributed Networks I've written already about Current and Future eCommerce Challenges leveraging social network effects, Web Widgets as a Distribution Channel and of course Facebook's Open Platform as a Serious Trend for Future Marketing.

When Facebook announced at their F8 event a new strategy for further expansion focusing on distribution deals, Facebook as an Open Platform, they set a starting point to letting users build the site from the ground up. Amazing facts from the Facebook Developer Meetup in New York last week via ZDNet:

'Dave Morin, Facebook's director of platform, told the Developer Meetup audience via video conference that more than 40,000 developers have requested to be part of the project, around 1,500 applications have been produced so far, and some of the most popular went from zero to 850,000 users in three days. "This is unprecedented in the history of the Internet," Morin said to the developers.'

"If you think about just how we went about building the site," Zuckerberg said, "the traditional approach would have been to assemble the information and build the directory ourselves"..."Decentralised systems just tend to be more efficient."

Attracting more than 1000 developers a day and one month later it almost seams to be done - with an open platform it's no longer necessary to build all software in house - it even leverages the Long Tail sporting smaller, but very specialized applications far beyond the mainstream offering them an opportunity to capitalize on Facebook's large and loyal user base. I've never seen enhancing a platform in that short time!

• New Strategy: Facebook as an Open Platform
• Facebook's Open Platform a Serious Trend for Future Marketing
• Web Widgets as a Distribution Channel for Advertising

Of course there is also the risky side gambling with its image of being the anti MySpace. Letting things go in an 'unprotected' way and see what's coming out in the end might lead to spam & co and be overwhelming for some users, they might become tired of new apps, but seen overall this kind of strategy applying a strict policy in case has shown that 'no major problems had surfaced yet' according to Zuckerberg. No risk no win!

It reminds me to the success of YouTube, which came up by just letting users do it and finding out what they really want. YouTube holds 45% of the free online video market now - they are currently developing a software to detect and protect copyrighted material and offer online publishing tools and copyright free outlets to remix one's videos and to address a stricter policy.

• Google Developer Day: Going Offline with Google Gears

Labels: bizdev, facebook, networking

  ¶ 'Facebook Sets Trend for Distributed Networks' posted by eA : 2:40 PM  1 comments links to this post

  Facebook's Open Platform a Serious Trend for Future Marketing Since Facebook opened their platform letting information structure emerge instead of imposing structure developers can create their own services on top of Facebook now leveraging trendy and ground-breaking technologies and disciplines setting a serious trend for the future. Combining social networks with vertical applications means

• creating new opportunities for self-expression and collaboration
• complementing and competing in products and services
• leveraging network effects and monetization

Getting in front of potential users such as facebook members and showing them the value proposition is crucial to success of a service.

Both, the social network and the services benefit from a word-of-mouth spreading through social networking resulting in an explosive growth as a recent analysis from Fortune showed:

'The social network has gained another million users and is now up to 25 million.'

'The hottest application on Facebook is from a music social networking company called iLike. That service is now approaching a million users, growing at about 200,000 per day.'

'Now there are already 300 applications' (up from 85 at launch)

'iLike also demonstrates the viral power of Facebook's platform.'

Since Facebook will impose no limitations on how services make money besides selling one's own products and services business models for the open 'Facebook Platform' can involve

• Contextual, displayed, targeted and linked advertising
• RSS advertising
• Sponsoring and donations
• Affiliate programs and merchandising
• Social Commerce

I'm expecting more companies opening up their platform to optimize value, to broaden reach and to attract the attention of niche markets and markets that did not exist before.

• New Strategy: Facebook as an Open Platform

Labels: bizdev, facebook, networking, web2.0

  ¶ 'Facebook's Open Platform a Serious Trend for Future Marketing' posted by eA : 3:34 PM  0 comments links to this post

  New Strategy: Facebook as an Open Platform The Web has quickly morphed into a giant global operating system which allows to remix the Web via mash ups resulting in improved social networking technologies fostering creativity and self-expression, service orientation and cinematic user interfaces based on AJAX and Flash complementing modern SOA's.

Being the second largest social networking site on the Web Facebook announced at their F8 event a new strategy for further expansion focusing on distribution deals: Facebook as an Open Platform.

From Fortune:

'"We want to make Facebook into something of an operating system so you can run full applications," Zuckerberg told me. He said Facebook is becoming a "platform," meaning a software environment where others can create their own services...'

People's behavior in researching buying related information and decision making has changed during the last months. Their favorite methods include researching buying related price comparison sites, RSS-feeds, review sites, blogs and travel sites, while consumer generated content and peer-reviews have a huge impact on their decision making.

Currently Facebook is monetized by advertising. Introducing new applications might lead to intensified usage without leaving the site and a richer experience for its users leveraging content and commerce.

'Facebook will impose no limitations on how they make money. Says Zuckerberg: "They can sell sponsorships, they can have ads, they can sell things, they can link off to another site - we are just agnostic."'

It's a step further to better compete against MySpace and since Facebook resisted a $900 mio. acquisition offer from Yahoo! I think they will even resist further mergers and acquisition offers, do it alone and potentially go public one day. While Google is the exclusive provider of text-based advertising and keyword targeted ads for MySpace Facebook's main business partner is Microsoft.

'Last year it contracted to broker banner ads for Facebook, reportedly guaranteeing a minimum of $100 million per year through 2011.'

To take advantage of new business opportunities it's recommended to hook in some of the best community-empowered sites.

Labels: bizdev, ecommerce, facebook, networking, web2.0

  ¶ 'New Strategy: Facebook as an Open Platform' posted by eA : 11:11 AM  2 comments links to this post