Most people with a Facebook profile will be unfamiliar with IPOs (initial public offerings) and the financial ins-and-outs of the company, but this move from Facebook is significant.

How much?
Facebook is expected to sell of a 10% stake in the company for anywhere between $7.5billion and $10billion. If they achieve this price, the total value of Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room brainchild will be £75billion to $100billion. That makes this offering the biggest tech stock market floatation since Google. Crucially, it cements the social network’s position as an essential tool, just as Google has done with search.

Who benefits?
The biggest beneficiaries will, of course, be the current owners. Founder Mark Zuckerberg holds the largest share in the company, which could be valued at up to $24billion from May. Other early investors expecting big investment boosts include Sean Parker (Napster co-founder), Dustin Moskovitz (Mark’s old college roommate), Eduardo Saverin (Facebook co-founder) and Russian tycoon Yuri Milner.

What does it mean for users?
Firstly, as a public company Facebook would be under more scrutiny and obligated to be more transparent. What this also means, is that there is likely to be increased use of personal information on users in order to maximise profits for shareholders. Personalised ads could expand and be based on your friends’ likes, and more targeted advertising is likely to be encouraged. Because there will now be an obligation to please new part-owners, more priority could be given to revenue making operations in the company instead of innovation. Google were a victim of their own IPO success in this manner, as their previous boast that staff could spend 20% of their time on anything they wanted had to be pushed aside, and Google labs was closed off to “devote more resources to high-impact products”.

Micrositez Digital is an award winning web agency.

Over the last eight years Facebook has grown, and won the hearts of millions of users. With over 800 million active users now, Facebook and it’s owner are far from shy when it comes to breaking records. Last September Mark announced during the F8 developers conference that the company had broken the record for the number of people logged on a site at any one time. Over 500 billion users helped them break that record, and today another record was broken by one American woman, and 107 of her friends.

Cathy Matthews, from Sacramento achieved over one million comments in response to her post, which she and her friends from an online gaming community set a challenge to.

Speaking to local news, Cathy commented; “I’m not a spring chicken anymore, and I really haven’t done anything phenomenal.”

Cathy and her friends have submitted their achievement to the Guinesss book of records.  Although it is believed that the group have more than doubled the amount set by the previous record holder. They have yet to hear back.

Micrositez: Web Design

Apple has been surging ahead in the tech industry for some time, but how have they managed to so spectacularly outperform their rivals? One simple answer: the iPhone. The iPhone is now Apple’s key product, and accounts for over 50% of the company’s revenue.

Apple sold 37 million iPhones this quarter, which is a mind-boggling figure. This surpasses last year’s Q1 sales (16 million), and the previous quarterly record for iPhone sales in Q3 2011 (20 million) combined. A large proportion of that has come from enterprise customers, as RIM’s Blackberry handsets lose their hold on business customers.

What does all this mean for Apple competitors? As quick as tech media are to suggest the next big thing in mobile or consumer electronics, the fact is that no other tech firm has come remotely close to that kind of earning power. Facebook may be a behemoth of social media, but its $250million 2011 Q4 earnings look paltry compared to the cash that Apple are bringing in. Google’s recent quarterly earnings posting of $2.71 billion was impressive, but classed as a “disappointment” by shareholders. Despite Android’s impressive growth in mobile, Google does not control the hardware of their mobile product, which means that growth is shared with manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and Motorola.

It appears to be the case that Apple is so far ahead of the competition, that it’s not going to be possible for other companies to catch up financially. Apple’s limited (but highly desirable) product line could be seen as a key to their success, but may leave space for companies to compete in terms of variety and innovation instead of profit.

Micrositez Digital is an award winning digital agency.

Clicking the notice takes the searcher to more information on Google’s Help Center, and a link is also provided on the blog for webmasters who feel their site has been unfairly labelled as compromised.

This interesting update has been mostly ignored however, as most users are concerned with what has appear on the official Google blog today; a privacy update. The update, which Google say Is designed to provide a more seamless experience for Google account holders across their various products is explained here:

Essentially, your preferences will be shared across search, social, mail and other activities, making it easier for Google to determine what you mean when you search for certain terms. The problem is, as Facebook have learned, that users are none too happy when their privacy is tampered with, especially when there is no facility to opt out. If you hold a Gmail, Google+, Youtube, Google Docs or any other account, this will affect you.

Google’s position is outlined in their blog:

“Finally, what we’re not changing. We remain committed to data liberation, so if you want to take your information elsewhere you can. We don’t sell your personal information, nor do we share it externally without your permission except in very limited circumstances like a valid court order. We try hard to be transparent about the information we collect, and to give you meaningful choices about how it is used—for example our Ads Preferences Manager enables you to edit the interest categories we advertise against or turn off certain Google ads altogether. And we continue to design privacy controls, like Google+’s circles, into our products from the ground up.”

It’s another controversial move from the search giant, who are already dealing with a lot of heat online after the launch of Search Plus Your World and forced signup to Google+. Is it possible that users will take their data elsewhere?

Micrositez Digital: Web Agency Glasgow.

The result of this work can be found at focusontheuser.org. From there, users are encouraged to click and drag a button to their bookmarks bar, and this button can then be used to alter search results. Or, as the team call say “try a more relevant Google”. It works by using Google’s own relevance measure to determine which social content should appear in the People and Pages section of search results. So the social results better match the most relevant and popular social locations for search terms. It doesn’t exclude Google+, but it does categorise it more accurately according to how relevant it is.

The name of this bookmarklet?

the "don't be evil" button

If this phrase sounds familiar, that’s because “don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto of Google themselves, and an ironic reminder to the company that perhaps they’ve slipped from that ethos with their promotion of Google+ above all other social networks.

It’s an interesting project, and it could become very popular. Search engine users value relevancy over anything else, and if they’re given the tool to get it, why wouldn’t they use it?

Micrositez Digital: Web Agency Glasgow.

The initial partners include some familiar names like Zynga, Pinterest, Ticketmaster and Rotten Tomatoes. Facebook has confirmed they will start approving new apps from developers straight away.

Some Open Graph features were already in use, and users have been sharing their music activity through apps like Spotify, and their news habits through social reader apps. These features were already using frictionless sharing to update users’ timelines, and the new apps will work in the same way.

The difference with the new apps will be the range of activities users are now able to share. Facebook’s ubiquitous “like” button has been criticised in the past, and even Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that it has limitations for users and marketers alike. The new Open Graph apps can use frictionless sharing to update activity on other sites. For example, for e-commerce sites a user can update that they “want” or “own” a product, and this will be shared to their timeline. With the range of apps available there is a lot of potential for reported activities, and users’ timelines will soon share what they “read”, “cooked” or “ate” on their timelines.

The idea of frictionless sharing is to turn the timeline into a type of noticeboard where users an update all types of activity. Some people are concerned that it could mean more corporate updates into already crowded newsfeeds, or that it could be the very definition of oversharing. Facebook users are not known for keeping their opinions on such changes to themselves, so we will soon be able to see how well the changes have gone over.

Micrositez Digital: Web Agency Glasgow.

Today, Facebook dominates the social landscape, and has infiltrated popular culture to the point that the brand, like Google, peppers people’s speech as a verb:

“I need to find a car hire company, I’ll Google it”

“I don’t have her number, I’ll just Facebook her”.

The growth of Facebook has been well documented, and recent figures now suggest that the social network could hit the 1 billion user mark this year. Local big players in countries around the world are being usurped one by one, from Hyves in the Netherlands and StudiVZ in Germany to Orkut in India. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation now has unparalleled global reach, and that makes it an incredibly attractive platform for advertisers. Facebook controls approximately half of all social media traffic in the UK.

But this figure indicates that Facebook is in decline here. Recent figures are suggesting that Facebook’s share has fallen by more than 7% in the last year, and analysts are suggesting it has reached saturation point. Social media users in the UK are gaining a reputation for being a fickle bunch; MySpace’s dominance a few short years ago was shaken by Bebo, which then stepped aside for Facebook. Now, Twitter, YouTube and even Yahoo! Answers are showing considerable growth. Meanwhile, Google+ isn’t in the top 10 social networks in the UK yet, but it is growing incredibly quickly.

So how do you keep social media users in the UK interested in your online social media presence?

The important thing is to watch and engage with the movers and shakers on the social media landscape. The popularity of niche social networks and forums like Moneysavingexpert and Pinterest, and even local social networks such as KILTR, make social networking in the UK a different experience. Make sure your business establishes a presence in these networks before your friends start to explore them as well. It’s a lot of work, but there are big rewards for those who invest in this kind of brand awareness.

Micrositez Digital is a Social Media Agency.

1. Circle Volume
Google+ now allows users to turn up and down the “volume” of their circles. This means users can choose which circles are more important and make their posts “louder” or more visible, allowing people more control over which content they access first.

2. Google+ Pages admin
A particular bugbear of users when Google+ Pages were introduced was the lack of multi-admin. All pages could only be administered by one person. Google+ have amended this, and up to 50 users can administer a single page, making it easier for multiple employees of a company to work on their Google+ page. We have to admit, this is our favourite new feature in the Micrositez Digital office!

3. Photo Lightbox
Google has boldly claimed on their blog that their new Lightbox feature is “a more beautiful and useable photo experience”. We are prone to agree with this. The new interface is uncluttered and focuses the user’s eye on the photo. Coupled with improved navigation and better photo-tagging, this should be sure to please the large and vocal photography community on Google+.

In addition to these changes, the Google+ app on Android Market has been updated and improved, with easier access and use of the popular hangouts feature. It is hoped that the video chat capabilities of Hangouts will help the community to grow, and entice users away from Facebook (whose mobile apps are notoriously buggy). While the new Google+ changes aren’t quite as revolutionary as the Facebook timeline, they are certainly a small step in the right direction.

Micrositez Digital: Social Media Marketing

Micrositez: Digital marketing agency

Enter Jerry Rizzo and Hunter Coleman. These two enterprising fans decided to help the team out by launching and running twitter accounts for two of the mascots. Soon @PhilEMoose and @BFranklinDogg were engaging in friendly banter online and encouraging fan votes. This quickly caught the attention of Adam Aron, who sent a friendly but firm e-mail requesting ownership of the accounts “without the use of lawyers or anything like that”.  When voting closed, Rizzo and Coleman dutifully handed over the account passwords, and the 76ers rewarded them with box seats for the season opener, and season tickets for their troubles.

Adam Aron wasn’t finished yet. He began to research Jerry Rizzo, a self-confessed “social media sponge”, and was impressed by his social media presence and the quality of writing in his blog posts. So impressed, that he offered Rizzo the role of Social Media Consultant for the 76ers. Jerry Rizzo accepted the offer of his “dream job” and the story gains an even happier ending.

This doesn’t appear to be an isolated fairytale. Beverly Macy, social media author and Huffington Post contributor, sees this as evidence of shift in the communication industry. She told Mashable: “It just shows that people now have the ability to showcase who they are for good and bad, and that all of that is findable. It says it’s about personal initiative and that if you have a love or an affinity for something just go do it, because you don’t know what might happen.”

Statistics released by MBAworld this week show that social media recruitment is on the rise. Over 18 million americans credit Facebook with getting them into their current roles. Over 10 million LinkedIn users got jobs through the site, and 8 million Americans are in jobs they found on twitter. Employers are more open about monitoring the social media presence of job applicants, not just for the screening process, but for recruiting stand-out “superusers”.

The moral of this fairy story? Make your social media presence stand out and it could reap real rewards.

Micrositez: SEO and Social Media.

Since then developers have been given access to the beta of Timeline, which has enabled them to build apps around the new feature. Over a million coders have signed up to the test version and so far feedback has been positive.

In true Facebook fashion, the news was announced through the update of the original blog post published back in September.

Timeline, which is all part of the Frictionless experience, has been designed in such a way that users will now be able to share their whole life in a chronicle fashion, everything from place of birth to the present day.

There has been some controversies regarding the level of openness Facebook are encouraging, however; Facebook believes this is in the interest of their users.

Micrositez are a social media company.

That’s what reports are suggesting today as the Gowalla app has struggled to obtain any great level of success similar to their rival, Foursquare.

Although Mark Zuckerberg and his team have yet to comment on the matter, Josh Williams, founder and CEO of Gowalla has made the following statement; “The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumours and speculation. I have another email penned that was ready to send you today, assuming you would get this news before the story was officially released.”

“But now it is all over Twitter, so you have likely heard. A longer email will be sent soon.”

We know there is a growing trend for consumers to share more information online than ever before. Back in September, Facebook announced that over half a billion users were recorded to have logged in one day – breaking social web records.

Facebook already have their own check in tool enabling users to share their location with friends from their mobile, but it would seem that until now Foursquare has certainly dominated in their share of market.  Would this be the case if Gowalla did receive a Facebook takeover?

Micrositez: Digital marketing agency

The organisation that publishes classified documents from anonymous sources, have now released their new project ‘Spy Files’ to the public to highlight their belief that we are now living in a “totalitarian surveillance state.”

The Spy Files includes hundreds of documents highlighting that as many as 150 organisations have access too, and are monitoring data on our mobile smartphones.

Although he adds it is all above board. The founder branded the act, “Mass interception” and went on to add that this was “a secret new industry spanning over 25 countries.”

Have they told us anything we didn’t already know?

It’s safe to say this has been a controversial subject for the best part of last year. On the same token many now believe their relevance has certainly been tainted and the novelty worn off.

With over 50% of us using our blackberries and smartphones to surf the net today; logging into Facebook and Twitter has formed a daily habit for most.

With the consumer demand on businesses to provide a more personalised user experience. The question lingers that how much of today news is really that relevant anymore?

Is privacy an issue? Of course, but it’s not a new issue. There is an awareness of the matter, and we are continuing to hear about improved changes. From Google’s Algorithm changes, to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announcing yesterday that they would be committing to the release of more tools and resources to improve privacy for their 800 million active users.

There is a strong argument to suggest the need for businesses and organisations to use location-based data in order to improve customer service, product and give consumers an all-round better personalised experience.

Micrositez: a digital marketing agency

Some users greeted Open Graph with some derision, as the automatic sharing of news stories they are reading isn’t something they wanted. Many still share stories using the more familiar copy/paste method, giving users more control over the articles they choose to share.

The most popular story shared on Facebook this year came from the New York Times; a collection of interactive satellite images of the after-effects of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March. This story was shared over 600,000 times. The second most shared story was a CNN feature on “What teachers really want to tell parents”, which was shared 586,000 times. The top ten was rounded out by a variety of stories including animal tales, feminist themed editorial and two stories on zodiac signs. The top 40 is available as a note on www.facebook.com/media. It’s clear to see that humorous and political pieces are the most often shared types of story on Facebook.

The volume of articles shared and uptake on news apps is further proof that social sharing is a massive influence on the way we consume news today. More and more current events are shared on Twitter before the mainstream news catches on, meaning more people turn to their social networks first when looking for the latest updates. Just this week a video of a woman in the UK having a racist rant on a London tram spread like wildfire over twitter. By the time BBC News caught on to the story, it was to report that the woman had already been identified and arrested. The line between traditional news media and social media is blurring by the day, and it will be interesting to see how this trend evolves in 2012.

Micrositez: SEO and Social Media.

The IPO will raise enough money to keep Facebook evolving and developing for a few years, but analysts are concerned about what outsider influence could do to the company. Mark Zuckerberg is notorious for keeping a tight rein over the company’s direction and any major changes and developments. This is one of the reasons he controls an extra seat on the board of directors. Relinquishing some of that control to outside investors could be a big problem for a company innovative as Facebook.

Changes that niggle users – as the newsfeed did when it was first introduced – could be discouraged by stockholders to avoid temporary dips in the stock price. The ad-less Facebook mobile site and free smartphone apps will doubtless be a bone of contention to outside investors, keen to see advertising revenue rise without real thought for the user experience. For Facebook to avoid a future of banner ads, sponsored stories in the newsfeed, and other potential irksome changes, it needs to find a way to balance outside investment with the level of control and identity it currently maintains.

In other tech IPO news, the recent public offering from Groupon has quickly gone from success to mediocrity. Stock is currently trading at $15.24, around half high price that investors paid for stock at the offering earlier this month, and below the initial $20 price Groupon itself set. For the stock to fall so quickly in the space of a few weeks could show that initial excitement about the company has worn off. Groupon’s failure to profit from the momentum around black Friday and cyber Monday has also disappointed investors.

Micrositez is an award winning Digital Marketing Agency.

Cyber Monday falls on the Monday following thanksgiving, and is the busiest day for online retail of the year, as families prepare for Christmas. In the UK the busiest day for online retail is usually the first Monday in December. US retailers often offer massive discounts, similar to Black Friday deals and will be competing with each other to lure shoppers to their sites.

This year, more than ever, social media is being used to spread the word about deals, offer exclusive discounts and attract customers. According to shop.org, 29% of American consumers will check out the Facebook pages of retailers when deciding where to shop this year. More than ever, it pays stores to have a social media presence.

Social media also serves the customers well. Dedicated Facebook and twitter accounts have popped up seeking out deals for customers (searching “Cyber Monday” on either site yields a large number of new accounts). Individual retailers are also offering exclusive deals to fans. Great techniques include inviting fans to “events” at their online store (Hudson Jeans), updating fans with new offers in real time on twitter (Best Buy, Kmart), and deal alerts to customers’ mobile phones by SMS (Amazon).

On Small Business Saturday – a US only event which encourages shoppers to buy their festive goods at small, local merchants – American Express customers who synced with Foursquare got a great deal: a $25 dollar voucher towards purchases at the small businesses of their choice. Etsy, as a collective of small merchants selling handmade wares, was a perfect fit for Small Business Saturday, and used their blog to showcase deals available on the day.

At Micrositez, we can’t wait to see if UK retailers are as keen to use Social Media to get our attention next Monday.

Micrositez: SEO and Social Media.

1.Addict-o-matic

Addict-o-matic is a great search tool that pulls real time search results from a number of high profiled sites, including Google, WordPress, Bing, Twitter, YouTube and number of other news websites. The great thing about this site is that you can search a topic or trend over multiple sites at one time and Addict-o-matic will lay out your results across a single three column page, making it much easier to skim for the relevant content.  Whether you require a broad look at a specific topic, or a more refined result perhaps through a smaller number of sources, then addict-o-matic will do that for you.

2.Social Mention

Another real time social media search that also provides analytical data.

Like, Addict-o-matic you can select from a number of sources, although social media has a particular focus on social media sources and will feature a list of relative keywords, hash tags etc. amongst results page.

This site will also allow you to create free alerts on your brand, company, specific search terms, or breaking news story similar to Google Alerts, but for social media.  Once you get going, you’ll find the interface easy to personalize, enabling you to tailor your search to any particular social media source too.

3.Search direct

Search direct is Yahoo’s latest answer to real time image and video search, for the UK. The site went live today, and aims to deliver results before the user completes a search. The new feature will display top trending images from around the web, allowing full size image display; and update each search every 10 minutes to ensure the latest search trends are displayed.

Users can also search the Yahoo! image bank, which gathers pictures from Yahoo news and Flickr, through their Facebook account providing the user has synced their Facebook with the Yahoo stream.

The US search engine giant has also announced a video search results page will also be available, with the ability to filter videos of interest to the user.

Micrositez: Search Engine Marketing

The latest algorithm changes have been made in response to the increase of social media use in delivering the most recent and up to date news and events on the web. The search engine giant hopes to compete with Twitter and Facebook as the go-to page for updates on the latest news and events, and redirect some of that social media traffic back to search. In order to do this, Google recognised that it had to amend the algorithm to freshen up some stale searches. Google also need to maintain market dominance over Bing, who already include more Twitter feeds and Facebook updates in their search results.

Google Fellow Amit Singhal blogged: “Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.”

In Google’s blog, Amit wrote that changes will affect searches relating to the following:

• Recent events or hot topics – quality content and stories on the latest news and talked about events as they happen.
• Regularly recurring events – relevant updates on annual conferences and events, Olympiad and sporting tournaments.
• Frequent updates – the most up-to-date product queries and reviews (e.g. “best camera” or “ford fiesta review”).

In order to ensure they are not compromised by “freshness spam” (websites re-posting stories to ensure they are the latest word on a topic to boost rankings) the freshness will be determined by the time the page is first crawled. The usual rules of quality and topicality will also apply, so making sure your content is relevant and well-written is key to maintaining rankings.

Micrositez: SEO and Link Building

The most talked about of these new additions is the “trusted friends” feature. Users can assign trusted status to between three and five friends. If your account is compromised, Facebook can send codes to the three friends you have nominated. You then simply retrieve the codes from your friends to regain access to your account. Application security is also under the spotlight, and Facebook are now planning to allocate passcodes to maintain security for users.

There are some basic security steps that all users of social media can take to prevent their account being compromised:

• Never share login details with other people
• Choose complicated passwords, containing letters, numbers, and symbols
• Avoid using the same login details for multiple sites
• Regularly change passwords
• Report any suspicious activity on accounts to site administrators, and
• Ensure you log out of your profile/account after each use, especially on shared computers.

Exploting the fear of online insecurity, Jason Zada, a TV, digital and music director, created “Take this Lollipop”. Many users of Facebook will be familiar with this film experience, considering the speed with which it went viral last week.  Users log in using Facebook and are then presented with a security nightmare. (If you’re brave enough, have a look for yourself at www.takethislollipop.com.) It can be speculated that the video’s popularity has a lot to do with the way it taps into the very real fear users have of someone accessing their Facebook accounts.

With social media such an integral part of day to day life for hundreds of millions of people, online sharing has become the norm. The difficulty for many users is striking the balance between sharing and engaging online, with maintaining privacy and security.

Micrositez: Social Media and SEO.

But of course, we’ve heard this before. Google+ has the money and clout to take on Facebook but hasn’t taken the mantle (at least for now). Diaspora’s launch in November last year was hyped in tech media, but their growth has been slow and with the site still in alpha release (no features like video, links, etc.) it isn’t likely to be a real challenger for now.  Unthink, however, may just be the one to watch.

Visitors eager to sign up to Unthink have swamped their servers, and users were greeted with this screen almost immediately. (Disclosure: I am one of the masses eager to try it out, and because of high demand have been waiting for an invite code to get started for three days.)

Unthink hopes to appeal to the large contingent of Facebook users who are concerned about privacy and the level of information sharing with advertisers. Unthink CEO Natasha Dedis came up with the Unthink concept when her teenage son wanted to sign up to Facebook. In order to survive the social minefield of school he had to be online, but Natasha was unhappy at the privacy conditions that come with a Facebook account. Her plan was to create a social network that she could feel happy about her son joining.

To attract investment and keep advertisers interested, Natasha developed a novel model for users to control their account. Users can either pay a subscription fee to use the site (just $2 per year) or choose a brand to “sponsor”. By choosing a brand, users are allowing targeted advertising from a company they are already aware of or interested in. This kind of active brand engagement could be the key to the fortunes of Unthink, as at first glance it looks like a win-win for users and advertisers. While no one is expecting them to unseat Facebook from their social media throne anytime soon, they could make a serious impact.

Micrositez: Social Media and PPC.