2010 is the year of location–at least in blogs focused on social networking, which is a Montana-sized “at least”–and Facebook’s entry into the increasingly crowded field has long been expected. Today, the company officially announced its plans, by the name of Facebook Places.
Facebook’s Places borrows heavily from location-based social networks like Foursquare and Gowalla, which allow users to check in at places and broadcast their location to friends. But those companies, as well as others like Yelp, said they saw Facebook’s Places as a complement to their own services and as an opportunity to gain additional distribution.
Facebook is going to go beyond rolling out standalone applications for iPhones, Google Android devices or feature phones and start considering itself a platform for developers to distribute mobile apps with.
“Where we’re going from here is a platform strategy. We’re going away from a one-off app strategy,” said Erick Tseng in his first public appearance since joining Facebook as head of mobile products. Speaking at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference today, he said the company will start building out this effort over the next several months [Source].
Software upstarts such as Playdom, Posterous, and Foursquare capitalize on Web users’ desire to make social networks more useful and fun.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s have surveyed the tech sector to identify a fresh crop of the most promising technology startups and the young people, age 30 and under, who are steering them. Seven of the 13 startups on this year’s list are building Web and mobile-device software that extend the capabilities of social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.
It’s not surprising that many startups want to ride the coattails of popular social networks. The rapid ascent of traffic to social networking sites can draw lots of attention for startups that offer new tools or diversions to their members. “Facebook and Twitter have become platforms in the same way Microsoft’s Windows became a platform 20 years ago. The complete special report can be found here.
According to the latest Hitwise analysis, Google’s lost its crown as the most-visited Web site in the U.S. last week. The new king of Web site traffic is, of course, Facebook.
During the Winter holidays there were a few momentary spikes in traffic which placed Facebook on the top, but if you check out the graph of the long term trend shown above, you can see Facebook’s meteoric rise is now on target to meet or beat Google. And if that curve continues on its trajectory, which it may well do for a while (its market share is 185% up over the same week in 2009, for example,) Facebook will become number one by a huge margin, versus the tiddly little 0.04% separation it currently has above Google’s 7.03% share of average weekly market share.
Nonetheless, Facebook is now in a position to leverage those user visits to seize control of the online ad-placement business from Google–advertisers will begin to do the math and work out which site will get their ads in front of more eyeballs. And while Web 2.0 has been with us for a while, the fact that more people are visiting Facebook than Google indicates that this interactive revolution has really changed online habits [Source].
Even in these tough times, surprising and extraordinary efforts are under way in businesses across the globe. From politics to technology, energy, and transportation; from marketing to retail, health care, and design, each company on the Fast Company list illustrates the power and potential of innovative ideas and creative execution.
The top spot is taken by Facebook which has around 200 million active users to date. Most notable in the top five and new on the ranking is Huawei, the Chinese Telecom equipment manufacturer. You can find the complete list here.
For years Google has stayed on the fringes of the social-networking industry, leaving the field largely to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Now, however, it is making a determined foray into online friendships. On February 9th the search giant unveiled Buzz, a networking service that will be closely integrated with the firm’s e-mail offering, Gmail. Google no doubt hopes Buzz will help it catch up with the leaders of the networking world—but the chances are slim. Mashable made a comparison here. [Source 1] [Source 2].
That’s how big Google’s vision is for its Wave social-networking/search service, which will have apps created by independent developers who sell them at a Google app store.
Google has big plans for Google Wave, its new online communication service—and they won’t all come from Google.
Combining instant messaging, e-mail, and real-time collaboration, Wave is an early form of so-called real-time communication designed to make it easier for people to work together or interact socially over the Internet. Google started letting developers tinker with Wave at midyear and then introduced the tool on a trial basis to about 100,000 invited users starting on Sept. 30. Invitations were such a hot commodity that they were being sold on eBay (EBAY). For Google the hope is that Wave, once it’s more widely available, will replace competing communications services such as e-mail, instant messaging, and possibly even social networks such as Facebook [Source].
The world’s largest social networking site just got bigger with the announcement it has 300 million active monthly users from around the globe [Source] and [Source].
On August 10, Facebook said it had acquired FriendFeed, the Mountain View (California) social aggregation service founded by Google alumni Bret Taylor and Jim Norris in 2008.
The deal, which The Wall Street Journal reported to be valued at nearly US$50 million in cash and stock, gives Facebook top talent and advanced technology in an area many see as the next great frontier on the Web: real-time search.
This month also a book released on the popular social networking site titled “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal“.
Marketing has changed. We’re in the age of one-to-one marketing, where the customer actually has a role in shaping the messaging for your brand. Social Media–blogs, Twitter, Facebook, wikis, user-generated tools–have given her all she needs to effect whether your products and services do well in the marketplace.
Long gone are the 4Ps of marketing, these are the days of the 4Cs, a customer centric approach that includes the customer’s wants and needs; the cost to satisfy the customer; the convenience; and communication.
A key driving force in this new way of marketing is social media. An article on marketing with social media can be found here.
2010 is the year of location–at least in blogs focused on social networking, which is a Montana-sized “at least”–and Facebook’s entry into the increasingly crowded field has long been expected. Today, the company officially announced its plans, by the name of Facebook Places. 
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