Tag Archive for 'advertising'

Is Facebook aiming to trump Google by making money from ads PLUS virtual currency?

Published on September 22, 2010 in Facebook, Google, business and social media. View Comments

Further to my recent posts, 21 points tracking the rise and rise of the Facebook business empire and Facebook Credits coming to a bricks and mortar store near you, it seems that Facebook is aiming to eventually make around 30% of its revenue from Facebook Credits.

Facebook Credits are Facebook’s on–site currency. Credits can be used to purchase virtual goods in third-party Facebook games and apps. Facebook takes a 30% cut of Credits spent, leaving the app developers the rest.
Facebook Credits

If industry estimates are correct, Facebook is on track to make over $1 billion in revenue this year alone, so if Facebook Credits do eventually make up 30% of their growing revenue, that’s going to add up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

It has often been pointed out that despite its increasingly diverse operations, Google is still finding it difficult to add a significant source of revenue outside of its (huge) advertising business. This begs the question: if Facebook manages to succeed in making a lot of money from its advertising business AND from it’s virtual currency, will it end up having a more solid business model than even Google?

Wow, that would be something, and would certainly bode well for an eventual IPO. Of course…on the other hand, people could also stop using Facebook in such large numbers and the whole business could go into terminal decline.  It’s fun to speculate. What do you think will happen?

Is Twitter about to offer us a real-time analytics tool?

Published on July 8, 2010 in Twitter, business, social media and technology. View Comments

It seems highly probable, if this recent report by ReadWriteWeb is correct. It’s only speculation at this stage as to what will be rolled out.

As RWW says, it could just be a measurement system for marketing promotions they will be running through their own @earlybird Twitter account. It could be an analytics tool for Twitter Search, now the world’s fastest growing search engine, but by my estimation currently not the best real-time search engine.

Whatever it is, if it’s an offering that can be used by individuals, organisations and companies outside of Twitter’s own walls, it’ll be most welcome (except perhaps by those who’ve been developing their own). What kind of tool would you like to see being offered by Twitter? What would be useful for you?

The World Cup 2010, a combined TV and social media blockbuster.

Published on June 28, 2010 in Facebook, Twitter and social media. View Comments

England vs Germany

There’s no doubt that traffic on Twitter and Facebook has been very heavy during the FIFA World Cup. Twitter even set a new record of 3,283 Tweets per second during the recent Japan vs Denmark game. That beat the previous record at the close of the LA Lakers’ win over the Boston Celtics in June. That’s some feat, considering that football (or soccer) isn’t the most popular sport in the U.S., and Twitter has a large U.S. user base.

I wonder if that record was surpassed again last night (Australian time) when England quite obviously scored a goal against traditional rivals Germany, but the referee didn’t pick it up? Everybody around the world watching on TV and those tweeting with each other certainly noticed. I know I tweeted about it. I’m sure there was also quite a bit of social media debate going on as to whether football should finally install video refereeing within the goal area!

Peter Blackshaw, an executive from TV and web monitoring firm Nielsen, has recently noted that social media activity during the World Cup is outpacing that seen during the Olympic Games, Super Bowl and Academy Awards, which is causing advertisers to want to get more involved. Indeed, according to Coca-Cola’s Carol Krus, Coca-Cola’s Promoted Trend on Twitter, which ran during World Cup matches and was only the second such trend, achieved 86 million impressions and an engagement rate of 6%, for whatever that’s worth.

The World Cup’s massive global TV audience in certainly a big factor in the success of the World Cup in social media. Not many people would be tweeting about it if they weren’t watching it on TV or via web video streams at the same time. Football is a spectator sport, perhaps the biggest in the world, and that’s being reflected in social media.

For the first time during a World Cup, fans have been able to swap views on favourite teams and games in real-time and in a big way, thanks to social media. During the last world Cup final in 2006 in France, the worldwide TV audience for the final game was estimated to be 715 million viewers, but Twitter was only just beginning and Facebook only had around 12 million users.

With this sort of probable TV number on the table, it’s no wonder Twitter decided to get involved with its own official World Cup pages and hashtags. Smart move, if only they could keep the service running during the peak traffic periods. Depending on which teams are in the final game of the World Cup, it’s shaping up to be a combined TV and social media blockbuster.

Twitter World Cup 2010

Twitter’s official World Cup 2010 pages