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.
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?
Last Monday evening I gave a presentation at Social Media Club Sydney, along with another presentation by Dae Levine, Head of Communications with Greenpeace. The topic of the event was “Lessons Learned from Not for Profits: Local Effort, Global Effect”.
I’m not going to give you a summary of the whole event here, as there are already decent summaries here and here if you are interested. As has been noted by various people, the two different campaigns demonstrate how quite different approaches can yield successful results, depending on the objective of the campaign.
One of the most obvious and perhaps biggest differences in the two approaches is the ‘more party than protest’ approach taken by Earth Hour, compared to the more confrontational protest approach taken by Greenpeace.
Yesterday I blogged about another Greenpeace campaign which takes a similar approach in confronting Facebook. The campaign takes aim at the company’s inadequate measures in relation to addressing its growing carbon footprint. After the success of Greenpeace’s Nestle ‘Killer’ campaign, it’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.
For those of you who might be interested, I thought I might break down my presentation into a list of points identifying the approach taken by Earth Hour, especially in relation to social media. In short, this is how and why I think it has worked so far.
Good timing: climate change action is needed and wanted by many people all over the world.
It’s a simple Idea and message. It’s positive, fun and hopeful. It’s more party than protest, which encourages a lot of people to get involved.
Turning off lights is a powerful visual to help deliver the message worldwide.
It involves people power, with a grassroots driven campaign.
Earth Hour is an open source brand. It’s available for anyone to use.
The use of social media and user generated content fits well with the grassroots driven and open source nature of the campaign.
For Earth Hour there are thousands of events organised worldwide, both official and unofficial.
Earth Hour social media started organically and has grown as social media has grown since 2007. In 2007 Twitter was not mainstream, Facebook was smaller, YouTube was only a couple of years old.
Earth Hour has access to, and the support of the global WWF Network to help with campaign organisation. For instance, in social media there are numerous official and unofficial social network profiles worldwide, in multiple languages and on multiple networks.
The network is asked to respect the open source nature of the Earth Hour brand, to let go of the brand so anyone can use it.
There are numerous unofficial Earth Hour supporter profiles and an overwhelming amount of supporter generated creative content, which organisers encourage worldwide.
Local agency generated creative content is encouraged worldwide.
Numerous official and unofficial partnerships are developed with companies and organisations worldwide, to help spread the word and lend support.
Throughout the year, bloggers are engaged and encouraged to write about Earth Hour – from popular, influential blogs to environmental bloggers, to regional bloggers (in different countries and languages) to any and every bloggger. Earth Hour assets such as videos, images and logos are made available for use by bloggers when possible.
The rewards of an open and available brand have so far, far outweighed the risks of letting it go.
The approach by organisers to social media conversations is mostly “hands off”, letting conversations flow and letting supporters argue the case when there is criticism.
Interventions are based on highly ‘offensive’ content only.
Traditional and social media have worked together to make the campaign a success – from print to radio to tv to websites to mobile to social.
Supporter–made creative content is showcased through official Earth Hour networks.
On–the–night image and video uploads, live blogging and status updates are encouraged, to help support the event itself, in real-time.
Here’s the official Earth Hour 2011 video if you haven’t seen it yet :)
Well, the full theatrical trailer is out for the much anticipated film ‘The Social Network’. The film is based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book: The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal (Amazon Associates link). As you can see from the embedded trailer, it stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake as Napster cofounder Sean Parker.
It remains to be seen whether the film will be any good, or whether it will be a hit with critics and the public. No surprises for guessing whether Mark Zuckerberg will like it or not! I’ll certainly reserve any judgment until I actually see it. On paper the film seems to have quite a bit going for it so far. It’s directed by (previously Oscar nominated) David Fincher, who has directed such films as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Panic Room, Fight Club and Se7en. According to IMDB, also in pre-production is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That said, direction is one thing, the writing has to be really good too.
Surprisingly, the film has been chosen by The New York Film Festival to be its opening night film. The New York Film Festival is known for not choosing mainstream American films, so that’s certainly a vote of confidence. The selection committee chair and program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center apparently said that ‘The Social Network’ is the rare film that “powerfully captures the spirit of its time”.
The trailer certainly does its job of making me want to see it (as if I was ever not going to). How about you, are you going to see it? It’ll be interesting to see just how successful this film will be at the box office. No doubt it will do pretty well as a digital download, torrent or otherwise.
UPDATE: I’ve just noticed that the hashtag #SocialNetwork has appeared as a Promoted Trending Topic on Twitter. Well that should grab the attention of quite a few social media users! I wonder if Sony Pictures will want to run Facebook ads too? I’m not sure Facebook would allow that. Would you if you were Mark Zuckerberg?
UPDATE 2: It appears order has been restored in the wider world. The international version of ‘The Social Network’ trailer has been released, and it includes Radiohead’s original lyric “so fucking special”, instead of the more sanitized “so very special” in the U.S. version; otherwise, the trailer is the same. If I may say, the “so very special” version never seemed right, not even in Radiohead’s sanitized version. And another thing, Trent Reznor scored the film and says “it’s really fucking good, And dark!”. If he says it’s dark, well, it must be dark.
Hat tip to TechCrunch for the international version update.
