I just discovered that Facebook now allows you to create and organise your friends into lists! This is fantastic as I have over 1,000 friends, and often not all of them are close enough that I want to monitor daily! This will really allow users to have better control over what they see, and from whom. I was getting a bit annoyed with not being able to create lists such as “Family” or “Business Contacts”.
This will really turn Facebook into a far more viable tool for managing social network contacts, IMHO.
Ok - so the $15bn valuation is holding up, according to Kara Swisher. Granted, when it comes to Chinese billionaires, and large software companies that put $240m in for less than 2%, it’s arguable that the valuations are not realistic. Heck, I think I was even the first person to predict that they would get a $10bn valuation.
For those of you who weren’t following the Facebook beacon fiasco - it’s become quite a nightmare for Facebook and they have already capitulated. Facebook needs to hire some seriously top notch Internet Marketers - and not make old school mistakes like this - I wasn’t impressed with the invasion of privacy either.
The $15bn valuation only holds true if they can crack Google Adsense (IMHO) - with moves like this, it doesn’t look good at all!
Marc Andreessen’s blog post today has been great at helping to explain what Google’s drive around Open Social. After reading the post, I think Facebook may have found some competition for the first time.
Two important points to note: Yahoo & MySpace are not participating in the war on Facebook - and I do mean it’s a war, as just about everyone else is pushing for open standards (which I totally support!!).
Now the question is: Google & friends vs Facebook - who wins? It’s like the big question of Alien vs Predator in a way . I’m going to stick my neck out here, and say that I think Facebook has met it’s match and Open Social will eventually force them to comply with more open standards.
Who knows, maybe the big loser here is actually Microsoft with their $15bn valuation on Facebook!
Allow me to quote my favourite comedian, Russell Peters : “Somebody is going to get a hurt real bad!”
For the first time in this millenium, Google has been displaced as the #1 accessed website in South Africa - that honour now goes to Facebook, according to Alexa’s stats.
I’ve been reading up elsewhere, and it seems that Facebook is the #4 accessed site in the world - I’m anxiously looking forward to hearing about their advertising platform plans - if they can crack the demographic targeting it will become interesting.
On another note, it seems that Google may have outsmarted Microsoft, according to this article and backed up by reports on TechCrunch today that Google is planning to launch their own social network. If so, it was a smart moving on Google’s part by being a shill bidder at an auction with Microsoft holding the buyer’s remorse cap!
Steve Ballmer has said that 25% of Microsoft’s revenue will eventually come from advertising - that would be an impressive turnaround to see - given that the current number is 5% - the Facebook deal is obviously just the first step on that path.
I really like what Google is apparently planning on doing with their open API’s - and given Google’s background in pageview monetization, Facebook have an uphill battle on their hands to actually make money and justify their valuations.
Are we in a bubble? No. Are valuations high? Yes - but only because the paradigm of small domestic markets is dead - the Internet is a global marketplace of goods & services with over 1bn participants actively contributing to the growth in some way. The startups of today are justifying valuations on the back of solid business plans and proven revenue models and they are no longer limited to their own geographies.
Web 2.0 is turning out the way Web 1.0 was supposed to go, but wasn’t ready for it…
. I’m going to stick my neck out here, and say that I think Facebook has met it’s match and Open Social will eventually force them to comply with more open standards.
