Analysis: A sobering look at Facebook
Although there has been lots of hype about investors and staff becoming millionaires and even billionaires from the public offering the focus will now move to average investors to see if they start buying the stock. This excellent piece from Reuters has a look at some of the numbers behind the IPO and ask if it is all actually worth it.

Sarah Lacy over at Pando Daily has been following the Facebook story since the early days when she phoned the offices and Mark Zuckerberg himself picked up the phone. This post gives a great insight in to how Zuckerberg has stayed CEO and runs the company on his terms.The

The Wall Street Journal says that the Advertisers’ free ride on Facebook may be over. The article argues that it is hard to get any coverage on Facebook simple by having people like your content and the platform is moving towards a pay to play offering where the only way for brands and businesses to get seen is by paying for ads.

Plenty of people have become millionaires and there will even be a group of billionaires when the IPO goes ahead but this article broke the story of a young man who painted the offices back in 2006 and accepted stock instead of cash and is now worth over $200 million.

There are people arguing both sides of the argument on Facebook being worth $100 billion but this post says Facebook Clearly Belongs in the 10X Revenue Club and has some good technical analysis and explanations on why that is the case.

If Facebook does have one issue that has always hung over it since it’s launch then it is privacy and this post explains why things could be about to heat up even more for the social platform…. Post-IPO, Facebook will have to make privacy investigations public

Facebook’s $5 Billion IPO: The Next Google? Or The Next Groupon? There have been a whole host of tech IPOs in the last year and not all of them have done as well as expected. This in depth look at the market from Wired weighs up the options for Facebook and where the stock price could be headed.

Once again MD Seigler is straight to the point and has some simple numbers that point out the who the battle between Google and Facebook could be heating up in terms of revenue.  Facebook might only have a tenth of Google’s revenues now but as he says they are coming!

Evaluating a big network, which isn’t the same as a big product. Some really good thoughts here about the size of the network and what could possibly happen if advertising just fell away and what the network would then be worth.

Where is Facebook’s Audacious S1? The Author here argues that Facebook had the chance to do something really different and shake Wall Street up but in the end their IPO was as predictable as all the other big companies coming to market.

According to AllThingsD, the CEO of Path Dave Morin said that over 50 million items of content have been created by Path users and that 70% of people who use Path in a week would return the next week. Regards geographical location, the U.S. is predictably the most popular country for Path users, eclipsing every other country, while other fast growing countries include the U.K., Germany, Korea, France and Japan.

The most common types of content shared on Path are photos, ‘thoughts’ which are effectively another word for status updates, and sleep records, where users can manually note when they power down for the night and when they wake up.

Morin also stated that over half a billion pieces of ‘feedback’ has been created since Path creation. While ‘feedback’ refers to any time a user looks at content on the app, but for frame of reference, there are 15 million pieces of feedback created on Path per day now, against the 10 million total created in the first year.

Facebook users can reach an average of more than 150,000 Facebook users through their Facebook friends; the median user can reach about 31,000 others. At two degrees of separation (friends-of-friends), Facebook users in our sample can on average reach 156,569 other Facebook users. However, the relatively small number of users with very large friends lists, who also tended to have lists that are less interconnected, overstates the reach of the typical Facebook user. In our sample, the maximum reach was 7,821,772 other Facebook users. The median user (the middle user from our sample) can reach 31,170 people through their friends-of-friends.

Although the number won’t be in the millions for most people it is a start reminder of the scale of Facebook and the consequences of ticking certain boxes on the site that might seem fairly minor at the time. The survey used Facebook logs of hundreds of users and had some other interesting findings including…

40% of Facebook users in our sample made a friend request, but 63% received at least one request

Users in our sample pressed the like button next to friends’ content an average of 14 times, but had their content “liked” an average of 20 times

Users sent 9 personal messages, but received 12

12% of users tagged a friend in a photo, but 35% were themselves tagged in a photo

PIP Facebook Users 2.3.12

For the 50 million people who use Dropbox, you can never have too much free space for uploading your images, files and videos. However for free accounts, they cap the storage space to 2GB, but for those testing out a new photo import feature to automatically upload photos, they can get an extra 4.5GB to play around with.

To avail of the offer, users are required to download a beta version of their software as well as testing out a feature which uploades photos and videos to the service.

In a forum post on their site created yesterday, Dropbox stated that for every 500MB of photos and videos users automatically uploaded, they receive another 500MB of space. Counting the initial 500MB for the first photo import, users can get up to 5GB of space through this feature.

The service allows users to import photos from cameras, phones and SD cards onto the site as well as uploading or downloading files in a batch. The company strongly recommends users to create a backup of their Dropbox files first before they try out the beta as the feature is being tested out for any bugs that might crop up.

There are a number of other factors highlighted on the post for users willing to test the feature out.  Such details include the feature isn’t available for Mac 10.4 and Linux, importing from your iPhone requires you to unlock your phone and enter your password before importing, otherwise it will claim to find no photos and (worryingly) Galaxy Nexus smartphones take a lot of time to connect on OS X as it pretends that every image on the device is a photograph, so an estimate bar – which measures in minutes – is required.

This isn’t the first time Dropbox has offered more space to users under certain conditions. For example, they allow users who take a tour of the site or tell their friends an extra 250MB for each action while being a student grants you 500MB. Full details about the beta testing can be found on the Dropbox forum.

Also out of the 200,000 companies that Yammer has using its site, roughly 85% of those make up the Fortune 500 list . It’s very impressive how the company has grown even tripling its number of employees over the year from 80 to 250. With the company reportedly in the process of raising $40 million this year, 2012 is shaping up to be a very bright year for the site.

So, Dublin is definitely a good place to start your digital business.  And there is plenty of help for budding entrepreneurs (much of it Enterprise Ireland assisted) through various accellerator and incubation programmes.  There is the Hothouse, M50, CreateIreland and Endeavour to name but a few.

One such program that’s getting a lot of airplay of the NDRC (National Digital Research Centre) Launchpad accelerator programme, which is “focused on supporting the next generation of digital entrepreneurs to accelerate good ideas to sound start-ups”.

The programme is designed for digital start-ups and 15 will be selected for the investment stage (which starts in mid-February).

70 start-ups, both national and international, recently applied for one of the small number of places.

NDRC provides up to €20,000 per project in micro-seed investment to support the founders during the programme.

In 2011, NDRC Launchpad was identified in the top six best accelerators in Europe.  NDRC has supported 30 start-ups through its Launchpad programme since 2009.

With this number of applications for the 15 places, there is clear evidence that Dublin is the place to be and accelerator programmes are the thing to be in!

Roll on new digital ventures.

Trading security for accessibility may have meant less hoops for developers to jump through, which in turn means more apps are made available and more choice for users, yet the susceptibility of infection still looms large when the app in question is from a small developer

Now, Google Android have announced a new service developed to combat this problem. Codenamed Bouncer, the service provides an automated scanning of the Android Market for potentially malicious software which doesn’t require developers to go through an application process.

Announcing it on their Mobile Blog, once an application is uploaded, the service immediately analyses it for known malware, spyware and trojans. If the system finds anything that indicates that an app is not all that it seems to be, it analyses the data against previously analysed apps to determine whether it’s malware or not.

Android’s Vice President of Engineering Hiroshi Lockheimer said in his post that the percentage of device applications increased by 250% year-on-year and that the total number of apps downloaded from their market place went over 11 billion.  The biggest announcement was the decrease in the number of malicious apps downloaded from the market, dropping by 40% during 2011.  Speaking about the reasons behind this drop, Lockheimer said:

“This drop occurred at the same time that companies who market and sell anti-malware and security software have been reporting that malicious applications are on the rise. While it’s not possible to prevent bad people from building malware, the most important measurement is whether those bad applications are being installed from Android Market – and we know the rate is declining significantly.”

Other core malware prevention features include sandboxing, which places virtual walls between applications and other software on your Android device, preventing the spread of infection; Permissions which function similar to apps that you install on your Facebook profile – allowing you to determine what an app can and cannot do – and a Malware removal option.

It difficult to determine how much of a drop in malware downloads Bouncer will bring with it, especially since -judging by the above quote where it’s malware and security companies that are spotting bad apps – Google’s approach towards tackling malware has been relaxed to say the least. Bouncer is a step in the right direction but it only highlights just how much Google really needed to up its game when addressing this problem.

One large malware problem could be enough to undermine the work and reputation Android has developed, nor is there any real factor that could discourage developers from creating malware apps with offenders being booted out and losing their $25 developer registration fee. Yet with 11 billion apps being downloaded, Google will want to make sure that there is a follow up to Bouncer to ensure that a large malware problem doesn’t become a reality in the future.

Well, the best indicator of Facebook’s brand page improvements are usually derived from profile pages. When Facebook overhauled profile pages in 2010, brand pages were soon to follow, in the very same style. So back to the present, where Facebook have rolled out Timeline to its users, and it is fully expected that they will replicate the Timeline’s visual aesthetic to the full – and with good reason.

Timeline is visually rich and could be exploited by brands, with lots of room for big visuals and app integration. So we thought we would try and see how a few of Facebook’s biggest brands could take advantage of the possible new look for brand pages.

*NOTE: These are only rough mock-ups of how the new brand pages might look.

McDonalds

First we have the global McDonalds page – while still being very strong, lacks a major focal point. Now, for the possible revamp. The first notable change is the cover photo. This would be the biggest visual area brands could utilise. The entire header of the page is ready to be filled with a banner ad displaying the latest offer, product or just showing the brand’s visual identity.

This is a massive change from what Facebook are currently allowing – five microscopic sized icons at the top of the page, that can’t really give any visual impact. Also, it would be a much easier way of integrating and sticking videos/ads onto Timeline permanently.

Nike

Next we have one of the biggest brands on Facebook, Nike. Known for their slick advertising campaigns, their Timeline could provide a plethora of visual ideas for the brand. One thing Facebook could also integrate is its frictionless sharing applications. So, for example, Nike could pin their latest Likes and Pins on Pinterest, or share what movies they Like.

Mercedes Benz

Finally, we have Mercedes Benz. Again, their current page isn’t bad at all, providing lots of information on dealers, products etc, as well as the usual photos and videos. With a Timeline page, their Facebook presence could be dramatically transformed. In fact, the Timeline cover photo is perfectly suited to things such as cars. Car companies could display their latest model in a massive banner ad at the top of their page. Apps could be integrated with the page, bringing much higher engagement with current fans.So there you have it, just a wild guess as to what Facebook’s rumoured new brand pages might look like. Do you think they will in fact use the Timeline style? Also, will they integrate apps on the page like our own profiles? Only time will tell, but it seems certain that brand pages will receive a long overdue revamp very soon.

The Paris court upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographics against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free mapping services to some businesses. Bottin Cartographics provides the same services for a fee and claimed that Google’s strategy was to undercut competitors by temporarily swallowing the full cost until it gained control of the market.

The court ordered Google to pay €500,000 in damages and interest to the plaintiff as well as a €15,000 fine. A spokesperson for Google France said that the company would appeal the decision saying that the service is both beneficial for both internet users and websites.

While this is the first time Google has been convicted for its Google Maps application, the company has gotten into trouble before in France. During March 2011, the country’s data privacy regulator imposed a fine of €100,000 on the company for collecting private information while compiling its Street View service.

The findings, compiled by content sharing company Shareaholic, looked at aggregated data from more than 200,000 different publishers, reaching a combined total of more than 260 million unique visitors every month.

Overall, Pinterest only commands 3.6% of all referral traffic since January, with its nearest rival being Youtube (1.05%). The greatest site for referral traffic is Facebook which commanded 26.4% of all referral traffic last month, more than four times greater than its nearest competitor StumbleUpon (5.07%).

Following those two sites is Google (incorporating services such as Google news, Google Images, Gmail etc.) with 3.62% and Twitter with 3.61%. Facebook is also notable as it was the second fastest growing referral site after Pinterest.

What’s more impressive about this is that the site isn’t officially opened as it’s invite only: you either have to put yourself on a waiting list or have one of your friends who’s already on the service to invite you. The idea behind Pinterest is for users to find and share items and images they find online. This is all organised into categories and different pinboards that’s meant to appeal or inspire users. 

Effectively an extension to what the site already does, the app scours your friends on the site and see what jobs are on offer. If one of your friends, or someone your friend knows, is linked with a company that has a vacancy, such results will appear at the bottom of your feed showing you what connections you have at a company.

Once you’re logged in, you can read all the usual information associated with each vacancy such as anoynmous reviews and ratings, salary reports and interview questions and reviews. It allows you to get a feel for the company you’re interested in and develop a much better idea about whether its the best fit for you or not.

Glassdoor say that 60% of all jobs are obtained through an inside connection and it’s through this principal that Glassdoor have created their app. It’s incredibly similar to LinkedIn in this regard, but since Facebook is more about social connections, there’s a much higher chance of you having a connection in an industry you’re interested in.

While it’s at best an extension of their site, it’s a good example of a site using Facebook apps to enhance their product instead of tacking it on to gain more traffic. Not everyone is on LinkedIn and it’s perhaps easier to network with someone if you have a social connection as opposed to a professional one.

The site has information on more than 150,000 companies from across the world and currently has more than six million job listings on its site. There are over three million reviews and salaries listed on the site to help your search.

I want to stay focused on Facebook’s mobile strategy with the company themselves admitting in their filing that it was the area with the biggest potential, but also a huge threat to their business going forward.More and more people (450 million) are using Facebook on their mobiles but with no revenue streams and with Facebook unable to own the biggest platforms (they belong to Andoid and iOS) the future is slightly uncertain. As they say themselves:

“We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products. Accordingly, if users continue to increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers…our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected”.

In truth, Facebook have been in this tight corner for the last couple of years and they have been making some great strides (including their own rumored phone and mobile operating system), but as the story of the IPO shows there are still a lot of unanswered questions that investors will need to know about the future…

Facebook Only Owns The Desktop

Since it started, Facebook has been a huge success first and foremost on desktops. They have over 400 million mobile users and that side of the business has been booming for the last twelve months. But in terms of revenue, nearly 100% comes from people clicking on ads or playing games while using the platform on desktops.

Consumer browsing habits are fast moving from desktops to mobiles though and Facebook finds itself in the tricky position of trying to navigate this change and find a solution that works across all the mobile platforms. They are clearly in the phase of acquiring as many mobile users as possible and are doing this with as much success as they did the desktop. However, making money from those users is going to be tricky because location based services, targeted mobile advertising and other mobile revenue streams have just not really taken off.

Facebook Eating Its Own Revenues

While it might seem like a great thing that Facebook users are moving in increasingly large numbers from the desktop to mobile devices (including tablets), that will start hurting their own revenue as time goes on. To put it simply, there are ads on the desktop that a lot of people click on while no such ads exist yet on mobiles.

There is no doubt that Facebook will start to monetize mobile later this year and open up new revenue streams, but for now Facebook is actually cannibalizing their own revenues by improving their mobile offerings. It will be interesting to see if and when Facebook turn on their mobile ad platforms and what they look like.

Facebook Deal with Apple Is Inevitable

The IPO filing mentions the biggest threat as being the fact that Facebook is reliant on two of the biggest platforms in iOS and Android. As they say themselves:

“We are dependent on the interoperability of Facebook with popular mobile operating systems that we do not control, such as Android and iOS, and any changes in such systems that degrade our products’ functionality or give preferential treatment to competitive products could adversely affect Facebook usage on mobile devices.”

As there is very little chance of Google and Facebook ever working together in a meaningful way then the only option is really Apple. They are, of course, already in bed with Twitter baked in to their iOS5 operating system, but there is no reason why Facebook shouldn’t be more deeply integrated into iOS.

It would make both Apple and Facebook more powerful and they have been very close to a deal of this nature in the past only for it to break down at the last minute. It won’t be easy for either side but the companies will eventually strike a deal and declare Android as the common enemy.

The Five Year Plan

Despite all the problems and perceived threats, Facebook have been making great strides in the last year in terms of getting their mobile strategy together. Their apps have improved drastically, they have beautiful tablet versions of their sites and they have accumulated a huge amount of mobile users.

The desktop is still kind, but Facebook will need a strong five year plan that sees at least 30 or 40% of their revenues coming from mobile. It’s a very serious challenge and if I was investing, it would be my biggest fear but based on Facebook’s track record and their huge new pot of money, it is a challenge that I’m pretty sure they can pass with flying colors.

Speaking at the D:Dive Into Media Conference this week, the CEO of Youtube Salar Kamangar said that while such thoughts are premature as Youtube doesn’t currently have a product to announce, it’s certainly something they are thinking about.

Signs of Youtube wanting to become more than just a quick stop for videos have been around for a while, most notably their investment in over 100 different channels containing original programming.  Kamangar said that Youtube is making that investment as a way to catalyse something that’s going to happen and speed up the process by doing so.

“What we’ve learned from our experiences with Youtube is that you can’t predict what’s going to be big. We’re trying to place our bets far and wide,” said Kamangar.

Subscribers

This was a subtle change that Facebook introduced a couple of months ago. You don’t have this switched on by default, but by turning it on you can bypass the problems you have with too many people sending you friend requests. You now only have to have your real friends and you can allow other people to simply subscribe to your updates. Your subscribers don’t need to see everything you update either as the options allow you to customize every single thing they see. To activate subscribers, simply go in to the subscriber tab on Timeline and then click on “settings”.

Tagging Photos To Map

You can upload photos from the various mobile versions of Facebook, but you can also retrospectively add photos to your map on Timeline. It’s a great way of tracking where you have been  around the world and when. Improving your map will become addictive with the more photos and locations you add over time the better it gets.

Life Events

Life events are new on Timeline and they allow you to paint a picture of the major things that have been happening in your life like getting a job, relationships, moving house or starting a hobby. Remember that these will all be dated and added to your Timeline at the relevant time so it’s a great way of keeping track of all the big moments in your life and looking back at a future date. You can also add events retrospectively.

Pimp Your Photos

The Timeline photo is obviously something that you can play around with a lot to create a unique look for your page, but you might not be a graphic designer or have the eye for creating something truly stunning. Luckily Schweppes have launched an app that does all the hard work for you and allows you to create stunning Timeline cover photos. The video explains how it works and you can check out the app itself here.

Hide Stuff From Your Timeline

As soon as you start using Timeline you are going to realize that there is stuff that you never want to appear so publicly for the world to see. The nature of the layout means that people can scan back over everything you have done for a number of years and find the geeky or drunk photos you posted way back in the day. Luckily you can click on the little pencil beside any individual item you spot and choose to hide it forever from your public Timeline.

Hide The Sidebar

Facebook is currently doing everything it possibly can to keep your attention within the site. The ticker (the little mini real time news feed in the top right hand corner) and chat appear on every single page and they keep you on the site. They can also be very annoying and highly distracting as you probably don’t want to know what song somebody is listening to or what article they’ve just read. Luckily one simple little click of a button on the bottom right of the screen will remove the ticker and chat and give you a purer Facebook experience.

Block People From Seeing Your Timeline

If you really don’t want somebody to see your Timeline at all you can go through a series of steps to restrict who sees what. Once you have clicked on the privacy settings you can then enter the names of the people that you want to block. Once you have done that you can head over to your Timeline and click on “view profile as” which will show you what your profile will look like when viewed by a particular person.

Change Your Cover Photo On The Go

With the main cover photo acting as the main feature on your profile it can be a nice tip to change this while on the go. By simply firing up any of the Facebook apps and heading over to your profile, you can then click on the photo icon and snap a photo that will instantly appear on your Timeline. A great way of letting people know what is happening with your life while on the go.

Play Beautiful Full Size Videos

If you have shared (or somebody else has shared to your Timeline) a video then you can click the little star beside it that will allow you to “resize” the video. This simple action means that the video will then appear full size on your Timeline forever going forward (unless you change it back of course). It’s a simple way of showing off great content and making your Timeline look more unique. This also works for photos.

Control What Appears On Timeline Of Others

The most important place to go on your Timeline is “Activity log” which allows you to control what is happening on your Timeline and what gets shared. You can also chose to remove stuff that you have been tagged in, remove the post from Timeline completely or even mark it as spam. This is the best place to go if you are worried what other people are posting on their Timeline about you.

The latest to arrive is from Walker Sands‘ who recently published their Quarterly Web Traffic Report for 2011. They found that around 12.6% of total web traffic came from mobile devices in the last quarter of 2011, an increase of 102% from the 6.25% registered back in the same period in 2010. In comparison to Q3 in 2011, the percentage of web traffic from mobile increased by 2.3%, the highest increase seen that year.

This increase could be down to the festive season where shoppers would have used their smartphones for purchase,s although the year long trends suggest that this way of shopping is growing in popularity. The growth of mobile web use has been steady over the past year with a increase in growth experienced from the second quarter onwards.

Android was the most popular operating system commanding a 46% share of the market, an increase of 19% since Q3. Apple held 31% of the market, falling by 17% since Q3, and the iPad holding 16%. Blackberry were the real losers clinging on to 4% of the market, a drop that could be attributed to its widespread problems that it experienced during October. Due to the low volume of Windows Mobile and Symbian used, they were not included in the final percentage figures.

Before we get too carried away, there are some caveats within this report. For example, while they say they’ve analysed a wide range of B2B and B2C companies, their methodology notes states that a dozen Walker Sands clients were sampled for the report and that they were all U.S. based companies.

This doesn’t entirely bode well if you’re want a clear idea as to where the sector is heading although this could be an indication that either (a) businesses are still adapting to mobile, albeit slowly, or (b) Walker Sands didn’t have a large number of companies to analyse. Also there’s no indication as to what size these businesses are or even an indication as to the number of visits received via mobile overall so all of a sudden, such statistics look less impressive.

In saying all this, the web percentage does reflect the growing use of smartphones and feature phones in developing and aiding consumer choice. Yet until a comprehensive report analysing the U.S. or international trends, it’s best to treat such stats with caution.

Good ad text has a two-fold advantage – it resonates with the search query of your potential customer and improves your QS (Quality Score) reducing your costs and improving your competitiveness.

Here is a 4-point checklist to help you recognise whether your ad text strategy is currently hurting your paid search performance:

1. Do you assume your current ad variation is as good as it can be?
   Many PPC advertisers tend to test between 5 and 10 ad variations, find the one that is proven to perform best and stick with it. However it often takes thinking outside the box and continuous testing of new original ideas to ensure the success of your PPC campaigns.
2. Do your ads have the best destination URLs?
   If you run time-limited offers, or have a different page for each product/service you need to ensure that your ads go to the most relevant pages. This is not only important for the QS, but above all offers a user the shortest path to what they are looking for – dramatically increasing conversion rates. It is also crucial to ensure ads direct to correct pages if you add new categories, or carry out any kind of restructure of the website.
3. Are you constantly monitoring your competitors' ads?
   It is important to constantly check live Google results rather than just the stats in your AdWords account, so you can see what is going on with your competition. If your best ad starts showing signs of decreasing performance, it might be because your competitors have a higher bid, or a more compelling offer. In case of the latter you could even get some good ideas on marketing your product or service!
4. Are you testing your ad on the correct metric?
   Focus your ad wins on a combination of click-through-rate and conversion rate. Often if you pause your ads based solely on low conversion rate you could actually decrease your sales volume. Check your Analytics reports and how visitors arriving on the site through those ads behave. If they spend a lot of time, visit some key pages and/or complete goals (e.g. fill in contact form), then they are quality traffic that you cannot loose.

Managing Google AdWords account requires a good bit of time and a lot of diligence, but it is absolutely worth the effort you put in. Since the ad is the first thing a prospective customer or client sees from you, having a compelling message that results in clicks cannot be underestimated.

Need help? Digital Marketing Institute has a PPC module included in all its programmes.

If you are new to digital marketing, Professional Diploma would be a good holistic course to start with.

However, if you would like to learn only Google AdWords, you will be able to attend classes on just this topic. Email or call 01 271 1816 for inquiries and next available dates

Called ‘Spotify your status‘, it basically allows those who have the app installed onto their profile to select music that reflects their status update. Through identifying key words that you type, a list of songs are selected for you to accompany your status update, the idea that a song will convey a message more than a simple status update.

Frankly, I’m not a user of Spotify and the idea of my Facebook friends seeing my (questionable) taste in music has meant that I’ve avoided it so far. But it does tap into the idea of people linking youtube clips with status updates – usually when they’re announcing something important – so I could easily name a few of my friends who would use this app, especially if its integration is as seamless as it appears. Others will more than likely avoid it if it ever comes to fruition, but if you’re interested and want to see how it could work, have a look at the video below. (Note: there’s no sound in the video except for when songs are being played)

KLM have shown countless times just how much they understand social media with the likes of this airplane campaign, this smart Twitter campaign, and also some excellent customer service. Watching this video would make me feel happy to be a KLM fan, and want to engage with the page even more so you could say that is probably job done.

Between Page and Screen is a book that has no words or text printed on it, instead it only contains abstract geometric patterns and a web address leading to its site. As long as users have a browser and a webcam, they will be able to read the book where the patterns allow poems and text to appear before you. The animations which appear move with the book and create the equivalent of a digital pop-up book

The book explores a series of letters written by two lovers struggling to map the boundaries of their relationship, and the poems that appear fill the space between the reader and the screen. People viewing this may see the book as a novelty but that would be missing the point, it’s not intended as a commercial project, but a new way of tackling and injecting some  a familiar medium. The fact that the book relies solely on augmented reality

The book was written by Amaranth Borsuk and the site was developed by Brad Bouse. Originally published as a limited edition book, the book is now available to buy from Siglio Press for $24.95.

paidContent report that the changes in question are based on the feedback received from OnePass’ dozen or so trialist partners.  The move is timely after Apple recently revealed its intentions to enter the education market with the publication of its own ebooks. Currently the commission required to publish on Google is 10% in comparison to Apple’s 30%.

Google has been working closely with various publishers, both publicly and privately, to try and make the system more user friendly and meet the needs of publishers. The system will continue to include flexible content payment through Android apps and through the web with its 10% commission.

The service was originally revealed as a beta product back in February 2011. While publishers decide what price and terms they sell their content through, uptake of the service remained slow while it stayed a beta product. Now the relaunch aims to make OnePass an official service and boost publication numbers which will include a deal involving eight large French publications.

The industry in France is currently in turmoil due to crumbling distribution processes, slow digital reform and dependence on state aid so the relaunch of OnePass is of great interest for French publications.

Now Bloomberg are reporting that Twitter and LinkedIn are expecting their advertising revenue to increase dramatically over the coming years. According to the New York based research firm EMarketer, Twitter’s ad revenue is expected to rise to $540 million in 2014 in comparison to the $139.5 million it raised in 2011. Citing increasing popularity outside the U.S., the company’s reliance on the American market will decrease, with the precentage of dollars coming from there decreasing from 90% this year to 83% in 2014.

Also professional-networking site LinkedIn will see ad sales rise over the next few years, with their ad revenue growing from $154.6 million in 2011 to $405.6 million in 2014. Similar to Twitter, the site’s dependence on U.S. dollars will fall from 68% this year to 60% by 2014.

Both sites will be looking beyond their traditional methods of advertising, focusing on their unique qualities and demographic. Twitter, for example, will be placing an emphasis on political ads in line with the U.S. elections this year. Speaking at the AllThingsD’s Dive into Media conference, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo stated that they “have figured out the business…the advertising model is working”.

Twitter has hit trouble over recent days over its censorship policy and the option to block certain tweets. They defended themselves by stating that the new policy allows them to block tweets in specific countries and that originally, if a tweet had to be taken down, they would have to do so globally.

The digital advertising industry however needs to be careful of what it wishes for because I like mashed potatoes but if you serve it to me every day I am going to get very bored very quickly. And right now personalisation is extremely blunt and unsophisticated. Facebook for example knows my age and when I turned 40 I was bombarded with crass ads for a year about my 40th selling me everything from scuba diving to cars. Admittedly that’s at the crude end of the scale but even the more sophisticated attempts at personalisation are all moving in one direction; giving me more of what I've already had.

The goal of a hyperpersonalised web experience is a mixed blessing for the user also in that our web experience becomes like looking in the mirror at ourselves and even the most narcissistic amongst us gets tired of our own face after a while and the result is that we end up switching off all forms of personalisation.

Funny I don't remember ever switching it on in the first place but it's there by default (more about that next week) whether you realise it or not our web experience is totally moderated by your previous online actions.

The missing element of course in all this moderation towards the mean is the elimination of surprise and discovery. Most of the stuff I bought or surfed or engaged with online I found by accident, I discovered by connecting the dots and finding new things.

If the logical end of digital marketing is users ending up alone in a corner by themselves they will simply opt out of all personalisation until our industry becomes more sophisticated.

Will the meteoric rise continue once Facebook becomes a public company, or is there a chance that the social network will end up in a similar position to its predecessors like Myspace and Bebo? Both those social networks were lauded at the time and seemingly could do no wrong, but Bebo was rumored to be closing yesterday while Justin Timberlake is trying to do something new to turn Myspace around and failing miserably. But surely Facebook is on another level and is simply too big to fail?

An Advertisers Dream

If you want to be a successful business, it’s not ultimately the amount of users or how much media coverage you get, but the amount of money you make that determines your success. The older social networks relied on banner ads and more traditional revenue streams which could only take them so far, but Facebook have invented possibly the most targeted advertising platform the world has ever seen. With this advertising platform Facebook has the ability to have revenues more like Google and less like Myspace. If you are a public company revenue is pretty much the most important factor and that is a good sign for the future of Facebook.

A Social Platform

Myspace and Bebo were websites whereas Facebook is a platform. There is a huge difference and it is the fact that Facebook is wrapping itself in to the very fabric of the web that gives it such a huge advantage. You don’t really have to be on Facebook.com itself to be using the service. You could be using a social plugin, leaving comments via their commenting system on a 3rd party website or one of the 400 million mobile users. There are plenty of huge companies that rely on Facebook as a platform (Zynga, Netflix, Spotify etc) for acquiring users and that will continue to grow. As Mark Zuckerberg says himself Facebook is becoming the “social plumbing” of the web and that is not about to change any time soon.

$10 Billion War Chest

Facebook has been extremely well funded for the last few years as investors piled into the company, but despite that they have always been a start up burning through cash. The money that they did have was used for scaling, hiring and a series of acquisitions. As soon as the company goes public though they are going to have a massive war chest of over $10 billion in cash that they can use to prop up the company and hopefully grow it as well. That money will be used for everything from acquiring smaller companies to offering increased packages to the most talented engineers in the world. Facebook have come a long way without having piles of cash, and now we are about to see what they can do with tons of money in their pockets.

Constantly Re-Inventing

Facebook are brilliant at re-inventing themselves. Look at the site now and you will see that it looks nothing like it did when it started. It doesn’t even look like it did this time last year. Facebook often upsets its users by making sweeping changes but by constantly tweaking the look and feel of the site and trying lots of new features they have been able to keep the site incredibly sticky with users spending hours at a time there. Their new features don’t always work but Facebook are certainly not scared to try new things.

The Zuckerberg Effect

It’s pretty widely accepted that the young Zuckerberg fellow is a bit of a genius and totally obsessed with improving the product. Alongside his genius is the fact that he is far less obsessed with making a quick buck or becoming famous than other founders of social networks seem to have been. Despite movies being made about him and constant media coverage, it is clear that he is obsessed with turning Facebook into a platform that rules the world rather than worrying about the $25 billion that he will be worth shortly.

All in all, I think it’s safe to say Facebook won’t turn in to another Myspace or Bebo anytime soon.

So they created Best Tweeshes, where users simply added the hashtag #tweeshes to all new year wish tweets. The thousands of tweets featuring this hashtag contributed towards a crowd sourced musical map, each tweet assigned to a point on the world map depending on where it was located.

The best thing is that this map is actually a synthesiser and each tweet became a musical note which plays each tweet, turning the map into a melody. It’s a nice little idea that dares to do something different with tweets as well as bringing different people and tweets together to create something unique. You can check out the Best Tweeshes website and listen to the music created by the world’s tweets and wishes.

Hubspot recently compiled a study which looked at over 5,000 different businesses and their social media efforts, and found that the traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, almost three times higher (277%) than both Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%).

The study also found that LinkedIn’s conversion rate was also greater than social media as a channel overall, that is, all of the traffic that came to these businesses via social media, .98% of that traffic converted into leads, compared to LinkedIn’s 2.74%.

The study concluded that the reason behind this is due to the very nature of LinkedIn: it’s a social media site for professionals to help improve their standing, so the target market is very straightforward. Also, when someone visits LinkedIn, they are normally focusing on business which means related content performs better.

Another reason is because of the type of content appearing on the feed is more focused. Instead of being cluttered with personal content, the items and posts displayed are concentrated on marketing or business meaning there’s less posts to digest and a higher chance of a company’s post being noticed on LinkedIn than any other site.