175 Million Users Per Day Log Into Facebook
Well, that’s a mighty big number isn’t it? While I hate to admit it I am one of those people doing just that because it has become a bit of a habit. I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook. In fact, my technique is to see what my friends have said, maybe say something I feel that there may be ANY interest whatsoever, rarely if ever talk business then get out. For me Facebook holds the potential to be a tremendous time waster so although I log in I don’t stick around for long at all.
But I am one of just 175 million that use Facebook to some degree daily. This fact was stated by Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg as she was interviewed by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington at the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland. Some of Arrington’s comments:
A year ago Facebook had 150 million users, and more than 200 million people visited the site monthly. I noted “You realize it’s like 1 in 5 people in the world that are on the internet visit Facebook.” Sandberg replied, joking “So we have 4 in 5 more to go.”
The thing is, they’re well on their way to getting those other 4. Facebook has more than doubled in size to 350 million registered users in the last year. By this summer well over half of all Internet users will likely visit Facebook each month.
What’s more dramatic – Half of all registered users still log in to Facebook every day, says Sandberg in the interview. That’s 175 million people. And that doesn’t include Facebook Connect logins, only those people that visit the Facebook website.
The numbers start to become a bit staggering but the one nagging question is revenue and profitability. When asked about this Ms. Sandberg seemed a bit evasive in her answer
Yeah. So, I think this was the year that we changed from being experimental ad platform to really being able to go big and we are going big in lots of ways. What Facebook does and I think we do uniquely well which is part of why I’m so excited about the Facebook opportunity when I was offered it two years ago is we’re a place where users express themselves and we’re a place where people share. And when you think about building brands(ph), not just giving someone something they search but before they search. When they’re talking about who they are and affiliating and, you know, finding things typical demand generation, which is still 90% of global ad spenders(ph). I think we’re best property anywhere, with any media to do that because friends want you to affiliate. They want you to say, you know, I am, you know, a Starbucks drinker. I like Starbucks latte and they want you to tell your friends about it.
Huh? It only got less understandable from there. So what is my takeaway on this one? Facebook has a lot of users but is still struggling to monetize this huge traffic flow.
Maybe this would be a good time to ask the question: When you are on Facebook do you pay attention to the ads? If you do how often do you click through? My answer is never unless an ad is offensive then I will rate it. As far as something getting my attention enough to make me curious to buy? Not yet. Maybe I’m the exception of that 175 million but I doubt it.
Jobs Calls Bull$&%# on Google
I hope it doesn’t get much worse but the war of devices between Apple and Google is quickly deteriorating into a war of words. This type of war never ends well when it is played out in the public forum. Steve Jobs has set a very low bar with regard to standards by some of his words following the iPad announcement. Considering how he sounded after the announcement one wonders if the naming of the device explains his ‘moodiness’.
After a big public announcement of the sort Apple had this week for the iPad CEO Steve Jobs often takes time in the day or two afterwards to have a Town Hall at One Infinite Loop, making himself available for questions from employees bold enough to stand up and take one right between the eyes.
On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.
It doesn’t take much for things to get worse from this point and it is likely that they will. In fact, over at the Business Insider we get the report on just what Google is thinking with regard to Apple from Apple’s former board member and Google CEO, Eric Schmidt.
Today, a reporter asked Eric what he thinks of Apple’s new iPad. His answer: “You might want to tell me the difference between a large phone and a tablet.”
So is now time for the CEO’s to start tossing insults at each other as they become direct competitors? Let’s hope not. Wouldn’t it be real interesting if they would each just keep their mouths closed about each other, talk about their own products and innovations and then let the buying public decide? I think it would but I suspect that considering the size of the companies involved, the amount of money at stake and the Mt. Everest like egos at the helms we have yet to hear the end of this schoolyard name-calling and back-stabbing. Jobs even went on to call Adobe “lazy with regard to its approach to business and how Flash will be replaced by HTML5. While the latter may be true is it really necessary for the insults? Looks like Steve wants to yell at everyone. Oh brother.
So get ready everyone for the new way to compete in the new media world. Shout the loudest and then throw a hissy fit and best of all, use a curse word or two to sound tough. If this is where this is heading this will get real old, real fast.
Report: Google To Bring More “Transparency” To AdSense Revenue Sharing
BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis was part of a “private meeting” in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum with Google CEO Eric Shmidt and a handful of other top Google execs. Jarvis reports that Google sales boss Nikesh Arora said that Google “would consider giving more transparency about revenue splits in Adsense” (this is likely a [...]
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US Appeals Court Allows Google Street View Trespass Lawsuit To Continue
A couple called “Boring” (yes, that’s their surname) sued Google in early 2008 for taking pictures of its suburban Pennsylvania home. The claim was their house was on a clearly marked private road (“Private Road, No Trespassing”) and Google’s Street View mobile trespassed by entering and taking the images of their home. There was also [...]
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2000 In Review: AdWords Launches; Yahoo Partners With Google; GoTo Syndicates
This article is part of a series, a review of the 2000 decade and search developments. Below, major events from the year 2000 in consumer search. For the complete series, see the introduction, The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009.
Google Launches AdWords
To me, the big story of 2000 was Google’s launch of AdWords. [...]
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Can Google Kill Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6?
On Friday afternoon, Google announced they will be discontinuing their support for “very old browsers.” They said, they will stop supporting Internet Explorer 6, commonly referred to as IE6, on many of their applications. Starting on March 1st, Google Docs and Google Sites will no longer be officially supported on IE6.
Google [...]
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The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009
The 2000s were notable as the first full decade of consumer search. The first decade ever where you could try to sum up what happened in search, as a consumer product. And what happened, in a word, was Google.
In the 1990s, Google barely existed. If search were a religion, it was polytheistic. There were a [...]
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Six Odd Tactics For Getting Ads Into Google Maps
As usage of Google Maps grows, marketers are increasingly drawn to the promotional potential found there, and some innovative ways of insinuating ads into the interface have evolved. Here’s a breakdown of some of the strangest tactics that have been dreamed-up for getting messages in front of Maps users.
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Broad Match + Negative Keywords = A Profitable Long Tail
It’s common to hear advice that you should use long tail keywords and that you should be careful when using broad match. After all, broad match keywords do not convert higher than either phrase or exact match.
THe problem is that often these two pieces of advice can be contradictory.
If you start using keyword phrases [...]
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Overcoming The SEO Challenges Of Huge Online Commerce Sites
Ecommerce sites featuring product catalogs present interesting search engine optimization challenges. Typically, these sites will carry large volumes of products, organized into various groupings. Let’s take a look at a snippet of the Zappos home page as an example.:
Notice in the left menu the neat categorization of the shoes category of products on [...]
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