2020systems Blog

Google decided in 2009 that it could no longer ignore the social web as it watched Facebook warp the web into a global community of 800 million plus. On June 28, 2011  Google Plus launched and became the fastest growing social network in history reaching 25 million users in less than 30 days. It continues to grow at over 600,000 users a day and is projected to reach 400 million users by the end of 2012 according to estimates by Paul Allen.

It is now both a personal and business social network after launching Google+ brand “pages” on November 7, 2011. Google plus enhanced the visual aspect of social networks by making its images significantly larger than the photos on Facebook. Facebook has since responded with a revamp of its design that allows for much larger images in its new “Timeline” for personal profiles.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a huge increase in social networking usage from a variety of users, from students to large corporations. Tons of new platforms are popping up daily – and, as you probably already know, the latest addition to the social networking family is Google+. But what exactly is its purpose and can it help you and your online brand?

Google+, the newest brainchild from its namesake, is a social platform that essentially merges all your activity into one site. Think of it as a rolled together version of all the popular networks, like Twitter and Facebook. With Google+, users can:

• Create a profile, including adding photo and video
• Arrange their networks into Circles or small groups
• Engage in video chatting with Hangouts
• Meet up with friends in chat rooms in Google+’s Huddles
• Show off and share your interests in multiple categories with Sparks, and more

Though it’s probably only the tip of the iceberg for Google+, it’s rising popularity in such a short period time (currently 25+ million users since launching on 6/28/2011) proves that the platform is not going anywhere soon, even with reports of traffic declining.

So, can Google+ actually help boost your online brand? Absolutely, especially if you use all its features to your advantage.

As with any social network, it’s important to complete your profile in full before you start spreading word of your Google+ platform. Apart from the usual information, you can include places you’ve lived in the world, “bragging rights,” and +1’s, which are what you’ve liked on the Web using Google’s +1 button. Further, think about linking back to your other social sites so you can create a more concrete brand. You can also chose which Circles you want to display on your profile as well, which could be convenient when you want to keep certain parts of your life private.

Next, try to find people you admire, like influencers or mentors, and add them to a separate Circle. Why separate? Circles are designed to make your Google+ experience easier by helping you organize your network. When you check out your stream of updates, you can chose to see what a certain Circle is talking about, posting, questions they have, etc. This makes commenting and interacting with your networks much easier.

Lastly, just having a presence on a popular social networking site can do wonders for your brand. As with the others, update and maintain your Google+ profile regularly. Above all, don’t just create an account and never take advantage of it. It can be a great resource if you use it to it’s full potential. Your brand will probably look better if you do so.

Are you using Google+? What tips do you suggest for new users who want to improve their online brands? 

IPO Details:
LinkedIn’s initial public offering priced at $45 a share Wednesday, the company will raise about $350 million via this offering.

Shares of the social networking service for professionals will begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LNKD.

The 8-year-old company will make its stock market debut with a value of $4.3 billion as investors clamor to get a piece of the most hotly anticipated IPO out of Silicon Valley in years and the biggest from a U.S. Internet company since Google set the gold standard nearly seven years ago when it went public.

Whether LinkedIn can maintain this valuation has implications for Silicon Valley and the broader Web industry. LinkedIn is one of the first social-media companies to go public, leading a wave of expected IPOs from other Web companies such as Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, Zygna.

LinkedIn Businesses:
For supporters of LinkedIn’s offering, the company is in a unique position to profit from the change in the way professionals connect to one another and search for new jobs. LinkedIn has a fast-growing membership base of more than 100 million subscribers and three diversified revenue streams: online advertisements sold to businesses; premium subscriptions for individuals; and hiring tools sold to recruiters.

LinkedIn’s subscribers also tend to be relatively wealthy because it is a professional-networking site. That makes each member more valuable to advertisers, compared with people who use Facebook and Twitter. In economic downturns, more job seekers also tend to use sites like LinkedIn,

Inside Shareholders:
Reid Hoffman has a 20% stake in the company which this time Thursday will be worth $858 million.

Chief Executive Jeff Weiner will also be in the money: His 2.5% stake is worth roughly $105 million.

Dual-stock Structure:
LinkedIn has a dual-stock structure, which lets the company’s insiders retain significant control over shareholder decisions even after others become stockholders. Google and Facebook have similar structures.

Co-founder Reid Hoffman and other executives hold Class B shares, which have 10 times the voting power of the Class A shares LinkedIn will sell to the public.

It’s a method that’s controversial to shareholder advocates but popular among tech startups, which want to ensure that their founders are able to execute their vision.

Who’s selling?
LinkedIn itself is selling about 4.83 million shares, and existing stockholders are selling about 3 million.

Hoffman and his wife, Michelle Yee, are selling about 115,000 shares. Even after the sale, they’ll still own more than 20% of the company’s stock. That will be worth more than $850 million at the $45 per share price.

LinkedIn Corp. has filed plans to raise $175 million in a public stock sale - the first major social-networking company to formally announce plans for an IPO.

LinkedIn, which has more than 90 million members around the world, announced its intention to go public in a document filed Thursday with the SEC.

In the document, the company for the first time disclosed its financial data, reporting net income of $10 million for the first nine months of 2010 on revenue of $161.4 million, which doubled from the same period in the prior year. However, the net income dropped to $1.85 million after accounting for “undistributed earnings allocated to preferred stockholders.”

For all of 2009, LinkedIn posted a net loss of $3.9 million on $120.1 million in revenue. But revenue has risen dramatically since 2007, when it was $32.5 million.

The IPO papers filed Thursday by LinkedIn put the 8–year–old company on a path to make its stock market debut in the next three to four months, barring any major stumbling blocks.

LinkedIn’s filing could encourage other rapidly growing Internet services to test the public markets after amassing followings of millions of users. Other likely candidates include: online coupon service Groupon, which rejected a $6 billion takeover bid from Google Inc. last year.; online game maker Zynga; online messaging service Twitter; and potentially the biggest investment opportunity of all, social networking phenomenon Facebook, which already has indicated it’s likely to file its IPO plans by the end of April 2012.

LinkedIn, based down the street from Google’s Mountain View, California, headquarters, is the most mature of the group. It started in 2003, a year before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg launched his website while he was a Harvard University sophomore.

Since then, Facebook has emerged as a hot spot for having fun and wasting time while LinkedIn has positioned itself as a place for getting down to business.

Not surprisingly, kibitzing with friends and family has proven to be vastly more popular than contemplating work.

More than 90 million profiles have been set up on LinkedIn, compared with more than 600 million on Facebook.

But LinkedIn has carved out a profitable niche. The company earned $1.85 million on revenue of $161 million during the first nine months of 2010.  During the same period, Facebook earned $355 million on revenue of $1.2 billion, according to documents recently distributed to its newest investors.

LinkedIn warned it will sustain a loss this year as it invests in its service in an effort to attract more users. It’s also trying to ward off competition from similar services overseas, such as Xing in Germany and Viadeo in France, and a looming threat in Salesforce.com, which has developed a tool for professional networking.

Most of LinkedIn’s revenue comes from fees that it charges for recruiters and businesses that want expanded access to the website to help fill job openings. The company also sells online ads.

In contrast to Facebook, most of LinkedIn’s principals are in their 40s. Zuckerberg, who has been Facebook’s CEO since its inception, is just 26.

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, 43, will be the biggest winner in the IPO. Hoffman also stands to profit from Facebook’s eventual IPO because he was among the early investors who backed Zuckerberg’s idea after he moved from Massachusetts to Silicon Valley.

Hoffman remains LinkedIn’s chairman. He also served a stint as CEO until turning that role over to former Yahoo Inc. executive Jeff Weiner in 2009. Weiner, 40, owns a 4.1 percent stake in LinkedIn.

The company’s other major shareholders are venture capital firms: Sequoia Capital with an 18.9 percent stake; Greylock Partners with a 15.8 percent stake; and Bessemer Venture Partners with a 5.1 percent stake.

LinkedIn has raised about $103 million since its inception and now has nearly $90 million in cash.

Some of the major stockholders plan to sell shares in LinkedIn’s IPO, but Thursday’s filing didn’t spell out those or other key details, including the projected price for the IPO. That target will likely be set as the sale of stock draws nearer.

The filing said LinkedIn will raise $175 million in the offering, but that figure often escalates as investment bankers gauge demand. Morgan Stanley & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch are the main investment banks steering LinkedIn’s IPO.

Based on stock trading by employees in secondary markets set up for privately held companies, LinkedIn is believed to be worth more than $2 billion.

Demand Media Inc., an online service that hires freelance writers to produce stories about frequently searched topics, went public this week and now boasts a market value of about $1.8 billion — higher than The New York Times Co.

The lofty appraisals have evoked memories of the late 1990s when investors were clamoring to pour money into startups that had set up websites to cater to the tens of millions of people who were just starting to embrace the Web.

This time around, though, Internet startups have been staying private longer than predecessors did during the original dot–com boom. That has given them more time to build their audience and, more importantly, develop moneymaking business plans.

If you have a Facebook account, you’ve probably reconnected with an old pal, shared photos with your family, and gotten advice from your friends on what to buy and what to read. It’s pretty likely you logged on today.

Lately, the social networking site has been introducing new products - one after the next - with the goal, it seems, of turning the entire Web into one big social network, so eventually the Internet will be Facebook.

As if the company wasn’t surging enough, the movie “The Social Network” about the creation of Facebook has heightened interest, especially in its 26-yr-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.  Now Facebook is about to get a facelift, and agreed to launch its new look on “60 Minutes.”

One thing that isn’t really pointed out or discussed much by Facebook, though, is the fact that the bar on the right side where the ads are displayed has about doubled from its previous width. Sponsored ads are now much more visible, and take up more Facebook real estate.

Predictably, there is a backlash from some of the Facebook community. It doesn’t really matter what changes Facebook makes–some will hate them and complain vocally that they wish the site would just remain stagnant and never change.

For us (advertisers), the changes represent an improvement in the marketing potential of the Facebook platform. Anything that improves the user experience and gets Facebook users to spend more time interacting with the social network increases the opportunity to interact with them as customers. The larger ad space will hopefully draw more attention, and give businesses a better chance of inducing a response from users.

Not everyone has the new profile update yet. It hasn’t been pushed out to users, but you can get it if you want it by visiting the Facebook site detailing the updates with the new profile and clicking the button. Be warned, though, once you switch to the new profile you can’t switch back.

Facebook has announced that it has 500 million active users around the world.

Each Facebook user has on average 130 friends and shares 70 bits of personal information — including home movies and family photos — every month. With 500 million users detailing their moods and passions online, Facebook is more than a social networking site. It’s a global phenomenon that’s shaping the way people communicate.

Facebook has half a billion users around the world (130 million in U.S.). That’s huge for a planet of less than 7 billion people. In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous nation after China and India.  Every 1 out of 12 people on this planet has a Facebook account.

What grew as the pet project of Mark Zuckerberg, when he was a student at Harvard, has exploded — gaining eight new users ever second for the past 15 months. Facebook has changed the way many people communicate — letting its millions of users share personal thoughts and images with their network of friends.

Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, said, “People have really gotten connected, not only sharing more information and different kinds but being more open and with more people and that social norm is just something that’s changed over time.”

And people share a lot. Whole lives play out on Facebook. Births. Graduations. Marriage. Even divorce. Some experts say that sharing too much information can have downsides — including affecting the way prospective employers may evaluate a job candidate.

And some people are downright negative about it. “I think it’s terrible. It’s narcissistic,” said Facebook user Julia. Yet, people share personal information on the site 70 times per month on average.

And what was once an online destination only for college students has expanded, says Michael Nelson. He worked at IBM and currently teaches at Georgetown University. “It’s grandmas, it’s executives, it’s politicians. It’s everybody. The fastest group of users — it’s the over sixty group,” he said.

Bonnie Speich logs on once a week to keep in touch with family. “Every minute of my grandson’s life is on that thing,” she said. Mike Aedenran checks in a lot. “I usually go on about five times a day, five to ten minutes every time,” he said.

But not everyone is excited about having an online community of friends. Kevin Sampson said “If they are finding comfort with friends online rather than meeting people, that’s pretty sad.”

Still, Facebook is so popular that public figures have taken notice. President Barack Obama is credited with using the power of Facebook during his 2008 campaign. Even Pope Benedict has a profile — sharing updates in eight languages.

And Facebook played a role during Iran’s post-election upheaval. Khsro, a graduate student from Iran said “For a lot of Iranians, like a year ago, it became one of the foremost important tools to get news from inside Iran. Right after the elections, basically the international news agencies were not allowed to get news and the first place you would check for the videos from Iran, the protest videos and so on, was just on Facebook.”

Information can easily go viral with the click of a mouse, says Nelson. “Now we have this technology for this one community to talk to another community, and all these different conversations happen at the same time. Almost effortlessly,” he said. He says, the future of social media is mobile. More phones will be able to support Facebook giving even more people access to their online communities from the palm of their hand.

It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.

Mark Zuckerberg

Twitter today changed its tagline from “What are you doing?” to “What’s happening?”

This esentially bring the social networking and micro-blogging service with 140 characters to become a “Local Real-time search engine”.

The location-stamping or geocoding of content and the release of that data to third parties (online and in mobile) will unleash a wide range of creative applications and expressions for local tweets.

Indeed, newly hired Twitter COO Dick Costolo emphasized that mobile would be a prominent use case for this location-oriented data.  That’s clear, as people look to Twitter-enabled local-mobile apps to find out who’s around and what’s going on.  This innovation should bring more explosive growth to the platform.

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