Why trust Facebook with our history?

Scott Rosenberg discusses the digital records we leave of our day-to-day existence, and wonders why anyone would entrust them to Facebook. It's a good question. Many of us don't have the zeal of a Gordon Bell when it comes to monitoring and recording our lives. But we're recording big sections all the same, with our conversations,... [read more]

Facebook ‘Hilarious Video’ Phishing Attack is Spreading Quickly

<!--break--> Be careful out there! A Facebook phishing scam is running rampant this weekend — the third widespread attack on the site in as many weeks. The scheme attempts to steal your Facebook login credentials, install malware on your computer, and grab your home address. The attack is spread via a “hilarious video”... [read more]

Calculate the Value of Your Facebook Page

<!--break--> Marketers are clamoring for data to determine the ROI of their social-media efforts, and a new free tool called the Social Page Evaluator, from social media management company Vitrue, is here to help. It’s designed to assist marketers as they try to get a better grasp of the value of a brand’s Facebook Page. A... [read more]

Social Media: Tracking Its Exponential Growth [Stats, Video]

<!--break-->   Many of you are probably familiar with Social Media Revolution, a fantastic video created last year by Erik Qualman that examined the explosion of social media onto the modern scene. It did an excellent job of explaining the importance of the social Web and its impact on society. Erik is also the... [read more]

Early Indications April 2010 The Web of Opinion: Metadata as conversation

<!--break--> In the beginning, there was data, enumerating how many, what kind, where. Data was kept in proprietary formats and physically located: if the library was missing the Statistical Abstract for 1940, or some other grad student had sequestered it, you had little chance to determine corn production in Nebraska before World... [read more]

Facebook estimates $350 million in 2009 from Performance Advertising

<!--break--> As Facebook was estimating it’s total profits from 2009 to be $635 million, over half, or $350 million of that was attributed to performance marketing, where the advertiser pays only for measurable results. Of that $350 million, $175 was attributed to social games like Farmville and the balance from... [read more]

Early Indications December 2009: Yet Another Predictions Issue

<!--break--> In this last week of 2009, it's scary to think that it was a full ten years ago that the IT profession was holding its collective breath as midnight January 1, 2000 approached. Apart from spooking us with memories of how fast the decade sped by, the Y2K issue stands as a cautionary tale for any technology prediction.... [read more]

Social software adoption, how are we doing?

I was going through some IDC survey data that I got back recently and I think there's an interesting story to tell. My group does a regular survey 2-4 times a year on software applications, called Appstats. We have some fixed questions for trending and some questions that change out each time so that we can look at many different parts... [read more]

When Tweeting trumps Friending

<!--break--> SocialText CEO Eugene Lee argues that Twitter might be a better model than Facebook for next-gen communications within companies, so-called Enterprise 2.0. Facebook's trouble? Reciprocal friending. The problem, he says, is that employees on corporate social networks start collecting friendships of execs. "Because the... [read more]

What carries you up will also bring you down

<!--break--> In Rules of Thumb, Alan Weber quotes legendary venture capitalist John Doerr discussing the original business plans for companies he invested in such as Google, Intuit, and Amazon: In every case you can find the one sentence or paragraph that describes their unique business model advantage. It could be their unique... [read more]

What if online business model innovation is slowing down?

<!--break--> There is a widely held assumption that new business models will continue to emerge online – that statements like “how will Twitter ever make money?” will look as silly in 10 years as similar statements made 10 years ago about Google look now. There is no question that, if they wanted to, Twitter could make tens of... [read more]

Project Gaydar: A Reminder That Privacy Isn’t Binary

<!--break--> There’s a nice article in the Boston Globe about “Project Gaydar“, a project to predict who is gay based on statistically analyzing their Facebook networks. They’ve only done ad hoc validation of their predictions, but claim that their results seem accurate. The involvement of distinguished MIT professor Hal Abelson (at... [read more]