Infographic: The Facebook News Experience

From the good folks at Pew Research Center Journalism Project, The Facebook News Experience

Facebook in the U.S. - Mixed News from Pew

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project recently took a look at Facebook usage in the U.S. as a part of their larger omnibus phone surveys of American adults.
  The good news for Facebook is that some two-thirds of online American adults are Facebook users, making Facebook still the dominant social media site in the U.S.  And social media use generally continues to grow: 69% of online adults report using at least one social medium (which translates to half of the entire adult population of the U.S.); 92% of social media users maintain a Facebook profile; and people are using social media more frequently than before - 41% indicate accessing social media sites several times a day.

  One the other hand, 61% of current Facebook users say that they've taken breaks from regular Facebook use of at least a couple of weeks.  And for those who aren't currently using Facebook, 20% used to, but quit, and only 8% said they were interested in joining Facebook.  According to the Pew Report,

Some of the verbatim thoughts from those who took Facebook breaks include the following: “I was tired of stupid comments.” …  “[I had] crazy friends. I did not want to be contacted.” … “I took a break when it got boring.” …  “It was not getting me anywhere.” …  “Too much drama.” ... “You get burned out on it after a while.” … “I gave it up for Lent.” … “I was fasting.” … “People were [posting] what they had for dinner.” …  “I didn’t like being monitored.” … “I got harassed by someone from my past who looked me up.”…  “I don’t like their privacy policy.” … “It caused problems in my [romantic] relationship.”

A lot of the same reasons were cited by those dropping Facebook.
  When asked about the value of Facebook in their lives, more users reported Facebook becoming less valuable and important in the last year (28%) than thought Facebook had become more valuable and important (12%).  In addition, more reported their use decreased over the last year (34%) than indicated that they had increased their Facebook use (13%).  The bad news for Facebook is that the declining use is highest among the key demographics advertisers want to reach.  In the key 18-29 age bracket, 42% of users reported decreasing their time on Facebook in the last year; among those 30-49, 34% reported using Facebook less.

When asked about future Facebook use, most thought it would be about the same.  However, only 3% indicated they would be using Facebook more, while 27% thought they would be using it less.  Here, again, there were also demographic differences, with younger users being the most likely to anticipate reducing their Facebook time (and only 1% thinking of increasing).

It would seem that Facebook has been morphing from the hip, cool, must-have app for the younger generation, to a useful tool for keeping contact with friends and family as people move and disperse.  As for the younger generations, other research results suggest they're not abandoning social media; rather, they're shifting their focus to other social media sites - Twitter in particular.

Source -  Coming and Going on Facebook,  Report from Pew Internet & American Life Project

 

Future of Digital - Social

The BI Intelligence slide show at the IGNITION: Future of Digital conference last week also had a lot to say about Social Media.  Here's some highlights -

  As noted in the previous post, Social Networks are becoming the gateway to the Internet - for the last two years, people spent more time on social networks than they did on Web Portals.
  Facebook is the dominant global giant of social media (i.e., the Google).  About 1 of every 7 people in the world are active Facebook Users (at least once a month).  And Facebook is truly global - it's the leading social media site for most of the world, with a few notable exceptions.  Several countries have banned or severely limited Facebook service, and in some countries a native language alternative dominates.  While Facebook supports more than 70 languages and dialects, it seems to be less successful outside the English and Indo-European core languages. 

(A glance at the map shows most of the countries with a different leading social media service speak non-Indo-European based languages.)

  With the recent public stock offering for Facebook, there's been a lot of focus on Facebook's ability to monetize its reach and user base.  Google dominates the digital advertising market, although it's share is slowly falling as more channels and online advertising opportunities develop (including Facebook).  This led the BI Intelligence folk to ask the question Facebook investors ponder: Will Facebook ever be bigger than Google?  They don't think so, offering this analogy - Google is like advertising at a store, while Facebook is like advertising at a party.
  While Facebook's ability to drive referrals to e-commerce sites is growing rapidly, those numbers remain minuscule compared to Google and other online portals/search engines.

  In fact, at the moment the biggest challenge to Google's supremacy in digital advertising revenues looks to be from e-commerce sites.  In-store advertising has always had the advantage in that it reaches buyers while they are shopping, and proper ad placement (targeting) can put the ad's message in front of prospective buyers.  Amazon is already generating more than $1 billion a year in advertising, and U.S. online retailers are generating more than 20 billion ad impressions per quarter. With retail sales shifting online, there's a lot of opportunity for growth.

Then there is the new category of "social commerce," sites and services that blend marketing and commerce.  Revenues are still in the early market stages, and are experiencing the type of explosive growth common in the early stages of diffusion.

  The "Social" online markets are still in the early development and growth stages, but there's good evidence that social sites are finding ways to monetize their user base - through advertising, in-game fees and purchases, and through marketing and linking arrangements.  Perhaps not as much, or as fast, as hoped by the people and institutions buying stock at Facebook's Initial Public Offering, but the potential is there.

Next up - Mobile

Source -  The Future of Digital [Slide Deck],  Business Insider

Facebook's rivals and initial public earnings report

Last week, Facebook reached 1 billion monthly users, and made it's first earnings report since it went public - $1.18 billion in revenues in the second quarter.  Advertising accounted for $992 million, up 28% from the same quarter last year.  While revenues were up 32%, Facebook reported net losses of $157 million, mostly from various costs and write-offs related  to the IPO - without those, Facebook earned a profit of $285 million.  The report indicated that mobile earnings were slow to develop, but earnings were up from "sponsored stories,"

As for the (distant) competition, there's

• Google+, with a reported 170 million users as of last May,  Facebook's already integrated one of Google+'s innovative features (Circles, which allowed users to separate business from social contacts).  For now, though, Google+ users indicate they like that services cleaner interface (fewer ads) and integration with other Google services.
• LinkedIn has a reported user base of 150 million, and has focused on building a social network for working professionals.
• Twitter has a reported 555 million users, and a quite different pedigree and focus.  Technically a microblogging service, it's becoming the preferred service for quickly sharing content.  (Sometimes too quickly). Users also like Twitter's better record of keeping private information private.
• Pinterest has about 11 million users, and also provides a different type of content sharing - providing its users with a sort of virtual bulletin board where they can post pictures and other things.
• So.ci is a new social media offering from Microsoft.  With the announcement that Windows Office will integrate more social-oriented features, and their introduction of SharePoint collaboration software, this may be the outlet for Microsoft's social features.

Facebook also has major competition in some foreign markets from native-language-based social media services.

Sources -  5 Facebook Rivals Hot On Its Heels, the Brainyard
Facebook Reports $1.18 Billion Revenues, Mobile Progress,  the Brainyard

Milestones: Facebook passes 1 Billion

Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social network had reached 1 billion monthly active users.  That means that 14% of the world's estimated 7 billion people have Facebook accounts and use them at least monthly.  He didn't indicate whether that number includes the 83 million duplicate and fake Facebook accounts that the company had previously acknowledged.

  Following YouTube's lead, Facebook released a number of "Wow!!" statistics.

• 60% of Facebook users access the social media site from mobile devices
• There are more than 140 billion connections between friends
• People have uploaded 219 billion photos
• 62.6 million songs have been played an aggregated total of 22 billion times since that feature launched in Sept 2011
• 1.13 trillion "likes" have been recorded since that feature launched in early 2009
• 17 billion posts have been location-tagged since that feature was launched Aug 2010

Users are trending younger - when Facebook hit 50 million users (Oct 2007), their media age was 26; when it hit 500 million, media age of new users was 23; and now with over a billion served, the median age of new users is 22.  In keeping with that trend, Facebook is working on technology that will open the social media service to kids under 13 (with parental permission of course).

  But with much of Facebook's current growth in users coming from younger, less affluent individuals and poorer countries, financial analysts suggest that it will be hard for Facebook to maintain it's current average revenue per user of $1.28,

Source - Facebook Hits 1 Billion Users: Now The Hard Part,  the Brainyard

Facebook for PR

A recent study of how nonprofits are using Facebook may offer some insights on the general impact and role of social media.  The study, a supplement to the annual eNonprofits Benchmark Study produced by M&R Strategic Services and NTEN Nonprofit Technologies, looks at how nonprofits have been using social media, the successes and failures, and makes some suggestions for the strategic use of Facebook and other social media outlets.
  First, some general results - the study found that the media nonprofit fan page had more than 30,000 "likes", and that wildlife and animal welfare related nonprofit sites were the most popular, with a median of more than 70,000 likes.  The use and popularity of nonprofit fan pages is showing significant growth. Between 2010 and 2011, the median growth rate for fan page users was 70%.  Churn (turnover in users) averaged 0.5% per month.  As for reach, the nonprofits examined reached an average of 20% of their fan base daily.
  The study also looked at several impact metrics. Using the People Talking About This (PTAT) measure, which measures how many people wrote about information on the fan page within a week, nonprofits averaged about 22 PTAT per 1000 fans.  About 9 per thousand "engaged" with the fan site on a daily basis (Daily Page Engaged Users).  Nonprofit fan pages had 2-3 "actions" (liking or commenting) per thousand fans (Daily Action Rate).  There were differences among the various nonprofit sectors in these "impact" measures.

Some of the recommendations -

• "the key is to worry less about [the people who unsubscribe] and concentrate more on producing engaging content for the people who do want to hear from you."
• "If your fan page is one-third the size of another group's page, but has three times the reach percentage, your message is reaching just as many people."
• There are various ways to measure user involvement or impact, and nonprofits should focus on those that best match their missions and goals.

Sources -   Facebook Data Shows What Works,  Brainyard News
You can access and download the main benchmark study, supplement, slides and webinar through http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/ 

Facebook wants $$ for 'Likes'

 An article in the New York Post is claiming that Facebook has been approaching cable and network executives about payments from the networks for the additional exposure for, and interest in, their video content hosted on the popular social media site.  To date, Facebook has earned minimal advertising revenues from its online video offerings, but feels that growing that service is key to remaining competitive with YouTube.

(T)he companies would share the ad revenue gleaned from the increased exposure a piece of video content generates from “liking” the content on Facebook. The social network feels this would boost TV ratings and the company should therefore get a cut of TV ad revenues.
“If you have 2.6 million likes and Facebook drives that to 4.6 million, then they would share a piece of the additional likes,” one TV source told The Post.

  This move is one of many new potential revenue streams being explored by Facebook.  Earlier, Facebook reached a deal with cable net TBS to split ad revenues for some video content hosted online by Facebook, and distributed across TBS's TV and digital platforms.

So what's a 'Like' worth? Chompon, a daily deals online platform, suggested earlier this year that a Facebook 'like' was worth $8, while a Tweet was worth $5.

Sources -  Facebook wants to cash in on 'like' button, New York Post
Facebook, TBS Team Up to Distribute Branded Content,  MediaPost News

Gaikai brings gaming to the Cloud

Post contributed by Jamison Lanum -

For those unfamiliar with the rise of cloud-gaming, here's the rub -
   Streaming content from the Cloud may not seem like such a big deal anymore. Netflix does it. Hulu does it. However, streaming video games is an entirely different animal to tame. High-end video games typically require a dedicated gaming pc that can run between $800 and $1200 and even higher.  This platform is needed because the data loads and throughput of games can run orders of magnitude greater than simple video, and speed and responsiveness is often critical.

    Companies like Gaikai have installed a massive network infrastructure that allows them to stream (that's right) high-end video games over the internet. Gaikai has this hardware and network in place on their own service, allowing customers to play games on lower-end machines without sacrificing performance.  Now it needs to show off these capabilities to potential users.
   Taking their service to Facebook is a huge step for the company, offering access to hundreds of millions of users around the world, many of whom are already playing simple games on Facebook. While Gaikai is only set up for streaming game demos at this time, full games are on the horizon. Partnering with Facebook seems to be a good marketing strategy, as long as the service delivers the full video gaming experience.

Source -  Gaikai brings its cloud gaming to Facebook, launches beta application,  Engadget

BJB - edited for style

Facebook's Global Dominance

Post submitted by Reanna Mortensen -

There is a major difference in international social network use from 2008 to 2011. The biggest difference is the world domination of Facebook over other social media sites in 2011. In the top map, it shows that MySpace dominated the United States as a social media website, Hi-5 was the biggest site in Mexico, Orkut and Hi-5 were popular in South America, Europe had many different sites depending on the country, and Africa had a variety of social network systems. In 2011, almost the entire globe turned to Facebook as its main social medium. In fact, there are only three other colors visible on the 2011 map.

    I think it’s unreal how fast Facebook spread across the world in just three years. This brings up the question, what does Facebook offer that other social networks do not? Perhaps Facebook is better advertised than other social media websites, or maybe the concept and functions it offers are just really well designed. Either way, Facebook is the powerhouse of social networks internationally.

BJB - This also illustrates the concept of network economy - that for many networks, the value of the network to users, as a means to interact with others, increases as the number of users (or possible connections increase.  As Facebook gained ground, its value as a social medium increased, enticing more to join or switch from other options.

Source -  World Map Showing the Popularity of Social Networks,  Oxyweb.co.uk blog

What Facebook's IPO filings reveal

You've probably already heard that Facebook stock will soon go public.  In order to do the IPO (Initial Public Offering, in case you're wondering), they have to file a variety of documents and reports with the SEC and the markets.  These filings offer some detailed looks into Facebook's status and operations.
  The numbers for last December indicate that there were 823 unique users (or at least user accounts), and that more than half (430 million) used Facebook through a mobile device.
   On the financial side, Facebook reported earning $3.74 billion in gross revenues for 2011 (up 88% from 2010), with $1.7 billion in operating profits before tax (and about $1 billion after).  That resulted in a very healthy profit margin of around 27%.
  Facebook seems poised to continue its push into mobile.

"We are devoting substantial resources to developing engaging mobile products and experiences for a wide range of platforms, including smartphones and feature phones. In addition, we are working across the mobile industry with operators, hardware manufacturers, operating system providers, and developers to improve the Facebook experience on mobile devices and make Facebook available to more people around the world. We believe that mobile usage is critical to maintaining user growth and engagement over the long term," the company wrote in its filing.

  The high degree of mobile use has potentially positive and negative implications for Facebook.  On the positive side, a mobile-friendly systems is a huge advantage in globalization, as mobile networks are expanding much faster than computer networks, and consumers seem much more willing to invest in "feature" phones than in PCs, in emerging markets.  And with Facebook working to embed its platform on SIM cards, Facebook access could become a standard feature of new mobile phones.  On the negative side, Facebook currently generates less advertising revenue from mobile users, as third-party advertising does not display in current mobile apps.  Some analysts are also suggesting that Facebook may have to work out some revenue-sharing with cell operators, if features like Facebook chat service displace SMS use (and revenue).
  While display advertising currently drives revenues, the IPO filings show that in-app purchases from games and other apps is a significant and rapidly increasing revenue source.

“Users are paying for premium content and features through these games and apps, and everybody is surprised by just how much money that is generating for Facebook,” commented Adrian Drury, senior consultant at Ovum.

In general, the future seems bright for Facebook.  However, one analyst cautioned that Facebook's current success is attributable, at least in part, to its focus on providing value to its users, rather than maximizing profits.  Will going public shift that focus significantly?  If it does, users may well shift to other, more user-friendly social media systems and start a spiral of decline seen recently in other media.

Sources - What Facebook's IPO filing means for the telecoms industry,  telecoms.com
Facebook files for $5B IPO, shows 425M mobile users,  Fierce Mobile Content
Facebook's SEC Filing

Facebook challenged on profiling preteens

Post submitted by Molly McCurdy (edited and elaboration by BJB) -

  Facebook is a convenient way to stay in touch with friends and has become a pivotal advertising tool for companies; but what you may not know is that all of your personal information is packaged up into a profile, which is then marketed to advertisers.   When Facebook was initially created in 2004 as a social networking site for college students, the user had to have a college email address to register and open a page. In 2006, Facebook allowed anyone with an email address to register, although its terms stated that users must be 13 or older.  Now, seven years later, the website has transformed into an advertising powerhouse with users of all ages participating. But in a generation where cyber bullying and online predators are a serious problem, where is the age limit for Facebook users?

   The 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act prohibited any website from collecting personal information from a child under the age of 13 without parental consent - thus Facebook's choice of 13 as its lower age limit.  However, it's a soft limit, and can be bypassed.  Also, there is no prohibition against parents registering their kids on Facebook.  A Consumer Reports study last May estimated that more than 7.5 million U.S. Facebook users were under the age of 13; and 5 million were under 10. Moreover, their study found that most of their use was unsupervised by parents. Other studies indicate that about three-quarters of parents report occasionally monitoring their kids' social media accounts - but 80% of kids report using privacy settings to block at least some content from parents' view.. In any case, it's pretty clear that parents aren't always supervising and monitoring their kids' use of Facebook (or other social media sites).  Critics aren't only concerned with privacy and data collection - there are also charges that Facebook provides no increased security precautions for minors, and dioes not block advertising to kids..
   Within weeks of Consumer Reports releasing their article, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that they would challenge the COPPA law. A New York Times Magazine piece speculated that it is not certain why they want children’s membership so badly but brand loyalty does come into play - “The younger the child, the greater the opportunity to build brand loyalty that might transcend the next social-media trend. And crucially, signing up kids early can accustom them to “sharing” with the big audiences that are at their small fingertips.”
   Facebook provides a "free service", but like many media, operating costs are offset by advertising and marketing revenues.  When you create an account on Facebook you are providing personal information about yourself that goes into a “personal profile” if you will. You enter your; age, hometown, activities, “likes”, your friends, where you vacation etc. This enables the ads to be highly targeted, including targeting kids.  The more connected you are with the site, the more “likes” you post, the more personalized your ads will be on the side of the page. Some find the targeted marketing helpful, and appreciate the advertisements. For others, the concept of Facebook marketing you for profit is simply outrageous. But kids are considered special, and there is greater concern about the influence of advertising and marketing directed towards young people.  It doesn't help when a Facebook's sales chief notes that friend referrals are a potent form of online advertising, giving Facebook even greater incentives to track kids' online behavior.  Lisa Wirthman, in a Denver Post Op-ed, stated that “Parents need to pull back the curtain and understand that Facebook has no motivation to make its site safer for minors when restricting data collection from kids directly contradicts its business model.”
   Whether Facebook is directly violating COPPA is open to debate - Facebook correctly states that to get an account, you must either state you are 13 or older, or have a parent register you.  If you lie about either, Facebook can close the account, and they do, when they are notified of the situation.  Critics argue that this kind of reactive enforcement isn't enough, and that the law should be interpreted as requiring parental permission to be collected for each separate Facebook session.  They also suggest that Facebook should actively screen questionable accounts, or at least make privacy settings for kids default to the "no marketing of info" setting.
    Whatever interpretation wins in court, Facebook faces a PR issue with how they handle kids, and their personal information and behaviors, in the system.

Sources - That Facebook friend might be 10 years old, and other troubling news,  Consumer Reports
Facebook and Your Teenager,  Denver Post
Why Facebook Is After Your Kids, NY Times Magazine

Facebook to add media sharing

Facebook is said be planning to unveil a service that will allow users to share music and TV programs with friends.  Facebook is said to have made deals with some program services to allow a user's profile page to show the content the user is consuming from outside music and television services.

Source:  Facebook to unveil media sharing platform,  Fierce Mobile Content

Get your MBA through Facebook?

The London School of Business and Finance is proposing to offer the first MBA degree program delivered through a Facebook app.  It already offers the degree through a traditional distance approach, and the online version is expected to cost prospective students about the same amounts.  The app will deliver video lectures; lecture notes and revisions, and tutor and student support through forums and discussion groups, and directed online readings.  One new component is the planned "Global Live Revision Sessions" - monthly online Q&A classes with tutors.
The proposal raises a number of issues regarding pedagogy, learning styles, and potential issues with quality control - but also shows some of the "outside-the-box" potential with new media.

Sources: MBA(fb),  OnlineMediaDailyCommentary
Program site: LSBF Global MBA

Facebook sued by marketing firms over billing

A group of social marketing firms have filed a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that Facebook has intentionally violated industry standards for measuring click-throughs in order to inflate their advertising revenues.
In 2009, the Interactive Advertising Bureau released a set of recommended guidelines in an attempt to get online metrics to reduce fraud and better reflect what advertisers and marketers wanted - users who are interested in visiting their sites.  What they didn't want is to have to pay for fraudulent clicks (coming from bots or other suspect sources) or for more than one click-through per user in a short period of time.  The IAB guidelines were partly in response to stories of offshore "click farms" that employed individuals to repeatedly click links to inflate usage numbers, and the increase in automated systems searching the Net and gathering information.
The suit alleges that Facebook did not use available industry lists of bots and spiders to filter out their clicks, went against the advice of their engineers (and industry standards) to shorten the length of time between clicks recorded by individual users, and refuses to be audited under IAB standards by any outside group, or to reveal its standards for measuring clicks..
This suit stems from one originally filed in 2009 - in that case Facebook asked for a dismissal, citing language in its terms and conditions that it was not responsible for fraudulent actions by third parties.  That judge ruled that Facebook could be sued for Facebook charging for "invalid" clicks, but not for "fraudulent" ones.
At the very least, the breadth of the class-action suit raises questions about the degree to which Facebook overcharges, compared to other online media that follows IAB guidelines.  That can impact Facebook's viability as an advertising and marketing medium.  The failure to be release details about its own measurement standards is perhaps the most glaring problem - for metrics to be considered valid and reliable, the specifics of measurement needs to be public. Otherwise, the value of the metric and measure becomes uncertain, and reduces demand.


Source - Facebook Isn't Going To Like This: Papers Allege It Violates Industry Click Standards,  OnlineMediaDaily

Social Media News - Discovering the Value

More and more, traditional media outlets are hoping to take advantage of social media's ability to reach large numbers of people in a more interactive, engaging way.
A recent RTNDA/Hofstra survey of U.S. local TV stations shows social media being embraced by most stations, with the possible exception of "the smallest stations in the smallest markets."  In fact, they report that more than 90% of TV stations participate on Facebook or Twitter, and stations are beginning to see social media as more than a way of reaching audiences or for promotion.  According to the director of the research project.

“There appears to have been a shift in the last year from using social media primarily as a promotional tool to using it heavily — if not primarily — to have conversations with the audience ... Most news directors noted seeking comments, feedback or interaction. Some talked about livechat and crowdsourcing, but most of the comments dealt with conversations.”

The survey provides some additional details as to how local TV stations use social media.  More than two-thirds of station reported incorporating social networking into their content and storytelling.  36% of stations report using Twitter "constantly", but another third report using Twitter sporadically or not at all.  On Facebook, about a quarter of stations report only having a single page focused on the station, and 32% report  their single page is tied to the newsroom.  Another 37% have separate pages for both the station and the newsroom.
The report indicates that utilization of social networking by radio station still lags, despite large gains in the last year. This year, two-thirds of station report some use of social networking, while only one-third reported doing so last year.


Another report from NetProspex looked at business use of social media in the U.S.  The New York Times topped the list, and the Washington Post also made in into the top ten.  Walt Disney comes in at number 11, while Scripps Networks ranked 14th. Their study also indicated that local TV stations was the industry making the most use of Twitter.

One example of the increased emphasis comes from the 'Today' show.  This year, producers at NBC's 'Today' show began encouraging both fans and performers at their summer concert series to share tweets and photos.  Producers created unique Twitter hashtags for each event, and posted signs encouraging its use during concerts. 

After the show, they use Instagram to share and curate photos, and then assemble top tweets and photos into a story that is posted on Storify.
Senior 'Today" producer Melissa Lonner commented that, as a result, “Our concert fans show up with their cell phones to every performance ... Social media has allowed fans to immediately share the concert experience with their friends and family, and their participation has energized the concert-going experience.”
One outside indicator of success was that May's Rhiannon concert became the #2 trending topic worldwide.

There are many ways that media can use social networking - for promotions, for building greater connections with audiences and building communities, and for tracking news, events, and topics.  While not every potential use will benefit everyone, social media provide tremendous opportunity for innovation, with a little investment of time and effort.

Sources:  "Most TV stations embracing social media", lostremote.com
"RTDNA/Hofstra Survey Finds Changing Social Media Landscape for TV & Radio: Focus Shifts From Promotional to Conversational", RTNDA release
"NYTimes, TV stations among ‘most social’ companies", lostremote.com
"NetProspex Social Business Report", NetProspex release
"'TODAY' Show Engages Concert Crowds On Social Media", lostremote.com

Adding value through integration: Skype from Facebook

One of the general themes of this blog and course is that in a hyper-competitive market, one path to success is to find ways to add value to your product or service.  Facebook's been fairly good at that - first enabling its use as an alternative to email, then as a platform for sharing and streaming video (see earlier post).  Their latest added-value service is to allow users use Skype for video chats with their Facebook friends directly from Facebook, without having to have the regular Skype software.  This is an extension of recent Facebook - Skype collaborations (Skype users have been able to message Facebook friends directly from the Skype software platform).
The integration of these related services adds value for Facebook and its users, by integrating video or audio chat functionality, and benefits Skype and its users by tapping the more than 750 million active Facebook users (being able to access more people more easily).  The move can also be seen as a competitive response to Google's newly launched social network service, Google+, which includes a video calling component.

Source: "Facebook and Skype announce video sharing partnership" Telecoms.com

Facebook - Trouble with Faces?

Some of the oldest and largest public interest/advocacy  groups concerned about online privacy have asked the Federal Trade Commission to force Facebook to suspend operation of a new feature that uses facial recognition software to identify people appearing in other people's photos.  The complaint argues that the automatic tagging system amounts to an automated online identification system that largely occurs outside of individual's knowledge or consent; and as such exposes individuals to unknown risks.  The complaint calls for Facebook to obtain "opt-in" consent before sharing information about them in new ways.
Facebook has replied that it's previously announced its automatic tagging feature as it's become available in countries.  They say that users can "opt-out" - that if you become concerned about particular applications of automatic tagging, you can reconfigure your privacy settings to not automatically tag your image (if you can figure out how).  They also claim that if other users 'tag" you in their photos, you can ask for your name to be removed after the fact.  [Opt-in permissions require specific consent be obtained prior to the collection and/or use of information, while opt-out permissions only stop the use or sharing of the information collected after notification that you've opted out].  Those backing the complaint argue that Facebook still hasn't provided adequate information about the range and extent of personal information that it collects on its users, and that the opt-out option fails to prevent continued collection of the biometric data, or require the deletion of data already collected.  They say that Facebook has left open the potential for the service to market or share the data with advertisers, app developers, and the government without users' permission.  Name searches could reveal information about you that you had no idea was there.

So the fundamental lesson about the Internet needs to be expanded.  No longer do you need to realize that once you post things on the Internet, it's always out there somewhere, so be careful as to what you post.  Now, you may also want to be careful about what your friends post - those potentially embarrassing photos your friends posted from last Spring Break may show up at a later job interview.

Source: "Privacy Groups File FTC Complaint About Face Recognition", Online Media Daily

Warners trials direct rentals on Facebook

(Topic suggested by Samantha Bright)

For any media content producer, an issue has been having to use one or more middlemen (each of whom takes a cut off the top)  to get content into the hands of consumers.  The growth of the net has created opportunities to more directly reach consumers (and reach more of them, and more cheaply).  Over the last few years, innovators in various media (academic research papers and music early, more recently photography and book publishing) have explored ways to minimize the path from producer to consumer.
Warner Bros. Pictures is testing a new pathway, this time through Facebook.  The company is offering "The Dark Knight" for rental on Facebook.  The movie, which has already earned Warners a billion dollars worldwide (split with distributors, theaters, retailers, etc.), is being made available at a cost of 30 Facebook credits (about $3), with Facebook taking 1/3.  Purchasers, after downloading, have a 48-hour window for viewing. 
Warners has indicated that it will continue testing both rental and purchase options through Facebook with other titles over the next few months.

Source: "Facebook to Stream Movies,"  WGMT 411NBC News

The Future of Facebook Funding

From Jennifer Sprouse -

This article in the Huffington Post is about facebook users paying for facebook. Fred Wilson argues that the idea of charging users to pay to use facebook and other social media would never work. Wilson suggests that advertising is the way to go for facebook and other social media to make a profit.

 

Source: "Fred Wilson: It's 'Absurd' To Expect Users To Pay For Facebook, Twitter"  Huffington Post 

 

From  Professor Bates -

Other recent stories show that Facebook is coming to dominate online display ad impressions, with comScore saying they account for 25% of the exposures in the last quarter of 2010, with the next highest source of impressions being Yahoo (9.7%) and Microsoft (4.5%).  A Nielsen report suggested that the Facebook users averaged more than 6.5 hours online with Facebook in March, and an eMarketer reported that Facebook overtook Yahoo in grabbing the biggest share of online display revenues, with $2.2 billion (21.6% of all US display ad dollars), and predicting that Facebook reaches $4 billion this year.

 

So maybe they don't need revenues from users - which would likely drive down use of Facebook, and thus display ad revenues. 

 

Source: "Facebook Serves 25% of Display Ads" Online Media Daily