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In The SXSW Location War, Loopt Hopes The Correct Weapon Is Events

With SXSW starting Friday in Austin, Texas, every location-based service out there is right now finalizing updates that they hope will be the one that gets them used more than all the others. Loopt, is betting on events integration.

The latest version of the app, due to hit the App Store tomorrow will feature a new Pulse tab. Here you’ll find events populated from a ton of sources including the live music tracker SonicLiving (SXSW is first and foremost a music event, after all) and most notably, Facebook. This pre-population is important, because it means the events will already be in the system so users won’t have to do anything other than share it with friends, or check-in if they’re going. The feature also uses you current location to show which events are happening around you at any given moment that a lot of people are at.

As you might expect, you also also tell who is already at the event, and which of your friend is supposed to be going. The later feature works with Facebook Connect. You can RSVP to an event right from within Loopt and see who else is scheduled to go.

Calling it the “best event ever from an app,” Loopt founder Sam Altman believes they’ll have every single event taking place at SXSW in their system. A newer startup, the recently funded Plancast (started by TechCrunch alum Mark Hendrickson), may have something to say about that statement as they’ll be debuting their own events-based iPhone app at the festival as well. And like this new Loopt feature, a key Plancast component is Facebook event integration.

Gowalla, meanwhile, has a full list of events straight from SXSW itself — which is highlighting the app on it’s main site. Gowalla is Austin-based.

Loopt was one of the original hot players in the location space, launching an iPhone app alongside the App Store launch in 2008. However, their initial bet was on always-on location updates, which the iPhone cannot do because it will not allow third-party apps to run in the background. Loopt found a loophole (see what I did there?) to that through AT&T, but by then the momentum has already swung to the check-in based location services like Foursquare and Gowalla. Last year, Loopt pivoted its app to be more predicated around check-ins.

Look for the latest Loopt app tomorrow in the App Store.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

NYT: Facebook Location Features Coming Next Month

Facebook is finally going to enter the location game at this April’s f8 conference, according to a report this morning on the NYT’s Bits blog. And they’re looking to take Google head on.

We’ve been hearing rumors about Facebook’s location features for a long time, but the buzz has picked up in the last few months. Those rumors got legs in October, when we noticed that the site had added language explicitly talking about location features to its rewritten privacy policy.

The question now is exactly what this location sharing will look like. I’ve heard that Facebook has tested simply attaching location data to user status updates, similar to the way Twitter does it. According to the report, Facebook will also offer an API to third parties, presumably allowing services like Foursquare to send their location data into Facebook (it’s unclear if data will also flow the other way, but I suspect it will once Facebook can get the privacy settings right).

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Times piece is the assertion that Facebook isn’t looking to beat Foursquare, Gowalla, and similar location based services — something that I believe it could easily do if it wanted to. Rather, it’s looking to beat Google in the small-business advertising space. The Times report doesn’t say much on how exactly Facebook is going to do that, but I suspect it will involve getting as many third parties as possible to integrate its API.

Go Tribal Helps Friends Coordinate Informal Plans

Launching in beta today, Go Tribal tackles the other side of the equation from formal event services like Meetup or Plancast by helping members organize informal group plans. By identifying when users are free and available to hang out, Go Tribal hopes to eliminate some of the hassle involved in coordinating friends for spontaneous group activities.

Targeted primarily towards women, Go Tribal’s goal is to facilitate meaningful offline interaction via simple technology that lets users see which of their friends is “down to hang out” at any given time. Members can set status indicators for upcoming dates, allowing peer groups to identify the best times to arrange informal get-togethers. Once a group has agreed upon a physical meetup, members can coordinate on the specifics of time and place, plus use existing social networks like Facebook and Twitter to further socialize the event and send out more invites.

We spoke with Founder and CEO Shruti Challa about the service, which will be open to the first 10,000 signups in the U.S. for now. She said the inspiration for Go Tribal arose naturally out of the young founding team (which also includes Chris Baclig, Eric Ma and Amara Humphry), who upon recent graduation from Stanford discovered a lack of tools for maintaining existing friendships in the physical world.

“Technology seemed to be getting further away from creating and sustaining relationships in real life. Facebook and Twitter seemed distant, and we wanted to use technology to help create a physical connection,” Challa said of the new startup.

Future plans for Go Tribal include integrating more contextual local search and information tools to help members decide where to spend their group time once they settle on a date and time to get together. The startup also plans to eventually work more closely with businesses to help groups influence decisions when they’re actually being made — imagine a coalesced social group with some bargaining power to “shop around” for potential deals and experiences that clubs or venues might be willing to offer in exchange for securing business from a large group.

With an interesting twist on local and informal group event organization and a smart road map ahead, Go Tribal is a social service to watch. If you have a chance to check out the service, let us know what you think. What features would you want to see in a service facilitating informal meetups?

Tags: Events, facebook, go tribal, informal plans, meetup, social media, startups, twitter

The Secret Lives Of Objects: StickyBits Turn Barcodes Into Personal Message Boards

Every place and object in the world has a secret past: who lived there, who passed by, who touched it. The secret lives of objects are filled with such details. If only you could make them talk. But what if you could give any physical object a story simply by sticking a barcode on it and appending a message to that barcode? The message could be a photo, a text message, a video, or a voice note. All anyone would need to unlock the message is a phone with a special barcode scanning app.

Stickybits is that app. Founded by Billy Chasen (the original programmer behind Chartbeat) and Seth Goldstein (chairman and founder of SocialMedia), the startup just closed a $300,000 seed round from Polaris Venture Partners and Mitch Kapor. Officially launching this week at Austin’s SXSW festival, stickybits is a new mobile app for both the iPhone and Android. It lets you scan any barcode and attach a message to that physical object.

The barcode in a greeting card , for instance, could trigger a video message from the sender. One on a box of medical supplies could inventory what is inside. A business card with a code on it could link to a resume or LinkedIn profile. Museums and theme parks could use them for audio tours and maps. Local merchants could use the barcodes to track deliveries or place them in their storefront windows to distribute digital coupons and offers to passersby. The possibilities are endless.

The app is free, but stickybits sells packs of 20 vinyl barcode stickers for $10. You also can download and print your own barcodes for free, or scan an existing one on a physical product like a can of Coke. (Future business model: charge brands to claim their barcodes and place their own messages first).

Each barcode is programmable by the first person who scans it and and leaves a photo, video, audio, or text message. The next time somebody scans that barcode, the previous message will appear on their phone. Anyone can add a new message to the same code, resulting in a stream of messages connected to whatever object or place the barcode is stuck on. Each scan, and related message, is geo-tagged so you can see as an object moves around how its story evolves.

The app lets you follow people and see their object stream, or get notified whenever one of your objects is scanned, moved, or new bits are attached to them. You can toggle between stream and map views. It supports Facebook Connect for login and any scan can be broadcast out to Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare. With Foursquare, it actually gives you the option to check into the place where you are by scanning the barcode.

If stickybits sounds like science fiction that may be because they share some attributes with author Bruce Sterling’s concept of “Spimes” (later fleshed out in his book Shaping Things):

The most important thing to know about Spimes is that they are precisely located in space and time. They have histories. They are recorded, tracked, inventoried, and always associated with a story.

Spimes have identities, they are protagonists of a documented process.

They are searchable, like Google. You can think of Spimes as being auto-Googling objects.

Sterling predicted Spimes will eventually be designed into all objects, and contain their histories, raw materials, ingredients, ownership history and other data. Perhaps stickybits are first steps in that direction.

Google Buzz Could Have Dominated Location. (And Snuck Up On Facebook And Twitter.)

Tomorrow it will be exactly one month since the launch of Google Buzz. The song remains the same: it’s a mess. Normally, that wouldn’t bother me so much — after all, a lot of services are a mess — but Buzz has a lot of potential. But again, it’s been a month. I’m starting to wonder if it will ever reach that potential. I’m also starting to wonder if it shouldn’t have been introduced as something entirely different.

Despite its many annoyances, I’ve been using Buzz regularly over the past month (Gmail integration tends to shove it in your face and I hate unread counts). The one thing I keep coming back to is that Buzz on the iPhone and Android is pretty impressive. Specifically, the location functionality as run through the mobile web is impressive. In fact, that’s what I think Buzz should have started out as.

Yes, I know Google already has a location-based service: Latitude. But let’s be honest: no one uses Latitude. Or if they do, they likely don’t even realize they’re using it because it’s just turned on in the background. And that’s precisely why Latitude doesn’t work.

The past several months have proven that consumer demand for location services is contingent on one thing: the ability to “check-in.” That is, rather than having a service that is always on in the background transmitting your location (like Latitude), people are actually using the services that allow you to dictate when and where your location is sent out (like Foursquare and Gowalla). There’s a reason that services like Loopt has pivoted from one method to the other.

Checking-in works for people because of two main things: simplicity (of the concept) and privacy. People prefer checking-in because it makes sense. You hit a button to say you’re somewhere, and it gets transmitted. You don’t have to worry about whether your mobile device is always transmitting because you’re in complete control of it. In the future, as people become more comfortable with the concept, I suspect some form of “always-on” location will become the norm, but for now, it’s baby-steps.

And that’s why Latitude, as it’s currently built, doesn’t work for most people. But Buzz — the mobile version, at least — is the location-based service that Google should have built. It has the idea of checking-in built into it; you simply do so by buzzing from your device. When you do that, Google offers you the opportunity to tag your buzz to a certain place and instantly send it out to your followers.

That’s another key to why Buzz (and check-in services as a whole) works as a location service: with it, Google finally understands that people don’t want to let others know their GPS coordinates. That means nothing to most people. Instead, Buzz lets you select an actual place (like a restaurant, for example), and send that out with your message.

People understand the concept of places, not coordinates. And Google, thanks to its Search and Maps businesses, happens to have databases of more places than probably any other company out there. With Buzz, they’re finally using it.

As a sharing service within Gmail, Buzz isn’t ready for primetime yet. As a location service, Buzz could have been a serious challenger to Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt, and all the others preparing for big launches at SXSW later this week. Imagine Buzz as a location-based iPhone and Android app (or even just a web app). It still could have been linked to your Google Profile and perhaps would have even been a better gateway drug to making Google more social because it would have been a more gradual build-up.

And to ensure some usage beyond Google Profiles, Google could have put Buzz in Gmail Labs, as an option for Gmail. As a broken social sharing service, Buzz in Gmail is annoying. But as a location-based stream of check-ins (that people could still comment on and like), it’s potentially interesting. And it still would have been exposed to millions of potential users that way. And some users could have even used browser location features to use it within Gmail (Google Chrome is one of the browsers testing this natively).

Google could have kept the Buzz button on its mobile interface for easy check-in/update ability from all of its mobile apps. And Buzz built-in to the native Maps application on Android is simply brilliant.

As a location-based app, Google would have likely been instantaneously bigger than all of its rivals. This is the key reason people suggest that when Facebook enters the location game, it will wipe out the other players — it’s the huge built-in user base.

Then the next step could have been to more directly emphasize the concept of sharing. That would have been to opposite approach of Twitter, which first was all about sharing, and more recently has added the location layer (which Facebook is also likely to do at some point this year). But that makes sense for Google, since the social elements have been their weak point and no one yet has a huge stranglehold over the location space.

Instead, right now, Buzz is oddly split between this sharing service within Gmail and this location-based service that exists on the mobile web. They should have focused on the latter, used the location buzz (pun intended) at SXSW to take out their upstart rivals, and then morphed into a social sharing service down the road. Then they would have been well-positioned (and perhaps more importantly, better prepared) to take on the more established social sharing sites, Twitter and Facebook.

Oh well. Time to go mute some more posts on the Buzz we’re stuck with.

Facebook Looks To Be Partnering With Eventbrite To Monetize Events

Here’s a fascinating idea – Facebook looks to be partnering with Eventbrite to let users sell tickets to the 3.5 million events added to Facebook each month.

Earlier this month we confirmed that Facebook intends to sell tickets to its upcoming F8 developer conference through Eventbrite. But there was no indication that the partnership extended beyond that.

Then a reader noticed that facebook.eventbrite.com linked to a page showing the image above (the page has since been removed). The message says:

Collect money for your event with Eventbrite

Eventbrite is partnering with Facebook to enable you to collect money for your event. Your attendees pay with credit card and Eventbrite collects the money on your behalf and sends you a check when your event is over. We charge a small service fee for every ticket sold. 5.5% + $.99c, which attendees pay, costing you nothing.

Eventbrite has helped event organizers around the world sell over 10 million tickets. We’re excited to help you sell your and put some delightful cash in your pocket.

Like the F8 event, this is set up on Eventbrite’s site, and it seems likely that Facebook will send users there that want to monetize events, have them log in via Facebook Connect, and finish the process.

We interviewed Eventbrite founders Kevin Hartz and Julia Hartz last last year when they announced funding from Sequioia Capital. The company is growing fast and expects over $100 million in gross ticket sales this year.

A Facebook partnership would add a lot of flow to the service, obviously. And even though only a small percentage of events need ticket sales, lots of them want to give out free tickets. Eventbrite does that without any fee and calls it viral marketing.

When we asked Eventbrite’s Kevin Hartz about the screenshot he said Sorry, “Mike, can’t comment at this time/We never comment on deal speculation.” Facebook hasn’t yet responded to our request for comment.

Update: Facebook says “We’re always testing Connect implementations with various sites and have nothing to share at this time.”

Google vs. Yahoo: Who Has the Right Social Strategy?

The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; YouTube; Wordpress: these companies, built from the ground-up, are mainstays in social media. None of them were created by a large tech company, and all but one remains independent.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, when you think about it. Large tech companies have had limited to no success creating their own social media home runs. In an era where communication is increasingly taking place on these channels, the inability of these digital giants to build social networks is rather striking.

Two titans in particular are making social media headlines for different reasons: Yahoo has decided not to create it own social network, but is instead striking partnership deals with Facebook and Twitter. Google on the other hand, not only bought YouTube, but it is attempting to carve out its own piece of the social media pie with Google Buzz.

Partnership vs. in-house development; content vs. technology; Yahoo vs. Google: which company has the right social media strategy? What are the goals of both companies in the social realm? Do either have a chance against new and nimble startups like Facebook and Twitter?

Let’s take a look, shall we?

The Yahoo Strategy: Partner in Order to Drive Traffic

In 2006, Yahoo made a $1+ billion bid for Facebook. As we all know, Yahoo failed to close that deal and the story ever since has been the rise of Facebook and the slow decline of Yahoo, who was nearly acquired by Microsoft for over $40 billion in 2008.

Now with new leadership (led by CEO Carol Bartz), Yahoo is trying to make a turnaround and bring back some of the authority it once commanded. The Internet portal is turning to social media as a cornerstone of its growth strategy, but it isn’t focused on acquiring a Twitter or building its own social network, but on creating partnerships that integrate every facet of Yahoo into social networks, primarily Facebook and Twitter.

In September 2009, Yahoo announced that it would integrate Facebook Connect in its most popular web properties. The goal was to truly make Yahoo your portal to the web by not only delivering news, email, and finances, but also your social graph and the status updates of your friends. On the flip side, Yahoo would also benefit from the traffic bump that comes with sharing articles and content on Facebook’s news feed.

Yahoo has continued to push this partnership strategy in recent months. Two weeks ago, Yahoo partnered with Twitter to give users access to their Twitter feed from within Yahoo, update their status, and integrate Twitter content into the company’s search and media properties. A few days ago, Yahoo Mail hooked up with Facebook, the first integration between Facebook Connect and Yahoo.

Yahoo seems content in partnering with the major social services, rather than compete with them. Social media efforts like Yahoo Buzz, the tech giant’s answer to Digg, which hasn’t made a dent in the social voting powerhouse, have likely left a bitter taste in the mouths of its executives. Yahoo is now focused on using social media to generate traffic, eyeballs, and engagement times.

The Google Strategy: Dominate

Google’s strategy goes in a completely different direction to Yahoo’s approach; its strategy is also all over the map.

Like Yahoo, Google doesn’t have a good record in social media. Google Friend Connect isn’t even close to Facebook Connect in terms of adoption, Orkut never made inroads in the U.S., Blogger has nowhere near the traction of WordPress, and other acquisitions such as Jaiku and Dodgeball haven’t panned out.

You’d have a very good argument if you said that Google’s only social media hit has been YouTube, and that “only” cost the company $1.65 billion. Google has a lot more social properties than many people realize, but it’s a hodgepodge of acquisitions (Blogger, YouTube, Picasa) and internally-created services (Orkut, Google Knol, Friend Connect). The company’s batting average, though, has been pretty poor, especially by Google’s standards.

That was before Google Buzz, though. With the launch of its most advanced social product yet, Google’s strategy has finally begun to emerge, and it is a good one. If Google can stir up adoption for Buzz (which it has via Gmail), keep that engagement (this remains to be seen), and launch a standalone version of its social media tool, it can carve out a piece of the (very large) social media pie. Linking or integrating it to YouTube, Picasa, Orkut, Friend Connect, and its other social tools could provide a boost to those services as well.

There’s no reason to believe Google will succeed with Buzz, given Google’s social media track record. However, Buzz is the most complete product Google has put out yet and has some strong engagement numbers. It’s riskier than Yahoo’s strategy, but the payoff could be be titanic.

Google and Yahoo Are Very Different Companies

Yahoo’s strategy is focused around integrations with already-popular social services, while Google is focused around building and acquiring its own social media powerhouses. While Yahoo does acquire social media companies (e.g. Flickr) and Google has some strong partnerships (e.g. Twitter in Google Real-time search), that’s not the focus of their respective social strategies.

The reason their approaches to social media are so different has little to do with their leadership teams or the quality of their decision-making. No, it boils down to one simple truth: Google and Yahoo are very different companies.

I argue that Yahoo is, for the most part, a content company, while Google is focused on technology. There was a point where Yahoo was known for its tech innovations, but that mantle has long since passed to Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others.

I explored this phenomenon in my first Social Analyst column, Content vs. Technology: What MySpace and AOL Have in Common. MySpace and AOL were also tech giants, but at some point lost their technology edge (MySpace lost to Facebook, AOL lost to DSL and Cable Internet) and thus began to focus on ramping up content creation and driving traffic to their web properties. Yahoo falls into the same camp.

Because of this key difference between Yahoo and Google, it’s no surprise that they are implementing different approaches. Google’s is focused on building technology that will drive adoption, revenue, and information through its doors. Yahoo’s focus is on bringing more eyeballs to this content and keeping them on Yahoo for longer periods of time.

Who Has the Right Social Media Strategy?

Now for the big question: is Google or Yahoo doing better at social media? Which one has the right social media strategy?

If you’ve read this column carefully, you can probably guess that I’m not going to outright declare that one company is “right” or that one is “wrong.” What I want you to take away from this week’s column is simple: your long-term plan and company composition should determine your social strategy.

Yahoo is simply better at content than Google. Yahoo Finance is, in my opinion, simply a better product than Google’s version. Its array of hosted news content is bigger, and it owns properties such as OMG, which is doing well as a celebrity news hub.

Google doesn’t write its own news or acquire a newspaper for a simple reason: it’s just not their focus, and they wouldn’t be very good at it. Would it make any sense for Google to focus on using social media to drive traffic to its content? The answer is no.

On the flip side, Google’s technology prowess trumps Yahoo by large margins. Google can build better technical products (e.g., Search, Gmail, Buzz, Android, Chrome) in a shorter amount of time than Yahoo can, and it can iterate faster than almost any large-scale public Internet company (its rapid privacy changes to Buzz is one good example).

These things are no longer Yahoo’s strength. So does it make sense for Yahoo to try to build a social network to rival Buzz, Facebook, or Twitter? Could it really keep up with any of them over the long haul? I severely doubt it.

So here is my conclusion: neither company’s direction is “wrong” because each one requires a different social strategy to succeed. Based on their strengths, Yahoo and Google are implementing the right strategies.

Now it’s just about executing them.

Tags: facebook, Google, google buzz, social media, The Social Analyst, trending, twitter, Yahoo

TweetPhoto Gets More Social With Facebook, Twitter, And Foursquare; Launches Better iPhone App

First launched back in April 2009, TweetPhoto has been steadily building out its service with multiple useful features, including Foursquare integration and a partnership with Kodak. Today, the site is getting a huge overhaul with more social features and a new iPhone app.

TweetPhoto has now added the ability to sign in with Twitter OAuth, Facebook Connect, MySpace OAuth and Foursquare OAuth so that a user of any one of these social networks can use TweetPhoto as a stand alone photo sharing service. The site will also be rolling out LinkedIn support in the next few weeks. In addition to login capabilities across all four of these services, TweetPhoto users can also link these social networking accounts together. Once you link your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace , or Foursquare accounts on the site, your photos uploaded to TweetPhoto can be simultaneously broadcast to all of the networks. Third party applications that use TweetPhoto as the default photo uploader such as TweetDeck and Seesmic’s BlackBerry app, will also include this functionality.

TweetPhoto’s new, free iPhone app, called TweetPhoto Pro, is a suped-up version of its sister iPhone apps. The app allows users to upload photos, see their friends photos, the public photo stream, popular photos (usually celebrities or breaking news), and can link their social network accounts. The startup has also submitted similar apps for Android and Blackberry platforms.

In connection with the new social broadcast features, TweetPhoto is rolling out a new API to include over 35 new API calls. And as we wrote last year, TweetPhoto got into a bit of a pickle over its logo. That combined with Twitter’s trademark of the word “Tweet,” is resulting in TweetPhoto completely rebranding its service. The first step of this effort is a new logo, which we’ve attached above. A new name is forthcoming, says TweetPhoto, and its focus will be much more on the mobile side of things.

While TweetPhoto is still not getting the same amount of traffic as the leaders in the space, TwitPic, the site is edging out fellow competitor yFrog, according to January’s Compete numbers. But as TweetPhoto, which met with a little bit of scandal last fall, makes its offerings more social and interactive, the site could even give TwitPic a run for its money.

8 Great Spotify Hints, Tips and Tricks

We’ve already brought you a how-to guide to get started with Spotify (read that first if you don’t know what it is), but now we’re delving a little deeper into the music streaming software with a look at some hints, tips and tricks that will help you get the most of the service.

Have a read below to see eight great ways to make your Spotify experience smoother, both within the service and via third-party services. And, as always, do be sure to let us know in the comments if there are any great Spotify user hints you have to share.

1. Advanced Search Options

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While you’ll likely find tons of music you like by browsing around Spotify’s click-based system, there will be times you want to find a specific track and don’t want to muck around with fuzzy searches or the like. That’s where Spotify’s advanced search options come into their own.

Simple search terms include sticking title:, album: and artist: at the front of a text-based search query to narrow down results to those three fields, but you can further refine searches for an even more targeted result.

If you wanted a quick trip down memory lane, you could search year:1999 to bring up tracks tagged with that particular year. Likewise, you can search a range of years through year:1999-2004. You can follow the same logic to search by genre, so genre:blues will offer you up a vast range of blues tracks in a jiffy.

This gets advanced when you combine those terms to get a smaller list of results, hopefully containing just what it was you were looking for. Say you only like the old Fleetwood Mac. To get songs you know you want to hear, you could type artist:”fleetwood mac” year:1967-1975.

2. Use Keyboard Shortcuts

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Those of you skilled in the ways of keyboard shortcuts will be pleased to note that Spotify has a ton that will have you control-clicking quickly around the software in no time at all. While some are the same as you’re already used to (e.g cut is control-x or command-x, and paste is the same with v), here are some of the main shortcuts we’ve found useful, for both Windows PCs and Macs.

Play and pause: Spacebar / Spacebar

Turn the volume up: Control-Up / Command-Up

Turn the volume down: Control-Down / Command-Down

Mute the audio: Control-Shift-Down / Command-Shift-Down

Skip to the next song: Control-Right / Control-Command-Right

Go back to the previous song: Control-Left / Control-Command-Left

Make a new playlist: Control-N / Command-N

Land on the search box: Control-L / Command-L

Go back: Alt-Left / Command-[

Go forward: Alt-Right / Command-]

Logout (close in a hurry): Control-Shift-W / Command-Shift-W

3. View All Versions of a Song

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Spotify shows a little circular symbol with an arrow below a line when there is more than one version of a particular song. This feature can be useful if you’ve found the right song, but the wrong version.

As an example, say you look up Bob Dylan’s Girl From The North Country but it’s not the version you wanted with Johnny Cash. If you click the symbol, Spotify will display that version too, as well as any others it may have in its database.

This feature is not perfect — it didn’t group Gary Numan’s remastered version of Cars in with the other versions, for example — but is generally a handy way of finding alternative, acoustic, live, or radio edit versions of songs.

4. Enable Last.fm Scrobbling

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This one’s not rocket science, but it is a feature that’s not exactly promoted so we thought it worthy of mention. As with other music software, like iTunes, et al., Spotify can scrobble the music you are playing on Spotify to Last.fm (i.e. send it to your Last.fm profile).

It’s super-simple to enable this link-up. Just go to the edit menu from the top-right menu bar, click preferences, scroll down three or so options and you’ll see a Last.fm box. If you enter your Last.fm username and password and check the “Enable scrobbling to Last.fm” button, it will do just that.

Now, your Last.fm “Recently Listened Tracks” will display your Spotify streams.

5. Decode Spotify URLs

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If you’ve seen someone tweeting a track, or happened across a Spotify URL that you’re curious about but don’t want to launch the application (or aren’t on a Spotified computer) there’s a site that offers “decoding” of such mysterious URL strings.

Head over to http://spotify.url.fi/ and you’ll see a box to enter the text into. Once you do, the track or album will be revealed to you. It’s a pretty basic site, as you’ll see from the results screen grab above, but it works, and will get you the data you require with minimum fuss.

6. Clean Up Your Spotify URLs

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As well as decoding them, you can also use a tool that will get a little more info out of your Spotify URLs. Instead of the seemingly random string of numbers and letters, Cleanify will take your HTTP link and add the artist’s name and track’s title while preserving the Spotify direct link.

7. Shorten Spotify URLs

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There are a few services that help you shorten the long Spotify URLs so that you can actually get a word in edgewise if you wanted to retweet it, for example.

We think a really neat option is spo.tl (slogan: Shorter, prettier Spotify links), a Spotify-focused URL shortener that not only squishes down the URL to a manageable size, but offers direct links to Facebook and Twitter for easy sharing.

Clicking through to Twitter auto-pastes the artist name and song title (as well as the new URL) in the text box, while Facebook click-throughs generate the album art too, just as with a direct FB share from within Spotify.

8. It’s Not Just Music

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You may well have signed up to the Spotify service because of all that sweet, free, streaming music, but now you’re creating a zillion playlists, microblogging your music taste to all, and playing “guess the song” with your cubicle buddies. What else does Spotify offer?

Well, a fair bit more than just music. Comedy is one thing — there’s tons of stand-up material available. Audiobooks are another, with Chris Anderson’s Free the first such title to debut last year. There are also audio travel guides, speeches and podcasts — in fact, a veritable wealth of non-music audio exists on Spotify. However, there is a catch.

At present, there is no way to easily identify non-music content available, not even via a genre search. The only way you will come across such content is by searching by keyword or the artist’s name with the option to click through to “Related Artists” (on the top-right of an artist’s homepage) for more suggestions.

It’s a bit of an omission from Spotify, so we hope that an update will bring such functionality — and soon.

More HOW TO resources from Mashable:

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- HOW TO: Get Started With Spotify
- HOW TO: Keep Your Facebook Updates Private
- HOW TO: Integrate Facebook, Twitter and Buzz into Your Gmail
- HOW TO: Add Captions To Your YouTube Videos
- HOW TO: Create Custom Backgrounds for Twitter, YouTube, & MySpace

Tags: facebook, Guide, how to, music, social media, spotify, tips, tricks, twitter

Major Facebook Investor Hopes to Score with Chatroulette

Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian venture capital firm that has invested $400 million in Facebook, has apparently made an offer to buy a piece of Chatroulette, the webcam network where you can chat with random strangers.

According to Spiegel Online, DST made an offer to 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy to buy a piece of his booming website. He has yet to say yes though, as he is traveling to the U.S. to speak with American venture capitalists before taking any investment.

Multiple venture capitalists have apparently expressed interest in Chatroulette, which has more than 1.5 million visitors per day and a reputation for, well, extraordinary amounts of male exhibitionism. Some of the potential investors may include Google, Union Square Ventures and Skype.

Look, we understand why people would want to invest in Chatroulette: It’s hot, it’s fast-growing and it’s taken the web by storm. However, as we argued in an article earlier today, we believe that Chatroulette is unlikely to be the next Twitter — its primary functions are novelty and shock factor, not utility.

Unless Mr. Ternovskiy has a plan to turn the site into a legitimate business (with the male genitalia completely removed), we have a tough time seeing Chatroulette as a smart investment.

Do you agree? Would you invest in Chatroulette? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: business, chatroulete, facebook, social media, twitter

How Companies are Using Social Media to Make Better Decisions

Mat Fogarty is the Founder and CEO of Crowdcast, a leading provider of collective intelligence and prediction market solutions.  You can read more of Mat’s posts on the Crowdcast blog or follow @crowdcastinc.

Collaboration and crowdsourcing are the realities of today’s public Internet, and the trend is now gaining real traction in the workplace.  Smart companies increasingly understand that their richest source of insight, ideas, data, and information is within their own employees. They are the ones whose talent, work, and daily interactions with the product make the business what it is.

Just as so many of us look to the Yelp community to figure out where to make our dinner reservations, companies are increasingly looking to the employee crowd for the knowledge and insight to make better business decisions.

Enterprise Social Networks

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“If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.” – Lew Platt, Former CEO of HP

As the social enterprise builds momentum, the big question is: How will companies effectively tap the employee crowd to become more productive?  

Enterprise social networks arm companies with social media functionality, allowing them to collaborate with their employees around up-to-the-minute information. Late last year, Salesforce stirred up some buzz around enterprise social networking with the announcement of its Chatter Collaboration Platform.  Currently in beta, Chatter aims to bring together elements of Facebook, Twitter and other real-time services. By integrating profiles, feeds and groups across its platform, Salesforce offers its end users the same functionality they already use to share ideas and information on public social networks. 

While social networking functionality excels at connecting teams around projects, information, and qualitative data, it falls short in its ability to drive quantitative, actionable insights — the holy grail for project managers and enterprise forecasting groups.

Prediction Markets

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Prediction markets are all about tapping the crowd to source hard, unbiased quantitative metrics about the future of projects and business initiatives.  A prediction market works like a stock market of sorts, allowing employees to anonymously place “bets” on key forecasts: When will the product really ship? How much will we sell in Q1? Will our competitor enter the market in 2010? And so forth.

Business leaders rely on metrics and data to inform decisions around new products and opportunities, but traditional forecasting methods suffer from bias and lack of first-hand information. That’s why business forecasting is an ideal target for the application of crowd wisdom.  While bets are made anonymously, some prediction market software applications have built-in reward systems for accurate forecasters. And the accuracy of prediction markets over traditional forecasting methods is proven again and again.  

Crowdsourcing the Next Big Idea

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There’s a good chance that a company’s next big idea could be hidden within the people who are most engaged with its product and brand. More companies are turning to the crowd for ideas on all aspects of their business by creating online public forums. In 2008, Starbucks launched a major initiative to enhance their services with a website called My Starbucks Idea that polls members on decisions that would most directly impact them.

This kind of innovation sourcing applies to the enterprise as well.  Companies like Brightidea and InnoCentive are helping their customers tap resources to inspire, gather, and manage ideas and innovation from within their employee ranks. 

The Future

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As collaborative technologies gain traction, the future of enterprise will include internal social networks, prediction markets, and idea management platforms.  In this vision, social networks will be the default location for a collaborative employee community. Think of it as a wide and deep pool of employee knowledge and ideas.

Prediction markets will then aggregate this knowledge to produce actionable, people-powered forecasts. The result is an ultra-rich information source that will lay the foundation for smarter, better-informed company decisions. We are already seeing the first movement towards this integrated vision with products like 12sprints from SAP.

The ability to manage and profit from employee knowledge through social networks, idea funnels, and prediction markets will be the defining competitive advantage for this decade.  Employees will have a voice and enterprises will truly leverage their most valuable assets.

More business resources from Mashable:

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- 3 Crisis Survival Lessons for the Social Media Age
- 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl

Tags: business, crowdsourcing, enterprise, facebook, small business, social media, social networks, twitter

Israeli Raid Cancelled After Very Stupid Facebook Post

If you're in the military, here's a tip: don't put upcoming missions in your Facebook status. You wouldn't think someone would need to tell you that, but here we are.

A raid on suspected militants in the West Bank was cancelled yesterday after an Israeli soldier updated his Facebook status to read "On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing, we come home." The solider has since, unsurprisingly, been relieved of combat duty for being a moron. He'll also spend 10 days in prison for his update.

Trying to educate soldiers on the importance of not leaking classified info to Facebook, the Israel Defense Forces have started putting up new posters in bases:

In posters placed on military bases, a mock Facebook page shows the images of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Below their pictures - and Facebook "friend requests" - reads the slogan: "You think that everyone is your friend?"

I really want to see one of those posters. Anyone in the IDF want to send us a picture? My email address is below. I won't post it on Facebook, promise. [NY Times]

Suze Orman Advises Mark Zuckerberg Against Buying Twitter [SPOOF VIDEO]

Twitter may be valued at $1.4 billion, but it’s definitely not a smart buy in Suze Orman’s opinion. Well, that is if you’re Mark Z., a 25-year-old degreeless professional with $300 million in liquid assets, $4 billion in Facebook stock, $2,500 in monthly expenses and no debt.

In her latest “Can I Afford It” segment, Orman strongly advises Mark Z. — an obvious reference to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — against buying Twitter. She exclaims, “You want to spend $1.5 billion on Twitter, do I have that right? … Why do you need to buy it … you know Twitter, you can get it for free.”

Of course, the video is all in jest and first aired at last night’s Shorty Awards in New York. Orman, who happened to be nominated for a Shorty Award in the finance category, agreed to film the spoof video when approached by producers. The end result is a slice of comedic genius at the expense of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and even Chatroulette.

Check out the clever and entertaining mock segment below:

Tags: celebrities, facebook, twitter, video, viral videos

HOW TO: Get Started With Spotify

Spotify is a free, legal, cloud-based streaming music service delivered via desktop software with a nice social twist. A Swedish start-up with offices in London, it launched back in 2008 in Europe and now boasts around five million users and around six million tracks from the major labels as well as a ton of independents.

Currently only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain (technically), Spotify has previously talked about plans for expansion — including a U.S. launch later this year, the exact date of which is TBD.

The basic version of Spotify is free to use for anyone who manages to grab an invite (either via another user or through a waiting list-based e-mail sign-up), although consumers can skip the ad-supported free option and choose to sign up for its £9.99 per month (approx $15) “Premium” service that also gives you access to Spotify’s mobile apps — and more — which we’ll explore in a later post.

But for now, here’s a quick guide to getting started on the entry-level version of Spotify, taking you through the sign-up process to more interesting options such as how to start sharing your music.

Signing Up

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Once you get your e-mail invite, there’s a direct link within it to set-up your account which is a standard username/password affair. However, be careful when you select your username, as it’s not possible to change it — to do so would mean you’ll have to re-register which will mean begging around for another invite.

When you’ve created an account you need to download the software (which works with Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X 10.4.0 and up, and Linux using Wine) via the installer option which is the usual save file, double-click, choose where you want it process as far as a Windows install goes.

With a Spotify account, you can sign in anywhere via a connected computer and download the software, although you can only play music on one computer at a time.

Start Finding Music

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With the simple sign-up process complete, there are now several ways for you to start gathering content. The quickest is search, via the search box which does offer fuzzy “did you mean” options if you aren’t quite sure whether it’s “Byork” or “Bjork.”

If you’re impatient to hear some tunes, you can start listening to music right away while you’re looking for more — just search, click on the track or album you want and it’ll start playing immediately.

Another option is via browsing, which is link-based, so you need to initiate at least one search before you can start surfing. But once you do, almost everything you see in Spotify is clickable — artist names, album titles, years, genres, styles, tracks, playlist titles, etc. — starting you off on a click-through-fest which could take you days to return from.

Clicking through on an artist’s name will give you that artist’s homepage which offers an “overview” including a pic, brief bio, top hits, related artists (always good for new music discovery) and then a scrollable list of albums, complete with artwork. Some artists also offer a longer biography, too.

More advanced text-based search options include the ability to narrow down your search from a general keyword search to a more focused effort. These work along the following lines — to search for a song with the word “prince” in the title, enter “title:prince,” or search for “album:prince” or “artist:prince” to find matching albums and artists.

Other ways to find music are by hitting the “Home” option on the right-hand side menu which offers a “What’s New” selection as well as “Top Lists” which lets you browse playlists, including an option to see what’s hot in your country, as well as others.

Creating Playlists

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Once you have found tracks you like it’s easy to start making playlists. Just click “New Playlist” from the menu on the right-hand side and name it.

Then you can either drag and drop tracks, or you can right-click a track or an album and select “Save To” which will bring up the roster of your existing playlists. You can control and click to select multiple songs. A single Spotify playlist can store up to 10,000 tracks.

Sharing Songs and Playlists

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Anyone with Spotify can listen to your songs or playlists through Spotify’s sharing options. You can either right-click on a playlist and select “Copy HTTP Link” which will generate a link along the lines of
http://open.spotify.com/user/username/playlist/692nO7eEkPIsoZiijxhlk8. When anyone clicks that link it will open Spotify and show your shared music.

You can also share through Twitter, Facebook and Delicious by right-clicking, selecting “Share To,” which will give you the three sites as clickable options.

If you want to make sharing a more interactive effort, then right-click on your playlist and check the “Collaborative Playlist” option. This means that others can add songs to your playlist by opening it in Spotify and adding tunes — this feature is impressive and works almost in real-time.

Listening to Spotify Radio

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Spotify’s radio options offer the usual genres — blues, country, jazz, disco, funk, etc. — and then also offer radio stations by decade, which is a nice touch. You can select as many genres as you’d like in order to generate a combined stream, so if for some bizarre reason you fancy a mix of country and techno, you can hit both those buttons to create a custom station.

The radio player offers a visual for all the songs playing and coming next, so if you spot something you’re desperate to hear two songs along, you can skip forward, or keep clicking back if you want Suicidal Tendencies’ I Feel Your Pain repeated 17 times.

Similar to competing sites like Last.fm, you can also choose to generate a radio playlist based on a favorite artist. Just click on the artist’s name link and select “Artist Radio.” The subsequent song list is generated from your chosen artist, as well as related artists.

Buying Songs

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Spotify does offer the option to purchase some songs through its download partner 7digital, although it will likely be a different company when the service launches in the U.S.

Any songs with an arrow in a circle under the “Buy” option can be purchased. Doing so for the first time generates a quick small print message to agree to before giving you the option to add credit or debit card details. At this point Spotify will give you one-click buying options, or the choice to enter your password.

The next time you want to buy a track you don’t need to enter you card details again, just click to confirm the purchase, which is devilishly easy, so do watch those Spotify spending sprees if you’re on a budget.

As well as downloading to the Spotify client, the music is also downloaded to your computer. You can set where you want it to save to in the preferences, otherwise it saves to default locations such as My Docs/My Music on a PC.

The files are DRM-free MP3s, from 192kbps to 320kbps, and can be downloaded several times (the number of which is dependent on the track and label) then transferred to an MP3 player or burned to a CD from your computer.

That’s All, Folks

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That should be more than enough to get you up and running with Spotify. If you’re looking for an invite and don’t know a current Premium user to ask for one, you can sign-up your e-mail address on the Spotify site (just hit the “Getting Started” button) to go on the waiting list.

Are you a Spotify user? How do you like it? Share your thoughts about the service in the comments below.

More HOW TO resources from Mashable:

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- HOW TO: Keep Your Facebook Updates Private
- HOW TO: Integrate Facebook, Twitter and Buzz into Your Gmail
- HOW TO: Add Captions To Your YouTube Videos
- HOW TO: Create Custom Backgrounds for Twitter, YouTube, & MySpace

Tags: delicious, facebook, how to, music, social media, spotify, twitter

Yahoo Contacts Gets Facebook Connect

Last December, Yahoo announced that it would be rolling out a deep integration of its products with Facebook Connect, essentially outsourcing all things social to the world’s most popular social network. Today marks one of the initial demonstrations of this partnership, with Yahoo Contacts now connected to Facebook.

Now Yahoo allows you to add your Facebook friends’ email addresses to your Yahoo Contacts via Facebook Connect. In the Import Contact landing page of your Yahoo account, you’ll be able to select Facebook (importing from Gmail and Hotmail already exists). Once you authorize the connection with your Facebook credentials, your friends’ email addresses from their Facebook profiles will be added to your Yahoo Contacts. Yahoo will scan the imports and delete any duplicates.

As we’ve written in the past, Yahoo’s move with Facebook shows that the company has given up on leveraging the existing social connections among Yahoo email, address book and messenger users, and thus, weakens its ability to monetize this social graph. And Yahoo also just added Twitter integration to its products as well. While Google’s Buzz may have its problems, at least Google is making an effort to try to develop technologies that use its communications products to build a social graph. Perhaps Yahoo CEO shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds her.

How Much Are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn Worth? [REPORT]

For the moment, the valuations we have for private companies like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are based mostly on what we know from venture capital investments.

SharesPost, however, is a company that lets owners of shares in private companies sell them to prospective buyers, and it has just released an index detailing valuations of some of the most prominent companies in the social media space.

Here’s what they report:

Facebook: $11.5 billion

Zynga: $2.6 billion

Twitter: $1.4 billion

LinkedIn: $1.3 billion

Linden Labs (Second Life): $383 million

How close are these valuations to reality? Facebook’s most recent investment from DST valued the company at north of $10 billion, while Twitter was valued at roughly $1 billion when it took $100 million in funding back in September. In other words — likely not too far off.

SharePost also says that it has been involved “in the negotiations of more than $229MM worth of transactions,” so there is enough activity in its marketplace for it to make rough estimates of valuation. Its estimates also take into account venture capital investments and research reports from equity analysts.

What do you think of the valuations? Let us know in the comments!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tforgo

Tags: facebook, finance, linden labs, linkedin, Second Life, sharespost, trending, twitter, Zynga

3 Crisis Survival Lessons for the Social Media Age

Dallas Lawrence is Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications, the nation’s top crisis communications firm. He blogs on emerging digital media trends and best practices for social media engagement on Bulletproof Blog. Connect with him on Twitter @dallaslawrence.

If there was any doubt before last year as to social media’s ability to exacerbate reputation crises, 2009 settled the debate. In just that one year, Domino’s, United Airlines, and Tiger Woods were but a few of the headlining examples that were variously infected by the viral bug. These global brands made their problems even worse with sloppy responses to online news reports, blog posts, Facebook updates, YouTube videos, and Twitter entries.

With big names such as Toyota and Johnson & Johnson suffering similar ills in just the first two months of 2010, it seems that the second decade of the 21st Century will be as unrelenting as the first on brands that fail to effectively prepare for and respond to crises in the online marketplace.

The good news is that by understanding how online crises can be transformed into trust-building opportunities, companies and high-profile individuals can avoid repeating the grave mistakes of 2009. There continue to be teachable moments in abundance. It’s time to seize on their lessons.

Size Doesn’t Matter

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In the age of digital crises, big does not mean savvy. Indeed, the bigger the brand, the harder it often falls. Having worked with dozens of Fortune 1000 companies under digital duress, several salient problems seem glaringly apparent to me. Far too often, for example, corporate marketers have no contact with those entrusted with crisis response. In many cases, the company’s social media wunderkinds are completely walled off –- intentionally –- from those empowered to ensure the survival of the brand itself.

Toyota has particularly suffered the consequences of such balkanization. Toyota boasts more than 81,000 fans on Facebook, yet the company simply failed to utilize that immense resource during the first days of its recalls. To put Toyota’s silence in perspective, Google registered more than 22,000 recall-related blog posts in the first week after the announcement. Rather than engage their tens of thousands of self-identified brand ambassadors who were waiting for information, it seems Toyota simply forgot they existed.

This failure to engage a captive and influential audience represents an utter misunderstanding of the power that online communities wield in crisis. Individuals who align themselves with brands online do so for a reason. If kept informed, these individuals are a willing and enthusiastic first line of defense both online and off. Yet with each passing day of the Toyota recalls, these audiences quickly grew more concerned for themselves and their families than the brand they trusted and treasured. The messages they needed weren’t there for them in the places they look to first.

The internal walls that separate crisis response efforts must come down or more brands will suffer the wrath of real-time communications and the public’s demand for instant access to vital information when it matters most.

What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There

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Johnson & Johnson’s response to the Tylenol tampering incident of 1982 is the stuff of legend. After numerous deaths were attributed to cyanide contamination of its marquee pain reliever –- which then represented a large portion of the analgesic market –- J&J initiated a costly nationwide recall, ultimately revolutionizing the industry with tamper-proof packaging that’s now an industry standard.

Yet three decades later, when J&J found itself embroiled in new recalls, the rules of the game had changed dramatically. Audiences today want information and solutions in real time. At the decisive moment, J&J did not respond fast enough to reaffirm its brand as a champion of consumer safety.

Of course it isn’t always possible to offer a solution in the first hours of a crisis, but it is essential to at least assuage consumer fears by acknowledging the problem and affirming that all that can be done is being done. Silence only raises more vexatious questions from consumers, the media, regulators, and increasingly, online communities. The lesson here is all the more underscored by contrast to the past: If you are still reading from the pre-social media revolution crisis playbook, you will fail in the digital age, period.

You Can Not Advertise Out of Crisis

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There’s no debating the historical success of big brand advertising and marketing programs. As a result of such programs, Toyota’s Camry has long been America’s best-selling car. As recently as January 6, 2010, Bloomberg reported that the company’s market share was greater than Ford’s. But by the end of January, reports showed that the trend had reversed — Ford was outselling Toyota and the Japanese auto maker’s share of the market had fallen to its lowest point since 2006.

Oddly, Tiger Woods’ ordeal was similarly patterned. His agents and public relations specialists had built a seemingly bulletproof brand, yet, at the first blush of controversy, those same advisors utterly faltered by leaving key questions unanswered and allowing the online outrage to transform uncertain rumor into outright truth. As we saw on February 19th, months into the controversy, Team Tiger still failed to learn even the most basic lessons of his crisis ordeal. In today’s world, every brand has a plug. When it’s pulled, the balloon can instantaneously deflate.

Traditional advertising and brand/reputation management cannot work in such a galaxy where crisis moves at the speed of light. Today’s consumers do not make decisions based solely (or in many cases even largely) on what they read in print or see on TV. Rather, they are increasingly turning to the experiences of their friends on Facebook and the bloggers they follow. In its 2009 State of the Blogosphere report, Technorati found that 70% of these bloggers actively discuss products and companies.

Meanwhile, no platform has shown more rapid ability to drive the lifecycle of a story than Twitter. Penn State’s College of Information Science and Technology found that 20% of the 27 million tweets posted each day mention brands in one way or another. Yet only 20% of Global Fortune 100 companies have a comprehensive social media plan that includes a presence on each of the major social media hubs, and just over a third still don’t even have Twitter accounts.

Conclusion

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In a crisis, consumers need honest answers and they need them fast –- and no messaging vehicle is better suited to meet this demand than those fueling the crisis in the first place. Transparent engagements in the online communities, where your customers already live, provide a credible and direct channel for the answers they need.

As we round the corner of the first quarter of 2010, successful companies will need to embrace the reality that effective crisis management has undergone a fundamental evolution in the Digital Age. Companies that still focus primarily on traditional journalists and broadcasters or messages through paid marketing campaigns do so at their own peril. At bet-the-company moments, open and rapid engagement via blog posts, tweets, viral videos, Facebook updates, and other online venues make the difference between victory and defeat in the Court of Public Opinion.

More business resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, rjzinger

Tags: brand, brand management, business, facebook, pr, small business, social media, tiger woods, Toyota, twitter

WSJ: Facebook Revenues For 2010 Could Hit Between $1.2 To $2 Billion

Late last year, we published a list of the top 10 IPO candidates of 2010.  Leading that list was Facebook, which has grown to 400 million users and is finally starting to turn on the revenue pumps as it works toward its inevitable IPO. But this evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article penned by Jessica Vascellaro that may dash the hopes of anyone who thinks that will happen in the immediate future. The lengthy piece, which is well worth reading in its entirety, touches on quite a few issues related to Facebook’s history and its future, and largely revolves around CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who doesn’t sound all that keen to take his company public.

While the article covers a lot of familiar territory about Facebook’s past, there’s plenty of new information too. Of note, the article says that Facebook executives have “discussed how revenues for 2010 could hit between $1.2 to $2 billion” — figures that exceed even the $1.1 billion InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon reported yesterday (clearly, the number is looking big). The article also asserts that Facebook is working on a tool for sharing your physical location with Facebook (something that we’ve been hearing about for quite a while, and that I believe will be key in the future).

With regard to Facebook’s IPO, the article discusses Zuckerberg’s penchant for “delayed gratification”, which he says he has a special capacity for.  And because Zuckerberg still maintains firm control over the company, and when it will IPO, delayed gratification seems to be the law of the land.

There are also a handful of interesting anecdotes about Zuckerberg. According to the article, a Facebook engineer once wrote an internal memo called “Working With Zuck”, in which he warned other employees not to hope for much in the way of back-patting from their CEO, explaining they should not “expect acknowledgment for your role in moving the discussion forward; getting the product right should be its own reward.”

Mobile Social Networking Usage Soars [STATS]

Digital measurement firm comScore released a study today highlighting the rise in social media access via mobile phones and offering some comparison metrics for some of the biggest social networks and their usage on mobile devices.

comScore measured the changes in both mobile browser access to social networks and the access numbers to specific social networks from January 2009 to January 2010.

Some highlights:

– 30% of smartphone users accessed social networks via mobile browsers — this was up from 22.5% in 2009.

- Total social networking access via mobile browsers on all mobile phones rose to 11.1% — this was up from 6.5% in 2009. Most of this growth was in the uptick in smartphone usage.

When it comes to specific social networks, Twitter and Facebook both had increases in mobile browser usage in the triple digits. Twitter usage via mobile browsers was up 347% while Facebook mobile browser usage was up 112%.

Mirroring non-mobile usage, MySpace mobile access was actually down 7% year over year.

It’s important to note that these figures are just from mobile browser statistics — they don’t even take into account the use of mobile applications for Twitter or Facebook.

Both Facebook and Twitter have prospered from having strong mobile strategies. Twitter’s mobile strategy and integration with SMS messages has made it a natural mobile player since its inception; still more and more users are turning to its mobile browser counterpart to send and receive messages.

Facebook has a great presence on mobile platforms, but the fact that so many people are continuing to use it from a mobile browser shows that its strategy of catering to mobile users is working.

Do you use Twitter or Facebook more on your phone or via your regular computer? Let us know!

Tags: ComScore, facebook, mobile browsers, mobile stats, stats, twitter

Omniture, Facebook Expand Social Media Marketing Partnership

Omniture, acquired by Adobe for $1.8 billion last year, has expanded its partnership with Facebook. Together, the companies aim to provide marketers with solutions to optimize the enormously popular social network as an effective online marketing channel.

Initially, Omniture and Facebook will focus on the ability to automate Facebook media buying and access analytics that measure customer engagement on the social networking service, although the two companies indicated that the partnership will expand even more in the future.

The closer tie builds on the Facebook (and FB apps) analytics capabilities Omniture announced in May 2009.

With the new solution, Omniture customers can now utilize the company’s new SearchCenter Plus product, essentially an enhancement of its search engine marketing management application with new functionality for purchasing Facebook Ads. Omniture customers will thus be able to compare Facebook ad campaign metrics alongside other media channels and increase their ad spend on the social network using tools they’re already familiar with.

In addition, Omniture customers can now generate reports specifically designed to understand ad effectiveness for things like Facebook Pages and applications.

Just yesterday, Eric Eldon from InsideFacebook posted a great, detailed article estimating Facebook’s current and future revenue run rate, projecting that the company could be on track to surpass $1.1 billion in 2010 (and could already have topped $700 million last year).

Partnerships like the one with Omniture are a great way for Facebook to appease marketers who have to date been hesitant to make a substantial investment in marketing on the social network as long as they have to learn new ways of setting up campaigns and can’t effectively track the success of those initiatives.