Facebook May Be Growing Too Fast. And Hitting The Capital Markets Again

When Facebook raised $240 million from Microsoft in 2007, and another $235 million in debt and equity in 2008, everyone thought they had plenty of cash to get through their big growth phase. With that kind of cash, the company could hire as many people as it needed to and not worry about profitability or going public until at least 2009.

But a confluence of factors may be conspiring to throw those assumptions out the window and force Facebook back to the capital markets much earlier than they originally planned. We’ve heard from multiple sources that they are testing the capital markets right now, in fact, and may be considering a near term capital raise at terms that could be much more favorable to investors than the previous $15 billion round that Microsoft kicked off in October 2007.

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LinkedIn Links With Apps

LinkedIn is the latest social networking site to to offer third-party applications to its users. As befitting a site for professionals, the first batch of nine apps released are all about business, not throwing sheep.

They include a "reading list" app from Amazon, a file-management tool from Box.net and a travel-tracking app from Tripit. Not just anyone can put up applications on LinkedIn. Developers and companies have to go through a careful screening process before their apps are approved. External ads aren't allowed either.

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Retailers Get Social with Facebook

More retailers have fan pages on Facebook than on other social media sites.

Facebook is the social media site of choice for many US online retailers, judging by an August 2008 study. Nearly one-third of responding businesses said they had a Facebook page, compared with 27% that had a MySpace page and just over one-quarter that had a page on YouTube.

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Drinking In The New Pepsi’s Social Media Strategy

Apparently, Pepsi has set up a room on Friendfeed called the Pepsi Cooler, which asks consumers to “Join us as together we shape Pepsi’s social media future. We’re changing the way we do things and want to have you along for the ride.” (Friendfeed, if you’re not familiar, is a social site that aggregates members’ social activity into a feed, so, for example, one’s tweets, blog postings and so forth can all be accessed in one place.)

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Pepsi Cooler

Social Networking Sites Good For Businesses

Good news for workers addicted to Facebook, Bebo and MySpace -- a British think-tank says bosses should not stop their staff using social networking sites because they could actually benefit their firms.

The report by Demos said encouraging employees to use networking technologies to build relationships and closer links with colleagues and customers could help businesses rather than damage them.

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Consumers Embrace Social Media Ads

Four in 10 online consumers have made a purchase based on advertising they saw on a social media site, while almost three-quarters welcome brand advertising on social networks, according to new research from Razorfish.

"What struck us was the massive impact of search, social media and widgets and feeds on the consumer landscape... and how that's creating a more distributed experience for consumers, and they love it," said Garrick Schmitt, group vice president of experience planning at Razorfish and editor of the study.

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Yahoo! Launches Facebook Connect Competitor

A few months back, Yahoo! announced that it would be opening up the site’s services to developers in a significant way. This afternoon the company rolled out a big iteration which has a massive social component. The service has a bunch of features that developers can use to detect any individual web user’s “social presence”. So what are the new component of this open platform and what does it mean for developers?

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Nooooooo! Blogs Influence Purchases More Than Social Sites

Too upsetting to read more.

Click if you want to.

Social Media Dilemma: The Post-Click Experience

Everyone is asking the same questions: What happens after a user clicks on my ad? What is the user experience AFTER the click? Is the user taken to a page outside Facebook? That's where most ads go. The problem is that most users don't WANT to leave Facebook.

So what the next big thing for advertisers on Facebook? Branded applications, apparently.

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Brands Want to Be a Pepper, Too

If you want to know the future of using social data for advertising, look to Dr Pepper. Specifically, the Dr Pepper fan group on last.fm. Kevin Menard, last.fm's senior vice president of U.S. advertising, introduced me to the social music site's multiple Dr Pepper fan groups. He sees these groups as key components in smarter last.fm ad buys.

Last.fm allows advertisers to target ads by musical genre and artist; by studying the musical tastes of Dr Pepper drinkers on groups like "Dr Pepper," Menard argues, the soft drink can target its ad placements to better match its users' musical tastes. For instance, at the time of this writing, the most popular artist among Dr Pepper group members is Oingo Boingo. Dr Pepper may want to run advertising when last.fm users play Oingo Boingo songs or similar tracks.

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Bacon Salt Shows How Social Media Help Young Companies Grow Quickly

Big company efforts in social media have mostly failed to this point. Facebook's application platform has become a graveyard of failed attempts to harness the platform, while other brands have suffered embarrassments at their ham-handed attempts to influence the blog world.

Yet for some small companies, social media has proven to be a godsend of low-cost, effective brand building. Take Bacon Salt, an unlikely product dreamed up last year after a night out drinking by two Seattle buddies. What began as a half-joking idea -- what if there was a spice that made everything taste like bacon -- soon became a bustling business that's sold 600,000 units in 18 months, thanks mostly to the harnessing of the word-of-mouth power of social media.

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Twitter, Tagged, Ning Grow Like Weeds Among SocNets

Twitter.com, Tagged.com and Ning, which racked up 343%, 330% and 251% year-over-year audience growth respectively, were the fastest-growing US online social networking sites as ranked in September.

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Social Web Now Socially Acceptable

U.S. consumers are flocking to use social networks and other participatory venues to the extent that the activity is now mainstream, according to Forrester Research.

The company's polling indicates 2008 has marked significant growth for social media, with a decided majority of users now taking part. A consumer poll done in the second quarter found that 75 percent of Internet users participate in some form of social media, up from 56 percent in 2007.

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US Military Targets Social Nets

The social networking landscape could change beyond recognition with technology that maps the skills and needs of users.

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CBS Interactive Offers Social Viewing Rooms

Looking for new ways to boost its Web audience, CBS Interactive has added a feature that lets viewers chat and interact while watching the network's TV shows online.

CBS's "social viewing rooms" allow friends to gather in virtual rooms to watch top programs such as "Survivor" and "CSI" at the same time, evoking the collective experience of sitting around the living room TV.

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Pizza Hut Launches Ordering Application On Facebook

Pizza Hut has added the social network Facebook to its array of choices for delivery orders. It joins the mobile Web, text messaging, a desktop widget, the chain's own Web site, and of course, the telephone as methods for consumers to easily order their pizza pies, pastas, chicken wings and other menu items from the Yum Brands national chain.

The Facebook application, dubbed "Pizza Hut Interface," is accessible through a redesigned Pizza Hut Facebook page. The chain currently boasts more than 300,000 Facebook fans, and to lure more, on Wednesday it launched "Lotta Pizza Lotto." Any Facebook user who becomes a "Pizza Hut" fan through the end of the year will become eligible for the weekly prize of a $50 gift card.

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Meredith Corp. Serves Up Social Networking Via Mixingbowl

The upcoming launch of Mixingbowl.com represents Meredith Corp.'s first attempt at creating an independent social network. Mixingbowl takes the approach that authentic community building must happen outside the digital spinoffs of its established print products, which include Better Homes and Gardens and Parents.

The site provides a venue for consumers to share recipes and connect with others on food-related community groups. Due to launch in late November, Mixingbowl is powered by technology company Ripple6, which has built local mom networks for Gannett Co. and a health information site for Procter & Gamble.

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MyAds Give Access To MySpace

MySpace's solution to a dreadful economy is allowing small businesses and individuals outside its social network to affordably create and service their own graphic ads that are hyper-targeted to its 72 million domestic members, beginning Monday.



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Google Gets In To Advertising On Social Networks

Last night Google announced that they had launched Google AdSense for games. One of the largest gaming companies benefiting from the new advertising platform is Playfish. Google actually included a demo of AdSense for Games directly integrated into Playfish’s Word Challenge game. This is a big step for Google and one that competing advertisers should pay close attention to.

Why? According to sources within Google, games are not the only applications that Google is advertising on within social networks. Google is testing out their AdSense platform for other social applications. Take a look at some of the most popular applications on Facebook and you’ll quickly realize that Google is testing banner advertising on some of the largest applications.

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Facebook Intros Microsoft's Live Search

Which company partially owns Facebook again?

The deal should open more opportunities to serve local ads from Facebook's small and medium-sized business ad programs that allow advertisers to target users by location and demographics, according to the Kelsey Group.

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Publishers Ask Facebook Executive 'WTF?'

The astounding rise of the social networking phenomenon rightly has many traditional media executives wondering, "WTF?" or perhaps more accurately, "HTF did you do that?" So observed BusinessWeek Editor Steve Adler, drawing laughter as he introduced Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer for Facebook, at the American Magazine Conference in San Francisco on Monday afternoon. Sandberg had plenty of advice for magazine publishers, but was also careful to distinguish their functions from Facebook.

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Estée Lauder Hits Social Nets to Warn About Breast Cancer

The Estée Lauder Company is, for the first time, using social networks in a multi-faceted online effort to heighten awareness about breast cancer.

As do all the elements of the company's new Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign (BCA), the Web components stress the importance of learning about the breast cancer and the need for early detection. The company hopes the various social network-related elements of the online effort will prompt users to spread the message.

"It's the first time we've used social networks," said Marisa Thalberg, vice president of global online marketing for Estée Lauder. She said doing so "felt like a natural extension" of the social network marketing efforts of Estée Lauder's various brands. "Social networking and social media have been very important to several of our brands this year," said Thalberg. She said using these viral networks to warn about breast cancer and the value of early detection "seemed like an incredible opportunity."

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Branding on Facebook: Groups or Fan Pages?

Facebook allows for 2 networking tools:

1. Creating/ joining a Facebook group;
2. Creating/ joining a Facebook fan page.

Which one is better?

Find out