LinkedIn could find themselves in some serious trouble thanks to those dastardly genius’s at Facebook. Facebook released a new application around 6 months ago named “Branch Out”, which is effectively the Facebook version of LinkedIn.
BranchOut is a professional network (like LinkedIn) that is built as a Facebook Application, which means that Branchout instantly has Access to 600 million users, assuming everyone is a working professional. So this clever Application is combining the friends/contacts you have on Facebook and introducing a working professional element, providing job opportunities and candidates for people looking to hire via Facebook.
BranchOut are going straight for the kill against their main rival LinkedIn, by having a button that exports your whole LinkedIn profile at the ultimate convenience of just 1 click! So this will inevitably be a massive time saver and also a big factor in making people’s decision to convert from LinkedIn to BranchOut a lot easier.
Although this new Application is still in it’s early stages, it is gaining a lot of positive momentum and I am predicting it won’t be long until LinkedIn will be surpassed and dare I say it… made extinct! The only thing that could possibly halt this from happening is the 1 click button that takes all the data from LinkedIn and imports it to BranchOut. If I were LinkedIn, I would be seriously contemplating taking away this function before it’s too late!
So it’s a new year and I am predicting a lot more emphasis on Facebook in 2011, especially seeing as though they have just received a very generous endorsement of $500 Million from Goldman Sachs. Although this has not been officially confirmed, it has been widely reported that this is the case.
Apparently the Goldman investment will enable the company’s most wealthy clients to “get in” before an IPO and virtually guarantee that Goldman is the firm (or the lead firm) that takes Facebook public when that eventually happens.
Despite the obvious success of Facebook in 2010, they is rumoured to be increasing pressure for them to go public and create their own search engine to rival Google (proving that the more you succeed the more is expected from you!). Facebook are reportedly making an annual $2 Billion on advertising, serving almost 25% of all US display ads according to comScore.
Something that could potentially interest Facebook would be to buy out the fast growing search engine “Blekko”, to enable them to have their own search engine. But, this is all rumour and circumstance and is not something that I think we will be hearing from Facebook anytime soon, although I am sure it is something that is a definite possibility as the social media giant continues to grow.
- View updates from your professional network
- Search for people to discover things you have in common and establish new connections
- Respond to invitations sent from people in your professional life
- Keep in touch with your own connections on LinkedIn
This is only the first beta of the application and LinkedIn have promised to continue to introduce new features including the “people you may know” feature. The app also uses Android’s unique search capabilities, offering the ability to search for contacts and people from the app. LinkedIn says that it is the fastest search experience it offers across all mobile platforms. Read more and find out how to download the app at the official LinkedIn Blog.
Jason Goldman VP of Twitter products just anounced the integration of Instagram with Twitter during a LeWeb presentation in Paris. The tweets that include a photo taken with Instagram will be embedded in the right sidebar of Twitter.
What’s Instagram?
Instagram is an application for iPhone and iPod Touch that lets you take photos and apply a sepia filter that gives them a retro look. Instagram is currently valued around $ 20 million, and surely this integration will help them even more.
Check out the video below to see what your New Facebook Profile page will look like:
For those of you who are familiar with Facebook advertising and promotions, this is a great bit of news for you. Facebook have recently changed their strict policies to allow smaller organisations/businesses to get in on the act.
So the 3 main things that have changed are:
No minimum spend is required – Facebook have changed the rule so that you no longer need a minimum media spend to support the promotion. This means that companies with smaller budgets can now create a Facebook competition or run promotions without encountering problems.
You no longer need approval from Facebook – If you wanted to run a competition on Facebook before, you would have had submit to Facebook first, and then await for approval, which was time consuming (stopping the possibility of a spontaneous competition/promotion) and not always resulting in the outcome you were looking for. Now these factors have gone, but you do need to make sure you stay within the guidelines Facebook have set out for competition and promotion creation, because Facebook will not be able to spot every mistake you make from this point onwards.
New feature – Check in for a competition – This new feature requires Facebook users to Check in via Facebook Places before being allowed to enter the competition. Which is an added bonus for advertisers, giving them new info on their key demographic.
For more info on the specific rules and guidelines of Facebook promotions and competitions, follow this link http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php
Research.ly launched its service for real-time search in Twitter. Conversations can be tracked by categories such as gender, location or degrees of separation between users.
Research.ly is a new platform to search for conversations on Twitter and track statistics. This is not a microblogging analytics tool, but it provides useful information for marketers and experts in social networks.
The Research.ly service offers a historical analysis of tweets going back three years through a streaming database. With access to this information from Twitter, the tool has built indexes for categories such as gender, opinion, position, degrees of separation, among others.
Twitpic images or YouTube videos can also be found using Research.ly. Twitter users are categorized depending on the position they occupy their companies.
I don’t know what to think about this to be honest. Part of me thinks that the appeal of Facebook is now starting to warp people’s minds and reach platforms I’m sure they (Facebook and Mr.Zuckerberg) didn’t think were possible. But the other part of me thinks that it is quite a cool concept and possibly a great idea for the perfect Unique Xmas present… until the whole world wants one, that is!
An App designing company named “Bouygues Télécom” selected 1000 lucky people’s facebook profiles and created an App which was able to transfer the historical data (all the goings on, updates, photos, pokes, farmville updates, etc) of your profile, and put it all in to a Book!
Check out the Video below:
Just before you put this on your Xmas list for Santa, I have to inform you that this was a one off promotional stunt by the French App Creator’s. But I’m sure you could probably create a Facebook petition to make this one off a more permanent feature…
You guys have seen the film “Terminator” right? Well replace the terminators with Facebook & Google and that will be my prediction of future events! Will they stop at nothing for their goal of World Domination?
Google may have tried to buy Twitter, offering around $2,5 billion dollars for the company according to a source close to the negotiator involved in the talks. According to BusinessInsider, Microsoft may have also tried to bid on the microblogging site.
It is well known that Twitter is looking for a profitable business model, with initiatives like the recently launched, but they could also need funding. Nevertheless, the fact that Google made an offer for Twitter is not a surprise.
The news comes from a source close to an executive involved in the talks. He says that Google recently offered $2,5 billion dollars for Twitter, but it wasn’t a formal offer. Another source, a shareholder of Twitter, also said that the site turned down an offer from an unknown entity for the amount of $4 billion dollars.
Both sources also believe that Microsoft may have made an offer, which gives an idea of the interest of large multinationals on the microblogging website. Digital Sky Technologies, Facebook’s Russian investor, is also keeping an eye on Twitter.
For a few months now we’ve been hearing rumors that Twitter was planning on creating an analytics service. Ross Hoffman announced that later this year they’d begin to offer a beta service to some users, and they sure did!
Twitter reports that they have selected a group of users and invited them to use the trial version. As reported in September, a privileged group of users were already using Twitter analytics: Andrew Nystrom of RedBull and Brad Nelson of Starbucks, had a conversation on Twitter ensuring that the service worked great and that it was really helpful.
Red Bull and Starbucks are part of the promoted tweets program, many believed that the service would be limited to companies that participated in the program, but it seems that Twitter has the intention of making it available to all users, and free!
What do we know about Twitter Analytics?
Web analytics services intend to report on the impact of online activity. Twitter Analytics reports on the number of tweets, retweets, and of course the most popular tweets.
