The Best Way for Facebook to Cash In!

The other day I was discussing Facebook w/ my wife and she was explaining how much she liked the service especially since our move up north away from friends and family.  

I had also been dealing w/ Facebook on a different level w/ attempting to use there Ad system for YoParts.  It was less than effective to say the least.. then I mentioned to my wife that Facebook should leverage the power of their users and basically rev. share w/ users and auction off user's profile pages etc.  The basic premise is lets say for instance Robert Scoble being a  star user would sell advertising space or to be branded and share the revenue w/ facebook.  

As the economy gets worse more and more peeps are spending time online and especially facebook.. This caused quite the discussion on Techmeme today and what FB should do about it.. It has been well documented that FB has had a really tough time gaining traction in the ad space and is even getting the beat down by Myspace.  Also social network ad spending is trending lower only elevating my point in a diff angle that needs to be approached by FB. 

Facebook has already made small moves in order to get more influence via the search engines by making some internal structural changes to profile pages.  I think a well thought out brand building approach similar to beacon but not as remotely scary is the tactic that should be thought about. This would encourage users to spend more time on FB to achieve a better "Quality Score" of some sorts.  I am sure the algorithm could include tons of metrics FB already has. As a user I would have no problem branding my profile page or co-promoting if I was part of the team.. 

Anyways.. I know this one is a little far fetched but.. I thought I should share.. 

Is Google Pulling a Rope a Dope?

It has been awhile since I posted but I felt compelled under the current economic news and other trends that I have been noticing. 

Apparently the sky is falling and even Google is subject to fall in this unstable economic climate.  Silicon Valley Insider has this piece about google turning up the juice on ad results per search query as a desparation move.  Apparently Google is also getting rid of  10,000 contract workers and extra perks as well.. gasp!.. and the final straw was the complete meltdown of it's stock price since last year.. 

Please step down from the ledge people.. Google is pulling what the "The Greatest" did against Joe Frazier and many others.

Here are my top 10 reasons that Google is going to be even stronger when this Economic Tsunami is over.

1. Obama may tap 'Father of Net' for top tech post; Free Net access ahead?
2. FCC's Free-Internet Plan Could Morph Into Free Airwaves
   
3. Google CEO is on Obama economic team
   
4. October Search Market Share: Query Volume Breaks 10b Mark, Google Search Dominates!
   
5. Print Media is Freaking Toast!
6. Obama's Recovery Plan involves Broadband Development
7. Yahoo and MSN Making it easy for Google
8. Bad Economy is good for Google and online ad spending
9. Google Subsidzed Phones w/ Andriod wil be a Homerun in the Economic Enviorment
10. Live Streaming sites that are starting to monetize via Google.

Twitter Worth a Billion in a Year? hmm more like Jaiku

Link : How Twitter Could Be Worth A Billion In A Year



Recently there have been some interesting conversations going on around the web about the possibilities of what Twitter could become.

Well after reading it I thought compelled to share some thoughts on this subject. First Nate's whole premise is off kilter because it is defendant on Twitter's ability to overcome it's recent scaling issues and loss of it's of respect from the community.

Nate's main point was to use Twitter as a micropayment service. Here is where I think Jaiku (cough cough Google) has the advantage. Google Checkout has already been playing around in the mobile arena for the past year. Now this alone should not be news worthy but I came across an interesting post about Jaiku founder Jyri Engestrom.

"

• Verbs for social objects: we need to think about the verbs that people perform on objects. E.g., Flickr’s aggregation of what people have done with your photos. We should be surfacing the available actions.
• World of Warcraft's information methods for everyday life: “Imagine a physical world where we have as much peripheral information at our disposal as in WoW.” Not just “boring update feeds.” Innovate, especially on mobiles. We will see this stuff in the next 24 months. Some examples: Maps: Where my friends are. Phonebook: what are people up to. Email: prioritized. Photos: Face recognition.
• A new take on social search: Detecting nodal points: “What should I be aware of that’s happening around me? Was what just happened significant to someone on the network.” And then deliver it to people at just the right time, perhaps via push. “Discovery is becoming social.” “It is the end of the era of search,” i.e., of querying for stuff. From browser to search to share (citing former ceo of paypal). From pagerank to “facerank” where what counts is friends in common, physical proximity, shared taste, shared objects."

Google has been very quietly getting ready to open a big ole can of whoop ass directed at Twitter. Remember Google could have bought Twitter but why didn't they?? Because they saw the potential in Jaiku as something much bigger than a micropayment service. Imagine and interconnected stream through this new service that incorporates email / video / maps / shopping etc.. on a platform that is truly stable and scaleable and monetizeable.

All of this running on Android equipped phones and piercing through all of the open social partner sites as well.. It's just a matter of time.