This is worth it just for the humour …. those Brits 🙂 … … it crossed my mind that in the future, 40 or so years, Facebook will look somewhat different when we’ve all got a touch older. http://www.creativebinge.co.uk/blog/what-will-facebook-look-like-in-40-years/ Continue reading What Facebook will look like in 40 years

Facebook certainly is the topic de jour. Jim makes a compelling case for getting first mover advantage within F8, the designated name for the FaceBook platform. More interesting are the 893 new services have opened their doors on the platform. The most popular, Top Friends by Slide, already has 6.4 million users. Yes, that is no typo, in one month a Facebook service grew to more than 6 million users. With traditional marketing, it would have cost a bank or card company as much as $1 billion to attract that many customers assuming acquisition costs of $100 to $150 per … Continue reading Thoughts on Social Network evolution

I have looked at Wesabe before and considered the unique view it presents across consumers including their banking and spending patterns. The information has grown significantly, and now contains information representing 1/2 billion dollars in transactions. Users can tag and rank their impressions of merchants and Banks. The company gave several examples of how it is putting that data to work, revealing which major banks charge its members the most in overdraft fees (Wachovia and U.S. Bank). Wesabe also reported the types of member purchases that give the most satisfaction (outdoor and camping), and showed that purchases in industries where … Continue reading Wesabe Database helps Members Make Better Financial Decisions

This was a good panel. – Lionel Menchaca, Dell manager of Ideastorm – Jordan Banks Ebay – Will Pate, Flock, CommandN with Amber, etc They started by defining communities, as people or customers, who care about being there, share likes, interests, desires. Responsibilities for a companies community ‘manager(s)’ must include dealing with negative issues. The company needs to be responsive to their community. Lionel spoke of the rapid decision and implementation by Dell to provide Linux based on Ideastorm’s feedback. EBay has 5 million users in Canada. Jordan spoke of attempting to create at eBay a community department, but has … Continue reading MESH07 | Building communities

Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist spoke most unassumingly about their company. Some notes: – 7 Bn page views annually – 500K news ads monthly in Canada – 24 staff Every question about strategy, vision, and future, was answered in a similar fashion – its all about the users. They have a laser focus on user input, and either implement, or at least explain why they are unable to do so. Favourite quote: we don’t sit around in business planning meetings, planning things, actually we don’t have meetings, actually, we don’t have business people …. “ Continue reading MESH07 | Craigslist

Further to my earlier post, I just came across this, which i should have seen yesterday. FBML – Facebook Markup Language What keeps you up at night? The thing that worries me the most is how to maintain attention, when everyone and their dog is going after the same space. The answer cannot be in old style ad bombardment. Surely it lies more in relevance to the user. If I come in, then my relevance is different than Williams, or Rons, or Trents or James, or whomeever. At that point I actually don’t care about them … at that point … Continue reading Facebook | will people share their pictures, thoughts and information with commercial interests?

I have been trying to digest the implications of FaceBooks announcement yesterday about becoming the “social operating system” for the Internet, to quote 23-year-old chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. When I looked closer at FaceBooks new positioning today, they have portrayed everything as an application, groups, photo’s, events, and now, LendingClub, as reported earlier. Then I was reading Brad Stones review of FaceBooks plans, and this little quote leapt off the page at me. Facebook hopes that thousands of outside companies will eventually build features for its site. One inevitable drawback is that Facebook pages will no longer all look the … Continue reading Could FaceBook risk becoming another AOL?