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Facebook Marketing Bible

The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your company, app, brand, or website using Facebook. The full version includes an a description of the benefits to your brand of enacting a successful replying strategy, and a walkthrough of how to reply to positive commenters, disruptive commenters and trolls, and spammers.

Facebook isn’t just a broadcast medium, but a two-way conversation between your and your fans. Communicating directly with those who Like your Page by replying to their wall posts and comments on your Page updates can help fans feel appreciated, increasing their loyalty and the likelihood that they’ll follow your calls to action. It can also inspire them to leave more comments on your Page updates, increasing their news feed optimization — the level of visibility your posts have in the news feed.
Here we’ll explain how to formulate a reply strategy for your Page that offers the greatest benefits for the level of resources you can devote to your Facebook Page’s community, and explain how it can improve brand loyalty, avert customer service disasters, and keep conversation on your Page productive.
When To Engage
Comments fall into four broad categories:

• Positive comments – Those that thank your brand for the value it provides the commenter.
• Constructive negative comments  – Those that criticize your brands for flaws in your product or service.
• Disruptive negative comments (Trolls) – Non-constructive insults to your brand or other members of your fan community, and non-sensical comments designed to distract and interrupt the conversation.
• Spam – Links or mentions of unrelated websites or brands.

Constructive Negative Comments
Constructive negative comments are the most important to respond to because if these fans aren’t appeased they can start evangelizing against your brand and cause customer service and public relations disasters. In a famous example, a man who rode a certain airline had his guitar broken in transit. When his attempts to contact the company through social media were ignored, he created a video criticizing the airline that received millions of views and hurt the company’s business.
In most cases, the best strategy is to apologize for the fan’s negative experience without admitting that there is a flaw in your product or service. If you’re sure there’s a simple solution to their problem, kindly explain it in your reply.
For example, if they say “I don’t enjoy your website because you require an account to upload photos, but I don’t know how to create an account”, you could reply “Sorry to hear you’re having trouble creating an account. You can create one by visiting this link www.examplesite.com/create or by clicking the ‘Create Account’ button at the bottom right corner of the home page.”
If it’s not exactly clear what their problem is, you aren’t exactly sure of the solution, or the solution may be complicated, refer them to your customer service department or provide contact information for someone they can privately communicate their issue with. You don’t want to have a negative customer service conversation in public where it might give other fans the impression that there are problems with your brand.
For example, if you received a comment saying “I bought your food product but it tasted rotten”, you could reply “Sorry to hear you had an issue with our food product. Please contact our customer service department here www.examplesite.com/service and we’ll see what we can do for you.”
Conclusion and Priorities
Every organization needs to decide how many resources they will devote to community engagement. In general, though, you should prioritize replying to the different kinds of comments in this way:
1. Replying to constructive negative comments to keep the authors of those comments from causing problems for your brand in the future
2. Deleting the comments of or banning trolls and spammers
3. Replying to the best positive comments to create brand evangelists
4. Replying to the remainder of positive comments
Walkthroughs for replying to positive comments and dealing with disruptive commenters, as well as Page management and moderation strategies  can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing your brand using Facebook.

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Featured Facebook fan page: Subway, Samsung Televisions, Stoli Vodka, NBC & Bravo and More

Brands used health as a draw for users to Like their Pages and purchase their products this week in our featured Facebook campaigns. Subway asked users to commit to a healthy lifestyle for a chance to win cash; NBC and Bravo also tried to bring users into a healthier lifestyle. Free Samsung television products, free concerts, the creation of an alter ego and some inside scoop about an upcoming fight match round out our featured campaigns.
We’ve excerpted two of the campaigns below. You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of dozens of other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Subway’s Commit to Fit Sweepstakes

Goal: Page Growth, Engagement, Product Purchase
Core Mechanic: A sweepstakes on the landing tab allows users to make a commitment to be healthy for a chance to win $25,000, a Subway gift card or Champs Sports gift card.
Method: Users select what type of healthy commitment they want to make, enter their address and email, then have the chance to invite friends to enter.
Impact: In a week the Page grew from 6.6 million to 7.5 million Likes. A successful campaign with more than 1 million new Likes.

Samsung Television’s Like It, Reveal It, Win It Contest

Goal: Page Growth, Network Exposure, Product Purchase, Engagement
Core Mechanic: A weekly product giveaway that incentivizes users to invite their friends to participate and to check in on the Page regularly.
Method: The Like-gated contest from Ignite Social Media asks users to unlock a certain amount of pixels each week to reveal a photo of the Samsung Television prize for the week. Users can win instant prizes, or a grand prize.
Impact: Users enter by unlocking a pixel, thus, the more pixels unlocked the easier it is to see the prize, creating an incentive for users to share with friends. Ignite Social Media tells us that the Page has grown 12,000 new fans to 64,300 Likes in just about a two week run.
How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of dozens of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

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Harry Potter fans, Potter Parody Fuels Frenzy Of Facebook Wall Posts

Hardcore Harry Potter fans went up in arms over a parody that people misunderstood once it became a popular share on Facebook.


The Onion, a publication that satirizes news items, printed the “Final Minutes of Last Harry Potter Movie To Be Split Into Seven Separate Films” and all heck broke loose when people began sharing the story on Facebook.
Diehard Pott-heads began protesting to no end. Hudson Hongo, a writer, thought that he should capitalize on this debate and countless others, many of which are fanned on the popular social networking site, so he just created a website called Literally Unbelievable.
Hongo’s website interprets stories that The Onion runs that are then become misunderstood when shared on Facebook. The impetus for his site began with a May 18 story “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex.“ The story also featured a picture of young teen girls and with a looming sign overhead that read “Abortions, 8,864,902 Terminated.”  Folks were outraged over the fake story and a no-holds-barred debate began on Facebook from both genders. Many were convinced the article was real which talked about a sprawling abortion facility that would terminate pregnancies with rapid-fire results.

“When I found out that people were reacting the same way to many other Onion articles, I felt the phenomenon was worth documenting and put it up my blog.  Y’know … for science,” Hongo told CNN.
But is he mocking the gullible? Hongo admits that he is somewhat sympathetic to those individuals who might be satirically impaired.  “I think folks are willing to believe Onion articles because the real news so often seems unreal these days,” he explained in an email to CNN.
Meanwhile, back on the Potter front: I’m sure that I do not stand alone when I say, “End it already!”  Poof, be gone!  I would love to wave my magic wand to bring the curtain down on the coming-of-age fantasy series that has frankly run out of steam.
Readers, what do you think about the rise in Facebook users misinterpreting humorous fictional stories?

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The popularity of religious, Justin Bieber, pages has lost some ground this week

The popularity of religious pages has lost some ground this week, while a certain pop star has moved closer to the to the top spot on our ranking of engagement.

Name	Fans	Interactions
1. Jesus Daily	5,336,725	1,738,155
2. Justin Bieber	27,538,023	1,165,147
3. The Bible	7,132,145	1,096,263
4. Manchester United	14,070,407	1,018,771
5. Mario Teguh	4,042,470	860,829
6. Lady Gaga	34,737,127	775,896
7. FC Barcelona	14,981,412	568,703
8. Necip Fazil Kisakurek	1,014,819	539,712
9. Jesus Christ	2,500,949	509,425
10. Harry Potter	23,874,795	464,320
11. Kemal Kilicdaroglu	1,240,443	442,130
12. Educate Yourself	1,199,241	424,618
13. Dios Es Bueno!	3,543,471	372,617
14. Leo Messi	14,113,075	370,923
15. MTV Roadies	1,443,054	358,527
16. We are Khaled Said	1,291,682	343,274
17. Mehmetcik	1,970,299	328,905
18. NBA	8,745,042	320,020
19. Müzik Keyfi	1,417,240	318,183
20. Werevertumorro	1,882,595	294,395

Religion

Jesus Daily has spent most of the month resting comfortably in the top spot, and with 1,738,155 interactions the popular hangout on Facebook will finish May there as well. The Bible gets knocked back a spot; the text lands in third as it sparked 1,096,263 comments. Also within the top ten, you will find the page dedicated to Jesus Christ finishing in ninth this week thanks to 509,425 talkative fans.
God is Good, or Dios Es Bueno in Spanish, lands in the 13th position with an interaction total of 372,617.

Music

Covering all sorts of random topics in his updates throughout the past seven days, an abundance of fan responses helped Justin Bieber put up quite the competition. The page had a notable week as it lands just short of first with 1,165,147 thoughts added to the discussion.
It was presumed that the release of her new album for under a dollar on Amazon last week would have the masses buzzing over at Lady Gaga‘s social networking home. The pop superstar does take a surprising fall this week though landing in sixth with 775,896 interactions tallied.

Sports

The competition was sizzling overseas on the football field. While Manchester United may have lost the championship, they did manage to outrank competitor Barcelona as a more engaging page. The team moves forward to fourth this week as 1,018,771 diehard fans cheered on Manchester.
FC Barcelona took home the championship — as well as the seventh position on our countdown; 568,703 likers added to the conversation. Star forward Leo Messi page skyrocketed over the past seven days; 370,923 talkative sports fans helped propel the FC Barcelona player into the 14th position.
With the two teams heading to the championship were finally decided last week, NBA‘s social networking hub is a busy place filled with trash talk and championship banter as 320,020 interactions helps the page stay in the 18th spot for another week.

International

Mario Teguh successfully finishes the month in the top ten; the Indonesian motivational speaker splits the first half of our countdown as the content posted has sparked 860,829 responses. Educate Yourself takes a step back to 12th with 424,618 posts added to the page. We are Khaled Said nabs the 16th spot with a seven day interaction total of 343,274. Werevertumorro takes a big fall as the comedic page rounds out our list with 294,395 comments.
In Turkey, Necip Fazil Kisakurek comes in eighth with 539,712 thoughts added to the discussion. Politician Kemal Kilicdaroglu finds his way back to our countdown with 442,130 engaged fans moving the page into the 11th position. Mehmetcik also returns this week to the 17th spot with an additional 328,905 voices partaking in the discussions. Müzik Keyfi slips six spots; the page hangs in 18th with 318,183 interactions.

Movies And Television

Excitement is building for the seventh Harry Potter film set to be released this summer. The upcoming blockbuster explodes in fan hype this week as it cuts our list in half with 464,320 excited posts added to the mix. Facebook continues to be the go-to place to discuss “MTV Roadies” as the show hangs on to 15th place this time around with 358,527 chattering fans.
If you want to measure interactions on your own page and compare them to others, take a look at all article about Facebook , which allows you to track and compare your pages in different dimensions. The tool is available in a free version, along with multiple business packages.
Readers, which pages have you engaged with the most this week?

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The House GOP conference says the challenge spawned 11,000 new Facebook likes for participants.

We told you about the New Media Challenge that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives launched to increase member participation on social media platforms, including Facebook. Well, round two just wrapped up and we’ve got the winners and losers hot off the press. The envelope please…

The House GOP conference says the challenge spawned 11,000 new Facebook likes for participants.

• Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (WV), simply asked (er, pleaded) outright for more friends in a video post on Facebook. The straightforward approach shouldn’t be surprising, since politicians have to ask for things all the time, right? Unfortunately, this time it didn’t work as her competitor, Rep. Allen West (FL), moves on to the next round.
• Or, there’s the “all for one and one for all approach,” as these Texas Congressmen shared on their respective pages (neither made it past Round 2.)
• Congressman Steve Womack (AR) posted a photo from his recent trip to Arlington National Cemetery, along with storm and tornado tips for his constituents in Arkansas.

Worth noting are the number of freshman GOP members who have taken to the challenge, since they have only been in office since January.  More than half of the remaining players are new to Congress. The challenge started with 106 players and after today that’s been cut down to 24.
So, what’s the secret to increasing engagement? There may not be a tried and true formula, but here are a few highlights the Republicans learned about it during the week.
Leanne Goodman, who handles social media for California Congressman Howard McKeon’s office, said, “The strategy is straightforward- engaging our constituents on Facebook through relevant, consistent content that integrates different new media platforms. The Congressman is fully engaged in the process, regularly recommending articles and opening his doors to ‘behind the scenes’ views for constituents back in California.”

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about Facebook profile photos

Did you know that the average Facebook user will change their profile photo 18 times this year? That’s three times as often as in 2006. Check out these interesting stats about Facebook profile photos!

Pixable has put together a pretty informative infographic that details some interesting statistics about Facebook user behavior as it applies to their profile photos. Check out the stats compiled from the company’s more than 500,000 Facebook users below.

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Readers, how likely do you think it is that Weiner’s accounts on Facebook and Twitter really got hacked

Sometimes, having a higher profile than Twitter has its disadvantages, as Facebook found itself mentioned in a scandal it had absolutely nothing to do with over the weekend that went by the chuckle-inducing name of Weinergate.

Weinergate reared its ugly head Saturday, when Big Government reported that a photo of a man’s erection, concealed by underwear, appeared in the official Twitter account of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), included in a Tweet directed to Gennette Cordova, a graduate student in Bellingham, Wash.
So what does this have to do with Facebook? Not much, except that Weiner apparently doesn’t know the difference between the U.S.’s largest social network and the 140-character microblogging site, as he replied in a Tweet, “FB hacked.”
Weiner told Politico in an email that he thought it was “obvious” that his account had been hacked, and his spokesman, Dave Arnold, told the New York Post, “Anthony’s accounts on both Facebook and Twitter were hacked.”
For her part, Cordova never mentioned Facebook, telling the New York Daily News:

Friday evening, I logged onto Twitter to find that I had about one-dozen new mentions in less than an hour, which is a rare occurrence. When I checked one of the posts that I had been tagged in, I saw that it was a picture that had supposedly been Tweeted to me by Weiner. The account that these Tweets were sent from was familiar to me; this person had harassed me many times after the congressman followed me on Twitter a month or so ago. Since I had dealt with this person and his cohorts before, I assumed that the Tweet and the picture were their latest attempts at defaming the congressman and harassing his supporters.

And as for the hacking itself, RedState blogger Caleb Howe Tweeted, “Haven’t seen it mentioned, but wouldn’t have to hack twitter/facebook to post from yfrog. Only have to hack yfrog. It’s authorized to tweet.”
And Photoshop expert Philip Bump went one step further for Mediate, reporting that the photo doesn’t match previous images uploaded by Weiner, that the type of camera is different, and that in his opinion, the photo did not come from Weiner.
Readers, how likely do you think it is that Weiner’s accounts on Facebook and Twitter really got hacked?

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ShopIgniter CEO Matt Compton on Raising $8M and the Growth of Ecommerce on Facebook

Founded back in 2008, when social shopping was an exciting but unproven idea, ShopIgniter has been building its business among clients who have real-world goods to sell online, with a focus on Facebook. And like some of its rivals have recently, the Portland, Ore. company has raised more funding, an $8 million second round led by Silicon Valley venture firm Trinity Ventures with existing investor Madrona Venture Group participating.

The new interest is because brands that had been focused on gaining Facebook fans in past years are now looking for what do next, as chief executive Matt Compton tells us in an interview today. For many Page owners, that means selling direct. ShopIgniter has a set of interlocking products aimed at meeting this emerging need.

One is a customizable white-label application for Pages, with ways to adjust the look and feel to match the page, tools for easily sort through product offerings, and other features seen social commerce apps. The Portland TrailBlazers basketball team, for example, has been using it to sell team merchandise on its Page. Compton tells us that in a recent test between on and off Facebook sales for a brand, conversions were twice as high on Facebook.

A ShopIgniter product called the "Social Promotions Engine" reaches further into Facebook, helping Page managers create custom campaigns designed to get users sharing content about the brand on their Walls and news feeds in order to generate sales. In an example detailed by Ryan Spoon, Nike promoted a limited set of collectible golf balls to fans of its Page. The contest winners got free golf balls, and Nike was able to increase fan awareness of and interaction with the store. Finally, participants were also encouraged to share a news feed story about their winnings with friends.

For the Blazers, Compton wrote last month, promotions like these resulted in the Page fan count growing by 25% and, perhaps more importantly, transactions conversions originating with Facebook friends growing by 16%.

Beyond the application and promotions, ShopIgniter also provides a white-label ecommerce product for web sites. The point of it is to go beyond more general online ecommerce management products, instead capturing commerce around social interactions wherever they happen. For example, one customer may go to a web site, find a product they're thinking about buying, click the Facebook Like button, and generate a story about it in their news feed. Their friend might then click to look at the product, be taken to the Page of a company with a ShopIgniter store, and buy the product there. Meanwhile, the person who Liked the product on the site might still go to the site when they decide to complete their purchase.

A variety of competitors in the business provide their own variations on social commerce applications — some we've looked at include 8thBridge (formerly Alvenda), which announced a $10 million second round in late May, and Payvment, which added a $6 million second round in December.

With client lists growing and venture capital firms doubling down, the non-virtual goods part of the platform appears to be coming of age. We just kicked off a series on social commerce in our Facebook Marketing Bible subscription service. Stay tuned for more.

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Facebook Announces PayPal Payouts to Developers for Credits Revenue

Facebook announced this morning that developers signing up for Facebook Credits now have PayPal as a payout option, increasing the flexibility developers have for monetzing apps through Facebook Credits.

This is of particular importance to developers in countries where PayPal is really the only trusted payout option for developers. Payout is the means by which a developer converts in-app currency exchanges to real money that the developer can then deposit into its bank accounts. Facebook says that the PayPal option now doubles the number of countries where developers can begin integrating Facebook Credits to 22 countries total, including Turkey, India and Japan.

Facebook Credits has been a slow road for certain social game developers in the last nine months between apparent reluctance and technical issues. The mandatory integration deadline for Facebook Credits within social  games is July 1. It is not clear if Facebook will extend the deadline for remaining countries that are experiencing difficulties with integration tied to payout complications. PayPal currently serves over 190 countries.

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Why Facebook Ads Are Undervalued By 800%

Facebook advertising is even more powerful than previously thought.

Advertising efficacy is usually assessed using the “last click,” meaning that the point of interaction right before the conversion is considered.  But this methodology has become outmoded in the context on Facebook advertising because people simply aren’t in buying phase when playing around on the social network, making it highly unlikely that a brand advertising on the site will get an immediate conversion.
Most Facebook ad clicks lead to a conversion at a later time and through a different channel. But last click analysis would have inaccurately attributed these conversions to last channel in the purchase path.
Quite often this shows search as the beneficiary because when people are ready to buy something online, what lazier way is there to navigate to your chosen brand website than by quickly searching for the site?
My experience of analyzing advertisers’ Facebook advertising conversions shows that between five and eight times as many sales from Facebook happen on a first click basis rather than last click.
Last click valuation refers to focusing on the advertising channel that a customer most recently interacted with before converting to a sale. Let’s instead consider Facebook to be the first click in a sequence of interactions that ultimately leads to a conversion on any channel.
For higher consideration purchases, where the length of time to conversion can be several days or weeks, this type of analysis is particularly important.
A typical example is the travel industry where we are seeing more than 30 percent of conversions take longer than 7 days from the first visit to final conversion. This has a big impact on measurement.
The result for travel is that awareness creating forms of advertising such as Facebook are often either the first click in this process or an assisting click. In the samples we analysed Facebook was the first click in the transaction over 3.5 times more than when it was the last click. This ratio increases up to six for assists.
When compared to other channels this is one of the highest ratios — showing the power of Facebook’s influence on other channels. The main beneficiary being paid search where more than 40 percent of transactions converted on price per click where Facebook was an assisting click.
Another interesting statistic we uncovered was that the average order value increased with the longer paths to conversion. This makes sense since the bigger the purchase, the more
thought goes into it. This adds another dimension to the importance of accurate tracking andattribution, particularly if last click (as a method) is undervaluing the order values as well as the transactions.
Grant Muckle is the managing director of I Spy Labs.

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Google Leads Investment In Facebook Gamer Kabam

If you play Facebook games, then you are familiar with Kabam games. The company is the maker of Kingdoms of Camelot, Dragon of Atlantis and Glory of Rome. The company receives $85 million in a financing round led by Google’s venture arm, helping the startup expand in Asia, hire developers and make acquisitions.

The investment is also being co-led by Pinnacle Ventures, and now values Kabam at about $500 million. The Bay Area company has raised $125 million since it started five years ago as a sports and social media group, but transformed into creator of social games. Kabam was formerly called Watercooler, and changed name last year. The size of its personnel has shot from 25 to 400 since 2010.
Click here to read more on Social Times.

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PastPost Recalls What You Did On Facebook Last Year

Can’t remember what you did yesterday? Yeah, we can’t either. Well, a new application intends to fix that.
PastPosts, created by tech veterans Jonathan Wegener, Matt Raoul and Benny Wong, sends users a daily email — if you didn’t log in every day last year, you only get messages on days that correspond to when you’d used Facebook in the prior year.
The daily missive comes in an easy-to-read format showing wall comments, posted photos, status updates, and more from your personal Facebook archives.
Wegener said the idea came from an app the guys created for Foursquare a few months ago called 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo that does pretty much the same thing.
“The response to that product has been really positive and thousands of people have signed up and told us they love it,” he said in an interview. “PastPosts is the next logical extension, bringing that same proven concept to the largest personal data creation platform, Facebook.”
“More philosophically, the interesting trend here is personal data exhaust — as we use web services, we’re constantly leaving behind a trail of digital information. We’re helping people re-experience that content as a daily email a year after the fact,” Wegener said.
He brings up a good point. This service is not only a cool idea that can help remind you of what your life was like a year ago, it serves as a reminder that just because an old post isn’t showing up on your wall anymore doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

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Ex-MySpace Exec Launching Facebook Alternative

This is probably the most far-fetched pitch I’ve heard yet: a social network billing itself as an alternative to Facebook, created by MySpace alumni.

MySpace, for the few of you that don’t know, literally was the Facebook alternative until Facebook beat them at their own game.
Now there are plenty of social applications looking to fill gaps in Facebook’s experience. There are even a few that are trying to use privacy as the key selling point, just as Altly is.
However, most of these startups never received traction and thus never received an investment of any significant size. Altly appears to be the exception, starting off with a round of funding from some influential investors.
I can understand where the investors are coming from: Use Facebook’s branding to build a brand off of being “the alternative.” Unfortunately, it’s a horrible idea.
Rather than actually launching anything, the company is making its big debut with a long blog post which is nothing more then a rant about why Facebook sucks.
Dmitry Shapiro, the former MySpace executive behind the project, has so many connected friends that he was actually able to convince some of them to give him money on the basis of hatred against Facebook.
Shapiro’s blog post ranting about why Facebook sucks is so long that he needed to post a follow-up summary at the end of it. Rather than posting his summary, I’ve decided to take the liberty to translate what he’s really saying — I’m going to alternate between quoting him and then commenting:

Many people are friends with their co-workers, their bosses, business partners, and casual acquaintances. In fact, we feel pressured to become friends with all kinds of people that we would not normally have frequent communications with.

Dmitry clearly gave in to the pressure and now his life has suffered because of it. Like he rants:

Facebook makes it difficult to configure privacy settings and to target messages towards specific groups of friends, therefore encouraging us to broadcast our activity to every one of our friends. And since many of us have our share permissions set to friends and friends of friends, a Facebook default, we are inadvertently sharing not only with our friends but also anyone that is friends with them. With the average Facebook member having 130 friends (Source: Facebook statistics May 2011), sharing with friends of friend” means that you are not just sharing with your 130 friends but with 16,900 people.

In other words, “I’m mad because I accidentally broadcasted out something that I didn’t want one of my friends to see. I really have no idea to use Facebook’s privacy settings and frankly I could have made $1,000 in the time it would have taken me to configure them.” He also says:

To add to the complexity of understanding who sees our personal information and interactions, Facebook has a long history of changing privacy settings, without first alerting users, and exposing our private information in ways that we did not intend.

Get mad! Facebook is screwing you over and you have to put up with it. Do you really want to live life being pressured by Facebook when you are sitting in front of your computer? Hell no. I’m leaving and you should too. Who’s coming with me?!  Nobody? Okay, well how about this:

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive officer, claims that Facebook is simply creating a tool that facilitates our natural movement away from privacy. What he fails to acknowledge is that Facebook EXERTS its power over how we communicate and is FORCING social norms to change.

Mark Zuckerberg is telling you how to communicate. Are you going to put up with that?!

A recent CNN story titled “Young job-seekers hiding their Facebook pages” says that “A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft found that 70 percent of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States have rejected an applicant based on information they found online.”

People should be able to act like stupid idiots and it should have no repercussions on them! Don’t you want to act stupid? I know I do! Come join me on Altly where you can act stupid all the time and nobody will see it! (We know the real reason nobody will see it: nobody will be on it.)

Facebook, by forcing our communications to be more and more public, creates an environment where they can allow advertisers to better target advertising to us. Targeting of ads online is not new, but the amount of information that is collected by Facebook, and then exposed to advertisers for targeting purposes is DRAMATICALLY beyond that of any service that has ever existed.

Look, I know that MySpace used your information to target ads to you . But seriously, folks, Facebook has much more data than MySpace ever did and it’s far better structured! (Damn, Facebook was smart.) Do you really want Facebook knowing all that stuff about you?!

There is clearly nothing wrong with Facebook making money, as all business has to do. What IS clearly wrong is when our privacy, our personal information, our digital lives are being subjugated for the sake of profit, without us having any meaningful capability to opt out, or even know the extent of such activity.

Have you ever tried deleting your Facebook account? Go and try it! Your account is never disappearing and Facebook is going to keep your information even if you don’t want it to.
In fact, they’re going to sneak under your bed and when you are sleeping they are going to steal your wallet. (Someone says, “Really?”) Yes, Really … Facebook would steal your wallet, and your lover. You better hide yo’ kids and yo’ wife, because Facebook is coming after you!!
Now that you know that the Facebook boogeyman is coming for you, don’t you want an alternative? Hell yeah, you do. Well at Altly, we’ve got the solution that will make your life less miserable. Get this, we honor your privacy! That’s right, we are going to let you control who can see the 10 million photos, status updates, messages, comments, likes, wall posts, and all the virtual cows you purchased in FarmVille.
When will it launch? I have no idea because building a system this complex required me to get $1 million before I even started building it. How will we make money? We don’t! We are here to make your life better and that’s all you need to know.

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SURVEY: 2 In 3 Small Businesses Are On Facebook

Roughly than two-thirds of small business owners have a presence on Facebook.

That comes from a survey of 1,132 small business owners by Webs.com.
Webs.com found that 68.6 percent, or 591 respondents, use Facebook the most for their business.
Over three quarters of the survey respondents plan to increase their use of social media this year, while almost one in five plan to maintain the same amount of effort they did in 2010.
And 25.3 percent said they update social media several times a day, while 16.7 percent said they posted once a day.
When asked whether they see social media as a viable way to communicate with their customers, 62.1 percent responded “definitely,” while 34.3 percent said “sometimes,” and 3.7 percent said “not at all.”
However, 40.5 percent of the surveyed small business owners said that social media has either met or exceeded their expectations; some 42.8 percent said that it only somewhat met their expectations, while 16.6 said the experience hasn’t lived up to their expectations at all.
It seems like small businesses are only just beginning to hit their stride on Facebook. Readers, what insights do you have based on these numbers?

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D.C. Facebook Employees Get A New Boss

Joel Kaplan, a former staff member under George W. Bush, will join Facebook and lead the Washington D.C. office.

Previously an executive vice president at Energy Future Holdings, Kaplan has very strong ties to the Republican party.
Facebook is in need of growing the company’s D.C. efforts as they want to “demonstrate to policy makers that [they] are industry leaders in privacy, data security and safety,” the company said in a press release.
Evelyn Rusli of the New York Times is calling this a “significant coup.” Given the increasing scrutiny surrounding Facebook’s privacy practices, it’s critical that they continue to add staff members to increase their influence within the beltway.
It also sounds like a great career change for Joel Kaplan. According to the Times, he’s leaving a private equity firm that’s currently “sitting on billions of dollars of losses.” Sounds like the perfect time to jump ship and head to a company which is sitting on billions of dollars in new revenue!
In addition to Joel Kaplan, Facebook has hired another Republican, Myriah Jordan, who “recently served as general counsel to Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina,” the Times said.
I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more about the D.C. office in the coming months as it attempts to convince Congress that Facebook’s privacy practices sufficiently protect users.

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How To Succeed At Facebook Advertising

Gordmans opened two new stores in Minneapolis and promoted them with several Facebook campaigns, working with BlitzLocal.com.
They created two different types of campaigns: one advertising an event, and another advertising a tab. Both were targeted at the city level. Because the scope was so narrow, tests included adding the city name as part of the ad image itself. Overall though, these ads definitely helped in garnering more visitors.

Sponsored Stories Outperformed Regular Facebook Ads

There are two types of sponsored stories – a sponsored like, which targets friends of your fans, and a Sponsored post, which shows messages to existing fans. Gordmans ran a highly targeted sponsored like ad:

• within the regions where the retailer has its 68 retail locations
• female demographic
• keywords related to bargain-hunting

While most Facebook ads are lucky to get a 0.05 percent clickthrough rate, this campaign drove a .4 percent CTR on the first day, which fell by 45 percent within 48 hours to .2 percent.
Generally, anything at or above 0.1 percent is highly optimized. Sponsored likes also cut the cost per click by 70 percent and cost per fan by 83 percent overall. That’s like getting a 77 percent discount off from Facebook.

In two days, this ad drove 515 clicks for $76 and gained 418 new fans. That works out to 18 cents per fan and a click-to-conversion rate of 81 percent.
Most brands out there are getting fans at between $2 and $10, the former via self-serve and the latter via premium ads. $0.18 for a new fan, one that is giving your brand permission to talk to them, is a great cost of acquisition.
Gordmans found the key to success with Facebook advertising is leveraging the endorsement of their existing fans. People are far more likely to click on events that are associated with what their friends are doing.

Highly Engaged Content Equals Positive Fan Growth

The creative refresh demand of social requires you to be able to iterate much quicker, to refresh your content and creative much more quickly than other types of online marketing.  Gordmans knew they needed to rotate ads to keep them fresh. Facebook ads are typically served to the same users multiple times, often in the same day, so they quickly tune-out repeat ads.
Gordmans also used the Webtrends Apps platform to develop fresh and engaging applications rewarding customers for engaging through fans-only promotions.
While apps have about a 10-to-14 day shelf life before people start to drop off in interaction, ads have around three-to-five days before you see a dramatic drop off. But because Gordmans’ wall postings resonated well with the brand, only five percent of fans have unsubscribed from the page.

Geo-Targeting Works

The average human attention span is about 30 seconds. In fact, successful Facebook advertisers try to relate images to their audience, for example by serving an image of a local landmark or in Gordmans case including the city name is another way to garner more attention.


By injecting the city name in the ad image in conjunction with the geo-targeting, the ads were more appealing and relevant.
Gordmans found that geo-targeted ads with the city name on the ad image performed better than the ads without it. With geo-targeted ads that offered fans the opportunity to check in and claim deals, Gordmans was able to drive customers to their brick and mortar stores.

More Earned Media At A Cheaper Rate

By measuring the number of impressions the Facebook page generated over time, then estimating a $5 cost per impression, we can determine the earned media value of the brand.
Earned media represents impressions generated for free, from efforts outside of the traditional ad spend, which includes viral and word-of-mouth publicity such as likes and shares.

This type of exposure has a high quality because  it leverages the trust of friends. With over 38 million impressions over a period of 79 days, at the aforementioned $5 CPM, we get $190,000 earned media value for that time period, which represents how much ad spend would have been required to achieve the same number of impressions via paid media.
Extended out over a year’s time, the value is $879,000 per year, or $4.5 million in perpetuity, assuming we’ve applied a 20 percent discount rate to the projection of earned media over time.

What’s Next?

Now in the works is a new Facebook places strategy— to drive check-ins, shares, and coupons.
Gordmans has had a lot of success in running Google Adwords campaigns with a focus on letting users redeem coupons. Running similar campaigns on Facebook will reinforce the Google campaigns, and with Facebook’s social twist tied into the coupon redemption strategy, they expect to see excellent results.

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Facebook Users Counting Down To Memorial Day

As the the holiday weekend approaches, the frequency of Facebook posts concerning Memorial Day increases in pace.

Status updates and wall shares related to Memorial Day are going up at a rate of about one every few seconds as of this writing.

This is based on our own admittedly unscientific keyword searches of Facebook posts by everyone; click here to see these results for yourself.

Many people are asking each other what they have planned for the three-day weekend. They’re also sending invitations to barbeques and parties. Others are sharing details on Memorial Day weekend sales.

Only the occasional post addresses the fact that the holiday honors those who’ve died in military service. However, we expect that type of posting to become more prevalent on Memorial Day itself.

Meanwhile, a Facebook page simply called Memorial Day has 11,674 likes as of this writing.

And we wouldn’t be surprised if Monday brings about a viral revival of the Memorial Day-themed application launched last year by Involver and the White House.

Readers, what are your friends posting on Facebook about Memorial Day?

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VOTE: Would You Switch To Spotify On Facebook?

Europe’s most popular streaming music service, Spotify, is coming to Facebook soon.

Make that: as soon as Spotify completes negotiations with all of the major recording labels in the U.S.
Once live, an icon leading to the music application may appear in the left-hand side of the Facebook home page.
The imminent availability of Spotify on Facebook begs the question: Would you change your music listening habits? European readers, would you go to Facebook to get the service instead of how you might already be listening to it now?
Let us know what you think by participating in the poll below. We’d love it if you could share your rationale for voting by posting a comment. And be sure to check back to see how everyone else is voting.

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SEO Social and Search: A Small Business Primer

Decisions just got easier with the addition of new social features to Bing. By bringing together the power of search and Facebook, people can now receive personalized search results based on the opinions of their friends by simply signing into Facebook. These features, available now, make it easy to see what people’s Facebook friends “like” across the Web, incorporate the collective IQ of the Web into their decision making, and conduct conversational searches. Decisions can now be made not just with facts, but with the opinions of trusted friends and collective wisdom from the Web, resulting in smarter, faster decisions. Also available today is the new Bing Bar, that includes the first universal “like” button, making it easy for people to “like” any page on the Web.  As a publisher your messaging is going to be amplified due to how Bing is surfacing the messages to consumer.

With social media’s rise to prominence has come an increased influence on search.  Search engines are always striving to return the most relevant results when a searcher uses their services, and integrating social signals is one more way Bing can understand what matters most to a searcher.  By integrating social signals from the social sphere, we can help guide searchers to the best results.  If people feel something is worth calling out socially as “the best”, it’s obvious hearing their opinions at the time someone is scanning for search results can have an impact on click choices made by that individual searcher.  By watching signals such as this, Bing integrates results that matter more to searchers, returning more relevant results.  Those searchers are your customers.  The signals they see are coming from the “friends” and “followers” your business has online.
Here is a snapshot of how the features work:

• Microsoft data shows that nearly half of people say seeing their friend’s “likes” within search results could help them make better decisions; and who better than a group of trusted friends to guide everyday decision making? Bing’s new features make this possible.
• Liked Results, Answers and Sites. Cut right to the good stuff, by seeing what stories, content and sites friends have “liked” right in the search results. Planning a trip to Napa Valley, for example, can be overwhelming with the hundreds of wineries there are to choose from – luckily the “likes” of friends can narrow the choices on which vineyards are a must see.
• Personalized Results. Bing personalizes the search experience, by surfacing content your friends have “liked” from deep within search results to the top of the page. Because most people don’t go beyond page one of the results, they might be missing the best information.

But it’s not just friends that can help out. There’s also value in the larger brain trust of the Web. Bing now brings the collective IQ of people to decision making online when friends may not have the right expertise, or a person may not know exactly what they’re looking for.

• Popular Sites. See collective “like” results related to trending topics, articles, and Facebook fan pages, to find the most popular content.  When searching a recipe site, for example, see what articles on the site people have liked, to help find the perfect recipe for dinner.
• Social Messages. Searchers can also benefit from knowing what major brands and companies are sharing on Facebook. For example, when planning a vacation and searching for a rental car, Bing will show recent Facebook posts alerting people to a new deal at the top of the results.

Many decisions require a discussion with friends. By combining Facebook’s communication tools with Bing, search can become conversational – taking decision-making on Bing from a passive experience to an active dialogue. Bing’s vision is to combine the power of discovery with the empowerment of conversation.
To clarify, this does not rerank the search results per se.  When Bing understands a searcher’s results contain annotations from their friends, we bring those results to the main page or results so the searcher can see them.  They are inserted for viewing, not replacing anything we would show in the organic results.  Bing expands the real estate on the page to showcase the socially annotated results.  The results themselves shift to accommodate this, with the order of ranking remaining the same.  Regardless of whether you are logged in socially or not, the actual order of the ten organic results does not change.
Here’s how social works with Bing:

 

It all starts with people sharing and liking content.  These actions lead people to share their feedback via outlets such as Facebook and Twitter.  Bing collects the publically available information to work into our processing and indexing of content.  From there, we process the data and factor that into ranking.  All of this happens very rapidly, with signals being collected in real-time, and results showing nearly as fast on search results pages.
Rising above the noise
Here are some things to consider as search engines become more social.  Some will be items you already perform, while others may require you to rethink how you approach building your site, content and community.

• Quality: Create unique, interesting and useful content.  Deploy the like button smartly across your content so that customers can express their sentiment to help you show up better in search.
• Trust: Work on getting trustworthy sites linking to your site. 
• Popularity: Being popular helps. While quality of your inbound links matters more, having a number of trustworthy links pointed at your content helps, too.
• Timeliness: Practice frequent updating of your sites or blogs.  Visitors like to know your site is current.
• Simplicity: Make it easy to Like and Share content.  Enable functionality which encourages visitors to share your content.
• Share: Include links in updates via your own social spaces.  The perceived quality of your posts increases when you include links to relevant, useful content.
• Relationships: Seek ways to encourage trust-worthy people to share your posts and content.  Avoid spammy clumps or groups who randomly “Like” things.  Organic is best.
• Frequency: The number of people “Liking” what you said/shared in the last minute, hour, day, week is easily seen by the engines.  Work to increase your influence.
• Change: Be prepared to turn on a dime, and for the flash mob as new things go viral.  Focus shifts quickly today, so be ready to take advantage of shifts as they occur.

Things you should be doing now

1. Growing your social footprint.  Get started with a Facebook fan page to leverage the ability to get “Likes” into the SERP.
2. Accessing data to help you improve your website.  Sign up for a Bing Webmaster Tools account to not only see the data available about your site, but to watch for updates and future announcements from Bing.
3. Balance your marketing plan.  In addition to well-planned search engine marketing and social media plans, you should be seeking to balance where you get traffic from. By including paid search as part of your plan you create a safety net for potential organic algorithm changes, and can drive highly targeted, converting traffic immediately.
4. Cover the basics for long term traffic.  Since we’ve mentioned it above, make sure you’re making progress on that search engine optimization plan.  Work to ensure your website is as optimized as it can reasonably be.  This makes for a better product for your users, and for the search engine’s crawlers as well.

Wrapping up
There is a lot of conversation about the future of search these days.  One thing we can tell you for certain is that social will surely play a role in whatever future search has.  The ability to use social signals to fine tune search results, making them much more relevant for every searcher, is simply too important to overlook.  Search and social will each continue to evolve.  While neither will replace the other, they will continue to remain inseparable as part of a well-rounded marketing plan.
Final thought on managing social: Avoid spammy communities
As Link Farms flourished over the past few years with a goal to game the search engines with paid links, today we are seeing the advent of Like Farms.  In the images below, you can see the difference between content which gets shared organically (on the top), though people sharing with legitimate friends and followers, and the kind of sharing that happens through Like Farm-style sharing (on the bottom). It’s pretty easy for Bing to spot these activities as the patterns are obvious. 
If you are growing a legitimate community of followers they can actually help you share your content.  This does take time, though, so be ready to put in the work if you want the success.  Taking shortcuts like using auto-follow services to boost your fan counts, or using “auto-Like” services may seem like a smart use of your time, but in the end they won’t help your efforts.  You’ll end up wasting time, and sometimes even money, on tactics that simply don’t work long term.

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Deals get Social

A few months ago we launched Check-In Deals, to help you get special offers when you check in at local businesses from your mobile. Today we're going a step further and testing a new feature to help you find fun experiences to share with your favorite people: Deals on Facebook.

Initially, Deals will be available to people in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco and we hope to expand this test to other cities in the future.

Deals get social
While many Deals on Facebook offer discounts, it's more important to us that you find interesting experiences around you to do with friends.  We've worked with partners and local businesses to help deliver the best social activities in your area.  And once you've found a deal you like, having the deal on Facebook makes it easy to share, buy and plan with your friends.

For example, Austin City Limits Live is offering an 'All Access Experience' for concerts starting in May. You can buy this deal and get backstage passes, sound check access and a catered dinner in addition to attending the show.

How to find Deals
You can find deals on Facebook in a couple of different ways — for example, you can get deals updates through email and notifications to find out about new deals in your area. You can also check out the Deals tab of your home page. If your friends chose to share this information, you may also see the deals friends buy or like in your News Feed.

We are working with aDealio, Gilt City, HomeRun, kgb deals, OpenTable, Plum District, PopSugar City, ReachLocal, Tippr, viagogo, and zozi, so you can buy their Deals on Facebook too.

Whether you're making plans for this weekend or your best friend's birthday or a big anniversary, check out Deals on Facebook today to find cool things to do with friends.

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How people are using Groups on Facebook

It's always been easy to share with all your friends on Facebook, but until we introduced Groups last October, there wasn't a simple way to share with just a few people. Much of what we share in our daily lives is only meaningful to smaller groups of people, like our family, roommates, or co-workers. With Groups, you can create a private space to share with just those friends.

In the six months since our launch, people have created over 50 million Groups on Facebook. It's grown quickly because of its social design. Instead of making everyone build and manage individual friend lists, one person can create a group for their families and everyone in the family gets to use it.

We've received some great feedback about how people are using Groups and what new features they would like to see. Today, we're happy to announce some new improvements, including integration with Questions, the ability to upload photo albums, and additional membership controls.

How people are using Groups

People are using Groups to communicate with many of the important communities in their lives, like their families, best friends, and teammates. My own family uses a group to stay connected to each other. As a Californian with a brother living in Peru and parents back in Wisconsin, we use our group to update each other about our lives, share vacation photos, and discuss where we're going to meet up next.

I also have a group with my roommates. Because we have such different schedules, we can go a whole week without seeing each other in person. Our group is where we meet to divide up chores, settle our bills, and make plans for the weekend.

Popular group names among college students 19-22 years old (larger words represent greater popularity).

Popular group names among people 60-75 years old.

New improvements to Groups

You've always been able to post updates to Groups, but now you can post questions and polls for only members to weigh in on. You'll get quick responses to questions like "What movie should we see?" and "When should we should hold our next soccer practice?"

Where before you could only upload individual photos, now you have the option to upload entire albums directly to your group, making it even easier to share your photos with the people who most want to see them.

For group owners, we're also adding a control that lets you approve people before they are added to the group.

For people who were using our older version of Groups, we've created a tool that makes it easy to upgrade to the new Groups format. Owners and members of old Groups will be receiving information about how to upgrade within the coming weeks.

Send button lets you share with Groups

In addition to the other new group features, we're also introducing the Send button.

A year ago, we launched the Like button, which gives you a quick way to share the things you find on the web with all your friends. But there are times when you find something that you only want to share with a few specific people.

Say you're on Orbitz and want to tell your roommates about a great idea for a summer vacation, or you come across a Huffington Post article that you only want to share with people at work. With the new Send button, now you can share things with any of your Groups or individual friends on Facebook.

Starting today, the Send button will be available on over 50 leading websites, and it will appear in more places soon.

Create a Group today

It's been exciting to hear about the many ways people have been using Groups to communicate with the different people in their lives, and we hope you all enjoy the new features, which will be rolling out over the next few days.


 

Elliot Lynde, an engineer on the Groups team, is currently working on scanning in all his old photos to post in his family group.

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CEO Guide to Technology

The CEO Guide to the Data Center Building Boom

Data center building plans by companies such as Dell, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google are helping small rural towns cut deficits

Slide Show: America's Secret Data Centers
Plus: Digital Realty Gains on Frenzy
Podcast: A Home for Internet Data

The CEO Guide to Business Gamification

Kia, Best Buy, and Viacom are using new tools to mine comments on the Web to see what consumers really think of their brands



The CEO Guide to the Micro Workforce
Learn how companies are cutting costs by hiring microworkers who are paid by task. Read about the businesses and Websites that are helping match workers with jobs and employers. These include Amazon.com, CloudCrowd, LiveOps and ODesk

The CEO Guide to Mobile Payments
Learn how companies including Wells Fargo, Google, Starbucks, McDonald's, AT&T and Verizon Wireless are using near-field communications to help consumers make purchases with a mobile phone

The CEO Guide to Cloud Computing
Learn how companies including Flextronics, Siemens and Accenture are using cloud computing to cut costs and tackle tasks including human resources and sales management; Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com, Workday and SuccessFactors are competing for a slice of a $148.8 billion market

The CEO Guide to Mobile Business Apps
Learn how companies are creating and using mobile apps for employees who want to use the Apple iPhone, Research In Motion BlackBerry and phones that run Google's Android software to get work done when they're on the go

The CEO Guide to High-Performance Computing
Learn how General Motors is using high-performance computers made by IBM to make cars safer and market new automobiles. Other companies harnessing high-power computers include Boeing, DreamWorks, Eli Lilly, and Speedo

The CEO Guide to Collective Intelligence
Learn how companies including Pitney Bowes, AT&T, Cisco Systems and Electronic Arts are using software to tap workers' collective knowledge and ideas to solve problems at a low cost

The CEO Guide to Aging IT Workforce
IBM and CA are hard-pressed to replace the aging corps of Baby Boomers who support their still-indispensable mainframe business

The CEO Guide to Apple's iPad
Learn how large companies including Wells Fargo and SAP as well as smaller businesses such as restaurants and nail salons are using Apple's iPad to make employees more productive and keep them better connected to the office

The CEO Guide to Robots in the Workplace
Safety advances and a keener sense of their surroundings are putting robots to work in such new settings as hospitals, warehouses, and offices

The CEO Guide to Wellness Technology
Companies are turning to individualized plans for employees to improve their fitness, assisted by wearable technology and Web sites, in an effort to contain health care costs

The CEO Guide to Cyberwar
The U.S. government is stepping up recruitment of engineers who can help wage cyberwar

The CEO Guide to Counterfeit Tech
Fake chips, routers, and computers cost the electronics industry as much as $100 billion a year; distributors and law enforcers are fighting back

The CEO Guide to 'Patent Trolls'
Microsoft, McAfee, and Symantec are countering costly infringement litigation by joining a year-old group that buys and licenses its own patents

The CEO Guide To PC Alternatives
IT departments attempt to cut costs by experimenting with thin clients, netbooks, virtual desktops, and other substitutes for traditional computing

The CEO Guide to Context-Aware Technology
Context-aware computing draws on vast amounts of data to help consumers buy from vendors that know more about them, too

The CEO Guide to Augmented Reality
The technology for meshing digital data with actual images, or augmented reality, makes a jump to smartphones, and the market is taking off

The CEO Guide to Smart Grid Technology
Smart-grid technology will bring huge savings to companies as varied as Cisco, PG&E, and Cargill, and to consumers, too. But who will foot the bill?

The CEO Guide to the Tech-Job Outlook
Hiring at small, venture-funded tech firms is on the rise, raising hopes for an industrywide turnaround by 2010

The CEO Guide to Broadband Stimulus
Companies seeking some of the $7.2 billion in federal money to bring broadband to underserved areas are rushing to meet an Aug. 14 deadline

The CEO Guide to Cyberthreats
How a top payments processor responded to the largest-ever criminal pilfering of credit-card data, and what other companies can learn from it

The CEO Guide to Carbon Accounting
Coca-Cola, Cisco, Intuit, and others use ever more sophisticated tools to measure their environmental impact and meet emissions goals

The CEO Guide to Apple's iPhone
Despite such worries as data security, IT staffs are beginning to support Apple's device—especially if the CEO starts carrying one

Electronic Health Records
Electronic medical recordkeeping may not cut the overall cost of care, but by eliminating redundant procedures and reducing errors, quality may be improved

Business Intelligence
The recession is fostering interest in BI software, which helps companies analyze the data they collect for new cost-cutting or sales opportunities

Outsourcing in a Recession
Discretionary IT projects are getting the ax as companies review costs, hurting sales and growth for outsourcing providers

The Desktop of the Future
Companies as varied as Nortel, Nationwide, and Bechtel are experimenting with virtual desktops that are likely to improve security—but will they reduce costs?

Open-Source Software
As the recession puts pressure on tech spending, many companies are turning to open-source software to handle more IT tasks

Refurbished Tech
With credit tight in a rough economy, businesses are offloading equipment while bargain hunters are picking up retooled hardware on the cheap

3D Computing
Diverse fields such as medicine, fashion, combat and architecture are adopting 3D computing applications

Microblogging
Microblogging lets an airline, for instance, monitor customers' gripes—and tweet back. Is this a creepy trend?

Cloud Computing
A major shift in the way companies obtain software and computing capacity is under way as more companies tap into Web-based applications

Disaster Readiness
Many companies are realizing that they can play a crucial role in helping communities recover from natural catastrophes

Innovation Prizes
Competitions from the likes of Microsoft and Virgin are sparking innovation and drawing thousands of contestants from around the world

Virtual Worlds
Moving beyond Second Life marketing, many companies are infiltrating virtual worlds for employee meetings, mixers, and recruiting

Emerging Outsourcing Hubs
Efforts to send IT work anywhere but Bangalore are taking on added urgency as costs of doing work in India rise and the dollar sinks

Widgets
The customizable bits of software on Facebook and other social networking sites are the latest trend in viral marketing. But are widgets here to stay?

Consumer Tech at Work
Companies large and small are seeing their proprietary information compromised by employees' personal devices, and they're taking action

Green Computing
As a threat to operations and the bottom line, corporate computing's fast-growing power consumption is forcing companies to adopt green energy

The Web of the Future
A rising tide of companies are tapping Semantic Web technologies to unearth hard-to-find connections between disparate pieces of online data

Wikis
The online tools for building collective info banks are making deeper inroads in corporations and rewriting the rules of collaboration

The Virtual Workplace
The benefits include lower costs and greater productivity, but figuring out how to communicate with off-site employees is crucial

Viral Video
A growing number of companies turn to online video, and the word of mouth that accompanies it, for everything from advertising to recruiting

Outsourcing
Companies are increasingly sending IT work to hubs outside India. They're saving money but facing a whole new raft of challenges

Mashups
Corporations from IBM to Google to E*Trade are jumping onboard the trend of mixing and matching software from different sources

Location-Aware Technologies
Radio frequency identification, or RFID, has been slow to reshape retailing, but it's finding unexpected uses in health care and beyond

Social Networking
Networking technology gives companies a new set of tools for recruiting and customer service—but privacy questions remain

Prediction Markets
More corporations are setting up their own markets for economic forecasts, hoping to tap into the wisdom of employees

VoIP
Companies are upgrading old phone networks to reduce bills and add features. But cost savings can take time, and IP systems aren't risk-free

Web 2.0
What every CEO needs to know about the array of new tools that foster online collaboration—and could revolutionize business

Read more »