Looking at the below graph, you’ll see that up until about 5 weeks ago, traffic to FriendFeed, Twitter,and Pownce was relatively consistent, respectively. However, the last 5 weeks has shown a HUGE traffic spike for FriendFeed, and I’m quite sure it’s because of the constant downtime at Twitter.
I’m sure Summize traffic boom will continue for some following months, until users adopt a stable fast follower of Twitter (FriendFeed):
This post was guest blogged by Travis Taylor, who is trying to become Seth Godin’s intern.
The CPC is lower than Google and the targeting is more specific than a general search.
For those who haven’t created a campaign here are the steps required:
1. Choose whether the ad will send users to
2. Select demographic. Select by Country, Age, Gender, Relationship Status, Interests, Workplace, University
3. Create ad
4. Select daily budget and enter payment information
5. Receive Clicks
It is very straightforward and intuitive.
My Problems with Facebook Ads:
1. You can’t see the demographics of who clicked on your ad
2. Only one person can manage a campaign at a time
3. You can’t edit the ad once it is created
4. Navigation that makes you want to kick Zuckerburg in the face
5. You can’t delete your credit card number without adding another
6. All the text runs together in the ad/ you can’t cap all letters in the sentence
7. You can’t narrow down to a smaller audience by adding more targeting terms.
What this means:
Suppose I am trying to reach only one person, Hayden Panettiere. There are only 80 women in the US who are aged 18 and describe themselves as liberal and liking dolphins. However, when I add acting as another interest. Now the ad is targeting 3,400 people. Facebook is effectively destroying the possibility for long tail marketing, which could be one of its strongest features.
The information provided about who clicked through is also lacking. You aren’t told which keyword is more productive, which requires you to run a simultaneous campaign if you truly want to be an effective Facebook marketer.
Being able to refine a search based upon what part of the target audience is clicking through like a perfectly logical feature. It doesn’t reveal any private information but would turn Facebook from a PPC-for-idiots to one of the most direct and powerful advertising tools available.
If you are interested in creating a personal brand, spending money on Facebook might not be a bad idea (assuming they allow personal ads).
Google announced on it’s blog that YouTube will now have integratd metric and statistics available.
Insight gives the creators an inside look into the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and helps them to increase views and become more popular. Partners can evaluate metrics to better serve and understand their audiences, as well as increase ad revenue. And advertisers can study their metrics and successes to tailor their marketing — both on and off the site — and reach the right viewers. As a result, Insight turns YouTube into one of the world’s largest focus groups.
Thanks TechCrunch. Image from Google blog.
There’s an awesome post on Web Strategist called “Case Study: Dissecting the Dell Regeneration Graffiti Facebook Campaign“. It details how Dell used the Graffiti application on Facebook to promote its products and being green.
Now that Facebook applications can be put on any website, the time is now to make your app, whether it be to promote your website or just make a few extra bucks. This post covers the basics and is meant to been an introduction to researching, creating, launching, advertising, and making money from Facebook applications.
Researching your app:
Be sure to do the proper research on your target market and Facebook users. We previously wrote a post on Facebook stats, that is a must read before making any application.
Your application should be:
1. Viral = users should WANT to invite their friends to join the app. 
Top Friends and Hobo Wars are great examples.
2. Exciting = an exciting or fun app will kee users coming back and help your long term retention rate.
3. Unique = there are a ton of applications out there, so do some research and make sure your application is unique or at least separates itself from the competition somehow.
Creating your app:
There are a few options when creating your application. The most obvious is to just code it yourself, but companies like Facebookster can create your app for you. Additionally, websites like Clearspring can assist you in the coding process, especially if you are new. The Facebook Developers section also has documentation, resources, and tools to help you forge through the process of creating your app.
Launching your app:
Some applications can require a dedicated server and since some may grow very quickly, it is often difficult to forecast server demand. That’s one of the reasons Amazon launched their AWS for Facebook Applications hosting.
I’d also strongly recommend tying your application to a website. By also having a website, you’ll be able to capture brand search traffic in search engines for the application as well as use the website for updates, news, community involvement, and an additional revenue stream.
Be sure to fully test your application. There is almost nothing worse than launching the app and having the early adopters frustrated and leave.
Advertising your app:
After making sure the app is bug free and when the app is ready to be launched, you should:
- Install it yourself and invite your friends.
- Tell your friends to invite their friends.
- Contact relevant blogs and ask them to blog about the app.
- Create a Facebook group and fan page.
- Advertise on Facebook.
- List the application in the application directory.
Making money from your app:
There are numerous ways to make money from your application. You can insert affiliate links and banners from cj.com, sell private advertising, or insert ads from a network. Most ads should be placed on the app landing page, not the actual app itself (though, it seems it’s fairly acceptable to include a small link in the app on the profile). A specialized solution for making money from your application is fbExchange, which lets you trade, sell, or buy clicks from your application or others.
Thanks to Luke from Kinoli, Virtual Marketing Blog, and Free Shipping for the post idea.
Advertisement: Feel like creating your application is a little overwhelming? No problem! Freezing Hot can be a project manager and help launch your application and get it in front of millions of users. Go over and get a quote so we’ll be in touch!
Viral videos, or videos have spread like wildfire around the internet spreading you “word”, have increased dramatically over the past year with the increase in video sharing website and broadband access. BusinessWeek* reported that spend on viral video promotion is now in excess of $100million a year.
“Done right, a ‘viral’ video can get a brand in front of millions of viewers, even boosting sales.” Dan Carlin, BusinessWeek
The video’s Freezing Hot has promoted have been written about on on: Advertising Age, Adrants, Techcrunch, LA Times, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Complex Magazine, YouTube frontpage, and many other media publications.
The cost for the service is $3,000 (or $.05/video view) and takes 4 weeks to complete.
In addition to the promotion, Freezing Hot also offers consulting (at competitive rates) on content, call to action, length, etc of viral videos.
Check out the new viral video promotion page.
A little weird, right? Well I, and Techrunch, both agree that this celebrity bloggers speeddate event made for great content and link bait. Great way to show off your services, get some blog coverage, and have some fun.
Inspired by a post on Techcrunch, below are some statistics found using Facebook’s advertising audience selector. Data is for the U.S. and all percentages (Group/Total U.S. Facebook Users)*100. So in short, they are out of the entire U.S. Facebook population, not the group. Hopefully that makes sense.
As expected, 18-24 year olds dominate.
This graph was especially interesting to me. I thought there would be a lot more in college than grads or high school, but they are surprising close.
As previously reported on Techcrunch and other blogs, there are quite a few more females than males. In fact it’s almost 2 million more.
Again, as expected (younger age generally leans liberal), there are more liberals and conservatives.
Very surprising to see how many people are single. The married also seems higher than it should and my gut is telling me this is because a number of people put “married” with their best friend (even though they are not).
Overall, my association of Facebook being for college students only has greatly changed, because of this research. Also, the number of females and the relationship status of users really surprised me. We’ll see what the future holds for Facebook - will it continue to age as college students graduate?
Here is the raw data (sorry for the image, Wordpress wasn’t liking the table):
Discuss!
Seems everyone laughing at Facebook for holding out on that $1b valuation was wron, because today Microsoft and Facebook announced that Microsoft will invest $240m for a 1.6% stake, making it a $15b valuation. You can listen to the conference call at (866) 435-1324 or read the press release below.
PALO ALTO, Calif., and REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 24, 2007 — Facebook and Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft will take a $240 million equity stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation, and the companies will expand their existing advertising partnership. Under the expanded strategic alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“We are pleased to take our Microsoft partnership to the next level,” said Owen Van Natta, vice president of operations and chief revenue officer at Facebook. “We think this expanded relationship will allow Facebook to continue to innovate and grow as a technology leader and major player in social computing, as well as bring relevant advertising to the more than 49 million active users of Facebook.”
“Making this investment and expanding this partnership will position Microsoft and Facebook to better take advantage of advertising opportunities around the world, and is a great win for not only for our two companies, but also our collective users and advertisers,” said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft. “We have partnered well over the past year and look forward to doing some exciting things together in the future. The opportunity to further collaborate as advertising partners is a big reason we have decided to take an equity stake, and is a strong statement of our confidence in the long-term economics of this partnership.”
Facebook continues to experience strong growth both in the U.S. and international markets; 59 percent of Facebook’s users are outside the U.S. With an average of 250,000 new users registering each day, Facebook continues to be one of the most-trafficked sites on the Internet.
On Aug. 22, 2006, the companies announced a U.S.-only strategic alliance that named Microsoft the exclusive provider of standard banner advertising on Facebook using Microsoft’s digital advertising solutions and the Microsoft® adCenter platform. In early 2007, the terms were extended to 2011.
Below is the extent 2008 U.S. Presidential Candidates use social networks (some might not be fully considered such) for their political campaign. Data was collected from 10/9/2007 and 10/10/2007. The highest score in category (web site) was set at 100 and the remaining scores were determined by percentage of the highest score. Scores were then added up to obtain a total, sorted, and graphed.
Graph was made without intentional basis, as Freezing Hot is politically neutral. The list of candidates was obtained from the Washington Post.
What do you think about the above graph? Do you think candidates out of the top 5 will start embrace social media?
ADDITION: This graph is meant for entertainment purposes only.
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