I can’t decide whether or not the just announced Facebook Timeline app totally freaks me out. I’m about as out there online as anyone can be, but I don’t know if:
I want to share all that information about my life;
Anyone would actually care enough to look at all of that information about me, or
I would ever care enough to roll through someone else’s timeline (and I’m all about a solid Facebook creep).
What about you? Are you excited about all the new features Facebook announced this morning?
Group chat. New design. Video calling! Oh my! Mark Zuckerberg today announced via livestream on the Facebook Live page several new apps to come. In typical Facebook fashion, they kept us all waiting. At least the Facebook Twitter like comment thing was entertaining.
Onto the good stuff … Without question, the most exciting was the announcement of the partnership between Facebook and Skype as Facebook will today launch Video Chat, a near seamless video chatting app accessible through your buddy list. Within 20 to 30 seconds, users can download a plugin and start chatting with their Facebook friends. Sounds like it will function like AIM video chat, which has been around for several years.
There were many questions about the business side of things; how Skype would benefit. Skype CEO Tony Bates pointed out that Facebook and the video communications behemoth have a “shared vision of what communication can be” and that this partnership would get them to their goal of 1 billion users.
Other announcements included todays launch of group chat. Zuckerberg pointed out that more than half of Facebook’s 750 million users are utilizing groups. The new Group Chat feature will make it so you can have ad hoc chat. Also announced was a new design, which will make it easier to see who’s online with a fullscreen Facebook view with a visible sidebar buddy list.
Ben Parr of Mashable asked if group video chat was on the horizon, to which Zuckerberg replied, “I wouldn’t rule it out.”
The incredible film about the contentious, early days of Facebook received the following nominations:
Best Picture, Director David Fincher
Adapted Screenplay, Aaron Sorkin
Original Score, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Actor in a Leading Role, Jesse Eisenberg
Achievement in Cinematography, Film Editing & Sound Mixing
I’m sure most of you have seen the film by now, but if you have time check out the script, which is available for free download on the movie’s official website. You can also snag a few tunes for free from the award-winning score here, courtesy of Trent himself.
Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg, who, today, was named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine. This is a well-deserved achievement for the 26-year-old Facebook co-founder, who in seven short years has completely revolutionized the way in which we communicate. Facebook now boasts more than 550 million users – if it were a country would be the third largest on the planet.
Facebook is so much a part of our lives that it’s become a verb. According to Facebook stats, people spend more than 700 billion minutes a month on the social networking site. Facebook has quickly become the place to not only gather with friends online, but also email, share pictures, stories and get news.
Zuckerberg has had a crazy year. On the heels of the Oscar-buzzworthy film The Social Network, where he was portrayed as a socially awkward, morally questionable hacker genius, Zuckerberg announced he was making a $100 million donation to Newark NJ’s public school system.
More recently, Zuckerberg pledged to donate the majority of his estimated $4.9 million to charity.
One great thing about living in LA is easy access to things such as Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for The Social Network, which I stayed up until 4 a.m. reading. Yep, it’s pretty brilliant and I simply couldn’t put the thing down.
It’s part modern day Citizen Kane, with hints of The Great Gatsby and a little touch of The Secret History (without the murder, of course). I promise no spoilers, but the story weaves around from the early Harvard days of Facebook co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin through the development of the social networking behemoth, to the fallout and eventual lawsuits against Zuckerberg. But this isn’t a movie review.
While the story is truly an incredible tale of greed, genius, power, friendship, insecurity and deception, it also is a reminder that Facebook really has changed the face of how we communicate. I woke up this morning and went through my normal routine of first checking my Facebook account and all the pages I run on the network. But this time I approached it from a whole new mindset, perhaps not new, but one that had been lying dormant and was now reawakened. I truly was overwhelmed by the influence of social media in our lives, especially Facebook.
Maybe Zuckerberg is a thief, an asshole. Maybe not. What is inarguable is his genius. His creation is quickly becoming the foundation of modern communication. The last page of the screenplay, which was written in May 2009, includes a stat in the Title: Facebook has 180 million users in 60 countries. That was just 16 months ago! Now Facebook boasts more than 500 million users, which is a figure from August 2010.
Everyday people are spending more time on Facebook, using it for much more than spying on an ex, or looking at friends’ vacation pictures. People are using it to effectively market themselves and businesses. It’s a new way to connect to not only your friends, but also customers. It’s become a way to engage your customers, learn more about what makes them tick. This is invaluable to marketers.
As Facebook gears up for its big announcement today, nerds like us wait with baited breath. Most expect Facebook will be making the long-awaited introduction of its geo-location services.
The social media giant was supposed to launch this new offering back in June, but Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated in an interview with Ad Age that privacy issues were the cause of the delay and that it was “a very important area, but it’s also a sensitive one.”
But now it seems the day of the much-anticipated announcement is upon us. Geeks, marketers, local business owners – think retailers and restauranteurs – rejoice! What exactly does this mean for us?
Thanks to location-based pioneers like Foursquare and Gowalla, we’ve seen the value of these services. By posting specials and promotions that encourage users to “check in” to establishments, business owners and marketers already are leveraging the users of these offerings to serve as mini, grassroots marketers for our businesses and brands. These check-ins get posted onto the users respective geo-location site pages and typically then onto their Facebook and/or Twitter pages, offering invaluable and coveted word-of-mouth advertising.
And while Foursquare recently confirmed its number of registered users to be approximately 2.6 million, imagine what will happen when the behemoth Facebook, with more than 500 million users, starts offering a GPS-based service.
Ian Schafer best speculated in a May 2010 Ad Age column, “Almost overnight, the ability to easily broadcast your location on and via Facebook will be put into the hands of about 500 million people — 500 million people that retailers and businesses with physical locations will have the opportunity to influence people nearby to visit. This will go from curiosity to one of the biggest opportunities that a marketer can have within a month of its launch as users become more comfortable with the feature.”
Group chat. New design. Video calling! Oh my! Mark Zuckerberg today announced via livestream on the Facebook Live page several new apps to come. In typical Facebook fashion, they kept us all waiting. At least the Facebook Twitter like comment thing was entertaining.
No surprise here! The Social Network just scored itself eight Oscar nominations!
Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg, who, today, was named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine. This is a well-deserved achievement for the 26-year-old Facebook co-founder, who in seven short years has completely revolutionized the way in which we communicate. Facebook now boasts more than 550 million users – if it were a country would be the third largest on the planet.
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