Facebook Graph Search

Finally, Facebook is updating it’s search functionality with “Graph Search”.

Facts: Facebook currently has more than a billion users with more than a trillion connections. And there are more than 240 billion fotos published on facebook.

Graph Search is a new way for you to find people, photos, places and interests that are most relevant to you on Facebook. Technically it is a high-speed contextual discovery engine.

Graph Search will help you instantly find others, learn more about them and make connections, explore photos, quickly find places like local attractions and restaurants, and learn about common interests like music, movies, books and more. All results are unique based on the strength of relationships and connections.

“It is not web search,” Zuckerberg says.

Graph Search and web search are completely different. Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: “music industry”) and provide the best possible results that match those keywords.
With Graph Search you combine phrases (for example: “my friends in Los Angeles who like Justin Timberlake”) to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that’s been shared on Facebook.

Facebook is taking privacy more serious
Another big difference of Facebook Graph Search is that every piece of content on Facebook has its own audience, and most content isn’t public. Facebook built Graph Search from the start with privacy in mind, and it respects the privacy and audience of each piece of content on Facebook. It makes finding new things much easier, but you can only see what you could already view elsewhere on Facebook.

Monster Inc., reinvent or die?

In the late nineties the recruiting industry had been turned upside down by the start of many online job-posting websites, including the launch of Monster.com. Over a decade later the online recruiting industry seems to reach a dead end. The former giant and market leader Monster Inc. is tumbling and the CEO Sal Iannuzzi does not give confidence to have a turnaround strategy in place. He even declared publicly to sell the whole or parts of the company in March this year (Source: Reuters).
In yesterdays investor call the company announced that the 2nd-Quarter profits have decreased 56%. The market cap has dropped below $800 million, I can still remember when Monster’s market cap was over $3 billion last year.

Such a change is always an opportunity, too. While the quarterly revenues of Monster Worldwide fell to $237 million, LinkedIn’s revenues are steadily growing and have reached $230 million at the same quarter.

From an outside perspective it looks sad to see that Monster Inc. is not able to reinvent itself and look forward rather than trying to protect old-thinking. It’s a bit like the music industry when peer2peer sharing, napster and later iTunes came along. They have time, money and smart people to change and lead into a successful future. But my feeling is that Sal Iannuzzi is lacking of a powerful vision and dynamic leadership. Two things which is needed to turn such a big “ship” around.

I don’t know who will be the future leader of online recruiting, but LinkedIn seems to be running the right path, as they are heavily investing in its product and technology. Furthermore LinkedIn has acquired Connected, Rapportive and Slideshare – all relevant building blocks to build a future proof company.

Although I have left RECOMY, I will keep watching the innovators in this market. As an entrepreneur I am especially looking at startUps like Identified, Jibe, Jobvite, BranchOut, BraveNewTalent or Talent.me.

New Social Network “Best of All Worlds” (BOAW) challenging facebook & co

Erik Wachtmeister, former founder of the exclusive social network “A Small World” is sending out private invitations for his latest online project.

Erik writes:

We are getting close to the launch of our new private online community.
Best of All Worlds in the coming weeks. I wanted to make sure you received your invitation.

As you may know, Louise and I founded aSmallWorld in early 2004, a pioneer in online communities. After we left the company several years ago, we began designing and building a new, useful and relevant social network – an alternative to what currently dominates social media.

We will launch Best of All Worlds (boaw.com) with an iPhone app in the coming weeks, followed shortly by a full web version.

Best of All Worlds will enable us to navigate and leverage the collective intelligence of the trusted and relevant few, rather than the wisdom of the crowd. It will be a fun and useful tool for our social and professional lives by providing trusted information among top influencers and connectors worldwide – in an intimate and private online environment.

Sarah Brown at WIE Symposium 2010

On September 20th, 2010, Sarah Brown, alongside Arianna Huffington and Donna Karan hosted a dynamic new annual conference for women and I had been part of it There had been only two other man there, one technician and one gay person – but what I can tell you is, that I got a lot of inspiration, ideas and new perspectives.

The WIE Symposium (Women: Inspiration & Enterprise) is hosted by The White Ribbon Alliance and took place in New York City during the UN General Assembly. Here is a short review of the event and an interview with Sarah Brown, Global Patron of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood and wife of Gordon Brown. As a special guest Estelle was joining the stage to sing her famous song “American Boy” on the rooftop party in NYC.

The WIE Symposium (Women: Inspiration & Enterprise)

I met Arianna at the Monaco Media Forum, where she briefly introduced me to the idea of a Women Network. A few month later she announced the first Event of the WIE Network. I am looking forward to attend the inaugural symposium in New York in a few weeks.

The WIE Symposium (Women: Inspiration & Enterprise) is the annual conference of the WIE Network hosted by Sarah Brown, Arianna Huffington and Donna Karan. The WIE Network is a forum for professional women to network and connect.

Sarah Brown, Wife of former UK Prime Minister, is the Chairwoman of The WIE Symposium which will be held on September 21st, 2010, in New York City. Drawing on the legendary drive and energy of New York City, the Symposium is a motivating and results driven gathering of creative women, working together to achieve social change and inspire the next generation of women leaders and advocates.

The symposium takes place at the newly renovated “Skylight West” located steps from Midtown, the Javits Center, Chelsea Galleries, and the Highline. It also features the city’s largest open rooftop, offering a gorgeous view over the skyline of the city and sunset of the Hudson River.

Find out more about the WIE Symposium at www.wienetwork.org

Most Famous Facebook Pages killing Brand Websites

Facebook has quietly become the biggest relationship-marketing provider for many brands.

For many marketers, their Facebook fan bases have become their largest web presence, outstripping brand sites or e-mail programs either because a brand’s traditional web-based “owned media” is atrophying or because more consumers are migrating to social media.

Coca-Cola, with its 10.7 million Facebook fans, has three to four times the Facebook fan base as MyTown and Foursquare have registered users. (There are at least 11 brands whose Facebook fan pages have quietly grown bigger than the biggest geo-location providers.) That certainly trumps U.S. unique visitors to Coke’s brand website, which fell by more than 40% to 242,000 in July compared to a year ago, per Compete.

Kraft Foods’ Oreo is the No. 3 brand page on Facebook as tracked by DBM/Scan, with an 8.7 million fan base growing at a clip of 71,000 a day. But the multi-brand site where its web presence has been hosted, NabiscoWorld.com, has seen U.S. traffic decline from 1.2 million in July 2009 to 321,000 last month.

(Via AdAge)

Infographic: Tracking Google’s Acquisitions.

Ever wondered what companies Google bought during the last couple for years. There is a complete list of acquisitions by Google on Wikipedia, but I also like the following Infographic “Tracking Google’s Acquisitions”.

The Three Keys To Facebook’s Success – Interview with Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook Places

Mark Zuckerberg has presented the new location based service “Facebook Places” yesterday. Facebook is addressing the market Foursquare, FriendTicker etc. has opened up.

eBay Movie & Twitter Movie (Parody of the Social Network “Facebook” Movie)

One month after the release of the Movie Trailer of “The Social Network”, aka “The Facebook Movie”, two parodies are getting a lot of attention. Have a look yourself.

Twitter Movie Trailer

eBay Movie Trailer

Facebook Movie – New Trailer

GE’s $ 200 million open innovation challenge

Today GE announced the start of a $200 million open innovation challenge that seeks breakthrough ideas to create a smarter, cleaner, more efficient electric grid, and accelerate the adoption of more efficient grid technologies. GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt unveiled the challenge, the “GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid,” here today.

The global challenge invites technologists, entrepreneurs and start-ups to share their best ideas and come together to take on one of the world’s toughest challenges – building the next-generation power grid to meet the needs of the 21st century. The challenge is one of the largest ever and is open immediately at www.ecomagination.com/challenge.

“Innovation is the engine of the global effort to transform the way we create, connect and use power,” Immelt said. “At GE we have invested broadly and deeply in digital energy solutions and see this as a substantial market for us, but we can’t do it alone. We want to work with our partners to make sure we have a comprehensive digital energy offering. This challenge is about collaboration and we are inviting others to help accelerate progress in creating a cleaner, more efficient and economically viable grid. We want to jump-start new ideas and deploy them on a scale that will modernize the electrical grid around the world.”

The Challenge, launched in collaboration with leading venture capital firms Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer and RockPort Capital, and Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired magazine, is part of GE’s ecomagination initiative, a global commitment to build innovative clean energy technologies and will help fund the most promising ideas. Proposals are sought in three, broad categories: Renewables, Grid and Eco Homes/Eco Buildings. Select Challenge entrants will be offered the opportunity to develop a commercial relationship with GE through:

• Investment: the $200 million capital pledge of GE and its partners will be invested globally into promising start-ups and ideas
• Validation: evaluate entrant’sbusiness strategy through in-depth discussions with GE’s technical and commercial teams
• Distribution: explore partnership opportunities with GE to scale a business and create global reach
• Development: leverage GE‘s technical infrastructure and GE Global Research Centers to accelerate technology and product development
• Growth: explore opportunities for utilizing existing GE customer to take Challenge products to market

The $200 million commitment will help bring these new ideas to market by providing businesses and individuals with theopportunity to secure growth capital through GE investment and/or investment by participating venture capital firms. It is open to anyone aged 18 years or older and all legally formed entities.

Live from the catastrophe

BP’s live video stream of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is simultaneously tragic and hypnotic. With each passing second, more gallons of crude oil and natural gas escape into the ocean.

Beside watching this live video from the catastrophe, I recommend reading the ironic (not official) BP Twitter channel @BPglobalPR.

For BP, Obama and the whole USA it has turned from a pure catastrophe for nature into a catastrophe in public relations and reputation.

Infographic: 30+ Amazing Facebook Statistics and facts

Apple is Re-Thinking Mobile Advertising

Apple is entering the mobile advertising business and aims at high emotional and interactive ads. Here is a great example of an iAd of Toy Story. After a click on the small banner within an iPhone App you won’t leave the app directing you to a website. The user experiences a smooth change to a branded environment, the iAd. It opens like a regular app, but due to the new multitasking you can still keep the other app open.

The Toy Story iAd then shows an overview with several options and buttons. One option is to watch a few in-ad videos, play in-ad games or open the in-ad shop and buy the product right away. This might redefine mobile advertising and opens completely new ways to market products on a mobile devices.

Apple is reshaping the mobile advertising market

Today Apple announced key features of the new Apple iPhone OS 4 which will come out in Summer 2010. During that presentation Steve Jobs announced that Apple is entering the mobile marketing business with iAd.

The average user spends over 30 minutes every day using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’s 10 ads per device per day. That would be 1 billion advertising opportunities per day.

Steve Jobs: “There are many free or reasonably priced apps… the developers are putting ads into apps, and we think most of this kind of advertising sucks!”. He added: “Search is not happening on phones; people are using apps. And this is where the opportunity is to deliver advertising is. You know the ads on the web — they’re eye catching and interactive, but they don’t deliver emotion. What we want to do with iAds is deliver interaction and emotion.

It’s about motion plus interactivity. The ads keep you in your app. Today when you click on a banner ad, it yanks you out of your app and throws you onto the advertisers web page. So people don’t click on the ads.

Because iAd is in the iPhone OS itself, we have figured out how to do interactive and video content without ever taking you out of the app. For developers to add this to their apps is really simple. They can do it in an afternoon. Apple is going to sell and host the ads, and we’re going to do a 60/40 split.”

60% of Advertising Revenues will be for the Developers. Apple will earn 40% of the mobile advertising market in the future.

Apple iPhone OS 4.0 Event on April 8th 2010

Looking forward to the Apple presentation today.

Here are the start times of the event:
07:00AM – Hawaii
10:00AM – Pacific
11:00AM – Mountain
12:00PM – Central
01:00PM – Eastern
06:00PM – London
07:00PM – Paris
09:00PM – Moscow

MobileCrunch is reporting live from the event.
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/04/08/apple-iphone-os-4-live-blog/

Apple will present iPhone OS 4.0 on April 8th 2010

Apple has begun sending email invitations to select members of the media inviting them to a “sneak peek of the next generation of iPhone OS software.” The invitation features a large graphic with a large “4” shadow spread across a blue background, with “Get a sneak peek into the future of iPhone OS” overlaid in white text. The event will be held on Apple’s Cupertino, CA campus and will begin at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time on April 8.

Video “The Internet of Things” by IBM

Samir Arora, Founder & CEO of Glam Media

Samir Arora, Founder & CEO of Glam Media took part at a panel about the future of branding at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit 2010. Right after the discussion I met talked him about his key issues.

Glam Media is a distributed media network comprised of both Glam-owned-and-operated properties and a publisher network of 450+ lifestyle websites and blogs. Glam Media aims to bring high-quality print content to the online medium, instead of the usual online trend of having print magazine-lite content. The Glam Media network also includes a slew of fashion websites, blogs and magazines.

Founder Samir Arora wants to gear the site’s online advertising towards the female market in the same way that traditional print has. Glam Media is working with publishers, content owners and media companies to reach readers in effective ways. Glam officially launched in September 2005 at Fashion Week, New York and quickly grew from there. After signing a partnership with AOL in October, Glam created the Glam Network consisting of style websites and blogs later that year. Since then, Glam has partnered with the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan, signed a content syndication deal with the Hearst Corporation, and completed a multi-year advertising deal with Google. With more than 53 million unique monthly visitors, Glam Media, Inc. is clearly proving itself as a leader in the online industry for women’s lifestyle and fashion.