Five for Friday

Happy almost weekend, everyone, and welcome to this week’s installment of Five for Friday!

What a week in the world of Social Media – so many great stories! Followed are a few that grabbed our attention:

It’s official: following a $16 billion initial public offering that valued the Network at $104 billion, Facebook is now a publicly listed company. A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase posits that the Network has all the makings of “the next great blue chip.” Others, however, warn that the site has yet to demonstrate an ability to wring serious profits from its huge user base. That debate is sure to continue in the days and weeks ahead: for today, let’s just say that shares of Facebook appear to be this season’s “must-have”… (Source: The New York Times | DealB%k)

Meanwhile, in the world of marketing, a spirited conversation has arisen amongst those eager to determine the ROI on the millions of dollars they’ve spent advertising on the Social Network. Amplified by General Motors’ – the third largest advertiser in the US – decision to put their Facebook ad plans on indefinite hold, the general consensus amongst industry leaders seems to call for paradigms that measure performance based on traditional (read: offline) methods, such as brand lift and sentiment. Aye, here we go again… (Source: Various).

If you’re tired of your every thought landing in Google’s search results, there may be a new way to keep that from happening. Google has unveiled a revamped version of their content removal tool that allows users to submit links for the profiles they wish to “clean” (e.g., https://twitter.com/robertjricci) and have all of its contents omitted from future queries. As of this writing, the Search giant warns that not all links will be removed, so be ever mindful of the content you share… (Source: Google)

Whether you’re searching for a person, place or thing, your search experience is about to get smarter. In more Google-related news, the company has just introduced a new service – Knowledge Graph – that promises to deliver real answers and not just links. According Google’s engineers, this enhancement is “a critical first step towards building the next generation of search,” powered by a system that “taps into the collective intelligence of the Web and understands the world a bit more like people do.” The Knowledge Graph bases its outputs on three pillars: relevant results, topical summaries and deeper discoveries. Put simply, the results generated by your searches in the not-too-distant future will be based on how others have searched for that subject in the past… (Source: Google | Inside Search).

Newly published data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) shows that a number of consumers who use smartphones while watching TV outpaces the number of those who use tablets and computers in a number of program-related areas. These connected viewers are also twice as likely to text, email or IM with friends and more than three times as likely to engage in live chats about a show. Certain types of shows (e.g., reality TV, sports) tend to elicit simultaneous second-screen activities that are endemic to the programming; others do just the opposite. To win, marketers have to have a keen understanding of viewers motivations and mindsets, while actively engaging in simultaneous multi-screen activities in real-time… (Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau).

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