Facebook Billionaires Countdown

Pos	Value     @U$38.23/Flotation Cash	name/who	Picture/Link	invest. year	initial investment	share %	Est. ROI
10	U$ 1.06bn/U$0.64bn	Peter Thiel		2004	U$0.5mln	~2	2120%
9.	1.21bn/0.89bn	Tiger Global Management		2005		~2.1
8	U$1.4bln/U$176mln	Bono and Friends / Elevation Partners		2009	U$90mln	2.3	1600%
7	U$1.4bn/U$1.1bn	Goldman Sachs		2009		2.3
6	U$2.67bn/U$0	Sean Parker		2004		~4.2
5	U$2.73bn/U$?	Eduardo Saverin		2004	co-funder
4	U$4.7bn/U$2.5bn	Yuri Milner and Friends(DST+MAIL.ru)		2009-2011	about $500mln overall
3	U$5.1bn/U$0	Dustin Moskovitz		2004	co-funder	7.6	5.1bn%
2	U$5.85bn/U$1.95bn	Jim Breyer (Accel Partners)		2005	U$12.2m	~8.5
1	U$19.2bn/U$1.15bn	Mark Zuckenberg		2004	co-funder	24	19.2bn%

Surreal sums for 99.9% of over 900mln people with accounts on Facebook thanks to whom this very few can earn such a money

Next time you post on facebook make sure you adding to these U$bn

Krzysztof Kurzydlo

Fortunately speakers made up for all bad organisational experience. I expected a lot of sales pitches and things which are out of focus. Although we had some of these too majority of seminars, presentations and panels was Premier League.

Among arena speakers many top brands Microsoft, Guardian, Google, Expedia, eBay…

On the last day Ian Carrington Google Director of Mobile and Social presented Android based technology from Google and shared some industry figures – hugely important for many businesses. Of course he did sales pitch too but it was all balanced.

One of the most important things he mentioned was SoLoCo?!

We all know internet industry likes catchy phrases and acronyms. This is how we almost instantly adopted SoLoMo. Someone would think ok Google being Google come up with their own spin on SoLoMo and the introduced SoLoCo. I exchange opinions with couple of other people from industry and this is what I think about Google’s SoLoCo

It makes perfect sense but you need to go granular on SoLoMo to get a clear idea how this new nomenclature could work for Average Joe:

Short Internet World 2012 summary:

speakers and exhibitors – premier class,

organisation – third league

It supposed to be the biggest and best Internet show in London in 2012 at least this is what you would expect from internet trade show which is around for 20 years! – It wasn’t .

Organisational failures:

- seminar programe unconfirmed to the last moment, about third of seminars unknown –  hilarious outputs of last minute patchwork - SYNOPSIS NEEDED

- Popup Seminar theaters with inadequate sizes – mobile – perhaps the hottest  topic of the year ended up with the smallest theater!

- Not unified strategy regarding “fast track” badge holders advertised on homepage “Guarantee a seat at all education with a Fast-Track Pass”. I didn’t made to 3 seminars! Despite of being at the “gates” on the time before seminar theoretically started. I was told there is no space for me in Advertising, Affiliate & Search Theatre twice (I was told: “You can complain to organizers sir”) and ended up with cancelled – “Best practices: Advice for taking your social media programme global” in social media theater. For people who didn’t pay to attend seminar program this is perhaps fine but for someone who spent money on these “Fast Track badges” it was poor organisation.

- Useless and confusing ”Club Visitor” upgrades – Why? – Organizers had this idea of treating potential buyers better – in  general good idea but if you won’t create correct infrastructure it does make no sense! Few tables and chairs is not enough – I spent 15 minutes in a queue for my tea as area was available for everyone else on the first day – never used again simply pointless.

But there was a lot of  good stuff @iwexpo

- The idea of six worlds as there are complimentary sector specific events from UBM gives impression of holistic approach to Internet Industry. And this is very good idea.

- Surprisingly the best element of this show were seminars and presentations or FREE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME. Speakers step up and they presented high quality stuff. For a very first time only couple of people treated potential buyers as “uneducated lunatics” with budgets to spend (this happens a lot on consumer focused trade shows where sales people try to act as knowledgeable industry leaders). I suppose the harder market becomes the tougher is to sell crap.

Well done Internet World speakers!

To be honest looking on Earls Court Two yesterday I have bad feeling this show didn’t make expected profit as there was a lot of empty space and unused stands. Show didn’t seam to be busy at all with visitors – maybe there is no need for shows like this?

Get a grip of course it can’t be true – worth over £100Bn UK industry can’t make a trade show which would allow potential buyers to show comprehensive internet technology offer from ISPs to Hosting, Ecommerce and online marketing? Internet World has great potentials: Name and established brand but it felt as provincial show. You compare this to Travel shows like ITB in Berlin or WTM in London and you will understand what I am talking about. When I’m entering WTM or ITB I know I can meet there everyone from industry either as visitor, exhibitor or speaker – I mean everyone. Technology section on ITB has got separate building and if organised on its own would perhaps be bigger then all UBM shows put together!

“IS OBVIOUS WE NEED INTERNET INDUSTRY TRADE MEGASHOW”

Are we unable to create a real world class show for internet industry? It is well known fact there is no other unorganised, polarized and divided industry in the world. See cookie law comes across in EU.

There is no formalised industry voice?- sorry guys this is stupid law and has no sense whatsoever. We just start talking who should handle this – browsers, websites, ISPs etc. How nice would be to meet together and write document to EU commissioners or lawmakers – No sorry look 90% of industry says your law makes no sense whatsoever – go fish.

Where it gets wrong?

Opposite to for example Travel Industry which seems to have one of the best trade shows in the world – engaging , lead generating and well organised from infrastructure point of view we are unable to gather everyone in one place. When I’m on WTM I can see Accor Hotels next to Holiday Inn brands, 5 the biggest car hire companies, even Palestine and Israel have both stands there. Despite their different opinions and native technologies people from top players in each section of the industry argue their points in seminars and conferences and create industry standards to keep external regulators away. Unfortunately I am yet to see Internet Trade Show where in Search Engines section I can see stands from Google, Bing, Yandex and Baidu and Top players from Ecommerce or Social Media World launch new products for business or layouts for customers.

Tell me who wouldn’t join big arena for 1h mobile panel of experts talk – Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, RIM where we would have top Googler, Apple guy, RIM and Microsoft guy replying to some unexpected questions from audience. This same with Browsers standards, ISP speeds etc. We all know how painful this is.

Maybe egos in our industry are too big for such a show ? Or technology leaders are petrified to go head to head during knowledge based not sales based event and discover some company which doesn’t want to be purchased and has got no connections to Sequoia Capital.

Benefits from such a show for the entire industry are obvious – things like SOPA could be discussed across all industry sectors and actions with programme for lobbing politicians and media could be nicely put in place so we would talk using one voice or at least we would be able to identify what is the majority voice in this area.

I might have missed this by couple of days but I must admit I have never seen this type of layout within UK results.

I consulted this with my colleagues and it looks like this is the very first appearance we noticed!
We are always asked by customers how to identify influencers among this vast numbers of bloggers and social media based publishers? Not waiting for twitter, facebook or any other platform Google decided to tell us this very clearly. Google’s paraphrased message is simple

“we (Google) believe people who use very strongly and promote Google social media product G+ are these people who are the strongest influencers on the market for any given subject.”

In this case three “Python” coding language related accounts/pages are promoted within space usually used by AdWords (not that I was looking for Python.org but give or take “mind reading by Google” is not scheduled for release until late 2014:-)
I’m telling you – Average Joe and Plain Jane get your circle sorted ASAP!
New Social Search is here in UK fully implemented form now onwards

Local

Mobile

Another buzz term from Web Marketing industry but this time highly focused on holistic approach to online and offline marketing which we find very appealing.

In recent weeks perfect case study how SoLoMo concept can be used for the benefit of everyone show cased at “The Big Egg Hunt” in London. Event organised by Action for Children and Elephant Family in cooperation with  Fabergé. Voluntary egg patrols have been created, hospital egg news make in to Facebook and Twitter and as fight with “baddies” continues we learn about eggs reclaimed by the Met Police in main stream media. All this to generate more money for charity in a fun way – SoLoMo in it’s best!

Time to find out how you can leverage this online marketing concept in your own business:

Google is a leader in web technologies and concepts there is no difference with SoLoMo. Some of the Google services allow SoLoMo concept to exist in the first place and span together your online activities. The most important is business tool Google Places. Recent updates from Google search Team show us how important this area is for Google delivering good search results.

Google ’Venice’ Search Results Update

From February, Google are relying more heavily on main search rankings as a signal for your associated Google Places listings, meaning if you have strong natural rankings in Google’s main index, your local listing in Google Places will have higher positions.

Top 5 Google Places Ranking Factors

1. Having the same city in your description as the search is associated with a 1.42 improvement in rankings.
2. Having at least one photo, and having ownership of listing verified is associated with a combined 1.18 improvement in rankings.
3. Having the search category (or synonym) in the business name and/or description is associated with a 0.75 improvement in rankings.
4. Having a secondary business category that is a broader category than the search category is associated with a 0.68 improvement in rank. i.e. secondary category is “restaurant” when search is for “surrey pizza.”
5. Having 5 or more Google reviews was associated with a 0.31 improvement in rankings.

As we touched reviews we can not overlook little stars more and more often popping up on Google. Some of these are unfortunately irrelevant but some from services like Trip Advisor, Qype, Yelp and Trust Pilot have significant impact on our day to day purchasing  decisions.

QR Codes

These are essence of SoLoMo marketing – funny looking square images which you can get printed on any of your marketing materials or even displayed on interactive display screens on public transport or in local pub.

• Use them in your leaflets, flyers, etc.
• Put posters in your shop window for local passers-by to scan.
• Try OKNO.co.uk to create free QR codes and short links.
• Try Likify.net for more advanced “Scan to Like” Facebook functionality (also works with Twitter Follows).

Listening to the Social Noise, Locally

• Just like listening to your local radio station, use twitter as a tool to listen out for all recent tweets people have tweeted using your local area hashtag. For example search twitter for #croydon (to see what’s happening in Croydon, right now!).
• Try TweetDeck to make your own social listening hub, and listen to more than one hash tag simultaneously.
• Events may prove to be good way of communicating with people focused on particular subject. Football Equipment producer and local pub can both generate business from Euro 2012 or London Olympics events. For one business “Local” means their town for others country make sure you recognise where your “Local” audience is.

Facebook/Twitter Location Access (mobile)

• Use it in your posts to promote your whereabouts.
• Use your own Facebook Page as a location setting to promote your business name within your status updates.

The times small business was able effectivly keep the fort on the top of the results for “short tail” keywords is over. But world of web offers now huge opportunities to explore impossible to explore layers of knowledge. Similar to businesses for users search world is also changing rapidly from:

- 10 blue links with bit of text in 2006 through to

- Universal Search Pages in to

- Personalised Search Result Pages with microformats and even further into

- Augmented Reality Search

Business web marketing become rocket science over last few years we are now on approach to make choices in our business setup. We may soon need “profesional internet researches” to show us our way around. Similar to the way we institutionalise profession of librarians to help us search for books about 120 years ago we may soon need graduates in “Internet Searches”.

The last advice for businesses is make sure you monitor your business performance if you realise you have more leads from website than from other sources is time to focus on web. Do not delay investment and make sure you investing wisely.

Enjoy Easter!

SES London takes place later this month SMX London in mid May.

We ask simple question:

Maybe these two are so different we should visit both even you have tight budget?

Any Comments?

Carried away? – Of course

As much as everyone complains about new Facebook updates and layouts I’d have to say this is one of the worst. It’s not just a small change it’s a whole new profile design and if you use it to its full potential, a new way for Facebook to gain more information about you. It also means that some unwanted or purposefully forgotten updates could reappear.

What do you think? Will you be boycotting Facebook, or have you found a real opt-out?

Let us know in the comments ( :

GoogleNet is almost here?

Over the years company took over a lot of businesses many with existing customers. Online services from YouTube, DoubleClick to Feedburner and many more had there own set of legal documents in place. During last 12 months we can see extra effort in bringing all these services in to one manageable system. This of course is not very smooth operation and Google managed to upset few people and institutions in the process. However difficult gradually whether we like it or not we are closer to Googlenet then ever before.
Google claims is managing currently over 60 privacy policies and is willing to replace them from 01/03/2012 with one which will serve everything from searching to sharing and browsing (You can read new policy here). Of course we can imagine all this is to do with cutting budget measures but we must mention recent advance of https in Google’s infrastructure as one of the elements which will show interesting results in the near future especially for online marketers.  From beta version and english based only service Google over ssl is now spreading to other languages

Encrypted search available on new regional domains. Google now offers encrypted search by default on google.com for signed-in users, but it’s not the default on our other regional domains (eg: google.fr for France). Now users in the UK, Germany and France can opt in to encrypted search by navigating directly to an SSL version of Google Search on their respective regional domains: https://www.google.co.uk, https://www.google.de andhttps://www.google.fr. [more about Jan 2012 Google update here]

We can soon expect many comments from legal and from technical gurus about one Privacy Policy changes from Google.

There are no shocking statements here but we must remember this page https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/ is perhaps now guarding Privacy of the biggest human database in the world!

Going to the page reveals that the page title is not blank or set to untitled.

Any ideas why this would happen? Let us know in the comments!

UPDATE:
I found another!

While search in for “diamond football international” I found the title “nbsp; |   &nbsp – Diamond Football International”. I now think Google is changing the way results appear in the SERPs, instead of just the content from the title tag appearing as the result title it take content from other sources including the H1 tag of the page and content from other pages.