Today, Facebook launched there latest implementation for web publishers that just “blew me off my chair”.  They have taken social to the next level by enabling publishers to leverage the social graph of Facebook to not only share articles, but to integrate this see seamlessly between both the users profile  on Facebook ( or news feed) and  the Publishers content page.

This was my experience with the connectivity with CNN.

1)  First of all, when I was as the CNN site,  I noticed the Facebook Share Widget.

2) So then I clicked “Facebook Connect” and went through the series of processes to Connect

….. Facebook Connect in Action….

3) I then had the option to sign-up for the CNN network…. which I did and become fully connected between Facebook and CNN.

4)  So lets take this for a ride….. I noticed I could go to the page within CNN to see all the articles recommended by Friends

5)  ….Then I found an interesting article on “Smell Sensors”.   I  ”commented” like and left a comment.

6) That comment was automatically posted to my Wall ( News Stream)

Strangely, but lots of panic from all the app developers today, when @Ev on the corporate blog announced the acquisition of Tweetie’s owner Atebits.  To me this is clearly an obvious direction and it could only be predicted.  In reality it should not really affect app developers as it is a very similar model to Google and syndication.  Think of all those websites that are powered by Google-Search?  It is like Google having a search engine without all the different types of its own end-user experiences to build and test out their business?  They need to best understand and support the end-user first and foremost.  The Web2.0 world already established the model for syndication, and it would be the kiss of death if either Google or Twitter stopped offering api’s for developers and publishers to syndicate and let the vertical world evolve.

However, the differences between Google and Twitter is that Google is an advertising company and Twitter was just growing larger and larger as a bit-pipe. Google was once in the similar situation and added advertising as the balance to only building out a user-base in the beginning.  In order for Twitter to start to build up its advertising business ( which will probably be the next announcement) required them to have the ability to test and launch it first through their own properties…. hence Tweetie.   It is like Google not having a tool-bar strategy to test cookies, etc…  This is my reasoning why the Tweetie client will be free and just called Twitter.  They needed this kind of product to test and build the best user-experiences to surround their product and build out all the API’s for syndication.  Now especially advertising.

I am bullish on the fact this acquisition took place at this time, and it looks like Twitter is really coming together to potentially be  the next Real-Time Search and Real-time advertising engine that links to mobile.  They now have a platform to test and evolve as a free app…..

So in my mind the Twitter+Tweetie is basically Twoogle.

Facebook has been successful in not only owning the user, but they do a great job in “viral marketing”.  Will this growth continue or will privacy kill them? Will they become the next Internet? Will they form that unique strategic partnership with Apple?  They are consistently going from country to country and becoming the underlining social graph.

However, there are countries that have not become dominated yet by Facebook.  Not only are they in the top of Apple’s portfolio of must downloaded applications, Mobile has been know to be a usage case of social media ( >50%).  Many strong mobile players such as Mocospace, AirG, Brightkite, Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare keep on growing, but the shear volume of growth of Facebook is astounding.

Many companies have leveraged “Facebook Connect” as a way to build there usage base, and they seem unstoppable.  Bebo is up for sale, and the other social networks are taking on a completely new business models.   Even Twitter has not shown the growth yet as Facebook, and as Facebook has prided itself with Direct to the end-user, they can bring any kind of app as integrated into their platform and just crush the competition.  Location was launched recently in Facebook, but when are we going to see extravagant maps tied to the overall service.

As they say, “what goes up- must come down” so it will be interesting to see where they peak or will they just become the WWW…. or FFF.

The recent blog post by John Battelle ( SearchBlog) prompted me to share some of my own quick thoughts on Foursquare, Apps and syndication of the Twitter bit-pipe.

I myself started to use Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite and a variety of others and I have to admit that had very similar feelings to what John had to say.   I also found that it is not what they offer today, but what they could be…

Up until now many location based services were based on Lat/Long and following you on a map.  Google latitude was just this.  Seeing my little face on a map was cute, but having it follow me around all the time somehow just did not make sense ( for me anyway).  Even thought it was system of opt-in, it was designed very much so as a 1x opt-in.  What I find so powerful about Facebook is the ability to always opt-in with a status update.    This is what I believe has become the real power of these services;  the ability to always control your opt-in by checking-in.  Instead of the lat/long trace, an individual can opt-in  ( check-in) to a location and leave notes or syndicate out their status via Twitter, Facebook and any octopus service they are tied into.    The application is the key point of user experience and these services have started to really attract users and build offers with marketers as per their check-in.   Even though I still use Twitter quite a bit via the web interface, I have started to use more services that appeal to me and just push it through Twitter as well.  Having the relationship with the end-user at the Application level and then building relationships with brands and marketers could be the real power here.  Over time as more and more services present themselves that are competitors to Twitter and unless they own the end-user in some sense, their ability for true marketing and managing the sales funnel could become quite difficult to keep control.  Could they end-up as a dump bit-pipe?

We all have been waiting for Twitter to showcase their new advertising business model ( which seems to be delayed), but as a bit-pipe they have pushed a key mass of  the end-user relationships to the developer communities.  It isn’t surprising to me that Fred Wilson ( a lead investor in Twitter) made the announcement today that Twitter is at an inflection point and may start to build and leverage its own applications to enable the “killer app”.  Yes- Twitter has built a very powerful syndication model and a strong loyal gathering , but the ownership of the end-user is something that is very key in balance to attract marketers and advertisers; that direct relationship has traditionally been key for media  and media sales.   However, if they did have the advertising machine, like in the case of Google, then syndication is a very strong balancing act for buffering and building out distribution.  Some how I feel like Twitter has sandwiched themselves in the middle with out the control over the end-user completely, and with no monetization engine just yet.  This is like flying with out flaps on the each wing on either side, so to speak?  You can go fast, but were is your control…

So as Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and others  battle it out for control of the end-user and the unique interface to the local community, twitter may in fact just become just another vertical feed provider  in the growth of real-time conversations and local.

Even though this is not too surprising and Facebook has been able to spread around the world as a social wave that is defining how we all communicate, share and connect, I thought it interesting to post a chart published by insidefacebook that shows the breakdown of the >400M users of Facebook.   With approximately 35% of all users under 25 years old  they have captured more then 125M of the Gen-Y population and about 75% of the users are all under 35 years old or 300M users.

I was moved by a recent blog post by Clara Shih titled, titled “Social Showdown: Google vs. Facebook” who in my mind is one of those real though leaders in the social media space.

What I find interesting and challenging for Google as they attempt to enter the social media space is about spread of the social graph amongst users that are looking for choice.  Even though Google has 176M users of Gmail, Facebook is ~400M  strong as a user base, with many of them using Gmail as a subset to their Facebook accounts.   I thought with the release of Wave, Google was positioning itself out of the box from its own services to have an agnostic service that could eventually spread to all users.  What makes Facebook so powerful ( in my mind) is that it can exist with many other products as a connector.  Once you build something into an existing product, I find it pigeon-holes you into the users of that service and in many ways you can fall victim to your own boundaries.  This has been a very complicated position for many years when I was at Nokia.   Even when many services were launched, they were mainly only for Nokia devices and it was a challenge for those services to also work across other devices to create that brand awareness that this existed.  This is my opinion, but I feel Social communication services should be agnostic to all services and devices and work as a form of connector of services.  How will Buzz work within a Google defined structure of Gmail vs. Facebook that is agnostic and a service that stands alone on its own right that now is getting positioned across all mobile operators and something complementary to your email, IM, etc…   In other words, I would say it would probably make more strategic sense for Facebook to incorporate the email service of your choice as opposed to try to create your own email service that again artificially creates a boundary of usage when users are comfortable with their own email service and email address to begin with.

I do believe that Google will find a very strong way to make Buzz a success, but being positioned in Gmail was something that might be limiting.  Any other thoughts out there?  Here is also a great presentation by Facebook Mobile at #MWC this past week.

Since the release of Google Buzz, I have been thinking quite a bit about usage cases of public and private ( even without the mobile usage case as this goes even to a different level).  In our daily lives we touch many different products that serve this kind of public/private usage case and have been an established behavior associated with them.  Our emails have a certain privacy shroud wrapped around them even though we may have conversations with people on many different levels….

Here is my first pass thoughts on why Buzz has opened the debate around Privacy.   It is not that Buzz is any different from the status box on Facebook and twitter, or even the one that Linked-in has added.  I think the real debate is about around the social behavior around privacy and the tools we use to manage our conversations.  Twitter exists on its own with the tools surrounding it as a certain usage case for many-to-many public discussions.  I would not think that I would want to include these types of communications in the inbox of my email, but Twitter has in fact done so with SMS and Text messaging that has been private.

I am still trying to figure out in my mind the ethos of social behavior and the tools we use, but email and twitter seem to be on completely opposite sides of my social communication graph.

With the recent rumours of Facebook launching a mobile advertising platform this year for the 100M mobile uniques and a recent article by Robert Scoble about “Supertweets” as a business model for Twitter in the advertising world, we are finally about to see a real explosion in social media advertising.  In addition with the announcement today of  Ex-Googler Tom Phillips to join Media6Degrees as CEO indicates the massive shift of talent into the space of social media  that is about to begin.

I spent the summer of 2007 working on this business model of influencers in the social graph of communities, and the real value of “WOM” in a digital form is finally taking root via social networks.  The challenges still remain around how to associate a brand in the user-generated content of conversations, but with the right platform and analytics, getting the community to back a brand and support it can be quite powerful.   This is an exciting time for social media platforms and I am looking forward to the next couple months of annoucements and the real indications of media budgets moving to social media platforms.

Although my Facebook account was down for 24 hours yesterday due to the Group Hack,  if my calculations are correct, in the next couple of days Facebook will announce the break-through of over 100M mobile users.  About a month ago in my discussions with Facebook staff,  I heard that they had over 65 M Mobile users and they they were expanding about 1M new users per day…… Therefore, I would imagine anyday now they will announce the 100M users and launch their mobile ad platform and the mobile open API.  Couldn’t be better timing then right around Thanks-giving  and the end of the year Christmas sales.  Great time for advertising.

Last year on Dec 12, at 3:27  they announced the 100M users on Facebook.  It is incredible that in less then 1 year ( if they do hit the mark and announce it) they could repeat this with Mobile.  This is an exciting time as it is the first service that has broke through the 100M user mark in Mobile outside of China.

Last week Facebook announced its 300M unique user!  Incredible.  I also heard that there is now over 65M users that are accessing Facebook daily from mobile devices.   I remember the days at Nokia where we discussed a service that had a mobile audience of >100M, but today I believe with over 65M active users a day on mobile, this has got to be getting pretty close to the the top.  I am sure there is a service in China that is getting more then 65M active users a day, but for something so sticky and mobile, I think we will probably see Facebook to be the first to “break the 100M mark on mobile”

So where does this leave them with a business model?  Also there was some unique discussions of Facebook killing on advertising.

Last week when I was at Advertising Week, Facebook sponsored a wrap-up party that I had the honor to attend ( Thanks Matt/Lance) .

So it is clear to me that Search and Social are keys to a digital marketing strategy in harmony and it only validates the dramatic ad revenue growth of Facebook.  Interested to see what Twitter does with links and lead-gen.  Will Social media someday match Search Revenues?  As long as the Brands can be satisfied with the proper placement of brands in the mix, as Search has become a direct marketing tool, Social media can become a brand marketing tool….. See the book by Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen ( Communities Dominate Brands- written many years ago and quite visionary…)