Authors claim their recent review of literature regarding Facebook Usage Reveals Validation is Chief Reason for Use, But People are Generally Healthier than That.

I have to say, this particular argument for why people use Facebook is really tired, and based on the (IMHO) antiquated concept that overemphasizes the importance of “belonging” as a significant driver for meaning. It is the same anthropology that dismisses faith in God as stemming from the same place. But I digress.

This is also only a literature review (no primary research) and it seems to come from 2009 sources. Lots has happened in the Soc Media world since 2009. Its like talking about the stock market without mentioning mortgage backed securities and TARP.

Facebook usage is far too widespread and its user base way too diverse to draw these kinds of conclusions. A full sixth of the planet is on Facebook and 50% visits daily. That is unfathomable, and no one would have ever predicted it.

Most important, Facebook offers people a way to be MORE efficient with their relationships. These days, for those in a person’s tight circle, a wall post is etiquette for letting them know about important things, much easier than blast email or dialing for dollars. For people like me who only have about 450 friends and acquaintances, it helps me stay in touch with some folks lightly, and others know about everything they post. It is easier to manage more relationships with Facebook.

Finally, it is a permanent address. You can move as many times as you want and change all your contact info, and you are still reachable via Facebook. It is the Uber Persistent Yellow Pages. That in and of itself is more important than being validated by Like buttons.

That said, we do not need more social networks, other than certain special interest ones. Google+ is baffling to me. If you don’t trust Facebook, how do you EVER in God’s name trust Google with your info? They would sell their mom’s molars for cash.

Interesting, but I disagree. What do you think?

After Listening to Mark Zuckerberg for some time, it is obvious we can all learn something here.

I have had my Facebook page for some time now, and have been watching the young CEO receive a significant amount of fame, money and power in a very short period of time. I even saw the movie and really enjoyed it (as an entrepreneur, it was very energizing). The character I saw in the movie was nothing like the individual I have been watching in interviews and in the media. Maybe he isn’t the smoothest operator in interviews, but he is the real item.

As we learned from Spiderman several years ago, “along with great power comes great responsibility”. This, in fact, is what Mr. Zuckerberg owns and carries with an ease that I have not witnessed among men for some time. This is no exaggeration. He has had a devotion to all the right values and ideals when you are talking about what it means to operate a business with such significant influence.

• He is committed to the social experience. First and foremost, he wants to mirror how people interact with each other in person.
• He jealously guards open infrastructure and wants to enable entrepreneurs.
• He is not chasing after the most lucrative option (they would be public already if that were so).
• He is more interested in Facebook itself than who it makes him or how much it makes for him.

For the man who owns most of the website where 250 million people use it every day, these are important values.

I can’t help thinking about Bill Gates when I think of Zuckerberg. While Bill Gates was an aggressive business man when it came to protecting his Windows base and through bringing more and more functionality into the operating system, Bill Gates has always been a committed proponent of collaborative computing and what contribution his operating system could make to society as well. It is his largest contribution to the world (aside from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).

(Update) Mark was raised Jewish, but most of what we find online seems to indicate he claims to be an atheist. While a disappointment for me personally, it would be my hope he would correct this to say he is agnostic, as atheism is extremely unreasonable (it makes a claim that you can know for sure there is no God which makes no sense at all).

He may be surprised to find out many of the values he is committed to are important to God as well.

What do you think? Do you think I am fooled, or do you agree? Do you think he is like Gates in this context?

Google+ is cooling off, and with only a minor amount of rest, we now we have a new entrant, UMeNow, who is vowing to Kill Facebook, and dismisses Google+ as a competitor. Well, Hi dee hi Mr. Hanky.

The Google + Conundrum

What baffles me most is, how is it Google can sell they are a better steward of our information than Facebook? Do you really trust Google more than Facebook?

Let’s see…on the Facebook side, we have Zuckerberg, who has pretty much proven that, while an honest capitalist (which is fine and dandy, I am a business owner myself), he is more focused on the user experience than stacking up columns of Billions. Google, on the other hand, likes to talk about “not doing evil” but then exploiting everything they learn about you.

I don’t think Google+ is going to cause anyone to turn over a new leaf over there, do you?

The UMeNow Folly

OK, so there is a group of people out there who are pretty sure someone is out to get them.  Perfect social network for them!  I am sure these folks have so much pull among their friends they will cause things to tip toward UMeNow.  Not a chance.

The reason Facebook has been so successful is because it does what it is supposed to do.  Offer a permanenet residence for everyone online.  Now you can move three times a year, change jobs and mobile phone numbers as often and your friends can still find you. That is important.

So do we need to make everyone scour 5 different locations to find us when one is perfectly good?  I think not again.

UPDATE: Facebook just added new more granular controls to sharing.  It appears now almost everyone else is now comfortable with the changes.  Except for those in the witness protection program.

I know this has nothing to do with research. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.

Advertisers also had plenty of fumbles. The ad time was dominated by auto makers and film studios, which generally create dull advertising. Several star-studded ads flopped, at least among Madison Avenue peers, including a spot for Snickers featuring Roseanne Barr and Richard Lewis that failed to live up to the buzz of last year’s Betty White ad.

Some ads featuring Super Bowl ad icons, such as CareerBuilder’s chimpanzees and the GoDaddy.com girls, felt stale, ad executives said. And fast-growing Internet firm Groupon Inc. stirred controversy for an ad depicting Tibet.

“It’s brilliant and simple. It will win the water-cooler discussion,” said Allen Adamson, managing director at WPP PLC’s Landor & Associates.

The ad, which captured pregame buzz with more than 12 million views and more than 10,000 comments online before kickoff, was one of two spots for Volkswagen AG’s VW created by Interpublic Group of Cos.’s Deutsch LA.

Sunday night’s game featured ads from more than eight companies in the auto category, including General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet brand, Volkswagen’s Audi luxury brand, Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz, BMW of North America, and South Korea’s Kia Motors Corp. and sister car maker Hyundai Motor Co.

Few stood out, ad executives said. One Chevrolet ad shows a couple kissing goodbye after a first date and the man checking his date’s Facebook status using his car’s technology as he drives away. The Audi spot, which attempts to pitch its message about a new class of luxury, features a pair of well-dressed men escaping a mansion. The Mercedes Benz ad promotes the brand’s new line and stars musician-actor Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Using humor and going after buzz can be risky for auto advertisers because cars are big-ticket items where safety plays an important roll in the purchase, ad experts say. The effect—combined with a series of movie trailers for film studios—led to a game that largely lacked the comedic energies of years past.

Marketers spent about $2.8 million to $3 million for a 30-second spot during this year’s matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers, which was expected to draw a huge audience amid a year of record-breaking viewership for the National Football League.

E*Trade provided plenty of laughs with a spot featuring its iconic talking baby, which has been starring in Super Bowl spots since 2008. The ad shows the baby discussing investments and planning for retirement while getting measured by an Italian tailor named Enzo.

“It is very easy to get it wrong, and they keep getting it right,” said William Charnock, chief strategy officer at Interpublic Group’s RGA.

The ad was created by WPP’s Grey New York.

Other familiar characters returning to the Big Game were met with a less enthusiastic homecoming. Ad executives said the ad for online jobs site CareerBuilder, which featured chimpanzees making it impossible for a human co-worker to park his car, wasn’t fresh.

See the rest of the article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703989504576128260801960194.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Nestle’s deal for CM&D Pharma Ltd., to be announced Wednesday, is likely the first of many for Nestlé Health Science SA, a subsidiary that opened its doors last month. Nestlé confirmed it had made the deal but didn’t disclose terms.

In September Nestlé said it would create the Health Science subsidiary and invest 500 million Swiss francs ($534 million) over 10 years in a sister research company.

That’s the short version of the company’s explanation for the drop, during its earnings call this morning: It had a variety of reasons to explain the exodus of subscribers, but all of them revolved around money that their previous customers didn’t have or didn’t want to part with.

A “small number” of former Comcast subscribers did appear to be swapping out cable for a free, over-the-air signal, said Comcast Cable president Neil Smit. But based on exit interviews, he said, they don’t seem to be planning on using the Web or services like Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu, et al as a cable substitute.

On the one hand, that distinction seems to be pointless, since someone who isn’t getting cable anymore isn’t getting cable anymore. Which makes them a “cord cutter,” technically speaking.

But those customers aren’t the ones that worry cable companies and Wall Street–or excite potential disruptors and their investors: When those guys are talking about cord cutting, they’re thinking about customers using the Internet and “over the top” services to get what they want.

So we’re still stuck where we’ve been for a while: Lots of people–many of whom are the kind of people who read sites like this one–say that cord cutting is either here or inevitable. And the incumbent cable companies say they see no sign of it.

As always, I invite you to let me know why you have or haven’t cut the cord yourself in the comments below this post.

Back to Comcast’s earnings for a second: The company would like investors to note that the customers who do stick around are handing it more money than ever. The average video customer now pays Comcast an average of $130 per month, a 10 percent bump.

And while those 275,000 missing video subs are more than Wall Street expected, Comcast says that things are getting better on that front, too. It says subscriber trends started improving at the end of the third quarter, and have continued to pick up in October.

Comcast lost 275,000 cable subscribers last quarter, and has lost 622,000 in the first nine months of 2010. More evidence of “cord cutting”?

Nope, says the cable giant. It’s evidence that the economy sucks.

That’s the short version of the company’s explanation for the drop, during its earnings call this morning: It had a variety of reasons to explain the exodus of subscribers, but all of them revolved around money that their previous customers didn’t have or didn’t want to part with.

A “small number” of former Comcast subscribers did appear to be swapping out cable for a free, over-the-air signal, said Comcast Cable president Neil Smit. But based on exit interviews, he said, they don’t seem to be planning on using the Web or services like Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu, et al as a cable substitute.

On the one hand, that distinction seems to be pointless, since someone who isn’t getting cable anymore isn’t getting cable anymore. Which makes them a “cord cutter,” technically speaking.

But those customers aren’t the ones that worry cable companies and Wall Street–or excite potential disruptors and their investors: When those guys are talking about cord cutting, they’re thinking about customers using the Internet and “over the top” services to get what they want.

So we’re still stuck where we’ve been for a while: Lots of people–many of whom are the kind of people who read sites like this one–say that cord cutting is either here or inevitable. And the incumbent cable companies say they see no sign of it.

As always, I invite you to let me know why you have or haven’t cut the cord yourself in the comments below this post.

Back to Comcast’s earnings for a second: The company would like investors to note that the customers who do stick around are handing it more money than ever. The average video customer now pays Comcast an average of $130 per month, a 10 percent bump.

And while those 275,000 missing video subs are more than Wall Street expected, Comcast says that things are getting better on that front, too. It says subscriber trends started improving at the end of the third quarter, and have continued to pick up in October.

Mobile Games Revenues to Surpass $11 billion Globally by 2015 as In-Game Purchases Overtake those of Pay-per-Download, says Juniper Research

This is an important area for research.  While we know the profile of the enthusiast, who can we draw into the gaming mix that has more disposable income?  While the games certainly seem to be selling just fine, there is a significant point of sale opportunity for a variety of games and other items to be purchased within the gaming environment.  That would be more than the $11 Billion I would guess…

The article is below. – DC

December 2, 2010  - A new report published today by Juniper Research forecasts that revenues from in-game purchases will overtake the traditional pay-per-download model as the primary source of monetising mobile games by 2013. With Apple’s in-app billing mechanism showing the way forward, total end-user revenues will surpass $11 billion annually by 2015, nearly double what they were in 2009 ($6bn).

An increasing number of games are being offered free at the point of purchase, in order to garner attention, with in-game purchases – which include extra gaming levels or gameplay items – being utilised by developers and publishers to monetise the game once the user has been given a taste of what the game has to offer. However, discoverability remains a problem for developers and publishers on some app stores, given that many now contain 100,000s of applications, the majority of which are mobile games.

According to Mobile Games report author Daniel Ashdown, ” Discoverability can be a “chicken and egg” problem: high downloads lead to prominence, but achieving a high number of downloads is largely dependent on already being prominent. Consequently, a small minority of games achieve very high downloads, whilst the vast majority achieve very small download figures.”

This is the kind of dramatic action, coupled with built-in accountability for genuine change driven by their customers’ photos, that will result in Domino’s future success.  See the contest at http://showusyourpizza.com.