Ad.Ly Leverages Facebook to drive traffic

Wow, this is great news for ad.ly. New integration into Facebook will increase exposure onto multiple platforms for microblogs. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=143878

I have been closely following ad.ly since Derek Rey, VP of Sales moved there from Technorati a couple years ago. Derek is one of the great minds in Social Media today, and has established himself as a thought leader for marketing in social media.

This move makes complete sense as Facebook continues to lead the space for time spent, audience size. It's all about hitting critical mass of audience. So, why not Twitter & Facebook & MySpace?... Microblogging has been fragmenting since inception, and it's important to understand who and why audiences use the respective platforms. It's all about selecting the correct medium for your audience and message.

Ad.ly has a really smart platform and great celebrity personalities to drive influence for brands across the microblogging universe, driving enormous amounts of qualified, real time influence for events, products, and services.

Party Like it's 1999

Two Thousand Zero Zero .... Party Like it's 1999. Wow, IPO's for LinkedIn and Facebook possible for 2011. That's a huge indicator for new investment and innovation in our social media industry. Adding to the hype, as the rumor mill churns... Groupons turned down some serious money (something like $6 Billion) from Google.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=142495

Since we know that "fear and greed" drive our capital markets, I assume that these indicators will bring out the greed in the VC community. This means that many new entrants to the social media race will become well fortified with capital to better compete in a liquid marketplace. I'm not sure if the event will really bring back the big DOT COM boom of liquidity into emerging social media companies, but historically VC's tend to invest where liquidity exists.

The main question is which companies will be the next darlings. First it was eBay & Yahoo, bunched with everything that had Dot Com in the name, then Google emerged as the Goliath, and now? Will that be Facebook, or potentially a new entrant fueled by new VC monies.

Personally I feel that Facebook is very limited, but does offer potential growth. I think the Bing partnership is very important, and there are come deep commerce implications associated with the build out of Facebook over time. Question is... will there be a new social media platform that bumps them off the block with better tools, and a more interesting user interface.

LinkedIn is an obvious value, and will succeed for a very long time. That said, they too have been fairly limited with regards to adding new powerful tools to drive more activity and community. But hey... it's a cash cow, and will hit hard once the economy and recruiting comes back strong over the next 3-5 years.

Personally I'm very happy to see these companies thrive, and I would imagine that we'll see some very strong M&A, and more hopefully IPO action in the Dot Com and or Social Media space.

Go Bulls !!

Facebook - will it survive long term?

Like many of us, I spend several minutes each day passively checking on my network's facebook updates. As we know with facebook, and twitter it's the vocal few who like to post all the time with photo's, family updates, weekend plans, pointers to their blog, etc. Based on this limited range, I'm actually experiencing some facebook fatigue. It seems to be that there are about 20 of my "friends" who are the most prolific posters, and not a real distributed array of updates from everyone in my network. Too bad really, because it does get a little tiresome just following the daily, mundane lives of the 20 or so vocal friends in the network...

I wonder if I'm the only person who feels this way?

I think that there's an opportunity for new social media network models, with better filters, better functionality, and perhaps a way to draw in more interesting content into the platform. It appears that our friends at Google are hot on the path to a new version, and it will be interesting to watch the space for increased competition.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=131134

MediaPost cites "Google Me" as a potential "facebook killer", but it seems more likely that it will be another college student, or small group of techies who develop the next, more interesting, more robust version of social network platforms. Someone will certainly take advantage of the lack of features, and lack of range of content associated with facebook. I think it will be more than a "me too" platform, but a fundamental game changer. With the now generation, it will likely be some new mobile app type platform (no doubt designed for the iphone user) that takes social media by storm.