Free Mobile Internet Service Offered by Facebook

 

Facebook has recently announced that it has plans to scale up its new free of charge internet service for mobile devices. This decision was made after the company managed to successfully launch its mobile app in 17 developing countries this past year.

The comments were made on Facebook’s official blog recently, where the company mentioned that it would be offering the new free internet for mobile platforms via its Internet.org program. The company is currently in partnership with various mobile operators who will help them launch the new free internet service in various countries.

Facebook’s Internet.org has managed to bring around 9 million users online since its launch last year. VP of the product, Chris Daniels recently told operators that Facebook had developed the platform along with six technology partners who brought together around 4.5 billion previously unconnected people online mostly in third world countries such as Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The new platform basically provides a pared down access to the internet which is free to users, and of course, comes along with access to Facebook’s messaging and social networking service. According to reports, over the past year, Facebook has managed to bring millions of new users to its service.

According to Daniels, this new platform is basically a customer acquisition tool which is aimed mainly at mobile phone and tablet operators, which in turn enables them to benefit from getting a very light amount of free data for free, rather than having to pay for the service.

While the new service has been welcomed by many, it has also faced some fierce criticism in some places. For instance, in India, the Internet.org platform was launched in partnership with Reliance Communications and faced a backlash from local technology and internet providers who questioned the motives of the service, especially when it came to the principles of having a neutral internet.

So far, the company has faced no scrutiny in the majority of countries where it has been launched, with most countries seeing the initiative as a pro connectivity service which will further strengthen the use of the internet. The service has only been able to launch in a few countries, but with collaborating with local mobile operators, Facebook plans to push this service further into other countries as well.

Source: technogigs.com

Google vs Facebook

The tough war between the two giants in technology space began ever since Facebook started gaining more popularity than any other brand in the social web. Google’s product portfolio consists of more than 100 products, as Google wanted to have its presence in every product which is used on Internet. This led Google into concentrating on continuous acquisitions in the market mainly Orkut, Youtube and others.
Google Started off late in 1998 by three people Larry page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt. The company started with a core idea of being one-stop search engine for Internet users in getting all the information around the world in a single mouse click. Google’s strategy is to constantly innovate and engage in acquisition and partnering with other companies beyond the core business of providing search engine. Google’s broad classification of products includes web-based products, operating systems, desktop and mobile applications, hardware etc.
There is a saying “Curiosity is the mother of invention”, but here the idea of search “curiosity” itself made a great revolution in web space. Google’s revenue generation model is mainly from advertising and its main motive is to make people stay more time on its webpage. Along with search engine advertising, there are products like google adwords and google adsense which allows marketers to advertise and earn revenue respectively. Adwords and adsense contribute heavily to the revenue generated by Google. Google advertising covers 41% of the $31 billion US advertising market. When Google has shown such a rapid growth ever since its launch, what made Larry Page to go for Google plus? Which was a similar concept of like and share in Facebook!
The revenue from search advertising were slowly declining as the companies started concentrating on advertising in social networking giant ruling the social web, Facebook. Facebook has a user base of over 800 million and a survey says that an FB user spends an average of two hours daily. So, it is easy for the companies to capture them in Facebook over any other forms of advertising. Banner –ad revenue is expected to rise by 81%, which will result in decline of Google’s online advertising market share from 41% to 34 percent in the coming year. Forbes magazine has released the annual list of richest Americans, in which Mark Zuckerberg has pushed Larry Page behind. Mark Zuckerberg CEO and president of Facebook was in 35th position last year and has moved to 14th position with a net worth of $6.9 billion. Now that’s growth!! Larry Page who was in 11th position last year is in 15th position.
The war between the duos of Internet space has started and Larry Page took a counteroffensive defence to defend the market share by introducing Google plus. Mark zuckerberg’s recent announcement to go for IPO , also alarmed Google to retaliate in order to retain their position in Social web. Orkut which belongs to Google was once the most preferred social networking site, but Orkut rapidly faced a decline in the number of users after youngsters found FB to be more interesting as it had new features. Google also tried introducing google buzz which appeared to be a twitter clone trying to leverage the power of google. But buzz too was a failure. This clearly shows that any company in technology space has to constantly upgrade in terms of features and creativity to appeal the audience. A recent report by Enders Analysis has mentioned about Google Plus that it will be a Niche product and will remain to be niche and has a huge scope to regain Google’s lost market share in Social networking. The rivalry started from “Facebook Vs Orkut” and then to “Facebook Vs Google”. Presently the war is getting tough like a head on head competition between Larry Page and Mark Zukerberg.
Google has a better work culture compared to Facebook, in terms of the freedom given to the employees to take up their pet projects. Every employee can work 20% of their work time in concentrating on their pet projects. This means the employee is allowed to spend 20% of allotted time in his own area of interest apart from his assigned projects. This is considered as an opportunity for innovation as people tend to exhibit more productivity only in when they like the job.
Facebook’s only area of focus is Social networking whereas Google has a chain of products complementing each other like Gmail, Picassa and Youtube etc. Any technology innovation is subjected to sustain only over a short period of time. Hence Facebook is more vulnerable in the years to come as youth’s tendency is generally to look for new arrivals. As learning from Orkut the user loyalty to such products is generally low and there are also professional networking sites like LinkedIn etc. On the other side the reason for the Facebook success is all about the “Curiosity of knowing what others are up to!”
Larry Page, Google CEO and founder who is 11 years older than Mark Zukerberg is facing the heat as Facebook in showing their dominance over Internet. Both are great visionaries in tech world in terms of their innovation and accomplishments. In the end the debate boils down to this – “Necessity or entertainment?”. Google is a necessity as people need to search. They need google’s product such as the search engine, gmail and youtube. But Facebook is complete social entertainment and that’s something people love. People may not need Facebook. In fact Facebook is a time sink. If you wanna be unproductive – log into facebook. But that’s the fun. If you want to escape from work online, and catch up with friends. Facebook is your way out. It is your hangout.
So we come down to the basic point. Who will win in the end? Only time will tell. Till then, keep searching, and keep sharing.

Facebook adds 60 new apps to hook users

SAN FRANCISCO: Social media giant Facebook released dozens of new applications to let users catalogue every aspect of their lives, from movies to books to food to fashion, and share them with friends.

"Whatever you love, whatever story it is you want to tell, you can add that to your timeline," said Carl Sjogreen, director of platform products for Facebook.

The initial batch of some 60 "apps" included contributions from companies such as Foodspotting, Rotten Tomatoes, Pinterest, TripAdvisor and e-reader Kobo.

The handful of companies present at the rollout event in San Francisco pitched their apps as a way to allow users to more fully integrate their social experiences outside of Facebook into their social networking profile.

Someone reading an e-book from Kobo, for example, could highlight passages they want to share with Facebook friends. The app also will automatically track which books they have finished or started reading and connect them with other Facebook users reading the same books.

Richard Penner of Kobo said the company views books as a social experience and believes that is what its customers want too. "We believe users want to engage with each other," he said.

It was a theme echoed by almost all developers who gathered in a chic, softly lit downtown lounge to show off their apps: it's no longer enough to simply allow users to "like" a book or a pair of jeans; an entire social experience should be created around everyday habits.

With the app from Foodspotting, food connoisseurs can easily share their love of a particularly delicious cheeseburger or just let friends know they tried an avocado roll at a new sushi place everyone is talking about.

"It gives extra context to friends," said Foodspotting spokeswoman Fiona Tang.

Developers were quick to emphasize user control over which actions appear on Facebook -- an issue that has prompted concern among some privacy rights advocates since the apps were first announced last year. Read more

Social Media Marketing – Trends And Topics

Over the past few decades, social media sites have added a completely new and innovative angle to the marketing. These sites not only help to carry the businesses effectively online but also help to improve one’s abilities regarding the online market and teach lot more than just logging onto facebook daily.
Social media marketing helps one to build medium which is acceptable to the public for marketing one’s business. Through habitual organization of social media, you can attract customers and build new relationships.

Besides only promoting, you can also use the social media marketing strategies for increasing your backlinks to some WebPages, videos or to the articles. These backlinks are the medium to get enough traffic to your sites and also to increase the rankings in search engines.

These sites for social media marketing facilitate market analysis techniques too. They help to analyze as to what goods, the customers prefer to buy and help you sell your services and products accordingly for optimized profit and monetary gains.
The social media sites form an excellent way to establish your business by building trust in the customers and thereby increasing the brand reputation. Social media marketing serves this, by enabling you to make new friends and potential clients and some long lasting relationships.

Social media marketing, if performed correctly creates elusive viral effects. Today, one gets to hear a lot of buzz about these effects and terms. The various search engine algorithms help to keep a track of the traffic that buzzes to your website or to your blogs or articles. When one achieves lot many links and a lot of buzz to one’s webpages, only then will the search engines place the content at a higher rank on their search results.
Thus, social media marketing runs on a good content and one must concentrate on providing this good content in order to raise the business standards online.