Facebook paid that astronomical sum for Instagram and the work of its 13 Employees. Yes mere 13. If one were to look at the bare basics, which amounts to $ 76,923,076 is what Facebook paid to Instagram for each of its employee! And all this, for just a one year old company!

Now the numbers apart, there is a more significant impact of this acquisition. With Instagram now, as part of the Facebook stable, it sets them up well to enter the photo sharing and photo processing space and strengthens their position to take Google on. Both, Facebook and Google have been at it for a while, trying to rein supremacy in the social media space. Google encountered Facebook earlier, with Google Buzz which unsurprisingly failed only to lead to Google Wave which bombed too. The two failures enabled Google to rectify their mistakes and in came Google Plus, a direct rival to Facebook.

While Google plus still doesn’t boast of the following that Facebook has or even its overall appeal, their Hangouts feature lead to a street fight to acquire Skype. Despite losing out on Skype, Facebook managed to survive the Video chat surge. Meanwhile, Facebook mail was launched as well which started to give Facebook an all round feel as a company.

Cut to 2012, Mark Zuckerberg was prepping for the biggest event of his life and his company, an IPO. Facebook aims to raise about $10Billion through the IPO which will evaluate the company at a staggering $ 96 Billion.

The acquisition of Instagram goes a long way in strengthening their proposition to the masses as well and rouses further buzz around the IPO that they are willing to invest and keep the company growing and moving towards newer grounds all the time. Why did Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s level-headed but mercenary founder, buy Instagram at twice the valuation that professional venture investors were putting on it? The answer is found in Zuckerberg’ own blog post:
“This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.”

This clearly reeks of “Damage Control” or “Crisis Management” so to speak. With Instagram already boasting of over 30 million iOS users and then opening itself up to the Android world, Facebook ran the risk of losing one of its core value propositions which was to share as you go. A major part of this being pictures. Let’s face it, we all love uploading pictures on the GO on Facebook and Instagram was rapidly taking that ground by storm.

The timing of this acquisition is really what the best thing about the whole deal is. Facebook now has Instagram which has both Android and iOS users and further cements Facebook as a firm favorite application on Android more so because Instagram too is now part of their stable.

It remains to be seen how Google will respond to this acquisition, Picasa which is Google’ photo sharing platform surely needs more sprucing up and a more robust photo processing application to go with it.

As this race to Supremacy heats up further, it only promises to give the consumers more innovation, usability and options!

Companies, small or large have started to make use of the cost effective yet influential means to make their business worthwhile and also bringing their brand names in the eye of the customers. It has changed the personality of an individual, making a detached virtual image from the real one. You might just end up finding a person different on facebook and in real you might be shocked to see how different he looks or even what he actually does! In reality, people also use the social networking sites to create an ‘image’ and a profile that immediately comes into notice with an intention to get chosen by some professional company for a job. But seriously, there is an end point to everything where you can trust these sites, crossing which you get concerned about all the security issues of your pictures and information.

With excessive use over the time, the social networking sites are on the topmost notch of earning the big bucks. Besides being beneficial, they also take away the time ticking from your clock. However, the way in which it has made a mark in the lives of people is considerable. It has equally been a backbone for the big brands, to maintain a contact with their fans and the customers who follow them regularly.

We have heard of several instances where people are actually managing to run their business because of the social networking sites. In fact I just read a joke which said ‘A lady to a begger on street “arre maine tumhe kahin dekha hai!”, and the beggar replies “haan memsaab aap mere facebook account pe friend ho!”. Imagine how much progress the sites have made if the joke is true!!

And here I wonder a couple of days later, if people actually start following his page just out of curiosity or for making a pun on the social networking sites.

Author- Hetal Doshi

The net users are getting concerned about their personal surfing information being used by a random search engine for constant advertising purposes as per claimed by Pew internet survey. The Pew Internet & American Life survey illustrated that 65 percent of Internet users are negative about their search information being tracked for ranking purposes and they think that it would hamper the information that the users get from the online surfing and the results they see.

73 percent of them were strongly against their information being used for such random purposes giving an excuse that it was an invasion in their privacy whenever they seek for information online.Only 29% of those surveyed thought that the information being used by the search engines is good, as this would enable them to find information relevant while making the search. 23% said that they are even in favour of search engines keeping track of their searches and using that information as it would give them personalised future search results.

Many of the users were not even aware of the fact that they can limit their own information that the websites gather. About 38% of Internet users accepted that they were aware of their info limiting capability. In that group, the most common method used by everyone was of deleting their web history to avoid any further use of it.

Regardless of these concerns about online privacy, the Pew research found that most of the users were on the positive side of the search engine use and the results. The use of search engines will always be the most favourite one followed by the use of E-mails. They have very strong notions about the use of these engines and 91% affirm that they always or most of the time acquire the information they are finding. Moreover, 73% vouched for the information results being reliable and true.

It was quite an obvious result of Google gaining the lead on being one of the most used browsers, and the results were found being useful most of the time.

Author- Sumesh Madhavan

Woahh!! Now you can figure out for sure how long it has been since twitter has been online. It has successfully become de facto short message system of the internet. It really has become an essential for all the celebrities world-wide to share a mutual virtual space with their fans. Imagine who would not want to know what their favourite celebs are doing!!

It has become the largest one-to-many open communication platform on the web with 500million users spread over the globe.

Twitter’s beginnings were unpretentious. The service started out as an off-hand project from the creators of podcasting company Odeo, and even though it seemed potential with the blink of an eye, it was still weighed by frequent downtime in its couple of initial years.

The stability problems for Twitter have become a thing of the past. Twitter’s tweets and the hashtags have become a part of the culture for everyone. For a change, if you ask a celeb about how to reach them, you might just get a prompt reply about their Twitter name!

If we check its business plans, in the last one year twitter is known to have cast a shadow with the facebook IPO. Still one question has been haunting Twitter since quite sometime, whether it will be overpowered by giants such as Google, Microsoft or Apple, or is it going to keep growing???

Anyways lets wish Twitter a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!

Written by-Hetal Doshi

We, at Gozoop, have set for ourselves yet another benchmark with a hashtag called ‘ReplaceMovieNameWithExam’ that we initiated for our client – Mad Over Donuts. The said #tag contest was trending worldwide just within 3 hours of being live on Twitter.

We launched the campaign on 19th March 2012, at 12 noon as a part of our fortnightly Twitter contest for Mad Over Donuts and by 3pm we were already trending #1 worldwide. Not just that, we were trending #1 in Mumbai as well as in India.

While we were just absorbing this success, we figured out that the real picture was larger than we thought. In no time, we were trending #1 in several countries like USA, UK, Singapore and Malaysia. One of the tweets that also trended worldwide was #HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyExam that took the contest a notch higher. The rest, as we say is history!

Twitter executions have been one of our strengths, considering the ‘Twitter Expert’ that we have! (You know I’m talking about you but I won’t name you!)

Now, when we look back at how it all unfolded, we just have a round of giggles going on with some hands slapping each other and some smiles getting wider!

To begin with, we had two #tag options that we were to choose from. Fortunately, we zeroed down on #ReplaceMovieNameWithExam. Little did we know that it would make a global footprint two and a half hours later! We were all excited and began tracking it down with an online tool we usually use. (I’m not gonna name that either!) At about 2.40 PM IST the mentions of the #tag suddenly surged as it started to go viral in USA. Soon enough we ran out of the tracking limit of the tool and the mentions of the #tag were skyrocketing.

While we absorbed this success amongst our team, we definitely called for several boxes of donuts and feasted ourselves on this yet another success story! With Twitter at our fingertips, we are certain to have many more glories to be achieved! Until then, keep checking out for all the awesome stuff we do on Twitter and elsewhere!

Author- Bansi Raja

A recently released report of social media statistics, conducted by Social Bakers with 10 leading brands to evaluate their performances on social networking websites mainly Facebook and Twitter, revealed that, the former is much more efficient in pulling audience than Twitter. According to the study, Facebook provides with a much better and efficient platform to the brands to interact with their audiences or clients and create the much needed brand loyalty.

Facebook consents to the people to communicate with their brands exclusively and vice – versa. A user can freely talk to a specific brand or ask them questions, where as the brand can communicate to their fans through various modes like pictures, albums, videos, links, status updates, applications and now the all new feature of Milestones and much more. ‘This is the straightforward reason why this platform is preferred by companies, who mainly want to build that intimate bond with their audiences, and share the sentiments that their brands would want to convey,’ points out the report.

Meanwhile, as far as Twitter is concerned, it is restricted to just 140 characters and the thought reaches more people losing its exclusivity. It can be a safe refuge for things like live streaming, blogging and promotion of ideas, but when it comes to linking with the audience, there is no beating Facebook as it wins, hands down!!

Starbucks, Red Bull, Converse, Play station, iTunes and McDonald’s are few of the brands that were delved into by Social bakers. These brands had reached higher average engagement rate on Facebook, while on the other hand, Oreo showed high level of engagement on Twitter. However, this augment was due to the tweet posted on Oreo’s 100th Birthday anniversary, which had asked audience to share their special Oreo memories. Twitter is the most useful platform in terms of spreading the content at a faster rate and therefore, it was this notion that helped Oreo in getting people to engage on the micro-blogging site with great success.

But the fact still remains; Facebook is much more efficient in pulling audiences and keeping them engaged while building an impactful image for your brand!

Author- Muntazir Mahdi

Everyone is acquainted with how famous and interactive Facebook is. After such a great success thrust forward, Facebook has now started to make some modifications in it. It has added a mobile referrals dashboard, so it is easy for the developers to track and analyze traffic from mobile devices; this was announced by the company in a blog post as a new development.

Now the developers can monitor the mobile app clicks by day, device and source. This dashboard enables the developers to view mobile referral data by age, gender, language and country. It is the actual information that helps developers to understand their audience better. It is more likely to help developers in their marketing efforts, and also allows them to make more precise and detailed decisions about the direction of their product.

Another feature added by Facebook is, game stories in News Feed, as a way for users to determine and notice apps on their mobile devices. This distribution of referral traffic is easily viewable by developers from the mobile feed, versus mobile search, bookmarks, notifications and Timeline. This allows developers to understand Facebook’s mobile platform better and decide which discovery channels to accentuate. This feature also highlights areas that Facebook needs to improve in order to provide enough significance to mobile developers. These features add up to your convenience, if you want a constant touch with the ongoing on site-activity your brand is involved with. In fact, mobile is the medium through which a person can be connected with their brands all round the clock if wanted.

The new ideas are available for all apps that incorporate Facebook, which is great including native iOS and Android applications. These can be accessed from the “Mobile” tab underneath “Traffic” in the app insights dashboard. So it is better you know the inside out of a function, if you want to use it to the best for your benefit and keep in pace with the constant developing technology. The Androids have made this function easily accessible. So, if such a successful portal like Facebook has given constant innovation, you can also take some inspiration.

Author- John Shaikh

The feature is available to users; along-with the effects from the marketing perspective, which can’t be ignored. With whatever the reasons are, there are few factors creating connotation out of the facebook timeline for brands:

Elevated Involvement

According to the social giant, there are around 800million people who have an active profile on facebook. Some members log in to communicate with friends and family, while others join to explore the creative side of games, apps, and relish in the entertaining aspect of the site. What we mean here, is that there are times when people have been spending their entire day on facebook and because of facebook-timeline this engagement factor is expected to elevate more. This factor attracts the marketers’ after-all in several aspects.

On the other side, many pages like sales pages (fan pages), due to the promotional nature of the brands’ content have been in the eye. If solid content is created and they are able to strike up a conversation with the consumers, the new timeline could make your brand appear more engaging, by making it more approachable and visible. Whether it is the launch of a new product or maintaining the visibility, this makes it possible for audience to be able to see the human side of your business and watch it grow right before their very eyes which will help them connect stronger.

Target the Right

Creating a page on the timeline makes the audience aware of even the smallest business and you might end up getting the enthusiasts, visitors or customers within your vicinity just because you made that effort of being visible. This makes them aware of your existence and they would try having a conversation with you at least once.

To conclude, observers are confident that marketers are sure to benefit immensely from this. It is better to figure out with its use over the time. Till then, brands can get a sense of contentment just by knowing that the new timeline looks to be a good thing adding up to all the businesses.

Author-Hetal Doshi

It won’t be far away when you will see the social media “Share” options available all together. How will you decide whether you should “Pin it”, “Tweet it”, “Share it”, or “+1” it? This will be definitely a tough choice to make, in the future to come. While many of us are locked into the Pinterest obsession, many others have still not recognized its relevance or are simply uninterested in what it has to offer and how it can help their brand if not similar but at least in some way.

Here are the three alternatives to Pintrest that can help your business:

Fancy:

If you like the general idea of Pinterest, but cannot give into waiting for an invite, then Fancy is definitely for you! Fancy has the same concept as Pinterest, in that, it is pictures only. The concept remains the same i.e you can Fancy pictures (similar to liking a picture) and Add to Lists (which is similar to Pinterest Boards). In Fancy you get a Rank, which is a way in which other people will rank your popularity. The more people Rank you, the more popular you become. Fancy also gives out badges but it’s yet to figure out which kind of badges can actually be earned. Another very eye capturing feature of Fancy is that of Deals. You can look at the Deals tab to find tons of deals on the internet. There is a Deal tab on the top middle of the screen that will help you to find the best Deals available. As of now there are not many Deals but I am pretty sure that there would be more addition to this list as it gains more popularity in future.

To know more about the site click here: http://www.thefancy.com/

Chill:

Similar to Pinterest, but with videos instead of pictures! While it may sound more like YouTube, it is not just a place to watch random videos across the internet. Chill allows you to share videos that you like and watch videos that others have posted. Another important feature of this social networking site is that, you can comment on others’ video, show you have watched it, and use emotions to convey what you really feel about the video. You can also repost the videos and share new videos in the Collections (which are similar to Pinterest Boards).Chill also lets you customize your page unlike any of the other sites listed.

To know more about the site click here: http://chill.com/

Gentlemint:

The man’s Pinterest! It is no secret that 90% of Pinterest’s users are women. Gentlemint is full of manly things posted by manly men. It has tons of posts about things guys are truly interested in, which is refreshing to see. Though Gentlemint is still invite only, the main reason for this is because the creators of the site want the users to have an enjoyable experience without getting bogged down with too many users right off the bat.To keep the users more involved and attract few others, Gentlemint keeps on adding new features, the latest being Save to Your Mint, which is slightly similar to putting things on boards.

To know more about the site click here: http://gentlemint.com/

All this sounded like one for another, but from the perspective of a brand, it’s more the merrier. Let’s see how the brands feast on these competitive social media platforms and make the most of it!

Notifications:

The Notifications Panel which is visible on the top left of your Facebook page allows you to view all your page-related notifications viz. new activity, new likes, tags as well as fan comments for your posts. It also notifies you about the ongoing discussions taking place on your Page. The important part however, is to respond and stay connected with every activity and notification that you come across.

New Likes

Like the name suggests, it is a tab to keep you updated on the people who are joining your page regularly (becoming new fans). Although the New Likes section is ideal for Pages that don’t have a large fan base as it is vital to check out new likes after a considerable promotion activity to figure out how successful the campaign really was. Furthermore, the Insights panel too gives you a more comprehensive and detailed analysis for the same.

Insights

The Insights Tab is by far one of the finest tools for any Facebook fan page. The Admin can instantly see the exact response that he gets for a particular post on the page. Divided into 3 bars, the purple bar lets you know how many times you actually post something in a day, the green and the blue bars let you know how engaging the post is for your fans i.e. how many impressions does it initiate. However the best part about Insights is its ability to determine what content can actually help in engaging and connecting with your fans (includes sharing the post, commenting upon). The “See More” button on the upper right corner also determines the connection and relativity of your posted content.

Messages

Brands on Facebook have surely rejoiced after discovering the Messages option on the page. Messaging is one of the best possible ways to let your fan connect with you and address you on known issues and problems he is facing regarding the product of the brand or the brand itself. Messaging has not only reduced spam but also proved to be beneficial for the B2B companies in connecting and promoting their products.

Manage

The Manage tab on the upper right section serves as a functionality option for Fan Pages. The admin can manage all kinds of settings for his fan page from here which could depend on deciding with whom to share the post, who can tag or get tagged in the post, manage the profanity level on the page as well as decide on the country and age restrictions for further Likes. Deciding on age restrictions is another great tool to manage page visibility. If the Page is about Contraceptives, the page can be hidden from people below the age of 18 years.

Similar to the Timeline of the User profile, the Manage option also lets you view what you’ve shared in the past. The banned users tab too lets you view the people, who no longer have access to your page. Also the Build Audience tool is definitely one of the best ways to get new Likes with sponsored stores and premium ads to target the users in a specific country or worldwide.

Help and Page Tips

If you’re new to the Facebook fan page scenario or experiencing difficulties on using a specific tool or setting, then you can explore vital tips and suggestion under this option. It is a great tool for troubleshooting and solving known issues on a Facebook fan page. Using all the resources in the admin panel will surely help you build your fan page effectively and take it to a whole new level!

Author- Shahid