As we have talked about last week, Facebook has reached 1 billion active users, which means that one in every seven people in the World are, in fact, actively using Facebook. To Facebook, an active user is defined by, “One who has logged in through the website or a mobile device and/or taken action to share content with Facebook friends or connections through a third-party website that is integrated with Facebook, within the last 30 days.” Waaytv has provided some interesting statistics showing the depth of how large 1 billion actually is. For instance, if Facebook were in fact its own country it would be the third largest in the world. The United Sates wouldn’t even be a competition, considering it has merely 314 million residents. Facebook would be more than 30% larger than the United States. Going back in time, if Facebook was around in 1804, everyone living on Earth would be creating, updating, and posting information to the site. These statistics prove how powerful this amount actually is. We all know how much Facebook is worth, and this might be increasing even more by way of their users. That is right – Facebook has also been in the news last week for their new posting feature. The new feature enables users to promote their very own pictures and posts. Users currently are able to ‘Like’, ‘Comment’, and ‘Share’ their own as well as Facebook friends’ updates. Well, now users will be able to promote their personal posts and updates to their friends’ newsfeeds for a fee. That is right, a fee. Facebook has already enabled the promotion feature, in testing mode, to more than 20 countries; the United States was not included, until last Wednesday, when Zuckerberg announced the news. According to The Verge promotion per post will cost a user roughly $7.00. What does the $7.00 get the user? Essentially, more visibility in their friends’ newsfeeds and the ability to see statistics on the amount of people who have seen the post. But, like regular posts, it will eventually fade away from all newsfeeds. Facebook does not intend to have the promotion tool being used daily, but instead for big events in the lives of their users. These events may include birthdays, weddings, baby announcements, etc.  The feature is still in testing phase, so only a certain amount of users and pages are granted access to it. If you want to find out if you have been chosen to be a part of the testing, check under your recent posts and a new ‘Promote’ button will show up next to the ‘Like’ and ‘Comment’ buttons. So, whether you have been granted access, do you think you would be willing to promote your own posts for a small fee?

It is common knowledge that social media is an important part of daily life in today’s age, but most are not aware of a surprising new way that social media is breaking into people’s lives. As the summer comes to a close you may want to squeeze in that one last vacation. To plan this last minute vacay you may want to consult your Facebook News Feed, Twitter or Pinterest account. That’s right; a growing number of Americans are now using social media to plan their travel destinations. Once planned, users of social media are also using their mobile social media apps to make reservations, keep in touch, and share pictures while on vacation. But, it doesn’t stop there! It is becoming a growing trend for travelers to post reviews of their vacation hot spots once they have returned home. Gone are the days when vacations were all about ‘unplugging.’ See the below infographic from MDG Advertsing for a more in depth look.

Ever since the Facebook IPO (and for some time before it as well), critics, skeptics, and everyone with a financial stake has wondered how boy-genius Zuckerberg would lead his monolith of social media into the realm of profitability in the fastest emerging market of all: mobile. It’s no secret that Facebook’s financial success hinges on advertising, those pay-per-click blurbs to the right of the news feed offering everything from guitar lessons to shoe sales. The question has been – and Zuckerberg himself asked it in his SEC filing – how to make advertising successful in the mobile space, with much less screen real estate on which to show ads and a potentially higher user-dissatisfaction rate when those ads interfere with someone scrolling through their feed.

A couple of recent reports have both discouraging and encouraging news. EyeTrackShop used heat mapping technology to track mobile vs. web viewing habits and found that iPhone users notice ads 6 percent less and spent 14 percent less time looking at them. Not only that, mobile users recalled the ads 20 percent less than those who viewed ads on the web. By these measures, mobile ads just don’t perform as well.

But that’s only part of the story. AdParlor, a company that specializes in large-scale Facebook advertising for some rather well-known clients (Audi, LG, and Groupon, to name a few), released its own data with a more positive spin. It seems that mobile users are 15 times more likely to click an ad than web users and the click-through-rate for mobile ads is considerably higher: 1.32% vs. 0.086% on the desktop. Now those numbers are significant.

On balance, there is reason to be optimistic. If the data are correct, the increase click-through-rate should more than outweigh the drop in visibility for mobile ads. And it’s worth noting that Facebook is still new at mobile advertising. With some more study and a few tweaks, Zuckerberg and Co. could turn many of those skeptics and critics around.

It comes as no surprise that monitoring is and always will be a part of the social media world. College and high school students, as well as workers, are constantly being reminded to be vigilant about what they post on the web that might come back to haunt them during an interview for a potential job.

Some employees are mindful about what, if anything, should be posted about their day at work. Others let their opinions fly about their current or former bosses, co-workers, and even worse, the company’s name. And it’s not always positive news.

But we’re not addressing today the how-to of social media etiquette (i.e. smart moves). In fact, it is more about how social media host sites are now becoming the “hall” monitor, literally.

Several social media sites have transformed from passive watching to actually contacting the police, according to a report from Mashable. As explained, Facebook is now proactively using software to scrutinize information posted on its pages. It is unknown if the data is being stored or deleted, but it is being sifted through for information. If something “such as an exchange of personal information or vulgar language” is signaled, then the company’s security team gets involved to determine the next step.

Welcome to the new era of neighborhood watch on a digitized level.

Now, it does have that “big brother is watching” concern, but the company’s monitoring process does have an appealing proactive approach in our ever-changing, pioneering digital world. However, for every user on this social media site, one cannot claim to be shocked or be appalled about any privacy issues because this policy is actually outlined in the company’s Terms of Service.

So, weighing in on why tolerate Facebook sifting through personal information and knowing how that information is being used versus meaningful exchanges among family and friends – one has to say this may or may not be good news. It depends if they consider my aunt’s freshly baked homemade strawberry rhubarb pie is illegal.

Fascinating question, that. It might be hard to conceive of a time when Facebook doesn’t exist anymore, or maybe exists in the same way that Myspace does – as a floundering shell of its former self. After all, Facebook has more than 900 million users worldwide, and that doesn’t even include China, where it’s not allowed. With a world population of just over 7 billion, that comes to around one Facebook account for every eight people on the planet. That’s a pretty impressive rate of saturation.
So the original question bears repeating: What could kill a behemoth that size? The answer is one word: mobile. In order to understand that, it helps to know a little about how Facebook operates. Most of those 900 million users are everyday folks who want to share photos, stories, and events with friends. Those users are the primary source of revenue for Facebook. Or rather, their data is. Facebook makes about 80% of its profits from selling ads targeted with that data that show up all over the site. They get paid anytime someone clicks on one of those ads.
The trouble is that on most mobile devices (smartphones and such), there isn’t enough real estate on the screen to show all those ads and still give the user a good experience. And guess what? The use of mobile devices for access to Facebook (and the internet in general) is exploding. As more and more people switch to mobile as their first choice for Facebook, ad revenues will drop significantly. And when a company stops making money, well… we know what happens.
There’s always the chance that Facebook will figure out a way to make money through their mobile app. Then again, maybe not. They started out with a traditional computer model and who knows if they’ll be able to make the shift? There’s probably just as good a chance that some upstart will come along with a product that wasn’t just adapted to mobile but created for mobile, and that could be the Facebook killer.