Microsoft has attempted to get into the social networking space by launching its own social network So.cl, which is specifically targeted at students.
The world’s favourite social butterfly, Facebook, finally made its Wall Street debut Thursday as the IPO process got underway. Although it was to be expected, at $38 each, the shares still seem ridiculously overpriced. Legal advisory firm Magister Advisors explained to the Informer that Facebook needs to make ten times more revenue per year than it currently is making, and hit annual figures of between $30bn to $40bn, in order to provide value for that price. The site may be the internet’s equivalent of crack, but making this much money is still a tall order.
The stats on Facebook usage are jaw-dropping, with over 900m registered users, over 500m of whom visit daily. For many of those users, Facebook is the internet. It’s the place they go to connect, to communicate, to share and – increasingly – to spend time consuming content. Much of that content – photos and status updates – is user-generated, but in terms of time spent and revenue generated, the importance of professionally created content, notably social gaming, cannot be overlooked. And by virtue of its scale, Facebook is becoming an important global platform for more traditional media content such as music and video. Yet attempts to charge users for such content have so far failed to gain traction.
Facebook has been at the forefront of the growth in mobile data usage in recent years. It is indisputably one of the big stars of mobile; one that most operators have wanted to ally themselves with to drive the sale of data plans on their networks.
Yet, by Facebook’s own admission, mobile could be its Achilles heel.
Mobile operators worldwide should be preparing for an impending surge in traffic over the next several years, with mobile users in 2016 consuming an average of 6.5 times as much video, over eight times as much music and social media, and nearly ten times as much games than in 2011.
Nordic carrier group TeliaSonera’s wholesale division and backbone operator, TeliaSonera International Carrier, has announced that it is building a pan-European managed optical network for Facebook. To provide the social network with connectivity between internet exchange points in multiple European cities and its newest datacentre in Sweden.
Facebook has announced that it will shortly launch its App Center, a new portal for its users to discover and rate smartphone apps.. Due to be launched “in the coming weeks”, the App Center will showcase iOS, Android and HTML5 apps. Facebook will use indicators such user rating and engagement to select the apps it feels are of the highest quality.
Social network Facebook added another acquisition to its books this week as it seeks to shore up its talent pool ahead of its imminent IPO.
Photo sharing startup Instagram has been acquired by social darling Facebook for an estimated $1bn, or a quarter of the network’s 2011 revenues.
Social network Facebook is expanding its reach into the emerging markets through a partnership with France Telecom owned Orange in Africa.
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