Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg -- Insights For Entrepreneurs

FROM: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-28248860/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg----insights-for-entrepreneurs/?tag=bnetdomain

By Steve Tobak, October 31, 2011 11:58 AM

 

On Saturday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a rare interview at Y Combinator's Startup School in Palo Alto, California.

On stage at Stanford University, the 27 year-old billionaire offered surprisingly candid advice for entrepreneurs and reflected on Facebook's success and failure.

Thanks to Techcrunch's Leena Rao for excerpting the interview, which you can see in its entirety here. If you're a Facebook fan, an entrepreneur, or even thinking about striking out on your own, check it out.

Here are four tips I found most insightful:

1. The only strategy that's guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. You're not judged by your mistakes.

Zuckerberg: I don't pretend that I had any idea what I was doing. I always felt like we were so close to dying in the first years, and were afraid that Google was about to build our product and we were going to be screwed, and look how long it took for them to build our product. You are going to make a ton of mistakes, you don't get judged by that.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

2. Don't start a company just to start a company. Do what you you're passionate about, what you think is awesome.

Zuckerberg: There's this culture in [Silicon Valley] of starting a company before they know what they want to do. You decided you want to start a company, but you don't know what you are passionate about yet ... you need to do stuff you're passionate about. The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.
I was in denial that we were going to make a company early on. When I was in college, I had a lot of conversations with my friends about the direction the world was going to go to and we cared more about seeing this happen. We built it and we didn't expect it to be a company, we were just building this because we thought it was awesome.

3. Don't sell out for the money. If you want to follow your vision, don't sell the company; things will change.

Zuckerberg: The only reason why it's this big story that everyone knows about us turning down a lot of money is because I messed up the process. It's one of the biggest management mistakes I made through Facebook's whole history. I learned a lot about the team at that time, and ended turning over a lot of that same team. I wasn't in it for the acquisitions, and I wanted people around me who were in it for the long-term, he said.
It's not clear that you should turn down offers, but you should take it if it means the company can go in the direction you want it to go on. If you go through some big corporate change, it's just not going to be the same. If we sold to Yahoo, they would have done something different. If you want to continue your vision of the company, then don't sell because there's inevitably going to be some change.

4. Silicon Valley is too short term focused.

Zuckerberg: If I were starting now I would do things very differently. I didn't know anything. In Silicon Valley, you get this feeling that you have to be out here. But it's not the only place to be. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.
There's a culture out here where people don't commit to doing things. I feel like a lot of companies built outside of Silicon Valley seem to be focused on the longer-term.

MTV Launches Facebook App Aimed at Reducing College Student Debt

FROM: http://www.policymic.com/articles/3501/mtv-launches-facebook-app-aimed-at-reducing-college-student-debt/category_list

Rita Solomon in National, Education

MTV recently launched a new Facebook app, My College Dollars, aimed at reducing the increasing amount of national college student debt. Complete with application and financial aid information, motivational videos, and other resources, the app uses students' Facebook profile data to determine the best financial approach toward a higher education.

Perhaps MTV is launching this initiative only for good press, but nonetheless, the widespread influence MTV has on the millennial generation makes it a great platform to fight against rising college debt.

It is encouraging to high school and college students to see a mainstream media source finally tackling the previously unaddressed issue of student debt. Since the financial crisis of 2008, college students have amassed over $1 trillion in student debt, the largest amount of consumer debt in the nation. MTV’s choice to engage in an important social and economic issue integral to its young viewers is admirable.

Although the videos, aid, and advice offered by MTV’s app may not be better than those offered by alternative websites with the same intent, the widely viewed network boasts a viewership demographic of 18- to 24-year-olds, proving its superior influence on youngsters regarding college acceptance and financial aid.

The collaboration with Facebook also better integrates aspects of social media into MTV's network, a way to connect more deeply with millennials. Targeting social media as a forum for change will impact today's students more than ever.

There may be concerns that the app infringes on the privacy of users, as it accesses a user's race, gender, age, location, and other personal information to make educational choices. However, the scholastic benefit attained from this localized information access far outweighs privacy concerns. Additionally, young people have adopted other social media apps that access private information.

Despite publicity stunt and privacy concerns, MTV’s admirable campaign to increase higher education and decrease alarming amounts of student debt should be encouraged and made an example of. If other large entertainment networks followed MTV’s lead, we would perhaps find a faster resolution to our nation’s student debt conundrum.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Facebook vs. Google+: User Focused vs. Brand Focused

FROM: http://blog.involver.com/2012/01/20/facebook-vs-google-user-vs-brand-focused/

It’s no secret for anyone that Google has wanted to create a social network to compete with Facebook’s huge popularity for quite some time. That’s why Google+ was created. Now after almost 7 months after its launch, Google+ is considered by many the biggest rival of Facebook for supremacy in social media.

Google+’s growth is amazing, at around 10 million users a month, so the question asked is whether it will overcome Facebook as the number one social media network worldwide. No one knows the answer yet, but the most probable scenario is that they both coexist (as much as it is now, but with Google+ possibly gaining a bit more attention gradually). However, in what way they will coexist?

A big possibility is that Facebook will continue to be a tool for users to get in touch with old college friends, to share a music video to people they like or to show their photos of last month’s ski trip. Google+, on the other hand, is a way to find out more about your favorite brand of clothing’s new collection or how others feel about that Italian restaurant across the street from work, as it is much more brand oriented with Circles.

 

Social Networking for Users

For users, Facebook is still usually the number one option for social networks, as it already has a base of 800 million users around the world, of which approximately 50% log in on a daily basis, uploading about 250 million pictures a day. But it is more than that: “Facebook me” is now a pretty well consolidated verb especially among young people, and the whole Facebook culture is a part of almost everyone’s life, which includes a movie and a dozen books about Mark Zuckerberg and so on.

For the moment, Google+ has around 65 million users and doesn’t yet have the popularity of Facebook. However, the fact that it is a product from one of the world’s biggest and most respected companies helps create quite a buzz. The social network itself has many of the same features as Facebook, but it currently does not share some of the most popular Facebook’s features, such as the ticker and the newly released Timeline.

 

Social Networking for Brands

From a brand’s perspective, Google+ can also be a great tool to get in touch with your customers. In its recently launched Google+ fan pages, the internet giant company has added some very interesting features, which should create an intense competition in the business field against Facebook. It is true that Facebook allows companies to create several tabs, with contests, coupons, Twitter feeds and Flickr, just to name a few, while Google+ currently allows companies to have one front page with posts, a tab with information and standard tabs for photos and videos. We are interested to see what other attributes are added to brand pages in the future.

Sony's page on Facebook, including several different tabs

At first sight, this would mean that Facebook has an advantage over Google+. But if we take some time to analyze Google+’s tools for brands, the story changes and we find that both platforms offer unique business solutions. Below are some of the features offered by Google+:

• Segmentation: Google+ Circles allow companies to segment their followers into many different categories, as the company can add each person to a different circle, according to their category (or even to more than one category). Whether it is by age, location or product preferences, the company can target a specific audience and share content with just a part of its followers, taking into consideration that only a part of them will be interested in a given subject. For example: a shoe company can create two different circles: one for men and one for women, and share content for new shoes for men only in one circle, allowing them to target the message to that specific audience.

• Google+ Direct Connect: users can find Google+ brand pages by searching “+” followed by the name of the company on Google;

• Integration with Google search: if your friends on Google+ recommend a brand or company through the “+1” button featured on the top left corner, the chances are that it will appear earlier on a Google search.

• Integration with Google AdWords: users will be able to “+1” (or recommend) companies’ ads on Google, and the chances that a friend will see this ad on Google search will grow as the number of recommendations increases. On Facebook, a similar feature is available, with the new “featured ads”, which are ads placed on the users’ news feed, according to the users’ friend’s likes. But this Facebook search feature is only visible on Facebook itself, not on Google, which is the biggest search website on the internet.

• Hangouts: Google+ allows companies to interact with its customers via video conversation with up to 9 users at a time, which means faster feedback, better interactions and a bigger opportunity to know the customers better. Allowing brands to help them with any doubts or problems or to demonstrate some new product or features to potential buyers.

Sony's page on Google+, including the "+1" button for recommendations

Needless to say that while Google+ is still expanding and growing in popularity, it can be a powerful tool for companies and brands, in the near future for social media marketing, in addition to Facebook. Some brands have already realized the value behind Google+. From the 100 top global brands, 77 now have a Google+ page, while 93 have a Facebook page.

Malls cash in on social sites

FROM: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/investment-world/article2820535.ece?ref=wl_companies

Abhishek Law

Facebook can be a tool that lets managers project a human face.

As competition heats up, Kolkata-based mall developers are embracing social networking sites like Facebook to print advertisements.

January 21, 2012:

Mrs Madhu Goyal least expected to win the contest that she entered into through Twitter. Half expecting the gifts, she walked into a newly opened shopping mall in Kolkata. To her surprise, she received gift vouchers worth Rs 1,000 more than the promised gift.

As competition heats up, Kolkata-based mall developers — increasingly conscious of garnering more footfalls in their properties — are embracing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as the next-best alternative to print advertisements.

While the easiest way would be to use these platforms to generate user interest, by putting up approaching promotional activities, organising contests and lucky draws have also emerged as the other alternatives for some developers.

“A social media platform helps us connect to our users. And it also helps us gauge the mood and get user feedback on the probable additions or changes to be made in the mall,” Mr Subir Das, COO and Co-Founder, Avani Riverside Mall told Business Line.

Active both on Twitter and Facebook, this latest entrant in the mall space in the city has seen a huge surge in footfall for its recently-opened property, following a promotional campaign that include contests through social media and networking sites.

While an exact quantification of footfalls because of promotional campaigns on social media isn't possible, Avani Riverside Mall has more than 5,000 “Likes” on its Facebook page.

“Contests have generated a substantial interest, and people have actually come to the mall to collect prizes. Footfalls have increased substantially too,” he added.

And some of the other mall developers like South City Mall and Mani Square too have their own Facebook pages, where events and promotions organised by the developers are put up to garner user interest in the plazas. While South City has more than 11,000 “likes” on its Facebook page, Mani Square has more than 800 “likes”.

Mr Harsh Neotia, chairman, Ambuja Realty, and developer of City Centre plazas said: “All I can say is that these (social media campaigning) are good opportunities for ensuring better footfalls.”

THE EVOLUTION

Mall owners have got savvier in combining traditional, on-site marketing events with their social networking efforts.

An evolving social media platform such as Facebook can be a tool that lets the mall manager project a human face for the mall without having to worry regarding spokespersons and cost. By empowering the average consumer with a forum, a specialised mall page allows the plaza manager to post events and information to a central location that people can check.

They found that technologies that were once expensive to own and costly to upgrade — electronic bulletin board, discussion forum, picture uploads, video-sharing and emails — come standard and free.

While there were initial hesitations on if the forum would be used to air grievances and customer complaints only, most malls found that there were some willing to promote them. There are also people with genuine complaints, which the smarter plaza managers were quick to respond and report solutions.

Mall vendors also found a forum where the consumer can give feedback, and they can test promotions and talk to the consumer directly.

MALL VENDORS

Shoppers' Stop, one of the retail chains in the country, agrees to the advent of social media as a potent tool for advertising products. According to them, a sync between user profiles and target customers have the retailers reaching out.

“Of the several people who have ‘liked' our Facebook page, nearly 53 per cent are actual users of Shoppers' Stop. We also have an online store, from which people can actually buy some of our collections,” Mr Vinay Bhatia, Customer Care, Assistant Senior Vice-President, Marketing and Loyalty, Shoppers' Stop, said.

Some other retailers, such as Future group's Pantaloons and Big Bazaar, too, are active on these social media platforms.

According to Mr Mayank Saxena, Managing Director, East, at real estate consultancy firm Jones Lang LaSalle, the importance of social media as a marketing tool will see several new developers take to it.

Even existing developers, who are currently averse to this, will also choose online promotions through social networking sites.

“It is inevitable. Even those averse to such promotions might be forced to follow it,” he said.

PITFALLS

While there may be excitement regarding the supposed better connect with shoppers, market sources and analysts warn of the pitfalls. According to them, social networking site pages need to be “dynamic and active”, with regular interaction between users and mall developers.

Leaving questions unanswered, or not attending grievances, could spiral into having a negative effect.

Moreover, relying just on on-site promotion, too, won't generate the expected interest levels (read footfalls).

“Ideally, there should be a mix of online and offline promotional activity. You cannot rely on one and ignore the other,” Mr Saxena adds.

Avani Riverside Mall officials agree. According to an official, one person has been appointed by the company to constantly monitor its “online promotional campaigns” on Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook considering doubling size of European HQ in Dublin

FROM: http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/facebook-considering-doubling-size-of-european-hq-in-dublin/

January 20, 2012By Trevor Mogg

With a rumored IPO coming in May and the site close to getting its billionth user, social networking giant Facebook is said to be looking to double the size of its European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.

Things are happening at Facebook. Well, of course, things are always happening at Facebook, but news emerged on Friday that the social networking giant is considering doubling the size of its European headquarters in Dublin.

If you double something that’s small, it remains pretty small, but Facebook already has a sizable presence in the Irish capital. Indeed, doubling its current 5,000 square meters (54,000 square feet) of office space would take it from fairly big to large.

According to Bloomberg, who cited three people with knowledge of the matter, Facebook is considering leasing around 11,500 square meters (123,000 square feet) at various locations, including the building of the former Bank of Ireland headquarters.

The Dublin office, which was opened by Facebook nearly four years ago, is responsible for all the users of the social networking site based outside the US and Canada, Bloomberg reports.

The Irish Times says the 300 or so Dublin-based Facebook employees are mostly concerned with “advertising, multilingual sales support, finances, human resources, user operations and development.”

Besides the rumored Dublin expansion, a report late last year suggested the company is also set to build an enormous server farm in Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle, to improve site performance for European users.

The reports of further expansion come ahead of a rumored May initial public offering (IPO) which could value the company at around $100 billion.

This year could also see the site welcome its billionth user, astonishing growth for a company that started out less than eight years ago.

Hopes are High for 'Workplace Facebook'

FROM: http://abcnews.go.com/International/hopes-high-workplace-facebook/story?id=15401212&singlePage=true

By Christopher Cottrell in Berlin, SPIEGEL

Jan. 21, 2012

With more than a million downloads of its first app and a big investment from Skype's co-founder, 6Wunderkinder is already a significant player in the Berlin start-up scene. It now wants to establish itself as a major European company with the soon-to-be-released Wunderkit, a "Facebook for the workplace."

Thirteen years ago, a young boy with a knack for technology holed himself up in his parents' attic in a small town near Berlin to tinker with his mother's new computer. That was back in the days of QBasic and Delphi Pascal, programming languages whose zenith coincided with the rise of Microsoft DOS.

"I was the only one who used the computer, and I think I destroyed it every week," says Christian Reber, co-founder and CEO of 6Wunderkinder. "Each time, a guy from the IT department had to come by and repair it, but after a while I understood how everything worked and I could do it myself."

It wouldn't take long for a teenage Reber to outshine most of his high school computing class. He improved his geek cred by studying math and computer science at Berlin's Technical University. Fast forward to today and Reber finds himself at the helm of 6Wunderkinder, a fast-rising start-up based in the German capital where antiquated programming languages have been replaced by iPads, iPhones and cloud computing.

No Place Like Home

Tucked away in a quiet corner of Berlin's central Mitte district, 6Wunderkinder earns its bread and butter developing smartphone and web-based productivity software. With the November 2010 release of "Wunderlist," a souped-up to-do list for smartphones and desktops, the company was quickly established as one of the better-known up-and-coming Berlin start-up firms. Reber claims the company broke the one-million user mark nearly twice as fast as geo-location app Foursquare and three times as fast a Twitter. Its next product, Wunderkit, is coming soon.

The name of the company is a nod to its six co-founders, including Reber, who are friends and all have roots in the region. Reber hails from Brandenburg an der Havel, a small town about an hour west of Berlin.

But 6Wunderkinder is no Brandenburg garage start-up. It is as international as the city around it. The 28 "wunderkids," as employees here are dubbed, hail from 12 different countries on four continents -- a diversity that Reber attributes to the city's soaring popularity worldwide. The office language is English, which is not unusual for the Berlin start-up scene.

"I think the big difference between all the other tech cities is that Berlin is really a city where people want to live," he says.

Reber attributes 6Wunderkinder's early success to the fact that, as he claims, it was the first in the world to create a full product with technology from the developing platform Appcelerator Titanium, which streamlines the process of making products compatible with various operating systems -- whether it be Windows, Android or Apple's iOS.

By allowing up to 90 percent of the code from the desktop app to be ported over to other device platforms, 6Wunderkinder was able to launch five new products within four months.

"If you're that fast, getting to a million users isn't that hard," Reber says. "But, honestly, we were surprised too." The app's international popularity has helped attract attention to the company from far outside Germany.

A Major Investment

Initially, Wunderlist was only meant to test the waters. It was intended as a project to help the team determine the best way to develop cross-platform software and learn the ropes of how app stores work.

Wunderlist is relatively simple, allowing users to create lists and share them with friends and colleagues and sync them to the cloud so that they can be retrieved on any smartphone or computer. The influential Lifehacker blog describes it as "simple" and "elegant."

Even though it would eventually grow into a successful product, co-founder and designer Jan Martin says the company deliberately held back in development, saving the best for Wunderkit, which he and colleagues describe as a sort of "Facebook for work" that will enable colleagues from all over the world to exchange information on projects they are working on.

The as yet unreleased app has generated considerable buzz in the Berlin start-up scene, even attracting a round of funding from Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström's London-based venture capital firm Atomico, which announced a €3.1 million investment in 6Wunderkinder late last year.

"6Wunderkinder have developed a fantastic product that can be used around the world," the Swedish Skype co-founder recently told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. "And they are a team that works together very well."

A Pivotal Year

Other sources of funding include T-Venture, the corporate venture arm of Deutsche Telekom, and the High-Tech Gründerfonds, a mixed private-public initiative of the German government and major companies that invests in young start-up firms.

And 2012 promises to be a pivotal year for the company. After months of development and hard work, Wunderkit was finally released into private beta this week, with a select few being given early access to what is still a work in progress.

The company has described Wunderkit as a "blend of a social network and online working space for the individual," a productivity application which has carried forward the sleek and user-friendly characteristics of Wunderlist. It allows users to create workspaces for different collaborative projects -- work-related, perhaps, or maybe for a sports team or a planned trip -- which can be shared with friends and family, and kept private or made public.

Within the workspaces, there are dashboards, notes and tasks, to keep track of what you need to do. It has many of the functions you would find in a social network or a to-do list application, and 6Wunderkinder is hoping it will prove even more popular than its older brother. It is due to go into open beta on February 1.

"It's a little bit Facebook, a little bit Twitter and a totally new way to do productivity and to work," Reber says. "If Wunderlist was the iPod, then Wunderkit will be the iPhone." And when it comes to Apple analogies, Reber is anything but modest. "We really want to create the next Apple," he says.

Microsoft: The new hip gadget company

FROM: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/article/66241--microsoft-the-new-hip-gadget-company

By Navneet Alang | January 19, 2012

It sounds as implausible as a Facebook-Google merger, or RIM buying Apple: Microsoft becoming the world’s coolest consumer tech company. And yet, somehow, Microsoft has quietly transitioned from the tech world’s favourite joke to a company full of innovative promise.

If that sounds preposterous, look at the facts. Critics at this month’s Consumer Electronics Show raved about the newest Windows phones, many pundits naming them best in show. The Xbox 360 displaced both Nintendo and Sony to lead the video game industry in 2011, in large part because of its novel Kinect motion-sensing controller, which overtook the iPad to become the fastest-selling electronic device ever and has shipped 18 million units to date. Meanwhile, tech publications are almost universally impressed by what they’ve seen of the upcoming new version of Windows, a product usually known for its ubiquity and inelegance and little else.

Individually, each of these represents a small evolutionary step. Taken as a whole, they represent the beginnings of a huge, daunting pivot for the company: a move from being an entity known for clunky operating systems and boring enterprise software to becoming a desired, buzzworthy consumer brand. Astonishingly, they so far appear to be succeeding.

What makes it especially unexpected is that for years, many of Microsoft’s consumer-focused efforts have been lacklustre at best. There are numerous high-profile examples—the failed Zune MP3 player and the disastrous Kin “social phone,” among others—in which Microsoft rather conspicuously and spectacularly failed. What’s more, one might argue that talk of a “turnaround”at Microsoft is itself misleading: though the corporation’s stock price has remained static for some time now, the company has consistently raked in billions in profit. Talk of a new Microsoft, one might say, is purely about perception.

But perception isn’t simply about the whims of a fickle press and public. There’s a certain inevitability to the idea that the age of desktop operating systems and thousand-dollar boxes of enterprise software, the stalwarts of Microsoft’s product stable, is slowly drawing to a close. During a banner 2011 fiscal year that saw $27 billion in operating income, Windows revenue dipped 1%; meanwhile, revenue from the Xbox-led Entertainment and Devices division jumped by nearly a third. Since that still accounted for less than 13% of overall revenue, Microsoft has little choice but to expand further into the growing overlap between hardware, digital media and mobile, of which Apple is the current paragon. And here, brand identity and the capacity to generate excitement are central to success. Microsoft’s new attention to how they are perceived outside the CIO’s suite refl ects the very real economic consequences of hype.

Few things are as symbolic of this shift as Microsoft’s new emphasis on user experience, at the core of which is Metro. The name given to the interface that first appeared on Windows Phone devices, Metro was recently brought to the Xbox 360, and will also form the basis of Windows 8. Rather than showing small icons for each application, like the iPhone, Metro presents you with animated squares that off er constantly updated information about your friends, the weather—whatever. With a clean, readable font and a decidedly“design-y” aesthetic, Metro is just—there’s really no other word for it—cool.

Metro is crucial for two reasons. First, it represents the fi rst time in memory that a Microsoft interface one-ups Apple’s; Metro is both more aesthetically impressive and better lets you perform basic tasks. Second, Metro’s the best example of an emphasis on uniformity of design across Microsoft’s entire portfolio of products. For a company known for behaving as if it were 20 companies rather than one, that is an enormous step forward, perhaps most importantly because it gives Microsoft’s marketing department something that it’s never had before: a clear brand identity. And unlike, say, Samsung—which frequently apes Apple’s designs—with the Metro interface, Microsoft is carving out an approach that is uniquely its own.

The results so far have been promising, as is the growing buzz around the Windows Phone partnership with Nokia. The question now becomes long-term execution. Though Windows 8’s Metro-based design will be found on desktops, laptops and tablets, it requires a singular clarity of vision to create a great operating system suited to such different devices. Similarly, though Windows Phone has become a tech press darling, developers and consumers will need to adopt it in numbers for it to gain traction against iPhone, Android, and even BlackBerry.

What seems certain, however, is that Microsoft has turned a corner. Most significantly, it’s in how their products feel—not just as consumer goods, but as cultural artifacts. After all, Apple’s incredible success hasn’t been simply because of design or marketing. Their iDevices became markers of the contemporary, objects that seemed to bring high-concept visions of the future to the present.

Now, though, it’s waving a hand in the air to select a movie on Xbox or flicking through the interface of a Windows 8 tablet that elicits the feeling of living in a sci-fi film. It’s a remarkable turn of events, one few saw coming. What remains to be seen is whether consumers can accept an idea that seems fantastical in its own right: when it comes to leading-edge design and innovation, it’s now Microsoft that’s leading the pack.

Navneet Alang is a freelance technology critic and blogger.