TechCrunch - FaceBook's Biggest Success Story

If you thought selling 1.6% stake of Facebook to Microsoft for $240 million (i.e valuation to $15 billion) or Mark Zuckerberg rejecting $1 billion from Yahoo was Facebook's biggest success story, then probably you are missing the point that success is never measured today, but reaped tomorrow.

In my opinion, Facebook's biggest success story to date is TechCrunch and other technology sites that can't stop talking about Facebook and what's happening with Facebook. And I specifically mention TechCrunch is because it is "the big" tech blog of today. TechCrunch is #3 at technorati, #1 at Techmeme and probably the biggest tech site read by non-techies. I have immense respect for Michael Arrington and I'm not saying that they are biased for Facebook. Its just that Facebook seems to have gathered so much momentum and respect from everyone around, that TechCrunch ought to cover it as much as possible. Just to give you a hint on how much of Facebook features on TechCrunch, write "Facebook" on the search posts field and see the results for yourself.

Facebook is a big social networking website and a fast growing one as well. But like every other fast growing business, it has to focus on a larger market to keep up its growth rate. Nearly everyone would agree that publicity plays a big role in reaching a larger audience. Facebook's publicity through TechCrunch's genuine posts easily catches the eye. Every word about Facebook somehow plays a role in the publicity of Facebook and this is one reason why Facebook will continue to grow in the future.

One popular marketing mantra, "What you show is what sells", is very true in Facebook's glory. Social networking websites are hangouts for friends and what better way to reach the hangout than taking a lift in your friend's car to this new hangout. TechCrunch in many ways is like a friend to its reader base. When the reader gets his daily dose of Facebook as the place to hangout, your next job is to go chill out at Facebook, just like your friend advised. Be it negative or positive comments, it definitely sparks a curiosity in the reader's mind. And this curiosity is what will drive Facebook to grow in the future.

So don't be shocked if you see a story about Facebook being valued at some $25 billion. It's just because we all love to talk about the big things in life and with that they only seem to get bigger!!

Do You Believe ComScore?

Lately I have seen a lot of tech sites talk about the popularity of different sites based on information from ComScore. ComScore is an internet marketing research company and it uses surveyed computers to study online behavior.

This made me enquire into how ComScore was collecting data and how it was monitoring the sites. I also wondered about the sample size that ComScore uses to report to its clients. ComScore is popularly used by a few tech blogs like GigaOm, TechCrunch and hence I wondered if these tech sites have reliably tried to find out how ComScore accumulates its data.

ComScore states that it installs monitoring software on computers with user's consent and tracks their behavior. In return the users get security software, virus-scanning and even cash prizes and goodies. This is the good way of monitoring, but then it makes me wonder how many computers can have this software installed ?? :-0

In the past, ComScore have also used not-so-righteous ways for monitoring user behavior. They have used spyware from DollarRevenue and also had something embedded into iMesh for reporting. They even gave away proxy servers to the world, so that they can be monitored. College dorms, libraries and public internet cafes are popular places where the tracking/monitoring softwares could be installed... This means that obviously sites where college/young students visit like Facebook and Orkut would get higher pageviews.

I have used many different types of web-tracking softwares and was once part of a web tracking application project. During that I realized how impossible it was to create a meaningful and true picture of the net-surfer's behavior.

Cookies distributed through popular sites is one way to track users, but is an expensive affair. Google easily does it due to its rule over the web and nearly everyone using analytics or urchin gives Google all the data. I'm wondering when Google would start selling its tracking data and become an internet marketing research provider!!

MySpace Takes Features From Facebook

Recently I was reading BigAdda Vs Orkut, and I wondered how the other social networking websites are working! Went into MySpace and saw a newer changed look with a lot of the stuff which was there are Facebook. I regularly use Facebook and identified those features...

The new features on MySpace are:
1.) New Friends View (Facebook, Orkut already have this one - MySpace has Mutual friends now!)
2.) Forums (more like real forums now!!)
3.) New Music Player
4.) Spam Control (CAPTCHA to send you a friend request)
5.) Tagged photos (Like Flickr and Facebook... this should be a nice one)

Login to your myspace and enjoy the new features