Category Archives ⇒ Business

6 Reasons To Leave Facebook For Google Plus – And 3 Reasons Not To

· Brandon Hann

Google Plus is the new kid on the block and compared to Facebook, it’s still a small kid. However, Google Plus has been gaining huge momentum in the last year that it has been available. Part of this gain has been from the fact that Google operates on so many levels within the web community and Google+ interacts seamlessly with almost all of them. Plus, it helped that Google began forcing all YouTube users to link their accounts with a Google+ profile. So even though Google+ has over 400 million users, only about 100 million are active on a monthly basis.

It might seem like a daunting task to start fresh on a large-scale social networking site considering that you’ve likely been on Facebook for so many years now, but after my experiences with Google Plus, I’m about ready to drop Facebook completely! But let’s not jump the gun completely…check out the pros and cons below to see if Google+ is right for you.

Reasons to jump ship

  1. Advertising – Facebook is full of it. It’s not always so apparent too. With all the adverts for game requests, sponsored links and now promoted wall posts, Facebook has become a haven for cyber junk that you are probably getting really sick of. I know I am. Now, this doesn’t mean that Google+ doesn’t have the potential for falling into the same traps, but my guess is that since Google has more than one service, they don’t need Google+ to be their cash cow. Whereas Facebook now has shareholders to answer to, it’s very possible that advertising could get worse for them.
  2. Integration – Facebook integrates well with other online services and websites, but it’s still a very separate platform. Google+ is basically the backbone of the majority of Google services so when you log into Gmail, you are already logged into Google+, YouTube, Drive and more! The best part is that practically all of these services are well-integrated and they cross-manipulate one another.

    3. Google+ Events

  3. Google Events – Yes Facebook has events, but they are like Google’s. On Google+, you can create an event, invite all your friends and instantly it turns into Party Mode. This feature allows all attendees to upload photos to the event which then threads them all together for everyone to see.
  4. Google Hangouts – Remember the days of video conferencing or webcam chats? How difficult was it to get more than two people in on the event? Well Google+ now allows live streaming events to be hosted online and joined by others and/or watched by everyone. From a business standpoint, this allows much more integration between employees and clients.

    5. Muppets Google+ page

  5. Communities and Pages – Google+ offers users the ability to create pages for their businesses just like Facebook as well as starting their own communities like Facebook groups. The difference is that the integration is much tighter with Google+ and everything is instantly linked to search results related to your content. On Facebook, you might have to pay for advertising to get similar results.
  6. Future proof – Google+ is banking on long term goals with product integration and it starts with Google search. With the rise of micro-blogging and the sharing of content all over the internet, the power of Google search can only help get that content to the people. As a blogger myself, Google+ has even allowed my search results to appear next to my name and a photo to help make them stand out among the competition.

It seems that there isn’t much if anything that Google+ can’t do that Facebook can, so why would anyone not make the switch? Let’s take a look at some of the things that are holding me back…for now.

Reasons not to jump ship

  1. Entrenchment – There’s no doubt that Facebook is vastly more widespread than Google+ is. In fact, “facebook” has almost become a ubiquitous term for social networking, much like “google” has become for finding things online. As a result, it’s much easier to find people on Facebook.
  2. Vanity URLs – This might seem like such a small detail, but having the ability to tell people they can find your Facebook page by going to facebook.com/ledfrog is far more enticing than trying to tell people that they can find you on Google+ by going to plus.google.com/114683976907069457614. However, I should point out that Google has already started rolling out vanity URLs to verified celebrities and corporate brand pages. One such example is google.com/+hughjackman. The use of the little ‘+’ is also used to tag names in posts or search for people.
  3. Integration – Although it’s also mentioned above as a pro, Facebook does have a leg up with website integration in terms of being able to login to external websites, but that’s all starting to change.

With time, Google+ has great potential to become much more powerful than Facebook due to Google’s vast amount of services and products they have connected together. Facebook has been described has being a social network, while Google is described as being a social layer that covers many of Google’s properties.

My Two Cents

In the end of all this debate, many people (including myself) will simply continue using both. I have to because all of my real-world friends are on Facebook and very few of them are on Google+. I also have a couple of Facebook pages that already have fans attached to them, so until I see the natural progression of Facebook users moving toward Google+, I don’t plan on deleting any accounts.

But just like the pioneers of Facebook did when they left MySpace all those years ago, I plan to start really pushing Google+ to my friends as well as posting more updates there than on Facebook. If my friends want to continue following me…well, they’ll have to literally follow me over to Google.

Be Careful When Deleting Your Google+ Account

· Brandon Hann

Learn from the master…ehh…well not-so-master today. Learn from one of my biggest mistakes in quite some time!! The lesson of the day is DO NOT DELETE your Google+ account if you plan on keeping your YouTube account.

YouTube error

Purpose

I only had one reason to delete my Google+ account and it was simple—I started using Google Apps. Google doesn’t allow users to have two Google+ accounts, so my original setup was me just using Google Apps for the email service. This meant that I left everything else over on my original Gmail account. As a result of this, ever time I wanted to use YouTube, Google Drive or Google+, I had to switch accounts. There were times when this was as easy as clicking on my name and selecting the second account and then there were times when I had to log in again.

These issues weren’t so much a problem when I was on my laptop or desktop, but when I went mobile, everything went to hell. The reason for that was because all of the Google services run as separate apps and things like YouTube, Google+ and Gmail need the account to be added to the phone. I didn’t want to do this because with adding the account, I now have multiple Google accounts battling it out for attention over things like syncing contacts, calendars, Chrome settings, etc. I also didn’t want to have the second (original) Gmail account in my inbox because I was already forwarding mail to my new one, which meant that I was now getting two of every forwarded message on my phone!

Regardless of every workaround I found, it went against the streamlined setup I was aiming for—one Google account for all my devices and one login for all my services when on a regular computer. And thanks to my desire to have this account be my new Google Apps domain rather than Gmail, I have now lost everything I had in my YouTube account.

How to do this the right way!

The first thing you want to do is unlink your Google+ and YouTube accounts. However, this only works on accounts created before May 2009 as those are called legacy accounts and were created before Google owned YouTube.

  1. Make sure you’re signed out of all Google Accounts and visit this page: http://www.youtube.com/my_account_unlink
  2. Enter your YouTube username and your old YouTube password from before you linked to your Google Account, then enter the verification code.
  3. Next, click Unlink My Accounts.
  4. You’ll need to re-link your YouTube account to another Google Account. You can link it to an existing Google Account that you own, or create a new one.

After the original accounts are unlinked and the new accounts are linked, you can delete the old Google+ account. Because I didn’t follow these steps, I have lost all my video uploads, video/channel views, other stats, subscribers, username, etc. I have since opened a trouble ticket with Google’s 1 on 1 support to see about possibly getting back my old account or at the very least, my username! I’ll post back here with updates as I get them.

How this happened

Ever since Google+ came out, Google has been linking user profiles to YouTube accounts. This was in an effort for Google to streamline their services under one roof and to enhance the ability to share things with friends. I had no problem with this and in fact, I linked my accounts as well. Everything was going fine until I realized that I couldn’t escape using Google+ with my Google Apps account.

Many of the services (as expected) needed Google+ configured in order to work. I begged and pleaded with Google to allow accounts to be merged, but alas, the only option was to have one account migrated to the other. This allows a user to move all their circles and information over to the new profile to allow the deletion of the old one. I did this step, but I still never deleted my old profile because it was connected to Google’s authorship feature allowing them to show my name, photo and Google+ profile link next to search results of blog posts I’ve created.

Ultimately I decided to start using my Google Apps Google+ profile and delete my old one. When I went to go delete the old profile, I was warned about everything being deleted like photos, circles, etc. Nowhere on this page did it say that I’d lose my YouTube account!!

My Two Cents

I feel that Google should be a little more clear about the real-world effects of moving things around. Normally they are pretty good about warning you what will be deleted and everything, but in this case, there were no warnings about the direct effects of how deleting a Google+ account will affect YouTube. At any rate, I’m expecting the worse case scenario in that I’ve lost this battle. I’ll have to re-upload my videos (whichever ones I still have) and start all over. I’m not too heartbroken because I didn’t have a whole lot of time invested in my YouTube channel, but I kind of want my original username back.

$450 Starbucks Metal Gift Card SOLD OUT

· Brandon Hann

Metal Starbucks card sold outYesterday, I wrote about the new limited edition $450 metal gift card from Starbucks that was worth $400 in credit and about 30 cents in steel that was supposed to go on sale to the “general public” this morning. I was assuming that the sale was to happen around 9am PST because earlier yesterday, there was a little clock counting down the hours on the website. However, I checked this morning and the Add to cart button disappeared and an Add to waitlist button has been put in its place.

Granted, this doesn’t exactly mean that the card is sold out, but I’m pretty confident that it is. I’ve never shopped on Gilt.com before, but my guess is that they don’t ever tell you something sold out, but rather give you the hope that one day, the item will be back in stock. If you’re feeling lucky, here’s the link to the $450 Starbucks gift card product page.

Well unfortunately for those of who waited, getting more in stock is not an option on this item. Starbucks had said they made 5,000 of these cards and once they were gone, they were gone. The terms of the sale was that Starbucks rewards members were able to “pre-order” the card yesterday on Gilt.com and that the remaining cards were to be sold this morning at the same site. A Starbucks rewards member is basically anyone who signed up for a free account on Starbucks.com and/or downloaded the smartphone app and handed over their email address.

What struck me as odd was who did they expect was going to buy this thing?! I’m pretty sure that by the close of yesterday, this card was long gone! Within that pool, I’m guessing that almost half simply bought the card for collectors value or for resale on eBay. The rest of you bought it because you drink a lot of coffee at Starbucks. There’s no shame in that…I’m just making a point. There was no reason to believe that the card would ever make it to the “general public.”

Starbucks gift card order statusAt any rate, congrats to those who got lucky enough to pick one up!! According to the order status, my card will be delivered sometime around December 18th. Although it doesn’t say it in the screenshot, Gilt.com is using UPS 2-day Air to ship these cards out. I’m assuming that cards haven’t been made yet since there’s no other logical reason why we couldn’t expect our orders within a few days from now.

Starbucks Limited Edition Steel Gift Card – Only $450

· Brandon Hann

Starbucks distribution map
UPDATE: The card appears to now be SOLD OUT!

Well it finally happened. After all these years, I’m writing about Starbucks. I say it like that because I’ve always been somewhat against shelling out $5+ for coffee especially since I’m not a “coffee drinker”. But, just like most of you out there, I enjoy a sugar-filled cup of joy from time to time and given that it’s been proven that the farthest you can get away from a Starbucks is about 140 miles, there’s never a place where you can’t find one. That data and this map image was compiled by James Davenport, who runs a blog on IfWeAssume.com.

Anyway, I come to you today to spread the word about the latest gift card idea from the coffee giant. Little did most of us know, but there is apparently a small-time hobby out there of collecting these little cards. Usually they are plastic and carry some sort of graphic design that matches a specific theme such as a holiday or time of year. But not this time! Starbucks has announced the release of a new limited edition gift card made of actual steel and pre-loaded with $400 of coffee-flavored Starbucks money.

Starbucks Steel gift cardStarbucks Steel gift cardStarbucks Steel gift card

Availability
It’s limited to only 5,000 and has a retail price of $450. If you do your math correctly, that means you’re paying $50 (plus shipping) simply for the card itself. Excuse my lack of Starbucks gift card history, but I’m pretty sure this marks the first time anyone has ever had to pay for a gift card! But don’t fret. With the $450 price tag, you’re also upgrading your Starbucks account status to Gold, which gives you a few more perks than the average Starbucker.

Apparently Gold members get free refills on iced coffee and teas on the same visit, a free drink or food item after every 12th purchase and random perks throughout the year. This may be worth it for someone who enjoys Starbucks year-round. And if you think about it, getting Gold normally takes 30 purchases. This gift card lets you bypass that requirement right out of the gate!

How to get one
The card is not available at any Starbucks location and will only be sold on Gilt.com starting tomorrow at 8am PST for the general public. Current Starbucks members can take advantage of the pre-sale today. I was on the site earlier and was presented with a “Coming Soon” message and a little clock that said 23 hours left. However, I closed that page, went and logged in at Starbucks.com, went back to Gilt.com and the page allowed me to place an order. Yes, I bought one! But I’m thinking of the collector’s value. My goal (if I decide to sell) would be to at least get the face value back on this and who knows what else. I’ll leave that up to the eBayers.

I’m not sure if it’s even still for sale, but check out the link above to see if you can still purchase one. If you’re not a Gilt.com member, you can quickly sign up and it should allow your to process an order.

My Two Cents

I think this one is going to come down to a couple of things. There will be those people that just have to be “that guy” (or girl) to pull out the mysterious metal gift card every time they go into the store and watch as the other Starbuckers ooo and ahhh at the sight of a pretty card and then there will be people like me. I have a feeling that once this item sells out, people are going to want it for collecting purposes. Now I’m not saying that this card will sell for thousands of dollars, but if the one listed on eBay right now is any inclination of what may come of this, then here’s hoping!

On the flipside, even if this card proves to be a major flop, there’s always the $400 value still on the card which makes the worst case scenario one that involves the seller losing about $50. Still another outcome could be that you just simply use the card’s value and keep (and continue to refill) a really nice, quality gift card. If I used mine, it would probably take close to 3 years to use it all up!

Using Google Apps for business – Or for pleasure

· Brandon Hann

UPDATE: Google is no longer offering a free version of Google Apps. They wiped out the ability to use Google Apps for free with less than 10 users and few features missing and all businesses (and individuals) of any size must upgrade to the premium service that starts at $5 per user monthly or $50 per user annually. Google also announced that existing free account holders will still be able to use their free accounts with no changes. If you’re like me and were lucky enough to get in on Google Apps while it was free, don’t close your account!

For years now, I’ve run various websites on many different servers and hosting configurations all with varying success. One of the biggest pitfalls in hosting your own web services besides keeping up with security is finding that happy balance between function and form. While it may be easy to get a server configured properly and have your site up and running in no time, email services seem to always become problematic.

I find that the reason for this is because no two hosting companies are alike and depending on your setup (dedicated, VPS, shared, etc.), the email service(s) that you’re forced to use can be anything from OK to downright crappy.

Google Apps

Google Apps PricingIf you haven’t heard of Google Apps by now, you’re seriously missing out! Google Apps provides your business (or you) with EVERY Google app for use on your own domain. Imagine instead of having a random email @gmail.com, you can use yourname@yourdomain.com and still have full access (and interoperability) with things like Mail, Drive, Plus, YouTube, etc., etc. and it’s all free (up to 10 users)! This experience is greatly enhanced if you’re also an Android user as you would imagine.

Now if you’re like me and you only run a personal website, have a few extra domains lying around that you want to be able to send email from or you’re just looking to consolidate all of your Google accounts under one roof, you’ll get the most out of Google Apps. This is because you’re the admin and have full control over everything from creating new users, domain aliases and more. If you work for a company that already uses Google Apps, you must suffer the consequences that all of your services are managed by your company and things like YouTube favorites won’t be so personal anymore.

Gmail

I started using Google Apps mostly for the email service. I had so many problems running my own mail server. I’m not sure if it was my lack of experience in running Linux-based email or if my server was never configured properly to begin with, but either way I had issues ranging from invalid SSL certificates to mail servers not being found. By moving everything to Google, I was gaining quite a few advantages:

  • Fast and secure email
  • Freed up extra bandwidth on my own server
  • Trusted email servers
  • DKIM signed messages (more security)
  • Ability to check my email by simply logging into Google anywhere in the world
  • Flawless syncing to my Android devices

This is not to say that none of that couldn’t have been done without Google Apps, but for me, I was starting to use my original Gmail account more and more because of the ease of use that Google always seems to provide. I didn’t want to use this account because I wanted so badly to be able to promote my own domain, ledfrog.com.

Google Apps Domain AliasesThe best part is that I also have many other domains that I used to use for email and a few that I still wanted to have access to, but the old way of doing things meant that I had to setup a mail account for each domain and then configure all the accounts separately on my mail client and/or phone. At one time, I had 6 different email accounts all draining my battery with each server check.

Google Apps solved this problem as well by allowing me to add multiple domains under my account and use them as aliases. From there I was able to create email aliases all pointing to my one main email account. It gets better! Within the Gmail settings, you can set up a bunch of email addresses you’d like to send mail from, so now when I compose a new message, I have the option of sending it from any one of my many aliases! And this isn’t one of those aliases that just looks like an email, but the end user will see your real address…no…these are fully functioning email addresses.

Anyone who uses Gmail will tell you that Google’s labeling system is amazing. Rather than create actual folders that emails are placed into for organizing, Google simply allows you to place a label (or more) on messages so you are given the appearance of folders. Mix this in with filters and you can have all of your incoming email from each domain alias being labeled properly so you can sort everything as it comes in!

Drive

If you’re just a solo user, this Drive account is nothing new. It’s just connected with your new Google Apps domain and works the same way that your standard Gmail account worked. However, if you’re using Google Apps for business, Google Drive becomes much more than a storage place. You can now have shares automatically setup between user groups. For example, if your business has 20 employees and 5 of them are in the accounting department, Drive will allow those 5 to share files between themselves while still being able to share everything else with the other 15 employees.

By creating user groups within Google Apps, you can break down your entire company’s employee structure and secure it piece by piece.

Google Plus

Again, as a solo user, nothing has changed. For businesses, each of your employees will get their own Google Plus profile with all the perks included. Plus, as the owner, you actually have the ability to post things across all accounts without needing approval. This would be handy for times when you want to send out an advertising campaign through your employee’s pages.

My Two Cents

As you can tell, I’m pretty stoked about Google Apps. I’ve been using it for about 2 months now and it was the best move I ever made! As I mentioned earlier, the main reason for making the change was to clean up my email issues, but knowing that I have access to all of Google’s other services as well just makes the deal that much sweeter.

Everything within the Google Apps suite is free for up to 10 users. If you have more than 10 users, it’s $5 per user and you don’t get to have the first 10 remain free. But along with that $5 charge, you up your storage space on Gmail from 10GB to 25GB and you can finally disable those pesky ads that show up in your inbox. Personally, I haven’t found a need to upgrade since I’m well below my 10-user limit. Even with the addition of some of my friend’s websites and at least one username for each of them, I am still within the free range.

In all honesty, when you factor in some of the features of the more corporate ($10 per user) plan that Google offers and compare it to running an Exchange/BlackBerry environment, I wonder how long it will be that those two giants are still leading the pack. It can costs thousands of dollars purchasing hardware, software and licenses to operate just one Exchange server. Plus you have to factor in the amount of money it takes to keep everything updated as well as the paycheck of the IT guy to manage and maintain it all. Add to that the cost of providing data backup services (on or off-site) and you have an insane bill at the end of the year. With Google Apps, you pay a monthly fee and that’s it. Everything is maintained by Google.

New Domain TLDs – A Real Possibility for Q1 2013

· Brandon Hann

Back in June, it was announced that ICANN revealed a list of over a thousand new domain gTLDs (generic top level domain) could be released to the internet sometimes in early 2013. For those that don’t know, ICANN is the governing body that presides over and from time to time, they take in applications from companies and individuals alike who wish to see a new (and hopefully functional) domain TLD put out on the market.

The most recent addition to this namespace was the .XXX domain. After months of back and forth wrangling, the new domain extension was finally put into action with a goal of being able to separate adult websites from the rest. This new extension met with criticism by those who compete in the industry because many people felt that a new extension does nothing but pollute it. Those who supported the initiative said it would be much easier for network admins to block entire domain names at the extension level rather than trying to pin down individual websites.

Some of the TLDs expected to be approved are .BLOG, .WEB, .LOL, .ONLINE and .SHOP. If these and others are approved, it will change the internet namespace forever. As it is, there are over 200 TLDs available for registration, but most of them are just 2-character designators created for each country in the world. Some countries have been successful at selling domains by promoting their use for specific niche markets to English-speaking countries such as what Tuvalu did with .TV, Montenegro did with .ME and the Federated States of Micronesia did with .FM. Less than successful pitches came from [Western] Samoa with .WS (promoted as “Web Site”), Laos with .LA (promoted as “Los Angeles”) and the Democratic Republic of Congo with .CD (promoted as “compact disc”).

The new TLDs will completely change the conventional thought process behind the registration of domain names. When domains first came out, there was an attempt to separate commercial (.COM) companies, networks (.NET) and organizations (.ORG), but shortly after, the domain space was pretty much opened to anyone with the money to cover the registration costs. With new TLDs like .BLOG and .SHOP, the attempt to sort the web is back. However, once again, there are no regulations in place that would keep people from registering a .BLOG domain and putting an adult website there.

Each proposed domain that gets approved can either be hoarded for private use or be used to sell second-level domains to consumers. For example, if Google wins the rights to .BLOG, they can decide to allow users to register new domains such as MYAWESOME.BLOG or TECHNOLOGY.BLOG or just keep it for themselves. It’s only $25,000 annually for Google to own .BLOG!!

My Thoughts

Google gTLD listThe most interesting part about this whole process is that every application that was sent to ICANN carried with it a $185,000 fee just to have the TLD evaluated! In the case of Google, they have applied for over 100 TLDs! I hope they get a few approved because I’d love to set up some new websites under the .BLOG domain.

But at the same time, I think that releasing so many TLDs at one time would seriously dilute the spectrum. I imagine myself as the owner of Ledfrog.com and having to register over 2,000 variants just to lock down my name at every possible corner of the web!

This also doesn’t bode well for those who make money from registering domain names and selling them to people months or even years down the road for a hefty markup. Right now something like BUSINESS.COM is worth millions to the right person, but add in over 2,000 other versions of it and people might be more inclined to settle for a lesser known extension just to save the money.

Also, what’s the point of some of these requests? Feel free to look over the entire list (including multiple submissions for the same domain) and please tell me what we need .BOO for? Or how about .CHK? I understand that many companies and corporations are submitting TLDs to completely wipe out the need for having to type in any “dot” after their name like with Canon trying to get the TLD .CANON, but seriously…I think this is going a little too far.

However, that hasn’t stopped the speculating guy in me! I found out that at least one company is making an attempt to pre-order new TLD domains free of charge. Of course there are no guarantees, but they say their success rate for acquiring domains for the .XXX extension was about 47%. If anything, placing a free pre-order will allow you to stay informed of the changes coming (if and when) as well as possibly even being able to to secure a nice second-level domain that you haven’t been able to get in the .COM world. To check out the pre-order system, visit UnitedDomains.com.

IDC reports that 75 percent of smartphones are running Android

· Brandon Hann

IDC 3Q resultsIDC has reported that 75 percent of all smartphones shipped in the third quarter while Apple held onto 15 percent. While most people would see this number as a clear indicator of which OS is superior, it really only reflects two things—the first of which is the fact that these numbers only mention sales in the third quarter of this year and second, you have to consider that Android devices severely outnumber iPhones.

In other words, Apple has been able to retain a 15 percent share of the market all on its own while Android devices are counted as one, even though there are some 20+ devices currently on the market. So while Apple is doing well, it must be noted that they still had room to grow from last year considering that other devices such as Blackberry and Symbian were losing marketshare. One year ago, Apple had 14 percent marketshare while Android had 58 percent. Yet, it was Android that appeared to take over where others have lost.

What does all this mean? Well nothing exactly except that it seems Apple has somewhat plateaued while Android has been thriving. Many people had thought that one of Android’s weaknesses was that there were too many choices out there—so much so that many consumers would be scared away by all the confusion. But the numbers speak for themselves…Android is growing!

As a former iOS user and now Android fan, this is exciting. Despite my biases, I am a believer of competition and I don’t seek an all out war between iOS and Android which would put one in the grave. However, it’s nice to see that the almighty iPhone isn’t the only great phone out there and people are really starting to pay attention to this.

But enough of my opinion! Let’s look at the numbers directly from IDC:

— Android (Google Inc.) — 136 million units, 75 percent share (57.5 percent a year earlier)
— iOS (Apple Inc.’s iPhone) — 26.9 million units, 14.9 percent share (13.8 percent a year earlier)
— BlackBerry (Research in Motion Ltd.) — 7.7 million units, 4.3 percent share (9.5 percent a year earlier)
— Symbian (mostly used by Nokia Corp.) — 4.1 million units, 2.3 percent share (14.6 percent a year earlier)
— Windows (Microsoft Corp.) — 3.6 million units, 2 percent share (1.2 percent a year earlier)
— Linux — 2.8 million units, 1.5 percent share (3.3 percent a year earlier)

The Future of Best Buy

· Brandon Hann

With all the speculation about how much longer big-box retailers can hang on in this increasingly online-based retail economy, it’s no surprise that Best Buy would make attempts at copying other top retailers in almost all aspects of their sales strategies. A few things Best Buy is trying out are to use smaller product displays that focus on a few products and allowing items to be purchased in more locations rather than forcing customers to wait in lines at the register.

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Facebook Stock – Buy, Sell or Wait?

· Brandon Hann

It feels like I haven’t written in a month! Oh that’s because I haven’t! Anyway, what better topic to re-open the flow of blog posts than one about Facebook?? As we all know, Facebook launched its IPO last week in an attempt to raise billions more than they were already worth (according to estimates), but from the very beginning, analysts were questioning the legitimacy of Facebook’s value. I mean seriously, how can you really gauge the value of an Internet company that doesn’t have a constant stream of revenue? Well, it seems the value of Facebook is relative to the amount of users actively on the site mixed with the real-world numbers of how much traffic and advertising Facebook is capable of receiving and displaying.

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Facebook To Go Public – IPO On The Horizon

· Brandon Hann

Facebook is poised to launch its first IPO valued at $10 billion. Interestingly enough, this will beat Google’s IPO back in 2004 worth only $1.9 billion. Currently being a private company, Facebook doesn’t have to publish it’s accounting records, but it a report surfacing back in January of 2011 claims that Facebook made a net profit of $355 million on revenues of $1.2 billion in the first nine months of 2010.

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