How Facebook’s IPO Could Transform Marketing the Mesh Report Staff January 31, 2012

By Nate Elliott

Media reports suggest that Facebook will file for an IPOthis week that could value the company at $100 billion — and leave the company sitting on $10 billion in cash. I’m not a financial analyst, so I’ll leave it to Wall Street to discuss and debate that valuation. But the fact is this newfound wealth could not only allow Facebook to solve its biggest business challenges, it could also help Facebook finally achieve its longstanding goal to change how marketing works. So how should Facebook use its IPO windfall?

1.To make its marketing platform actually work. For a site that makes almost all its money from advertising, and which claims 96 of the top 100 US advertisers as customers, Facebook harbors a dirty little secret: Marketing on Facebook doesn’t work very well. In fact, user engagement rates on branded pages are declining rather than increasing, and most large marketers tell us they simply haven’t gotten much value from their Facebook investments. (The biggest difference between the Google IPO in 2004 and the Facebook IPO? In 2004, even the least sophisticated marketers were generating enormous ROI on Google; today, even the savviest marketers often struggle to do likewise on Facebook.) Facebook can – and must – domuch more to turn the data it has on users into effective ad targeting. (Buying a demand-side platform would be a good start.) And it must build or buy much better tools for building, managing and measuring branded pages. (And again, there are several companies who could help, and who are no doubt reaching out to Facebook as I write this.)
2.To find transformative new revenue streams. At its core, Facebook’s revenue model is pretty simplistic: They sell little advertising badges on Facebook.com. The fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world come to Facebook every day means this simple little business generates perhaps billions of dollars in annual revenue; but if Facebook was a baseball team, you’d accuse it of playing “small ball.” For Facebook to become the company it wants to be (and the company investors want it to be), they need to swing for the fences – and data is the key. Facebook needs to use its data not just to power ad targeting on its own site, but everywhere online. Building or buying an ad exchange or a sell-side platform is one obvious way to do this; and they need to work hard on other creative and profitable (and legal) uses of their data as well. Two years from now, Facebook should be competing with Google to see who can best use your own data to help marketers target ads to you, no matter where those ads appear. If they let Google walk away with this opportunity unopposed, as it currently looks could happen, then Facebook will have missed its single biggest revenue opportunity.
3.To fight off its biggest external threat: Government regulators. Some people worry about Facebook’s ability to fight competition from new social start-ups, but not me. Whether introducing new features they’ve dreamed up on their own or quickly and strategically copycatting the best of other social sites, Facebook has long been the most aggressive innovator of all the social sites – and that’s consistently kept them one step ahead of the competition. One external threat they can’t outrun, though, is the government. One of the first things Google did after its IPO was to hire an army of lobbyists, and I expect Facebook to follow suit — especially if they follow the advice above and look for creative and expansive new ways to use their data. Expect lots of blue business cards floating around Brussels and Washington by the end of 2012. After all, $10 billion buys a lot of influence.
4.To aim for global domination. Facebook has clearly won the hearts of social citizens in North America, but in other countries the story looks a little different. The global markets where Facebook dominates are the ones that use social media least, like Europe. And in the global markets where users are most enthusiastic in their use of social media — including Asia and many large emerging markets — Facebook isn’t doing as well. They’re behind in Russia, Japan, and Korea, and they’re not even playing in China. We’ve never seen a social network successfully buy its way into a foreign market, so an acquisition probably isn’t the way forward. But Facebook must earmark some of its new capital for investing resources in these countries, and possibly building site features or flavors that appeal to user preferences there. If Facebook can both make its marketing platform more effective and grow its user base in Eastern and emerging countries, it could finally offer what so many marketers are asking for: A truly global social media marketing platform.

Are you comparing Google's search enigine rankings to Facebook's????

What's your point???

What if FACEBOOk creates a search engine.....I don't see your point

Yes but FB's 800M user base is nothing compared to what google had..

You're missing the point.....up until 4yrs ago Google was just an internet search engine. Android....Google Chrome...Google Maps...the mergers and acquisitions et al. came much much later.

Google is like procter and gamble, many outlets. FB is one thing and thats profiles/social media..

Bought Google day1...remember all the CNBC pundits back then??? HAHAHAAA "GOOGLE IS WAY OVERPRICED AT $100"

I GUESS AT $576 GOOG REEEEEEEALLLLLLY SUCKS NOW CNBC??? HUH????

Apple went into music downloads...FB "800 million active users" A Music....Movie entertaiment mecca.

Again,,,with the right investments could conceivably
run circles around Google.




Media impactIn April 2011, Facebook launched a new portal for marketers and creative agencies to help them develop brand promotions on Facebook.[174] The company began its push by inviting a select group of British advertising leaders to meet Facebook's top executives at an "influencers' summit" in February 2010. Facebook has now been involved in campaigns for True Blood, American Idol, and Top Gear.[175]

Social impactFacebook has affected the social life and activity of people in various ways. Especially with its availability on many mobile devices, Facebook allows users to continuously stay in touch with friends, relatives and other acquaintances wherever they are in the world, as long as there is access to the Internet. It can also unite people with common interests and/or beliefs through groups and other pages, and has been known to reunite lost family members and friends. One such reunion was between John Watson and the daughter he had been seeking for 20 years. They met after Watson found her Facebook profile.[176] Another father-daughter reunion was between Tony Macnauton and Frances Simpson, who had not seen each other for nearly 48 years.[177]

Some argue that Facebook is beneficial to one's social life because they can continuously stay in contact with their friends and relatives, while others say that it can cause increased antisocial tendencies because people are not directly communicating with each other. Some studies have named Facebook as a source of problems in relationships. Several news stories have suggested that using Facebook causes divorce and infidelity, but the claims have been questioned and refuted by other commentators.[178][179]

Political impact The stage at the Facebook – Saint Anselm College debates in 2008. Wikinews has related news: Egyptian man names daughter 'Facebook'

Facebook's role in the American political process was demonstrated in January 2008, shortly before the New Hampshire primary, when Facebook teamed up with ABC and Saint Anselm College to allow users to give live feedback about the "back to back" January 5 Republican and Democratic debates.[180][181][182] Charles Gibson moderated both debates, held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College. Facebook users took part in debate groups organized around specific topics, register to vote, and message questions.[183]

Over a million people installed the Facebook application "US politics" in order to take part, and the application measured users' responses to specific comments made by the debating candidates.[184] This debate showed the broader community what many young students had already experienced: Facebook was a popular and powerful new way to interact and voice opinions. An article by Michelle Sullivan of Uwire.com illustrates how the "facebook effect" has affected youth voting rates, support by youth of political candidates, and general involvement by the youth population in the 2008 election.[185]

In February 2008, a Facebook group called "One Million Voices Against FARC" organized an event in which hundreds of thousands of Colombians marched in protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC (from the group's Spanish name).[186] In August 2010, one of North Korea's official government Web sites and the official news agency of the country, Uriminzokkiri, joined Facebook.[187]

In 2010 an English director of public health, whose staff was researching syphilis, linked and attributed a rise in cases of the disease in areas of Britain to Facebook. The reports of this research were rebuked by Facebook as "ignoring the difference between correlation and causation".[188]

In 2011 a controversial ruling by French government to uphold a 1992 decree which stipulates that commercial enterprises should not be promoted on news programs. President Nicolas Sarkozy's colleagues have agreed has said that it will enforce a law so that the word "Facebook" will not be allowed to be spoken on the television or on the radio.[189]

In 2011, Facebook filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to form a political action committee under the name FB PAC.[190] In an email to The Hill, a spokesman for Facebook said "FB PAC will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected."[191]

FB will collapse - not in the near future or anytime soon, but it is inevitable, just like myspace did. They are only into 1 thing and thats social media. Google and the other companies had tentacles into several different areas to grow, and increase profits.

None the less, it'll be around for a while.

They'll have enough money to make the right longterm investments.

I don't think FB will have longevity.

Lol read that myself.. funny character.

This is gonna be interesting..

They're filing for IPO on Wednesday

WHEN CAN WE BUY SHARES ????????????

Facebook History: IM conversation.."a 19-year-old Zuckerberg confers, during the fall of 2003, with his best friend from high school, Adam D'Angelo—who would become Facebook CTO and later cofound Quora—about which project he should focus on: a "dating site" he was asked to build for some Harvard seniors, or "the Facebook thing." Zuckerberg and D'Angelo discuss what "the Facebook thing" should be like.

http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-the-im-conversation-in-which-19-year-old-zuckerberg-decided-to-build-facebook-this-years-100-billion-ipo-2012-1

,,,,,,,Show time--MONEYMADE