Facebook To Launch Crowdsourced Ad Format Next Week | Fast Company

Excerpt:

"But next week Facebook will launch a new kind of unit that’s innovative not just for its format, but for how it was conceived. That’s because Facebook didn’t come up with the idea itself--it crowdsourced it.

The new unit is called the “Comment” ad. It will appear in the right-hand column, like other ads. But it will be formatted like a conversation (or, as Facebook calls them, “a story”). The brand will make a statement or pose a question, and below that will be a comment box where the user can enter a response (see top right).

If the user does enter a response, the conversation then appears in the user’s News Feed, where the brand starts to reap “earned” impressions among that user’s friends. And if some of the user’s friends comment themselves, those comments can be turned into Sponsored Stories (see bottom right).

In other words, it’s the ad that keeps on giving...."

The Socialistic Interview: Yury Lifshits on the Importance of Facebook “Likes” (Excerpt)

March 17, 2011

The Socialistic Interview: Yury Lifshits on the Importance of Facebook “Likes”

The effects of social media on user engagement with news sites have become undeniable: Facebook and Twitter (and Reddit and Digg and many others…) have become major drivers of traffic for pretty much all content sites. So it’s become increasingly necessary to figure out what kinds of stories result in a flood of sharing and engagement, and which ones don’t.

A recent study by researcher Yury Lifshits, under the auspices of Yahoo Labs, looked at Facebook “like” stats for over 100,000 news articles published over three months, seeking to divine insights about the stickiness of content in social media.  Socialistic caught up with Lifshits recently to talk about his findings, and what they might mean for content sites as well as social media marketers.

What were some of the key findings from your study of how “likes” affect traffic to online news sites?  What are some of the major lessons for content creators?


I can not give well grounded advice here, as I only know the number of likes, not referral statistics from Facebook and Twitter. The feeling is that social referrals become a significant source of traffic. They may be around 1% for now, but can go to 10% or more.  Social referrals play a bigger role than it might appear. Epidemic coverage on Twitter initiates secondary coverage in media and blogs. Without Twitter there will be much less of that. Clicks from various social clients are not always attributed back to social networks.

Lesson #1: measure your success in social networks. Lesson #2: work to improve your social success. Lesson #3: use social feedback to adjust your editorial policy. Focus more on subjects and forms that readers like most. But of course, you should preserve your voice and integrity.

Read the full interview on socialistic.com

Bigger & Bigger & Bigger: Facebook valued at $65 billion in new investment | Reuters

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"(Reuters) - Investment firm General Atlantic is investing in Facebook, valuing the leading social network at $65 billion, representing a 30 percent boost from its last big investment in January, according to a report on CNBC.

General Atlantic is purchasing a block of roughly 2.5 million Facebook shares from former Facebook employees, giving the firm a 0.1 percent stake in the company, CNBC said.

The deal, which has not closed and requires approval from Facebook, would give General Atlantic a 0.1 percent stake in Facebook, according to the report...."

Netflix: Can Its Business Model Survive? -Karl Denninger on Seeking Alpha

In a rather interesting move, Warner Brothers apparently is making available "Dark Knight" through Facebook on a pay-per-view basis.

Barriers to entry? Moat? What's that? There isn't one for online video streaming, which is a huge problem. Well, for Netflix (NFLX) it is anyway.

I have long pointed out that Netflix has a major issue with their basic business model, which I argue is basically one of poaching transport charges and billing out only at some reasonable multiple of the licensing charges for the exhibition. That's a nice model, if you can manage to (1) defend it against other entrants, and (2) not get hammered for the distribution costs you managed to shift onto others.

Unfortunately #2 isn't likely to work for long, and now #1 is under attack from all sides. Coinstar (CSTR) (Redbox's parent) and Amazon (AMZN) have announced intent to enter the market, and Amazon has actually done so, making available some of their already-licensed "instant view" content to those with PRIME memberships - without an additional fee.

Facebook has one advantage - 600 million accounts worldwide. Whether there's an actual business model here with a PPV sort of setup is another question entirely, especially considering that Facebook isn't exactly a revenue monster - in fact, I'd argue that there's no revenue of note at all. Oh sure, they've got some advertising money and will for a short while, until advertisers figure out that (1) people don't come to the site for ads, and (2) if you get annoying people will either block display of those units or turn you off. You can only sell advertising in that environment until the buyers figure out that they're wasting their money, at which point your "revenue model" collapses.

read Karl Denninger's full article on seekingalpha.com

Very Interesting: Lessons of the Like Log: The big story and the nuances of shareability » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism

Excerpt from original article by Megan Garber:

"The Internet may run on love; thanks to Facebook, though, it also runs on like. Or, more specifically, on Like.

That’s made clear in a collection of research, released last night, that traces the Facebook effect when it comes to online news. Conducted by Yury Lifshits under the auspices of Yahoo Labs, the study traces three months’ worth of Facebook Like stats for over 100,000 stories at 45 large news sites, from The New York Times and the Guardian down to paidContent and Poynter. (The research takes advantage of the fact that Facebook allows anyone to collect the total number of Likes for any URL.)

The Like Log’s findings? In terms of overall popularity (total Likes), The New York Times is “the leader of social engagement,” with some 2.3 million Likes per month, 400 Likes for a median story, and 13 articles in the top 40 most-Liked overall. In terms of individual stories, the Wall Street Journal’s excerpt of Amy Chua’s (in)famous Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother — Journal headline: “Why Chinese Moms Are Superior” — comes out on top, with 340,000 Likes..."

read the full article:

http://bit.ly/ie0wU7

Another Big Shift: New Film Site Fandor: A Cross Between Sundance and Netflix, Only Smaller #infdist

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Tim Appelo's full article is on Hollywood Reporter

"What the film industry desperately needs is a merger of social networks and content," says Ted Hope, the celebrated producer of American Splendor and dozens of indie hits at Sundance and elsewhere. That's why he just joined former Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly on the board of Fandor, the indie film streaming site built by Dan Aronson and Jonathan Marlow, a veteran of Amazon and GreenCine. After several months in beta (trial-run mode), Fandor made its full-fledged debut Wednesday.
Fandor streams about 2,500 films, far fewer than Amazon or Netflix. But instead of having users discover movies through mainstream studio marketing and "people who bought this also bought that" algorithms, Fandor concentrates on indie (and international) movies -- no TV -- and relies on human expertise to curate, like a film fest programmer or the proprietor of a great video store like Chicago's Facets or Seattle's Scarecrow Video -- to pick the good ones, from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to the latest, weirdest Oscar-nominated foreign film, Dogtooth. "It isn't just a simple algorithm," says Marlow. "It's an actual individual who can distil the reasons why you might be interested in the movie." Then you can read learned essays about the films, and plunge into the discussion youself. For $10 a month (or a free first-month introductory trial) you can watch all you want on Fandor, and rave (or pan) them with friends on Facebook..."

Netflix Stock Drops After Facebook Movie Streaming Announcement - The Hollywood Reporter

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Excerpt from full article on Hollywood Reporter:

"The movie rental giant's shares dipped 6% on Tuesday as another new competitor joined Amazon.com in the movie-streaming business.

One day after Warner Bros. said it will let Facebook users stream The Dark Knight for $3 over their computers, Netflix stock dropped 6% Tuesday on worries of another rich competitor entering the fray...."

Big: Warner Bros. to Rent Movies Digitally on Facebook, Starting With 'Dark Knight' - The Hollywood Reporter

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Excerpt from article by Gregg Kilday:

"The studio, which says it is the first to offer movies directly on the social media site, aims to roll out additional titles over the coming months.

Warner Bros. is turning to Facebook, where it hopes to find an electronic audience interested in digitally renting The Dark Knight.

Warners said Monday that it is the first Hollywood studio to offer movies directly on Facebook. Friends of Christopher Nolan's Knight, the second of his two Batman movies, can rent the film by going to its official Facebook page and clicking a "rent" icon to apply Facebook Credits. The cost per rental is 30 Facebook Credits, or $3...."