Facebook Exceeds 300 Million - What Does It Mean ?

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that its online community crossed the 300 million user threshold, equaling the approximate size of the US population. About 70 percent of Facebook's users are outside the U.S., according to statistics posted by the company. Facebook says its fastest-growing demographic is people older than 35.

Facebook's growth reflects a tipping point for web 2.0 tools and its implications are far reaching for organizations, as consumer driven platforms will increasingly shape our world. With integrated voice chat coming soon to the platform, even more rapid evolution is inevitable. In Fortune's recent interview, CEO Sheryl Sandberg, reveals the rise of advertising revenues and users using the Facebook tool. She points out that you are seeing the beginning of what advertising is becoming - "part of the user experience".

One cannot underestimated the implications of Web 2.0 tools, which Facebook is. These tools and their users will redefine the constructs of markets and fuel business innovation opportunities. Truth is their adoption is just beginning and the tools will evolve rapidly with other even more powerful platforms like WAVE coming soon.

Three key points for organization's to keep in mind when employing these tools were brought to light in a recent article by Udayan Banerjee, The 3 Faces of Web 2.0, and are outlined below. When exploring Web 2.0 potential, its important to keep these points in mind.

1. Remember You Are Interacting with an Enlightened Consumer

“…the new consumer has grown up with brand new perspectives and redefined the interplay of communications, relationships, brands, technology and media.” – from Five Rules to Engaging a New Breed of Consumer

2. Adopting An Open Collaboration Platform Requires New Disciplines

“…make the corporate intranet into constantly changing structure built by distributed, autonomous peers – a collaborative platform that reflects the way work really gets done.” – from Enterprise 2.0: Dawn of Emergent Collaboration

3. Monetizing the Collective Intelligence of Users

“…collective Intelligence draws on this to enhance the social pool of existing knowledge.” – from Collective Intelligence page of Wikipedia

Socialnomics - A Business Revolution

Social media is not a fad, its a new way of interaction that is diminishing traditional media. By next year, generation Y will outpopulate the Baby Boomer generation and 96% of Y's are involved in social networks. If Facebook were a country it would be 4th largest in the world. 80% of companies are now using Linkedin to find employees and the fastest growing segement on Facebook are 55-65 year old females. 80% of tweets are made via mobile devices and therefore word of mouth has become world of mouth with only 14% trusting advertisements as a source of reliable information; afterall there are better sources via new technologies. Find out more in this incredible video on socialnomics.

Apple - Understanding the Business You Are In

A recent article in PC Mag by Dan Costa pointed out something pretty interesting about Apple:

 Apple doesn't want to attract new customers—it mostly wants to keep its existing customers happy. Now, you might think that Mac people are so self-satisfied they don't need any help being happy. And you would probably be right. Still, these customers have proven they are willing to pay a premium for a product that is more commodified every day. In fact, Apple has a stunning 91 percent of the market for PCs that cost more than $1,000. Clearly, these are customers Apple wants to keep.

Costa points out that just 4.86 percent of worldwide Internet traffic comes from systems running the Mac OS. Even if you throw in iPhone users, the number barely passes 5 percent. Hardly a mass phenomenon. And thats a good thing indeed. You see by staying small Apple can be more innovative and flexible.

Apple is a great hedgehog organization, ala Collin's book. They understand the business they are in and act accordingly. Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings. That's its mission. The business understands its focus - Great businesses know its all about the consumer and the product. See an interview of Jobs as he talks about Apple.

Google Book Settlement & Lessig on Copyright Law

Much is being made of the pending Google book settlement. Now Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo are jumping in to object to the settlement. Despite all of the fuss about Google, this complex matter truly results from a lack of appropriate stewardship of our intellectual property laws by Congress. It is why issues like the Google settlement are relegated to the courts (see Lessig's lecture at the bottom of this post). The problem has become increasingly obvious due to advancing technologies which have uncovered the irrelevance of the IP rules and it is putting a great deal at risk for our society and our innovation culture - see Lessig's recent book ReMix, Making Art Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy.

US copyright laws are severly broken and this issue and its consequences need to be addressed. However, the skewed priorities of U.S. elected leaders, driven by contributions and corprorate interests from the likes of Disney et al, won't allow it. To learn more about how broken our copyright rules are, please view this Colbert Report interview with Lawrence Lessig.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Lawrence Lessig
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After your finished laughing, I highly recommend listening to Lessig's recent lecture in Cambridge on the Google book deal. It explains the implications of the settlement, concept offair use and our broken IP governance system clearly as noone but Lessig can.

Read Competing for the Future & Create Value

With Competing for the Future, managers have seen how they can reshape their industries. Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad offer a masterful blueprint for what YOU must be doing today to occupy the competitive high ground of tomorrow. The key to future industry leadership is to develop an INDEPENDENT point of view about tomorrow's opportunities and build capabilities that exploit them. Authors Hamel and Prahalad reveal an entirely new definition of what it means to be strategic-and successful. Watch Prahalad's talk on Build a Bear and Pace makers as examples of creating value in the "experience" economy. Can we transform our businesses and industries ? We must because there are new fundamental dynamics around creating value that demand rethinking what we believe and how we do things.