Since businesses discovered the revenue potential of fans and followers, they have been clamouring to acquire them. But what gives greater value? Those you acquire through good social media strategy and engaging content, or those you buy. Another fan buying enterprise, Bird Bird Fans, has recently launched its service of buying high volumes of fans to boost the Facebook pages of small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) new to the market. According to Mark Macias, Founder & Managing Partner of 3M Media Group, the company behind Big Bird Fans, multinationals spend “$100k a month on social media fan acquisition.” He claims Big Bird Fans will bring this technology and acquisition techniques only used by large brands to SMBs. Macias believes some people just want fans from anywhere and organic fans have too high a cost. For him, targeting is something that large companies are looking to do, not SMBs but [...]
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Mashable CEO and founder Pete Cashmore sat down at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to talk about the future of journalism, his favorite social media tools and how he’s using social games to increase activism. Kristof, who is very active on social media, talked about how he engages with his large following, and also said that since the implementation of Facebook Subscribe, he’s seen a big change in the value of Facebook. Kristof says he has 1.2 million Twitter followers, but his Facebook subscribers, who are only a fourth of that number, are more engaged. “The Facebook people spend much more time on Facebook, and I think they are real,” Kristof said. “My sense is that every Facebook subscriber is worth four Twitter followers.” But, Kristof said Twitter still has a huge value, and it’s where he turns to post breaking [...]
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So, you want to start a company? That’s a very exciting decision. But first, you must cover all your bases. For instance, generate a clear and simple idea, then determine what industry or market you plan to target, what type of corporate organization you’ll implement and where your business will be located. Each is an important decision, but the main consideration when starting a company is how to manage risk. Risk is the heart of entrepreneurship — defined as “the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” Risk is the sole determinant whether you will succeed or fail. Billionaire Sir Richard Branson follows a principle called “protecting the downside,” which means that by looking at any situation and determining all options before making a decision, one can identify the worst case scenario and work backwards from there to find the optimal route forward. Protecting the downside is all [...]
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Symantec’s pcAnywhere software could very well turn into “virusAnywhere” due to a potential security breach made by Anonymous. Symantec, the anti-virus software company, warned users of pcAnywhere, a tool that allows for remote access to your computer, to disable the software. Symantec revealed in a white paper that Anonymous stole pcAnywhere’s source code in 2006 and could use that information to create vulnerabilities: Upon investigation of the claims made by Anonymous regarding source code disclosure, Symantec believes that the disclosure was the result of a theft of source code that occurred in 2006. The company is working on a set of updates and patches to fix the vulnerability issue even though Anonymous — as far as we know — hasn’t capitalized on it yet. The source code could let malicious users build exploits and attacks targeted at pcAnywhere users to reveal session information, PC Mag reported. This is not the [...]
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Aiming to hit Facebook in a vulnerable spot, Google on Thursday opened Google+ to teens — and added security enhancements designed to help secure their privacy. In a post explaining the move, Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product at Google+, doesn’t mention Facebook by name, but dubs current social media sharing “second-rate.” “In life, for instance, teens can share the right things with just the right people (like classmates, parents or close ties). Over time, the nuance and richness of selective sharing even promotes authenticity and accountability,” Horowitz wrote. “Sadly, today’s most popular online tools are rigid and brittle by comparison, so teens end up over-sharing with all of their so-called ‘friends.’” Google, which had previously barred consumers under 18 from joining Google+, is attempting to avoid such a situation on its network via a series of enhancement aimed at protecting people on the network aged 13-17. Those include steps [...]
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