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The Uproar Over Facebook – Y’all Are Jus’ Jellus

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:30:24 +0000

You may have seen all over the news lately that some people have estimated the worth of Facebook at $10 billion. Yes, that’s right, billion with a ‘b’. And opinions have exploded all over the place, with most people decrying the rather high value that has been set.

First of all, the math is a little off. The $10 billion calculation comes from the deal that was just announced, where Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies bought 2% (actually 1.96%, but please, I’m rounding up) of preferred Facebook stock for $200 million dollars. People have been using the equation if 2% = $200 million, then 100% = $10 billion, which isn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, because the 2% was not common stock, but preferred so the common valuation for the company would actually be lower.

Still, the fact remains that Facebook is worth more than any of us will likely see in our lifetimes. And that makes its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, a very rich, or rather richer (and some would argue lucky) man. And that somehow makes it necessary for people and pundits out there to try and cut him down to size because he dared to succeed where most of the rest of us have tried (or thought about but not actually tried) and failed.

Why is there the need to pick apart the value of Facebook?

Both Digital Sky and Microsoft have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of having infinitesimal amounts of Facebook stock. Zuckerberg has pulled in almost $500 million and given up less than 5% of his company; frankly we should be lauding his success and asking him to hold our babies in the chance that some of that skill/luck might rub off on them.

“But Facebook doesn’t make any money!!” … you cry.

While it’s true that Facebook suffers from the social media disease (hee) that also affects Twitter (the one where when you give away everything for free, if millions are using it, you get 0 x infinity, which is still 0) but it is not without resources. And more importantly, to draw in this kind of money from people who know what they’re talking about, it’s not without plans, either.

“But the new design sucks!”

Umm…so what?

People are still using it. People are still getting results from it. And people like me are still using it to promote their businesses (are you?)

“But Beacon was a disaster!”

Well, yes, so it was.

And the fact that Facebook is still alive and kicking and having people invest hundreds of millions of dollars into it speaks well of its ability to both adapt and recover from setbacks.

“But Zuckerberg is a control freak who’s ruining the company!!”

Really? According to whom? Mark Zuckerberg is a 25 year old who has accomplished an amazing amount of things so far in his life for anybody, much less someone under the age of 30. He has a knack for coming up with ingenious pieces of technology. Even if any of the accounts of his control-freak leadership are true (and I’m certainly not saying they are) he’s 25 years old. How many of us would have been able to run a billion dollar company at that age?

Like I said, you’re all jus’ jellus. And so am I, but at least I can admit it.

(And lest I contradict my own post about the importance of good grammar, those misspellings in the title were intentional.)

Oh and do not be shy about sharing this post with others please… you can click here to automatically post it to your twitter account

So what comments do you have?

How Do You Handle Internet Marketing’s Obstacles?

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:22:20 +0000

I want to touch a little on the obstacles thrown in our path in this business. It’s amazing but as soon as you think you’re on top of things, something comes out of left field to unsettle you or drag you back into the mire.

Here’s what happened to a good friend of mine recently. He had his main Digg account suspended. His actual page had built to a page rank of three. He had built up a list of hundreds of friends and was becoming an authority in this particular niche. In fact, rarely did he digg something that didn’t receive at least half a dozen comments. Then, with the push of a button, it was gone!

Now a year ago he said he would have probably admitted himself for psychiatric attention because it would have been devastating. It’s funny, today he said he almost didn’t give a s@%*. His reaction was “oh well, it was nice while it lasted but I’ll just open up another account.” And that’s what he did.

The point I’m trying to make is when obstacles are thrown in our path, they will either defeat you or strengthen your resolve. Make sure it’s the latter because if you don’t, success in this business will continue to be a pipedream.

Here’s what most would do and what he would have done 12 months ago. He would have tried to analyze the situation…

- why was my account suspended?
- the shame of it all
- I feel like a criminal
- what did I do wrong?
- what about all the work I put into it?
- what do I do now?

The only question he told me that he asked was the first one and he figured maybe he pushed the boundaries too much. All it takes is one complaint and that’s probably what happened. He didn’t even bother to contact their support to try and get an explanation. But Digg is not my business. It’s just a tool he used to help build and promote it and it doesn’t take long to get back on the horse and start a new account.

This is what a steely resolve is all about. Forget over-analyzing and just push through any hiccup you encounter. And when social media sites are concerned, don’t let an account suspension unsettle you and throw you off course. They are free which means they are dispensable and each time you have an account closed, learn something from it which is usually how far you can push the limits.

So can you relate?

Review of The Social Profiles WordPress Plugin

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:09:37 +0000

As we are putting the finishing touched on CommentMILK, I thought I would share a new plugin I came across last week that I liked.

As you most likely know, one of the best ways to encourage blog commenting is to offer your community members increased exposure. Plugins like Commentluv, which brings a link in from the commenter’s most recent blog post, are an added incentive to comment on your blog and become a part of your community. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a way to integrate this sort of benefit with social media.

Enter the Social Profiles WordPress Plugin. Designed by Sugarrae and written by WordPress plugin legend Joost de Valk, Social Profiles lets you add links to your commenters’ social profiles. The links can be text links or graphical ones, and you can even put a nofollow tag on the links if you want to.

Social Profiles comes with ten of the most common social networking tools pre-installed. These include:

Delicious
Digg
Flickr
Furl
MySpace
Newsvine
Reddit
Stumbleupon
Technorati
Twitter

By default, Digg, Delicious and Flicker are enabled. You can add and remove tools via a control panel.

The one downside to Social Profiles is that only registered users of your site can have their profiles listed in their comments. While this is ideal for sites that use a membership model, sites that don’t register users may have more difficulty implementing Social Profiles.

You can register her at JohnCow and use this… PLUS when you register it makes commenting easier

Installation of Social Profiles is relatively easy, and consists of uploading the files to your WordPress plugins directory and adding a single line of code to your template. There are plenty of customization options, too. The control panel lets you ad prefixes and suffixes to the social network links, as well as the ability to customize their appearance.

Check it out for yourself at http://www.sugarrae.com/wordpress/social-profiles/