Search Engine Optimization

The worlds of SEO and social media were rocked the other day when Bing announced they will incorporate Facebook data into their search results for the most personal social-search integration to hit the web. What does this mean for the user? If you search for something on Bing and are logged into your Facebook account, you will see which pages, products and websites your friends Like and recommend high in the results, regardless of where that page ranks in the general SERP.

Back in October 2010, Bing one-upped Google be forming a partnership with Facebook, establishing the importance of social factors on search results. The amount of information shared between Facebook and Bing was limited, but the foundation was set. Then in February of this year, Bing announced they were incorporating Facebook Like data into their search results. The newest integration is the most personalized to date.

According the Bing blog,
…Bing is bringing the collective IQ of the Web together with the opinions of the people you trust most, to bring the “Friend Effect” to search…you can receive personalized search results based on the opinions of your friends by simply signing into Facebook. New features make it easier to see what your Facebook friends “like” across the Web, incorporate the collective know-how of the Web into your search results, and begin adding a more conversational aspect to your searches. Decisions can now be made with more than facts, now the opinions of your trusted friends and the collective wisdom of the Web.

Check out this video from Bing about the Facebook information integration

Here are a few things Bing and Facebook have done to create a personalized search like none before:

1. Instantly see which stories, content and sites your Facebook friends have “liked.”
2. Bing will surface results, which may typically have been on page three or four, higher in its results based on stuff your friends have liked.
3. Bing shows well-liked content, including trending topics, articles and Facebook fan pages, from sites across the web.
4.By combining Facebook’s communication tools with Bing, search can become conversational and turn decision-making on Bing from a passive experience to an active dialogue.
5.Bing not only shows you what your friends like and share online, but also what major brands and companies are saying.

Some are saying that this integration has changed the face of SEO forever. Others are saying it’s still not enough to take on Google.

How do you think the Facebook-Bing integration will affect SEO?

I would like to say that Facebook is in the news again, but if we are honest, we should probably say that it never left.

This week the actual ownership of the Social Media giant was challenged in court by Paul D. Ceglia, who claims to have financed the original Facebook site for $1000.

In the complaint filed in New York, Mr. Ceglia essentially states that he paid Mr. Zuckerberg $1000 in 2003 to build a website named “TheFacebook”.

The sketchy details alleged that the current owner of “Facebook”, Mr. Zuckerberg, agreed to give Mr.Ceglia 50 percent ownership in the website named “TheFacebook, with an additional one percent of the company for every day that passes beyond January 1, 2004, where the agreed upon website remained unfinished.

The “TheFacebook” site in question was completed on February 4, 2004; this timeframe would give Mr. Ceglia approximately 84% ownership in return for his patience if we adhere to the letter of the supposed agreement.

Will they adhere to that agreement, and what could this mean to Facebook?

The cash that Facebook generates from its advertising pursuits and other forms of revenue have now exceeded the high cost to run the required servers and the many other expenses that are required to keep Facebook up and running, so it is essentially profitable, or “in the black”.

There are many “one-time costs”, as in the $50 million dollar purchase of Friendfeed that continue to chip away at that profitability.  However, investors like Digital Sky Technologies, and their $200 million dollar investment, help to offset these purchases for the future, as well as helping to make possible the public offering of Facebook, rumored to be on the horizon.

Even with investments like this, Facebook is always looking to create new income streams from virtual goods to customized advertisement.

They probably should look into items like these, considering that Facebook has reached the $500 million dollar company level.

Consider that Facebook’s total user base sits at around 300 million and its sign up rate is roughly 806,000 users per day. This rate of growth has also incurred a $100 million in debt financing directly related to server costs.

If the new income streams take hold, these statistics show a viable way to make a lot of money; 50% of Facebook active users log on to Facebook in any given day.
The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to 60 pages, groups and events, and creates approximately 70 pieces of content each month.
More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month, and more than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites in this same time period.

There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices and those who use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
So to Mr. Ceglia, this could mean a great deal of both money and possible big headaches, if he were to win his lawsuit.

I wouldn’t look for a “under new ownership” sign just yet however, as some have stated that New York’s Statute of limitations could put a quick end to this exercise.

Judge Thomas Brown, who is hearing the case in the New York court, however, has issued a temporary restraining order restricting any transfer of assets by Facebook.

This measure probably has more to do with procedure than actual merit in the lawsuit; considering that  Mr.Zuckerberg created Facebook, and a new company, Facebook, Inc. which is different that “Thefacebook” as the lawsuit names.

To the average person, “thefacebook” and “facebook” is a trivial detail, but to those of us in this industry, even one letter out of place can mean the difference between traffic to your site or traffic to your competitor.

I will be interesting to see how this develops, but I would imagine Mr.Zuckerberg’s Facebook will remain as is when all is said and done.

The answer is that they are all in the news this week around the recently beleaguered social media site;

Facebook.

The big news is that Lady Gaga passed President Barack Obama with the number of fans on Facebook. In

reaction to hearing this news, Lady Gaga went to Twitter to thank her 4,796,663 Twitter fans for the honor.
However, she then promptly thanked her actual 11,065,406 Facebook friends as well.

President Barack Obama, has approximately 9,999,092 fans on Facebook and pop star Justin Bieber hit 6.7

Million Facebook fans this week. Texas Hold ‘Em Poker has passed 20 million fans, Michael Jackson, even

deceased has over 15 million fans and the game Mafia Wars has also more than10 million fans.

For comparison on the social media site Twitter, Britney Spears is at approximately 5,278,864 followers,

Ashton Kutcher is at approximately 5,204,397 and President Obama is at approximately 4,476,497

followers. Justin Bieber’s Twitter account is now at 3.5 million followers this week and rapidly growing.

However not everyone is a “fan” of social media, or more correctly how it is being used.

Canadian lawyer Tony Merchant has launched a class action lawsuit against Facebook for letting users’

private information to be sold for profit.

Specifically the lawsuit centers around the changing of Facebook’s privacy settings as explained in the 32-

page court papers which were filed in Winnipeg, Canada this week. Mr. Merchant believes that users are

deceived that private information is secure but, it has been claimed by others that the new Facebook

changes has made its users vulnerable to data mining and more advertisements.

Facebook’s privacy changes in question, were made in April, November and December of 2009. According

to these recent claims, this has caused the publicizing of private information and unauthorized sharing of

personal information with third-parties which include software companies and social media applications

like Farmville.

Canada is not alone in its concerns over privacy; Germany’s Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection

and Freedom of Information is asserting that Facebook is storing non-users’ personal data without their

permission.

This claim is around the address book sync feature which uploads data about non-users. The problem is

when Facebook stores this data because a significant portion of these individuals do not belong to

Facebook. This means they have not given permission for Facebook to use or save their private data.

Germany contends this data can contain phone numbers and even e-mail addresses, which they do not

believe that Facebook has a right to use, as it is essentially storing third party data without authorization.

In the wake of this suit, Britain and Switzerland are also reviewing Facebook’s third party data storage

policies.

Also scrutinizing Facebook is Google, but not to sue the social media site; Google wants to kill it.
Google is working on a new social network called “Google Me”.

Google is using YouTube Leanback, to turn YouTube into an all new way of experiencing media and online

networking; The idea is that when logging on, you will see HD video, full-screen,  and as each video ends a

new one starts playing, much like a TV station, only this is based upon data harvested from your

preferences.

This move, they hope, will change the way people view social networks and lure users to Google’s

application.

Google Buzz already allows members to share links, photos, videos; to the careful observer, all of this seems

to point to the idea that Google is staging a takeover.

This may be too little, too late, given that Facebook recently lost 19 percent of its teenage audience to

“Facebook fatigue,” a new disorder gaining popularity where teenagers ditch Facebook.

However, YouTube is the second most popular social network among teens with two in three still using it.

MySpace has lost much of its popularity a while ago with approximately only two in five teens using it.
Twenty two percent of teens have left Myspace, and Twitter, which seems to be geared towards

professionals, was never as popular with teens in the first place
Twitter has only 20 percent of teens using it anyway.

Having said that, teens still spend 80 percent of their online time, or two hours each day on social media

sites.

The social media backlash may be closer than we think.