Articles tagged Facebook.

Facebook is the dominant social media service today. It currently has about 750 million users worldwide. It took the top spot from MySpace many years ago. While MySpace is still a social media player with 100 million users, it no longer has the same influence on the industry.

Is Facebook too big to be replaced? History has shown that no tech company is too big to be replaced. There are many dark clouds on Facebook’s horizon. Can Facebook weather the storm or will a new social media player rise up to replace them like they did to MySpace.

Can Facebook be a cause of depression in children and teens? That seems to be one of the findings of a study produced by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study sites,

“Seventy-five percent of teenagers now own cell phones, and 25% use them for social media, 54% use them for texting, and 24% use them for instant messaging.”

Apple's Steve Jobs seems to be the wunderkind reborn after his return to Apple in 1997. His first stint with Apple led to the design and launch of the original Macintosh and the original Mac OS. During his second time behind the wheel he brought us the iMac, Mac OS X, and the i-Series of products and iOS operating system.

There's not much that Apple has done under Jobs' leadership that hasn't been a success. One of guiding principle Jobs has used is during his second term is, "Keep Your Friends Close; Keep Your Enemies Closer". There are three examples of this from the recent decade: Intel, Google and Facebook.

Recently a big stink over user privacy has reared its ugly head again, but this time about one of my favorite products and something I use daily, if not hourly — the iPhone. Security researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warde revealed last week that Apple was storing logs of users' geographic coordinates in a hidden file. The researchers didn't know why Apple was doing this or what it was using the data for, but they said Apple indeed is gathering this information about the whereabouts of its iPhone users.

This weekend Apple added a Japan Tsunami donation page to iTunes. Apple claims 100% of your donation will go to the Red Cross. Last week social media giant Facebook announced the rental of Warner Bros. movies through Facebook. In response Netflix stock took a 5.8% hit on the news. Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos fired back (in fear) "Nobody goes to Facebook to watch movies."  Ah,... yet. I remember no one was going to watch movies on their computer when Netflix first started their online streaming services too. There really is no reason Facebook can't do what Netflix did by integrating their movie service into the AppleTV, XBox 360, Wii and more.

These are just two examples (iTunes donation, Facebook movies) of giants walking about and running out of room, so they start bumping into one another.

Google is the King of internet search, but there is a new game in town. Social media is the next wave of internet communication and Google has been unable to compete with Facebook or Twitter. Not only is Facebook the top social media website, it has also de-throned Google as the most visited website in the US for 2010. While Google is going after Apple's mobile market, Facebook is going after Google's core business.

Google is focused on finding another market in which to grow their business. All of these new strategies are based on free or open source software. One of these new markets is the smartphone market with Android, in which they are competing directly with Apple. Google has created many such projects and has canceled some of them like Google Wave. Google and their open source software developers have been generating software products at an astounding rate. Yet, it does not look like they have a clear strategy to all this software development. They are basically throwing mud on a wall and hoping some of it sticks. Can such a mud flinging battle be profitable?

One thing not found at One Infinite Loop is mediocrity. Since Steve Jobs returned to Apple their success has been built upon designing and executing excellence. Excellence is found in the iOS — an OS designed just for touch systems. Excellence is found in the Mac Book Air with its super thin sleek design, long-lasting battery life and solid state drive. No matter what Apple product you consider, that product has excellence built-in.

Another way to state this is that Apple does not manufacture commodities. A commodity is an item that can't be distinguished from a competitor's product except for by price, delivery or something that has little to do with the product itself. For example, the Windows PC quickly became a commodity. Speeds and price were the only real differentiators, but in essence, one Windows PC was just like the next one. This commoditization significantly reduced the value of the PC Manufacturer while it raised the value of the Operating System. Apple was able to avoid being seen as "just another PC" by making its products different — better and special — through hardware innovation, design and software integration.

In business there is nothing like having enough cash to do what you want to help your business grow. Whether that is hiring key talent, purchasing new equipment or buying out a competitor, having money in hand is important. Matter of fact the number one reason businesses don't make it past year #1 is cash flow. Having enough “walking around money” to take advantage of key opportunities that may only happen once is a critical factor to a business' success.

Fortunately, Steve Jobs and Company know this all too well. Almost every financial quarterly conference call contains a question about, "What is Apple going to do with their billions in cash?"