Facebook Passes the Billion User Mark, But Where Will Revenue Growth Come From?

 User growth will come from new territories as the social media giant continues to eat up users' time and Likes, with almost half of all North Americans using the Facebook service to keep in touch online. But where will it see new revenue growth?

All Around the World

While the stock price might be on the way down, the user numbers are going up and up for Facebook. With almost 45% of North Americans and Australasians now on board, a third of South America, nearly as many in Europe with only Africa and Asia lagging behind in single figures. That led the company over the 1 billion mark, which he discussed in an interview on NBC. 

They are the key growth markets for the company, and it will be aiming aggressively at signing them up. Of the existing users, over 600 million now use Facebook on a smartphone or other mobile device, up from 552 million users measured in June this year.

Mobile will be key in emerging markets where they are more common than computers. Facebook is trying to adapt the service to the feature phones prevalent in Africa but will need to use marketing muscle in China and Russia where local services dominate. 

On the Face Of It

Facebook recently broke into the physical gifts market in an attempt to move on from the virtual gifts that helped boost its early growth. With long-time revenue partner Zynga also suffering, it will also be looking for the next big thing in revenue generation, with better targeted advertising already on the radar.

Gambling could  become one natural focus, with real money gambling having started in the United Kingdom via a Bingo game, and virtual sports betting being trialled in America. These and other initiatives should see revenue rising to keep the stock holders happy.

However, it may face more defections from users over the latest claim on weak privacy with private messages claimed to be publicly visible. Similarly, further attempts to monetize the service's vast user database could lead to collisions with irate users suffering growing "intrusion" into their News Feeds. 

While still in a very strong position, and dominating the social media scene, Facebook still has plenty of time to find its feet as a traded company, but every move and misstep will come under increasing focus and scrutiny. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

EMC's Syncplicity Gears Up to Disrupt

Syncplicity wants to be the place that enterprise users go to sync, share, access and protect their files. The SaaS start-up that storage giant EMC acquired in May has been working in overdrive to achieve its mission.

In just a few short months they have built a new release (featuring true Mobile Sync for iOS and Android devices) that not only further liberates knowledge workers from being tethered to their desks, but that also syncs automatically, thereby freeing them from the burden of manually selecting, pushing and pulling information between their mobile devices, computers, file servers, business applications and the cloud. 

The majority of other solutions in this space work by downloading a file while connected, marking it for viewing later, uploading changed files and so on.

“The challenge you have with most of the players in this market is the degree of forethought required by the user,” says Jeetu Patel, Syncplicity’s newly appointed Chief Executive.

With Syncplicity, users are notified when changes are made and file and folder organization remains consistent.

Your Content at Your Fingertips, All of the Time - No Forethought Required

Work on a document in Salesforce. Visit a client and access it from your iPad. Get a call from your boss while you are on your evening run demanding that you look over changes “right now.” Review, edit and/or approve from your iPhone (no download or upload needed), then continue your run. Your boss has what he needs so you can take time out for an extra mile and a well-deserved ice cream. Access the most recent version of the document via your laptop (or any other device) later.

Imagine your work-life being this simple. Being able to access your content where it lives. No need for check-ins or check-outs, no dragging or dropping, no wrestling with and organizing content and document versions.

And if you’re collaborating on a project, like a presentation, with co-workers you can set read-only or read-and-write permissions to content. This might save you from getting up before a crowd with a stack of PowerPoint slides that looked different than when you last saw them.

That’s Great for the End User - How about IT?

Ask IT managers in regulated industries what they think about popular cloud hosting services like Dropbox and you’ll hear nothing but qualified praise. “Great for individual, personal, consumer use, but we don’t let people access it, or Box, from the office,” an IT Director at an insurance firm told me. “We have compliance, governance and security concerns when our files are not in our control.”

Is his company’s policy an anomaly? It doesn’t seem to be with companies that are regulated. We called three people at Life Sciences companies and three at Investment Banks and asked them to see if they could access Dropbox, Box or SugarSync. Their answers? “Blocked. Blocked. Blocked.” And this does not seem uncommon.

It’s not fair to ask the same question about Syncplicity because a good number of IT managers have never even heard of it and therefore have not come to any conclusions about it.

This may, or may not be, and advantage.

Will Syncplicity Win IT Managers Over?

If Syncplicity can get in front of IT Managers before curious, would-be early adopters do, the service might be more easily accepted. After all, EMC has a significant, trusted footprint in the enterprise world.

Add to that, that Syncplicity says it provides 99.999999999% data resiliency; that it stores documents and encryption keys in different data centers; that it provides remote wipe data from lost or stolen devices; that it enforces legal, regulatory and security compliance and much, much more.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Microsoft Debuts Windows Phone Dev Center

Windows Phone developers now have a new online home, courtesy of Microsoft. The technology giant has unveiled the Windows Phone Dev Center, which it calls an evolution of the retired App Hub Developer Portal.

Top to Bottom Redesign

In a post on the Windows Phone Developer Blog, Microsoft describes the Windows Phone Dev Center as being “redesigned from the ground up.” In addition to streamlined menu options and links on the front end, on the back end the site sits on top of a more robust and scalable infrastructure.

Beyond changes to site layout and infrastructure, Microsoft is expanding the reach and payment opportunities for developers, who in the near future will be able to register in four times as many countries or regions, and get paid in three times as many as what’s possible today. Microsoft is also in the process of tripling the number of consumer storefronts for developers to sell their Windows Phone apps.

The Dev Center also now supports PayPal and allows developers to enter a unique price in each country or region. Furthermore, Microsoft is promising to provide the ability to add and manage in-app merchandise and track sales in the next version of Dev Center.

There are also other changes besides those to the site’s financial capabilities. For example, Microsoft has streamlined the account signup and submission processes and integrated Dev Center more with Microsoft Advertising’s pubCenter, so it’s possible for developers to create a pubCenter account and ad units from the same place they manage their apps.

In addition, Microsoft says it has improved features such as reports and analytics, beta testing, and portal integration with MSDN.

Windows Phone Readies for ‘Ramp-Up Year’

Although Windows Mobile/Windows Phone shipments only represented a small portion of worldwide smartphone shipments in Q1 2012 as reported by IDC, the research group said 2012 should be “considered a ramp-up year for Nokia and Microsoft to boost volumes.” During Q1 2012, there were 3.3 million global Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile smartphone shipments, representing 2.2% of the market. Although the Windows Phone market share dropped from 2.6% in Q1 2011, total phones shipped grew a healthy 26.9%.

Windows Phone 8 Nearly Complete

Although Microsoft has not said whether the Windows Phone Dev Center will immediately be compatible, Microsoft should have the smartphone version of the Windows 8 operating system done in the next few weeks, with Nokia expected to announce new devices for a coordinated launch later in the year. One of the major aims of the new OS is to help Microsoft get back into the smartphone race.

Developers can use Windows Phone Dev Center for Windows Phone 7.5 or earlier apps. Microsoft says it will “fine tune and optimize the site and infrastructure in the weeks ahead.”

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com