The Funnel begins - Google taking on Facebook, bigger than you think
The big news today is that Google will soon be announcing OpenSocial [ongoing].
OpenSocial is a BigDeal(tm) for a lot of reasons. If you have been in a face-to-face conversation about Facebook with me recently, you’ll have heard my own ideas about an open platform being what will drag Facebook down. It will be slow, but this is the beginning. I have also written about why starting a company as the Facebook Platform is risky.
There is even more interesting news than the announcement of OpenSocial however. As Microsoft and Facebook strengthen their advertising relationship, Google has hit the ground running and they are currently courting the more successful Facebook application developers to start using Google tools to built their user numbers. Full text of the email is below.
Why does this matter? There are a few reasons. The biggest is that this demonstrates that Google has a serious, long-term strategy in place. Simply releasing the OpenSocial spec did not do anything to confirm how serious Google is about this game, but they are creating a funnel of Facebook Application developers to leverage in the future. Google is going to be more than willing to create very cheap offers for developers in order to keep them addicted to Google’s ecosystem. As OpenSocial expands and matures, Google will light the fire under their Facebook developers and create easy, and profitable, options to migrate Applications and Users away from Facebook.
Google see Facebook as a primary threat, and Microsoft sees them as a battalion of shock-troops to keep Google in line. If Google did not create a long-term strategy now, it’s possible the would have paid dearly down the road.
This is a problem for Microsoft’s investment in Facebook. Because Google has a long-term strategy, this is going to be a protracted and expensive fight. The theories doing battle are open platform vs. closed platform. Considering the success of the Internet itself as a largely open platform for developers, Google is in a great position to win this fight.
Dear Facebook Application Developer,
Would you like to drive more users to your app? We’ve expanded our pay-per-action (PPA) beta test and would like to invite you to participate by creating ads for your Facebook application.
To start setting up your first pay-per-action campaign, click on the link within the pay-per-action alert in your AdWords account and follow the simple steps at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=68150 to get your PPA ads up & running across the Google content network and on other Facebook applications.
Key Benefits of PPA
* Save money by paying only for actions that you define, such as users adding your app. Rather than paying for clicks or impressions, you only pay when a visitor performs a specified action, such as installing your Facebook application or visiting your main application page.
* Save time by setting up AdWords conversion tracking: you can set your desired cost per action and pay for completed actions to hit your cost-per-action targets.
* Increase conversion rates by using publishers’ knowledge about visitors to their websites to your advantage. Individual publishers in the Google content network, including other Facebook applications, choose to display PPA ads that they feel will appeal to their visitors. This works to your advantage, as publishers are motivated to choose ads they believe will have a high conversion rate.With PPA, you decide how much you want to pay for each type of action, whether it’s $1 for a user installing your application or $.15 for visiting your application page. You can also control your spending by setting a daily budget. In addition, you can view clicks, impressions, conversion rate, cost per conversion, total conversions, and total cost for each pay-per-action campaign by running a Placement Performance Report or a pay-per-action report in the Report Center of your AdWords account.
For more information about pay-per-action ads and a list of our most frequently asked questions, please visit the pay-per-action section in the Google AdWords help center: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=11635
We are excited to offer you a new way to attract new users to your Facebook application and meet your advertising goals.a If you have any questions, please email adsense-developer-research@google.com.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Update: Techcrunch and VentureBeat are now covering this.
“Please hang up and try again later. . . “
I haven’t been blogging here much lately. I have been working on some really cool things that I am looking forward to talking about publicly at some point later on, but right now time is at a premium.
In the meantime, I am really trying to stay on top of my duties at Startupnorth.ca
So, should you consider building your startup as a facebook app. Or is that, should you consider building a facebook app as a startup?
I think there are a few fundamental problems with trying to do so, and I will try to explore those here. As a disclaimer: I have not tried to start a business on Facebook, I have just been an observer. I am also aware that there are some facebook apps which are doing quite well, and time will tell if they truly manage to cash-out.
Pete Forde, one of the leaders of Toronto’s rails community published, a year ago, Endless Pageless, which gives you the technical overview for a Dead Paradigm. Thanks Pete!
Atlassian, NewsGator develop Sharepoint Integration Options
Both Atlassian and Newsgator are announcing partnerships today with Microsoft to help further build out Sharepoint using Atlassian Confluence, their Wiki, and Newsgator’s suite of tools, most notably their Socialsites product. At the same conference last year, SocialText announced its own Sharepoint integration solution.
Sharepoint integration is a no-brainer for almost any enterprise software company. With deployments totaling closer to 80million seats, it is feasible to build an entire business based off of servicing Sharepoint, and a lot of companies do just that. Newsgator and Atlassian have built fantastic businesses without having to focus solely, or at all, on Sharepoint, but both have undoubtedly been feeling some pressure from customers to offer a higher level of integration.
In order to open up market access, both Atlassian and Newsgator would be expected to bear the brunt of the technical integration. The economic benefit for these companies is quite immediate and significant.
The question that weighs most heavily is: is there enough incentive for Microsoft to participate in this partnership in any significant way? The immediate economics aren’t obvious for Microsoft, which leaves us with two options:
1: Microsoft has a new long-term partnering strategy
This could be significant. With its massive installed base, Sharepoint has its own economics, but it is also becoming increasingly antiquated. While there is no pressing short-term need for a strategic shift on Sharepoint, there is a very real need for long-term innovation.
By creating more partnering opportunities, Microsoft can maintain the relevance of Sharepoint as a platform while offering relatively low-cost upgrade opportunities to customers. The ecosystem of addons and extensions for Sharepoint are not what we would consider customer-friendly. They are typically wrapped in service-laden packages and offer disjointed integration.
By embracing more Enterprise 2.0 companies and creating a top-tier pool of integration options for customers, Microsoft can bring significant new value (beyond the low-quality options now available), embrace a significant new technical and business trend, and it is also an opportunity to augment the overall value of Sharepoint.
By focusing on complementary partnerships, Microsoft can focus on building a much stronger core platform and can leave innovation up to outside players. Innovation is expensive and risky, and Microsoft would be well advised to stay out of that end of the business.
2: This is a blip on the radar.
Here is the less optimistic option.
ISV partnering deals are certainly not new to Microsoft. Why are these two announcements any different? They are essentially two disjointed approaches with some notional overlap, which means they are not complementary as a package.
How serious is Microsoft about these deals? Will they actively promote and market Newsgator and Confluence? That remains to be seen, but Microsoft has jumped in with two of the most significant names in Enterprise 2.0, and it would be foolish of them to let these relationships fizzle to any degree.
When I spoke with them, neither Atlassian or Newsgator had any concrete knowledge of how Microsoft intends to promote this partnership, which might mean that Microsoft does not intend to promote it in any real way.
What’s next for Atlassian and Newsgator? I’m not sure, but I do have some thoughts on what they should be doing.
Atlassian and Newsgator are two established leaders in the respective markets. Both have significant market access, well tuned sales operations and strong product roadmaps. Atlassian specifically has fantastic developer relations, and have built a very pluggable and easily integrated product.
Atlassian and Newsgator should be seeking out their own partnerships, and should be doing deals around their own platforms. More significant news than their Sharepoint integrations would be the announcement of a Newsgator/Atlassian partnership. What would be even more interesting would be a series of announcements in the next 12 months putting these two companies at the center of Enterprise 2.0. Both Atlassian and Newsgator are above this sort of base level ISV partnership, and deserve far more significant participation from Microsoft.
Despite this, these deals are significant and useful in the short-term, and this is big news for both Newsgator and Atlassian.
Update: I will be speaking with a Microsoft spokesperson this afternoon to find out exactly what their intentions are.
Recent posts on the FastForwardBlog
Recent posts on the FastForwardBlog: Dead Paradigms in Organizations and More Dead Paradigms in Organizations.
The end of 2007. Was it the year that Enterprise 2.0 died?
I am feeling bearish on the Enterprise 2.0 world these days. I started off the year by making some big predictions, and I am starting to wonder just how out to lunch I was.
Despite wanting to be down on the whole space, the reality is that a surprising number of those predictions have come true, and a few are (based on the rumor mill) on the cusp of becoming public as well. Despite that, my overwhelming feeling is that the rate of progress has slowed immensely. Thought leaders have dropped off like flies, corporate agendas are rampant in the conversation, and the brightest minds are settled in to comfort zones. The good news is that this is more about rationalization than it is about backtracking.
I’ll be recapping the year next month. Until then, sit tight and let’s see if there are some big announcements. Or Not.
Tip for website developers and designers
…. Get the user to do the work first and only then should you get them to sign up for an account.
It’s a simple thing, but your only hope of having me get my feet wet.
