Why does JCPenney spend so much on Facebook?

I read the bit about JCP putting up banner ads with like buttons and started wonders.

Supposing I had access to million of dollars to get millions of people into my thousand of store locations, and/or my online shopping site, would I set up a DESTINATION on Facebook?

The ordering on Facebook bit make sense.. it's like putting up a new store in a new town. "Go where the people are"

But what about the ads. A banner is luck to get one click. Would you use that to go to Facebook, or send people to your own site?

Amplify’d from mashable.com

JCPenney currently has 1.3 million fans on Facebook. The company moved closer to Facebook integration in October when it began running Facebook “like” buttons in its banner ads. Read more at mashable.com

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Employee Tweets, Posts and Company Social Media– Should Managers Care? | BNET

URL:  http://www.bnet.com/blog/virtual-manager/employee-tweet...

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Is $6 Billion for #Groupon a Great Deal? (thanks @seosteve)

Andrew Mason, Groupon’s founder and chief executive, says his strategy is “finding the holy grail of local.”

Amplify’d from dealbook.nytimes.com

As investors fret that Google’s $6 billion bid for Groupon is too high a price to pay, new details about the company’s sales and growth suggest that it might be more like one of Groupon’s cut-rate deals.

An individual close to Groupon, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the company’s annual revenue is running in excess of $1 billion a year and its subscriber base tripled this summer, to 35 million users.

And an analyst at Barclays Capital, Douglas Anmuth, estimated in a research report released on Tuesday that sales could hit $1.5 billion in 2011.

At those levels, Google would be paying four times next year’s revenues. In contrast, the company paid $3.1 billion, or roughly 10 times sales, for DoubleClick in 2007. It bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, when the online video hub was making less than $11 million a year, according to a company filing.

See more at dealbook.nytimes.com

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Someone believe email isn't dead @iContactcorp gets $40 million

Learning to Love Farmville. Comments on @loritaylor post

If you've somehow missed Farmville and it's huge market, or are in the 80$ of Facebook users who dread seeing users notices, it may be time to start playing.

I hold that anytime you put together a large group of people who aren't rioting for food, you have a MARKET. I'll let Lori tell you about the market and dollars going to Farmville and other games.. I want to comment on the marketing.

We've learned from social media that the future of marketing is to go where your customers are and find a way to serve them.

Think about good old TV as an example. When TV was new, but had got tot he point of being in most every house, ads went to the ones that were where the customers were watching.

Now many use social gaming MORE than TV.. get the picture.

Difference this time is that it's not just for big brands with big budgets. We're not just talking about segmenting (running a Farmville flavored ad in that game) but REAL communication. Some has to figure out out to get into the game, interact with the players without annoying them and the get them whatever they want. And all this can be targeted to any niche that you have previously targeted promotions to.. Just on Farmville, that at least twice as many niches as we used to have.

We are still at the beginning of this. A niche can be pretty big and your competitor likely hasn't figured out that he can buy ads (he will).

In the future, I predict there will be a job category of servicing people inside he games.. either for real world brands or things not yet created.

Still using last years marketing campaign? Last weeks?

Amplify’d from www.socialmediaexaminer.com

Gaming in China is bigger than ads or search, which might explain Google’s reported $100-$200 million investment in Zynga, a top social gaming company. Even a listing by appdata.com of the top five games paints an astonishing picture of growth in social gaming.

Social media is a game-changer. It’s impacting who plays, along with when and where they do it. Because of the viral aspect, social media even affects how games are developed and their shelf life.

According to Zynga, a company’s success revolves around three factors:

Ability to drive new users

Ability to create an engagement loop

Access to an open communication channel Read more at www.socialmediaexaminer.com

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Be Careful Who You Call Stupid

Here's a great rebuttal to an industry pundit who claimed that certain companies have no reason to exist.

Find fault with a companies's business model, state how to improve it, but don't go telling the world that people don't have a right to try.

We just don't know what the next big thing will be till somebody tries it

Amplify’d from www.inc.com

What's a Real Company?

The trouble is that these start-ups seem only trivial until they change the world. Back when I was writing about Twitter two and a half years ago, most serious business people thought that the service was a joke. Then this happened. And this. And this. Today, one can argue about the Twitter's long-term prospects as a business, but it would be crazy to call the company trivial. Twitter has had a marked influence on world events, has become a legitimate source of news, and has made businesses millions of dollars.

In fact, the "dipshit company" formulation sounds eerily similar to Clayton Christensen's definition of disruptive innovation:

Generally, disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches. They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream.

Fred Wilson makes this point especially well:

...you just don't know what is a crazy idea and what is a brilliant idea. And you don't know what is a great team and what is a weak team. Of course, we have our opinions on that. We make those judgment calls every day. But we are often wrong. Read more at www.inc.com

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