Why is Facebook Worth So Much?

Last October Microsoft announced a $240 million advertising investment in Facebook, which put the valuation of the social media company at about $15 billion.

While it is shockingly common to see businesses throw around dollar sums with seemingly little attention to the number of digits left of the decimal point,...

Facebook in the Real World

One of my friends sent me a link to a clip from a BBC comedy show named The Wall this morning.  This Facebook in the real world clip, which is found on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog on The Atlantic‘s site, shows a man knocking on an old acquaintance’s door. ...

Is UserVoice New or Recycled?

Fledging company UserVoice is attempting to provide focus groups to those companies that cannot afford focus groups.  The site's general idea is to moderate user ideas and complaints by means of formal comment boxes, polls, and ranking systems.  The three-person ‘Team UserVoice' is quoted as saying, "UserVoice adds structure to feedback and reduces the overhead of an honest dialog with our users –...

Facebook Applications Analysis – Part 4

This is the final part of my four-part analysis of Facebook applications.  (For the preceding part, click here.)  In this section, I will attempt to make some conclusions and predictions from all of the data that I collected.  For a complete list of every single one of the Facebook pages that I analyzed,...

Facebook Applications Analysis – Part 3

[This post is cross posted at our ImpactWatch site] 

Continuing the study (see the preceding part of the analysis here), I analyzed if there had been recent activity by users regarding the addition of new applications.  Facebook applications can be added or deleted from profiles at any time,...