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Month: July 2014

Facebook’s Revenue & User Base Increases in Q2

July 31, 2014

Facebook, the popular social networking platform, has just announced an over $2.91Billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2014. Facebook has shown an impressive performance and its sky rocketing growth is showing no signs of slowing down. Facebook’s second quarter has shown successful growth, after a momentary dip in its first quarter, and its revenue is at an astronomical gain of 61% over the same period last year. Facebook has also beaten Wall Street’s estimates of $2.81 Billion in revenue and a huge increase in the amount of user data has been observed which Facebook can store and analyze. Facebook’s user base has continued to grow, with monthly active users having risen to 1.32 Billion out of which 1.07 Billion are mobile users. The number of daily active users currently is 829 million while 654 million users are daily using Facebook on mobile.

The company’s emphasis on mobile presence has been gaining momentum in the recent years and mobile advertizing sales have accounted for 62% of its revenue. Facebook has been cashing on the fact that it has good advertizing solutions and a huge customer base. With the addition of video advertizing and improvement in quality of promotions targeted for phones and tablets, Facebook has managed to increase profits due to the increasing number of mobile users. The average price per ad has increased by 123% which goes to show the massive user base of Facebook. Due to huge traffic to the website, the advertizers get higher returns on their investment which enables them to pay more money for future advertizements and thus increase Facebook’s revenue.

Facebook is growing its share in the global mobile advertizing market, which is expected to be up by almost 85% this year. To get a greater slicing of the advertizing budgets, the company also plans to take on TV by buying a video technology company. Facebook Audience Network was also launched to profit from advertizements on other companies’ apps by using the Facebook user data to improve their targeting. Facebook has allowed advertizers to use their user data and the company is in the process of acquiring LiveRail, a startup, to serve video ads on third parties publisher’s sites. Facebook’s mobile and video networks allow for a greater generation of revenue and Facebook can probably extend its third party ad network, much like the Google and Yahoo.

Google Buys Songza

July 21, 2014

Google has officially announced its acquisition of the music streaming service, Songza, for an estimated $39 million to take on giant players like Pandora Media Inc, Spotify and Apple, and to compete in the world of digital music streaming.

Streaming music business is heating up after Apple reportedly bought Beats for $3 billion that creates expert-curated playlists. It was touted that Apple would be soon the fastest growing segment in online streaming market and now, Google’s buyout of Songza, can be a major concern for Apple Inc. and further heighten the rivalry between them. The online streaming business is going to face a stiff competition where iTunes, iHeart Radio and Spotify are already competing for market leadership. Pandora’s dominance over streaming services is likely to take a major beating with this merger as well.

Songza, a 4 year old music intelligence firm, uses contextual curation to build playlists and recommendations to give the right music at the right time to the user and adapts to a user’s musical preferences. The app generates playlists to match the user’s mood at particular times of day and with activities like waking up, working out, commuting, entertaining or unwinding. Such clever data mining is invaluable for Google.

Google’s interest in Songza intensified after it embraced the fact that it had failed to adapt to the streaming business and similar services started gaining pace with other companies. Songza’s playlist creation services are free along with advertizing, which will provide Google with a free music service and the fact that it doesn’t have to invest in creating such a technology altogether will give it an edge. Songza’s 5.5 million user base isn’t that impressive as compared to Pandora that has around 76 million active users, but as of now Google wants to focus more on the product’s features. Owing to its brand appeal, Songza is expected to get enormous potential audience in the meantime.

Songza’s representatives are delighted with this merger and are confident about its future. Songza’s employees will join Google and work from their base in NY. For the time being Songza is likely to remain an independent app and no immediate changes will be made while the company’s technology will be incorporated into Google Play Music, YouTube and other products. However, a few changes like speedy and smarter searching to enhance user experience will be made.

This move by Google is strategic and aims to hold the reins of streaming music business. With high aspirations from Songza, Google hopes to re-invent the music business again.

Google To Shut Down Orkut In September

July 14, 2014

The giant social networking site Orkut, named after its creator a Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten, is officially set for its closure on September 30 this year. Orkut was Google’s first initiative to start a social networking website and was officially launched in 2004, gaining immediate popularity and users all over the world.

In the last few years however, with the upcoming of many other social platforms like Facebook, Google+, Youtube and Blogger, which were widely preferred social networking sites, it was becoming clear that Orkut was not having much of a future. Facebook with an estimated 1.28 billion users is quickly becoming the largest networking site on the net. Orkut however has chosen not to disclose its number of users but it seems Orkut is not fortunate enough to survive the enormous competition. More and more users have multiple accounts on different social networking sites and Orkut is losing popularity.

Google has now confirmed that they would focus their energy and resources on more innovative ideas and have decided to shut down Orkut. In order to help make the transition easier, Google Takeout will help the existing users to export their profile information, photos and community posts from Orkut before the site shuts down completely. The site will also stop registering any new users from July onwards and existing users will no longer be able to log in or export photos to Google+ and any APIs tools related to it after the site goes down. Google play and Apple App Store will remove the Orkut app from their stores as well.

To mark its legacy though, Google will create an archive of Orkut’s online communities. The users will have an option to opt out of it by removing their accounts from Google. Employees currently working on Orkut will most probably be shifted to projects on Google+.

Why Your Business Should Be On Instagram

July 9, 2014

The increasing competition and constant pressure to up the bottom line and sales are key drivers that compel any business today to have a strong online presence. While social media giants like Facebook and Twitter were ruling the roost when it came to brand promotion online, the scenario is changing currently. Both of these have certain drawbacks, which are now easily being overcome through Instagram. If you are one among those who want your business to flourish, read on to know how Instagram can help you create a strong online presence for the same.

When it comes to creating remarkable online presence for your business, visibility is the key factor. The problem with Facebook is that a customer, who has marked even a single post from your page as spam, will no longer have access to any posts from your page. Moreover, Facebook algorithms are such that not all posts from a business will appear in the newsfeed of its subscribers. But that is not the case with Instagram; all posts from your business will be visible to 100 percent of your subscribers. This means your brand is recognizable online.

Instagram offers tremendous potential for growth and expansion. This is primarily because more and more people are switching over to smartphones when it comes to internet surfing. Instagram has a huge user base for its smartphone mobile app; this is a potential opportunity that businesses can cash in on. Mobile apps are much more convenient for customers rather than using a laptop or a personal computer. As per figures, the user base of Instagram went up from 50 million user accounts in the year 2012 to 200 million accounts in 2013. The number is further expected to rise up to 400 million in 2014.

Instagram is a huge bonus for small businesses that get an opportunity to showcase what they have on offer through photographs and hash tags. You can easily reach your target market and build up customers from any part of the world.

Once clientele has been established, it becomes very easy to communicate to customers through Instagram. You can reply to their feedback and comments, and also take in suggestions for improvement. As the visibility improves, you can get more number of customers, and hence increased sales and profits.

Business is all about evolution; you have to market your product or service effectively so as to sell it. Instagram allows that by providing ample exposure and opportunities for promoting a brand.

We at Centex Technologies, provide internet marketing and branding solutions to our clients. For more information, call us at – (855) 375-9654

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