Image via CrunchBase

Facebook filed for a $5 billion IPO on February 1.

“There are more than two billion global Internet users, according to an industry source, and we aim to connect all of them,” the company said in its S-1 form, published by the SEC.

Here are some of the best stats and facts from the S-1:

NASDAQ ticker name: FB

Lead IPO underwriters: Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs
Date founded: 2004
Number of employees: 3,200
Number of monthly active users as of December 31, 2011: 845 million 
Number of daily active users as of December 31, 2011: 483 million

Net profit in 2011: $1 billion
Revenue in 2011: $3.711 billion
Revenue in 2009: $777 million

$3.9 billion: Facebook’s cash pile in 2011
$305 million: Facebook’s cash pile in 2008

85: Percentage of revenue derived from advertising in 2011
95: Percentage of revenue derived from advertising in 2010
98: Percentage of revenue derived from advertising in 2009
12: Percentage of revenue derived from Zynga in 2011

$1.49 million: Mark Zuckerberg’s compensation in 2011
$30.9 million: Sheryl Sandberg’s compensation in 2011

Risk Factors:
Increased mobile engagement — Facebook’s over 400 million mobile users are a threat to the company, because ads and commercial content are not displayed on Facebook mobile apps.

Competition — Facebook asserts that its competitors (listed as Google+, Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut in Brazil and India, and vKontakte in Russia) could pose a risk to the company’s future revenue by making it more difficult to locate Facebook in search or by “integrating competing social networking platforms or features into products they control such as search engines, web browsers, or mobile device operating systems.”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• Quick Summary: Facebook’s IPO Filing (wire.kapitall.com)
• Live: Facebook’s Ipo Filing Is Here (businessinsider.com)

Image by dannysullivan via Flickr

Article From HuffingtonPost Written By Mandy Jenkins 

When Facebook launched its Subscribe feature in mid-September, quite a few journalists sighed in relief. This, we thought, is what we needed: A way to communicate with a larger audience of readers while maintaining a somewhat private personal life behind a friend wall. I’m sure it’s a great option to other professionals, celebrities and wannabe celebrities as well.

I enabled subscriptions the day they launched, mostly to test it out. After all, who would be interested in reading the occasionally inane updates of a non-famous non-reporter? More than 9,000 subscribers later, I found out.

In the six weeks since, I’ve found some things I like and dislike about the feature. This ongoing experiment has helped me to formulate a few tips that may help anyone who wants to use this feature.

Getting It Set Up

• Customize your profile information.

Your profile will be open to the public when you turn on Subscribe, so this is the place to lure people in (and possibly turn others away). Click on “Edit Profile” on the top right of your profile page. Use the ‘about me’ space to describe who you and and what you do.

This is also a good space to lay out what subscribers can expect from you. Do you frequently share links or start discussions on sports or politics? Say so. Will you talk about your personal life? What is your policy on friending?

I also use this area to put down a couple of ground rules, particularly “Don’t be a creep.”

• Adjust the privacy settings on all aspects of your profile.

If you adjust nothing here, it could very well be visible to the entire Internet. You can adjust whether areas such as your location, connections, contact info and interests should be publicly visible or shown only to friends (or certain groups of friends).

Keep in mind, while you might consider your life to be an open book, your friends and family may not be as comfortable. Think about their privacy when adjusting the ‘Friends and Family’ settings and remember whoever finds you will be able to find them.

• Decide what to do about those past posts.

In your privacy settings, there is an option to limit the visibility of past posts. If you have any doubt about the updates, photos and other stuff you’ve shared on Facebook in the past (including those crazy college photos), you might want to check this so new subscribers can’t dig back through your possibly sordid history.

You may also want to look at your photos page and set individually which past albums and images can be seen by the public.

• Set how people can find and contact you.

If you want to be easily found on Facebook (and why would you turn on Subscribe if you didn’t?), you need to be sure you’ll come up in searches. In your privacy settings, select ‘How You Connect’. Here is where you can set how strangers will find and contact you. If you’re actively looking to reduce friend requests, you should limit those who can send them to at least ‘Friends of Friends’.

• Turn on Subscribe.

Do this with the button on the top right of your profile page. This is also where you want to decide if those who subscribe to you can post comments on your posts. Your comment numbers will go up – and they will require work (see below), but consider this: Why would you read something you can’t comment on? Weigh this option carefully.

• Take a look at how the public sees your page.

At the top right of your page, click “View As”. Click “public” to see what subscribers will see or check how certain friends see your page by entering their name.

Follow Mandy Jenkins on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjenkins

Related articles

• Facebook Privacy: 6 Key Moments (informationweek.com)
• The secret to using Facebook at work (guardian.co.uk)

Image by dpstyles™ via Flickr

Time magazine recently announced that the late Steve Jobs has been nominated to be the magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year. If he wins, he would be the first person to receive the award posthumously and the second tech titan to win in as many years. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg took home the honor in 2010.

Jobs has graced the cover of Time several times. Since his first appearance in 1982, Jobs has been on the cover alone, or accompanied by one of his inventions, a total of seven times, including a memorial cover the week he died.

But not everyone thinks the Apple co-founder deserves the Person of the Year title. International Business Times argued that, though Jobs has contributed much in his lifetime, during 2011 specifically his cancer battle prevented him from doing enough to qualify for the honor.

“When judged on his contributions to the world this year, Jobs had understandably done very little compared to the other nominees,” wrote the IBT, also pointing out that while Jobs’ products have made our lives more enjoyable, the contributions he has made do not measure up to other nominees who are “fighting to make the world a better place.”

The rest of the Person of the Year nominees were chosen by a 6-person panel that included “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams, Attorney Anita Hill, conservative lobbyist Grover Norquist, actor Jesse Eisenberg, “Saturday Night Live” writer and actor Seth Meyers and Chef Mario Batali.  Here The Complete List :-

• Elizabeth Warren - U.S. Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren was nominated by attorney Anita Hill.

• Steve Jobs - The late Apple co-founder was nominated by “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams.

• Populists - Actor Jesse Eisenberg nominated populists. “The major shifts globally and domestically have been made by individuals that have formed together to resist, reject, and often times even topple leaders. They’ve been movements of populism,” Eisenberg said during his nomination speech.

• Bankers - Bankers were nominated by celebrity chef Mario Batali, because, as he stated in his nomination speech, ”They’re not heroes, but they are people that had a really huge effect on the way the world is operating.”

• Angry People - ”Saturday Night Live” head writer Seth Meyers nominated “angry people” saying, “I do think that angry people are the Person of the Year because I think they’re right to be angry.”

• Mohamed Bouazizi - Conservative lobbyist Grover Norquist nominated the Tunisian vegetable vendor whose horrific self-immolation Norquist credits with setting off the revolutions that would become known as the Arab Spring. Norquist said, ”I think he set off something that wouldn’t have happened without his act, at least not when it did.”

• Michael Pollan - Mario Batali also nominated journalist and food activist Michael Pollan, saying, “In terms of changing the way people think, I’m a big fan of Michael Pollen.”

• Esraa Abdel Fatah - Esraa Abdel Fatah, “one of the lead organizers of the Arab Spring” also received a nomination from Anita Hill.

Related articles

• Steve Jobs nominated for Time Person of the Year (news.cnet.com)
• Steve Jobs Nominated for Time’s “Person of the Year” (forbes.com)

Image by TaranRampersad via Flickr

For many, being “unfriended” is a fate worse than death.

But it’s not something you’d know about right away.

In previous versions of Facebook, there was no easy way to see which of your “friends” had decided to sever your relationship on the social network. Sure, you could always go to their profile to check, but that required the effort of remembering who they were.

While “old Facebook” made the online friendship breakup a bit less-in-your-face, the new Facebook Timelinemakes it way easier to see who’s decided to ax your online friendship.

If you’ve already enabled your new profile, you can check it out right now.

Here’s how you can see who’s unfriended you:

First, pick a year from your timeline (any year since you joined will do).

Then, find the “Friends” box for that year. This will tell you how many people you added in this year.

Click on the link that reads something like “Made ___ New Friends.” That link will bring up a new box, showing all the people you were friends with. If an “Add Friend” button appears next to their name, then you are no longer friends.

Granted this goes both ways. The “Add Friend” button will appear next to the people you’ve unfriended, not just the people who have unfriended you. It doesn’t show who ended the relationship.

This feature, however, lies at the core of the new Facebook changes, providing insight into how a person’s life and online relationship change over time. As Mark Zuckerberg said at the f8 keynote, the new profile is really going to give people a chance to put their whole history online.

Whether users regard this as a privacy breach remains to be seen, but it must be noted that these “unfriendings” are only easily available to users looking at their own profiles. If someone else is looking at your “Friends” box from a certain year, they can see that you were friends once, but not the current status of the relationship.

Want to know whats new in Facebook Timeline Click.

Source :- http://www.buzzfeed.com & http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• HOW TO: Use the New Facebook to See Who Has Unfriended You (mashable.com)
• Facebook’s new Timeline tells you who unfriended you (thenextweb.com)
• See Who Unfriended You on Facebook with New Timeline (blogs.sfweekly.com)
• Use the New Facebook To See Who Unfriends You [Facebook] (gizmodo.com)
• How To Use The New Facebook To See Who Unfriends You (businessinsider.com)
• Unintended Facebook Feature of the Day (geeks.thedailywh.at)

Facebook is dramatically redesigning its users’ profile pages to create what CEO Mark Zuckerberg says is a “new way to express who you are.”

Zuckerberg introduced the Facebook “timeline” Thursday in San Francisco at the company’s f8 conference for some 2,000 entrepreneurs, developers and journalists. The event is also being broadcast to more than 100,000 online viewers.

The timeline is reminiscent of an online scrapbook, with the most important photos and text that users have shared on Facebook over the years. It’s Facebook’s attempt at growing from an online hangout to a homestead, where people express their real selves and merge their online and offline lives. The timeline can go back to include years before Facebook even existed, so users can add photos and events from, say 1995 when they got married or 1970 when they were born.

Zuckerberg took the stage after a humorous skit, in which Saturday Night Live actor Andy Samberg impersonated him. The real Mark Zuckerberg looked considerably more playful and at ease than he has in past events, suggesting he is growing into his role as the public face of Facebook.

But he quickly got down to business as he introduced the timeline as “the story of your life – all your stories, all your apps and a new way to express who you are.”

Expanding on its ubiquitous “like” buttons, Zuckerberg said Facebook will now let users connect to things even if they don’t want to “like” them.

“We are making it so you can connect to anything you want. Now you don’t have to like a book, you can just read a book,” he said. “You don’t have to like a movie; you can just watch a movie.”

Check out our live blog from f8 to read about the biggest announcements as they happened.

• New ‘Cover’ Photo - While past iterations of the Facebook profile have featured a customizable photo that sat near the upper left of the page, users can now top their profile with a large “Cover” photo that stretches across the user’s Timeline. This will be in addition to the Profile Picture, which will act as an avatar of sorts for News Feed updates and posting on others’ walls.

• New Layout For Updates Posted - The Timeline is wider than the old profile and displays content in two columns. Posts appear in a continuous stream in chronological order, from top (most recent) to bottom (oldest). The layout is very visual and emphasizes large pictures and important events.

• Yearly, Monthly Navigation - The Timeline will feature a navigation panel along the right side of the page. This list of years, which can expand to display months, allows users to quickly jump to a spot in their timeline and view their posts from that moment in time. You can also manually scroll up and down through the timeline to search activity by month and year.

• Mobile Interface - The new mobile interface on the Facebook app will also feature the Timeline re-design.

• Private Log - The private log stores all your facebook activity so you can choose what to share in your timeline and with whom.

• Apps In Your TImeline - Apps–including what you’re listening to, reading, cooking, watching, etc.–will showcase your interests and activities in digest form so that friends can quickly catch up on what you’re into and share with you simultaneously. For example, if you’re listening to a song on a Rdio that’s synched with Facebook, that activity will appear as an update in your friends’ Ticker widget. That friend can then click your update, start listening to the same song, and even chat with you while doing so.

• Release In “A Few Weeks” - Timeline won’t be available to users for “a few weeks,” so savor that old profile while you still can (or start to get excited for the new one!). Read more about the new Facebook at their official blog here.

Related articles

• Bits: Facebook Unveils Timeline View and Media Partnerships (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Facebook’s Zuckerberg unveils revamped profile: Timeline (zdnet.com)
• Facebook Timeline Redefines User Profiles (mashable.com)
• Facebook Announces Timelines and Improvements to Open Graph (hubspot.com)
• Facebook redesigns profiles, adds ‘timeline’ (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Facebook debuts Timeline, a dramatically new kind of profile (gigaom.com)

Image via Wikipedia

The talk show queen is scheduled to do a live video interview with Facebook on Thursday, September 8, almost exactly a year after Oprah brought Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on her show.

The discussion with Oprah will be streamed via Facebook Live and will kick off at 1:30PM PT. Facebook is inviting people to submit their questions for Oprah on a Facebook Page dedicated to the event.

Some of the queries submitted so far include, “Mrs. Winfrey, if you had one week to live what would you do with your week?” or “What drives you Oprah to stay connected with the people of the world?” One user also asked Oprah to ask Barbra Streisand a question on her behalf (“We know that you are friends with Barbra Streisand… Could you please thank Barbra Streisand for my husband and I? Because of Barbra, we met the love of our lives – each other!”).

AllThingsD suggests that the idea for the interview might be traced back to this year’s exclusive Allen & Company conference, where Oprah “apparently hit it off with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.”

The New York Post reports that Oprah’s trip to Silicon Valley may be about more about an “internet intervention” than an interview. “The talk show queen plans to huddle with top tech players next week to gin up some ideas for reviving her flagship site, Oprah.com, whose traffic has plummeted since her daytime talk show ended in May,” writes the Post.

Facebook has previously hosted live video interviews with President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush , among other notable figures.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• Facebook To Interview Oprah (huffingtonpost.com)
• A Salute to Oprah from Skype (blogs.skype.com)
• Oprah Winfrey to do live interview at Facebook next week (zdnet.com)
• Oprah Will Answer All Your Burning Questions In Upcoming Live Facebook Chat! (lukewilliamss.wordpress.com)
• Oprah Winfrey turns to Facebook and Twitter execs for help (thenextweb.com)
• Oprah to Appear on Facebook Live (1ntheknow.wordpress.com)

Facebook executives have choice words for Google’s efforts to bring casual games to its fledgling social network.

A little less than two months after Google launched its fledgling social network, Google+, Silicon Valley’s latest rivalry is heating up.

Google+ (GOOG) launched in June with an innovative group video chat dubbed Hangout. One week later, Facebook announced a video chat feature of its own in cooperation with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Skype. Last week, Google announced that games like Zynga Poker and Angry Birds would find a home on Google+. A day later, Facebook unveiled a slew of improvements to its games platform, including a newsfeed-like live ticker with game updates and higher-resolution gaming.

If it wasn’t clear before, it is now: Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg is paying very close attention.

At an event last week, Facebook director of game partnerships Sean Ryan had some choice words for his new competitor. “Google has emulated aspects of our system, which is what they have the right to do,” he said. “We just need to be better.” He’s referring to the way the companies make money from casual online games like Farmville and Words With Friends. Players pay for play time or virtual goods within the games, and the social networks take a cut of the sales. Currently, Facebook reportedly takes 30% from game developers, whereas Google takes just 5%.

The similarities between the two models have obviously ruffled some feathers. At the event, Facebook’s Ryan argued that Google’s gaming foray was like McDonald’s (MCD) recent efforts to offer premium coffee, competing in the same space as Starbucks (SBUX). (That business went on to become huge for McDonald’s…) “Google is at 5% because they don’t have any users,” he said dryly. Google declined to comment on the statements, but confirmed the percentage it planned to take from game makers.

There’s good reason for the two technology giants to see games as a new front in their tussle for social users. The global virtual goods market — arguably the largest revenue stream for casual games makers — is expected to more than double to $20.3 billion by 2014 according to research and investment bank ThinkEquity. Jeremiah Owyang, a principal analyst for Altimeter Group, notes that it is also a way to reach a coveted demographic. “When we saw casual gaming growth, it was amazing to see that the most common gamer was a middle-aged woman in the Midwest, and there’s a lot of advertising dollars associated with that,” he says.

But according to Owyang, both services have their work cut out for them. Google+ is off to a good start, but he doesn’t think a compelling reason exists yet for mainstream users to switch over from Facebook. That’s why the company announced it was going after casual games, to attract new users. Meanwhile, Facebook needs to be less reactive to Google+’s announcements and become more aggressive, he says.

With an estimated 25 million registered users, Google+ has a long way to go before it catches up to Facebook’s 750 million users. What’s clear is that both companies are likely to continue watching each other’s moves closely.

Source :- http://tech.fortune.cnn.com

Related articles

• Facebook: Google+ has no users (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
• Facebook: Google+ has no users – Fortune Tech (mbcalyn.wordpress.com)
• Facebook: No One’s Playing On Google Plus Yet (allfacebook.com)
• Facebook: Google+ has ‘no users’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Facebook Says That Google+ Has No Users (tech.slashdot.org)
• Games won’t redeem Google+ (infoworld.com)

Image by eirikso via Flickr

Randi Zuckerberg, who is director of marketing at Facebook and also the sister of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — is leaving the company after six years to start a new media firm to help companies become more social.

In her resignation letter, which is below in its entirety, Zuckerberg said:

“I have spent my years at Facebook pouring my heart and soul into innovating and pushing the media industry forward by introducing new concepts around live, social, participatory viewing that the media industry has since adopted. We have made incredible progress, but there is still much to be done and other ways I can affect change. Now is the perfect time for me to move outside of Facebook to build a company focused on the exciting trends underway in the media industry.”

Facebook confirmed the departure and in a statement said: “We can confirm Randi has decided to leave Facebook to start her own company. We are all grateful for her important service.”

There was no comment from Mark Zuckerberg directly.

The company Randi Zuckerberg is creating is apparently called RtoZ Media, which is obviously a play on her name.

The move is likely to be much noticed, since Randi Zuckberberg has been at Facebook since its early days and has also been a high-profile and charismatic personality both inside the social networking company and in Silicon Valley.

She has been on maternity leave for the last three months, after having her first child, and sources said she has told them that being away from the rapid-fire pace at Facebook has given her time to reflect on what she wants to do in the next phase of her career.

Presumably, leaving Facebook will give Zuckerberg greater freedom to work for a range of companies without a conflict. That said, it’s unlikely she’ll take on Google+ as a client.

Zuckerberg is certainly going out on a high note — she was recently nominated for an Emmy award in the category of live coverage of a current news event for her work on “Facebook Live,” a real-time news show she created and hosted for the company.

Zuckerberg, who is definitely not a geek like her brother, noted in her letter to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and communications head Elliot Schrage: “I am thankful for the strong mentorship, guidance, and support, which is empowering me to follow my dreams and show that you don’t have to be an engineer to be a hacker.”

Here is the letter and also a video I did with her last year when Zuckerberg was covering the Golden Globes in Beverly Hills for Facebook early last year:

Randi Zuckerberg Letter 8.3.11

Source :- http://allthingsd.com

Related articles

• Randi Zuckerberg leaves Facebook for her own startup (allthingsd.com)
• Randi Zuckerberg to leave Facebook to start social media firm (news.cnet.com)
• Exclusive: Randi Zuckerberg Leaves Facebook to Start New Social Media Firm (Resignation Letter) (allthingsd.com)
• Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg quits to start media company (digitaltrends.com)
• That Zucks: Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Quits Her Job at Facebook (techland.time.com)
• Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Leaves Facebook To Start A Company (thenewspundit.com)

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook’s marketing director, has a fix for cyberbullying: stop people from doing anything online without their names attached.

Facebook requires all members to use their real names and email addresses when joining the social network — a policy that has been difficult at times to enforce, as the prevalence of spam accounts or profiles assigned to people’s pets suggest.

Zuckerberg, who is Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, argued that putting an end to anonymity online could help curb bullying and harassment on the web.

“I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away,” she said during a panel discussion on social media hosted Tuesday evening by Marie Claire magazine. “People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. … I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.”

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has also made this suggestion, calling online anonymity “dangerous” and predicting that governments will eventually “demand” that people use their names for all online activity.

But the proposal to tie real-world identities to online actions is a controversial one, with many privacy and free speech advocates countering that anonymity is necessary to protect dissidents and other individuals, such as sexual abuse victims.

Gigaom’s Matthew Ingram wrote recently, “Many people believe that requiring real names will solve the problems of trolls and bad behavior, but they don’t — and that policy can have negative consequences in terms of suppressing dialogue about important topics.”

Though pressed several times to name what new features Facebook will offer to better safeguard security on the social networking site, Zuckerberg declined to offer specific examples of forthcoming initiatives.

“There’s so much more we can do,” she said. “We’re actively tying to work with partners like Common Sense Media and our safety advisory committee.”

Erin Andrews, an ESPN anchor who had a naked video of her posted online by a stalker, joined Zuckerberg as a panelist and addressed her struggles to have the illegally-obtained video removed from the web. She became emotional at points during the conversation and described her frustration working Google and other companies that declined to pull the video from the websites hosting it.

Andrews praised Google for its “remarkable” contribution to the campaign against bullying titled “It gets better,” but noted she also found it inconsistent: Google searches for her name still turn up the images and videos posted by her stalker, even as the search giant professes to be taking a stand against online harassment.

“So when does it get better? I’m confused,” said Andrews, who suggested that her situation may have been viewed differently because it involves a “woman in her 30s.” “It’s still cyberbullying. Somebody needs to step in. As a family we’re always asking, what is it going to take?”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• Yes, It’s Time For Online Anonymity to Go Away (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Mark Zuckerberg’s Foe Is Losing His Allies [Facebook] (gawker.com)
• MC Hosts Panel on Social Media and Privacy (marieclaire.com)
• Mark Zuckerberg Suggests Kids Under 13 Should Be Allowed On Facebook (blogoholic.in)
• Zuckerberg appears to Think Google Plus Will Slay Facebook! (eset.com)
• Mark Zuckerberg | MediaGuardian 100 (guardian.co.uk)

Image via CrunchBase

Post from Mashable authored by Tom Anderson

Tom Anderson is the founder and former president of MySpace. MySpace sold in 2005, and Anderson left the company in early 2009. You can find him on Google+, Twitter or Facebook.

Sometimes when you follow a trend, you fall flat on your face.

Early adopters of Google+ have declared that Twitter is now “obsolete” and that they are “bored” using Twitter. Most suggestions for improvement are a list of Google+ features that Twitter doesn’t have.

Yet, even while Twitter’s own CEO, Dick Costolo, has maintained that Twitter will remain simple, the company’s founder and executive chairman Jack Dorsey recently let go four key product people from Twitter, indicating some kind of change is in the works. So what’s @Jack to do? What does the future of Twitter look like?

Taking Measured Risks

Facebook is actually instructive on this front. One of the things that founder Mark Zuckerberg and crew have done exceptionally well is to know what and what not to incorporate from competitors. They’ve evolved their vision, but instead of jumping on every trend, they’ve found ways to expand by incorporating the best innovations of their competitors into a holistic vision that’s kept Facebook growing.

When Facebook had 12 million uniques thanks to nearly every college user in America using the service and MySpace had 80 million uniques (what seemed like “everyone else” at the time), it was a bold move to open up the site to the outside world. In hindsight, it may have seemed risk-free, but it could have killed the entire feel of Facebook. They moved slowly, adding companies, high school students and eventually went fully public. It wasn’t a given that this wouldn’t destroy the closed, private and wonderful service Zuckerberg had created for college students.

When Twitter became a significant force, Facebook tried to acquire the youngish company. A deal was never reached and Facebook ended up up incorporating the status update into the newsfeed — which really made the newsfeed more interesting than it ever would have been otherwise. Again, a great move that fit in with the evolving vision of Facebook as a “sharing platform” (before that, Zuckerberg used to talk more about “efficient communication“).

But it’s also instructive to look at the things Facebook did not do. To compete with MySpace, lots of people thought Facebook should offer some level of profile customization (definitely controversial), but even more thought they should launch a music service. Facebook toyed with the idea by briefly allowing users to put some apps on their profile pages, and they gave priority status to iLike, a music service that let you create playlists. I’d heard rumors at the time that Facebook had actually built a full customization platform for profiles that they never launched. Just this month, Facebook decided to allow users to put images and videos into comments (something that probably would have been too MySpace-y back in the day). Facebook knew when to add feature at the right time. And that music service? Well, it may still be coming.

What This Means for Twitter

So what does this teach us? It’s difficult to extract a lesson or set of rules from these examples. It’s hard to know how to evolve your service, and it’s hard to say what Twitter should do to continue its growth trajectory. I think the answer lies in trying to step back and understand what’s the real value you provide to your users. How can your service evolve to realize that mission without following every trend that rules the day?

In Twitter’s case, is the 140 character constraint really a benefit or is it a leftover relic of the text-message infrastructure that smart phones have replaced? As pundits and users, we can all make our demands about what we want from Twitter, but that probably only tells us about our own personal biases. Twitter will undoubtedly do better to analyze its own data to understand its own user behavior.

Then they can look at those numbers in the context of competitors’ numbers that are public. Who’s driving more engagement, where and how?

You might say, you and I don’t know jack about Twitter. Only @Jack knows jack about Twitter.

Depending on what he learns, he’ll make the tough decision of what to change and what to keep the same. Maybe he’ll test, iterate, analyze and revise. He’s already decided he needs a new product staff, so change seems to be coming.

No answers here, but hopefully they’re the right questions.

Editor’s note: This post was adapted from a post originally published on Google+.

Related articles

• What Twitter Can Learn From Facebook [OPINION] (mashable.com)
• Zuckerberg named as most powerful person in UK media (digitaltrends.com)
• Facebook: Next MySpace? (foxnews.com)
• Facebook’s Video Chat: Not Really Too Awesome (techattitude.com)
• 4 Morals from MySpace’s Fall (blogs.forbes.com)
• Could What Happened to MySpace Happen to Facebook? (techland.time.com)