Who would bet against Facebook today, as it readies for the largest initial public offering (IPO) in the United States in the coming months?

Yet, amid the excitement, one thing that investors will read about is this troubling reminder of the threat coming from rival social networking efforts from the likes of Google, which can take away key advertising dollars.

Even while Mark Zuckerberg and company are expected to raise an initial US$5 billion from a red hot IPO, there is worry that Google will expand its offerings to target the activities that make loads of money for Facebook now.

Facebook’s 845 million active users upload 250 million photos a day, make 2.7 billion comments or “likes” a day and are part of 100 billion friendships online, according to details released for the IPO. Together, they made the eight-year-old company a neat US$1 billion  profit last year – an achievement, since users don’t always equal dollars.

Facebook’s cash cow? Advertising, which contributes 88 per cent of the company’s revenues. Yes, those little tiles on the side of the page that your friends “like” or recommend. The rest of the revenue comes from Zynga, which creates those addictive – and sometimes annoying – social games for Facebook users.

The issues? The mobile version of Facebook does not display ads, so the company could conceivably lose a stream of revenue as more users go online with their smartphones. The question then becomes one of making mobile users view the ads without irritating them enough to force them to quit using Facebook altogether.

The other issue has to do with the company’s focus on advertising, say analysts. This means it is susceptible to the fortunes of the advertising market as well as moves from rivals like Google, which has been gaining traction with its Google+ efforts of late, said Ovum’s Jan Dawson.

He pointed out: “As Google seeks to ramp up Google+, it will eat into Facebook’s share of the social networking market and with it Facebook’s share of related advertising. In addition, since much of Facebook’s revenue comes from gaming apps, as Google expands the gaming platform it is building with Google+, it threatens to dilute Facebook’s relationships with Zynga, which accounts for 12% of its revenue, and other major partners.”

Indeed, Facebook admits the threat from rivals as much in its IPO documents to the US authorities. Besides Google, it includes Microsoft and Twitter on a long list of rivals going forward.

Most industry watchers say Google+, the closest competitor, still has some way to go to shake Facebook from its deeply-entrenched position, but the search and advertising king’s alternative is ramping up fast.

Google+ already has 100 million users today after just seven months, according to one analyst, and the figure is expected to go up to 400 million by the end of 2012.

With a successful initial public offering and the recent opening of its Asia Pacific (APAC) headquarters in Singapore under its belt, professional networking website LinkedIn is gearing up for more growth in the coming year despite a projected economic downturn looming on the horizon.

In fact, you might even say the company is counting on it.

“Talent remains key to how companies compete,” said Arvind Rajan, Managing Director and Vice President of LinkedIn in Asia Pacific and Japan. LinkedIn aims to elevate the role of these “talents” to be an important source of competitive advantage for companies.

For the individual, this means that maintaining a robust professional network of trusted contacts will be an important advantage. And with 135 million members around the world, LinkedIn is positioning itself as the ideal social network for this purpose.

Nowhere is LinkedIn’s growth more apparent than in APAC. Research firm comScore reports that LinkedIn visitors from the region grew by 132 per cent from March 2010 to March 2011, and its number of APAC members exceeds 18 million. Update: The most recent number of LinkedIn members in APAC is more than 20 million.

Members accessing the service from their mobile devices also saw a huge jump of 400 per cent.

In preparation for its regional push, LinkedIn will be embarking on a hiring spree, aiming to double its current local base of around 10 employees.

The website, currently available in 14 languages, will also be localised for more markets.

In addition, the company will be looking into developing apps for more mobile platforms. Currently, the official LinkedIn app is available on the iOS, Android, BlackBerry and webOS platforms, but is conspicuously absent on Microsoft’s up-and-coming Windows Phone 7.

In a short interview with Techgoondu, Rajan also revealed that while LinkedIn does keep tabs on growing competing services such as Facebook app BranchOut, it is still confident of leading the pack. “We do look at what they’re doing, but I don’t think they’re really taking off, so we’re not that worried at the moment,” he said.

“People still generally see Facebook as a personal social network, not a place for work,” he added.

From the angry to the sarcastic, Singapore’s frustrated train commuters have taken to Facebook pages – real and fake – to vent their unhappiness at the massive train disruption yesterday. Thousands of commuters were left stranded when train services on segments of the North-South line were disrupted during yesterday’s evening peak travelling  hours.

Folks on one particular train, trapped in a tunnel between stations, resorted to smashing a fire extinguisher at a window to get fresh air, after power came off and the air conditioning went offline. They then hiked to the nearest station in a dimly-lit tunnel, during the latest but one of the most serious disruptions to the city’s train services.

Today, Internet users were fast to vent their anger at SMRT on the social media space, whether this was through a fake SMRT Facebook page set up by online pranksters or on SMRT’s own page.

On the fake SMRT page, called SMRT Ltd (Feedback), people are seen pouring scorn at the transport operator.

Facebook user, Harul Fariz, asked: “If SMRT cannot handle these few existing lines without any major disruptions, can we expect more of the same to happen when more new lines appear as the complexity of the systems increases?”

Clearly angry, another user, Aaron Ang, suggested that SMRT work with the Singapore tourism authorities to build a fun ride. ”Oh wait. Here’s a suggestion. Why don’t you work with STPB to come out with a ‘Uniquely Singapore’ attraction: Come experience the thrills and excitement of suffocating in a train, breaking a window, walking through tunnels in a WORLD-CLASS SMRT train!”

Over at a real SMRT Facebook page, the Ride SMRT page, commuters too were unhappy.

Said Facebook user Kenny Giam: “SMRT must be held accounted for what has happened on 15th Dec. You guys pride themselves as First World Transportation but in truth, SMRT is worst than than even third world countries.

“In your eyes, profit and money are the only things you people care about. First Increase Cab Fare and then when the mrt break down, start to send out information to all your cabs to rush down to grab “income opportunity”. This is like trying to make profit from people or country’s plight. Totally unethical!! Its like the shame of the country!”

It didn’t help, of course, that SMRT had sent out some rather insensitive-sounding advice yesterday to its taxi fleet, which it also operates along with the trains.

It is understandable that SMRT wanted to direct taxis towards MRT stations to alleviate the human jam, but coming days after highly unpopular taxi price hikes, the announcement of an “income opportunity” read like SMRT was coordinating its resources to fleece helpless commuters in a time of crisis.

To its credit, SMRT has since apologised for this particular mess-up, explaining that the message was sent from a template. While the anger is going to take a long time to assuage, perhaps what stands out amid the unhappiness on Facebook is that some commuters are grateful for the efforts of the rank and file staff who had to work overnight to restore and ready train services for today – even if this was posted on the fake page.

Said Facebook user, Ryan Joseph: “Kudos to the engineers and all the other men and women on the ground. As for the senior management .. enjoy your jolly good salaries in unique little Singapore with no competition.”

A third of a group of about 2,800 youths told a survey conducted by networking vendor Cisco earlier this year that they considered the Internet as important as some of the most basic needs for survival. More than half of them said they could not live without the Internet, citing it as something that was “integral” to their everyday lives.

The findings are part of the second annual Cisco Connected World Technology Report, which surveyed college students and young professionals in 14 different countries, including the United States, Brazil, India and Australia, in May and June this year.

Besides showing how tethered these young users between 18 and 29 were, the survey also highlighted interesting facts about social media, the use of mobile devices, and the privileging of the Internet over other material luxuries.

Four out of five of those polled consider the Internet to be “vitally important” and part of their “daily life’s sustenance”. Up to 62 per cent say they cannot live without the Internet, and 40 per cent would rather hang out on the Internet than go on dates or hang out with friends.

Interestingly, more than one in four college students globally (27 per cent) said staying updated on Facebook was more important than partying, dating, listening to music, or hanging out with friends, according to the study done between May and June 2011.

And Mark Zuckerberg must be feeling real good- 91 per cent of college students and 88 per cent of employees globally said they have a Facebook account. Of those, 81 percent of college students and 73 per cent of employees check their Facebook page at least once a day.

The costs of productivity can be hefty though. College students tend to be interrupted at least once per hour due to online media. The prevalence of social media has also blurred the line between work and private life, with 66 per cent of employees who use Twitter follow either their bosses or colleagues.

For the full details of the study, hit up http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns1120/index.html

(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Facebook has taken down an app developer’s ads promoting this Google+ account and promptly banned his other ads on the social networking site, as the tussle for control of the Internet heats up between the online giants.

According to reports over the weekend, Michael Lee Johnson had put up an ad telling fellow Facebook users to visit his Google+ page, where he claimed to be an “Internet geek, app developer (and) technological virtuoso”. But a few days later, Facebook yanked his ads out, saying that he had flouted their terms and conditions.

Facebook also said he was banned from advertising on the social networking site, in a cryptic e-mail that is now circulating over the Internet:

“Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.”  (Source: Time TechLand)

And so the app developer’s story has become the latest in a deepening saga between the two Internet giants.

Why are they at each other? Facebook sells the most display ads in the United States now, and is set to collect US$2 billion in ad revenues this year and grab 20 per cent of the market. Google, once the online ad king, is obviously not happy to stand idly by. And in Google+, it seems to have finally found an alternative to make Facebook sit up – or start resorting to some anti-competitive behaviour.

Launching its new service just weeks ago, Google had signed up more than 10 million users in no time and had to temporarily stop invitations to join. Though it is still a long way off Facebook’s expected 750 million users, the search giant has not come this close to upsetting the social media network king for years.

The next year or so will be interesting to see if Google manages to leverage on its e-mail, maps and search services to knock Facebook off the perch. Lest Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg forgets, that’s how fast things change with social media. Remember MySpace?

This is it, folks. No more half-hearted and half-baked social products. Google has revealed their trump card in the war for your online social life and gone all in with their chips.  Google+ is an amalgamation of all of Google’s efforts to penetrate the social sphere thus far.

Although initially open only to a select number of users, the service has since expanded into the hands of quite a good chunk of people. But how will this latest foray into social networking fare for Google?  I spent the last few days playing with Google+ and messing around with it, so here’s my verdict, for what it’s worth.

Google+ is no Facebook killer, but it’s nothing to scoff at either.

The first thing a new user should notice about Google+ is the striking resemblance it has to Facebook. That’s not a bad thing, since Facebook’s user interface generally does a great job at organising the various parts that make up its full service.

Beyond this superficial resemblance, Google has brought some fresh ideas to the online social networking table, including the much-hyped “Circles” feature.

Circles lets us organise the people in our lives in a more sensible manner, instead of classifying them all as “friends” like what Facebook does. I can put my family members in a “Family” circle and selectively share with them only the things I choose to. No prizes for guessing which circle my boss will go into.

Another interesting feature is the ability to start Hangouts: video group chats which, again, you can selectively invite and display to your various circles. This seemed to be Google+’s unique feature, until Facebook recently unveiled its long-rumoured partnership with Skype to bring video chat to Facebook users, complete with an overhauled chat function.

There are numerous other features on Google+, but other than a differing paradigm in handling your online social contacts, it’s not that different from Facebook. Without a unique feature to hook users in, Google+ will remain a plaything for us geeks.

Plus, we’re so entrenched in Facebook that there’s no point moving to a new service if the bulk of our friends don’t move. I, for one, am not going to download all my Facebook photos and then upload them again to Google+.

One advantage Google+ has right now is its overall tie-in with the rest of Google’s services. Google is updating the design of all its major Web apps to provide an overall consistency to their look and feel. There is a huge potential there for Google to integrate their Web apps into a one-stop portal where you spend most of your time online.

Good reviews and optimistic outlooks on Google+ are pouring out all over the Web but don’t forget that these are written by early adopters, who love shiny new tech playthings. Facebook now has more than 750 million users and it’s going to be a mammoth task for Google to win them over. Still, don’t discount Google yet, since being late to the game, it has plenty of time to polish Google+ up.

Have you tried Google+? Let us know what you think of Google’s new attempt at being social!

In what could possibly be the most exciting iPad-related announcement since the iPad itself, word is going around that our social overlords at Palo Alto are finally preparing an app for the iPad.

According to The New York Times, “people briefed on Facebook’s plans” have revealed that the app has been in the works for almost a year, going through several design iterations that fully optimises it for the tablet form factor. It is even reported that Mark Zuckerberg himself has been “heavily invested in the process”.

This seems like a drastic reversal from Zuckerberg, who previously said that the company had no plans for an iPad app as he doesn’t consider the iPad to be a mobile device. Currently, iPad users who want to check what their friends are up to will have to fire up Safari and use the web interface, or rely on a third party app like Friendly or MyPad.

Zuckerberg’s right. The iPad opened up a whole new class of mobile devices, one which almost every single big-name consumer electronics company is now vying to enter. Soon, we’ll have to contend with iOS, Android (and its terrible mess of hardware difference), webOS, and Windows 8 (a potential pile of hardware difference as well).

Given Facebook’s limited resources, it wouldn’t make sense to spend the time and effort in trying to develop a compatible app for all these new devices.

In my view, the solution is simple: an HTML5 version of facebook.com that is completely optimised for touch-screens. It’s not that huge a leap of faith to think that this is exactly what Facebook means when it talks about an upcoming iPad app.

Coupled with Facebook developing some sort of photo-sharing app on the sidelines and a rumoured secret project to avoid Apple’s app store altogether, it certainly seems as if Facebook will be putting more focus on the web and less on platform-specific apps.

The pressure, in this case, would no doubt shift to the OS developer itself – i.e. Apple, Google, and Microsoft – to make sure that their browser is compatible with Facebook. Hah, fancy that!

Of course, there is also the nagging fact that I could be completely wrong. Let’s wait and see, shall we?

The Web is buzzing with Google’s newly announced addition to their search engine. Called “+1”, it works like Facebook’s “like” button, except that you use it on search results from Google search.

For example, when you try searching for “strawberries” on Google, a bunch of results come up. You feel that one of the results is the best and would like to let other people know about it. With +1, you can do so with just one click, and it’ll appear as one of your recommendations the next time somebody else searches for “strawberries”.

Google is calling this a “public stamp of approval”, since real people are giving feedback on search results, making them more relevant to other users.

One concern we thought of is the possibility of “+1 farms” popping up in the future to twist results to certain sites’ advantage. But Google states that +1 tries to make results as relevant to you as possible by only showing you the links “+1’d” by people who matter to you, such as people already in your Google contacts or chat.

But this lumping of everyone in my Gmail contacts into the category of “people who matter to me” smacks of what they did with Buzz back then. Moreover, Google adds that they “may still show you how many people across the Web have “+1’d” a certain link. This could potentially cause some unhappiness with those concerned with privacy.

Furthermore, when you +1 something, your name is immediately associated with that link in search, on ads, and across the Web”, and anyone can see that you’ve recommended it. Fortunately, you can easily remove a +1 from your Google profile page should you wish to do so.

You can even +1 advertisements, although that won’t count as a page click, meaning you won’t have to pay Google for every +1 you get. Google says that all ads on search results pages will eventually have the +1 button, and an API for webmasters to put up a +1 button on their sites will come in the following months.

+1 is essentially an extension of recent efforts by Google to “socialise” search. You might have noticed that Google recently rolled out a feature which let you know who in your Google Buzz or Twitter networks shared a link in your search results.

I’m glad to see Google taking their foray into the social aspect of the Web one step at a time, and enhancing their core product (search) at the same time. Launching a full-fledged social network at this time probably won’t win any hearts over from the king that is Facebook.

If you want to try +1 out now, hit up Google Experimental Labs and sign up for a preview! Or would you prefer to stick with Facebook “likes”? Let us know in the comments!

With four times more budget than the previous season, Refinery Media’s hit reality TV show SupermodelMe returned for a second season last week on March 17th, and sees 12 aspiring models vying for the top spot to kick-start their careers in the fashion industry.

This new season by the home-grown production company promises enhanced interaction with audiences through new media technologies, building on the previous season’s use of social media.

Multi-platform programming

Similar to last season, each model will blog about their experiences after every episode aired on television. They also have their own Facebook pages to maintain. On top of that, the models will also be giving tips through location-based social network Foursquare.

Refinery Media’s executive producer Karen Seah said that each platform adds a unique layer of content to the show which promises to make the show more engaging for viewers.

For instance, StarHub mobile subscribers will get access to “mobisodes” on their mobile phones unavailable elsewhere. On the web, viewers will be able to access “webisodes”, which lets viewers take a sneak peek at what is happening back stage.

The “webisodes” also feature Refinery Media’s proprietary Hyperspot technology, which embeds clickable areas within web videos that viewers can click on to get more information on what they see. For example, clicking on a model’s blouse will bring up information about the blouse and direct them to partner sponsor’s sites for purchase information and retail conversion.

While the idea of actually doing something while watching a video might horrify couch potatoes, we think this concept has tremendous potential. In effect, the option to view advertisements are left to the viewers, and they don’t have to click on anything if they so choose. With the advent of Internet television, Hyperspot might take off and land on your TV soon.

Following the models’ footsteps

SupermodelMe has also teamed up with location-based social network Foursquare to offer two exclusive virtual badges – SuperConnected and SuperStyle – to viewers who check-in to one of the show’s partner locations.  The designs of the two badges were crowdsourced from the show’s viewers, who voted for the two best designs.

The exact check-in locations are revealed only in the “webisodes”, and viewers who check-in to at least five locations will unlock a badge, which they can then display to participating retailers for discounts in their purchase.

Viewers can explore each location by following the tips left by the models on the show’s Foursquare page. In addition, badge holders can enter themselves into weekly lucky draws for prizes ranging from swimwear to bags.

The combination of Hyperspot and Foursquare represents SupermodelMe’s attempt to engage viewers with the show’s sponsors in a new way. Seah said, “This advertising format is unobtrusive, and allows us to meet our marketing objectives.” Seah also revealed that such click-through rates are “extraordinarily high”.

SupermodelMe is aired every Thursday, 9:30 PM on KIX StarHub Channel 518.

A series of massive earthquakes hit Japan at 5.45 GMT today, causing widespread devastation in the form of landslides, floods and even a 4-metre high tsunami. If you have family and friends in Japan, and want to keep track of everything that is happening, here are a few ways to do so:

Google’s Person Finder
The search giant launched “Person Finder: 2011 Japan Earthquake” shortly after the earthquake hit. The Web-based app allows you to look for a person by searching his name, and, should there not be a result, let you create a new record for a missing person. The service is available in both Japanese and English, and should be very handy for those trying to locate a loved one.

Live blogs
Many news outlets are live-blogging the catastrophe on the fly, including BBC News, Reuters, and The Guardian. Accompanying the live blogs are interactive maps, videos, and pictures. You can also contribute by submitting information on the unfolding disaster.

YouTube
Arabic news network Al-Jazeera is providing live coverage over on their channel.

Twitter
Twitter is an excellent place to hear what people on the ground are saying. Virtually all trending topics right now are about the disaster, including #prayforjapan and #tsunami. Searching for “Japan earthquake” on Twitter also yielded numerous results.

If you have any other ways of tracking the earthquake, do share them in the comments below. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people affected by the disaster.