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On February 1, Facebook filed for an initial public offering and expects to begin selling shares this spring. In 2011 Facebook had profits of $1 billion on sales of $3.7 billion. 85% of that revenue came from advertising and the rest from social gaming and other fees.

Facebook expects to raise at least 5 billion and hopes to raise as much as 10 billion when it begins selling stock in April or May. This is likely to be the biggest Internet or technology IPO ever.

 

For online marketers, the message is: social media must be embraced! Its impact is growing stronger every day. Facebook and other social media platforms will continue to be aggressive in finding ways to compete with search engines. In addition to having a presence on social media sites, many marketers are adding Facebook pay-per-click to their advertising plans.

From 2010 to 2011, the number of PPC ads delivered on Facebook grew 42% and the average price per ad grew 18%. Keep in mind that it's easy to make costly mistakes when you first venture into social media marketing. Call us if you want help with social media. 

 

Starting March 1, 60 of the more than 70 Google privacy policies associated with its various properties (Google search engine, Gmail, Android operating system, You Tube, Google+, etc.) will be combined into one, simpler policy. In a company blog, Alma Whitten, director of privacy, product and engineering, wrote 'Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you're signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services.

In short, we'll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.' Google insists its privacy controls are unchanged. 

 

Google's announcement that it will create one comprehensive profile of each user and will share data across all of its platforms has been a public relations challenge. Many users are alarmed that Google has the ability to collect data on everywhere they go and everything they do.

But, is this really so different from what Google has been doing all along? Data is already shared across at least some of Google's platforms--consider that Adwords ads are served to Gmail users based on the content of private emails.

And last month, Google released Search Plus Your World, a search format that combines content that’s been privately shared with users in combination with public results.