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fbFund No More?
Things have been a little slow on the fbFund front this year. The site hasn't posed an update since January, and you probably won't be hearing about new ventures anytime soon.
Inside Facebook reports that fbFund appears to be "mothballed". fbFund is a seed fund and joint venture run by Facebook Founders Fund and Accel Partners. Investment capital for the fund was provided by these entities.
fBfund gave startups up to $100k in investment, as well as access to key people, presentations on technology, product, marketing, and business topics, mentorship, and even office space. Eric Eldon writes:
After noticing that the company has been completely quiet about fbFund plans so far this year, we asked it about its plans. "At this time we have no plans for future iterations of the program," a company spokesperson tells us, “but we will keep you posted as soon as we have anything new to share.” The company also says that it will "continue to support innovation from the startup community through initiatives like the developer garage program."
fbFund operated for two years, funding companies building Facebook's developer platform, and as Eldon points out, it has kind of taken a backseat to the big boom in the social gaming market.
Facebook's new Questions product, launched in beta earlier this week, has a great deal of potential for answering the questions of half a billion people (the most recent number of Facebook users reported by the company).
Will you use Facebook Questions to seek answers? Let us know.
As competition between Facebook and Google over Internet user time and attention continues to increase, this may be yet another area where Facebook has a bit of leverage over the search giant. Q&A is becoming a big area of focus throughout the industry with many smaller players fighting for a piece of the pie (not that all of the players are small).
Google has Aardvark, which it has yet to really do anything incredibly significant with (at least related to Google search). Yahoo, of course, has Yahoo Answers. Ask just reinvented itself with a focus on community and web-driven Q&A. That's just a few examples. Facebook has a major advantage, however, with that half a billion users, and the simple fact that many of those users spend a great deal of time using Facebook.
Facebook Questions data could be very useful to search engines and their users, if the product itself lives up to its own potential, but it remains to be seen if Facebook will be willing to share that information. The company is already notorious for being stingy with its data, from the open web perspective, despite its own "open" graph initiative.
Facebook told Search Engine Land that it doesn't have plans to give search engines access to its questions and answers, though they didn't rule out future consideration. The decision could be an important one strategically for the company in the future, particularly as Google continues to move toward trying to steal some of Facebook's thunder (the key word there being "trying"...I should mention this notion has been downplayed by the company).
Microsoft has to be pretty interested as well, as it is frequently looking for new ways to compete with Google and it already provides Facebook with its own web search results.
Q&A is becoming an increasingly interesting segment of the search industry, and one where there is distinct possibility of shaking up Google's share, thanks to an increasing number of players, the diversification of how people actually do their searching/information gathering, and blossoming mobile application ecosystems.
Facebook, Google, and increasingly Bing all have their places in these ecosystems, and Facebook Questions could conceivably play a powerful role in tipping x amount of searches in one direction or another.
Do you see Facebook Questions as a potential disruption to the search industry? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Everybody's scrambling to get their iPad competitors out. Most recently, we heard what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had to say about his comany's plans. Research in Motion (RIM) will apparently have its iPad competitor out in a few short months.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports the BlackBerry maker intends to have one out in November. Hugo Miller writes:
The device will have roughly the same dimensions as the iPad, which has a 9.7-inch diagonal screen, said the two people who wouldn’t be identified because the plans haven’t been made public. The device will include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technology that will allow people to connect to the Internet through their BlackBerry smartphones, the two people said.
Will it be called the BlackPad? As Mobile Crunch pointed out this week, RIM has purchased the BlackPad.com domain.
iPad sales have been impressive, to say the least. However, it has yet to really be faced with competition, and that will soon change. The iPad-like tablet market is going to get flooded with new products and choices for consumers, and there is no doubt that some of them will be much more competitive with pricing. This is one thing that has helped Android grow (which is powering its own iPad competitors).
As the holiday season arrives, it looks like the iPad isn't going to be the only one getting looked at by consumers.
Twitter has begun rolling out a "Suggestions for You" feature that helps users find people to follow. You may be familiar with a similar feature on Facebook.
"With more than a hundred million users on Twitter, there are sure to be at least dozens of accounts out there that will reflect your interests. The trouble is finding all of them," the company says.
Twitter's suggestions utilize algorithms based on factors like people you follow and the people they follow. The suggestions can be found on Twitter.com and the "Find People" section. Of course you can click "follow" to follow those Twitter suggests for you. If you're not interested, you can click "hide" and they won't show you that suggestion again.
Twitter is also launching a feature that shows you "similar" users when you view other people's accounts. Both new features will be available in third-party apps, as Twitter is launching an API.
If you don't mind a shameless plug, I might suggest just using Twellow to find people of interest by category or location. If you're looking to find interesting people to follow, that can help big time, and you can look for people yourself rather than relying on who Twitter thinks you’d be interested in. Mashable included it in its top 20 Sites to Improve Your Twitter Experience as one of two in the discovery category.
It’s a tough question, especially in a bad economy.
The question really begs another question – what is your goal for your site?
If you are operating it as a real business where you hope to either supplement your current income or rely on it as your sole source of income – then you need to be prepared to invest in search (it’s often the foundation of your marketing and a consistent source of regular traffic).
You can invest time or money and in most cases, you usually need to invest both.
I think there is someone out there spreading some erroneous information about starting a business online. There is a lot of the “build it and they will come” mentality – in other words throw up a site and voila insta-business!
While in many ways, it is easier to do business online because you don’t need to set up physical stores and have a lot of the issues you have with brick and mortars, it is by no means a “sure thing” – you still have to work for your success.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying you shouldn’t start an online business - I am just saying if you expect your business to grow and treat you well, then you need to treat it like a serious business.
So, yes, it will be necessary for you to invest both time and money into generating traffic.
So back to the question at hand – how much should you spend on SEO?
You need to crunch some numbers and see how many visitors it takes to get a sale and how much a sale is worth to you to really fine-tune your budget – especially if PPC is part of your plans (so many people waste money on PPC that isn’t converting – spend wisely or it can suck you dry!)
For organic SEO you will find everything from $19.99 mass submission (avoid like the plague, you may as well burn your $19.99) to tens of thousands of dollars per month.
Most small to medium sized businesses spend between $300 – $800 per month, although I’ve also heard people say numbers a little higher, like $500 – $1500 per month is the norm. So somewhere in that range is what you should expect to pay for quality SEO work.
It always amazes me that people are annoyed they have to pay for SEO. People will pay for a doctor or a mechanic, or even a web designer but they seem to resent having to pay for SEO. If you have the time and knowledge, then by all means, don’t pay anyone, do it yourself. However if you don’t have the time or knowledge, it’s a valid, and important expense and not something you should begrudge. Driving traffic to your site is the foundation and not the area you want to go cheap.
I’m jussayin…think about your goals and think about what you are prepared to do to get there.