iClimber Social Media Marketing Blog

The Fortune and Power of Mark Zuckerberg

admin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:36:49 +0000

Among the deluge of Facebook articles currently in circulation, two are particularly interesting for their distinct focus on the man behind it all: twenty-seven-year-old Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, of White Plains, New York (at this stage, his saga certainly deserves some historicizing). The first, written by Somini Sengupta, appears in the New York Times; the second in the Los Angeles Times, and is written by perennial tech-beat savant Nathaniel Olivarez-Giles.

Sengupta highlights the degree of control that Zuckerberg has managed to retain at this significant stage of maturation for Facebook; as the company heads into its colossal IPO, Le Zuck holds approximately 60 percent of his company’s shares as well as three out of five board chairs — that means he has an almost unprecedented amount of control over a company of such proportions. Sengupta also discusses the important role former-Facebook president Sean Parker had in advising and guiding Zuckerberg to such levels of company power.

Olivarez-Giles shares that starting January 1, 2013, the person behind “frictionless sharing” will be paid only $1 dollar per year for his work as company CEO. Zuckerberg’s salary for 2012 is expected to be $600,000, but it’s unlikely he’ll be missing the six-figure salary since his personal fortune is about to rocket into the eleven-figure range, and the new token salary is a tradition among ultra-rich leaders — the late Steve Jobs from Apple, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and even Google CEO Larry Page have all received that loneliest of numbers as their base annual salary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/technology/from-earliest-days-zuckerberg-focused-on-controlling-facebook.html?ref=technology&pagewanted=all

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/02/mark-zuckerbergs-salary-dropping-to-1-in-2013-facebook-ipo-filing-says.html

Graffiti Artist David Choe’s Facebook Stock Worth $200 Million

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:42:09 +0000

Thanks to Facebook’s upcoming IPO, David Choe, a graffiti artist from Los Angeles’ Koreatown, is about to become a millionaire hundreds of times over. Back in 2005, Choe was invited by Sean Parker, the then-president of Facebook, to paint interior murals for the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California. When Facebook’s headquarters were moved north to Menlo Park, Choe was invited again to spruce up the new walls, this time by the social network’s CEO and co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

It seems that Choe is very big on foresight: he opted to receive company shares instead of currency for his work. Those shares are now expected to be worth some $200 million. Choe is among an elite cadre of approximately one thousand individuals slated to become millionaires later this year when they cash in their Facebook stock. The company is expected to go public around May.

A detail of Choe’s mural work for Facebook can be seen in the image above — the network’s famous homepage atlas motif has been re-imagined with a good dose of vibrancy and humor. Although he began experimenting with his art in the streets of Los Angeles, David Choe also honed his talent in Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46234749/ns/business-us_business/

Facebook Celebrates 8th Birthday by Filing for IPO

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:11:07 +0000

The day investors and tech watchers have been waiting for is here: Facebook filed its IPO today, which happens to be its eighth birthday. Its anticipated valuation range is $75 billion to $100 billion, but in the papers submitted with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the wildly popular company states that it hopes its IPO will net it $5 billion. Everyone is expecting Facebook’s stock market début to be record-setting. As of this moment, the IPO is expected to occur in May.

The rumor had been circulating that some Facebook shares would be made available to small investors, but the filing gives no indication of preparations for such a proceeding, alas. Working at Facebook are 3,200 individuals, and by the Los Angeles Times’ account, roughly one-third of them will become newly minted millionaires.

The filing included a letter written by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and co-founder, and in context of where they appear, and the enormity of the wealth that is about to be hoisted onto the company and those responsible for it, some of Zuckerberg’s words rest enigmatic. He writes: “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services,” and adds, “I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.”

All eyes are on Facebook: in the picture above, Mark Zuckerberg smiles along with famed journalist Charlie Rose and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, who’s already being called a viable future presidential candidate.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fiw-facebookipo-web-20120201,0,1236022.story

The Advantages of Hiring an SEO Agency

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:29:16 +0000

Select your SEO agency wisely and you’ll be on track to improved online traffic and more engagement from your online audience. Folks in the business know that improved audience engagement is a surefire indication of incoming rises in profits or in the faster attainment of the particular goals of your site. If the purpose of your online portal is to recruit volunteers, you’ll have an immensely easier time going about it if the majority of the inquiries you receive from online visitors come from people who want to participate. You are probably all too familiar with how taxing it can be to your resources to field questions or comments unrelated to your enterprise.

Dealing with these types of issues is where SEO companies excel. They are the places to turn to when your in-house staff doesn’t have the time, or expertise, to craft compelling write-ups that can captivate and persuade readers; or, maybe they’re unable to implement changes to your site’s design that makes it be more in tune with major search engines.

What else can an SEO company do for you? It can help you construct a better image of whom, precisely, your core audience is. If you want to expand beyond it, say reach folks in a neighboring town that could be more responsive to your business, then delving into SEO work is the way to go. And although search engine optimization is primarily concerned with the search engines, part of its work today also involves “social media optimization.” Say Yes to improvements by saying Yes to SEO.

Effort Underway to Replicate Silicon Valley Near Harvard University

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:02:49 +0000

Last Friday, inside Harvard University’s Maxwell Dworkin lecture hall, Patrick S. Chung, W. Hugo Van Vuuren, and Harry Weller introduced the Experiment Fund, which will represent “seed money” along with structural and networking support to exceptional student entrepreneurs in the Cambridge-Boston area. Among those eligible for funding will be students from Harvard, MIT, and Boston University.

The fund is also being wielded as a promising cork to a genuinely unflattering brain-drain: Cambridge-centered entrepreneurs tend to leave town for the advantages that California’s Silicon Valley offers. Two of Harvard’s highest high flyers, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, after all, famously dropped out of the school to develop their own tech companies.

The idea behind the fund is to provide budding scholar-entrepreneurs with the tools they need to propel their ideas forward without needing to leave the school or geographical area altogether. With the fund, approximately four to six startups would be eligible for early capital in sums ranging from $250,000 to $500,000.

The Harvard Crimson quoted from an email sent by Harry Weller in which he explained that the fund was “not an incubator or grant-giving organization,” but a resource for investment that can help campus scholar-entrepreneurs “grow with seed capital, consistent guidance, and unparalleled access to experts.”

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/27/experiment-fund-seas-investment/

New Search Tool Out as Social Web Tells Google: “Don’t Be Evil”

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:35:31 +0000

Download the “bookmarklet” released today by an ad-hoc group of engineers from Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace, and you might get better search results from Google.

Last week, Google announced that information from its fledgling social network, Google+, would be surfaced in its search results all while effectively suppressing data from other competing, and much more popular, networks. Google claims the suppression (unfair censoring?) is unavoidable because it could not adequately index data from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn due to their reluctance to publicly share all their data.

Understandably, the folks behind the other networks — which do actually supply a significant amount of public data — were miffed. But they took quick, and pointed, action. The bookmarklet that’s now available, and which has Google’s famous motto for its name, “Don’t Be Evil,” uses Google’s own search capacities to demonstrate how the current setup of data suppression is avoidable, after all, and how the dominant force in search is using its brute force to manipulate results in a way that serves its own interests.

If you want to use the tool, go to http://www.focusontheuser.org/ and download it.

So far, only one name from the group of engineers is known: Blake Ross, a co-founder of Firefox who’s currently Facebook’s Director of Product.

http://www.focusontheuser.org/

http://allthingsd.com/20120123/facebooks-blake-ross-leads-dont-be-evil-effort-to-restore-diverse-social-results-in-google-search/

Pretty-In-Pink Valley Girl Interviews Sheryl Sandberg

admin — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:45:58 +0000

Facebook’s new digs in Menlo Park were recently visited by Jesse Draper, the host of “The Valley Girl,” an online talk show based in the Silicon Valley. Draper was on the hallowed (for tech devotees) premises to interview the company’s celebrated chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. During the interview, Sandberg chatted about her first job as an office assistant; she greeted patients for an ophthalmologist boss — her father — during her tenure. Sandberg also shared tidbits about her subsequent stint as an aerobics instructor.

The show’s cameras made sure viewers got a good eyeful of the newly opened quarters. Highlights included a communal office bike, touch-screen soda machines, endless snacks, and a concrete message wall that replicates the spirit of the well-know virtual walls found on typical Facebook profiles.

Finally, Sandberg laid bare what impresses her the most about the company she helps run: the big “impact” that Facebook has in people’s lives, including her own, in matters that go beyond the daily toil of work. She even spoke of having felt less alone after sharing publicly, through her Facebook profile, an obituary she wrote for her recently deceased grandmother. She said she read every one of the Facebook comments she received following the post.

In addition to her high-powered position at Facebook, Sandberg also sits on the corporate boards of Starbucks and Disney.

http://www.valleygirl.tv/

SOPA and PIPA Disowned By President, Republican Senators, and the Public

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:54:31 +0000

On Wednesday, Internet users came together to denounce two bills making their way through the American legislature: the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, also known as SOPA and PIPA. Many took directly to the streets, but the overwhelming majority expressed their opposition by spreading information about the issue on online social networks, signing petitions, writing emails to congress, calling their representatives’ offices (incredibly retro for some), and of course, tweeting about it.

Among the biggest organizers of the widespread protests were Wikipedia, Google, WordPress, and Reddit. These organizations have a lot to lose if the bills become laws. The regulatory measures being considered threaten to hold these institutions, already profoundly entrenched in people’s everyday lives and heavily dependent on user-generated content for their business, legally accountable for the copyright infringes of their millions (soon to be billions) of users.

The extent of the opposition demonstrated yesterday even caused two Republican senators to withdraw their support for the bills: Senator Marco Rubio, from Florida, and Senator John Cornyn, from Texas, no longer back the bills. President Obama expressed his non-support Saturday.

Speaking to the New York Times, Cary H. Sherman, the chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America delivered a quip telling of the uphill battle currently faced by the entertainment industry: “It’s very difficult to counter the misinformation when the disseminators also own the platform.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/technology/protests-of-antipiracy-bills-unite-web.html?ref=technology&pagewanted=all

Facebook Shedding Its Echo Chamber Name

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:06:54 +0000

For some time now, Facebook has been saddled with the unfortunate sobriquet of Echo Chamber. As anyone who’s ever tried knows all too well, ditching an unwanted nickname is more than a little complicated (read: Difficult). But, since the company behind your online life record has the motivation, human resources, and economic means to carry out data studies that can, ahem, empirically disprove the basis on which such an inglorious moniker was erected, Facebook has done just that.

The Facebook Data Team, which harking back to Facebook’s origins in the realm of Ivy League scholarship carries out academic-style research studies, has just cranked out another pointy-headed paper. Eytan Bakshy, a recent Ph.D. from the University of Michigan’s School of Information helmed the study that looked at how previously unknown information is passed along among Facebook friends. His research underscores the importance of the inordinate amount of weak social ties Facebookers accumulate the longer they remain on the network. According to the paper published by Bakshy and his Facebook team, those weak ties do a lot of the heavy lifting related to the introduction of new information to users, thereby giving a good shaking to the Echo Chamber theory, which postulates that we only read/think/opine like our closest Facebook friends.

More details about the study can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/rethinking-information-diversity-in-networks/10150503499618859

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/01/online_echo_chambers_a_study_of_250_million_facebook_users_reveals_the_web_isn_t_as_polarized_as_we_thought_.single.html

The Underestimated Power of SEO

admin — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:09:38 +0000

While search engine optimization (SEO) has been around for more than a decade, many entrepreneurs are still not convinced that it is an important part of internet marketing. Does keyword research and SEO really make a difference in the world of organic search engine results? The answer is yes.

SEO companies have the tools and knowledge to help make websites more attractive to search engines and online browsers, pushing them to appear at or near the top of search results of major search engines such as Google and Bing. Why is this so important? Nearly 9 out of ten online browsers utilize search engines over word of mouth or social networking sites to find everything from local restaurants to plane tickets.

And why is ranking high in Google search results so important? Once again, Google Sites led the U.S. search market in October with 65.6 percent market share, according to the most recent data released by comScore. This means that out of the more than 18 billion searches that were conducted in October; more than 11.9 billion of those people used Google.

So whether you own a chain restaurant, a local salon, or a travel agency, chances are potential clients will be using the internet to search for your products or services, even if they don’t purchase them online.

For a business owner, a powerful SEO campaign can not only provide the business with more sales, but also save the company thousands of dollars in marketing and advertising. An SEO agency has the tools and experience to create an effective SEO campaign tailored to your business and services.