Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Sean Parker in front of work by graffiti artist David Choe, who took shares instead of payment for his work and is set to make millions from Facebook’s IPO.

For anyone who has an interest in the story of Facebook, or has seen the hit film “The Social Network”, you will know how Mark Zuckerberg is the brains behind Facebook and even after going public, Mark will retain charge of the empire that he has created. Shares in the company are split into two types, shares ‘A’ and ‘B’, with the ‘B’ shares actually being worth 10 votes per share compared to the single vote of shares ‘A’. Mark owns 28% of the company’s shares and obviously they are ‘B’ shares so that actually equates to Mark having a 56.9% say in how the company is ran. Not only that but in the case of Zuckerberg’s death, he has the right to name an heir to the company to make sure Facebook continues to be ran by someone that shares his vision.

It wasn’t only details of Mark’s control over Facebook that was detailed this week. The profitability of Facebook has been revealed as $1billion of pure profit with 2009 being the year when everything started going right in terms of finance. Income almost tripled from $272m to $777m and costs only doubled which of course means plenty of pure profit. So what happened in 2009 that made this happen? Well that was the year that Mark introduced the ‘Like’ button to the world. One thing the aspect of ‘liking’ has done has been to enable the site to target advertising, which of course is something Facebook depends on for revenue. The other aspect of revenue for the site is through in-app purchases and one company got a special mention in the IPO report. Znyga are the company behind popular social games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars and Poker and make up 12% of Facebook’s revenue and so are a very important company for them to continue working with.

One aspect of all of this that has been focused on by the media is how a lot of people are due to become very rich or become even richer. Many people already have shares in Facebook such as co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel and even U2 singer Bono. One great story is that of graffiti artist David Choe who was commissioned in 2005 to decorate the social sites new offices. He was offered a few thousand dollars or shares in the company and decided to take the shares, which could now net him somewhere in the region of $200million. Even the enemies of Facebook, the Winklevoss twins, are going to capitalise on this with their shares from their lawsuit against Facebook being potentially worth $300million. Employees that have been with the company for a number of years are also looking to benefit from any shareholdings they have with a number of them looking to become millionaires.

The story of Facebook is an interesting tail and there are many interesting stories to read and if you haven’t seen “The Social Network” movie then we’d suggest doing so. With Facebook going public, there will sure to be more to come as Zuckerberg and his social network look to shape the future of the Internet.

To discuss how social networking sites could help your business improve its web visibility, contact the SEO Coventry company HeadRed.

Having a presence on Facebook is a great way to interact with customers and as they ‘Like’ your products and services, your business will appear in their feeds and be seen by all their friends and can lead to great exposure.

Have a look at a social media or SEO Coventry campaign with HeadRed to help improve your search engine rankings and lead to greater visibility, more enquiries and more business.

Although announced at the end of last year, the new look Facebook Timeline hasn’t been a compulsory change for all 800 million plus users of the social networking site. Some people were able to get access to the new features but the majority are still using the traditional Facebook page layout. All this is about to change though with Facebook making the change compulsory over the coming weeks with users having seven days to play around with their new profile once clicking get ‘Timeline‘ before it becomes permanent. The idea behind Timeline is that it’s “the story of your life and [a] completely new way to express yourself.” The creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, says that he wants users to share their entire lives on Facebook yet still have complete control over how they share their content online. The new change hasn’t gone down too well with the social giants users though with many upset over the new features but some are enjoying the new layout and are being very creative with the design of their new Timeline.

This user shows clever use of the new Facebook Timeline layout to recreate Angry Birds.

Streaming Shows with NetFlix

The speed of the Internet has increased dramatically since its introduction and has allowed for a whole new range of sites, services and features. One such service which has improved dramatically over recent years is the ability to watch and stream movies and TV shows over the Internet. This month saw the UK launch of Netflix, the US online and DVD rental service and with a one month free subscription the sign up has been very positive. The service allows users to watch the latest movies and TV shows such as 24, Doctor Who and South Park whenever they want on a variety of devices including PCs, laptops, smartphones and video game consoles. But is this high uptake rate going to continue once the monthly subscription rate starts after the free period ends?

Netflix has been fairly active on the social media circuit gauging customers’ opinions and as with any direct customer feedback it hasn’t all been positive. Whilst Netflix has been posting about its great range of titles and increasing its catalogue range, users have responded directly back saying the range is limited and that they will leave as soon as the free period ends. The majority of users have said the service is good though but Netflix needs to make sure customers are happy to continue paying for its service. Social media is a great way to get instant feedback from customers and although it hasn’t all been positive for Netflix, hopefully they will be able to addresses the issues raised, improve its catalogue range and then engage more positively with users on its social media sites.

HeadRed Google+

The other week we blogged about the integration that Google is going to be introducing between its social media site Google+ and the search engine itself with ‘Search Plus Your World’. If you haven’t got one already then now is a great time to set up your Google+ profile and find out what it’s all about. If you have a personal Google+ profile or a business page then why not add HeadRed to one of your circles? The HeadRed Google+ page features the latest news and postings from ourselves as well as circles featuring interesting people from the world of SEO and the Internet.

Why not share this post from the web design and SEO Coventry based company HeadRed using the icons below?

The algorithm update is to penalise sites that feature too many ads “above the fold” and make it hard to find the actual content on the page. Content should be visible as soon as a user lands on a page so Google is looking to not rank sites as highly that feature too many ads making up large sections on a site’s initial screen. As always it’s important to focus on the user experience on a website and if someone visiting can’t find the content they are looking for through the forest of adverts, they are unlikely to return.

Google roll out many search algorithms throughout the year.

Google have said that this is only one of more than 500 improvements to search that they are planning to implement this year, so whilst this one isn’t a major change that you will likely need to worry about, it’s always worth noting the changes that the search engine giant is rolling out to make searching the web a better experience.

To find out the latest news about Google Search and SEO, make sure to follow the HeadRed blog where our SEO Coventry team will be keeping you up to date on the latest.

So if companies aren’t advertising during the break in Coronation Street, having a page spread in the national newspaper or being featured on local radio, what are they doing to promote their products or services? The survey found that many were favouring price discounts and online advertising over the traditional advertising methods and with only 10% of marketing executives having a positive outlook on the financial situation for the ad and marketing industry, it’s no wonder we are seeing more companies utilising online methods for advertising and marketing.

The great thing about online advertising is that it’s not just restricted to adverts located on different sites that allow companies to advertise online. The dominance of social media on the web has allowed many retailers to engage with their customers and advertise their products directly to their audience. On Twitter, there are numerous companies that are constantly advertising throughout the day, with businesses such as video game retailer GAME, online entertainment retailer Play.com and fashion giant Next all engaging with users on a daily basis. It’s not just the big companies that can utilise social media as a form of advertising either, with smaller local companies being able to target people based on location and offer their services and products.

With Twitter, Facebook and Google+, any company has easy access to a huge audience, so it’s no surprise to see companies favouring online over the traditional methods of advertising. That’s not to say that offline marketing is dead though. The survey found that firms are looking to increase their budgets in 2012 compared with last year and with major events such as London 2012 Olympics approaching, advertisers will have a large audience to target.

To discuss how a social media or SEO Coventry targeted campaign could help your business, get in touch with HeadRed.

What with Google announcing this week the inclusion of Google+ into search results, it will be interesting to monitor whether companies increase their presence on Google’s social network. One such company already using Google+ to their advantage is the chocolate manufacture Cadbury, who announced a brand new product via the social site the other day; the Dairy Milk Bubbly bar. This is considered to be the first time a company has used Google+ to introduce a new product and Cadbury was keen to let this be known by posting “remember this moment: the first time Cadbury revealed a new product on Google+”.

Although over 2,000 people have the Cadbury UK brand in one of their Google+ ‘circles’, the company maybe didn’t have complete faith in the Bubbly bar spreading throughout the net via Google+ alone, with reveals on Twitter and Facebook soon after. This is unsurprising due to the vast number of more active users on the other two social sites but it shows that companies are starting to view Google+ as a viable source for marketing activity.

A look at whats been happening on the big social sites this week.

Facebook add ads to news feeds

At the end of last year, Facebook announced that they would be soon implementing paid sponsored ads into users news feeds and this week saw the feature begin to appear on some people’s profiles. Facebook has featured adverts on its pages for a while now that can be related to anything, not just products or services you may have ‘liked’ and only appear outside of your news feed. These new sponsored ads will appear directly in your news feed but the difference is they will be related to pages that you have previously ‘liked’.  Say for example you like the KFC Facebook page, a sponsored ad could appear in your feed for a new burger that they are offering and be listed as a ‘Featured’ news item. This allows companies to offer new products or services directly to people that have expressed an interest in their company.

The reason some are viewing this as a bad thing is because of the terminology Facebook has chosen to use. If a news feed item is listed as ‘Featured’ then users may not be aware that this is actually a paid advert. Should they instead be listed as ‘Sponsored’? It will be interesting to see how users react to this or if they even notice as Facebook continues the slow roll out of sponsored ads into the news feed.

2012 Twitter Trending

The start of 2012 has seen a similar phrase appearing in the top trends in the United Kingdom everyday and if it continues we will be seeing it for the rest of the year. This year is a leap year and “Page # of 366”, where # indicates how many days into the year we are, has for some reason become a popular phrase to include in Tweets for a large number of Twitter users. Twitter is a great source for breaking news but sometimes the trends list can be taken up by useless phrases such as this. Although many users are using the phrase, not everyone is keen on seeing it everyday for the rest of the year and as one disgruntled Twitter user Tweeted today “Page 13 of 366 is trending… If this continues all year, I’ll officially know how little time ppl on twitter have”.

HeadRed offer web design and SEO Coventry services with over 11 years of web experience. Get in touch today to find out how an SEO campaign can offer  greater visibility to your site for more visitors, enquiries and new business.

The big idea is to merge ‘public’ search results with content from the searcher’s Google+ social network by adding three new elements: Personal Results, Profiles in Search and People and Pages.

The success and impact of these changes depends on how many people sign up to Google+ and start using it regularly. At the moment, with the dominance of Facebook, it’s hard to imagine users switching to Google+ en masse, but having said that, the uptake of Google+ has been huge with over 50 million users signed-up in a little over 6 months.

HeadRed will be keeping a close eye on the changes to keep our SEO Coventry clients fully informed.

Vinnie Jones tells us all how to do it.

The video is a very clever parody of the ‘Vinnie Jones’ character and shows him playing a gangster teaching how to perform CPR. The BHF have said that anyone without insufficient CPR training should not perform the “kiss of life” but focus on hands-only CPR instead and Vinnie shows how to perform the life saving procedure to the beat of the Bee Gees hit “Stayin’ Alive”.

Have a look for yourself.

The video has been a success for The BHF with the YouTube video on the official channel receiving over 150,000 views and nearly 5,000 likes. The video has also been picked up by a wide range of online news sites and blogs this week as well as featuring heavily on social media sites. Facebook has seen the video shared multiple times and a large quantity of positive comments on The BHF wall. The campaign has also been trending throughout the week on Twitter with the promoted hashtag #hardandfast trending as well as other phrases relating to the video meaning many people were discussing the humorous video.

The “Hard & Fast” video has been a great example of a successful online campaign to promote a good cause and message. The humorous angle taken by The BHF has appealed to many people who have then shared the video with friends via social media networks and the life saving advice featured in the video has meant coverage by a wide range of news sites. Online coverage of this level is beneficial for both conveying a message to a wide audience and can also lead to an increase in search engine rankings. More links to a site can mean improvements in rankings and sharing content via social media sites is a great way to gain these links.

If you would like to discuss a social media or SEO Coventry based campaign then get in touch with HeadRed today to discuss what we can do for your business or organisation.

Some Shoppers Are Not Happy

Much to the disgust of shoppers who bought in plenty of time for Christmas, many high street stores have decided to kick off their January sales early meaning that many have paid over the odds for their Christmas gifts. Stores like Argos, Debenhams, John Lewis and M&S are all starting their sales now in order to avoid piles of stock becasue of customers leaving it so late.

In contrast, online stores have been reducing prices for weeks with great deals to be had all across the web including Amazon and some of our ecommerce Coventry clients. Although it is almost definitely impossible to order online now in time for Christmas, the same great deals will be available after with the addition of some new ones as the Boxing Day and January sales start properly.

It does seem like online shopping is becoming the way to go for Christmas shopping. You can get the best deals early and avoid all the queues and hassle of the high street. Early reports suggest that online shopping is up 16 per cent this year from last and the number is expected to increase in the coming years. There has never been a better time to set up an online ecommerce business.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all here at HeadRed. We look forward to seeing you in 2012.

The top ten features a wide range of people and products, with three searches relating to Apple appearing in the top ten. At number 10 we have the “iPad2” which was released throughout the world during the first half of 2011 and sold 500,000 tablets in the first weekend. The sad death of Apple founder “Steve Jobs” in October made him the first or two deaths that feature in the top ten. Number eight is “東京 電力”, which relates to the Japanese Fukushima Plant nuclear reactors which were damaged during the devastating earthquake. Two days after the earthquake saw a massive rise in searches as support and donations poured in from around the world.

Fastest rising Google searches 2011

Pop star “Adele” was the seventh fastest rising search of 2011, with a 1,588% increase in searches from 2010. An interesting thing to note about this search is that it maintained constantly high searches throughout the whole year, where as other search terms peaked at a sudden point in the year. Another Apple search was at number six with the “iPhone 5“, even though the product wasn’t actually released. Many people expected Apple to unveil the product this year but they revealed the iPhone 4s instead. Video game fans made “Battlefield 3“ a high search term of 2011 with much anticipation for the first person shooter. The American case of “Casey Anthony“, who was charged with the murder of her 2 year old daughter but then found not guilty in July, was a high search term with people not only interested before and during the case but also in Casey’s life after the trial.

We begin the top three with the sad death of “Ryan Dunn” after the Jackass TV and movie star died in a car accident in June. During the news of his death there were nearly as many searches for his name as there was for the keyword ‘weather’. With speculation about drink driving and an emotional Jackass highlight reel shown at his funeral, fans kept searching for Ryan to make him the third fastest rising search of 2011. At number two we have “Google+“ as Google launched its newest attempt to capture the social networking crowd. Throughout the second half of the year the search term had a constantly high search volume due to the announcement, launch and then open sign-up of the product. Whether Google+ has the momentum to take on the might of Facebook is yet to be decided but as SEO Coventry specialists we will still be searching and following this throughout 2012.

And so we come to the number one fastest rising search term of 2011 and it’s safe to say that it most likely won’t feature again in the Google Zeitgeist in feature years.  A 13 year old American girl called “Rebecca Black” made a splash after releasing her pop song ‘Friday’ onto the unsuspecting public which went viral and resulted in over 167 million views on YouTube. At one point in the year Rebecca Black even beat global superstar Lady Gaga in search terms. If you are unaware to the phenomenon that is ‘Friday’ then have a look on YouTube to hear the song which made Rebecca Black the fastest rising worldwide search term of 2011.

There are many facts, graphs and information about the searches of 2011, so if you have some spare time then we’d highly recommend having a look at the full listings on the Google Zeitgeist with the top ten ‘Fastest Rising in Sports’, ‘What is…?’, and ‘How to’ searches for individual countries.