Quick Math: 100m+ Birthday Actions on Facebook per Day?

A rather obvious finding from my birthday yesterday: Facebook is immensely popular. My Facebook wall, email, notifications and SMS alerts were bombarded with birthday notes... several magnitudes greater than last year... and similarly the year before.

To be clear: this says a great deal about Facebook (popular!) and nothing about me (not popular!). Facebook usage and engagement are unbelievably high: at F8, Alex Schultz said that half of Facebook's 400m active users were active *each* day. And judging by the steady stream of comments and messages, users are doing more than logging in: they are viewing the birthday alerts, actively reading the feeds, giving Facebook gifts, creating JibJab cards, etc. It would be fun - and overwhelming - to look at the total number of Facebook actions / engagements that happen around birthdays each day. If you apply basic math and use me as an example:

- ~400m Facebook users - ~1.1m birthdays / day - ~100 actions per birthday

... Thats something in the range of 100m+ birthday actions a day. My guess is that last year's numbers were 10% of this.

Game Mechanics, Badges & eBay Feedback Ratings

Thanks to the success of Foursquare, Booyah / MyTown and Zynga, "game mechanics", "badges" and "leaderboards" have become cornerstones of any web marketer's dialect and user-acquisition strategy. What these three companies have done so well is figure out how to apply game mechanics to the core experience... in a way that is fun, on-brand and - most importantly - adds value to the users. As an example, anyone can add badges or leaderboards to their product - but if it is merely a front-end layer, it won't stick. And as more companies race to understand and apply game mechanics, differentiation and core integration becomes even more important. Not to take anything away from Foursquare or Zynga - who I have great respect for - game mechanics are not new concepts. Mainstays like eBay and Amazon have been applying game mechanics to their core businesses for years.

One of the great examples is eBay's seller rating system... which is represented by stars.

It does several things well:

1. Clarity: it clearly and obviously conveys reputation

2. Persistence: it travels alongside the username throughout the entire eBay experience

3. Value-Add: the reputation system adds value to the buyer and to the seller

4. Incents Behavior: sellers fight very hard to foster their reputation and earn new stars. It also fosters communication between buyers & sellers.

5. Drives Activity / Engagement: there are gaps between each 'reward' that drive activity and excitement. But the goal is transparent and well-defined.

6. Marketing Opportunities: for eBay marketers, it is an opportunity to engage customer segments. Your first star, for instance, is welcomed with a congratulations email and certificate.

7. Scarcity: the higher level stars are earned by a select few (1,000,000 ratings!). For them, it is a badge of honor that extends on AND off eBay.

In summary: think about how game mechanics apply to your core product and brand... and how it adds value to your users. Game mechanics are powerful only if fully weaved in to consumer experience and mentality.

For fun: check out the Wikipedia page of Foursquare's badge list.

20% of All Google Searches are Location Related

The last week of tech news has revolved around: Twitter, Foursquare, Apple, Google (who today announced Google Places) and Facebook (who announced communities yesterday and has F8 tomorrow).

The common threads across each of these: location and mobile. As part of Google's Places announcement - which introduces local advertising campaigns, custom QR codes, and a revamped Favorite Places program - they underscored the importance of local on their core business model:

1 in every 5 Google searches relates to location.

Over time - as hardware, software and search algorithms / relevance improve - local will represent an even more significant portion of search queries. And as we have seen with Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and others, location will play increasingly important roles in our social experiences.

Zynga's Treasure Isle: Economies of Scale in a Social World

There are two camps in the world of social gaming:- One side thinks that it has been won outright by Zynga - The other side believes that we are in the early innings of a nine-inning game No matter where you fall on this spectrum, it is clear that Zynga benefits greatly from their massive userbase (which they worked hard to amass). It is also clear that this is a major competitive advantage precisely because it is a tremendous lever to launch new titles.

Ever watched a popular television show or event and seen the constant reminder of an upcoming show on that same network? This is more powerful because it is in-browser, social and can be cleverly incentivized / connected.

Proof: Zynga's newest title Treasure Isle is days old (launched April 6). It now has roughly 17m monthly actives and 7m daily actives. Not only does that make Treasure Isle the fastest growing Facebook App, it makes it the 16th biggest game on Facebook ... in a matter of days.

It of course helps that Treasure Isle is very well done - a generational improvement over Farmville and Cafe World. But, as many developers know well, audience collection is often tougher than building the game. Zynga has done both:

Sprout Enables HTML5 & Flash Ads - Simultaneously

After last week's Apple announcement, I declared HTML5 as one of the winners. Generally, I believe that mobile represents a significant change in our web usage / consumption... and HTML5 plays an increasingly important role in that experience. This certainly is true for publishers...

... and increasingly true for advertisers - who have to create units that intelligently work in different formats, locations, etc. Sprout's now allows simple creation of rich-ad units that work in both HTML5 and Flash.

The motto: 'Build once. Publish anywhere.'

Below is a demo of Sprout's 'Engage Ads' platform - showcasing the units in both HTML5 and Flash.

View more on TechCrunch: "Sprout Now Lets You Simultaneously Build Rich Ads In Both HTML5 And Flash"

Join Two Amazing Companies: Formpsring and ShoeDazzle

I have been slow to update my blog's "job board"... but have two great companies and opportunities to add to the list. I am fortunate to spend time with each of these companies: excellent products, teams and communities. Job specs are below. If you are interested in either company, please let me know directly: rspoon @ polarisventures

Formspring is a social question & answer service that has seen meteoric growth (my blog post here). They are looking for engineers and designers to join them in San Francisco. It is a terrific opportunity to be part of a fast-growing company and build large, impactful products that touch 10m's of users:

- Jr. Software Engineer (PHP) - Senior Designer - Sr. Software Engineer (PHP) - Systems Engineer

ShoeDazzle is a monthly online shoe society, working with a team of Hollywood stylists to choose shoes for each member every month based on the member’s unique fashion personality. ShoeDazzle delivers unique products (stylized shoes) in a unique experience (monthly and at a fixed price of $39.95)... and their community is active, passionate and excited (50,000+ Facebook Fans).

ShoeDazzle is looking for a Director of Social Media & Community. Details are below:

The Director of Community and Social Media will be ShoeDazzle’s social media maven. This person will drive the development and implementation of all social media marketing programs and expand ShoeDazzle’s web presence and user base. The position takes ownership of all marketing efforts on social mediums including blogs and viral marketing campaigns for ShoeDazzle.

Responsibilities - Create and execute ShoeDazzle’s social media strategy that will exponentially grow the user base - Be the company’s expert on understanding social media marketing and functionality on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, and other core social platforms. - Responsible for aggressively using social media to drive consumer engagement and grow ShoeDazzle’s online community. - Produce innovative, efficient and measurable social media programs that will engage ShoeDazzle’s users - Drive viral marketing campaigns using social networking tools - Develop and drive events, contests, promotions and incentives to keep the ShoeDazzle community actively engaged - Work cross-functionally with the Marketing, PR and Creative teams to develop tools to support social media initiatives (i.e. landing pages for social media contests, offline promotions, etc) - Increase customer life time value through targeted customer communications and appropriate incentives and promotions - Managed and produce regular contributions to blogs and social networks that will interact and communicate with the community, expanding ShoeDazzle’s web presence - Responsible for analyzing and monitoring web metrics (e.g. page views, Twitter followers, fans) and strategizing web content accordingly while providing reports to senior management - Identify and implement weekly, daily and often real time content updates - Stay up to date on social media tools online communities and share knowledge with the rest of the organization

Experience - 5-7 years of online marketing experience with 2-3 years of social media marketing preferred - Possess a keen understanding of social media’s added value to ShoeDazzle’s product offering since it is an integral part of how customers engage with the company - Expertise around crafting and executing user acquisition and retention campaigns on social media platforms - Demonstrated ability to develop and execute marketing strategies, with measurable and consistent results - Ability to manage social applications effectively with an expert understanding of the technologies deployed by social media - Deep understanding of social network structures with experience effectively using social media/Web 2.0 tools to effectively communicate and build relationships - Familiarity with dynamics of ROI/metrics related to social media channels

Skills

- An analytical mindset is a MUST! It is critical this person test, test and retest marketing campaigns - A charismatic, credible communicator who can lead by example - Have excellent communication skills – written, verbal, presentation and interpersonal - Strong organizational skills with attention to detail, operates with urgency, focus and discipline - Have the ability to thrive in a high energy, fast growth, entrepreneurial environment - Hands-on; completes tasks and dependable - Strong team player who can build strong relationships at all levels of the organization - A cost conscious, proactive problem solver who can maximize the resources of a start-up - Ethical, fair and of high integrity

Compensation: VERY competitive + equity

Google's Q1: 60,000 Android Devices Activated Daily; AdSense Revenue Growth (+24%)

During their Q1 earnings announcements, Google revealed some good tidbits about their business and strategic initiatives... which clearly include Android and Chrome:

- 34 devices from 12 OEMs are Android operated - 60,000 Android devices are sold and activated daily... that's a run-rate of 21m / yr - which is an Apple-worthy number - 38,000 Android apps - which is +70% quarter over quarter - With Android, Google is focused on "openness" of market and platform - Nexus One is "profitable" One other interesting note from the Google search business - Google-owned properties drove $4.44B in revenue (+20%) - AdSense is $2.04B (+24%)

More from TechCrunch and PaidContent

Facebook Testing New Feed Posts to Drive Additional Comments?

It appears as though Facebook experimenting with new formats of news feed 'announcements' to escalate noteworthy, relevant content to your "top news" feed? This is the first time I have seen notifications like this via my Facebook Feed: essentially noting that two friends of mine have commented on an active post. It's interesting for a few reasons:

First, Dave McClure is a Facebook friend of mine as well... so his article already appeared in my feed. Second, the assumption must be that I am more likely to find it interesting and contribute to it because friends have actively participated. In fact, the newsfeed had already shown me McClure's post and then, on my second visit to Facebook, I got the "your friends commented on Dave McClure's link" alert. Good assumption by Facebook by the way.

These updates are usually reserved for the "most recent" feed and are tied to friend requests, calendar RSVPs, or wall-to-wall posts. I have not yet grouped alerts of friends who commented on a thread... interesting.

Also, very much worth reading Dave McClure's actual post - rather than my analysis of how it appears in my Facebook feed!

The original Dave McClure post which appeared in my Newsfeed prior to the getting the above feed post:

E-Commerce on the iPad: Gilt Group & eBay Help Us Imagine

Not because I shop regularly on Gilt Group or eBay... But I encourage iPad users and folks within e-commerce to download their iPad apps... Because it represents that potential of what e-commerce can look like atop the iPad (or extracted beyond: our new wave of computing / mobile devices).

With its large, crystal clear and touch-enabled screen, the iPad enables developers and brands to think more creatively... and in the same way that we were all encourage to think about consumers in the transition from web to mobile browser / app - we again have that same opportunity. So with Gilt Group and eBay, we have two iPad applications that were available on launch, sit in the iTunes top twenty apps and provide unique, powerful experiences different than the web or iPhone apps. These are good directional glimpses of e-commerce on the iPad:

- super simple layouts with very clear action items: browse and bid/buy - both have huge, colorful pictures - with color, layout and clear actions, both encourage serendipitous browsing - images are highly interactive - swipe them to see additional views - Gilt's navigation is nested and reminiscent of the iPad's email system - very clever - Gilt also uses the push notifications to alert users of new sales (interesting concept for flash sales, low inventory, etc) - Gilt provides an incentive / reward for download: iPad owners get to circumvent the 'exclusive' invite process and register directly