As I mentioned a couple of days back, one of the folks I get to interview on stage later this month is Sheryl Sandberg, who I met with earlier this week (this post was one result of that meeting). Sheryl is Mark Zuckerberg’s key partner in building out Facebook, and while she won’t take credit publicly, I’d wager that Facebook’s recent declarations of profitability and top line revenue growth have a lot to do with her leadership and focus on Facebook’s online advertising platform, which is clearly starting to scale.
Recall that Sandberg came from Google, where she ran ad platforms, and she made the choice to move to Facebook for a reason. What did she see? Well, my own thoughts run to the trends I’ve been pointing out for the past year or so – the model of attention distribution is shifting in the web economy, and Facebook, along with Twitter and other social sites, are increasingly taking share from Google. Follow the referrals, so to speak. Search is still king, but it’s no longer a dictatorship.
So what do you want to hear from Sandberg?
Others we’ll be interviewing (and I’ve asked for your help):
To come: Aneesh Chopra, Jon Miller, Austan Goolsbee, Paul Otellini, Shantanu Narayen, Tim Armstrong, Tim Berners Lee, and more. Again, an amazing lineup.
If you want to come, I can still get you a Searchblog discount (for about another week). Just ping me here.
The traffic in Twitter, the fad, will never convert well for advertisers which is why they will never attain the heights achieved by Facebook. No chance.
Just some ideas, John.
There seems to be a consensus that Facebook advertisements do not convert very well into sales. Some believe that this is due to the ads being obtrusive and irrelevant. Does Facebook have any plans to ameliorate this situation? Will there be any movement toward keyword targeting?
The interface used by advertisers is somewhat cumbersome. In fact many advertisers create scripts of their own to allow for greater functionality. Will this interface be improved any time soon?
I tend to agree that most social sites that exist now are lacking in the right type of format that allow advertisers to market their product or service in a way that convey their sales pitch to targeted prospective customers. That is why I’m having so much trouble getting in.
Apparently Facebook is beta testing APIs with larger agencies according to an article over at Market Pilgrim.
I would definitely like to know their time-line for mainstreaming the use of APIs.
How is it working for/with a kid? 🙂
Seriously, I’d be interested in hearing her compare/contrast the people & cultures between google and facebook.
I prefer facebook to twitter
in russia, the ‘social web’ is supposedly now bigger in page views the ‘public web’. meaning the number of page views on sites behind a user login now outnumbers those publicly available.
will this happen in the west? if so, what does this mean for google and facebook? will google no longer be able to organize the world’s information, and be relegated to the web yellow pages? will facebook offer a social search engine? has fb already become that?
Please ask her perspective of how today’s administration wants to use more open, IP, Web, social technologies and how that compares to when she was on the Clinton team.
During Clinton era, we were just into the Telecom Act of 1996…today, we are 13 years into the opening of the pipes. Did we make the right bets? Did that decision help get us to where we are today?
Stuff like that…
Some Brain Candy (Though it may be difficult to chew on!)
The Attention Economy is obviously an area of interest to facebook since it’s the User’s focus that becomes a valuable commodity and source of primary revenue.
If, as some research suggests, there are technologies, designs or methods that may draw human attention in ways that operate not only unconsciously (already well recognized I believe) but also in ways that may be damaging to good decision making and/or rational development what is the best response?
Please! I’m only suggesting this as a potential issue… not some conspiracy theory.
In fact, much that’s going on works against it… especially the dispersal of information and communication capability.
It’s just a cautionary thought since the same forces empowering dispersal can also empower concentration if we take our attention off the ball.
(But run away fast when the screen starts flashing purple and orange pinwheels while a deep voice calmly soothes, “Let me bring you peace, security and happiness… Trust me… just press enter”