Facebook Friday: Update Oopsie Reveals Future of Facebook

The blogosphere was in a frenzy yesterday with the unceremonious and unexpected launch of Facebook's new features. There was just one slight problem...

The update wasn't supposed to happen.

Unfortunately, the new features were gone as quickly as they came, leaving the social media news giants scrambling to piece together what some off the changes were. Based on user comments and screenshots, a few things start to emerge:

• The new Pages layout, which was revealed last week, is still set happen along with the ability to switch accounts at the click of a button.
• There's a new RSS feed-like feature called "Outside World" to filter news outside of Facebook.
• There's also a new "Memories" feature that is apparently a snapshot of status updates and new friends from previous years.
• Photos are also getting upgraded with a Lightbox UI to better display photos. This feature has been alluded to before (back when Facebook upgraded its photo resolution capabilities).

Of course, because this was an accidental launch, well have no idea if/when these changes will officially take place.

But what we do know is that the old adage of "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" still rings true, because that accidental inch Facebook slipped up on has led to miles of content and speculation for blogs and news sites across the web.

Video Post: Social Media's Impact on News in 2010

For the final Daily Axioms video post of 2010, I look back at the a couple of the biggest news stories from this year and the role social media played in how we as a society viewed them. From the Winter Olympics to the Chilean miners' rescue, it was a big year in the headlines and social media had a definite influence.

What I Learned from the Science of Blogging Seminar

Last week, Hubspot's Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella) held a webinar called The Science of Blogging based on his research into blogger and blog reader habits. It was a great seminar with some eye-opening points, and if you didn't get a chance to check it out, here are some of the main takeaways.

• Analysis of 170,000+ blog posts show that links about videos get more hits than photo links. 
• However, photo links get more comments than video links. 

• Incentivizing commenting by the audience tends to work, because the word "giveaway" gets by far the most comments.

• Something to keep in mind when sharing blog posts on Facebook: As the reading level required for a Facebook post goes up, the chance it gets shared goes down significantly.

• Most blog views and links happen early in the week, but blog comments and retweets happen later in the week.
• Blog articles posted around 10am tend to get the most amount of views.
• Most re-tweets happen between 2pm and 5pm.

With the hundreds of thousands of blogs out there, obviously bloggers have to keep the best practices in mind if they are going to set themselves apart from the rest.

Buying the Cow When You Get the Milk for Free

Who wants to buy the cow when they get the milk for free?

Apparently I do, because I recently upgraded my Evernote account to premium, officially taking my first step into the cow-buying-after-free-milk-getting realm of online startups.

That got me thinking about the whole idea of monetization of online services in an increasingly accessible world. With so many mobile apps and networks out there, companies have to ask themselves more and more if and what to charge for their services.

On one hand, having a free service means there's no risk for people curious to try it out. And the more people you have actually trying the service, the better the chance that they'll adopt it for the long-term. But on the other hand, free services have a harder time making money. Sure, you can sell ad space, but you run the risk of diluting the experience for the user and losing that adoption rate.

I remember seeing a study back in July that showed the percentage of people who would be willing to pay for Twitter should they stop offering the service for free: 0%. I know we're dealing with some complex statistics here, so I'll break those numbers down: Nobody is willing to pay for Twitter.

Sarcasm aside, that study did provide an important lesson for startups. Given the same features and relatively same user experience, users are not willing to start paying for a service they already had access to for free.

That's why I like this emerging trend of the freemium service, where a startup offers a basic version of their service for free but has upgradeable options. There was an article recently about Evernote's freemium business model and how the free note-taking service is now a $10 million dollar business.

For developers and investors, stories like this are great because it shows there is indeed a market for online services, even if they're offered for free. For consumers, it's great because that means we should continue to see innovative services.

The biggest takeaway from all of this is that if people really like the milk, they'll be willing to buy the cow either way.

PR Curators for the Digital Age

Do you like Axiom's new tagline? No, it's not official, but it points to the direction we want to go as an organization. What we want to do is make it easy for our clients and partners to evaluate new media options. And there are plenty out there. New iPad apps, Android apps, and new automated curation tools like Flipboard.

We need to be ahead of our clients when it comes to social media. Steve and Heidi probably won't agree, but I tend to think FaceBook and Twitter may be gone in a few years as they grow beyond their original intent, to be replaced with something new. But the main point is that we can't be satisfied as a company simply offering the same, safe strategies and tactics that have been used in the past.

Upwards of 50 million tablets will be in the hands of consumers in a few short years. We need to make sure our clients are integrated into that platform, much like they have been in newspapers and magazines. What comes after that is anyone's guess, but I hope we'll still be here talking about it.