DISQUS

hi, I'd like to ask three questions:

1. How did you get to your first million users, e.g. advertising, seo, word of mouth, forum...?

2. How much money or effort did it take to get your first million users?

3. What was the most important factor that made your company stand above competitors and take their market share?

Thanks.

this is not related to this post but since we are talking about the press, you guys are featured on the NY Times and Techmeme

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/technology/22...

Robert, first, I think you are totally bias on your view about videos. Just because you are working with videos doesn't mean everyone else should have a video on their homepage as well. Videos might work great for your and Winelibrary but not for all the other sites. There are countless of successful startups that can portray their messages without using videos.

Second, just because stuff works for people in Silicon Valley doesn't mean it will work for the rest of the world. People outside the Valley might like things cluttered and things that you guys don't like.

I love your outspoken style but it's not cool to criticize people's work without understanding the industry and the market that those startups are targeting. I'm sure most of them have a reason to setup their homepage the way they do.

Fred, how about when you don't have something to say, pick a company and tell us what you think about their business model, technology, market trends, what you would do different, etc.? It doesn't have to be a startup. It can just be any company that you think have some interesting aspects.

This will give us readers a chance to pick your brain and will surely give you something to blog about everyday :)

how will doing this help my sales?

Because if you don't, you will surely lose sales and customers to the competitions that do adopt social media. We have witnessed the revolution of search marketing and how search has changed the way people find products and services. When was the last time anyone opened a yellow page to find an address or phone number to a business? It's hard to imagine any billion-dollar companies still haven't adopt search marketing today but 10 years ago, it was unheard of.

Social media is the next revolution. It will be another powerful form of advertising medium whether companies want to adopt it or not because like search, it is in the user/customer control. The customers decide which blogs to read, where to read comments or reviews about product, which social networking site to be a part of, etc. It is the companies that need to follow their customers, not the other way around. The question to ask is not whether social media will help my sales but how much sales will I lose.

I wrote a post comparing facebook social ads vs google adwords here. Basically, the roi for facebook social ads is nowhere near google adwords, yet. But as you said in this post, they do have great demographic filters that google don't have, in addition to the social connections and word of mouth potentials.

Google Adwords' success wasn't overnight and facebook social ads and beacon are still in development stage so only time will tell. My bet is that social ads will be just as successful as adwords assuming their user base will continue to grow, because without a large user base, social ads won't work.

I don't think that they are abandoning Beacon because advertising is the bread and butter for any social site. Facebook Beacon is still in its infant stage but when it can leverage the demographic and behavioral data and the word of mouth quality in their user base, it will be a powerful form of advertising medium. I just hope they can get there before people give up on them.

I mentioned this in a recent post that compared facebook ad vs google adwords.

another great post Fred. In fact, reading this post inspired me to start my own blog last week. No doubt that blogging has became a powerful form of communication. It is much more personal and relevant than any books or newspapers can offer. I agree with dlweinreb about how u can find something interesting to post everyday. Thanks for all the great posts.

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