I think we solve the problem of authentication by facebook conect but we have now a verification problem. I think that there must be a new verification company that most of the sites must trust. I think the company is Eczacibasi Holding, one of the pioneer brand in Turkey. The name of the company of the holding is  Tasdix ( unfortunately and unbelievebly the site is Turkish http://www.tasdix.com/Default.aspx ) . And their facebook application is Gercexiz http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=32219934928

Last week Jason Goldberg (XING Chief Product Officer) was in Turkey.  I have some comments and notes, that I like and  disagree in his speech.

First of all I like to say the points that I don’t agree with Jason.

He told us that internet is in perceptual beta. But it is not in that way I think. Beta is a need to say that you cannot  sue us in any problem even if it is free of charge. But the internet world is changing day by day so as an enterpreneur I think that he have to change his point of view. We are not part of conventional world anymore, and we also dont need to make our speech to this world anymore.

The second interesting thing is the example of facebook country. Most of you must know that if facebook is a country it is the seventh biggest country in the world. I dont like and even care about this explanation. We are trying to break the borders as a netizen. But now i realize that we are not only fight with the conventional but also the enterpreneurs, which want the power of conventional world.

In the new world the description of some words are changing. Power is also have a new description and it is not about quantity, it is about quality of people you are working with. Xing must be happy with this new dscription, becouse if they act like in this description, they will not challenge with facebook anymore.

But Jason also said good things mostly about the production processes… First of all the slogan was very impressive; SHIPIT… If you have an idea just do it and ship it and see if it is working. There is nothing worst about it… Just ship it and try to learn something from the feedbacks. By the way just take feedbacks from anywhere, twitter, facebook  just from anywhere.

Also if you are a web developer; I learn great websites from Jason… Once you launch your website get customer relations from; http://getsatisfaction.com/ (People-powered customer service) and http://uservoice.com/ which has a slogan “Your customers have great ideas. Are you ready to listen?”. They are great websites, you have to learn…

I am a big fan of mashable… Ben the guy wrote a great article about managing multiple profiles on internet which is a big prob for me… I hope it will also help you!

HOW TO: Manage Multiple Social Media Profiles

Start counting the number of social media websites you have a profile with, right now. Out of fingers yet? Facebook (Facebook reviews), Twitter (Twitter reviews), Flickr (Flickr reviews), and YouTube (YouTube reviews) are just the start of it – for people active on social websites, you could have several dozen social media profiles, half of them using a really old picture of you. Heck, some of them probably have inboxes filled with strange messages from some girl named “Leota” who wants you to visit her sexy singles website.

While inbox spam and old pictures may not be the end of the world, keeping up a consistent image across the web and keeping your content fresh is vital to good business and strong relationships. With a little upfront effort, the task of maintaining multiple profiles can be less tedious, freeing up time to better connect with other people.

Step 1. Understand your Current Position

The first step is to exactly know where you have a social media profile and where you do not. Start by checking with Check User Names, which will search dozens of popular social media websites to see if your username is active. Check any you normally use. If any don’t ring any bells, see if it’s yours or if somebody already owns.

Tip: Always keep note of other people using your most common username. Making sure people don’t confuse you for somebody else is important for friends and potential employers alike.

Step 2. Choose Your Platforms Realistically

People may disagree with me, but I believe you should sign up for the most popular social networks regardless of whether you are going to use them all. This prevents someone else being mistaken for you and protects an account that you may want to use later.

This doesn’t mean you should be active on all of these services. Take a long, hard look at all of the services available and your time constraints and choose the ones that pique your interest the most. Keep some focus when choosing platforms. For the rest, place a note on your profile with contact information and links to your favorite social profiles.

Step 3. Organize!

This is the most important step! Don’t be satisfied with a disarray of bookmarks and email notifications. Organize a bookmarks folder or two for the social media services you are using. Filter your email so that all of your notifications fall into their own inbox/label. Schedule time to log into these accounts and make sure they are in order.

Tip: The most important thing to remember is to find a system and stick to it. These are the profiles that need your attention consistently; keep them free of spam and outdated information.

Step 4. Automate and Combine Your Profiles

No, I am not suggesting using a bot or having autoresponders. Instead, I am talking about grouping similar tasks together. One of the most common actions on social media is sending an update that you have updated your blog. Normally, you would have to copy and paste this type of message into Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace (MySpace reviews), not to mention Plurk (Plurk reviews), Brightkite (Brightkite reviews), or FriendFeed (FriendFeed reviews).

However, with services such as Ping.fm (Ping.Fm reviews) and Twitterfeed, this can be done without any work on your end. Find tools that can help you spread you reach without eating up your time.

Tip: Atomkeep is a cool tool for updating all of your social media profiles at once – it connects to your Twitter, LinkedIn (LinkedIn reviews), Facebook, and other accounts and allows you to change bios and profile pictures with one action.

Step 5. Keep it Fresh

It’s easy to tell if someone has abandoned an account and left it to grow weeds. If you intend to use a service, keep adding new content! You can’t expect to meet new people on Digg (Digg reviews) or Stumbleupon (StumbleUpon reviews) accounts without digging or stumbling. And it can be confusing for other people if your profile has an old email address or says you’re still in a relationship with your high school sweetheart.

Tip: Use a Firefox extension like Shareaholic to help make adding new content to your profile easier.

Go Forth and Network!

Once you’re organized and understand where you really want to spend your time, managing multiple social media profiles becomes less of a chore and more about sharing experiences, discovering new content, and building new relationships. That is why you made these profiles in the first place, right?

I read an article about ppl who are bored about checking social networks everyday. There is a good solution for it.. But for those also like to followed by others maybe my second solution which is a really big hype in Turkey the friendfeed will also be a good solution.

The Sledgehammer: NutshellMail It might seem counter-intuitive to sign up for another web service to majorly reshape the others, but you have no idea what kind of power NutshellMail can give you. It solves what we’ll call the Email Alert Circle, which goes something like this: * You log into social sites and speed-read all the new stuff, but it’s destroying your free time, and your brain! It’s just too much. You stop visiting so often, but wish you could still get the most relevant stuff from them. So you switch to… * Oh, look, email alerts! Now you can get just the direct messages, replies, and relevant friend posts. Two weeks later … * You’re now avoiding your email inbox and decide it, too, is just too much. So get a free account at NutshellMail. Authorize it to parse your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and/or LinkedIn accounts, and it takes all those “John Smith commented on your status” and “Lindsay Jones sent you a direct message” emails you really don’t need to see Right This Minute and delivers them in a digest whenever and however you want them. “But my Twitter replies are crucial to my self-est..I mean, it’s an of-the-moment service!” you say. Fine—go ahead and schedule your NutshellMail updates to arrive every so many hours, depending on your addiction. You’ll still get all the updates for everyone you’re following, and you won’t even have to hop into Twitter.com/TweetDeck/Tweetie/whatnot to reply, because NutshellMail lets you @ reply via email links. For those who can be realistic about how connected they need to be, NutshellMail takes the constant back-to-work hurdles of email updates, known as bacn in some circles, and pounds them into one flat page of your kinda-need-to-know.

Friendfeed

It’s fast and easy to start a conversation around shared items, or to show that you like something a friend has shared. You can subscribe to updates from individuals and groups, such as your family or a team of people you work with. On FriendFeed, you and your friends contribute to a shared stream of information — information that you care about, because it’s from the people that you care about.

You don’t need to install anything to use FriendFeed. You can read and share your FriendFeed however you want — from your email, your phone or even from Facebook. If you make your FriendFeed publicly visible, your friends can see what you’re sharing without creating an account, and you can embed your feed in your home page or blog. FriendFeed also lets you pull in updates from other sites around the web, and even publish your feed to services you already use, like Twitter.

Global e- work’s the most important approach is “think global, act local.
This view of global work firstly contains using language of country which you are in. From the mythology of babel to this time language becomes a tool that cause people far away from each other. The most significant reason is not only differentiation of the words used; but also variation of several matters from syntax to construction of logic and conception according to geographical position.Chance not only language which they use but also their point of view while providing to behave local. For example some point of views which are funny at a lot of languages begin to seem dreadful and meaningless when translated without changing anything in Turkish and Turkey.

However the expression that is used at eksisozluk (sourdictionary) which is called sewer of internet and the most immoral website of turkey has too sophisticated point of view to translated to another languages. This is the difference of Turkish people’s geographical point of view not attitude of feeling themselves different. So global companies that plan to have operations in Turkey need to make contacts with that geographys’ movers and shakers for learning local behaviour. In Turkey, Microsoft, which shows activity from nearly beginning of the 90’s, go ahead truely and seriously. But this isn’t valid for the other companies.
For example facebook, which draw attention with its Turkish population , put signature to unsuccesful translation in this subject Facebooks’ Turkish is meaningless and far away from being understood. Similar situation is valid for linkedin.com, which try to gain people only with becoming Turkish, and for Xing , which buy cember.net in Turkey. The worst side of this work is translating the language to Turkish automatically with the control of IP. This makes it much more incomprehensible.
Turkish users ,who have difficulty and also can use more than one language, obliged to change the setting of the website english to understand. Global companies which translate their institutional site to Turkish, make the second greatest mistake . In my seminars while giving examples, which brand the participants say , we can see sites contain serious mistakes. The two example in my last seminar were sony and nike and Turkish translation in their web page was incredible and contains an incomprehensive speech contain sentences in Turkish and in English. The last and the most important mistake is the corporations inhibit their web to certain geographies. I Think of that this issue need to be researched by Human Rights Court and United Nations. Because when you service on the internet, you have to accept all internet users as the costumers coming from your door in this situation. If how you can t write ‘no entrance for blacks’ on the door, you can’t also write ‘no entrance for Turks’, you should not. This is exactly racism. While there must be a equilibrium between all surfers in internet , existing of this difference is a very unpleasant and unacceptable injustice.

People who sees this problem just as a legal subject or as a censorship law can only solve it for short term.

The best way to understand this issue is through knowing the internet history of Turkey. Perception and appreciation of internet as a media has started with the foundation of haberturk.com. Haberturk used scandal news and events in order to call attentions as a news website. The need of controlling and inspecting the internet by hands of state begins when this site starts to becoming a thread to  the governing party of the time. A draft of law has been constituted. However since this act of law aims to control websites such as haberturk.com, it becomes censoring more than inspecting. Moreover, since legists who prepared it knows the traditional media more than the digital one, the law contains technically impossible procedures such as two photocopies of each webpage sent to local authorities etc. Liberals who realized this reacted hard to the law. This caused the moderate renewal of the law.
But, despite all the softening, this new law signed by the President of the time, Ahmet Necdet SEZER in 2005 contains censoring of media in its soul, so its logic of punishment was deep wide in order to increase its dissuasiveness. The law took the force of processing this logic from taboos of Turkish society such as child pornography, insult to Ataturk etc. That is because the legislation was enacted by agreement of all forces from media to public. These forces of which the law received its support was its Achilles heel at the same time. May be by this analysis, or just by coincidence, immediately after the law was laid down, a video broadcasted in Youtube was sued for one of the nine main components of the so known catalog crimes in Turkish lawbook. Eventually the case lead to a ban to Youtube due to those nine crimes mentioned.

This situation caused the forces in Turkey who supported this law once splitted into two. The main reason to this separation was not arised of the problem thereopen but the worries. Yet for the moment Youtube.com should show respect to the subject which is very sensitive in common for Turkish people and remove the video. However, liberal constitution interests in concerns more than the problem itself, it cares for Turkey not to remain in hands of censorship, and uncomfortable with the incapability of government handling the issue. For the moment, major aim of all groups who want youtube.com not to be banned is not more than the will of diverging from a censorious society. Besides, all forces of Turkish community owns an indisputable integrity about the removal of those visuals containing insults and disrespect to Ataturk, and demands esteem on our culture and merits.Turkish culture, though it molded its matriahal basics through tolerance, is committed deeply to their values which are protected from past to present and endowed with high pride and figure to serve them even if it worth their lives. Although this approach of Turks is seem paradoxical in many other cultures including European culture,it is the main speciality that makes Turkish people distinct in the world.
To this reason, no matter how it is told, in order to remove this problem, primarily youtube.com has to show respect to Turkey’s culture and values. People who sees this problem just as a legal subject or as a censorship law can only solve it for short term. Youtube, like many other international firms operating in Turkey, has to be respectful not only to our laws but also to our viewpoints. In this matter, Google groups should take companies operating for long time in Turkey such as Microsoft as an example. Yet, though similar problems are lived with facebook, the solution come easily alongwith the communication skills of Microsoft.

In the few days since Facebook Connect launched, we’ve noticed something: blog commenting is becoming more authentic. The presence of trusted Facebook identity is creating a context for more meaningful conversation on the web.

For example, when Facebook Connect launched on Inside Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, several people at Facebook, and dozens of people in the industry commented on Inside Facebook for the first time. Why? Because for the first time, Facebook Connect has enabled real identity on the web. In other words, everyone knows who’sactually talking.

What does that mean for online discussion?

1. If your comments are connected to your Facebook identity, you’re not going to publish things you might say anonymously.
2. Because comments connected to a Facebook identity are connected to a real person with a reputation (usually), they are more trustworthy (at least to the extent of that person’s reputation).

In other words, over time, Facebook Connect is going to slowly increase the authenticity and quality of conversation across the web. While this has been the goal of many identity systems for a long time, Facebook Connect has the potential to make it a reality more powerfully than ever before.

On crisis small budgets are the big reality. So we must learn how to deal with small budgets.

In the article below you can find small budget planning for marketing….You have a great product, a great website and a great staff. The only thing that isn’t “great” is the size of your marketing budget. Roughly $27 billion dollars will be spent in online advertising in 2008, according to eMarketer. With so many marketers occupying the same space, how can a company stay competitive while staying within its budget?

Don’t resort to taking up offers from the snake-oil salesmen such as bogus SEO optimization services or overpriced and over-glorified affiliate marketing programs. Instead, use proven ways to compete toe-to-toe in today’s online market without breaking your budget.

We have all seen companies get caught up in the losing game of keyword bidding wars over terms that are way too general, or against competitors with deep pockets that are willing and able to spend on loss leaders. A strong presence in today’s online market is critical — but contrary to popular belief, size isn’t everything. What does it take for a marketer to compete effectively when money is tight? Here is a list of six key strategies marketers can use to get ahead while staying within their advertising budgets.

1. The “they’re huge!” effect

When you see commercials, billboards, print ads, online ads, etc. for the same company over and over again, you probably think, “They’re huge!” Right? Customers’ perception of your company has a lot to do with their decision to buy from you. The more you stay top-of-mind to a consumer, the more likely it is that they will purchase from you. So the trick is getting your message in front of your customers at a good rate without having to throw major bucks at a search engine, email marketing campaign, ad network or other advertising vehicle.

The common types of behavioral targeting are effective, but they don’t necessarily give the returns that would justify the large ad spend to get the “they’re huge” effect. It’s costly to contextually or behaviorally target customers via display advertisements. These are great marketing vehicles to use when you have the budget, but when your advertising dollars are limited, these forms of behavioral targeting should be left for the big boys with the budgets that can support them.

Newer behavioral targeting methods, like retargeting, are cost effective and deliver incredible results. Retargeting is categorized as behavioral targeting because the customer’s behavior — visiting your website — causes that person to be shown targeted displays ads during his or her everyday web surfing activities (visiting sites like Yahoo, Facebook, etc.). You aren’t spending money to get placement in front of certain demographics; you are directly targeting customers who have visiting your website.

Here’s an example: Jane visits a website that sells cosmetics. She leaves the site for whatever reason — she wants to comparison shop, she is at work and her boss walks over to her desk, or maybe she gets interrupted by a phone call. When she gets back online, she goes to her Yahoo email account. When she logs in, she sees an ad for the cosmetic website she visited earlier. Later, she goes to CNN.com to read the news and, again, there is an ad for the cosmetics website. She sees ads for the cosmetic website as she visits her favorite celebrity blog website, and also as she goes to a local directory website when she’s researching wine bars. Jane is not aware that she is the only person seeing these ads as she visits these web pages, but she is left with the impression that the cosmetic website must be huge since its display ads are everywhere online.

A few months back, one of the investors of FetchBack saw our ads everywhere online and made the comment, “How much are you spending on marketing?” We explained to him that we aren’t spending much on advertising; the reason he saw our ads everywhere was due to retargeting, and apparently it had worked in created the “they’re huge!” effect we were going for.

2. Focus where there is interest

Those who know me know that I strongly encourage marketers to focus primarily on their interested prospects and existing customers, and not to spend most of their time attracting new customers. Traditional advertising programs — including paid search, affiliate programs and other traffic drivers — get prospects to your site and are important; however, they are not the most important things for marketers to focus on. At times, they can even be cost prohibitive. Once you spend the money to get a customer to your website, the majority leave without purchasing. Rather than simply focusing on getting another new customer to come to your website, you should work to get the customers who have already visited your site to come back.

Once customers visit your site, they are put into one of two categories:

* Interested prospects: customers who visited your website and didn’t purchase
* Existing customers: customers who visited your website and purchased

So why should you focus on these customers and not work primarily to get new leads in the door? The answer is simple: These customers are responsible for one of the most important metrics that most marketers don’t pay attention to: your site’s return conversion rate. Our data show that, on average, return conversion rates are four times higher than new customer conversion rates. For every new customer you convert, four customers who have either visited your website in the past or made a purchase from you are converting.

That is a huge number that you should work to increase. Don’t simply think that customers will come back to your site again to purchase, regardless of what your competitor is doing. It is important for you to stay top of mind and find ways to entice customers to come back to your site and re-purchase again and again. Methods for doing this include email campaigns, retargeting, superior customer service, reward programs and sending discount coupons in the mail to say “thanks.”

On your website, prominently display ways for consumers to opt-in to your email marketing program. They have shown an interest in your product by visiting your website, and they should also be interested in your special offers. You can also create a loyalty program and promote it on-site to encourage customers to visit your website again and purchase. Add your loyalty program information to your display advertisements and paid search text ads, and don’t forget to give it exposure on your website. If you promote the value customers get from purchasing from you, more customers will come back and do so.

It’s more expensive to get a new customer to your website than it is to convert an interested prospect or existing customer. Don’t leave money on the table from your acquisition efforts by not continuing the conversation with them. This is not an easy task to take on, but once you start increasing your return conversion rate, you will see an overall lift in sales and will spend less money acquiring new customers.

3-4. Highlight benefits; use testimonials

3. Highlight your benefits
Highlighting the benefits you have over your competitor is an effective method of driving conversions and interest in your company. The best way to do this is to create content that compares the benefits of buying your product or service to that of your competitors. Tell the consumer why you are the best choice, and be as specific as you can, so that customers can be assured of your value. Examples of points that could be included in comparative content could be the fact that your laptop performs better than your competitor’s, that your candle has a more pleasant aroma or that you have the best customer service in your industry.

Once you’ve developed such content, you need a strategy to get it in front of your customers. This strategy should include free press-release tools and microsites that customers can visit. Getting your content printed in a publication pertinent to what you are selling is also tremendously useful.

If you create a microsite, buy keywords that drive traffic directly to it. Those keywords might include searches around negative issues in the market where you shine above your competitors For example, your keywords could include “short battery life” if you are promoting a laptop with a long battery life. Your microsite can tell customers how your laptop is superior to your competitors’ laptops.

Later in this article, I discuss do-it-yourself PR in detail; this is another important way to help customers understand why you are better than your competitors. Create case studies or write an article comparing your product to your competitors’ offerings. Once the content is created, send it out to the editors of product review sites to see if they will publish it. Be your biggest fan, and use facts to show why you are better than your competitors. The point is to give your customers every reason to purchase from you by highlighting why you are superior. Use this method to push the real substance of what sets your company apart, in a positive way.

4. Use testimonials
Let your existing customers speak volumes for you by leveraging testimonials in your marketing efforts. The most important thing that most companies forget to do is to simply ask customers to provide testimonials. People love to talk about a product or service they enjoy, and on-site ratings are gaining in popularity.

Include testimonials on your website, incorporate them into your advertisements and add them to your email signatures at work so that everyone you interact with sees the good things people are saying about your company. Potential customers that see positive reviews about your product or service are much more likely to purchase, especially online. We are living in an era where customer reviews are prevalent and influential to customer purchase decisions. If your customers are not familiar with your company or brand, let your satisfied customers help you in the sales process by giving their thumbs-up for others to read.

5. Do-it-yourself PR

Guy Kawasaki posted an article on his blog written by Glenn Kelman of Redfin about why companies should move to a do-it-yourself PR strategy. In essence, the PR game is not what it was five years ago. Forget hiring an agency and spending the standard $5,000-$20,000 fee per month to have your account handed off to an associate who knows little more than you do about how to pitch ideas and stories. The most important part of a good PR pitch has always been the value in the idea that is being pitched.

In the past, PR reps would scroll through their Rolodexes, call press contacts and pitch them ideas for stories. The value in this was that information about companies and press contacts used to be much harder to come by. From the companies’ perspective, the press contact was hidden, and the press contact had no idea who to contact at a company about new innovations. Now, mainly due to the internet, both companies and members of the press have the same ability to search each other out and discuss story ideas.

Take some time to think about how you can help those who are in a position to write about your company to do so. Kelman’s article provides some excellent insights. It’s not just about pitching story ideas; you can also create the content you would like to see distributed. Write an article and contact an editor of an online publication and pitch them on the idea of running the story. Who knows your company, your product and your service better than you?

Think about what you can offer to a reader that is informative, interesting and adds value. Creating this valuable content is going to get you noticed and get free publicity for your company. Who can argue with anything free nowadays? The more people hear about your company, the more apt they are to want to learn more about you, thus creating a huge opportunity to convert them.

6. Customer service is not a cost center

One of the most overlooked — and yet most critical — ways to improve sales is through a company’s customer service. Your customer service team has incredible influence on your customers and whether or not they purchase. One bad experience can cause you to lose a customer for good. No amount of incentives or cool product offerings can correct that customer’s perception of you if it’s a bad one.

The marketplace is competitive, and there is more than one company out there that will happily scoop up your disappointed customer and make them feel valued. The more an organization looks at the entire experience of the customer as part of the goal to retain and acquire customers, the more likely customer service will be considered an investment. It’s an investment that will drive down the total costs of acquiring a sale, as well as give you more exposure in the marketplace.

Ask yourself the following questions:

* How does your organization view customer service?
* What does customer service bring to the table to help increase sales?
* Do your customer service representatives up-sell customers with complementary products or enhancements?
* Do they get your customers’ email addresses so you can market to them later?

There are countless ways to optimize your customer service. Take time to consider how customers are treated at every touch point and how you can improve those interactions. It takes time to examine this process, but companies like Zappos are finding continued success by focusing on customer service and retention.

Marketers are facing tough times, both online and offline. During such times, you have to be creative and innovative with your advertising efforts in order to differentiate yourself. It can be tough to compete against a company that has 100 times your marketing budget. Don’t get discouraged; in some instances, you actually have the clear advantage. Most large companies couldn’t care less about competing harder for a single customer. They often don’t provide the same level of service or value that you can.

Once you have an interested customer, do everything possible to stay in front of that person and convert them. Once they convert, provide service that is second to none and remember to treat them with the value they deserve. It might be difficult in the beginning to gain the general awareness necessary to compete, but once you are dealing with interested prospects, you can not only compete, but you can dominate.

Facebook’s latest attempt to finally get some real ad revenue has shown early signs of promise, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told an audience at the American Magazine Conference in San Francisco yesterday.

Facebook, a site that’s successfully accumulated a large group of active users but hasn’t quite found a business model yet, has been testing an interactive product that draws willing consumers into the advertising itself. MTV tried it out to promote its latest video music awards, posting clips of Britney Spears, for example, and allowing viewers to post comments about them. Those comments then appeared in other users’ News Feeds, the Facebook function that tells you what your friends are doing and saying.

“The results were really positive,” Ms. Sandberg said. MTV not only got some attention for its awards show, it learned a little about what viewers wanted to see. It and other networks have subsequently said they want to try using the product earlier, to make the most of that feedback, she said.

If it takes off, the product could help unravel a very big knot in the world wide web. “The monetization question on the web is a very big and open one,” she said. Google and its competitors have made answering demands for information very profitable by selling ads attached to search requests, or demand fulfillment, Ms. Sandberg a former Google executive herself, noted. “What no one’s figured out how to do is demand generation,” she said.

“We need to find a new model and new metrics,” she added.

In another recent innovation, Facebook recently released a product called Facebook Connect that helps you bring your Facebook contacts into other sites’ communities, Ms. Sandberg said. That would also help keep Facebook involved even when you socialize elsewhere online — without trying to force users back to the main site itself. “Walled gardens don’t work,” she explained.

Many users, meanwhile, are loudly complaining about Facebook’s latest redesign, but Ms. Sandberg didn’t seem too worried. “People are using our product to protest our product,” she said, noting that a protest group is now the fifth largest on Facebook.

Rumors started to leak earlier today that Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz  and colleague Justin Rosenstein were leaving to start their own company.

Facebook has since confirmed the rumor to us with a simple quote from Mark Zuckerberg: “Dustin has always had Facebook’s best interests at heart and will always be someone I turn to for advice.”

Fortunately, Rosenstein (who formerly worked at Google as product manager of Google Page Creator) has posted more information about their reasons for departure in a Facebook note to friends, which we have reproduced with his permission below.

In it, he describes briefly how Moskovitz and he plan to build to an “extensible enterprise productivity suite” that uses Facebook Connect as its user authentication system and borrows many of Facebook’s own design conventions. The two of them thought about building this suite from within Facebook but eventually decided that it would make more sense to build it within their own company. The choice quote: “We hope our products will become to your work life what Facebook.com is to your social life.”

What Web applications and trends will make it big in 2008? In this post the RWW authors ruminate on the current trends in Web technology and look forward to what 2008 might bring us. Topics include Google, semantic web, online advertising, recommendation systems, Facebook, digg, open standards, Mobile Web, search engines, and much more!

So check out our predictions for ‘08 and please contribute your own in the comments. Also you may want to review our track record for 2007 Web predictions.

Richard MacManus, Editor, ReadWriteWeb:

1. Semantic Apps will become popular in 2008, due to their ability to get better content results and make better data connections. Think search engines like Hakia and Powerset, wikipedia-like efforts like Twine and Freebase, and apps that use semantic technologies under the hood (such as AdaptiveBlue and Snap).

2. In tandem with #1, Google will experiment more with Semantic Apps in ‘08. The Knols project, although not overly semantic, is a hint of this direction.

3. Web Services platforms will be a fierce battleground in ‘08, with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and others competing to provide ‘Web OS’ and online storage to consumers. Unfortunately this may spell the end of a number of startups in this space.

4. Zoho and/or ThinkFree will be acquired by big companies wanting to leapfrog into the Web Office space.

5. The online advertising market will consolidate, after the spate of acquisitions in 2007. CPM will continue to dominate for media brands and CPC for niche sites, although there will be experimentation in VRM and other forms of highly specific targeting of ads. Privacy issues will prevent the latter from becoming mainstream though. The much-hyped CPA (Cost per Action) will continue to be a pipe dream, because publishers simply don’t want it.

6. The big Internet companies will surprise us all by embracing open standards, and attempting to compete with each other with features instead of data lock-in (OK, this could just be wishful thinking!).

7. The most interesting innovations on the Web in 2008 won’t happen in Silicon Valley, but in Asia (China, Japan, Korea). At least one startup from China will break through in the US market with Twitter-like success in 2008 – and it will almost certainly be a Mobile Web app.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, Lead Writer, ReadWriteWeb:

1. Twitter will be acquired.

2. Most ad networks will start producing their own content to advertise against; and some content companies today will get acquired by ad networks.

3. Online video will become so ubiquitous, including live and mobile, that everyone will wonder how the internet existed without it. It won’t feel like a big deal, though.

4. A handful of big companies will let you start logging in with an OpenID associated with your account.

5. The value of recommendation engines will become all the more clear; the era of data will be celebrated.

6. People will rebel against Google, at least a little bit. Maybe.

7. People engaged in the new web will do some really awesome stuff that we’ll all be in awe of.

Josh Catone, Lead Writer, ReadWriteWeb:

1. Tumblr will be acquired.

2. Privacy will be a growing concern in the mainstream, but ultimately people won’t really take any action and for the most part, things won’t change. Some companies and groups (think Mozilla) will push for better privacy controls for users, while others (think Facebook) will continue to push the envelope and continue down a slippery slope. Users will eventually push back, but I am hesitant to say that proverbial “straw that breaks the camel’s back” will come in 2008.

3. OpenID will be adopted by more startups and larger web companies, but most people (mainstream users) still won’t use it – that’s a couple of years off.

4. Facebook will continue to grow and their platform will be adopted by other large social networks. Google will sweat.

5. Mobile web usage will be a big story in 2008. It’s already big in many parts of the world; and Westerners are about to get hooked. With new mobile devices that makes web surfing less painful, people will be more and more connected away from their computers.

6. Mainstream media coverage will be a catalyst for the adoption of Web Office apps by consumers; and Microsoft will eventually be forced to change their Web Office strategy and offer a fully online office suite (but that latter won’t happen in 2008). Offline mode (Gears, AIR, Silverlight, etc.) will be what really tips the scales and causes mainstream users to to embrace the as-of-yet unfamiliar world of Web Office applications.

Alex Iskold, Feature Writer, ReadWriteWeb:

1. 2008 will be slow and cautious, with the first half dominated by recession or fear of recession.

2. Facebook is going to see the same kind of decline in popularity in 2008 that MySpace saw in 2007.

3. Digg is going to be acquired by one of the mainstream media conglomerates.

4. Implicit applications, which monitor our habits and automatically infer our likes, will rise.

Emre Sokullu, Feature Writer, ReadWriteWeb

1. Facebook will acquire companies that do the following, in order to strengthen their advertising unit: personalization, behavior tracking, image recognition (Riya?)

2. Facebook will release a browser.

3. However, despite all that… Facebook will decline.

4. Google OpenSocial will be a failure; Google will try to create its own social networking empire by making acquisitions in this space.

5. Microsoft will become more aggresive and buy many popular companies at once (remember Ballmer’s quote). Candidates include SixApart, Technorati.

Sean Ammirati, Editor, ReadWriteTalk (our podcast show):

1. Google will really start looking vulnerable in 2008. While the ‘one trick pony’ comment by Steve Ballmer drew sarcastic responses, this will begin to look prophetic. While they’ll maintain market share in the search industry, the lack of traction in any other of their other initiatives will start to cause frustration. Plus, they will increasingly be perceived as the ‘evil’ company in many of these new initiatives.

2. Closely related, Yahoo’s Hack strategy (see ReadWriteTalk’s podcast with Bradley Horowitz) will start to bear fruit and things will look much more optimistic in Sunnyvale this year.

3. Facebook will start to feel pressure from two trends that will emerge on the web: distributed social networks and distributed commerce systems. For distributed commerce systems, look to see a first proof of concept from the VRM project. Chris Messina’s diso project with WordPress will be a great proof of concept for distributed social neworks.

4. Non-search advertising on the web will increase in value significantly. This will be done through a lot of innovation in the ad targeting systems (both behavioral and contextual) and new metrics being adopted by Madison Ave beyond CPC and CPM.

5. There will be a lot of innovation in the hyper-local space, putting the final nail in the newspaper industry’s coffin. This will include companies like Outside.in and Yelp moving toward widespread use and new web properties (from both startups and big Internet Cos) emerging.

6. Finally, a 3G iPhone! OK, I don’t know if this is a prediction, but I really really want it to be true

Charles Knight, Editor, AltSearchEngines (RWW network blog)

1. In the 1st Q 2008, the true “Google Killer” in search will be in Stealth Mode. In 2nd Q 2008 the first prototype will begin in closed Alpha mode. In 3rd Q 2008 it will be ready for the final closed Beta testing. In 4th Q 2008 it will launch and “Rock and Shock” the world!

2. The classic Vertical Search Engines (Job Search, Health, Consumer Electronics, Shopping, Video, People, more…) will continue their dominance over all other Search Engines in their various niches.

3. The Alternative Search Engines will pick up the pace of partnerships and cooperation, for their solid mutual benefit.

4. Mainstream Media interest in the Alts will increase until it begins to rival coverage of the five major search engines.

5. The trend towards ‘widgetization’ of the Alts will continue. Approximately 2 in 10 Alternative Search Engines (20%) have widgets now, and that number will double in 2008 to 4 in 10 or 40%.

Atıf Ünaldı,

1. A new web boom will be held.

2. Video, privacy and security is the most important issues on 2008.

3. Open ID becomes the most important web site but ppl will look for alternative solutions which are more physical.

4. Microsoft wants to bite google while google wants to bite facebook. None of them make a great deal to bite

5. As Seth Godin explains in his book purple cow, Yahoo will fall down.

6. Adobe Air will be an important developing era.

7. Also pay attention to freebase….

SocialMedia, one of the leading advertising platforms for social network applications, announced today that they’ve paid out over $8 million to developers since the platform’s launch last year.

The majority of this revenue has gone out to Facebook app developers, but the platform also supports applications running on OpenSocial. The money has been paid out to approximately 1000 developers that have used SocialMedia’s ad platform across 5000 applications (the money has not been evenly distributed, so it isn’t worthwhile to look at the average).

These figures may be encouraging to critics of Facebook’s development platform, who worry that applications can’t be easily monetized. During a talk at the Web 2.0 conference last April, members of an expert panel were predicting total revenues on the Facebook platform of as little as $10M this year – an amount that certainly wouldn’t be encouraging to the venture capital firms that have been pouring millions into some of these apps.

Around 20% of Facebook’s 29,000 applications have used SocialMedia to distribute ads (and contributed to the $8M total). While this is impressive, it only represents a fraction of the total revenue that’s being generated – clearly, there’s far more than $10 million to be had on these still-fledgling development platforms.