Crenk

Just two days ago, www.feedheads.org was brought to my attention. There are plenty of RSS Reader sites out there, but Feedheads offers a different experience by not reinventing the wheel, but rather attaching itself to an already popular social site, Facebook.

At first glance Feedheads is nothing fancy. It almost reminded me of a Craigslist-like site which little to know aesthetics and a focus on information. Personally I don’t care what a site looks like as long as it’s informative and easy to find what I need, the bells and whistles are just icing. So don’t turn away from Feedheads until you’ve given it a try.

To log into the service you need a Facebook account, and you must allow Facebook to provide access to the site, but once you’ve gotten through the set-up you’re logged right into full access for Feedheads.

I admit at first glance I saw no need to really delve into it since there was no social aspect, but attaching to Facebook makes it very different from other RSS sites. From within the site you can introduce your contacts to stories, have them vote on their favorites and even have them join your networks. You’re given the opportunity to view the stories by three categories, “New”, “Top in 24 Hrs.”, and “7 Days”. A separate link will provide you with the days most popular tags, which is useful for a quick at-a-glance of the days topics.

If you’re a heavy Facebook user and you’re looking for new ways to make that your one stop shop for friends, news, and other information, give Feedheads a try. If you’re stuck on looks then perhaps looking elsewhere would be prudent, Feedheads is definitely for the purist.

There have been a lot of reports today about Google losing another top executive to Facebook. The person in question is Elliot Schrage, who is the VP of global communications and public affairs for Google, or was up until a few days ago. Elliot will now be taking up a new job in the same position at Facebook.

I remember back when Google was just launching into the marketplace, and all the stories were around top executives moving from Microsoft to Google. Now they all seem to be slowly moving from Google to Facebook. Are these movements to make more money or equity or are they moving to the next Google? At this stage im thinking they are moving to Facebook because they see Facebook as the next Google, but im not so sure. Facebook has never been profitable, they are only back up crazy valuations and they dont have a complete business model in place to obtain revenues. Thus, leads me to think, who will be the next Google? Who will own the internet, because this isnt done upon valuations, this is done upon generating high revenues!

PayPal can now be used on the fastest growing social network in the world, Facebook. PayPal can now be placed on your facebook pages; so you can your friends for the beers the bought last night, they can pay you from the bet you had or it can be used in a business context to fundraise.

In the PayPal press release, they mention instead of asking your friends for the money they owe you, just send them a message and save the hassle, plus embarressment.

I see this PayPal addition being integrated nicely with Facebooks new Pages (business) option. Now you can easily just place a badge on your page which allows people to donate easily and efficiently. The badge is easily customisable with features such as messages, changing the amounts of donations and a progress chart on your proceeds.

This might even be the new way to get investors to invest in your new startup, that is of course once you make a very details page on Facebook.

There has been a lot of talk this week about Zuckerberg appearing on 60 Minutes (USA). Some where saying it was a good idea and a way to push his older audience and others were saying that it was just pointless because the Facebook demographic is 16-24. However, this all being said, after Zuckerberg’s performance the CBS show only drew 9.6 million viewers (an all time season low), and normally it average 14.3 million viewers. So all in all this was really pointless for Zuckerberg and Facebook. The low numbers might have been due to the Giants-Cowboys game on Fox at the same time, but thats not the point.

Come on Facebook im sure you can come up with better marketing options than 60 Minutes. Why not just pull a stunt like the Gizmodo guys did during the week, or not!!

As every now knows Facebook launched their much awaited Advertising solutions with the inclusion of Social Ads and Beacon. However, there seems to be an inclusion of two other products that not many people are talking about which seem to be huge additions to the Facebook platform and capabilities. These inclusion are Insight and Pages.

Facebook Pages:  Pages are for companies trying to create a brand image inside Facebook. Obtaining a Page is free and it is great for businesses such as: bars, pubs, artists, games and sports teams. Think of it as word-of-mouth marketing, only completely free and happening online.

Facebook Insights: A statistics package that allows social ad users and pages users to see meaningful data which includes activity, fan demographics, ad performance and trends. This information will be very important to Pages users who are running companies and trying to improve their presence in the social space. After a few months of data Pages users will be able to determine the exact areas they need to target for advertising. Additionally, you can refine your Social Ad target demographics, budgets and creatives based on Insights data to increase traffic to your Facebook Page or website. Use the data to adjust the content of your Page and optimize for increased engagement with your customers and fans.

After watching the video which I posted in my most recent post, from the Graphing Social Patterns conference, I have noticed that Jason Calacanis has very well developed business mind and is not just some tech geek that wants to develop the coolest app on the web.

Calacanis makes a very strong point about how if a company bases their entire existence around a Facebook App they are stupid. I really must agree. From basic business principles it is very easy to understand that he is right on this topic. Facebook is a website controlled by a team of people and they can change the playing field whenever they want, so why would you want to put all your eggs in one basket and allow them to control your companies future. A Facebook app should be used as a nice tool to develop either a buzz for your product or a customer group for other products you can feed through the app. Im sick of reading about companies that only develop Facebook apps and think they can have a prosperous future, because it just ain’t going to happen. For example the iLike Facebook app will be useless soon when Facebook decide to open up a new music sub-section. The playing field will always change.

This is a picture of Jaiku’s co-founder Jyri Engestrom. He looks quite smug after he just sold his company to Google for an undisclosed amount.

But seriously is this a prime picture of what web 2.0 entrepreneurs look like these days. I thought the geeks got the girls. Im hoping the more work i do with web 2.0 and media companies doesnt make me turn into a total geek on the outside as well as the inside, because then i would just have no chance of getting laid.

However, congrats again to Jyri and im sure the people over at Pownce are kicking themselves they didnt have a chance at exiting to Google.

Google have said that the Jaiku team will be relocated to Mountain View for three months before eventually returning back to London. A Google spokesperson speaking to blognation said this acquisition was part of their strategy to counter the closed proprietary nature of Facebook and we should expect to see a few more acquisitions in this space soon.

Myspace seems to be finally improving their user interface. Today they released a new beta home page which can be selected after sign-in. For so long myspace was just winning the race in social networking by sheer number of users and customizability options. However, since Facebook has opened up, there seems to be much more of a struggle and Myspace need to pull their finger out and get the site looking professional.

There are still a lot of issues on myspace that annoy me, for example music launching on a profile once it is opened and some profiles are just so high in flash and other objects it just shuts down my browser. With these new interface and nav options it seems to be looking a lot more professional and even has little web 2.0 looking buttons.

Options now include module selection and customizable colour combination. The new profile editor is only available for Internet Explorer users. Well I suppose one step at a time!

On the old Crenk website we profile Lending Club and now it seems that they have been able to secure some funding. Lending Club has closed a round of $10.26 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Canaan Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.

Lending Club provides a peer lending service for Facebook users and now hopefully with this funding it will be able to expand. The site needs to be taken beyond Facebook and expanded on its website and possibly other social networks. The peer-lending and micro-lending market is experiencing quite a boom right now, with companies like GlobalFunder also getting investment for their services as well.