A Lot Can Happen Over Internet

What Is Retargeting And How Does It Work?

2013-01-01T22:20:00.000-08:00

Retargeting, also known as remarketing, keeps your brand in front of your online audience after they leave your website. So what is retargeting and remarketing? How does it work? Imagine being able to show your display advertisements solely to people who have shown interest in your brand. This is exactly what retargeting and remarketing does. By having your banner ads follow your users throughout the internet, retargeting aims to: Increase your brand awareness Retain your website’s visitors Drive users throughout your conversion funnel The key beauty to this technology is that it really is only serving banner ads to people who have shown at least some amount of engagement in your brand. This makes retargeting a smarter spend than most other display ad campaigns as it focuses on your brand’s engaged userbase. Even if other campaigns are demographically targeted, your brand’s ads will be much more memorable to your users if they are being ReTargeted.

A few concerns can arise, however, when your banner ads start following your site’s visitors. How do ReTargeted campaigns know who your visitors are? Will the ads overbear your users? The absolute truth is that there is NEVER any transfer of personally identifiable data. Retargeting works by having you place one line of code on your site. When a user visits your site, this single line of code drops a cookie onto the user’s computer, which starts the retargeting process and has your ads follow your visitors around the web. Additionally, companies like ReTargeter follow best practices to make sure that your users never get inundated with your banner ads. Some high-level ways to utilize this technology: In conjunction with any outbound email marketing that you may do, retargeting campaigns can place cookies on any user who opens your emails, effectively beginning the retargeting process for them. Additionally, there is a huge value in utilizing retargeting to encourage your users to convert throughout your freemium product’s funnel by displaying banners with different CTAs to people who have converted throughout different stages of your funnel. Lastly, you can target the people who have visited a specific product’s page on your site, and target them with ads to encourage them to learn more and purchase your product. This is great for any company that sees a high amount of shopping cart abandonment for any of their particular products. The value of advertising to your users via retargeting is definitely huge for building brand awareness, retaining visitors, battling shopping cart abandonment, and driving users throughout your conversion funnel. With all of these benefits being set from retargeting, you can be sure that this form of hypertargeting will deliver a tremendous ROI.

6 Great Gifts For Mom This Mothers Day

2012-05-05T00:35:00.000-07:00

Mothers Day is on the second Sunday of May. The purpose of this holiday, as proposed by Anna Jarvis (1864-1948), is to remind us to appreciate our mother and strengthen family bonds. One great way to show appreciation to your mom is to send her a Mothers Day gift. This article provides ideas for 6 great gifts for mom this Mothers Day.
1. Mothers Day Gift Basket: A great way to let your mom know you appreciate her unconditional love is to send her a Mothers Day gift basket, which is designed specifically to honor mothers. These beautiful baskets usually contain savory treats, votive candle, and a book of inspirational stories and quotes about mothers (or images of special moments shared by mother and daughter). Other items may also be included in the basket to proclaim your love for her. For example, a popular gift basket for mom includes a self sufficient container garden inscribed with Love You Mom on the outside, and contains the soil, nutrient, and seeds for her to start a blooming garden. All she has to do is to water and flowers will bloom. While the contents of these baskets vary, they can surely deliver your message of love to your mom and warm her heart on her special day and beyond.
2. Spa Gift Basket: Spa gift baskets are popular Mothers Day gifts, and there are spa gifts designed just for mom. One of these gifts consists of a beautiful container adorned with purple flowers and includes a table top glass and mirrored plaque with a poem just for mom. Also included are lavender bath and body products, exfoliating bath mitt and facial towel, hair brush, rose-shaped tealight candles and heart-shaped holder, floral magnetic notepad, and a mini ceramic angel. This unique gift will not only sooth her body, but also fill her heart with your love.
3. Gardening Gift Basket: If your mom is passionate about gardening, then a gardening gift basket will bring her joy. You can send her a solid wood gardening planter that contains a soft knee pad, a pair of stylish gardening gloves, assorted vegetable or floral seed packets, a spritzer bottle, a beautiful gardening sign, hand soap, moisturizing hand lotion, and aromatherapy sachets. She will also find some tasty treats inside the planter, including chocolate chip cookies, caramel apple stickies, and herbal tea. She can enjoy these tasty treats while taking a break from planting.
4. Tea Gift Basket: If your mom is a tea lover, then a tea gift basket will be the perfect gift for her. This white basket contains a delicate rose stoneware teapot and matching tea cup with saucer, and two varieties of tea. Also included are chocolate truffle cookies, raspberry chocolate cake, green tea, breakfast tea, butter toffee caramel corn, chocolate truffles, and chocolate covered pretzels. This sophisticated gift will delight any tea lover.
5. Personalized Picture Frame: Another way to profess your love to mom is to send her a personalized picture frame featuring a poem in her honor. You can select from one of the 4 different provided verses, and personalized the frame with your special message. The frame can hold your favorite picture with mom.
6. Giant Fortune Cookie: You can also surprise your mom with your personalized message inside a giant Mothers Day fortune cookie. You can tell her how fortunate you are to have her in your life. The cookie is hand-dipped in fine Belgian chocolate, sprinkled with sweet pastel candies, and decorated with pink hearts, butterfly, flower, and a candy plaque that says Mom.
In summary, there are many ways to show your appreciation to your mother. You can send her a Mothers Day gift basket, or one of the 6 great gifts for mom.

Gift

2012-05-05T00:12:00.000-07:00

Gift giving should be a special gesture that needs creativity on the part of the giver. Whatever the occasion may be – birthday, Christmas, anniversary - the gift need not be that expensive in order to be appreciated. Give sweets and chocolates with an online touch. Personalized photo gifts could simply be great, as well as photo canvases, for anniversary gifts. Wedding favors could be most unique.

Off-Page Search Engine Optimization

2011-03-11T02:40:00.000-08:00

Off-page optimization refers to factors that have an effect on a website in natural or organic search results. These factors are off-site in the sense that the Webmaster or the coding on your page does not control them. But they play a major role in Search Engine Optimization. According to Google's survey, if a website is not in the first page results, then it looses 63% of potential business. So off-page optimization is really important from all the aspects to promote your website on major search engines.

Off-page optimization basically includes:

1.Proper selection of keyword for anchor text
2.Directory Submissions
3.Search Engine Submissions
4.Blog Comment Posting
5.Social Bookmaking
6.Press Release Submission
7.Link Building
8.One-Way link building
9.Two-way/reciprocal link building
10.Three way link building
11.Article Submission

The major point in off-page optimization is to get back-links to your website. It improves your position in SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Major search engine like Google gives great importance to back-links while calculating the position of a website in search engine. Other than on-page optimization, off-page is really what matters if a site has to perform well in a search result. So proper planning should be made before doing it as a small mistake can really decrease your credibility.

Social Media Marketing/Optimization...

2011-03-11T02:31:00.000-08:00

Social Media Marketing

SMM/SMO or Social Media Marketing/Optimization is basically the use of blogs, social networks, online communities or any other method of internet for marketing or sales of a product. It also involves making public relations and providing customer service. Some popular tools to carry out social media marketing are: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube. In terms of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users and not direct by employees of the property. For users and not employees can upload example there are many blogs whose content related with the blog.

What you can gain by SMM?

Social Media Marketing has so much potential that it can rocket your traffic, promote your brand and can grow the visitors to your site to a new height. To promote your business you just have to start a social media-marketing program with a proper planning and strategy. The target should be potential customer and not any audience. For example, suppose you have a company that manufactures child toys, and you want to build a marketing scheme to attract people to buy your products. Here social media marketing plays an important role as you can promote your product on blogs and other SMM sites. To keep your customers updated with happenings on your site, you can use blogs or Tweets to feed them content that catches their eye. In this way you can not only save money but you can also keep them psyched for any next major push from your side.

Social media sites are a great place to find new customers:

If you are very good in communicating with people, then Social Media Marketing can really be a bonus for you. But be damn sure that it is a great time consuming job. You will have to build your friend circle out of which most of them will be not interested in your business. You have to find potential customer for you. Even if you find one, there will be many who will be targeting those. So here comes your ability to present yourself. If you are good at that, then definitely you will have a lot of success in customer building program. Try to know which area of people is more lenient towards your business. Also know other aspects like their age group, general demand and other things. This will help in better presentation of your business to them. Also knowing these facts will make sure that next time you advertise yourself, you approach the group of people who are really interested in your business.

BY
Joydeep Das

What is SEO....???

2011-03-11T02:25:00.000-08:00

Most people understand Search Engine Optimization or SEO as a way to increase the traffic on their site. A better understanding of SEO is the process of optimizing your content in order to be easier to find by potential visitors who are looking for the information you have published or the service you provide. In other words, it is more suitable to think of traffic incensement as a result of well performed content/website optimization, not as a SEO itself.

When you build your website

It is important to understand that nowadays SEO literary can be called a science, just like math and physics for example. Due to the fact that it would be almost impossible to cover all the points which make one website well search engine optimized, we will provide you with some basic guidelines how to improve your website and certain things that should be avoided during the web site creation process.

Content and title

Whatever design you decide to make for your website the most important thing for your website will be the content itself. So, providing high-quality, useful, full and accurate information on your website will definitely make it popular and webmasters will link and refer visitors to your website which is one of the key factors of site optimization.

Most crawlers have very sophisticated algorithms and can recognize natural from unnatural links. The natural links to your website are developed when other webmasters include in their articles or comments links to your content or products and not just including you in the blogroll, for example. If a certain page is considered as “important” by a search engine and there is a natural referral link to your website content most probably your page will be also crawled and marked as “important” if the content is relevant to the topic of the original page.

Another important subject that should be considered while creating your content is the title of your pages and articles. Please note that we are not referring to your URLs and links here. You should carefully choose your posts, articles, pages and categories titles in order to be more search engine friendly. When you are creating a content regarding a subject, think what words a potential visitors will use in the search engine websites when they are looking for this information and try to include them in your title.

For example, if you are writing a tutorial about how to install WordPress it will not be suitable to name it “Configuration, adjustment and setup of WP”. That is because people who are looking for this information will use more common words in order to describe the information they need – “How to install Word Press”. Think about the phrases that users would use to find your pages and include them on your site – this is a certainly a good SEO practice and will improve your website visibility in the search engines.

In addition to your title and key words another important part of your page are the meta tags. They are read by the search engines but are not displayed as a part of your web page design. For more information regarding meta tags and meta tags optimization you may refer to this URL.

Dynamic pages issues

People like eye-candies, bots do not. Yes, indeed, people do like colorful websites, flash, AJAX, javascript and so on, however, you should know that these technologies are quite difficult to be assimilated by the crawlers because they are not plain text. Furthermore, most bots can be referred to another page only by static text link which means that should make sure that all of your pages on your website are accessible from at least one simple text link on another page. This is a very good practice and assures that all pages on your website will be crawled by the search engine bots. Generally, the best way to perform this is to create a SiteMap of your website which can be easily accessed from a text link on your home page.

The easiest way to imagine how the search engine bot actually “see” your website is to think of it as text-only browser. If you are Unix/Linux user you can simply use a text browser via your shell such as Lynx (http://www.google.com/search?q=lynx+browser). However, if you are a Windows user you will need a text only browser or program which can visualize your website in order to get a general idea of how the bot “sees” your pages.

You can use this online tool which provides this service for free.

Basically, this website works as web proxy but provides only the text output. In order to use this website, however, you should create a simple file called delorie.htm under your public_html directory. Be advised that it can be just an empty file – it is used only to verify that you are the owner of the website and not a bot that uses the proxy service.

As soon as you have the file created type your domain name and click on “View Page” button. You will be displayed a text page with the text content of your website. All information that can not be seen via this proxy most probably will not be crawled by the search engine bots – this includes any flash, images or other graphical/dynamic content.

It is important to mention, however, that some search engine bots recognize graphical and dynamic content such as Flash, AJAX, etc.

Possible workaround

Still, it is hard to avoid using dynamic pages when you are creating a modern-looking website, thus, you will need some workaround in this matter in order to assure that the information is properly crawled. A possible solution is to create a text only duplicate of your dynamic page which will be readable by the search engine bot. This page can be included in your SiteMap and in this way all of your information will be read by the bot.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) target paid listings. In general, the earlier (or higher on the page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a website web presence.

The Growth of Social Sites in India....

2011-03-10T03:06:00.000-08:00

The following chart represents the growth of various social networking sites in India during the past year. The dark bar represents the total number of unique visitors for a site in Nov '09 while the lighter bar represents the same number for Nov '10.

As is obvious from the chart, Facebook experienced enormous growth in India, rising to the top spot, while previous market-leader Orkut has more or less stagnated in this period. LinkedIn and Twitter have also managed to nearly double their audience in a year.

While most old-time Orkut users may have migrated to Facebook, Orkut numbers have not declined because the site is still hugely popular in Tier-II and Tier-III towns of India.

BY Joydeep Das

The Social Network.....

2011-03-10T02:51:00.000-08:00

How to use social media to look for – and get – a job...!!!

Networking has always been a great way to seek and gain employment. While attending industry events and engaging your friends and family are still valuable in the hunt for work, however, modern-day networking often means using social media – websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – to take your job search to the next level.
By Joydeep Das

Just make sure you’re doing it right.
“Because social media and online job-searching components are now part of the norm, candidates need to know how to benefit from the use of these tools in order to be successful in their search,” states Bernadette Kenny, chief career officer at Adecco, in a Holloway Schulz & Partners report entitled Job hunting in the digital age.

“A job seeker’s personal posts on social media outlets, as well as their overall ‘persona’ on the Internet, can harm their hunt for the perfect job – or they can turn it around and use these same tools to help them land a great position.”
Angela Crocker, a social media trainer with Beachcomber Communications, agrees. “We’re in a new age of job search [where] everything you’ve ever done online now has the potential to work in your favour or against you,” she says.

Crocker’s recommendation for any job seeker hoping to make a positive impression online: “Do a Google search for your own name and see what comes up in the first few results. Is that you? If not, then could the person be confused for you?”

Indeed, a study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that “one in 10 employers will use social networking sites to review a job candidate’s information, gaining access through the public Internet domain into a person’s private life. More than 60% of employers who review the sites say that the information they glean there will have at least some influence on their hiring decision.”

This, says Dayna Chambers, a staffing consultant at Randstad Work Solutions, makes maintaining a positive online persona particularly important for job seekers.

“Remember, what goes online stays there forever, so represent yourself appropriately in your profiles and communication,” she explains. “Make sure others see you in the way you would like to be considered.”
For more tips on using social media to get a jobKeep reading for more tips from our experts, scroll down (that’s social media speak for read on).

FACEBOOK

Employers today know that, when they want to get a good, honest look at a job candidate’s character, Facebook is one of the best places to start.

“Every potential employer looks at your Facebook page when they do a search for your name, so make sure it’s locked down from a security perspective,” says Chris Breikss, president of 6S Marketing Inc. in Vancouver.

“Also, your friends of friends may not have their security settings set as high and people might be able to view pictures of you through others’ profiles,” he continues. “As a rule of thumb … try and remove any potentially objectionable content anyway.”

Adds Crocker: “Do the five-year-old drunk college photos on your Facebook profile represent who you are today? Are your [updates] filled with slang and profanity? Depending on the employer, this can work against you.”

Erin Gray, office manager at Wolfgang Painters, says it’s critical to “be aware of your online image and what it says about you to people who don’t know you.”
“If the company you’re looking at [joining] is advertising on Facebook, be mindful of your privacy settings when you are applying to it,” she explains. “If you can find them there, they can find you there.”

The fact that more and more companies (i.e., potential employers) are leveraging Facebook to spread the word about their products or services and build a fan base creates a new set of social media job search rules.

Breikss says you should “use the Facebook ‘Like’ button to like companies that you want to work for. You can also comment on posts that they make on their wall.” However, warns Crocker: “Only leave comments when you have something meaningful to say.”

TWITTER

Twitter, according to Lana Bradshaw, is a great way to follow staffing firms and “potential employers or companies you want to work for.” Just remember to keep your interactions professional (i.e., “no smiley faces”).

Chambers has some timely Twitter tips, too: be sure to have a professional profile and photograph; tweet the fact that you are looking for job opportunities; and search the site to find what you need.

“You can use visit search.twitter.com/advanced to search for jobs in your area and language,” she says. “Also check out third-party Twitter services like www.twitjobsearch.com.”
As a job seeker, it’s really important to take an active approach to your Twitter activity. “Twitter is best for contacting a company directly and asking if they have job postings or asking for clarification on job postings, rather than just combing their tweets,” Gray explains. “Use it to have conversation with people, rather than just as a broadcast tool.”
Breikss agrees. “Make positive comments on tweets by replying to them and asking questions,” he suggests. “Showing that you’re active and supportive will get their attention. However, you can’t build relationships overnight, so this type of strategy requires time and patience.”

LINKEDIN

When it comes to employment opportunities, Gray calls LinkedIn “by far the best of the big three to try and find a job.”

“LinkedIn is used by the HR departments of most organizations and is also popular among recruiters,” Breikss reveals. “It’s essentially your professional public resumé, and you should make sure that you fill it out well with previous work and school experience. Try and add contacts and ask colleagues for endorsements to improve your profile and leave a good impression.”

Bradshaw has some additional advice on leveraging LinkedIn for your job search:
join industry-specific groups, which usually include job boards with postings;
follow the human-resources staff of potential employers, who often post jobs; and
contact recruiters and try to set up a meeting to show them your resumé – even if they don’t have a current position, it helps to stay in touch.

Staying in touch on LinkedIn means “updating your status with news of your job search, changing your preferences to communicate with visitors to your profile that you’re interested in job opportunities and getting proactive by conducting an advanced search … for people, companies, jobs and groups,” says Chambers.

“Ask for introductions to friends of friends, and be careful not to have more than five requests to connect refused – otherwise your account will get blocked as a spammer

Where Does Social Networking Fit Into Social Media

2011-03-10T02:10:00.001-08:00

Social Networking is a subset of social media. It is where individuals that share common interests, hobbies etc. gather together. These individuals want to connect online, and they use many different sites- Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter are just a few. Social networking exists in every community, and even small cities like Reno Nevada can have their own specialized social networking sites.

These Social Networks supply an ongoing discussion about every thing imaginable from movies, to music, to food and lifestyle choices.There are sites and groups on the sites can focus on people, products and even businesses or industries. This provides the ability to have instant information exchange. The timely exchange of information is a huge draw. You are able to get recommendations about the best movie, restaurant, or other entertainment venues. Additionally, you are able to vet any service or business, and it is like getting a recommendation from a close friend—except the whole world can now be a close friend!

I like to say Social Networking is like having Pen Pals of old–just at hyper speed. So, social media in Reno, Nevada can now reach out to the entire world.The same type of connections and relationships can be created with Social Networking—and are much more readily maintained with the 24-hour access of the internet. Pen pals of old of course had to rely on snail mail to connect with their networks

You have immediate access to not only friends but also their thoughts, ideas and assistance. You no longer need to wait until a business is open to get a question answered. There are experts and hobbyist available online at the various sites, around the clock, who will answer your question immediately, and if you are making a buying decision, woe be the supplier who does not have a method to at least capture your name, and preferably sell you the item you need, want or desire.

Social networking is a great place for local businesses to communicate with their existing customers, and also their potential customers. One local example of a social network is the Reno Tahoe Young Professionals Network. They clearly state the mission of the organization, and by default, the mission of this Reno Nevada social networking site.

Business owners who have this niche as a target are missing a big opportunity for social networking in Reno Nevada if they are not participating on this site. Since this site is dedicated to a particular local group, I highly recommend that local businesses not only communicate online but also contact the organization and see how they can support this specific group.

All About Assam.........

2011-03-04T01:05:00.000-08:00

Assam is the largest of the seven sister states of north-east India and is known for its tea production, oil fields and rich biodiversity. The geographical area of the state spans 78,550 sq km, and 36 per cent of the land is under forest cover. These forests house five national parks and 18 wildlife sanctuaries, and are rich in commercially viable products like bamboo and timber.

Assam's economy is primarily agrarian, and over half the labour force is dependent on agriculture. It is an industrially backward state, and the sectors that provide employment are tea, oil & natural gas and tourism. Digboi in Assam is considered to be the birthplace of the country's oil industry. The oil refinery in Digboi was commissioned in 1901 and is one of the oldest in the world.

The state has witnessed large scale migration of people from Bangladesh as a result of the wars on the eastern front. These refugees now have become integrated with the local population. Sporadic incidents of violent attacks by separatist groups have hampered the growth of the state.

Orkut vs Facebook

2011-02-24T04:08:00.000-08:00

Facebook is becoming popular in India,the growth of facebook in India is tremendous this year.

When it comes to social networking in India,Orkut was the major player since 2006 because it was the first social networking site launched in India by Google.

When we compare ,both does the same “connecting with friends” but each have some specific features.

History

Orkut was founded by Orkut Büyükkökten. in January 24 2004 .Later acquired by google.Initially orkut was launched in US,Most users of orkut were in US by that time.By the word of mouth Orkut spreaded to Brazil and India where the Orkut’s growth picked up speed.The US users later switched to other social networking sites.Currently Orkut is famous in Brazil (50.6%) and India (20.4%)

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 at Harvard university as a on-line network to connect with friends.Facebook transformed as a platform where programmers can create applications on it,Today there are 800,000 developers around the word.

Interface

User Interface is the major concern for growth , Orkut has simple user interface that a average person can use it without hassle. While face book still simple but has some complex feature that an average person has to be guided first.Orkut recently updated its interface with new one but many still opt for old interface.

Application capability

Nowadays students and developers go for face book because of additional features like facebook applications which can be developed by thirst party, community pages,open graph.One more feature that a developer likes in facebook is “facebook connect” which allows huge possibilities of integrating secure applications inside WebPages.Orkut doesn’t have any of these features needed by a developer.

Social Gaming

One major reason for facebook's success is gaming.The game application is integrated right inside the facebook . Over 83 million active users for the Farmville game alone. Many of my friends are die hard fans of farmville and mafia wars.The fact is I started using face book just to play mafia wars.Now I literally not using Orkut nowadays.

Privacy

Major problem for facebook is privacy.People can easily find others personal data.BTW orkut has some better security features like applying security for photos,scraps etc.This gives a some extra control to our personal data shared on internet.

Statistic

Facebook and orkut in India over the yearss

Facebook surpasses orkut in india

Net Orkut usage globally

Additional facts

By knowing its potential growth, Facebook has opened its first office in India to attract third biggest online market.

Zynga Gaming Firm has also started international office in India.

FACEBOOK - The World’s Largest Social Network

2011-02-24T03:28:00.000-08:00

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks.

The original idea for the term Facebook came from Zuckerberg’s high school (Phillips Exeter Academy). The Exeter Face Book was passed around to every student as a way for students to get to know their classmates for the following year. It was a physical paper book until Zuckerberg brought it to the internet.

With this success, Zuckerberg, Moskowitz and Hughes moved out to Palo Alto for the summer and rented a sublet. A few weeks later, Zuckerberg ran into the former cofounder of Napster, Sean Parker. Parker soon moved in to Zuckerberg’s apartment and they began working together. Parker provided the introduction to their first investor, Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and managing partner of The Founders Fund. Thiel invested $500,000 into Facebook.

With millions more users, Friendster attempted to acquire the company for $10 million in mid 2004. Facebook turned down the offer and subsequently received $12.7 million in funding from Accel Partners, at a valuation of around $100 million. Facebook continued to grow, opening up to high school students in September 2005 and adding an immensely popular photo sharing feature the next month. The next spring, Facebook received $25 million in funding from Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital, as well as previous investors Accel Partners and Peter Thiel. The pre-money valuation for this deal was about $525 million. Facebook subsequently opened up to work networks, eventually amassing over 20,000 work networks. Finally in September 2006, Facebook opened to anyone with an email address.

In the summer of 2006, Yahoo attempted to acquire the company for $1 billion dollars. Reports actually indicated that Zuckerberg made a verbal agreement to sell Facebook to Yahoo. A few days later when Yahoo’s stock price took a dive, the offer was lowered to $800 million and Zuckerberg walked away from the deal. Yahoo later offered $1 billion again, this time Zuckerberg turned Yahoo down and earned instant notoriety as the “kid” who turned down a billion. This was not the first time Zuckerberg turned down an acquisition offer; Viacom had previously unsuccessfully attempted to acquire the company for $750 million in March, 2006.

One sour note for Facebook has been the controversy with social network ConnectU. The founders of ConnectU, former classmates of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, allege that Zuckerberg stole their original source code for Facebook. The ordeal has gone to court, and has now been resolved.

Notwithstanding this lingering controversy, Facebook’s growth in the fall of 2007 was staggering. Over 1 million new users signed up every week, 200,000 daily, totaling over 50 million active users. Facebook received 40 billion page views a month. Long gone were the days of Facebook as a social network for college students. 11% of users are over the age of 35, and the fastest growing demographic is users over 30. Facebook has also seen huge growth internationally; 15% of the user base is in Canada. Facebook users’ passion, or addiction, to the site is unparalleled: more than half use the product every single day and users spend an average of 19 minutes a day on Facebook. Facebook is 6th most trafficked site in the US and top photo sharing site with 4.1 billion photos uploaded.

Based on these types of numbers, Microsoft invested $240 million into Facebook for 1.6 percent of the company in October 2007. This meant a valuation of over $15 billion, making Facebook the 5th most valuable US Internet company, yet with only $150 million in annual revenue. Many explained Microsoft’s decision as being solely driven by the desire to outbid Google.

Facebook’s competitors include MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Piczo, and Open Social.