Bebo, The White Elephant

With news coming through that social networking site Bebo, is set to close at the end of May, it goes to show that companies have to constantly invest in their product to make it more well known, and above all, more profitable. Bought by American giant AOL for $850m in 2008 when it was the most popular social networking site in Ireland, the U.K and New Zealand, and 3rd in the U.S, it has since lost considerable market share to rival Facebook which in now the most popular of these sites in the world.

This news opens many questions as to how these sites are so popular which in turn leads to wonder how do they make so much profit. Advertising is the money marker for these sites, but how did Facebook succeed where Bebo have clearly failed? In 2007, Facebook gave a platform for developers to create applications to work within Facebook, such as games and quizzes, and as users stayed on Facebook for longer amounts of time using these applications, they gave more personal information over, which Facebook collected on their servers, which they then used to give precise targeted adverts to users, thus making more revenue for Facebook.

Here is a video showing what type of information Facebook collect on their users, although this video is negative about Facebook, in my opinion I think it is very clever how they collect their information;



This video will show you just how much information Facebook receives every second by it user's;



Bebo failed to capitalize on the information they received from users, and with little or no investment from owners AOL, many people left to join Facebook which was more aesthetically pleasing, was being constantly updated, had applications which Bebo had none of, and most importantly, it more than likely had more of your friends as users than Bebo, which is the main point of these sites.

Links

BBC News Article on closing of Bebo
Irish Times Article

Augmented Reality, real life, but better?

Augmented Reality, (AR), is a burgeoning field that mixes computer power with real life to add extra information to a scene or event. The next generation of AR is designed for people on the move - and it's already being implemented

App's have already been brought out on the IPhone to huge success, below is a video of one such App which will give you a overview of what this technology can do;



 But what does this emerging technology mean to the business world?

Well for instance, if you were looking for somewhere to eat in a city you were unfamilar with, using the App, a list of all restaraunts in the location would be shown, a company like Mc Donald's could pay hefty sums to be included in the App which could garnish them with more customers. Company reps could use it when going to customers to see if all their products are up to date and serviced.

It's not just using your camera where AR can push the boundaries out on what we can do with our phones, below is a video showing what can be done using sound;



There are thousands of uses for AR in the mobile market, but there could also be some negative aspects to this emerging technology, thieves could use the technology to case houses or offices to see if people are in the building, or sex predators could find victims by using the Twitter App showing Tweets in their general area.

I think this technology has large potential for businesses, although some industry guidelines should be put in place to try and offset some of the negative aspects of it.