How Much Is Twitter Worth?

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Is Twitter Really Worth $10 Billion? (WSJ)
WSJ columnist Dennis Berman spent the last week trying to write a column that proved Twitter wasn't worth $10 billion. Then the facts intervened. Stubbornly, they arranged themselves into a most unexpected conclusion, one that seems almost blasphemy to type: Twitter has the potential to match some of the money-gushing properties of the Internet's greatest money gusher, Google. Twitter isn't worth $10 billion if you benchmark it to its current financials. But that hardly matters now. The prime question is just how big Twitter can get— and how profitable. Read >>

Twitter Is The Fastest Growing Social Network (GlobalWebIndex via Dashburst)
Twitter is now the fastest growing social network in the world, expanding by 40 percent over the last half of 2012.

According to data by Global Webindex, there are 485 million total account holders and 288 million active Twitter users. Read >>

Yelp: We Compete With Print, Not Google (CNet)
The Internet behemoths don't pose any threat to business-reviews site Yelp and its still-blossoming local advertising business. Well, that's Yelp's attitude anyhow. "Today, we're really competing with print, radio, and television," Geoff Donaker, Yelp's chief operating officer, said when speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference. But what about Internet businesses like Google and Facebook? Donaker is sure the pair will compete with Yelp in the local advertising arena eventually. Yelp will let that battle "play out in a decade or so," he said. Read >>

The Anatomy Of A Facebook Ad Campaign (Windmill Marketing)
The Facebook advertising platform is definitely something that is worth exploring especially if you are trying to target a local market.

It's all about getting the details right. Check out the full infographic. Read >>

Pinterest Beats Facebook In Users Per Employee (Pingdom)
Founded in March 2010, Pinterest is still relatively young as a company and seems to be growing by the minute. During 2012, it grew from 20 employees to 100 as its user base went up from 9 million to about 40 million.

This makes it the largest social media platform in users per employee. Read >>

Social Media Is Just Getting Started (The Huffington Post)
As social media continues to embed itself in modern society, we have many traditional businesses and brands still scratching their heads trying to make sense of it all. When radio first became popular there were fears from many that it would be extremely destructive to society. The first organizations to make money off this new medium were the owners of the radio stations and the content producers. The second were those that produced advertising and conducted marketing activities via the "wireless," and finally, the third were businesses who tapped into this new phenomenon to create market reach. Social media is following the same pattern. The initial "land grab" was all about the network. Then advertisers flocked to shove more messages down the new pipe to consumers. Read >>

Social Media Tricks To Steal From Coke And Dell (PRDaily)
It's all about telling a story. Here's a tale of two tweets at Coca-Cola: The first message noted that the darksome beverage was on sale at local grocers. The second stated, "When you open a Coke, 12,607 bubbles are born. Happy birthday, bubbles!" Which was more successful? No, not the news of a discount. For a time, bubbles was "the most retweeted commercial tweet on the entire Twitter platform," says Adam Brown, president of the marketing consultancy adMAGINATION.

• Share your value to prove your value
• Remember the 99 percent rule
• Choose the same key performance indicators that your leaders use
• You may have to pony up
• Think of Facebook as a search engine

Again, tell a story to keep people interested. Read >>

The Rise Of Social Business (Internet Evolution via The Huffington Post)
Social business is more than just social media. Check out this infographic to see why if any business that wants to survive, and thrive, it will be social by design. Read >>