That’s pretty hard to do in a world where so much of what gets done is reactive. You can have all the best ideas but be forced to abandon them almost in a heartbeat. The only way around that is when you reach a certain point where, like Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce, you have such an engaged audience that lives and dies by the platform, or Apple, which enjoys the halo of a technology company with the physical product cycle of a more traditional product manufacturer.

Somewhere between the more straightforward shareholder meeting and Apple’s World Wide Developer conference sits Facebook’s experience. Their platform reached a level of prominence in the programming community where the company needed to start having its own event. An overall industry still makes sense, but for the company to truly capitalize both strategically on the corporate buzz as well as more tactically mobilize the developer base, it had to control the environment and messaging.

That’s what the company’s f8 event, that took place yesterday, is all about. Tickets to the event sold out about as fast as those to I Heart Radio festival also taking place today. I sat next to someone who couldn’t get tickets and it required the chairman of this billion-dollar business to call up a favor and get this person in.

While Facebook doesn’t enjoy the manufacturer’s product lifecycle like Apple does, they too have begun to use their conference to announce significant product enhancements. Many people claim that this event ranks among the most important as the company hasn’t had a truly meaningful release since the Like button more than a year ago.

As to what Facebook unveils, the pre-launch consensus centered around content consumption and sharing, adding music and television to the preexisting suite of photo sharing and status sharing. Reading the Business Insider list as to their predictions, which spans everything from an iPad app to increased emphasis on Facebook Credits, you can’t help but gravitate towards a saying that noted internet analyst Lou Kerner coined while talking about Facebook. He called it “the second internet.”

Reading through the pre-announcement list, if even half of the predictions come true, the business starts to feel eerily like AOL in the mid 1990s.

For those who remember the original AOL, it truly was the Internet. There was no browser. It was the walled garden much like cell phone content pre-mobile web. You connected to the internet via AOL and all your activities took place within the confines of AOL. As it was still early at the time, some things didn’t take place like commerce, but for just about anything else, the only thing that mattered for a brand was their integration and inclusion in AOL.

We may not have entered an exact parallel because there are so many other sites and services outside of Facebook that people will use, but everything we seem to read has Facebook creating services to make it hard for people to need to leave Facebook. The site not only has their entire social graph, but it will soon be their social graph. They are making more than just an identity play but what can only be described as another version of the Internet.

Like Google, most of the services don’t appear to have any immediate revenue potential – think Google News or Google Docs. They seem designed simply to make sure your online life revolves even further around the company. If Google is the doorway to the first internet. Facebook wants to simply be the internet.

Facebook has stated, perhaps less for grandiosity and more for focus, that it would like to become the first trillion dollar company. With almost a billion users world wide, and a current estimated value of $80 billion dollars, that goal doesn’t seem quite as far fetched as it might sound.

The $80 billion puts them at half of Google’s value and just under a fifth of Apple’s value. Given that Google trades at five times its opening amount, things bode well for Facebook. If it can do what Apple has done over the past decade, then the company could pass the current world’s number one and find itself pretty close to one trillion.

All fun speculation, but just as we couldn’t help think of Groupon and Webvan in the same light, we can’t help but wonder where we are in the second Internet bubble and what path Facebook will take once they finally go public and have money in the bank. Will we see a similar outcome as AOL where they acquire a more traditional company only to years later be a standalone entity once again at a fraction of the size and value?

That’s the question now. Facebook clearly has incredibly lofty ambitions, but the track record for large, high-flying consumer Internet companies is spotty at best. We thought the answer was to continue to focus, like Google, on serving businesses.

The current trend is focusing more on consumers spending their time. It may or may not work. Perhaps the best thing it has done is to draw Google into a battle that can’t be won.

Cross-published at the DM Confidential blog.

Subscription products have been the latest rallying cry of publishers, with News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch leading the hollering. Fittingly, The Wall Street Journal online is the most notable publisher to make paid content work. At the same time, Brian Quinn, vice president/general manager of digital add sales for the Journal Digital noted that its BlackBerry application is free while the site is opening up more content to nonsubscribers.

“We’re not in the business of making content to give it away,” added Walker Jacobs, senior vice president of new media ad sales for Turner, “but the question is ho do you make money on it online?” Turner has found success with subscription services for special features related to sports coverage.

However, Peter Naylor, senior vice president of digital media at NBC/Universal suggested, “This past year we’ve been too focused on price instead of audience and the audience has leaped ahead of us.” Hence why the media all stars need to investigate employing content on as many platforms as possible. “Audience should matter far more than price.”

But content owners are anxious about the numerous platforms available and different distribution channels, commented Jeanniey Mullen, executive vice president and global CMO for Zinio and VIVmag. How many times will a user pay for their content? she pondered.

Ubiquity is the goal, the panel agreed, but information overload is a problem for everyone on all sides of the fence — publishers, advertisers and readers alike.

The moguls see value on the advertising front in contextually relevant content in advertising. Jacobs noted that Turner sees a great return from relevant ads in sports programs, such as Armor All banners on the NASCAR page. Quinn noted that WSJ.com is planning to run an educational series on options trading from an advertising partner. The editors at the site have given it two thumbs up.

Alisa Bowen, senior vice president and global head of consumer publishing for Reuters, noted that advertising partners can be handy when trying to build content that increases engagement.

“Many people think of advertising as an annoyance, but we see it as a complement,” she said. “Consumers are smart — as long as sources are labeled and they get something out of it, they’re fine with advertising.”

On the other hand, there was little love for selling “underbelly” inventory to ad networks.

“Ad networks don’t really make a material difference and poorly placed ads can subtract from a brand,” Bowen said. “It doesn’t make sense for the big names to play ball.”

With the injection of $50 million, the company has been valued at $1 billion, according to MediaMemo. This despite the fact that its revenue streams are paltry, and Facebook keeps mimicking its ideas.

And now, just to add to the nattering nabobs of Twitter negativity, comes the results of a new First Amendment national survey conducted by the First Amendment Center. No surprise, television was the first source for major news stories for about half of all responding (49%), followed by the Internet at 15%, radio at 13% and newspapers at 10% – which places traditional news media (TV, radio and newspapers) as the first source for 72% of Americans.

Twitter, e-mails and social-networking sites each were named by 1% of those responding, according to the survey. And the deeper numbers on Twitter are even more interesting, considering that journalists and new media experts went gaga over the service after it became a real-time news source. Just 3% of those who had an opinion on Twitter found it a “very reliable source of news” and 14% considered it “somewhat reliable,” while 21% said “not reliable at all” and 13% said “not too reliable.”

According to the survy, many Americans have yet to “tweet”: 49% of those responding didn’t know enough about Twitter to have formed an opinion. The “reliability rating” rose only marginally among the younger groups in the survey: For those ages 18-35, 3.3% said “very reliable,” while it was 3% for those ages 36-49. For older groups, the rating fell: 1.9% for those ages 50-64, and 1.3% for those ages 65 and older.

Sounds like a valuable company to me.

Rupert Murdoch said while advertising spending is nowhere near where it was in 2007, recent results have been “getting better every month and getting better every week.” The News Corp chief added that the US advertising market is going to get a nice bump and then it will settle back to a fairly slow recovery.

But the notorious anti-union executive also said that though Amazon, with its Kindle, is not sharing enough of its revenue, he believes eReaders will be the end of the print world. “Then we’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions,” Murdoch told the Financial Times. “It’s going to be great.”

Murdoch didn’t divulge any major plans as the company moved toward a pay-for-content model, though he did say that The Wall Street Journal, one of the few newspapers that have successfully charged for online news, will start charging non-subscribers $2 a week to access content on mobile devices such as the BlackBerry, he said. Current subscribers will be charged $1.

Three months ago, Politico Network was launched and allowed subscribed members to run Politico content, print or online, while sharing online ads. Now, members can run both, and once again sharing in the revenue from online advertising that’s sold by Politico. Reuters will distribute Politico stories worldwide through its wire service.

“It is no secret newspapers and broadcasting companies are hungry for new and interesting content,” Executive Editor Jim VandeHei told Politico. “Our partnership with Reuters allows us to offer newspapers and television stations terrific coverage of politics and government, as well as international news, business and sports.”

Newspapers have the opportunity to run Politico content at no cost, while potentially profiting from the sale of online ads. According to the NY Times, the site is pitching it as an important new revenue stream. A paper can agree to use up to five Politico articles a week, and receive 50 percent of the ad revenue that Politico sells on those Web pages; or up to 10 articles a week, and receive 40 percent; or up to 15 articles, and receive 30 percent.

Maybe this is a new model for newspapers. But I’ve heard that before.

– Express your opinion, comment below.

“Western companies understand the importance of innovating in emerging markets,” said John Hegel, co-chairman of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation. “They should not miss the much larger opportunity for innovation blowback to use emerging markets as seedbeds for innovation that can be used to attack more entrenched positions in more developed countries.”

Meanwhile, the transformation of mobile networks from primarily outdoor to increasingly indoor usage will create new opportunities for network operators, who will need to move rapidly as the process of fixed displacement takes hold. In advertising, the growing online advertising market will contend with increasing consumer antipathy to online ads and concerns about the tracking of online behavior.

Predictions 2008 is a series of three reports examining emerging developments and how they will shape the TMT market. They were written by the Deloitte TMT industry group with input from leading industry analysts and executives. Each report includes recommendations on how to best take advantage of these trends.

Accompanying the Global TMT Predictions this year is a closer look at the U.S. market in a separate report called the Deloitte 2008 Industry Outlook. This report for Technology, Media and Telecommunications looks directly at trends impacting the U.S. market in 2008.
   
Key trends identified in these reports include:

    Technology

      – Innovation Blowback: Technology industries are demonstrating
         Increased interest and investment in developing products to reach
         Large, low-income populations in emerging economies such as India,
         China and Latin America. In a phenomenon called innovation  blowback,
         expect to see at least one of these innovative products, services, or
         management practices be introduced back into Western economies in
         2008 and act as a disruptive force, targeting the entrenched
         positions of incumbents in these more developed economies.

      — Green Technology Issues: LED lights, nanotechnology and water
         conservation technology predictions are all examples of how
         technology will play an important roll in green issues in 2008.
         Additionally, the growing importance of green technology to U.S.
         corporations will lead to the creation of a new certification body
         for energy-conservation claims.

      – Privacy & Protection of Personally Identifiable Information: The
         rising value of digital protection, the flight to privacy and a move
         to online authentication will become increasingly important as
         increasingly sophisticated consumer targeting plans emerge, along
         with continued data security breaches involving personally
         identifiable information security.

    Telecom

      — Getting Mobile Indoors: With an increasing portion of network traffic
         moving indoors, how will mobile operators adapt to this changing
         landscape? Network sharing will be a strategic decision made by many
         operators in 2008.

      – Accessibility as a Business Driver: Demographics are creating new
         market opportunities for communications services and products. Market
         segmentation will play a key role in creating new product target
         markets.

      — From Credit Crunch to Communications Crisis: A vital question for the
         telecommunications sector is the extent to which the current credit
         crunch may provoke a crisis in the telecommunications sector in 2008.

    Media & Entertainment

      – Online Advertising: Despite increased spending on online advertising
         ($10 billion invested in specialist online advertising companies
         alone), there is growing antipathy by consumers to the online
         advertisement and the tracking of online behavior.

      – Long Live Traditional Television, Thanks to Internet Television:
         Internet television will increasingly broaden the user experience of
         traditional ‘TV’ as opposed to providing a viewing experience that
         competes with it.

      – The Living Room Moves Closer to Being Public Enemy Number One: More
         elaborate TV/entertainment set-up in living rooms means higher energy
         consumption nationwide. The media and electronics industries will
         need to consider how the carbon footprint of the living room can be
         reduced without returning to antiquated technology.

Compliments of PR NewsWire

As speculated in Adotas (http://www.adotas.com/2007/06/the-wait-is-over-introducing-the-iphone/)  the release of the iPhone has proven to change the way advertisers and publishers approch mobile media. Many publishers are scrambling to become relevant to iPhone owners by launching sites that work seamlessly with the Safari browser on the iPhone. Many agency experts have trumpeted the value of the iPhone audience as being the consumers of choice. Yesterdays announcement by Facebook reflect this growing trend.

The mobile version of Facebook allows members the freedom to enjoy most of the functions incorporated into the traditional Facebook site with the additional benefits of direct calling to friends and directions to Facebook events. ”If you are like me, you may find yourself updating your status a bazillion times a day once you have Facebook in your pocket everywhere you go,” Facebook engineer Joe Hewitt wrote on the Facebook blog.

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