Your participation on Facebook may generate two bucks in revenue for the company this year, more than expected.

Facebook could pull in $2 billion of revenue this year, better than previous projections, according to three different conversations that Bloomberg BusinessWeek had off the record.

Ad sales may more than double this year compared to last year’s. That certainly jibes with the growth in users of the site, given how the 600 million mark appears imminent.

The company previously expected revenues of $1.5 billion in 2010, double the roughly $750 million that came in during 2009. But if this year’s take comes in higher than previously expected, Facebook will have hit the $2 billion mark faster than Yahoo and at almost the same pace as Google.

Yahoo reached that revenue milestone in its ninth year, while Google did it roughly between years five and six. Facebook got started in 2004.

Facebook has been gaining market share in display ads, and may have 9.4 percent of it in the U.S. this year, compared to 6.6 percent last year, based on estimates from EMarketer Inc.

You might already know that that this type of ad isn’t synonymous with search ads, which gives context to the following comparisons.

Yahoo will have dropped to 16.2 percent of the display ad market this year, from 16.5 percent in 2009. Google may close the year with 6.7 percent of the display ad market, up from 4.7 percent in 2009, according to EMarketer.

These statistics might not explain the increase in Facebook’s revenues for the year, assuming that whatever Bloomberg heard off the record bears fruit. The social network may be employing a tactic more common among publicly held companies: Set lower expectations of revenues or earnings so that you can beat them and then impress investors. This might make more sense given how hot the company’s shares are on SecondMarket.

Readers, what do you make of the news that revenues may exceed previous expectations?

READ MORE - Facebook May Pull $2 Billion In Revenues This Year

Glassdoor’s third annual Employee’s Choice Awards gives Facebook the top recognition, with its employees averaging 4.6 out of 5.0 in overall satisfaction.

Employees ranked their workplace based on different categories, such as Careers Opportunities, Fairness and Respect, and Work/Life Balance. Facebook ranked the highest in Communication and Employee Morale, although they scored at least 4 out 5 in every category, including Compensation and Benefits. In the meantime, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was positively scored by 96% of his employees.

Although employees voted based on their experiences of the past year (obviously so), the award is actually for 2011. In other words, it seems that Glassdoor –the website where employees rank and spill the beans about their workplace– wants to make the recognition relevant to prospective employees of any given company. Southwest Airlines and global management consulting firm Bain & Company rounded up the top three. Other companies mentioned were Trader Joe’s, Apple, and Chevron (really?).

In 2009 and 2010, Facebook didn’t even rank among the Top 50 best places to work. We assume they had simply not submitted their company for review until this year (this is how you get into Glassdoor’s ranking in the first place).

Any employees want to share their stories? Is the atmosphere as relaxed and productive as it seems?

taken from : allfacebook.com

READ MORE - Facebook Named Best Place To Work By Employees

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologised for a new feature which has been violating members' privacy. At the same time he has been trying to stop a website from publishing his personal details.
Photo: AP

After copping a barrage of criticism from users and the media, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has broken his silence and apologised for flagrantly breaching user privacy in the pursuit of profits.

The mea culpa comes as the 23-year-old social networking kingpin is being called a hypocrite for trying to force a website to take down unflattering personal documents from his university days, while he was at the same time profiting from the sale of Facebook users' personal information.

But the court ruled against Facebook and the documents, which include Zuckerberg's Harvard application and excerpts from his old blog, remain online. Among the details exposed were his girlfriend's full name, his parents' home address and his social security number.

Facebook's new ad system was meant to be a financial boon for the social network, offering companies the ability to run highly targeted ad campaigns based on even the most granular personal details contained in user profiles.

But one feature, dubbed Beacon, which lets users notify their Facebook friends when they buy something on other sites such as eBay, transformed Facebook's army of adoring fans into a lynch mob.

Criticisms centred on the fact that Beacon alerted users' friends of their activities on external sites without permission, and it was impossible to switch the Beacon system off entirely.

Users were given no choice on whether to opt in and the flames were further stoked by the apparent apathy of Zuckerberg and Facebook's PR team, which have been notoriously secretive and have failed adequately to address users' privacy concerns.

Adding further insult, a number of Facebook's initial partners, including Coca-Cola, pulled out of the advertising system following the litany of bad press.

Zuckerberg broke his silence today in a contrite statement published on the Facebook blog, acknowledging Beacon had been a flagrant breach of privacy.

"We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them," Zuckerberg, whose paper wealth skyrocketed to $US3 billion following a $US240 million investment in Facebook by Microsoft, wrote.

"We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it."

Last week, long after the situation became a PR disaster, Facebook modified Beacon so users would have to opt in on each partner site before information on their activities was sent to their friends. Today, Zuckerberg said users would be able to disable the system entirely.

READ MORE - Facebook fiasco: Zuckerberg says sorry

This past weekend I was browsing through the Facebook applications directory and came across the “Send Ben & Jerry’s” application. My initial response was that this is yet another gift giving application. I then noticed that close to 4,000 people had used the application the previous day and almost 200,000 people had installed the application. This is an impressive number for a general Facebook application.

The reality is that non-generic versions of standard Facebook applications can actually succeed. Apparently popular brands can produce simple applications that grow virally. I would have thought that gift giving applications have already been dominated but it appears as though some applications are still figuring out ways to launch and succeed. What extra features does the Ben & Jerry’s application provide that traditional gift giving applications doesn’t already have?

Truthfully, not much. The one addition is the ability to unlock other gifts based on the volume of ice cream that you send to your friends. I decided not to barrage my friends with a bunch of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream goodness but it looks like a lot of other people are. If you want to send ice cream to your friends as well, check out the Send Ben & Jerry’s application.

article source : come here

READ MORE - When Gift Giving Isn’t Spam

Facebook now offers Real-Time. Well it’s about time. Late last week Facebook made the announcement that they were releasing the Facebook open streaming API. What this means for Facebook users is that now by using one of a growing number of applications Facebookers are able to watch and respond to the updates their friends make moments after they make them. What Applications Support Facebook’s Real-Time Updates? As of right now there are two applications that I am aware of that use the Facebook open stream API. Certainly more apps are in the works. Both applications run on Adobe Air, and as such are very compact in size. The first application is Facebook Desktop, and is made by facebook. This application is very simple and only allows a user to view Facebook updates and update text status updates. The other application to use the Facebook Open Streaming API is Seesmic Desktop. I recentlycongratulated Loic Le Meur on his Blog about the presentation he made about Seesmic Desktop at Facebook HQ. He will deserve further congratulations once Seesmic adds Friendfeed integration to Desktop as well.

For Real? No big deal.

Real-time updates is a cool feature that has been an integral part of Friendfeed for quite some time now. A nice feature of the real-time stream in friendfeed is that it can be paused. The pause feature is handy for when a stream is moving too fast. By pausing a stream a user can take time and comment, and then resume the stream afterwards.

READ MORE - Real-Time Updates from Facebook