Louis Columbus, Cincom

Last night 60 Minutes broadcast a segment on Facebook. If you missed it, it’s worth a look, and also check out Charlene Li’s blog entry, Facebook recap from 60 Minutes. It’s an excellent overview of what’s going on with Facebook today. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is interviewed in the segment.

Acknowledged as the next Google, Facebook is widely credited with being one of the catalysts of the growth of social networking globally, yet struggling to define and execute a profitable business model.

The development of the Facebook Beacon, which reports back purchases from affiliate sites to friends of those who purchased products, was intended to be an uber cross-selling advertising engine, meant to rival the AdWords strategy of Google, which accounts for a large percentage of the search engine providers’ revenues in any given quarter.

The launch of Beacon however violated many users’ privacy and turned into a PR fiasco. Of the many strategic paths Facebook could take, one hopes the eventual path chosen has a heavy dose of transparency and trust associated with it; in fact that seems to be the only direction that makes sense right now.

Post By Louis Columbus (80 Posts)

Louis Columbus has over 20 years in the IT industry, specializing in product management, sales and marketing. Immediately before joining Cincom, Mr. Columbus was a Senior Analyst at AMR Research. He earned his MBA from Pepperdine University and completed the Strategic Marketing Management Program at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He has published 16 books on operating systems, peripherals and integration technologies.

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