360i Social Media Summit in Times Square

I am practically drooling!  360i hosted a conference today in New York City with some of the biggest names in the social media world.  I so wish I could have been there!  Luckily, if there’s any conference in the world that would be documented online, its this one.  I almost feel like I was there!  (almost…)

The two big questions that everybody’s asking about social media and interactive advertising are:
1)  Will these sites/companies stand up to the test of time and develop into a reliable revenue source for their investors?
and
2)  Is this a true foundational shift in marketing strategy or is it just a fad?

Well, Facebook’s announcement earlier in the week stating that they had gone cash flow positive in the last quarter sure made me feel a lot better about #1.  And the reports I’ve read from this conference have blown away any concerns I may have had over #2.  Research shows that we are experiencing an evolutionary transformation in the way that consumer purchase decisions are influenced.

There was so much great information presented today.  There’s no way that I could sum it all up in this little post, but here’s my favorite point.  It’s very basic, but also very important:

Definitions.  There really aren’t any yet.  There are so many terms that are being born every day to try and describe this changing world.  Many of them are used interchangeably and it can get very confusing.    I found a few today that I think describe their areas pretty well.

My three favorites are:

• Emerging Media – This is a great, relatively all-encompassing term that covers both user created content, news, and advertising.
• Social Media – This term is often used to describe all new media, but it really only applies to the user created content.  This is definitely Facebook, Twitter, message boards, blogs, etc., anything that is “social.”  There must be two-way communication between users.
• Interactive Advertising – This is where the good stuff comes in!  This is where the marketing world is going.  This is what businesses, companies, and individuals can create in order to elicit a particular response or to influence an opinion in the user (can’t be called a viewer b/c its interactive!)

I’ll be posting more info about this summit as I sift through the information.  If you’d like to beat me to it, go to http://blog.360i.com/events-conferences.

Our little Facebook is growing up…

Bear with me.  I’m going to go into little old grandma mode for a second here…  I remember back when Facebook was just a little message board site and your college had to approved before you could even get in…  Okay, I’m better now.

But seriously!  Facebook has reached a pretty big milestone recently.  In the second quarter (which ended in June), the company was cash flow positive for the first time.  Now, this doesn’t mean they’re “profitable” per se, but it is a big step forward.

I have my eyes set on new media advertising & pr as my future career, so the longevity of these social media sites has been a big question on my mind and I am really glad to hear about this latest development.  Just a few FYIs:

Facebook…

• has over 300 million users
• is valued at $10 billion
• has raised over $600 million since it was founded 5 years ago

The big question about these companies has been whether or not they will be able to develop a true revenue stream.  The question still looms, but considering how far this site has come in such a short time, combined with the fact that they haven’t gone public yet, I’d say they’ve still got some time to figure that out.  And the fact that they are now cash flow positive indicates that they are on the right track!