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There are already questions surrounding Facebook’s purchase of Instagram for $1 billion yesterday. Was it a talent purchase (of 13 employees)? Is it the peak of social media purchases before the bubble starts bursting? Is Facebook only interested in companies with zero revenue? Is this a play against Google+? Twitter? There’s one question that was clearly answered: “How do you build a billion dollar company in 17 months?” In this Instagram Infographic, Visual.ly takes us down the path that started in March, 2010, when Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger raised $500,000 in seed funding for burbn,…

It’s a sign of the times. Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook has purchased photo app Instagram for $1 billion. The 13-person team at Instagram has not been able to generate revenue but was able to build a strong base of 30 million users. Facebook has done poorly at developing their own mobile technology with the Facebook iPad app having not been released until after the iPad 2. Here’s the report from the Wall Street Journal: …

With many in social media declaring Google+ as a valiant effort that simply came too late to the game to make a real impact, Google CEO Larry Page released March data that showed a sharp turn in the total visits after flatlining from December to February. I want Google+ to succeed. I don’t want it to be the ghost town that keeps forcing me back to Facebook to see what my non-tech-savvy and non-Google-employee friends are doing. I prefer the interface, the organization of the data, and the company itself more than Facebook. The challenge has been in getting friends and family on it. For Google’s part,…

When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, he wanted to make a closed network for the elite at Harvard. Over time, he realized that by opening it up, he would be able to build something that cataloged the college experience for everyone. Eventually, it expanded outside of college but the roots were embedded in the entire college experience. A case could be made that today, as the vast majority of college students are on social networks when they enter or join them shortly after getting to college, social media is as big of a part of the college experience as parties have always been. Is this a good thing?…

Social media has been the most enigmatic tool that chief marketing officers have used with varying degrees of success over the last few years. They know that there’s something there but it eludes many. In some cases, social media has been seen as having a negative effect on the overall marketing efforts. This infographic by CMO breaks down the landscape nicely. While there are certainly things included in the graphic that could be argued, it’s generally an exceptionally well-done breakdown. Click to enlarge. …

It’s all about timing. Bing’s inability to take market share from Google in the search industry and Facebook’s focus on improving their internal and external search abilities has made it seem to be a perfect match since the NY Times suggested the possibility last year. The timing simply hasn’t been right and the discussion hasn’t progressed beyond closed-door discussions. When is  the right time for this industry-changing event? Most would say that an infusion of cash and the risk of distraction makes it a deal that would best occur after they go public, but there are those who say that concerns…

Lately the social media buzz in the film industry has surrounded Marvel’s new summer tent pole release The Avengers. The Avengers, a team of superheroes including, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Nick Fury and Captain America, band together to defend Earth from an alien invader bent on world domination. Since the release of the Spiderman film franchise starring Tobey Maguire, the comic movie industry has taken Hollywood by storm. From DC’s Dark Knight to Marvel’s X-Men, comic franchises are becoming more popular and technologically superior since their introduction…

If there’s one thing that can be said about Barack Obama and his chances of winning re-election, it’s that he’s dominant on social media in ways that none of the GOP candidates even fathom. Case in point: Pinterest. Obama’s there. Mitt Romney’s wife is on Pinterest but the Republican frontrunner is not, nor are any of the other remaining candidates (at least not in a way that’s making a difference). Newt Gingrich may or may not have a presence there – if this is really him, he’s not doing very well. As with just about everything related to social media, Obama announced his Pinterest page on his Twitter…

To those of us who have been watching social media grow over the past few years, there are certain sites that succeed that didn’t quite make sense when they were rising. Looking at Facebook or YouTube, it’s easy to see the appeal, but in the early days many questioned the success potential for other social networks like Twitter (yes, there were actually major doubts just 4 years ago), Foursquare (I remember a discussion about how “nobody would want to take part in getting themselves stalked”), and now Pinterest. It’s just a photo sharing site, right? Flickr has that market in check for the most part…

Things didn’t look good for Bill Nguyen’s latest startup, Color. They announced their funding on March 23rd of last year and by the next day there were bloggers and tech journalists all asking pretty much the same question: “How does an iPhone photo-sharing app land that kind of money before showing that they have something special?” When a satirical pitch deck emerges making fun of your app and more specifically the people who invested in it, things are bound to get ugly. It’s been a year since the launch. Did the app prove to be successful? Did they prove the silly naysayers wrong? Are they on the…