Personally, I don’t know if Instagram is truly worth $1 billion dollars, but if Facebook is worth $80 Billion then Instagram is worth well more than a mere billion to Facebook.

What is most interesting about this exorbitant purchase is what it tells us about Facebook. When the mobile app market began to explode, we saw an influx of innovation that resulted in an expansion of sharable content, along side a rethinking in what constituted social content. Gaming, location check-in’s, mobile video and photography began to flood our feeds.

We learned that Facebook can’t simply replicate a service and takeout the competition. Foursquare debunked this notion when Facebook Places launched and subsequently prospered. Foursquare noted that Facebook Places merely exposed more users to the concept of “checking-in” which resulted in a massive boost in their user base. Why you might ask? Simply put, Foursquare does it better.

Facebook’s biggest problem is its inability to figure out mobile. The fact remains that Facebook’s mobile app is packed with features resulting in a navigational nightmare. Accessing a single feature requires the user to jump through several hoops. My use of Instagram and Foursquare started as a matter of convenience.

It has been reported by various sources that Path, an app that allows you to keep a social journal (posting various types of media) is a source of concern for Facebook., as it should. Path is simple, elegant and easy.

I don’t have Facebook’s solution but I think the answer can be found through a multi-app strategy. Facebook is a platform, not a single application. If Facebook is looking to avoid several billion-dollar acquisitions – which doesn’t appear to be Mark Zuckerberg’s style – it had better change course, because this titanic platform has a huge hole in its hull and it’s shaped like a smart phone.

Why did we learn to type? Because typing was a basic and necessary skill for functioning in a world where computers were taking over the workspace. Today, in a world where we interact through websites, networks and app-enabled mobile devices, it seems that our prerequisites are in need of an update.

How frequently have you found yourself in a situation where you need to launch a simple website? Perhaps it’s for your resume, band, artwork, small business, an original idea, etc. Everyone has that one friend who knows how to build a site, or that guy who knows a guy, who knows how to build a site. But these days, on some level, everyone should be that guy or that girl. Your goal should not be to unseat the masters of code and design, but seek out the simple foundations of their art. You don’t need to be Edison to change a light bulb, but when the lights go out, you shouldn’t need to call an electrician to fix the problem.

We’ve reached a point where people need to re-educate and learn new basics, if not for themselves, but for the benefit of their co-workers. Imagine an office where the same number of people that understand Microsoft Word understood basic HTML and Photoshop. That would be one high functioning workspace.

It’s the ancillary knowledge gained when developing these skills that we’re really after. Suddenly the things you see online become demystified and your ability to foresee greater possibilities and problem solve increases exponentially. All companies no matter the industry, profession or trade interact with the web in some capacity – whether as a utility, a distribution channel or communications platform. Giving context to these channels and platforms on a wider scale is long overdue.

You didn’t sidestep learning Microsoft Word because you weren’t a writer. So why sidestep the fundamentals of the web because you’re not a designer or programmer? After all, learning to type has turned out to be pretty handy.

Retail on Facebook cannot be treated like a traditional e-commerce experience. Facebook is as much a discovery platform as it is a social platform. Given this, e-commerce experiences need to be setup in such a way that retailers can take advantage of discovery-driven behavior.

We browse our Newsfeed in the hopes of finding something entertaining or interesting. JC Penny’s, GameStop and Nordstrom’s have all opened and closed their Facebook storefronts. This should surprise no one. These Facebook commerce experiences attempt to mirror their existing e-commerce sites – which for the most part are good,  if not better than the ill-fated 520 pixel- wide attempts on their Facebook pages.

There are two inherent problems with retail on Facebook. The first being that Facebook has not provided retailers any substantive e-commerce functionality. Third party companies understandably – given the void – provide some commerce functionality on Facebook, but this is a task where Facebook must take the lead. Facebook commerce represents a potential revenue stream that could become as vital as advertising. Given the desire by major retailers to participate and the obvious benefits to Facebook’s bottom line, Facebook needs to show some leadership and innovation in the space.

The second problem is Facebook is by no means a mature platform. Though Facebook’s growth is beginning to slow – as would be expected when a platform hits nearly 1 billion users – the platform and user behavior is still evolving. Give Facebook and its users time to understand and get comfortable with just how commercial exchanges will take place on the platform. When this happens retailers can fairly expect results.

However, it’s still early and retailers are treating their Facebook pages as though it’s their website and it’s not. Nordstroms.com is a destination, Nordstrom’s on Facebook is a discovery and the purchase of a Nordstrom’s product on Facebook will be an impulsive act.

If you have a retail experience on your Facebook page ask yourself a few questions and decide if retail on Facebook is right for you:

• Does the experience accurately reflect your brand (visually and experientially)?
• Are you getting a return on your investment?
• Could your Facebook commerce resources, be reallocated for a bigger return elsewhere?
• What is the goal (beyond selling things) for integrating commerce with social

By engaging in the social space you’ve already committed yourself to a certain level of transparency. Intrinsic to this transparency is a level of vulnerability, thus making honesty and authenticity more important than ever.

Consumers are smart. They understand that brands evolve. They understand that most companies are in the business to make money. The new consumer appreciates and desires this honesty and authenticity. Above all else, they reject pandering.

When you consider switching to Timeline, construct your story so that individuals can see the evolution of your brand. Cadillac is an example of a heritage brand that has reshaped its image and re-targeted it’s efforts in a drastic way. At one point in history, Cadillac was the gold standard of American luxury. Yet over time the brand morphed into the preferred boat-car for the 90 year old retiree. Today, Cadillac has transformed itself into a sexy, luxurious road-beast. Seeing this evolution is both interesting and inspiring.

Many brands who’ve gone through radical changes and feel weary of embracing their former selves are encouraged to fight the urge to reject or abandon their past. Our past, whether it be a brand or person, represents who we are today. Paying homage to past iterations of your brand is a record of your growth as an organization and helps play a role in creating a connection with your consumer.

Launch Timeline, but do so thoughtfully. Consider your story arc and accurately identify marquee moments that play a role in who you are today.

Taxes, unemployment, class warfare: The haves and have-nots have consumed much of the rhetoric in this year’s election cycle. Today’s political discourse would have many believe that most of the country is wildly divided, occupying opposite ends of a political spectrum with little to no overlap; however, the truth is very different. Most Americans are moderate, and though political ideologies may differ, we generally seek similar goals.

Throughout what has seemed like an endless procession of debates, a comment made by one candidate was particularly jarring as it highlighted a troubling trend: a growing gap between politicians and the people they represent.

Newt Gingrich recently said of the poor, “You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work… They have no habit of showing up on Monday and staying all day or the concept of  ’I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal…What if you paid them in the afternoon to work…What if they became assistant janitors, and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?”

Forget for a moment the disregard for child labor laws, even the displaced workers (replaced by a cheaper child work force). His solution centers on the premise that there is an inherent flaw in the poor that is best fixed through imposed manual labor.

How is it that in a society more open and connected than ever before the gap between politicians and voting Americans has never felt larger? If politicians (not their staff members) actually used the Web, specifically social media sites, they’d begin to understand their constituents more intimately. It’s something that can easily be done everyday, not just during election cycles. President Obama’s recent Google+ Hangout – albeit during a campaign season – is a perfect example of a politician using social media to connect with his constituency.

Obama was recently challenged by the wife of an unemployed American semiconductor engineer on his visa program that allows highly skilled foreign workers to gain employment within the US. Obama, perplexed, insisted she send her husband’s resume so he could look into this matter further.

We watch politicians debate bills like SOPA and PIPA and believe these moments expose how far removed and out of touch they are with technology, the Web and social media. But the truth is, false statements, outrageous stereotypes and inane proposals expose their disconnect.

As a politician, it is your civic duty to be in touch. Rejecting the vessels that connect you to your constituency is a failure of responsibility as a candidate and elected official.

The comments made by Gingrich offend me not because they are representative of Republican values, because they aren’t. Rather, they offend me because it is yet another glaring example of a politician pontificating while ostensibly removed and out of touch with the real issues and the people he claims to represent.

Over Christmas most of my friends were out of town  and while the streets may have been quiet and empty, the overall feeling was anything but. Thanks to my other friend…the Internets!

It’s times like this that being connected is nice. It allows you to have a greater appreciation for what social media can do for grandparents or friends whose lives have taken them to places remote and far away.  In NYC its easy to become spoiled and take for granted how close everything and everyone is.

Once Christmas had ended and everyone had landed back in New York, the second half of my annual ‘week off’ was to begin. I planned a ski trip to Vermont with a fairly large group of my closest friends. After having spent the last few New Years in NYC, I was ready to avoid the crowds and do something slightly more low-key.

With the expectation that I’d have to do some work over break, I brought my computer and all my gadgets. Even without the expectation of work, parting with these things can bring about a great deal of anxiety. I know… pathetic.

Upon arriving at our cabin, I realized that – much to my chagrin- we had no Wifi. Panic set in.  I calmed myself with the knowledge that I was with friends (and humans) and my reliance on my devices would be pushed aside by quality time with people I cared about. As I went about my week, in the beautiful mountains of Vermont – skiing, building fires, cooking food, playing board games etc. I found what I had originally viewed as a ‘disconnection’ became contrarily, refreshing. By week’s end, I hadn’t so much as glanced at my laptop.

It wasn’t until I got home and saw my Facebook wall, Tumblr blog, Instagram posts and tweets that I realized… I hadn’t disconnected at all. We talk about social media as though it’s a special thing that takes place in a vacuum. The truth is that social media doesn’t exist. ‘Social Media’ is a behavior, an attribute that we apply to forms of media, which have existed for a very long time.

The ubiquity of distribution and sharing by individuals has contributed to the erosion of this notion of ‘connected’ and ‘not connected’. In turn, the distinction between ‘media’ and ‘social media’ should erode as well.

If you are still relegating your social media team to some far away understaffed corner of your office in 2012, you’re doing something wrong. Your social teams of 2012 should be integrated and with the rest of your marketing department and have an equal voice at the table.

Social media is dead because it never actually existed. The truth is that your marketing departments needed to label something they didn’t understand. They stopped evolving and the new kids at the table needed a title. Assimilate your teams and let knowledge sharing trickle up and down. 2012 is going to be a fascinating year – start it off right.

My father has served as a director of finance for various non-profits both large and small for several decades. One of the difficult issues he is forced to confront is where and how to allocate funds. The organization’s cause? Salaries? Marketing? Fundraisers? The challenge: how to maximize each dollar and every resource so that the organization can A) stay afloat and B) carry out its mission.

He taught me that one of the best ways to save money is to create an environment where a salary is not the single defining assessment of an individual’s value to an organization. The truth is, money has and always will be an important factor for employees. However, deep down we know that money is only one of many factors, and its significance diminishes greatly after a certain point. Princeton University conducted a study and determined one’s happiness as it relates to the amount of money he or she makes starts to level off at around $75,000. It’s at this point that other factors play a surprisingly more significant role.

Whether or not you subscribe to the theory that a happy employee is a productive employee, the science backs it up.  Results of a study conducted by the University of Warwick‘s Economic Research Institute overwhelmingly support this idea.

“We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity,” the team said. “Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings, while negative emotions have the opposite effect.”

The study goes on to conclude:

“If happiness in the workplace brings increased returns to productivity, then human resource departments, business managers and the architects of promotion policies will want to consider the implications.”

So the question then becomes, absent of money, how do we make employees happy? Sure, compliments, greetings and everyday friendly gestures can make a difference, but it’s a small (albeit important) piece of a much larger pie. The seemingly obvious solution would be the public recognition of an employee’s contribution or success. Yet even as this basic act can often go unrealized, the larger challenge for managers can be how we deal with errors, missteps and failures. Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics investigated the benefits of a reward-based strategy as opposed to one that focused on punishment. The study found:

“When both options are available, reward leads to increased contributions and payoff for the group, while punishment has no effect on contributions and leads to lower payoff for the group.”

Often when we think of rewards in the work place we think money. It just simply isn’t the case. What we do know is that there are several factors that motivate us, and each seemingly contributes to our overall happiness. Congruently, the factors that demotivate contribute to our unhappiness and ultimately detract from the group as a whole. If revenue is down, try working to get employee spirits up, and just maybe the revenue will follow.

For more information on what motivates us see Daniel Pink’s (author of Drive) video “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.”

Rdio launched in the US a full year before Spotify, so naturally when Spotify with all it’s marketing dollars and buzz plopped in from overseas I was a bit skeptical. Sure enough, the service wasn’t bad, in fact it was pretty good… but not nearly as good as Rdio. You see, Rdio wasn’t just a music streaming application, it was like my personal music concierge service. It curated music for me based on what my friends and trusted sources were listening to, and delivered it in an easy to use interface. I was swooning from day one. I’d watch in my newsfeed as friends would appear, listening to their music using the popular Spotify service and like a Mac user watching someone on a PC, I’d think… “Why are you using Spotify? Rdio does the same thing…. just so much better.”

Then… last week happened. Spotify Apps.

Spotify Apps came in and shattered my world. Akin to when my parents told me I was Jewish and Santa was never coming again, everything I thought I knew was out the window. You see, Spotify Apps with its wildly open API, allows all the trusted music sources you’ve relied on for the past 5-10 years to curate customized music experiences; essentially building their own little music apps on the back of Spotify’s library and music deliver system.

Spotify is to the music-blogosphere, as steroids are to Barry Bonds career (umm… allegedly), making something good into something great.  Spotify has essentially empowered your favorite sources for music discovery (blogs, magazines etc.) to become a true access point for music consumption.

Reading Pitchfork? Like that song, album? Add it to your favorites. Now you have it on your computer and phone. Spotify Apps have made themselves a blog’s best wingman. You’re going home with that record tonight, because quite frankly… it’s just so easy.

Dear Rdio,

I love you and I know we haven’t been spending that much time together… but there’s someone else….  I’m sorry.

In a January (2010) blog post I attributed platform loyalty to more than just user interface and network availability. Additionally, I stated that a consumer’s investment in applications – many of which do not operate cross platform – would play an important factor:

“Every app purchased on a mobile device represents a small investment by a mobile user in their respective mobile ecosystem.”

Today, Apple far outpaces Google in terms of dollars generated through app purchases. As we’ve learned from Microsoft, there is big money in software. In a staggering figure, Apple accounts for roughly 85-90% of all dollars spent on mobile applications.

These numbers are alarming when one considers that Apple accounts for only 5% of global market share for mobile devices. This is a massive problem for Google, and the longer it goes unchallenged the bigger the problem will become.

The study released by GfK regarding platform loyalty further illustrates the dangers posed by Apple to its competitors. Apple’s 80% retention rate can easily be tied to several factors beyond investments made into the App Store. The study underscores that unseating current Apple users is an uphill, if not futile effort. Imagine how this will translate to tablet market where the iPad enjoys a 75% market share.

Fortunately, the smartphone market is anything but mature with a global penetration rate of 27%. There is still plenty of room for platform growth in the tablet market. The mobile market, whether it be a smartphone or a tablet, represents the future of computing. In two years we’ve seen companies who’ve pioneered and ruled the marketplace diminish in influence, and dance with death (RIM, HTC, Nokia, Motorola etc.).

Microsoft dominated in the 80’s and 90’s and what we are seeing now is a battle for the new king of computing. With no apparent heir, what’s becoming apparent is that a cohesive, cross-device platform will rule the land. With a king yet to be crowned, iPhone loyalty, iPad market dominance, App Store dollar spend and the introduction of iCloud, seem to be positioning Apple as the frontrunner for succession.

For many – if I may continue this analogy- what they see are the grand rapids… chaos, confusion and an overall sense of feeling overwhelmed. It is easy to get lost in all the noise.

For many companies (large and small), Facebook has been approached as a promotional platform; a marketplace for the exchanging of ideas and thought and less as a marketplace for an exchanging of goods.

If the Social Graph has taught us anything, it is that our connections matter. Our friends affect our actions, and we really value their opinions as they contribute to the shaping of our own.

When riding the grand rapids, those in the raft are looking at more than what’s directly in front of them, they’re looking down river in anticipation of what’s to come: calm water, rocks, waterfalls…

In the grand scheme of retail, e-commerce is still fairly new and continues to evolve. US e-commerce sales totaled $165.4 billion in 2010, up 14.8% from 2009. That is substantial growth in what has been a fairly stagnant economy. The introduction of online sales was extremely disruptive for the brick and mortar businesses who were disengaged from the web. For this reason, looking downstream is crucial (no matter your business).

The social experience will be equally disruptive for those who choose not to engage in the social web. The signs are pointing to a future in social shopping. Building your social footprint as a business is an investment in your future digital storefront. A recent study by Webtrends & Adgregate Markets found websites that are not engaging in e-commerce are losing traffic to their Facebook pages at startling rates. This is likely because they are not deriving value from their experience with these retailers online. For the retailer this is simply lost opportunity. The study also discovered commerce conversations on Facebook ranged from 2% to 4% matching traditional commerce websites. Consumers are beginning to show signs that the Facebook + retail intersection isn’t that far-fetched of an idea.

Be proactive ,anticipate your customers’ future expectations. Begin investing in your own social properties today, so you can turn your relationships into actions (sales) tomorrow. There are several retail platforms and services available today. Payvment (which has an Etsy plugin) currently sits atop them all. Other services include Storefront Social, BigCommerce SocialShop, Ecwid and more.

If the first phase of the social web was establishing connections, we are now moving into the next phase where we continue to converse and share, but behavior is extended further into movements like purchasing and selling.

Today’s Amazon.com might be tomorrow’s Facebook storefronts. The web will continue to evolve and change. As a business owner or boss, your choice is to change with it, attempt to anticipate the changes and learn…or atrophy and die (your business… not you).