1.  Can you COPE? COPE, as in Create Once Publish Everywhere. Originally this phrase was simply a sell for clever publishing software. It’s now become shorthand for planning and creating content that can be published and re-used across many platforms, ideally cutting the cost of creation, production and (especially) translation and localisation. Lately we’ve heard it bandied about a lot in editorial meetings. Obviously if you are going to publish the same content (or elements of the same content) across many platforms, you’ll need to indulge in some pretty sophisticated content planning work first. If your company operates in a series of content silos, with one team ‘doing email’ and another responsible for ‘social’, you’ll struggle to get this off the ground. But if you can join your internal content owners up to develop a truly inclusive content strategy, then COPE may well prove efficient for you. On a practical level, for written content, this will usually mean coming up with highly adaptive modular copy formats that everyone signs off on and subscribes to. Cue stakeholder pistols at dawn…  2. Post-Panda SEO for peanuts? You can’t stuff your content with keywords any more. So what now? Those whose businesses stand or fall on their search results are out there trying to source content that will both keep customers engaged and satisfy a Google algorithm that rewards content quality. But how much are they willing to invest in it really? As far as we can see, the SEO copywriting market has polarised. While we can report a recent large influx of clients prepared to invest in quality copywriting, along with the editorial planning, format work and quality control that requires, we also notice a proliferation of extremely low-cost content providers. There will always be people prepared to churn out repurposed gobbledegook for buttons (£6.50 for 700 words, anyone?) and also those who insist that software could “seriously, like, replace Shakespeare”. But the truth is that anyone who is prepared to write you an on-brand, optimised, customer-facing, usable piece of content, mapped to your business objectives, legally compliant, sub-edited and proofread for a fiver, is either living in a country where that’s a day’s wages, living off a trust fund or has repurposed it from someone else’s work. Really good content costs. Sorry. 3. Micro-content fixes The rise of the copy nudge. The double-dip has forced companies to focus even more on the bottom line. So what content gives the greatest return on investment? Last year we started suggesting that budget-strapped content owners identified quick copy fixes with high ROI. After all, if your conversions increase as a result of your emails, then why not focus on a more compelling email sign-up, or on messages which dissuade customers from unsubscribing? Re-working a key call to action, a button, or split-testing the benefits on a product page is quick to do, requires minimal design input and can produce instant results. The king of all quick copy fixes is the online form. We have case studies showing up to a 35% increase in conversions from fixing the reassurance and instructional text in transactional areas. So maybe instead of that big ambitious content migration, you should simply ‘sweat the small stuff’ instead? 4.  Mobile, tablet and yet more mobile Making content mobile and tablet friendly is definitely what’s keeping content owners up at night. Last year, Jakob Nielsen revealed that content is twice as hard to understand on a mobile device. "When reading from an iPhone-sized screen, comprehension scores for complex web content were 48% of desktop monitor scores," he reported. So what is the answer? In short: write short, clear sentences. What’s the problem? This is very hard to do well, especially when summarising the terms and conditions of a home contents insurance policy. And what about tablet? While we’re still in learning mode as to what works best, certain content issues are already pretty clear. Overly-long lists and menus, information ‘too small to tap’ and serving up splash screens are all out. It appears you do need a distinct content approach for tablet after all… 5. Govern or be damned "Quality is doing it right when no one is looking," said Henry Ford. Unfortunately, all the best editorial set-ups rely on lots of people looking. Looking, editing, checking, and then looking again in fact. While most content teams weren’t initially set up with anything like this kind of QA process in place, we are seeing a rise in demand for content training and guidelines which support governance and help benchmark content quality. For many clients this is ensuring that (a) best-practice samples and execution guidelines exist for each content typeand (b) someone is making sure they actually get followed. For others, this means regular content auditing followed up by training and mentoring. It’s fantastic to finally see the old-school rigour of print publishing being embraced by the digital world. Better content should come of it. 6. Content ideas brainstorm boom The trend to embrace content marketing as a discipline in itself continues apace. But this is primarily an editorial endeavour. And great editorial depends on an ongoing flow of high-quality ideas. When the ideas run out, it’s all over. As original ideas can be hard to find (especially for the more complex B2B brands), the ability to brainstorm clever content ideas, formats and executions has become powerful content-marketing currency. What marketers are after is ‘ideas with legs’, workable series of content that can be replicated week after week without flagging. Content mapped to customer needs and interests that is truly useful, usable and builds long-tail relationships. In his post-Panda blog post  Google fellow Amit Singhal advises content owners to avoid ‘mass produced’ content that is ‘shallow in nature’, and to strive for high-quality ‘original content’. He urges us to produce articles full of ‘interesting information that is beyond obvious’ and remove low-quality content from our websites. And this is the biggest content trend of all: the culling of poor-quality content is finally beginning to happen. And we can’t wait to see the results...  

There has been a great deal of attention and research directed at the multi-screen recently, and with good reason. 65% of the respondents with a tablet in our study said they were likely to be using a second device while watching television...and that number goes up for those 18-44 years old. Even most people with only two screens (TV + computer) are more likely to be online while watching than not (52%). The Multi-Screen Marketer explores some of the effects of these behaviors, and tries to lay out an approach for publishers and advertisers. How does the distraction of the second screen affect attention?  When someone has another device at the ready, their attention can shift from the screen the moment they lose interest. Whether it's a commercial break or just a break in the action, they're off and mentally running. Studies have already shown that commercial blocks invite the heaviest multi-screen behavior. We wanted to measure how this could impact advertiser recall. Respondents were asked to identify their favorite television program, and then asked if they could identify specific advertisers associated with it. We expected that the less people fit the mold of the multi-tasker, the more they would recall, but that's not what we found. Overall, 46% of survey takers were able to identify between one and three advertisers. Surprisingly, four screened respondents (TV, computer, smartphone and tablet) were more likely (53%) than those with only two screens (42%). Again, younger tablet owners did even better...61% could recall at least one advertiser. Of course, this doesn't capture some very important pieces of information; we don't know anything about messaging recall or sentiment. You can be sure that studies will fill in these gaps. Does the type of content (TV program) correlate with multi-screen behaviors? Television programs aren't all the same, even if it feels that way when you've got a remote in your hand. Respondents were asked to identify their preferred program types (procedurals, sports, reality, etc.) and given three randomly chosen questions about their behaviors from a total of six possible questions (to avoid overload). Three of the behaviors were "commercial" - related to online shopping, product searches, etc., while the others related to general online surfing and searching for media-related information. Findings are broken down in detail within the report but one of the highlights was discovering that independent drama (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc.) is a hotbed for both commerce and non-commerce related second screen behaviors. People are somewhat more likely to shop for products they've seen during the program (show + commercials) and to do things like connect on social networks, than during any other program type. At the other end of the spectrum are procedural dramas. Where are we headed? Connected TV is already here, but few people have bought them so far, and those that have often aren't using them to their full potential. We asked respondents to describe television of the future and the televisions of the future, and to gauge the impact of these expected changes. At the top of the list is the ability to watch anything, anywhere, anywhen. Not surprising and unlikely to be fulfilled any time soon, because of the basic business models of the primary players. The second highest priority is for a television that listens and more importantly, does what we tell it. Voice recognition scored well, as people acknowledge that between multiple remotes, hundreds of channels and piles of accessories, it can be complicated to find or record the content we want.  Other top priorities center around the multi-screen experience. People expect to be able to watch programming on any device, and then move it simply from one device to another as they travel. Naturally, we gravitate to the best available device, but often that is the most available device. Watching a film on a smartphone is sub-optimal, unless you're on a subway, in which case it's sublime. Other Findings The Multi-Screen Marketer looks at a number of other topics including how social is really a private activity, how multi-screeners use online information during the purchase process and how TV viewing is shared among devices. Thanks to the sponsorship of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the report is available to all Econsultancy members, bronze and higher.

Not buying or licensing Google's technology in 1998 In 1998, Google's two young co-founders approached Yahoo when they were making the rounds for backing in Silicon Valley. According to a book written by John Battelle, that opened the door to an investment, licensing deal or an outright acquisition of the duo's technology. But Yahoo (and other major players) weren't interested. Turning to Google for search results in 2000 Two years later, at the height of the first .com boom, Yahoo saw that search was becoming far more important than it had anticipated and it looked to third parties for search technology while it worked on its own. One of those third parties was upstart Google, which it struck a deal with to power search on yahoo.com. That deal, of course, was far more favorable to Google than any deal would have been in 1998. Paying billions for Broadcast.com in 1999 While Yahoo's 1999 acquisition of Broadcast.com for $5.7bn didn't kill Yahoo, it is arguably one of the worst-timed acquisitions in tech M&A history, and one has to wonder how the ill-fated acquisition impacted Yahoo in subsequent years. Not buying Google in 2002. According to reports, Yahoo had the opportunity to purchase Google for $5bn in 2002. Although that price was high for Yahoo in relation to its own value at the time, it would prove to be the last chance Yahoo would have to acquire Google. It didn't, and the rest is history. Failing to take full advantage of its Overture acquisition Google AdWords may be the king of pay-per-click advertising, but the model was pioneered by Overture, a company Yahoo acquired in 2003 for $1.4bn. As part of a patent lawsuit settlement, Google obtained a perpetual license to a key Overture patent that would spell trouble for AdWords. The price: 2.2m shares of Google stock. While there were questions about the legitimacy of Overture's patent, and some suggested it would be found to be invalid, in retrospect, Google got a bargain of a settlement. Hiring Terry Semel as CEO Some consider Yahoo's second CEO, Terry Semel, the worst tech CEO in history. While that may not be entirely fair, one thing is hard to dispute about Semel's reign at Yahoo: with his total compensation pegged at some $500m or more over his tenure, he has done far better than the company he ran. Botching the Flickr and Delicious acquisitions While there's no denying that Web 2.0 upstarts Flickr and Delicious wouldn't have saved Yahoo, the company's failure to manage the assets it purchased, particularly given its built-in audience, represented another huge missed opportunity that could have helped Yahoo find its way on the modern internet. This excellent article from gizmodo looks more deeply into this. The restrictions on Flickr's mobile development is a particular missed opportunity, opening the door for the likes of Instagram.  Not buying Facebook If watching as its Flickr and del.icio.us acquisitions stagnated or went south wasn't bad enough, Yahoo's failed attempt at acquiring the social networking behemoth adds insult to injury.   As the story goes, Yahoo was nearly able to acquire the popular social network in 2006 for $1bn but due to a faltering stock price, Yahoo lowered its offer to $850m, allowing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to walk away from the deal. This Friday, Zuckerberg and company will take 900m-plus user strong Facebook public at a valuation exceeding $100bn. Rejecting Microsoft's buyout offer Yahoo has made plenty of bad moves in acquiring (or not acquiring) other companies, but its crowning failure was its handling of its own potential sale. In 2008, the Redmond software giant, eager to compete with Google, was willing to pay $44bn for Yahoo, but thanks to what many considered gross incompetence, Yahoo's board rejected the offer. Today, Yahoo's market cap sits at just below $19bn. Partnering with Microsoft Months after having failed to make it to the altar with Microsoft, the worst financial crisis in decades hit. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, must have breathed a sigh of relief and he capitalized on his luck by inking a partnership that gave him most of what he wanted without having to buy Yahoo.   While this deal may have been a convenient way to turn back the hands of time for Yahoo, at least partially, it was a far better deal for Microsoft, and didn't help Yahoo answer any of the fundamental questions crucial to its future.

Rakuten Ichiba is the largest e-commerce site in Japan and among the world's largest by sales. The compaby has recently acquired Buy.com in the US, Priceminister in France, as well as Play.com. According to Raukten CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani: While some may see e-commerce as a straightforward vending machine-like experience, we believe it is a living process where both retailers and consumers can communicate, discover, and curate to make the experience more entertaining. We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world. Although Pinterest is one of the hottest new social media players to emerge in recent years, and is, according to Experian, the third largest social network in the United States, some will naturally point to a $1bn valuation for Pinterest as further evidence that we're in the midst of a huge bubble. Yes, such a valuation would appear to be frothy, but if there's one hot startup that everyone agrees has the potential to develop a solid revenue model, it just might be Pinterest. Many of the images that Pinterest's users are pinterested in are products, and the company has built an audience with a very appealing demographic. For online retailers, that's apparently translating into more than just potential. According to a recent report, Pinterest revenue per first click beats Facebook and Twitter by 27% and 400%, respectively, making Pinterest a potential game-changer for social commerce. The big question for Pinterest is how well it can execute a monetization strategy. The company must take care in adding commercial aspects to the service, lest it upset users. And the social media darling will want to ensure that the backing doesn't limit its potential to work directly with all retailers. If it can do all this, the future would appear to be bright for Pinterest. Whether the company's possible trajectory justifies a $1bn-plus valuation is another matter altogether but for the Pinterest team, taking advantage of the current market conditions to obtain such a valuation is probably pretty cool.

The tracking pixel enables communication between vendors and websites and is key to most digital marketing technologies. Site analytics, optimization and personalization all depend on them, and while these technologies provide valuable data and capabilities, they also create complexity and work for the marketing department. The ROI of Tag Management Report looks at one of the rare opportunities to increase ROI and simultaneously simplify life for the marketer, while giving them greater control over digital assets. Tag management systems (TMS) were developed to counter a number of challenges, especially those brought about by the reliance on technology department resources. Survey respondents cited the top issues with manual tagging, including: Delays in implementation as the tech department is overworked Product and site development is slowed Tag implementation is often incomplete Tags slow down the website What are the benefits of managed tag implementation? The complexity of the digital world is increasing as data-driven tools infiltrate most levels of digital marketing. Tag management gives marketers greater control over the chaos. The respondents to the Tag Management ROI Survey highlighted the benefits of moving from manual to managed implementation: Tag management saves money as marketers can swiftly make changes to vital assets without enlisting the help of the IT department. Less people and less time means less cost.  Time to market is dramatically reduced. 70% of tag management system (TMS) users create and modify tags in less than a work day with almost half of them reporting it takes them less than an hour. Compare that to the industry standard of over a week for manual implementation, and you can see how significant a managed system can be.  The marketing department can be more agile which releases the IT/ Tech department for higher level tasks.  Website speed is increased as multiple tags are replaced with the single universal tag of the tag management system.  Privacy tool are easily enabled site-wide which will be key as privacy concerns begin to force marketing technologies to offer "do-not-track" options. To find out how tag management can benefit the work that you do, download our ROI of Tag Management report, created in association with Tealium. This comprehensive survey will help you better gauge the industry's attitudes around perceived value, critical challenges, important vendor considerations and more.   Some of the top findings from the report have been captured in this infographic:      

Get your content out there It’s all too easy to talk about content, but very few businesses actually get it written and published. If you want content success you need to have a plan and complete it. List what you want to write and when, and then stick to that plan. Even the simplest editorial calendar will help you achieve more. If Benjamin hadn’t finished the book, there wouldn’t have been a movie and his Zoo wouldn’t have had the publicity. Be honest, have you been failing to see your content through to completion? Tell a story with your content A story is often more interesting than a technical piece of writing. Yes, even if you’re in a tech industry. Great content is easy to follow, has a clear start, middle and end and most importantly takes the reader on a journey. The desired destination is a place that’s helpful, inspiring or interesting for the reader. Enjoy what you’re writing You need to have a passion for what you’re writing. There’s no point tasking an agency or a member of staff to write your content if they’re not passionate about it. You can always get your work edited after you’ve written it; I couldn’t survive without our editors. Just focus on sharing your passion and let someone else worry about dotting the i’s and crossing t’s. Make the most of your successes If you’re lucky enough to get a few bites, just like Benjamin Mee did — no pun intended — you’ll need to make the most of them. Sometimes your content can get you PR and you may even set out with that intention. If you get success, make the most of it. Dartmoor Zoo have the book featured on their homepage, they have additional web pages explaining their story, it’s available to purchase in the shop and Benjamin does as many interviews as he can. He was even smart enough to get pictures of movie star Matt Damon wearing a DZP (Dartmoor Zoological Park) t-shirt. Make your content work harder Writing the content is just the start. The key to success is getting it in front of your target audience. Share your content on your website, emails, social media, at events and anything else you can think of. You need to make it work hard. You should also think about how your content helps your SEO. Wherever possible optimise your content even if you’re just adding a few keyword rich links to other pages on your site. When you find something that works don’t be scared to do it again. Everyone loves a sequel right? Following up on interesting content can be very successful. Focus on your business but be creative There’s no point writing content about subjects that are completely unrelated to your business. Benjamin wrote about a Zoo, that makes sense right? However, you should also think about what interests your audience. A great example of this is the Skull Candy App. Skull Candy make headphones, so what kind of content do they have in their app? It’s not about headphones, it’s snow, surf and skate-related content. This is the content that interests their customers and more importantly their potential customers. Your business should provide content that helps your customers and prospects and encourages them to reach out and share it with other like-minded people. That’s successful content.

The cookie misnomer Everyone is talking about the run-up to May 26, when the ePrivacy Directive will begin being enforced by the Information Commissioner in the UK. The attention paid has been impressive, and we know that significant companies are taking critical steps behind the scenes. But we need to flag a problem.   Somehow, the term ‘cookie’ has crept into the conversation like an insidious little worm, eating its way into headlines, distracting the market and potentially sending well-intended companies sprinting in the wrong direction during this critical last stretch.  To be clear, we’re talking about compliance with the amended e-Privacy Directive. The portion of the Directive that applies to cookies is in fact written much more broadly and requires consent for non-essential tracking, regardless of whether or not a cookie is involved. Yet we hear the Directive referred to as the ‘Cookie Directive,’ and the ‘Cookie Law.’ Companies have sprung up selling ‘Cookie Solutions,’ and providing ‘Cookie Audits.’ We have fantastic new ‘Cookie Policies’ and detailed breakdowns of the functions of each cookie.   All of this is helpful in as much as it moves the ball incrementally forward. The danger is that our choice of words can end up putting horse blinders on our approach to compliance.  Cookies, tags and trackers As a lens through which to view tracking activity on your own site, a focus on cookies, to the exclusion of other technologies, is both incomplete and exhausting.   Tags are the central tracking element, not cookies. Many companies track the consumer using an alternative technology, like a flash object. In addition, an emerging class of trackers are beginning to use technologies like device fingerprinting.   These companies use tags, but do not leave behind any tracking object on the computer and as a result are typically invisible to web scanning technologies. Because of these gaps, a ‘Cookie Audit’ will frequently miss as much as 40% of tracking activity, a clearly unsustainable result for companies that wish to comply with the law. A complete dump of all cookies set on a site can also quickly become overwhelming. One company can set one cookie or 12, there is no pattern. And a large organisation with a portfolio of domains, or any company with an ad supported site, can easily have 100 or more trackers, each setting one to 12 cookies.   500 or more cookies are not at all uncommon. Further, it is often impossible to distinguish the specific purpose of individual cookies, with their cryptic names and randomised values. We’re talking about a massive undertaking, and for what benefit? You need to understand who is on your site, and what they are doing with data. Not the particular differences between these two cookies (and yes, they are real): a)name: __utmc, value: 46026228 b)name: __utmb, value: 46026228.1.10.1330142291 It can be very helpful to know which cookies are being set, but the cookies should not be the focal point of your analysis, or you will spend hundreds of hours diving down rat holes with questionable returns.   Instead, you need to up level your assessment to the companies that are tracking the user. Each company has distinct attributes relevant to your assessment, including: The categories of information they collect. Their business model. Data retention policy. Whether or not they have a properly functioning opt-out. Whether or not they engage in online behavioural advertising. The types of tracking technologies they are using, including tags, cookies, and flash objects. Whether or not ALL of their tracking activities can be considered ‘strictly necessary’ under the Directive. All of this information should be rolled together into a clear position on whether or not each company requires consent. You can do this yourself, or you can work with a company like Evidon, but whoever you use, be sure you don’t find yourself lost in a maze of cookies.  Tracking activity and the consumer When it comes to the consumer, again, cookies should not be the focus.  It makes no sense to inform them of just the tracking activity that uses cookies.   Disclosures that leap directly into a breakdown of each cookie are replacing a problem created by legal geeks (privacy policies) with a problem created by real geeks (technical explanations of hundreds of cookies).   The inability of most people to comprehend the dense legal language in a privacy policy is one of top reasons we’re in this mess today, but at least privacy policies are written in English. You must engage the consumer in a dialogue about tracking that is happening on your site to comply with the law and that dialogue must be specific, but there is no reason to leap directly to the logical extreme. Again, they need to know who is tracking them on your site and what they are doing with data. Your priority should be experimenting with interfaces that simplify the presentation of this information as much as possible, rather than running a microscope over the particulars of each cookie.   When discussing cookies, be sure to provide context. Include the company behind each cookie, with links to more information about that company’s practices. In the EU, our clients will be deploying consent solutions that make it clear to the consumer that tracking is taking place, using visual tools like the orange bar and Cookie Consent button on the bottom of the page below. Step 1: Consumer visits site and reads about the tracking taking place as well as their options. Step 2: If the consumer clicks on the Cookie Consent button, they will have access to a breakdown of the categories of tracking activity, including Essential, Analytics and Customisation, and Advertising.   They can withdraw consent for the latter two categories of tracking, as they are subject to the Directive, or they can click an arrow to read more about the tracking in each category. Step 3: If they click an arrow, they will see a list of the companies tracking them in each category along with the purpose of their tracking and can withdraw consent from individual companies. When taken together, these tools allow a company to have comfort that they have acquired the implied consent of the consumer. With all of this said, I want to be clear about the importance that cookies play as a part of your compliance game plan for the ePrivacy Directive. But do yourself a favour and strike any reference to the ‘Cookie Law.’  I still haven’t seen a copy of that law.

In fact, it's so unimpressed that the Wall Street Journal's sources say that the once-troubled automaker "plans to stop advertising on Facebook after the company's marketing executives determined their paid ads had little impact on consumers". Ouch.The timing is intriguing, and many believe it isn't coincidental. But the news isn't all bad for the world's largest social network: the Wall Street Journal's sources say that GM will continue to invest in its Facebook Pages, which Facebook doesn't charge for -- yet. at least. That investment, pegged at some $30m, is triple the amount GM is said to have been paying to Facebook directly for advertising ($10m).While GM's move is a blow to Facebook on the eve of its IPO, and it highlights some of the risks Facebook investors will have to grapple with as the company seeks to live up to its exorbitant $100bn-plus valuation, the real lesson here is that companies need to be vigilant about all of their digital spending, particularly as it relates to new channels like social.In an effort to be more innovative and catch new trends early on, Madison Avenue is arguably more willing than ever to try new things and get involved with young services developing new ad models. That's certainly a good thing. But at the same time, there's an argument to be made that exuberance (and perhaps fear) has pushed some marketers to treat what should be experimental campaigns as standard digital media buys.That might work if those campaigns produce an ROI, but as GM apparently discovered, the latest and greatest doesn't always deliver. In the case of Facebook, Forrester analyst Nate Elliott writes, "Companies in industries from consumer electronics to financial services tell us they're no longer sure Facebook is the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget—a shocking fact given the site's dominance among users."In reality, the shocker isn't that advertisers are questioning their Facebook investments despite its dominance, but rather that they haven't questioned some of their social spend sooner. There have been plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the efficacy of many social ad offerings, and the fact that most users are ignoring often well-targeted but still-annoying social ads is not front-page news.While GM will continue to invest in Facebook even though it won't be paying the social network directly, it's likely that brands will eventually start to review their 'free' social media efforts too given that the costs of building, growing and managing Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, and the like isn't cheap either, as evidenced by the fact that GM spends 8-figures doing just this.So where does this leave Facebook and other social giants as they look to prove their worth as advertising platforms?Obviously, it's easy to accept that the consumer internet's hottest services are too big to ignore, but when the ROI they deliver is too small to move the needle, throwing good money after bad doesn't a great marketing strategy make.

As reported by The Guardian, 10m of those users are in the UK. That's good enough to make the UK Twitter's fourth largest audience behind the US, Brazil and Japan, and explains why the company has a 30 person strong office in London. Although Twitter's userbase can't compete with Facebook's, the service's impact on society has arguably been nearly as significant, and in some areas, perhaps even more significant. As The Guardian's Charles Arthur notes, "over the past year [Twitter] has been blamed for inciting riots – a charge that was disproved – and of undermining superinjunctions involving, among others, Ryan Giggs and Jeremy Clarkson." And, as Arthur points out, Twitter has become a key platform for prominent figures, celebrities and brands to interact with the public. Like Facebook, Twitter has a front-row seat to the mobile revolution. According to the company, some 80% of British users who used Twitter in the past month did so using a mobile phone. Obviously, Twitter's service, which was inspired in part by SMS, is more easily adapted to a mobile experience than, say, Facebook's, but in terms of monetization, which Twitter has taken slowly, the dramatic rise of mobile usage is clearly going to present challenges for Twitter too. One challenge Twitter is facing that Facebook isn't (yet) is user attrition. The Guardian's Arthur observes that one research firm had pegged the number of Twitter profiles created at around 383m at the beginning of the year, so the 140m figure Twitter is touting hints that the company's service isn't for everybody. Even with all the question marks, Twitter's growth, coupled with its age and the amount of funding it has received, raises the question: will we see a Twitter IPO in the next year or two? If Facebook's IPO is a success and its share price doesn't sink dramatically in its first six months, it wouldn't be all that surprising to see some of Twitter's investors pushing for a TWIT listing.

When Facebook goes public on Friday, it will be selling 50.6m shares more than it originally planned to, and at $34 to $38 per share, the company's stock will debut in a higher-than-anticipated price range. All told, Facebook could raise nearly $15bn in its offering and hit the much-talked-about $100bn IPO valuation it looked as if it might not achieve. So much for a lack of demand for the company's shares, which will trade under the ticker symbol FB. Facebook's IPO will be the richest ever, and it could even be the most interesting ever. Why? Because for all of the apparent investor demand Facebook and its army of bankers have been able to drum up, there's a general skepticism about the company's future. Take Bloomberg's investor poll last week, which asked more than 1,200 investors, analysts and traders who subscribe to Bloomberg what they thought of Facebook's valuation. 79% of them thought the company would be overvalued at $96bn. Just 7% believed it was valued correctly at that figure, and a paltry 3% suggested it was undervalued. An AP-CNBC poll found similar numbers, with half of respondents, which include Facebook users and investors, saying the company would be overvalued at $100bn. Active investors were even more skeptical, with 62% believing the $100bn figure to represent an excessive valuation. As in the Bloomberg poll, just 3% of those surveyed thought Facebook would be undervalued at $100bn. There may be good reason for this. Over half of the Facebook users in the AP-CNBC poll indicated that they never click on ads or sponsored stories, and another 26% said they "hardly ever" do so. As for the company's potential to turn its vast social network into a commerce juggernaut, over half of those surveyed said they wouldn't trust Facebook for financial transactions (as compared to some 8% who would). Facebook's future, of course, may rely on mobile, and area it admittedly hasn't yet cracked but where it is focusing a lot of attention. Given the demand for Facebook's stock, it would appear that investors and speculators who have ponied up for shares in the IPO aren't too concerned about mobile being a drag on the company, at least in the short-term. But the company's mobile problems may not just be related to monetization. Facebook has a reputation as being home to some of Silicon Valley's top engineers, but a post looking at how Facebook's iOS app has been built raises questions about the social network's mobile chops. Interestingly, it's not the first time techies have criticized the social networking giant on technical grounds. Put all this together and you have what could be better-than-television drama. Right now, there are enough investors are willing to hand Facebook and shareholders billions at a $100bn valuation, but their apparent exuberance is tempered by the fact that so many people are also skeptical about the company's valuation and prospects. Which group is right? It's worth noting that those putting their money into the IPO may have a wide range of motivations, from short-term speculation to a desire to be involved in one of the most historic IPOs ever, and some of these motivations won't necessarily lend themselves to long-term shareholder loyalty. At the same time, Facebook has -- thus far at least -- managed to overcome its greatest obstacles, which include more than a few high-profile user backlashes. Which hints at why the Facebook IPO may be so compelling even to those who aren't buying shares: for all of Facebook's undeniable, astonishing success, it appears remarkably -- perhaps almost unbelievably -- vulnerable.