

Are you building for Google or Facebook? - teej
http://nabeelhyatt.com/post/391963368/are-you-building-for-google-or-facebook#

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patio11
_This was really brought home when a fellow entrepreneur mentioned the other
day that Google makes it near impossible for startups to enter a category in
SEO._

I have to chime in, because this is just plausible enough to be dangerous
without actually being true.

Incumbents have several built-in advantages, however, that doesn't mean
startups can't compete with them. Practical examples are using your vastly
superior access to the linkerati (if you don't know what this word means, go
read SEOMoz, it is probably the most-important-least-obvious thing about SEO I
could name), willingness to experiment rapidly, and lack of structural
impediments to engaging at scale.

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ekiru
I don't understand how the author concludes from the article he or she links(
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_facebook_social_...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_facebook_social_networking_search.php)
) that Facebook exceeded all of Google's properties in traffic in December.
That article says that peak social networking traffic exceeded peak search
traffic in that month. It then goes on to point out that even that is
questionable, given that the traffic figures count Youtube as social
networking.

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btilly
I agree bad reasoning.

Still the point is good that people have put less attention into optimizing
websites for Facebook, so getting traction there may be an easier target than
Google. Therefore that may provide better value for effort.

~~~
jfarmer
This is less true every day. Facebook-specific companies like Zynga, Playdom,
etc. have huge ad spends on Facebook.

Facebook ads are also valuable for highly localized companies like Groupon,
because you get fine-grained demographic control.

The CPC of Facebook ads has probably risen by 50-60% over the last year, and
it's only going up.

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Mc_Big_G
I couldn't agree more on Adwords vs Facebook ads based on my experience using
both. The targeting on FB is fantastic and you can really play with it to get
maximum CTR.

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awa
The article seems a little biased to me:

For Google: Revenue - Optionally opt for Google checkout, which has been a
mediocre product so far.

For Facebook: Revenue - Optionally opt for Facebook payments. Early, but we’ve
seen good results in their alpha and their team has been very responsive.

