The wait is finally over. After years of anticipation and weeks of headlines, the world’s largest social network is a publicly-traded company.

FB shares, which priced at $38 yesterday, became available to the general public in the past hour on the NASDAQ.

After a delay, the stock hit the market at a opening price of $42.05. It is currently trading at around $40.

Facebook’s IPO is a huge milestone for a company that is arguably unlike any other to come before it. Launched in 2004 from a university dorm room, Facebook has risen to become more than just a multi-billion dollar consumer internet star — it’s a cultural phenomenon used by close to a billion people.

But the company’s public debut is hardly the end of the story Mark Zuckerberg wrote. Instead, it’s just the beginning of what could prove to be either one of the greatest tech investment opportunities ever or a passing fad that brought irrational exuberance back to internet stocks. Which one will it be? Naturally, it depends on who you ask.

On one hand, Facebook is a force to be reckoned with. It has nearly a billion users, billions in revenue, one of the best-recognized brands in the world and some of the best engineering talent in Silicon Valley. Facebook boosters thus argue that the company is just getting started and its best days are ahead of it.

On the other hand, Facebook’s current valuation is based on its potential more than its relatively modest earnings and faces significant challenges in realizing all of its potential, including mobile. Skeptics will point out that the company is no spring chicken, saw a quarter-over-quarter revenue decline last quarter and that key insiders are selling in the IPO, hinting that they may believe Facebook’s valuation has peaked (or is close to peaking).

One thing is for sure: the initial movement in FB shares (up or down) in the next hours, days and weeks will make for great entertainment, but it’s what happens in the coming months and perhaps even years that will determine whether Facebook is the next Google, or the next Groupon.

The Wall Street Journal revealed some interesting data about readership trends by device and time today at the Business Development Institute’s social and mobile conference for Financial Services.

While a live Twitter feed streamed the thoughts of the audience, Michal Shapira, Associate Vice President of Digital Marketing noted that the organization is not just a traditional media company anymore and claimed that, compared to a jury of it’s peers, the company is number one in terms of mobile access.

Supplementing print readership, the WSJ’s desktop, tablet, and phone applications extend the companys product consumption levels far beyond it’s traditional reading hours.

The news organization’s tablet usage (mostly iPad) begins first, at five in the morning, with print following shortly thereafter. As people transit to and arrive at work those consumption methods fall precipitously.

Subsequently, mobile phone and desktop access rise, then hold steady throughout the remainder of the working day. Tablet usage begins to pick up again in the evening, and usage of WSJ Live, the company’s streaming video app, peaks in the evening at 10pm.

Shapira said that this is evidence of either digital video consumption replacing television, or, additive second-screen viewing. 

In either case, this level of advanced penetration of owned properties throughout an array of devices and content-formats is an impressive success for the 123 year old brand. 

In part, the success of these products is no doubt attributable to the company’s aggressive participation in numerous public-ish social media channels. According to a shared slideshow from March, the company maintains over 100 Twitter accounts, with over 2m followers.

Social sharing within Facebook is the largest source of traffic referral, and the company maintains 14 brand pages with 600k likes. The company has additionally embraced Pinterest, and is active on Instagram, where it has over 15k followers.

As brands consider implementing content strategies, they would be wise to pay attention to publications like this. At one point, the Wall Street Journal was just a newspaper. Now, it has the potential to poach eyeballs away from TV advertisers.

It isn’t that every brand should desire to become a full-fledged news service, it’s that the opportunity to deeply penetrate into the lives of consumers is there, for those who can figure out how to do it.

In the ROI of Tag Management, a new report released today in partnership with Tealium, we explore the role, challenges and opportunities for technology in handling vendor website tags.

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:

Facebook may be the subject of all of the headlines with its public debut looming this Friday, but another major player in the social networking space is reminding the world that it’s still growing too.

Twitter, which has built a company that one day might go public too on the back of 140 character messages, has waived its hands in the air by announcing that it has surpassed 140m users worldwide.

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.

Chances are if you’re an owner of a Mac, you don’t worry too much about malware and viruses.

The Flashback botnet made headlines, but many were quick to point out that the infected machines became vulnerable through Java, not Apple’s OS, suggesting that Apple wasn’t to blame.

That may not have been entirely true, however. Apple had apparently blocked Oracle from issuing a direct update for Java on Mac, leaving Macs vulnerable to infection far longer than they should have been.

And that’s just the beginning of the problem according to the CTO of antivirus vendor Kaspersky, Nikolai Grebennikov. He’s on the record as stating “Mac OS is really vulnerable,” and apparently Apple believed that enough to invite Kaspersky to help it assess just how vulnerable Macs are.

The bad news: “Apple doesn’t pay enough attention to security.” In Grebennikov’s mind, the Java exploit that was left open for hackers to exploit proves this. When Oracle patched Java, Apple took far too long to issue a patch. Perhaps more importantly, it raises the question as to whether Apple should have allowed Oracle to issue the patch directly.

The even worse news: Grebennikov believes that malware targeting iOS, the operating system that powers the iPhone and iPad, could be right around the corner. While none has been identified yet, if past is prologue, it won’t be too long before it hits the scene. And as Grebennikov sees it, there’s no way Apple will be able to defeat iOS malware without help.

Which brings us to the good news: Kaspersky’s criticism of Apple’s security model seems to have caused Apple to bring Kaspersky (and perhaps other third parties) into the fold as it looks to take security more seriously going forward.

Locking down its OSes and maintaining their reputation as relatively “secure” could prove crucial to Apple staying on top. One of the main selling points of Apple devices is that they “just work.” But if hackers and scammers have their way, Mac owners could be in for some headaches. The business risk to Apple is huge, and it’s one that the company can’t afford not to try to mitigate.

In part one of this series, we examined ways for marketers to deliver a relevant browsing experience to users visiting their websites from mobile devices. With recent data indicating that 20% of all mobile phone owners made a purchase using their phone in 2011, there’s an obvious need to effectively reach consumers on mobile devices.

And with mobile web usage expected to surpass desktop web by 2015, delivering a seamless and relevant mobile experience will only grow in importance.

Unlike traditional desktop web browsing, where online brands have the full attention of their customers, mobile users are often distracted while engaging with you on their smartphone. But they also may be looking for that perfect pair of shoes.

How can you tell, and most importantly, use what you know about the mobile visitor to increase their likelihood of converting?

Usable vs. Useful

There is a clear difference between mobile sites that are usable, and those that are useful. Usable sites may load fast, have easy navigation, and a clear hero image that fits nicely on the page, but developing useful mobile pages that take advantage of the user’s location and provide immediately actionable information are more effective.

Just like you can’t judge a book by its cover, you also can’t judge a customer by their device. Mobile adds valuable texture to the universal truths of how landing pages convert, and in order to improve mobile conversions, marketers have to take advantage of everything they know about their customers. The fundamentals of making pages usable matter more on mobile than they ever did before, and a generic landing page that ignores its users and their context will most likely be useless.

Why is this important? As we previously discussed, mobile users may be browsing your mobile site in a store, on a train, or at a restaurant to kill time while waiting for their date to arrive. It is very important for this context you know about the user to factor into your overall mobile design and user experience.

Geography Matters

Understanding the location of the consumer when they are engaging with your brand from a mobile device presents a big advantage for marketers.

For example, many shoppers frequently use their mobile devices during the in-store browsing and purchasing processes. Given this common behavior, it’s marketers must make it easier for in-store shoppers to find the information they’re looking for. One way is to allow shoppers to scan barcodes with their phones and find reviews, ratings, and other information without having to search around the mobile site. According to the National Retail Federation’s Mobile Retailing Blueprint, making it easier for mobile shoppers to make an informed decision can help close the sale faster.

Perhaps more interesting than the user’s actual geography, however, is their proximal geography, meaning how close they are to something. One of the blessings smartphones present to marketers is that you know exactly where the user is with greater accuracy than the traditional way of identifying location based on an IP address.

Did the user arrive at your mobile landing page from a geo-targeted AdWords campaign? Are they near your competitor’s store? Are they near your store? If so, give them a targeted offer to purchase from your store to discourage them from hopping over to Amazon to buy a similar product.

The Right Technographics 

Mobile screen real estate is precious, and every inch represents selling space just like floor space in a store. To improve your likelihood of converting, you better use that real estate effectively.

Another important variable to consider when optimizing mobile landing pages is connection speed. We all know that the length of time it takes for a page to load has a direct correlation on its effectiveness to convert. So focusing on whether a user is browsing from an iPhone or Android device is less important than knowing whether the user is in their living room with a strong Wi-Fi connection or on a plane using a 3G signal, where the page will take up to 10 times longer to load.

In order to convert more effectively, use what you know about the user’s connection speed to progressively disclose content so headlines and the above the fold image are the first things to load and additional supporting information loads later.

Beyond the Landing Page

The most important question to ask about a mobile landing page is: Does it actually address the needs of your users? And since conversion doesn’t happen on the landing page alone, you need to help distracted mobile users stay focused throughout the entire session.

If a customer finds that other pages on your website are loading too slow, they will look elsewhere and all your hard work to optimize the landing page will be lost. Mobile users are distracted and have limited time to complete a task, which is why you have to make their shopping experience as seamless and efficient as possible.

If the user session doesn’t end with a conversion on the landing page, maintain consistency in terms of the user experience and your offers throughout. Make sure that the offer the customer received in an email or paid search ad is consistent from page to page and don’t include links to non-mobile optimized pages.

And whatever you do, if you’re selling the user something, don’t send them to your shopping cart that’s not mobile optimized and be surprised when they don’t convert.

The Bottom Line: Test

The evidence clearly shows that consumers are using their mobile devices to access your website. However, mobile optimization now is comparable to space flight in the 1950s. While we may know the basic rules, this is all very new and nobody has enough real-world experience to make universal statements at this point.

The only way to learn what works best for your brand is by constantly testing. Blaze some trails within your organization, challenge assumptions, and realize that you may discover something new by testing.

The more you test, the more you learn. And the more you learn the more you will earn.

Apple and Google may be arch rivals thanks to their competing mobile operating systems, iOS and Android, but the relationship between the two tech giants hasn’t always been so rocky.

Case in point: since the iPhone’s launch, Apple has used Google Maps to provide mapping in iOS.

That, however, is apparently about to change according to a report from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac’s “trusted sources” say that Apple’s in-house replacement for Google Maps will be “fairly similar” to the Google Maps-driven application currently in iOS, “but it is described as a much cleaner, faster, and more reliable experience.”

To build out its mapping back end, Apple is said to have relied on assets obtained through the acquisition of several companies. One of those companies, C3 Technologies, was a 3D mapping solutions provider. According to 9to5Mac, C3’s technology will power a “powerful” 3D mapping mode in Apple’s new mapping application that provides “beautiful, realistic graphics based on de-classified missile target algorithms.”

Interestingly, many of the executives from C3 have reportedly left Apple recently, and 9to5Mac observes that their “leaving just ahead of iOS integration would be similar to Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus leaving following Siri’s launch on the iPhone 4S late last year.”

Whether Apple’s new mapping application, which is apparently going to be called Maps, will create as much buzz as Siri at its expected release in mid-June as part of an iOS 6 announcement at WWDC remains to be seen, but it will almost certainly cause disappointment amongst the ranks of Google executives who will see one of the most important Google Maps integrations disappear.

This time we cover influential moves from Fuse to Newsday Media Group, two greatly anticipated hires at RIM, a promotion at Edelman, new hires at AOL and the Hoffman Agency and two new hires at Hootsuite.

Andreoli MSL Brazil brought on board Valeria Cafe as COO to manage the agency operations in Brazil.

AOL has nabbed former Time Inc. executive Ned Desmond to oversee its tech media brands including TechCrunch, Engadget, Joystiq, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog. 

Banyan Branch hired Kelby Johnson as Senior Account Director of Social marketing strategy.

Beehive PR promoted Ayme Zemke to the position of Vice President from her role of leading client services for the agency.

Bnations, a Toronto-based app developer, hired University of Southern California graduate, Jenna Hannan as their marketing director.

Edelman promoted Cornelia Kunze to vice chairman of Edelman Asia Pacific from her current position of CEO of Edelman Germany.

Formula PR hired Debbie Etchison as the VP of the agency’s sports and entertainment division in Los Angeles. Prior to working at Formula, Etchison was VP at Atomic PR and VP at Hill & Knowlton.

GolinHarris hired Brian Snyder to join them as Director of Digital where he will work on interactive campaigns for midwest clients.

The Hoffman Agency brought former principal of the Burkhart Group, Steve Burkhart, on board as GM for North America.

HootSuite Media has made two new hires including Cameron Uganec who joins them as Director of Marketing & Communications and Brian Bailard will be its VP of Global Strategic Accounts.

The social media agency, Laundry Service, has hired Don Middleberg, CEO of Middleberg Communications, to be their principal and CEO alongside Jason Stein who is the current Principal and President. Middleberg will continue working both roles.

Kellwood Company has made Jill Granoff its CEO, nabbing her roles as CEO of Kenneth Cole Productions. Prior to working at Kenneth Cole, Granoff was the EVP of Liz Claiborne.

Market America/Shop.com appointed Dana Dillehunt as Social Media Writer and Amanda LaRiviere as its new Social Media Manager.

Newsday Media Group hired former Senior Vice President of Marketing for Fuse, Valerie Green, to be publisher of amNewYork.

RIM has made two new greatly anticipated appointments. Frank Boulben, former EVP of strategy, marketing and sales at Lightsquared, will be its new CMO and Kristian Tear is moving from Sony Mobile Communications where he was EVP to be RIM’s new COO.

UnitedHealth Group appointed Rachel Medina as Senior Communications Specialist of Social Media.

Washington Post Company appointed Emily Barr as the president of Post-Newsweek Stations after moving from her role as president of WLS-Chicago.

Today, LinkedIn launched its inaugural Financial Services Summit in New York which focused on the role social media is playing in the financial services industry. The first panel brought together representatives from American Express, Citi, Fidelity Investments, Prudential Retirement and Hearsay Social to talk about using social media in financial marketing.

It was curious to see a panel on social media where only two out of six individuals on the panel have Twitter accounts. One was Clara Shih, who runs the agency Hearsay Social, and the other, Frank Eliason, SVP of Social for Citi. The panelists’ lack of Twitter accounts felt like a microcosm highlighting how most financial service organizations are behind in social media.

Not that Twitter is the be all and end all of social media, it is a communication channel for 140 million active users. Saying that, in LinkedIn’s new findings released today, financial advisors are mainly reaching out to prospective clients on LinkedIn with Twitter only used by 8% of them. Even brand identity building primarily takes place on LinkedIn over Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for those working in an advisory capacity.

Though the panelists did mention communication on all platforms, a lot of the issues they are facing aren’t about where the conversations are taking place. It’s rather that financial institutions need to put customers at the center of their decisions as well as enable their employees to do the same.

Below are a few of the key takeaways from each of the panelists. These points could be taken across any organization, especially those who have to deal with compliance issues and regulatory bodies:

Clara Shih, CEO, Hearsay Social

There are two main things that Shih highlighted about how social media is shifting the way financial services market themselves:

1) Proliferation of online identity where people freely sharing what they do, who they are, etc. is very valuable for the financial world. When people get married or have a career change, these are great triggers for financial services discussion and this is when financial advisors and institutions need to reach out to customers.

2) The online social graph (social networking) shifted us from a base founded in search. Today the way we get information is discovery based with more links coming from social media than Google now. Shih stressed that Twitter is mainly used for retail, customer service, offers and deals, Facebook is a perfect place for retail cards and insurance and LinkedIn is used most by ultra high worth individuals. It’s more than a social graph, it’s a decision graph. We need to figure out how consumers use connections and rich information to make the best choice for them and give them the facility to do it.

Most importantly, we have to find a way to enable the advisors, whatever the device they are on and wherever they are. We’ve seen this movie play before many times before. There was a time when it took convincing to get employees to get computers and email. We’ve proven what can be done with technology so once we can ensure compliance, we have to look at ROI.

Kara Segreto, CMO, Prudential Retirement

Segreto is seeing a real trend to shift to more thought leadership with the generation of enough content to completely regenerate and be one step ahead. You also need to commit as a whole institute or it won’t work. There has been a shift from spending time with sales and product to spending more time with technology and tech law and compliance. There’s also been a shift in media mix and spends and financial institutions need to have an integrated approach to the market place.

Audrey Hendley, General Manager, New Customer Acquisition, American Express

Social Media has provided a greater opportunity for deeper engagement with customers at American Express. Social media amplifies brand messaging across different customer touch points and aids with customer service, engagement and retention. It is looking to engage more with small businesses and American Express puts on Small Business Saturday once a year to engage with customers and the community. Hendley stressed that it’s important to know who you are talking to and and correlate your messaging and content to that audience. The more connected customers are to the brand, the more they will use it.

Sean Belka, SVP Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, Fidelity Investments

The goal at Fidelity Investments is to help customers achieve big goals. 20 years ago meant calls and mail, then web and email. Social media is part of the large evolution to be where the customers are. We need to look at technology and try to figure out how that will help your customers. Think – is this going to help them in their financial lives? It’s less about the channel and more about what the customers need.

People want to aggregate multiple sources when making a financial decision instead of a single source like they did in the past. How do we enable that and bring that all together in a low cost way? One of the things Fidelity brought to market in the last year, was to enable customers to deposit checks through their mobile. This way the company can be where the customers are, make it easier for them and create new opportunities.

Frank Eliason, SVP Social Media, Citi

For Citi, social media shifted the control. Now the control is more in hands of the customer and the hands of your employee. This is changing the culture at all companies and we’re forced to be more open. This openness will help build the trust that is lacking in the financial world at the moment.

The huge thing that is under discussed is how we can help facilitate conversation. How can financial institutions listen in the space and understand what is happening in all brands in the marketplace. They then need to take this information to see where they can change things internally. Also how do you build that trust and build those communities? Traditionally, financial services was about community and relationships and that is what social is. Ultimately, you have to find ways to connect the dots. It’s not about the brand, it’s about finding out more about your customers.

In the financial services world, we need to shift from the product perspective and look how customers are using it and doing it. All social spaces are different. First, you need to listen in each space and then ask customers where to communicate, what they want and then keep adapting as the platform adapts. At first everything may be cool with how a platform is used and then elements may not, so you need to adjust accordingly.

A big problem is that most financial firms push messages out and no one cares. We have to remember it’s about human dialogue. When you’re dealing with compliance, traditionally it’d take 3 days to have approval but taking three days to approve something makes for really funny Twitter conversations. To help with this, Citi has 2 social lawyers.

As for trying to stop employees from speaking online, you can’t. They are speaking there and they are connecting to other people. This is not a bad thing, we just have to start doing it in the right way. Regulators are just as confused in this space as financial services are so we need to have the conversation with them. This is important as the real world has changed since the time regulatory laws were first created in 1929. Now is the time to rethink them.

The future of Google’s greatest social networking effort to date, Google+, may be debatable, but the search giant hasn’t found it very difficult to lure brands to Google+.

And for good reason: Google+ has been Google’s most respectable social effort to date and brands have learned that getting on board services before they get big is often a far better strategy than waiting until it’s too late.

While it remains to be seen whether those brands that joined the Google+ bandwagon early will be rewarded with ROI, there is some promising news according to social media analytics provider Simply Measured.

It looked at the Interbrand Top 100 brands that are present on Google+ and found that, six months in, 22% of the brands circler counts exceeding 100,000. Nike, which joined just two months ago, is one of them. All told, the total number of circlers counted has grown 138% since Simply Measured’s first report three months ago, and circler engagement is up 112%. Engagement with content, which Simply Measured says is driven primarily by photos and videos, is up too, although not as much (65%).

As one might expect, not all brands and verticals are treated equally on Google+. Four luxury brands — Ferrari, Gucci, H&M and Burberry — are tops in terms of the number of circlers they have. Combined, they have more than 2.5m circlers. In terms of verticals, brands in the automotive, electronics and luxury categories are by far the most popular.

According to Simply Measured CEO Adam Schoenfeld, “With a user base surpassing 100 million and growing fast, Google+ is becoming an attractive channel for brands to engage with consumers.”

For brands like Ferrari and Gucci, that does appear to be the case. But there’s a wide chasm outside of the top-tiers of the Google+ brand page leaders. Armani, which ranks twenty-second in circlers with 111,000, is followed by Adidas, which has just 26,000 followers.

A lot of this has to with how great an effort different brands are making on Google+, which raises the question: just how much time and money should brands invest in Google’s social network to get results? Ferarri’s 730,000 circler count is impressive, but the iconic automobile manufacturer has more than 8.1m likes on Facebook. Adidas, which has a far less impressive circler count, has an equally impressive 7.6m likes on Facebook.

Obviously, Google+ isn’t yet a year old, so comparing circlers to likes isn’t entirely fair. But at the end of the day, savvy brands will begin to make comparisons. What’s the cost of acquiring a new circler compared to a like? At what point does fan acquisition hit a plateau on both networks? What’s the value of circler versus a Facebook fan?

Right now, Google can’t offer a Facebook-sized audience, so it should probably focus on doing what it can to ensure the answers to these questions cast Google+ in a favorable light.