Using a tool called the Moment Maker, you create each "Moment" (as the shared media is called) by adding notes, assigning an emotion, adding the date, location, and the names of the people who were in the moment, in addition to the media itself. You can choose to add the photos and videos either from your computer, from publicly shared content on the web via a search tool, or from your own accounts at various online services including flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Picasa.

A Few Stumbles

The Moment Maker tool is relatively easy to use, but could use a little simplification. For example, the first time you go to use flickr, the service needs to authorize your account. Although you're in the middle of "moment creation," thisMoment doesn't perform the authorization using a separate tab or pop-up window. Instead, you're forced to save the moment as a draft, head to your preferences, and authorize flickr from there. Had I known that I'd have to drop what I was doing to configure these settings, I would have headed to my preferences first, then created my Moment. Even better, some sort of walkthrough or prompt to set up your associated services in the beginning would have been useful. UPDATE: The company tells me that you won't see a prompt to link your services if you log in via Facebook Connect from a "moment" page, which, of course, is what I did. You might do the same, so I stand by my assertion that this process needs to be easier. Even the prompt you're supposed to see isn't as obvious as the link to "add a moment" at the top of the screen.

Another slight drawback was the search feature once connected to my flickr account. Although a search box is displayed, entering in a query returned photos that were clearly not mine, but pulled from the public stream. Considering that flickr Pro users like myself probably have hundreds of photos (or thousands!) to sift through, being able to search your own images is a critically important feature. There is a way to search your own images, but it's odd that it wouldn't be the default setting. Instead you have to click the link that says search images "from me" to find your own photos. I didn't even see this option the first time I used it!

Still, when you get through the challenges of locating your content, the end result is an attractive, side-scrolling slideshow of photos and videos which you browse through using the site's timeline feature. These slideshows can be set to public or private as you choose.

Social Sharing

If simple slideshow creation was all the site did, it would probably languish in obscurity since it's already somewhat competing with other photo slideshow creation tools like flickr and Slide. The addition of video and an attractive UI would only take thisMoment so far.

However, the beauty of thisMoment is that it lets you push the content out across the web. After creating a moment, you have the option to post it to Facebook and/or Twitter or email it to friends. Thanks to thisMoment's integration with these social web services, it also automatically identified certain contacts of mine already using the site and allowed me to select them from a list of "my connections" instead of having to type in email addresses.

Another change since the service was in private beta is that it now allows you to access embed codes for publicly shared moments and you can promote them on social sites like Digg, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, and others through a "share" widget located at the bottom of the slideshow.

Premium "Momentos"

At launch time, thisMoment announced content licensing agreements with The New York Times, the Time Inc. Lifestyle Group and Road & Track. These companies will offer branded versions of thisMoment called "Momentos." Surprisingly, these moments weren't featured on the company's homepage nor were they easily accessible via site navigation or search. That's an odd choice - you would think that if they have access to premium content, they would find a way to highlight it better.

In the future, thisMoment plans to expand their offerings to include an iPhone application - it should arrive in the App Store in a few weeks. A Facebook app is available now.

1. Define Your Object: This is the easy part, but perhaps most important. The social object will be the center of your network. On eBay, it's whatever item you're selling or buying. On Amazon, it's a product. On Flickr, it's a photo and so on. 
2. Define Your Verbs: This means what do you want people to do with your social object. Do you want them to comment? Rate it? Share it? Watch it? Etc. Make sure whatever action they should take is clear and highly visible on the site.
3. Make the Objects Shareable: This is almost a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many sites have not made it easy (or even possible!) to share the object which their site is centered around.
4. Turn Invitations into Gifts: Want your friends to join you on the network? Don't just spam them with an invite, send them something of value. Jyri mentioned how a purchase of a Skype headset years ago also included a set for a friend. Also, PayPal had originally offered a small amount of money posted to the account of your friends who signed up for the service.
5. Charge the Publishers, Not the Spectators: On any network, there are those who are creating and those who are passively consuming the content. You shouldn't charge the latter, only the former. The people who are actively using the service and are getting value from it in some way are the ones who would be willing to pay for additional features or, in some cases, just to use the service itself.

An interesting parallel to #5 is the online news industry. Today, many publishers are tossing around ideas about charging for their online content. This actually goes against his final key principal, which may be why some of those ventures won't be as successful as the publishers hope.

Although Jyri Engestrom has not published the slideshow that he used during the presentation, the one embedded below has many of the exact same slides, including the five principles. However, you may be surprised to learn that this one was uploaded to Slideshare two years ago. Even though, it seems the subject matter is still as relevant today as it was back then.

Do you agree that these principles have held up over time? Or does this list need to be modified or changed in some way?

About 75% of Super Rewards' income is currently derived from advertising offers, while the other 25% come from direct sales of in-game points that bypass the advertising solution. Super Rewards has about 40 million users worldwide, a majority of which can be found in English-speaking countries. Super Rewards currently features about 3,000 different offers in its database.

Developers can now implement the Super Rewards system relatively easily into their own games and apps. For relatively simple applications, this can be as easy as copying and pasting Super Rewards code into their own programs. While Bailey couldn't quite divulge all the details in the agreements that the company has signed with developers, he stressed that Super Rewards would take less than the 30% cut that Apple currently gets from apps sold in the App Store.

Walking a Fine Line

Overall, this looks like an interesting solution for developers to monetize their games and social network apps, though they will clearly have to walk a fine line between creating a compelling reason for users to engage with advertisers, and looking like they are exploiting their users and annoying them with ads and offers from Super Rewards. Some of the games are obviously also targeted at younger kids, which could potentially introduce a number of ethical problems for developers who want to implement Super Rewards in their apps.

Author: Ravit Lichtenberg is the founder and chief strategist at Ustrategy.com -- a boutique consultancy focusing on helping companies succeed. Ravit works with CEOs, marketing groups, and Social Media managers to craft customer-centric engagement strategies that result in higher customer value, stronger customer community, improved monetization, and higher profitability. Ravit authors a blog at www.ravitlichtenberg.com.

By now Facebook should be accustomed to criticism. Despite having had a tremendous growth spurt, it seems to be on a trial-and-error journey, guided by an ever-changing map and an elusive destination. In a way, it acts like a child in transition to puberty, slow to catch up on change, impressed by its new-found power, and definitely not bothered by such nuisances as "planning" for its future. But in the end, by will or by force, it too will have to grow up. What can Facebook do to make the transition less painful? What will it take for Facebook to start thinking like the grown-up company it is becoming?

Better to Have B-Level Strategy but A-Level Execution

That's what Kulwant Singh, Dean of the National University of Singapore's Business School, told us each day when we entered his classroom. It's a pretty basic principle, but one of the toughest for companies to uphold.

Facebook is still a pretty simple business: it is an online platform that facilitates community-building and provides multiple methods and points of interaction for users to express themselves and connect and share with each other. Its strategies, then, should also be pretty simple and its execution near flawless. That hasn't been the case, however. Facebook has failed to demonstrate that it is truly able to monetize its platform, and it continues to invest in meaningless endeavors, such as the recent redesign. This is due not to a lack of vision or talent but rather to the mile-long canyon between Facebook's strategy and its ability to execute.

Facebook's Strategy Simplified

In a recent interview, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, said the company will be focusing on growing its community and on monetization. To add some clarity to an otherwise generic statement, we can say that Facebook's strategy most likely includes these three key goals:

1. Increase user base. Grow network effect even beyond the current 175 million user base.
2. Increase wallet share. Leverage existing platform and find new ways to make money (e.g. applications, advertising, revenue share on partnerships, paid services).
3. Maintain and grow leadership in social media/networks. Effectively compete with and beat other online media platforms and tools on which users spend time and money, or form a partnership (like with Twitter) for a piece of the action.

As with all strategic plans, each of these goals can be further broken down into multiple objectives, each of which has its own specific requirements. All that's left to do is execute them. But in Facebook's case, the flow from strategy to execution is disjointed, resulting in a very bad case of broken telephone. What should have been a relatively easy and flawless execution has turned into a terrible blunder that continues to put Facebook in the hot seat for not realizing its potential.

Facebook Vision Realized

While it may have started out as a project by a couple of passionate students, Facebook today, like most successful startups, is in the business of making money. Advancing this vision does not mean spending what must have been countless hours of team meetings to discuss the corner radius on the new profile chicklets. Nor does it mean risking getting sued for quietly attempting to take over user data. It's time to lay down some fundamental principles to help Facebook bridge strategy and execution:

1. Start thinking like the large company you are becoming. Instead of kneejerk responses to competition and internal whim, Facebook needs to set a long-term vision and work backwards, taking into consideration priorities, technological capabilities, and company as well as (most importantly) user needs. When a company knows what targets to keep its eyes on, it can choose one of many roads depending on the circumstances at the time.
2. Choose an identity and stick with it. Is Facebook a fun startup, or a large successful company? Engineers and geeks, or business people? Is it about connecting or sharing information? The next couple of years are going to shape Facebook's identity and redefine its culture, focus, and value proposition. Planning ahead by testing a few ideas can be of tremendous help to reducing noise and confusion.
3. Listen to your users. It's not just about blogs, notes, and user comments. Facebook should proactively seek to understand its growing base of user segments, their needs and desires, and their relationship to upcoming technologies and Facebook's own strategic objectives. This will enable Facebook to design a complete experience (not thumbnails) that turns users into customers, while making it extremely difficult for competitors to match the experience.
4. Grow with your market segments: While Facebook may have started with tech-savvy early adopters, it is now certainly crossing the chasm and attracting different user segments. Does Facebook understand the value proposition it offers to each of these segments? What about the growing base of 35- to 49-year-olds who are now flocking to social networks? Does Facebook know how to keep its original evangelists active? Keeping a close eye on these evolving segments and making sure its services speak to their unique needs will be key to Facebook's success.
5. Implement a co-creation architecture. Facebook could learn a great deal from the open-source environment by creating both feedback and contribution channels. The addition of OpenID and the increased flexibility for developers were significant steps forward, but they need to be integrated into a more holistic tool set and be linked to a strategy that answers more than, "How do we make money off our users?"
6. Dare to change. Fear of change is one of the greatest pitfalls of established businesses and makes it easier for startups to take a significant share from them. Apple's iPhone, BlueNile, and Zappos are but a few examples. Only by focusing on the whole experience and daring to break out of its own mold will Facebook maintain momentum and growth.
7. Seal those gaps. This is a tough one for most people, more so for companies. It means pulling up the curtains, going from room to room, and figuring out what works and what doesn't. It also means sitting down and devising a strategy to address all those gaps in a way that enhances the business while not hindering its operation. Not an easy task, but crucial for growth.
8. Stay honest. Stating that public-figure pages are good for users is borderline disingenuous, and placing friends' photos on ads is probably grounds for lawsuits. Take the example of Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, who says clearly that ads mid-program are Hulu's way of monetizing an otherwise free platform. Facebook should clearly distinguish between pursuing business objectives and meeting users' needs and should thus communicate the true intent of its actions.

For a people-based business, it's shocking how little attention Facebook pays to understanding its own users. Less shocking is how poorly it has been executing its strategy, given the nature of this developmental stage it is going through. Parents often look for signs that those terrible teenage years are over and that their child is finally coming out of his or her self-involved state. For Facebook, this will happen when execution matches strategy, when the terms "user" and "customer" are integral to every single one of its strategic goals, when useless design tweaks finally meet their end, and when Facebook provides services and goods that users actually want. If nothing else, though, we can always take comfort in knowing that teenagers don't stay teenagers for long.