“If I were starting now, I’d do it very differently—but I knew nothing back then. You get this feeling when you’re out here that you kind of have to be in Silicon Valley. There’s all these great engineers out here, there’s great universities, there’s a lot of great VCs, you can get people to help you set up a company well… you can rent data center space—all this stuff,” said 27-year old Zuckerberg.

He added: “It’s not the only place to be, I think…Honestly, if I were starting now, I just would have stayed in Boston.”

The idea is to “drive engagement with the club’s fans and tap into Asian markets, where Manchester United has a strong following and smartphone use is growing rapidly”.

It’s also possible that Manchester United wants to leverage its own ad network and sponsorship opportunities for brands which equals more dollars for the club.

But it is uncertain how Manchester United plans to get 500 million fans to sign up for its yet-to-launch platform when it can only convince 20 million out of Facebook’s 800 users to follow it on an existing social network.

[via: TheNextWeb]

Disclosure: I’m a Manchester United fan

Teleios Consulting is organizing a Consumer Engagement workshop themed: “Harnessing the power of social media for brands”.

The workshop is structured to be highly engaging and seeks to bring together bloggers, internet marketers, social media and brand communication professionals to chart the course on how the internet is changing consumer habits, expectations and how business professionals and entrepreneurs can leverage on these mobile and digital platforms in meeting their business objectives.

As new media platforms are emerging, what better time for Nigerian brands to leverage on these platforms to bring their brands online.

Participants will benefit from the knowledge and experience of some of Nigeria’s finest social media strategists including:

Dayo Adefila – Chief Operating Officer at HotSauce

Yinka Olaito – Lead Consultant at Michael Sage Consulting

Franklin Ozekhome – Business Director at Insight Communications

Loy Okezie – Editor of TechLoy.com and Digital Content Producer at NEXT

Deola Kayode – Managing Partner at Teleios Consulting

The event holds this Thursday, July 21, 2011 at Korbis Building, 18/20 Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun, Ikeja, Lagos. To register to attend this event, visit this link. Free, but limited spaces are available.

Nollywood diva, Omotola has gained over 2,000 fans more than President Jonathan recently and seems more popular on the world’s largest social networking site, Facebook.

The actress and singer now has 560k + fans compared to Jonathan’s 558k + fans on Facebook. In early March this year, Jonathan crossed the 500,000 Facebook fans milestone, beating Omotola to it.

In response to this latest trend, Omotola’s Facebook page was updated about an hour ago, saying:

“This page has just been recognized as the page with the highest no of friends for any celebrity in Nigeria with even more friends than the president.”

In March 2011, Omotola emerged the most popular Nigerian celebrity on Facebook with over 500,000 fans, and became the 2nd Nigerian personality, after President Jonathan to cross Facebook’s 500k fans mark.

While the 1 million Facebook fans milestone seems like a long shot, one wonders which of these Nigerian social media personalities would be the first to cross that mark.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Saheed Adepoju, Co-founder & CEO of Encipher Group where he shares insightful analysis into Google’s possible strategy towards merging the recently unveiled Chromebook with android-powered devices. He argues that Google will not kill the android ecosystem with the Chromebook and further provides insights into the Google way to Cloud Computing. The post was first published on the Encipher Group website and flags off a series of sponsored posts from Encipher.

At the just concluded, Google I/O, something fascinating was unveiled, the Google Chromebook. According to their website, Chromebooks are built and optimized for the web, where we all already spend about 90% of our time. It would be available from June 15th in stores around the world.

It is believed that Chromebooks would destroy Windows powered laptops and change the way we do our computing, I couldn’t agree more but from an entirely different perspective.

It has also been said that Chromebooks might destroy the Android ecosystem and its advances and ultimately the Android tablets. Well, I simply don’t agree. Why? Because I don’t think a company as big as Google would allow their products to kill each other or at least have seen that they might be a clash in the future of both innovative thinking.

In one of such discussions that Chrome is going to kill android, it is said that Google may scale back its android development because of Chrome. Although this was way back in 2009, I still think that most industry experts still believe that end users still need to choose between both platforms.

However, this year’s Consumer Electronic show (CES 2011) gave rise to a seemingly interesting product which most industry experts may have missed: Motorola Atrix 4G.

From the specifications, it feels seemingly decent but the real deal with the Motorola Atrix isn’t the phone but the Laptop dock accessory. The beauty about the dock is that it is powered by the Atrix’s Tegra-2 processor which is a dual-core 1Ghz processor. When docked, it charges the Motorola Atrix and launches a tiny kernel within the laptop Dock and this mode is called Webtop mode. It has generated a lot of buzz and interests amongst tech savvy geeks and also corporate executives who want a phone laptop combo without the risk of losing anything if both devices get missing.

Google, I believe is going to build a combo just like the Motorola Atrix and its laptop dock. It would eventually be Android powered Chromedock devices. Since Android 2.4 (codenamed: Ice-cream Sandwich) is said to be the end of android fragmentation and the merging of tablet experience and the mobile experience, unifying it brings developers some relief as they would just end up coding once and the experience is shared across multiple devices. I believe this is simply the beginning of Google unveiling their ultimate product line up yet, the unification of Android Ice-cream sandwich and the Chromebook.

The Chromedock essentially would be no different from the Motorola laptop dock. Both are powered by a tiny Linux kernel, both run applications within a browser, Firefox for Motorola and ChromeOS for ChromeDock. So I believe the upcoming Tegra-3  chip (quad-core based) would be an interesting mix to the entire deal as I believe that future Chromebooks would spot a dock-like feature which would allow Android ICS be docked and access all your contacts, applications via the Chrome browser and allow a user switch between Android-mode & Chromebook mode. In the end, it would be beautiful to fully live in the cloud as described by Google.

Since Google already has a solid move in it ChromeOS venture and partnerships with ACER & SAMSUNG, I believe these partners can develop ChromeDocks for future Android-powered phones. In the end, ACER, SAMSUNG and others would release Android-powered phones to work respectively with their ChromeDocks stations. Even Encipher would jump on this bandwagon.

What’s the future like?

Google’s strategy is to take over cloud computing not just via services but control the hardware and also certify such hardware. Their ultimate strategy isn’t really to kill the laptop PC running windows OS but to take over a budding cloud computing enterprise where industry players are yet to really make a big dent. In a bid to win the race for social, which Facebook currently dominates, they are creating hardware to help them connect to this social experience and monetize via it. I believe with such integration, Google kind of puts a dent in the social media experience in being able to integrate your social experience on a mobile device and ChromeDocks.

This also appeals to enterprises as Google has almost any services that are done in premise.  Their Google Apps & Google Apps marketplace has a plethora of applications that can compete with Microsoft anytime. Apps ranging from Google enterprise mail to ERP solutions. And this list is endless. Some are free while some are on a rent basis which allows one to ensure ROIs immediately rather than spend so much and wait for ROIs later on during the quarters.

Microsoft also has a cloud strategy for its products and also gaining recognition but with its slow pace within the tablet market and the mobile space, in the end a combo like a Android powered Tegra-3 device and a ChromeDocks might eventually slow down their pace in being king in such a thriving and bubbling space. This futuristic move might as well kill Microsoft in the enterprise market space where it is currently king. Although I strongly believe Microsoft office is still a killer reason why anyone would stick to Windows for a long time to come.

This also would eat deeply into other ERP solution providers like SAP and Oracle as all infrastructures would be hosted by Google and small start ups can compete with the big boys in terms of scalability without breaking the bank.

What’s in it for developers?

This could be a dream come true. Java’s inspiration as always been, “Write once, run everywhere”. Everywhere refers to any platform be it SPARC, INTEL etc. I believe with Android ICS + ChromeDocks, it would really be a true “Write once, run on every device”, every device being Tablets + Mobile + PC (Chromebooks, Windows, Linux), Apple (via Safari).

Developers wouldn’t need to boot different operating systems to build innovative programs anymore as there now cloud-based IDEs (e.g. Cloud9) which allows developers build and execute web apps straight from your browser. This would enable developers build scalable applications and test on Google App Engine instantly and test it out on the mobile for mobile phones, tablet via the tablet features of ICS via the Chromebook interface emulator for Tablets and finally on Chromebooks itself for a browser feel. Also remember, the Google web-based IDE for Android development (App Inventor) which allows building Android apps straight from your browser to the docked Android phone and tested straight from the ChromeDocks interface for mobiles all courtesy of the power of the ChromeOS.

What’s in the bank for Google?

At the end of the day, this has to translate to revenue for Google. As always, they have been generating revenue from search since inception and I believe it would be no different. Now that they certify both products (Chromebook & Android ICS), I believe they would invade users with ads (though in a positive way).

Interestingly, Chromebooks (ChromeDocks) could have a segment to the right-hand side with interactive HTML-5 ads which changes when a user searches for results. When a phone is docked, it instantly displays relevant apps from the market place which a user may choose to install directly on the docked phone and either played via the ChromeDocks or when the phone is undocked.

With YouTube having a lot of user-generated content and now trying to gain Live-TV attention, your bet is as good as mine. Youtube may replace your TV which in turn translates to more revenue for Google. It would be cool to have HDMI outputs from the ChromeDock to your TV and allows the user watch TV comfortably and use Bluetooth keyboard/Mouse to control the ChromeDocks (with phone docked) and can interact. Adverts would be streamed and played for the user based on interests all stored up in the cloud.

What’s fishy about all these?

Security

It all sounds good and fun, until a breach happens someplace and it dents our happiness. The recent SONY PLAYSTATION breach is a classic example. A lot of enterprises still love on-premise computing as they can safe-guard their data and also prevent exploitation from cloud infrastructure. Google must be able to ensure secured data and also timely delivery of critical transactions whilst using cloud-based applications.

Integrity

Would Google keep their integrity and maintain their mantra? The mantra “Don’t be evil” has shaped them to become a world-class company but occasional breaches such as the Google Street cars snooping of Wi-Fi passwords can dent such integrity especially since a ChromeDocks + Android combo would highly depend on such integrity. However, Google has been a kind company in admitting to such mistakes and I believe they genuinely admit when they cross lines that breaches their motto.

Outage

Ok, I love the idea of outsourcing all my on-premise computing infrastructure to the cloud but what in the world do I do if Google cloud infrastructure goes off for a few hours? I sit and hope they fix it. There have been outages even from the masters of cloud infrastructures. Amazon, Microsoft and Google occasionally report outage and end up apologizing. I believe we cannot dodge this fact since we are talking about computers running the infrastructure. They break down, parts needs to be replaced; OS needs to be upgraded etc. However, I believe Google in time would master the loopholes and provide incredible failovers for such outages. Only time will tell.

Bandwidth

Well, for most part of North America and some other parts of the world, this isn’t an issue but writing from Nigeria and being part of a budding enterprise here, it is a heavy concern. How would a thriving startup here plug into such an innovative idea without decent broadband?  They can’t. However there is hope, with more cables landing, I believe the prices would go down much further producing more competition and faster speed. It is also good that it is happening now so when the combo hits, we would be able to enjoy the innovation as well within Nigeria.

Final Thoughts

I hope I have been able to shed more light into what I believe might be a strategy Google might employ to marry both Android ICS + Chromebooks into what I have termed (Android ICS + ChromeDocks). Disclosure: I don’t work for Google so these are entirely my own insights and forecasts for a thriving cloud computing industry.

I believe strongly that Google I/O 2012 would be a very interesting one for Android + Chromebooks. They might even be giving away the duo for free. Either way, I hope to participate at Google I/O in 2012.

Saheed Adepoju is the Co-founder & CEO of Encipher Group, a software development company based in UK and Nigeria with expertise in ensuring that products and services are always available on the “cloud”, regardless of platform or device.

Image via: Reuters

Perhaps the most memorable royal wedding to date is that between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer who got married on the 29^th of July, 1981 at St Paul’s Catheral before an invited audience of 3,500 and an estimated global TV audience of 750 million.

Fast-forward to 2011, about 30 years later and we are about to witness the first social media royal wedding between Prince William & Catherine Middleton, which could become the most memorable royal wedding of all time. William is second in line to the throne and marrying Middleton will make her the next Queen.

Apart from news coverage that could attract viewership from more than 1 billion people around the world, it is expected that people all over the world will be tweeting, facebooking and blogging on the day of the Royal Wedding.

Already, discussions about the Royal Wedding have taken over social media. According to Greenlight, a London-based independent search marketing specialist and technology firm, new research shows that in the past seven days the royal nuptials are getting one new mention every 10 seconds.

About 12 years ago, the world witnessed a Royal Wedding between Prince Edward Windsor and Sophie Rhys-Jones on the 19th of June 1999, but without the help of social media. Even the last Royal Wedding between Peter Phillips, the Queen’s eldest grandson and Autumn Kelly on 17 May 2008 (in the age of social media) couldn’t produce the world’s first social media royal wedding.

But on the 29^th of April, 2011, the world, yeah I mean even the worldwide web and the social web will witness the first ‘Royal Wedding’ of the digital age between Prince William & Catherine Middleton.

The Official Royal Wedding website for Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s wedding was launched on 2nd March and has received 9.5 million page views as at 19th April. The website features news and information about the royal wedding which holds at Westminster Abbey, London at 10 am (GMT +1).

The site, powered by the Google Apps Engine, provides details about the service, the procession and the reception. It also features exclusive photos and videos, including links to official Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube accounts as well as a virtual tour of Buckingham Palace.

For such a significant and historic event, social media has cemented its place in our lives and it’ll be interesting to see what impact this event would have on social media usage for future weddings.

Will the royal wedding help increase people’s hunger for social media weddings? Will you use social media for your wedding? If you’re already married, do you wish you used social media?

Twitter has launched local trends in 70 new locations around the world, including Nigeria. The feature which launched in a few countries back in January 2010 exposes what people are talking most about on a state or city level.

In November 2010, Twitter announced that they were expanding local trends to 14 new countries and 6 new cities, which included some of the site’s fastest growing markets. Just last week, Twitter added Nigeria to the list of countries with local trends.

At the moment, only Lagos, apparently the largest Twitter community in Nigeria is listed on Twitter’s ‘Local Trends’. Twitter had previously explained that “locations are not manually selected, but rather displayed dynamically based on tweet volume.”

I’m guessing that other cities in Nigeria would get on the ‘Local Trends’ list once there are signs of huge tweet volume coming from that area. It would be interesting to see what the local trends for Lagos would reveal, although as at time of writing this, the trends for Lagos didn’t reveal anything local.

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President Jonathan may be described as a ‘Facebook President‘, or perhaps, ‘the man that brought Facebook to Nigeria’, as one of his ministers gaffed last year, but would this guarantee his winning the 2011 Presidential polls this April.

A recent article on FastCompany suggested that perhaps African leaders should avoid Facebook, citing a new statistical analysis that indicates that the more Facebook fans an African politician has, the more likely they are to be forced out of power.

At the time of writing this, President Jonathan has over 500,000 fans on Facebook, which makes him Africa’s most popular leader on any social media site.

But Ethan Zuckerman, a researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, asserted that having more followers on Facebook was directly proportional to regime instability, according to FastCompany.

My Thoughts

While Zuckerman’s analysis may be correct given the ousting of the Egyptian President, we should not forget that there were serious protests and unrests in each of these countries during which their Facebook pages saw increased activity, including ‘likes’ and ‘comments’. (Oh, make that ‘dislikes’, even though Facebook doesn’t have a ‘dislike’ button).

On the other hand, President Jonathan gained more than 250,000 Facebook ‘likes’ on his official page in the first five months and has been described as the favourite to win the April Presidential polls.

So would Jonathan be ‘unliked’ on election day? That is very unlikely! In fact, the President has gotten much more ‘love’ from the nollywood and entertainment industry more than any other Presidential candidate. Thanks to celebrity endorsements from D’banj et al.

In a few weeks when Nigeria decides who their next President would be, I’m guessing that they would prove Zuckerman’s stats and analysis very wrong.

What are your thoughts? Will President Jonathan be ‘unliked’ at the April polls?

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Today, Nigeria’s first-ever youth -focused, youth-driven presidential debate spotlighting priority issues for young Nigerians will hold at the Shehu Musa Yar’adua Centre, Abuja.

The ‘WhatAboutUs?’ debate would be a direct conversation with the Nigerian youth, inviting presidential candidates to answer questions posed by young Nigerians, at home and abroad, via social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, SMS, email and video diaries.

It’s been said that young Nigerians represent 70% of Nigeria’s population, yet their concerns and issues are not present on the national agenda or current political campaigns.

Even last week’s presidential debate aired live on NN24 did little or nothing to address the most important concern of every young Nigerian – UNEMPLOYMENT.

At the moment, Mr. Nuhu Ribadu (ACN), Chief Dele Momodu (NCP), Professor Pat Utomi (SDMP), and Governor Ibrahim Shekarau (ANPP) have confirmed their participation, while Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (CPC), President Goodluck Jonathan (PDP), and Reverend Chris Okotie (FDP) have declined the invitation to attend the youth-focused debate.

The debate will be simulcast live at 7pm on local television station, Channels TV and also online on Youtube.

In addition, viewers everywhere will be asked to chime in using #whataboutus on Google Moderator, a unique platform which empowers communities to connect and share comments, questions, and analysis.

The debate will also be rebroadcast on the WhatAboutUs website following the event.

The “What About Us?” Campaign is a collaborative effort from Enough is Enough Nigeria, Vote or Quench, Sleeves Up, StandUP Naija and several other youth advocacy groups and activists.

Who in your opinion will win the WhatAboutUs debate?