It seems everyone’s obsessed with Facebook’s IPO right now. And while CMOs are beginning to understand the possibilities of Facebook, and other social technologies, to connect and engage with customers, many CIOs remain unclear on the value of Facebook. It seems everyone’s obsessed with Facebook’s IPO right now. And while CMOs are beginning to understand the possibilities of Facebook, and other social technologies, to connect and engage with customers, many CIOs remain unclear on the value of Facebook. Facebook’s IPO Filing Reveals Technology Details Slideshow: Facebook IPO: The Heftiest Paydays Slideshow: Facebook’s Road to IPO: 10 Memorable Moments A question many business executives ask is this: “What’s the value of having someone like your page?” On its own, maybe not much. But the true potential lies in the ability to collect insights about the people who like brands, products or services – be it your own or someone else’s. For example, the chart below shows the percentage of consumers by age group who have “liked” Pepsi or Coca-Cola. These data suggest Coca-Cola is significantly more popular with 17-28 year olds than Pepsi, while Pepsi appears more popular with the 36-70 crowd. I pulled these data points directly from the Facebook likes of each of the brand pages using a free consumer tool from MicroStrategy called Wisdom. Using this tool I can even tell that Coca-Cola fans are likely to also enjoy the odd Oreo cookie and bag of Pringles. “Wisdom” illustrates the potential for companies to leverage the massive amount of data embedded in Facebook to help target more refined advertising campaigns, build new product affinities and ultimately deliver greater value to their customers. New analytics tools from MicroStrategy and others designed to integrate with social networks will make this possible. The opportunity for CIOs is to help lead the way toward integrating this stream of customer data into other sources of customer insight to provide a competitive advantage. MicroStrategy is clearly hoping their investment in data analytics will pay off by providing a bridge between enterprise data and Facebook for their clients. Delivering a free consumer app to create buzz around their product could be a stroke of marketing genius. by Nigel Fenwick Related content opinion 2012 EA Award Winners: Business-Focused, Strategic And Pragmatic In Forrester’s EA Practice Playbook, we describe high performance enterprise architecture programs as ‘business-focused, strategic and pragmatic”. They are business-focused so that the direction and guidance EA provides has By Forrester Research Oct 08, 2012 3 mins Enterprise Architecture IT Strategy IT Leadership opinion Focus Your Information Strategy On Business Impact Today's organizations must manage the explosive growth of all types of information while addressing greater-than-ever business demand for insights into customer needs and the business environment. Meanwhile, the significant regulatory and compli By Forrester Research Oct 01, 2012 6 mins Regulation IT Leadership opinion Digital Disruption: What Software Dev & Delivery Competencies Matter? In this age of digital disruption and a society empowered by software-fueled technology, firms that can cultivate competencies in software development & delivery will establish competitive advantage as they will be better equiped to meet, and exc By Forrester Research Sep 14, 2012 3 mins Developer Enterprise Applications IT Leadership opinion Can IT Open New Sources Of Revenue? At an IT strategy offsite a senior director of IT asked this simple question: "How can we use information technology to help our company open up new streams of revenue?" A refreshing question, given that nine out of ten CIOs ask the opposit By Forrester Research Aug 31, 2012 4 mins IT Leadership Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe