Wildfire

This brand marketing company uses Facebook to create buzz for most of the clients, which ranges from small entities to larger ones like Coca-Cola. They develop a platform where ‘fans’ with one click can gets access to direct interaction with the advertising company.

Wildfire comes up with innovative campaigns like quizzes, contests, coupons, gifts, and so on. These strategies are very effective when it comes to promote the brand name like, well, wildfire.

Not many companies in this area have the expertise to provide viral marketing strategies that really works. However, at Wildfire, they know what people need and how the campaign works.

The operational model too is trendy, and far from traditional concepts. Most of the process is online, with fees starting from mere $5 up front amount and 99 cents for each day of service. For big budget campaign, they have premium marketing campaigns. The company is now planning to move beyond Facebook, on other social networking sites. It has already started its operation on Twitter.

Slide

Commenced its business in 2005, Slide was found by Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal. Initially, they focused on a photo sharing software on MySpace that allowed users create customized photo album and slideshows. Very soon, they branched out into generating widgets for the social media giant Facebook, and gained popularity by some popular widgets like FunWall and Top Friends.

Being one of the initial entrants, Slide also attracted many venture capitalists. In January 2008, it attracted $50 million. However, Facebook, due to varied users, is unpredictable, and Slide is now struggling to keep up with the pace, especially after arrival of several new players. Currently, Zynga is on the top with 211 million users, and Slide has slided to #17 with only 14 million users.

Yet, Slide is far from coming to an end. It’s still a lucrative business, says Keith Rabios, Slide’s Executive Wise President.

Oodle

Initially, when Oodle came into existence, it was a standalone website that sold everything from pets to home appliance to houses. It was extremely difficult to survive in a space where Craiglist dominated.

Meanwhile, Facebook came up with its on classified category known as ‘Marketplace’ early in 2007. After about two years, this social networking company came searching for Oodle to transform it into more professional marketplace.

Oodle now helps buyer, also a Facebook user, to reach the seller conveniently by getting rid of anonymity, and ease of access to contact details.

For individuals, Facebook’s Marketplace is free. However, businesses would have to pay some amount to post here. The original Oodle website is still operative and is pretty much a success. When a sellers posts an ad on Oodle, it appears on hundreds of social networking and other websites.

Zangya

Zangya is barely 2 years old, but the games launched this company have become necessities for Facebook users. Some of the very popular games include FarmVille, FishVille and several other Villes, and also games like Mafia Wars. Before they even check their wall, many users directly log onto Zangya and start playing its games.

Zangya’s most popular game, FarmVille, asks people to become a farmer and grow their virtual farm by planting crops and raising more cattle. The company did not reveal its annual revenue, but with over 200 million players worldwide, Zangya is certainly one of the top earners on Facebook. Many venture capitalists have invested more than $400 million into this company.

Zangya’s empire, with over 30 million virtual farms, seems to be bigger than the US farms that counts only 2 million.

After the completion of the acquisition process, Virgin Money plans to nurture its banking business geologically. Currently, Virgin Money offers personal financial services like insurance, pension schemes, and retail credit cards. After acquiring Church House Trust, it will obtain the right to receive money from depositors and lend mortgages.

Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds has informed that they will divest. However, Virgin can still buy further assets. And buying Northern Rock this time is quite possible. At least that’s the meaning one can derive from the offer document, which mentions that they might consider acquiring another company after this one.

Merely by offering investment products, credit cards, savings, and insurance, Virgin Money is catering to 2.5 million customers. The government believes that the acquisition of rights to deposit and lend money will definitely help Sir Richard Branson to grow the financial hand.

Virgin Money will pay around £12.3 million from its funds, while the other £37.3 million will be raised as fresh capital. Two-thirds of the shareholders of trust are ready to sell their shares to the Virgin’s financial firm.

Church House Trust was established in 1987 and is located in Yeovil, Leeds, and Somerset. However, it is formed from a company which was found by a renowned West Country solicitor named Edmund Batten in 18th Century.

According to Virgin Money, acquiring Church House Trust is a lucrative preposition as its deposits are much more than double its lending. This ensures that it is not much vulnerable as it doesn’t depend on external funding.

Operating profit, as per 2008 books of accounts, is recorded as £4.05 million and profit before tax was £450,000. The trust was operated in a conservative model and it will, according to Chairman David Batten, provide a strong foundation for Virgin to penetrate the retail market.

For Branson, this is an ideal time to commence a financial firm and benefit from the disintegration of giant banks. Probably, Virgin Money will be transformed as Virgin Bank after the acquisition and they expect online banking to be one of the key areas of their service.

Predictions of analysts coupled with views of Kevin Mountford, Banking Head at moneysupermarket.com, are quite optimistic. According to them, Virgin will establish itself as a reliable and significant brand in the retail banking sector. We will see a lot of innovative and aggressive strategies like the successful promotion of its credit cards with best buy.

However, their futile suggestions and ineffective ideas are helping to spawn new ways to splurge more funds than they actually have that wouldn’t help the non-worthy population.

We are not anywhere close to declare that the US is now out of the hazardous effects of the bubble that exploded few months ago. And look at what the government is trying to produce: Even bigger bubble.

Ok. You love Obama very much and you want to know why I am mauling the innovative ideas of the Fed. Let’s start with the foolishness of providing tax credit to first time home buyers. Firstly, it wasn’t required and you will know why before I conclude my arguments. Secondly, why the heck did they extend it? To encourage people to buy new homes; I know that. But do you know what will this result in?

More national liability. They allow people (first time buyers) to buy new home which will help them to save tax up to $40,000. And is it really helping? Firstly, people are very much capable to buy a new house because mortgages are now available easily. Secondly, this tax credit thing seems to be helping more to existing home owners than new buyers. What they do is simply transfer the home ownership from one person to other that anyway lived together. Hurray! The other person is now a first time home buyer with great tax benefits.

Ok. Consumers are really thankful and this tax credit seems to be helping their economic condition. But what is it doing to the country’s economic health? Due to this tax credit, government is losing huge amount of tax that it could have otherwise earned, which could further have been utilized to improve the infrastructure and stabilize the economy. Now, they are spending huge amount ($4 billion) for home buyers on which the country have to pay enormous interest which is definitely hampering economic growth.

I don’t really understand why President Obama (along with his team of silly advisors) fails to observe that any graduate (without any work experience) would have noticed. This is not what a president is supposed to do with a borrowed amount of around $14 billion. It’s a sheer worthless way to correct the market conditions or generate any employment opportunities. No, it’s not even helping a bit to increase the customer confidence. It’s just an excuse to create a delusion among people that you are performing your job.

You should know that confidence does not necessarily translate to actual spending. Confidence is only an indication of the mental state of people. By being confident a consumer only wants to convey that he is not feeling insecure anymore and that he has the power to buy things and lead a good life once more. Thanks to the increased jobs in recent times! But this state of well-being does not mean that the consumers are going to start increasing their purchases. Don’t you think they’ve suffered enough to spend their long-awaited money liberally? I know how it was during the recession. The insecurity of losing my job (which thankfully I haven’t!) and moving into the future without much financial cushioning gave me a lot of sleepless nights. The first thing I’m  going to do with my increased money is save it up and then sleep well for some nights to come. Who wants to go to the market to immediately spend all that hard-earned money ? Of course, I shall go but not now.

You might think that I’m an individual case talking this way, but I’m not the only one with this opinion. According to Director Lynn Franco, Conference Board Consumer Research Center, “Consumer confidence, which had posted back-to-back monthly declines, appears to be back on the mend. The Present Situation Index increased slightly, mainly the result of an improvement in consumers’ assessment of the job market. The Expectations Index improved considerably and is now at its highest level since December 2007 (Index, 75.8). Consumers were more upbeat in their short-term outlook for both the economy and the job market in August, but only slightly more upbeat in their income expectations. And, as long as earnings continue to weigh heavily on consumers’ minds, spending is likely to remain constrained.”

So you can make out that the consumer confidence is simply a spurt of positivism owing to the improved employment conditions. It’s just a temporary mental state created by the euphoria of the fading recession. Well, I don’t want to sound pessimistic. It’s just that I’m trying to show you the real picture. I wish as much as you do that this confidence is a permanent trend with the consumers.

When consumer confidence does not necessarily map on to spending does this mean that the created demand for your products, which is a major indication of the fading economy, will not remain? If consumers are not really ready to buy your products do you think your businesses are really going to flourish in the near future? Well, to me it definitely looks as though the recession is fading. But it’s not fading as fast as you think. As I said earlier, it’s just drizzling now. You’ve just got to wait a bit more for the rains to come and help you cultivate economic prosperity.