Facebook on quest for mobile content; CIOs should follow suit

Hey, CIOs, it’s time to take a page from Facebook’s playbook and focus on user content and mobile engagement. Facebook sure has, with mobile making up an impressive 59% of its $2.27 billion in ad sales for Q1. Add to that the 34% rise in the number of users accessing the site through mobile devices, and it’s probably safe to say the social networking site is getting the hang of the whole mobile engagement thing.

Facebook, as we know, has also made some very expensive bets on how users like to communicate, with its $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp, a rejected swipe at Snapchat for $3 billion, and the launch of the Instagram direct-share function and its very own chat app, Messenger.

The social media giant is homing in on its users’ personal conversations – what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls private content – and it wants more of them. In our latest Searchlight, take a look at how Facebook is playing it smart by enabling users to create and share more private content, further expanding what Zuckerberg says is “an ecosystem that’s [already] growing incredibly quickly.”

And it’s not just personal content you can use to further your business: public content – namely what your customers have told you about their experience with your products and how they prefer to engage you with their feedback – is also a nifty tool, say, for public relations. Panelists at the recent CDO Summit in New York urged for companies to understand their “brand story”: Know what your users are saying and use it to move the conversation.

In other tech matters this week: “Heartbleed” isn’t over yet; environmental sensors on the iPhone horizon?; Obama’s friendly soccer match – with a robot; and more.

Check them out in this week’s Searchlight column!