Stay focused and keep shipping.

By Clara Shih (Co-Founder & CEO, Hearsay Social)

It’s electrifying here in Silicon Valley this week, even more so than usual. Normally, many of us are heads down, focused on our own companies, but right now, even in the land of “what’s next?” all anyone can talk about is the Facebook IPO.

This week marks the dawn of a new era. Facebook going public – with a billion users worldwide and $3.7 billion in revenue – confirms that Facebook is doing to Google today what Google did to Microsoft nearly a decade ago. It’s hard to believe that it’s been eight years since the Google IPO.

What’s changed since Google was the new, hot company that toppled Microsoft in consumers and investors’ hearts?

For one, consumer behavior has changed. In the Google era, people learned to search for information, products, and businesses. But over the last five years, Facebook has altered online behavior. In the Facebook era, people now choose to share and discover rather than simply search for information.

ยป Read the full article at Huffington Post.