Buzz, Wave and Orkut have all raised some interest at their time, but never caught on with the masses. However, if Google manages to combine the best features of its previous ventures, the rumoured Facebook challenger ‘Google Me’ could prove to be the real deal, a PC World article speculates.

Google Buzz’s strength was its ability to incorporate location data into a social network. Its ability to be readily integrated with Google Maps proved a considerable competitive edge against Twitter and Foursquare.

Google Wave, the PC World article continues, might provide Google’s imminent social effort with a more interesting version of Facebook’s wall and messaging system.

Orkut, meanwhile, has a more ‘robust’ delete function than Facebook. And in Orkut, you can see how many people have clicked, viewed or trashed the items you have promoted.

According to the article, privacy is one of the key issues to tackle for a new social media platform – but also an opportunity. Facebook’s recent problems with confusing privacy settings and inconsistent approach towards privacy issues creates a chance for a new platform to shine.

To add to the mix, Google has recently acquired Jambool, a virtual currency platform, to make it easier for users to buy apps and games.

According to PC World, social gaming seems to be an important part of Google’s plans, as they already own also ‘Slide’, the developer of the hugely popular Farmville.

Read the full article here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/203499/how_google_could_build_a_better_social_network.html

The number of ads on Facebook is reported to have grown 33% in the last year.

The social media giant is reported to have served 19.7 billion ads in the UK during May this year – almost four times more than second-placed Microsoft.

Google Sites managed to reach third place on the list with its 2.68 billion ads, beating both eBay (2.71 billion) and Yahoo Sites (2.4 billion) by an inch.

However, the volume alone doesn’t necessarily reflect the effectiveness for the advertisers, Mark Redgrave, chief executive of semantic web service OpenAmplify, pointed out.

“The last year has been the first year advertising has really taken off on Facebook and I think advertising will increase by more than a third again in the next year,” he said. “But the key to the current growth is that it can only be measured in terms of volume, not value.

“Being there’s the easy bit, CPM rates are generally cheap, the hard bit comes when marketers try and fully engage. The technology now exists to really understand users based on conversations.”

Source: MediaWeek

Profile

Mike Schroepfer is the Director of Engineering at Facebook and a former Vice President of Engineering at Mozilla, where he headed up the engineering team responsible for Firefox browser.

Schroepfer, nicknamed Schrep, studied computing science at Stanford University. In his early career he worked with a digital effects software startup developing a software which has been used in several major motion pictures.

Schroepfer has also worked as a Chief Technology Officer of Sun Microsystem’s data centre automation division. He was responsible for the ambitious N1 project, which aimed to use virtualisation technology to simplify network environment.

Guest

International Quit Facebook Day came and went, without making a dent into the user-base of the fantastically successful social networking site.

The brainchild of two Toronto-based developers, Joseph Dee and Matthew Milan, the idea behind Quit Facebook Day was to send a message about privacy and control to the often controversial Facebook, following it’s recent privacy hoo-haa.

However, it seems the lure of playing Scrabble with their mum, or running a fake farm, was too much for most users.

Meanwhile, the more intellectual Twitter has yet to get a real backlash, or turn a significant profit. Perhaps when it does, we’ll see a Quit Twitter day too?

by Pete Hindle

Pete is a guest contributor of New Media Monthly. He’s a North East based researcher/artist/thinker/designer/programmer. Read more about Pete in his blog.

Almost 40 per cent of UK employees criticise their workplace on social media, with one in five admitting to lambasting their bosses, a recent survey reveled.

Nearly 60 per cent confessed they would change what they wrote on their social networking profile if they knew their employer was reading it – yet recent Facebook privacy settings changes mean many employers could already be checking up on staff.

The employee research – conducted for MyJobGroup.co.uk which operates the UK’s largest network of regional job boards – showed over half (55 per cent) of workers believed fellow staff should face disciplinary action for criticising their workplace on social networking sites.

Consequences, what consequesnces?

Most staff had little or no awareness of the legal implications of their online jibes and 70 per cent had no idea if their company had an HR or disciplinary policy in place to tackle online criticism; only 16 per cent knew for certain their company was equipped to deal with such issues.

In response, MyJobGroup.co.uk has teamed up with leading national law firm Irwin Mitchell Solicitors to make both employer and employee aware of the severity of the issue.

Fergal Dowling, an employment law specialist at Irwin Mitchell Solicitors, noted that abuse of social media can be grounds for discipline, even termination of contract, depending on the level of abuse, and the policies in place at the company.

He said: “Employees need to be increasingly aware and careful about what they write online as proved by the conviction of a man who tweeted what he thought was a joke about an airport bomb.

“Employers and HR departments need to be upfront and honest with their employees about their policies. Many firms may ban social media altogether but in some industries that is simply not viable, and some creative industries rely on social media.”

For more information visit www.myjobgroup.co.uk

Have a look at what’s public about your Facebook profile using ReclaimPrivacy.org’s tool: http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

Guest

The New York Times made a feature of Facebook’s privacy policy in an extensive review of how, when, and where you can make your private stuff private on the world’s largest social network. It turns out that Facebook’s privacy policy is now so complicated that it’s longer than the Constitution of the United States. Take a look at the infographic (which doesn’t quite explain how to hide those pictures of last weekend from your mum) here.

by Pete Hindle

Pete is a guest contributor of New Media Monthly. He’s a North East based researcher/artist/thinker/designer/programmer. Read more about Pete in his blog.

The new way is said to better represent the nature of the interaction. Michael Lazerow, CEO of social media advice agency Buddy Media, described ‘liking’ a brand as a lower threshold for users.

He said: “The idea of liking a brand is a much more natural action than (becoming a fan) of a brand.”

According to Facebook, an average user becomes a fan of a four pages each month.

According to an article by Stuff.co.nz, it is not yet sure whether the change would apply to all fan pages including those of celebrities and musicians. It is also reported that, despite the change, the ‘liked’ brands would still remain listed on the users’ profile page.

Source: Stuff.co.nz

Facebook has overtaken Google to claim the place as the most visited website in the US.

According to the statistics from web analysis firm Hitwise, the social media giant whizzed past Google.com last week as millions of people turn to the site to play online games.

The Times Online states that the news represents a milestone and shows just how important gateways social networking sites have become.

Facebook has earlier claimed the US number one spot for single days at a time but last week was the most sustained lead for it.

In the UK, the social networking site has still some catching up to do as, according to The Times Online article, Google currently holds 9.34% of the web visits in the country against Facebook’s 6.01%.

Google has tried to tackle the growing popularity of social media by launching of its own social networking tool, Buzz, within the popular Gmail. However, the service hasn’t quite taken off the way the internet giant intended and has encountered, for example, privacy concern complaints from the users.

Source: The Times Online

Google has announced that public Facebook status updates have now been included in its real-time search results.

The addition will make Facebook a higher priority for businesses as it will position the social media giant at the top of the search results for the hottest queries, alongside the likes of Twitter and MySpace.

The Google indexing will only include updates from Facebook ‘pages’ instead of personal profiles. Links, status updates, photos and videos shared will be among the search results.

Another social media leader, Twitter, has also got good news for advertisers. The microblogging website is reported to be preparing to a launch of an ad model.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital, the new way of advertising would not appear in users’ regular streams but would, instead, be tied to search results.

The ads are said to be copying the 140-character style of the service and will first come available via agencies. The future plans will see Twitter following Google’s and Facebook’s example of a self-service ad model.

Source: WebProNews, MarketingWeek

Statistics from last year showed 82% increased usage of social networking sites. The Nielsen Company report also shows that together with blogs, social networks are the most popular online category ranked by the average time spent online in December 2009.

With its reported 350 million active users, Facebook is the uncrowned king of social media. As global users spend nearly six hours per month on the site, it’s becoming more and more difficult to bypass Facebook as a serious marketing opportunity anymore.

Social media is also leading the way in people’s use of the web on their mobiles. BBC has reported that Facebook accounts for nearly half of all the time spent online via mobile phones in the UK. Dominating the statistics, Facebook topped categories of most unique visitors, most number of pages viewed as well as most time spent on the site.

Recent reports have also hailed Facebook’s growing dominance as a traffic driver to online news sites. Research from Hitwise lists Facebook as the fourth largest distributor of online content demonstrating the growing attachment social media is establishing to our daily lives. Even the Vatican has recently been reported to have advised priests to start engaging in social media!

A meaningless toy or a real effect on ROI?

Enough statistics. I guess it’s safe to say that, at least at the moment, social media is massive and impossible to neglect in marketing strategies anymore.

But while more and more brands are making Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for themselves, many are still puzzled about what it is all for. Does it really matter? Is it really worth the all time and the effort?

While the general consensus seems to speak for the importance of online presence, some still argue that it might not be that essential.

Sienna Farris, director of social media marketing strategy for New York agency, Strawberry Frog, states in an AdWeek article that Twitter, for example, is not for everyone. She says while all marketers should mind the real-time mentions of their brand, there are only few areas where Twitter actually makes sense for marketers such as customer relations management and as a channel for promotions.

For those contemplating the real effect social media has on the business side of things, new tools of measurement are emerging.

Advertising measurement company, Millward Brown, is said to be moving towards establishing a service that will introduce digital word-of-mouth as a measurement alongside traditional ad effectiveness metrics such as awareness, brand lift and intent to purchase. AdWeek reported that together with “buzz-monitor” company, Cymfony, social media presence will be analysed using measurements like volume, sentiment and share of voice.

To tweet or not to tweet?

Research by eMarketer speaks on behalf of social media as part of marketing strategies. The results concluded that over half of new media users (53%) believe that brands should have a presence in new media. Over one third wanted regular interaction as part of that presence.

A friend interacting with a company via social media was seen as a positive image booster by 64% of the respondents. More than half (52%) also stated that they choose to follow or become friends or fans of a brand because they feel it helps to showcase their personality.

What’s restricting some companies to meet the interaction demands is the fear of negative publicity. Econsultancy research concluded that more than one-fifth of companies and one-third of agencies stated fear of reputation as a key problem for their brands to interact more efficiently in social media.

The fears can’t be accused of being unfounded. In addition to worrying how consumers will react online, the companies also have to worry about a possible problem coming from within – new online tools are an extremely easy channel for disgruntled employees to voice their frustration.

A recent example saw network company, Vodafone, send out a stream of individual apologises to its Twitter-followers after an obscene message was posted by an employee to the company’s account.

And it doesn’t even take a dissatisfied employee to get a company in social media trouble. It takes only a moment of thoughtlessness to make an unintentional mess online – one misjudgement and you find yourself sending out global apologies. The internet is ruthless in allowing anything juicy to pass the online communities’ scrutiny.

Football club Manchester United has recently warned their players about social networking sites – not strictly banning players from using them, but urging their players, especially the younger ones, to be careful with them.

According to the Econsultancy report, more guidance is needed in order for companies to learn to master the new tools of marketing. Social media is a huge opportunity to really engage with customers or fans and therefore not to be neglected.

The report stated: “To address this, there needs to be more education around how to deal with negative PR and social media crisis management, as well as best practice on how to engage in the first place.”

The future

There will always be the cynics who are ready to write Facebook and Twitter off because ‘that’s what tends to happen with internet phenomena’. A Telegraph article listed examples such as Six Degrees, Firefly, Friendster and Friends Reunited – all of which appeared to have established a prominent foothold in their time.

Twitter’s user statistics from mid-2009 alerted some hawk-eyed social media followers. The decline from 7.8 million new users a month down to 6.2 million, was considered enough to suggest that this is the beginning of the end for tweeting.

However, the fact remains that when scanning through online news services, it’s impossible to get far without bumping into articles analysing the usage of social media tools, contemplating their role and giving advice how to engage in them.

Rather than asking whether or not companies should think about social media in their marketing strategies, a more relevant question might be: why not just go ahead and do it? Even if hugely popular services like Facebook and Twitter would eventually fade away, there’s no doubt that others will follow, Google being the most recent one to join the game with its ‘Buzz’ – enabling Gmail users to create a profile page and post status updates.

Once the groundwork is done and social media added to the marketing strategy it’s easier to readapt to whatever will follow. The internet has changed the way people communicate and there is nothing to suggest marketing strategies would be excluded from that change.

Case Study:

How to use social media effectively

Some companies have managed to effectively exploit the huge popularity of social networking tools in their marketing strategies. Some have tried bravely, but failed miserably. We have listed a few examples in trying to outline what works and what doesn’t. Read more…