Neworking sites top in billing rates

Last week, the Harvard Business Review published a long interview with Howard Schultz. The Starbucks CEO talked about the coffee company’s many moves to win back customers and battle against the ill winds of the recession. As evidence of Starbucks’ rebound, Schultz pointed to the biggest of the social networking sites out there. “We’re the number one brand on Facebook,” he boasted.

Starbucks, in fact, was the first brand to top the 10 million-fan mark. Just to put this in perspective, that’s more fans than the entire population of New York City (8.2 million) and all but seven states in the US. That’s more Facebook fans than its closest rival, Coca-Cola (8.3 million fans) and way more than other large global brands.

McDonald’s has 2.5 million fans. Target has 1.43 million, Abercrombie and Fitch 1.37 million, and the trendy teen clothier Forever 21 totals 1.27 million. Among high-end food and food-related brands, Ben and Jerry’s has 1.35 million Facebook fans with Whole Foods lagging behind with just 296,152 fans.

The other day, my Facebook page (I have 302 friends) told me that many people who like Barack Obama also like Starbucks. Turns out the president is one of Starbucks few Facebook rivals. He has 10.9 million fans, a few more than Starbucks. But Starbucks still has more fans than Sarah Palin (1.93 million), Mitt Romney (460,832), and Bill Clinton (353,583) combined.

Most pop culture figures don’t reach Starbucks’ level of fans either. Apart from Facebook leader Michael Jackson (16.6 million) and Lady Gaga (12.9 million), the coffee giant has more online backers than Bruce Springsteen (880,459), Adam Sandler (5.44 million), and even teen idol Justin Bieber (7.88 million).

When it comes to coffee companies, there is no contest. Starbucks’ closest competitor (in terms of its number of cafes across the US) Caribou has 154,754 fans. Peet’s has 45,497. Not long ago, Time Magazine wondered if the famed Portland, Oregon independent roaster Stumptown might be the next Starbucks. Not on Facebook. It has only 10,780 fans.

From the business side — and from the side of studying culture — what do all of these numbers mean? Clearly, brands and personalities have turned to Facebook to market their products, enhance their image, and communicate with their customers. But beyond that what does this new form of fandom mean, beyond a sort of crude measure of popularity?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Neworking-sites-top-in-billing-rates/articleshow/6232505.cms

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Facebook launches online safety page

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook has launched a Web page devoted to staying safe on the Internet.

The “Safety Page” will highlight news and initiatives focused on ways people can keep data secure at the world’s leading online social-networking community, Joe Sullivan of Facebook said in a blog post.

The new page was intended to augment a virtual Safety Center that Facebook introduced in April and was based on a “security page” that boasted more than 2.2 million “fans”.

“Online safety is a shared responsibility,” Sullivan said. “We’ll continue to think of innovative ways to promote safety on our service and elsewhere on the Web.”

The number of people using Facebook topped the 500 million mark last week, meaning one in every 14 people on the planet has now signed up to the social netowork.

The launch of the Safety Page came in the wake of demands by privacy activists that Facebook give users of the booming social network more control over the use of their personal data.

A coalition of privacy groups, in an open letter to Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg last month, welcomed the social network’s recent overhaul of its privacy controls but said additional steps were needed.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Facebook-launches-online-safety-page/articleshow/6222131.cms

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Facebook reaches 500 mn users

SAN FRANCISCO: Social networking site Facebook officially has 500 million users, the company has announced.

The milestone means that the six-year old website now reaches eight percent of the planet’s population, just 18 months after it passed the 150 million user mark.

Last month Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said there is a “good chance” that the social networking site could boast one billion users within three to five years.

Facebook has continued adding users at a record-setting pace despite growing concerns about the privacy policies of a site that has more data on its users than any other website.

Facebook marked the milestone with the launch of a special section in which users are encouraged to post their personal stories about how Facebook has affected them.

“Half a billion is a nice number but the number isn’t what really matters here. What matters are all of the stories we hear from all of you about the impact your connections have had on your lives,” Zuckerberg said in a video message.

“Instead of focusing on numbers, we want to help people around the world hear about these stories for themselves, and we want to let you tell your own story.”

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Facebook-reaches-500-mn-users-/articleshow/6199866.cms

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3 Hottest Tips for Lawyers using Social Media Marketing

Some helpful tips to lawyers using social media marketing to develop brand recognition.

Social media marketing is a fantastic way for your law practice to be noticed and to grow. It allows for potential clients and others to form “personal” online relationships with staff who may be blogging, tweeting or posting information online for others to see. This aids in developing brand recognition and in bringing a larger clientele through your firm’s doors; however, when using social media in a professional capacity there are a few things that should always be kept in mind

1. Don’t treat these communications any different from typical client communications – always maintain your professional integrity.

2. Assume that anything you say in an e-communication will be disseminated and read widely, so ensure you govern yourself accordingly.

3. Remember it is no more acceptable to discuss and disclose a client’s business online that it is anywhere else.

Source: http://www.fastpitchnetworking.com/pressrelease.cfm?PRID=44100

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Rumor: Google to Challenge Facebook with “Google Me”

By: David Murphy

Is Google prepping to launch some kind of Facebook-killing service? That’s the rumor of the day, spawned by a brief Twitter update by Digg founder Kevin Rose.

According to Rose, the new service is going to be called “Google Me,” and it will—in some way—offer up a social profiling functionality that could rival Facebook’s.

If true, it wouldn’t be the first time that Google’s launched a new high-profile service to compete with an equally high-profile Web 2.0 entity. Remember Google Buzz?

It remains to be seen just how much of a mark Buzz has made in terms of dedicated users, however, one number in particular is rather telling: According to ReadWriteWeb, 90 percent of all content published on Buzz is just an automated rehash from an existing Twitter account or RSS feed.

So what, then, would the proposed “Google Me” really do? The only details thus far are sheer speculation. However, it appears that Google Me could fly in as an upgrade to the preexisting Google Profiles service that, itself, is almost like a mini-biographical profile page.

However, its unclear as to just how Google’s other user information feeds—Buzz, Wave, and even the company’s experience with the social networking site Orkut—would tie into the grand picture.

“Knowing that a Google account is required to use Orkut, and a Gmail account is required for Buzz, we can safely assume that we’re looking at roughly 200 million users to any service that would combine the two,” writes The Next Web’s Brad McCarty.

“It wouldn’t take much for Google to not only be a thorn, but to actually come knocking with a heavy hand on the door of Facebook,” he adds.

Adding more fuel to the fire, the site All Facebook reported earlier this week that Open-Graph-friendly Web pages were now showing up in search results on the social media site.

Open Graph, in a nutshell, connects Web elements to Facebook by allowing users to “like” elements of third-party sites—like a movie on a retail platform—which then becomes a part of one’s social experience on the site. Said movie would, in theory, be added to your list of favorite movies and, depending on how many others like the product, would be prioritized in your search results accordingly.

Open Graph represents the start of Facebook’s “social semantic search engine” and, as some have suggested, a direct shot across Google’s bow. With Facebook dipping its toes into search, and Google dipping its toes into social, it’s going to be quite a battleground for user interest over the next many months.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2365734,00.asp

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Making more user information public has both privacy and security dangers, experts warn.

Last month, Facebook finally crossed a line. The company announced that it would make certain user information–including a user’s name, hometown, education, work, and “likes” and “dislikes”–permanently public.

Facebook’s default privacy policy has gradually shifted to expose more user data to the wider Web, but the reaction to this latest change has been significant. Last week, a collection of European data-protection authorities known as the Article 29 Working Group sent Facebook a letter chastising the company for not allowing users to limit access to their social data. The letter follows a similar criticism of Facebook by several members of congress, such as Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, over the past month. The reaction from privacy advocacy groups, and from many of Facebook’s users, has also been vocal.

Some experts also say that the increase in information disclosure could have a serious side-effect–opening up new opportunities for hackers. Kevin Johnson, a senior researcher with security firm InGuardians, uses Facebook as a starting point for his job: testing companies’ network security. Many times, he says, the most significant vulnerabilities are not in hardware or software, but in a users’ use of social networks. The information leaked on social networking sites can be used to impersonate a legitimate person, in order to recover a password, for example; or to trick users into opening a malicious file by making it appear to come from a friend or a colleague.

“As a penetration tester–as an attacker–Facebook’s privacy settings have made my job easier,” Johnson says. “In the past, before two years ago, we had to trick people into running a [rogue] application [to collect data]. Now, the majority of people out there–the bulk of Facebook–run under default privacy settings.”

Pushed by a need to monetize the data entered by users, Facebook has increasingly loosened its privacy policies. In 2005, the company’s original policy stated that no information would be shared with people “who [do] not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.” By 2010, the policy had changed to one that focuses on sharing much more information, stating that applications and Web sites “will have access to General Information about you.” The text of the company’s privacy policy has grown nearly 500 percent and users are now required to navigate some 50 different privacy settings.

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What Facebook’s Open Graph Means for Your Business

Brenton Gieser is the President of ConvoSpark, a social media development agency focused on building socially engaging technology on Facebook, mobile devices, and other social media platforms. You can find him discussing the intersection of social media and entrepreneurship on his personal blog, BrentonGieser.com.

All the buzz about Facebook’s most recent changes has left marketers scrambling to get a grasp of what these new products and features mean for their business. For marketers, keeping up with the entire social web is a job in itself, and Facebook()’s constant evolution doesn’t make it any easier.

To sum up the recent announcements, it is appropriate to simply state that Facebook has moved one step closer to creating the semantic web — that is, a human-powered web — and positioning itself at the center of this new universe.

Facebook’s Open Graph protocol will help cultivate richer and more useful data in an attempt to make “social” the new default of the web. Still, the looming question is: What does this mean for businesses that have invested so much in Facebook marketing? If any of Mark Zuckerberg’s audacious F8 presentations come to fruition, businesses should start optimizing their Facebook presence now more than ever.

What Was Introduced at the F8 Conference?

There were three primary items that were announced at F8 that will work in conjunction with the rest of the web to make it more social:

• Social Plugins: Social plugins are the easiest way for anyone to integrate Facebook’s social features on their website. By adding a few lines of code to your site, you will give visitors the ability to engage with both your website and your Facebook presence. The focus is on the “Like button.” Clicking it places content from that web page in your Facebook stream. This differs from the Facebook “share button,” as you now receive updated content from that web page directly in your feed.
• Open Graph Protocol: The Open Graph is less of a feature or product and more of the overarching concept of what Facebook is employing. The foundation of the Open Graph protocol lies in having website owners identify their pages as “objects” (examples: a movie on IMDb or an athlete on ESPN.com). This allows Facebook to establish a connection to those objects, optimizing the website’s presence across Facebook and setting up two-way channels between the web pages and Facebook.
• Open Graph API: This is the actual API that developers will be working with to integrate websites with the Open Graph. At F8, Facebook’s product team stressed the simplicity of implementing the API, perhaps after seeing the mass adoption of the Twitter() API and its ease of use.

Integrating Facebook Into Your Web Presence Will Be Easier

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 If there was one message that Bret Taylor, Facebook’s Director of Product, wanted to hammer home at F8, it was that the Open Graph protocol will be extremely simple to implement. Any website that has pages representing real-world things can utilize the Open Graph to create a more social experience for visitors.

One of the purposes of the Open Graph protocol is to simplify the sign-in or profile linking process between Facebook and websites. In many instances, logging into the website through Facebook will be unnecessary. If a visitor is logged on to Facebook through their browser, they will still be recognized by that website without any authentication through Facebook Connect. To go a step beyond that, Facebook is adopting OAuth, which will make it easier and safer for users to authenticate their Facebook log-in through third-party websites.

Facebook has also made it easier for developers to incorporate new features on websites. As I stated before, a few lines of code can create dynamic social web integration. This is great news for websites that are looking to avoid the complexities of the Facebook Connect API and to provide a big upgrade from simple Fan Page plugins.

By reducing the cost and time it takes for websites to become a part of the Facebook platform, Facebook has created a win-win proposition for many companies hoping to market on the network. Websites will be able to provide a constant flow of content to the people who “like” what they publish online, while Facebook becomes one of the primary aggregators of social data across the web — not a bad deal.

Community Pages Connect the Web Via Common Interest

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You may have noticed that the majority of Facebook’s user profiles have been changed recently. Interests, movies, and other descriptives on a user’s profile page are no longer just inanimate text. Rather, those objects are synced up to Community Pages. This new feature stems from the Open Graph protocol and Facebook’s move to gather the web’s socially generated data.

Community Pages have the ability to organically group people together based on what they like. Whether you clicked “like” on the LeBron James ESPN.com web page, or you have him listed in your interests, you will be connected to the LeBron James Community Page and everyone else who has done the same. Gathering people together based on interest is not a novel idea, but doing so from a pool of over 450 million people means vast amounts of people-powered information.

Since Community Pages are built actively and passively by users, companies need to make sure to monitor pages related to their brand in order to manage their identity within Facebook and the rest of the social web. Marketers who recognize Community Pages as a great place to engage with their enthusiasts will see early benefits. Sparking conversations with these individuals and asking for feedback on your company’s products and services may help shape public opinion of your business and improve sales on the whole.

What Are the Effects on the Current Model?

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Since the Open Graph protocol will reshape how the rest of the web is connected with Facebook, what does that mean for the current method of connecting?

The new social plugins offer your website a rich feature set very similar to that of your Facebook Fan Page. But hundreds of millions of people continue to log-in to Facebook every single day. You still need to maintain a strong presence within the site’s walls. Your Fan Pages will remain valuable to your social media marketing efforts, and syncing them to your websites will be a viable option moving forward.

Facebook applications may become an even more intriguing option when it comes to packaging a viral marketing message on Facebook. With access to the new API, developers may find ways to better leverage data and create an even richer social experience.

Facebook Connect is probably the biggest question mark of the bunch, as it seems likely to be thrown by the wayside. With the addition of the Open Graph API and the social plugins, much of what Facebook Connect offers will be obsolete. Still, there are some questions about how exactly developers are supposed to accommodate these changes.

What Should Your Business Do Next?

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It’s no secret that Facebook is making a huge push to lock down their top spot on the social totem pole and they hope that the users will follow their lead. In Facebook’s case, it’s safe to say both users and marketers will stay on board. With Facebook’s size and reach, if you are not keeping up with the changes, you are going to be left in the dust.

Businesses will need to build their web presence with the Open Graph in mind. Moving forward, Facebook-enabled websites will become an essential piece of lasting success in the digital space. Content dissemination will occur more often and be more relevant to users, and applications will take on many new forms.

Social optimization is to 2010 as SEO was to 2005. Facebook, along with other important social platforms are now giving you the tools to optimize your social media presence based on the quality of social engagement you create. As Mark Zuckerberg said, the web is defaulting to social. It’s time to act accordingly.

Source: http://mashable.com/2010/05/05/facebook-open-graph-business/

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5 Tips for Quick Social Media Success

You started a business blog, created a Twitter profile and developed a Facebook page–now what? Sure, you can start publishing updates and sending friend and follow requests, but those communications are just the preliminary steps to social media marketing success.

Here are five tips that anyone can apply to their social media marketing efforts today and start seeing positive results almost immediately.

1. Make it easy and non-threatening for your audience to participate.
Not only does your content matter on the social web but your personality matters, too. In other words, you need to be accessible and approachable in all of your social media marketing communications. Don’t talk at people, talk with them, and do so in a manner that makes it clear that you want them to join the conversation.
This applies to your employees as well. Your employees are your best brand advocates. Make it easy and non-threatening for them to talk about your business on the social web by providing simple guidelines for them to follow. You can find an excellent directory of well-known company social media and blogging policies here, which you can benchmark in order to develop your own business’ guidelines.

2.Write share-worthy content.
The more amazing content that you publish online through your social media profiles and branded destinations, the more people will want to share it with their audiences. That leads to far more online exposure for you, your business
and your brand than you can get on your own. Of course, not every piece of content that you publish on social sites has to be share-worthy, but you should try to publish as much amazing, share-worthy content as possible. Not just to broaden your exposure, but also to add value to the online conversation.

3. Acknowledge and recognize your audience.
The power of social media marketing comes from the relationships you develop with your online audience (who will become brand advocates and will talk about your business, champion it, and defend it against naysayers). With that in mind, you must acknowledge people when they reach out to you.

Would you ignore a person who walked up to you at a networking event and spoke to you? Hopefully, your answer to that question is, “no.” No one likes to be ignored, and social media conversations shouldn’t be treated differently from in-person conversations. Many of the most successful marketers make a point of responding to every e-mail, blog comment, tweet and so on that is directed at them. So recognize your audience, and make them feel important.

4. Integrate all of your marketing efforts.
All of your marketing efforts should work together to present consistent brand messages and lead to your ultimate marketing goals. You should also cross-promote your various marketing efforts. For example, feed your blog content to your Twitter and Facebook profiles using a tool like www.Twitterfeed.com. Promote your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles by including “Follow Me” buttons in your blog’s sidebar that link to your profiles. Include your Twitter ID in your printed ads and link to your blog and social media profiles in your e-mail signature.

The key is to surround your audience with branded experiences and let them select how they want to interact with your business and brand. Give them options and make it easy for them to join the conversation in the way that they choose.

5. Don’t try to keep up with the Jones’.
Just because your competitor is doing something on the social web doesn’t mean that you need to do the same. By blindly following your competitor’s path, you’re marketing scared and without purpose. Plus, it’s probable that your competitor’s initiatives won’t help you meet your goals at all. While it’s essential that you monitor your competitor’s social media marketing activities, you should analyze them against your own goals before implementing any of them yourself.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/marketingcommunicationscolumnistsusangunelius/article206306.html

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Social Media Addiction

Online marketing and advertising using social media is effective. Why? Because social media is addictive. By learning more about the habits and behaviours of social media users, it is easier to target consumers and increase the effectiveness of online campaigns.

A study by Retreveo Gadetology reveals just how addicted social media users are when it comes to use of popular services such as Twitter and Facebook. Consider: When asked, “Do you check/update Facebook and Twitter after you go to bed,” respondents revealed the following, 1. Yes, anytime I wake up during the night (Under 25: 19%, Over 25: 11%), 2. Yes, sometimes when I wake up during the night (Under 25: 27%, Over 25: 20%), Yes, as soon as I wake up in the morning (Under 25: 32%, Over 25: 21%). Startling numbers.

Further, mobile use appears to be the primary method of social media use. iPhone owners tend to lead the way in the study, indicating they use Facebook and Twitter more often and in more locations, both in Dallas, and nationally, than other smartphone users.

Other revealing numbers; 56%: Social media users check Facebook at least once a day. 12%: Social media users check Facebook every couple of hours. 40%: Respondents who said they didn’t mind being interrupted for a message. 32%: Respondents who said using the sites was not off limits while eating a meal. 7%: Respondents who said they’d check out a message during an intimate moment.

What the percentages indicate is that businesses, marketers and advertisers looking to increase brand awareness and loyalty, should strongly consider social media use to do so if not already engaging in social media use. Having a better understanding of each social media method and when consumers use each service will result in providing more appealing content that will engage one’s target market in an effective and ongoing manner.

Are you addicted to social media? What method(s) do you find work best for marketing and advertising efforts? Comment below, submit any questions to us via Formspring, follow us on Twitter, and become a fan of our Facebook page, for the latest in social media, and technology news and to participate in our contests!

Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-39209-Dallas-Online-Marketing-Examiner~y2010m4d17-Social-Media-Addiction

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With hundreds of millions of customers using dozens of social media platforms, a small business owner may benefit by using social media

By NEBS Newsdesk

Many business owners have at least a vague idea about how to run a conventional marketing campaign – create an attractive ad, and then plaster it on posters, websites, newspapers, magazines, radios, and TV.

Social media marketing, on the other hand, is a bit more foreign. It’s a relatively new concept, which, despite being utilized very successfully by bigger companies, has managed to stump a lot of Candian small business owners. In a recent survey conducted by Employers, only 16 percent of small business owners actually used social media marketing.

Many small business owners just don’t understand how many people can be reached by social media. In another survey conducted by Ad-ology, as reported by MarketingProfs.com, 31 percent of business owners don’t think their customers use social media. The fact of the matter is, though, that more than 400 million people have Facebook accounts and 75 million people have Twitter accounts, so quite clearly social media has a large following. Another study, conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey, shows that customers who follow a product on Twitter are 79 percent more likely to recommend a brand to someone else, while 67 percent are more likely to buy that brand themselves. It’s quite clear that by engaging customers with social media, a business owner could see tremendous results.

Once a business owner has come to the decision to use social media, the first step is signing up to the various social media outlets. There are dozens of social media outlets to sign up for, but for starters, a business should register with at least Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses, depending on what a business is trying to accomplish. While Twitter and Facebook may be good tools for brand exposure and communicating with customers, they aren’t particularly good at driving traffic to a website. Conversely, while Digg and StumpleUpon may drive traffic to a small business’ website, fan communication is limited. The key lies in using the various platforms in ways that complement each other.

After signing up, a business owner should begin to expand their network. In an article for Mashable.com, Ross Kimbarovsky says that the best way to do that is to join conversations about a business owner’s company. On Twitter or YouTube, that means searching for the company. If there are no conversations happening, then join general industry conversations. By establishing themselves as a thought leader, a business owner can gain a reputation within an industry, which will lead to fans, says Kimbarovsky.

If a business owner wants the audience that they have accrued to stick around, they must give them something of value, says Peter Wylie in a recent article for SocialMediaExaminers.com. One way he recommends doing this is by offering promotional materials, like free gifts or coupons, exclusively to customers that follow a company’s social media efforts. If a business doesn’t have the budget for special offers, than they need to offer something else of value, like industry insight.

For business owners that are still unsure how to use social media, Wylie recommends they get ideas by checking out how their competition utilizes it. If a business owner’s competition isn’t using social media, then that puts them ahead already. If they are, Wylie advises studying the tactics they use to increase their fan base.

The most important thing to remember about social media is that it’s social. Unlike traditional ad campaigns, where the business owner is sending a one-way message to a consumer, social media is about having two-way conversations. Marketing is an important aspect of any business, and by utilizing social media efficiently, a business owner may be able to reach a whole new segment of customers.

Source: http://www.nebsmarketingstore.ca/news/business-marketing/small_businesses_may_benefit_from_better_social_media_marketing$727.html

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