Read it. Think about it. Take steps to implement what it says.

However last night there seemed to be more than the usual backlash in the social media space about the event. What concerned me the most was the fact that the information that was being presented was hard to follow - both audibly as well as visually. This is a key element that needs to be addressed. I primarily attend social events to learn more about the field and improve my skill set. Others seem to be going for other reasons, or worse, create a negative back channel of comments taking away the hard work of those presenting.

The holier than thou type attitude that is present in marketing unfortunately cannot work in social media. Social media first and foremost is a conversation. Between people, not egos. And I think the suggestions mentioned by the attendees that everyone should have a voice is a great idea. Sure it could turn into a school yard brawl, but that is what we have moderators for isn’t it?

Rather than people moan and pull out red pens whilst the blue one is left at home (corny analogy I know, forgive me…) I think open dialogue could remove a lot of that. The nature of the experts and champions of this new form of media are naturally extroverted, intelligent, witty, and business minded - they wouldn’t be in the game if they weren’t. I just think the mentality when we deal with our own should be one to make it better for everyone involved. Let’s create effective strategies together. Let’s bounce ideas off one another. Let’s share what we have learnt from our various campaigns.

Let’s talk about how we will show the corporate world that social media is the greatest form of marketing since word of mouth.

And friends, that how industry will be expected.

Its not so much that Facebook has taken away its traffic, I feel that Facebook was what people were looking for in a social network in the first place. MySpace was the first successful network and nothing will take that away from them. People were looking for a place to store and share elements of their life with friends and family no matter where they are. And MySpace provided that service. It even allowed users to add their own personal touch to the pages, no matter what design/HTML skills they possessed.

What really exploded MySpace was that celebrities, predominately musicians, had a cheap, easy and effective way to communicate with fans and promote their artistry. Fans got the added benefit of being able to communicate to their idols (or their idol’s PR firm) online and show that to the world. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Facebook meanwhile was working on a platform that did something extremely well. A place to communicate and find lost friends with a clean and generic interface. The added protection of the wall preventing search engines and people accessing the accounts unless they were a “real” friend - a clear benefit of those sick of the MySpace stalkers and worried about their privacy.

And I guess Myspace was the only place for these normal everyday people to do that until Facebook. The only ones that were truely benefiting was the musicians and the spammers. So this gradual migration to Facebook has occurred over the last couple of years. And for most it is coming as a suprise, or at least they did not expect the migration to happen so quickly.

Facebook obiviously now is going against Twitter, which took one element of Facebook and doing that feature extremely well. What will become of that is yet to be seen.

So where does that leave MySpace?

It should be continuing to serve the users that have stuck by them and used the service to its full potential: musicians and celebrities. Why not save costs and take advantage of the MySpace platform, the API, the bandwidth, the hosting, and the features rather than charge out to 3rd party web developers? You can have that idea for free record labels.

Viacom are pretty smart themselves, wanting to merge MySpace and MTV. It’s a match made in heaven and I don’t know why anyone didn’t take them up on the offer earlier.

That is well and good though in the real world and creating real world friendships. The Internet, it seems however, almost forces us to judge someone off a two sentence bio and 75×75 avatar. I am not going to delve into the social ramifications of this scenario, but rather I want to focus on how to make sure you are represented properly on your various profile pages on your social networks. The reason being is that more and more employers and clients are searching your name, and making decisions about you as a person, based on your network profile.

If people are going to pass judgements, and lets face it, it’s going to happen, lets make sure its as close to the true representation of you as much as possible. Lets go through some basic tips.

Make Sure Your Updates Are Current

Prove to anyone that is visiting your profile that you are active on the network. No one likes people that don’t contribute in face to face conversations and it is equally important on social networks. I know myself, I’m more inclined to follow someone that is regularly contributing rather than someone who comes once a month for self-promotion.

Bring Sexy Back

As mentioned, the world is a superficial place. A good quality picture that proves to everyone you are not a company, or a bot, or a brand puppet goes a long way to establish your credibility. It also helps to use the same picture across multiple networks so you are easily recogniseable when people go looking for you. Also a great tip if you are trying to brand yourself as an authority.

If you have a little bit too much fun on the weekend, do a little bit of online reputation management on yourself too, by making sure the photos that your friends upload of you that you probably don’t want your boss or clients finding stay that way.

Give More Than You Take

Applies more so to Twitter than some of the other ones, but if the network allows, a lot of people will scan your recent updates and base their acceptance of you as a friend by what you are doing on said network. Make sure you (and I *shudder* as I type this phrase) “add value” to your friends/followers, that you offer suggestions and help, and be engaging with your more trival updates. A well rounded member is more likely to be respected and continually grow their network.

By following these recommendations, you are sure to be an honest and model member of your network. Whilst they might only judge you off a picture and 1 hour’s worth of updates, they will not regret that decision a week later.

The data found if one employee spent an hour a day of company time on Facebook, it could cost their employer more than $6200 a year.

Projected across the 800,000 businesses with one or more employees in Australia, this one wasted hour a day equaled productivity losses of more than $5 billion a year.

NineMSN, however is running an article discussing Facebook as a “vital tool for productivity“. Interestingly enough I returned to this article for information on Facebook as a time waster and found that it had been altered to this new standpoint.

Facebook is a “vital tool for productivity” for Australian businesses, a leading Internet authority says.

Ross Dawson says claims that websites such as Facebook are timewasters is irresponsible and contradicts actual business practice.

Ninemsn’s Money website is also on board with an article titled “The dangers of being too social” that discusses social networking sites again from the time wasting point of view.

These sites can also be a huge waste of time. According to comScore, people spend an average of 186 minutes on Facebook per session. (To be fair, a lot of those visitors are letting the program run in the background while they perform other tasks — but three hours is still a long time.)

Aside from the time-waster vs time-saver debate, there is also a rising issue of threat from hacker activities. A concern shared throughout these articles as the popularity and growth rate of the site makes it an attractive target for hackers and spam monkeys. I have already come across groups and members on Facebook who are spamtastic. It’s not uncommon now to see members with a profile that invites friends to come along and view their webcam site or sign up at another site to see more pictures of them. This is something that will only get worse and I do hope it is an issue that can be tackled before it is too late.

I am not totally sold on the “vital tool” argument but I do see how it can be beneficial as a tool for some companies and also as a tool for networking with others in your industry for sharing ideas and perhaps even finding employees.

Almost all of the team at my office are signed up and we have multiple groups ranging from professional work groups to party organising groups. I have found it to be time saving for organising social activities but from a business point of view my mind switches more so to thinking about the productivity lost for my team checking out their buddies photos and writing on their “super walls” - and also the large amount of bandwidth these sorts of sites seem to guzzle up. We’re not ready to ban the site yet (as many companies have started doing) but we have given a softly softly warning to staff and asked them to keep their “facebooking” to lunch hours.

I am sure we will see more articles of this nature popping up in the mainstream press in the coming months.

But why does this new practice fall under the realm of search marketers? And does it make sense? Most search marketers see it as a natural progression of services.

Check out the article to read about the progression as well as selling SMM & SMO related services to clients.

Two reports have been released by major big business think tanks in the last two weeks which serve as bookends to a growing debate over the future of enterprise IT and, by implication, Web 2.0. On one side is Forrester Research and their contention that CIOs will spurn Web 2.0 startups and let the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and Google provide their ‘best of breed’ solutions. On the other side is The Leading Edge Forum and their multi-year study advising the enterprise to abandon intranets, live on the web and let IT and users cooperate in generating ‘best of breed’ solutions. It’s hard to imagine both sides can be right.

The lengthy article discusses the comparisons in detail and gives some great insight. Myself I feel more of a growing sensation (perhaps like spider senses?) that the web related I.T. industry is heading for another bubble burst. Looking around at salaries on offer for jobs, charges for different services and so on - from an insiders point of view I cannot see how such values can be maintained in the long haul. It might be glory days now - particularly here in Australia as industries such as search marketing and services such as SEO are becoming more widely known and as such are booming - however with new competition entering the market every day and clients becoming more aware of the work required it is my opinion that prices will inevitably come crashing down, and so too will salaries along with them.

Nevertheless check out the article here.

del.icio.us can be used in many ways. Those listed as examples on the site itself include;

• Research - Keep track of the sites you’ve used for researching a specific topic - this will make it easier to come back to them when it comes time to do your referencing.
• Wishlist - You can save pages from commerce sites to your wishlist on del.icio.us and then send people to http://del.icio.us/username/wishlist to feed them gift ideas.
• Podcasting - You can find or post podcasts using the mp3+podcast tag combination.
• Vacation Planning - Bookmark and tag all the sites you find whilst researching your holiday, or browse through to find sites others have found for the destination you wish to visit.
• Linklog - You can save bookmarks to interesting websites along with a bit of commentary. There are features on the site to help you posts these lists to your own blog.
• Cookbook - Bookmark recipes and tag them with the recipe’s ingredients or style of cooking.
• Collaboration - Create groups, specific tags or share an account with friends or colleagues.

From the site;

What can you do as a Digg user? Lots. Every person can digg (help promote), bury (help remove spam), and comment on stories… you can even Digg and bury comments you like or dislike. Digg also allows you to track your friends’ activity throughout the site — want to share a video or news story with a friend? Digg it!

For more information check out the How Digg Works page.

The feature list is as follows;

• Aggregates all of your social networking presence into one interface.
• Lets you know exactly what is happening on all of your social network locations in real time
• Unique ranking algorithm that ranks your friends according to the level of interaction they have with you.
• Saves you the effort of constantly visiting all the social networks you regularly use. With 8hands you can access all your community locations from one single entry point.
• Chat via IM with all of your social networks friends.
• Organize all your social media files that are all around the net (your flickr pictures, YouTube videos, etc,) and store them all in one place.