Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing

If you are still wondering what is the current state of Social Networking, Social Media or Social Media Marketing, have a look at part two of the awesome presentation series by the Boston-based communications expert, Marta Kagan.

If you missed part one, you can see it here..
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If you think Social Media is just another fad that will come and go, think again. Social Media Networking represents a significant shift in the way people communicate now and in the future. Facebook has added over 100 million users in just under 9 months; over 65 million of them use it via their mobile phones or Blackberries. The fastest growing demographic is 55-65 old women. If Facebook was a country it would be the fourth biggest in the world right after China, India and United States. Mark Zuckerberg is therefore one of the top 5 leaders of the free world (well…ok, that’s bit too much.). Close to 15 million pieces of information (photos, wall posts, links, news, notes etc.) are shared on Facebook. Daily. That’s over 10.000 messages in a minute. This platform is the online marketers wet dream come true. The following video by Karl Smith and Scott McLeod shows some distubing facts and figures of the power of Social Media. If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed or ReTweet.

Google has announced that its new real-time communication platform, Google Wave will be launched to the public later this year. This will be Google’s biggest product launch in their recent online history.

Google Wave is designed to be a real-time communication platform. It combines email, social networking, instant messaging (IM), wikis, online chats and project management all built into one web application. Google Wave is actually designed to replace email, instant messaging (IM), blogs and wikis. It is also build to be a collaboration tool whereas FaceBook is not build to be a collaboration tool at all, although you could use it as such if you know your way around it. So, in this aspect FaceBook is just a glorified IM platform- to put it bluntly.

Here are some of Google Wave’s features:

• You can see what someone else is typing in real time.
• Third party developers can build their own applications within Google Wave, just like in Facebook and iGoogle.
• Waves (Google Wave posts) can be embedded on other blogs or websites.
• What ever you write in a Google Wave can be edited by everyone else. This gives also you the opprotunity to correct or append information submitted by other people;  you can also add comments within conversations.
• The Google Wave code will be open source.
• Easy Drag-and-drop file sharing. You don’t need attachments; just drop your files into Google Wave and everyone will have access to them.
• Waves can be playbacked.
• Spelling autocorrection.
• Auto-translation on-the-fly.

Study released today by the MacArthur Foundation suggests that using Facebook and other Social Networking sites is more useful than not. A team of researchers working on the foundation’s “Digital Youth Project” concluded that interaction with new media such as Facebook is increasingly becoming an essential part of becoming a competent citizen in the digital age.

Team of researchers conducted more than 800 interviews of youths and their parents, and spent more than 5,000 hours observing teens on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. The goal was to find out how youths use the digital media, such as social networking sites and video games, to understand and participate in society.

The study shows that all that Web surfing and online socializing isn’t necessarily eroding the intelligence or initiative of the young generation. The Internet isn’t rotting their brains. Actually, it’s almost necessary.  Kids denied access to the new media, what ever the reason,  are likely to be short on skills that members of their generation are expected to possess.

“When kids lack access to the Internet at home or public libraries and schools block sites that are central to their social communication, youth are doubly handicapped in their efforts to participate in common culture and sociability,” the study reads.

Major findings from the Digital Youth Project:

• Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace foster productive, if not essential, social skills for teens.
• Adults who restrict access to such the sites may do teens a disservice.
• When youths “hang out” online, they’re reaching out to people they know, not strangers.
• That form of hanging out is no better or worse than similar, face-to-face interaction.
• Social networking sites allow youths to develop public identities.

“It may look like kids are wasting a lot of time online, but they’re actually learning a lot of social, technical and also media literacy skills,” said Mizuko Ito, a researcher at the University of California, Irvine who lead the study.

Some of their findings should be no surprise to teens or their parents. For instance, teens like to hang out with their friends online. They learn social skills online. They flirt online. They develop interests, express themselves creatively, and give each other feedback — all online.

(ST. LOUIS POST)

Now you can get drunk on Facebook! From this Thursday onwards you can send and receive real drinks to you Facebook friends. There is a new Facebook application coming that allows party-happy Facebook users to send real drinks to their friends for just $1. The application is called BarTab, and it converts Facebook virtual drink credits into real drinks by mobile phone at participating bars. So far the only bars accepting these credits are about 100 local bars and pubs located in Arizona, US. There are, however many bars around the world interested in this service as well. Well, who said social networking isn’t fun? Just don’t get too drunk on Facebook.