A few months ago I blogged about the impact of facebook on traditional print media. 

Many promoters had stopped printing flyers and started leveraging the power of the social graph available through facebook in order to reach and promote their events.

As reported by Yahoo last week, Yahoo is poised for hundreds of layoffs this week as advertising revenue has dropped significantly. 

Social Media sites have become everything Yahoo used to be - but simpler.  And easier. And more open.

Marketers have followed consumers to popular social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace. It would appear that facebook has moved on from eating the print shop’s lunch to eating the lunch of Web 1.0 sites.

Who’s next?

The announcement of Google buying Jaiku is making waves in the industry. Imran Ali at Mobile Messaging 2.0 is calling it the most significant acquisition ever by Google. I’m calling it the continuation of a cold war arms race between Nokia and Google for world domination. Well World Mobile domination (the new WMD?) anyway.

From the East (or near-East… or near-near-East) there is Nokia. They are already world leaders in the mobile device space and have a neat mobile social network called MOSH. With their acquisition of Enpocket they now have a best in class mobile ad-delivery platform. With their acquisition of NAVTEQ they now have a best in class GPS-based mapping system to compete in the location based services (LBS) space.  With the Gartner Group forecasting that GPS based handsets will grow to around 40% by 2011 from 13% in 2007, clearly GPS or LBS could become the next killer mobile application. With all these acquisitions in the social networking / content space, Nokia is starting to look a lot like Google… 

From the West we have Google. They own search world wide and have become a massive advertising power with their Google AdWords platform…. a platform that is now being offered for free for mobile for a limited time.  Some have speculated that a mobile AdWords platform could subsidize carrier costs for the eventual release of a Google phone into the marketplace. Imagine a 3G phone loaded with Google widgets that costs little to nothing for the consumer. The g-phone could be an i-phone killer… or anything Nokia killer.

Combine the Google acquisition of Jaiku with the other recent announcement that Google also purchased Zingku - a mobile social utility tool that is web and SMS based and we have the makings of a mobile social networking platform that will rival all others.  Consider that Google already has a great installed base with Orkut (which is more popular than facebook in some parts of the world), it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that they’ll be playing in the mobile social networking space very soon. With all these acquisitions and developments, Google is starting to look a lot like Nokia…

Who will win this cold war…or will one buy the other eventually? One thing is for sure, following the mobile space is going to be very interesting over the next 18 months!

UPDATE 10/11: Nokia is also going into mobile search - check out this article on mobile semantic search!

Do you twitter? It’s a question I recently posed on my facebook account. Only a handful even knew what Twitter was…only three actually admitted to having a Twitter account.

Twitter is a really neat free social utility tool - it essentially allows you to post very short messages about what you are currently doing RIGHT NOW to the Twitter website - which you can personalize. This is very similar to creating status updates on MSN messenger or facebook…or even setting up email or SMS auto-replies.

The neat thing about Twitter is that you can follow somebody’s Twitter in many ways - either through a website (by visiting their site), as an update on your IM, as a SMS alert, RSS, or email. Think of it as micro-blogging - or blogging for people who don’t have enough to say to actually blog… or for people who want to say a few things but don’t want to create an entire blog posting around it.

I created my own Twitter account and admit i’m struggling to really find a use for it. After investing significant time in building my social equity on facebook, why do i need a separate social utility tool for status updates when facebook already does this automatically to my network of friends? Do i really want to tell people what i’m up to all the time? Do people even care? Will people accept my invitation to join Twitter in a lame attempt to make my twitter page more popular? I’m thinking the answer is no to all of the above.

Having said that, some people have said that Twitter has become a hot newswire - industry insight and news is sometimes available through a Twitter feed before it hits the blogs or news pages. I guess that’s important for some industry people…but does anybody else really care if they hear about industry news 3 hours before they read it in their RSS newsreader? One sign that Twitter has become a hit is the fact there are lots of imitations now available globally - like Pownce, Jaiku and Dodgeball.  Wikipedia reports that there are over 100 knock-offs of Twitter now. It seems like instant messaging 2.0 has arrived. 

As marketers, how do we leverage this channel to reach our audiences and deliver messages? If you are marketing an established personality (or trying to create one), this is an interesting space to play in. Celebrities and politicians have setup their own Twitter pages in order to connect with a younger audience. U.S. presidential candidate Obama has his own Twitter page here.

In previous blog posts I’ve discussed the idea around “Identity 2.0” or creating a way for people to manage their online profiles centrally so that they don’t need to manage multiple accounts or create new ones when they want to join new communities. I would suggest the same thing is or will be needed for micro-blogging to go mainstream.  Wouldn’t it be great if somebody created a widget that automatically updated my status on all my channels? In this scenario all I would do is create a status update on facebook and watch (or not) as the widget automatically publishes my status to Twitter, Pownce, MSN Messenger, my RSS feed, personal website, blog,  or email. I reference facebook because it’s easy, it’s already there and there is already huge social equity in the platform.  

If Twitter can build more social equity beyond the early adopter tech / celebrity / politician communities, it has a great chance of being really useful. The best way to do this will be through real integration with facebook, myspace, and all other social networking tools

UPDATE 10/07: IF you actually click on the Twitter settings within facebook, you can have Twitter automatically update your facebook status. Sweet!

Terri Hardin has published an article in Successful Meetings Magazine this week on using web 2.0 or social networking sites to promote meetings, events, and conferences. The articles covers a lot of ground and aligns with what I presented at the Canadian IncentiveWorks show in August.

From my perspective, leveraging web 2.0 / social media sites are not just a new way to promote your meeting, event, or conference - it’s a shift in philosophy. Meetings as monologues are dead.

Although it’s true that social media is affording us new ways to reach our potential audience for promoting our events… the true power is in creating community - not just advertising within them. By creating your own social networking experience for your meeting (or leveraging somebody else’s), you can create meaningful interactions and value exchanges before, during, and after your event.

With traditional meetings, events, and conferences, the networking part begins once you show up & register. By creating your own community, you can facilitate meaningful interactions before people even show up. The social networking continues during your event and well beyond the conclusion of the event. Your community can now propagate, grow, and build momentum for your next event. A great example of this concept put to use is the social networking site launched as part of the Motivation Show in Chicago. Like most social networks, when you register you provide some profile information. For a meeting, event, or conference you may ask people to self-select issues that are important to them. You can then leverage this data to “match” like-minded people together who may have an interest in connecting at your meeting, event , or conference.

The Motivation Show is doing exactly this - some colleagues who have registered for this event have received emails highlighting the 10 people they need to meet at the conference.  The email is personalized, dynamic, and based on the criteria selected in the registration process. The email also includes links back into the social network to initiate a conversation or to do further investigation (or creeping as we call it on facebook).  

I’ve evaluated / piloted / implemented several white label social networking platforms and all the best ones also come with great community tools built-in - like RSS feeds, personal blogs, group forums, chat areas, user polls, and your own media bin where you can upload images, links, documents - or whatever.

Not everybody is going to participate in your community - but the early adopters will drive content and word of mouth will mean constant growth and continued engagement. You’re not likely going to reach 100% engagement, but it’s not unusual for events that leverage this type of software to see 30% or more of their audience engaged. In a world where we deem a good marketer as somebody who gets 3% return on traditional response mediums and great marketers as those who get 5% - don’t you agree that this is an area worth your attention and further investigation?

It’s here, it’s cool and now all our friends have given in to the peer pressure and have signed up. Now that we’ve setup our profiles and added all the widgets that help you score cool points, what’s next with facebook? Some in the media are already predicting its demise, or stating that people will move on to the next coolest thing. That may be true…but until that next thing manifests itself, I have some thoughts on what I think would make facebook a better place for us all:

1) RSS all the way. Why not allow ALL content within your profile AND groups be exportable through RSS or through a widget builder that will allows user to repurpose existing content on their own personal blogs, sites, or communities? Seems only logical…and it will make groups more viral & relevant again.

2) Be nicer to outsiders.  Allow assets from other social networking sites to be imported into facebook, and allow facebook profile info to be exported to others too. Kind of like a universal avatar - a concept that has been discussed here and in the blogsphere. If facebook is truly going to become the new platform within the internet platform, they need to do this. It will also make it easier for marketers to reach and provide relevant messaging to a targeted audience. Sweet.  

3) Stop being so darn self-centered. I’m talking to you. Yes you. Your entire facebook profile is about you. You only add applications that improve your social standing through karma points, bragging about travel destinations and competing for the most number of friends while being a top friend the most often as well.   It’s not your fault - facebook is setup to be a self-propagating self promotion tool. In the old days of web 1.0, we used to join forum communities / discussion boards. They were highly effective in community building because every time somebody added content or responded to your post, you were notified via email. Facebook NEEDS this in the worst way for their groups to stay relevant beyond the first week a group is setup.  It will never reach its potential as a true community tool until they figure out how to leverage the power of groups.  

4) Friend categorization. I know I can choose who can see my limited profile and define what that means…but that’s not enough now that facebook is more then a friends network. It’s becoming a professional network too…and scarier still….our parents are starting to come online too. Do you really want your mother to have the same access to your friends network as anybody else? Maybe you do… then maybe you are a momma’s boy too.

5) Optimize the mobile channel. m.facebook.com kicks butt. Text alerts and commands we can do through the shortcode stack are awesome too. I can go a week or more without going to the website because of it. Having said that, what’s up with only pushing 60 characters at a time on messages? I hate pressing “n” 17 times to get the full message. It may be a case of optimizing for the lowest common denominator…but why not allow us change or choose different options? I have both a treo and blackberry - i can handle more text!

6) Expand the mobile platform. At facebookcamp Toronto I asked the 400 or so assembled if anybody was developing an application specifically for mobile or ensuring their apps will work on mobile. Only one person raised their hand. You can start by allowing people to take media from their profiles (or groups) and allow them to download them to their mobile device as a wallpaper…or maybe ringtone for audio-related media. This is also a good revenue stream potentially for developers taking advantage of the new open APIs… 

I’ve just come across this link at one degree on five predictions for facebook. Check it out…and feel free to add your own wish list here!