Last night, I embarked on the new look of Facebook, and I have to say I am fairly impressed.

First of all, I have to give Mark, and the whole Facebook team props, because of the new cosmetic change that they have developed, and how they have handled it. I remember back in college when I first started using facebook, they introduced a few new physical changes to the site, and the facebook team received a whole lot of guff from their community for not really explaining what they were doing, and if this was okay with their users.

This controversy was really big when the News Feed was introduced. I remember when it first came to be, and hearing from fellow college students that it was starting to become an invasion of privacy, even though they soon started to latch on to it.

Now, they have come across to the user (once they log in) explaining this big physical change, emphasizing feedback, and having the option to revert back to the previous feel of the site.

Here are some features from my pro/con perspective.

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You’ll see all types of articles, advice and opinions trying to de-construct the true nature of social media. At its simplest, social media is a conversation between like-minded people using various different software platforms to communicate with each other.

What you need to understand first about social networking is that it’s just like social networking in the offline world: the same courtesies, rules and etiquette apply in both spheres, and this is one of the most important things to keep in mind.

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I am a FriendFeed fan boy.

That is saying a lot, because I am usually pretty critical of everything.

The platform is easy to use, and makes the first real concentrated effort towards making a single platform for all social media.

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The next Olympics is big news, not only for its presence in China and all the rigmarole that’s created, but for the way Olympic news will be broadcast and the steps some Olympic sponsors are taking. With Twitter, Plurck and all the other microblogging apps, we’re going to know what’s happening quicker than you can say Olympics. How exciting.

This is going to make things very interesting, and I can just imagine all the Twitterers and ilk doing their thing with minute to minute updates, giving live television a major run for its money.

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Facebook, Filkr, Fllxter, Friendster and that’s just the F’s. Have you ever tried to figure out which of the growing number of social networks deserve your time or which services attract the exact demographic you’re looking for? Consultancy Rapleaf has some answers.

In a follow up to a study of social network users vs. age, Rapleaf has released data on the 49.3 million people who made up the survey. Some highlights:

• Women ages 14-24 dominate activity on social networks and have more friends than men of the same ages.
• Men ages 35+ are more active and have more friends than women of the same ages.
• The average social network user has a mere 2-25 friends.

But that’s just the beginning. If social networking matters to you, take a few minutes to dig through the data here.

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Jason Falls asked his followers on Twitter to define social media in two words or less. Here are some of the results:

• Overrated
• Relationship Building
• Communal Interaction
• Community Building
• Shared Narcissism
• Citizen Journalism
• Confusing
• Authentic Minutia
• Scaled Intimacy
• Serendipitous Networking
• Movable Relationships
• Establishing Trust
• Business Networking
• Participate. Reciprocate.

My two words? Communal platforms. What do you think?

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Social media monitoring and social media measurement are two very different things, but I think many of the searchers and social media taggers using those phrases don’t always make the distinction. For some quick insight from a qualified audience, I turned to Twitter and within an hour had about 40 replies.

It started off with this Tweet: Twitpoll: What’s a better term: “social media monitoring” or “social media measurement”?

Many of the responses were a specific selection of “measurement” or “monitoring” but most pointed out that social media measurement and monitoring are different things. Monitoring is what you do to find information which you can then measure.

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For Marketing Pilgrim readers who love data - here is a follow-up to Rapleaf’s social media study. The link has a spreadsheet that you can apply formulas to. The study looked at 49.3 million people on social networks and breaks them down by age and gender. This is good to study to look at if you want a general idea where to focus your marketing on a specific social network to a target customer.

The first group post about this talked about how men often have more “friends” on social networks and tend to be on LinkedIn and Flickr. Facebook and MySpace has more women. Men and women on average have 2-25 friends. So if you have more, you’re above average

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July 5th was the five year anniversary of my blog. I started thinking about the bigger issues, and wrote this post on July 8th - and waited until I could get more information (see sidenote on bottom).

Ten-plus years ago, I started my career in public relations. One of the first campaigns I worked on was the Cure Breast Cancer stamp - working with a friend that was on the campaign, to get it launched and to get people to buy it.

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You can’t escape social networks or social channels even if you tried to. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, FriendFeed, Orkut, Bebo, LinkedIn - give access channels for strangers to meet and attempt to become your friends.

As a marketer, social networks or web 2.0 networks and services give you an opportunity to reach out to potential customers at significantly lower costs compared to search engine optimization or paid advertising.

In my opinion there’s greater finesse involved, because if there are another 100 marketers using the same channel to reach out the the person, you have to fight to gain the person’s attention, even as they are being courted by 100 other suitors.

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