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.

Pros:

• Wider width for more information. The ‘classic’ design was tightly condensed, even though it was pretty close to the same dimensions it is now, but with the left menu sidebar removed, it does allow more room for content.
• News Feed organized by medium. The ‘feed’ section of Facebook is now sorted by Top Stories (the most recent activity of your friends on Facebook), Status Updates (which actually used to be under the Friends menu, but is now amalgamated into the feed), Photos, and Posted Links. These, I have never thought of as a ‘feed’ arrangement, but I’m sure it will be very accessible in this way.
• Option to go back to old design. If you’re among the large demographic that does not like change, you can go back to the original layout for facebook, and when you are ready, you can switch back to the new design.

My one con:

• Wall mixed with feed. On your profile, along with your friend’s profiles, The Wall is now mixed in with the News Feed. On the old design, they were two separate entities, and was great to have The Wall as an actual part of the person’s profile, and not mixed/cluttered with the News Feed, which is two separate areas of social interaction. It also does make the profile page look cluttered, and not as organized as the way the classic profile page was.

Feel free to leave any comments or feedback.

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.

Social media etiquette goes something like this:

1. Respect other people’s opinions, even if you highly disagree;

2. Don’t be afraid to disagree and debate, but refer to #1 above;

3. Introduce yourself and keep posting. Especially in “clique-ish” industries (all industries have their “clique,” which simply consists of those people with the most “authority” in their industries. Yes, the popular kids;p But unlike high school, most of them tend to be pretty nice;p), the more visible you are, the more people will get to know you;

4. Ask questions. Don’t always just post an opinion; a well-thought out question can get just as much attention as a brilliant comment;

5. Make sure you read an article in its entirety before posting a comment on it;

6. Never include a URL to your own site in a comment on a blog unless it is specifically stated you can do so; if you add someone as a friend or contact, always make sure you’re familiar with them and their work; send a message, even if it’s as simple as “hey great blog; I really like your take on things.”

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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.

One of the main uses I see for FriendFeed is as a reputation monitoring and management tool.

Here are five ways to utilize the service for rep management and monitoring:

1) Establishing a Network - I am a huge proponent of reputation of management through preemptive means. By creating lasting relationships with market publishers and thought leaders you can more easily build your brand, and protect it. FriendFeed gives you a tool to effectively communicate your social media efforts en total with these contacts. It also allows you directly communicate through the feed itself using its “share something” feature, which is a form of micro-blogging.

2) RSS Monitoring - The most simplistic reputation management tools are based on RSS feed monitoring. By simply following the market publishers and thought leaders that influence your niche you can easily monitor what is being said about your brand, as well as make immediate transparent responses. Remember that dead time in response to a reputation crisis, is time that can kill your brand.

3) Mobile Rep Management - FF to go and other applications give you a mobile reputation monitoring and management option. Stop brand crisis on the go.

4) Social Media Profile for SERPs - Optimized Social Media profiles have been a hot topic of discussion in SEO and Social Media as of late. A well optimized FriendFeed profile, can be critical in your battle for SERP equity. Remember that one of the most damaging things that can happen to your online reputation is having a negative post or comment show up when a customer is searching your name in the search engines. Controlling the search engine results pages through brand controlled content is important in the battle for quality reputation.

5) Building Brand Advocates - Utilize the medium to create a transparent image of your brand. Do not look to fool your customer, utilize your FriendFeed feed to be transparent and show the qualities your company looks to project. Share your FriendFeed on your Facebook profiles, your blog, and anywhere else you are likely to find customers looking for you. Let them realize that your company is actively sharing transparent information. This type of strategy helps build brand advocates, which will help you destroy any reputation issues.

I plan on sharing some of these tactics on the SES San Jose panel Andy Beal and I are sharing. I think FriendFeed has a lot of potential in terms of link building as well, but for marketers of every ilk the reputation management use of this tool makes it intriguing. Get out now and claim your important names in the platform, and begin to establish your strategy.

Never wait until a rep crisis emerges, because by then it is too late.

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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.

Companies like Lesovo have also jumped on the Social Media Train with their branded blog project “Voices of the Olympic Games.” Lesovo gave computers to a number of Olympic athletes and set them up with blogs (no strings attached, of course;)) Sport fans can follow Lenovo’s athlete bloggers and the latest news on their experience in Beijing.

You have to give Lenovo props for a brilliant marketing strategy and for using Social Media in a creative way. And, while they clearly sponsor the blog, the athletes don’t have to promote Lenovo products and can write about their experiences apart from anything that has to do with Lenovo. I’m still skeptical about that line, but we’ll see.

More to come as we examine the lives and drama of Social Media at the Olympic games;p

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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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• 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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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.

It was a pretty neat application of using Twitter for a quick poll with near immediate responses from professionals that might not respond to traditional polling methods. Below are the actual replies:

	dantemonteverde @leeodden social media monitoring
	jonkelly @leeodden not sure 1 is better, they are just different, no?
	zenaweist @leeodden two separate things (social media monitoring and social media measurement) related to each other.
	gilliatt @leeodden Also important to understand what assumptions people bring to the question. PR measurement is only one possible paradigm.
	brianchappell @leeodden yea they are completely different.
	mitchellhislop @leeodden monitoring-something this organic cant really be “measured””
	webprgirl @leeodden I like social media monitoring
	CarrieHill @leeodden - i call them 2 different things also measure = how much is said - monitor = what is said
	ladyemma @leeodden measurement
	matt_mcgowan @leeodden measurement (gets point across better)
	alexaclark @leeodden Is ego-surfing an option? (But seriously I like “social media monitoring” better because “measurement” is still so imprecise)
	AdamIss @leeodden - online brand management. @sexyseo, I disagree that you can’t measure SM, it’s just that there aren’t decided upon standards.
	pageoneresults @leeodden Social Media Metrics?
	EdWords @leeodden I would go for ’social media monitoring’. In my opinion measuring is a way to monitor social media.
	ginakay @leeodden Measurement. Monitoring sounds so… big-brother-ish…
	eristoddle @leeodden measurement is less human and is being attached to social
	feydakin @leeodden monitoring sounds like you are doing more “work” than just looking at a chart..
	eristoddle @leeodden monitoring
	PeterHimler @leeodden social media monitoring is capturing the conversation; social media measurement is what you do with it after it’s in hand	>
	danperry @leeodden I prefer measurement

	brentnau @leeodden What is the context?
	gilliatt @leeodden Two different things.
	melaniephung @leeodden I think they mean completely different things, so it’s not a question of one being better than the other. What are you describing?
	revenuerobot @leeodden social media monitoring
	DaveTaylor @leeodden I’ll vote for “monitoring” for $20, Monty!
	jennmae @leeodden I prefer social media measurement
	AaronMSB @leeodden, I think “social media monitoring” and “social media measurment” are separate. Mon = content. Mea = hits/conversions.
	SexySEO @leeodden you can’t “measure “social media” you can only “monitor”
	hjomats @leeodden Depends on what you are trying to get out of it. Those two terms could be interpreted very differently
	Babiesonline @leeodden depends on if you want to monitor or measure, I suppose
	jtobin @leeodden They are two different tools. Monitoring = listening to me. Measurement = counting results.
	organicmania @leeodden Measurement. Many monitor, few know how to measure.
	adamsherk @leeodden sounds like 2 different things. monitoring for tracking activity/convos and measurement for trying to assign value to the activity
	SexySEO @leeodden monitoring
	MillerMosaicLLC @leeodden “Measurement.” “Monitoring” sounds too big brother-ish — unless you were going for that.
	KurtKrejny @leeodden social media monitoring
	BenjArriola @leeodden : social media analytics?
	JasonFalls @leeodden They’re two different things. Watching and counting.

One of the interesting things about social media monitoring tools like the one we use from our client, Radian6, is that you can actually see the effect of a thread like the one above. I didn’t throw out the query to Twitter for the purposes of promoting a client, although in hindsight that’s a pretty good idea as long as the client is relevant.

(Mashable and Twitter graphics added)

This image shows a 3 day period tracking “social media measurement”, “social media monitoring”, “social media analytics” and “social media metrics”. For this report, only blogs and micro content (Twitter) are being monitored, although we could watch mainstream media, video, forums and images as well as extend the time frame to multiple ranges or a specific start/stop date.

You can see a spike early in the morning July 31st for “social media measurement” when an article posted to the Mashable blog, “How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business” which was also syndicated by several other sites, repeating the use of the phrase. The Radian6 tool allows you to drill down at any point in the graph and see another “river of news” report showing where the phrase was mentioned. You can further drill down and read/view the content with a built in viewer.

To the right you can see a smaller spike for “social media monitoring” which came from the today’s Twitterstream as documented in the above post. If you want to be notified on an ongoing basis, there’s an alert function built in to the reporting as well. Kind of like “Google Alerts for the social web”.

Advanced social media monitoring tools like this one will also analyze the data being monitored and measured. The monitoring begins by defining a keyword based universe to track. Then specific reports can be setup to filter the data collected by the web crawler for measurement.

For example, analyzing comments, links and engagement with an algorithm allows the system to assign scores of influence to bloggers. That helps you decide which bloggers make the most sense to reach out to.

There is no “best phrase” when it comes to social media monitoring and measurement. There are plenty of tools for monitoring social media whether it’s free tools like Google Alerts or BlogPulse. Tools that begin to measure and analyze what’s being monitored, as you can imagine, cost money.

Here are several lists of companies that offer various types of online social monitoring, measurement and analysis tools.

• Nathan Gilliatt - Monitoring Social Media Before You Have a Budget
• Jeremiah Owyang - Companies that Measure Social Media, Influence, and Brand
• Smashing Magazine - Web 2.0 Buzz Monitoring and Tracking

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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

Other Highlights on the Social Media Network Study:

• 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.
• There are a disproportionately high number of 69 year olds across various social networks.

For some reason, 69 year olds have a strong showing on social networks. I have to assume that’s because when people create a fake profile, most of the sites have the default age set to 69. Or that’s what comes to people’s mind the fastest when they need to make up an age.

My mom just turned 73 this week and based on her and her real life friends, I doubt any one could name even one social network. However, even being a social online, I don’t recognize a lot of the social networks either - have you heard of Perfspot?

More women than men. If you combine the results on all social networks combined, there were almost 25 million females represented, compared to over 20 million males. Maybe the stereotype.

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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.

That’s a nice high for PR: doing some good work that changes people’s lives.

I look at what I have done in social media, and it is not the same. And, while people are glomming onto social media, there seems to be very little being done in the circular nature of the social media consultants.

You don’t hear/read about campaigns that are helping change the world. You don’t hear/read about campaigns that are being done with the large agencies or consultants that are trying to help make the world a better place.

You read social media people talking about social media … and that seems to be it. It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy of Valleywag’s 250. And, I have written about this before, and nothing much changes.

There are groups of social media people that fall outside this realm. There are networks that are more community than others.

I have spoken at and asked for help and advice from various social media fundraisers, such as TechSoup and NetSquared, and spoke to a few of these people at Blogworld Expo.

So, this is my challenge to the social media consultants and the power of social media. Prove to me that it works.

Here is one situation - help raise funds for Lisa Gift-Kelly at Clusterfook.

It’s a deserving person, who has cancer and is trying to make sure that things stay afloat and is able to afford treatment, as well as make sure her family will be okay and not fall under the weight of health care costs.

Here’s my question and request: show that social media can change the world. Right now, it’s just talk.

Robert Scoble - rally your readers and community to give just $5 to one or the other. Heavy is the crown for someone in your position, but times like this call for a rallying of troops. And, it fits into your recent post that tech blogging has failed … maybe because it’s too insular?

Steve Rubel - you often talk about community, but then use the card that you did not ask for a leadership position. You started a skin cancer blog, but inexplicably let it die. Here’s an opportunity to do something for someone with cancer, and to show leadership in social media and PR.

Social Media Club - you now have 44 board members of social media experts and consultants. Have them get the word out, have them work with the larger community of readership and help make the world a better place one person at a time.

Chris Brogan - you are one of the nicer people I know, and always do the good thing. Get your massive network to help out. It’s not about blog tips, but it’s about affecting change.

Jason Calacanis - while you might have retired your blog, you still have your Calacanis army on Twitter and your new newsletter. Rally your readers and followers. Plus, well, you are a mensch.

Now, there are tons of other people that I can think of to add to this list, but just using these four (plus SMC) as an example, and because of their position in social media. There are a ton of other people that write about social media non-stop, who have written books (Rohit Bhargava, Joel Postman, Geoff Livingston, Shel Israel, Brian Solis, Chris Heuer, amongst others) and would be good candidates to help spread the word and raise money.

Is that all that social media is? Is it to just sell stuff? Is it just a self-fulfilling circle that links to itself over and over? Or is there a higher value to social media, where we can make people’s life better and really rally people to help others.

And, while there are organizations, groups and people that are doing good online, the vast majority of social media / blog noise comes from the consultants. Prove me right - that social media can do more than just be about social media talking about itself, but help change people’s lives and change one part of the world. Social media consultants have a vested interest to do this, to show the world an example of social media doing good.

Go donate on the side through the SmartyPig Widget, or send people to Lisa’s donation page.

When I wrote the post, my hope was to see if social media can do for Lisa what it claims the buzz can do for people.

As a sidenote: On a recent post, Lisa questioned if I was still helping her out, among other things. I have and had been researching alternative funding beyond Paypal, and doing traditional offline PR with face-to-face conversations with a myriad of people. As for the outreach that I am doing in my off-hours, in public relations you need to be ready and prepared for all and every question. I should have kept her up-to-date, and am now emailing her weekly. I apologize that I was not as proactive as she would have liked in the ten days between our correspondence and posts (which she has since taken down).

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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.

So the $64,000 question is how do you get someone’s attention without becoming annoying.

Can you painlessly win the social media love dance, without getting your heart (and sales conversion) broken?

Here’s an example of what I mean:

My facebook “friend add” request queue currently numbers in the 450+ range.

How do I decide if I approve a friend request?

First step, I look to see if we’ve friends in common.

Second, who are those friend? Casual acquaintances, close friends? Business partners?

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If there’s a personal note, it could gain a couple more bonus points…or be a major deal killer.

A reason like “I saw you on the network and I want to grow my friends list. Please add me” works well if you’re building a friendship profile, or looking for strangers to chat up on an instant messengers or IRC. It doesn’t work as well otherwise.

Another poor reason “I see you’re in affiliate marketing. Let’s be friends”.

Erm, my blog is listed there. I have videos up. Would it be too much to take a look at what I do, and invest a minimal amount of time and effort to find out more about me. And then decide if you want to be my friend?

The analogy would be, if you wanted to expand your circle of friends, would you find out more about someone, or would you go out in the street and randomly start talking to strangers?

I can’t say that talking to strangers might not yield results, but I’m fairly sure the hit rate is going to be significantly lower.

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So you’ve made it past the velvet rope, now what?

The love dance doesn’t end once you get in the “inner circle”. If anything, that’s when the work begins.

My focus remains to bring value to the table.

What’s “value”? It’s anything useful that will help the other person - perhaps a relevant blog post, report, video that relates to the person’s interest (personal, business or otherwise).

That’s what search engines do their best to replicate, don’t they? Serve up appropriate results.

Any relationship will improve if “stuff” going in, improves the relationship. If you focus on improving the relationship, you can expect good things to come out of it.

What’re some no-no’s when it comes to building a relationship?

Here are 3 top cardinal sins to avoid:

• Being Irrelevant:Being accepted into a “friends” group means that there is some commonality between you and me. Serving me irrelevant and unrelated information or offers (even if it’s a highly profitable affiliate offer) will kill the relationship some, especially if it’s way out of what I focus on.
• Pulling Favors Too Quickly: Whether physical or virtual, there’s a comfort zone related to what people are willing to do. If we just became friends yesterday, and you send me an email asking to mail all my lists with your offer, I would probably do it if it was compelling, and I believed in the product or service. Asking someone to do something for the sake of doing it (even for the “highest payouts” reason often cited) is a bad practice in my books.
• Following Up: UFO marketers are really irritating. And they really should get their email systems fixed. When they need something from you, they send emails leading off with “Hey buddy! How’s it going? Here’s an offer you want to look at”. And when you send them an email, you don’t get a timely reply (and sometimes don’t get a reply at all). I have a blacklist, it might be good to stay off it. If it’s a consolation, Donald Trump talks about being stood up in his book “How To Get Rich“. How do you deal with these people? Just ignore them and move on, says the Donald.

Being a successful social marketer is not a difficult task. What makes it difficult is when marketers forget some of the simple rules and get themselves into a world of unnecessary difficulty.

The unfortunate part is that these troubles were likely of their own making.

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