Great read here from @briansolis

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Google and the Rise of Facebook November 22, 2010 32 Comments and 1169 Reactions Share385 In 2007 I said that Facebook would be the home page for your personal brand. Now it seems that Facebook is officially setting out to become your homepage period. The other day I logged into Facebook and noticed a new message at the top of the screen. I was presented with a simple way to make Facebook my homepage so that I could see “what’s happening with friends as soon as I opened my browser.”  And, I’m not the only one. Why am I taking the time to let you know that Facebook is making it easy for you to drag and drop Facebook to your home button? Facebook started out as a social network, but it is officially growing into a full-fledged personal OS, where friends and experiences are interconnected inside and outside of Facebook. And, at the center of everything is you. Facebook is a platform where relationships create the construct for the 3C’s of information commerce. The acts of sharing and consuming content in social media represent the social dealings between people and set the stage for interaction and education.But, it is the platform that offers a sandbox for development and also a solid foundation for social architecture. It is the sites that feature Facebook interconnects that weave the fabrics of relationships and the ties and interests that bind us. More than one million websites have integrated with Facebook Platform. 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook. The more we interact with Facebook around the Web through Likes, Shares, and Comments, the more we feed the social effect and the greater the personalization inside Facebook and within its partner sites. Indeed, according to comScore, Facebook traffic soared by 55.2% hitting 151.1 million in October 2010, up from 97.4 visitors at the same time last year. It’s also important to note that Facebook was home to 300 million active denizens last year and now it has a population of more than 550 million. While Google is earning 173.3 million visits in the U.S., Facebook’s trajectory is only gaining in mass and force. And it’s only gaining momentum… - 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day - The average user has 130 friends - People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook Don’t Google Me, Facebook Me Over the years, Google has missed steps to foster a social network of its own, perhaps focusing on a culture of code rather than human culture and behavior. What lies ahead is a quiet war where  your social graph is at stake. Facebook is taking large steps to move you away from Google and toward the social web.  As this new “homepage” request rolls out to active users worldwide, we will see many follow Facebook’s instruction to now make the social graph the starting point to their online experience each and every time they fire up their browser. Doing so changes behavior and teaches us that we can indeed get a little help from our friends by leaning on them for empowerment, entertainment, and enlightenment. We don’t take to Google for insight, we  now take to the stream… What’s materializing before us may in fact represent the beginning of the end of the Google era of Web domination. This is the rise of the Facebook economy (F-commerce) where commerce represents the currency of information and engagement and the net worth of the relationships we nurture. While it doesn’t beat the drum in its march toward online supremacy, Facebook is in fact setting out to help you improve the way you communicate, discover, and share. Since you are at the center of the social egosystem, Facebook is designing products and services that make managing and interacting with your social graph more efficient. From Gmail to Facebook.com > We now have a new messaging platform on its way to us with @facebook.com email addresses yours for the taking. It changes how we think about messages and exchanges and may in fact, encourage us to follow Zuckerberg’s vision away from the traditional inbox. By integrating messaging into one system that connects through multiple clients and devices, Facebook also starts to minimize the value of Google Talk. Does Google turn its 193 million Gmail users out of the inbox and toward a social network…something like say, GoogleMe? Now with its social hooks in MySpace, Google must revisit its human algorithm. From Google.com to Facebook search > The future of search is social and we are already investing in social media optimization (SMO) in addition to SEO. We can’t underestimate Facebook search. Google has long dominated search and the behemoth of a company is showing its age and its weaknesses. Even though Google is experimenting with integrating social into traditional search results, its algorithm is in dire need of a human touch – a human algorithm. At the same time, Facebook is slowly but surely improving its search feature. What used to simply display results within the network, now starts to feature results from around the Web where the displayed list is curated by the actions of your friends – as part of the platform. This will only improve and become more substantial in the coming months. From Google Voice to Facebook + Skype > Google Voice is a valuable service that combines voice, Web, and email. While it’s not getting thunderous roars of attention, Skype and Facebook are introducing the ability to call friends directly from the News Feed. As this integration becomes seamless and demand for such a service gains awareness and pervasiveness, Facebook and Skype will rival Google Voice one day. From Google Latitude to Facebook Places > Google is experimenting with geo location, but Facebook Places is gaining mass adoption. Competing for attention online and offline is helping Facebook merge experiences and channel the activity into the News Feed. From Google Groups to Facebook Groups > Google Groups was once one of the Web greatest hosts for contextual networks, groups organized by interests, events, and causes. Now with the release of the new and improved Facebook Groups, people are forming nicheworks, networks within networks. Their focused activity is enhanced by a dedicated group framework that fosters collaboration and conversation whether the group unites relationships or actions linked by strong, weak, or temporary ties. From Google Docs to Facebook + Microsoft Office > Google Docs are the industry standard for Web collaboration around documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms and artistic canvases. While the world was abuzz with Facebook’s messaging service, Microsoft introduced Office Web Apps as part of the new messaging system. The technology alliance allows people to view Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments with the Office Web Apps directly in Facebook. It just the beginning of something more productive… Twitter Me This…The Facebook Generation And what of Twitter? I believe it is the moon that orbits a networked planet. It turns the tides. It defines its rotation. Twitter is your window to relevance, but Facebook is your homepage for the social Web. According to recent data released by Hitwise, Facebook accounts for 25% of all page views in the U.S. And it’s only going to skyrocket as we interact with content and one another through the Facebook platform. Depending on which data we review, Google is either in Facebook’s rearview mirror or in its sights. Hitwise claims Facebook has already surpassed Google in terms of views. Earlier we stated that comScore has Facebook nipping at Google’s heels. Either way, it’s just a matter of time until Facebook traffic surpasses Google with tenable data supporting the historic milestone. We are witnessing the dawn of the social consumer and their network of preference for the immediate future is Facebook. As I’ve previously observed, the medium is no longer just the message. In social, the medium is the platform and as such, people now represent both the medium and the message where reach is defined by a blending of the social graph, the context of the story and the expansion and contraction of strong, weak, and temporary connections. The Facebook platform serves as the foundation for our Social OS and in turn, we are its driving force. With every action, we trigger an equal and opposite reaction. With our relationships serving as Facebook’s construct, we are realizing that the social graph effect may in fact, spark greater volumes of reaction than Google, or any of us, may have anticipated. Welcome to the Facebook generation…the question is, will you call Facebook home? Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Facebook ___ If you’re looking for a way to FIND answers in social media, consider Engage!: It will help… Read more at www.briansolis.com

Some great tips and resources here from @lissaduty - including some that even I didn't know about. My favorite kind of find!

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The BIG Idea File: Social Everywhere – Simple Steps to Build Your Social Media Presence Posted by Lissa Duty on November 23, 2010 · http://www.momeomagazine.com/?p=6316">View Comments  20tweetsretweet When you think about social media do you immediately think of the big four – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube? However, there are lots of other social networking opportunities available that will help you get the word out about your business. When you create a social media presence you want to include some of these other sites in your social media plan. The key is finding the social networking platforms that fit your business. #1: Directory Listing Sites Every business should go out to the directory listing sites and claim their business. Many have a place where you can list your business hours, website, and your customers can review your business. Don’t just think of reviews as negative. Customers like to give positive reviews for a job well done. Remember, whether you use social media or not, your business is still being talked about online. You need to be involved in the conversation. Yahoo Local (www.local.yahoo.com/) Best of The Web (www.local.botw.org/) Bing Local (www.bing.com/local/) Google Places (www.google.com/places) HotFrog.com (www.hotfrog.com) Merchant Circle (www.merchantcircle.com/corporate/) Yelp (www.yelp.com) Urban Spoon (www.urbanspoon.com) #2: Article Marketing Sites Writing articles and blogging is an important piece of social media and is one of the best methods for branding yourself as an expert in your field. After creating an article or blog post, submit them to FREE article and social bookmarking sites. Go Articles (www.goarticles.com) Ezine Articles (www.ezinearticles.com) Article Directory (www.articledirectory.com) Digg (www.digg.com) Delicious (www.delicious.com/) StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com/) Reddit (www.reddit.com) When you submit to the article sites, you cannot be self-promoting, such as listing your business name, your name, website in the body of the post. However, you can list those in the biographical information. It takes some effort and in some case revisions to get approved, but once you get through the red tape you will be on a roll submitting content. On some of the social bookmarking sites you cannot submit your own article content. You’ll need to find a strategic partner and submit their content for them and in return have them submit yours. #3: Event Listing Sites If do you do public speaking, or host workshops and webinars, event listing sites are the best way to expand your audience and brand yourself as an expert. Plus taking your online connections to an offline venue, builds the relationship. Plan Cast (www.plancast.com) Zvents (www.zvents.com/) Event Sync (www.eventsync.com/) EventBrite (www.eventbrite.com) #4: Niche and Upcoming Social Media Networks There are many other Social Media sites out there and new networks are developing all the time. Bizzy (www.bizzy.com) Bizzy is a newer social networking site that is growing and expanding to new cities/states. Get in on the ground floor, if they are in your city and grow with them. FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com) Friendfeed is quite similar to Twitter. You can set your GoogleReader to feed to your FriendFeed account, which you can setup to post to Twitter as well. Plaxo (www.plaxo.com) Plaxo is in essence an online address book. It syncs with your Outlook. It has been making some updates and has a social networking feature. You can post status updates to your network on Plaxo and get a weekly birthday reminder email of connections who have birthdays coming up. NameChk (www.namechk.com/). The NameChk site will let you see all the social networking sites where your username is available or taken to ensure your branding is universal across the board. I recommend only registering for the popular or growing sites. Don’t be overwhelmed by all the websites out there. Take it one website at a time. You cannot do it all of overnight, but once you have mastered one, add another one into the mix. Eventually, you will be using them all and won’t even realize it. Social Media can be time consuming, but in the long run is worth the effort! If you find you have difficulty mastering some of the technology, there are lots of social media professionals that would be willing to help you out and get your accounts set up for you. Special Thanks to @AnaLuciaNovak for her added contribution to this blog post. Your HotFrog.com find and share is another great example of your social media knowledge and willingness to share resources with fellow professionals! Read more at www.momeomagazine.com

Three people I really enjoy. @AmyOscar, @ikepigott and @asouthernyankee. If you read the post, you'll see why

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The Angel, The Brain and The Hot Mess Posted by Shelly Kramer on November 21, 2010 · http://www.v3im.com/?p=2133">View Comments   Share You know what happens. You’re working, kind of. Or at least you should be. Then you pop over to TweetDeck to see what’s going on with your pals on Twitter or hop over to Facebook, just for a jiffer. Then you see an interesting link (or 27) and pretty soon, it’s over. I blame social media. You’re pulled into the interwebs and all hopes of getting anything accomplished (work, that is) are dashed. Too bad somebody already wrote the book on it, because I’m a professional Internet lurker + Time Waster. But I refuse to believe that’s all bad. For instance, one day, I saw a random tweet complimenting a writer on a beautiful post. I was intrigued, popped on over to check it out, and before you an say “lickety-split” I’m sucked into what may well have been the most beautiful piece of writing I’ve ever seen. And, in no time, I’ve come to be great friends with Amy Oscar, the writer of that piece (and many more), read her stuff if you know what’s good for you. She’s an angel. You’ll see what I mean. I few months ago, through random Facebook interaction, I discovered Ike Pigott, who might just be the smartest guy I know. It was actually his amazing post on the dangers of Friending Strangers on Facebook that hooked me and, naturally, I’ve been stalking him ever since. He has a way of writing that not only speaks to my heart, but engages my brain in ways that send cool neurons firing all over the place. Kind of like what happens when you eat chocolate, only with less calories. Jason Falls called him “The thinking man’s PR wizard” and that’s pretty apt. I’d like to amend that to read “The thinking person’s writer” – maybe Jason won’t mind that so much. Damn, but it makes me wish I could do that. Write like Ike, that is. Today, when I was supposed to be working on the book that Wiley is paying me to write, well, you guessed it. I got sucked into Twitter. Again. This time I discovered the Hot Mess, that inspired the title of this post, Gordon McCleary, and all because of a random Tweet that said his blog was hilarious. Well, I’m bored. I need some hilarity. In fact, I consider it medicinal. So, off I went. Gordon doesn’t know me (yet) but he had me at not only the fact that he’s a Yankee living in the south, but that he is, apparently, inspired to write by getting out and experiencing people, places and things. I’m like that. And I’m also a transplanted Yankee, which is a whole ‘nother story. I’m constantly ridiculed by my family and friends (for a variety of reasons), but many related to how I discover my blog content. Everywhere I go, I’m inspired by something new. I feel as if I’m literally tripping over great content. Ideas come a mile a minute and, as a result, I’m often (annoyingly) engaged in the process of snapping pictures, taking notes and getting all crazy documenting things so that I can write about them later. Gordon apparently suffers from the same syndrome. Somehow, I knew I would like him – from the moment I saw the word “hilarious.” So he had me early on. And then I dove into his post called Yankee Musings – A Hot Mess about his trip to the Winn Dixie, jamming to James Brown and multitasking – all of which ultimately lead the cashier to call him a “hot mess.” Clearly, he is. And clearly, since the only words that can ever be accurately described to describe MY life are “hot mess,” we are kindred spirits. My work here is done. Consider yourselves introduced to three amazing people. Find them, read their stuff, engage your heart, your brain and your sense of humor. Then send me some cupcakes to say thank you. Read more at www.v3im.com

Ever read a blog and can't find the "subscribe" button quickly enough? Well, I subscribed to Ike's blog a long time ago, and posts like this are why. Read it. I predict you'll enjoy Ike as much as I do. #thatisall

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Path That Leads Nowhere? 3tweetsRe-tweet It’s alright to have a high-minded concept now and again. It’s als

A Path That Leads Nowhere? 3tweetsRe-tweet It’s alright to have a high-minded concept now and again. It’s also okay to be occasionally right. But is it okay to be right for the wrong reasons? The Road Less Traveled I saw a promotional post touting a new social network called “Path.” Path wants to beat Facebook by being smaller. You see, Facebook is just too much, and there are too many people, and you can’t possibly know them all that well, and there are people who aren’t even people who you might not want to share things with. I get that, I really do. Path will limit you to 50 friends instead of 5,000, because that limits it to who really matters: Path allows you to capture your life’s most personal moments and share them with the 50 close friends and family in your life who matter most. Because your personal network is limited to your 50 closest friends and family, you can always trust that you can post any moment, no matter how personal. Path is a place where you can be yourself. I agree completely. Yet Path is wrong on two very important counts. Done With Dunbar Path has tapped into a very interesting sentiment, that we’re not all ready for a totally public world, and that there’s safety in the familiar. The idea of sharing with a smaller number of people is enticing, to say the least. Where they lose me is with their attempt to use science as part of the sale. Again, from Path’s introductory post: We chose 50 based on the research of Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar, who has long suggested that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships that the human brain can sustain at any given time.  Dunbar’s research also shows that personal relationships tend to expand in factors of roughly 3. So while we may have 5 people whom we consider to be our closest friends, and 20 whom we maintain regular contact with, 50 is roughly the outer boundary of our personal networks. These are the people we trust, whom we are building trust with, and whom we consider to be the most important and valued people in our lives. Actually, it would have been better for them to be honest: “We chose 50 based on popular misinterpretations of the research by Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar, who has long suggested that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships that the human brain can sustain at any given time under a given tribe-centric circumstance. There… that’s a little better. The alleged Dunbar Number has been pitched around so much by social media knuckleheads that you don’t even need to go to the original research. If you did, you’d be astonished at the game of Telephone that has radically altered the popular meaning. Dunbar’s hypothesis, never proven, is that there is an upper boundary for our notion of community, based on the size of our cerebral cortex. (I’m talking humanity, not our own individual brains.) Dunbar’s idea is that the neocortex limits us to a complete understanding of a community of a given size. The “complete understanding” is the key here. He did not say you could only have 150 friends… he said that 150 is the highest number of people you could know where you also knew all of the ways in which they interacted and knew each other. Simply put, the Dunbar Number is the size of the high school graduating class where everyone can still be all up in everyone else’s business, and know who slept with whom, and which kids shakes down the others for help with their Geometry homework. Path gets it wrong, horribly. Paging Sybil I grew up in Idaho, and have a few friends from that time in my life. There are a couple dozen people from my church on my Facebook. I know some really clever communicators and I share things of interest to them, and they reciprocate. I’m connected to dozens of my close friends still doing great work for the American Red Cross, and with those who I’ve trained and trained with in Kung Fu. But Path wants me to have 50 friends. Period. I think it’s a mistake to try and cater to “the real Ike,” especially when half of my friends first knew me as Isaac. Yes, I am a complicated person, but aren’t we all? Oversharing is a real issue, and it’s easy to turn people off with pictures of the vacation nobody cares about, or photos of the family members that we didn’t know you had. And it’s also a mistake to assume that my closest 50 Best Friends will all know or care, either. Because they are as fractured and multiply-enabled as I am. The Isaac who studies Kung Fu and the Ike who writes about communications does indeed overlap with the Isaac who has watched every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer — but will I need another social network for just the people who understand my analysis of Buffy’s rhetorical banter prior to delivering spinning heel-kicks? Um… no. There is only one me, but there are many parts to me. Why not just let me share those parts with the people who care about that part of me? Redundancy, Once More With Feeling Which begs the question: Why do I need Path? I can already divide the different parts of Me among different lists. Facebook Lists are easy to set up, and I can direct church-related stuff to the flock, family pictures to the immediate family, and articles about failed social media networks to those who care. The Holy Grail of social media will be discovering how to bake Relevance into the system. But until that pre-packaged recipe arrives on my shelf, I can still cook that from scratch for my friends, by being smarter about how I share what with whom. And odds are, you can too. Path is a great idea, wrapped up in justifications so misguided and incorrect that I may just have to recommend the paths more traveled. Read more at occamsrazr.com

Seriously don't miss funny. Thanks to @fjfonseca for the share.

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#SoMe Ask your agency: Episode 1 You can download here this poster in glorious A0 format [PDF; released under a CC License 3.0 by-nc-nd] Read more at zargon.me

Come join us. If you dare.

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Sneak Peek: Social Media for Business Posted by Shelly Kramer on October 12, 2010 · View Comments  12Share I’m doing a webinar series with my smart and sassy friend, Erika Napoletano, Head Redhead at Redhead Writing. And yes, we are the geeky girls you might not have paid attention to in high school. But all that’s changed now. We’ve got the goods. And how. And we’re partnering with our friends at iThinkBigger and we aim to deliver to small business owners, Marketers and PR pros more tips, tools and information than they can shake a stick at. Never mind put to good use right away in their businesses or for their clients. If we could show you a way to get your brand to listen, hear, connect with your customers and build a group of people who will share your brand message for you – would you listen? There are no strings. No easy monthly payments of $29.99. No books to read or crap to wade through. No Ginsu knives and no spam in your inbox. Just relevant information, served up in an easy to understand format, with instantly implementable solutions for you and your business or clients. Just a single webinar that will let you know if you’re ready to work smarter instead of harder. Join us this Friday at 3pm EST/2pm CST/1pm MST/12 noon PST for a complimentary Sneak Peek Webinar on how your business can use social media effectively and with REAL results. In this no-fluff session, you’ll learn: * Resources you can use TODAY to improve your ROI on Twitter * How to identify influencers on Twitter and bring them into your circle * The importance of inbound marketing techniques to your business * Five simple, yet startling statistics that mean your current marketing techniques are most likely not working. In our world on Planet Geek, we call that a FAIL. It’s free – you have nothing to lose. We don’t waste anyone’s time by teaching sessions we wouldn’t attend ourselves. Register today. Interested in the entire Social Media for Business series? Click here to learn more about the sessions. Early bird pricing is in effect until 10/14, so get on it. Erika and I are pretty well known for being gals who don’t tolerate much BS and who tell it like it is. In this webinar series, we’ve done the work for you, and all you need to do is participate, get the information you need to fast track your social media efforts, and thank us when it works (and it will) by sending lots and lots of Red Velvet Cupcakes. Read more at www.v3im.com

This post was written by @brentnau - an SEO jedi who works with @berniepiekarski at SMT. They are awesome, and you should check them out at http://smtusa.com

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Survey Finds Social Media Impacts Search Engine Rankings Tuesday, September 28, 2010 A recent study, The Impact of Social Media on Search, by BtoB and Business.com took a look at how business-to-business (B2B) marketers are integrating social media with search engine marketing (SEM). The study polled 464 B2B marketers to see how they are using social media to improve their search engine rankings. Whether social media had an impact on their search engine performance? 44% stated it had a positive impact 28% stated neutral 27% stated they did not know 1% stated it had a negative impact One of the interesting things in the study is that 41% of the respondents were not currently measuring the impact from social media on their search engine rankings. Those that were, used such metrics as organic search engine rankings, number of inbound links, search volume for brand or keyword phrases, and search engine marketing conversion rates. The top metrics B2B marketers were using to measure the effectiveness of their social media campaign: Visits to their web site (54%) Number of Fans/Followers and “Likes” (48%) Number of company or product mentions (35%) Number of retweets (28%) It was also noted that 25% of B2B marketers were NOT measuring their social media campaigns. Establishing your metrics should always be included into your social media game plan before launching your campaign. To help set up your social media game plan, you should check out the informative infographic from B2Bento that provides a quickstart guide to social media for business. Read more at www.smtusa.com