As many have suspected, Google is working to develop social media into its search engine business model. I commented on a blog last month in which naysayers were claiming that Google had missed the social media bandwagon and that Facebook was going to crush them etc etc. Myself and one other poster pointed out a key thing about Google though- they have all that valuable information. Truth be told it is a lot less time consuming and arduous to create a social media platform than it is to index billions of webpages. So if anyone has the upper-hand going forward its Google. By combining social media elements to search engines Google is bringing together two of the most common online activites- searching and being social- into one platform and frankly they’ve done the hard work first. Communities of common interest can easily form around a new engine like this once it hits the market, and I’m pretty excited about it. I just pumped my fist again.

Google is being supported by Myspace and a host of other platforms including Linkedin in its efforts to socialize searching. Linkedin also recently synergized its platform with Twitter, making users of both services able to update both at once by cross filing. The new service should be available in a few days. Notably absent from Google’s growing coalition of social media allies is Facebook, who many feel is working to develop their own search engine service to their model. What an epic standoff that may become. Social media search engines will create another exciting chapter of the internet as we move forward, and businesses, schools, private citizens and public personalities will be forced to pay attention. Real-time information exchange and perhaps just as importantly idea-exchanges will be facilitated by these kinds of platforms, which is why Rupert Murdoch blocking Google from News Corp pages is just another example of how utterly closed minded and ignorant the Australian media tycoon is.

Murdoch recently suggested a full ban on the search engine as he has long accused them of being a parasite who feeds on his news tit without his companies profiting. Frankly it wouldn’t make a difference to me if he does, I can’t imagine any critically thinking person seriously referencing Fox News as a credible source. And if you yourself are on the fence about that just watch the documentary Outfoxed. If Murdoch really goes ahead with this he’ll be moving his media empire slowly back in time as the internet continues to develop and grow, having a continued impact on society. Google is one of the major players in that development whether he likes it or not and as their new intention to incorporate social media demonstrates they’re clearly thinking about the future. A future with or without Murdoch’s muckracking sensationalist “news”.

A post of mine from earlier this month explored how many smaller and medium sized businesses have had difficulties embracing social media as a profit generating tool. In fact, many companies have banned all social media from being used by employees in what I still think is an example of poor business practice- with companies working against the forces of nature rather than with them. Then this morning in my RSS feed is an article from the Canadian press about how “the savviest companies have instead mobilized their cyber social butterflies as a key part of business strategy”. These cyber social butterflies are frequently younger people who bring a naturally intuitive skill set to job. According to Alexandra Samuel of the University of British Columbia it’s because “They understand social media culture, because it’s actually the culture they live in”

While the savvy companies embracing social media in Vancouver and other major cities are keen to engage their existing and potential clientele through the medium, it’s not just as simple as hiring 20 year olds to carpet bomb the public on every platform you can find. The platforms themselves that we use are beginning to show stratification and diverging social patterns that may impact your engagement strategy. New research by the Nielson Group, explored in an earlier Senses post from Jordana, shows that social stratification is beginning to be reflected in our social media platforms. To sum up the breakdown given in a CNN story about the findings, Myspace is blue collar, Facebook is upscale suburban and Highly Educated while Twitter and Linkedin are elitist. In fact According to the Nielson findings “…almost 38 percent of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year” and there is a strong connection between that site and Facebook with many users having active pages on both.

Facebook has of course become an explosive phenomenon, but what I find so interesting about the platform is just how agile the company has been in finding revenue streams. It has come to dominate the social media spectrum and has very subtly yet aggressively from the onset commercialized and monetized the site progressively through apps, surveys, and now more direct forms of advertising. Something that took Google a few years to figure out (how to make money on the internet) Facebook seems to have figured out (and every angle) relatively briskly. Major marketing and advertising groups have taken notice. Last month at Ad Week’s Social Ad Summit in NY it was recognized that “Facebook is one of the only social networks whose users are becoming more engaged (and at a pretty strong rate), giving it a huge advantage when selling ads to agencies/marketers” It’s still growing, and not only that, those who are using it are becoming more engaged.

These two trends are crack cocaine to marketing executives, who have been invited into the fold by Facebook through “Owned Properties” and other advertising and marketing products that the site offers. Owned Properties are essentially Facebook pages started by larger companies that capitalize on this deeper engagement trend by creating constant dialogue or activities with users. For a list of some examples of these owned properties go here. I see it like a sort of mobile that hangs above a babies crib, keeping us constantly fascinated and engaged. Where I’m most interested in social media for profit (because wasn’t it about just being social and connecting with people at one point?) is in the realm of small and medium sized businesses. I find the corporate uses make me feel like I’m being talked down to, literally like I’m a baby that needs a new toy or a new game to draw me into a brand or product. Startups and smaller businesses don’t seem to have this kind of frivolous tone, they engage in a more frank and respectful tone which I think demonstrates the more respectful position they take in regards to new and valued consumers- as opposed to major brand who view us more like cattle or toddlers with money. This psychology of advertising traces itself back to the very beginnings of the Freudian/Bernays rooted PR philosophy of the early 20th century that I sincerely hoped and continue to hope Social Media can help us break out of. But like all natural phenomenon, geological, biological or sociological there exists an ebb and flow.

Where social media once empowered consumers to demand better from producers, putting large companies on their heels (read Groundswell) and armed small companies with an affordable tool to engage mass population, we may be witnessing a swing of the pendulum back to the major advertisers. Interesting that they’re now using younger and younger people to engage the consumer. It’s like an accelerated dialectical info-materialism. A generation is created by social media, and then they find employment harnessing the power of the new tools that defined them. I just sounded like a total Marxist. Go capitalism! (Never end a social media blog on a socialist note)

If you’re a small or medium sized business and you have questions about how you can successfully adopt social media into your business and marketing plan, get in touch with us at Thirdi. It’s what we do. It’s what we love.

I hate job hunting. I don’t mind the actual hunting part. And if I make it that far, I don’t really mind the job interview, the getting hired or the receiving a steady paycheque parts either. What I hate is the amount of work involved to write or fine tune the resume, concoct a persuasive and grammatically correct cover letter and gather work samples together into a visually pleasing format. So I was quite pleased to find out that now you can find a job just by writing a message that’s, oh, about 140 characters long.

Yes, Twitter, and other social networks, are the newest way to get your butt off the dole and back into an office where you belong. Most of us already know about LinkedIn as a way to connect with potential employers, or employees. And since so many work peers are connected on Facebook, that’s a natural way to put out the word about your current employment status, or lack thereof. But Twitter? Really? Do people honestly think that whipping off a 10 second “cover letter” tweet will find them a job? Apparently they do, and they might even be right.

Experts always say that networking is the best way to find a job. So online social networks, where it’s easy to have a much wider group of contacts, are bound to help in your search. You might not land a job or interview from that little tweet, but it could certainly get you in the door. And clearly, lots of people believe. If you do a search on Twitter for: “looking for job” you’ll see pages and pages of tweets by people that are doing just that. You’ll also likely find links to job-resource website, job listings and maybe even a link to a story about how to use a lemonade stand to find a job.

Once you find that dream job, though, you might want to ease off on the social networking. These days, stories abound about people losing their jobs for innocent Facebook transgressions like referring to the President of the U.S. as “O-dumb-a” or taking a moment away from your job as an EMT to post a photo of the murder victim currently riding in your ambulance. Okay, so maybe they weren’t all that innocent…

Privacy. Many believe it is a thing of the past, like horses. Some believe it is simply reserved for the outrageously wealthy, Masonic Lodges, and the Pope. But we in Canada are fortunate enough to have a government that believes we still have privacy, and have given Facebook a serious rap of the knuckles for violating it.

The young social media giant is accused of having “serious privacy gaps” according to our privacy commissioner, and is in direct violation of Canadian law. But AS IF you didn’t already know that. I mean why would they offer all those social media apps and things? For fun? You think it’s all about fun? You’re telling me that every time you clicked on that app or filled out some personal info that you didn’t think you were tagged in a demographic consumer study. I mean COME ON, why do social media sites like Facebook exist? For our amusement alone? The Canadian government is just catching up with this now? Do I have to say COME ON again? It was noted almost 20 years ago that the age of the private citizen was over as the Globe and Mail’s Mathew Ingram reminds us. Talk about bureaucratic lag.

Third parties have been sniffing in our garbage and peeking in our windows for years. Our subscriptions to magazines, our coupons sent in from Captain Crunch boxes, and phone calls received at 9pm asking us how we felt about random colours and phrases? If you were born after 1990 you probably think that’s just the way the world has always been. And I believe the CEO of Facebook was. Which perhaps speaks to the company’s feelings on privacy. But how else are these crucial third parties supposed to know what we want? This is their way of asking us, they mean well but are too shy to approach us face to face. They only want to make us happy. Don’t you want to be happy?

The fact still remains that we willingly put this information up about ourselves, and we have become quite accepting of the fact that we are on CCTV cameras throughout our cities, with our complete personal information in numerous consumer databases, numerous government databases, and are all renters of linkedin, Facebook, Myspace, and other profiles for anyone to see with absolute ease. If I don’t want someone to know something about me I don’t put it online.  That being said- everything about me is available online or through a third party.  So what on earth the privacy commissioner hopes to do besides make a name for herself in the altruistic cause of protecting our non-existent privacy I say good luck. I’m glad there’s a modern day Don Quixote looking out for us all.