Let’s play a little guessing game. We’ll start with an easy one – The founder of which groundbreaking social networking site turned down a $30 million acquisition offer by Google in 2006, an amount that, if paid in shares, would be worth approximately $1 billion today? Okay, now another one – Which social networking site has become a punchline due to the face it more or less invented the genre, then got its butt kicked by a bunch of imitators? And, lastly, a trickier one – which social networking site has over 115 million registered users and is still one of the top 100 global websites based on traffic?

Of course the answer to all those questions is Friendster. Everyone’s first social networking site, Friendster’s meteoric rise and even faster fall is the stuff of legend, and jokes. But much to the surprise of many, I’m sure, the site still gets over 61 million unique visitors a month and is among the most visited sites on the planet. And that’s probably why Friendster just sold for $100 million dollars, to Malaysia’s MOL Global.

Those numbers, and that payday, raise an interesting question. Who the hell uses that site? If nobody you know still rocks a Friendster account, it’s just because you live on the wrong continent. The top 4 countries accessing Friendster are: the Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea. Yep, apparently Friendster has enjoyed a massive resurgence in Asia, mainly among teenagers.

Oh, and one last question for the guessing game – What’s the 5th country on that list? The United States. Which means that somewhere in the vicinity of a million Americans are still hooked on Friendster. But can you imagine what’ll happen when those folks discover MySpace? It’s going to blow their minds.

If any of your FBBFs (Facebook Best Friends) from the New York area recently disappeared from the social networking site, you can stop wondering why. They were a sex offender. Well, it’s also possible they just decided they have better things to do than spend all their time on Facebook. Either way, you’re better off without them.

Thousands of registered sex offenders from New York state were just given the boot from Facebook and MySpace. It’s the result of a new law that recently came into being. The Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (aka e-STOP), requires the state’s 30,000 or so registered sex offenders to inform the state of their home, email and social networking addresses.

Those who set up new social network accounts, or continue to use existing ones, without disclosing their info to the government face new felony charges if caught. Despite that threat, only 27% of those 30,000 provided authorities with an email address. And only 10% revealed a Facebook or MySpace account. According to a government spokesman, those 22,000ish sex offenders who didn’t divulge that information are either in jail, homeless, don’t have internet access or “chose not to respond”. It’s that last possibility that raises a few alarm bells.

But the e-STOP law did succeed in rounding up the accounts of 3,533 registered sex offenders, and having Facebook and MySpace terminate them. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, sex offenders prefer Facebook over MySpace by almost a two to one margin. There was no immediate indication how many were using Friendster.

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.

It’s always interesting to see how people believe that the Internet will somehow be this utopia where all the problems of the physical world are transcended.  What is this, 1996? The Internet is definitely an empowering, magnificent place, but it is also dirty, corrupt, and downright dangerous.  It should be no surprise to anyone the results proclaimed in this recent CNN news story bemoaning how social networks are beginning to reflect real-life social stratas.

In the story, reporter Breeanna Hare details how the users of MySpace and Facebook differ: MySpace users are generally poorer and less educated, while Facebook users were usually highly educated and affluent.  The smartest and wealthiest of the popular networks was LinkedIn.  These results should really surprise no one – MySpace is the grab-all of social networks with its open member policy and amateurish page customizations.  Facebook and LinkedIn though have historical roots as targeting particular population segments – Facebook of college students, and LinkedIn of professionals.  No wonder then that despite Facebook long having opened its doors to everyone, it still has a predominantly “higher-class” of members.

You could say that Facebook is more attractive to the more affluent sectors because those with higher incomes tend to be have better access to technology, education, and therefore are more likely to be technically savvy – all factors which imply a distaste for sites full of annoying ads and downright gag-worthy member pages full of crazy graphics, nauseating color schemes, and music.  As one person in the article put it, MySpace  “… is like, ghetto.”

What’s more thought-provoking about this article is that it also details how friends lists show that users tend to stick to their own racial group, with users of mixed backgrounds often acting as the link between groups – something that the article says reflects real life.  So does this mean the hopes for an Internet of openness and freedom from racial and socio-economic boundaries is just a pipe dream? I would like to not think so.  In my opinion, sites like Facebook and MySpace may strongly reflect our personal inclinations in choosing social mates, but it still allows us to connect with others outside of our comfort zone.  Hasn’t everyone connected with at least one person that they normally would never socialize with, or reunited with old friends? Social networks still achieve their goal of connecting people around the world. It’s not time yet to give up on the dream of a discrimination free Internet, just perhaps to be more realistic about it.

A new report conducted by the British telecom regulator Ofcom indicates that young people are losing interest in social networking. Among the 15-24 age group, the number of people with a profile on social networking sites fell 5% in the last year and a half, down to 50%. It was the only age group who’s rate of participation actually fell in that time period.

But why? Is it that they’ve collectively decided that concerts, hooking up and keg parties are somehow more fun than sending out a 140 character update about what they had for lunch? Well, maybe. But the report indicates that this group is still spending just as much time online as they always have. Instead, the answer may lie in another finding of the report; for Britons, social networking is growing fastest among the 35-54 year old demographic. Their usage rose 8% in the last year and a half, with 35% now having a profile at a social networking site. And really, nothing kills the fun for young people faster than a bunch of people their parents’ age showing up at the party.

According to that same report, Twitter’s appeal is still growing exponentially, even among the 15-24 year olds, but it’s not the same kind of destination-site as a MySpace or Facebook. So the question is, if North American young people follow suit, will a new young-people-only social network rise to fill in the gap? MySpace and Facebook were that once, but with their age, and broadening demographic appeal, they’re hardly the new, parent-free thing that young people flock to.

Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are all massively popular, and enjoy enough press and attention to make Brangelina jealous. But none of them are the biggest social networking site in the world. That honour goes to…wait for it…QZone (see it translated by Google here). Now some of you probably do know all about QZone, and more of you likely have some knowledge of QQ. But for most of us over here in North America, it’s a surprise to learn that QZone has somewhere in the range of 200-300 million users. QZone is from China, and over there it dominates along with its sister service, the instant messaging program QQ.

And that’s just one of the interesting factoids you can learn if you check out this cool map of social network popularity around the world. Other highlights:

• Facebook does what Napoleon couldn’t: It has pretty much taken over Europe, to add to its world #2 ranking.
• MySpace has jumped the shark, landed and then been eaten by the shark: The only spot in the world where it’s the #1 social networking site is Guam.
• V Kontakte is tops in both Russia and Facebook-ripping-off: Actually I shouldn’t say that. For all I know V Kontakte came first and Facebook stole their design.
• Canada and the U.S. are not the same: Facebook and MySpace are #1 and #2 respectively in both countries. But #3 in the U.S. is Twitter, while we prefer Flickr up here in the Great White North.

Now I should point out that there is some controversy about the user numbers detailed in that map above. Everyone agrees QZone is huge, but there’s some disagreement about just how huge. So there is some small chance that, right now, Facebook is still #1, and that my headline is a filthy lie. But if so, at the rate QZone is growing, it’ll be on top very, very soon.