So I might be a little late, but recently I created a Facebook account. As a previous Myspace user, it is easy to become comfortable with a particular social media network; because it is so easy to stay in touch with friends and family. The problem develops when your “friends” switch social networks or start to use multiple networks, as is the case with Myspace and Facebook.

The first thing I noticed within the Facebook platform were the similarities in features made the switch easier for me. Status updates, picture albums, and connecting with new friend’s remains the same between both Myspace and Facebook, however Facebook’s method of advertising puts them a step ahead from a marketer’s standpoint.

Facebook embeds their advertisements within the different pages of profiles and change as the user browses. One particularly unique function is that Facebook allows the user to “Like” or “Dislike” an ad and select the reason why the ad was unappealing. This type of information is invaluable to advertisers and can play a major role in allocating marketing dollars to the right audience or to target different demographics. Once you “Dislike” an ad, Facebook will serve you a new one but never the one that was marked disliked.

One of the most interesting concepts today is the inclusion of real-time web results. Web indexes from search engines update at astounding rates. It normally takes quite a long time to populate results from the entire web and to index results for searchers; but getting “real-time” results has been challenging. The immediacy of real-time data has been created primarily by Twitter.

The explosive popularity of Twitter is the best example of this “real-time” results opportunity. Twitter produces millions of tweets every minute on any subject you can imagine. Twitter lets the public express their opinions and thoughts in a way that has never before been possible.
 
Shortly after Bing launched, an experiment was conducted with the team at Twitter. A small number of “celebrities” tweets were incorporated as part of Bing search result. Here is a great example of real-time results using the keyword “Ryan Seacrest.”

What if Bing could index the Twitter stream and make it available to seachers? At The Web 2.0 Summit, Bing announced that working with the “real-time pros” over at Twitter. There now is access to the publics Twitter feeds and a beta of  Bing Twitter search has been rolled out in the US. Instead of the usual descriptions that are used for links, Bing and Twitter decided to give a “social media caption” to display what people are saying about those links.

Most of us don’t have the time to update one of our social media profiles, let alone all of them. Myspace has recently implemented a two-way syndicated function between Myspace status updates and Twitter tweets to assist in making multiple social media updates easier.

This application works both ways. It updates whichever social media profile status update or tweet that is the most current. So if you’re on either Myspace or Twitter, you have the option of dual updates. Users can decide if they want status updates to be one-way or two-way.

When users post a status update on MySpace, it syndicates to their Twitter feed. Twitter will show “MySpace” as the service the tweet originated from, similar to its display of TweetDeck, Twitterfeed, and other services that allow users to update their streams away from the site.

So far, MySpace’s Twitter sync is in beta. Myspace said that they will be adding other networks soon. For now, you can try out the Twitter sync in your MySpace profile by inputting your Twitter credentials under the “sync” menu in account settings. Once the accounts have been synced, all you have to do is simply update your status on MySpace as you normally would (from the Home page, Status and Mood page, or your mobile phone).

Facebook has recruited yet another Google AdWords executive after recently receiving a $200 million subsidy at a $10 billion valuation. It’s been speculated that the social media champion could hit $400-500 million in revenue this year as sited by The Business Insider.

Facebook hired ex-Google Adwords executive Grady Burnett to help beef up their self-service advertising unit. What can he bring to the table? Optimistically, Grady’s experience from both DoubleClick and Google will aid him to develop an improved self-service advertising platform for Facebook. Facebook has been steadily pulling in higher amounts of advertising revenue.

Facebook has said that their advertisers are beginning to see an increasing return on their investment. On the contrary, advertisers have been discussing how social media sites like Facebook and Myspace have not been generating conversions. Expectantly, advertisers need to see the return in capital in order to spread the word about how well demographic targeting deliveries results. Generating converting traffic is a goal that Grady can hopefully help his new Facebook team achieve.    

There is no doubt that Facebook has the audience. They have advertisers ready and willing to allocate funds toward their network because of their highly targeted demographic. But, now its time for Facebook to determine what is going to help advertisers get conversions. Once Facebook overcomes this challenge, it will help obtain new advertisers as well as retain current ones in their network. Some advice from a Google mogul may help; now they have it.

As business owners continue to learn and accept social media, urgency of branding awaits. The more social media is exposed to business owners on a personal level, the more acceptable and suitable it should become for their businesses to engage in these channels. The popularity of social media is too hard to ignore. But as business owners are starting to engage, one frequent incident they may encounter is the unavailability of acquiring their brand terms for page/profile names.

It’s an even greater challenge to try and have the same branding page name throughout all social media networks. To avoid this, business owners should look for emerging channels and preserve their branding names in new social media networks as they arise. If a business owner feels that social media is important to their business or that it could be, they should look into the availability of some of their branding terms.

So log-on. A good practice would be to go into Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Twitter and begin to create accounts and get a feel for what’s still available in the order of your branding terms and try to create a “super-user” name in all the networks. This shows a strong branding presence and could precisely connect users to your profile across other networks.

Even if you don’t have immediate plans for setting up social media profile pages, you still need to secure your brand. If not, your competitors and venture opportunists will. If finding time to put into social media networks is your biggest obstacle, Morevisibility offers these services.

Twitter’s on the rise, Facebook has reached 200 million users, and Myspace continues to try and keep up. The quick user interaction via Twitter and Facebook rapidly leaves Myspace trailing. But when it comes down to social media marketing, Myspace is still at the top. After partnering with Google and recent upgrades of Myspace Mobile, Myspace aims to accommodate today’s swift social network users, but they’re still playing catch-up.

Everyone’s Tweeting. Companies are promoting themselves, while big corporations use Twitter as a huge instant survey on what their consumers think. The volume is there in terms of traffic for advertising but are Twitter users planning to click on ads while tweeting? The majority of Twitter updates are from done directly from cell phones. Consequently, the vast amounts of tweeters aren’t viewing a web page. Phone updates takes users away from websites and clicking onto other webpages. Continuous Twitter updates and one on one relationships can be overwhelming for users; especially those who are used to the web page experience adopted from the Myspace world of social networking. Single webpages may be the saving grace for Myspace.

Facebook has been the biggest influence for Myspace advancements. If it wasn’t for Facebook and its application updates, some Myspace users may not have lasted as long as they have. It doesn’t seem to matter what applications Myspace migrates from Facebook, because Facebook still takes the lead with reaching 200 million users who are escalating in age, aside from their college users; but these 200 million users are hesitant to click on ads. Facebook’s user increase hasn’t converted into major advertising revenues. Facebook experienced a fifty percent decrease in the amount of users that clicked on ads from 2007 to 2008. Advertisers are just beginning to grasp the user behavior of Facebook and are shifting their focus on branding as a result.

Myspace does stand alone on one thing that has been taken lightly; the Self Service advertising platform that they offer users. SelfServe by MySpace is for display ads on profile pages. Google has a partnership agreement with Myspace which allows advertisers in Google to create ads for Myspace. This agreement had no influence on Myspace’s ad service platform which is similar to Google Adwords. However MySpace platform is geared toward building display ads, not text ads. This similar ad arrangement conveys the same user experience with ads as they do within the Google Adwords search engine. Myspace might be on to something, particularly given that they exclusively use this ad platform layout.

In order for Myspace to stay relevant in social media, it has to be less time consuming. Viewing photo albums and having to comment individually on your friend’s page will begin to push away users who have become accustomed to the quick phone updates and interactions available through Twitter and Facebook. Myspace is dominant in social media advertising, but in order to remain prevalent, the trend of user interaction has to be considered. Users want quick and that’s what Twitter gives them.