I continue to see articles concerning AOL’s slow implosion in the press.  The latest in the salvo concerns the management at AOL consideration of shedding Bebo.  AOL bought Bebo for $850 million two years ago, while they were still a part of Time Warner Inc.  Bebo was an important piece of their transformation plan in which AOL wanted to move away from being a subscription based service for Internet access to a media business generating ad-supported revenue.  When a business with the resources of a Time Warner makes a billion dollar bet and fails to monetize, one must wonder if they performed the proper vetting process or were they simply following the herd.

This is not the first failure in the firm’s acquisitions; Buy.at was recently jettisoned for $17 million after paying $125 million in 2008 for the dgital ad firm.  Will its instant messaging service ICQ be next?  When will the shareholders demand better stewardship from the leaders making these bets?

The small to medium business (SMB) owner would not survive if they followed the herd at each new fork in the technology path.  SMBs must be better shepherds of their funds than the large public companies that they compete against, if they want to survive and flourish.  So how does a SMB determine when to launch a social media campaign and which platform?  Many variables must be considered such as these outlined in a recent blog post.   When you are ready and have performed your due diligence, give us a call and hear how we can help you to make the correct bet.

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).

It seems hard to imagine just six years ago, MySpace was created, revolutionizing the internet. It can be said that MySpace was the beginning of what we all now know as social media. Two short years later, Facebook came into the picture.

Facebook has steadily grown while MySpace has been declining. It was less than a year ago that MySpace had more visitors than Facebook. However, according to comScore, MySpace had 124 million monthly unique visitors last month, a decline of 2%. In contrast, Facebook garnered 276 million unique visitors, an increase of 16.6%.

According to the graph below from Compete, Facebook overtook MySpace in December 2008 and continues its growth, while MySpace experiences a sharp decline in visitors.

While the largest demographic on Facebook is ages 18-25, the fastest growing demographic is women aged 55 and over. This could be a major contributing reason for Facebook surpassing MySpace in the number of visitors.

By now, we know that internet users are very fickle and what is today’s social hot spot could be tomorrows passing fad. By this time next year, we could start to see other social networks, like Twitter or LinkedIn surpassing these social media giants, making both Facebook and MySpace yesterday’s new.

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.