Social Media: Is Facebook a Final Destination or Just Another Social Fling?
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 25, 2009 | Share This
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Recently, a client asked me why they should put time and resources into their Facebook fan page when users are only going to migrate to the next platform eventually. The question felt very last year but I had to really stop and examine why that is – what is to stop fickle users from fleeing Facebook? After all Friendster and to a lesser extent MySpace were once the networking sites du jour but each found users siphoned off by the next big thing. Why shouldn’t Facebook be a victim of user burnout too? Or does it even matter?
After all, you go where the people are today. It’s unlikely that users discovering a new social media destination will stampede in such numbers that your fan page will be rendered useless in a matter of months. Also, although they have been eclipsed by Facebook, both Friendster and especially MySpace serve particular subsets of users very well. In the case of MySpace teens and music fans find the eye-wateringly be-spangled site to be more relevant to them in many cases than Facebook.
Social Media: Is Facebook Tilting at Twitmills?
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 12, 2009 | Share This
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Facebook has moved forward on several fronts this week, from tweaking its search capabilities to include out-of-network user updates for a more “real-time” experience, to the purchase of FriendFeed and most recently the beta testing of a so-called stripped-down Facebook Lite. While there are separate logical reasons for each of these changes, many commentators have remarked that in total they suggest a renewed focus on Twitter.
But is Twitter really a competitor to Facebook? I say no.
Social Media: Leverage Social Media In Your Job Search
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Written By Miguel Cancino | May 28, 2009 | Share This
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Getting a job has never been easy, but in today’s economy it is worse than ever - even for highly qualified candidates. While many job seekers continue to rely on sites like Monster.com and Career Builder, there are a wide range of social media tools that can help you expand your search and increase your chances of landing a quality job.
Most people know that getting a referral from someone inside a company is usually your best shot at an interview. Social media offers today’s job seeker a faster, easier and more efficient way of making those critical personal connections that will lead to interviews.
However, leveraging social media in this way requires a thoughtful, focused approach to the way you build and work your network.
Social Media: Twitter, bit.ly and Whoopi Start to Channel the Data Flow
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 6, 2009 | Share This
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Twitter is like a series of tubes…no, wait, that’s the Internets. Ok, try this, Twitter is a river of information, a veritable data flow that can be strained and redirected in all sorts of ways. That being said, the wide-open nature of the platform has opened the door to data that is (to some folks at least) the equivalent of a power plant dumping PCB’s into the river. For instance, Twitter founders @ev and @biz were on The View today and got an earful from Whoopi Goldberg who doesn’t use their service, but who is represented on Twitter by an impostor.
Social Media: Facebook, YouTube and FriendFeed Say Real Time is Where it’s @
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Written By Esther Assaad | May 5, 2009 | Share This
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The spike in success for sites like Twitter and Digg make it clear - the real-time web is here and its seems like just about everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.
Let’s take a look at some of the recent events that are bringing the web closer to the here and now.
Social Media: Facebook Opens the Door Wider to Layering Ads
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 27, 2009 | Share This
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One of the little-mentioned facets of Twitter’s hardcore third-party app users are the possibilities this opens for others to monetize the platform. Sites such as Friend or Follow, which shows you users who aren’t following you back, has ads on their results pages. Granted this is the exception to the rule and the ads are anything but targeted but once you have access to users streams can targeting be far behind? Considering that a large chunk of active Twitter users never access the service from the homepage, third-party apps like TweetDeck have a sizable audience - and there’s no indication that they’d have to share any revenue from advertising.
Search 3.0: Susan Boyle Links Her Way to Stardom
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 20, 2009 | Share This
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Yep, I got Susan Boyle’s name in the headline of the post – and now the first paragraph. I’ve now joined hundreds of thousands of bloggers who have done the same, illustrating one of the most interesting new principles to emerge from Search 3.0.
In Search 2.0, optimizing for search engines was achieved in part by link building and sharing with other websites. While this is still a valid part of strategy in Search 3.0, the new wrinkle is that the platform size and strength has moved up a level from individual websites to social media sites, interlinked and connected loosely with each other and directly through well-optimized profiles.
Search 3.0: The Dark Side of Search 3.0
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 14, 2009 | Share This
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For every day there is a night, for every Two-face a Harvey Dent, for every Abbott a Costello. We have been talking about Search 3.0 for a while now – the convergence of social media and search that is happening as we speak (or blog, or tweet, or however you are reaching this post). Search 3.0 is neither good nor bad, it simply is. However there is a dark side to it that can have consequences for brands large and small.
Search News: Welcome to Search 3.0
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Written By Noah Mallin | March 30, 2009 | Share This
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Sometimes the world is like a Chuck Close painting: standing up close allows patterns and colors to be discerned, but it’s only by taking several steps back that what seems abstract congeals into a recognizable set of strikingly realistic features. Right now, that’s the way the world of search and social media feel – we all know that they are converging, and we all know that they affect each other, but it’s difficult to actually wrap our heads around what this will look like from a marketing point of view – let alone as users.
In Advertising Age’s latest Digital Issue, Reprise Media Managing Partner Peter Hershberg does the equivalent of taking three big steps back in the museum and reports on what he sees. What he reveals is something that we like to call Search 3.0 and it’s not just where search and social media are right now – it’s where it’s going in the future.
Social Media: Twitter Tests Search Ads
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Written By Noah Mallin | March 24, 2009 | Share This
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With all the hullabaloo over Twitter’s big deal promoting ExecTweets, what may prove to be a far more significant revenue stream has been overlooked. The ExecTweets promotion is tied to a spot on Twitter’s main page right below the user counts, which Twitter uses to promote a variety of tools including third-party iPhone app Tweetie. So far only the ExecTweets placement there is paid. What shows up in that area is completely untethered to activity on the page or by the user, and seems aimed at the relative newcomer who might not know about stuff like Twitter Search – another tool that gets time in the box.
With our interest in how social media and search intersect, it’s no surprise that Twitter’s rollout of integrated search functionality piques our interest. Not every user has access to Twitter search as an integrated function yet but for those who do there is a brand new “featured user” ad spot that looks very much like a typical search ad:
Why hello there, gray lady.