Advertising—In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open as we’ve said before.

This is of great interest to larger players, especially some big media:  Who in the main seems skeptical (I will leave it to the reader to determine who ‘some analysts’ are):

Some analysts are skeptical that advertising will catch on in a meaningful way on social networks, arguing that companies are reluctant to juxtapose their brands with unpredictable, and potentially offensive, user-generated content.

This doesn’t seem like a change in policy, but it is being billed as one. Twitter wants in on the ad action, and 9/10/2009 marks the crossing of the Rubicon.

Another important thing for twitterers to remember: There is a follow limit.

If you follow too many people, there is no way you can keep up with everyone’s updates in your home page.  If you’re following more than 2000 people, you’re missing quite a few updates from many people you follow.  You can view a profile page to catch up with someone’s latest updates.

It seems to be hard and fast set at 2000, but what about the thousands of people who are following more? It is unclear how this effects everyone, but here is my analysis:

Following does not imply friendship, and Twitter is encouraging instead the use of following for listening, and the use of @ messages as a more proper way of communicating. This means that users actual relationships are entirely informal as far as the system is concerned (an interesting choice) and given that Tweekdeck automatically searches for ‘@yourname’ messages it is actually pointless to follow people you don’t want to hear from unless they address you.

This doesn’t address the issue of social pecking order, of personal pride and prestige, but I would (almost) say Twitter is getting themselves out of the business of providing it.

If you want to hear from me, give me a shout at @riverc. Or you can hit up Ron at @diamondbuyer or any of us at @samuelsonsrocks. Nothing to it.

First, for those who are a bit ‘Web 2.0 Illiterate’ we have: A Social Media Glossary! (I even learned something. What’s a Quantcast? Will I ever need to know? These and other questions answered…)

Secondly, an insightful opinion piece: Six reasons why Facebook is losing its way ; (Let the Betting begin! What is Xobini? This has some info.)

I have a take on this myself. Facebook is very reliable about some information, like, who your friends are, where you live, whether you’re male or female, your name, and even your social connections. But it isn’t very reliable about your preferences and your hobbies (and most of all, your needs!)

This means in layman terms that if you as a marketer or advertiser want to reach people, you will still be shooting blind. Is it better than putting ads on specific blogs, sites or networks? We’ve tested it out, and we have to say, inconclusive. The dividing between guys and gals, the fairly decent area network accuracy, the age information – very good! But better? Currently the ‘ad software’ on facebook itself is nowhere near what Google has, and competition is still lower (so we can’t say what your bang for your buck might be in the long run.) Jury’s out.

Also, for fun: Twitter Fail Whale Tattoo is Awesome, Kinda (And THIS. Plus a tons of nerdy tattoos. What is the ‘fail whale‘? You will have to use Twitter to find out.)

Have a good weekend, folks. We’ve got ‘secret projects’ to work on over here!

A few days ago many people were reporting this:

TG Daily – UPDATED: Facebook changes policy, now owns rights to your content forever

With the new terms of use Facebook effectively owns each and every item you have posted to their site thus far.

Many people uttered an ‘it figures’ – and I even caught a tweet like this:

Twitter / TC Krantz: Deactivated FB accounts an …

Deactivated FB accounts and took photos, art out of MySpace to be safe as well. I’m really considering deleting my MySp acct too.

And…

Facebook Terms of Service Change Rapidly Turns Into a PR Nightmare

Talk about a snowball effect. Since Consumerist posted the article about Facebook’s subtle change of terms over the weekend, users have begun lashing out about it and is now sparking a formal complaint to the FTC.

But, if you read the top article completely (or this) you’ll find out that Facebook has decided to take this whole thing seriously.

Facebook Revises Back to Original Terms

Mark Zuckerberg has just posted an update to the Facebook blog stating that they’ve decided to revise the terms to what they were previously.

(The last link is dated yesterday, February 18th, 2009.) I think this problem was inevitable, and I’ll explain why. Facebook needs to make some money on what they are doing, and since Facebook accounts are free (we can thank competition + capital for that one) and most services on it are also free (except for the $1 gifts) they have turned to advertising for money.

The only conceivable advantage Facebook advertising has over, say Google, Yahoo, and MSN, is that instead of just ‘seeing’ the page the surfer is looking at, or the terms they have just entered, Facebook sees status updates, photos, interests, friends, fan pages, groups for that same person.

Having dabbled with the platform myself, I can say that most information – like ‘interests’ for instance, is very inconsistent as a field to use for keywords, and thus to reach a good audience one often has to use very basic methods. This would mean geo-targeting, male or female, and maybe relationship status. That means, things almost everyone has entered.

But what if you could scan their notes, posted items, status updates, and comments for keywords? To do this, though, I think they were advised they would need to ‘own’ that content – just like Google owns your search when you enter it. (And as a side note has not given that information away to the government, as of yet.)

If that is the real cause for the change in the policy (which is now rescinded) or not, I can’t say – I don’t work for Facebook. It does however, seem to me to be a candidate for the correct answer. For the social media startups – and the big players – profitability is a big issue.

In the first article I linked, you’ll find there are a few terms added in the TOS here:

license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Against:

license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising…

It’s reworded to begin with, but the second has a lot more terms ‘modify, edit, adapt…’ and an explicit line about Advertising.

As for the removal or the ‘If you choose to remove your User Content at any time…’ clause, which states that their license to your stuff expires when you remove it, I can only guess the machinations behind it. But I’ll bet it’s to protect their use of your stuff for data mining.

Good, bad, ugly? Facebook has a had a little of all three. My guess is that unless we’re willing to pay for Facebook accounts, we should expect more of this.

Wikipedia says,

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.

That’s pretty much it. Social media services let us share information using the internet. Unlike a blog (like this) or email, they are a common place – a website usually – where discussion takes place. Sort of like those Roman forums. (Unsurprisingly, one of the earliest social media services, which is still around, is called a forum.)

Now, most services focus around being able to communicate quickly, and to be able to get a ‘community’ view of everyone you’re connected to. That is, you will be able to see a summary of what your friends have been saying or doing. All services nowadays have privacy settings that allow things you do to be restricted or even private. Many services also double as publishing tools, allowing your updates or posts to be viewable and searchable across the web.

I’ve used a number of these in my day, and they vary greatly in popularity and in features. Some that are around now include Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Bebo, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Identi.ca, Plurk, Hi5!, Mashable, Orkut, Friendster and quite many more. (For a list of popular social networks, this is a good place to look.) Some sites that weren’t social networks became so over time (Flickr, YouTube) and there are even aggregation services (FriendFeed, Ping.fm) that allow you to send or see posts or updates from different social networks in one place.

As for actual daily usage, there aren’t great statistics yet, but there are in almost all cases dedicated users of all of these networks. How do you figure out what network to get on? Usually you get invited by a friend. Because, that’s why you’re on there – to communicate. Services like facebook and orkut offer ‘groups’ which represent common interests among their users, and even more you can create ‘events’ and send invitations through the service. Usually you get updates of your choosing through email, because perhaps you don’t log in all the time.

The thing that is most interesting to us, and even as customers of others, is the ability to express interests. Sometimes you come to a web site and you see a banner ad – maybe it’s for computer servers. But whatever it is, it is rarely something you’re looking for or even interested in. Most of what annoys us about ads – junk mail is all about this – is that it is all about stuff we don’t want or couldn’t care less about. However, with the ability to express interest in things either by writing out a series of interests or by making one’s self a ‘fan’ of different products or businesses or people – it allows advertisers themselves to stop wasting time on people who don’t want their product anyway. And believe me, never seeing another ad for male enhancement (at least until I’m 60) sounds good indeed.

Mostly what’s in it for all of us is connectedness. Plus, for us men out there, something that automatically reminds you when somebody’s birthday is coming up saves us a lot of trouble. (Now if it could only remind us of anniverseries.) I don’t know that they are the center of our political and social life (yet) but they certainly have shown themselves to be anything but a fad.

The only question that remains at the end of the day is, which ones will stand the test of time? Recent news suggests that the social media trend is lasting, but some services are going to either be changing or disappearing for good.

What’s my favorite service? Easy, compadre: it’s Twitter, hands-down. Ron’s a big fan, too.

Have a great holiday, folks.