Things never seem to stay the same in the world of Facebook.  Since December when the social network changed its default settings to share users’ profile information with anyone, unless a specific user opted out, Facebook has received a healthy amount of flak from privacy advocates and regular members eager to keep their profile info to themselves.  Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, then defiantly declared we were headed to “a web where the default is social” last month when he expanded his definition of “anyone” – now the network was not only opening up profiles to other users, they were beginning to open up profiles to third-party websites.

Quitters Far From Winning

Facebook’s privacy battle has only escalated.  The recent changes prompted a small but fierce group of insurgents to mobilize behind “Quit Facebook Day,” adopting the final day of the month of May as their D-Day, publishing on their site: “If you agree that Facebook doesn’t respect you, your personal data, or the future of the web, you may want to join us.”  As of this blog post, the QuitFacebookDay.com movement is just shy of 12,500 pledges to quit on the 31^st.

Facebook, which was probably hoping to lay low for a little while, also grabbed the cover of Time Magazine, due to hit newsstands (coincidentally) on May 31 with an article on the privacy concerns of the social network, called it the “the Web’s sketchy Big Brother, sucking up our identities into a massive Borg brain to slice, dice and categorize for advertisers.”  For all the doomsday rhetoric, worries over the site have yet to materialize into any concern regarding the overall stability of the network; the Quit movement would need to increase its members by 400 times to equal 1% of the total Facebook userverse.

Shift in Privacy Policy on the Horizon

Naturally looking to avoid Time Magazine’s characterization, Facebook has signaled today that they are reconsidering their privacy settings.  From a series of crisis management meetings of senior staff for the social network, all agreed that the privacy settings were at best confusing and at worst exploitative.  It is unclear at this point whether these changes would include an unlikely abandonment of Zuckerberg’s “open graph” proposal he unveiled last month or will satisfy privacy advocates.  Facebook, nonetheless, stresses its desire to remain “user-friendly,” thus fueling speculation that the default setting may be switched back, meaning only those users who opt-in will be sharing their public information with the vast public of third-party websites.  This would likely satisfy their near 500 million person network, as we only want to have a choice in the matter.  All in all, the flak Facebook faces nor the U-turn Facebook management is about to pull will likely hurt the stability of the massive network.  Sometimes things change while remaining the same.

A recently released report by Marketing Charts titled “State of Inbound Marketing Report” from HubSpot, reveals a growing trend of brands focusing their energy and funding on “inbound” marketing versus “outbound.”  Outbound techniques have long been employed and still constitute the majority of marketing techniques, but that is beginning to change.  Last year’s numbers indicated brands were beginning to rely more on inbound marketing techniques to generate leads; this year the outbound marketing budge­ts contracted further, closing the gap between the two opposing approaches.

What’s the Difference between Inbound and Outbound?

So what exactly constitutes an inbound approach versus an outbound approach?  And what techniques are brands turning to?  Essentially, an outbound approach is that where a marketer pushes his message out to the masses whereas an inbound approach is designed to pull in people who are already looking for your product or service.  HubSpot classified these techniques based on how important they were perceived by the company, and also allowed for multiple responses in order to account for brands that place value in more than one technique.  From their data, we see that popular and time-tested outbound techniques, such as direct mail and telemarketing, contracted 1% and 6% respectively, only generating 10% of leads each.  Trade shows remained flat at 10% importance among respondents, meaning outbound techniques are preferred by less than 1/3 of brands.

Meanwhile, inbound techniques have become increasingly important to brands.  Paid search and AdWords were the only inbound methods that fell in importance, now at 22%.  However, social media, company blogs, and SEO methods have all increased in importance to brands, with social media and SEO methods important to 60% and 59% of companies, respectively.  Company blogs were claimed to be important to 49% of the survey’s respondents.

Follow the Money, Inbound Marketing Budgets on the Rise

But let’s get down to the bottom-line: company budgets.  When asked whether budgets for inbound marketing strategies increased or decreased for the year 2010, 51% of respondents claimed their budget had increased, with an additional 37% claiming it had remained constant.  This means that 88% of American companies have maintained a healthy budget for inbound techniques, such as social media and SEO marketing strategies.  Furthermore, of the companies that claimed to have a lower budget for inbound marketing campaigns, 92% claimed that the economy, not performance, was the reason for the decrease.

Specifically, social media campaigns returned high confidence numbers from brands, with four in 10 companies overall acquiring customers from major social networks.  Businesses are increasingly placing their confidence in inbound marketing strategies, believing social media and SEO to be the two most important channels in gaining leads and bolstering their brand image.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerburg, surprised his almost 500 million man strong user-verse this week by unveiling new features for the social network at the F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco.  Some initial response has been hyperbolic, claiming an end to the Internet as we know it; however, conventional wisdom indicates that major changes to one of the Internet’s most popular Websites will doubtlessly impact our online experience in a dramatic way.  Zuckerburg’s vision is extraordinary and revolutionary; in his keynote, Zuckerburg proposed the Web as a social being, where you, your friends, your brands , and your favorite bands (among other things) are all a part of the experience.  Ultimately, Facebook is attempting to socialize the Web in a much deeper way than any previous vision.

Open Graph to Blur Existing Distinctions between Websites

The main feature of Zuckerburg’s vision includes the “Open Graph.”  The CEO highlighted current issues in connecting Facebook friends to one another through their Yelp or Pandora accounts, leaving many people unconnected precisely when they are sharing informed personal insight.  As a result, Zuckerburg has proposed the Open Graph, blurring the lines of current distinct Websites.

The Open Graph is essentially Facebook’s method for reading tags from other Websites to decipher what information their users are “liking.”  For example, IMDb starting immediately will include “Like” buttons for films, and Facebook will publish your recent favorite film. Likewise, favorite plays on Pandora will be published on your profile. Furthermore, this process will be fluid, allowing for information from a CNN article –  liked on CNN.com and published on Facebook –  to appear when you hover over the News Feed story.  Facebook has paired with major partners – including Microsoft, CNN, and ESPN – ensuring that there will be enough Websites from which users can begin to test these features.

A lot to “Like” about the Changes to Fan Pages

For brands and businesses, it just got a lot easier to gain fans.  Zuckerburg announced that a single line of code will integrate a “Like” option onto Websites, so that one click can ensure an interested customer has connected to the brand via Facebook. Just like the major partners, brands that include this code will make their website, a fan’s News Feed, and their fan page separated by less than three clicks.

There are skeptics who question whether the public desires to be so steeply invested in Facebook, or social networking for that matter, that are unsure of whether these changes to Facebook will indeed succeed.  It is important to keep in mind that Facebook’s 500 million person strong network can certainly find a sizeable group of test subjects.  The future of social networking and the Internet is uncertain; however, it seems there’s consensus to the claim that major changes are in the pipeline.

As of April 19th, 2010, Facebook no longer offers users the ability to “Become a Fan” of a page.  Instead, the option to “Like” a page will be the new way to connect with a company’s fan page.  This is not to be confused with the option to “Like” a status, comment, photo, etc. however, which will still simply mean showing one’s approval for another’s action.

Instead, this new form of liking will carry all the same connotation as becoming a fan used to, meaning stories from a page one likes will still show up in their newsfeed and a list of pages one likes will still be displayed in their info section. This change may seem arbitrary and unnecessary on Facebook’s behalf—considering the web has seen a flurry of articles about the existence and effect of this change on Facebook and SEM.

Why Change One Word?

So, many people are wondering why Facebook would go through all this trouble to change one word on their website.  Facebook has stated that they made this change to promote consistency throughout the site.  Basically, instead of having different terms for different actions, Facebook wants to group as many actions together as possible.

Moreover, a recent study revealed that Facebook users click the “Like” button much more frequently than they click the “Become a Fan” button. Therefore, there may be some grounds to support changing the button based upon this study; however, it would seem to us, as Internet marketers, like comparing apples and oranges.

Future of the Changes

In general, this change reflects Facebook’s attempt to make connecting with a fan page less committal, in an effort to promote user fan page interaction, as this is their main source of revenue. They are considering “liking” something to be less serious than “becoming a fan.” Facebook expects that this change will positively affect users’ probabilities of connecting with a page.

The question then becomes, once users realize the change and comprehend that “liking” a page is equivalent to previously “becoming a fan,” will their behavior still confirm to Facebook’s predictions?  We aren’t sold but regardless, Facebook contends it will stimulate a permanent shift in user perception of connecting to fan pages.

Only time will tell whether this change will have a significant effect on Facebook users’ behavior, but in the meantime, Facebook page owners should ensure their followers understand that nothing has changed about their relationship with the fan page, other than the name of the most important action.

You may know how many friends, followers, and connections you have on your various social networking sites. But do you know how many are actually agents from the FBI, looking to comb through your profile and pictures for criminal leads? Maxi Sopo, a fugitive living abroad in Mexico, sure didn’t when he began posting Facebook status updates saying he was “loving it” and “living in paradise.” While Sopo had been careful to stay private on his social networks, unfortunately for him, his list of friends was not. And so — with the click of a button – a friend request was made, accepted, and the Secret Service was able to track down Sopo’s location and arrest him.

Kind of makes you re-think the last friend request you accepted.

But this is how U.S. law enforcement agents are updating their tactics in a world that’s become increasingly more connected through social media. What’s most surprising, though, is the lack of boundaries for federal authorities within these spaces. Previously, the stories revolving around investigators catching crooks online involved a lot of criminal stupidity: Thief caught after stopping to check Facebook. Bank robber arrested after boasting of crime on MySpace. However, today’s federal authorities are proactively seeking evidence using social networking sites. Some of these investigative techniques include verifying alibis though Twitter messages, uncovering illegal activity through Facebook photos, and using Google Street View to investigate taxpayers. Even more, because of unclear regulation online, agents are currently able to impersonate a suspect’s family member or friend under the guise of a social networking account.

So how concerned should I be?

Assuming you’re a perfect citizen and have absolutely nothing to hide, keep on tweeting and posting to your heart’s desire. For the rest of us though, use some common sense about online privacy. Be sure you understand who you’re accepting as a friend and why you’re accepting it now. Sift through and remove any incriminating pictures from your profile. And be discreet about not only what you’re posting but who can see it (there’s some great privacy filters in Facebook you should be aware of). Until there’s more regulation on what the Feds are able to do online, your best bet is to be cautious.

Or, at the very least, not accept that friend request from the Secret Service.

A new study detailing the likelihood of referrals and purchases from Facebook fans and Twitter followers has revealed, perhaps unsurprisingly so, that fans and followers are a brand’s best friends.  The study explains that 60% of Facebook fans and a whopping 79% of Twitter followers are more likely to recommend a brand or brands after becoming a fan or follower.  Furthermore 51% of Facebook fans and 67% of Twitter followers are more likely to purchase products or services offered by a brand after becoming a fan or follower.

New meaning to “brand loyalty”

Skeptics of the lasting impact or advantage of a brand maintaining its presence on Facebook or Twitter may insert their feet into their mouths now.  The simple act of clicking “become a fan” or “follow” is likely not the sole reason these brand loyalists are recommending or purchasing from a brand.  Still, the regular interaction with and updates from their brand of choice remain influential in their decisions to recommend or purchase.  In some ways, a person’s news feed is the ultimate location to stage a marketing campaign, as updates are mixed between posts from a user’s friends, subliminally asserting that this brand itself is a friend. 

The end of the email era?

If critics still need convincing, they need only look at the frequency with which Facebook users are logging onto the social network.  The raw numbers of daily log-ins were detailed in a previous post, but they, nonetheless, indicate that almost half of Facebook’s user-verse (universe reference, anyone?) logs in each day, most times more than once, ensuring that an update or promotion is not left unnoticed.  Furthermore, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal announced the “End of the Email Era,” positing Facebook messages had replaced emails, citing a study by Prompt Communications.  In the study, 96% of respondents claimed to use Facebook messages as a means of communication, with only 91% of respondents admitting the same for email.

Just like video killed the radio star, Facebook messages have killed the email.   Armed with the knowledge that radio remains a viable means of mass communication, we know that death is not quite as final as the Buggles suggested.  Nonetheless, as medium replaces medium, the broad encompassing tool of email has been edged out in sheer usage by its cousin, the Facebook message.  The question remains over the qualitative differences between these media, as almost certainly deeper conversations and more information can be exchanged via email than Facebook message.  That being said, it is becoming increasingly clear, given the frequency with which the social network is utilized by everyday people and the inherent loyalty of fans and followers, that social networks are and will remain a crucial arena for marketing campaigns.

So we know the postman always knocks twice, and that the USPS will deliver your mail through rain, sleet, or snow, just not on Sundays.  But as snail mail has been replaced by email, email has been increasingly replaced by its cooler cousin: Facebook messages.  As the number of users has exploded, so too have the number of transmissions through Facebook messages.  Which leads to the latest hiccup in the world’s most popular social network.

Last week an undisclosed number of private messages were misdirected by Facebook’s servers to unintended recipients, originally reported by a Wall Street Journal writer who fell victim to the server snafu.  While spreading general confusion, these messages also offered snapshots into the lives of other Facebook members. Messages ranged from teenagers lamenting their sweetheart not asking them to the prom to even death threats.

A Selection of mis-delivered messages:

1.“Until I start hearing some thank yous from you, I will be unable to give you rides home after dance.”

This raises great questions over modern parenthood.  Are today’s adolescents so plugged in their parents need to Facebook them in order to garner a thank you?

2. “The jealousy, the vibes, and what I hold dear to me made this whole weekend hard. The cuddling, truth or dare game, the texting back and forth for long periods of time, and the whispering back and forth for a long time got to me.”

Unrequited love and intrigue has never seemed quite so titillating as when it’s delivered through a Facebook message, where you can simultaneously poke the object of your affection.

And finally,

3. “I took my stuff off don’t want to ruin your life for you. So you can continue to cheat on facebook I don’t care anymore. I have asked you please not to do things but you keep on and on. So you are listed as married but that is because my status is gone. Too bad everything had to end over a f*****’ website. Wow that was worth it to you I guess.”

The age of question of who gets to keep the circle of friends has only gotten messier in the digital age, wherein, it appears, all record of a relationship must be cleansed from that “f*****’ website.” The question remains whether a post-marriage restraining order will mandate these two be defriended.

How About We…

Go gallery hopping in Chelsea this Thursday.  Attack the crossword in a quiet café.  Take a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Go skin-diving in the Maldives.

Finally, an online dating site dedicated to, in the words of UrbanDaddy, finding “like-minded hedonists.”  Flipping the online dating scene on its head, new matchmaker “How About We…” lets you first propose a date, then find someone to ask out who is mutually interested in that activity.

Previous online dating platforms have matched users by interests or “chemistry;” this new model aims to find people who enjoy doing the same things when out and about in New York City.  To get a sense of your style, the site presents you with a series of sample dates, to which you can respond with interest or skip over.  Based on your reaction to these samples, the site will try and show you dates proposed by other users that may be of interest, as well as allow you to post your own dates.

Even if you don’t find a love connection, you can at least find someone with which to enjoy even the quirkiest of habits…from weekend-long Chinese checkers tournaments to blindfolded knife-throwing lessons.

The site will officially launch in mid-March, but if you sign up now during the beta phase they’ll give you 3 months of free dating.  Check it out at www.howaboutwe.com

Luxury Brands and Social Media: an Oxymoron?

Luxury brands are moving away from small targeted social networks, according to Mashable columnist Samir Balwani.  Balwani lays out the three main obstacles for luxury brands in social media:

1. Luxury = exclusive.  Social media = inclusive. The loyalties of each lie in almost polar opposite ideologies.

2. Luxury brands uphold a hesitancy toward all things experimental.  They are classic and timeless, not fans of following new fads.

3. New ventures = expensive invoices. Luxury brands put high priority on aesthetics.  Aesthetically pleasing applications or web pages for social media can often rack up the bills.

For these reasons, it has been tough for web users to find an agreeable juxtaposition of social and luxury.  But with Facebook recently reaching the ranking of #2 most popular website in America, along with a slew of other encouraging statistics enumerated in a previous post, it seems that brands can no longer ignore a growing market of online socialites.  Add another attractive element to the mix—a study recently released by Unity Marketing, claiming that nearly 80% of “affluent luxury consumers” belong to a social network—and the social media presence becomes almost essential.

Two new studies of social behavior over everyone’s favorite social networking site were released this week, detailing the nature and extent of sharing links and information on the network.  The network, which grew from 250 million users to 400 million in only the last six months, was the subject of criticism once again this week as users debated the merits of the facelift the site received.

Sharing is caring on the social network

One study, an update on Facebook’s statistics page, indicates that users are moving away from using their statuses to really tell friends “what’s on their minds.”  Instead, people are using Facebook more often to share links, news articles, songs, YouTube videos, and the like.  And they’re doing it a lot.  Five billions links shared a week in the whole of the Facebook network – a staggering figure – averages to 12 shared pieces a week per user.  Facebook also revealed that 175 million people log in to the network each day, meaning just shy of half of all Facebook account holders are checking their friends’s links daily.  This trend points to a great importance on the part of fan pages of businesses to take an active role in the conversation by sharing as frequently as possible.  Sharing content other than promotional status updates has amazing potential to be commented on or liked by other users, thus reposting the article in their news feeds and keeping the fan page in the public eye.  Fandom increased dramatically as well as the number of fan pages doubled in the same time, fuel largely by new pages

for local, small- and mid-sized businesses.

The Facebook Gazette

Facebook called on its users at the end of January to share more news links with friends through their account, a move aimed at undermining the attraction of Twitter and RSS feeds to web surfers looking for quick itemized news updates.  As a result, Facebook has surpassed Google News as the dominant driver of traffic to news sites, currently beating it handedly by sending a 350 people to every news article Google News sends 1 to.

What do these numbers boil down to?

Ultimately these numbers indicate a growing legitimacy of Facebook.  This is not something that happened over night, nor has Facebook replaced the newspaper, but Facebook is nonetheless consistently adapting and evolving and incorporating new features that the community ends up adopting and utilizing with great frequency.  So maybe we shouldn’t complain about the new face of the social network just yet…it appears they know what they’re doing.

The techies and gadget enthusiasts the world over waited with bated breath for Steve Job’s State of the Union address to shareholders last week.  Not because he offered any solutions for the growing deficit, the wars in the Middle East, or health care reform.  But unlike President Obama’s competing speech, Jobs delivered a Holy Grail of sorts in the form of the iPad.

Technically speaking, the iPad is an iTouch that has been drawn and stretched 7Xs larger.  Resembling more a tablet than a hand-held device, the iPad retains the same web-surfing capabilities and the space to store songs, podcasts, and videos of its ancestors.  The expansion of the screen however adds the option of reading texts and e-books loaded onto the device, the very feature that casts Amazon’s Kindle as hell bound, since they’ll soon begin open competition for the same consumers.

So if it is the day of reckoning, who’s headed where?

The introduction of the iPad begs the question of who exactly will Jobs be saving?  Long in need of a savior in the Internet age, newspapers and magazines have been quick to predict massive overhaul of their operating procedures and u-turns in their revenue graphs.  News corporations dream of potential readers – and in light of several major papers beginning to charge for their service, subscribers – landing on their website after seeing a tweet or post on Twitter or Facebook.

But this gets to the heart of the matter – as the iPad stands in between its smart phone and netbook cousins, it undoubtedly will be only positive for social networking sites.  Apple’s newest product couples a larger screen than the iPhone with more portability than laptops.  This will make it easier to read on-screen material  ranging from e-books to  news feeds or tweeted links on Facebook and Twitter.  The fact that the iPad is less cumbersome will encourage owners to check-in on these networks more frequently than on their netbooks.   The result: people will be spending more time, more often on social networking sites.  Beyond pop-up ads and mandatory videos, social media networks promise to be a major player in the future of effective marketing, especially with the advent of the iPad.