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.

Are we all asking to get robbed?  That’s what the guys behind PleaseRobMe.com are telling us, with their new website dedicated to a Twitter reel showing anyone who recently left their homes and then notified the public via location-sharing networks, such as Foursquare, Buzzd, Gowalla, all of which have been profiled in this blog.  Really it’s about time someone highlighted the dangers of sites like Foursquare and Google Buzz; when you break it down, it really does seem ridiculous to tell the entire world when you leave your home and to publicly list your address.  The site itself is overall quite primitive—all their “inside scoop” comes from a simple Twitter search that anyone could perform on their own computer in about 0.4 seconds.

Okay, so maybe these guys are exaggerating a bit, making it sound like we might as well put out a welcome mat and greet burglars with a tray of freshly baked cookies.  But they do make a very good point about how oblivious most users are to the privacy risks that come with being so connected.  And now that they’ve done that, and in the process garnered a whole lot of buzz, they want to dedicate the website to a foundation for online privacy awareness.

What does it all mean?

One reading of this development is as follows: privacy concerns are taken far too lightly by members and participants of these social networks.  People share too much information too frequently and are compromising their safety.  Conversely, one could argue that the size of these networks has grown faster than imagined, creating a wealth of information that is now being sifted through and sorted out, allowing for a disciplined thief to digitally case someone’s place.  If members start to post less information they will be protecting themselves, but they’ll also be providing marketers less information to assemble a profile from.  In the meantime let’s not forget the major precautions one can take to protect their home and belongings…like locking the door.

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.

At the start of the new decade, many are questioning what lies ahead for social media networking sites.  Twitter remains the target of skeptics who point to stagnant membership and mock the micro-blogging mecca. Simultaneously, tweeters and commentators have come to the site’s defense, alleging Twitter is here to stay.

Skeptics point to mediocre 2009 in numbers

While the latest social media network reported a small bump in membership in December, its end of the year numbers were a staggering 24% less than June 2009.  Ironically, while Twitter was featured more and more frequently in cable news broadcasts – and stood at the center of the Iran election coverage in June – the network hemorrhaged members.  Twitter’s growth problem has thus become a billion dollar question: how can the social network grow? Some analysts are pointing to the immeasurability of new Twitter members, as an increasing proportion of members are tweeting from mobile devices and via apps, which were not captured in the statistics.  Others claim Twitter has not yet reached a critical mass, like Facebook already has, encouraging potential members to join to keep track of everyone else they know.

Twitter makes sharing information simple

Yet, Twitter remains extremely popular and has been put to great use recently in light of the earthquake in Haiti, as tweeters are sharing thoughts, needs, websites for charity, and prayers through the social network.  New York Times media reporter, David Carr, remains optimistic about the future of Twitter.  In his article titled “Why Twitter Will Endure,” Carr argues that Twitter allows for the consumption of a massive array of information.  Yes, people tweet about their choice of cereal, but they are also sharing news articles, videos, blogs, and discussion boards where responses are not limited to 140 characters or less. As Steven Johnson, another journalist and technology commentator for TIME, observes, “the history of the Internet suggests that there have been cool Web sites that go in and out of fashion and then there have been open standards that become plumbing. Twitter is looking more and more like plumbing, and plumbing is eternal.”

Over the last decade, the Internet has become increasingly more interactive for its users by the year, by the month and even, by the day.  New innovations are happening constantly and it would be impossible to stay updated on them all on a regular basis (another good reason to read the IMI blog everyday!).  Today, I want to mention a relatively new phenomenon that is taking off like wildfire- website applications that allow user personalization.  And I don’t just mean custom forms that allow people to search the value of their old cars like on KelleyBlueBook.com or something; I mean true personalization with digital imagery upload- something that really hits close to home for our population’s more visual users.

So let’s start with something seasonal: Has anyone ever checked out ElfYourself.com?  On this website, users are allowed to upload pictures of themselves and four additional friends.  After the upload is complete, each of the head shots are inserted onto elf bodies, which then sing and dance to holiday themed songs.  Whereas two years you could only select one standard song, this holiday season, users have the option to select from country, disco, hip hop and more.  And now, when you’re done, you can embarrass yourself and your friends by sharing with Facebook!  It’s truly phenomenal.

But, if you’re already over the holidays and you’d prefer a blast from the past, check out YearbookYourself.com.  This website allows you to upload a head shot and after you’re done, it will place you in a persona from yearbooks of the past.  For some reason, whenever I try it, it has an uncanny ability to make me look identical to my mom.  Anyone else getting the same results?

My latest find in the interactive web arena is a site called MorphThing.com.  It would probably behoove you to check it out everyday for a good laugh when you’re in need of a smile because you never know what new morphs will be featured.  Today’s best morph was a cross of Marilyn Manson and Barack Obama.  Other featured morphs include: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie entitled “Brangelina,” Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez entitled “Bennifer,” Jessica Simpson and Dane Cook, Ashley Olsen and Mary Kate Olsen, and the list goes on.  Users can also make custom morphs and even baby morphs, which could be a very useful tool in marriage preparation (and might send some people to counseling).  Use these tools wisely!  Enjoy.

In case you didn’t know, we’re in tough economic times.  These economic conditions have drastically cut budgets across the nation and world, leaving meager allowances for marketing and advertising in its wake.

Nonetheless, expectations for 2010 remain optimistic.  In a new study released yesterday, StrongMail reveals nine out of ten business executives plan to maintain or increase their marketing budgets.  Execs aren’t thinking conventionally for the new decade either, instead the survey’s respondents indicated they were open to marketing strategies that utilize the Internet and maximize their dollar.  Next year, 69 and 59 percent of business executives anticipate increasing their email and social media marketing, respectively. Another 42 percent claimed they expect to spend more on search engine initiatives, such as SEO and PPC.  The survey’s results indicate a migration to internet marketing tactics, as advertising and direct mailing initiatives are expected by less than 30 percent of execs.

Furthermore, the study showed a desire among business executives to combine the tested and proven tactics of emailing potential customers with social media.  Execs did not, however, demonstrate uniform confidence about how they would go about implementing such strategies in the upcoming year.  Instead, one out of five executives claimed they had no idea where to begin.  With more businesses seeking to establish an online presence in hopes of finding cheaper alternatives to conventional advertising, it is certain that social media marketing and search engine initiatives will play integral roles in the year 2010.