This is hot "businesses have to be thinking about how to incorporate the social map into the way they deal with customers and prospects. "This is going to be huge," " I agree :)

How Social Nets are Changing Advertising
BusinessWeek
Fresh questions are being asked about Facebook's ability to monetize following the huge $200 million cash injection secured earlier this week with Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies. A $10 billion valuation is a lot to live up to, after all. Meanwhile, the argument still goes that people go to Facebook to socialize, not hunt for products.

BusinessWeek's Jonathan L. Yarmis thinks that that argument misses the point; he thinks the focus should be more on how Facebook and other social networks are changing advertising. "I'm loath to affix the 2.0 moniker to yet another phrase, but if ever an industry needed to be 2.0-ized, it's advertising," Yarmis says.

"The good news is that we're on the verge of a major rethinking of advertising's fundamental premises," he says, noting that one of the biggest challenges facing the industry is ad credibility. Consumers don't trust ads, but they do trust their friends, and telling friends about the products they use has never been so easy. As Yarmis says, through social nets, "credibility now has a channel for mass distribution."

He adds that businesses have to be thinking about how to incorporate the social map into the way they deal with customers and prospects. "This is going to be huge," he says, "and the opportunities are immediate." - Read the whole story...

Where are the Users of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter

This is from Kenradio I know about the Harris Poll and agree with the 48% of internet users ie 250 myspace and 210 facebook but there is a ton of dups and non users that don't come back We are on track to find the real answers with the cross map so will see. 51% of Americans do not use Twitter or have a MySpace or Facebook account. 48% of adults have either a MySpace or Facebook page, with 16% of adults updating their page at least once a day. While the media may have found Twitter, only 5% of Americans are currently using it, according to a Harris Poll. There are some substantial differences in who is and who isn't using these social networking sites, says the report: I think for Twitter the realiaty is a great deal don't know how to use it so to say that the % is coming back to still use that's another question we are working on to have on twitter cross tabing. * 74% of those aged 18-34 years old have a Facebook or MySpace account but this quickly drops off the older one gets. Only 24% of those 55 and older have an account * 8% of 18-34 year olds use Twitter, 7% of those 35-44 use it, 4% of those aged 45-54 and just 1% of those 55 and older * Men and women use Twitter at the same levels (5% each), but women are more likely to have a Facebook or MySpace account (52% versus 45%) From our SN Analysis this is spot on * Two in five people with a high school degree or less have a Facebook or MySpace account compared to 55% of those with some college and 52% of those with at least a college degree There has been some discussion about whether these social networking sites may, at some point, become a threat to search engines such as Yahoo! or Google. Right now, that doesn't seem to be an issue, as 45% of adults believe the sites are popular, but they won't pose a real threat to the domination of search sites while just one in ten say they may become a threat. 46% of Americans are not at all sure. Even among the largest users of the social networking sites, 18-34 year olds, 62% say they will not become a real threat to the search engines. While the younger age groups are all about the social network sites, they haven't yet migrated to Twitter. The report concludes that if they had found it before the media had, there is a stronger possibility they would be increasing their usage, but they may already be looking for the next big thing.

We are in the mist of getting more data to back these numbers based on cross tabbing facebook to twitter to linkedin to myspace so stay tuned
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Why Online Video Ads Still Don’t Work

Why Online Video Ads Still Don’t Work

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090515/why-online-video-ads-still-dont-work/?reflink=ATD_wsj_quotes#mod=djemTECH

From David Carlick ...... Retro email rant on tweeting.

Tweet. Kindle. Wha!

The irony is that the two most interesting technology stories on the pages are about Twitter (and, by extension, FriendFeed and social networks themselves) and Kindle.

In my opinion, these are polar opposites, an irony in plastic and electrons.

While Twitter coverage celebrates a sort of global stream of snippety consciousness, the Kindle is a product that is, in the end, about thoughtful reading.

Twitter and its social network brethren certainly deserve a place in our consciousness – a hundred million people can’t be ignored.

Pundits are breathless over Twitter, and the plumbing of that stream of consciousness that will, in theory, emerge and give us insights into the mind of God, or even better.

But the ‘need’ to post is a compulsion and so is the ‘need’ to know what all your friends and friends’ friends and celebrities are doing.

This colossal ‘party line’ is a kudzu vine that is choking off people’s time and thinking, with a deluge of the inane and a swarm of links that lead to more of the same.

But then, after having read too many of their thoughts than I needed to, maybe that is appropriate.

Asynchronous communication (first, voicemail, then email) were great steps forward in communication. I formulate my request and send it to you. You deal with it, or not, on your own schedule.

In parallel, the FAQ and its website progeny have made it easy for people to get information without bothering others.

So moving back to synchronous, short form, real time updates and queries from everyone on everything is proof that technology can waste as much time as it saves.

In fact, I will call it David’s Law: Technology Wastes More Time Than It Saves, But It Saves Enough To Pay For Itself and It Makes Time Wasting Even More Efficient.

Personal computers did spreadsheets and word processing, but they also did hobbies, recipes, family trees.

The instant they got a modem, you had forums, discussions, groups, and forwarded jokes and of course, pornography.

Now the Kindle, that is something different.

Paper lovers bemoan its lack of texture and size while computer and iPhone lovers bemoan its passive mono screen.

But it is the end of paper, finally, and passive = low power and mono = resolution that finally brings digital text into the readable realm of print and line art.

I will own two, one for my pocket and one for my briefcase, and eventually, one the size of a tabloid for home and office reading, and maybe another for the bathroom.

Other than coffee table tomes, I will never buy a print ‘word’ product again. If it won’t go on my Kindle, I don’t want to bother.

My bookshelves look, now, as useful to me as the cabinetry I had built to house a 40” CRT television once.

Not only is Kindle the end of paper, but in a fit of irony, it ushers in The End Of Free.

I happily, gladly, cheerfully pay for newspapers and books and blogs to be sent to my Kindle, and judging by the size of the cable bill most people pay for free TV, I am not alone.

The tyranny of users not paying is over, or at least, the flame that will burn it away is now kindled.

Investors will no longer tolerate funding free, and the Kindles, Facebooks, MySpaces who will never really get advertisers to pay for as much time and bandwidth and storage as users consume are going to have to face this.

Twittering won’t go away. Nor will social networks.

There is a genuine benefit to having a digital presence, connectivity.

There is, for some, genuine fun in slavishly reading the constant comments of those who feel slavishly compelled to post them.

The technology that saves us time will give us ample opportunity to waste it, but it is still paying for itself.

And the little Kindle is the milestone on the road to a coherent content future.

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/11/is_the_social_g.php

Is the social graph Web 3.0?

November 22, 2007

Well, it looks like there'll be no escaping the "social graph" term. World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, in a blog post last evening, not only bestowed his blessing on the social graph but elevated it to the capitalized Social Graph, a sign that we have a New Paradigm on our hands. Sir Tim suggests that the Semantic Web (recently dubbed "Web 3.0") was really the Social Graph all along, and that the graph represents the third great conceptual leap for the network - from net to web to graph:

Wanted to share this since I'm speaking at Web 3.0 2009 on this same topic at http://www.web3event.com/program.php