(Source) Imagine if all the conversations on Facebook were fed through natural language interpreters in order to understand users’ likes and dislikes. Take this a step further and imagine if all of the users photos were fed through image interpreters to find commercial products. In theory, a system could be created sophisticated enough to identify the clothing brand of a person featured in an image, determine who is influenced by this person and use this information to market to specific targets. Think about the impact on a high-schooler who sees an ad delivered on Facebook featuring the beautiful cheerleader at his school with a Pepsi can in the background. This system could work equally well for co-workers, family members and significant others. The possibilities for ‘relationship driven advertising’ are practically endless.

This kind of system would enable companies to stop spending millions for a celebrity endorsement and start buying a guaranteed recommendation from an influencer of a potential buyer for a fraction of the cost.

Is this what Facebook is coming to? If so then you’ll have to forget everything you know about social marketing.

Yesterday, Search Engine Optimization Journal wrote a post predicting that search engines and social networking sites would integrate to revolutionize both search and social marketing. If SEOmoz is correct, we may be closer to that that we can imagine.

Of course, it won’t happen tomorrow. But Microsoft could be poised to take top traffic and marketshare from Google within five years. Unless Google develops its plan first. With Google partnering with MySpace, which is working hard to play catch up to Facebook, and Microsoft partnering with Facebook while working to play catch up to Google in the search arena, this fight could get really interesting.

There is a major shuffle going on right now in the search and the social marketing industries. Google is losing employees - key employees - fast. Facebook is acquiring them. Yahoo! is losing them. MySpace is tinkering in the background. Ask, of course, is just doing its own thing, and doing it fairly well. But unless Ask develops real social applications that appeal to the masses with the cashes, it won’t be a major player. It’s quite possible that within five years the search/social marketing industry will be dominated to two giants: GoogleSpace and MSNbook. That will be interesting to see.

On February 5, MySpace will be launching its developer platform. Following the lead of Facebook, it looks as if the social marketing site may have been taking some notes. They claim to have addressed some of the issues and found a way to avoid the pitfalls that other social networking sites have experienced.

One feature of the MySpace developer platform that looks really promising is its integration with OpenSocial, the joint venture project between MySpace and Google, which was announced late last year.

Adam Ostrow at Mashable actually talked to MySpace COO Amit Kapur and reports that MySpace is addressing privacy issues and spam with its developer platform. I for one am anxious to see how this develops.

At first glance, Prologue sounds like a cool tool. But you have to be using WordPress to get any value out of it. That’s not a bad thing.

Some folks are saying it will murder Twitter. That’s not likely to happen and Mike Bogle makes a good case. Nevertheless, I see a useful application of the theme.

First, Prologue is a theme, not a widget. Keep that in mind. And it’s WordPress.com, not dot org. That is a drawback because it means you’ll have to change your current WordPress theme if you want to use Prologue, and if you are using the WP software on your own domain name it isn’t available. If you like your current theme then you’ll have to give it up - ah, sacrifice! Otherwise, you’ll have to do without this unique social feature that takes WordPress.com to an entirely different level.

Personally, I’d like to see this as a WordPress widget for the dot org users.

To see what Prologue looks like, check out this demo blog.

On a personal note, didn’t this wii tennis player and member of the WordPress team sing that song about saving horses and riding cowboys?

StumbleUpon is one of the most popular social bookmarking and social networking sites online. There’s a good reason for this. It’s hard to classify SU as social bookmarking or social networking because it incorporates elements of both so well. I particularly like SUs toolbar, which gives users a one-click approach to voting for or against a site. If you like the site you just click the thumbs up icon. Don’t like it? Click the thumbs down button.

There are some downsides to StumbleUpon though. For instance, if you are the first person to vote on a site and you don’t like it then you can’t add it to the SU community. SU won’t let you. That’s a bummer. But I’ve recently discovered another weakness of the system, although my observation at this point is merely a hypothesis.

If you bookmark an entire blog - that is, the home page - then go back later and try to thumbs up a specific blog post, SU won’t let you. Click on the thumbs up button and you’ll get a gray thumb and no response. I believe this is because you’ve already shown that you like the entire site, therefore saying that you like a particular post is redundant. At least that’s the way SU sees it. For this reason, I recommend only voting for individual blog posts.

I wonder if anyone else has had this experience with StumbleUpon and if so, what did you do about it.

If you like sharing your photos, Flickr is a cool way to do that. There are some ways to use Flickr to network with others who like photos. But it’s also not all about photos.

Flickr is a social site that allows users to upload photos and other graphics and share them with each other. Like other social media sites, you can browse the photos of other people, vote on them if you like them, or against them if you don’t, comment on them, and even add the users to your friends list.

There are many different uses for Flickr, but one powerful way to use it is to store your photos so that you can hotlink to them from your blog. I’ve known several bloggers who use Flickr for that purpose. But you can also use Flickr to network with others who have blogs and enter into an agreement with them so that you can use each other’s photos on your blogs.

Through Flickr’s Creative Commons library, you can set the rules of use for all of your photos. You can reserve all rights or make your photos open domain. You can set your rights to anywhere in between. There are even social applications out there that allow you to write slideshows for your photos and show them on your website.

Flickr is a great way to make new friends and everything you can do there you can do for your business or for personal pleasure. I strongly recommend using Flickr as a networking tool.

I agree with Sean at Mashable on this one.

Recessions are difficult to predict and harder to explain. They rely on fundamental aspects of economics that much of the Internet does have to abide by. Simply put, taxes are an issue off line, but online they are not so much so. If the price of paper rises or falls, people online aren’t bothered by it. On the other hand, if ISP prices move up or down then people online are much more concerned whereas people off line hardly notice, unless they’re an ISP customer (even then, you won’t see much of an economic ripple).

Off line advertising might slow down. It already has, in fact, been in decline for the past 3-5 years. I guess you could call that an advertising recession. Or could you? Probably not since online advertising has increased during the same time. Which is Sean’s point (the broader point at least).

Fuel prices, a new president, economic slow down in certain sectors, decline in value of the dollar, all of these could contribute to businesses cutting their advertising budgets. But would they stop advertising altogether or simply transfer their budget to online advertising instead? There is no historical information to give us a clue. As Sean so eloquently pointed out, any allusion to past data regarding this matter online is outdated and won’t shed any new light on the topic. There simply is no data to tell us how today’s online consumers and advertisers will respond to an off line economic downturn.

One thing I will take issue with Sean Aune on is that consumers will automatically embrace online commerce. His own words:

1) Consumers will be turning more to the Internet for all of their shopping needs. Where it has previously been a convenient part of Christmas shopping, they are becoming more comfortable with it, and the lure of no sales tax, the occasional offers of free shipping, and not having to gas up the car to drive somewhere, will send more of them to do their everyday buying online.

Consumers have already turned to the Internet for many of their shopping needs. They are more likely to search for real estate online and more likely to research their next purchase in clothing, computers, automobiles, and a huge bevy of other product lines on the Internet before actually making a purchase. However, they are still more likely to drive to a local merchant to make the purchase. That’s today. Could that change?

It could, but there would have to be a drastic event, I think, to make it change drastically. An off line downturn in the economy might be the drastic event. If gas prices go up and people prefer to do less driving, that could happen. People are becoming more at ease with doing business online, but will that translate into increased purchases online during a recession? That remains to be seen.

If consumers do end up spending more online then advertisers will definitely spend more money on advertising, regardless of what is happening off line. If consumers slow down purchasing altogether - online and off line - then advertisers will spend less. The undeclared and unknown variable is how consumers will act. Therein lies the mystery.

I will see this as a final caveat, if consumers spend more and advertisers spend more in response, Google will likely end up making more money and you could see their stock rise again. You’ll see more content network advertising and possibly places like Facebook and other social networking sites will increases in their stock values as well.

There have been tons of marketers head over to MySpace to make a buck. Most of them have fallen on their faces and not made a dime. Then they leave in a huff and scream “MySpace doesn’t work” on their way out the door. The fact is, you can make money on MySpace.

MySpace was started as way for musicians to network and share their love of music. Many bands got their start by finding fans through MySpace. Then they went on to make recordings and sold them. They made money.

Once word got out about that, every Tom, Dick, and Harry in cyberspace decided to try MySpace for pimping their latest widget, gizmo, gadget, or whirligig. But most of them didn’t understand MySpace. They thought they could just show up at the door, throw spam in the kitchen, and get the housewife to yell, “Bring me the checkbook!” But it doesn’t work that way.

Internet marketing is the same anywhere you go. Whether you are trying to do business at Facebook, MySpace, or through Google and Yahoo!, the idea is to produce relevant content.

When you build a new website, do you just throw up a bunch of unrelated keywords and wait for the traffic to show up because you are marketing band-aids and tooth brushes? No. That’s not relevant content. It’s watered down content and it’s been proven that it doesn’t work. So why do you take that approach at MySpace? Why do you build a MySpace page and add every friend you can find even if they’re interests are totally different than yours then spam them with message blasts five times a day asking them to try your new triple wing-ding air-powered motorized scuzzbucket? It’s nuts, but MySpacers do it anyway.

The best approach to using MySpace for selling your products or growing your business is to first know your target market. Would they hang out at MySpace? If not then you shouldn’t either. That’s not the place to sell your thingamajig. On the other hand, if your target market lives on MySpace then you have some potential. Just pay attention to these tips:

• Don’t make friends with just anyone; have a plan. Only invite someone to be your friend, and only approve friend requests, if someone actually has the same interests that you have.
• Do you have diverse and unrelated interests? Set up a MySpace profile for each one.
• Start a MySpace blog and blog to it as often as you can. Publish helpful hints and tips related to your niche topic. Write it just like a normal blog.
• If you have another blog outside of MySpace, use it to drive traffic to your MySpace profile.
• Put a MySpace icon on your website to let your visitors know that you have a MySpace page; link to it.
• You don’t all those fancy schmancy bells and whistles with colorful page designs and hippy-looking polka dotted backgrounds; if you want to customer your space on MySpace, that’s fine; just don’t go overboard.
• Take the music off; nobody wants to listen to Nine Inch Nails just because you like them.
• Don’t spam. Spam is still spam even on MySpace. Only send out messages to all of your friends if you have something important to say. Otherwise, keep the spam in the can.
• Tell people who you are. The most successful MySpace profiles actually include something about the person who rents the space. Tell people what you are interested in and what you are promoting, but don’t hard sell. You’re networking, not carny barking.

That should do it. Make MySpace fun. It’s a networking place. Treat it like any other networking place.

Lemonade Stand is an application you can set up and sell products through on commission. You currently can’t sell your own products through Lemonade Stand, but the developers “hope to add this functionality in the near future.” But you do earn 80% of the commission payout from anything you do sell through the application; the other 20% goes to the application developers. That’s fair.

Currently, you are limited to the products of the affiliates Lemonade Stand has in its system. They are adding new companies all the time and boast that they have 1.5 million products.

I recommend Lemonade Stand if you have a well-trafficked profile page on Facebook and have a lot of friends. I wouldn’t install it if you just have a handful of friends and don’t update your profile on a regular basis. You likely won’t get a lot of people to buy from you unless they trust you so if you plan to use Facebook as a business model then you should put some time into trust building activities like blogging, newsletter publishing, and article writing. But it does look like it has some potential for ancillary income.

If you really want to see what social networking is all about, attend the conference. You only have eight days left to register as the conference takes place January 31 and February 1.

Held in Miami, Florida, the Social Networking Conference is sponsored by Mashable, Venture Magazine, FastPitch, Web Host Industry Review, and Webmaster Radio, among others. Top speakers include Patrick Chanezon of Google, Carlos Hoyos of IBM, Scott Baker of Digg, Kevin Lawver of AOL, Richard Jalichandra of Technorati, Mark Brooks of Social Networking Watch, and Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations. Attendees will get to hear presentations on the following topics by top social networking industry professionals:

• Web 2.0 for Social Networking
• Software for Social Networking
• Social Networking Mashups
• Business Social Networking
• State of the Social Networking Industry
• The Next Generation in Social Networking Technologies
• Top Level Domains for Social Networking
• Secrets of Creating Talkability
• Building, Developing, and Enhancing a Social Network
• And several panel discussions

The cost for attending the Social Networking Conference is $850 until January 25, 2008. After that date the price goes up to $995.

It’s not Facebook, but ActiveRain provides real social networking opportunities for real estate professionals.

ActiveRain users have the ability to start their own blogs and market their businesses with the real estate community. If you are a real estate professional whose target market is other real estate professionals then this is the perfect community for you. Start your own blog, network with potential customers and partners, and just enjoy yourself all that you can handle.

The site is organized in several ways: By state and province, by real estate professional type, and by most active and most recent blog entries. If you blog every day then you should appear on ActiveRain’s home page every day. That’s pretty good marketing!

ActiveRain looks to be a good social networking community for the following types of real estate professionals:

• Agents and brokers
• Mortgage loan officers
• Virtual assistants
• Home inspectors
• Home stagers
• Title companies
• Real estate attorneys
• Architects
• Notaries
• Real estate media companies
• Contractors
• Or anyone in real estate

You can have a Facebook profile, but if you’re in real estate, you should really be on ActiveRain.

Goodreads is a networking site that got its start late in 2006. It’s already nearly at 1 million members. The concept is to provide a networking site for people who like to read.

With Goodreads, members can review books and choose from several of their favorite genres. You also get to meet other readers and share interests. Like a lot of other networking sites, you can start and join groups and do other fun things. But what I really like about Goodreads is its emphasis on good books. You can even get closer to some of your favorite authors as some of them have their profiles at Goodreads and you can contact them through e-mail and such (but don’t spam, please!).

Goodreads is great for anyone in publishing or for professional writers who want to stay connected to the publishing world. It’s also good for for fans of good books who want to network with others who liked the book as well. It can also be used by anyone in business who just wants to share what they’re reading right now. Plus, it’s another inbound link to your website, so why pass it up?

If you read books, Goodreads is another great social networking site for you to join.

Flip through the headlines of your favorite social bookmarking website. Be it Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, or wherever, I think you’ll notice one common strain. The stories with the most attention have attention-grabbing headlines.

It’s been a newspaper principle for a long time. If you want readers to read your stories then you should write headlines that grab their attention. Then we all went online. It didn’t change. You want people to read? Reach out and grab them.

That principle is as true for social marketing at it ever was for anything else. Headlines - good headlines - make people read. They get the click. And that’s the first step to earning trust. You may write a dynamite article or blog post, but if no one reads it because you failed to get their attention with the headline then all the brilliance in the world won’t matter. Headlines. That’s where it’s at. And don’t you forget it.

(Source) Social media marketing is more about conversations and influence than it is about offers and conversions. Create accounts, make friends, comment and vote on content.

These two sentences represent the biggest misconception about social media.

Last year I tried to do some marketing through MySpace. I found out that there were so many people going online and setting up a profile then sending out messages to all their friends, like, five times a day. Most of them were just “come on” offers. Not very effective.

Even the blogs were spam oriented. MySpace bloggers would write up a four paragraph article about how great they were at X. There was no relationship building. Just self-congratulatory praises that seemed empty and hollow. I was supposed to just take these anonymous strangers at face value and believe they had the answer to all my dreams only because they said so.

If this is the way you are approaching social media marketing, it’s no wonder you’re not being effective. Whether you use MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, or another medium, the principle is the same. You are there to build relationships. Start a conversation. Or join one. Treat people the same way you’d treat them at a social gathering in your neighborhood. Would you walk up to the punch bowl and just start talking about how wonderful you are without first introducing yourself or trying to get to know the people in the room? If so, you probably have a lot of people who shun you at parties.

It’s time for social marketers to put the social back in marketing - and that means being sociable. Just because you can’t see the person face to face doesn’t mean you should treat them like a piece of meat. They are human. Talk to them like you’d want them to talk to you, and refrain from “pushing.” Just have fun and make contacts. That’s the way to do social media marketing.

A viral marketing tool that isn’t mentioned to often is a browser toolbar. You’ve likely seen several browser toolbars on the market, and likely use a few. Some of the more popular toolbars include:

• Google Toolbar
• Yahoo Toolbar
• MSN Live Toolbar
• Alexa Toolbar
• Firefox Toolbar
• StumbleUpon Toolbar

These toolbars serve a useful purpose, particularly for the users of these various services. Why not create your own toolbar to the interests of your market?

You can create your own toolbar using a service called Conduit. Conduit allows you to create your own community toolbar and include customized features that are appropriate to your target market. It also tracks usage of the tool so that you can see how your users are using the toolbar. You can communicate directly with your toolbar community through the toolbar and it includes some other great features as well, such as:

• Customize search engine powered by Google
• Web radio
• RSS feed subscriptions
• Check your e-mail from the toolbar
• Privacy features that allow you to erase cookies and clear cache and history at the click of a button
• Install gadgets
• Plus, you can create your own gadgets to include in the toolbar

The Conduit toolbar creator is brandable so you can upload your company logo and name your toolbar with your company brand. It is also set for monetization so you can use it as a source of revenue. All in all, the Conduit toolbar creator is a good tool for viral marketing and has a lot of potential to take your business to the next level.

Social networking comes in many forms. On of the most powerful ways to network, whether you do you networking through StumbleUpon, Facebook, LinkedIn, or another social site, is to join or create a Group.

Social networking groups are hard to manage and you have to market them the same way that you market any other activity that you do. You have to get good at promoting them. If you don’t have the time to promote a group then you might as well not start one. But that doesn’t mean you can’t join one - or more.

Every social site allows users to join groups and participate in the activities. Joining one of these groups is a lot like being a member of a forum. That means there are some general rules, or etiquette, to follow when you do.

1. No. 1, don’t spam. People find it annoying when every comment you make is a promotional comment. Just join the conversation and have fun.
2. Don’t troll. Otherwise known as being rude. It turns people off and you won’t get the business you’re looking for.
3. Treat people as you would want to be treated.
4. Be helpful. People will respond to you a lot better if you just try to be helpful to them. Answer their questions, be a friend, etc. You know, what Robert Fulghum said he learned in kindergarten. Play well with others.
5. If an occasion does come up that allows you to tout yourself or mention a promotion that you are having, don’t pass it up. You don’t have to go looking for these opportunities too hard. They pop up. Just don’t do it too often or you’ll be called out on it.
6. Stick to the relevant topic. This is very important, in forum postings as well as group conversations.

Group moderators can and will ban trouble makers. Don’t be one of them. Have fun and enjoy yourself. Social media marketing takes time, but the nice thing about groups is you can interact with them when it’s convenient for you.