It is no surprise why Facebook has grown so much and is passing by MySpace to quickly become the leader in social networking, it is clean. From day one Facebook has been strict on how people use their social platform. Obvious self promotion is severely frowned upon and could quickly get you banned from their website.

Facebook has very strict guidelines on how they want people to use their social networking tool and they will not hesitate to pull the plug on your profile. Launching a profile under your business name is a huge nono. Many people still try to launch personal profiles under their business name but be warned that you could spend a great deal of time and effort building up that profile only to have it shut down. You will still see friend requests coming from businesses because Facebook has not caught up with those profiles yet but it is only a matter of time before they do. In order for things to work out nicely you must launch a profile from an actual persons name. Then you can reach out to the community and try to express what it is that you offer but you must do it tastefully. Sure it makes it a bit more difficult to send someone a friend request from a person rather than a business but this is how Facebook keeps things as clean as possible in order to receive additional rounds of funding. If you want to target your business on Facebook you must create a business page located in the advertising section. You can then direct traffic to your business page through your personal profile to build awareness around your business.

It’s no surprise that the internet is moving at a fast pace. Every day it seems like something new is out and about creating a buzz and attracting visitors. With all the vast amounts of information where do you go to just learn without all the distractions? A new Facebook application by the name of Super Cool School has been developed with the hopes of educating individuals looking to learn about business techniques ranging from offline to online with topics such as social marketing and to how to write a business plan.

Each class is interactive with video, audio, chat and a virtual blackboard so classmates can interact with each other and also learn from each other. Unlike other online classes you have to purchase this one is free, fun and is introduced on a social level. For many trying to take classes and actually have to travel to a physical location just might not work with many people’s schedules these days. This way you can interact just like in a class room but sitting in your living room. If you can’t find a topic that you want to learn about you can actually request a specific area you want more understanding on and Super Cool School will find an expert to teach the topic of your choice. The best part is it doesn’t cost you one red cent to use. This is a great place for you to meet others with same interests so that you can network and build good long lasting relationships with. Super Cool School brings the power of knowledge and social media networking to one location.

If you are like many people that want to learn something but really don’t have the time to go out and search for available classes come check out Super Cool on Facebook and find out for yourself just how easy it is to learn again.

If users have had doubts in the past, it seems they have been answered. According to Facebook, they are not a social networking utility, rather they are “a social utility that connects you with the people around you”.

TechCrunch has a post related to a Facebook account that was deactivated and the email received (they received an email?) related to the accounts deletion. The circumstances admittedly are not your standard events. You can read the TechCrunch post for those details. Was it interesting and important to note is the wording of the email.

If users have had doubts in the past, it seems they have been answered. According to Facebook, they are not a social networking utility; rather they are “a social utility that connects you with the people around you”.

TechCrunch has a post related to a Facebook account that was deactivated and the email received (they received an email?) related to the accounts deletion. The circumstances admittedly are not your standard events. You can read the TechCrunch post for those details. Was it interesting and important to note is the wording of the email.

Please note that Facebook accounts are meant for authentic usage only. This means that we expect accounts to reflect mainly “real-world” contacts (i.e. your family, schoolmates, co-workers, etc.), rather than mainly “internet-only” contacts. As stated on our home page, Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you, not a “social networking site”. It is meant to help reinforce pre-existing social connections, not build large groups of new ones.

A follow up email to the TechCrunch post did clarify matters a little. In that email they stated:

We recognize and appreciate that each person uses Facebook based on their own interests and preferences and are happy to see people meeting new friends on Facebook.

That statement is almost the reverse of the first email. As I said earlier, the situation is an unusual one and related to multiple accounts or people using Facebook for reasons other than socializing. However, when looked at from a different perspective, the first email does state the ‘official policy’ according to their home page. The second email is almost an acknowledgment that individuals do go beyond ‘family and friends’ and that’s okay.

At least, it appears it’s okay if you don’t upset anyone. Upset the powers that be and they can use the ‘official policy’ to deactivate your account. A double standard in anyone’s book.

Facebook has been getting up the noses of a few people just lately by shutting down profiles without warning. Now they are about to roll out the new upgrades across the board.

I know there are many users who are happy with the new look, there are also many that are not. For those that are not happy, there are no smiles in sight. Facebooks’ announcement stated:

Throughout the next week, we’ll actively migrate all our users to the new profile. This will happen by default rather than on an opt-in basis. Shortly thereafter, the old Facebook profile will no longer be available to anyone.

The statement that caught my eye however was:

Over 30 million people have checked out the new profile, and many are using it as their profile full time. We’re nearing the time where we’ll switch over remaining users by default

I would have thought that most of the users who have not switched over had a reason – they didn’t like it. Life does go on and those that don’t like it will either move on, or learn to like it. In the long run, it is going to be the ease of use and stability that will be important.

Facebook have promised one new application to make your profile more accessible to users. They haven’t revealed this new application yet. If you haven’t switched to the new profile yet, standby – it will happen this week for you.

Welcome to Facebook they say when you get to their website, more like welcome to jail. I have been building a Facebook account for a good year now, actively engaging in discussions, networking with individuals local to me, joining groups that pertain to my interests and Facebook has decided to shut my account down. I thought this was extremely strange since it is a “networking” website and it is a little difficult to network if you are not allowed to request people you don’t know. Facebook asks you to only requests people that you know. Yeah ok most people couldn’t even name off twenty people they know but they are supposed to only link to people they know on a website that unlocks them to thousands of people with just a few clicks away. Barack Obama’s Facebook account currently at this very moment 1,450,617 friends, wow he has a lot of real life friends because you can only connect with people you know in real life. I don’t’ see his account getting shut off.

Facebook has fallen and bumped their head if they think they can control this. I think they have commissioned the secret service to monitor everyone’s behavior because I read the other day that someone had gotten kicked off because they used the search function too many times in one day!! The search feature?? What’s next getting your profile booted for thinking about sending someone a friend request? How is using the search feature too many times in one day bothering anybody? I have spent an entire year networking on Facebook with many other young adults promoting their website and this is how they repay you. When you try to log into your account they say they can’t tell you specifically what you did wrong for “security reasons”. What security? Am I going to hire a lawyer because my Facebook account got shut off, probably not. You have to send 17 emails to Facebook in the hopes of prying a reason out of someone. Why they hiding it?

I don’t think Facebook is going anywhere but they are quickly infuriating many people with these new rules and regulations and I don’t think Facebook wants to face another class action lawsuit. Maybe they are doing it to get a buzz going? If you send a friend request to someone they have the option to deny it. Easy and simple, click no thank you, go about your day and the problem is solved. Did it ever occur to Facebook that for every ten people that might actually enjoy receiving that friend request that the one person that triggers an abuse flag might just be ruining a good thing for everyone else? I think the whole point that Facebook is missing here is that if you want to call it a social networking site but you are not allowed to meet people you don’t know than it is useless. The whole point of networking is so that you meet people you don’t already know! Isn’t the whole point of networking to meet other individuals whom you can communicate with and feed off each other’s knowledge and strengths?

I am not promoting spamming social networking websites but Facebook needs put in place some much more tasteful strategies for monitoring its members. Sending friend requests is not spam, accepting a friend and having them nonstop slander your wall with ads is and should not be tolerated. It is time for Facebook to rethink their ink or they might just be shopping around for a reputation management firm!

Facebook and Microsoft have reached agreement to extend their advertising partnership by placing Live Search on Facebook. LiveSide News Blog included an email from Microsoft which read in part:

As part of the deal, Microsoft will work with Facebook to bring its customers Live Search-powered web search and search ads by the end of the calendar year. Facebook will work with Microsoft to design the best search experience for Facebook’s customers and advertisers.

This is a big step forward for Microsoft. With search results being returned within Facebook, Live Search is sure to add to Microsoft’s income. With the millions of users coming through Facebook each day it may even boost Microsoft’s share of search results – only marginally, however as Microsoft spreads its wings and grabs all these little margins, they eventually add up to being a big margin.

For once, it may even be Google that loses a little search traffic. For Facebook users, it may be a plus. Then again it may be the start of a much broader advertisement placement throughout Facebook. Either that or a Microsoft takeover. I am not sure which is worse?

Facebook has grown to be a fairly popular site for people of all ages and from all walks of life. One of the options within Facebook is to develop your own group/ This group can be based around any topic of your choosing.

For this reason many web entrepreneurs use Facebook as a form of social marketing for web sites, blogs or product/services. To do this successfully, you need to develop a strong profile and start a group based on that product/service or related subject.

These tips should help you to develop a successful Facebook group:

Get the basics right
Set it up right. Choose a title, category and description that is relevant to your product or brand. Enter as much information as possible about your group including contact info, location, purpose.

Add friends
Personally invite people – there is nothing like the personal touch. Include your friends who are already in Facebook. Your friends’ friends will then notice that they have joined a new group and may be interested in checking out the group as well.

Send invitations
Facebook allows you to send group invitations to all of the contacts in your Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo accounts, so don’t forget to invite everyone who’s not already a Facebook friend.

Be Human
Welcome new members and send out periodic emails to your group. Don’t spam them with useless information – keep it focused on the topic of your group.

Keep the group alive by constantly adding information. Encourage others to do the same. Keeping it fresh and update will encourage others to return. Where ever possible promote your group including references on your web page, in your email footer and in your RSS footer.

Treat the people in your group as friends rather than potential customers and your new group will grow and expand – with it will comes the traffic and new customers.

Facebook has a feature that I find interesting, yet limited. Perhaps I have not got the hang of it. The MiniFeeds are handy to grab feeds from your blog, del.icio.us, digg and SU accounts (there are others).

I have not been able to work out how to get the feed from more than one blog into my account. It seems it has a limitation in that respect.

What is interesting is the introduction of comments on these MiniFeeds. This will have one of two effects – one: it will decrease the number of visitors to your blog or website – let’s face it if I can comment on one of your posts in Facebook, why visit your blog in person. Not only that, I can see all your posts and view them in Facebook.

Two: you may find an interesting discussion starting that can be used on your blog as a new post – it can be great to receive inspiration from your readers. That’s value added content.

Of course you need to get viewers in to your profile first and that is where joining groups can be a great asset. Join the groups, add some value and your profile views will grow. The traffic to your site may not.

Whilst you can use url’s in the comments, they are ‘nofollow’ so there is little in the way of link value – however they do sneak through occasionally – if not then perhaps viewers to these comments will follow. Just make sure the comments add value and the link extends the conversation to a higher level. Facebook Minifeeds with comments – and interesting concept little utilized to date.

Your profile is the starting point for your presence on Facebook, in fact, it is the window that allows others to look into you and your products. Your profile page is your landing page – the first thing that visitors see is that landing page so it needs to be optimized to sell you.

The profile page is one of the few areas you can control in Facebook. You control the design and the information that is contained. You can reveal as much or as little as you see fit. You can express your passion for any cause, any product or any brand. You need to take advantage of components including the Personal Info, Work Info, Photos, and applications to tell (sell) your story to the world.

Most people don’t realize how many page views profile pages generate. The more you network, the page views you can generate. The more your profile tells a story – the more attractive your message, the more people are going to want to see more.

Develop pages, which were launched by Facebook last year as a way for businesses of many types to easily establish a brand presence on Facebook, and you have a complete Facebook presence.

It can be difficult finding the time to be social on all these social sites and some, like Facebook and Myspace seem to take more time than many other. There are several ways you can manage your activities on Facebook that will increase your presence but don’t take up all your time.

1. Limit your contacts – With Facebook you will get a lot of people wanting to connect with you. Check them out first and only connect with those that are going to be of value.
2. Limit your activities to twenty or so groups – Thirty groups max. Select groups that are relevant to you and to your niche; getting involved with groups outside your niche just uses up valuable time.
3. Create a group or two – create groups that are under exposed and yet related to your niche. Become the ‘expert’ in that group.
4. Initiate discussion – move around the groups on a regular basis and start discussions. Over time you can use your own products or brands within those group discussions.
5. Work on your profile – make sure your profile is interesting without being a total sales pitch. Tell people a little about yourself – people will be interested in you – not your product.
6. Cross reference – use a blog or your web page to introduce discussions on Facebook. Use your discussions on Facebook to reference back to your pages. If you can work quickly, you can find a hot discussion, write a relevant article and publish it, then join the discussions where you can casually refer back tot your article.

Follow those tips and you will find that your time on Facebook is worthwhile and will over time start to develop trust, loyalty and traffic.

Facebook Connect has removed Google Friend Connect from its data sharing system following what Facebook describes as breaches in privacy issues. Facebook’s news release stated:

Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance.

Facebook have not stated exactly how this data was shared although the previous sentence to the above quote stated: “In the past, when we found applications passing user data to another party (for instance, to ad networks for the purpose of targeting)….” Clearly, Facebook are not happy with the potential use that Google do with this data.

It seems that Facebook have tried to negotiate with Google but to little effect with the statement:

We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.

Perhaps Google feels it doesn’t need to add Facebook to its social network. Whilst data sharing by users may have many pluses, the big issue of data security and privacy must be a primary factor. Google, perhaps the worlds largest advertising agency, could capitalize heavily if it had open access to Facebook or MySpace data.

Fortunately Facebook have been on the ball and aware of any ramifications in the misuse of private information. Hopefully Google will come to the same conclusion and work to protect everyones privacy.

Facebook have introduced an interesting new feature, ‘”People You May Know”. The idea is to help you to connect to friends that you may not have known were on Facebook.

The system will match data from your profile with many others to see if there are any common areas such as employment and schooling. It is understandable. If one of your co-workers is on Facebook then why not connect with them – then again, perhaps Facebook is your escape.

To quote from the Facebook blog:

We introduced this feature somewhat recently with the specific intention of helping the newest people on Facebook find their friends quickly

A noble idea and for most people, and ideal way to connect with friends. The blog article further explains:

If you are already friends on Facebook with some people from your last job, for example, you may find some more of your former coworkers (assuming they are visible to you in search) among the “People You May Know’ suggestions.

I wonder how many people will suddenly start working for some of the larger companies so they can snare the friends lists. I can see unethical individuals signing up for an account claiming to be a student from a certain highschool in the area they want to target, adding as many friends as possible and then spamming them.

Facebook has the best of intentions and this feature has a lot of merit. It will be interesting to see how Facebook handles any potential issues down the track.

I am not a stats person, however some stats stand out and should be taken into account when planning any campaign. The stats from the Facebook stats page do make for some interesting reading. So here is a did you know?

Did You Know?

• There are more than 70 million Facebook users
• Facebook is the 6th most-trafficked website in the world (comScore)
• Facebook is the 2nd most-trafficked social media site in the world (comScore)
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
• More than 6 million active user groups on the site
• The top three countries are the USA, UK and Canada
• Remaining top ten countries are: Turkey, Australia, France, Sweden, Norway, Colombia, and South Africa
• No. 1 photo sharing application on the Web (comScore)

Apart from the traffic statistics, the over 25 demographic increase and the top countries list are interesting statistics. Where much focus of late has been on the under 25 age group, the balance is returning as moms and dads sign up to stay in touch with their children. The international numbers are interesting with Turkey and Australia at four and five respectively. These countries have much lower populations than France and many of the other countries that don’t appear in the top ten.

These stats could certainly be useful when trying to put together a marketing campaign, particularly if you are considering using Facebook as part of that campaign.

If you like to keep up with what is going on with your friends on Facebook then you may like this handy little social blogging plugin. The plugin requires WordPress 2.5 and above.

To quote from this social blogging plugin’s homepage:

this plugin will process your Friends status updates RSS feed and/or your Facebook notifications feed, and add a widget for each to your WordPress admin dashboard.

This social blogging plugin enables you to keep up with your friends without having to visit Facebook. Handy if you are not able to log into Facebook for any reason.

The latest release from Facebook may be of interest to those involved in social marketing. Facebook have released a new feature called Facebook Lexicon which is similar to Google Trends.

Facebook Lexicon lets you see which words and phrases on popular on Facebook Walls. You are able to compare up to five different words or two-word phrases. The results are made available in the form of graph. Unfortunately you cannot get any deep data such as graphical or demographics, only a simple graphical representation.

Where it will interest social marketing efforts is that you will be able to identify what is ‘hot’ and whether or not your particular area of interest is popular. You may also be able to gauge whether or not you are having any influence when trying to increase the buzz around a particular keyword.

It will be interesting to see whether or not it does have an impact on social marketing strategies. Information like this can be very handy when planning strategies. By checking with the Facebook Lexicon you may find that where you have been using a word or phrase, just a slight alteration could bring it closer to the limelight giving your marketing activities a gentle push.

Facebook have more innovations in the pipeline so perhaps they are starting to ‘grow up’ and become more focused on what users want. Gone are the days when you can tell users what they can have – you either provide what they want, or they move elsewhere.