An interesting study from Australia that has been reported on in a post on WebProNews provides an insight into how men and women tick. A large of majority of men listed surfing the net as their number one relaxation.

There were far less women who labeled it their number one pastime, they prefer family and friends. Interestingly, men now prefer the internet to sex according to the statistics quoted. With less than 50% of men claiming sex as their number one relaxation preference to over 50% for the internet. Women were slightly lower at around 40%

The internet is still a male dominated society. There are of course many notable women who have found their place but when it comes to social networking, it is the principle domain of men.

It is an interesting statistic if you accept that women are often more social than men although they are probably prefer face-to-face contact to the anonymity of the internet. The trend is changing slowly with younger women than men accessing social sites such as Facebook and Myspace.

There is a key for social marketing there. If you want to target males then social networking sites such as Linkedin maybe more appropriate. If you want to target women, particularly young women, the Facebook or Myspace maybe more appropriate.

One I notice on many of the social networking sites is the number of business people who ‘hang out’ with fellow business people. As far as networking is concerned, that is fine; when it comes to social marketing, it seems pointless.

The aim of social marketing is to put your name, your brand, and/or your product out into the public domain – in other words, to promote your business. Promoting your business to other businesses is not going to increase your sales. You may increase your knowledge of the industry, but that is not the purpose of social marketing.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a need to network with others within your niche. However that should, in the long run, be secondary to promoting your business. To successfully promote your business, you need to be where the potential customer base is. This requires a little research and an understanding of which sites your demographic audience frequents, and what sort of marketing is permitted on those sites.

Hanging out with your peers is fine for networking – just remember to hang out where your customers are if you want to increase your business.

Social media seems to be going through a phase of shakeups and shakeouts at present. StumbleUpon has recently made some changes and this followed Facebooks big change to profile pages. There are still a lot of mumblings and grumblings about those changes.

This last week has seen Yahoo! introducing a new look to their MyYahoo! Pages, it seems it may include new features and new functionality.

The latest to go through some changes is Twitter. Like most of the other changes, Twitter’s is more about looks than function. From what I can see there is little in the way of function changes, the look is certainly changing.

Twitter is probably one site that did need the change. Facebook on the other hand is still being questioned about its changes.

On the Shakeout site of things, there seems to have been a bit of a shakeout at Facebook with many having their accounts suspended, often for having to many friends – a social site with too many friends. You can figure that one out – I cannot.

StumbleUpon has finally decided to remove people from your friend’s lists if they have unsubscribed. At least now you will know that all your friends are actually active users.

Talking about StumbleUpon, it seems they may be up for sale. Anyone want to buy a social bookmarking site? Ebay have finally decided to divest itself of some of the poor purchases it made last year. StumbleUpon is the second to go with Ebay also selling of Skype. One wonders why they made these purchases since neither could be said to be complementary to their business.

Google were said to be interested in acquiring a bookmarking site. It will be interesting to see if they do go in for a sniff around. SU would probably offer a lot to Google. Of course Microsoft could step in if, for no other reason, to stop Google acquiring it. The winner then would be Ebay, particularly if a bidding war breaks out.

A lot of changes, and lot of updates, but when it all boils down, the actual functions of the various sites has remained fairly much unchanged, including the weaknesses.

Linkedin announced earlier this month a collaboration with CNBC. As part of the announcement, Linkedin’ blog stated:

This collaboration includes CNBC integrating LinkedIn’s community and networking functionality into CNBC.com, enabling users to share and discuss news with their professional networks.

The collaboration has several benefits for the Linkedin community. They can access and share “breaking business news & content from CNBC that ranges from articles and blogs to financial data and video content”. The Linkedin community is made up of professionals who rely heavily on the latest data, particularly financial data.

Of general interest was the statement that:

Community-generated content from LinkedIn will also be broadcast on CNBC programs. These include survey results and on-air Q&A with CNBC anchors, reporters and guests.

This is a first for social networking communities. Actually taking the content and publishing it on a broader mainstream media outlet. It will be interesting to see how well it is taken up by the general community on Linkedin. I’ll keep you posted on any future developments.

Has social media lost its newness? Perhaps! Many would say about time too. According to an article on WebProNews, 58% of respondents in a recent survey did not recognize the term social networking.

Social networking as a fad had to come to an end at some time. Along the way many people have enjoyed using the services and met many new friends, however, as is becoming apparent, many sites are now becoming rigid in how you use those services.

If you accept that the largest demographic to use social media is in the under 35′s, finding a haven away from the rules of society has been one of the biggest attractions. As soon as society’s rules start to affect their online experience, they want nothing to do with that site. Social networking is not a young person’s terms. They don’t go online to network, they go online to meet friends and do whatever young people do.

They play games, they chat, they gossip, they even wind each other up. Start to put restrictions on these actions and it is no longer fun. It is more of home, school, work and society – the very fabric of our society that they are trying to escape. Of course they don’t recognize social networking. Social networking and social marketing are two business terms. They are certainly not in the everyday language of the majority of users.

Social media marketing will not be lost, at least, not in the short term. As the younger generation move on, the over 35′s are moving in. The old joke of a parent signing in to Facebook or Myspace to talk to their child is no longer a joke. It is real, and the kids don’t like the rules they are bringing with them!