MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for people worldwide. MySpace has been one of the most wildly successful sites in recent years, amassing over 120 million profiles while transforming social networking online.
It has created a central community comprised of people across the globe. It is one of the most visited sites in the world and it’s introducing a huge number of people to content syndication through news feeds and it allows millions of people around the world to publish on the web for the first time.
MySpace is also used by people to display their talents and it’s about keeping in touch with friends and making new friends. It’s all about interactivity and the ability of people to participate actively in your MySpace community.
It is an amazing community building tool and is starting to become an amazing marketing tool by giving internet marketers the power to drive large numbers of potential clients to a Website. MySpace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML, no Java script, into such areas as “About Me,” “I’d Like to Meet,” and “Interests.”
It has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board. MySpaceTV is now in beta mode, and will probably be launched as a separate site in either 2008 or early 2009. The MySpace Polls is a feature that was brought back in 2008 to enable users to post polls on their profile and share them with other users.
MySpace is the world’s largest Social Networking website and maintains a dominant position as a media site, primarily aimed at youth, giving them the opportunity to express their feelings on a variety of topics.
Facebook, on the other hand, has the largest number of registered users among college-focused networking sites, according to Wikipedia. Facebook’s culture, appearance and principles have become the envy of the social networking business. It has moved in exactly the opposite direction, from MySpace, going for a more sophisticated and increasingly older audience.
Social media online is extending our real world networks so that we can carry on conversations internationally as well as locally. Facebook is a tool to keep in touch with friends and family around the globe and is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom.
Facebook is often compared to MySpace but there is one significant difference between the two sites and this is the visual appearance. Facebook is cleanly designed and has a sophisticated, upscale sense about it.
Facebook is a private company and doesn’t disclose sales figures but the Financial Times reported it made 150 million dollars worth of sales last year. Facebook is already supporting several languages and they successfully launched their Spanish speaking version recently.
Statistically speaking as of January, 2008, according to TechRadar, Facebook has more than 60 million active users worldwide compared with MySpace’s over 120 million. On average 300,000 new registrant’s sign up to MySpace everyday versus Facebook’s 250,000. For Facebook the fastest growing demographic are those 25 years old and older while 85% of MySpace users are of voting age 18 or older.
No matter how you slice it, these are two very successful and very influential players in the Social Media online arena today and should be for a very long time to come. And there is no telling how big a resource they can become for Internet Marketers worldwide.

Technorati Tags: facebook, Marketing, Myspace, social media, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Traffic

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Facebook is a social network that utilizes Web 2.0 platform.  Facebook is one of the top ten applications in social networking sites in the world.  This stared as a social experiment that was originally designed to keep the lines open for friends who are physically apart. With Facebook, profiles are created and updated with thoughts, photos, comments, etc. People can be invited to be in the list of friends. Once a person is invited, he can get to view the profile.

Gaining popularity with the younger generation and college students, Facebook helps in connecting with friends and family who happens to be a member of this social network.

Facebook have the following features:

Facebook is for everyone.  Adults, students or teenagers can use it. For business owners, it is a great way to do networking connections to the group who has a potential targeted client. This social network is free making it accessible for everyone.

The site is also utilized by business owners to create a customer base. Business owners invite people to be part of the friends’ list then announcements or product updates are made using the message facility or the public postings. Just imagine with one method, the announcement can go a long way to hundreds of people easily and with no cost. Customers and clients can interact with business owners too by sending private messages or placing comments.

Almost everyone is into Facebook. Be it for personal or business social networking. Have a Facebook profile now and experience firsthand the power of this social network.

Technorati Tags: blog talk radio, brand development, content development, forum marketing, marketing facebook, marketing myspace, online guerrilla marketing, page set up, promotions online lead generation sale, social bookmarking, social marketing, social media, social ne

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One of the most powerful tactics in marketing that Facebook has, is The Events app.

It is something that can do three things:1) It can establish you as an Expert in your field.It is focused on featuring you and your message. It will help maximize your exposure and also introduce you to new people via the News Feed. This will help you become more visible as well as branded. This is a win win situation for you and your message.2) It can help push your message out as worthy of Listening to.This is critical. Many people have great messages, but do not really “get out there” enough to be heard. Facebook events can help alleviate that challenge. it can create visibility that you once only dreamed of-and continue to do so.3) It can start a Connection process with people who are checking out your event.

Many people that may have never heard of you, will connect to your event, and to your event page. The event page is a GREAT place to network as well with the people that you invited. All you do is go tp your facebook profile, and type in “events” in the search box. The events page pops up, and you will see”create an event.” Follow the directions as it is a wizard fill in the blanks template.

Ands here are 2 critical marketing moves:1) Have someone host it for you.It will add more credibility with what you are doing. People seem to pay more attention to a Facebook event when it is hosted by someone else and promoted by someone else.2) Have other people invite their friends for you.This ia a great way to expand your reach with facebook Marketing. The secret is to let others become the broadcasters of the event, and you become the “conversation” that is talked about. You then can build your brand beyond where you are, and get it out past where you are currently.We call this “3rd Party Broadcast Marketing.”A third party broadcasts your event to as many people as they possibly can, and then broadcast again. Broadcast it across the social media landscape. On Twitter. OnPlurk. On Pownce. On myspace. And then let the viral marketing start to happen by putting up a youtube video about the facebook event.Facebook events are a powerful platform to start building your brand. I would suggest that you come up with a powerful topic that people wouild be interested in, and then put an event together for it. It is how you market on facebook and Social Media Marketing.

Doug Firebaugh

Social Media Training Network

Technorati Tags: Facebook Marketing, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tips, social media, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Web 2.0. Facebook

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Once a social platform for college students, the 40 million active membership site facebook is the latest buzzword in social media marketing. However, most members are extremely online savvy and they smell blatant advertisements from miles away. It is important to know some basics and gain experiences in utilizing the site and interacting with its members before you start planning your facebook marketing adventure.
1. Create a profile. The first step is to create a profile. Sign up using your real name and upload some pictures. If you do not have an email with a top-level edu domain, by default you join a regional network based on your zip code or international address. Later, you have the option to join your company’s network and change your regional networks. You can change your networks twice in a 60-day period.
Always upload a profile picture. If you don’t upload a picture, facebook places a default question mark icon. It is a good strategy to show your face in facebook. Don’t use group pictures for your profile because others may have difficulty identifying you in the group pictures. Don’t use logos, your cute cat or dogs’ pictures, or a picture of your expensive car and boat.
You don’t have to fill all the profile information. Fill only the information you are comfortable sharing with others. If you want to find dates using facebook, fill up the relationship status feature of your profile accordingly. Don’t change the status often because others will notice it and doubt your trustworthiness.
2. Make friends. The site can find active facebook friends for you using emails in your address books of a few free web email providers like yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc. Once you get a few friends, new friend requests will pour in from your friends of friends. You can also search for friends and send requests. Work on creating a network of 100 to 200 friends. Don’t make friends with celebrities because in most cases these are fake profiles setup for marketing purposes.
3. Upload pictures and videos. Start uploading some interesting pictures and group them in albums of travel pictures, baby shower photos, bachelor party scenes, etc. Pictures help people connect with your life without meeting you face to face. Always upload a number of related pictures or themes.
Create a random albums and put all your random pictures in the random album. Tag your pictures to identify people on the pictures. When you tag your friends in your pictures, they show up in their wall. You can also share your albums with others outside facebook. You can upload personal videos using your browser or mobile phone and directly record videos to facebook.
4. Use friends’ walls and never post on your own wall. You have a wall in facebook for others to write notes. Don’t write in your own wall. Write in your friends’ walls. Your friends will write notes, share videos or links in your wall. You do the same in your friends’ walls. When a friend posts something on your wall, reply to the post. If you find the posting annoying, politely ask them to back off and clean up your wall.
5. Join a few groups. There are all sorts of organic groups in facebook. These are groups of people with similar interests. Find a few that interest you and join them. You can create your own group but first find out if one exists on the same topic. This is an excellent place to be creative and get support from a bunch of people for your cause.
6. Create events and invite people. If you want to host a party, this is the feature you will use. Create your events and invite others to join. You can make an event public for your friends to see or private for the invitees to browse. Under my event, you can browse your friends’ public events. You will immediately know who are your fake friends because they did not invite you to their gala dinner they are hosting.
7. Send notes and share links. You send notes to your friends. Depending on the topic, you can send a note to a few friends or to all friends in your network. Don’t send chain letter notes because people find these repulsive. Your notes show up in your friends’ news feeds or on their walls. A tagged note shows up on the wall, otherwise, it is found in the homepage news feed. Use share for sharing links, even though you can use this feature for sharing notes. Share that link of a cheap travel-booking site you have found while surfing the net with friends planning their upcoming vacations.
8. Visit your homepage everyday. Besides your profile page in facebook, you also have a homepage. You homepage displays collaborative news feeds of all your friends, event and group invitations, friendship requests, friends’ birthdays, etc. If you want to know what is going on in your facebook friend circle, visit your homepage everyday.
The other features of facebook are poke, marketplace, facebook mobile, and hundreds of applications that enhance the facebook experience. As the facebook awareness grows, online marketers have started pounding the facebook door to gain a foothold. Future articles will discuss different ways to market your products and services to facebook members without insulting their intelligence.

Technorati Tags: facebook, social media

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We have been hearing about the new emerging trends of social media from quite a long time now. Besides other popular web services, Facebook is one of the biggest social networking website so far. Facebook is all about connecting people and providing them the ability to them to share. People can share photos, videos, ideas, links and lots of other things on Facebook. In no time they can meet their friends from workplace, school, college, groups and from anywhere around the world. Facebook is highly popular among high school and college students in particular.

Launched in the year 2004, Facebook is a complete social networking website, founded by Mark Zukerberg, a former Harvard student. With the passage of time, Facebooking has become a complete addiction among youngsters, encouraging them to spend hours on it. Some popular Facebook features include “Status update” that describes the current whereabouts and activity of the user. Another one is “The Wall” which is a space on each user’s profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see. Other than this it also includes a “poke” feature that allows one user to send a “poke” to another one, basically “nudging” them to attract their attention.

The platform of Facebook allows anyone, anywhere to built applications. It has grown so wide now that it brings all other social networks on Facebook. One of the most admired applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums of photos, tag friends, and comment on photos. The applications developers at Facebook have been constantly trying to create viral applications that can become popular by a simple word-of-mouth. Facebook incorporates various social applications such as Orkut, LinkedIn, MySpace and some other virally growing applications ranging from “Honesty Box”, “Will you kiss me”, “Rock You” or “Flirtable” to an unlimited number. Facebook also now includes various location and mobile social networking applications in which you can share your location with your friends and let them know what you’re up to or in some other cases the users can vote and win free mobile application and games.

An annoying drawback of Facebook is that it has grown up to vast extent, aiming to become everything to everybody. It has lost its exclusivity by overcrowding people from every race and culture. If we compare it to other social networks, their main objective is to keep themselves restricted to a particular segment such as LinkedIn focusing on business/professional users. One of the biggest disadvantage of Facebook is related to privacy issues where the complete user information (even a lot of intimate information) is published online, making it accessible to strange people and potential stalkers at the click of a button. Facebook can solve these problems by initiating separate closed communities for specific schools and organization using the domain extension of .edu links.

In the end, keeping aside the criticism for a while, we must appreciate the amount of popularity Facebook has attained in a short time. It features all the elements of web 2.0 services which include (sharing, communities, user generated content etc), but keeping its focus on a specific segment and making things less complex for people will help it to become one of the most successful social networking website of future.

Technorati Tags: facebook, Mobile Application, social media

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