Image via blog.spoongraphics.co.uk

Something that has stuck with me is an idea from one of Amber Naslund’s webinars that I attended last year. Why are many big brands so uncomfortable with letting their employees represent their brand on social media? This is not a social media problem, in Naslund’s view. This is a hiring problem. You need talent you can trust.

The way I see it, social media is a tool. A tool that will either emphasize parts of your business that are great, or bring the not-so-great to the public eye, painfully.

Sometimes the problem is that big brands want to jump on the social media bandwagon so quickly that they never implement a social structure within the organization. But if it doesn’t work from the inside, then what you put out on the outside won’t work either.

Brands need to be social in every department, not just marketing or communications. Making social media a skill for each and every employee instead of a full-time job for one, will make your business social in operation.

Instead of looking at social media as your silver bullet to virality or some spaceship into relevancy, brands need to look at social media as a tool to make all aspects of your operation work better, and be better in the eyes of your consumer.

Social on the inside

The keys to building a truly social business are training, guidelines and empowerment. The transition will be slow, which is why some big brands spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on third-party agencies to take it off their plates.

Using a platform like GetSatisfaction, for instance, can make your customer service social by nature. It can be implemented on your Facebook page and all incoming support inquiries will be indexed so that if someone has an inquiry that’s already been answered, they will be prompted to look at that answer instead of creating a new case. This will save your customer support agent’s time, and the department money.

Public relations have embraced social media faster than most departments. No longer do you have to push your pitches via email and pray that media will pick them up. You can create and maintain relationships with press through Twitter, having short conversations daily rather than only talking to them when you need something.

Brands can also use tools like PitchEngine, which makes news releases social media friendly and turns PR professionals into media outlets in their own right. In the social business age, many PR pros have reputable blogs and Twitter accounts with thousands of followers which allow them to connect with mass influencers without using the mainstream media as intermediaries.

Creating social leadership

Image by ChrisL_AK, via Flickr

While social should permeate all aspects of your brand, it’s still important to have the right leadership to define overall strategy and look over individual elements of your social media presence.

This can either be one person or a panel of people, each responsible for a different area of social (PR, Marketing & Sales, Customer Service, Product Development, etc).

Collaboration has never been more important to bridge the silos that traditional business has created, and which are the enemy of social.

Big brands are the slowest to adapt, when people may expect (with all the money that they have) that they would be the quickest. Redesigning your business to be social by nature trumps having 100,000 Facebook Fans, because doing it right is more important than getting it done.

A samba school dancer at Rio Carnival 2012. Image by Leandro Neumann Ciuffo, via Flickr

Booze, bunda and bright shiny objects. That’s modern-day Mardi Gras in a nutshell.

Theologically, the celebration heralds the season of lent, when Christians practice repentance, prayer and almsgiving for the 40 days leading up to Easter. Across the world, Mardi Gras marks the last moments of unrestrained revelry before the season of austerity kicks in.

In some parts of the world (read: Rio de Janiero and New Orleans) the event is a full-blown tourist attraction worth hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

But here’s the interesting part. Since it’s a Christian holiday, unlike say, the World Cup, many cities prohibit sponsorship, meaning brands have to find special ways of inviting themselves to the party.

New Orleans Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is an enormous moneymaker for the struggling city of New Orleans. Because the event is free, it’s hard to know exactly how much money it brings into The Big Easy, with estimates ranging from $144 to $500 million.

As far as official sponsors go, since it’s a Christian holiday, there’s no such thing. The one exception was in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina when Glad was brought on as a sponsor to help with cleanup.

But that hasn’t stopped Zatarain’s, a local brand selling Cajun-inspired food, from going guerilla. Zatarain invited a bevy of lifestyle bloggers to act as brand ambassadors during the celebration, and encouraged them to use the hashtag #JazzItUpNOLA every time they tweeted. The company also created a Facebook app and playlist on Pandora. 

LGBT love in Sydney

Sydney’s Mardi Gras festival is one of the biggest LGBT celebrations in the world, with over 300,000 spectators alone attending the parade. And gay-friendly brands are paying attention.

Durex, for instance, released a print ad campaign in the lead up to the festival, with posters popping up in gay bars across town.

Not exactly subtle, they feature a giant… rooster with the tagline, “Dress yours up for Mardi Gras.”

Caaarnaaaavaaaaal!

For five straight days, millions of people flood the streets of Rio de Janeiro (and other Brazilian cities) to cut loose at the world’s biggest street party.

Given the proportion and reputation of the event, Carnival is one of the few Mardi Gras celebrations that does have sponsors.

YouTube made a splash at Carnival this year, devoting a channel to the festivities and sponsoring live performances at the event.

Celebrities also flocked to the city, some of them as brand ambassadors. Jennifer Lopez, for example, was invited to watch the Samba contest as local beer company Brahma’s brand ambassador.

In the run-up to Carnival, Lopez was featured in a Brahma ad campaign. The commercials included the neologism “Sapucar,” which, according to AdAge, means “have lots of fun at Carnival.” Apparently the term has since become a regular in the  lexicon of Carnival revelers.

Here’s one of the spots (it’s in Portuguese, but the images say it all)

The social Super Bowl

Goodbye Super Bowl on TV, hello Super Bowl online: NBC and Verizon Wireless are teaming up to provide live streaming of the game for the first time. But given that the 2010 Olympics and World Cup were both available on the net, the real question is: why the wait?

Another first is the social media command centre headquartered in downtown Indianapolis, the city hosting the event. For 15 hours each day a team of 20 will assist local fans and tourists with everything from finding parking spaces to restaurants – using channels like Facebook and Twitter to do it.

And then there’s mobile discovery company Shazam. Similar to how QR codes act as portals to digital content, the Shazam mobile app ‘listens’ to sound cues in the physical environment and directs users to content online.

The NY Times reports that nearly half of this year’s Super Bowl ads will be “Shazam enabled,” meaning more consumers will be directed to more content during commercial breaks (think coupons, free videos and gift cards).

Polar bear’s first word

Coca-Cola is doing its best to distract audiences from the game on whatever device they’re using to watch it.

On Sunday people can attend the Coke Polar Bowl event on Facebook or follow the bears’ real-time reactions on Twitter. It’s a bold move for the company – the bears have never had a chance to ‘speak’ before.

More buzz is coming from another precedent-setting move: Coke execs will be on-site at NBC studios to select which version their commercial to air. Will it be the bear with the Giants or Patriots insignia who “catches” the Coke bottle?

Ferris Bueller’s Pay Off

Everyone’s a sucker for nostalgia. That’s what brands Proctor & Gamble and Honda are betting on with their spots. If they pull it off, the recession-weary audience will enjoy revisiting some iconic moments in Super Bowl commercial history.

P&G are doing a re-make of Coke’s classic Super Bowl ad “Mean Joe Greene,” replacing the can of Coke with Downy.

Honda and actor Matthew Broderick team up for a long-awaited sequel of sorts to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

And Jerry Seinfeld dusts off some of his old Seinfeld catchphrases (and characters) in a spot for Nissan.

The Super Bowl is the biggest advertising event in the U.S., which means there is just too much content for one Sparkbeat post to cover. We haven’t mentioned VW’s “The Dog Strikes Back,” why Pepsi Max chose to go gimmicky, or whether GE’s decision to ditch celebrity glitz will pay off, for instance.

But given that most of these commercials already have millions of views on YouTube, and NBC’s post-game Google+ Hangout is already scheduled to discuss and decide which ad was best, it looks like we needn’t worry. Thanks social media – see you at the game.

Events

This summer sports fans, brands, and anglophiles will be flocking to London for the Summer Olympics.

According to JWT, social media will be playing a bigger role than ever, with an IOC sanctioned social media policy already in place for athletes and affiliates. #Olympics is expected to trend for months.

As the event approaches, expect to see lots of ads from traditional sponsors, like this…

…and a few unexpected ones, too:

Entertainment

Netflix will be turning heads with its first offering of original programming. Lilyhammer, starring The Sopranos’ Steven Van Zandt and set in Norway (you might remember it as the location of the 1994 Olympic Winter Games) is scheduled to air early February. It’s a bold move for the streaming powerhouse. We’ll see whether critics give it a gold.

In other TV news, Apple plans to enter the television market this year with a TV/computer hybrid that has a chance to do for the crowded TV market what iPod did for mp3 players.

The first installment of Peter Jackson’s two-part epic, The Hobbit will be hitting the big screen this year in time for the 75^th anniversary of J.R. Tolkien’s much loved classic. Will it be the blockbuster of the year?

Social Media

While Facebook’s early adopter markets reach the saturation point (and it plans for its early summer IPO, currently speculated at $100 billion), Google + has been growing fast, with one analyst predicting it will reach 400 million users by the year’s end.

If Zynga’s recent IPO is any indication, free and social gaming, and more generally, social design, will emerge as ‘the next big thing’ across digital industries, says Facebook VP of partnerships and platforms, Dan Rose.

Mobile

Apple’s recent announcement that its iPhone 4S will launch this month in 22 countries – including key-market China – means big business for the company. But speculation abounds as to how Apple will transition into the post-Jobsian era.

Android, on the other hand, has surged in popularity, taking nearly 50% of the U.S. smartphone market in 2011. If all goes according to plan, they’ll be hitting the 60% mark by the end of 2012.

Finally, with speculation of a leadership shuffle at struggling RIM, and with Nokia giving a boost to Windows Phone, expect to see plenty of mobile headlines this year.

Technology

Mobile payment services like Google Wallet were introduced to the U.S. last year, and will launch in the U.K. in 2012. But according to ABI research group, we shouldn’t expect to see too much growth until at least 2013 thanks to difficulties developing effective business models.

Cloud computing is also getting its fair share of buzz. While it’s been around for half a decade (is there anyone left who doesn’t have a Gmail account?), end-users will begin to see more applications emerge in areas ranging from security and databases to games and music.

And while the cloud bubble continues expanding, Berkeley scholar Vivek Wadhwa predicts that a cloudburst may rain on the market’s parade if big companies experience security breaches, which is far and away cloud computing’s biggest concern.

If you’ve got time to kill before the apocalypse, check out JWT’s slideshare, 100 Things to Watch in 2012 and Wired’s series 25 big ideas for 2012.

The year began in the wake of Cablegate: In late November of last year, hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables were released to the public via WikiLeaks, transforming international relations and democratic journalism along with it.

Social Media helped organize resistance in the popular uprisings in the Middle East, image courtesy of voiceseducation.org

The WikiLeaks scandal may have helped provoke the Arab Spring, while mobile devices and social media sustained the popular uprisings. So if 2010 was the year that social media went mainstream, 2011 saw everyday people use digital platforms to change the offline world.

Emerging markets

Image courtesy of kevinschoenmakers, via Flickr

With democratization comes opportunity, but marketing to Muslims and other emerging consumers requires cultural respect and brand flexibility.

As western economies continued to sputter marketers looked to new markets for growth, learning that mobile adoption, status symbols and sexual norms differ from culture to culture.

Meanwhile, Facebook encroached on Orkut’s territory in an increasingly digital Brazil and China continued its high-speed development.

Branded entertainment

Branded entertainment has been around for a while but 2011 brought on some truly ambitious stuff. In May we reported from Cuba on Havana Club’s feature film and cultural projects, while the Muppets franchise took social media by storm with a series of viral videos leading up its fall movie release.

Speaking of viral, transmedia crossed the threshold from industry buzzword to just plain industry with this year’s StoryWorld conference, where we met multiplatform storytelling pioneers from Hollywood, Madison Avenue and around the world.

The great content debate

Media brands suffered some growing pains this year as they continued to search for new ways to fund, monetize and distribute their content.

Streaming video leader Netflix was chastised for planning to spin off its original DVD-by-mail service into a separate business called Qwikster  – then got panned even more for reversing course.

At the beginning of the year Sir Martin Sorrell predicted that the “free versus paid” content debate would come to a head as the New York Times, the Times of London and even The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s iPad newspaper, introduced subscription models.

But the great content debate raged on at SXSW in March, with Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Bernard pushing for “anytime, anywhere” access to content, while Wenner Media’s Daniel Mendell argued that a freemium model gives readers the best of both worlds.

Platform abundance

With the launch of the iPad 2, the Kindle Fire and a variety of Google-powered smartphones, designers and developers scrambled to keep up with platform abundance.

As print publications struggle to translate their content to screens of all sizes, new web standards like responsive design are starting to inculcate a “digital first” mentality among forward-thinking publishers.

The good news for editors, creative directors and other content curators is that with the explosion of digital content, human filters are needed more than ever.

Face-to-face

One of the ironies of the digital world is that the more connected we become, the more we crave face-to-face interactions.

Sparksheet covered a slew of events this year, from SXSW in Austin and CES in Las Vegas, to 140conf in New York City and the  International Content Summit in London.  The best part for us is that beyond the conversations and keynotes, conferences are a treasure trove of great content.

Steve Jobs

Last but not least, the untimely death of Apple visionary Steve Jobs reverberated around the tech world and (way) beyond this October.

A Steve Jobs memorial outside an Apple Store. Image courtesy of Jahn Steven, via Flickr

Despite his long battle with pancreatic cancer, Jobs stayed at the helm of Apple until the end, stepping down only months before succumbing to his illness. The public’s outpouring of grief signaled the end of an era in every media-related industry Jobs touched. Which is all of them, really.

Curating the curators

For some laughs (or winces) check out Mashable’s best 10 memes and Facebook’s 15 most-shared stories. Alternatively, head over to Twitter to find out who joined, what trended, and how many tweets can be crammed into a second.

And steel yourself for the onslaught of Top 10 lists, Best of the Year posts and other year-end roundups sure to be flooding the net as 2011 draws to a close. As for us, we look forward to reconnecting in the new year!

For some it’s fall, for others it’s spring, but for legions of people around the world, it’s something else entirely: It’s Movember.

For the uninitiated, Movember (a portmanteau bridging the words “moustache” and “November”) is a month-long campaign that raises awareness and money for men’s health issues, including prostate cancer and depression.

The campaign, stipulating that men must grow a patch of whiskers below the nose but that nary a hair shall migrate to the sideburns or below the chin, is so unequivocally masculine, novel and (relatively) painless, that it attracts men (and women) of all stripes and ages.

While Movember’s beginnings were humble – the idea was hatched by a group of Australian pub mates in 1999 – it has since gone global. Last year alone the movement raised $76.8 million, a blowout compared to $54,000 in 2004.

One reason for Movember’s growing success is that the once-decentralized movement has coalesced into a full-fledged foundation and bonafide brand. The campaign is officially organized by the Movember Foundation, which has its own website, Twitter feed, YouTube channel and Facebook page.

Another reason is the number of brands that are getting behind the movement, either as direct sponsors, or indirectly by giving donations.

This cause marketing approach allows both Movember and the brands that support it to gain exposure and attract good vibes. Brands sponsor events and create publicity, and Movember gets mo’ money.

Of course, where would moustaches be without the tools that help us groom them, which explains why Movember’s official sponsors happen to be hygiene products… and beer.

Schick is doing its part with a cross-Canada tour, distributing free products on campuses while simultaneously engaging the most involved demographic in the campaign.

Meanwhile, Speedstick is upping user engagement with a series of videos featuring the misadventures of a clumsy Mo’ man.

From local to global, the number of brands capitalizing on Movember through Facebook and Twitter is surprisingly large, but it makes perfect sense: The platforms let them produce tailored content faster than it takes some guys to grow peach fuzz – and at a much lower cost than billboards and TV spots.

Mercedes, an official sponsor, has taken this route, urging users to ‘like’ it for donations.

Then there’s Mr. Clean, Proctor & Gamble’s famously tonsured mascot. His Facebook profile pic features a decidedly hirsute photo, and with every ‘like’, his ‘stache grows a little thicker.

It’s a win-win-win tactic: raise awareness, establish a brand purpose and increase the popularity of your Facebook page.

And then there’s mobile apps. It turns out people love to digitally impose nose-neighbours on their faces. At least that’s what Ogilvy Group UK’s Picamo suggests.

The £0.69 app lets users (digitally) try on a selection of 30 moustaches and share the results on social networking sites, with profits going to Movember.

Google has also joined in, showcasing the movement in its latest instalment of “The web is what you make of it” video series.

TOMS Shoes, a cause marketing leader, is offering limited edition moustachioed footwear. All proceeds go directly to the cause.

Usually, we don’t associate prostate cancer with humour. But that’s one reason for the campaign’s popularity: No one likes prostate cancer, everyone thinks moustaches are funny.

This lighthearted take and the campaign’s hip(ster?) gloss make it a very attractive charity opportunity for brands.

And while some bigger brands (like PepsiCo) have been participating indirectly with contests for staff members, as the buzz on the fuzz keeps growing, their participation probably will, too.

How do you maintain Playboy’s unique voice, outlook and culture across so many disparate media, from print and video, to Facebook and Twitter?

It’s a challenge to ensure that all of our mouthpieces are aligned in terms of voice, tone and messaging. Back in the day, the magazine was it.

Now we have constant external communications on TV, radio, Playboy.com, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Ustream, TheSmokingJacket.com and other communications vehicles.

Each of these platforms must stick to the brand’s identity and [they] are constantly monitored to make sure they’re on-brand and in line with Hef’s vision and our editorial director’s ideas.

That said, each platform communicates and publishes differently and may also have separate audiences, so the way they represent/interpret the brand may differ slightly.

What’s the goal of Playboy’s social media activity, and how do you measure success?

We have a number of goals in social media. First, building celebrity for our Playmates and models. Years ago TV was the only way for a Playmate to make the major step from centrefold to household name. Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy are prime examples, but since we know that every Playmate with some charisma and a story to tell isn’t going to end up on TV, social media is the way to grow their audience.

Each new Playmate goes through our social media training and is introduced to our fan base (5 million+ on Facebook, 250,000 on Twitter) when her issue comes out. Within days she’ll have a thriving fan base of her own and we’ll work with her to create content and identify digital influencers to interact with. There are over 90 Playmates actively using Facebook and Twitter with a combined following of over 2 million, giving Playboy the sexiest army of digital brand advocates in the world.

Second, increasing engagement with our fan base beyond the pages of the magazine. We create specific content franchises for each platform in order to properly use each channel and not just post content for the sake of having a presence on a certain site.

Third, generating revenue. A few years ago, managing social media for a brand was mainly focused on growth, engagement, listening or some other buzz term. Monetizing was a nice-to-have but certainly not a primary objective.

Now once we reach a certain scale, revenue is a must in order to justify the existence of jobs like mine, right? True success in this space is quantifiable.

How would you describe the quintessential Playboy reader, and have your perceptions of him or her changed as you’ve engaged with readers online?

In terms of our social media audience, it spans beyond just the obvious, which is the guy who appreciates beautiful women.

Some of the other types we see include people that love the brand and its history, women that became fans after watching The Girls Next Door on E!, women who are aspiring Playmates, and people in search of men’s entertainment and lifestyle content.

We all know that Top 10 lists and sexy photo galleries are good for traffic, but Playboy has made its reputation on long-form articles and in-depth interviews. How do you attract eyeballs without sacrificing the quality of your content?

It’s important for us to recognize that there are many different types of people that come to Playboy.com via many different entry points. For example, if someone gets to the site to check out the latest Playmate, how can we make them aware that there’s a great interview or gaming feature they’d be interested in?

Or if they got to Playboy.com from a site that linked to an interview, how can we keep them on site to enjoy the eye candy? The “link-bait” may bring in more visitors, but the “long form” is what will build a true audience for a site.

With the Playboy mansion, you guys were pioneers in extending the “magazine experience” into the real world. Do you think being involved with things like events and nightclubs is an increasingly important part of what it means to be a magazine in the 21^st century?

Absolutely. Playboy allows consumers to interact with the brand and experience the Playboy lifestyle through parties and experiences at the Playboy Clubs. In 2006, we opened a multi-faceted entertainment venue in Las Vegas. More recently, we’ve opened Playboy Clubs in London, Cancun and Macau and look forward to continuing the expansion.

The Playboy brand has always been representative of “the good life” and we have always offered exclusive opportunities to enjoy that good life via nightclubs, parties and special events.

Playboy.com features a mix of free content and premium stuff. Do you think you’ve struck the right balance between the “open web” and “walled garden” approaches to online content?

Playboy has a number of web properties that aim to reach different audiences. Playboy.com includes a mix of girl features, entertainment stories and longer articles.

The Smoking Jacket, Playboy’s safe-for-work site, includes shorter posts, lists, “quick hits” that you’d want to pass along to your friends, and non-nude girl features. Playboy’s subscription sites offer extended girl content.

Our sites aim to attract different readers and viewers; we work to give fans a variety of content, both free and paid.

When people think of Playboy, they obviously think of your founder, Hugh Hefner. How have you brought Hef’s considerable legacy and personality into the online space?

Hef is extremely active on Twitter and it has become a part of his daily routine. People always ask if it’s really him, and it is Hef on his iPad from the Playboy Mansion. A lot of his tweets are answering fan questions, good or bad, so Twitter truly is an engagement platform for him.

Photos courtesy of Playboy

Ann Curry @140conf - Image by bjmccray via Flickr

Ann Curry takes her role as anchor to heart. Curry believes that television news anchors are responsible for holding down the journalistic principles of truth and accuracy in a world where the real-time news cycle often leads to error and misinformation.

Opening with a tongue-in-cheek impression of her Japanese mother, Curry charmed the crowd into a tweeting frenzy at last month’s 140conf.

During her 10-minute talk, entitled “Journalism in the State of Now,” Curry boldly declared that today’s journalists find themselves “where no generation has gone before.”

In particular, Curry addressed social media’s role in igniting social activism and spreading knowledge. She said that Facebook and Twitter offer people a platform to express their hopes and frustrations, or what she calls their “beautiful outrage.”

We caught up with Ann Curry backstage to chat about the changing state of news journalism and how she approaches her role as anchor across multiple platforms.

Known as the digital middle class, these Brazilians made up 42 percent of the country’s Internet population in 2010, and are highly coveted by digital marketers, despite their average monthly income being only US$581.

This historic shift has forced Brazilian brands and marketers to figure out how to engage 101 million people to whom they never really had to pay attention before.

It’s clear that the “social pyramid” traditionally used to describe Brazil’s social structure no longer works. Today, a diamond is more accurate. In 2010 alone, 19 million Brazilians "graduated" from classes D and E to Class C.

Social media nation

An impressive 45 percent of class C Brazilians are active on social media. Brands, therefore, have focused their marketing efforts on channels such as YouTube, MSN Messenger, Twitter and Orkut, the Google-owned social network that still trumps Facebook in Brazil.

Popular chocolate brand Lacta, for example, partnered with Orkut on Fazendinha, Brazil’s answer to Facebook’s Farmville game (the name literally translates as “little farm”). When players plant a cacao seed on their virtual farm, the seed grows into a tree that produces MiniBis, Lacta’s new chocolate snack.

These social networks have also given brands access to a previously elusive demographic: middle class women. According to research, 83 percent of class C women access the Internet on a daily basis, and 40 percent of them spend more than two hours a day on social networks.

In order to engage this underserved market, popular Brazilian clothing chain Marisa launched a flashy new website that includes a virtual changing room where shoppers can “try on” clothes on a variety of body types.

Almost half of the Brazilians who use social media belong to Class C, and the vast majority of this "digital middle class" are female.

Different market, different rules

Brazilian brands have learned that the products and strategies they’ve used to reach class A and B consumers can’t simply be “pushed down” to class C.

This new middle class is, after all, making the transition from a very different economic reality in which a can of condensed milk was considered a luxury item to be offered as a gift on special occasions.

Brazil’s emerging consumers will be loyal to brands and products that cater to their unique needs and norms. Sales at the Casas Bahia retail chain skyrocketed after the brand figured out that class C customers loved furniture with mirrored doors because it made their small homes appear bigger.

And since many class C customers live in isolated areas where electronic products such as mobile phones are essential, Casas Bahia added a video series to its shopping website to explain in plain language how to use these unfamiliar items.

Class C-targeted ads also tend to be more didactic and direct. Most middle class Brazilians access the Internet from pay-by-the-hour Internet cafés (LAN houses) and don’t have time to ponder the pros and cons of buying a product while surfing on the clock.

With this reality in mind, department store chain Ponto Frio, one of the largest in the country, has added video and 3-D presentations on its website to reel in customers.

Class warfare goes digital

If wider access to credit lines over the past decade is largely responsible for allowing class C to participate in the economy, Orkut gets credit for putting class C on an even social footing, at least online.

About half of Orkut’s Brazilian users come from the digital middle class. Meanwhile, the upper classes are quietly fleeing to rival Facebook to escape Orkut’s rapid “favelization,” a term commonly used to describe the influx of lower income users.

Some things change more quickly than others.

Last week at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, Steve Jobs introduced the long-awaited iCloud, the free service that will allow users to seamlessly (and cordlessly) sync their Apple devices. While the move is being championed as Apple “finally getting the web,” some critics are questioning whether the service is ready to serve the business world.

Speaking of Apple, along with the iCloud, Jobs also gave a sneak peek of iOS 5, which will “deeply integrate” Twitter into the operating system, but not so much Facebook.

In another nod to Twitter, Facebook is now testing its “Happening Now” feature on a handful of users.

As of June 20, brands will be able to apply for top-level domain extensions, meaning they will be able to purchase URLs ending in their brand names. The new domain offerings will give brands that do not own their desired URLs a second chance at reclaiming themselves on the web.

Views from around the web

Zip up that hoodie, Zuckerberg; Mashable’s Adam Ostrow thinks Twitter is the new Facebook.

Has “informational dystopia” finally arrived? Slate’s Jacob Weisberg pops author Eli Pariser’s “Filter Bubble,”

Lessons from Weinergate: “This should be a lesson to those who get too relaxed about powerful forces they mistakenly believe are within their control.”

Random bytes

Media agencies are putting their money where their mouse is by allocating more funds to online marketing.

Does this screen make my butt look big? The next generation fitting room.

Google’s Do-Ra-Mi doodle finds a permanent domain.

Going viral

Facebook and Twitter are taken to the streets, showing us just how awkward our online practices actually are:

The man responsible for Old Spice’s Emmy-winning “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” spot strikes again, this time with beer:

Duck and cover! Angry birds comes to life in Barcelona:

What’s app-ening

The app answer to Damn You Auto Correct, plus Business Insider’s list of other apps you may have missed.

PC World’s best budget apps (only 99 cents!) for when boredom ensues.

Order sushi like a pro with these apps. Domo Arigato, Apple (and Android).

With more than 1400 companies in attendance, the conference highlighted everything from smart phones to tablets to new applications for these proliferating devices. Even good old Angry Birds found a place in this week’s festivities, taking home the awards for Best Mobile App and App of the Year on the Apple platform.

It’s no surprise that tablets dominated this year’s conference. Acer launched its new Iconia tablets, which critics hope will have a more reasonable price tag than some of its competitors. HTC also revealed its Flyer model, which CEO Peter Chou claims is more than just another “me-too” product.

More than a showcase for new devices, the event made headlines by uncovering some controversial opinions about the world’s most powerful tech companies. For example, AT&T’s CEO found himself with few positive things to say about Apple’s customer service. On a more positive note, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discussed the benefits of the Windows Phone 7 and boasted about the positive reactions it has received.

Smart phone pioneers Research in Motion also presented some new developments with Blackberry, unveiling a new app that manages travel itineraries. And Mark Zuckerberg a made a cameo via video recording to put the rumours about a Facebook phone to rest.

Throughout the conference, members were kept well informed via MWC’s  Twitter feeds. We can only hope that this year’s countless innovations will give us plenty to talk about on the mobile front until Mobile World Congress 2012.

Top stories

New LG Smartphone uses 3D technology.

Yahoo reveals Livestand, the latest in personalized magazines for tablets.

The Brazilian High Court apologizes for a Twitter message.

Apple implements controversial subscription fees. And so does Google.

Views from around the web

Yet another take on social media’s role in the Egyptian Revolution.

Facebook turns a new page, changing the role of page administrators.

Smart displays move in-store at JC Penny.

TED continues to “spread ideas worth spreading” on their new Quora-inspired forum.

This week in social media

Lil Wayne vs. Oreo: The unusual Facebook battle over a Guinness World Record:

Blackberry coordinates with TAT for a new scrapbook app:

Travel Marketing

Caribou Coffee warms up potential customers by transforming bus shelters into branded experiences.

Southwest Airlines turns direct-connect into direct revenue – a competitive advantage they do not intend to share.

ITB encourages travel suppliers to establish trust with consumers before moving into social media marketing.

Media + Magazines

AOL takes aim at Flipboard with its new interactive magazine app, Editions – “The magazine that reads you.”

A study conducted by the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services reports that few business executives believe their companies use social media effectively.

The Independent demonstrates how newspapers and Facebook can work together to create a personalized media experience for readers.

Branded Content + Entertainment

With digital screens, real-time images and sounds, facial recognition, and some high-power fans, Discovery Channel series “Storm Chasers” comes to life when the “Urban Tornado” campaign touches down on the streets of New York City.

Tostitos focuses on making connections, using its Facebook page to launch an emotional social media campaign that reunites consumers with friends and loved ones.

Pizza Hut joins forces with Movies on Demand in an effort to entertain customers while they wait for their deliveries.

Photo by mary hodder via flickr

Let’s start with the basic question: What is VRM and why should businesses and marketers care about it?

VRM is Vendor Relationship Management. It’s the customer-side counterpart of Customer Relationship Management, meaning it’s the way customers manage their relationship with vendors. Businesses should care about it because customers will come to market with their own tools, and it’s a good thing to be ready to engage with those tools and those customers.

What role do Facebook, Twitter and other so-called social media play in VRM?

They provide ways to test or prototype some VRM activities. For example, one can put out what we call a “personal RFP” on Twitter. A couple years ago I did that at O’Hare when my family was delayed several hours by a snowstorm. I tweeted a request for pointers to a good sit-down restaurant at the airport and got a pile of helpful responses.

But we were still inside Twitter’s silo. Twitter owns and controls the means by which I issued that RFP. This is very much like it was when e-mail was owned and controlled by companies. You had to operate inside AOL’s mail, or Microsoft’s mail, or MCI’s mail. Today only one company controls all of tweeting, and that’s a problem, no matter how well Twitter behaves.

We have the same problem with Facebook. One company owns the whole show. It’s AOL 2.0. No matter how big Facebook gets, it can’t be bigger than the Web, and certainly not bigger than the Net. It’s a giant walled garden. And walled gardens are not free marketplaces. They are private ones.

Both Twitter and Facebook are close to becoming clichés as well. See Dilbert from last month, especially that first frame:

That you say “so-called social media” says a lot as well. As I’ve pointed out, social media are largely understood as marketing vehicles. Telephony, texting and blogging are no less “social” than Twitter and Facebook, but are dismissed or ignored because they have less marketing value.

VRM is social to the degree that humans are social, shopping is social, and dealing with companies in the marketplace is social. And, to the degree that “social media” – whatever they are – help, we might call them VRM tools. But VRM will never be a branch of social media or marketing, any more than any of us are branches of commercial entities.

What opportunities does the widespread adoption of mobile smartphones present for VRM?

This is the limitless sweet spot for VRM.

Humans are mobile animals. We were not built only to sit at desks and type on machines, or even to drive cars. We were built to walk and talk before we did anything else.

This is why mobile devices at their best serve as extensions of ourselves. They enlarge our abilities to deal with the world around us, with each other, and with the organizations we relate to. This especially applies to companies we do business with.

Right now we are at what I call the “too many apps” stage of doing this. Every store, every radio station, every newspaper and magazine wants to build its own app. At this early stage in the history of mobile development we need lots and lots of experimenting and prototyping, so having so many apps (where in lots of cases one would do) is fine.

But as time goes on we’re going to want fewer apps and better ways of dealing with multiple entities. For example, we’ll want one easy way to issue a personal RFP, or to store and selectively share personal data on an as-needed basis.

We won’t want our health data in five different clouds, each with its own app. We may have it in one cloud, for example, much as most of us currently have our money in one bank. But we’ll also need for that data to be portable, and the services substitutable.

Are there any businesses or services putting VRM tools into action? Anyone making money with them?

A number of companies are making VRM tools. Azigo, Kynetx and MyDex are three that come to mind. A number of open-source projects are also in the works. I’m working with students at MIT and Kings College London on my own development projects (r-button, EmanciPay and related tools). The list goes on.

It’s important to remember that not everything useful in the marketplace comes from companies or makes money. The protocols in the Internet’s suite make no money in themselves, yet support trillions of dollars in economic activity and benefits.

Look up RSS on Google and you’ll get more than two billion results. Dave Winer created RSS (Really Simple Syndication) as a tool to make it easy for anybody to syndicate what they publish. He didn’t do that to make money for RSS itself, but to enlarge the publishing world as a place where many – including himself – could make money and do other good stuff.

The authors of the e-mail protocols we all take for granted (SMTP, POP3, IMAP) just wanted a simple zero-cost way to do e-mail, not to make money with it. And e-mail supports a heap of economic activity as well.

In fact both RSS and e-mail qualify as VRM tools already in use.

If you want to see which way the wind is starting to blow here, look at this tweet from Alexander Ainslie:

Blaine is one of the founders and architects of Twitter. Webfinger is a way to translate e-mail addresses to URLs. This too can be a powerful VRM tool.

You recently hosted a VRM+CRM summit, where you brought folks from both sides together to cross-pollinate. Did you find any common ground?

Well, it was a workshop, rather than a summit, and it was terrific. We had a lot of very productive dialog, and agreement about the need to engage. We also saw clearly that both sides have a long way to go.

What mattered was that both sides were moving toward meeting in an open marketplace where customers roam free and companies see more value in free customers than in captive ones.

Check out Part II of our interview in which we ask Doc about privacy, marketing buzzwords and his contention that “brands are boring.”

Photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video via flickr

Inform

In tense, time-sensitive circumstances travellers turn to social media for information. The most effective tweets and status updates read like newspaper headlines: clear, concise and timely. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has been particularly good at this, using Twitter to send out frequent updates filled with re-booking tips, location-specific information, and links to more detailed content. No wonder the brand gained more than 4,000 Twitter followers in the past week!

Reassure

Between news updates, some airlines are reassuring customers that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Brussels Airlines addresses stranded passengers who may be worried about angry bosses or missed exams. Meanwhile, Lufthansa is keeping its customers’ hopes alive by re-tweeting passenger success stories while staffing up in airports and call centres.

Engage

Some airlines are going a step further by responding to customers personally. KLM’s Twitter feed is littered with @replys (individual responses to customer questions, comments and concerns) in both English and Dutch.

But some of the best engagement is taking place on Facebook, where customers and airline staff have more space to share stories, advice and sympathy. Lufthansa has been using Facebook to post updates and converse with fans throughout the week. KLM (can you tell we’re impressed with them?) has a “Volcanic Eruption” Q&A sidebar on its Facebook page and helpful staff members answering questions around the clock.

One of Facebook’s strengths is that it encourages customers to engage with each other. Like friendly passengers bonding in an airport lounge, people are using branded pages to exchange war stories, share information and even offer stranded strangers a place to crash.

Of course, Facebook and Twitter also provide ample opportunity to criticize and castigate an airline brand on its own turf. But losing control is inevitable in the digital age. And for the most part, all it takes is a touch of humanity to turn a disgruntled customer into an appreciate fan or follower.

©istockphoto.com/Katrina Brown

Social media has blurred the lines between marketing and friend-making.

Consider the wording that social networking sites use.  When you hook up with someone on LinkedIn it’s called a “connection.” The term elicits a feeling of old-school business success based on the size of your Rolodex. Now consider Facebook, where every connection made is a “friend.”  That word brings up emotions of shared experience, understanding and camaraderie. Finally, leap into the world of Twitter and you will find yourself with “followers,” a term that carries the weight of authority and relevance and brings us into the world of social media stardom.

In marketing getting a star to endorse your product is big business.  Think of William Shatner and Priceline, U2 and the iPod, or even Bill Cosby and Jell-O. Companies look to celebrities to link their product to someone the consumer will know and trust.

Here’s the good news: with social media you no longer need the big celebrity endorser as a middle man. Your company can be the star, with thousands of followers who respect your brand and love your product.

Take Southwest Airlines, for example. At the time of this writing the airline had almost 80,000 Facebook fans and 750,000 followers on Twitter. Southwest also has a presence on Flickr, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and its own innovative blog.  Recently Southwest’s social media gurus energized their Twitter followers with a contest, the prize being a two-night stay at the Napa Valley Marriott Hotel & Spa and used the hashtag #wineswa to promote it.  To top it off they used their “Red Belly Radio” podcast to announce the winners. That’s a huge amount of good publicity at relatively little cost. And no celebrity was harmed in the making of their success.

Of course, the simple fact that a brand has thousands of Twitter followers does not make it a star. Here’s where social media stardom diverges from celebrity— you need to follow your followers, friend your friends and connect with your connections. Customers won’t follow you blindly. They will be vocal and they expect a two-sided conversation.

Let me tell you a true story.  A weary traveller showed up at her hotel late at night and stood in line for over an hour waiting to check in. Disgruntled, she logged into her Twitter account on her phone and sent out a message into the virtual soapbox known as the Twittersphere: “Can you believe this–a four-star hotel, 12 at night, no manager, can’t check in . . . insane.”

Someone was listening. The staff at another hotel located a block away said it would gladly accommodate her, and even take care of any cancellation fees. Not only did the customer pick up her bags and leave, so did the three other people that were waiting in line. In this case there were two social media stars created, the hero and the villain.  Which one do you want to be?

Searching Facebook for “airlines” yields more than 500 results, including official “pages” (which are administered by airline staff) and unofficial “groups” (which can be started by fans or off-duty employees). This can get confusing, since groups and pages look the same, and since some groups seem to serve as official pages, while some pages claim to be “unofficial.” To make things messier, some companies have multiple accounts (EL AL Airlines has three pages) while some have plenty of friends, but no content to show for it (Delta Air Lines has 7,570 fans but no updates).

Online social networking requires companies to relinquish a certain amount of control, and some airlines are letting go more than others. American Airlines’ wall is populated by messages from customers, some disgruntled (“We need to start a movement against AA and their GROSSED out 757s (domestic)… How do we do this…”). Other companies, such as Royal Brunei Airlines, simply recycle content from their website.

There’s also the messy issue of employee pages. Pilots, flight attendants and airport staff – both former and current – have created their own spaces on Facebook to keep in touch. These pages are usually open to the public and branded with airline logos, making them indistinguishable at first glance from official pages. This can be a recipe for a PR fiasco: in November, Virgin Atlantic Airlines fired 13 flight attendants who criticized the airline’s safety standards and dissed its passengers on Facebook. On the other hand, is there any better or cheaper publicity than a spontaneous employee love-in?

Below is our list of airlines that have an official Facebook presence (with their current number of friends in parentheses). Let us know if we’ve missed any and we’ll add them to the list:

Aegean Airlines (572)
Aer Lingus (885)
Air Asia (3,415)
Air Canada (8,959)
Air France (2,275)
Air New Zealand (1,403)
Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air (2,652)
Allegiant Air (296)
American Airlines (10,954)
Arabian Airlines (194)
Asiana Airlines (254)
ATA (defunct) (547)
Atlantic Southeast Airlines (558)
Austrian Airlines (1,129)
Austrian Airlines Srbija (183)
Avensa (467)
Axis French Airlines (106)
Azerbaijan Airlines (976)
B&H Airlines (655)
Blue Panorama Airlines (106)
British Airways (219)
Brussels Airlines (1,495)
Cargolux Airlines International (480)

Cathay Pacific Airways (11,049)
Chanchangi Airlines (357)
China Airlines (510)
China Eastern Airlines (100)
China Southern Airlines (232)
Click Air (545)
Continental Airlines (5,996)
Copa Airlines (990)
Croatia Airlines (1,419)
Czech Airlines (751)
Delta Air Lines (7,506)
EasyJet (4,971)
EgyptAir (621)
EL AL Airlines (293)
Emirates (27, 423)
Ethiopian Airlines (1,148)
Eurofly (260)
Firefly (1,213)
FlyBe (72)
Frontier Airlines (569)
Ghana International Airlines (210)
Gulf Air (1,987)
Hawaiian Airlines (4,003)
Iceland Air (8,046)
Japan Airlines (2,475)
JetBlue Airways (7,536)
Jetstar Airways (1,497)

Kenya Airways (448)
Kingfisher Airlines (915)
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (1,546)
Korean Air (1,300)
LAN Airlines (4,378)
Lufthansa (5,105)
Malaysia Airlines (2,272)
Mandala Airlines (857)
Meridiana (1,808)
Merpati Nusantara Airlines (458)
Mexicana Airlines (431)
Middle East Airlines (3,734)
Midwest Airlines(410)
MK Airlines Ltd. (184)
Northwest Airlines (583)
Oasis Hong Kong Airlines 610)
Olympic Airlines (1,326)
Pacific Blue Airlines (486)
Pacific Coastal Airlines (318)
Pakistan International Airlines (89)
Pegasus Airlines (634)
Philippine Airlines (3,856)
Porter Airlines (469)
Qantas Airways (8,701)
Royal Brunei Airlines (1,068)
RyanAir (1,302)
Saga Airlines (192)
SAS Scandinavian Airlines (4,609)
Saudi Arabian Airlines (2,704)
SEEAIR (517)
Singapore Airlines (30,589)
Skyservice Airlines (147)

South East Asian Airlines (518)
Southwest Airlines (67,965)
Spirit Airlines (283)
Sri Lankan Airlines (740)
Tap Portugal (870)
Thai Airways (2,865)
Thomas Cook (8,223)
Tiger Airways (180)
Turkish Airlines (7,074)
Turkmenistan Airlines (254)
Ukraine International Airlines (59)
United Airlines (8,817)
USA300 (220)
V Australia (944)
Vietnam Airlines (312)
Virgin America (25,259)
Virgin Blue (973)
Virgin Atlantic (17,376)
VLm Airlines (289)
Vuelin Airlines (495)
WestJet Airlines (4,961)
Wizz Air (636)

©istockphoto.com/Simon Oxley

Travel is a social activity. You meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet. On a business trip, you hang out at your hotel bar and meet others doing the same thing. You strike up a conversation. Sometimes, you stay in touch. Every business trip is really a trip to meet someone. Business is, in the end, the art of the honest handshake.

So it’s not really surprising that the social aspect of travel has morphed into social networking. Sites like FlyerTalk are not just message boards about airlines and airports but also places where people “meet” and talk and, eventually, socialize. Friends are made, alliances are formed, plans are hatched. Travellers are a tribe, a group of people with common interests and problems, a real community. FlyerTalk makes this obvious.

Dopplr is another site that announces where you are at any given time to a wide range of people, some of whom you might not even know. My Dopplr account is hooked up to my Facebook account, so anyone who cares knows where I might be on any given day. (This might seem an intrusion of my social space, but how is it intrusive if I’m the one advertising my whereabouts? If I don’t want people to know where I am, I don’t post. It’s like turning your ringer off on your cellphone.) On Facebook, you can tell people where you’ve been, where you dream of going, where you’ve eaten, what you pack, where you buy stuff on your travels. The endless number of applications built around travel speaks to our desire to see the world or, if we can’t, to experience it vicariously through others. What these sites do is something many are calling “intelligent networking.” Our business trips are often networking opportunities, and the Internet has allowed us to network without leaving our desks.

On Twitter (yes, I’m on this as well; makes me wonder how I get any work done), anyone who is thinking about travelling announces it to the world. The “tweets” come in waves when someone is actually on the road; it’s almost as if you’re travelling with them, and, in a sense, you are. From Twitter you can link to a site where you’ve uploaded your photos, so your followers can see what you’re talking about. Go to Flickr, another photo-sharing site, and you can sort through millions of vacation photos from all over the world.

Why are we doing this?

Well, what’s the first thing you ask when meeting someone who’s been away? How was the trip? Because travel is social. You want to know the story. Even of someone you’ve just met.

“Watching” others travel allows us to construct our own stories in our minds. Every traveller has something to relate, no matter how mundane the reason for travel, and every anecdote has the potential to illuminate and entertain. So whether I’m following someone’s tweets or meeting someone in person after having met them online, my own personal narrative is nour­ished and grows – again, just like what travel itself does for me. And if this social travel allows me to grow my network and even wins me new business? Well, that’s about as intelligent as networking gets.

Originally published in Air Canada‘s enRoute, published by Spafax.

Robert Scoble is one of the world’s leading evangelists of all things digital. Previously with Microsoft, Scoble has also worked with Fast Company among others. He is perhaps best known as a blogger: millions around the world read it every day. And one of Scoble’s most famous creations is his starfish, a great, colorful visualization of the amorphous social-media landscape. Inspired by Brafman and Beckstrom’s “The Starfish and the Spider,” Scoble emphasizes the online media ecosystem’s decentralized and interconnected nature. Below, we dissect the starfish, laying out each medium’s strengths and weaknesses and examining which players are converting each into eyeballs and dollars.

Video

Strengths:
youth audience, viral, multiple senses, easy to embed, creativity, control over message
Weaknesses:
production costs, online video not as popular with adults, oversaturation
Services:
YouTube, Google Video, Kyte, Seesmic, Hulu
Conversions:
Politicians and interest groups use video to spread the word. Aspiring musicians and filmmakers can market themselves on the cheap. Grey-market entrepreneurs who provide links to TV shows and movies are making a killing off ad sales.
Who’s making money?
Let’s face it: YouTube will never be the cash cow Google expected it to be. And how annoying are those commercials networks lace their videos with? There is hope, however, in sites such as Hulu, where the big boys get a share of the pie.

Photo

Strengths:
“worth a thousands words,” cheap, easy to share across platforms
Weaknesses:
static, copyright confusion
Services:
Flickr, Zooomer, SmugMug
Conversions:
Citizen journalism sites such as Gothamist and CNN’s iReport are thriving off our Flickr photos.
Who’s making money?
Flickr has stayed afloat with its premium subscriber model but Yahoo suitors such as Microsoft may think they can squeeze more money out of the photo-sharing leader.

Blog

Strengths:
personal, interactive, multimedia, free and easy to use
Weaknesses:
Casual tone can lead to political and corporate gaffes. Many companies are leery about opening themselves to criticism through comments or linking. “Post or die”: maintaining a popular blog is a full-time job.
Services:
WordPress, Blogger, TypePad
Conversions:
Google, Wal-Mart, Amazon, McDonald’s and Whole Foods are among the most powerful corporations with successful. – and surprisingly readable – corporate blogs.
Who’s making money?
Blogs are the lifeblood of what Internet evangelist Jeff Jarvis calls the new “link economy.” According to a Wall Street Journal story, more Americans earn a living today from blogging than firefighting or computer programming (although some bloggers have questioned the Journal’s accounting).

Events

Strengths:
Welcome to the real world.
Weaknesses:
“If you build it, they will come”—except when they don’t.
Services:
Zvents, Evite, Eventful, Upcoming, Facebook
Conversions:
Scoble likes to talk about an unofficial Obama rally that was organized online and drew more than 4,000 supporters – plus the future President.
Who’s making money?
Depends on the cover charge.

Collaborative Tools

Strengths:
internal efficiency, transparency
Weaknesses:
Expensive and buggy. Will our privacy evaporate in a cloud?
Services:
Zoho, Zimbra, Google Docs
Conversions:
Google’s ever-evolving collaboration tools build brand loyalty (not to mention dependency).
Who’s making money?
By keeping its programs in perennial beta mode, Google can scrap unprofitable – or just plain crappy – creations while saving face. What happened to Vista Beta, Mr. Gates?

Wikis

Strengths:
Crowdsourcing, transparency, unabashed geekiness: Wikis are the coolest social media on the block.
Weaknesses:
The hazards of democracy: Wikis are fair game for critics, pranksters and sh*t disturbers.
Services:
Pbwiki, Twiki, Wetpaint
Conversions:
Wikipedia, anyone?
Who’s making money?
Wikis are the NGOs of the Internet economy. They won’t make money, but the geeks won’t let them fail.

Audio

Strengths:
intimate, easy and cheap
Weaknesses:
Radio is so 1930s.
Services:
BlogTalkRadio, Odeo, podcasts
Conversions:
The Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network just keeps growing.
Who’s making money?
Even public-radio producers have embraced mid-podcast advertising, which is somehow less annoying than video ads (how can you not buy a mattress endorsed by Garrison Keillor’s soothing baritone?)

Email

Strengths:
personal and timely
Weaknesses:
spam!
Services:
MediaPost, AWordADay, TPM Daily Digest and other so-called Bacn.
Conversions:
Six months after the election, President Obama is still tapping into his campaign e-mail trove to sell himself to the American people.
Who’s making money?
We’re so used to ads in our inbox, who would mind a few more?

SMS

Strengths:
even more personal, even more timely
Weaknesses:
except for when cell-phone carriers fail to deliver on time
Services:
Communications Channel
Conversions:
Obama announcing his running mate via SMS was a neat idea, but the cat was out of the bag hours before that early-morning text.
Who’s making money?
As if the Verizons and Videotrons of the world needed another revenue stream.

Microblogs

Strengths:
niche, timely, personal
Weaknesses:
limited audience, time-consuming
Services:
Twitter, Jaiku
Conversions:
Freelance writer Daniel Baum blabbed in 140-character form about his rise and fall at The New Yorker – just in time for his new book launch.
Who’s making money?
So far, Twitter is another VC trust-fund baby. But its powerful real-time search capabilities make it extremely attractive to a conventional search engine such as Google, whose results will always be a few steps behind.

Personal Social Networks

Strengths:
It doesn’t get much more personal than this. An advertiser’s dream.
Weaknesses:
Some might think twice before playing in another company’s walled garden.
Services:
Facebook, Myspace Linked In
Conversions:
Facebook has converted nearly every high school and college-aged kid into a computer geek and online consumer.
Who’s making money?
Program developers, online marketers and Mark Zuckerberg have all made a pretty penny from Facebook. But questions about proprietary rights and privacy continue to loom over the site.