Giant corporations like Sun Microsystems and Ebay, Inc. have accounts on social websites and now even government agencies are beginning to create accounts on sites like facebook and myspace. You may be wondering if social media can benefit your company as well, but these websites and how they can all work together can at times be confusing to a newcomer. In this update we’d like to explain the benefits social media can have for your company or organization.
The Big Two: Facebook vs. Myspace
While Myspace has more users, Facebook has recently surpassed Myspace as the most frequently visited website on the Internet. Facebook is a friends networking website much like Myspace however it tends to be geared more towards one’s “real life” friends. Many people out there don’t mind having 12,000 friends on Myspace but prefer to keep their Facebook accounts limited to those who they’ve met in person. Facebook allows for the creation of pages and groups however, which you will find people are more likely to join even if they don’t know you personally, so long as they agree with what it stands for. In general, Facebook has less privacy features then Myspace. For instance, on Myspace only your friends can see your status updates and bulletin posts, whereas on Facebook a friend-of-a-friend can see your photos or wall posts as well. Also, Facebook runs public RSS feeds of certain portions of your “stream”. It’s a good idea to go through the settings very carefully on both Myspace and Facebook to make sure you understand what information is being made public. However, as a general rule it’s best to just never place anything online or in an email that you wouldn’t want to be public knowledge. That is, afterall, exactly what that information becomes once you convert it to bits of data and begin passing it around through the internet’s routers.
Twitter – Microblogging in 140 characters or less
I read an interesting article recently about how Twitter came across the idea to limit their user’s posts to 140 characters or less. Text messaging is generally limited to between 128 and 140 characters (depending on your provider). In today’s blitz of internet-based media people are becoming inundated with blog posts, Myspace bulletins, Facebook notes, and e-mail and their attention span for advertising or marketing is therefore becoming shorter and shorter. It makes sense then to lessen the length of these announcements so people can hopefully find what they’re looking for in a more time efficient manner.
Enter Twitter, the champions of the micro-blogging arena. Beginner’s using Twitter may be a little confused initially due to a few new types of references unique to twitter. For instance, we all know the @ symbol in an e-mail address refers to the domain name of the user, but on Twitter the @ symbol is used a little differently. On Twitter, an @ symbol preceeds a user’s username. For instance if a user were to say:
Just got back from a great conversation with @websightdesigns
The @ symbol is simply there to alert you to the fact they are referring to another Twitter user.
Another reference that may be confusing to new Twitter users is hash tags. Hash tags look like this:
This band on the main stage right now is amazing! #sxsw
The #sxsw hash tag is referencing an annual festival in Austin, Texas called “South by Southwest” which is commonly referred to by the abbreviation SXSW. The hash tag serves two purposes. The first is that users who are uncertain of the meaning of the term or its usage in the current context can look it up on Tagal.us and if a definition exists there they will then be able to gain a better understanding. The second purpose is that Twitter hash tags are indexed on Hashtags.org so users can follow all the user comments on a particular tag. This allows for the following of a particular trend and gives advanced users a method of following a particular subject as opposed to just particular users.
Ping.fm – Unifying Your Social Media Networks
Ping.fm is a service which allows you to post to your Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress blog, Livejournal blog, and many other networks all at once. Since most of us are way too busy to spend the time it would take to log in to every single account and post an important message there, this proves to be a valuable and time-saving service. A dropdown box allows you to post your message to all of the accounts you’ve set up in Ping.fm, or only to the ones which fall under a certain category, like Blogs, Microblogs, or Status Updates.
Another similar service is Tumblr, however Tumblr is a way of following all of your social media networks updates rather then a way of posting messages to them.
Tags: facebook, media, myspace, ping.fm, social, social media, tumblr, twitter
