“This is a first in a series of changes that you’ll see designed to simplify the organization and display of content to benefit our users,” a MySpace spokeperson told Hypebot. MySpace has been struggling to retain users even as Facebook soars; and rapid innovation is their best chance to reverse thet trend.

click on image to enlarge

New features on the user home page include:

• A wider activity stream: The stream now spans the first two columns, featuring shared content and status updates from friends across their network.
• My Stuff and Recommendations: A new “My Stuff” module gives offers quick access to photos, videos and music from the homepage; and recommendations (Featured Games, People You May Know, and Recommended Events) have been combined into a single “Recommendations” module.
• New alerts system and address book importer: The new alerts system collects similar alerts and repositions them in a more visible and persistent location, enabling users to browse and interact with their alerts without ever leaving the UHP. A new version of the address book importer will help users find and connect with friends more easily.

What do you think of Myspace and the new front page?

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While I don’t necessarily believe in the “value” of the page calculated by this tool per se, it is a handy way to put a number to a page based on that page’s activity—looking at both post volume and the reaction to those posts. When you analyze the data this way, only three of the largest pages stay in the top 50. (Actually, it’s 51, as I inadvertently left Starburst off the Top 50 list. They are included here.) Here’s the list.

Key findings

As you can see, the list reorders dramatically. Some key findings:

• Passion products (like Oreos, Slurpees and Converse) may be able to grow fan bases quickly, but that does not automatically translate into page value;
• The pages with the highest value posted the most. While this isn’t surprising, it shows the effort required;

• All 5 of the top 5 most valuable pages had posts on Sunday and each one has custom tabs;
• While each of the top 5 have custom tabs, only 3 of the top 5 have set a tab other than the wall as the landing tab. This surprised me a bit.

• Each of the bottom 5 posted quite infrequently, except McDonalds.

• McDonalds (in the bottom 5) had seemingly random posts, each of which links to a different burger.

Value by fan

When you sort by dollar value per fan, the top 50 turns practically upside down. Here are the top 10 by that metric, with their rank by fan count in parenthesis:

1. Xbox, $7.08 (51)
2. Dr. Pepper, $7.04 (30)
3. Monster Energy, $5.30 (43)
4. adidas Originals, $4.57 (14)
5. Walt Disney World, $4.50, (46)
6. Breast Cancer Awareness, $4.28 (48)
7. iTunes, $3.31 (10)
8. YouTube, $3.27 (4)
9. H&M, $3.27 (24)
10. Playstation, $2.98, (49)

Xbox barely made the list in terms of size, coming in at 50th 51st, but they’re motivating their base better than anyone else. Dr. Pepper shares a strange collection of very product-centric updates with their fans, but the fans love them. And adidas Originals has both a partnership with Snoop Dog on their page and exclusive product announcements—a good mix of celebrity and insider info.

Real winners

The real winners on this list, then, are the pages that combine both high fan count and high value, as they are doing the best job of converting those fans into action. (Of course, we don’t have insight into the impact this is having on their business objectives, but if you can consistently motivate your fans, I have to think your opportunity to impact your business is enhanced.)

From that angle, the pages that have impressed me so far are:

• YouTube (#4 in size, #1 in value, #8 in value/fan)
• Skittles (#5 in size, #6 in value, #14 in value/fan)
• iTunes (#10 in size, #4 in value, #7 in value/fan)
• Facebook (#1 in size, #2 in value, #19 in value/fan)
• Victoria’s Secret (#9 in size, #11 in value, #18 in value/fan)

Of all of these, I’m most impressed with Skittles. YouTube, iTunes and Facebook have the advantage of a near limitless supply of content. Victoria’s Secret has, well, other advantages. But Skittles does not.

Little blobs of coated sugar, they got heckled a bit for their Skittles.com social takeover in early 2009. But it’s clear from this that they have not taken those fans for granted. They’ve found a way to keep them entertained.

Not the 50 most valuable

Keep in mind, this is a rank of the 50 largest branded Facebook pages, by value. It’s not the 50 most valuable branded Facebook pages. If it were, it would look a lot different, but it would require analyzing hundreds more pages individually.

For example, one of our clients, Windows, has 626,197 fans (as of Sunday, 7/11) and a value of $2,296,080. That would rank it 7th in value per fan ($3.67) and 28th in total value. But since it’s not big enough to be on the current Top 50 list, it’s also not on the “value” list. (But I think we’ll let them know nevertheless.)

What surprised you when you saw how the Top 50 re-ranked by value?

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When asked why they have no Internet connection at home, “don’t need/not interested” represented 16.7% of those surveyed, “too expensive”  was the answer for 38.9%. And when dial-up net users were asked why they don’t upgrade to broadband,  “not interested “shrank to 7.3% and “too expensive” jumped to 41.3%.

Answers for the music industry:

One solution is certainly to support The Obama administration’s efforts to spread affordable broadband access to poorer and rural areas. But another interim strategy could be to not abandon the physical format so quickly and – just as the experts preach in the digital realm – make the product available wherever the consumer spends their time.

If Wal-Mart want to shrink thier music section, would Dollar General make space for a brave rack jobber? Or what about music pop-up stores across from arena size concerts or at the county fair?

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Facebook has built its brand on pushing the idea that members should share real information so real people can connect to other real people, and not to some persona that is covered up in a neat social media moniker. As a result, people have come to trust the site as a place that is safe and exists for the user.

Well, that was then and this is now. Before the new policy took effect, most of the data that was given to Facebook was kept pretty private and there was not a tremendous concern about the data beyond the normal “it’s the Internet and nothing is really private anyway” talk. What Facebook has done now is to turn their backs on the folks that they built their data community on by saying that privacy is so 2005. In order to get your privacy back, you need to manage it yourself because the doors of the barn have been flung wide open.

Well, this move is just puzzling to me. I realize that there is a need to make money, but if this is how the master plan was laid out, then someone was asleep at the wheel. Since when was it good business to build trust with people over years and then pull the rug out from underneath them for your one-sided benefit?

Now the government is being called in, which is never a good thing.

So what may have Facebook done here? Let’s think about it.

1. Pulled a Tiger Woods? Take a pretty good image and do something sleazy and what do you get? Discontent. Lower approval ratings. Nothing good comes of it an act that is disrespectful of others.
2. Shown their true colors? Those true colors may be green, for the money which has been put in front of the community. No one is saying that Facebook shouldn’t make money. In fact, it is quite the opposite. They need to make money to show that social media is a profitable business. Sometimes, how you make the money (like selling out your users) can hurt your efforts.
3. Moved toward MySpace territory? While admittedly a stretch, what if Facebook is simply the bigger version of MySpace and it has made a second or third generation social media business mistake that will make it go the way of Friendster, or even worse, be pushed to the fringes of relevance like MySpace.
4. Shown its age? Let’s face it. Facebook was started by a very young guy and he shows his age more often than not. Maybe he is being swayed by counsel that is not in the best interest of Facebook, but he simply isn’t experienced enough to know differently. Being smart and being experienced are two completely different things. Mark Zuckerberg is definitely smart. The other? Not so much.
5. Created a free monster? Maybe there is no real way to turn the switch on a pay model after being free for so long. Maybe this is just an example of being too big and too ubiquitous. People are used to everything just “being” with Facebook. Now as the company is required to make moves to be profitable (which it has not done yet) it is learning the hard lesson of its model.
6. Assumed people wouldn’t pay attention? This is the most insidious of considerations because Facebook and their terms of service have always been a real PR play. They know full well that most people don’t pay attention to Facebook policies as evidenced by not reaching the required 7,000 comments recently to put a TOS issue to a vote. Maybe they were naïve enough to think that if the users of Facebook are just not paying attention then they could CTA (cover their a%$) with some privacy announcements and never look back.
7. Realized that Google really is in control because of search? With Twitter opening their feed to the major engines, Facebook was up against it to a degree. It was forced to sacrifice one of its pillars of trust (privacy) for the demand to index the entire world in real time.

What’s your take on this? Is it an over-reaction? Did Facebook do any real damage in the long or short term to itself? Will we all forget this in a month or so? I don’t have any answers to this but my suspicion is that this is not the end of this discussion. Not by a long shot.

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My views and opinions of how the FTC is flawed in its dissection of the blogosphere and Twitterverse as compared to traditional media is reserved for a separate, but imminent post. As a matter of edification, I support the FTC’s mission of protecting the consumer. I just don’t agree with how it lumps earned mentions from meaningful and effective public relations (PR) and paid placement of content either through monetary or product exchanges. There’s a difference and we’ll talk about that later.

In the realm of sponsored posts or tweets, the FTC simply cannot delineate the differences between earned and paid postings and therefore assumes that most consumers are equally oblivious.

With Izea’s impending announcement of a new pay-per-tweet network, combined with existing ad networks and services such as TweetROI, Twittad, and Magpie, the FTC will be forced to pay attention to the paid endorsements in one of Social Media’s most promising and also elusive networks.

As you could possibly imagine, the reality of mass-sponsored tweets will raise a Tweetstorm that will immediately trigger a blogstorm, which will ultimately escalate into full-blown category 5 media hurricane.

But the reality is, whether you agree with them or not, sponsored conversations and paid tweets work when used in the correct situations as a complementary program in addition to other traditional and socially-focused engagement initiatives.

They increase awareness, expand networks, drive sales, build community, promote causes and raise money and awareness, and push traffic.

So, before the chaos and confusion ensues, I wanted to take a proactive role in steering a productive conversation to explore and introduce solutions, ethics, standards, and also reduce the possibility for consumer confusion and potential backlash.

I hosted a virtual summit on the topic via Facebook and invited pundits and industry leaders to discuss:

- The issues and options for meeting FTC guidelines

- The responsibility of brands and participants to provide consumers with information, context and intent

- The inevitable need for guidelines and standardization in disclosure practices

- And how participating in these sponsored conversations might impact the image of the sponsoring brand as well as the brand of the influential voices who lease their stature and social graph how it ultimately affects the dynamic, trust, vibrancy of their community

Disclosure certainly protects all parties involved, but it can also steer perception, which is why this discussion is so critical to the evolution of sponsored conversations.

The debate however, centralizes on the mechanisms and terminology for disclosure and whether or not they are effective when either explicit or implicit in nature.

I introduced options for consideration such as including a symbol or term in each Tweet (TM) that conveyed sponsorship or endorsement such “$,” “spon,” “paid,” “endorsement,” “sponsored” or possibly including an is.gd or bit.ly link to a landing page that could more effectively communicate the nature of the endorsement, ad, promotion, and the intention of the relationship. From the beginning, I did not purport the use of a hashtag “#” in disclosure however.

Stowe Boyd, a fellow digital anthropologist and social architect, and also the creator of Microsyntax.org, shared his views on the implied mindset associated with hashtags, “Generally, hashtags are indicators about the nature of the topic of discussion in a tweet, not the nature of the tweet itself. Note that sponsored tweets might (and often would) have other tags, which would lead to the “adness’ of an ‘#ad not standing out…’”

Credit: PaidPerTweet

As the conversation deepened, the rationale for one standard or solution unlocked a series of challenges that necessitated further exploration and discussion.

As I noted in the forum, the use of “paid” for example, precipitates psychological connotations that will evoke a completely different emotional response as compared to endorsement or sponsorship.

Anders Abrahamsson shared an interesting perspective, “Paid is coming close to that you sold out your integrity – some might call it prostitution.”

In response, Stowe offered a general resolution that resonated with many participants, “My recommendation would be to concoct a new indicator, perhaps ‘AD’, to place at the start of any sponsored Tweet. This has several benefits since anyone would immediately know, at the outset of reading the tweet, that it is sponsored. It stands apart from the tags, which usually appear in a cluster at the end. Also, this would make it easy for tools to build filters to block ADs or to easily find them, depending on your leanings.”

I believe there’s a difference however, between sponsored and paid tweets, one defined by purpose and objective. For example, I enjoy the tweets published by Gary Vaynerchuck and I observe that he has a tremendous following of developing wine enthusiasts, I may choose to either sponsor his Twitter wallpaper and/or his tweet stream. In this case, I don’t necessarily influence his tweets, I simply sponsor them.
This introduces another alternative through the disclosure of relationships directly on Twitter backgrounds.

However, if I pay for tweets specifically, then I expect to dictate the content related to each paid tweet.

Unfortunately, in the eyes of the FTC, they are the same. So, as Stowe says, “I think we should go with the FTC interpretation until the FTC changes it, and lump them all into AD. Note: if people disagree with this convention, they can do what they want. But I feel that biases should be as transparent as possible: as Weinberger wrote, Transparency is the new Objectivity.”

He’s right. However, I disagree with Weinberger. I don’t believe transparency is not the new objectivity at all. Objectivity was compromised the minute that links became the currency of the social Web.

We are biased one way or another when we publish information online. Whether we’re seeking attention, linkbacks, RTs, comments, traffic, feedback, etc. Transparency begets nothing. It is simply a buzzword associated with Social Media. Openness and candor are not substitutes for value, direction, education, or insight.

Brian Carter of TweetROI shared his perspective on sponsored conversations versus ads, “I still haven’t heard a good reason from those who champion transparency why we must disclose only financial motives, not all of them. SP and AD make sense. Surprisingly, even some quality Twitterers, don’t want to change the advertiser’s text. That’s where the concept breaks down-  they agree with the sentiment as written. Everyone interprets payment/ sponsorship differently….”

Ted Murphy of Izea responded with support and support for collaboration, “I am not sure there is one specific answer to this question. The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is there should be some form of clear disclosure required for any tweet where value exchanges hands. I 100% agree.”

Source

At this point, SP and AD become potential preambles for sponsored and paid tweets respectively.

But, Jeremiah Owyang, social technology analyst with Forrester Research, believes that they are not enough, “People won’t understand that ‘AD’ and ‘SP’ imply that those tweets are paid for. We need to be explicit, even if it occupies more characters in the tweet. The only solution is to specifically state, ‘sponsored’ in each…”

Again, I suggest that an included (shortened) URL that directs to a pre-defined page that explains the sponsorship and further clarifies the intentions and benefits of the program is another option to consider. While it’s implicit in nature, it communicates disclosure in a mutually beneficial way that serves the twitterer, the brand, and the reader.

If the leaked Twitter documents, also know as Twittergate, are anything to consider seriously as they relate to this topic, there’s reason to believe Twitter is already thinking about this as a form of revenue generation.

As Jeremiah explained, “Twitter may soon implement color coding or introduce different fonts for sponsored and paid tweets.”

James Eliason of Twittad believes that Twitter should release an API to support color coding as not only a form of disclosure, but also as a measure of preventing spam, “I can tell you from meeting with several Fortune 500 companies over the last several months they are intrigued about this new form of influence marketing if it is done correctly. What many do not want to have happen is the “high-jacking” of a hashtag or ‘ad’ format within this space. Imagine a situation where a large group of users begin doing their own false advertising on behalf of a brand, and simply throw in a #ad, #spon, AD, or SP.  This can not occur.”

Eliason took the case to Twitter co-founder Evan Williams where he recommended that Twitter begin the process of selecting specific ad partner providers to prevent dilution from spam marketers and ensure that the advertising comes from the source through the API. His idea is to assign the API calls from each ad partner through Twitter.com and also third party apps such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, and PeopleBrowsr. He also believes this introduced a new subscription model for users to pay a small fee for a non-ad model across all platforms.

Izea’s Ted Murphy is proactively contributing his ideas towards developing standards and also collaborating directly with the FTC on the establishment of fair guidelines, “They [The FTC] invited me to Washington discuss my thoughts about Universal Disclosure and the current loop holes in the guidelines that need to be closed. Soft-money transactions like free products and trips as well as the definition of experts and celebrities were also discussed. The bottom line is everything should be disclosed.”

He continued, “The biggest hurdle to disclosure standards in social media is not platforms like Sponsored Tweets or TweetROI. It is the PR Practitioners, Social Media Consultants and Brands that don’t enforce disclosure or disclose in different ways. If a tweet from a platform needs to be in different color but a tweet from a tweeter that just got a free trip or video game doesn’t it puts the platforms at a disadvantage. It’s unfortunate, but even organizations like WOMMA don’t have standardized methods of disclosure among members. The only way you will see standardized disclosure in Twitter and all of social media is if the government mandates it (which I am for).”

Indeed. Our challenge isn’t only to unite the industry of sponsored conversation providers around common standards and ethics, we must also encourage marketers to put them into practice.

Whether it’s on Twitter, in blog posts, or in television commercials, paid tweets are technically no different than the array of commercials and advertisements that are available to marketers already. However, they are compartmentalized in function, impression, perception and level of appreciation. And, there are undertones associated with each word that exude contrasting reactions. It all starts with the intention of the campaign and the calculated brand traits/characteristics, values, and sketch of the picture you desire to paint. These steps and measures guide sentiment and activity.

For instance, what comes to mind when I mention:

- Advertisement or ad
- Commercial
- Informercial
- Endorsement
- Sponsored or “brought to you by…”

- Paid placement
- Advertorial

My point is that each one of those words carry hidden meaning and nuances that will not receive due justice or rally support for standardization if represented by a one-word tag within a tweet. This is further complicated by the nature of the disclosure in relation to the essence of the promotion and whether or not it is implicit and explicit in the tweet.

While everyone agrees on the need for standards, and it’s clear that competitors will actually collaborate to help define them, there’s merit and promise in top-down regulation from the FTC and/or Twitter itself. In the meantime, I still believe that including “sponsored” as Jeremiah suggests, providing disclosure on individual wallpaper, or including a link to a page that offers context and clarity (using a custom URL shortener that includes “disclosure” in the construct – for example, disclosure/hgt7), represent credible alternatives in the interim.

However, as Eliason and Murphy note, the FTC and Twitter itself may have to step in to dictate a solution.

Integrity is a priceless commodity...

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Aside from Razorfish’s creation of a new Social Influence Marketing (SIM) Score–which measures the reach and sentiment of your brand in social media–there’s nothing earth-shattering contained in the Fluent report.

Except, perhaps, this:

76% of the 1,000 consumers polled, said they trust their offline friends when making a product purchase decision. Compare that to just 33% who say they trust their online friends!

Clearly, this demonstrates that while social networks might encourage us all to be one big friendly social network, we’re clinging to our old-school definition of friend. It’s somewhat encouraging to see that we’re not collectively being duped into believing that when we add someone as a “friend” we’re instantly BFFs.

More startling is we trust our online friends less than we trust TV ads, social network ads, or online reviews. In fact, we barely trust the opinions of our online friends more than we trust banner ads!

This chart sums-up our trust:

You can read the full report here.

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As Facebook begins testing greater and greater publicity, with user controls, the EU begins demanding more and more of social networks’ privacy policies—or, that’s what we think their vague regulations are trying to do, anyway.

There are several specific policies that social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, which both have large European audiences, will have to comply with: automatically setting users’ privacy to the highest level (giving users the option to opt out of that extreme level of privacy), allow users to limit the data shared with third-parties (including advertisers and applications), and limit the use of “sensitive information,” including race, religion and political views, in behavioral targeting.

However, many of the regulations, like most laws, are constructed broadly. While broad language in laws avoids the problem of overspecificity, sometimes it becomes difficult for constituents to follow the law. I mean, do you want to define exactly what “legitimate purposes” a network must have to collect personal information?

On the other hand, how could the EU specifically name all the legitimate purposes for collecting data within its regulation? Is targeting birthday-centered promotions from advertisers a “legitimate purpose”? Is enabling your friends to send you virtual birthday gifts “illegitimate”?

What do you think? How can Facebook balance its users’ (and its own legal) need for privacy with its inherent purpose—friending everyone you’ve ever known since elementary school?

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In addition to the WordPress plugin, Chat Catcher works on any blog via a PHP script you can get from the Chat Catcher website. There’s also a module for Drupal.

However, Chat Catcher became a victim of its own success when, earlier this month, Shannon announced that he didn’t have the resources to keep up with it any longer and so could no longer continue supporting it.

Happily, others believed it was worth supporting as Shannon noted in an announcement email last Thursday.

Community spirit in action.

Even better news from Shannon over the weekend shows that Chat Catcher is here to stay:

Chat Catcher is pleased to announce the completion of an investment round with Ocasta Labs, an early stage technology investment group. Ocasta Labs have injected both funds and resources to extend the Chat Catcher team and to accelerate development of the service.

Terrific and many congrats, Shannon!

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