I quickly tried to take stock of my qualifications. I had written a book on social media and I serve as Chief Strategist at a social media marketing firm. Check. But what about my academic qualifications? Well, I went to college. I have taught a few courses at colleges and graduate schools, both the traditional standup variety as well as the new online courses. My books have been used as college textbooks. And my oldest daughter was in the throes of her college selection process. While not devoid of experience, it felt like my academic experience for this project was a bit on the shallow side.

So, I decided that I’d apply the experience I do have–more than 30 years in business–to see if some of the behaviors that I’ve noticed in those organizations have any parallels to academia. Was more of my experience relevant than I’d first thought?

So, both as we prepared the survey questions and as we checked the results, I tried to consider how social media might be playing out inside universities in similar ways to how these communication tools have infiltrated businesses. Now, I understand that there are limits to how much that applies. While both companies and colleges are communities, students are far more close-knit, I believe, than the average group of employees–and they have a relationship-building shared time line that is far rarer in business. Still, there is very much the sense that younger people are more comfortable with social media in both kinds of institutions, even while the older people wield the authority. Those in charge in both places also know that they somehow must acclimate themselves to this new tool in order to remain relevant to those young people that they lead.

I also sense that there is more than a fair dose of fear in those leaders. Fear that they are not up to the task of mastering (or even understanding) social media and even a fear that they will look silly even to try. In business, many of the leaders have tried to get the younger folks to “do” social media on behalf of the company, only to find that they don’t have the understanding of the business and of customers to do it well.

The results of the survey bear out some of these parallels.

The greatest use of social media among faculty is YouTube videos, which might skew towards people assigning videos to watch (or viewing them in class), rather than creating the content themselves. It is common in business to see less usage of Twitter, blogs, and other forms that more likely demand creation rather than mere consumption. Our survey showed similar results in academia. Less creation of content might be an indication of the fear we noted above, or less confidence in the skills of creation vs. those of curation (selecting the right content developed by others).

One surprise for me is that usage of social media in academia far outpaces that of business. Our survey shows that over 90% of faculty uses social media either for professional purposes or actually in their classes, or both. Contrast this to the mere 47% of employees who use social media in the workplace (McKinsey, 2010). Despite the expectations by business people that academics are behind the times and cloistered in a slower-changing environment, nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to social media. The wide disparity between professional social media usage between academics and business people marks the modern company as one that is far slower to change at least in this respect.

It’s trite to say that professors can learn a lot about social media from their students. They obviously do. Perhaps a more interesting conclusion is that business people can learn a lot about social media from professors. Today’s students, who will form the next wave of professors and business people, will show no such timidity in their use of social media. Today’s professors and business people can learn from each other to keep up.

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Less than two months after its release, Google has started pushing reviews and ratings from Hotpot into Google Maps.

Google’s aim for this is to make the Google Maps results more personalized for users by providing more personal, relevant and trustworthy reviews and to stay up to date with the latest places recommended or reviewed by your Hotpot friends. All Hotpot users on logging into their Google accounts will see recent activity from their Hotpot friends in the left-side window, as shown below.

Does Google have an ulterior motive for this integration? It would appear that Google is taking a direct shot at Yelp, the review site whose user’s ratings were included in the Google Maps results. Google Hotpot was launched last November in direct competition to Yelp who offers a similar service. With the introduction of a system that will recommend sites based on personal preferences & reviews and by integrating it into mobile, map and search pages it would seem that Google no longer has a need for Yelp.

Google says this new feature is available to both desktop and iPhone users and also that the integration of Hotpot reviews to Google Maps is still in its beta stage so users can expect to see the feature being further developed, making it even easier for them to keep track of their friends’ activities. Hotpot recommendations will also appear, in the Google Places search results when appropriate. With such an extensive user-base Google is all set to take advantage of these numbers and the fact that people are getting more and more interested in looking up reviews and recommendations from trusted sources.

Even though in its initial stages for now, Google has a lot of work to do to get at par with Yelp who are better off in terms of presentation and updating the reviews by the users.

We will have to watch closely to see how Google plans to develop this feature into a sophisticated, yet user friendly feature.

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As Facebook and other sites that gather personal information continue to grow, the laws that govern and control how much information is divulged are expected to become stricter. More advanced privacy rules from Washington can possibly severely inhibit social company’s ability to customize ads to the users of the sites. This will stunt sales growth and possibly discourage user participation if it is enacted.

For companies like Facebook that aggregate user data, Congress, the Commerce Department and the Federal Trade Commission are seeking ways to impose even more privacy safeguards and limit the exposure that companies have to this information.

Facebook has defended themselves by highlighting the fact that they give users a complete control of how much of their private information they are willing to share. There are several features on the social networking site that the user can alter for their preferences. They can choose with whom to share their individual information, photos and other updates. There are also other features that Facebook uses that completely block the sharing of certain components of a users profile. For instance, Facebook does not allow users to track information such as who un-friended them, contrary to several advertised downloads that offer that particular feature.

Facebook will have a permanent presence in Washington and with the team that has been assembled to investigate the patterns of how sites collect the information, and the ways that it’s used. Since Facebook is so dominate in the industry, their input and cooperation will do a lot to help establish laws and set precedents in information gathering.

For the first time, the percentage of U.S. consumers engaged in certain social behaviors actually went down, not up. Is the bloom off the rose? Is this the long-promised social media backlash?

Overall, social media usage among U.S. adults with Internet access declined 1% from 82% to 81%. This is certainly not a statistically meaningful atrophy, but it paints a picture of a plateauing social Web, where the remaining holdouts are simply not going to jump on board. Forrester analyst Augie Ray made a case for this plateau on his blog recently.

Ten percent of the country doesn’t have cable or satellite TV, and six percent (under the age of 45) don’t have a cell phone. So, I don’t see a one percent decline in overall social media usage as alarming, but rather a signal that the social media “market” is officially mature, and the rampant growth of the past three years may be a thing of the past, like Paula Abdul’s career.

Social Behaviors Are Shifting

To me, the more disturbing findings are in the composition of social behaviors. The number of Creators (people that write blogs and upload video); Critics (people that review products and comment on blogs); Collectors (people that use RSS and social bookmarking sites), and Spectators (people that read blogs and watch videos) ALL went down by 1% to 5%. This means that the number of Americans engaged in just about every social media activity was reduced in the past year.

Except for one activity.

The percentage of online Americans who are Joiners (members of a social network) increased from 51% to 59%, a huge change in comparison to the rest of the behaviors examined.

The fact that the number of social networkers (read: Facebook) is almost as large as the number of blog readers and video watchers (59% to 68%) is the most striking finding in this research.

Our love for virtual farming; the ability to keep in touch (somewhat) with an ever-broader circle of “friends”, and the allure of digital bumper sticking when we “like” brands is overwhelming our desire and ability to engage in other social behaviors.

Is Facebook Making Us Stupid?

Why read a blog, when we can look at the headline and first two sentences in a Facebook status update? Why watch videos on YouTube, when the best of them will inevitably be posted on Facebook? Why bother reviewing businesses at Yelp.com when you can just see which places your friends prefer based on their “likes” – or use of Facebook Places? Why use Digg or StumbleUpon or Delicious, when the people we care about already share with us the content they appreciate via status updates that include links?

Our Facebook addiction is threatening the core sociability and widespread content consumption, sharing, and curation behaviors that gave it succor in the early days.

Certainly, there are still PLENTY of people watching YouTube, reading blogs, and Digging their hearts out. But this trend of all social participation declining – except for one specific type – disturbs and frightens me.

How about you?

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That chart, seen below, seemed to show that social media usage in almost all forms had leveled off or even dropped depending on the type of social media in question.

Of the most interest to me was the drop in usage of blogs by the SMB crowd. While I understand why this might be happening, it is somewhat discouraging to see it happening for real.

I understand because maintaining a blog that is worth the time is a drain. It’s a drain on time and just about every other resource at the SMB’s disposal. The trouble is, most things that have a higher cost also have a higher value. Blogging is definitely one of those.

Yes, it’s hard to find time to write. Yes, it can be hard to determine what to write about. Yes, the act of writing itself makes getting a root canal seem like a Caribbean vacation to many. All that aside, I still don’t think there is a more valuable way to express expertise and to support just about every action in your business than through a well thought out and executed blog.

As for the rest of the social media options out there? It looks like people are staying with (although not necessarily increasing usage of) outlets like Facebook. Why is that? I suspect because many people find it easier to post a quick Facebook update than they do to craft a blog post. I get that but I don’t really agree with it.

Here is my quick list of recommendations to the SMB’s that want to win at the Internet marketing and social media game.

1. Offer a strong blog for your business (if applicable) at any cost. It tells the story that supports sales efforts, backs up referrals, gives existing customers another touch point with you and so much more.
2. Use social media for its real strengths, which are customer satisfaction, industry reputation, brand and personal reputation building for the general public. Social media is not necessarily the lead generation panacea that many tout it to be. If you take the pressure off that aspect, then you will still get leads and they may even be very well qualified.
3. Commit the time and resources to research what you need rather than chasing after every suggestion you find when searching Google for “SMB social media” (unless of course you find results that are attached to my activities )
4. Work with the reality of social media for the SMB and not the fantasy of the image of social media as the beginning and end all for the woes of the SMB market.
5. Stick with it and work it. Have you ever heard the phrase “Plan the work and work the plan”? No better advice for social media and the SMB. It’s not easy but it has real benefits when applied correctly.

So while the numbers may indicate that the love affair between SMBs and social media may be cooling off a little, maybe it’s just the lust of the initial attraction that is gone. Now it’s time to see how the relationship will work for the long term and see just what it can mean to a business to be friends with social media and not fall in lust with it.

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• a cleaner simple look
• dozens of new themes including some by Shepard Fairey’s Studio One
• the ability to create a own custom header
• easier navigation
• profile designs carry over to on photo, video and other pages

For musicians. MySpace has increased the total number of songs that can be uploaded to 25. So far, more than 4 million users have upgraded their profiles. Lady Antebellum, Silversun Pickups, Outkast, Thirty Seconds to Mars and Colbie Caillat we’re named as examples by a MySpace spokesperson.

click on image to enlarge

Users can upgrade here.

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“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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Dave’s Answer:

In its quest to be all things to every user, Facebook has again tweaked its interface, adding a feature that Yahoo Answers has had for eons, that Google’s experimented with variously, that’s been part of LinkedIn for a while, and that’s obviously near and dear to my heart with Ask Dave Taylor: the ability to ask your followers and fans a question.

On Facebook, it’s called “Ask Question”, ingeniously enough, and it’s actually pretty neat how they’ve integrated it into the newsfeed and interface, though I’m sure not everyone agrees. Maybe we should ask them!

More seriously, I will also say that in the week or two since the feature was released, I haven’t seen a single question show up in my news, so perhaps it’s not getting the widespread adoption that the Facebook team were hoping?

Anyway, on your main page, instead of the status box ready for input, there’s now a little strip of links along the top, one of which is “Ask Question”:

You can see here that I’ve clicked on “Ask Question” and typed in what I believe is a perfectly reasonable question (at least if you’ve seen the daft film Monty Python and the Holy Grail). To submit the question, I click on the “Ask Question” button and, since it’s the first time I’ve asked a question…

Yeah, yeah, I’m good with this. I click on “Ask Question” and it offers the ability for me to add photos, add a further description, even turn it into a poll (that’s cool!). I can also add topics, which are presumably keywords, but I’ll skip it all and just choose “Done”.

Now in my newsfeed – and presumably that of everyone I’m friends with – this shows up:

A short time later my friend Steve pops up with the correct answer:

Notice here that I can vote the answer helpful / not helpful by clicking on the buttons. Nice. In fact, I like Q&A systems that let you vote on the value of an answer, so I have to say that Facebook took its time and did a very nice job implementing the Ask Question feature. Now the real question: is anyone going to use it?

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