I’m sure everyone’s read this week that there’s a distinct likelihood of The Social Network, the Facebook film, being swiftly followed by a film about Google. Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, the book about the company penned by one Ken Auletta, has been optioned for the silver screen by producer John Morris.

I can’t help but wonder how the CEOs and employees in question feel about these films. Sure, they might not be representing the most positive view of the company, but surely any press is good press? I know no one needs to call attention to Facebook and Google – that’s a done job, being the two of the most popular online destinations on the internet.

But why not make a statement? Embrace the fact that the films are the talk of the town? I’m looking forward to The Social Network and the drama and controversy that the film aims to convey. Mark Zuckerberg, the film’s protagonist and arguable founder of Facebook itself, doesn’t think the film will hold to the truth. However, doesn’t he realise that Facebook’s saturation of the planet’s population means hundreds of thousands of people are going to see the film anyway?

Google’s film, however, may be far more interesting. Google is, like Facebook, a monopolistic online entity. Their market-share hovers at around 95%, they’re rapidly spreading into every digital market and medium, from their search engine to books, television and domain management and registration. I have an account, a homepage, a domain, a YouTube account and a browser, all done by Google and used by me on a daily basis.

But the end of the world? Is this really bad market for them, or is it an opportunity for Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to show off their PR muscle and demonstrate they’re serious, business-minded entrepreneurs whose determination meant they were able to place themselves at the centre of the internet. How many companies can lay claim to inventing a verb?

It’s an interesting, online-focused Russian doll concept to consider; the film’s advertised on sites, some of which using domains sold to them by Google, to talk about a Google movie that people will research using Google. No other company can claim to act as such a seller of information, and they could raise or sink the film depending on the complex, secretive algorithms they use to determine what comes first in their search engine – the excited Google critic, or the excited Google fan.

Both Google and Facebook have had their fair share of third-party controversy – Facebook has stalkers, kidnappers and rapists, and Google’s safe-search features aren’t always as “safe” as they proclaim. But what other companies will we now see drifting into the limelight? McDonald’s PR staff must’ve had minor aneurysms after Super-Size Me was released to the public, and they’re the most dominant fast-food chain on the planet – I discovered only last night that if you’re visiting the pyramids of Egypt and fancy a Happy Meal or a Big Mac, it’s only over the other side of these sacred architectural relics.

It begs the question; are you really coping with your critics as well as you could be? Everyone releases statements, denial-esque press releases, and product changes to respond to critics without actually responding. But what if Google’s founders sat down, tomorrow morning, and used Google Video to release a vlog of them discussing what they’d love to see discussed in the film. It calls attention to a film that could be dangerously critical, while making them seem involved in how they’re perceived by the public.

As with all the major shifts in the online sphere, time will tell on this one, but hopefully we’ll get a Google film that pulls no punches and stays neutral. The Social Network seems fun, but a little dramatic. An adaptation of a critical work of non-fiction about a company with monthly online visitors numbering in the billions deserves to be taken seriously, and the company should take the opportunity for a little serious marketing of their own.

As proved by Starbucks and Converses and use of the word ‘movie’, you can bet you you bottom dollar (pound) that if the American’s are drinking/wearing/doing it, it won’t be long before we are too.

Launched last Thursday, and currently only available in the States, is the new Facebook application ‘Facebook Places’. Places allows you to ‘check in’ at your current location, giving friends the opportunity to see your whereabouts immediately. Are you coincidently attending the same event? Brilliant! Have you skipped their dull birthday ‘do to attend something far more glamorous? Not so brilliant…

As if this wasn’t likely to become addictive enough, you can also tag those that are with you, like you would in a photo or status update, as well as browse other people who are checked in at the same place. Obviously, this has raised numerous privacy issues – something which the site is all too familiar with dealing with.

But what’s the implication for small businesses? Aside making it even easier for skiving employees to be caught out by a social networking slip-up, there are several advantages to using geolocation technology.

Twitter has offered geolocation for tweets since last year, as well as its ‘local trends’ feature allowing local business the ability to promote themselves as a ‘trending topic’. Location tagging network Foursquare also found popularity with small businesses, many which used the opportunity as a free platform to get themselves noticed amongst local customers. Of course, now that Facebook’s caught up, the site’s tendency to crush its competitors (i.e. The Myspace Effect) could see changes in the way geolocation is implemented elsewhere.

Facebook’s huge online presence means this latest development is likely to be even more effective for small businesses aiming to benefit from geolocation technology. Businesses in less commercial regions are advised to offer incentives to customers on geolocation networks in order to generate interest and draw people in from more tech-savvy areas. Teaming up with other local businesses to do this can be even more profitable for the companies involved, as well as the local area.

Geolocation content also has the advantage of operating in realtime, and by featuring in conjunction with social networking sites it offers businesses the opportunity to utilise valuable social interaction. Many businesses already use static location services, such as GPS, but the social aspect of applications such as Facebook Places are much more effective when it comes to networking opportunities.

Of course, businesses (large or small) will be well aware that no amount of advertising can beat social recommendations from real people, and Facebook Places could well be the answer into generating such valuable publicity. Yet whether a rise in corporate use of geolocation technology from those keen to make their make their mark using social media might result in little more then irritating promotional advertisements and more organised after-work socials is yet to be seen.

Not too long ago, I stated that LinkedIn wasn’t as popular as Facebook. I’ll be honest, I thought it would get sucked into the heaving morass of social media that is Facebook a la The Blob in the not-too-distant future. But seemingly, Mashable’s ever-impressive documentation of statistics has proved me wrong.

Nope, that figure isn’t false. Two billion dollars. Admittedly, it doesn’t hold a candle to the ridiculous worth of Facebook, but it’s an impressive display of what happens when you create a social networking site that focuses on the business side of things.

Far too many people are getting caught out doing silly things at parties via Facebook, but their LinkedIn profiles? Immaculate. Neat CV structure, experience, formal and (sometimes) well-worded recommendations from ex-colleagues or clients go a long way to improving someone’s online image.

We like the attitude of sites like LinkedIn. It’s a site that really devotes itself to providing as much information for every industry possible within its expansive networking system, and its this system that proves to be so popular.

It’s rather like networking at an industry event – you know the PR, and you know a few fellow journalists, who in turn, may know bigger journalists, who know or may even be related to the big people at the top of the corporate food chain. Now, hassling your way through endless degrees of separation at a cocktail party or a product launch can be mentally exhausting.

However, do it on LinkedIn and it’s simply seen as a normal, everyday activity. You’d be shocked to see who you can link to through the LinkedIn’s connection system, and getting your contacts to introduce you (via a simple series of clicks) is an incredibly powerful business tool.

It’s also a fantastic forum for people who work freelance or contract to discuss challenges they may be having at work in an environment where it makes them look productive, rather than simply incompetent. I’m a member of a few writing groups, and I have the writing questions section up on my welcome page. I’ve seen authors, copywriters and marketing veterans write long screeds out of the kindness of their hearts, and it’s fantastic to see a personal favourite author of yours take up someone’s question and run with it.

It’s not about friendship, sadly, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be. Although the LinkedIn ‘adding connections’ system does indeed seem to be geared towards business – asking you if you worked with/for/alongside/above them or if you’re simply an ‘other’, certainly it isn’t openly telling you to get all your mates to listen the second you’re done posing for your display picture. But make use of linking yourself to your friends and justifying it to the system, and you’ll soon realise that Barry at the pub actually works in a similar industry to you, and that PR bloke you’ve been hunting for months is actually one of his work colleagues.

It’s a great platform to promote a business from, and being able to both apply for and post jobs on its impressive employment section effectively turns it into a combination of business newspaper, job site and business network. It doesn’t mess about – your employment history and recommendations requirements (though optional, are encouraged though the use of phrases like “one more recommendation and your profile will be 100% complete!) really do make sure you know why you’re logged in here – to work, and to liaise.

It’s a different kind of Facebook. The galleries may be gone, and everyone’s a little less relaxed, but the politics, networking and digging through people’s history is essentially the same. Having the CV of a personal favourite author or copywriter at your fingertips is gold, and being able to see how the CEO of a company you want to emulate got to where he was is always going to trump “liking” that photo of his yacht.

(Note: those looking for my personal LinkedIn can find it here.)

Yep, it’s official – Facebook has hit 500 million users, and the internet continues its struggle for dominance over our lives and minds. Quite frankly, I think it happened years ago, but I’m sure many people paranoid about how much time they really spend on social networking sites would love to disagree with me, especially in front of their line manager.

Sometimes, I wonder how big Facebook’s going to get, really. With Mark Zuckerberg due to appear on The Simpsons, Facebook’s fame will be cemented in history, a history that is now digitally catalogued, stored, and compiled into the amateur encyclopaedia that is Wikipedia. That being said, are we truly grateful to Facebook for what it’s done to the internet?

For one thing, it’s connected 500 million people, and you simply can’t disagree with that statistic. It’s an incredible achievement, and one that the forefathers of the World Wide Web would be proud to see occur. However, it also means 500 million people are slowly exposing more and more of themselves to their employers, rivals, the press and to the darker agents sifting through Facebook’s many groups and friend networks.

It’s like the six degrees of separation, only multiplied to the nth degree. People are losing their jobs after whining about their employers, but that’s only possible because they’re publicising the wrong parts of themselves. If you’re a high-profile businessman, that gallery of Bangkok pictures is probably a silly idea. Basic stuff, no?

It just proves we’re still learning when it comes to technology that made its debut less than a couple of decades earlier. People are still releasing potentially harmful information about themselves onto the web, other people (or, intelligence-wise, the same people, really) are buying the iPhone 4 despite the recorded flaws, and most still get Windows releases even though we know they won’t work near-perfectly for almost half a decade.

At the same time, we’re more connected than ever before, and this has advanced politics, social networking, business networking. Hell, I may not be the biggest advocate of Facebook around, but I respect and know the power of it, and my LinkedIn account helps me get recommendations I can then use when I’m bigging myself up somewhere else.

LinkedIn, however, is rather different to Facebook. There’s no gossip, no controversy, no intimate details, just pure business, and the odd brown-nosed recommendation from someone you’ve hardly worked with who’d like to be introduced to that CEO you know. It’s more competitive, more serious, and for that reason, far more likely to fail.

Look at society – down go the serious films, up come the comic book movies. Down goes the classic literature, up comes vampire novels. We’re entering into a paradise of fun, of not caring about the more serious ways of enjoying ourselves, and aiming instead for the appealing, the easy, the simply enjoyable and the indulgent warmth that comes with that.

For this reason, Facebook will, in my opinion, hit a billion users well before 2015. This sounds like a mind-bending figure, but it’s not. Once the tweens reach adulthood, and the ever-younger net users hit the right age to start surfing, we’ll see a generation of social networkers who don’t even know what a VHS is. Doesn’t that terrify you? Terrifies me, all right.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last week, you are sure to have heard about the Raoul Moat vs the police story that has dominated the news.

As one of Britain’s biggest ever manhunts, the story was of course going get a lot of press time. When the situation came to a close on Saturday and Moat turned the gun on himself, what nobody expected was the subsequent public reaction.

What emerged was a Facebook fan page called “RIP Raoul Moat, You Legend”, which sent shock waves through the media, caused disgust from the public and finally being discussed by the PM in Parliament.

David Cameron speaking at the House of Commons on Wednesday said: “It is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story. I cannot understand any wave, however small, of public sympathy for this man.”

Unfortunately Mr Prime Minister, although this may be your opinion and that of the Daily Mail, it is not that of the 36,000 members who joined the group or indeed the opinion of Facebook.

A statement was released by Facebook saying: “We have 26-million people on Facebook in the UK, each of which has their own opinion, and they are entitled to express their views on Facebook as long as their comments do not violate our terms.”

However, according to the Conservative lawmaker Chris Heaton-Harris, it does violate their terms:
“We don’t want to set laws on Facebook at all, but we do want people who are hosting these sites and other pages to have some responsibility,” Heaton-Harris told BBC radio.

“What I would say to Facebook is that within its terms and conditions on this site, that its incitement goes against its terms and conditions.”

The reaction against the Facebook group has been fierce with a number of groups being set up asking for the page to be removed.

Today when searching for the group, it appears that it no longer exists. However there is a R.I.P Raoul Moat! group, which currently has 9,371 people who ‘like’ it.

The group says: R.I.P Raoul Moat! You were a loving father and an all round canny lad and No haters or you get removed from group. There is also a link to a website www.raoulmoat.com

What is interesting about the Wall of comments, is that probably more than half of them are against the group. And if you look at the other comments, a lot are idiotic such as “How can a ginger be a leg-end?”, others are from those who are expressing dissatisfaction at the police and the government. But a large number of them are saying that they understand what he did in the last week was wrong, but they feel sorry for him for one reason or another, including that he was let down by society, the mental health system, his family etc.

It’s not just the people leaving comments on the group who feel sympathy for him, in a Guardian blog Michael White admits to feeling ” have a twinge of sympathy for Raoul Moat the other day. Two, actually, though I didn’t post them on Facebook.”

He went on to say: “Clearly Moat was dangerous and had to be captured – one murder and two life-threatening attacks, one of which cost PC David Rathband his sight – but the scale and media-frenzied tone of the police hunt made me uncomfortable.

Then there was that 47-page letter he wrote, the one the newspapers printed at length. No father that he knew of, at odds with his mother, estranged from his kids and the girlfriend he had abused but decided was the one for him, it was a mess.”

The point that Michael White may be making is that it is OK to feel sympathy for Moat, but it is an entirely different matter to talk about it so openly.

This message appeared today from the admin of the group R.I.P Raoul Moat:
“A MESSAGE TO ALL HATERS AND ALL OTHERS WHO DO NOT LIKE THE IDEA OF THIS PAGE, INCLUDING THE GOVERNMENT. WE WILL NOT BE CLOSING THIS PAGE DOWN AS IT IS THE INTENTIONS OF THE ADMIN TO LET PEOPLE PAY THEIR RESPECTS. WE DO NOT CONDONE WHAT RAOUL DID ON THAT WEEK BUT YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER HE HAD A LIFE BEFORE THIS AND THAT IS WHY PEOPLE ARE PEACEFULLLY TRYING TO PAY THEIR RESPECTS…”

As Facebook themselves say, people should be able to express themselves, but realistically how far can this go? Would it be acceptable for a ‘Hitler – You Legend’ page? Clearly the crimes of Moat are not comparable to Hitler, but murder is murder and the glorification of it is surely unacceptable in our society?

Although the page now appears to have disappeared, the issue has divide the country, the story has become a vehicle for a variety of grievances felt by government and police haters and on the flip side a lever by those after tighter Facebook rules.

Where do you think Facebook should draw the line?

Facebook, subject of many an endless morning spent looking at galleries of pictures, tagging, commenting, and playing Mafia Wars. It seems like such a wasteful activity, until you count in marketing data, film promotions, band fan groups, political groups and the hundreds of thousands of uses it seems to be developing with each day.

In June, the site hit over 141 million unique visits in the US. So, in one month, the site’s visitors were over twice the amount of people living in the UK, that’s nearly half the population of the United States. It’s a huge figure and demonstrates how large and far-reaching the networking site has become.

But people are no longer simply creating holiday galleries and messaging and commenting about each other, as they were in its infancy. The ever-increasing list of Facebook features available to all users from the moment of registration is getting longer all the time, and this has opened the door to businesses who have finally recognised that the Facebook picture of their drunk CEO is going to matter.

Have you ever seen someone get caught out via Facebook? Everyone who’s aware of the social media industry has likely heard at least one dark tale of the consequences of careless social networking. Lost jobs, lost boy/girlfriends, broken marriages, legal suits. Privacy on the web is now at a premium, and with the average net-user racking up an increasing amount of social media and communications accounts, it’s becoming harder for businesses to keep track of the reputation of individual employees.

If you’re a company that deals in products or services that would encourage people to find you via the web, think about what else they might be finding. Your PR rep with the public gallery of his drunken week in Bangkok is suddenly going to look a lot less competent when another company is sizing you up for a merger.

But what to do? We can’t ban these people from Facebook or make them go private. If anything, social networking has become such an integral part of modern online PR that doing so would seriously cripple your online presence as a company. However, setting account privacy settings or moving certain photos into an area unlikely to be seen by a business is a wise idea.

Sure, when you’re dealing with a new company, you Google them. Of course, when you’re dealing with an individual, their social networking profiles will come up (and it may interest some to know that Facebook actually received higher traffic than Google in May) alongside their company profiles. LinkedIn contains very few risks – for all its “cool office-worker” image, it’s an online CV with few social interaction capabilities.

However, that MySpace account you had when you were fourteen – you know the one, “Bio: I hate PR!!! lol!!” – may haunt you when you’re looking into working for Saatchi & Saatchi. Think about your online presence, and, even better, pre-empt the haters. Set up fan groups for your company, but be open about it – the last PR disaster you need is to be seen secretly making yourselves look popular. Why not offer your clients a social space to meet and talk, to recommend you and link to you in their comments and status updates?

Offering them a way to interact via a medium that could, in ten years, become our main source of communication, is wise. Embrace the new if you want to stay on top of your target market, and get interested in their interests. If they’re “liking”, wasting hours on Farmville and posting pictures from the office drinks night, then consider whether your CEO might want to mention his love of pixelated pigs on his profile.

Drifting through the web on a peaceful Monday lunchtime, I stumbled across possibly one of the most interesting and informative infographics I’ve seen. Created by Mashable, titled “Google’s Long History of Social Media Attempts” is an entertaining insight into one of the biggest web companies in the world, and its continued struggle for social media presence.

Reading down the years, a clear pattern emerges: Google have bought their way into more social media companies and invested in more projects than the majority of all businesses, globally. But for all their attempts to break the ice with the new generation of socially and digitally savvy teenagers and twentysomethings, something’s gone slightly awry. No one seems interested.

Now, for a company as large as Google, it seems almost absurd, doesn’t it? They’ve got millions, if not billions of dollars to spare on new projects, and everything they touch is hailed as a viable alternative before it’s even in alpha. However, putting successful projects such as Blogger to one side, Google are in a unique position – one of, if not the biggest web presence of any company in the world, but with all the social media success of a ten-year-old with a mobile dongle and a dream or two.

Google Me has been rumoured to be a direct competitor to Facebook. After severely underestimating the continued growth of the social-networking giant, Google now face a dilemma that is familiar to smaller companies like Bebo and the ever-falling-behind MySpace: how to get back into the face of the people.

It seems simple enough, but Google’s single greatest strength has simultaneously become its greatest weakness. The majority of internet searches go through Google’s famous search engine. But placing results for Google Me above Facebook, or even as sponsored links, could cause opinion to turn against Google and perceive the company as biased.

The same goes for small businesses – how to break into social media? If you’re a web company with Zuckerberg-esque aspirations, then you’ve got your work cut out. But you’ve still got a head-start over Google in terms of getting ranked higher and higher without it looking slightly too quick for the few cynics and conspiracy theorists.

You’ve also got, I’d wager, a smaller budget than the colossal entity that is Google. This also gives you an advantage – a smaller budget requires more careful planning, and less public humiliation when a big project falls through. An interesting look into Google’s inner workings tells many tales of failed projects and Google’s personal investment in the employees that push it further in the direction of global dominance of all online media.

If you’re a web-design company, maybe even just a solo entrepreneur, this seems daunting and, if anything, completely de-motivational. But never fear – you can network, you can join communities, and you can build up your web presence the way you want it to evolve. With countless failed projects behind their doors and a few too many beyond them, Google are now beginning to look like a company desperate to break into social media.

Your advantage comes from your unknown status. By lacking the stigma of a money-wasting corporate entity and focusing on one specific idea rather than anything with even the remotest prospect of serious monetisation (Jack of all trades, master of none), you can put forward ideas in a less critical environment. Public reaction, especially via the web, is crucial to the initial success and the build-up and expansion that follows.

But social media maintains its presence in society, a theory confirmed by The Social Network, the film about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s rather controversial history, that will debut later this year. Taking Facebook off the internet and into the cinemas places it in the hands of yet another audience, and the genius of it is that it was never officially commissioned or sanctioned by Facebook in any way whatsoever. Hopefully, Google will be in the front row taking notes along with web-design graduates.

Yesterday Mashable posted the results of a survey claiming, in short, that women are addicted to Facebook.

The study, released by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research, uncovered numerous interesting facts that seemed to have shocked and surprised people. The issue has also been discussed like mad across the web.

What seems to have caused the biggest gasp is the fact that as many as one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook the moment they wake up. Yes, even before they go to the bathroom.

‘Blimey’ I can hear you saying, but as a 24-year-old woman this barely makes me raise an eyebrow. In fact, I did the exact same thing this morning!

The survey unearthed some other interesting statistics about women and their use of Facebook:

21% of women aged 18-34 check Facebook in the middle of the night. Tick, I do this when I can’t sleep .

63% use Facebook as a networking tool. Cross, networking is not something I do full stop. But this has got me thinking, maybe I should start using Facebook to build up some useful contacts.

42% think it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated. Erm, what other pictures are there?

79% are fine with kissing in photos. I wish.

58% use Facebook to keep tabs on ‘frenemies’. Tick, well, frenemies or ex-boyfriends.

50% are fine with being Facebook friends with complete strangers. What? Where did this one even come from? Are you mad?

The biggest problem with this Mashable article, or the author’s opinions, is his idea that:

“It’s not just that young women are using Facebook religiously: it’s that they’re very open with what they post and who they accept as friends. Combined, it can lead to a privacy mess.”

I disagree. It’s not a privacy problem, and it only becomes one when your nosey boss decides to have a look. If they don’t want to see what’s on there, they should look at your LinkedIn profile instead. And it’s not like we are at risk from paedophiles, so what is this big need to be so private?

As Anna Leach amusingly puts it on her post for ShinyShiny:

“No one asked your boss to go looking at your Facebook profile anyway, & what the hell did he expect to find? photographs of you poring over spreadsheets and motivational business books with your friends in your spare time?”

Of course people do have the option of making part or all of their profile private, but why should they have to? As much as people, particularly the older generation, don’t like to admit, most of us don’t care about privacy. We like people being able to find us, or to share photos of friends and being able to look at people from school and vice versa. So why should they care?

another girl headed to addiction

What has been most surprising about the Mashable post is that it focusses entirely on the survey results about women. We are told that ‘the study sampled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June of this year in an attempt to break down their social media habits.’ That’s ‘adults’, so it’s not just women.

What about the statistics on men? The results show that 20% of men use Facebook as a way to ‘hook up’ with people (only 6% of women do this). 24% of men, compared to 9% of women, have broken up with someone via Facebook, and 65% of men are OK with dating people they’ve met online.

Don’t men put pictures of themselves drunk online? Oh they do, it’s just that society (or this hack writing for mashable) still seems to think it is unacceptable to see women drunk. Surely if we continue to publish articles like this which focus on women, this backward attitude will continue?

What this survey really shows is that the things women do online, however ’shocking’ people believe them to be, only affect themselves. They are not hurting anyone with their actions. However many of the things men do on Facebook can hurt others. They use Facebook to find sex and as a quick get-out from a relationship. Isn’t this more shocking?

What do you think, is there something inherently sexist in the reporting of this survey or are you truly shocked about the antics of the young women of today? Do you even think it is a problem to be ‘addicted’ to Facebook? Let me know what you think.

500 million users? That’s not nearly enough, well according to Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg who said that they are on target to have one billion users.

Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival on Wednesday, Zuckerberg who picked up Media Person of the Year, revealed his plans to maintain growth for Facebook.

The aim is to crack the markets in China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. These are the only countries where Facebook is not the leading social network, he said: “We are down to [the above] four countries that we are not the leading social network in, now for the first time we are focused on doing some specific things in specific countries.”

The most interesting part of the hour long Q & A is the company’s attitude to advertising. According to Ian Maude, an analyst at Enders, “The fact that Zuckerberg is going to one of the main advertising events shows they are taking that very seriously.”

And it has been reported that they are expected to make $1 billion this year from revenue. Zuckerberg has big plans, saying “It’s a similar dynamic on marketer side as it is on developer side. We’ve built an A-class developer platform and we need to do the same for advertisers.”

But in case you thought they haven’t put their plan into action yet, Zuckerberg argued that advertising on Facebook is “squarely out of the experimentation phase.”

He pointed out that Nike’s recent decision to debut its World Cup ads on Facebook had led to the rapid addition of 3 million connections to the brand’s pages. And he said that Disney/Pixar’s decision to support Toy Story 3 ticket sales on Facebook is an example of a brand helping users connect with each other.

But what does this mean for smaller businesses? Well, the future is looking good for you, it seems Facebook could help even the smallest of SMEs (Small and Medium size Enterprises).

In the US Facebook took over from Yahoo! as the top publisher of display adds on the Web. AFP reported that according to online tracking firm Comscore, Facebook delivered 176.3 billion ads to US users in the first three months of 2010, a 16.2 % market share, more than double its 7.5 % share of last year.

However although Facebook may be running more adds, MSN Money reported that Yahoo! is still making more money because the ads rates for social media sites tend to be lower.

So Facebook aren’t making much money but will you? The thing with Facebook advertising is that you won’t instantly make money from it. What Facebook does is give you a change to get social with your potential clients so you can really build up a relationship with them.

Facebook is different from other advertising techniques because instead of targeting absolutely everyone it is much more specific. There are 11 different factors that Facebook uses for its advertisers, they are location, age, sex, keywords, education, workplace, relationship, interested-in and languages.

Zuckerberg said at the conference that Facebook is close to providing location-based advertising services:

“We are working on this, knowing where a person is and being able to personalise what’s around them,” he said.
This would be great for businesses as they could deliver ads to users who are near their place of business or they could let them know about any deals.

So is this the future of advertising? Will all businesses go via Facebook in the future?

Today, a rather interesting development popped into my sphere of social media awareness – something pertaining to an ongoing that most will be aware of already. Recently, Bangladesh had banned FaceBook due to their outrage at satirical images of the Prophet Muhammad making their way onto the social network. In a show of consideration (and, let’s be honest, sound business sense), FaceBook have now since blocked all images from being accessed in that region, unless you happen to be reading this in Pakistan (in which case, feel free to browse all you like, I suppose).

It was all kick-started by the Muslim attack on South Park’s depiction of the Prophet (though, interestingly, not their depiction of God as a cross between an orang-utan and a hippopotamus) and the FaceBook community’s response – by drawing him repeatedly. Where there are gods and religious icons, there are people wanting to put a face to a name, and this is where the “satire” mud-slinging begins.

Taking one for the team

It’s not really an issue of what is and what isn’t offensive – the case in point being a Muslim icon of worship – but more of how far across the line certain groups are willing to allow you to go. Many religions openly depict their deities – Jesus is everywhere, along with Ganesh and his various fellow gods. Religions have, for a long time, been the testing ground for many an amateur comic, and poking fun at the powers that be are simply a way of passing the time and being acceptably negative about something questionable. It’s a bizarre social exception – there are thousands of blogs criticising everything from Wal-Mart to George Bush, Jr., and yet religion seems to be the only hair trigger subject.

If you’re not offended, take a look at the FaceBook group that’s been one of the primary targets of anger from the Bangledeshi government. Loads of cartoons and cut-and-paste visual humour that all seem to say the same thing – “lighten up.” But what people are forgetting about the viral nature of the internet is that, with social networking, jokes can often become crazes within days. Take a look at the LOLCAT phenomenon. These images are bizarre and funny, but had it not been for the interconnected and flood-content manner by which we now share information in a post-web 2.0 environment, they’d never have left the network of the few friends that started it off.

With religious icons, many people forget this isn’t just the neighbour’s cat they’re taking the whizz out of. They’re messing with beliefs held by millions of people, and I refer to many an internet anonymity theory that points to the fact that, blessed with a keyboard rather than a face-to-face confrontation, people will attack and mock without remorse. It’s a dangerous game to play, especially with a religious group who are, quite rightly, not too keen on a venerated idol becoming a mere play-thing for the online masses. But the key question that lies within the matter is thus; is it a removal from the consequences of internet humour that fuels these bizarre waves of offensive content, or social media itself?

Chinese whispers

The problem with being offended by an individual, a group, or content on the internet, is that quite simply the response most of the time is “if you don’t like it, don’t use the web.” Not only is this a bizarre, elitist and ignorant way to view the argument, it also propagates the idea that social networks, a haven for every youth new to a keyboard, is nothing but a haven for offensive, arrogant individuals. Although those last three words do tend to describe an astonishing amount of teenage mindsets, for many the discussions facilitated by FaceBook groups or Twitter hash-tags have become key in allowing those who feel isolated by the wealth of faceless information on the web to re-connect, hours after school, college or work have finished.

Unfortunately, it also results in discussions like this one. In the red corner, we have Luke – loves offensive humour, thinks most Muslims are terrorists, and epitomises the mindset that draws such harsh criticism of the West out of people who are, realistically, as peaceful as we are on a person-to-person basis. In the blue corner, we have Zafar, devout Muslim and one of the many upset by the fact that his method of connecting with his friends has been corrupted and ruined by the defamation of something he holds dear to him. Their arguments are simple – Luke is adamant (rather ironically, considering his biblical moniker) that it’s not offensive, and especially not to people who do nothing but shout “death to the infidels” at anything that moves. Zafar doesn’t care, he’d just like the insults to his religion to stop.

Is it really too much to ask? Social media doesn’t make inappropriate or un-PC humour easier to spread – the viral nature of everything from slander to internet Memes has been going for longer than we’ve had social media in its currently world-dominating format. However, it also means that there is now a global platform from which mud can, and will be, slung. Forums, chatrooms – they were all so niche, so specific, and unless you were tuned into their frequencies, whether socially or via the actual URL, it was rare you’d stumble across their less PC statements. But FaceBook isn’t divided into sections – it’s one big mob of people who love to tag their dog in holiday pictures during their lunchbreak, and they sit right alongside politicians, celebrities, racists, sexists, homophobes and all other forms of offensive opinion, because it’s the same site.

The key issue here isn’t what what offensive, but why. Images are always going to plague society when it comes to poor humour, and shows like Family Guy do well to propagate the idea that political correctness has gone too far. But those who throw no caution to the wind when posting to groups like these are opening themselves up. Someone on a forum can hide behind a fake name, even if the admin can nab their IP address mere moments after posting an image of the Prophet. However, on FaceBook, chances are that’s your real name, and the torches and pitchforks become a lot more sharp and hot, suddenly. Keep it clean, or keep to 4Chan.