Social Networks

ProBlogger, the popular blog that teaches one how to make a living off blogging, published an interesting guest post from a former beauty/fashion blogger. In the post, the blogger talks about how she was so excited to do "product reviews" and get all sorts of free stuff sent to her by companies.

She even signed an $8,000 deal with, "a large pharmaceutical company to write six posts for them to try educating readers on the benefits of their product...the only thing I had to do was to get the copy reviewed by the pharmaceutical company to ensure that I wasn't using any medical words in the wrong way."

But then the economy took a turn for the worse and the blogger's freebie parade slowed down. What did she learn? People were actually asking her questions like how many unique visitors her site had and to send links of recent, relevant coverage before sending products. That didn't work out, so the blogger got into another niche, "healthy eating and healthy lifestyles," which she said worked out much better.

"One company (which manufactures supplements) that contacted me to send products for review also wanted to know how much it would cost to sponsor spots on my site. They actually wanted to pay to have banners on my site and not only receive a free review!" she said.

Um, free review? Companies aren't supposed to pay publications for product reviews, or to influence them. Although it does happen. This post, in essence, sums up the difference between how media has traditionally worked: build audience/content, sell advertising against said audience/content - versus how it is unfortunately working for some bloggers: the content is the advertising.

Twitter's new Lists functionality rolled out last week to a certain amount of fanfare in the blogosphere, and in media circles. It's designed to help users track groups of people, topics or trends without further clogging up one's main feed. Some might see this as a virtual school lunchroom, where the cool kids get even better tables and nerds become literally listless. Social media consultant and immensely popular blogger Chris Brogan is concerned about the exclusionary aspects of stuffing people into little boxes. He has a point that drier things like travel, airline and workaday newsfeeds work well in Lists when you need a quick look at a niche universe.

Adding to Brogan's take, Twitter in my opinion was a messy but fun replacement for RSS for some users. Now Twitter Lists can replace them altogether if one chooses. For example, with a few clicks you can create a List of news sources covering China, or a List to track the best deals on electronics with nary a complaint from the personally branded.

Poynter believes Lists could change the way Twitter is used altogether, by adding new elements of customization, discovery and curation (the buzzword for the fall), making Lists "something for every journalist, editor and news organization to keep a keen eye on."

What about for the public relations business?

Our quick take is that Lists will create a new layer of lobbying for clients and PR people themselves as they ask to be included on the more prominent ones. Clever PR people will also use the function to track their clients and competitors, and to keep an eye on issues bubbling up that may require a response. More paranoid users and aspiring astroturfers now only need one account as you also have the option to create closed lists.

More after the jump:

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Facebook announced yesterday the expansion of their Washington D.C. public policy team with the hire of former CongressDaily reporter Andrew Noyes as Manager of Public Policy Communications. At just 29, Noyes has years of inside the Beltway experience, covering privacy, cybersecurity and intellectual property, among other issues.

One of Facebook's public policy priorities is the pending legislation around online ad targeting and personal data. Noyes, who hasn't technically even started with Facebook as of yet (He starts on 11/9 and until that point continues to be a reporter for CongressDaily), was understandably reserved on the issue. "I'm hesitant to really talk about how Facebook has handled it to this point or how they will handle it," he said.

We caught up with Noyes via phone today to chat about some of the challenges communicating Facebook's message in Washigton, what experience he brings to the table to do so, and how the company will continue to make use of social media (notably it's own network) to communicate with the public.

In the memo announcing your hire Barry Schnitt, Director, Corporate Communications and Public Policy said, "Specific policy issues on the agenda for Andrew and the rest of Facebook's DC office include enhancing cybersecurity and online safety, expanding digital privacy protection through user control of data, and protecting free speech." What are some of the biggest challenges in communicating these issues?

Let me start with privacy and to some extent online safety. What you've got is an interesting mix of opinions on how these issues should be addressed in the digital age.

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Ever since Google SideWiki launched in late September, marketers and PR pros have been watching it with a close eye. Basically, with SideWiki anyone using Google Toolbar can post and view comments on your site. However, the comments reside on the Wiki and not on your actual Website. Eitan Bencuya of Google Corporate Communications tells PRNewser "Google Toolbar has hundreds of millions of users around the world."

We asked a few digital marketing executives for their take and what they are advising brands to do.

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The Chicago Tribune ran a feature story today, titled, "Younger employees help senior executives unlock social media mystery." Is it just us, or does this story have sort of a "duh" headline?

Edelman gets some ink, including this quote:

"We grew up with social media," said Matthew Clay, 23, a media executive at Edelman. "We spent eight hours every day on AOL IM."

We're honestly trying to figure out how chatting it up all day on Instant Messenger equates to advising major corporations on their digital communications strategy. What's your take?

Day two of mediabistro's UGCX conference began today with the panel "The New Newsroom" moderated by "BBC World News America" executive producer Rome Hartman, and featuring Ground Report editor-in-chief Rachel Sterne, NowPublic co-founder Michael Meyers and Publish2 co-founder Scott Karp. The question at hand: how is social media, mobile, and user generated content changing the newsroom.

Hartman provided perhaps the most blunt comments when he stated,"You talk about the wisdom of crowds, but it's a demonstrated fact that crowds typically like crap...what falls to the top is nonsense because people like water-skiing squirrels."

The conversation wasn't all negative. FishbowlNY has the complete recap.

Forget flying a few high profile bloggers to your corporate headquarters to meet with executives. Coca-Cola is taking the blogger tour to a whole new level. Three bloggers, who will be chosen by online voting to begin Wednesday, will embark on a 206 country world tour to uncover "what makes people happy." The program is part of Coca Cola's "Open Happiness" campaign.

"It's not about having the Coca-Cola brand first and foremost, center of the screen...It's about telling the story that involves Coca-Cola, that involves the attributes of what Coca-Cola is about, optimism and joy," Adam Brown, director of Coca-Cola's Office of Digital Communications and Social Media told Forbes.

The trip is being dubbed "Expedition 206." Coca-Cola selected the finalists but anyone can vote on who makes the final cut.

Peter Shankman, founder of journalist-to-source matching service HARO (HelpAReporter.com) just told the audience at mediabistro's UGCX conference how he plans to grow his $1.2 million dollar company.

"In the next month--don't tweet this--we're going to split HARO into sectors," he said. Shankman plans to segment his email blasts in to areas like technology, health, and more. "What we expect to happen, is for most users to stay on the general list," explaining that his word-of-mouth proposition, or "pimpage of HARO" is too powerful to abandon. Meaning, you want to share those queries with not only your PR clients, but with people in your network that perfectly fit a journalist's query. For people with a day job in PR, they will also subscribe to those "urgents" to make sure they don't miss anything in their area of expertise.

What this does for HARO is increase its advertising inventory from three email blasts a day, to a potential thirty. Shankman sees it as a way to grow the business, and to service those quirky businesses he loves, many who originally felt the benefit of HARO as a source and then turned into an advertiser.

Mobile social network and gaming application Foursquare has received quite a bit of hype since launching at last year's SXSW Conference. Despite only 60k users, no revenue and no business model, the company has emerged as one of the next hot things that may not yet have the user base of a Facebook or Twitter, but has the "right users," some may argue. It also has the "hip factor" as being the network that your parents haven't yet joined, (Hello, Facebook.) and isn't consumed mostly for business and link sharing (Hello, Twitter.)

The company is the focus of a New York Times feature story and Bits blog post today - coverage most tech start ups of Foursquare's size would kill for. Writes the Times' Jenna Wortham, "A combination of friend-finder, city guide and competitive bar game, Foursquare lets users 'check in' with a cellphone at a bar, restaurant or art gallery. That alerts their friends to their current location so they can drop by and say hello."

Despite all the attention, founder Dennis Crowley tells PRNewser that all PR is handled "in house" and "it pretty much takes care of itself." Has the company been pitched by agencies? "Nothing formally," said Crowley, "[I] got some emails here and there, but been too busy to keep up." The company's press page is bare bones, featuring only an email contact and several logos for download.

Internet monitoring company Hitwise released new data on the top social networks last week. As suspected, Facebook and Twitter experienced growth. In Facebook's case, the network grew 190% over last year and now claims 58.6% market share in terms of total visitors to social networking sites.

Myspace on the other hand is "in freefall," says CNET's Greg Sandoval, citing a big drop in market share, from 66.8% to 30% over the last year.

Given this, the social networking site's agency of record - Weber Shandwick - certainly faces challenges. We reached out to both the agency and MySpace internal PR, who have not responded as of the time of this post.