Social Nets

Social media guide Mashable has unveiled 15 Twitter Lists focusing on, you guessed it, social media.

Among the Mashable Twitter Lists:

Media Thinkers: media thinkers and commentators.

Social Media Linkers: social media experts, thinkers and linkers.

News Orgs: news organizations on Twitter, breaking news.

Marketing Experts: marketers who Tweet, digital marketing insights and links.

If some of these lists look a little, well, light, founder Pete Cashmore explains:

These are nowhere near finished, of course: just a starting point. We'll be adding more and more names over the coming weeks. If you see people you'd like to include (and there are many, many more to add - sorry if we missed you!), just send a Tweet to @mashable with your suggestions.

Now don't be shy, marketing experts.

Nick Gianos, a member of Facebook's platform team, wrote a post on the Facebook Blog outlining steps the social-networking site is taking to prevent deceptive ads.

From Gianos' post:

As part of an ongoing effort we've had underway to address the quality of third-party ads running inside applications, we wanted to offer some clarifications, reminders and information on our actions.

First, deceptive ads are a widespread issue on the Web and one we fight aggressively. This battle is not new and it's far from over. We faced stimulus scam ads on our own system earlier this year and pushed them off the site with rigorous enforcement. We did the same months later when deceptive ads from third-party ad networks appeared in applications. We're doing that again now as we see them appear in the form of offers.

Since introducing updated policies for third-party ads on Facebook Platform in July, we have disabled two entire ad networks and suspended or brought into compliance over 100 applications for ad-related violations in regions around the world, over one-half of which had more than 1 million monthly active users.

In addition to legal notices that have been sent to many ad networks to mandate ongoing compliance on Facebook Platform, today we are disabling two additional offer and ad networks that have repeatedly violated our policies.

In addition to steps we've taken to build teams and technologies devoted to this issue and continual outreach to work with members of the ecosystem on ways to improve their practices, it is the responsibility of both developers and ad networks to make sure the content running in third-party applications is appropriate.

If you have an advertising-related inquiry, please use the Platform Advertising Contact Form.

The Social Media Examiner regularly publishes some good stuff on social media tips and strategies. (That's SME's cute little icon to the right.) Managing editor Cindy King recently posted some helpful "ways to overcome the social media time sink."

I'll give you a few here (there are seven), along with my usual 2 cents, but it's worth clicking on the link to read them all.

1. Set One Specific Social Media Objective

Before you see any return on your time investment in social media, you need know what your business can get out of it.

This can be easier said than done, and it's probably the main reason most organizations have no idea how to measure social media success. After all, if you don't know your objectives, how can you develop and implement a strategy, to say nothing about assessing its effectiveness? Many organizations get panicked into social media because "everyone else is doing it." That's not an objective, that's a reaction. Instead, figure out first what your organization's social media objectives are. Once you've done that, King writes, you can proceed to:

2) Find the Right Social Media Strategy for Your Business

[Y]our social media strategy needs to be tailored to the particular message you want to convey to your audience.

Again, this is about your objectives and strategy, not, "Our competitors are on Facebook and Twitter, so obviously we need to be too!" I touched on this in a post yesterday about newspapers using social networking tools ("There's no magic formula for social media. You've got to find what works for your publication.")

3. Make Your Presence Social

Once you have defined your social media strategy, the process does not end there. It will only work if your presence is truly social and, as Rebecca Leaman says, you need to also "focus on being good online neighbors."

Relentless marketers, are you taking notes?

King has the rest of her tips here.

Social bookmarking sites such as Digg and reddit drive traffic to newspaper web sites. It's a proven fact. Except when it isn't.

That's the frustrating conclusion of an article published by the Newspaper Association of America as part of the organization's series on social media ROI. Paul Berger writes:

Today, readers can choose from dozens of bookmarking sites - StumbleUpon, Newsvine, Mixx, Propeller, Twine, Diigo, Blinklist, Blogmarks, Yahoo! Buzz - not to mention social networking sites such as Bebo, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. But what is striking is the different experiences newspaper editors have had trying to leverage such sites for traffic or brand-building purposes.

The ChicagoTribune.com, for example, reports having solid success with Digg, which refers about 5% of the site's total traffic, about half the total delivered by social media sites overall.

Then there's Minneapolis-St. Paul's StarTribune.com, which, Berger quotes the newspaper's digital executive director Jason Erdahl, gets "less than one-hundredth of a percent of overall visits" from the Diggs, reddits and Newsvines of the world.

Berger reports:

Erdahl says Drudge, the Huffington Post, and particularly Yahoo!, are far more significant referrers to StarTribune.com than social bookmarking sites. Facebook and Twitter are also important, he says, because they allow people who already know and trust each other to make recommendations.

In fact, Berger writes, Facebook and Twitter are emerging as far more effective traffic-drivers for local newspapers than social bookmarking sites.

The article offers some tips on social media strategies for newspapers, but the advice certainly can be generalized to online-only publishers.

My bottom line: There's no magic formula for social media. You've got to find what works for your publication. But that means trying things, taking chances and paying attention. Newspapers should adapt the advice of Richard Pryor, who explained his philosophy of comedy thusly: "Whatever the fuck make the people laugh, say that shit."

Results of a new survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project contradict the widely held belief that the Internet and mobile phones are making users more socially isolated.

Pew's Personal Networks and Community Survey examined how the Internet and cell phones affect how users interact with people in their core social network. From the survey's Executive Summary:

Our key findings challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology.

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Friend Connect, Google's popular online service that enables Internet users to, well, connect with friends on different web sites by standardizing the look of social applications and content, has added more features, IDG News Service's Juan Carlos Perez reports:

Google's Friend Connect has expanded its roster of social networking and social media services that participating Web publishers can add to their sites.

Friend Connect now has a new section called "Interests" that lets Web publishers pose questions to visitors who register with their sites about their likes, hobbies and preferences.

Other new features allow web publishers to 1) offer people the ability to use their site profiles to send private messages, and 2) fine-tune their sites by aggregating and analyzing data that users make public about their interests, Perez writes.

Launched in May 2008, Friend Connect is now deployed by 9 million web sites worldwide and is available in 59 languages.

From the "Trying New Stuff Is Hard, But Unemployment And/Or Staying In A Sucky Job Is Harder" Department:

Social media career consultant and CAREEREALISM blogger Josh Waldman has compiled a list of the top three reasons why people don't use social media for job searches.

Waldman notes that the three reasons he cites usually are concocted inside the brains of people feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, which really are manifestations of fear. Nearly all of us been down that unpleasant road (I used to get my mail delivered there), so it's not a knock on those people. His post is intended to help reduce the fear of social media that grips many job seekers. As he writes, "If you can name your resistance, it will have less power over you."

Here are Waldman's top three social media bogeymen:

I'm Too Old or I'm Too Young

I Don't Like Spending so Much Time in Front of Computers

I'm Overwhelmed and Don't Know Where to Start

The second reason, of course, generally is a lesser concern for media professionals, whose poor eyesight, hunched shoulders, carpal tunnel syndrome and ghostly pallor (and I'm not just speaking for myself) are testament to their years in front of a computer screen. But the first and last reasons are widespread and often crippling.

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Reddit, the social news site where haters will eagerly down-vote a link from a guy thanking people for supporting a fund-raiser for his cancer-stricken mother (I'm not kidding), has been inaccessible this morning.

OK, not everyone on reddit is that mean-spirited, but hating undoubtedly is one of the site's defining characteristics.

It appears the site has been down for at least an hour as of this writing.

Publishing company Conde Nast purchased reddit in 2006. Reddit's co-founders, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, recently announced they were leaving the company.

Reddit, you're going to be so down-voted when you come back up.

Update: The site is accessible now (as of 10:30 a.m. or so). Hate away. (Oh, and thank you, Barrack, for proving my point. Not to mention the page view.)

If you get a Direct Message on Twitter today that says, "I make money online with google. i learned how here," DO NOT click on the link. It's a scam, one that apparently also is making the rounds on Facebook.

I've seen that message from several of my trusted Twitter followers, so I haven't fallen for it. But others haven't been so lucky. Elinor Mills at CNET News.com reports:

According to Twitter users, the link leads to a phishing page and is likely being generated by a virus.

On Facebook, people were seeing messages from friends that said: "just take a look at it and read it over and try it if you want [link]." The link goes to a site that appears to be hosting malware.

Another one I got twice today via Twitter DM read: "i made $426.23 online today with"...and then included a link to what I'm sure is a phishing site.

Here's a link to a Twitter search of the term "make money online with google".

It might be a good idea to change that password, too.

There are many kinds of stupid when it comes to social media in the business world. Among the most common:

1) Ignoring social media in the belief (or hope) that the "fad" will pass

2) Using social media, but without a coherent strategy

3) Having a social media strategy, but not attempting to measure its impact or effectiveness

4) Trying to "ban" social media from the workplace because you think it's a time and resource drain

Over at SearchEngineWatch.com today, Eric Qualman tackles Stupid No. 4.

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