Social networking is the #1 activity online. Even though Google gets the most visitors, Facebook is where most of us are spending our time. And it’s not just about Facebook anymore. We are spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr and Twitter. While there are some clear major players in the social space, the social media universe continues to expand and 2011 was a banner year for the idea of an “Interest Graph.”

In 2011, we saw Google launching Google+ and Pinterest grewing at an astounding rate. Facebook launched “Timeline” and “frictionless sharing” with partners like the much anticipated Spotify. Facebook also acquired design companies and the team behind Gowalla, showing the company’s intent to provide a consistent experience across devices and becoming a more prominent player in the mobile space.

2011 was also a big year for social IPOs: From LinkedIn to Groupon and Zynga, small tech startups are becoming public companies. There is much speculation around the existence of a bubble, and some say growth cannot continue because social networks are running out of users. However, Facebook is not yet public and we still don’t see a clear exit for Twitter.

There might be saturation, but social media has changed the way we live. And this means social media is no longer a question for marketers. Companies of all sizes have accepted and even embraced the importance of social media. Investments are starting to increase and companies are now building teams to tackle the new risks and opportunities that social media has created. While Facebook and Twitter ad spending is expected to grow only at a decreasing rate, advanced brands are leveraging more digital dollars for their social media marketing strategies and tactics. “Social” has been an afterthought for many years, but marketing campaigns and programs are finally starting to feel inherently social.

This presentation is about the state of social media and social media marketing on January 1st, 2012:

Chris Brogan is a blogger, speaker, consultant, bestselling author and President and CEO of Human Business Works. Chris was one of the very first people I ever “met” on Twitter and I’ve been reading his blog www.chrisbrogan.com ever since.

Below is an interview with Chris about his upcoming book, examples of brands on Google+, Black Friday marketing in 2011, content curation tools, and more.

1. Congratulations on your upcoming book “Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything.” The book description says “This is a business book, not a technology book.” Can you share more about how this book can help businesspeople?

[CB] Business people tend to get a bit twitchy when a new technology comes along. But what I’m saying with this book is that this is a book about how to use the telephone to sell, or how to use business cards as part of your selling, or what to talk about at the cocktail party to sell. The tech of it all isn’t the worry. The problem is, for some unknown reason, humans get really weird when they start trying to use social media to sell. They forget the niceties and the human nature sometimes.

2. Google+ Pages have been around for a few weeks now. What are some examples of companies and organizations making good use of them?

[CB] I love what Samsung USA is doing (and no, not because you work there). I love what Dell has done. I think that Pepsi is already getting great engagement on their site. For a small business, check out Allure Home Improvements. I think people can really learn from places like these. Oh, and Kodak! Great work, Jennifer Cisney and team.

3. Social media is becoming an important part of how brands do marketing. What did you think of Black Friday efforts this year? You know who I saw doing something interesting for Black Friday?

[CB] Cali Lewis. Not a company, a person. Someone who works for a brand of her own, but who used Amazon associate links to point people towards products she endorsed, with a cut for herself. Did I see any brands doing something amazing with Black Friday? Well, at the risk of really seeming like I’m sucking up (I’m willing to risk this), I *did* like that Samsung had a nice summary on the Google+ page. Beyond that? Not as much on Twitter as I’d had expected, and I’m no longer qualified to talk about Facebook. I don’t go there anymore.

4. What are your thoughts on content curation and services like Pinterest, Curated.by and Storify?

[CB] I think that content curation is *finally* getting its due. Steve Rosenbaum wrote a grossly overlooked book, CURATION NATION, that deserves more eyeballs and thought. The specific tools will come and go, but people are finally understanding that curation is just as important as creation.

5. You’ve been blogging for over a decade and you’ve been using WordPress for many years. Do you think WordPress is at risk with the increased usage of Tumblr, Google+ and social media overall?

[CB] I rarely worry much about the tools. I think that there’s a huge group of people using Tumblr for curation and sometimes throwaway products. I think that people looking to use serious tools for serious business will stick with WordPress, but when I say that, don’t presume that I’m being elitist. I’m saying that one set of tools, WordPress, delivers a lot more business value. I’m saying that Tumblr is easy and makes it very easy to share and create. Both are quite wonderful and useful. That’s how I would divide them.

6. What advice would you give to bloggers who aspire to be book authors?

[CB] Blogging and books are two different disciplines, but I will say that if you blog daily and if you can write thoughts up such that they have a beginning, middle, and an end, you’ve got some potential. If you REALLY want to know what bloggers have to focus on, it’s building platform. Book deals go to people with lots of followers and readers, not the people with the best ideas. Sorry to pop your bubble, aspiring authors, but Trust Agents isn’t a great book. I just have a huge platform. Yep, there it is.

The A Case for Social Depth

+Dan Reimold has 44 followers at the time that I write this. He wrote an “article” called “Google+: Social Media Upstart ‘Worse Than a Ghost Town.”

Dan‘s article basically says “Google+ is not good because no one follows me.”

Now, Dan has some “evidence” for this. Of course he does.

Except his evidence consists of Rainbow Rowell’s article on Omaha.com. +Rainbow Rowell has 33 followers on G+ and she has posted a handful of times. Rainbow’s opinionated column basically comes down to this: “My Google+ home page is worse than a ghost town. It doesn’t even feel haunted. Meanwhile, down the road,in a much less desirable neighborhood, Facebook is teeming with life.” So apparently Google+ is dead because Facebook, which is over half a decade older has more users poking each other (I’m not disagreeing necessarily, just paraphrasing).

And her “sequel” is well… “The fact that I think Google+ is useless might be one of the best possible indicators that it’s going to succeed. Get yourself a Google+ account. This thing’s going to be huge.”I’m not sure what it is. Insurance? Change of heart? Sarcasm? Live journal emotional flashback?

But that’s not all. The “best” evidence comes from the one and only Forbes: +Paul Tassi, the person who called the “eulogy” for Google+ and celebrated when others talked about it on G+.

Apparently Google+ has become appealing to Mr. Tassi, who ironically also wrote a follow-up article only hours after the first one. No one remembers that one. Now, when I first saw Tassi’s profile on Aug 15th, he had few followers and aprox 5 public posts. Today he’s a happy Google Pluser with 1200+ followers. He almost raves about it without having to rave about it. Paul has converted and has amassed a following.

But wasn’t G+ dead? Hmmm… I’m confused now. I thought the word “EULOGY” was a strong one but apparently I’ve been reading the wrong dictionary.

Now, I would’ve rather Dan linking to this TechCrunch article. Despite their opinionated (and allegedly unbiased) point of view and their recent TMZification, TC writers actually know what they’re talking about. +Robin Wauters actually posted some numbers: A 41% decrease in public posts month-to-month. He might be right (someone please do call +Robert Scoble lol), but I will soon tell you why less posts doesn’t show the whole story. It’s not a good sign, but it doesn’t say anything about the quality of posts and the engagement within them (take a look at the average Fb post), or the quality of users (take a look at your DMs and you’ll see what I mean).

My thoughts are that if something is dead or a “ghost town”, then no one will care enough to write about it more than once. Google Buzz died once and it was a quick death. Google+ is dying on a daily basis but I don’t think +Larry Page is worried about what to post next before someone else tweets about his absence.

Traffic matters and all these deaths of Google+ create traffic. Even if the only people who care about it are those geeking out here and the media which absolutely loves to cover social media at its shallowest.

25 million or not, the Google+ community is unique and it has something worth coming back here for: DEPTH.

We’ll see what happens but I can assure you that there is no dead player in the Social War(s). Social depth is what I see as the next big thing in social. And I don’t mean this based on evidence but only as my personal hope (I’ve learned from the pros above that writing is apparently all about my own experience). In all seriousness, this is why I think Google+ matters to me: SOCIAL DEPTH.

Google+ doesn’t create it, but it enables it in a way that my blog doesn’t, location-based apps don’t, Twitter barely does, FriendFeed almost did, Tumblr almost does, and MySpace never will.

I’m a big fan of all Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Google+ is new so I may be blinded by that. Or maybe I’m excited to see 3 big competitors instead of two or maybe I’m more of an “interest graph” kind of guy. I’m in a position where I can, and must, get to know them all quite well. But bottom line, I’d interested in more meaning and substance while I’m spending time on these networks. And the same goes for articles with clever traffic-driving titles.

Hugh Macleod, the cartoonist who blogs at gapingvoid.com, recently announced that he was “giving up” Twitter and Facebook to “reclaim” blogging.

His reasoning seems to be partly philosophical (content ownership) and partly strategic (less tweeting about meals means more time to blog about, well, the important stuff).

Philosophically, Hugh says he doesn’t appreciate the fact that social media sites own what is supposed to be his content. There’s no WordPress-like utopian open source self-hosted social network (and I haven’t heard about Diaspora since Mark Zuckerberg sent his $10 donation).

The cause may be a noble one, but I’m skeptical of this alleged ownership argument though. Hugh and others who have shunned Twitter before him (ie. Seth Godin) don’t seem to be opposed to others sharing their content on Facebook and Twitter. The “Tweet” and “Like” buttons that appear at the bottom of each of their blog posts are evidence that they approve of content sharing and traffic building. It’s ironic that the “Decide” call to action on Hugh’s blog post is only a few pixels above the word “Tweet.”

Strategically… Hugh has a point. Focusing on one thing, instead of aimlessly trying to be active all over the web, makes a lot of sense. However, Hugh is in a unique position. He’s a published author and you could say he’s a bit of a quotable celebrity in the tech startup scene. Whether Hugh will be able to maintain the interest that his recent blog post generated (111 comments and counting) is yet to be seen, but there’s a chance he’ll be ok even if he never tweets ever again.

So, should you give up Twitter and Facebook to reclaim blogging?

Probably not, but ask yourself the following questions before making a decision:

1. Do I have a “reclaimable” blog?

Most likely, you do not. A “reclaimable” blog would be one that used to get a lot of traffic and comments, but at some point it failed to keep up. According to Compete, gapingvoid.com was getting 65k unique visitors in July of 2010. A year later, that was only 12.7K. The drop is a great one, but 12.7K unique visitors is still a lot.

2. What am I trying to achieve?

Is your goal to have a creative outlet where you share thoughts and ideas? Or are you trying to become a top blogger and quit your day job?

3. What do I really enjoy doing?

This is very important. I personally enjoy blogging and podcasting but it’s getting harder to do this. Being on Google+, Twitter and Facebook allows me to have rewarding conversations and discussions with friends and strangers, at any time and from anywhere.

4. What am I good at?

Everyone is different and you need to be objective about what you’re good at. People that are comfortable in front or behind a camera should be on YouTube, Flickr or Instagram. People with a radio voice should probably check out BlogTalkRadio and Cinch.

5. Where does my audience want me?

Hugh’s audience might be more than happy to visit his blog. For you, it might be a different story. Maybe your Twitter friends like to communicate with you in 140 characters, but they might not really be interested in reading your essays. It’s important to consider your audience, even if it’s a small one.

I asked myself the 5 questions above and I quickly determined that it would not be possible for me to give up Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to focus on blogging. In the same way, I wouldn’t give up blogging to focus on social networks.

In conclusion, I don’t think you should follow in Hugh’s footsteps. As Hugh mentioned in his post, blogging has gone from magical to diluted in one decade. Unfortunately for bloggers, I’m not sure that magic will ever be recovered.

Whether we can call it magical or not, great content has the opportunity to create valuable and powerful experiences in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Where and how you do this is completely up to you.

I first spoke with Erik Ober, CEO of Booshaka, in 2010 because his startup, which started as a search engine for Facebook, had caught my interest. I expressed that while it was great to find out about what people were publicly saying about Samsung on Facebook, it would be great to also know specifics about the engagement in our Samsung USA Facebook page. I really wanted to discover who Samsung USA’s “top fans” were.

Today, Booshaka ranks Facebook pages based on engagement and, as I had hoped, Booshaka identifies your “top fans” and ranks them in a nice leaderboard. You can see Samsung USA’s “Top Fans” on a tab on our Facebook page, and find more details on the Booshaka page for Samsung USA.
Read my interview with Erik below to learn more about the startup, how “Top Fans” works, and where his team is headed.

1. Who is behind Booshaka and what does your “Do the Impossible” tagline mean?

Booshaka is backed by a proven leadership and advisory team with 100+ collective years in social applications, data analysis, algorithms and advertising. Our mission is to help brands and businesses drive engagement and advocacy on Facebook.

From the start, we wanted to create big, meaningful company.  ”Do the impossible” is more of a motto than a tagline and its derived from the Urban dictionary meaning of “Booshaka.” Since naming the company, we’ve been told that all the biggest internet domains have two “O”s in them — Facebook, Google, and Yahoo :)

2. While the site initially started as a way to search on Facebook pages, it is now focused on Facebook Leaderboards based on engagement. Tell me more about this evolution.

The first few iterations of the product were experimental and designed to test how the market would respond to innovations built on Facebook’s Graph APIs.  In August 2010, we launched a version of the site which showed what was trending in different topical categories (ie Sports, Movies, Politics, etc) on Facebook.  We received some great organic press for the app and hundreds of developers and companies reached out to see how they might be able to leverage our technology.

After several months of customer development, we learned two things:

a. Marketers were overwhelmed with the amount of social data and interactions on Facebook and didn’t know how to take advantage of it.

b. Everyone was measuring the success of their Facebook Page(s) in terms of total number of fans / likes.

From our perspective, social media is all about how active your community is, how engaged your customers are, and how much they talk about your brand or business. At that point, we set out to develop technology solutions for the next frontier of social marketing — customer engagement and advocacy.

3. What kind of Facebook pages would benefit from adding a “Top Fans” application?

Most business owners are familiar with the 80/20 rule in which 20% of their customers actually make up 80% of their business.  Given this simple mantra, we believe the “Top Fans” application is instantly useful to any Facebook Page. Facebook Page admins can use the leaderboard to recognize and reward their top contributors and drive business metrics. On average, we’ve seen that effective use of the application will triple engagement in your community.

4. The Leaderboards are based on a point system. What does someone need to do in order to become a “Top Fan” on a Facebook page?

We’ve invested a lot of effort into ensuring that the point algorithm rewards the quality of your participation. Posts, comments and likes are all initially worth 1 point.  Your score is then weighted by higher quality activity (on topic and engages with the community) and will earn you extra points.  Lower quality activity (off topic and spammy) will actually earn you less points. Consistent activity over time is more valuable than repeatedly performing the same action, such as clicking the Like button on every post.

5. Is this all in real-time or does it get aggregated at the end of the day/week/month?

Points and rankings are calculated daily and are aggregated for the current month.  Soon, we will release a Rules Engine which will allow page admins to customize the leaderboard date range.

6. Does Booshaka provide custom development services?

Yes.  Currently, we are busy working directly with partners and customers to build out the platform to suit their needs.

7. Any chance we will see a Booshaka for Twitter in the future?

Possibly :)

8. Do you think Facebook is increasingly becoming a public forum as opposed to a private place for conversations with friends?

Facebook strives to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.  We think they are succeeding at that mission while simultaneously giving people the privacy controls they need.

9. Any advice for marketers trying to increase engagement on Facebook?

Our analysis on Facebook not only goes deep but it also goes broad across the whole network.  With an index of over 2 million Facebook Pages, we’ve gathered a lot of insights into how marketers can successfully drive engagement. We find the most engaged communities are the ones where the advocates have been empowered and motivated to participate. So, build your team of “superfans”.  All of your social customers have the potential to influence their friends, but in fact very few of them do. Once you’ve identified the fans who are the most engaged and strongest potential advocates, use game mechanics such as recognition and reward to nurture and grow their involvement.

At Booshaka, we’ve created new metrics for buzz and community health.  Social data provides marketers the opportunity to measure their success and understand their customers like never before.  Make sure you’re investing your budget and efforts in the right places and that your social strategy is delivering real value.

Find your Top Fans here, browse the most engaged Pages on Facebook here, and feel free to reach us via email: info@booshaka.com.

I’ve recently been advising the social media marketing efforts of Cucupons, a Guatemalan daily deals site that launched today. When I first met with the team I asked them if they had considered creating a video, such as the “How it Works” video by Groupon.

I quickly discovered that Groupon has inspired not only tons of daily group deal companies, but also lots of marketing videos in all kinds of languages from all over the world.

Alas, Cucupons launched without a video of its own, focusing on more cost-effective and differentiating tactics based on how Guatemalans actually shop offline and online.

You can find 100 Groupon “clone” videos that I’ve curated at www.curated.by/socialnerdia/groupon-clones.

When I was in High School, Napster was the coolest “computer application” on Earth. Sharing and downloading music, for free, had changed the world. From pillow fights with Metallica to the rise and fall of copycats like Limewire, Napster disrupted the web, the music industry, and the tech industry. Today, the Napster logo still represents music, but it doesn’t represent what it used to represent back then: Freedom.

Fast forward to today.

Spotify, the mythological creature of music streaming, is allegedly coming to the U.S. tomorrow, and rumor is it will be integrated into Facebook soon after.

Pandora, a public company (let me repeat: a public company) birthed out of the “Music Genome Project,” just recently redesigned its site to allow you to go “back” on your browser and provide a deeper social experience inspired by good ol’ photo social network Instagram, among other changes.

(And in related news, I haven’t bought a CD in three years. If I’ve paid for any songs online, it can’t be more than a dozen or two.)

So what does this mean? Spotify coming to the U.S. after what seemed like decades of waiting and Pandora going public and adding a social layer of its own are clear signs that the days of music ownership, at least in the traditional way, are numbered. Music streaming means you can’t download, but it also means you no longer have to.

Of course, many are skeptic.

Some say that only the giants (Google Music, Amazon Music, iTunes) have a seat at the exclusive musical table in the cloud and that streaming music will be costly, squashing the little guys in the process. Others complain about functionality and details and privacy and control and lack of subway access. And while geeks discuss the cloud, the masses show that AM/FM/?M is just fine and that $2 downloads is more than fine in 2011.

But all I can think of is this: Freedom.

I don’t really care about showing off CDs and LPs in my living room, and I don’t really want to “own” music that’s just taking space in my hard drive. I don’t ever care about high quality that much.

Music is to be listened to, not to waste physical and digital space! What I care about is freedom to listen to what I want, whenever and wherever I want at the lowest possible cost. And the best solution to this is streaming online music.

If Spotify gives me 20 hours, I’ll take those, thank you very much. Pandora offers a few more hours and throws some social recommendations? Sounds great. I will take those too. Last.fm and Turntable.fm want to offer me a few more songs for free? Sure, why not. And for the rest of the time (or maybe most of the time), I will keep using my beloved Grooveshark, which I use almost every day even though it has “social” features that I could not care less about.

If the past couple of years are an indication of the future of online music streaming, then we can be sure that there will be more options; differentiated and free options. And with multiple options I can assure you that I, like many others, will switch from Napster to Limewire to Last.fm to Pandora to Google Music to Grooveshark to whatever service offers me this: Freedom.