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There is no doubt in my mind that social networks and social media are the future of the 21st century.

It has amazing potential yet at the same time, as you would see with implementation of any breakthrough innovation, it goes through considerable growing pains.

One of the pain points that makes cringe even social network aficionados, is the constant tampering with privacy policy and terms of use. Of course social networks don’t call it tampering, they just call it “changing” – hey it’s their companies so they do what they want.

But the truth is many users feel betrayed since the final product they observe now, and the way the companies treat their private data is a far cry from what people agreed to when they sign up to get an account a few years ago.

Case in point – the way Facebook is morphing from closed community into a world-wide open social network, and the way it’s constantly changing its policies in a direction that is far less friendly for their user base and are much more accommodating for their advertisers and business partners.

I’m not pleased with this transformation either. But we need to remember that social networks are not non-profits (at least the majority of them). So theoretically they were created to make money for their owners and investors.

Yet many social networks in their current form are a huge money drain. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that they are trying to find effective ways to monetize their user base.

After all, nobody is twisting your hand into providing all this demographic data on your profile. It’s your choice. And if you do provide this information, it’s a little naive to think that nobody will use it, and the only purpose this information would serve is to help your social friends to find out more about you so that you could share your thoughts about your common interests.

As we see in real life, company can change their privacy policy at any time, so when you do provide any information, you should be comfortable with a thought that the whole world will see it, and not only your friends. If you don’t like this idea, then just fill in the basic fields. And nobody says that you should share your main email address either.

If you don’t like spam, then it’s your move to make sure you’re not getting any.

On another hand, social networks are a wonderful venue to promote your business at low cost or without any costs whatsoever. If done right, you can grow your list of social friends into many thousands.
And if you share common interests, and provide value in your communications, many of them can become your customers.

Social networks do not charge you one red cent for using their services and resources. But since they have to make profits somehow, they found a non-monetary currency that you’re paying them with. (Though sometimes you might not even understand that you are actually paying, and that it’s not a “free service” per se).

So what currency do they use to charge you and still let you feel like you’re having a free lunch? It’s a tiny-tiny thing called “data”. In a sense, you’re trading off your private information for whatever services you get in exchange.

In 20-30 years information might very well become a new currency accepted all over the world. And people will be paying for products and services in bytes and kilobytes, just as there are paying in dollars and cents now.

It’s just a basic rule of economics – if you’re getting valuable service you have to pay for it, and there is nothing to be upset about.

So the way I see it we have 2 choices here. You can either whine about all the negative aspects of social networks or look at the positive side and utilize social media potential at its fullest and build your business.

If you don’t like how certain social network treats your data then just stop using it (although it might be a little too late now since your data already was distributed through multiple channels and stored in the third party databases.)

The more productive approach would be to employ a viral effect of social sites.

Want to know how to use social networks to grow your business? Then just click this link…

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More information on this topic:

Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook

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Tagged as: Marketing and Advertising, Online Communities, Privacy, Social Media, social network, Social Networking, social sites

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Twitterati is a very popular term in blogosphere and in social networks that is used as a reference to Twitter influencer. So Twitterati is obviously a very influent Twitter user.

But I couldn’t find any agreed-upon criteria that could be used to define Twitterati.

Sure, you can find the section called Twitterati on alltop.com. But this is just an opinion of a popular online resource, not a set-in-stone rule.

I’m not sure about the origin of this world. But even if one can assume that this term originated at alltop.com, it obviously over-grown the barriers of any particular site and became a noun in English language, just like “Google”.

Google is not a company name anymore. The meaning of this word serves as a general representation of search engines per se (sorry, Microsoft), and is deeply interwoven in different layers of American culture.

The same thing is happeing with the term Twitterati.

Everybody sort of understands the meaning of this word yet it remains amazingly vague.

So, what criteria could be used to define this elusive term?

Number of Twitter followers?

Not the most accurate criterion but one can observe that all Twitteratties have over 50,000 followers. (I would say over 100,000 followers, but it’s not true since many of them have following in a range of 70,000 to 100,000).

Number of Retweets? That’s a dark alley since this number can be easily played.

What else then? The popularity of their blogs?

May be, but it’s not directly related to Twitter and hence to the term Twitterati…

So what could be a definition of Twitterati?

Your thoughts?

Tagged as: influencer, twitter, twitterati

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There is a disagreement among SEO experts whether duplicate content will negatively influence your search engine ranking or not. Some say it’s ok to use it as long as you’re the first poster. And then, in a day or two, you can use article directories and distribution services to spread your content all over the web.

The idea is that search engines are smart enough to identify the originator of the content and will give you proper credit as originator of the content.

Others think you need to at least spin your articles before distributing them.
But all the experts agree that the more sites publish your content and give you one-way links the better.

So you need to find sites that would be glad to syndicate your content.

On another hand, there are many tired bloggers who face the challenge each day to come up with quality content, and preferably a unique one at that.

A new service just opened that allows you to both distribute your articles and to acquire unique content for your blogs. And it’s free!

Brad Callen, the owner of this service, even ready to give you $1 for each blog that you register (only for a couple of days).

So go here right now and register fot Unique Content Creation and Distribution Service

Tagged as: article distribution, brad callen, content creation, content distribution, one-way links, seo linkvine

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There is currently a heated debate in blogosphere and in social networks about the correlation between the size of your following (ie: number of followers in Twitter, number of fans in Facebook pages, etc) and the real influence.

Many people argue that number of followers could be easily gamed and increased through automated scripts. And even if you’re followed back by many people, including influential players, it could be done merely as a matter of courtesy. It doesn’t mean that you have any relationship with them or can influence them in any way.

Usually you hear this argument from people who themselves don’t have large followings.

First, if you have a larger following, you have a better chance to get re-tweeted and to draw attention of the person with big influence, such as Twitterati. The same goes for Facebook pages. If your page has more fans, it ranks higher in Facebook searches for a particular keyword, and has higher potential to go viral.

Second, even if a Twitterati follows you back out of courtesy, you now have a chance to start building relationship with him. And if you provide interesting content or unique perspective then your relationship might grow.

So yes, number of followers is important in my book.

Of course, big following by itself is useless without active engagement.

There is another argument that number of followers is not as important as the ratio of people you follow to the people who follow you.

The theory goes that the closer this ratio to 0 the more influential is the person in question (for example if somebody “following “ 1000 people and is followed by 100,000 then the ratio is 0.01 (1000 divided by 100,000).

I think this ratio has its merit as part of the equation, but it means squat on its own. If a person is followed, it doesn’t mean that his/her follower will take action upon his/her words.

I am not going to drop names here but there are quite a few celebrities with 1,000,000+ followers who only follow a handful of people. Many twitterers agree that their tweets are worthless. Yet people continue to follow them out of curiosity. It doesn’t mean however that their influence is very strong.

Sure, there are @techcrunch and @mashable, each with over 1,000,000 followers. Both are very worth following. But on each TechCrunch there are hundreds of celebrities and buffoons whose tweets are absolutely useless.

On another hand, there is @GuyKawasaki who doesn’t have 1,000,000 followers yet. But his influence is much bigger on social networks than that of many celebrities.

So the social influence is not a question of a followers-to-friends ratio, rather it’s a measurement of reach and engagement.

I follow back many people, so my ratio is rather high. But I do this on purpose. Why? I like to have real conversation with people, and conversation is a two-way street. It’s only possible between mutual friends. That is, between people who follow each other.

Of course I don’t follow porn accounts or accounts with just a few tweets. But if you have something interesting to say about my topics of interest, there is a good chance that I will follow you.

And just as well, out of principle, I un-follow everyone who doesn’t follow me back. Yes, I give ample time to read my tweets and to decide whether to follow me or not. But if I’m not followed after certain period of time, I will un-follow you. No exceptions. No ifs or buts.

I don’t care if twitterer is a celebrity or a high-ranking political figure. If I want to get updates about his (or her) activity, I can just subscribe to RSS feed or use other tools to stay informed.

But Twitter is a platform for social communications, and building relationship only possible with mutual followers. The same goes for Facebook or any other social network.

Plus, both in Facebook and Twitter, there is a limit of people you can follow. So I’m not going to keep a spot for somebody who doesn’t care to follow me back.

At the end of the day here is what really important as a measure of your influence in social networks : how many people take action (ie: retweet, visit blog, donate, vote or do anything else) as a result of your words.

Ok, this post is getting a little long, so I will discuss other parameters and criteria useful for the evaluation of social influence, in the next post.
Looking forward to read your comments.

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Other Interesting posts about influence in Social networks:

Social Media Today | Twitter Influence

Graders: Behind the Green … – Does influence on Twitter matter? And, if it does, what is the best way to measure it? On the first question it seems reasonable to say influence only matters if all or part of the reason you are.

Measurement Tool Analyzes

Scope Of Twitter’s Influence – PRWeek … – Measurement Tool Analyzes Scope Of Twitter’s Influence – PRWeek – 03/01/2010.

Twitter: Influence vs Popularity |

Business Computing World – But how can you tell if a flamer has any influence on Twitter?

Looking at the number of people following that profile will give you an indication of popularity, but it’s not a good indicator of influence. For example, a disgruntled …

Twitter Influence Survey: Your Thoughts Appreciated : Thrifty and … – I am doing a bit of research on how companies presence on Twitter affects you the consumer…

Justin Kownacki – How “The Influencers” Use Twitter to Make a … – I’m no Twitter “influence”, in fact I’m far from it, but the great thing about social media is just that.

There are no rules. We are people, not robots, and we have to remember that. Trying to fit a mold of what has worked for someone …

WE twendz Grabs PR Innovation of the Year Distinction at 2010 PR …

-  a Twitter influence analytics service that helps measure brand impact and engage audiences on Twitter. …

SiliconANGLE — Blog — Twitter Data Suggests A New Class Of Web … -

What’s even more exciting is that the notion of influence is changing. The Internet, social networks, Twitter, Facebook, and social media have globalized and opened up influence to the masses. …

With Klout Comes Influence: Measuring And Modifying List Authority … – San Francisco-based Klout is no stranger to measuring influence on the Social Web. The company launched at SXSW Interactive 2009 to help Twitter users discover the voices that the world listens to (on Twitter anyway). ..

Tagged as: Better Chance, Blogosphere, Celebrit, Correlation, Debate, facebook, facebook influence, Fans, Follower, Followers, following size matters, guy kawasaki, Image, Many People, mashable, number of twitter follows, Online Communities, Perspective, Real People, Relationship, Scripts, Size Matter, social influence, Social Media Today, social network, Social Networks, TechCrunch, Trending and Popularity, twitter, twitter influence, twitterati, Wikipedia

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