Yesterday, the media went nuts with a Facebook frenzy. Apparently Facebook users who opt-out of Facebook’s public Pages land up with  blank profiles containing no information (no likes/dislikes, favorite TV shows, etc). Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb does a great job detailing the specifics of the changes and how to handle those choices.

What I found interesting was the new light being cast on ownership of data. The profile is ours, the user name and password is ours, but the data is theirs. Now I know in the terms of services (TOS) it clearly states that, but now users are really feeling it. So lets talk social networks for a moment. According to Wikipedia;

A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes,” which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

So what are they really…a buisness that needs to generate revenue. All social networks have a universal issue, they are busy but not generating enough revenue. And just like any other buisness, revenue keeps the lights on. In my opinion Facebook is trying to increase the value of their profiles to help increase advertising dollars. The more targeted exposure they can generate to their network, the more the real estate is worth. Sound familiar? It’s the foundational component of every shopping center in the United States.

Bottom line here is social media apps and networks need users to build robust pages and be engaging enough to attract tons of visitors who participate and interact. Users need to understand that privavcy starts and stops with themselves. Don’t post your birthday and no one will know, don’t post your current location, and know one will find you.

I hope Facebook comes up with a better way to monetize profile information and less of a way to “punish” those who choose not to participate in that monetiztion.

With today’s announcement of the Labpixies acquisition by Google, the convergence of web to mobile gaming takes a whole new light. According to TechChrunch’s  Erick Schonfeld, Google’s strategy may be to extend audiences from it’s personalized web app igoogle and continue a play pattern to it’s mobile platform android. The strategy makes sense when you think about Google’s overall goal to get more people using the Internet and now mobile.

What’s really exciting here is the validation of cross platform technology, something that Labpixies does very well. Cross platform technology is a way extending a single code base across many platforms. Think of it in terms of language and translation. Imagine if you could say “Hello; how are you?” in English and people who only speak German, Spanish or Mandarin could fully understand you and even respond back “fine, thanks” in their own native language which you would understand as well. Pretty cool!

Now back to cross platform technology, the true benefit to game developers is the enormours cost savings when developing a code base. Normally you would develop a game for the andriod platform, if it turns out to be a hit, you’ll have to rewrite it for the iPhone platform in order to incease your audience share. Now using services like Labpixes with miminal effort, your game can be ready for all platforms and users .

Read more about the acquisition here.

Do It Yourself (DIY) Social Networking platform Ning, announced that it’s Free networking service will be discontinued and replaced with a paid option.

Team,

When I became CEO 30 days ago, I told you I would take a hard look at our business. This process has brought real clarity to what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to do now to make Ning a big success.

My main conclusion is that we need to double down on our premium services business. Our Premium Ning Networks like Friends or Enemies, Linkin Park, Shred or Die, Pickens Plan, and tens of thousands of others both drive 75% of our monthly US traffic, and those Network Creators need and will pay for many more services and features from us.

So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity. We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning. We will judge ourselves by our ability to enable and power Premium Ning Networks at huge scale. And all of our product development capability will be devoted to making paying Network Creators extremely happy.

As a consequence of this change, I have also made the very tough decision to reduce the size of our team from 167 people to 98 people. As hard as this is to do, I am confident that this is the right decision for our company, our business, and our customers. Marc and I will work diligently with everyone affected by this to help them find great opportunities at other companies.

I’ve never seen a more talented and devoted team, and it has been my privilege to get to know and work with each and every one of you over the last 18 months.

We’ll use today to say goodbye to our friends and teammates who will be leaving the company. Tomorrow, I will take you through, in detail, our plans for the next three months and our new focus.

Thanks,
Jason Rosenthal

It lends an inetresting perspective on the focus of social media. On the heels of Twitter announcing some new revenue models, I wonder if social networking has had enough FREE and now needs to migrate to traditional business standards and generate revenue.  Successful social plays like Twitter, Ning and Facebook have been operating off of the valuation prospect, raising capital based on the acquisition and value goal due to virtually non exsititent revenue streams. Now with devices like the Ipad and Iphone taking hold in the consumer market, we seem to see moderate acceptance of subscriber based fees for premium expeirences, applications and content.

I wonder if Do It Yourself (DIY) video giant Magnify will be next to ditch the FREE?

It appears that Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo of Twitter introduced some new revenue model ideas today that the organization will be enacting.

There will be two “pillars” to Twitter’s business model, Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo said at the company’s Chirp developer conference in San Francisco. The first, announced earlier this week, is Promoted Tweets, which lets advertisers pay for sponsored tweets that appear at the top of search results for certain keywords.

The second pillar is commercial accounts, which Twitter started to talk about last year. That service will allow a business to pay for a Twitter account in return for detailed analytics tools and the ability for several people to post to the same account. Commercial accounts are in beta testing with “a couple of hundred customers” and will be offered more widely in the future, though Costolo didn’t say when. Read More

One of the biggest challenges in social media is also the attraction, free publication. Although many traditional media models have tried to carry over to new media such as subscription based content and ad supported content,  the struggle remains hard for many social publishers.  I suspect whatever revenue models Twitter puts into action will be successful given the overall reach of the platform.

A few years back, the Internet was positioned as the newest communication channel around. The very ability to instantly create published public content was only surpassed by being able to edit and update that content as well. In just recent years, Internet communication has moved from dynamic text to what I like to call “living on line”. This is the transparency that people now have connecting their actual lives to their virtual lives; in short melting the two together. What’s the spark of this new media paradigm: social networking.

Social networking is the ablity to dynamically connect. Whether your “tweeting, writing on a virtual wall, inviting or accepting friends, or simply posting to a blog :), exposing more and more of your life’s daily thoughts, events and travel is where the web is progressing to.  In a great article by Danah Boyd of Vator News titled Social media is here to stay… Now what? “For users, Web 2.0 was all about reorganizing web-based practices around Friends. For many users, direct communication tools like email and IM were used to communicate with one’s closest and dearest while online communities were tools for connecting with strangers around shared interests. Web2.0 reworked all of that by allowing users to connect in new ways. While many of the tools may have been designed to help people find others, what Web2.0 showed was that people really wanted a way to connect with those that they already knew in new ways.“

So let’s break down the social media food chain into three groups and briefly define the usability and goal of each:

1) The User-these are the people who make up the foundation of the social media. Without user uptake, this would simply be another “great idea”. What users want to accomplish when using social networks such as MySapce, Facebook, Mebo and others is the ability to connect with friends, family and new acquaintances in a vast and “FREE” way. In short, users see social networks as a way to expand their network while cutting traditional communication related expenses.

2) The Advertiser-this group is both an enabler and a hunter. By advertising on and supporting social networks, marketers help keep the network availableo t users. But as with all things, “freedom” comes with a price. Now don’t get me wrong, my background is in helping advertisers generate more return from their online campaigns, but one of the elements I always stress to my clients is soft sale. Social media is a great way to interact with your current and prospective customers, but with this powerful connection to people, comes the challenge to add value and utilize the info sale and trust relationship in order to gain success.

3) The Techies-by far the most challenging and rewarding group. This group usually remains agnostic to the various revenue models wrapped around social media, and more concerned about the development of new applications and services that will engage, entice and gain acceptance.

The important takeaways:

1) Give: Those users and advertisers who use social media to take and never give providing no value will quickly find themselves non existent
2) Enage-When utilizing social media, no matter what group you’re in, always strive to develop content, applications, or services that spark interactivity.
3) Have fun-it’s got SOCIAL built in to the name…