Facebook users are represented on the social network as either a Page, Profile, or Group. The three options offer different opportunities and restrictions, which can impact what you are trying to accomplish on the social network. A little research can help you decide which format is best for your business.

Facebook Profile
A Facebook profile is the login mechanism representing an individual to connect with his or her friends via their profiles. This personal file affords the opportunity for individuals to share their interests, hobbies, links, videos, pictures and games. An easy way to share interests is by clicking the LIKE button on Facebook Pages. By its nature, a Facebook profile is to personally connect with friends that are also on Facebook.
Benefits:
• Security options may be edited to private, semi-private or public
• You can easily change your display name
• You can comment on others posts

Restrictions:
• Only one user per profile
• Tabs and Box items are no longer available

Facebook Page
A Facebook Page is a useful marketing tool within Facebook’s community. Acting as a brand profile, the Page offers many advantages to companies not afforded by the Profile. Pages are advertised, linked to, recommended or shared to friends in the hopes the friend will LIKE the page. When individuals LIKE a page they essentially opt in for real time updates to be shown in their Newsfeed.

Benefits:
• A Page may have multiple administrators to manage the content of the page
• Facebook Pages are now searchable by Google, Yahoo and Bing
• Pages can still have customizable tabs
• Pages may have programmed landing pages for coupons, promotions, or welcome messages
• Advertising on Facebook for Pages or external Websites rivals Google AdWords

Restrictions:
• Unable to revise your display name
• Login is required from a profile name
• A page cannot interact with individual profiles

What’s right for you?
We recommend every business subscribe to a Page vs. a Profile. In the economic environment of Do Not Call lists and Anti SPAM laws a Page offers businesses a marketing shield. The benefits of advertising, customizing tabs and pages is why many Franchisers and Corporations now rely on Facebook instead of their websites for sweepstakes, contests, and charity events. Finally, the HR headache of reassigning the passwords with each employee’s promotion, intern, or management change are relieved with the ability to allow and remove individual profiles from editing pages.

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Well social media folks, here comes the end of another week. Here’s a rundown of some important stuff that happened this past week in the world of social media.

Gap Asks Facebook Fans for Alternative Designs to Derided New Logo
Did anyone hear about this incident this past week? Popular clothing maker Gap decided to change their logo for what they called a “a more contemporary, modern expression.” Well, contemporary and modern aside, the social media community exploded with backlash over the new logo. When the company saw how terribly the new logo was received, they’ve opened up Facebook as a means for finding a new one. A great story on how social media affects businesses every day.

7 Resources for Handling Digital Life After Death
So you’ve got your Facebook page running smoothly as well as your Twitter, Linked In, and other social media sites. Well what happens when you die? Does the content simply sit… forever? These 7 tools aim to answer this question.

Build the Perfect Blog Audience for You
If you’re a business and you have a blog, you should be keeping it fresh, updated, and relevant to your clients/readers. Here’s some tips that are often easily forgotten when it comes to blogging.

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Think that Facebook is a passing fad and there’s no need to be on it as an individual, let alone a business? Think again. Mashable cites new research data this morning putting Facebook in the number one spot when it comes to time spent online. Google and Yahoo are close followers, as well as YouTube.

In today’s content and connection-driven world, Facebook is more infiltrating into our lives than ever more. It’s important that as a business or even an individual you have a Facebook profile and that it’s kept updated.

Original article here via Mashable.

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The Facebook vs MySpace debate is long running.  While many users have profiles on both, some people only utilize one or the other.  For a business, questioning which platform is worth your time and marketing budget is a valid question.

What are Your Customer Demographics?

The MySpace audience is a slightly younger group.  While the average age is 31, a full third of their users are under the age of 17.  Facebook’s average customer age is 36.  Facebook’s male to female ratio is almost even at 57% female, where MySpace is 64% female.

As MySpace has evolved, they have lured more high school users through their customizable pages and heavy focus on music and bands.  Facebook has gone out of their way to appeal to an older generation by being user friendly and looking professional.

Do More People Use Facebook or MySpace?

In early 2010, Facebook boasted more than twice the number of users than MySpace.  While Facebook has grown rapidly over the last few years, MySpace growth has stayed steady or declined.

How Much Time is Spent on Facebook and MySpace by the Average Users?

By January 2010, the amount of time an average user spent on Facebook had grown to over seven hours a month.  While MySpace doesn’t offer as many analytics to the public,vusers spend about a fourth of the amount of time that site as they do Facebook.

The Bottom Line, Which is Better for My Business?

It depends.  If your business targets teenage music lovers, you might be better off focusing your attention on MySpace.  If your business targets any other demographic, Facebook is the better choice.

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Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Gone are the days when people wrote long letters to each other and waited for weeks on end till they got a reply back. Today, all it takes is a click to open a social networking site and a few strokes of the keyboard to convey any message that you want to your family or friends. Take Facebook for example. The popularity of the site is increasing every day ( going by its membership figures of 300 million) and its youngest members are still in school. But is there really too much of a good thing? People often argue that while such sites have made staying in touch so much easier, we also pay a price in terms of privacy. Are we aware that a lot of information we thought was private is actually in the open for the entire world to see?

To Like or Not to Like
Think of Facebook as community where people in your friend list know what you’re up to, what you are doing and even what you think. If that wasn’t enough, your friends are free to comment on anything that appears in your Facebook page as well. That is because Facebook offers both a Live Feed and a News Feed. The Live Feed shows you everything that’s happening within your friends circle. For instance you will be notified when a friend comments on a photo or another updates her status. On the other hand the News Feed is filtered by Facebook and consists of stories or links that the website thinks a user would enjoy based on factors like your friends commenting on the story. Needless to say, many Facebook users are outraged at the idea of the website itself making certain decisions for them. And exactly why would people be keen to know every little thing their friends do?

This week, Facebook laid out the next phase in its plan to rule the Web when it introduced a “Like” button that will be embedded on sites accross the Internet. The little “thumbs up” icon that many Facebook users have used to show approval for their friends activities is already featured on sites like CNN, and expected to show up on shopping sites, entertainment sites and beyond. In the words of Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerburg, at the launch of this new feature, “We’re going to serve one billion ‘like’ buttons on the Web” in the first 24 hours.

Over-sharers Beware
Many users are also waking up to the fact that every time they click the ‘like’ feature on an application or news item, their ‘like’ and profile photo will appear on the page that has been flagged. In other words, this is akin to a Digg like function, where content can be flagged with the only difference being that the content immediately appears in the status feed. This is just the beginning because very soon Facebook will also give you the option to ‘ like’ content that appears on entertainment and news websites; the only hitch being that all will be revealed in your status feeds. In other words, your friends will know which sites you visited, what you read and so on. How many of us really want the world watching what we do?

The Facebook team justify that any new update made is always tested extensively keeping the user in mind, and that real close knit interaction has only just begun. Facebook users on the other hand are anything but happy. Many feel that every time Facebook makes changes to the site, they are only for the worse. Increasingly, the invasion of one’s privacy is a scary reality.

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Facebook recently announced the introduction of a new type of page called a “community page”. Considering the fact that there are already “Facebook Groups” and “Facebook Pages (or Fan Pages),” this has left many businesses wondering whether or not a community page would be the right choice for them.

What is a Facebook Community page?

Facebook introduced community pages to people who want to rally around their favorite topics or causes. For instance, a possible community page would be “Bob’s Tacos Are the Best!” So that the multitudes of people that love Bob’s Tacos could join this page and proclaim this love to the world (or at least their Facebook friends). Community pages are typically unofficial so Bob never has to lift a finger.

Since these pages can get hundreds of thousands of fans, Facebook has said they will take away the creator’s publishing rights at an undisclosed point. This ensures that the members will not be spammed.

What is Facebook Fan page?

An Facebook Fan Page are created to represent a business, public figure, organization, brand or product. This page allows for communication with fans and customers. When starting this type of page, you must agree that you are the official representative of the person, business, band or product and you have all the proper permissions. So, Bob could start an official Facebook Fan Page for “Bob’s Tacos” and use it to publicize new menu items or weekly discounts.

Fan Pages operate very similar to a personal page. There is a wall where (depending on the page’s settings) fans and owners can post pictures, links or messages. There are also tabs that allow for discussions, reviews, photos and events to be posted by the owners. Whenever a status is posted in a fan page, it will show up in all the fans’ news streams. No matter how popular a fan page gets, the owner does not lose publishing rights. These fan pages are indexed and searchable through search engines.

What is a Facebook Group?

A Facebook Group is similar to a Fan Page. However, events can be handled differently in a group. The administrator can allow all the members of the group to send bulk invites to other members. So “Bob’s Tacos’ Monday Night Taco Club” could start a group, discuss the food and set up meetings. They can set up officers as well such as a President and Treasurer. These groups can also be hidden from unregistered users.

Which is best for my business?

Most businesses will find that an official Fan Page will best serve their needs. There will be no confusion on who is really running the page, or if its messages are company approved. Starting a Fan Page will allow a company to create a beneficial and long lasting relationship with their customer.

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Is privacy in the age of social media just an illusion? Signs certainly seem to be pointing that way. Thanks to Google, anyone with access to the Web can quite easily draw an accurate profile of who I am, where I work and what I believe. With the aid of LinkedIn and Twitter, potential employers can form an opinion of recruits without even checking references. I don’t want to debate ethics or the legal implications of such phenomenon, but I just wonder how long it will be before the public starts looking for a way to get out from under the microscope. Or, if Facebook is correct, and we’ll accept that it is now normal for strangers to peer into our most personal space.

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, received a fair amount of criticism when he said in a CNBC interview that, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” This is probably not what I want to here from the CEO of the company that stores my emails, voicemails, blogs, etc. But it doesn’t make me want to unplug from the web either. I’ve just come to accept the trade-off that balances the power of free-flowing information and our willingness to share what we know.

Popular social networks are literally banking on the fact that there are millions of other people who feel the same way and becoming increasingly lax about their privacy. While Facebook has lured us in with the promise of intimate networks and full privacy controls. Recent changes in their policies have shown that they would rather we opened up and made our lives searchable. After all, that is where the money is. Advertisers would love to know that I’m in the market for a new something-or-other so they can tell me just where to get it at the right price.

As social media develops, I believe the trend will continue towards people opening up and sharing, and over-sharing. It won’t all be bad, because I believe we all gain when ideas are shared and expanded. For now, I’ve drawn the line at geo-location (there’s something creepy about being tracked as a dot on a map). Besides, I still like the option of being fashionably late without my boss knowing that I stopped to get a donut. And it will be a long, long, long time before I’m willing to put my medical records online. Sorry, Google.

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Facebook put up a post on their blog yesterday on “What Happens If I Ignore a Friend Request?” This is a question that I’ve been asked about on several occasions, and even wondered about myself. Actually, I’ve wondered what happens if I decide that I don’t think this whole “friend” thing is working out.

Well, according to Facebook, if you receive a friend request that you would like to (politely) deny you can just choose to click on Ignore, and that person will not receive notification of your decision. They will still be able to send you another request later and maybe you’ll have warmed up to the idea by then. Of course you have the option to do neither and just leave the “Friend Request” in limbo.

But in the event that guilt or persistence gets the better of you and you do accept this “friend” into your inner circle, you can go to their profile and scroll down to the bottom of the left hand side column and click on Remove from Friends, and they will be none the wiser. Unless, you are one out of five of their only Facebook friends, in which case you’re on your own.

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Facebook is following in the footsteps of Flickr and now allowing people to upload photos and video via email. Here’s how it works:

Go to the Facebook Mobile page, while you are logged in and click on the link “Send my upload email to me now”. Then facebook will email you confirmation plus the email address to use for email uploads. Make sure you save it to your addressbook.

After you attach your photos or videos to an email, you can include a subject line that will be used as the caption for the photos or videos you upload. If you’re uploading more than one photo or video in the email, the captions will be the same for all of them. You can always edit the captions later by logging into your Facebook account. You can send as many photos as you like in accordance with the size limits of your email provider.

Facebook already lets you post pictures and video clips by via their website, as well as a host of mobile applications like the Facebook app for the iPhone or Blackberry, among others. But with this new email uploads feature you can now just forward photos as attachments in an email. This is definitely a convenient feature.

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In a nutshell

Facebook is a free social networking web site that lets users join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region connect and interact with other people. People can also search for and add friends who are already registered with the site. Key features on Facebook are the ability for people to send and receive public or private messages, update their personal profiles, and share photos, videos, news stories, as well as comment on them. Currently, Facebook has over 200 million users, worldwide, with an average of 120 people in their individual networks.

Why is it useful?

Businesses and organizations are increasingly using Facebook as a point of contact for customers by creating “fan pages.” When users choose to become fans of a particular product or brand, their entire network of friends is notified and thereby represents the holy grail of marketing: personal endorsement by trusted peers. According to Facebook, more than 6 million users become fans of pages each day.

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Top Alternatives

MySpace
Orkut
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