I have a bone to pick with my social media and marketing brethren. Stop making fun of people because they’re on MySpace. It’s unbecoming and shows that you’re so overwhelmed with your own smarts that you’re stupid. It’s the same smugness some Mac users generate despite the fact their beloved, intuitive machines account for a whopping three percent of the personal computer market. If they’re so great, why don’t more people get it?

According to Compete.com’s numbers from February, MySpace accounts for 66 million monthly visitors and almost one billion visits. Facebook isn’t too shabby, either, but at 28 million monthly visitors, it’s less than half the exposure opportunity MySpace is. According to USA Today, there are over 110 million registered users on MySpace, making it the equivalent to the 11^th largest country in the world (bigger than Mexico, slightly smaller than Japan).

The problem is that those of us inside the bubble and hip to hardware, software and online trends grew tired of MySpace. When Facebook opened its doors to the general public, then started experimenting with social advertising models, we all got hot and bothered by the chic, clean, open API network. We left MySpace, or conveniently forgot to check in for messages there more than once a month, and declared it dead.

But it’s only dead to us. The rest of the world still digs the ‘Space. And those 66 million monthly visitors aren’t high school girls, either. According to Quantcast’s estimates, 62 percent of MySpace users are above the age of 24, they have a higher than Internet average concentration of both Hispanics and African Americans and 49 percent of users live in households making $60,000 and up.

Frankly, I made a mistake last year when I began to migrate most of my attention from MySpace and a healthy network of friends and contacts I’d made there to the chosen networks of the Internet marketing elite. The mistake wasn’t in building contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. It was abandoning MySpace because those inside the bubble think it to be pedestrian. It might be, but there’s a hell of a lot of pedestrians there, if you haven’t noticed.

Marketing through social media is most effective when brands and companies put themselves on a personal plane with consumers. But you still have to reach those consumers. Turning our backs on MySpace, even belittling those who play there, is like calling Budweiser stupid for advertising during the Super Bowl.

Ignore MySpace because of its gaudiness and free expression and, “that is soooo 2006,” if you like, but ignore it at your own peril. That’s where the majority of the world is and will be for the foreseeable future. MySpace is gobbling up content deals with mobile networks, continually expanding their offerings to engage their users and, like them or not, they’ve got Newcorp’s pocketbook. They do music and video better than other major social networks, connect people with bands, comedians and filmmakers in a way that should make brands jealous and have a thriving subculture of niche blogs within their system few of us pay attention to. Shame on us.

Ironically, the advertising agencies and interactive firms we take such pleasure in mocking because they don’t get social media are the very ones benefiting from our short-sightedness. They’re so dumb, they only know to go where the most people are. In the end, crappy MySpace campaigns or not, they don’t look so dumb after all.

Wise up, kids. Just because you don’t personally like to play there doesn’t mean it’s a barren wasteland of marketing abyss. The rest of the world isn’t like us. And that, my friends, is often the only thing that keeps us from being successful.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. MySpace’s Growth Curve: Over?
2. Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
3. Diagnosis: Facebook Syndrome
4. Social Network Wars Are Over; Now The Fun Begins
5. A Successful MySpace Social Media Campaign

Technorati Tags: MySpace, Facebook, social networking, marketing, strategy

An email hit my inbox late Friday night I found rather interesting. It was from Ian Kennedy of MyBlogLog telling users in a couple of weeks they’d be launching something called “New with Me” that will aggregate your latest activity on the sites you have listed in your Services there. New profile pages are promised as the aggregation will be merged with the existing profile information you’ve provided. It even promises that lifestreams from your contacts will be there, too.

Strange. Sounds like a familiar sort of application.

It appears as if the change will happen and the aggregation applied whether you want it to or not. If you don’t, you should login and pull those sites off your profile.

The full email is below. Tell me what you think in the comments section. Is Yahoo just ripping off established aggregators like Profilactic? Is this just the direction social media sites are moving? Will you use MyBlogLog more now that there is a more dynamic set of information there for you and your friends? Will you pull your services off so they can’t aggregate your lifestream? The comments are yours.

FULL EMAIL:

It took a long time for word to get out about our changeover to Yahoo! IDs. Lesson learned. This time we’re reaching out to you via old-fashioned email.

In a couple weeks, we’ll be launching a new feature called New with Me. This feature will use the URLs on the Services tab of your MyBlogLog profile to aggregate your latest activity on sites such as Twitter, Last.fm, Digg, and YouTube. As a result, your profile page will look different - publicly available updates from the services you have listed will be merged with your existing information. Your latest Flickr photos, Last.fm tracks, and YouTube videos, will all be in one place. Updates from your contacts on MyBlogLog will be merged and available as well. Simply put, the New with Me feature will transform your static profile into a dynamic one.

MyBlogLog respects your privacy. We will aggregate and display only information that is publicly available. If you’re uncomfortable with MyBlogLog aggregating and displaying publicly available information from a particular service, you can remove that service from your profile at any time.

Of course, we hope you’re excited about the broader distribution of everything you produce on the Web. If you use any of the sites featured in the Services tab, you know the value of being able to display all your activity in one place.

Your MyBlogLog profile, About Me widget, and Email Signature were the first steps in distributing your Web identity. New with Me is the next, pulling together a unified picture of who you are on the distributed social Web. We have lots of cool things planned for this feature — I hope you’ll use it to help build the next generation of the Web.

For details, please check out our FAQ on this feature.

As always, check our blog for the latest news from us.

See you online!

Ian Kennedy
Product Manager, MyBlogLog

Technorati Tags: MyBlogLog, lifestreaming, social media, Profilactic, aggregators, lifestream aggreagator

My periodic Utterz on the way to work produced a question on Tuesday that I thought would make for good discussion here. I recorded my thoughts and the question in a Seesmic post Tuesday evening.

If you don’t have time to watch the video, I am essentially wondering how much microblogging is too much for you. Do you use Twitter? Do you use Jaiku? How about Utterz? Seesmic is a video version of microblogging. Are you there?

In addition to the Facebooks and MySpaces of the world, social media users are inundated with options for their time. People love to sign up for the latest thing, but who has enough hours in a day to keep up with more than two? Three? More?

It’s my job to play with social media tools, to understand them and the communities around them, so I have to juggle a lot of community commitments. But what about you? Where do you spend your time? How many communities are you a part of? How do you manage that time and how much more can you handle without dropping the ball elsewhere?

Please discuss in the comments. And everyone leave your profile links on Twitter, Jaiku, Utterz, Seesmic and others. I’d love to introduce members of my circles in one tool to members on another and vice-versa.

You can find me on Twitter, Utterz and Seesmic, among others.

Technorati Tags: microblogging, Twitter, Utterz, Seesmic, Jaiku, time management, community, community management

Logging into Fast Company’s new online community (fastcompany.com now in public beta) a few weeks ago was a neat perk of having a social media friend at a big company. I took my head start, got in, played around for a few hours, liked what I saw, then moved on to something else, forgetting to come back to it. Silly me.Shel  Israel’s post Friday reminded me I was a member of the Fast Company community and I should go back and see if I could find more friends that might start hanging out there, producing content, sharing ideas and all the things that come from social networks.

The Fast Company online community is, on the surface, a Facebook-type environment for those interested in innovation, technology, business and management. However, on this login I began to notice the little things that make it different.

Like the single question community forum off to the right side. FastCompany.com senior editor Lynne D. Johnson’s question was the one cued up for me when I logged in. It read, “Can a business publication blend journalism and online community to create something better than either by itself?”

My answer inspired this post. Here’s why I think the future of media outlets is bright if they follow Fast Company’s lead and build branded microcommunities for their readers instead of boring information sources.

It is easier to self-identify as someone who reads a publication than someone who evangelizes a brand. That, mixed with the fact that everyone wants to feel included, to own a part of something, and you have media outlets offering perhaps the best opportunity to build branded online communities.

I see myself as a Fast Company reader. I see myself in that demographic, not because I fit their demographic profile but because people who read it are people I identify with and share commonalities with. These are folks I’d want to hang out with. As much as I like a certain brand of whiskey, car, restaurant or vacation spot, there is a higher chance that people who aren’t quite like me are there, too.

Publications, particularly magazines, offer that unity in mind, spirit and sometimes even body for their readers. Think of it like this: Picture what you imagine to be the typical Car and Driver reader. Now picture what you imagine the typical Better Homes & Gardens reader to be. They’re different, aren’t they? They probably wouldn’t choose to hang out with each other when given the opportunity to socialize. But give them the option of attending a cocktail party or lunch with other readers of the magazine they like and there’s a tendency to think, “There will be cool people there I share interests with.”

Now picture the same thing for Target and Coconuts, a chain music store. Can you see Target enthusiasts wanting to hang out with each other? Coconuts? Sure there would be segments of these customer bases that would gravitate to one another, but I’d bet you could take the divisions in the room and find commonalities in what they read for fun.

Your media outlet of choice doesn’t necessarily define who you are, but who you might want to be. Everyone wants to be a part of a something greater, so it’s only natural to gravitate to the greater that is just like you. This is why media outlets with branded microcommunities can and will succeed.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. The New FastCompany.com: Most Social Of Media Company Sites
2. FastCompany Goes SUPER Social
3. Niches Happen
4. B2B Social Networking Usage
5. Identity Fragmentation And Social Networking

Technorati Tags: Fast Company, microcommunities, social networking, networking, FastCompany.com, media, journalism, newspapers, magazines

Lee Odden got me thinking. (I bet I’m not the first person to say that.)

Lee’s post and poll at Top Rank Blog Sunday offered up the latest usage statistics for MySpace and Facebook. MySpace is still top dog. According to Nielsen Online, it had 40 million more users than Facebook in December. Lee then offered the personal anecdote that he doesn’t log in to Facebook as often anymore. He posed the question, via the poll, “Are you still excited about using Facebook?”

As of Tuesday night, 146 people voted. The leading answer was “No, I’m over it,” which came in at 49 percent of respondents. Twenty-nine percent were still undecided, 18 percent answered, “Yes, the fun is just beginning,” and four percent answered, “What’s Facebook?”

The numbers are interesting but since they represent Top Rank Blog readers, one can assume the sampling shows the attitudes of internet and search marketers, social media and PR types and the like. An argument can be made that this is a poll of semi-early adopters of Facebook, meaning those of us who jumped on the social network as soon as the .edu requirement was lifted.

But thinking the differences between MySpace and Facebook through a little more thoroughly, I see similarities in the two largest social networks and the different education levels of our society. Could MySpace and Facebook be mirroring our social class system?

MySpace made having a web page, a blog, an online photo album and even a place for videos easy for the common user. By targeting the younger, hip-to-technology segment of the world, but allowing any regular Joe to walk in and set up shop, MySpace brought many a person into the Internet age. Sure, it has always been big, gaudy and commercial … kind of the NASCAR of social networking … but it appealed to people because it was easy to figure out.

As a result, the common person – not techies, intellects or high society folk – can assimilate there and feel comfortable. Anyone can do it and because of its liberal policies on content, customization, graphics and advertising, you can make your page whatever you want it to be.

Facebook was only for the college crowd until late 2006. To be there, you had to be well-educated, assuming our definition of well-educated is at least beyond high school. It was built by someone from Harvard. It was less customizable, neat and organized. While there was no real technical acumen needed to set up shop, the mainstream opinion of it was shaped by the college-only rule. The sparseness in design also looks more technical, less commercial, more high-brow.

Then you mix in Facebook’s more stringent policies on content, customization and advertising (pre-Beacon) and the average Joe wasn’t as comfortable. If you can’t drape Harley logos or pink cupid themes all over your page, why bother?

The parallels are interesting. MySpace is the blue collar, average guy place to enjoy social networking. Like it or not, the majority of Americans are lower middle class and below. According to the 2006 economic survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 75 percent of Americans have a household income of $75K or lower. The median household income for those with nothing higher than a high school diploma is around $40,000. According to the 2003 Annual Social Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) (PDF DOCUMENT), only 27 percent of Americans report they’ve completed at least a bachelor’s degree.

This means MySpace has a much larger pool of people to choose from, assuming non-college educated folks find Facebook unappealing.

Yes, Facebook is experiencing tremendous growth. According to Comscore in July, it grew an astonishing 299 percent (compared to MySpace’s measly 72) in daily visitors from June of 2006 to the same month in 2007. Those numbers indicate Facebook may, in fact, catch its bigger, less-refined brother.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The only way they can is by tapping into MySpace’s audience. That won’t happen at a great rate if Facebook continues to trend uppity. As Andy Keith, one of the commenters on Lee’s post said so well, “Facebook was initially fun and interesting, but now comes across as increasingly narcissistic.” The geek swagger that seems to emanate from founder Mark Zuckerberg carries over to conversations surrounding Facebook. It’s hard for the common person to find attraction in self-import.

Certainly, good marketing and repositioning can move Facebook forward. But the answer of whether or not the upper crust place for social networking can ever surpass the play space for the regular guy probably lies in the numbers.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. Top 10 Social Networks, Blogs And Web Brand Rankings For December 2007
2. Differences Between MySpace, Facebook And Others
3. MySpace Unveils Safety Plan
4. MySpace May Still Dominate In The U.S., But (Surprise!) Facebook Is Catching Up Fast Worldwide
5. MySpace and Facebook – We Can Co-Exist

IMAGE: “Graduating Class of 2006” by Silfverduk on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: MySpace, Facebook, social networking, social class system, social media, online consumer profile