From the outset of Google+ creation – we were told not to create business accounts, and if you have one it’s suggested someone from the business converts it over to an individual account. Because of my genuine interest in how Google+ develops, I watched Christian Oestlien video where he asked people to “hold off” on creating business accounts:

Now I’m sure the general Google+ user wouldn’t have seen this video, and I don’t know whether there was anything detailed in the Terms & Conditions of using Google+, as I didn’t read them.

The point I’m making is, if Google+ developers did not want people to use the service for business purposes, should they have not made it very clear to everyone at the time you received your invitation? For example, large bold writing across the top of the email perhaps?

I for one, if I had spent time creating a business profile, I would be rather aggrieved if Google+ then closed it down.

I suspect 1 of 2 situations have occurred here:

1. Google released Google+ knowing there would be a demand for Business Pages; however, did not have this part of the business developed, but wanted to go ahead in making Google+ available via invitation to individuals and failed to make it clear to users this was for personal use only.

2. Google didn’t anticipate the demand for business pages; however, I do find this hard to believe, and have been since been playing catch up.

So where does this leave someone who’s created a business page and subsequently had it closed by Google? Would you feel aggrieved enough to not go back to Google+, and continuing using your existing platforms? Or, do you accept the situation and wait until Business Pages are available?

Twitter is like an adolescent child. Talking none stop to anyone and everyone who will listen. Mostly, the content is garbled and non-descriptive. All the content is repeated over and over again until a point the original message is lost in translation. What’s popular or trending isn’t popular or trendy. It’s quick, simple and no attention span required.

Facebook – The Teenage Years

Pointless status updates of what you did last night. Sharing of information in a language that only teens can read.  Silly photos, videos and link sharing that everyone has already seen over and over again. The cryptic updates from the attention seekers.

Linked In – The 18-30ths

Network, connect, recommend, spam, brag, resume, jobs – it’s all for the taking here. Only connect to your past, present or future colleagues, but only if you know them personally. Build a network of people you don’t know to impress future clients and employees.

Google+ – Middle Ages

Maturity prevails over at Google. Be selective with whom your share with. Hangout with colleagues during the day, and friends or family after hours. Be free and add people you know, people you admire or simply people you like. Spark a discussion, or share that photo with only who you want to see. Have respect for your work colleagues who don’t want to see last weekends bbq snaps.

NB. This post is published to be amusing and doesn’t represent my view of the above mentioned social media websites.

We are all aware that Geolocation is becoming big business for many mainstream businesses. If you cannot be found on Facebook Places, Foursquare or Gowalla you are behind the times. I understand Twitter is playing with the idea of utilizing their geolocation tags for business purposes. These services offer local businesses huge potential revenue streams, and the ability to offer locational discounts, vouchers and promotions by physically checking in at specific locations.

But what if you have a local business, servicing a specific location but you don’t have a physical location that clients or customers can check in at? Before you can claim a location on any of the above services, you have to specify a location, and you have to be able verify that you own that location. If you don’t have a store or an outlet people can visit, how can you utilize these services?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer. However, I am wondering whether there is an opportunity here to develop a new platform, or enhance the existing services that allows non-physical local businesses,  to participate in the geolocation buzz.

Facebook Places has now been released in the US only and I’ve had a little time to play around with Facebook’s latest addition to its services. Firstly, Places can only be accessed via the Facebook iphone app and Facebook plans to release apps for other platforms including Android and Blackberry. Alternatively, you can access places via a brower at touch.facebook.com.

There are three flip sides to Places and I will discuss each individual as they are unique and offer different functionality depending who you are:

The End User:

The end user is me and you. We have a Facebook account and use the social networking web site to stay connected with friends and family. Facebook Places offers this facility to share our location with the people we have added as friends. You can also tag one another at the same location, or check in each other at the same location.

Local Business Owner:

Facebook Places is a local business owner’s vehicle for advertisement on the web for free. Places offers a locational based social side of the coin to help people share information and promote a business, offer discounts and loyalty bonuses for customers.

Developers:

Facebook has now released Places API, which will allow users to scrap data from checkins of their friends and their friends friends. Developers can surf the data in their applications to create a variety of social experiences, such as:

• A travel application that gives people the ability to see which of their friends have already been to the place they are visiting
• A conference application that makes it easy for attendees to find colleagues and connect with them
• An event application that enables attendees to see where their friends are at a concert

Facebook has stated that in the coming months they will offer additional location features through the Graph API and the Open Graph protocol, including the ability to check in with Facebook through your application and discover places nearby.

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The media are reporting that Facebook will be making an announcement on Wednesday (tomorrow) detailing their location service. So what will this service look like, and how will we use it?

This has been an anticipated move by Facebook for some time now, and I personally am surprised it has taken them so long to jump on the geographical location service, which is already provided by Google Buzz, Twitter and the specific geolocation service, Foursquare.

It is reported that there will be two key functions:

1) It’s own feature for sharing your location with friends.

2) APIs to let other apps like Foursquare and Gowalla offer services to Facebook users.

There are some clear privacy issues here, of which one hopes Facebook will address with their recent awareness of users desire to unsure they have control over their own data.

This is relatively simple process to follow; however, it does only apply to certain individuals. If you are a celebrity, you can verify your account. At this time Twitter isn’t verifying businesses, organisations or charities. Please visit Twitter’s help page for more information by clicking here. From this point you can request verification.

Twitter is a very useful tool to driving traffic to your web site, and in this article I discuss ways to get your Tweets Retweeted. I suspect that the top search engines are spidering peoples tweets, not necessarly to index or rank them, but using them to find content on the web very quickly. A popular post or article can be tweeted some several hours prior to it getting linked too. Search engines being interest in Twitter is very relevant to ensure their indexing is fresh and up to date.

1. Length:

Twitter limits you to only 140 characters per Tweet. A retweet is directly linked to the 140 characters as any retweet will be included at the front of the retweet: ‘RT’ @yourusername. Therefore, you need to keep you tweets short as possible, and leave sufficient space for the retweet information.

2. Phrasing:

There a few different types of phrasing, which are successful in achieving retweets. For example, definitive phrasing tweets which are authoritative and factual carry a lot of weight. Humorous tweets get retweets again and again for obvious reasons. Shocking tweets that provide information that isn’t widely known often get retweeted especially when they turn out to be factual. Carrot daggling tweets are often very intriguing to people. For example, you only give a snippet of information, or part of the story in the tweet and follow it will a url.

3. Content / Subject Matter:

This is very much fits the classic pattern of link bait on the web. For example, technology is big on Twitter and obviously celebrities. Content is king and will need to be current and relevant to your audiences.

4. Time of Day:

Research has shown that tweeting between 9am to 3pm pacific time is more likely to capture the maximum number of individuals are using Twitter. For example, if you tweet earlier you will capture Calaifornia one of the most heaviest percentage of users in the United States. Also, by tweeting before 3pm you will capture the United Kingdom audience. London has recently been deemed as the city with the most tweeters.

5. url:

To include a url very much depends on your Twitter strategy. If you are attempting to drive traffic to a web site, then obviously need to include a url. If there purposes of your tweets to raise you profile and follows, then I would suggest including urls selectively.

6. Pushing:

Email your friends asking them to retweet your tweets. Most people don’t mind helping you out, and it only takes a matter of seconds.

Below is a collection of social media products that I have gathered from around the web, which you may find in any geeks house.

I appreciate this is list isn’t exclusive, and I am sure there are many more products available. If you do come across an item that is worth sharing, please do not to contact me and I’ll include it in this list.

1. Twitter Earrings:

Twitter lovers can show their love for the micro-blogging with these Twitter inspired earrings available from etsy.com

2. Twitter Pendant:

This free jewelry making project shows you how to make a glass tile or glass slide pendant using a twitter image and some basic jewelry making supplies.

3. Social Pillows:

These Social Media icon-inspired pillows will add colour to any living space.

Geek pillow image from pillowhead designs on flickr

4. Twitter Clock:

The Twitwee Clock is a modified Cuckoo Clock that wirelessly connects to the internet and constantly checks for new status updates or search results received from the Twitter API. New Tweets are displayed on the built in display in near-realtime accompanied by the charming yet obtrusive call of a mechanical cuckoo poping out of the clock.

5. Twitter Stockings:

Follow me tattoo stockings.

6. Facebook Pillow:

Facebook is hard work, between the friend-ing and poking and tagging and stalking, it doesn’t take very long to get all tuckered out. That’s where this comfy icon pillow comes in. Now you can take your pokes offline and onto this perfectly plump Facebook pillow!

7. Twitter Icon Pillow:

There was a time when if you didn’t want to show your face, people would see a blue “o_O” on a hideous brown back drop. What was that about? Now, we get these wonderful colorful birds! And in pillow form you can have anonymous tweet dreams .

8. MySpace Icon Pillow:

Like MySpace, everyone should have one of these pillows, and everyone should also know 200 people who have one of these pillows. Tom should have one of these pillows. Unlike MySpace, this pillow doesn’t blast music, or try to give you a seizure when you lay your head upon it, instead it just makes you feel really cool without too much effort on your part. It’s awesome like that.

9. Reddit Alien Soap:

Check it out. It’s the Reddit Alien soap, and it’s awesome.

It comes in three fantastic fragrances. Orangered (which is just orange, to people not in the know), Bacon… and yeah, it smells like bacon. Have some vegetarian friends? They’ll both hate you and love you.

The third fragrance is Chocolate, and that’s for the Reddit’s Big Heart soap… the pink, cute one.

A complete collection of social media t-shirts available from Zazzle.

11. Facebook Cufflinks:

Social media has taken over the way we connect and communicate with our friends and family. From your boy/girlfriend to the random kid who ate glue in grade school, we now can keep up with goings-on of everyone we cross in our path.

Perfect for a night out, make a connection and become a friend instantly with the F Me Cufflinks.

How can you be lonely when you have so many friends on Facebook?

Are you cursed by the social network generation of only having relationships with people you hardly know, or work colleagues that you would rather not know in person, let alone online?

Has time move on from days when groups of friends got together in person for a night out or weekend activity?

Do you feel pressured into having to join popular social networking site because your friends are there, or you need to feel part of a community because online is the only community available to you?

All these questions are faced by many lonely people, who’s only access to people or a community is only available via a social networking website. Users of social networking websites know that you do not have to publish information about yourself, or post minute by minute status updates, but are you excluded or even black-marked by people when you do not join the ‘community’?

In my opinion social networking websites are not the place for a lonely person, because it can quantify your isolation from the outside world and people in person. The news feeds or status updates are constantly updated with streams of peoples activity, opinions, and photographs. It is a continued reminder of how other people are living their lives in text and technicolor and who’s popular and who’s not. Photographs are probably the most heartfelt reminder of when you see people tagged in a photograph and you were not included.

The pressures of young people to join social networking websites is well documented. Bullying has moved from the playground to social networking websites, and is know as cyber-bullying. There has been many reported cases in the media of people being harassed which has driven a few to suicide attempts and self-harming due to the psychological damage people do to one another. Do not get me wrong, bullying is not anything new, and not limited to social networking websites by any stretch of the imagination. My point is, as with many things, and especially for young people, there are social pressures for people to join these networks whether they want to or not.

This is not just a teenager or young person problem. The Mental Health Foundation released a report that a staggering 53% of 18-34 year olds had felt depressed due to loneliness. The report did answer one fundamental question: nearly a third of young people stated they spend too much time communicating online and not enough time in person.

How will Social Networking websites look like in the future? Or more importantly, what functionality will sites such as Twitter and Facebook provide and how will we interact with friends, family and work colleagues 3 years from now.

In the coming years, Social Networking websites will more likely become the hub or portal to all our online activity:

1. email:

Most Social Networking already have a form of messaging or internal email system. Applications are already beginning to appear to incorporate existing popular email accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail into Social Networking sites. In the near future internal Social Networking sites will allow you to email people outside of the its own internal network, either via it’s own system or using a third party.

2. ecommerce:

You will already find some major online stores allowing you to purchase directly via website like Facebook. In the coming years, this will explode. I am personally waiting for supermarkets to produce applications for sites like Facebook, to allow ordering of your weekly food/grocery shop directly from your profile page.

3. businesses:

More and more business will be conducted via social networking websites. Currently, most of the main stream businesses and companies will have a social networking present for marketing purposes. In the near future, business transactions will begin to appear via your Facebook profile. For example, not only will you see an ad for car insurance, the link from that ad will not take you to an external web site, the link will take you to that companies page, where you will be able to obtain a quote, and purchase the policy directly from your social networking site.

4. marketing:

Marketing on social networking website is already widespread. In the coming years, it will be bigger business and as the ad market becomes more competative, you will only begin to see ads from the companies that have huge marketing budgets. Gone will be the days of ads from local small businesses.

5. hub/portal:

As mentioned previously, social networking websites will become a hub or portal of all your online activity. This will include all the items mentioned in this article along with many others I haven’t covered.

6. billing:

Do you have paperless billing? Do you get an email reminder when your bills are due? If so, the next step is receiving these notifications via your favourite social networking website. This could be in the form of a private message, pop up, or a private comment placed on your wall.

7. calender:

Do you already use an electronic calender and organiser? If so, there will be applications soon that will allow you to import your calender into your favourite social networking web site. You will be able to customise this to receive notifications in your desired format.