Today I get to work and like many other office workers in America, first thing I do is log into my social networking website of choice. In my case it was Facebook. Now keep in mind I am a search engine optimization specialist so social networking is part of my daily routine but that’s besides the point.

So as I’m catching up on all the early morning postings of all my friends, I start to notice how they all seem to be bitching and moaning about the same problem; how none of their Facebook aps are loading up. I guess an hour without their YoVille or Mafia Wars is just too much for them to handle.

And then I started thinking how dependent we have become on our social networks.

We use social networking sites to stay in touch with family and friends. We use them for entertainment. We use them to stay up to date with news and celebrity gossip. We use them to stay ahead of the game for new developments in technology and medicine. We have become so dependent upon social networks that we don’t know what to do when they go down or aren’t available every second of the day that we want them.

And this brings me to my next point. The majority of social networks, including the major 3, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, are all free to join. All someone needs is a valid email account and within minuets you have your new social profile up and running. Free to start your social networking addiction.

But greedy as society is; not content with all the free services that we are offered on these sites, now we expect fully functional technical support, 100% up time, zero bugs and all without any type of compensation to the people running the sites.

A Social Network is a Business

This stuff isn’t free people! It costs money to build these websites, design these flash movies and code all these cool function’s, features and games you love so much. Huge databases of images and profiles to maintain, immense amount of bandwidth to manage. You can’t expect to have all this and still not have any problems for free.

Facebook announced that they finally turned a profit in the second quarter of 2009, it only took them 5 years. Twitter has yet to show any profit on their own apart from what they make from investors.

Maybe its time people stop taking advantage of these social sites and give a little something back. The only way for a free membership based social networking site can make any money and continue to provide the services we have become accustomed to is through advertising. As this seems as the best way to go, it still has its problems.

Myspace has made all its money from advertising but at the users expense. Slow load up times with massive flash advertisements for movies, continuously bombarding people with ads for online dating sites or diet and fitness programs. Sure its easy to ignore but we should be allowed to turn those adds off if we want. Facebook uses ads to make their money as well and they have had their own problems such as letting developers use profile images of users in their ads for dating sites. But with advertising being the only source of profit, what else is there to do?

Maybe its time to start charging a small monthly fee for these sites. Considering Facebook has 300 million users, I’m sure if they carged $1.00 a month for a premium membership that would allow you special features such as turning off these ads people, well people might just go for that.

Now I’m not saying that a paid membership is the right way to go but we have to face the facts. If our favorite social sites arent able to make any money on their own, then investors wil stop giving them money and then they will be forced to sale the site off, stop fixing bugs or worse just shut it down completly.

Randy Home facebook, Myspace, Social Networking, Social Networks, twitter

Once upon a time, back in June of 2007, I came across a tiny little micro-blogging site called Twitter.

Twitter wasn’t much of anything at this point in time; think of it as a freshly hatched baby Blue Jay, brand new to the world but with a ferocious appetite and incredible urge to spread its wings and fly.I wasn’t too sure of the purpose or benefit of joining Twitter but I decided to anyway (follow me on Twitter).

As with any young website it’s membership was small and the functionality wasn’t always working at it’s best. And the fact that it was practically unheard of outside of the social networking community, it was hard to enjoy the point of the site, which is to communicate with other people.

Seriously, whats the point of tweeting all day long if there are no members to read them and interact with?

So like any good social networker, when trying to do my part and spread the word of Twitter, I often received a look of confusion and the comment “WTF is Twitter” became a part of my daily life. I had a couple friends who would at least humor me and signed up but the most common reaction from everyone was “this is stupid“.

Now from my experiences with early days of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and as an internet marketer, I knew the potential that Twitter possessed. All it needed, just like the little baby Blue Jay, was some nourishment and time to learn how to spread it’s wings and fly.

Oh My, Look How Twitter Fly’s

Twitter slowly started to gain its popularity through word of mouth, social networking, bloggers, tech-websites and TV shows like G4 TV.

Then suddenly, out of no where, around October 2008 Twitters popularity exploded. Mainly due to the very public exposure to the media and masses in general from its use during the historical presidential elections. Every News channel you went on you would hear them mention Twitter. Some knew what it was while others had no clue but everyone was talking about it. Twitter became part of daily vocabulary for any news or talk show. Celebrity’s joined Twitter, public officials and even the Republican party decided to join.

Steven Colbert was even the first person on TV to make a controversial issue in reference to the site by using the past tense form of the word Tweet to Twatted on the Today Show, which sent the censors into a frenzy trying to decide if Mr. Colbert just committed an FCC violation or not.

The Future is Twitter

In just under 3 years of Twitters creation it is now the 3rd most popular social networking site on the internet with a membership of approximately 5,979,052 and monthly visits of 54,218,731 at the time of this writing. Twitter has worked its way into our public consciousness, and has done something that no other internet property has ever been able to do; successfully bridge the gap between the real world and the internet:

• For the first time in history of the internet and television; thanks to News agency’s such as CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and so on; a news anchor can make a statement and be able to get a real time response from a viewer thousands of miles away and be able to respond back in a matter of minutes all to the benefit of everyone watching.

• Celebrities can now offer a little bit more of a personal connection between them and their fans, allowing their fans to know aspects of their daily life without any real intrusions into their privacy.

• Companies and corporations are now able to connect more with their target audience and get real time feed back and offer special Twitter promotions to their followers.

It’s truly amazing to see how such a once thought of as insignificant website such as Twitter would actually be responsible for changing the direction of the internet and the world.

What’s even more amazing is that Twitter is able to accomplish this with only 140 characters at a time.

Randy Home micro-blogging, Social Networking, twitter

Some years ago back in February 2004, I came across this little start up social networking site called MySpace. At first MySpace didn’t seem like much compared to its only potential rival Friendster which has been around for a while. Since I was a member of Friendster and a few other news groups and small social networking sites I figured why not join this other one and see what MySpace has to offer.

The MySpace of 2004 resembles next to nothing to the MySpace of today. You were only allowed a small handful of photos, you only had a “top 8″ for your friends and the only way you could get a fancy background, graphics or custom profile was if you actually knew how to code the HTML and CSS your self. It was fun, simple and little to no spam or phishing of any sort to worry about.

By word of mouth, MySpace started to spread on the internet. And with the help of some of its more famous members such as Tila Tequila, MySpace started to spread like a virus. It’s membership skyrocketed like no one has ever seen and support websites that taught people how to customize their profiles and even profile generators started sprouting up all across the net. Some of the better code generating sites were even able to charge for their layouts. MySpace was flourishing, people were making money and everyone was happy.

Welcome News Corporation and Fox Interactive Media

Things were going good for MySpace but unfortunately things were about to change.

Just like with every other social popular entity in the internet, MySpace started to get the attention of more traditional media companies who wanted a piece of the MySpace pie. In July 2005 News Corporation, the parent company of Fox Interactive Media purchased MySpace for a cool $580 million.

What seemed like almost over night things started to change for the popular social networking site. Storage capacity increased allowing unlimited number of photos to be uploaded, support of flash profiles, videos and music players. Profiles for famous musicians, comedians, celebrities even every day companies such as Nike, Coca Cola and Hollywood movie studios all were becoming standard on the site.

With all this popularity and media exposure it was only a matter of time before the criminal element started to make its appearance. News coverage of cyber stalking and pedophiles and political and religious hate groups appeared on the evening news at least once a week. Then came the spammers the phishers and all the fake profiles from dating and adult websites started flooding members inbox and friend requests. It got to the point where no one wanted to even log in or at most had to make they profiles private in hopes of avoiding all these scams.

Its safe to say the fun of MySpace was gone and all that was left was a corporate ideal of how a social site should be.

The Rise of Facebook and Twitter

Around the same time in 2004 another social networking site originally called thefacebook.com but now more formally just known as Facebook was started over at Harvard University. This was more or less a social site for Harvard students but eventually expanded to other college students then high school students and finally, to anyone aged 13 and over across the country.

Out of all the social sites on the internet the battle for supremisy was between Facebook and MySpace and in April 2008 Facebook took the lead. Facebook surpassed MySpace in number of unique visits a day with Twitter in a close 3rd and MySpace started to feel the crunch.

Members who were tired of all the commercialism, spam and lack of new features were being driven away in massive numbers to Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is a social micro-blogging site in its most simplest form. Members are only allowed to post 140 characters at a time so think of it as your status update on MySpace, short simple and to the point.

Now why is Twitter so important? Well lets just say this simple micro-blog has had enough influence on the net to make MySpace add a status feature which resembles Twitter and Facebook tried to buy Twitter but failed and shortly there after redesigned, to the hatred of most its users, their entire layout to have Twitter’esq features.

And lets not forget the “Evil Google Empire”, who a few weeks ago was talking down about Twitter, calling it a “poor man’s email system” conveniently just as Twitter was launching its new search feature. Sources say this is typical of Google to do when it feels a web property is a threat,;discredit the threat and then acquire the threat. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google place a bid for Twitter in the next few months.

Ok so the last section got a little off on a Twitter Tangent but it just continues to show how “simplicity of design and function” and non-commercialism is the key to a successful social network.

Facebook has luckily found this out early on with their Terms of Service mistake a few months ago where they changed their TOS to the uproar of all its users, so much that it made the nightly news and they had to change them back, to their new re-design which will also probably be reverted back to the original layout.

So the lesson for all social networking sites to learn here is that social sites need to listen to their members, and ask them what they want before changes are made. A social networks isn’t the place for commercials or a place for you to saturate with and bombard members with new movie premiers, music releases, dating services or other advertising campaigns. It’s the members that make the site a success not the corporations who buy them.

Too late for MySpace. It went from being that hip cool new club on the strip to being that 2nd class night club where all the 40 year old men hang out trying to pick up on the 21 year old girls that no one really wants to hang out at. Just not a fun scene anymore.

Randy Home, SEO facebook, Myspace, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, twitter

Hey everyone! So I just got back from the 2007 BlogWorld Expo, which was held in Las Vegas and let me tell yo, it was pretty fun. Not only did I learn a few little tidbits of information, mostly I had confirmation on things I already knew which tells me I am on the right path to running a successful and if Im lucky, a profitable blog.

All things considered this was a basic blog convention where I went and sat around listening to some people speak and hope I pick up some good ideas. But what I think was the best part of the trip was the opening night party that was held at the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel and Casino’s own night club “The Joint!”

Picture a few hundred bloggers, geeks, Search Engine Optimization specialists and others who I still couldn’t really classify in any category, drunk off their ass thanks to the open bar and free food provided by the Hard Rock Casino. The drinks were strong and flowing. The DJ was very good and kept the music flowing.

My stay at the Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino wasn’t really worth mentioning apart from the fact that this was one of the worst Casino Hotels, or any hotel I have stayed in. The parking structure was confusing, no signs saying what level you were on or direction to where the exits were. Also after you park you have to either take the stairs or the elevator down to the ground floor, walk past all the dumpsters, and the maintenance workers break room, through another outside hallway then into a side door to get into the lobby. Let’s not forget avoiding all the taxi and visitor traffic because you have to cross right through the valet area.

Once inside the lobby of the Imperial Palace you have to take another elevator just to get up into the casino, and the check in is at the front which is in accessible without having to go through all this if you park in the parking garage. Ohhh and there are a whole seperate set of elevators you have to find to jsut get to your rooms. Speaking of the rooms, those were pretty nice actually. But the Imperial Palace is in a horrible location because directly below us was a small little outside cabana club right off the Las Vegas Strip who decided to play music till 3am every night. I was on the 10th floor and it sounded like they were in my room with me. I really wouldnt recomment the Imperial Palace Casino to any one.

I gambled a little bit, won some then lost it again but hey thats the fun of Las Vegas right? As for the speakers all of them were pretty informative and gave some good ideas but the one I enjoyed the most was with Thomas Frey – Google’s Top Rated Futurist Speaker from The DaVinci Institute. His outlook on what the future of 50 years from now holds for the internet and the world in general were pretty interesting and thought provoking. Ideas of Universal commerce, and no more country boarders paint an very exciting future, at least to me.

Well hopefully everyone will enjoy what the future has in store and Ill be sharing some new things with you as the weeks pass by.

-Randy-

Randy SEO Blogs, Google, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking

Are you Wired On Honda?

Are you tired of searching the internet, looking for that one stop spot for everything Honda? Well search no more. WiredOnHonda.com is ready to launch and dominate the Honda import racing world.

Located in Southern California, in the heart of the import racing scene; WiredOnHonda is set to bring the world of Honda directly to you.

With features such as an import racing events photo gallery, import car show coverage and local track meets to a full on Honda enthusiast forum designed to put you in touch with everything in the Honda world.

Member profiles, vehicle specific discussion groups, a Do It Your-Self garage section and the ability to customize the look and feel of your own Wired On Honda profile and experience it’s clear to see that this is a full service pitstop for all Honda Enthusiasts.

So what makes this Honda Forum stand out from all the other Honda fan sites out there? It’s dedication to providing you as much fresh content from the import racing scene with a focus on the import racing events, detailed write up’s and as many event pictures as possible. Providing up-to-date information on Honda’s and Acura’s latest news from around the world and a staff of event photographers spread throughout the country to cover all the different import racing events and car shows.

WiredOnHonda.com is sure to become the most popular Honda Forum on the internet. Whether you’re into drag racing your Integra, to pimping out your Acura RSX, NSX or even get the low down on after market parts for Honda Civic Si or S2000, Wired On Honda will have you covered.

Join today and become part of the new Honda Forum revolution that is going to take over the internet. Sign-up, build your profile and start posting your Honda import racing experiences and help make WiredOnHonda.com the most exciting Honda Forum out there. Don’t forget to join WiredOnHonda on MySpace to get that full Honda Forum Experience.

Randy Home Honda, Import Racing, Myspace, photography, Social Networking

Tea Partay Video

So how do you get the word out about your company or product in an ever changing, quickly evolving world of give me more, newer faster now now NOW!!!??
You create a viral marketing campaign such as Smirnoff Ice did with this video Tea Partay.

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is just a catch term for any marketing campaign that is used to spread the word of a certain event or product from one person to another, hence the word virus.

Perfect example is this Smirnoff Ice music video that was released August 6, 2006 on YouTube.com and has received 3,325,244 views at the time of this writing.
So how do you get your company noticed in a world as fast moving and “show me something I haven’t seen before” as this…well looks like Smirnoff Ice has found the way and it’s viral baby.

Randy Home, SEO Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking

1. Its free publicity to the 162,404,809 and growing members that are on MySpace
2. MySpace profiles are indexed by search engines and show up in almost every result of Google and Yahoo searches.
3. There are bulletins and event features that you can use to notify your friends of specials. (Example: if a Anchor Blue and and you’re having a back to school special, you can notify everyone on your friends list with just one notice.)
4. Offer incentives to your friends if they post a Banner with a Link to your Website on their MySpace profile. (Once a month pick a winner and give them a prize)
5. You are able to target your demographic very easily using the Advanced Browse feature. With options from age range, sex, height and weight specific, has children or not and more. Even the location can be set to span out from a giving zip code in 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 250 mile increments.
6. MySpace sells advertising mainly through banner impressions, not clicks. The costs vary, but it’s in the area of $5 per 1,000 impressions. the minimum buy for an advertising campaign is $5,000 to $10,000,” according to Luke J. Bodley from www.MarketingProfs.com
7. When you buy banner ad space on MySpace, you can target your banners so they show up only to the exact demographic you want. This includes all those specific demographics like religion, body type, sexual orientation and so on.
8. If you are advertising your local business on MySpace, make sure you include your city name on the banner. Your returns will be a lot higher, because people don’t expect to see their own city name on an international Web site, and they will click just out of curiosity.

Randy SEO Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking

Properly marketing your business online is one of the most important things you can do.
Most people spend thousands of dollars on banner ads or text links but there’s a cheaper way and it’s gaining more popularity every day.

Myspace.com is a free social networking website that will expose your companies profile to millions of potential customers everyday, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year world wide. There are a lot of ways you can market your site on myspace and I’ll let you decide that on your own, but here are some basic guidelines that everyone can benefit from.

1. Make the Profile useful and entertaining to ensure people come back to the profile.

2. Profile is completely editable using HTML and CSS. This will let the design of the myspace profile mimic that of the client’s proprietary website; or be designed in a completely different style, be creative.

3. Treat Myspace as what it is, a social networking site. So make your profile more personal and friendly not purely a commercial for your company.

4. Constantly post bulletins and blog’s. (example: new articles or specials you are having)

5. Have a lot of friends. Friends are the backbone of myspace. It links everyone together and keeps everything growing. Easy way to get friends is to browse MySpace and visit profiles and click the “request as a friend” button. This will send an invitation to that profile where they have the option of denying or accepting your friend request. This is not considered spam.

6. Make use of the many topic specific forums that are on MySpace. Find those that fit into what your business is and start posting in them

7. DO NOT send out unsolicited email messages to strangers on MySpace. That is considered spam and MySpace users are quick to report it as well as MySpace support is quick to remove it.

8. DO NOT post any photo containing nudity, pornography, sexually explicit images or any copyrighted image (unless you own the copyright). Again MySpace support is fast to find this and will suspend or delete your account.

Randy SEO Myspace, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking

There are many spamers (mostly pornography sites in nature) on MySpace who will fill out their profile to look as legitimate as possible but include links embedded in their text to take you to their site. Some will just use you to post spam in your comment section and worse some will try to hijack your page so they can spam all your friends with bulletins.

Here are a few simple yet effective ways to avoid this;

1. Check the text in their “About Me” section of their profile. Look for the hypertext by different color text or just run your cursor over it to find a link. Read the navigation bar of the link if its spam you will be able to tell.

2. Be cautious about people who offer you friend requests who do not have any pictures of them self’s but have hundreds or thousands of friends. Most people who are on myspace will have a few picture’s at least of them self.

3. Be cautious of obvious professional photography pictures being used as their default pic. Now this might be difficult at first because there are many legitimate people with professional modeling style pictures but compounded with the other clues you can easily spot them out. Plus models and celebrities will not be adding you as friends just out of the blue, use common sense.

4. If you receive a friend request and an email saying something to the effect of “Hey my friend saw you online but they don’t have their own computer, click here to speak with them” That is obvious spam and you might as well just report them to MySpace Support.

5. Look at their comments that others leave on their page, spammers post with other spammers, look for them.

6. If the person gives their private aol, msn, hotmal or yahoo Instant message name or email but its written with
spaces like “myname @ a o l.com” or write me here at “m y name @ya hoo. Com” this is an obvious attempt to avoid any detection by MySpace support looking for known spam address.

7. And finally if your just on the fence about accepting someone but you want to add them do it and watch it. If they are spammers then they will quickly start posting comments or bulletins and you can see who they are and delete them.

8. On a side note, periodically check your “edit friends” list to see who has been removed for spam. MySpace will delete them and their picture will show a huge red X in its place but their name will still be on your friends list, so just remove them.

Randy SEO Myspace, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking