If power is being transferred more and more to the people via social media mechanisms, what other forms does this take and look like? First, anytime there is a macro-shift, a small window of opportunity is unlocked where companies and people can benefit. Most evident are the neophyte companies of the dot-com boom who received good money from venture capitalists. You saw companies go from a garage to multimillion-dollar corporations overnight. You also saw people win. At one point, a company called All-Advantage was paying people by the hour so that a bar beneath their browser could scroll ads. And working like the Amway model, if you were able to get more people to use the advertising scroll bar, you received a commission for their viewing as well.

Some people were making thousands of dollars per month just to surf the Web. Others were ordering their groceries online and having them delivered by a company called Web Van. In the grocery store and at gas stations, some people were paying one-fourth of the normal price because the price was set on Priceline. Yes, at one point in time you could use Priceline to get a great rate on gasoline and groceries.

Eventually many of these ideas failed or were modified. Priceline adjusted their technology to give the user more control when it came to booking hotels, and their stock has skyrocketed the last few years. It's not likely we will see such an overt shift with the explosion of social media. In fact, this evolution of the Internet will probably mirror the shift we saw with the preeminence of search. Not quite as flashy and obvious, but certainly more powerful in shaping how we behave, live, and work.

In theory, the idea that All-Advantage embraced was noteworthy—paying consumers for the placement space rather than going through a middleman (buying outdoor boards, interactive banner placement on highly visited sites, etc.). However, All-Advantage failed miserably at execution. All-Advantage was serving ads based on what users selected they were interested in, but they neglected to understand that a user's mere interest does not translate into purchases and so the placement of the advertising alone was not sufficient to justify the spend.

The construct was sound, but the world and technology available just weren't ready for it. The world will be more than ready in the next few years. We will see more than a few business models constructed to take advantage of this fundamental shift caused by social media, and only time will tell what the best model is, but it's interesting to see some models already taking shape.

One shift we will see is that the money previously dispersed to middlemen is now being redistributed to the companies themselves and to the consumers. A good example of what some programs will resemble is Microsoft's Bing cashback program. Microsoft announced it would be giving cash back to people who use Bing and subsequently click-through and make a purchase. This program was rolled back in May of 2010, but the idea is still sound.

This program is vaguely analogous to the credit card cash-back programs (e.g., Discover Card); search engines that give cash back.

What we want to highlight is that these are the types of programs that we will see in a socially driven world.

People often mistake anything on the Web as new, when in fact the construct is often not new at all. It is only the delivery mechanism that's new and innovative. Microsoft giving cash back for searches is very similar to a frequent flier/hotel stay program. Let's look at an example:

Media giant Viacom offers a good example of a company realizing it is better to embrace social media rather than fight it (as the music industry did with music sharing). Viacom was aggressively trying to impose a "no" strategy from the beginning. They were suing YouTube for upwards of $1 billion for allowing users to post copyrighted content through its service. Originally Viacom's strategy was "Let's sue YouTube and block this." However, they quickly realized that would not work. Instead, a better solution is "Let's create a system where content can derive some benefit,"^[131] said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey.

The courts determined that YouTube wasn't responsible for proactively policing content; rather, they were responsible for removing content if the appropriate paperwork or complaint was filed by the copyright owner (e.g., Viacom). This was obviously a laborious process for YouTube to constantly sift through these complaints and rid the site of any violators. Also, it wasn't good for the user, because it meant there was less of the content that the user desired. At the same time, it wasn't good for the copyright owner of the material either because they had to go through the tedious process of finding the violation and then submitting the request through the proper channels to have the content taken down.

YouTube at this point in time had yet to produce a profitable return for its parent company Google. Realizing that the current "fighting" model wasn't working well for anybody, YouTube came up with a progressive solution. When they received a takedown notice, they gave the copyright owner two options: (1) remove the content or (2) keep the content up but allow YouTube to serve advertising and share in the revenue. YouTube foresaw that if they continued down the path they were on, they'd collectively be beaten. As a result, they employed the strategy of joining them (copyright owners) to their cause. You have probably seen this in action when you are viewing a YouTube video with music. A sleek pop-up message appears that denotes the name of the song and the artist along with a clickable link to purchase the song. This is great for the user, as well, since they can easily make the purchase if they enjoy the song.

After this creative idea from YouTube, Viacom, the owner of Paramount Pictures and MTV networks, decided to take a similar approach with MySpace. One of the more popular activities that MySpace users engage in is passing around video content—often copyrighted video content. MySpace was more than happy to engage in a win-win relationship with Viacom. "Consumers get to share some of the content they want without having it blocked or removed," said Jeff Berman, MySpace's president of sales and marketing at the time. "This is a game changer. It takes us from a world of 'no' to a world of 'yes,' where the audience gets to curate content, express and share it as they choose, while copyright holders are not only respected, they get to make money."^[132]

Contrasting this, Warner pulled all of its royalty content off of YouTube in a disagreement about how much revenue it should receive from YouTube. Time will tell if this is a poor decision. The odds are it will result in failure because the philosophy of "this is my ball so only I'm going to play with it" has failed time and time again on the Internet.

History repeats itself because no one listens the first time. This can truly be said about the strategy the Associated Press (AP) employed in April 2009. If you recall in our Jane the Blogger example in Chapter 1, some newspapers and traditional writers have had to adapt to these rapidly changing times. Some succeed, while others fail. The AP became fixated on others failing around them and panic is the appropriate word to describe what they did next. They went with a "these are my toys and you can't play with them" strategy. This only works if you are the only game in town, which is a rare position to be in. From our Jane the Blogger story and supporting documentation, you can see that the AP is not the only game in town. But what did they do? They requested that Google remove their stories from the Google News feed. Now, legally, Google would have been fine saying your request is unreasonable, but they didn't. Google did say your request is unreasonable, but we will remove it if you desire. Sometimes, it's best to take technology out of the question.

This is analogous to a record label in the 1950s asking the world's largest provider of jukeboxes to not put their songs on the jukebox. A hypothetical conversation would go like this:

This is precisely what the AP is doing by asking Google and YouTube to remove its content. While companies that get it are paying millions in pay-per-click and search engine optimization to rank high in Google, the AP doesn't want this free traffic and exposure. The even bigger kicker is that there was a deal in place where Google was providing some revenue share to the AP. One story in particular went something like this:

Panic, panic, panic is happening all around us. Companies that keep a level head will be fine and in some instances better off as their competition self-implodes. Don't fall victim to FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real). FEAR is an acronym borrowed from SCUBA diving. When things change under 100 feet of water, it's not the most technical diver that is the best off in that situation. It's the diver that doesn't panic and create FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real). Who in business can remain calm and keep their heads when the environment around them changes rapidly?

Despite the controversial bailouts of 2009, on the technology front government and politicians are not likely to bail out companies that do not implement swift strategies to survive, nor are they willing to step into this sticky mess. President Obama's stance on this was intentionally vague. Following his election, he stated, "We need to update and reform our copyright and patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation, and investment while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated."^[133]

This is a big step for companies like Viacom; they recognize that they need to embrace social media rather than fight it. One important step to understanding this is realizing that for many companies, revenue streams will be reduced, but at the same time, so will costs. A prime example is on the music side; instead of $5 for a 45 vinyl record (remember those?) you receive $0.99. However, there is also an enormous cost reduction: no costs to produce, ship, store, stock, and so forth.

If you resist embracing the change, you could quickly find yourself in the same declining mode currently being experienced by newspapers, broadcast news, and the music industry, all of whom to date have failed to embrace and understand this new way of doing business. Isn't it better to have a smaller piece of the pie than no pie at all?

Google product guru Marissa Mayer told the New York Times that social search will be a key component in the future of search. Social Commerce deserves Google's unbridled attention.

Why are Google, Yahoo!, Baidu, and Bing interested in social networks? Because social media could eventually dominate the search landscape. This is already evidenced by the social media site YouTube.

YouTube, which for years had been struggling to turn a profit, despite being acquired by Google, eventually decided to take a play out of its parent company's playbook, and in mid-November of 2008, deployed its own pay-per-click search program. This was launched only a few days after it became the second-most-searched site on the Web, dethroning Yahoo! from that perch. Yes, YouTube in 2008 became the world's second-most-searched site.

It seems logical for YouTube to introduce a Google AdWords (brand name for Google's Sponsored Ad Listings)-like model so that amateur and professional videographers can easily monetize their creative materials. The model is simple: a person who uploads a video has the ability to easily place advertising that complements or is entrenched in the video. The difficulty is pairing up the advertisers to appropriate video content. For example, companies like Lexus or Puma would not want to damage their respective brands by being associated with less than top-notch creative videos. This is less of a concern in the Google AdWords model, which is text based; however, they too were able to work out the kinks several years ago when they ran into issues like an ad being served for Aflac Insurance next to an article discussing a major lawsuit against Aflac. Google worked out the kinks there, and they will work out the kinks here as well.

The truly great companies in this model are those that go beyond simply appending advertisements to existing videos. The truly great and innovative marketing minds will roll up their sleeves and get "on the ground" by being nimble and identifying quick wins and reacting adroitly when it comes to developing original content that can be further incorporated into the video.

For example, during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, when the Tina Fey "Palin" spots were popular, a brand like Budweiser could have placed an ad and said, "If there was a Joe Sixpack drinking game for every time the word maverick was mentioned, you better believe the people playing it would be drinking a Bud." This played off the fact that Tina Fey was spoofing Palin for always saying Joe Sixpack and Maverick. Again, this is all about becoming part of the content and enhancing the user experience rather than an interruption model. Dodge did this well in the popular NBC show The Office when they asked the audience during the commercial break what the bumper sticker on Dwight's desk said. This is the type of real-time stuff that engages the audience; it's part of the content rather than an interruption to it. Green Mountain coffee also ran a clever outdoor advertising campaign that was along the lines of "Complete this sentence and your response could soon appear here: I'd rather be drinking a coffee. . . ." and they supplied the number to which you should text your response. In Chicago, Mini-Cooper billboards were reading chips in Mini-Cooper cars and welcoming the driver by name. Hello Cindy, welcome to downtown Chicago.

Originally designed for the visually impaired, the new system of tagging videos (using text to define what's in the video) makes things easy because there are tools that convert Web pages into audio descriptions of the page content. These tags make it simple to categorize the Web by efficiently determining what the video content contains. Tagging is a huge driver of transparency. If someone is tagged in a video, everyone in their network is instantly alerted. The old saying is "Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." Well guess what? With social media, the world is one gigantic glass house. That's why kids growing up today could appropriately be labeled the "Glass House" generation.

Also, an enabler for success is for companies to be more open and comfortable in letting go of the ownership and control of their brand. It's not going to be perfect every time, and the end user is smart—they understand that user-generated content is beyond a brand's control. If 90 percent is good and only 10 percent is negative, the positive will overwhelm the negative, and the 10 percent will not cripple your brand reputation. In fact, negative comments help add credibility. Numerous studies have shown that products with zero negative comments are consistently outsold by products that have a few negative comments.

This will be a new approach for some established brands who in the past have often played "not to lose" more so than to "win." Heck, if there isn't 5 to 10 percent negative noise around your brand, then your brand is either irrelevant or not being aggressive enough in the space. TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer states "The quickest death in this new world is deliberating rather than doing." Fear of failure is crippling to a company or individual. One needs to fail forward, fail fast, and fail better. It's no coincidence that TripAdvisor has been one of the first companies to embrace social commerce. In June 2010 they launched the ability for a visitor to their site to not only see the ratings on a certain hotel, but to also see who in their Facebook network had stayed at that hotel! This is the game changer, this is what Socialnomics is all about. The ability for me to see what my friends and peers think about anything and everything.

This is a monumental difference in mindset compared to when well-established brands had to be almost 100 percent on message all the time—and rightfully so because it would damage the brand if something was off (e.g., Rolex sponsoring NASCAR). This could still damage a brand today, and steps should be taken to quickly resolve issues when they occur, but if you are producing a ton of noise, or more important, your consumers are producing a ton of noise around your brand, then the few blips along the way will often be drowned out by the rest.

The foundation and historical model for Internet advertising revenue as we know it today is inherently flawed from a sustainability standpoint. Just as TiVo and digital video recorders were invented to help users avoid having to view advertising on television, tools such as pop-up blockers, spam filters, and banner blockers perform similar functions for Internet users. These Internet tools aren't limited to simply blocking only nefarious advertising activity. People also have a desire to be shielded from legitimate, but highly intrusive Fortune 500 marketing. Why? For the simple reason that these advertisers still use "push" messaging rather than develop conversations with their users.

In the late 1990s, the hot dot-com start-ups weren't based on advertising revenue models; rather, they were based primarily on e-commerce models, developing steady revenue via transactions. These types of start-ups were the darlings of venture capitalists, and they shied away from start-ups that based their revenue solely on advertising models. Then during the Web 2.0 era, advertising revenue models became all the rage thanks largely to the success of Google.

If you had the eyeballs (people visiting your site)—even if you couldn't develop direct advertising relationships (e.g., advertisers pay you to have their marketing materials on your site), you could always have a fail-safe fallback by putting Google search results on your page. This was accomplished via Google's successful AdWords program. The program allows a Website owner to place contextual search results from Google on any page, resulting in instant revenue creation. Google serves up ads on a website for example, www.american-novel.com. The ads are related to the site's content. So, for this example to work, the contextual search ads placed on the pages of www.american-novel.com would be related to American authors and American novels. The owners of www.american-novel.com would be paid by Google every time someone clicked on the text ads. For example, if the cost per click for the ad was $4, Google generally would give $2 of this revenue to the owners of www.american-novel.com and put $2 into their own pocket.

This is obviously great for small websites. It also works well for paying advertisers, since they are able to generate more reach outside of just being on www.google.com. This is also good for Google as it increases their revenue stream (as of January 2009, the AdWords program accounted for roughly 10 percent of Google's revenue).^[134]

However, what has been seen over time with sophisticated advertisers and robust tracking tools is that the quality of clicks coming from the AdWords network is much lower than those coming from www.google.com. The clicks weren't resulting in leads or sales.

The AdWords program is still a valuable one, but it will continue on a much smaller scale, and Google has already developed tools to allow advertisers to have more control over which sites the ads are placed on rather than placing the ads on every site in the network. For example, Nike may see that their ads don't perform well on www.american-novel.com and can remove the ads from being served there. While this type of targeting and new tools are good for the advertisers, if Google's revenue from this program dips from 10 percent (current) to 5 percent, that would be significant as it would equate to over $1 billion in revenue being removed from the Internet advertising market. Many companies are dependent on Google's sustained success. For example, the open-source Firefox browser revenues in 2007 were $75 million, with search-related royalties from Google accounting for 88 percent of the total, or $66 million.^[135]

Does online banner or display advertising get a bad rap? Yes and no. Is banner advertising going away any time soon? No. Will traditional banner advertising be reduced? Yes. Just like a quarterback on a football team, banner advertising historically was getting too much credit when things were good and too much blame when things went bad. Online banners have better tracking than offline marketing methods like television, radio, outdoor, and the like. Because of this, banners were getting too much of the credit simply from the fact that they could track something. The biggest ruse was the "view-through" sale. Tracking is available to place a cookie (small piece of text) on people's Web browser when they surf the Internet. If a user went to the home page of CNN.com, tracking tools would be able to see that this occurred.

When an advertiser, say 1-800-Flowers, was running a banner ad on the home page of cnn.com, they'd be able to see that a certain amount of users had that banner on their screen when they were at CNN. Advertisers did, and sometimes still do, make the assumption that the user saw that banner ad—which, in some cases they probably did, and in others, they probably did not. The second assumption that advertisers make is that if that same user takes a positive action (buys flowers or gives 1-800-Flowers his information), then the advertiser gives credit to the banner for driving that action. In some cases, the banner should be credited for that sale, but in many cases, it should not be. If the banner ads are the only marketing that 1-800-Flowers is running at the time, they can safely assume that the action is most likely a result of the banner campaign.

Since large companies are often running multiple advertising programs, this ultra clean scenario is not too common. In reality, what occurred was that online marketers took credit for sales that may have been driven by other marketing efforts like television, radio, magazines, and so on because the online marketer had the power of robust tracking. Also, this tracking cookie was set for 30 days, so if a user (Will) was on CNN.com and potentially viewed the 1-800-Flowers banner—again, there was no confirmation that Will actually saw the ad, just that it was on the page when he visited CNN. If Will were to buy flowers in the next 30 days, then that banner marketing would get credit for the sale when, in fact, it was a magazine ad that ultimately drove Will to make the flower purchase.

Marketers became addicted to this perceived success, which led to them buying banners on millions of low-quality pages at very cheap prices and having banners served to millions and millions of people. The odds of someone running across a site in 30 days that didn't place a 1-800-Flowers banner cookie "on them" was very unlikely.

The primary culprits of this were the advertisers and advertising agencies. Essentially three things were occurring:

We point out these items because too many companies believe that they can have a profitable and healthy online business by simply using the old advertising revenue model. This is not the case anymore. New forms of advertising online need to emerge to offset the ones that are currently broken. America Online (AOL) is a great example of this. When they decided to get out of the business of supplying dial-up and high-speed Internet connections, they figured they could merely survive with an ad revenue model—this hasn't worked out so well. Banners and display advertising will still have its place and serve a purpose, but it will be in a much smaller capacity.

Banners and display advertising will also have a place in social media, but it will be much different from the traditional banner approach. One of the huge advantages of social media for advertisers is that social networks can give them insight into a user's demographic (age, geography, occupation, etc.) and psychographic information (hobbies, clubs, networks, desires). In the past, advertisers often had to guess at this type of data. With social media, the user tells you exactly what they have been trying to determine for years.

As people change, the message can change to match their lifestyle. For example, in Facebook if you change your relationship status from "in a relationship" to "engaged," you will start to see relevant advertisements showing photographers, stationery options, and music providers.

A few weeks later, if you make an online purchase of stationery, then these types of advertisements to you would be greatly reduced, if not completely removed. Also, some banners reflect "social actions" of those in your network. So a company placing a banner to sell lipstick can elect to have a social network to create an ad based on people's behavior around their product. So if Kelly is friends with Beth and Beth purchases the lipstick, Kelly will be served a banner with Beth's picture stating "Beth has just purchased this cherry lipstick" and probably has a picture of Beth. This banner reflecting "social actions" will be more effective than a generic banner and is one of the powers and progressive nature of social media. Many companies, both large and small, are doing this very effectively through Facebook's Paid Ads. It has even been proven that if you know what you are doing within the Facbook Interface that you can actually target a single individual.

However, in the general Internet, we have already seen a rapid decrease in the percentage of revenue derived from display and banner advertising. In 2008, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported that search had overtaken display advertising, accounting for 41 percent of the market, whereas display accounted for 34 percent.^[136] This is radically different from 2001 when banner advertising dominated the advertising revenue landscape. Could we see the same type of shift from search to social media? Most likely; in Q4 2008, PubMatic indicated that the effective price that advertisers were willing to pay for display/banner ads fell 21 percent on average from the second to the third quarter, with the biggest declines coming at small and medium sites.^[137]

A shift or other form of change needs to occur in order to replace such lost advertising revenue at the macro level. If it is not filled, the user will suffer because content companies will vanish and the free content that users have grown accustomed to will be limited or cease to exist. If a new or revised online revenue model is not found to fill this hole, it could have a dramatic effect on the online community and on our economy as a whole. The good news is that there is a ready willingness and desire by companies to advertise on social media. We are at the start of a digital decade, and the advertising components will be largely shaped by mobile and social media. For example, 75 of the country's top 100 advertisers placed ads on Facebook in 2008, according to the company.^[138] Mobile items such as applications and iAds are going to produce huge new revenue streams. For example, today Google Maps is free. However, if Google Maps can't survive on an advertising based model, most smart phone users would be more than willing to pay $4.99 for a one-time download of an application. The new subscription-based model in terms of magazines/newspapers may more closely reflect one-time application downloads.

Users and advertisers collectively crave more real-time relevancy from search engines. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of crawling the Web, this is inherently difficult to achieve in organic results. Why, though, has it taken so long to correct this problem on sponsored search sections?

Why can't an advertiser easily alert users of a winter sale? Search engines are racing furiously to address this shortfall. The first search engine that does so will have a distinct advantage with users and advertisers. Let's look at an example.

An online travel agency sells hotels, airfare, car rentals, cruises, and so on. Because their business is centered on fulfilling demand, they're spending millions annually on search.

It's tough enough for consumers to differentiate the brands of Priceline (William Shatner), Travelocity (Roaming Gnome), and Expedia (Suitcase) in the marketplace. It's even tougher within search engines. A good example: perform a search for "Chicago Hotels." There will be 10 sponsored results showing at the top of the page and on the right rail. All the ads are almost identical. They all say "cheap hotels," "best rates," "Chicago Hotels," and so on. None of them stand out for the user. Wouldn't it be better for the user and the advertiser if the results were more specific? For example, here's a better ad:

Boutique 5-Star Hotel

The results are infinitely more relevant for the user. In turn, it would produce a greater return for the advertiser. So it's a win-win strategy.

How much greater is the return on investment? We tested this exact scenario within a top-10 travel company that spends around $15 million annually on search. When specific travel deals were dynamically inserted, the click-thru rate was five times greater than the campaign average. And, conversions were a whopping 413 percent higher.

If the returns are so great, why isn't everyone doing this? That's where it gets complex.

If you still don't believe that some traditional interpersonal communication skills may be suffering, then maybe this example will make you a believer. Second Life is a virtual reality application in which many users engage. It's a digitized life that allows you to do anything that you could do in normal life. People develop avatars (digital graphic representations of themselves), sometimes reflecting who they are in real life and other times taking on different personas (a librarian may become a dominatrix). In 2008, a couple got divorced over Second Life, and here is how their story goes: Amy Taylor (28) met David Pollard (40) in Second Life, or their avatars met each other in Second Life, rather.

Things went swimmingly, but Amy, being cautious, hired a Second Life Private Investigator (yes, they exist!). This investigator posed as a voluptuous virtual prostitute and tempted David inside Second Life. David resisted the temptation and passed the test with flying colors (a test he was unaware of at the time). Their courtship continued until their marriage. Because they had met in Second Life, they had their marriage ceremony on Second Life (hey, if nothing else, it saved a bunch of money).

Offline they signed the legal documents, and they were officially married. Things were going fine until Amy discovered that David was chatting with another female avatar (not her) and showing genuine affection. Amy was so disgusted with this that she filed for divorce both in Second Life and in the real world.

More and more interviews will be conducted on video because the cost to entry is much lower. iPods, phones, and flip cameras are cheap and have the ability to post video clips on social media sites within minutes. The ability to use video Skype over smartphones has changed things as well.

Traditional paper and pencil journalism is dying. For articles that will appear in newspapers, magazines, blogs, or online media, the way in which these interviews are conducted has radically changed. In the past, interviews were mostly conducted in person or occasionally on the phone. Now, they are generally conducted by the reporter or writer sending a list of questions to the interviewee. The interviewee texts, tweets, e-mails (social network or web mail), or instant messages back their responses. This may seem inherently lazy on the part of the interviewers, but it makes sense on many fronts. It (1) allows the reporter or interviewee to save travel time, (2) saves on the hassle of scheduling a physical time, (3) saves the interviewee prep time, (4) gives the reporter a written record, (5) allows the interviewee to not be misquoted, and (6) offers less chance for the reporter to misreport. Another big advance is video Skype interviews—so not just the big networks with the studios have this capability. Everyone has this capability and you can even do it from your phone.

The three major downsides to this style are: (1) there is no face-to-face interaction, another highlight on why people's interpersonal communication skills are diminishing, (2) the reporter may miss out on some good information that the interviewee may divulge, and (3) there is no chance for the reporter to read body language cues to determine where they've hit a spot and where they can probe further—although with hi-definition Skype it does get closer and closer to an in-person conversation.

According to a study by e-mail marketing firm ExactTarget and the Ball State University Center for Media Design, 77 percent of Internet and mobile phone users ages 15 to 17 use instant messaging, 76 percent use social networking sites, and 70 percent communicate via text messaging.^[139]

One of the more popular Apple iPhone applications is called "Tracker," but it could have just as easily been called Stalker. This works on the GPS in the phone to locate your friends and tell you exactly where they are. This is similar to Harry Potter's marauder's map. I guess you just need to make sure that this isn't enabled if you are trying to throw a surprise birthday party for someone. This application is also very practical for parents of teenagers—keeping track of where their kids are. Twitter also has the same functionality.

Mobile social media applications like Foursquare and Gowalla have taken this geotargeting even further by allowing you to "check-in" to popular destinations. The way this works is that if you go to a restaurant, you can virtually check-in. This alerts all of your friends in Foursquare, as well as your other social media tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), about your whereabouts. This is infinitely helpful when you are at a major conference or at an event like the Super Bowl cheering on your team (many of your other friends will probably have flown in for the game). When you check-in to the restaurant, you can also provide tips for other future visitors to the restaurant. For example: "There is no street parking, only $10 valet" or "If you are a healthy eater get the oriental chicken salad not the Santa Fe, as that is served on iceberg lettuce." If you frequent a restaurant more than anyone else on Foursquare, then you receive the title of mayor, and the owner of the restaurant may give you discounts or preferential treatment.

These applications are also very helpful if you are in an unfamiliar airport terminal as it quickly pulls up all the restaurants in the terminal and what other travelers think about them.

Opera Software shows mobile phone Internet access exploding, indicating that during 2008 use of its Min Browser on mobile phones more than tripled—reaching 5 billion page views in October. Opera said, "In many of the Southeast Asian countries the mobile Web exists not because it complements existing means of access, but rather because it replaces them."^[140] In the United States, research conducted by The Kelsey Group and ConStat showed that 9.6 percent of mobile users were connecting to a social network as of October 2008, compared to 3.4 percent in September 2007.^[141] By 2012, eMarketer projects that more than 800 million users worldwide will participate in social networks via their mobile device, up from 82 million in 2007.^[142] Of Apple's projected sales in 2010, only 4 percent were desktop computers and 6 percent were laptops. The remaining 90 percent were mobile devices; this is where the world is heading.

In 2010, Facebook indicated that 25 percent of their users accessed Facebook via a mobile device, and they see this trend continuing to increase. Facebook introduced Facebook Zero for mobile users who didn't have robust connections. Facebook Zero strips out some of the "heavy" files like photos and video so that the experience is quicker on a handheld device.

Lufthansa's statement about genflylounge.com: "GenFlyLounge is a social networking site for Generation Fly and allows you to connect with like-minded travelers. Get the inside information from other travelers you can trust and who share your interests and travel preferences. Explore destinations before your go there. Review, add and rate trips. Join now for free!"^[143]

While you can applaud Lufthansa for attempting to reach out to the next generation, you could argue that we already have too many social networks, and that we don't need another one. Lufthansa and others would be better served developing applications that work with the various forms of social media. It's that age-old cliché: "Fish where the fish are." That is why I affectionately refer to it as the "Field of Nightmares." This is taking creative liberty with the line delivered by a celestial voice postulating in the movie Field of Dreams: "If you build it [the baseball field], he will come." In this instance, Field of Nightmares, you may build it and they won't come. When companies like Lufthansa decide to build an application/tool/widget that complements social media, the first question they should ask themselves is: "What do we have the ability to develop that is not a poor replication of an existing tool, but is actually useful and places us in the best position to provide relevancy to our audience?" Let's look at a few examples for Lufthansa:

This type of social functionality still will not be 100 percent accurate, but it's much better than the system we have in place today. Also, airlines could employ the same concept as trains. Trains have no "no speaking" or "no cellular phone" sections. Travelers on planes vary by whether they want to talk or whether they want tranquility. The unsophisticated way to do this is to divide the plane into a predetermined number of seats for each flight. This would not work so well. However, if you develop the right social media application, the work would be done by your travelers who wouldn't feel it was work at all, and the process would be fluid and variable from flight to flight.

Love connections could occur on flights more often because more single "talkers" would be aggregated and people who don't want to be annoyed by an incessantly boring "talker" need not worry. This could potentially give Lufthansa a competitive advantage in the short term—obviously if this was successful, it would be replicated by the competition. However, the ultimate success, although it might be difficult to replicate, would be if through social media you were able to attract a particular crowd (e.g., intelligent, professional, singles, attractive) and that helped define your brand—people would actually choose to fly your airline because of the types of people they would encounter on that airline. Airlines have been fighting to distinguish themselves for years, and this could become a reality. This may be taking things a step too far, but you could have the preppy airline, the grunge airline, middle-class airline, blue collar, and so on.

The executives at Budweiser said that they learned some valuable lessons from their failed YouTube rip-off initiative of Bud TV. Let's hope so. They spent $15 million over the first two years alone, and for their efforts, Compete Inc. indicates they don't have enough traffic data to give an accurate reading.^[144] They aren't alone though. We are already seeing such popular sites as Dell.com, AT&T.com, Xbox.com, and Apple.com losing site traffic, but they aren't necessarily losing users! Their customers are just spending more time on social media and getting what they need from the companies there. Although it is cliché, it's vitally important to fish where the fish are.

Skittles took this to the extreme to showcase a point. For some time during 2009 if you visited www.skittles.com you wouldn't see their regular website. Instead there was a nice beautiful landing page with an interactive flash navigation box in the upper left. On this box were items like connect, video, photos, info, chat, news, etc. The beautiful thing was that when you click on these links, they didn't take you somewhere on the Skittles site, rather they took you off the site to social media.

Connect = Skittles Facebook Page

Video = Skittles YouTube Channel

Photos = Skittles Flickr Account

Info = Skittles Wikipedia Entry

News = Skittles Blog

Skittles was acting as an integration point or hub to great authentic content that existed elsewhere about them.

The funny thing is that in terms of the Field of Nightmares scenario, this same flawed replication methodology has repeated itself several times (no pun intended) in this relatively short Internet age. Whether it was e-mail, browsers, portals, search, video, and now social media, many companies believe they will be the starting point rather than an integration point. The example of BellSouth thinking that their users would have a My BellSouth start page (portal) that included weather, sports scores, and stocks is just one example (for the record, people just wanted their phone bill from BellSouth integrated into their established portals, MyYahoo!, iGoogle, etc.) of companies recreating a poorer version of the wheel.

To help avoid making the same mistakes or our clients making the same mistakes, we do a very simple exercise. For the social network example, we have them write down all the features and functionalities they desire on their 'site' or 'social network' onto a transparent piece of acetate. Unbeknownst to them we have all the features and functionality of the technology industry leader (in this case leading social network) on a white piece of paper. We take that acetate and lay it over the white incumbent listing and it is pretty powerful. It usually goes quiet for a few moments, and then we begin discussions on how to appropriately integrate with the leading technology.

Don't build your own Field of Nightmares.

A key question that remains to be answered (at least at the writing of this book) is about the interconnectivity of the various social media tools. Just like a carmaker doesn't use the same supplier for all of its various parts; rather, they select the best manufacturer for each specialty (e.g., headlights, sun roof, seats). Social media providers can't be the best at every functionality (social network, social bookmarks, wikis, video sharing, photo sharing, etc.). Users like the simplicity of one-stop shopping. Corporations do like these walled gardens—these are my toys and nobody else can play! A walled garden (technology), with regards to media content, refers to a closed set or exclusive set of information services provided for users (a method of creating a monopoly or securing an information system). This is in contrast to providing consumers access to the open Internet for content and e-commerce.^[145] This is primarily due to greed. Some easy to grasp examples of "walled gardens" are the following:

"It's a race to see who will work better and faster with everyone else," said Charlene Li, founder of consulting company Altimeter Group. "It's recognition that you can't be an island of yourself."^[146]

Microsoft Outlook's tied in contacts, calendar, and e-mail is a good model for how someone will tie up the loose ends of Web services.

We've seen this constantly over time, whether it was VHS versus Beta Max, Blue Ray versus High-Definition DVDs, having to fill out the same three forms at the doctor's office with the same information every time you visit a different doctor, and so on. The hope is, due to the open reliance and nature of social media, that this boils down to one seamless connectivity platform. We have already seen companies' willingness to be more open than ever before by Facebook, Google Android, and even Apple allowing programmers access to their systems (via Application Program Interface) to make cool widgets and tools that consumers can enjoy (e.g., Google Maps on the iPhone, Music I like Widgets on MySpace).

If this type of cooperation were to occur, it would further propel the adoption of social media by the mainstream (Moms and Grandmoms) because there would be more relevant offerings for more people and it would also simplify things. The power user would love it as well because they would have easier access to the best of each type of tool rather than having to wade through various watered down versions (analogous to having all of your clothes, shoes, and glasses from one brand versus getting your sunglasses from Oakley, watch from Rolex, and your jacket from L.L. Bean).

Imagine the ability to only have one login! How nice would that be, along with only a few places to visit when we finally reach an uberstate of truly everything being pushed on us rather than us hunting and gathering and putting things into one basket—we would have the basket being constantly filled with suggested information or products from friends we trust! With tools like Facebook Connect and Open ID, we are getting close, as these tools allow you to use your existing Facebook IDs to easily access other sites as well as to have your information follow you.

You can already see this with the new thinking that has been put forth by Facebook. In particular, the Facebook Connect product is all about openness. The thought behind Facebook Connect and other such platforms is to allow you to take your friends with you; it's what will result in the emergence of the social Web. Instead of trying to hoard all of a user's data, it will be shared on the Discovery Channel site, San Francisco Chronicle, Hulu.com, Digg, and so on.

"Everyone is looking for ways to make their Websites more social," said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer. "They can build their own social capabilities, but what will be more useful for them is building on top of a social system that people are already wedded to."^[147]

This type of open thinking is one of the building blocks of the social commerce items that we discussed previously. Specifically, this allows people to post a restaurant review on opentable.com and easily share it with Facebook, Foursquare, Zagats, etc. Before we crown Facebook as saints, their ultimate goal is to monetize this information for billions of dollars. The proliferation of Facebook Like buttons on various websites is so that Facebook has the ability to aggregate this data for social commerce revenue. Now, if only hospitals and dentists could help me out by only having one form to complete.

Another huge shift in the way we do things, both as individuals and as businesses, is the process of job recruitment. To better understand this shift, we should review the historical practice of job recruiting and job hunting.

For the past 10 years, if you were attempting to recruit talent, you would pay money to post on job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder, Hot Jobs, and so on. Or you could hire a recruiting firm or headhunter to assist in the recruitment effort. As you will read throughout this book, middlemen are removed in most instances as a result of the social Web. In the job recruitment market, middlemen are job boards, job fairs, classified advertisements, and job search firms. For the near future, these traditional recruiting avenues will remain but their influence will be greatly reduced, and not too far down the line they will probably vanish altogether, except for very specialized or C-Level recruiting. Social networks like Craigslist, LinkedIn, and Plaxo will ultimately take over the recruitment role because they provide more direct and insightful connections between the employer and potential employee.

The newfound transparency from social business networks is a godsend for employers. They no longer have to employ a large internal human resource or recruitment staff to perform this type of research, or hire an expensive headhunter. Instead, the potential workforce is already doing this for you (the employer), and they are doing it at much greater depths. Reviewing a résumé in the past was part art and part science; it was necessary to read between the lines on a static piece of paper to formulate whether the person deserved a screening call or interview. Now, social business networks supply photos, videos, links showing a person's actual work, 15 to 20 snapshot references, links to blogs or articles the person may be included in, and so on. If a picture can say a thousand words, then a video résumé must be in the millions, because there is nothing more helpful than this for a recruiter. Recruiters can quickly screen through potential hires in minutes versus all the guesswork associated with traditional paper résumés (paper résumés will still be a nice complement to video résumés).

LinkedIn is a good place to start because they are a powerful pseudo-monopoly. As of the writing of this book, LinkedIn has almost cornered the market on the social business network. This will be tough to supplant because users already have their recommendations on the site. Unless there is an easy way to port these recommendations to a new business network, it would be a somewhat uncomfortable task for people to solicit their previous references to rewrite what had already been posted for a new social business network (this book covers the importance for all social media tools to be interconnected). Imagine having to call your reference and say, "Morning, Carol, this is Ted. I know I haven't spoken to you in three years, but about that nice comment and thumbs-up you gave me on LinkedIn about four years ago, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind signing up for this new job site, after you get your account, which will take six minutes. Can you then write the exact same thing you did for me previously?" That would obviously be no small order. That being said, the hope is that, as previously stated, LinkedIn also figures out how to make the Web more open by allowing your LinkedIn data and recommendations to easily flow and follow you accordingly.

For job seekers, the "always keep your résumé updated" paradigm is gone because now it doesn't even scratch the surface of the importance of maintaining updated information, and more important, updated connections. It is essential to constantly update your career progress on social business networks as well as other social media, websites, blogs, and so on. It is also much more than simply updating your paper résumés on these sites. It behooves you to have an updated and professional photograph; also, a list of articles that mention you is helpful.

A link to your own personal and professional website with additional information about you will put you a step ahead of the competition. Any radio or video interviews of you should be easily accessible to augment your video résumé. Most important of all is to capture positive feedback and postings from your bosses, peers, partners, and subordinates. In the past, you really only needed one or two solid references from your supervisors.

Previously, once recruiters were able to get potential hires in through the doors, the screening process was difficult at best. It was generally based on a few interviews, a possible call to a reference or two (most likely not), and then your standard background check (this step was also sometimes skipped).

However, that didn't really tell employers the entire story, did it? You could be a superstar adored by your boss, but a recruiter may miss the fact that you are a terrible team player, that you treat your peers and subordinates with little respect, and that as a whole, you'd be a detriment to add to an organization that already has good team chemistry. That is why as an individual it is important that you have well-rounded feedback from various divisions and peer groups in and outside the organization. If you skew too heavily one way or another, it may quickly reveal a weakness to your potential employer.

One of the most important things employers look at today is the person's network itself! If the employer is hiring a bunch of new talent and brings on someone who has a polished network, then the new hire instantly becomes a recruiting asset. It was never possible before to have this type of insight into someone's network. You could assume they were connected with people at their current place of work, but you could never confirm it. Bringing on someone who has 300 well-respected professionals in her network is a tremendous asset to any company because after she is hired, the recruited quickly becomes the recruiter. In other words, as you hire job candidates, look at their potential reach; how many friends and connections do they have? That person's extended digital network is a favorable asset for the hiring company.

What really makes a network like LinkedIn helpful is that it allows users to share their online Rolodexes. Shally Steckerl uses social network LinkedIn (industry leader) to more easily recruit talent for Microsoft and other online companies. Steckerl says:

Echoes Maureen Crawford-Hentz of global lighting company Osram Sylvania, "Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting—ever. It's important to load your profile with the right keywords so people like me can find you easily."

It's also important within these social business networks to be constantly building equity. This can be obtained by connecting two people that you have in your network to posting jobs that you are aware of, to giving your peers a thumbs-up and adding written recommendations next to these approval ratings.

Aside from building equity that can be drawn on later, it's imperative that workers proactively manage their brand, whether they are currently in the job market or not. Employers will perform Google and YouTube searches on a potential recruit's name as well as filter through MySpace, Facebook, and Foursquare networks to see what is posted out there. Employers are always looking to mitigate risk. So, even though you may have a 3.9 grade point average and a 1300 SAT score (which would equate to a much higher number on the new version of the SAT) on your résumé, this information is immaterial if your Foursquare profile picture is of you holding a beer bong while wearing a jockstrap on your head; good luck in landing that dream job!

While I hope you aren't that stupid, you most likely have some friends who are. So it's important to spot-check what is out there and aggressively ferret out potential job career landmines. Job seekers should act like a potential employer and go to the search engines to investigate what shows up when searching for their name. Unflattering items should proactively be removed from the public eye. Part of this search includes confirmation that there aren't any egregious videos out there. Also, if job seekers share a common name with an individual that is less than scrupulous, then the job seeker needs to make certain the employer knows that that person is not them, but rather someone else with the same name. This due diligence and research can take time, so even if you aren't currently in the job market, it's imperative to keep items inside and outside of your business social networks as buttoned up as possible.

It's also important for individuals to build out their digital business network before they actually need the network. If you haven't communicated with someone in three years, it's much harder to ask them a favor than if you had been maintaining your network and been in consistent contact with your social graph. Once you do find yourself in the interview room or via video Skype it's imperative to show your story rather than simply tell the story. In an old job interview you would tell your story as the candidate. However, today you can literally walk them through your items digitally—showing them versus merely telling them why you are the right person for the job.

Thirteen Virgin Airline employees should have heeded this advice before they were let go from the U.K.-based airline for inappropriate behavior on Facebook. The 13 employees formed a group on Facebook and thought it would be a fun joke to insinuate that there were plenty of cockroaches on the Virgin Airline's planes and that the passengers were generally chavas. Chava is the British equivalent to calling someone a redneck, or more specifically:

Obviously, the competition among airlines is fierce, so Virgin didn't hesitate to quickly fire these employees for what they deemed insubordination. The world has shifted, and whether we like it or not, we are always representing who we are, whether we are on the clock or not.

Just as the one-way messaging strategy of advertisers is no longer viable in this new age, it no longer works for employers, either. Millennials are used to and want collaboration, but they will not necessarily acknowledge or adhere to traditional lines of authority or chains of command. Soon, many baby boomers in executive level positions will retire, and there will be an intense talent fight between companies. Companies can give themselves an advantage by understanding that this new talent has different attitudes, expectations, and skills than the previous generations.

Some people paint members of this under-30 crowd as spoiled or lazy. That is far from the truth. They are just different, and in a lot of positive ways. Work and life balance is much more important to them than it was to their parents, and they desire positions that are able to conform to their lifestyles (e.g., work from home or at odd hours). Company beliefs and values need to align with those of employees. A company mission of simply making as much money as possible turns many of this generation off. Companies need to contribute to the greater good of society, and to be part of the social community and causes.

Ironically, though, if another firm offers Millennials more money or a better opportunity, they will go. There is less loyalty; on average, a person will have 14 different jobs by the time they are 40 years old. Members of this generation have seen that companies in general aren't loyal to their employees, so why should they in turn be loyal to their employers? They desire to stay at the same company and grow, but they understand this probably isn't going to be a reality. They've also seen that companies may only have a strong robust lifespan of 10 to 20 years (e.g., Lycos, Prodigy, Atari, Enron, Circuit City). Fun at work isn't a nice-to-have, it is a need-to-have.

Employers need to throw away the old human resources playbook that consisted of hire, train, manage, and retain. This generation wants collaboration in all aspects of their lives, in part because of the social media tools they grew up with and are accustomed to, but especially because work is where they spend the most time.

Showing up at a college campus for a career fair isn't going to get the job done, because it's a whole new world. Online sites now hold 110 million jobs and 20 million unique résumés. Traditional advertising to attract young talent is as good as burning money. As a company, you need to use everything in your arsenal—blogs, podcasts, social media sites, and so on. However, your current staff members are your best recruiters because they are the ones with the networks and referral power. Just as marketing will be more focused on referral programs, the same holds true for recruiting.

Tony Hawk is the Michael Jordan of skateboarding. Tony owns more skateboarding titles than anyone in history and he literally put the sport on the map. After retiring from competitive skateboarding, Tony continued his success in the business world, becoming a global icon from the sale of his video games, clothes, skateboards, etc.

When Twitter started to grow in popularity, Tony saw an opportunity and seized it. His first foray was to leave a skateboard randomly in a hedge on a street. He sent this note out on Twitter that somewhere along said street was a free skateboard for whomever found it first. This was so successful that he continued doing this and he saw his followers on Twitter grow to over 2 million. More importantly he started to see sales grow.

Then, Tony started to use Twitter to announce impromptu town events. Tony and some other professional skateboarders would show up at a skateboarding park and ride with the locals. This was so successful that in time Tony realized he couldn't send out the tweet more than an hour in advance, otherwise there would be so many people that he couldn't physically get through the sea of humanity to actually skate.

Keep in mind that Twitter's initial popularity wasn't with Tony's normal customer base (young adults), rather it indexed high for business usage for people 35-50 years old.

Tony is a great example showcasing that no matter what you do or what you sell, if you are creative, passionate, and use common sense you can use social media tools to succeed.

As we mentioned previously, we have grown accustomed to the news finding us. We have also grown accustomed to other pieces of information finding us rather than searching for them. Brands and companies that understand this have benefited and will benefit in the future. Southwest Airlines recognized this early on with its Ding Widget. This widget allows users to place it somewhere convenient (desktop, social network, etc.). For a user who lives in Nashville (Tennessee) and whose Mom lives in Birmingham (Alabama), the widget will alert them with a "ding" whenever an appropriate airline ticket sale is available. After the first year, the widget hit the 2 million download mark and then went on to generate $150 million in sales.^[151] It is estimated that the widget receives upwards of 40 million clicks per year. The cost to develop and maintain such a widget is so low that it is almost at the point of insignificance.

The key with successful widgets like this is for the companies to show restraint in their push messages. Some smart companies have almost adopted a publisher's model. Historically, newspapers and magazines kept their writers in a distinctly different silo than their advertising sales team to ensure that their articles or content were not compromised by pressure from their largest clients.

With successful widgets and applications, some companies go to great lengths and in some extreme cases even turn over how these widgets are messaged to the product team versus the marketing team. In the past, many companies have seen with cost-efficient delivery channels (think e-mail) that marketing will spam the user. With these widgets, if you spam the user (in this example, that would be Southwest sending a general reduced-fare message for 20 cities of which neither Nashville nor Birmingham is included), they will be gone.

Speaking of being gone, that is exactly what is happening to some business and personal behaviors. This book highlights that some traditional behaviors, constructs, and principles will continue in this new world, while others will not be suitable. Individuals and businesses face new challenges if they are to stay relevant and viable in this new Socialnomic world. Are you up to the challenge?