Facebook – even your parents use it

It starts out by getting requests from people, at first a few, then more. You give in and build your Facebook page, or recruit the kid down the street to help you do it. Then you start looking at other people’s profiles and see people you know. Next thing you know you are connecting to people you haven’t talked to for years and it all snowballs from there.

It’s no wonder that Facebook attracted 25 million new users in the last month alone.

Facebook, a phenomenon that started with the under 35 set, is maturing in both demographics and uses. Facebook was born in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 and originally only for college students. A year later, high school students were allowed in. In 2006, Facebook got rid of its gatekeepers and began letting anyone in.

Over the next year, it grew from 12 million to 50 million users. Then it launched versions in Spanish, French and German. Today about 175 million people are on Facebook.

While most Facebook users are younger than 35, so many older people are now using it that the portion of the college-age users has dropped to 41 percent. Robert Scoble, a blogging and social media technology expert, says eventually Facebook’s popularity will slow — but not any time soon. And it remains hip with the college crowd.

“Having older people there doesn’t affect your experience,” Scoble said. “It’s segregated. You have your friends and your whole experience there is based on who your friends are.”

Of course some overlap occurs. Parents are finding that Facebook is a good way to keep in touch with their college age children who previously forgot to email or call. Of course some young people in college may be a little wary of their parents keeping tabs on them that way, however most just remove a few pictures that the parents might not appreciate.

The older crowd is here to stay on Facebook, in fact UC Davis is examining the “effectiveness of social media used by the higher education sector to communicate philanthropic news”. In other words, UC Davis thinks there might be enough people on Facebook with enough cash to help fund higher education. Since Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign, which heavily leveraged social media, it has become acceptable to run social media fundraising campaigns. Entrepreneurs are following suit and are using it to reinforce and create new business connections.

Think about the essence of a marketing campaign. You decide on your messaging and branding and with certain key activities you build momentum and buzz towards your event. This translates well to Facebook. Your Info tab .. or even better your business page, informs everyone about and even brands you and your business and your Facebook activity builds momentum towards the event you are marketing. It’s a natural fit.

Whether you plan to use the internet purely for personal reasons or you are looking for professional networking, Facebook will open doors you didn’t even know were there.

What’s your brand?

The Economist recently had an article noting the rise of the “faceless bosses”. Outsized personalities such as Jack Welch and Robert Nardelli are gone or retired. Carly Fiorina has turned her attention to politics.

While clearly, in today’s turbulent times, keeping your head down is attractive, I found this article an odd juxtaposition with the revolution in branding that social media is creating. Corporate branding, ho hum, personal branding is what is hot. If you haven’t figured out, you are brandU. What we say and do on twitter, facebook and our blogs becomes part of the gestalt that defines the online perception of who we are and what we have to offer.

So what does your brand say about you? Is it disorganized and not clear? Show me yours! As someone whose brand is not as together as I would like, I would love to see a a great example. Just post your URL or social media handle
below.

Are you ready to blastoff? Review of the BlastOff Network

Are you ready to blastoff? With the Blastoff Network Internet users can customize a portal to access news, games, social networks and shopping all in one place. It’s not a new idea, as it is similar to iGoogle, but what’s different is the affiliate program and partnership with PrePaid Legal.

The idea, like with many MLMs and affiliates, is that you build a network of friends, you then all shop together in Blastoff’s network of online stores and receive commissions on yours and your friends’ purchases. Before visions of riches start dancing in your head, keep in mind you are going to need a big downline to make any serious dough. Blastoff also partnered with PrePaid Legal to give its associates early access (and extended genealogies), getting in return a group that was tailored made to do some serious buzz marketing.

And marketing they are. MLMs, just like their salesman cousins, thrive on excitement and hype to drive recruitment. I’ve seen some “Wow” emails circulating around, sadly with some bogus unsubscribe links. Hopefully these folks are not intentionally spamming.

So is it worth the hype? Some might enjoy the custom page you can build with the network. You can set it up to connect to your facebook account (the video mentions twitter as well but that seems to not be there yet), add news feeds, games, and media sites such as hulu all with selectable themes as backdrops. Since I’m not a heavy user of portals or aggregators, I turned to a millennial (early 20s) to get an opinion of it. His take? “…very clunky and unusable. Sure you could spend hours getting it just the way you like it, but it should be user friendly right off the bat. The sites different ‘hip’ colors hurts the brain and at first glance you have no idea what the site is about.” Harsh words.

I agreed with him about the non intuitive user experience with customizing the site. On the FAQ, it advised using Firefox 3.5 for the best experience. I had some problems with Firefox 3.0, but it did better with Internet Explorer 7. And I simply could not figure out how to get rid of the ESPN widget (sorry I’m just not into spectator sports). You also are limited in the sites you can add. It’s not like you can drop any feed into your page. Let’s hope the experience is improved in the future.

The shopping picture looks a bit brighter. Blastoff does have some promising looking deals on “wireless” and “home services” that might be of interest. There are some prominent names in the mall section. Of course you can find deals independently, but it is convenient to have them gathered up for you. I’ve purchased one product from the network. Looking around, I did find cheaper deals for the same thing, but when I purchased through blastoff, I got a coupon auto filled in for a 10% discount making it competitive.

Since it is completely free to join, Blastoff will cost you nothing to check out. And if you invite enough friends that like to shop, those pennies might add up .. for you as well as for me.

FTC new guidelines on product reviews in blogs

This just in. I just heard on NPR that the FTC has released new guidelines regarding blogs that “endorse” products. Product reviews is a common blog post, popular with searchers who are researching a potential purchase, and yes bloggers sometimes get paid for the reviews or at least get free stuff. The FTC thinks these relationships the bloggers have with companies, need to be fully disclosed. Fines can be pretty hefty, up to $11,000 per infraction.

Not surprisingly, the twittersphere has picked up on it quickly. I found a tweet pointing to a cnet article discussing the impact on twitter and facebook users.

Seems that affiliate links is outside the scope of these new guidelines, but more careful reading is needed.