Happy to welcome my daughter Lauren Schaefer back as a guest blogger on {grow} …   

Hello readers! It has been too long and I’ve missed you!  I’ve been a bit busy graduating from college, moving to New York City,  starting my job as a professional event planner and writing my own blog that has nothing to do with social media. But now I’ve had some time to breathe, so time to write!

As I have immersed myself in this new “young-professional” role, I’ve been noticing some social media trends among my twenty-something peers that you might find surprising.  What’s hot? What’s useful?  What do we not give a crap about?

Here are some intelligent and good-looking opinions on the platforms that we loathe and love:

Twitter:  Among young professionals, Twitter is becoming the holiest of holy. The exclusive and elite. The smart and creative. You can be witty, you can be hip, #YouCanComeUpWithHashtagsThatAreSoBrilliant. And best of all, grandma — who is all over Facebook — doesn’t know about it. Twitter is the world without the politics and drama of Facebook and it is the coolest of the cool right now.

LinkedIn: Every day I receive new notifications from my classmates. FINALLY. Hop on board friends. It’s been a realization for my group that not only is this a tool we need while looking for our jobs, it’s also necessary to keep movin’ on up.

Facebook:  No, we’re not leaving Facebook.  My generation will never really let go of Facebook. We’ve gone through too much together. Too many photos, too many exes to stalk, too much history together.  But we have also trudged through all of the constant change Facebook has put us through and frankly, it’s exhausting.

Among my peers, there are two classes of people on Facebook — those on Twitter and those who aren’t. Those who are “Twitter-less” continue to post their lives, their trials, their tribulations on FB.  But those of us on the 140 character machine, bitch openly on Twitter and “family-friendly filter” on Facebook. Twitter is the conversation. Facebook is just a place to archive photos post lame jokes.  We can have Facebook open at work because we’ll never post anything incriminating there. Twitter is where the juicy stuff lives.

Google+  In a word, FAIL.  Seriously.  We don’t give a crap about our impact on SEO.  I joined and built my “circles” and there have only been two updates ever … and one is from my mother saying, “great , something else I need to update. ”

Everything that is cool about Google+ can be found somewhere else and we’re already happy and comfortable with those other platforms.

Now, let’s talk about a hot social media site for the young professional crowd and you probably have never heard of it: OK Cupid.

Yep.  A dating site.

But there is something very interesting going on here.  Once I got past the initial “creepy” factor of realizing that I’m old enough to be on a dating site, I discovered an exciting new social networking model emerging here.  It’s kind of like a combination of Facebook and Twitter for people you don’t know — people who are not currently your friends but who might become your friends, or in Cupid-terms, an “adventure buddy.”

Many of my friends are now spending more time on OK Cupid than Facebook. They are finding it fun to socialize, share restaurant recommendations, chat about music and books, etc. with new people who have similar interests.

Of course there are other social sites but I’m over my word limit and Dad is ringing the bell.

What do you think about these observations? Any surprises?

Lauren Schaefer is a recent college grad, new NYC resident, and nonprofit event planner with an interest in all things social media. She documents her new journey as a young professional at her blog From the Fifth Floor. Twitter: @leschaef

This is the time of year for predictions and it’s all starting to sound like yada-yada to me.  Probably you too?

But how many bloggers go back and actually let you know how they did with last year’s predictions? Let’s start there, and then I will add four surprising 2012 predictions of my own at the end.

Here are social media predictions I made throughout 2011 and my grade for my guess!

Google+ will not be the Facebook killer. People went crazy when I predicted this, especially since at that point I had not even tried it! Doesn’t matter. The switching costs are too high among Facebook’s core audience. I think Google+ is important and it will survive but it will not upend Facebook.  Am I right?  Too early to tell, but I think I am trending correct on this one. I’ll have to give myself an incomplete.

Quora is not the next big thing.  In early 2011 I was the lone voice it seemed not piling on the Robert Scoble bandwagon. Scoble had declared that Quora would replace blogging and was more useful and elegant than Facebook and Twitter.  I said no, there was not going to be a Quorgasm — it was too easily gamed, too noisy and too difficult to navigate. Yes, I was right.  Grade = A +

QR Codes will soon be obsolete — Many people predicted that QR codes would rock the world in 2011 simply because they were so popular in Japan. That’s the first mistake. Never assume what takes in Japan will take someplace else.  I said that QR codes are the eight-track tapes of our generation because will be a mis-applied, over-used gimmick and people will end up not trusting them.   I saw an article last week declaring QR Codes dead so it is too early to tell but I think I am trending positive on this.  I’ll give myself at least a B.

Augmented reality gets big.   I was a little ahead of my time on this. I thought AR would take off in a bigger way in 2011 but it is still in the silent movie stages. I still think I’m right but it didn’t happen as fast as I thought. Grade = C

Social Media “re-set” – I thought that during the 2012 budget planning process, marketing executives who were caught in the early social media hype would look over their budgets and figure out they’re not getting the traction they expected.  Too early to tell if there will be a budget re-set, but I think the anecdotal evidence I hear is that I’m wrong.  Small businesses are still catching up of course and the big brands I’m talking to are moving ahead with some pretty advanced stuff.  Would like to know what you think.  Grade = D

Social scoring takes center stage – A year ago when I made this prediction, nobody had heard of Klout.  Yeah, I got this one right.  Way right.  Grade = A+

Social for the enterprise – I wrote that internal uses of social media was the next big frontier for social media. Since that time, Yammer, a leading enterprise provider, had a nearly 200 percent growth rate according to various reports and now has some type of installation in 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. And it’s just getting started. Yes, yes, yes.  Grade = A

Micro payments – finally? Facebook started dipping its toe into micro payments in 2010 by giving out free credits to help condition customers use the new credit system.  Yes, this is taking off for virtual goods you can buy on Farmville but it is not the general monetization system for art, music and even blogging that I envisioned. Could still happen but not there yet, Grade = D.

OK … Here are four offbeat predictions for 2012:

1) 2012 will be The Year of the Bird.  On a percentage basis, Twitter will be the fastest-growing social media platform. It’s not new, it’s not sexy, but right now it is getting hot in high schools and that is where the cool stuff starts. It is also exploding overseas.  Watch out for Twitter.

2) Facebook will create alternate universes.  Facebook is too freaking complicated and changes too much.  And while it grew on the back of teens, Grandma represents the fastest-growing demographic. The platform will have to design user interfaces tailored for different market segments … more analytics for geeks, cool new skins for the kids, a larger typeface for the senior crowd.

3) Crowdsourcing goes enterprise. Crowdsourcing has so much potential but also carries a stigma of unfair labor practices.  Based on growth rates calculated by DailyCrowdsourcing.com, it look like this has the potential to finally take off on an enterprise level if companies can be assured of politically-correct and fairly-paid sources of labor.

4) Social Scoring — You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.  Klout stumbled and fumbled in 2011 but they also made breathtaking progress that was rewarded by brands.  But the real breakthrough is going to happen in 2012 —  Connecting online conversations to offline behavior. It’s already happening in small ways but the real rocket will be the Facebook Timeline.  Will work like this: Joey just posted and tweeted about a new record. Facebook Timeline shows Joey’s friends bought the record.  Record companies send Joey free stuff.

Along these same lines, I think Klout will continue to dominate this niche in 2012.  Although the entry barriers to this niche are really low (come up with an algorithm, attach it to the Twitter API and go), distilling wisdom from that big data takes some fire-power. Klout is far ahead in this respect.   However, I do think there is room for social scores based on different influence niches like teens, fashionistas, foodies, politics, and local measures of influence.  I also predict Klout Klubs will emerge so topical experts can find each other and interact based on this social proof.

What did I hit?  What did I miss?  Would love to hear your opinions in the comment section!

One of the best things about my job is that I get to meet executives from many different companies, both big and small.  I was having a discussion the other day with a digital marketing executive from a seriously huge brand (can’t politely name it) and he told me this story, which he said was OK to share with you …

His company, a famous consumer products company, became obsessed with assuring that their brands had more Facebook “Likes” than equivalent competitor products.  It actually became a marketing strategic goal and part of the annual performance objectives for brand managers.

The brand equity is roughly equivalent to something like “Mr. Clean” — successful, well-known, historic, but not exactly the center of daily conversation. A household given.

The company has two success metrics for this social media initiative:  1) Did the brand have more Likes than the leading competitor and 2) What was the “cost per Like?”  So internally, brand managers competed fiercely to have the lowest “Like acquisition cost.”

At first, I was amazed that a major brand would have such a seemingly strange view of marketing success but these are smart people so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and tried to figure out what the possible benefits of this approach might be. Here’s what I dreamed up:

• Perhaps they have research that shows there is important value in the appearance — “the social proof” — of having lots of Facebook Likes versus competitors.
• Maybe they are planning to create exceptional content that will reward those people who like the brand and turn them into fans. I don’t think this is the case, but it could be possible.
• Some studies have come out equating Facebook fans with a dollar value. I am skeptical about these generalizations but maybe they have some new market insight about this potential.
• By creating this internal competition, perhaps they are exploring best practices to garner fans.
• Maybe with this experiment, they are figuring out the most cost-effective way to link paid advertising and interaction on Facebook

On the surface, this battle of Facebook Likes seems arbitrary, but what do you think?  What is the possible value?  Are people getting caught up in this at your company?  Are you linking “Likes” to brand loyalty or sales?

I

I’m a social media guy.  I’ve been blogging for six years and have been on Facebook since its beginning in France.  I’m very familiar with how Facebook has evolved. So, I guess you could say I “get it,” but to be honest, even to somebody like me, Facebook has become too complicated, and even frightening.

I’ve found myself thinking that even the most die-hard users must also find Facebook’s changes — while esthetically appealing — incredibly confusing.

Following your Facebook feed can become a part-time job! You can spend a whole night plowing through your recent timeline updates, hiding what you don’t want to see, configuring all of your privacy settings, reconfiguring who has access to each and every photos album … it is starting to feel like you are becoming your own website administrator.

When you realize that Facebook can remove all of the filters that you had previously defined and dig up old photos albums that you had deleted from your profile, you quickly realize how much trust you’ve put into this machine — and there is nothing you can do about it but stop using it.

For me, the changes with Facebook have made make me shudder, especially when I start thinking through some of the implications of the new direction they are taking.

Facebook ubiquity

Facebook’s announcements last week imply that EVERYTHING we do, say, listen to, eat, work on, play on … every detail of our lives .. will be shared, stored, and then dissected at the discretion of the Facebook algorithms.  You might be thinking : “Wake up! There is nothing new, you’ve got to accept that anything online can be made public at any moment — even an e-mail.”

But having the ambition to display the whole life of their users is just insane.  Take Spotify, for example!  Sharing the music you’re listening to seems great, right?  Just put yourself in the shoes of a shy 16-year-old guy; what is he going to do to impress others and fit in?   He’s going to listen to the same music that everyone else is listening to, so as not to seem “weird” at all via his very public Facebook profile.

Imagine that he may stop listening to what he really likes because he will be ashamed to share his real taste in music, unless he is one of the rare users that figures out how to stop the feed from Spotify to Facebook.

Now take this concept and duplicate it for tastes in TV, movies, places to eat … maybe with just about everything.

There’s a significant difference in saying “I’m fan of” something to look cool versus having a machine checking everything that you actually do in real time. Big Brother? We’ve been talking about him for years and it seems like he truly is here.

Facebook is on track to homogenize society, which conversely, and ironically, may “weaken” the database that Facebook is building and the advertising targeting that they are offering!

We are boiling ourselves

Did you ever hear the story about the frog? If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out right away; the frog doesn’t want to die. If you put a frog in a pot of colder water, though, and slowly heat the water, the frog will stay until it dies (There are actual examples of this on YouTube if you really want to see that this is true).

We are frogs being boiled by Facebook. If Facebook had had the same privacy settings when it first started, people wouldn’t have joined or wouldn’t have joined for the same reasons. Now that they have, they stay and just let Facebook keep doing as it will.

We all have heard so many people say: “I’m going to delete my profile”, “Facebook is evil”, but yet they still seem to be on Facebook…

With the arrival of Timeline though, maybe this is a tipping point.  My friend Loic recently explained on his blog how his 16-year-old son decided to delete everything from his profile because he was afraid of sharing his life details, especially when people can go back to the very first things he did or put on Facebook.

Loic’s son is not alone; I’ve already heard the same story from multiple other people and friends that are deleting everything or something, clearly a sign of intrusiveness gone too far…

Perhaps the answer to this dilemma is in China.

Facebook is prominent most places in the world EXCEPT for China (and Russia). Part of this is because of China’s censorship and national protectionism, but it is also because Chinese social networks are very different.  When I was in China to understand how and which social media networks work there, I quickly discovered that their huge success is mainly due to one thing : anonymity!

When thinking about the future of social networks, it is impossible not to think about China and the way its social networks could change how we interact …

If Facebook could move to other countries, could Chinese social media platforms, with their elegant emphasis on anonymity, come into the Western World?

I think that we could see a backlash and a strong return to anonymity on the web because people love sharing their real lives, real stories, real fun, real everything without wondering about personal branding, or — wondering who is watching.

Any way, I can’t help but admire how much simpler and liberating our online experience would be — especially for youth — if we had a simple social networking platform that allowed anonymity.

What do you think? Is the trade-offs worth it?  Or, will you happily continue to feed information into the machine?

Gregory Pouy is a marketing professional who blogs at Greg from Paris. He also has created a very useful eBook on The Future of Commerce.  Follow him on Twitter at @gregfromparis.

What is the most-debated question in social media today?  One candidate is, “Should my company have a Facebook page?”

The tension comes from several angles. It could be due to:

• The company is not culturally-ready to deal with comments from real people.
• The company has whacked-out expectations about how sales will increase once they have a Facebook page.
• Their social media guru, Timmy from Accounting, has set their marketing strategy.
• They are doing it because their kids told them it would be cool.

So how do you decide if a Facebook page should be a priority for your company?  Here is the business value proposition for Facebook in one sentence:

“Come waste time with me.”

Think about it.  The overwhelming reason people go to Facebook is to waste time playing Farmville, watching funny videos, or catching up on the details of friend’s lives.  Your life does not depend on Facebook.  It’s entirely incremental activity.

So, do you have a business that people want to waste their time with?  If you are Disney, the answer is probably yes.  If you are selling ball bearings to Ford Motor Company, well … probably not.

Here are examples of organizations that would be fun to waste time with:

• Companies that provide humorous, entertaining,interactive, news-worthy, interesting, and/or educational content.
• Beloved brands that have passionate “fans” outside of social media like Coca-Cola, BMW, universities, charities, sports teams, or the neighborhood pizza joint.
• Brands that allow you some exclusive access, deal, discount, contest, or benefit from being on Facebook.
• Companies that interact with you in a unique and personal way.

Now of course there are exceptions, but I think as a general rule, keeping this business case in mind will be a pretty good predictor of a company’s ability to connect with people on Facebook.

Marketing through Facebook is difficult. People go to there to AVOID your sales pitches and ads. They immerse themselves in Facebook to escape. So to the extent that you can help them do that, you will have success.

I’m not saying that even the ball bearing company couldn’t have some benefit from being on Facebook. It doesn’t really hurt anything as long as it doesn’t distract you from real value-adding work.  But when your boss is pressuring you because nobody has “liked” her civil engineering firm, you can simply challenge her by saying, “we’re a great firm, but probably not a company people want to waste their time with.”

… Unless of course you can make it that way!

What do you think?  Does this fit for you or have you had another experience?

I’ve figured out Google’s grand plan for world domination. More or less.

See if this makes sense to you.  It sure did last night when I was sipping whiskey on my back porch.

Google’s business is built on collecting data about people and then selling those people highly targeted ads.  The more data they collect, the more ads they can sell.

That’s why they introduced Google +.  Facebook was getting too doggone much of the information collection market.  Even Twitter was honing in.  Every tweet was one little snippet that was out of reach of Google. So Plus was a bold grab at world info marketshare.

if you don’t think this is the name of the game, look at what happened this week with pharmaceutical companies.  Facebook reversed their decision that had allowed pharma companies to not have comments on their pages.  This provides potential costs, complications and legal ramifications for these folks that I won’t get into here, but you can read about it more thoroughly in this scintillating coverage from the Pharma Times.

Nobody seems to know why Facebook did this.  Except me of course.  It’s all clear.  Or a wild guess. You decide.  The way I see it, if Facebook pages don’t have comments, Facebook can’t collect information. If they can’t collect information, they can’t sell targeted ads. And they HATE that.

But I digress. In the whole big global pie of digital information, there is one gold mine that has yet to be tapped. In fact, it might be the motherlode of personal information and it lies tantalizingly out of reach of Google, of Facebook, of everyone.

Text messages.

The world sends billions of text messages every year. Or is it every day?  I can never be sure of these numbers. I usually make my facts up anyway. 57.8 percent of all statistics are made up. You can take that to the bank.

But I digress again.  Now, how in the world would Google ever get access to text messages? Hmmm … perhaps they should buy a mobile phone company like Motorola! Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit. They just did that.

Android Shmandroid.  Google wants the text messages!

Now there is this sticky little issue of privacy to overcome.  To really get access to text messages, you would have to obtain people’s permission to actually give up their most intimate thoughts and dreams to the Internet.

Who would be stupid enough to do that?  Wait, wait … I know this one!  TEENAGERS.  Hell, they already spill their lives all over Facebook every day anyway.

What would it take for a high schooler to give up the nano-particle of privacy they have left and let Google listen to their text stream? How about a free smartphone, complete with all the latest Google Goodies?  How many teenagers would give up their text privacy for a new smartphone every year?  All of them. That is a scientific fact. I saw it on The View.

Let’s look at how the economics would play out. Let’s say the manufacturing cost of a smartphone is $25.  Do you think Google could sell the equivalent of $25 worth of new ads over the course of a year to reach a break-even?  You betcha. I’d buy stock in that.

So that is the plan.  While Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune is climbing by a billion dollars a year (or is it a day?) Google is going to data-mine text messages all day long and kick his Silicon Valley ass to the curb. That really is the plan. I read it on Twitter.  Or maybe it was Harvard Business Review. Oh well, same thing.

Does any of this make sense or do I have to cut out caffeine?

There are going to be a gajillion articles about Google +, the new “Facebook killer.”

I haven’t seen the platform yet. I haven’t tested it. I don’t care about Google’s legacy of failure with other abysmal attempts at the social space. But I can predict it’s not going to kill Facebook. Here’s why.

I had a 17-year-old kid in one of my classes a few months ago. He’s a complete social media freak and a brilliant kid. I asked him: “If I gave you $50 bucks, would you switch from Facebook to something else?”

“Could I move everything on Facebook to the new platform?”

“No, I don’t think Facebook would allow that.”

“Then no.”

“What if it was $500?”

“No way.”

“What if it was $5,000?”

“Nope. Just couldn’t do it.”

And that my friends, is why nothing is going to beat Facebook. Here is what Google and every other pretender doesn’t understand. Facebook is not a website. It’s a lifestyle. The party’s over.

In more technical terms, Facebook may be entrenched as the king of social networking sites for a long time because the emotional and psychological cost of switching to something else is too high.

In our tech-addicted society of hyper-change, we’ve become conditioned to expect the next big thing. But every time we get our hands on the latest gadget or test drive an application, there is an inherent switching cost associated with that effort. If we try it out and perceive that the benefits of switching are too low compared to the time and energy it takes to make the change, we’ll drop the idea and simply stick to what is already comfortable and familiar.

The idea of raising this psychological switching cost is at the very heart of most marketing efforts! We want to create so much passion and loyalty for our products that consumers would never think of switching.

Most current users will find it very difficult to change to another social networking platform because the equity investment in Facebook is so high … and getting higher every day. That’s where they have their circle of online friends. That’s where they go to check on the Farmville crops. That’s where they go to see the daily pictures of the new grandchild. And that is where they are going to stay. It is their online home. Increasingly, it is their Internet.

Now some will say that the Google platform offer unique value as a viable ADDITION to Facebook. That is also faulty thinking. People abandoned MySpace because they just didn’t need two. Who has the time to maintain and commit multiple identities, multiple sets of friends? Is Google going to really offer something so uniquely sustainable that Facebook won’t be able to provide a competing alternative if they need to? To really make this work, Google will have to steal massive page views/ad dollars from Facebook.

I know this is unorthodox thinking, but I think this is the conclusion you have to come to if you focus on the fundamentals of human behavior instead of technology and gadgets. Google is not going to be able to catch Facebook, even if Google plus is great. The comment section is yours …

(If you can’t see this video, click here: “Mega-trends presentation at Social Slam.”)

How would you like to sit-in on a discussion with me, Jay Baer, Glen Gilmore and Jennifer Kane on the most important mega-trends in social media?

Let’s do it!

This video is from the recent Social Slam conference in Knoxville.  It was the most fun panel I have been on because I was in awe of my co-panelists!  We decided to take a different approach. Jay, Glen and I presented one big idea that we thought was the most important mega-trend and then Jen faciltiated a discussion.  It worked out great and I think you’ll enjoy it.

Let me know what you think … If you had to pick one social media mega trend, what would you have presented?

Do social media technologies isolate people and promote false relationships? Or are there important benefits associated with being connected to others in this way?

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project decided to examine these questions in a survey that explored people’s overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement.

Among the many interesting findings, Pew reports that the social relationship “boost” received by Facebook users is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married.

I always enjoy reading these reports because Pew is one of the few reliably valid sources of research out there!  The findings presented here paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people’s social worlds. Here is a summary: 

The number using social networking sites has doubled since 2008 and has gotten older.

In this Pew Internet sample, 79% of American adults said they used the internet and nearly half of adults (47%), or 59% of internet users, say they use at least one site. This is close to double the 26% of adults (34% of Internet users) who used a social site in 2008. Among other things, this means the average age of social media users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010.  Over half of all adult social site users are now over the age of 35. 

Facebook dominates the social space in this survey: 92% of social media users are on Facebook; 29% use MySpace, 18% used LinkedIn and 13% use Twitter.

By percentage, Twitter has experienced the most growth.  Nearly 60% of Twitter users, 39% of Facebook users, and 36% of LinkedIn users joined within the past year

There is considerable variance in the way people use various social networking sites.

52% of Facebook users and 33% of Twitter users engage with the platform daily, while only 7% of MySpace and 6% of LinkedIn users do the same.

On Facebook on an average day:

• 15% of Facebook users update their own status.
• 22% comment on another’s post or status.
• 20% comment on another user’s photos.
• 26% “Like” another user’s content.

 Twitter is for girls, LinkedIn is for boys?

Facebook users are more trusting than others.

Pew asked people if they felt “that most people can be trusted.” They found that the typical Internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted. Further, they found that Facebook users are even more likely to be trusting. They found that a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other Internet users and more than three times as likely as non-internet users to feel that most people can be trusted.

Facebook users have more close relationships.

The average American has just over two close Facebook confidants (2.16) – that is, people with whom they discuss important matters. This is a modest, but significantly larger number than the average of 1.93 core ties reported in 2008. They found that someone who uses Facebook several times per day averages 9% more close, core ties in their overall social network compared with other Internet users.  

Follow the money

Facebook users get more social support than other people.

Pew looked at how much total support, emotional support, companionship, and instrumental aid adults receive. On a scale of 100, the average American scored 75/100 on a scale of total support, 75/100 on emotional support (such as receiving advice), 76/100 in companionship (such as having people to spend time with), and 75/100 in instrumental aid (such as having someone to help if they are sick in bed).

Internet users in general score 3 points higher in total support, 6 points higher in companionship, and 4 points higher in instrumental support. A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day tends to score an additional 5 points higher in total support, 5 points higher in emotional support, and 5 points higher in companionship, than internet users of similar demographic characteristics. For Facebook users, the additional boost is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married or cohabitating with a partner.

Social media users are much more politically engaged than most people.

The survey was conducted over the November 2010 elections. At that time, 10% of Americans reported that they had attended a political rally, 23% reported that they had tried to convince someone to vote for a specific candidate, and 66% reported that they had or intended to vote. Internet users in general were over twice as likely to attend a political meeting, 78% more likely to try and influence someone’s vote, and 53% more likely to have voted or intended to vote.  

Compared with other Internet users, and users of other social platforms, a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day was an additional two and half times more likely to attend a political rally, 57% more likely to persuade someone on their vote, and an additional 43% more likely to have said they would vote. Participants in LinkedIn were the most politically active.

The report contains a wealth of detailed information but I hope this summary has been helpful. Any surprises?

Facebook is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re going to get.  And sometimes, it’s not even sweet.

While most social media advisers are bullish on Facebook as a marketing channel — and certainly there are some amazing success stories — in my classes I teach a more holistic view of the opportunities and the PERILS of what you might get into.

I use the screen shot above as a way to illustrate the dark side of exposing your brand on the social web. Let’s take a look at what’s going on here.

The first wall comment is from a guy who is using a cute little girl as his avatar. I’m guessing this is simply a proud papa, but without careful observation, or taken out of context, you might make the conclusion that this is a perversion or that this cherubic girl is thanking Budweiser for participating in an alcohol-related promotion in Kansas City.

Curiously, the next avatar is also from a Bieber-like child who is clearly below the drinking age. This little boy is thanking Budweiser for supporting LGBT issues. This stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transsexual. While Anheuser-Busch may very well support this demographic, it certainly is not reflected in its advertising or core brand promise. Bud is known as the King of Beers, not the Queen of Beers.

In any event, a casual observer would be thinking, why are these two little kids posting on Budweiser’s Facebook page?

Finally, Joe Doyle thinks this photo is so funny he posted it TWICE. Remember the Southwest airline attendant who got fed up with his job and abandoned his flight?  Yup that’s him. Joe goes on to suggest a Facebook site encouraging Bud to feature the wayward flight attendant in an advertisement.

From a traditional marketing standpoint, this is a mess.  Everything you do, and everything you don’t do, communicates about your brand.  What is being communicated by these community comments and how does this reflect on the most powerful beer brand in the world?

While social media represents a true opportunity for connection, listening and service, a wacky page like this seems to overwhelm those positive opportunities, doesn’t it? 

I had the privilege of working with Anheuser-Busch senior execs for four years and I know the extreme pressure on brand managers.  After viewing this page, if I were Bud’s marketing director, I might be thinking “WTF … Who talked me into being on Facebook?”

I’m not necessarily suggesting that they shouldn’t be on Facebook, but I’m making a point that in an era when many ”gurus” think every marketing problem can be solved with a Facebook page, you better be prepared for all possible consequences.

Marketing on Facebook is hard work … as we see by this example. Considering that a brand like Budweiser is probably going to consistently attract “diverse” and unusual comments like these, how do you weigh the benefit versus expense of a high-maintenance page like this? 

Is this a case where a brand has to be there or be conspicuously absent?  Is Facebook like your industry trade show – you just have to go or people will notice if you’re not?

Or, does Facebook represent an opportunity to legitimately inform, engage, and communicate in exciting new ways in a case like this, or is this a daily nightmare for an important brand?

Let’s get down to basics.  Is a Facebook page going to help Budweiser sell more beer?  How does it fit into an integrated strategy?  What do you think?