PR Week has today revealed comments from the Daily Telegraph’s assistant editor Neil Midgley who warned journalists and PRs that Facebook shouldn’t be used for work:

‘It’s my network. I won’t post details of my sex life on it, but I can post status updates on there that I wouldn’t post on Twitter. Don’t talk to me about work on it’

These are comments that I’m sure many PRs and journalists – indeed most people – would agree with. I certainly use Facebook very much from a personal standpoint.

But, as you have possibly seen me ranting talking about recently, I think Facebook is changing. And I wonder whether these changes will alter the way we all use the service.

This has appeared on the same day as PR blogger Steve Rubel has launched his own Facebook page. As Steve explains:

“Now I am also adding a Facebook Page that will feature everything that’s posted here plus exclusive content for those of you who opt in and become a fan. It’s very similar to how I approach Twitter – which also features links that I don’t always share elsewhere. The difference is that the new Facebook Page will sit in between what I do here and Twitter and hopefully spark a rich discussion from a broader group of people who don’t necessarily read blogs or use Twitter.”

So is this possibly the way we – as individuals and also possibly as brands – should be going? Are Facebook pages the new ‘public Facebook’?

With Google in the US now showing Facebook updates in Google social search, I’m sure it’s a trend that Facebook is keen to encourage.

Facebook pages don’t have the same ‘conversational’ element that Twitter has, but could be an effective way to have a publicly available presence on Facebook that doesn’t encroach on your personal space.

I wrote last week about the battle between Google and Facebook. Now there is more interesting research out which adds yet another subplot: according to Compete, Facebook has passed Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is amongst the leaders for other types of sites too.

This follows news earlier this month that Facebook is now the 4th driver of traffic to major news sites.

Whilst for many businesses, Twitter is seen as the social network to use, it would be foolish to ignore the power of Facebook.

This preference towards Twitter was well founded. Twitter has a very open doors policy to brands, unlike Facebook – at least in the early days – when the emphasis was social networking between friends that you actually know.

This ‘walled garden’ was a scary place for brands (and the media) that didn’t want to experience a backlash from consumers.

But it is perhaps exactly this walled garden approach that makes Facebook such a hotbed of social media (and traditional media) sharing. Facebook networks are tighter, more controlled than the often sprawling connections that are made on Twitter.

Sharing on Facebook is perhaps less frequent than retweets on Twitter, but when it does happen, the effect can be significant, allowing brands to reach targeted and carefully curated networks of like-minded individuals.

And it’s not the no-go area for B2B companies that it was in the past. To my mind, social media blurs the boundaries between work and home, between professional and personal.

With 400m users worldwide, ignoring something this powerful is ludicrous.

There’s been a mad rush in the last 24 hours to blog and tweet about the latest social media craze – Google Buzz. It’s rarely possible to objectively comment on something this new until you’ve tried it and lived with a for a bit, but such is the pace of social media…!

I always try and take a step back and avoid the urge to blog immediately but, as the day has gone on and as I have read more and more about it, there are a few initial thoughts that spring to mind that I thought I’d jot down.

A few caveats. Firstly, I haven’t really tried Google Buzz in anger yet. I use Google Apps for my personal email and it hasn’t been switch on there yet. Secondly, I reserve the right to change all of these views and opinions in the future!

• Aggregation, location/mobile, social search – these are the three elements of social media that will be big this year. And to a certain extent, Google has made a start to confront each one. Google Buzz is yet another step in this direction, but they aren’t the only ones. Facebook in particular is also making big strides
• This is not a Buzz v. Twitter debate – I see Twitter much more as a data store rather than a destination. This is enforced by Twitter’s willingness to encourage API usage etc. Twitter.com as a destination is likely to become even less important, it’s the tweets that matter. Therefore Twitter and Google could happily co-exist
• It’s Facebook v. Google for social dominance - Facebook and Google have their sights on the big prize: they both want to become social media dashboards or the destination for all our online social (and even non social) activities. Facebook took a big step with the acquisition of Friendfeed and Google has moved into this domain today. Facebook’s announcement this week about it’s new email platform also adds fuel to the fire. It’ll also be interesting to see how software like Tweetdeck and Seesmic responds to this move
• But what if I don’t use Gmail? – this could be a big issue for Buzz. I can understand why they wanted to integrate Buzz into the Gmail interface rather than create yet another destination, but what about those of us that don’t use Gmail regularly? It makes more sense for Facebook to bring an email client to its 400m users than for Google to bring Buzz to its 140m users
• It’s more proof of the power of social – most of us now appreciate social media is here to stay, but this brings further confirmation from the biggest online player. Brin was on stage at the Buzz announcement which I think is a telling sign that Google has big plans for this in the future
• What does this mean for Google Wave? - we all got very excited about Wave when it launched last year, but this has fizzled out to some extent. I just wonder if Google sees Buzz as some sort of link between Gmail and Wave. I still think Wave is potentially very interesting, but it is a big jump for most. Buzz is more palatable and could just possibly bring a middle solution

I started the day quite enthusiastic about Buzz but, having used it a few times I’ve become less convinced. I can see that it would be great for those that spend a lot of time in Gmail and use their Google address book etc., but that’s not me. Buzz is definitely one to watch, it has to be. But, I hope for Google’s sake, there is more to come…

Forrester’s Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff have today released a revised version of their Social Technographics research – an analysis of the different profiles of social technology users.

If you haven’t come across them before, Social Technographics allow you to identify how certain users or segments of users participate in social technologies. As Bernoff explains:

“Social Technographics was carefully constructed, not as a segmentation, but as a profile (that is, the groups overlap). That’s because the actual data told me that people participate in multiple behaviors, and not everyone at a higher level on the ladder actually does everything in the lower rungs.”

The main update that we see today, compared to three years ago, is the addition of the conversationalists ‘rung’. Bernoff explains that this is in direct response to the growth of micro-blogging and, specifically, Twitter.

“Conversationalists reflects two changes. First, it includes not just Twitter members, but also people who update social network status to converse (since this activity in Facebook is actually more prevalent than tweeting). And second, we include only people who update at least weekly, since anything less than this isn’t much of a conversation.”

The Forrester analysis shows that conversationalists are 56% female (this is more than any other profile) and 70% are aged 30 and up.

Social Technographics are a great way to really understand audiences and Forrester has a great free tool on its website that allows visitors to construct Technograhics for specific demographics and audiences (e.g. by country, age etc.). At the moment it seems as though the tool hasn’t been updated with the new data, but I’d expect this to come shortly.

Social networks have become a solid part of any marketer’s thinking over the last few years and more and more members of the general public are spending more and more of their online time there too.

I’ve spoken before about the ‘information overload’ problem that increasingly exists as more and more networks appear, with more and more users.

Analyst Charlene Li from Altimeter has put together a great little presentation that casts a crystal ball on future trends in social networking. It’s well worth a look:

Hat tip to Michael Litman

Over at the always interesting Econsultancy, Chris Lake has a great post looking at how Google is ranking real-time results in its search pages – i.e. what tweets does it feature and why.

I’ve been thinking a lot about real-time search recently so this post really stood out; this is a huge development and will grow in importance throughout 2010.

Chris references a post by David Talbot which quotes Google’s Amit Singhal, who says about real-time rankings:

“You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers. One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation. As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well”

Chris has put also together a comprehenisve list of possible ranking factors that Google might be using for real-time search results.

But I’ve got another question which I think is potentially very significant – what if Google started attributing reputation to sites linked in real-times social networks and using this to influence positions of normal search engine rankings?

What’s to say if your blog post is retweeted by a ton of people why it should not gain some sort of reputation increase despite not being ‘linked to’ by another website?

I don’t claim to be an SEO expert, but I think there are some really interesting potential developments here for those of us that work with social media and search engine marketing.

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Social media is a great tool for marketers, no question about it. But what about when things go wrong and the tables are turned?

I’ve argued before that in many ways, PRs are best placed to run social media operations and there are number of reasons why I think this is the case. One of the key reasons is that experienced public relations pros are adept at responding to situations – good and bad – and communicating messages quickly and effectively to a particular audience to inform, whilst taking strides to protect the reputation of the brand or business involved.

Last night, five Eurostar trains stopped working as they entered the Channel Tunnel, leaving the trains and passengers on board trapped. Many were trapped for hours in what must have been a scary and terrifying ordeal for them as well as their families and friends.

This is a nightmare situation for a company like Eurostar. And this is not the place to look at attributing blame. But, I do want to look at how the company approached one of those mainstays of traditional public relations: crisis communications.

Across the board, Eurostar seems to have fallen down on it’s duty to its customers, by failing to adequately transmit information.

And nowhere has this been more evident that on social media and, in particular, on Twitter. Mike Butcher at Techcrunch has covered the unfolding of this story in detail. But, essentially, there were no updates on either the @Little_Break or @Eurostar_Uk Twitter accounts as the crisis unfolded. In a twist to the story, it transpires the latter account wasn’t even an official Eurostar channel – it has now been suspended – and @eurostar is used by someone in Shanghai!

The @Little_Break account wasn’t updated until 11.30 today (Saturday) – a full 16 hours after the first incident happened! WTF!? If we have learned anything about social media, it is that it works best in real-time.

What does this situation teach us about the handling of social media when things go wrong:

• It doesn’t matter what you want the account to be used for – it looks as though the @Little_Break account was being used for some sort of social media marketing campaign. Which is fine. But the public don’t put brands into boxes like this. If you have a social media channel then the public will see this as your brand on Twitter. So expect them to get in touch with you as they see fit, and not necessarily in the way you would like
• Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring – it doesn’t matter if it is a Friday night before Christmas, the public will still use social media and will expect companies – if they are using the channel, and increasingly even if they are not – to be listening
• Social media is real-time – we all know this, so why did it take Eurostar 16 hours to update their Twitter account? There is no excuse, especially as real-time take centre stage with Google transmitting the whole story as it unfolds
• Social media shouldn’t be an afterthought in crisis comms – as all good PRs know, in an emergency, you need to get clear, transparent and helpful information out to people as quickly as possible. And that means social media too
• Advanced planning is crucial – when something like this happens, there isn’t time to start putting plans together, it needs to have been thought about in advance. It looks as though this didn’t happen. Having social media as part of your crisis communications action plan is vital
• When things go wrong, who’s in charge – with this confusion over ‘who is best placed to use social media’ within organisations, it is no surprise that when things go wrong, social media could fall through the cracks. Is it the PR, ’social media’, SEO, marketing or customer service team that should be in control, pushing the agenda to the fore?

Obviously this is a horrid situation for Eurostar and it is easy to sit and criticise from a distance. But the fact is that this has not been handled at all well and their reputation, their PR, has taken a serious knock.

UPDATE: It seems this is a topic that isn’t going to go away any time soon. Already there are some great posts from Dirk, Rachel, Mark and Neville on the subject. As Dirk says, expect this to be coming to a social media case study near you soon…

UPDATE: Eurostar CEO Richard Brown has released a video apology on the Little Breaks blog site – it’s a good effort and sounds pretty sincere.

UPDATE: I was very careful not to mention any agencies associated with Eurostar in the above post. At a time like this, decisions will be made at a senior level within the business. An agency will only be able to sit and advise to their best ability. If this is ignored, there isn’t much to be done. And it seems this is pretty much what happened. In a very honest post, Robin Grant from Wearesocial, a social media agency, has given a very open overview of things from their perspective. It’s worth a read as it perfectly highlights some of the organisational challenges I referred to above.

Facebook’s new privacy policy has been met with a fair degree of hostility, and rightly so. The changes are clearly designed to encourage users to open up more of their updates to the wider world.

So why the change?

Simple. Facebook is worried. It’s worried about the rise of Twitter and, in particular, it is worried about the impact that the recent addition of real-time results to Google searches.

As I’ve said already, the Google changes have the potential to have a big impact on the popularity of Twitter as Twitter updates are put front of mind for the general internet public in millions of searches.

This is a problem for Facebook, because by default, activity by their users is private and shielded from the search engines.

The dangers for Facebook

But the one thing that is worrying for Facebook is the thing that it’s users like and enjoy about the service. It’s the reason why so many of them prefer Facebook to Twitter, or at least use it in very different ways.

I use both services, but I wouldn’t share or reveal the sorts of things I reveal on Facebook on Twitter. I like that and it allows me to use the services in specific ways for certain audiences.

Facebook’s move potentially changes this and I wonder if it is in danger of diluting the key foundations of what it stands for and what it’s users want.

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I’ve already discussed what Google’s new real-time search means for PRs over on the Wildfire blog. But I make no excuse about covering the subject again here as I think it is such a major development.

I’ve been mulling over some other possible permutations that might be triggered by this move:

Putting Twitter firmly front of mind

This move could bring yet another surge in the popularity of Twitter. Think about it; Google deals with around 300 million searches every day and a big proportion of these will soon see real-time results (the majority of which seem to be Twitter at the moment) towards the top of the listings. This will really propel services like Twitter into the every day online world of a large proportion of the internet population.

Google encroaching on newspapers (again)

Traditionally, if something big happens, consumers flock to traditional news outlets (formerly TV and then the web) to get the low-down. This year, Twitter has started to take on the role of a source of breaking news. But Google’s move here gives consumers another choice and another way to bypass the breaking news service provided by traditional media.

What’s next? Social search

At the moment, the real-time results in Google are a bit messy. Search for something like Le Web and you end up with a very busy stream of content, most of which is fairly meaningless. But these are early days and I think the functionality will develop in two interesting ways. Firstly, Google will offer the ability to rank real-time results by ‘influence’ to try and reduce the amount of noise this way. The other option that I fully expect to see is the ability to view only real-time results from your ‘friends’ or social circle (e.g. Twitter followers or Facebook friends). This again will reduce the amount of noise and make results more relevant.

Reduced importance of SEO?

I’m not certain about this one, but the introduction of additional real estate on search pages, in some instances, further pushes traditional rankings down below the fold. SEO will survive, but in many ways, this reduces it’s influence. Ciaran and others have some interesting thoughts relating to this over at Econsultancy…

Yes, I know this has been all over the web in the last 24 hours, but I wanted to mention it here too as I think it’s a brilliant campaign:

If you haven’t come across it, IKEA in Sweden have launched a competition on Facebook. They set up an account for one of their senior employees and posted up some of the displays from their new Malmo store.

They then asked ‘friends’ to tag the furniture in the images, with the first person to tag an item winning it!

They’ve got over 700 friends on the account already, lots of positive (global) media interest and some good social media buzz.

So why it this such a clever campaign and why has it worked so well:

1. Simplicity – it’s so simple that you could tell anyone about it in a few sentences
2. Cheap – it’s hardly cost anything for IKEA to set it up and market it
3. Technology – it uses social tech tools in a new innovative way
4. Value – it gives something back to social media participants
5. Creative – it’s a wonderfully creative and innovative idea