I’m moderating a panel on privacy, security and democracy concerns surrounding the social web at the National Constitution Center in Old City, Philadelphia next Thursday.

You should come. More details here. It costs $10 for non-members.

Facebook pushes traffic and helps build an online community.

We’re over that. Joining Facebook and learning lessons from it is in the distant past. It’s time to have that next conversation.

I’m interested in moving to the next step, creating more compelling Facebook pages that keep people coming back, attract more eyeballs, develop brands, help create communication and, of course, help push eyeballs.

I’ve been moving through some conversations, trying to pull out the best lessons. I’m not behind anything compelling yet, but I’d love to do something fun with NEast Philly’s incredibly active Facebook page.

Some worthy reading below:

• Data lessons on journalists using Facebook
• So you want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop! –
• 8 Essential Apps for Your Brand’s Facebook Page –
• Is Your Target Audience On Twitter, Facebook, Or LinkedIn? — Because you should only focus energies where it makes sense. This has been a focus of a NEast Philly BarCamp presentation.
• 5 Easy Steps To A Great Facebook Fan Page — Biggest take aways: You have to vary the types of content and be willing to strike up debate yourself. That means effort, but it will grow awareness and use. That’s a big first step.
• How To Build A Customized Facebook Page For Your Business –
• Facebook pages wih static FBML application
• Wiki on FBML development Facebook static FBML problems and solutions
  
• How to customize Facebook fan page with Facebook static FBML application
• A Facebook Page is probably what you want, but compare them with Facebook groups and get more about that fight with Mashable here.
• Want an RSS feed of a Facebook group? There’s a Yahoo Pipes mock up for that.

I tend to watch films in move theaters when I think they’ll have a particularly significant impact, will be worth remembering years from now and, of course, when I’m lured in by the story.

The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin’s film that tells with some literary license of the meteoric first-year rise of Facebook, fit the bill.

Last week, I saw and was greatly entertained — call it a 9 out of 10, not perfect but sure close and worth the price of admission.

The story is compelling and it is grounded enough in fact to give it a weight of impact. While not as much as I suspect might be fair, the movie does a commendable job of creating complex leading characters, in which the antagonists don’t need to be villains, but are nearer to complexly motivated individuals with whom the audience can identify.

It even reminded me of the Wire in serving like almost a diary through which we look at, in historical terms, incredibly recent events.

But you know of the movie, and I have no interest in spoiling the plot for anyone who hasn’t seen it — or read the book on which it is based, so I wanted to share some of the more interesting take aways I’ve had in reading discussion around the movie.

First, below, watch that killer trailer:

[Note, while nothing I share here really serve as spoilers to the plot in any real way, all outgoing links do lead to stories that do.]

The film spawned a lengthy Vanity Fair profile of Sean Parker, the mercurial and outrageous Napster co-founder and early Facebook influencer, who was played memorably by Justin Timberlake. The profile had some wonderful spots worth sharing:

Matt Cohler, who joined Thefacebook shortly after Parker, is awed when he thinks about that pivotal e-mail. “Napster and Facebook are two of the most significant companies in the history of the Internet,” he says, “and in both cases Parker spotted them earlier than anyone—other than the people who invented them.”

…

Besides serving as Zuckerberg’s comrade-in-arms, Parker also worked to bolster his partner’s position, so what happened to Parker at Plaxo could never be repeated at Thefacebook. In the financing that Parker negotiated with Thiel, as well as a much larger deal signed seven months later with the Accel Partners venture-capital firm, Parker was able to negotiate for Zuckerberg something almost unheard of in a venture-funded start-up: absolute control for the entrepreneur. Because of that, Zuckerberg, to this day, allocates three of Facebook’s five board seats (including his own). Without that control, Facebook would almost certainly have been sold to either Yahoo or Microsoft, whose C.E.O., Steve Ballmer, offered $15 billion for it in the fall of 2007—only to be met with a blank stare from the then 23-year-old Zuckerberg.

…

Says Moskovitz, known for his dry humor, “Sean probably deserves less credit for turning Facebook into what it is than he thinks he does, but also more credit than anybody else thinks he does.” [Source]

In Roger Ebert’s lauding review, he offers this:

It’s said there are child prodigies in only three areas: math, music and chess. These non-verbal areas require little maturity or knowledge of human nature, but a quick ability to perceive patterns, logical rules and linkages. I suspect computer programming may be a fourth area.

…

“The Social Network” is a great film not because of its dazzling style or visual cleverness, but because it is splendidly well-made. Despite the baffling complications of computer programming, web strategy and big finance, Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay makes it all clear, and we don’t follow the story so much as get dragged along behind it. I saw it with an audience that seemed wrapped up in an unusual way: It was very, very interested. [Source]

Also worth reading is writer Aaron Sorkin defending the portrayal of women in the film, Mashable’s short piece trying to get Zuckerberg’s take on the film and, hell, why not Sorkin’s interview with my friends at Geekadelphia, in addition to one with Jesse Eisenberg who played Zuckerberg.

The battle that is often reported to have happened around the founding and launching of Facebook — as prominently displayed in the film — is perhaps inevitable. There was too much money and potential involved.

But it still left me wrestling with the value of launching a venture with multiple people in equal partnership. Decisions may be slowed and, as growth continues, that, say, three-person team may be untenable, but in an organization’s early growth, having the checks and balances in direction can be powerful.

It’s a movie worth seeing for all of these reasons and, probably, more.

Tracking our Twitter followers from January 2010 to April. Back on My Feet launched a campaign on the Web in January.

Last month marked three months since I started at nonprofit Back on My Feet and launched a concerted effort to share more member stories and help develop a better, broader online relationship with our volunteers, members and supporters.

The first step in that process was to reawaken our social media accounts — the best platforms to create Web communities and ones buttressed by an organizational blog that I hope to more formally announce soon. Because our organization is all about accountability, we wanted to see how we’ve done.

I thought some lessons or benchmarks might be able to be garnered for others interested in social media use by nonprofits or other organizations, so I’ll share our progress below.

It’s important to note that no one was explicitly in my role before I joined, though someone was responsible for social media use. Still, there wasn’t a lot of experience or perhaps even interest in their uses, so, though all of these accounts had started, there is something of a starting from the beginning feeling.

As I mentioned in last week’s post announcing my seeking an intern, social media is really only one of four big roles I’m filling, so I can’t give it as much attention as I’d like, but it’s certainly a priority.

Take what lessons from these figures that you can.

Twitter — Though our organization is developing chapters rapidly, for now, I’ll be maintaining a single Twitter account.

• On Jan. 18, our Twitter account had 335 followers, 99 tweets and was listed 30 times.
• Today, our Twitter account has 770 followers (and we’re following fewer than 150 accounts), 564 tweets and is listed 54 times.

Facebook — I’m using a Back on My Feet organizational Facebook account to then push content to chapter-specific Facebook pages (though we’ll have to transition older groups to pages) and am having a single staff member in each chapter offer more daily updates to those chapter pages.

• On Jan. 18, our Facebook account had 727 friends and was only sporadically active
• Today, our Facebook account has 1,087 friends and updates between three and seven times a day with member updates, running quotes and news and links to our blog.
• On Jan. 18, our Philly chapter Facebook group had 711 fans; our Baltimore chapter group had 311 fans and our DC chapter group had 75 fans.
• Today, our Philly chapter group has 953 members; our Baltimore chapter group has 397 fans and our DC chapter group has 418 fans. All update between one and three times a day.
• On Jan. 18, we didn’t have Facebook pages for our May 24-launching Boston chapter, our fall-launching Chicago chapter or our signature event, the Stroehmann Back on My Feet 20in24.
• Today, the Boston page has 157 fans, the Chicago page has 32 fans and the 20in24 page has 161 fans.

Photos and Video — Youtube is proving nothing more than a repository for our events and member videos. Before I arrived, we had purchased a premium Picasa account, so at the moment all chapters are feeding into a single account for hosting purposes. I may need to transition these to chapter-specific accounts, though I haven’t the foggiest how to best do that.

• On Jan. 18, our Youtube account had 10 videos and 12 subscribers
• Today, our Youtube account has 32 videos and 18 subscribers
• On Jan. 18, our Picasa account was home to 91 photo albums from two chapters
• Today, our Picasa account is home to 130 photo albums four chapters (including Boston happy hour snaps)

What do you think?

When I first came on to Back on My Feet at the start of 2010, our Facebook presence was off.

We had a Facebook account — officially named “Backon MyFeet” to fit naming restrictions and even then against the social network’s terms of use allowing accounts for only individuals.

The vanity URL facebook.com/backonmyfeet, of course, had already been reserved for that account. What’s more, we had three Facebook groups for our two chapters (Philadelphia and Baltimore) and one for Washington D.C., where we were expanding to that March. All three had different style — i.e. a hyphen between organization and chapter name — and different utility.

We needed a change.

(We’re mostly assuming here that a Facebook Page is probably what you want, but compare them with Facebook groups and get more about that fight with Mashable here.)

While other work was warranted, I’ve found that one of my first objectives is a task that lots of groups, organizations and people have had to complete: transitioning Facebook groups to Facebook pages.

To transition fully from groups to pages:

• First, I made the opposing Facebook pages live and encouraged people to go.
• I sent one Facebook message out to group members encouraging them to transition.
• For a month, I’d leave the top message on those groups linking to the new corresponding Facebook page.
• I sent one final message out to group members encouraging them to transition, with a link.
• I made the groups private so no new members could find or join.
• I finally deleted the groups, though still the numbers in each of the groups were larger than their corresponding Facebook pages. Simply, having both for too long was confusing.

At the time of deletion:

• our “Back on My Feet Philly” group had 1,000 members
• our “Back on My Feet – Baltimore” group had 426 members
• our “Back on My Feet – Washington, DC” group had 213 members
• our “Back on My Feet 20in24 Challenge presented by Nike” group had 179 members

Goals that still need to be met:

• A focus needs to be made in transitioning out of the Facebook account, which still gets a flow of friend requests, messages and activity.
• We ought to move on tighter vanity URLs for all of our Facebook pages, an obvious first step that I stalled on because some were used by the groups.
• We never settled a discussion on how much flexibility and individuality we would give each chapter for branding and voice.
• Because of responsibilities, I failed to maintain as much conversation on Facebook as I’d like to see.

The funny thing is that with all their growth, Twitter and Facebook haven’t made a damn dime yet — despite all the hemming and hawing about their influence, most recently in the Iranian post-election dramatics.

With their incredible traffic, there was a time when advertising would seem like a natural choice. Even though they are considered among the most powerful Web products, they seem to be missing monetization possibilities, if not outright ignoring them.  Twitter is trying “innovative” revenue streams like, maybe, TV shows.

Could it be part of the fear that advertising prices could be in trouble?

Because, of course, Facebook should be any marketer’s dream, as the most dramatic example of the power the Web has for data collection.

Recently, Facebook was valued at $10 billion, setting Twitter at $1.7 billion, but, without any real method of making money installed, the Wall Street Journal has questioned the valuation of the company to be, as Business Week reported, more than twice the market cap of the New York Times.

But, it seems it won’t be advertising, or at least that won’t be a primary strategy — something with which I certainly agree. So as they toy with new monetizations, I figure one of two things will happen, an enormous Web 2.0 bubble will burst or these two social networks will help lead us into a post-advertising focused world.

Am I missing anything? Does that make sense? Which is it going to be — will a $10 billion Facebook valuation seem laughable years from now or will this be a point in history where traditional display advertising will only be a secondary revenue stream?

Cartoon from Ohio.com.

Update: We lost.

Grant money in journalism is flowing freely in a tightened economy and a historic juncture in print media.

Seems like an opportunity.

So, my two partners and I, who founded Technically Philly, applied for the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, a $10,000 grant to support new ideas in news. See our submission here.

We thought bringing together two niches — the geography of Philadelphia and the industry of technology and innovation — and diversifying revenue streams — going beyond advertising — was a new enough model that it might catch the eye of a judge or two.

We walked into a meaningful business, social and startup community in a major metro region’s creative economies and began reporting, relying on our interests in social media, community reporting and professional and ethical journalism.

We recently introduced advertising — a small first step in monetization –and feel that a grant for $10,000 could afford the three of us an opportunity to work full time for perhaps as much two months or more. Considering how pleased we are with our traffic growth and the response from the community, we’re thrilled by even the chance at the opportunity to give full time to a project none of us have been able to offer even part time thus far.

Unfortunately and entirely unsurprisingly, there is some stiff competition from the nearly 100 submissions that were entered.  Below I share some of the more interesting submissions I saw and my thoughts on our viability.

Big names

• CNN/Facebook Inauguration Collaboration — CNN.com collaborated with Facebook to create an interactive online experience where viewers shared their experiences of Obama’s inauguration from 8 a.m. till the last inaugural ball. Four anchors provided coverage from the Capitol grounds in DC, while a special report was given from the CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta. Online users could update their Facebook status directly from CNN.com Live video player in real time. On Facebook friends could click the CNN tag and join the live chat on CNN.com. There were 26 million live video streams on CNN.com, 1.3 million concurrent streams, 2 million Facebook status updates, and 1.2 million RSVPs on Facebook before the event. I was confused by another Facebook-related submission that already took place — where is the money meant to go?
• This American Life Live! — This American Life took advantage of HD satellite technology to broadcast a live performance to movie theaters across the U.S. More than 50,000 people gathered in their communities to watch this broadcast. This American Life utilized podcasts and social networking sites to promote the event and survey fans before the event to get feedback. An encore presentation was held due to massive interest.
• Ledger Live — Breaking down the barriers between the newsroom and the community, “LedgerLive” committed to video in the summer of 2008. Using different types of social media, the Star-Ledger’s webcast showcases the newspapers videos, brings viewers into the newsroom, and includes them in some content decisions. Columnists and reporters are guests on the show.
• The AP Economic Stress Index — It combines unemployment, foreclosure, and bankruptcy data down to the county level to create an index of the overall health of the economy. The data are displayed on a clickable map and the data can be mashed up in several ways to dig deep into the numbers.

Social Media

• Tagging Names in Facebook — This facebook application would allow users to tag names in news stories. As tagging photos on Facebook is so popular, the hope is that tagging names will bring a new audience to news articles. This application was developed by ASU engineering and journalism students who are very familiar with facebook. This is set to premiere during varsity sports season, when athletes, coaches and parents are likely to tag.
• Twitter integration — The Des Moines Register used Twitter to help report on Iowa’s gay marriage decision by creating a hashtag, aggregating Twitter users’ tweets using that hashtag on their Web site, and getting live tweets from reporters after the decision. Their hashtag was listed on Twitter’s top trending topics, and they are planning more Twitter reporting projects for the future.
• Video Your Vote — “Video Your Vote” records voters experiences of the 2008 election by providing over 1,000 flip video cameras, using voters cameras, and teaching citizens laws regarding recording and voting. 2,500 videos were received from 50 states and several foreign countries to depict the election moments from different points of view. PBS, the NewsHour and YouTube collaborated to create this project in efforts to share the realities from the day, which gained 300,000 views on YouTube.
• What Is Barack Doing? – What Is Barack Doing? aggregates presidential news from many different sources, from the major networks to social networks. It uses good Web design practices to increase usability and accessibility.

Philadelphia

• Street Level Philadelphia — After working as a photographer for 10 years for the Philadelphia Daily News, Jim MacMillan taught himself how to shoot, edit, and produce video for the Web and created 1-2 minute video reports. He reported, filmed, voiced, edited, and produced the videos alone, and tried to tell the stories of Philadelphia on a personal level.
• PlanPhilly — An organization that reports on and seeks to bring transparency and openness to Philadelphia’s design, development, and planning as an experiment in project-based journalism. It has developed partnerships with some of Philadelphia’s mainstream media outlets, and seen their unique visitors double in the last year.
• Philadelphia Neighborhoods from the Temple University School of Communications Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab class — Temple U. project covered 20 predominantly minority Philadelphia neighborhoods by sending student reporters to do multimedia reporting. The program also trained community residents to use programs like Final Cut Pro, Flash, videography and blogging so residents could tell their own stories. One story about a racist police officer generated enough mainstream media coverage that the officer was fired. (A story written by Shannon McDonald certainly seems to have put the program’s recent incarnation on the map)

Others

• AmherstWire.com — A student-run online magazine, a project of the Journalism program at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The site offers a wide array of content, including various beats localizing current events, a video blog that tracks the pulse of campus opinion, and the Global Beat Blog written by students studying abroad. The main section of the site includes periodic, in-depth feature packages that tackle major issues from multiple angles using non-traditional storytelling techniques. Over the course of three semesters, a small group of full-time students were able to produce a high quality, professional news Web site that attracted a worldwide audience with a budget of well under $1,000.
• American Indian online journalism — To interact with readers and to attract a younger audience, The Circle (the sole source of print journalism for the American Indian community in the upper Midwest) has created an enhanced web edition. This allows readers with limited access to transportation to interact with other communities and lets users share their stories on the site. As of June 1, 2009, there are over 350 registered, and 7 bloggers getting ready to go online with Native-specific topics.
• Newspaper Tycoon from Eastern Illinois University — An idea for a video game wherein the gamer is a newspaper mogul responsible for all the aspects (both business and journalistic) of the newspapers he/she controls. The game has not yet been developed so it does not exist. At this point it is just an idea.

I’m personally unsure of proposals dominated by only-citizen contributors — concerns about their stability and where advertising money is going. There are some innovative ideas, but I am happy with our submission. If not the best, I feel like ours is a model that could offer important coverage for other communities and, as I wrote above, I think that $10,000 grand prize could have a far greater impact on our project than many of the others. I also am proud that we are moving ahead with our own monetization, so that money will only help us surge forward toward a truly sustainable product.

Do we have any chance? What are some other submissions you like?

I’ve written about social media here more than I’d probably like to admit.

These social networking sites are transforming the way we receive our news and information. There’s no secret there.

But they keep popping up, so much so that I’ve stopped joining them, because I never know when enough’s enough.

Newspapers are still figuring out the power of the conversation, and some say that media in general is covering social media more than they are using them. It just seems no one seems interested in deciding what is worth anyone’s time.

The real lesson is that social networking and other media are tools, plainly and simply. Not all are good for everyone.

Facebook — The major player is aiming at being a yellow pages for the future. Anyone you need to find will be there. It’s a shame, then, that I’ve seen increasing levels of spam since I joined last summer, and even more since I credited the network’s value months later.

Some good:

• People still spend a lot of time on that site and will follow links. They will come to your site with the help of link-posting and an RSS feed.
• By some standards, you don’t exist as a young person — read: potential employee — unless you’re on the social networking behemoth.
• It can be a hub for your other online presences
• It’s so popular that, apparently, with the right people, it can make you a happier person.

Some bad:

• Man, people hated the new Facebook version when it came out, and it seems it continues to be reviled. Put that with the pushback over privacy rights, and you can see a real path toward the site’s demise.

Twitter — I knew Twitter long before I joined it, but a friend warned me it was a time suck. And it is. What’s worse is that it’s become awfully fashionable, as some have complained. That would be fine if it wasn’t bloating the conception of who should be there and what purpose it serves. I did join and, while I have a somewhat small following of 430 or so, I have found by regularly sharing good links, I can bring small pockets of traffic.

Here are some positives:

• Create a following of people interested in similar things, who can support your writing, products or initiatives
• By following the habits of successful Twitter users, you can pick up standard best practices online, like sharing links, interaction and followup.
• Some say, those followers can lead to employment or other freelance work or assignments.
• Because Twitter is so popular right now, there are a lot of hacks and alternatives coming out that can help you learn Web possibilities and suggestions and tools to make it easier, so you can better understand what’s out there for the future.

Negatives

• It’s searchability is still janky
• It still goes down on functionality when it’s busy
• It does take more time than other social networking tool because a simple RSS feed is missing the point.

LinkedIn — It aims to be the professional equivalent of Facebook.

Some good:

• This was my first foray into social networking because it felt the least dirty and self-involved.
• It is meant to be nothing but professional, resume and little else.
• It doesn’t require a lot of effort, and it can be a Web presence left on auto-pilot. I do get some clicks from plopping this WordPress site on my LinkedIn page, as you can do, too.

Some bad:

• Nowhere near as powerful or versatile as Facebook
• Can’t compare with the number of links Facebook or Twitter bring

Industry-specific social-network — I just wrote about an event-planners ISSN for Technically Philly, and there seems to be the most growth in this arena. I am a member of Wired Journalistss. I also joined Uwire while still a college journalist.

Here are some positives:

• Job postings and opportunities worth your time. I got some blogging work from a post on WJ.
• Smaller communities allow you to actually e-meet new people

Negative

• Out of your work flow mean you might never ever return after setting it up.

Flickr — Not too long ago, I reawakened my Flickr account, putting photos I was proud of there, and hosting other images elsewhere, whether it be on Slide or Picasa, depending the purpose.

• Show some photography skill by being where many serious photographers are — although there are many alternatives.
• Useful editing and hosting tools there

Bad:

• Free service is, of course, limited — active photographers will likely find the premium services worth the cost.
• Not as prone for others finding you, so it’s hard to develop brand or expect links or traffic from it.

YouTube –I took a healthy look at YouTube’s value as a social media tool, beyond just watching illegal videos and listening to music.

Good:

• It can bring traffic.
• People will likely find your videos.
• And, hey newspapers around the world are on YouTube.

Bad:

• There are better video hosters, like Viddler and Vimeo.
• It doesn’t seem terribly professional. I think newspapers need to see YouTube as a means to promote their video, but I understand wanting to control their product outside of the site.
• YouTube may be unstable, even with Google ownership

MySpace — I say give it up. Sorry. I took the trouble to joining MySpace last summer, and I even tricked it out a bit for journalists, but I won’t recommend anyone else join. In fact, I trashed it in an entire post dedicated to its shortcomings.

The good:

• There are still audiences there.
• It can be incredibly passive after a little time invested to set it up.
• It can be something else that clogs up a Google search for your name, so you can claim another spot.

The Ugly:

• It is MySpace
• Can’t post traditional RSS feed
• On the decline

There is value in being on all of these and everywhere else, too, if only just to more aggressively control a Web search of your name. College Media Innovation showed some other examples of brand-development through major publication, but, some choices are worth being made.

• The Winner: With the right attitude, use and effort, right now Twitter brings the best brand development, links and traffic, though your audience matters.
• The Obvious: Joining Facebook may hurt your pride, but real traffic can come from it, if you cast a wide enough net.
• The Loser: MySpace doesn’t give any real quantifiable traffic or brand devlopment you’d want. I guess unless you’re a music artist, there isn’t anything there for you.

I was interested to cover the convergence of social networks and fine arts institutions in a story running in today’s Inquirer. While it focuses on Philadelphia examples, there are broader implications, I think.

On Valentine’s Day, Pennsylvania Ballet staff members stood in the Merriam Theater’s lobby handing out coasters that bore what might have seemed a strange suggestion coming from an arts organization: Go to our YouTube channel.

What the mostly graying matinee audience made of the invitation to an online video-sharing site is unclear. What is clear is that the Pennsylvania Ballet is not alone in lusting after online social-network users.

The Kimmel Center has a Flickr photostream. The Curtis Institute of Music is on LinkedIn. The Arden Theatre and the Franklin Institute use Twitter. The Philadelphia Orchestra has a MySpace page. Read the rest here.

Go read the story and comment, Digg it here, and then come back and see the extras that didn’t make it into print.

Shawn Stone, the Pennsylvania Ballet’s market director

• “We are always trying to build newer audiences, particular the 20 to 30-somethings.”
• “To reach this younger audience there are several new media tools. YouTube is the first piece. We wanted to launch the channel to heighten our availability, promote the artists, show behind-the-scenes ways to see the artists in rehearsal, to see what the dancers do.”
• “We want to create a dialogue, get them to come to a show and really be turned out by it.”
• “The Web has changed everyone’s lives. It’s working it’s way up. I’m a bit older than this group, but I have a Facebook page. Technology is expanding.”
• “Our audiences have a lot to say, so we want to give them more opportunities to voice their opinions and ways to spread the word.”
• “We see this viral marketing and keeping this dialogue going a really great way to build our audiences. We have to listen to what they have to say.”
• “We want to find new ways to show how they can become more aware of the dancers and get to know them. It’s much more of a personal relationship.”
• In the past, you came to see the show and you went home. You have an experience now. You have a community and can make friends interested.
• “It’s not direct mail and not newspapers but a direct way to build a network of people who are actually passionate about what you do.”

Janine Zappone, a PR associate at the Arden Theatre

• Zappone says her hours have changed too. “All I need are the log-ons, so on a Tuesday night, I can pop in, write some jazzy copy and do some real targeted marketing in a way you just couldn’t do in the past.”
• “We’re in the middle of the subscriber survey. While theater is known as primarily used by the white-haired generation, who are very loyal subscribers, it doesn’t mean we can’t reach them with social media, too. A number of our subscribers who are 65 or older point to Facebook and say they use it.”
• “When we ask for something, they’re really enjoyed writing their thoughts, reading the musings at the Arden, but not necessarily the response.”

J. Edward Cambron, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s vice president for marketing

• After years of keeping appearances, Cambron said, the orchestra has focused during the last 18 months on “aggressively targeting college students in a college town.”
• “Social media is a very big part of that marketing strategy.”
• “It’s another tool. Not a cost cut. When we started, I remember when we started selling tickets online, but we still needed a box office. It’s like that. Eventually it could potentially cut costs through less advertising. But for now, it’s just another tool, a targeted. tool.
• Increasingly, Cambron is directing younger members of his staff to be dedicated to social media.
• “You can’t control how they talk about you, what is said in this dialogue you’ve created.”

I wrote of the technological ramifications for TechnicallyPhilly.com.

I got a comment from “Mike” on a post early last month.

Interesting post. Curious on why you say “MySpace is lame.” I read recently that MySpace is among the most-visited Web sites with over 1b visits per month…

Of course he is right. MySpace remains one of the most popular Web sites in the world. I have a MySpace profile page, too. So why do  I still contend it’s one of the lamest sites on the Internet?

I joined MySpace in September and developed a sense of how a journalist could best leverage the Web service.

But, rather than develop its uses, my time with MySpace has been a tutorial in the shortcomings and destined failure of the first significant social networking Web site on the Internet.

Design

• Ugly-looking Pages — Many big-time bands and artists have sleekly designed pages developed by someone whose job it is to develop MySpace. The rest are ugly, cluttered and tacky.
• Outdated Options — There is no shortage of emoticons, lame gif animations, and crowded texts. Simple MySpace design options are loud, careless and more reminiscent of first-time design in the 1990s than the remarkable progress common Web design has found since.
• HTML Freedom — MySpace has managed to give everyone enough room to hang the look of their pages. There is a remarkable gap between what knowledgeable folks can design – like those who develop professional-musician pages – and the average user. Default options for those not wanting to code HTML are hampered.
• Autoplay music — While users now have the option to require visitors to choose to start music planted on one’s MySpace profile page, this social network device may never recover from the lunacy of auto-play music. Like ESPN.com has been, MySpace is laughed at for auto-play features for years. It won’t stop.
• Overwhelming advertising — Their is a gentle balance between content and advertising. MySpace is a wonderful example of how to break the trust of average users. They must be making money now, but the advertising excess will be one lesson in how their business model over-monetized.
• Angelfire Reincarnate — Remember all those old Web site-hosting sites like Angelfire – you know, back in Web 0.5? MySpace can’t say it offers much more than audio hosting and the option of posting video. …Yeah, cool.

Functionality

• Speed — MySpace is notoriously slow. These are for reasons beyond this discussion.
• Downtime — In my anectdotal experience, I find MySpace temporarily inoperable – “Sorry, we’ve encountered an error. Please try again later” – far more than Facebook and even Twitter, though I use it far less than the other two.
• Laughable Interface — The options for editing my profile are redundant and disorganization. There are at least 100 too many navigation options. It’s simply janky. I have made two changes to my profile since joining  half a year ago, and those were only two Youtube videos I posted. I’m done for good.
• Privacy options — Screwy privacy options keep me from seeing some profile’s until I am their “friend,” which keeps me from trying to recall who the individual is who is requesting a connection. This is one of several seemingly senseless
• Spam — MySpace is ridden with spam. Of its profiles, I can’t imagine one half of them aren’t porn stars. One reason I turned off all notifications and ignore my account.

Culture

• “Who are you?” – While Facebook is often rightly saddled with this criticism, there is less unspoken restriction on MySpace to become friends with relative strangers than on Facebook. While LinkedIn has branded itself a professional networking tool online, Facebook has tried to fill the personal realm. Thus, there should be some social element of a relationship to become Facebook friends. I have found this mostly to be true in my months on Facebook. I haven’t on MySpace. There isn’t that same philosophy, so, naturally it gets weird. The professional and quasi-personal come together in a frightening way.
• Celebrity “Friends” – Unlike Facebook, MySpace never made a designation between friendship and fandom. Facebook smartly has “Friends,” “Fans” and Group Pages. MySpace doesn’t, so most of my “friends” could be generic profiles of celebrities and music groups. This gives it a childish fantasy feel.
• Spam — Yeah, spam is so serious it deserves a second mention. Messages from adult Web sites and people from the fringe find you in a way and with a speed not seen on any other social networking device. It’s part of having a MySpace page. A sure way to attract 15-year-old boys and assure your failure.
• Dying Audience — What the Price is Right is for the elderly and 20-somethings, MySpace is for middle-aged folks and children: a home for disparate communities. Excuse
• Connotation — While Facebook continues to build inroads into mainstream culture, I can’t help but think MySpace is doing the opposite. MySpace continues to seem and feel dirty, at least to me. Because of its strange audience, janky use, over-monetization and more, something or someone has to lead me back to the site and even then I give it a second-thought. While remaining communities keep it afloat, these reservations are clearly signs of the future unless MySpace does something about it.

Its Future

• When it comes down to it, the main reason whyMySpace sucks is that there are many other sites which do the same things it does but much better. Increasingly Last.Fm is gaining the reputation as a place to find new music. Facebook is growing as a personal social network and LinkedIn professionally. There are dozens of photo sites to share your pictures and WordPress, Blogger and others are making personal sites cool and attactive again. What is MySpace’s role there?

It’s over. For those of you who point to MySpace’s popularity, please understand. It’s on the way out. It has been that way since about 2005. This past summer Facebook eclipsed MySpace in monthly worldwide unique visitors. MySpace still looms in U.S. totals, but, for the above reasons, no one sensibly argues that will last much longer – unless a major game-changer comes and comes quickly.

Source: Tech Crunch

So what will remain? MySpace is likely kept alive by music artists. Because bands can have an online home at a well-known site that will host at least five songs, some engine remains.

I don’t know if a wave of people will erase their profiles or they will remain, another step in serious online relationships. For journalists, a simple MySpace page will be another way to clog Web searches of their name and keep a broad, if passive online presence.

There is a culture of MySpace users who almost take pride in how many other online communities are dismissing the old guard.

Think of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory – the argument that the Internet will create an endless stream of smaller, niche markets for everything from media to books and magazines to toys and more. MySpace, one might say, was the mainstream hit. Anderson might say that MySpace will surely survive, though perhaps as a smaller community of these devoted users.

Regardless, we can be sure that we have seen the height of MySpace. It is lame, my friends, and, possibilities aside, its shortcomings will sound its path toward irrelevance.

Graph from Tech Crunch.