A Regular Roundup of Social Media Musings

In our inaugural aggregation of social media happenings we look at Facebook Places, the Facebook privacy debate and social network gaming.

Location. Location. Low cost of entry.

You are probably already familiar with location-based social networking. Just recently, Facebook took the concept mainstream with the launch of Places. Now, 500 million Facebook users can broadcast their location to their friends. How is this different from FourSquare? The 500 million part. Facebook’s existing network of users represent a lowered hurtle for participation in location-centric social media endeavors  and a massive audience now just a check-in away.

Which leads us to Facebook’s privacy concerns… 

You’ll be my friend and you’ll like it

Facebook’s biggest challenge as of late has not been from a competing network, but from the privacy concerns of its users. With the unblockable Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg frolicking freely about the 500 million online HQs, along with the latest gripes around the release of Facebook Places ( friends can “check-in” other friends, broadcasting their location to the world) and more than six years worth of privacy missteps... what’s the result? Individuals, your customers, expressing information accessibility concerns – especially when doing business under the News Feed header.

Speaking of unwanted updates….

It’s more than a game.

56 million Americans can’t be wrong. Elvis is alive (probably on a UFO somewhere) and social network gaming is an immersive medium worthy of a savvy marketer’s attention. People are tending to their farms and building their criminal empires.  According to the following research, these folks aren’t the 13-year-old, kind-of-geeky kid staring at a computer screen for hours on end:

• The average social gamer is 43-years-old
• Players are nearly split evenly male/female (45/55%)
• Did I mention 56 million users? That’s 20 % of the US population.

Social network gaming will not usher in the downfall of tradeshows and public relations (you can quote me on that). It may not even represent an efficient tactic to reach your target demographic. But the highly engaging phenomenon’s proliferation makes it relevant in the lives of many people, some of them your customers, and one worth exploring further.