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Even your Mom is on Facebook.

Everyone and their Mom is on Facebook.  Literally.  I know that my Mom certainly is.  The point is Facebook is growing faster than MySpace and soon all 6,883,817,696 of us will be SuperPoking each other (let’s hope not).  You get the point.

That viral growth of Facebook is what every company would want.  But it seem that Zuckerberg’s platform is quite expensive to operate, and that attempts at deriving value from that huge (and growing) user base haven’t realized the immense potential of such a intricate ecosystem.  So what’s a Web 2.0 darling to do?

You’ve heard of the term “Freemium” right?  It is “a business model which works by offering basic services for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features.”  Facebook is currently free, so who would pay for its use?  Not me.

Then who will pay to use Facebook?  Businesses.  This is not a new idea.  Most of the product offerings from 37signals offer a basic plan that would only be useful to individuals, charging a recurring fee for more advanced features that businesses can leverage.

Why would businesses pay?  Because:  Businesses cannot afford to abstain from social media participation.  Witness this snippet from ReadWriteWeb article:

“For any company that thought social media was a passing fad not worthy of their time, the numbers coming out of a recent study published by Opinion Research Corporation for Cone should come as a wake-up call. According to that study, 85% of Americans using social media think companies should have an active presence in the social media environment. What’s even more interesting is that those users actually want the companies to interact with them while there.”

Dear businesses, are you getting the message?  Dive into social media:  Consumers want you there!

Does your business belong here?

What does this mean and how would businesses benefit?  In channels like Facebook and Twitter, countless conversations are constantly taking place.  Some of these conversations might involve a product that your company provides.  Why would you not want to be a part of this conversation?  There are some great companies that have already joined the conversation on Twitter, but the same cannot be said for Facebook.  I’d argue that this deficiency is due to a lack of business tools provided by Facebook.

So here’s my proposal:  Charge businesses for premium Facebook profiles.  Allow an unlimited number of “friends”, or perhaps charge based on “friend cap” that would be in accordance with the company’s desired reach (a Mom and Pop taco stand in San Diego doesn’t need to reach consumers the same way Pepsi does).  Facebook should then provide tools to make their presence valuable.  Examples include surveys/voting (read:  new ad campaign testing?), games (read:  engagement widgets), conversations (read:  user feedback and message dissemination), sharing of virtual products, and whatever else might evolve from there.

Some might argue that Facebook is for friends and family only, and that brands have no place in such a space.  To negate that argument, just remember that we are not talking about MySpace and its associated intrusiveness:  You and a business will only have a conversation if it is mutually-consented.  And that is the beauty of the opt-in nature of social media.

What do you think?  Would such a model work for Facebook?  If you have a business, would you use something like the tools outlined in this post?

As a dessert, here is another quality production from Common Craft:

The benevolent Guru.

With the exciting democratization of media, anyone who wants it has a pulpit from which to critique, analyze, rant, and promote.  This is a beautiful thing, because the cream does tend to float to the top.  Numerous individuals producing quality content have gained rightful recognition for the value they provide.  But this media access tide has lifted all boats, greatly increasing the noise surrounding valuable signals.  And there is one member of this new media community that lurks in the dark corners of every channel, hanging out with retired infomercial hosts and sleight-of-hang magicians.

I refer to “gurus“; not in the personal religious teacher sense of the word, but in the “recognized leader in a field” sense.  You would think field leaders would be well-known, widely recognized, and a rare occurrence indeed.  But search Google or twitter and lo and behold:  gurus seem to be a dime a dozen.  How could this be?  How could so many experts exist in every field imaginable?  My guess (as well as yours, I hope) is that many of these “leaders” are trying to misrepresent themselves as “leaders” in the hope of it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Maybe they’ve watched “The Secret” too many times.  Who knows…

Trust me: I'm a Guru.

Anyway, this post had to be written as a kind of rant.  I love twitter, and it is always interesting to see what type of people you get as followers.  Maybe someone retweeted me, or found one of my tweets through twitter search, or perhaps I am the subject of a marketer trying to gain as many followers as possible:  It happens.  It is this latter class of twitter users that tend to be self-identified as gurus.  Now, I don’t blame these people for trying to hustle (right @garyvee?).  However, there is a right way and wrong way to hustle.  For all of the WineLibrary TV and Gary Vaynerchuk fans out there, you know that Gary knows wine and is passionate about sharing his analysis and insights on the topic.  Maybe you consider him a “guru”, or maybe you reserve that title for someone like Robert Parker.  Either way, he brings real value (through quality content) to the wine world.  He has become a prominent figure because of his quality content, plain and simple; not the other way around.  Had Gary started out claiming to be a “wine guru” without the quality content to back it up, he would be written off by level-headed people as irrelevant.  Instead, he has built a reputation on a solid foundation, just as one would construct any physical building.  Conversely, most “guru”-types try to build a skyscraper without any planning or foundation.

So how do you know if you’ve encountered a guru?  Here are a few indicators:

• When someone tells you that they are a guru.  As an example, here is one twitter user’s profile description:  “Marketing guru turned social media expert”.  Really?!?
• When you are offered executive level income within 30 days with little to no effort.  Example:  http://www.top-biz-reviews.com/
• When you come across an ebook or “program” that will help you become a guru too (making load of money [using new technology] in the process).
• When you get an unsolicited offer to help you become successful, just like he/she did.

So, I am alone in my sentiment towards these “experts”?  Definitely not.  Here is a funny tweet from @onehipmama:  “Whatever would I do without the “Social Media Gurus” lecturing on how to use Twitter so that I can properly Retweet them?(Eye roll, yawn).”

So why dedicate a blog post to this topic?  Well, simply to express what many others probably feel.  I am sure many of the gurus are great people, I am just not a fan of misrepresentation for exploitation (something that is easier than ever to do).

My advice to this insidious crew:  Create quality content, and the reputation will follow.  But then again, I am no guru ;-)

UPDATE (October 2, 2009): My coworker Adam just sent this video to me, and it resonates so strongly with this post that I had to update it. Enjoy.