Its funny how fast some trends can change.

I joined Facebook on May, 26 2007. I didn’t know anybody personally on Facebook then. For me then, it was primarily used as a way to network with other IM professionals and since I was a nobody in the Internet Marketing world it was pretty useless for me then. However, things have changed. Now, almost everybody I know personally is on the book. Below is an article I received in my email about the exploding popularity of Facebook. I thought some of my personal FB friends might find it interesting.

Is MySpace Toast? Officially googled by Facebook

If it’s lucky, MySpace is the new Yahoo. If unlucky, and it is unlucky lately, MySpace is AOL. Facebook has supplanted it, and will continue to do so, in much the same way Google ran past Yahoo, and for many of the same reasons.

The suspicion was there from the start of the social networking phenomenon MySpace spearheaded. When it stops being cool, what then? Well, then is now, and MySpace is a strip mall in a sleazy part of town. Traffic is down. Revenues are down. Executives are stepping down.

Back in 2005, when the buzz first came on about MySpace, I took a look and said, simply “meh.” The profiles seemed ugly and pointless. It seemed faddy and a lot of work just for the sake of coolness. In general, the site reminded me of slap bracelets, Beanie Babies, and acid washed jeans mixed with red plastic cups, bathroom walls and booty calls.

And then News Corporation took it over.

But I wasn’t 15, so what did I know? I regarded it like one of those teenage nightclubs creepy old men go to for no good reason at all. I just didn’t have any business there, and that may be just one of the problems leading to MySpace’s eventual peak.

High school student Jacob Ruffman, quoted today by McClatchy, has his own more teenage reasons. “I can go to the Facebook home page and see what’s going on with my friends. Then I flip over to MySpace and I get kicked in the face with colors and flashing penguins.”

Jacob’s at odds with my stepson, who’s 15 now and recently lamented that all his friends, like Jacob, had switched to Facebook. He could really customize his MySpace profile they way he had once customized his abandoned Gaia profile. And his parents and grandparents weren’t on MySpace the way they were on Facebook.

Coincidentally, about the same time he told me that his friends had all switched, a friend my own age had worried he’d not hear important news from home if he wasn’t on Facebook like everybody else. About that time too Facebook had started to overcome MySpace in terms of visitors.

Compete.com shows the shift began late last year. Facebook equaled MySpace around December, and by January had surpassed it, a huge feat considering how MySpace dwarfed Facebook this time last year. Compete says MySpace traffic is down by 5 percent for the year, though it still attracted over 58 million unique US visitors. Facebook on the other hand is up 125 percent for the year, and grabbed over 68 million visitors. On an international level, Comscore says Facebook is outdrawing MySpace by 110 million monthly visitors.

Taking a direct hit from MySpace’s woes is Photobucket, another Fox Interactive (News Corp.) property. MySpace had helped propel Photobucket to holding 45 percent of the online photo sharing market–just half a year ago. In February, Photobucket traffic declined by 24 percent, according to Hitwise, and Flickr is near to supplanting it as well. How quickly things can change.

I guess now, the question is why things turned around completely in just a couple of months. A year ago, Facebook wasn’t anywhere near MySpace, no threat at all. Well, part of it is, I think, MySpace’s time has come and gone. That doesn’t mean it won’t stay a reasonably popular and trafficked site, but, like Yahoo, MySpace will be a distant second at least.

Effectively, MySpace has been googled by Facebook for much of the same reason Google googled Yahoo. Facebook is cleaner, more intuitive, and has better features. Its members are rabid devotees who freak out at the slightest provocations. But they don’t leave. They protest until things change. Facebook has loyalty MySpace never did.

And while Facebook is opening up more and more, and making, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week, “hundreds” of upgrades over the coming weeks, what has absentee landlord MySpace been launching?

Ooh look, an HP cosponsored print button, and a MySpace cobranded credit card.

Pretty yawnable, if you ask me.

Here is the link to the original story.

I thought I would share this story with the many small business operators who ask me “what can social media do for me?”

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When J.R. Cohen, Operations Manager for CoffeeGroundz (@coffeegroundz) Cafe in Houston, Texas first heard about Twitter from one of his customers, he was puzzled but intrigued. Today, he credits Twitter with almost doubling his clientele and with opening his eyes to a whole new way to build Community.

If you’re reading this article, then chances are you’re already on Twitter, and you may even have experienced the power of Twitter for building your own personal or corporate brand. Recently, more and more companies have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon to help manage their online identities making it increasingly harder to stand out from the crowd.

But Cohen and CoffeeGroundz have found a way to do just that. Shortly after joining Twitter, Cohen started following members of the local Houston Twitterati and in no time had amassed over 1000 followers. Cohen is a naturally charismatic, giving, and friendly guy – traits that make him a natural on a network like Twitter.

On Becoming The Purple Cow

Nothing can build your brand faster than being or doing something remarkable. Seth Godin, author of the recently released Tribes calls this becoming “The Purple Cow”. Cohen didn’t set out to become a Purple Cow – but with one brief 140 character message – that’s exactly what he’s done.

On October 31st, 2008 Sean Stoner (@maslowbeer) was hungry. As a regular customer at CoffeeGroundz he sent the following Twitter to Cohen:

Cohen quickly replied and Sean went through the drive-thru at CoffeeGroundz to pick up his burrito.

This simple exchange got a lot of coverage on Twitter and was hailed as potentially the first time that Twitter had ever been used to place a To-Go Order. Seeing an opportunity, Cohen started taking to-go orders via direct message from any of his Twitter Clientele.

CoffeeGroundz offers free Wi-Fi, plenty of outlets, and they serve beer and wine – making it a cross between a Coffee House and a Lounge. Today, customers can order beverages and tasty bites from the comfort of their seat using Direct Messages to @coffeegroundz. How cool is that? You don’t even have to stop working to walk to the counter and order a coffee.

Building Community While Making a Profit

Recently, CoffeeGroundz was the venue for a Houston Tweetup that Cohen nicknamed “The Great Twitter Party”. Nearly 100 Houston Twitterites spent a lovely Sunday afternoon there at the largest Houston Tweetup to date. And did I mention that they bought lots of food and beverages? So the next time someone tells you that you can’t make money from Twitter, tell them to think again!

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The original story was reposted here.

Suddenly Twitter has become mainstream popular. Personally, I have yet to see a use for it in my own business. However, I do believe it has tremendous potential in many business applications, even small business.

This post is to share an email I received from a fellow marketer. I thought it might be of interest to some of you reading this blog.

Hey Terry, I hope you’re having a nice Monday. The weather’s great here in Indiana today. Very nice, for a change

Anyway, the reason for this email is to share with you how I built a 55,000 people optin email list in only 2 weeks… and how you can use the same strategy to build your own email list.

It’s something I did by complete accident, so wasn’t really a strategy at the time, but is something you can “rinse and repeat”, and actually use as a type of strategy.

Hint: It involves Twitter. And it’s something I don’t see anyone else doing.

If you don’t know what Twitter is, Google it, and you’ll see that it’s become one of the, if not the single most important Web 2.0 medium in the world.

Let me give you a quick example of just how powerful Twitter can be, and how much business it can drum up for you. This story is going to “knock your socks off” and I’ve not told many about it until now.

A few months ago, we released a new tool called PPC Web Spy.

Before we released the tool publicly (i.e. before I told a single sole the actual web address for the website) I posted a very simple demo video showing what the tool does, onto my Twitter profile page, so that those following me could see just what I’d been working on the past few months.

In the video, I ONLY showed what the tool did and showed how excited I was about it. It was basically just a video that I wanted to show my friends before I released it publicly.

I didn’t mention the URL of the website and even mentioned that it wasn’t really ready to sell yet. So, there was no direct way of knowing how to get the tool.

At the time, I had roughly 1,500 followers on Twitter. A decent amount, but not an extremely high amount…

Ok, now, guess what happened after I posted 1 small “tweet” with the link to this demo video?

1. Some of my 1,500 followers watched the video

2. Some of those people “retweeted” the message (i.e. reposted the link to the video onto their own Twitter pages) allowing their followers to see the video.

3. People started going to Google and looking up the name of the tool in order to find the website. They would go to Google and type in “PPC Web Spy” and up would pop the website, where users could actual purchase the tool. We were putting minor tweaks into the product, but it was pretty much ready and was available to buy.

4. This cycle continued and grew and grew and within 2 weeks, I built an optin email list of over 55,000 people!

Yes, that’s right, 55,000 people signed up and downloaded a free copy of PPC Web Spy! These are 55,000 people that I can now build long term relationships with for many years to come.

… and this was 100% done by 1 single twitter post!

I hope this all makes sense, because I know of no other single, free medium where you could make 1, (140 character) post and turn that into a 55,000 people email list in 2 weeks! Do you?

Now obviously most small business owners are probably not going to have hundreds of followers on Twitter. However, it is quite possible that several dozen people you know could be Tweetin your service or products to their followers.

Something to think about.