After a couple of days it was proving so successful in driving fan engagement that the team's owners asked the fan to hand over the account in return for courtside season tickets. Then they reconsidered - courtside season tickets and a job as social media manager for the team.

Now that's not a bad return considering the total time expended by the creative fan totalled only a few hours and cost him him nothing financially. And it's not only social media roles that get filled with the aid of social media activities. It's all kinds of roles...

Since 89% of employers claim to use social media in their recruitment efforts (up by 6% on last year) it is increasingly essential to have an 'employer-friendly' social media presence if you're looking for work.

The there's the concept of the 'twesume' - the 140 character twitter-based resume. There's a great post over at Mashable giving tips on how to maximise the potential of this idea - something which might only take 10 minutes to do but could be key in finding leads on the kind of jobs that would suit you.

Finally, in this little round-up of social media based job hunting tips and resources, there's some very handy analytics from Linked-In doing the rounds at the moment which reveal the most over-used words that users describe themselves with on their profiles (in English-speaking countries 'creative' came top of the list for example).

This can give you a good idea of how much your profile and CV actually stands out from the crowd (without having to stalk 100 other users to get an impression) and also an idea of what employers are looking for - i.e. what works.

Anyway, I'll leave it there for now but will return to this subject at regular intervals in the future as it becomes an increasingly prominent manner in which social media is shaping the world of work, even for those who don't work anywhere near the IT sector. Plus, in these cash-strapped and job-anxious times it's probably useful to have all the help we can get...

That's why I find this infographic over at Mashable (designed by JESS3) quite useful. It's called 'An Average Day on Facebook' and gives a little insight into the main ways in which users currently engage with the site as well as some comparisons between stats for 2008 and 2010. It only gives a quick 'at a glance' type of picture (there's simply reams and reams of data which could be looked at with 700 million users) but nonetheless could be handy for marketers trying to understand how their trade might be evolving with time on Facebook.

Take for example the average age of the Facebook user: 33 in 2008 and 38 in 2010. I would hazard a guess that it is now, at the end of 2011, higher still. This doesn't mean that all those young users have gone and are no longer reachable on the network (they are) it just also means that Facebook is now increasingly viable for social media marketing targeting older (and typically wealthier) consumers - which somewhat contradicts the stereotypical image of social media marketing being best for 16-25 year-olds for example.

All this is important as, unsurprisingly, Facebook remains the network with the highest daily engagement (52%) when ranked with Twitter (36%), Myspace (7%) and LinkedIn (6%). Social media marketers are therefore right to devote extensive time and attention to it - that fact won't be changing for some time at least - but the way their campaigns are constructed does however need to be constantly evolving, as the network does, if they are to maximise their potential.

The overwhelmingly likely outcome is that eventually it will not be worth your while to use Myspace (even when one takes into account the various tools currently available to make managing accounts and updates quicker and easier) - so the question really becomes not whether or not to jump ship, but when and, more importantly, how?

The main challenge presented by the network's decline is not the lack of an alternative (Facebook, twitter, WordPress, duh...) but how to migrate users and activities seamlessly, without resulting in losing some of them - or in the nature of one's social media marketing campaigns being altered or affected (negatively) by the switch.

Many Myspace users of course already use at least one other network for their social media campaigns - but nonetheless, for a specific set of sectors and professions (bands especially, but also the likes of live venues, photographers, video and audio professionals and so on), Myspace has been the dominant and leading tool for upwards of four or five years.

So, with all this in mind, here's a few thoughts on the subject of migrating social media marketing away from Myspace and over to somewhere else:

1.) First of all; the question of migrating users. While the prospect of losing connections with Myspace friends does represent a challenge - it is also a fresh opportunity to 'refresh' or update one's fans/followers/customers and thus arrive at a more accurate image of who they are today (and not who they were in 2005), and how many of them are out there etc.

It's no secret that, since Myspace's predominant connection type was the 'friendship', it was possible (and far too often done) for one party to artificially expand user numbers by befriending anyone and everyone under the Myspace sun (most people would more often than not accept such requests, since Myspace was a little less 'personal' than Facebook and thus not so much of a privacy concern). Facebook's 'Like' relationship however is nicely differentiated from its 'friendships', and thus Likes represent a much more meaningful measure of how users are responding to your social media presence.

So, yes, while it might sound like a cliché to say that this (for many users, unwelcome) necessity to eventually ditch a tool, which has been used well for a number of years, represents an opportunity; in this case I really believe it to be the case. In summary - identify the network(s) you wish to direct most users to and start encouraging them to join you there. It's important to start this now (if you haven't already) so that in another three or four months (when Myspace's future will be even more uncertain) you'll be in a position to slowly wind down your activities there. And remember - it's actually quite useful to get an up-to-date idea of where you stand regarding user numbers and profiles...

2.) Secondly, while Myspace will slowly become increasingly useless regarding the impact you can make with it - it is nonetheless important to retain your domain and profile for a good while yet - even if, by this time next year, it simple resembles a re-direction point over to your Twitter and Facebook sites.

There's two important reasons for this:

• Never relinquish a formerly lucrative domain, even if it's now of little use to you (someone else might see some opportunity in it which might not go well with your wishes...) - especially when it's free to retain it as Myspace is.
• Myspace still ranks highly on search engines - so even though it hasn't as much influence as before, it is still useful as a static billboard type advert for keeping brand/band/whatever awareness high.

So, basically the answer of when to migrate is both now (start moving things as soon as possible if you haven't already done so) and never (don't reduce your Myspace presence to zero for a good while yet - obviously this becomes ever more important relative to your former weight and significance on the network).

3.) Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, be aware that different networks operate slightly differently and that the nature of your social media marketing needs to be slightly adapted - even if you make use of various apps which attempt to make the transition easier (such as the Bandpage app for Facebook for example, which allows for some of the same features that made Myspace so successful - at a glance tour-dates and a music player for instance).

In any case, I expect those who face the trickiest time and most headaches regarding the move will be bands - especially those who rely exclusively on social media for their marketing (promoting releases, tours, news etc) and don't have mainstream press coverage to fall back on. Anyway, that's it for now - let me know if you have any further suggestions for businesses/professionals/artists/freelancers facing this dilemma.

Here's a summary of some of the key changes to the app which promise to make the whole thing even more mega useful (and it's already pretty good in case you were wondering):

• There's a new LinkedIn Share button to aid sharing content in-stream with your professional network
• Slideshare content shared on LinkedIn by your network now appears on the Today page
• Engage with recently-shared Slideshare content in the Update Stream without having to leave LinkedIn

Anyway, head over to the LinkedIn blog for more on the changes (though in all honesty you'd figure them out quicker just by clicking around the app for a few minutes). The bottom line really though is that the Slideshare-LinkedIn connection is looking healthier than ever, working very well for both parties - LinkedIn continues to sharply define its USP of being a business tool, while Slideshare gets the platform to remain the #1 presentation sharing tool. (Oh yeah, and we all get some pretty nifty tools for circulating presentations in easier and more fun ways than before...)

I draw attention to it here mainly for the reason that as a development company we're pretty keen on keeping abreast of trends and changes which can improve upon the services we offer to our various clients. One of the areas in which there has been a huge amount of such activity and development in recent years is the area of social networking (this is not exactly breaking news...) and thus we've spent a great deal of time discussing, both amongst ourselves and with the wider online community (often via this blog), exactly what interested us about social networking from a development perspective, as well as from a user point-of-view.

However, one shortcoming of this coverage has perhaps been that the term 'social networks' has been used consistently to refer to everything - but has actually ended up meaning a variety of (sometimes rather vague) things. For instance, in much mainstream television news coverage of tech stories 'social networking' pretty much stands in for 'Facebook + one or two others which probably aren't worth mentioning by name...' Who can blame them - networks, after all, come and go - but the activities and principles which they facilitate have tended to remain roughly stable over the past decade six or seven years (or so).

Well, I must confess to being a little bit too partial to this catch-all term myself (it is useful as a shorthand - listing every relevant network at every instance throughout an article would soon make for a rather illegible list), though in the interests of helping readers judge better which network I might be referring to in a particular instance and, more importantly, for business owners seeking to gauge which network(s) might best suit their business needs and goals, there's the aforementioned nice introductory info-graphic from Ignite Social Media.

Which network has the highest proportion of women for instance? Which network has the wealthiest users? Which has the most educated? All of these are just some of the questions that can be answered with the handy info-graphic. Thus the next time you hear someone bandy around the term 'social networking', it'll be that little bit easier to deduce precisely which networks are more relevant to contexts in which they are being discussed - and which less so. For instance if I were to start discussing social networking use for business purposes in the corporate world - you would probably work out that Myspace is not quite so relevant as LinkedIn here (sorry for the obvious example - I'm trying to keep it accessible without being patronising...)

Anyway, the other purpose of that rather basic example was to provide a (slightly tentative) link to the second little item I wished to discuss here - that of the Myspace sales pitch book figures, which have been revealed by a Techcrunch exclusive this morning. As the article indicates - they are 'bleak' to say the least (indicating a likely loss of $165 million for the past year) but oddly optimistic on what might happen in the future ( a return to profit is 'expected' from next year onwards, to the tune of $15 million, later rising to $70 million by 2015).

This hardly stands up to even passing scrutiny - and any detailed inspection will reveal that the whole thing is fantasy to anyone other than the ludicrously optimistic buyer... News Corp is having its Friends Reunited moment (i.e. selling off an expensively acquired network for relative peanuts) and there's simply no other way to look at it. The bottom line for businesses using Myspace within their web 2.0 or social media strategy however becomes when (not if - eventually it'll become a pretty pointless place to operate - losing 14% of its audience monthly) to migrate those functions, how to move efficiently (i.e. without losing users/interrupting campaigns) and where to move to. Again, if this includes your business, I refer you to the above excellent info-graphic for a basic 101 in beginning to ponder answers to those questions...

Yes the social network - that kind of isn't - at least in the sense that maybe we should stop classifying it with the other sites, with whom it has many superficial similarities (looks kinda similar for a start) but one fundamental difference - in the way it is used (i.e. it is actually not a 'social,' social network at all really, but instead something people use for work/networking etc). Hence in our 'lump-networks-together' type thinking for purposes of ranking them, we are perhaps often missing out on a key aspect of the online networking market - that of the individuality of the business social network.

If instead we take LinkedIn as by far and away the largest of the business social networks - we can see how signifcantly smaller it is (more than a factor of 10 by most counts) than the biggest player in the social networking pond. Now it is not that the business social networking 'pond' (i.e. market) is proportionatly smaller - but rather the fact that, as a market, it is fundamentally different from the one accessed (and dominated) by players such as MySpace and Facebook.

Even more importantly is the fact that it has hardly been developed or accessed anywhere near to the extent that is possible - in essence there is a pond right next to the increasingly crowded one occupied by the whales and sharks of Bebo, FB, Myspace etc - only this other pond is practically empty, with only the little goldfish of LinkedIn and a few tadpoles swimming round (networks like Ryze for example).

Ok, enough with the silly extended metaphors - it's not exactly rocket science after all. Ultimately we know social networking tools can be massively useful for work purposes (see this great post at bNet for more on this) - and we also know that many of us use social networks on a regular basis in our spare time for keeping in touch with friends etc. Yet, and here's the odd part, we hardly at all use any kind of business social network for work related matters even though there are plenty of us out there of working age and with jobs (teens after all only make up roughly 10% on average of social network users).

Yes, there will always be the fundamental point that many businesses will prefer to own their own business social network, rather than use one where information cannot be adequately controlled or protected. But in light of this I expect that the BSN pie will simply look a little different as it grows: not chopped into six or seven larger pieces like the usual SN graphics - but instead into many more smaller networks. Either way though it seems undeniable that next to the still-unsaturated, but certainly maturing, SN market, the potential of the BSN still has yet to be even fully imagined, let alone realised.

Dejan Levi

Myspace has blocked the aggregator from accessing its data for the latter's decision not to use Myspace's OAuth system for user logins, citing considerable (and valid) security concerns. The development leaves Power with only Orkut and Hi5 as its remaining significant networks, representing a considerable setback for the new start-up.

As an idea Power is clearly a pretty useful one from the point of view of SN users - and indeed if the majority of networks can be brought on board then those still outstanding will inevitably also join the group. However none will mind that they don't currently offer Power compatibility since no-one else does either - especially when the justification for such is to protect users' data.

The potential for Power is considerable; with the numbers of active SN users worldwide getting ever closer to the 1 bn mark the potential ad revenue of Power.com would be huge (it's no surprise investors have already put over $6m into the company). However the site clearly must do more if it is to take the essential step of offering something that the major players want to be involved in.

After all, in attracting users to its service and away from the login homepages of the likes of Myspace for example, Power is also redirecting ad revenue in the same direction. Arguably the ease of portability offered by the service would counter this by facilitating an increase in user numbers for all networks, as people create new profiles on sites from which they were previously absent. The only problem with this logic however is presented by the fact of the relative homogenisation of network choice within different countries/continents; i.e. if everyone you share a country/language with is using x or y network, then why would you want to port details onto z where you know nobody?

Ultimately, if an updated version of the site can be offered - which will keep the balance of control over users' data firmly in the hands of the original networks themselves, then probably the alienated Myspace and Facebook can be brought back into the Power.com fold.

A quick look at Alexa's traffic details for Power shows it impressively surging into the top 10,000 ranked sites only weeks after launch, and currently floating around the top 6,000 mark. If the better relationships with networks that are so crucial to its success can be fostered, then Power.com could soon see that top 6,000 figure lose a zero or two...

Dejan Levi

Some bloggers and commentators have been contemplating if this might mark a new phase in the development of social networking, with the earlier co-existence of the main players now giving way to a more open tug-of-war for market share. After all, new user uptake is slowing down, and one way for social networking sites to continue to grow will be to compete for the existing users of competitors...

Data portability is looking increasingly like a major front in this competition.

Question is; should Facebook's ban of Google Friend Connect be seen as a statement of intent regarding future competition? Or simply an inevitable tactical ploy?

Well, put it this way; to have done otherwise would have been to allow certain aspects of their service to become tethered and reliant upon a Google service, allowing for an uncomfortable degree of infiltration by a competitor. Why allow developers to use a Google tool for Facebook apps when an own-brand similar Facebook device could be offered?

Ultimately the ban represents perfectly sensible self-defence from Facebook, giving them time to work on their own rival without being rushed by the need to counter Google's permeation into its own product. Put simply, it should ensure Google does not succeed in filling a hole in Facebook's territory that could be filled by a Facebook tool.

One thing is for sure; whatever happens in the data portability sector Google will benefit massively, not just from the success of their own Friend Connect, but also from that of the Myspace and Facebook rivals. The inevitable increase in web traffic, which will come with the new data portability services, will surely boost Google's advertising revenues no end.

Luckily for us, the fierce competition for attracting both quality work from developers and new users should see some interesting innovation in this field over the coming months. Currently the social networking market still has room to grow, and it is unlikely the major players will be too concerned with pinching eachothers' users for now. Inevitably though the rates of user growth will tail off somewhat - and it is then that we might see some fiercer competition. Judging by this week, the battle over data portability services, and the race to become the main central online data repository from which users port details to third-party sites, could yet prove a significant battleground.

Dejan Levi