The frequency with which scandal erupts around a misjudged tweet or an offhand comment, caught on someone's iPhone and uploaded to Youtube, suggests that social media practically entraps people into such costly blunders with its pretty user interfaces and seemingly inconsequential virtual nature - and then the real world mess catches up with you. Last week for example, an English footballer was sacked by his club after posting a homophobic tweet in response to a TV show he was watching. I picked that example at random from my memory, but there were at least three or four others just from last week here in the UK (Ed Miliband, Diane Abbott, Tom Harris, Wojciech Szczesny etc).

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that we know better than ever what people are thinking - perhaps even to a detrimental degree - wherein thoughtless comments which people might not otherwise say in the company of others, get instantly shared with thousands. I'm not, however, here to debate the philosophical implications of all this. Instead, I'd just like to give a quick example where this insight into public figures' real thoughts can be quite illuminating.

Rupert Murdoch has recently joined twitter and has been using the service to share his views on SOPA (which he supports fully) and piracy (which he doesn't). His recent comments have now been excellently 'storified' by journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis, who breaks down Murdoch's rants against Google and Barack Obama (in the wake of today's setbacks for SOPA) and illustrates the fundamental problem facing Murdoch in the internet age: he doesn't understand the web.

Ok, so this is hardly news (there was the small matter of Murdoch's News Corp. running Myspace, then the world's most successful social network, into the ground) but nonetheless, since usually his personal views reach us in a highly mediated form via his spokespeople, his media outlets and his press officers, we've never really had as direct evidence of Murdoch's web views as we have now.

The point is that, while we should be wary of reading too much into 140 character tweets, what is clear is that Murdoch personally does not display a huge degree of enthusiasm for the innovation that publishing industries are being forced into by the web and would prefer to merely port existing (but increasingly outdated models) over to the web - and protect them with prohibitive legislature.

Look at those tweets and ask yourself - would you invest in the man who wrote them if he came to you asking for funds for his web start-up business? Does he seem like someone who is gonna do something clever or new online?

The answer probably would be no. Murdoch doesn't need your money anyway (he has plenty of it already in all likelihood), but what his recent tweets illustrate, for me at least, is that he is involved with the web purely out of necessity and hasn't developed a massively sophisticated view of how the internet works. If I wanted some creative ideas and fresh views on the online publishing landscape for example, I probably wouldn't call him.

Don't worry though, the feature is not compulsory so your profile will still look the same as it did when you last left it. At the moment, if you wish to enable timeline you need to head over to the intro page and click 'get timeline'. This will then take you to a preview of your timeline profile which is only visible to you for the first 7 days (while you work out what the hell is going on) before then going live to everyone else. Alternatively, if you're already happy with how things look, you can click the 'publish now' button and send it live immediately. (Anyone struggling with it should check out this little screenshot-featuring guide).

Moreover, there's also the mobile version to contend with which is accessible for Android 1.8.1. users and also through the mobile HTML5 facebook site. It's almost the same as the 'normal' version except that there's no activity log (and hence no privacy control for posts etc). For mobile users keen to get a little intro, I recommend this handy guide over at Techcrunch.

Personally, my initial thoughts on timeline are these:

1. It's a huge great big mess (or at least it is when you first enable it). The main problem is this two-column design which feels awkward to me at least, although maybe I'll get used to it. I'm sure once you take the time to edit things and decide what you want displayed it'll all look much better. Right now though I'll just say exactly what I'm thinking - I haven't seen such a messy, 'scroll-y' and chaotic social networking profile since the old days of Myspace custom profile editors...

2. The Activity Log is really quite good for giving you an accurate overview of how you actually use facebook (which the old profile didn't do very well). Plus, it's also quite good for managing your facebook use in terms of privacy since you can easily set the controls for who sees what in terms of your activity. That's actually a first for facebook - making privacy controls easier to understand and use - so well done for that.

3. Did I mention it was scroll-y? It really is quite scroll-y... and not in a good way.

4. With the whole concept of timeline, Facebook might actually get users to commit even more info to their profiles - namely stuff from their pre-facebook days. Consider it an invitation to 'back-fill' into facebook all the stuff you did before the network was around. This could obviously work out very well for the network and their potential financial profits from delivering advertising etc.

Anyway good luck with it. I'll leave it there for now since I'm sure everyone is too busy fiddling around with it to read too much now. Let me know what you think once you've had a little gander at it.

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.

That's where Greplin really starts to look useful; it is a tool for indexing all your private documents and communications which currently exist in various cloud-based social networking accounts and the like. So, for example, if you wish to back up social media things like emails, messages, status updates etc and, not have them separated according to which service/network they were originally on, Greplin is for you. (And yes, they have a mobile version).

Simply indicate which services you would like to index (Twitter, Gmail, Facebook etc), give Greplin your login details and permission, and watch it add your stuff to the 30 million documents it's processing each and every day. It will then be able to offer you a searchable database of all this material so that you can sift through and find what you need quickly and easily without thinking if this or that info originally appeared in a status update on Facebook, or if so-and-so emailed it to you on Gmail, or whatever...

In short, the idea is pretty timely considering the huge volume of e-material we are each now generating on a daily basis (what with the rapid acceleration of use offered by smart-phones, Facebook's new quicker messaging service, or even just the fact that we increasingly use multiple networks on a regular basis). Obviously there's a security issue (i.e. do you trust Greplin with your details?) but if you already trust Myspace and Bebo etc, then presumably you wouldn't have any issues with another service such as Greplin.

Rather than building up confidence in its security (which it should achieve pretty easily), the real challenge lies in just what Greplin can do with all the data it is indexing. For example, can it recognise what the key information in a particular document is and thus classify it according to this aspect, thereby enriching the precision and flexibility of its search?

Judging by the qualities their jobs page shows they are seeking in new engineers, I'd say they're very clear that this is one of the places they'd like Greplin to go - the only question will be if they can get there before someone else does. As their impressive technical success so far indicates however, they're no slouches when it comes to a bit of code so you'd bank on them to only go from strength to strength after their great start since the February launch.

Moreover, we've had a few petty gushing reviews of Postling on here, championing it as a very useful social media aggregator for social marketing purposes. Well, at this stage let us add Greplin to this recommended arsenal for successful social media marketing - it could offer a very handy counterpart to Postling's already excellent services (it remains to be seen if the two will ever eventually overlap - my guess is that it is rather possible).

Whether you consider it 'the search bar for life' which is Greplin's slogan for their service (as opposed to Google, which would be 'the search bar for the internet/the world' presumably) or 'the other half of search' as Techcrunch have dubbed it, there's no doubt that the service is looking pretty well-defined, well-run and well-publicised even at this early stage. A sure-fire hit according to many, I'd have to say I definitely agree with them...

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...

However, while never approaching the degree of customization that Myspace allowed at that point, Facebook has in the past few years slowly also been adding numerous features to the network, which unsurprisingly have entailed the arrival of gradually more complex profiles. Generally this has been managed with pretty well thought out changes to profile layout so that things remain clear while sometimes accommodating huge quantities of content (apps, videos, photos, personal info etc etc).

Well, it seems that one of the consequences of the latest of these profile layout changes is that - if you're creative - you can now create an element of originality for your profile to make it stand out. The key is to use the new snapshot sections (like for example the selection of a few of your photos at the top of your profile, which has recently been added) in a clever manner, as can be seen in two excellent galleries over at Mashable showcasing various inventive ideas for a bit of attractive customisation.

Aside from being a nice diversion for a few minutes, the gallery is also interesting from a social media marketing perspective in that it highlights another way in which profile design (in this case, on Facebook) can be approached in a creative manner so that it needn't look exactly like everyone else's and can be used to carry brand images and designs more prominently than many would first think.

So with Facebook rapidly becoming the network you can't really ignore from a social media marketing perspective (wherever else you also concentrate efforts), this represents a handy new way of thinking about how a profile page might be used from a business perspective (or even for fun, as would be the case with individual users). Of course if everyone starts doing it, then it won't be so useful - but the point with social media marketing is its immediacy and, right now, this neat little profile trick is an idea with some decent eye-catching potential.

p.s. I should note that French artist Alexandre Oudin is credited with coming up with this novel approach so kudos to him :)

Well, to be honest, it's hard to argue against this - all indicators seem to point towards Facebook continuing in its world-beating vein right through 2011 and into 2012, why wouldn't it?

The question is not really designed as a springboard for some wildly implausible scenario whereby Zuckerberg somehow makes a mess of it all and Facebook becomes the next Friends Reunited: clearly, this seems highly unlikely even in the worst case scenario. The only realistic threat I could possibly imagine causing damage to Facebook's prospects would be if it fell into the wrong hands (a la MySpace). Since Zuckerberg has been pretty categorical that such a sequence of events is not on his agenda (throughout Facebook's history only very small portions of assets  have ever been sold off, and always in order to raise funds for the next few years of expansion and operation - never for short term profit), then it'd be foolish to claim otherwise here.

There is however, I think, some value in raising the question of how big networks can fail - even from positions of extreme strength such as Facebook's - since the history of social networking is littered with promising, even dominant, properties which didn't last the distance. I've discussed Friends Reunited on here before for example, but the one which really looks set to become the archetype for a network 'that got away' in 2011 is Myspace, as it enters the year on very shakey ground indeed, with News Corp officially considering a partial sale as of last week.

How did we get here? In 2005 News Corp bought Myspace for $580 million, and for the next three years it was the biggest social network on the planet (depending on how you measure things) and generally looked as unassailable as Facebook does now. Now its Alexa ranking is 47 (Facebook is number 2) and this looks set to decline further as we progress into the year. So what are the morals of this cautionary tail? Just how on earth did News Corp mess it up so bad that they now might try to offload this formerly golden asset?

Well, first of all, we should acknowledge that Facebook has done extremely well in attracting new users and that there's not many networks that have improved their standing vis-a-vis Facebook since 2008. However, it's clear that Myspace wasn't simply in the wrong place at the wrong time - very generous contributions were made to its demise by its own management without a doubt.

Over at Soshable, they make the point that News Corp made a grave error in considering Myspace as a valuable driver of traffic to the newly formed Fox Interactive Media, instead of being a target for high traffic in itself (i.e. it shouldn't have been supporting something else - but leading the way itself). This seems a very valid point I think - especially if we consider the way Facebook drives traffic to other sites (i.e. without ever becoming just a stepping stone itself - instead users make trips out to other sites, but ultimately stay/'live' at Facebook - sorry for the dodgy metaphors;) Ok, so it's easy to see this in hindsight - but that's why we're here.

The thing which Myspace originally had as a unique advantage was the music side of things, which attracted bands from all levels and all parts of the world (many felt so comfortable there that they dispensed with having an individual separate homepage as well - or otherwise maintained it in tandem with the Myspace page). This is turn meant Myspace found it easy to attract the young early adopters of social networking who also found it attractive that they could befriend and communicate with favourite artists and bands.

News Corp identified this as something with further potential - so they sought to expand Myspace into an 'entertainment' network incorporating also television, video, films etc. The problem is that it wasn't so easy to just get Youtube to surrender its status in that field, nor to build up a credible film and VOD operation - though it sounded like a pretty good idea on paper. The end result is that things became kinda confused, with users unsure what Myspace was really for (meanwhile Facebook improved its service for bands, and had a lot less spam than its competitor).

To further the tricky issues for Myspace, as the volume of material which users wanted to share increased (and hence created potential for them to to spend longer on the site), Myspace instead found it difficult to integrate everything in a workable and seamless manner. Photos, videos, music, friends etc became muddled and confused as profiles took six minutes to scroll through (at the peak of the customised designs of the old layout) and instead users preferred the clarity offered by Facebook which could accommodate all of this much more clearly - albeit at the expense of some customisation, which users seemingly didn't mind sacrificing - even in the case of image conscious bands and artists who'd spent serious time and often money on getting their Myspace to look 'right'.

Anyway, Myspace launched a new profile layout last autumn, but there's no evidence of its arresting the user decline. For the time being the user numbers are still pretty significant but, tellingly, investors are abandoning the network in droves - indicating that not many are of the belief that Myspace could ever again be what it was for a little while (2006-8) and what it could have been even now had the key decisions been approached differently.

Thus, caught in limbo (neither a 'general social network' nor a clearly defined specific-use one), Myspace seems doomed - soon to become a cautionary tale for all budding social network entrepreneurs out there, proving that sheer size and popularity can never be a guarantee against failure (it merely offers a little extra time to turn around bad decisions), and that since social networking is still a relatively new game, without strictly defined revenue models, it's essential instead to focus on building the best possible network first, not for one year or four, but more like ten or twelve probably before attempting to extract serious cash from the venture.

Here are the seven points she discusses - though, it should be said, they sound a bit vague and general when taken out of context like this so it really is worth reading the original piece for yourself. Anyway she organises the main issues under the following headings:

1. Design your product to matter in a world of infinite supply
2. Be the best in the world at one thing
3. Seek out uniqueness
4. Focus on your most important interaction until you have it right
5. Choose your words carefully
6. Create a party, not a museum
7. Develop relationships, not features

Once I'd finished reading the original piece I decided to apply some of these points to concrete examples out there. Indeed when one thinks of the most successful social networks out there Bianchini is good at pointing out exactly how each of the above principles translates to these products (she uses Twitter and Facebook mainly), though it would be equally interesting to consider failed ventures from this perspective, for there are valuable lessons there too I think.

So, I got to thinking about something like Friends Reunited (which was one of the hottest properties in the social networking sector a few years ago when ITV bought it for $208 million in 2005, but since fell away and was sold last year for only $35 m) and Friendster (another formerly very successful SN, but now declining rapidly in traffic and only really enjoying success in Asia). N.B. I only chose these two to provide a couple of interesting examples for discussion - they are far from being the only ones to have experienced such fortunes.

In terms of Bianchini's key principles therefore, how can we understand the failure of Friends Reunited and the current decline of Friendster (which doesn't of course mean that it is finished for good as a SN, just that it is currently needing some re-direction)? The short answer in both cases is simple: Facebook. But this doesn't really explain what happened, or why Facebook was able to succeed in taking users off both platforms so effectively.

Take the first point Bianchini raises - 'design your product to matter in a world of infinite supply'. In essence this simply means being aware of the huge competition that exists out there for social network users' time and attention. So, at a fundamental level, the decision to charge users something like $10/a year to use Friends Reunited was a huge mistake (albeit easy to see in hindsight). It ensured impressive profits early on, but by the time the network's owners realised that it represented a disastrous long-term policy it was too late - Facebook was growing at an unstoppable rate, dwarfing Friends Reunited's meagre increment of users.

Since critical mass is so key for social networks (i.e. it's not just what you want to use - it's what those you want to connect with already use), it's now clear that the pricing policy was one key aspect by which Facebook was able to seize the initiative regarding network critical mass.

Bianchini also says 'be the best in the world at one thing' but if one looks at Friends Reunited, even now, there are multiple functions offered by the site (Friends Reunited Dating, Genes reunited etc) which seem to divide different facets of users' experience in an unnecessary manner. Facebook doesn't need a 'family finder' service for example - or a 'dating service' etc. The former is integrated into its normal operation, while the latter is to a point (you can do some things which dating websites also offer), but, importantly, neither is a key feature of Facebook marketing or brand image.

The problem with Friends Reunited in this respect is not that it does too many things - but that, in trying to attract users on the basis of all these services, it instead only confuses and sends a mixed message as to what it's for. This is not the way to 'be the best at one thing'. Diversification is of course a useful business strategy - but you must first lead in one particular field, before you can successfully diversify into others.

Turning now to Friendster briefly, the key change in dynamic undergone by this network recently is the focus on a specific part of the world (and language group) as an attempt to 'be the best at one thing', in the wake of decline in popularity in Western and English-speaking markets which began a few years ago. In response to this Friendster changed tactics, adding support for 10 new Asian languages between 2007 and 2009 and thus becoming the first network to support all major Asian languages.

This now represents their single greatest strength, around which other features are orientated (such as the focus on gaming for example). The point is that there is an attempt to create a core product identity around which a diverse range of other services can be built. Whether it will be enough to save it from the march of Facebook is another matter - at the moment it is certainly holding its own in the Asian market at least.

I could go on here - for example another of Bianchini's points ('create a party, not a museum') relates to design strategy, highlighting the current preference for clean and unobtrusive design, which allows the actual content users are interested in (photos, messages, profile info etc) to be foregrounded. Again here, Friends Reunited seems to be making multiple errors from the fairly 'busy' interface (this was also a problem for Myspace as it lost ground to FB over the past 2 or 3 years) to the choice of colour scheme (blue, as Bianchini highlights, is pretty much 'played out' - i.e. Facebook - so why use it as the single defining colour in the case of FR?).

Anyway, all this isn't designed to rip apart the efforts of a company that once represented one of the most successful social networks in the UK (and indeed also Australia and New Zealand), and did much to develop excellent technologies and products. Instead, I hope the discussion illuminates something of why certain networks seem to gain the upper hand over others - and consequently why Freinds Reunited's initial success wasn't as permanent as its owners would have liked.

The ultimate point is that of course the social networking market is always subject to external influences (like every other market): in this case things like technological changes can dictate the direction of development for a SN (advent of smartphones for example), or political factors can influence market dynamics (censorship in China means that companies must make an ethical decision about whether to operate there) to give a couple of examples. While this is often clearly out of the hands of developers, the key points discussed by Bianchini are certainly not - and it is that that makes them worthy of attention.

This is probably the most useful thing about the report itself, in that it offers quite a different sense of perspective on who actually is a major player in the industry sector, and who isn't. This is where Facebook comes in - or rather fails to come in, since it is nowhere to be found on the list.

Now many will point to the fact that Facebook's reluctance to structure itself as a business, in the same way that Google and Myspace are for example, is simply the technical quirk which accounts for its omission from the list - and that actually in relative terms, FB is just as significant and powerful as the extent of coverage it receives in the blogosphere, for example, would imply.

This is a sound argument and one I would certainly agree with - but nonetheless I think that the report's findings are not to be dismissed, for they do illustrate a key point: that many of the web's most prominent and exciting properties, of which Facebook is only the largest, are entirely absent from the business sphere as plc companies - despite the fact that by and large this is the status that most of them are ultimately aiming for.

Valued in the report at just (!) £3.5 bn, it seems Facebook has a long way to go before the business world is convinced that it offers viable revenue models, despite it being generally received wisdom among web commentators that the network is a financial juggernaut in-the-waiting - just as soon as Zuckerberg decides the time is right to go for it.

Regardless of the hype, this data ultimately comes as a timely reminder of Facebook's as yet unproven status as a business model - within the context of its colossal status as the world's most popular social network. However, perhaps it'd be best to keep in mind that even if FB is worth is as the report estimates, or closer to the £10bn which it is estimated to be worth by Secondmarket, it is, in any case, rather a lot of cash...

Dejan Levi