Check Facebook’s new “hybrid” news feed. You’ll see your friends, especially those well-liked baby and pet pictures posts. But you won’t see very many brands you once saw, particularly those that link to news, information, pictures and video. I myself subscribe to lots of media, and they have all disappeared from the feed.

The issue is being addressed at Facebook’s developer forum: Bugs - New news feed doesn’t show posts with pictures or links in them

Sure I like my friends’ pet pictures, but I now rely much more heavily on Google+ and Twitter for substantive conversations on and discovery of non-personal topics I’m interested in. Furthermore, there is no reason for any brand to advertise on Facebook because if they capture a “like”, that reader will eventually disappear because they won’t be able to see that brand’s future Facebook feeds.

I’m surprised at the lack of conversation about this issue because Facebook is alienating the commercial brands that are its customer base.

It’s the INUNDATION factor.

Since I do not intimately know most of my Facebook friends, I do not want to be inundated by:

1) Where they have checked in

2) What music they listen to

3) What they “like” on Facebook

Facebook’s new platform changes confirms their mission to broadcast (or a more kind term, to “share”) everything people do on social applications associated with Facebook by default. The new protocol is called “frictionless sharing” . This comment from Hacker News “Facebook is Scaring Me” explains the problem:

The reason why this bothers me is that there is no longer any EXPLICIT confirmation that I want to post something. Not sure who said it but I read it in a TechCrunch article, “Just hit play in Spotify and it will share with your friends”.

No, any sharing I do HAS to REQUIRE an EXPLICIT action on my part. I have to be in full control. Visiting a web site does not mean that I believe it will be interesting to my friends NOR do I want that information shared with people on Facebook.

A like button that shares, much like the Google+ 1+ button is perfectly fine, I have to hover over it, and choose my circles to share with, and then share. It is not automatic once I visit the site.

I don’t want articles automatically being linked just because I visited a page, or clicked play in Spotify, or put the toilet seat up.

It is not just privacy concerns, it is the image I try to convey while using social media sites where it is common place to be friends with your boss and or co-workers. I don’t need them knowing I like the Bloodhound Gang or that I read articles about atheism in the NYT but have never read a single article about religion.

Eventually all this collected data will be used against me. What if I do a simple Google search for cancer and I end up reading an article about it, that is now shared publicly, my insurance company a few years later gets a claim for cancer they claim it was a pre-existing condition and deny me coverage.

These are all scenarios going through my head. I am all for the interconnected web, and making it easier for me to introduce my friends to new content across it, however it has to be done on my terms, it has to require explicit authorization and must never do something automatically without my consent.

The reason we’re all seeing second-by-second updates on everything being listened on Spotify is likely due to the default checkmark that enables Facebook sharing (at the bottom of the screenshot). Spotify in fact now requires new users to be on Facebook so it’s automatic. Nobody gives it a second thought to uncheck it because it seems like a good thing.

"Get personal recommendations by sending music you play to Facebook's Open Graph"

When every social app defaults to frictionless sharing (and they all will because it is potent viral publicity), Facebook will become unusable.

It’s always been my philosophy on social media to contribute critical and interesting information related to my business, causes and hobbies, but not the daily personal life stuff that really doesn’t matter to the world.

Advice: turn off Spotify and other notification settings on Facebook app settings (Account Settings / Applications); you’ll likely need to go directly to the apps preferences page to turn them off manually. It’s a bother to do, and that’s why you’ll eventually be inundated with notifications from thousands of apps by millions of people who aren’t turning each one off individually.

I don’t think I’m alone here in hating this.

Airbnb, according to Techcrunch and others, is planning a mega-round raise at a $1 billion+ valuation, and validated social travel in one swoop. It redefines what a “hotel room” is, even one year ago the only viable short term rental space for the masses. Airbnb allows anybody to rent out living space – a refurbished basement, an in-law, or even a guest room – and relies on a social reputation system of references, reviews and personal connections to ensure both renter and host are reliable and trustworthy. It opens up a brand new segment of the hospitality industry that will inevitably grow and expand the supply of short term (and eventually long term) rental inventory.

Before Airbnb, the owner of a rentable space could realistically only offer monthly leases, and deal with the contractual legalities and problems of landlord tenant issues that may come with it. Airbnb creates a branded exchange for property rental that solves the arduous process of finding reliable tenants, up to now the province of Craigslist and classifieds. Now rental can be accomplished piecemeal, almost always at a better daily rate than what could potentially be received from monthly tenancy. Rental inventory increases because any space, even a guest room in an apartment, can become a virtual hotel room.

AirBnB opens up revenue opportunities for commercial property owners/managers that have rentable property but up to now did not have the distribution opportunities of an exchange to attract short term tenancy. Vacant properties and developments in overbuilt tourist areas in, say, Florida and California can be converted to rental property, even ad hoc bed and breakfasts quickly. For example, I’ve proven that I can easily rent out my previously difficult to rent no-kitchen in-law space in San Francisco for $70 per night, for potential monthly revenues of $2,000. At $70, it’s half the price of a three-star hotel room, and next to Golden Gate Park, where there are few hotels. This changes “cap rates” by augmenting revenue streams, particularly in cities and areas with high tourist or traveler demand, like resorts and college towns. Property managers can source more revenue for their clients simply by managing rental inventory on Airbnb, and charging commissions to do so. Expect new affiliate businesses – property management applications, Airbnb profile designers, local cleaning and other hospitality services – to serve a new virtual hotel room industry.

Finally, Airbnb socializes travel. The attraction and comfort of staying in the homes of friends and acquaintances becomes easier to accomplish when applied across Facebook’s social graph. Last month, Airbnb introduced Social Connections, a social discovery application that basically identifies friends of friends for rental and home stay. Airbnb is an aiming for the tipping point of adoption when travelers, both business and pleasure, can find like-minded people through their social networks at every “port of call”.

Related:  Quora – is Airbnb’s valuation ridiculous?

The long awaited announcement of Facebook Places this afternoon sure was anticlimactic. The “Check-in” is now institutionalized, and the masses of 500,000,000+ Facebook members can now enjoy what 2 million Foursquare members have been doing. But that was what was expected; the gorilla just tossed its hat into the ring.

The main function Facebook brings to the party is ubiquity:

Ever gone to a show, only to find out afterward that your friends were there too? With Places, you can discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time. (from Facebook blog)

“Checking in” has essentially been a kind of mindless activity, but its social context makes it meaningful within a massive network, like college students.

The locational media – Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla, perhaps even Twitter – now become relegated to being the worker bees developing new applications and functionality for the check-ins Facebook will ultimately dominate, just as they are doing with “likes”. With the new Facebook Location API also being launched today, it seems natural for mobile app developers to build for the massive audience of Facebook. It’s up to the locational apps to differentiate themselves with specific functionality – Yelp has business reviews, Foursquare has branding deals with movie studios and other corporations, Groupon has local discount coupons.

The next step – watch Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla double down on efforts to build the locational commerce applications that provide rewards for check-ins. Groupon has proven the revenue model associated with couponing (Forbes claims it’s the fastest growing company ever), and it’s low hanging fruit.

Get ready for the commercial social media...

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The latest Facebook metrics are powerful: 400 million active users (7% of the world), 50% of them logging on each day and spending more than 55 minutes daily on Facebook.

The sudden concentration of traffic on the social media led by Facebook has caught business by surprise. In particular, small and local businesses don’t quite realize their consumer is now spending a majority of their time on the social media, but they continue to rely on the old online standard: their website. Websites and blogs are critical as marketing collateral, but local businesses need to develop an online marketing presence that spans across the social media ubiquitously.

With all the buzz around Foursquare and Gowalla, why is hyperlocal media suddenly hot? Geolocation is changing the social media by providing nothing more than the tagging mechanism to define social networks by localities. Geolocation facilitates the development of a new, more practical, more intimate Twitter/Foursquare network of friends who just happen to be living down the street. It’s far more compelling to build a social network of folks you can have coffee with than the national networks than generally evolve in Twitter and Linkedin. I myself see this… I am starting to socialize with San Franciscans…

The Hyperlocal Marketing Opportunity

So we’re seeing social apps like Twitter and Yelp quickly adopting location “check-in” functionality, with Facebook in the wings. And this presents a huge opportunity. It’s a no-brainer for local retailers and businesses to see that they need to provide the most effective online venue for their local customers to “check-in” to. The new local “websites” are the Facebook business page, the new local advertising vehicle is the Twitter coupon, and the new reviews column is Yelp.

You haven’t seen them yet, but Facebook is primed to evolve into a massive Sunday advertising circular for local businesses:

And why not? It’s free. Enterprising local media publishers (for example, Breaking News sites) will curate and compile these merchants into local online directories.

Twitter will develop hyperlocal couponing systems that will be online equivalents of PennySaver coupons and Valpak:

And why not? It’s free. Couponing is effective because it is perceived by consumers as “found money” while straight advertising may now be considered “spammy”. You’ll see the advent of new local social media based advertising agencies that will create turnkey Twitter / Facebook / Foursquare couponing campaigns for merchants. And these campaigns will be accepted because online data is more efficient for tracking and analysis than traditional advertising channels like radio / TV or inefficient direct mail offerings like PennySaver. There is a defined ROI.

Conclusion

2009 was the year when the masses found Twitter and Facebook. 2010 will be the year when local business begins to recognize the power of leveraging Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Foursquare et al to achieve a level of community engagement that standard “one-way message” advertising can’t achieve. It’s about being ubiquitous across the social media so your community of customers can find your services via their preferred channels – Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Related slideshow: Ubiquity marketing (Jan. 2010)

Related webinar: I’ll be discussing “The Impact of Geolocational Media” on the Virtual Bar Camp April 6 at 2:15pm, Room #4. Register and join our discussion.

The powerful launch of Google Buzz (Mashable | Google Buzz has completely changed the game) last week signals the arrival of the Real Time Web as a truly new media. It’s been well documented that Twitter has established itself a breaking news source. Google Buzz, Facebook and Twitter form a triumvirate channel for sourcing news media that will continue to grow in influence.

The real time web implies that online news will flow more and more through applications, not websites. The problem facing mainstream media is their dependence on traffic through their websites for advertising revenue.

The journalistic media on the other hand continue to try to erect walls that halt traffic flow through their websites, either by charging subscriptions (New York Newsday gets 35 subscribers after three months), by limiting access to their content by aggregators (Murdoch’s gambit with blocking Google from indexing Sky News content), or simply by not providing an RSS feed for syndication (Santa Barbara News Press and many other local publications).

Social media thrives on RSS to find, deliver and syndicate news from journalistic media, and it directs traffic back to the news source.  If the traditional news media continues to ignore social media sourced breaking news, they risk becoming irrelevant to their communities who demand this real time news. People will eventually find that real time news directly from their community via one of their social networks and news aggregation applications.

Entrepreneurs and web designers launched a slew of social real estate applications over the past two years – literally hundreds of social networks devoted to real estate, multi-author real estate blog/magazines, and a variety of listings sites. Most of these sites still plod along with plateau traffic volume.

Even a year ago, it may have seemed like a great idea to build a social application for the real estate niche, but today’s reality is a niche application can’t build any critical mass versus an established “elephant” competitor. Today, my good friend Deb Madey gave me the idea for this article in a discussion of various real estate agent review sites. Yelp, by virtue of the sheer numbers of reviews of real estate agents eclipses any smaller niche review site that have little traffic, few reviews,  and are hard to find. Social media user bases are consolidating to the biggest player in each space, simply because everybody is there. Facebook reportedly has an overwhelming 25% page view share and a hardy few can remember the names of Twitter’s early competitors.

This trend is one more strike against startups. Fast growing apps like Foursquare and Gowalla can hit a wall when (not if!) Yelp copies its features, like it did with Foursquare’s location “Check-in” feature. Twitter have implied that their strategy is to add geolocation features that may also rival Yelp and Foursquare.

It’s now harder to be a game changer when the rules of the game called social media are solidifying / consolidating. Two years ago, no social network really dominated its niche… now lines are being drawn.

We have had success providing our social media training platform to a number of REALTOR Boards (an example in far flung Oklahoma City) and are extending the platform to any associations or enterprises who can use a social media training resource free.

We’re developing social media training systems together with association / corporate marketing groups and consultants who add their training content to the platform. For example, we’re working with a wine consultancy developing a national social media marketing business using the platform for “basic training” and reference for their client base.

Register for a peek at http://domusu.com/admin/first-time-users. We welcome discussion on this unique idea.

Facebook’s share of 25% of US pageviews is truly dominating for an application that just started taking off a couple of years ago. Businesses can’t afford to ignore social media in the face of this.

(from Soshable)

Twitter started out as a social tool, asking its users “What are you doing?”. Now, it’s become an effective business networking tool with an agenda…  “What are you pushing?”.

Business social networking boils down to two motivations to building a productive network: 1) getting your message across, and 2) getting others to feel comfortable with you. More simply, 1) branding, and 2) developing relationships

Before the advent of social media, business networking focused first on the message for the obvious reason that, without LinkedIn or Facebook, strangers didn’t exactly know what you did.

Relationship building has always taken time because it is personal. And social media adheres (correctly) to the protocol of having the equivalent of a beer, perhaps in the form of a Twitter chat, to get to know one another.

But business prizes efficiency and speed… they demand a media marketing model that broadcasts their brand and message, and attract those with common, shared business interests so they can move onto the deal.

Corporate practice of social media reflects this mindset. Starbucks, Comcast, Dell and Zappos use social media for, in essence, real time customer support. It’s all about the brand, and it’s aggressively business oriented to give the company a live face.

Consumers are beginning to demand real time results. The next evolution of business social media will facilitate connections between two parties to do business in real time. It’s inevitable that business social media presence will look like cut to the chase advertising. Only those with common shared business interests will opt-in to receiving that advertising. Here’s an example: those who need, say, baby sitters from time to time will opt-in to see a bunch of tweets asking for babysitters.

The spammers will always be a presence on social media. The most efficient way to deal with them now is to just ignore them.