Recently, at the Facebook F8 conference, it was announced that Facebook would be releasing a new social media “plug-in” called the Open Graph and will release protocol in order for websites to become integrated into the social graph. Including the Open Graph protocol in a website will allow users to “Like” the page which will then be processed by Facebook and be included in the user’s profile and activity/news feed.

Open Graph is designed for websites that represent profiles of real-life objects, like sports teams, restaurants, celebrities, and movies. Once a website becomes a node in the Open Graph, users will be able to link to it, which will then be shared with the user’s friends. Those connections will be very important as the page will now be shown all around Facebook, in a rich content, not just plain text. These connections are similar to how Facebook pages work now. The main difference is that following the connection will lead the user outside of Facebook, and not be constricted like Facebook pages on content.

Open Graph has only just been released and may change.  For more information visit here.

In order to communicate effectively to all of one’s social networking friends, one would need to have a profile on each social site and then post to each one of those separately.  One would also have to check each profile separately to get any answers, questions, or comments at each site.  This process is very time-consuming and keeping track of every site is a nightmare.

Ideas have come up about decentralizing social networks.  Technology has already surfaced to do this; it is called Salmon.  What Salmon does is rather simple.  Suppose Facebook and Twitter implemented Salmon.  If person A posts a tweet on Twitter, person B could respond to it from Facebook, without even having a Twitter account.  Person A could then respond to that post from Twitter and person B would see it in their Facebook.  The same decentralization process happened to email.  Everyone has email accounts on different sites like Gmail or Hotmail.  Person A can send an email from a Gmail account to person B with a Hotmail account without person A having to worry about having a Hotmail account.

What could this mean for the future of businesses in social networking?  First, it would increase the ease of communication between itself and clients/customers.  However, a business would still have to have an account in order to have a tangible presence on each social networking site.  Salmon just makes it easier to contact people on all of them, without having to worry about signing into a different account every time.  This increase in communication could lead to a better following and even better conversion rates as people would see the company has a strong presence in the social media world.

The “decision engine” recently posted on their blog that “new stuff” is on the way in the spring.  Bing has been showing a lot of growth in the search engine market.  Even though they are a fair amount behind Google, it is promising to see a competitor doing well and providing a different experience than Google.  This different experience is directly related to the features both that are implemented and new ones that are on the way.

One interesting feature Bing posted about is expanding on the Quick Tabs feature.  Quick Tabs is a way to help Bing users to narrow their search results when trying to complete common tasks.  Refining queries to make a better decision (hence “decision engine”) is what Bing is trying to accomplish with this feature.  Based on comments from Bing’s user experience team, the more Bing is used in search, the more it will learn about what you search for and help you make better, faster decisions in the future.

Bing is also showing promising real-time search results based on Twitter.  Bing is able to grab the most popular topics shared on Twitter and when a user performs a search, Bing uses the information it grabs to show more information to the user rather than just a link.  An example they posted on their blog shows a search for “New York Times” and shows a section of the most popular shared links from NYTimes on Twitter.

Bing Maps is getting some help in the real-time search department as well in the form of Foursquare.  Users using Foursquare will have their check-ins and comments visible to those searching in the Maps section.

Bing posting these updates is very important in terms of SEO.  Seeing that other search engines are heading into the social and real-time search allows SEO programs to shift more weight towards social media and networking to make sure they get noticed not only by network connections but by outside that circle as well.

Recently, a real-time search engine named OneRiot launched a real-time ad service that will automatically refresh based on trends in the social web.  Statistics have shown that the click-through rates of the real-time ads are at four times the normal rate for ads.  So what does this have in store for real-time search results?

As mentioned before in a previous post about social search, a business site’s visibility could be dramatically increased as long as they have a social presence.  Being able to connect to customers and to keep them informed of the business’s information is a major part of social search.

A connection could be made here that if the more people a business could reach through social search, the more people could be seeing that business’s site in real-time search results.  And based on the statistics from real-time ads, those results will possibly have much higher click-through rate than even organic results.

Currently, being seen in the social web world is only good for traffic from those social sites and not so much for SEO.  But based on these facts that are surfacing about real-time and social search results, social web presence could be as equally as important for SEO as link building, depending on the speculation  that many people could be clicking more on the social search results than the original organic results.

Google’s social search is beginning to make its appearance on search result pages. Social media sites including Twitter and blogging sites can now be used as a search result depending on how well connected the person who is searching is connected to those sites. For example, if a person searches for something, the usual websites will still show up, but suppose that person’s friend writes a blog about whatever the person searched for. That blog page will be included in the social search results.

For businesses, this could prove to be very useful in order to get their site’s visibility increased. There are some tips that a business should follow when trying to capitalize on social search:

1. Make sure to have as many connections as possible.

Having a lot of connections makes sure that a business’s site will be seen by more people in the social search results.

2. Make it easy for customers to follow through the social networks.

This means having links on a site that will either automatically make them follow the business or go directly to the business’s social media page.

3. Post content on those social media sites for interaction with potential and current customers.

Letting a Facebook page sit there won’t do anything but hurt the business. Businesses should answer any questions that come up and post relevant content to keep the people engaged.

4. All social network info should be included on business cards, signs, and online advertising.

This is important to get future clients involved in the network. That way once they start to follow the business, need a service, and search for it, the business will be a search result, possibly ahead of competition.

Remember, traditional SEO is still important. Users might not understand how to see those social results and therefore would still rely on those organic results. These social search tips are still useful in pulling ahead of local competition.

Social Networks

Reports say that the average time spent on social networking sites in the United States is over 6 hours in 1 month with over 140 million unique visitors (http://www.nielsen.com/). Companies of all sizes want to take advantage of the amount of traffic on these sites.

But with the number of social sites growing at a fast pace, how should a company approach their social networking strategy? Should a company try to make a profile on every single site in hopes of attracting some from each, or put the focus on the most popular sites and optimize their profiles there?

Let’s compare the two choices. For the quantity approach, while the traffic going to a company’s profile per site may be low, the fact that one could have lots of profiles spread out means that the traffic could match those who only have a few profiles. But is that traffic really worth it?

The quality of these profiles might not match what one could do when focused, and therefore might not attract the right kind of consumer. People may think one is only doing half the work to keep their profile up to date and might not give the traffic any reason to follow the link to the site.

Now, as for the quality approach, traffic might really enjoy coming to one’s profile page and actually read the content that is posted. The conversion rate might be higher due to the professionalism of one’s page. Optimizing for those popular sites would also prove useful as any visitors to one’s page might reference it to their friends. Those references will not happen on the quantity approach.

The major difference that can be seen between these two approaches is the kind of traffic that will be driven to a site. Through the quantity approach, a lot of random traffic may be driven to a company’s site, but what will the bounce rate be of that traffic, or how many people will actually stay? Due to quality of one’s profile, relevant traffic will be pushed to a company’s site, almost guaranteeing a lower bounce rate. Any company should see an improvement if the time it takes to build profiles on other sites is put towards optimizing the profile on the most popular site.