The Social

If you're running a business that has a presence in a virtual world, market research firm Gartner thinks you might want to make sure your employees' avatars aren't dressed like Lady Gaga at the VMAs.

"Companies with codes of conduct for other Web activities, such as blogging, should be able to extend those policies into virtual environments," a release Wednesday from Gartner announcing its new report "Avatars in the Enterprise: Six Guidelines to Enable Success" explained. "However, because 3-D environments add the visual dimension, they will need to make sure that their policies also cover dress codes."

That means your avatar might want to lose the sparkly pink torpedo bra, metallic leggings, and giant bat wings. When it's representing your company, that is.

The presence of businesses in virtual worlds like Second Life is nothing new--and has been much derided in recent years. But according to Gartner, it's still on the rise, particularly when it comes to training and virtual meetings. "Avatars are creeping into business environments and will have far reaching implications for enterprises, from policy to dress code, behavior, and computing platform requirements," the release explained. Gartner estimates that 70 percent of enterprises will be regulating the avatars of employees who use virtual worlds for business.

Two years ago, Gartner put out a study detailing the risks and pratfalls of doing business in virtual worlds, among them the difficulty of brand and reputation management. Now it's getting more specific: Gartner now says that employees ought to know how to operate their avatars properly, use the same degrees of discretion and professionalism that they do on social-networking sites, and even keep separate avatars for personal and professional use.

During New York's inaugural "Social Media Week" festivities earlier this month, media-industry research firm Abrams Research (that's "Abrams" as in MSNBC's Dan Abrams, for the news junkies out there) conducted a survey about the perception of various social-media services within the industry. The results weren't too surprising: 30 percent of respondents would pay for Facebook (keep in mind that these respondents are people already active in the social-media world). They encourage businesses to think seriously about Twitter for marketing. Etc.

That's all good and fine. But what we really found hilarious was the extra-credit question, which asked respondents to pair up one suffering print-media brand with a social-networking service for the ultimate media mashup. (Or, as the survey called it, a "shotgun wedding.") The best suggestion would receive a $500 charity donation in the winner's name.

The winner, according to the research firm's release, was MIT business school student Amanda Peyton, who put up a relatively straightforward pairing of Reader's Digest and social-news site Digg.

"Take Reader's Digest, add Digg, get AARP to sponsor," Peyton's suggestion read. "Create Digg-type ranking system within RD website. Call it 'Seniors Speak: Content Ranked By Seniors, For Seniors.' Baby Boomers are getting older and 50+ community is tech-savvy and loves targeted products. Digg gets an entirely new demographic. Site can start with only RD content and then expand."

One of the runners-up, Samantha Duenas, devised a way to bring fashion tome Vogue into the digital age while bringing a whiff of exclusivity to the News Corp.-owned MySpace. "(Old Media) is going broke, MySpace is falling off a steep cliff into uncool. Vogue should make all of their world issues digitally accessible through MySpace for an annual subscription fee," Duenas wrote. "Models, photographers, stylists would have MySpace profiles with exclusive photos and media only accessible to subscribers. Usage of photos/media on blogs would tag back to MySpace."

That's interesting. Some of the non-winners, however, were just plain funny.

"High Times magazine and Twitter," one respondent said. "It will give a whole new dimension to the term 'tweetup.'"

"AARP magazine with Facebook," another suggested, "since all of our moms are on Facebook now anyway."

There were also some blatantly obvious ones: "Hustler and AdultFriendFinder. Talk about a match made in heaven." Along similar lines, "Playboy and Facebook. Just because I'd love to see a 'Poke a Playmate!' promotion." Abrams Research said it also received a suggested match of the New York Times and naughty video hub YouPorn, but that no explanation was provided. Figures.

Another one of the entries was an elaborate epic poem about magazine giant Conde Nast, penned by blogger Katie Baker. It didn't win, but her valiant rhyming efforts were recognized.

When is a Twitter user not a Twitter user? Well, according to a new study from Pew Internet, "Twitter user" is a broad definition.

The research firm released a study this week in which the results indicated that in December, "11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others." Wow! Twitter sure is catching on!

But then you read the fine print: The catch here is that "update your status" is also a feature of big social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and those features are counted in Pew's definition of status-updating services. Considering Facebook and MySpace both have well over 100 million members apiece, the what-are-you-doing features on those social networks eclipse actual Twitter user for sure. We adore social-network statistics like nobody's business, but these ones probably have much less to say about Twitter than meets the eye.

So, um, taking that into consideration, let's check out the numbers.

About 20 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 have used a status-updating service, the research found (considering Facebook's ubiquity, this actually is lower than I would have expected). Then it starts to drop off. Only 10 percent of those between 35 and 44 answered affirmatively, 5 percent of those between 45 and 54, 4 percent between 55 and 64, and only 2 percent of those over 65. Okay, not surprising.

There were a few tidbits about individual social-networking sites. The average Twitter user, the study found, is older than a Facebook or MySpace user: 31, compared to 27 for MySpace and 26 for Facebook. (The average user of professional networking site LinkedIn is 40, according to the same Pew data.) Well, that's kind of interesting.

Then, the survey goes on to talk about access. 76 percent of Twitter users (and Facebook status-updaters, and MySpace status-updaters, and users of other microblogging services that haven't yet shuttered due to recessionary constraints) use wireless Internet, whether it be Wi-Fi or a handheld device. That's in contrast to 59 percent of U.S. Internet users as a whole, indicating (unsurprisingly) that people who run around updating Facebook statuses or Twitter feeds are a more mobile, tech-savvy set.

Also, 82 percent of them own cell phones and use them to send text messages (compared to 61 percent of U.S. adult Web users as a whole), but there are no statistics as to whether they use text messaging to update their statuses. However, 40 percent of that 82 percent uses the mobile Web. They're not any more likely to read the news than the average Web user, but they're more likely to read it in a mobile form and are less likely (52 percent compared to 65 percent) to read print newspapers. Guess this whole Internet thing is catching on.

One more for you and then we'll let these mildly convoluted figures rest. "Twitter users" (in Pew's broad definition) are way more likely to have blogs of their own. 29 percent of them, compared to 11 percent of the general Web population, say they have ever started a blog. Guess if you overshare in one way, you'll do it in another!

It's sort of cute, really: blogger Robert Scoble went on a nice snowy stroll with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg while the two were in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. Of course, he wrote about it.

Most of what Scoble wrote about his conversation with the young CEO is either information that was out there already or tidbits like the fact that Zuckerberg was teaming up with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to work the coat check at the World Economic Forum's annual Women's Dinner (aww!), but there was one fairly interesting part: apparently, Facebook is doing some extensive research into tracking user sentiment, and it has a lot of data on hand but isn't yet sure how it will be used.

"Facebook is, he told me, studying 'sentiment' behavior," Scoble wrote. Keep in mind that he's not actually quoting Zuckerberg, so this may be a bit general. "He said that already, his teams are able to sense when nasty news, like stock prices are headed down, is under way. He also told me that the sentiment engine notices a lot of 'going out' kinds of messages on Friday afternoon and then notices a lot of 'hungover' messages on Saturday morning. He's not sure where that research will lead."

We've had a peek at this already with Facebook Lexicon, the social network's trend-tracking search feature. It also sounds a lot like what some people are suggesting as a signature use for Twitter and may explain Zuckerberg's apparent onetime interest in acquiring the microblogging company.

More importantly, this is basically confirmation (via Scoble, of course) that Facebook has significant amounts of intricate data on hand that it hasn't released yet. It may sound creepy, and privacy advocates may be wringing their hands already, but for Facebook, this could be a quick answer to the profitability question.

NOTE: As it turns out, Zuckerberg was participating on Friday in Davos forum, along with Microsoft's Craig Mundie, YouTube's Chad Hurley, Adobe Systems' Shantanu Narayen, and others. The live Webcast has come and gone, but it looks like an archived version might show up eventually on this World Economic Forum Webcast page.

Market research firm eMarketer has cut yet another ad spending estimate for 2009, and this time it's social networks. The social-network advertising industry is now pegged at $1.3 billion next year, down from $1.8 billion. For 2008, it's been lowered to $1.2 billion from $1.4 billion.

That's a big drop. Looking at individual social networks, eMarketer has cut its estimates for MySpace from $755 million to $585 million this year, and from $265 million to $210 million for Facebook.

"As consumer usage of social networking sites continues to flourish, advertising has not kept pace," a release from eMarketer explained. "In 2008 and 2009, the recession will affect all forms of online ad spending, but experimental formats, such as the ones available on social networks, which cannot always demonstrate a proven return on investment, will be hit particularly hard."

eMarketer has already cut its ad spending estimates for the overall Web multiple times this year.

But marketers shouldn't write off social networks entirely, the report said. "Monitoring social network discussions about a brand or product and interacting with consumers in a community are still valuable--and probably essential--activities."

Facebook likes to trumpet the value of "trusted referrals"--recommendations and ads with the endorsements of members of your friends list. But a new study from Jupiter Research, commissioned by analytics company BuzzLogic, says that consumer purchases are more likely to be influenced by what they read on a blog versus what their social-networking rosters recommend.

Half of all those surveyed who identify as "blog readers" (people who read more than one blog per month, a fifth of total survey respondents) say that blogs are important to them when it comes to making purchasing decisions. But they don't necessarily find them to be all that reliable: only 15 percent of blog readers, and five percent of all those surveyed said that in the past year they had trusted a blog to help them make a purchase decision.

That's still higher than the number of people who said they used social-network recommendations, though: ten percent of "blog readers," and four percent of all those surveyed.

Results of the survey are similar when it comes to advertising: a quarter of "blog readers" say they trust ads on blogs that they read (versus 43 percent on "familiar" or mainstream media sites), but a slightly lower 19 percent say they trust the ads on social networks.

So what does all this mean? Well, it's good news for BuzzLogic, which tracks blogger influence for clients and has seen blog advertising pushed aside a bit on Madison Avenue in favor of "appvertising" and social ads. Aside from that, the real take-away point is that the results seem to indicate most blogs are less mainstream than you might think: Only a fifth of respondents say they read a blog at least once a month.

That's actually really surprising--or maybe blogs have become so ingrained on the Web that people don't even know they're reading them.

Nielsen has released numbers for its estimates on the biggest and fastest-growing social media sites in the U.S. for the month of September, and there are a few surprises.

The biggest social network in the U.S. is still News Corp.'s MySpace, Nielsen's numbers found. But the bad news is that its traffic has only grown by 1 percent since September 2007, keeping it just under 60 million visitors, and second-place rival Facebook has grown by 116 percent in the same time period.

Rounding out the top 10 social networks are (in order) Classmates Online, a mainstay that gets little press but a lot of traffic; business networking site LinkedIn; Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces, which Nielsen says has shrunk by eleven percent since September 2007; Reunion.com; kiddie site Club Penguin, now owned by Disney; AOL Hometown, which the service plans to shutter soon; Tagged; and the AOL Community site.

Nielsen's ranking of the fastest-growing social sites is a little more interesting. At the top of the list is Twitter, fueled by loads of press and tie-ins to coverage of the hotly contested presidential election, with 343 percent growth since September 2007. Following in second place is Tagged, which clocked in 330 percent traffic growth and which Nielsen says is most popular with the 35-49 age demographic. In third place is Ning, which is actually a service for creating community sites, followed by LinkedIn, music site Last.fm (owned by CBS Interactive, which publishes CNET News, Facebook, teen site MyYearbook, and then AOL's Bebo.

In ninth place is Multiply, a social network for the nongeek set that recently announced that it had partnered with Microsoft to absorb the MSN Groups service. And in tenth place is Reunion.com, which Nielsen says counts the 55-64 age demographic as its biggest.

Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, has projected that over 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites will have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. But, he added in an interview with CNET News, 50 percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures.

Sarner plans to present his results at the annual Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2008, which takes place October 12-16 in Orlando, Fla.

"(Businesses) will rush to the community and try to connect, but essentially they won't have a mutual purpose, and they'll fail," Sarner said. By a "mutual purpose," he means a way to serve both the company putting out the campaign and the audience interacting with it: finding that balance is not easy. The quirkiest and most addictive campaigns often provide little value for the company and turn out to be fads, whereas marketing efforts on the Web often don't go over as well with the public.

He cited the Facebook craze as an example. The social network is "more for the community than it is for the bottom line," and it's tough for marketers to get their message in on a site that's focused on communicating with your friends rather than finding stuff to buy. One of its more business-savvy advertising options, Beacon, on the other hand, was "more about the business trying to get value than it is actually about the customer." Some Facebook users didn't like it, and a public backlash ensued.

Sarner's research deduced that by 2012, fully half of all purchases, whether online or offline, will have some Web-based component to them. That could mean searching for product reviews, reading about a new product on a blog, or comparing prices even if the purchase is ultimately made in a store.

There's obviously no universal solution to social-media advertising and marketing, because every company is different. But Sarner offered a preliminary tip: to make sure that there's a clear reason why such a campaign is instituted, and "get people talking" isn't enough. "Are you discovering what's going to be the new black next season?" he suggested as an example of a trendspotting-focused strategy.

Once you've answered that question, it's time to pick and choose: whether to use existing technologies or build them in-house, whether the focus should be video or discussion or Digg-like yes-no voting, ad nauseam.

The problem with one of the most visible failures in social-media marketing--the number of brands that rushed headlong into virtual world Second Life two years ago--was that nobody was asking or answering those questions, Sarner said. Companies simply built "virtual headquarters" in the hope that Second Life would gain mass appeal, and then it failed to budge from its status as a niche forum for subculture and futurism.

For some companies, a Second Life campaign would be a good idea if you were distinctly trying to target that segment of the population, Sarner explained, and could use the 3D technology to actually come up with something innovative. He cited the example of electric cars. "If Honda has a new car and it's going to be purely electric, you could've set a Second Life campaign up that's promotional in nature," he said. "The futurism angle of an electric car, it kind of fits the people in that segment."

When asked whether the faltering economy will mean that businesses are cutting back on this largely unproven field of social media for marketing or customer relations, Sarner said he didn't think so, and that many businesses will turn to the Web to stay in touch with consumers during a difficult financial climate. "This is going to be a lifeline," he said. "You don't ruin your customers, and your spirit of customers is probably the only thing you have."

Genetic analysis start-up 23andMe, known for its star-studded "spit parties" and a controversial investment from Google, announced Thursday the debut of a new initiative to bring together women who have been affected by breast cancer or who may be genetically at risk.

October is the 23rd annual National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Using its Web-based social network, 23andMe hopes to "reach out to, and build a community around, women who have encountered breast cancer, thereby increasing the scientific understanding of the inherited aspects of a disease that affects 200,000 newly diagnosed individuals per year." Women who purchase the $399 testing kits will have the option to participate in surveys, and the start-up's research arm, called "23andWe," will build a community for the swapping of knowledge, advice, and support.

Representatives from 23andMe said that the project does not yet have any external research organizations as partners, and remains "primarily a social-networking community" at the time. The genetics community has been reluctant to embrace consumer DNA-analysis companies, and the state of California asked 23andMe, along with other companies in the same field, to stop selling tests until they could be fully compliant with health regulations.

At the end of August, 23andMe announced that California authorities had granted it a license to continue selling its tests. In a blog post, 23andMe's founders described the agreement as "only the start of the dialogue between regulators and genomics companies that offer direct-to-consumer services."

This post was updated at 1:04 p.m. PT to clarify the state of 23andMe's negotiations with the state of California.