In my previous post, I shined a little light on the repercussions Facebook platform apps can have on the productivity and performance on an individual.  But, how does Facebook apps create sluggish, under-performing companies?

Again noted, Facebook can be an incredible contributor to a company’s bottom line.  It’s a fantastic resource for generating leads and promoting brands, goods and services.  Companies need to define acceptable usage policies for social media so that the incorporation of social media is effective within the overarching marketing strategy.

Facebook is a fantastic tool for acquiring leads and growing your business.  However, Facebook does offer a new set of distractions.

I’m splitting this post into two parts in order to direct the content to two different, primary audiences: the individual looking for work; and, the business owner.   Depending on your current position, you should be aware of the distractions that may be causing you or your business to be less productive. 

Also, these two posts may seem hyper-critical, but please realize, my belief is quite simple…If you don’t like what you’re doing or the results, stop complaining and either change your attitude or change what you’re doing.

Website Magazine’s November issue lists 50 leading web sites for marketing and business development professionals. As one could imagine, the list paints a different picture than that which would have been constructed only a few years ago.

As Website Magazine points out, the use of social sites has increased among top enterprises.  Among the listed social sites are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning and Yelp.

Blogging sites have also become increasingly popular with enterprise trend setters.  Of course, the two most well-known, free blogging platforms, WordPress and Blogger, were ranked high in the list – #’s 9 and 11, respectively.  And, blogs could not receive nearly as much customer attraction if it wasn’t for the aggregators that push their content to subscribers and increase the blogs’ visibility.  A few aggregators, namely, Digg and Technorati, were included in Website Magazine’s list.

Finally, any company seeking to solidify their online presence, must now syndicate video content.  YouTube is now the second-largest search engine, following only its parent, Google, and provides easy and rapid traffic generation through professional and grass-roots video creation and delivery.  It’s no wonder that YouTube was #4 on the list.  Other video platforms like Blinkx, MetaCafe and Ustream.tv were included in the top 50, as well.

In conclusion, I must agree with Website’s disclaimer, “Keep in mind that the sites on this Top 50 are not an acknowledgement of their effectiveness but rather their popularity.” Website Magazine asserts that the effectiveness of the given sites still highly depends on the manner in which they are used.  Again, I completely agree.

On a previous post, I discussed the importance of diversifying your social media marketing channels due to the attacks on the social network Twitter.

As these attacks were taking place, marketers rushed to other channels such as Facebook and FriendFeed.  This, in turn, brought heavy stressed upon the infrastructure of these two servers making their responses to traffic requests quite sluggish, as well.

Over the past few days, we’ve witnessed some of Facebook’s own growing pains. 

Until recently, the extent of using Facebook for charity has been restricted to “Causes” – user-generated pages for organizations and charities providing a mechanism for allowing contributors to donate online.  This has been one way for organizations to “virally” get their message out and acquire new supporters.

However, due to the recent, massive flooding in Atlanta, the local Christian radio station, 104.7 FM – The Fish, has discovered a new way to serve the community through Facebook.  The Fish and their morning show hosts, Kevin and Taylor, are using their Facebook news feeds as a platform for posting community needs and responses.

For someone seeking assistance, the individual would post their request to either the main feed of the Fish or to the feed of Kevin and Taylor.  Community members receive the status updates in their own feeds and have an opportunity to respond to those needs.

Many would argue that social media has weakened the “back porch community.”  For Atlanta this week, Facebook has done the opposite – brought strength and encouragement to a hurting city.

Just because your company may have incorporated Social Media into it’s marketing strategy – it may have even gone as far as creating a Social Media team – doesn’t mean your management has adapted to Social Media trends or adopted its philosophies in the marketplace.

If you've ever sat in my seminars, you found very quickly that I love statistics.  As rapid as the Social Media horizon changes, so is the rate at which these statistics change.

Socialnomics, this past week, released some staggering statistics on the current impact of Social Media. Erik Qualman has done a fine job of compiling the data and its presentation.  I think you'd agree with me how amazing some of these statistics are. A few of these include:

1. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
2. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
3. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia

Also, a few interesting facts concerning education:

1. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
2. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
3. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

Erik has posted the list of statistics along with their sources on his blog, just below the video.