This morning, I stumbled across a feature of Twitter that allowed me to download an archive of my tweets – all 11,651 of them, dating back to May 2007 when I first got on this crazy ride.  Here is my first, ever so profound tweet …

… and a graphic navigator showing the relative number of tweets I posted each each month.

A interesting article published Sunday in Marketing Land was entitled, “Game Over: Twitter Mentioned In 50% Of Super Bowl Commercials, Facebook Only 8%, Google+ Shut Out.”  According to the article,

Twitter was mentioned in 26 of 52 national TV commercials — that’s 50 percent of the spots that aired during CBS’ game coverage. Facebook was mentioned in only four of those commercials — about eight percent. Google+, which is reportedly the No. 2 social network in the world, wasn’t mentioned at all.

At first blush, it would seem that Twitter might be gaining on Facebook in popularity.  However, I think another reality is at play here.  Twitter is really a broadcast medium – ideally suited to quick 30 second commercials of the Superbowl variety.  Plus, hashtags are easy for advertisers tto include in a commercial and easy for readers to reference after the fact.

Facebook is more of a relationship medium – better suited to conversations among people and without the relative ease of using hashtags.

But this is interesting just the same.  Marketing experts and wannabees will be debating over this for months.  Will Facebook start supporting hashtags in some interesting way?

Thanks to Bonkers World for capturing in a nutshell the social dynamics I experienced with my colleagues in a week-long training event in Santa Clara, CA:

Thanks to infosecurity.us for passing this along!

Much has been said recently (here, here and here, for example) about whether Facebook can overtake Google as the market leader in online adversting. I am certainly not an advertising guru, but from the online consumer cheap seats I occupy, some things seem pretty clear to me.

When I visit Google – I am searching for something. I type in a keyword or two and expect results that are relevant to my search. Both the regular search results and the ads presented to me are often helpful – directly in line with what I am seeking. The direct connection between my current frame of mind and ads presented to me is very obvious.

On the other hand, when I visit Facebook, I am seeking to connect with people I know, hoping to see interesting content they have posted and offering content and commentary of my own. Searching for items I may be willing to buy is usually the farthest thing from my mind. Facebook does a terrible job of assessing my current context and interests before presenting ads to me.

Google ads are like various brands of breakfast cereal that are presented to me when I purposely visit the cereal aisle in a grocery store.  Because I have an  active intent to buy cereal, the Google ads, like cereal choices, are usually very relevant to my search and a natural part of my expected user experience.

Facebook ads, on the other hand, are like the obnoxious array of items stuffed into the long aisle I must endure before reaching a KMart checkout counter. Lots of stuff, mostly terribly irrelevant, screaming “buy me!”

Just like KMart will never get rich from my paltry purchases from their checkout aisles, Facebook will never get rich from me responding to Facebook ads in their current form. Facebook must somehow do a much, much better job of understanding my current frame of mind and presenting relevant ads, or they will wither and die as an advertising medium.

What is more … if Facebook doesn’t fix the irrelevant, obnoxious way they present ads to me, I might just get fed up and quit visiting Facebook, much like I rarely visit KMart any more.

In my humble opinion …

Earlier this week, just days before Facebook’s IPO would launch, GM announced that it was pulling its advertising campaigns from Facebook.  I was intrigued to learn today that GM is also dropping its Superbowl ads.  

I’m not an advertising expert by any means, but I applaud GM for not just following the herd. My post yesterday implied that too many of us, particularly in our use of social media, are just like lemmings, mindlessly following each other off the proverbial cliff.  It is refreshing to see a company, particularly one as big and stodgy as GM, defy the herd mentality and chart a separate course.

On the eve of Facebook’s big IPO, maybe this Nonsequitur view of things is appropriate …

Do you suffer from the malady of Exclamation Point Excess in social media?  I do!  But  I had never realized the effect of it all on Eddie the Exclamation Point, until today …

You have heard of the Last Lecture. What would be your final tweet?

Did you know that Facebook has a population of over 600 million registered users – trailing only the nations of China and India? The following infographic from Search Engine Journal is a fascinating study of the growth of Social Media over the past few years.

Source: The Growth of Social Media: An Infographic

Now that is some crystal ball!

I wonder if the Wizard of Id could get one for me?  We could open a new business: HeavenlyTweets.com. (Alas.  Someone has already camped out on that domain.)