facebook is a community site, people register and post news on their walls, they have friends, belong to groups, become fans of pages, upload photos… in essence twitter has some of these functions but is totally different.

facebook is focused on networks while twitter is focused on microblogging. facebook is very much about being networked and being part of a network, while twitter is about quickly saying what you think and getting out.

on facebook tendency is towards organizing pages and groups and growing them through content and activities. focus on twitter is about having a publishing routine with some basic interactions. facebook offers a much larger variety of activities while twitter is minimal.

facebook is work, twitter is flash.

brands can get a lot out of both but each requires a very particular approach: facebook should be treated like a social club, twitter should be treated like smsing news to friends and sometimes replying to someones sms. at least this is how it seems to me today. i am sure that i understand these only partially because i only use them like this.

the point is that each is different, each requires a new approach which evolves all the time and therefore requires constant work and research and immersion into these environments.

be active with both and - like with any social media - learn it, get a feeling for it, experiment with it, get better at it.

each is a culture on its own with its own language, aesthetics and etiquette. it takes some time to relax with it and start getting solid results.

this goes for every social media or anything else brands do - as they say: devil is in details…

r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) we miss you mike!
fri at 01:23 ·
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r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) please everybody, let’s make this the biggest fan page in facebook.com history!!! for mj suggest all of your friends here.
fri at 01:34 ·
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r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) we are now the biggest r.i.p mj page on facebook, now lets be the biggest page on facebook ever! spread the word! keep it going!!
fri at 02:09 ·
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r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) everybody click under the picture and suggest this page to atleast 10 people on your friends list, it will ultimately make this page the biggest tribute anyone can ask for. we love michael!
fri at 03:05 ·
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r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) we have reached 20,000 fans for michael! lets reach 100,000 spread the word to 10 of your friends… thats all it takes!
fri at 04:24 ·
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r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) everybody click on “suggest to friends” and suggest to at least 10 friends, we are trying to make this the biggest page facebook has ever seen! as a tribute to the king of pop! it takes only 5 mins do it please, we all miss him equally
fri at 06:47 ·
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r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) thank you very much for all of your support, we are just trying to give him as big of a tribute that we can from the internet. if we make this the biggest facebook page in history, that is as good as it gets on our end. that’s why we are doing this… like building a statue for him (in a sense) so that’s why we ask for this. spread the word please, help us build the “statue”
fri at 17:50 ·
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r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) help us build the “facebook statue” for michael jackson by suggesting atleast 10 friends on to this page. he lives on through all of us!
yesterday at 09:38 ·
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r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) thank you for all of the love and support that you have shown to michael jackson. his music and legacy will live on through each and everyone one of us with our support. in a sense, he will never die.
4 hours ago ·
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r.i.p michael jackson (we miss you) facebook page had 1,113,126 fans on sunday 8:45 am cet.

also there are 1244 fan photos uploaded to this same page.

so, within some 70+ hours more than million people signed their names to support one single goal just based on few generic written words. luckily it was for michael jackson.

internet is buzzing.

although famous people leave us every day, for some reason michael jackson is making an impact.

it is a sudden death or someone who did everything he could to cheat it.

i found out about michael’s death on rich cruse twitter around midnight cet.

a lot can be learned from michael and i will write more about that in the future.

i am sorry that i have never seen him blog.

massimo vignelli usa bicentennial poster.

found it: on flickr

i had a short discussion with one of my clients about face expressions of ecommerce models.

i do not think there is a right answer to how should one make photos.

safest is least expression possible but this is definitely not emotionless, only leaves more options for visitors’ interpretation.

one rule should be consistency but branding consistency online is a flexible term.

so what is my advice? i have no idea, whatever you started with just keep on doing…

also check out kuleshov effect.

ps i realize i picked only girls in t-shirts… picking models which advertise gardening tools or swim wear would be different

problem is a lot of clients are mostly exposed to what large corporations do and try to copy this in their own work. what large corporations do, with millions in budget and staff of hundreds, only they can do. small or rather less organized businesses have to implement totally different strategies.

strategy is to produce as much content as possible with usually extremely limited resources (thank god for open source!) and this content has to maintain a level of quality which must not obstruct the rhythm of production, but also it is important to keep experimenting and finding new ways to approach the audience / market / whatever you call it, and analyze results.

there is always danger of starting to be too repetitive and boring. always same kind of photos, same kind of texts, same kind of comments… which results in significant drop in quality even if the rhythm can be maintained and quantity increased.

this is what a real test is: to figure out ways to produce quickly and still be fresh and keep changing.

i have done some really simple tests lately.

these take about 30 mins to make, most designers can make them and are a nice change from usual photos and graphics used on blogs, websites and social media.

do not bury yourself with trying to be too fancy - very simple things work well…

only problem is you have to do something new next week already!

possiblyawesome.com video experiments

found it: on daniel jenett facebook wall

360° eiffel tower by eric rougier at artdaily.org

found it: robin ogilvie-stewart barrow facebook wall

i am skeptical about how much twitter and facebook can contribute to actual sales. i think an enormous amount of work has to be done for these to turn into proper marketing tools. there are always examples which show facebook or twitter working but i think this is very unlikely for an average business.

but i like that facebook and twitter do stimulate high level of client activity.

clients do not feel isolated and get immediate concrete feedback and this motivates them to produce content.

basic websites and blogs on the other hand are much more isolated and this often results in lack of motivation. usual result of this lack of motivation are decisions to only invest in paid advertising which seems easiest to organize and evaluate (and is most expensive in the long run).

facebook and twitter, by some wonder, make most introvert clients communicate regularly to their audience, and as this will hardly ever turn into surge in sales, it is great training and education, and also creates possibilities for that “stroke of luck” of being noticed.

my suggestion to businesses of all sizes is to always be active in most popular social networks and try to understand them. keep in mind that it takes weeks if not months to truly get into how they work (and chance is that they will already change by then).

one of the basic elements of marketing is content, and any way which stimulates clients to produce content (which after all is a highly personal and subjective activity no matter how big the organization is) is welcome.

if you have chosen internet as your medium respect it and take time to understand it before budgets are wasted… facebook, twitter and similar are a easy and good start.

i got into those facebook quizzes, i did like one a day. they always seem to really guess who i am.

i finally made one myself to promote the nekada project: triathlon team.

amazingly i turned out to be aleksandar sørensen, which i think is closest to me in real life. so strange because i made all the questions and answers myself and it still worked out right. i wonder if triathletes will get themselves as results.

check it out here.

found it: quiz monster