Internet Search has hit a new level. After Bing and Google both integrated a real-time feed into their search results, the world is catching on to the trend. We want our updates and we want them NOW!

Twitter is our pioneer, facing the old, slow updates of Internet olden days and still having the determination to create realtime streaming for third-party Twitter apps. Apparently, TweetDeck and Echofon are both currently trying out the new Streaming API that pushes data to appear in realtime across these desktop applications. This new feature is called User Streams and has gotten much praise so far.

Friend updates, direct messages, search results all come up in an instant. You will notice this especially id you were to search a very popular phrase like Apple or Google. The results will appear so fast it is hard to read what they say.

So if you didn’t like TweetDeck before because it lives on your desktop, this feature just made it a lot cooler. However, before you get too excited, it is still just in beta and doesn’t have plans of coming out until at least the end of August.

Facebook is for a business, a full business.

You can’t make a personal Facebook page and expect to get any business related offers or chat started. If you do want to impact Facebook on behalf of your whole business, you should look into creating a Fan Page. Facebook is a social website, not a business-professional website so this is the only way to draw a line between business and personal life.

If you want to create a Fan Page you can do so here. A Fan Page needs to be updated regularly and house plenty of information for Facebook users to understand what your business does. Take advantage of the “Info” tab on your page and list what services you offer. The last thing you want is for a potential customer to leave your page because they didn’t understand your message. Also, be sure you have your website URL listed somewhere convenient. The main point of the Fan Page is to drive traffic to your website. Other good things to list are the office address, a phone number, and hours of operation. You also have the option to upload photos just like on a personal Facebook page. I would definitely utilize that aspect of the page as well. This is where you can show some personality or maybe show off some of your best work. Pictures of employees make the company more personal and pictures of your work show viewers that you are good at what you do. Check out our Facebook page if you want an example.

I mentioned briefly that a Facebook page needs to be updated regularly, but now I’ll stress my point. By updating regularly, you are drawing the viewer in. You are keeping things interesting. Maybe link to a blog post, or write a small update about a new service you offer, or even something about your latest work like, “Just finished the Ramsey job! Great work everyone and thanks for the team effort!” To engage your audience, you could also make it a point to have some kind of weekly contest or question. Maybe ask your fans what questions they have about computers (an example appropriate for Keystone). Then take your favorite answer and write a blog post answering it. The more you involve other Facebook users, the better.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is for the individual.

You create an individual, personal account where you represent your business. You can connect to others who work with you but the focus of this networking site is completely individual. By making business contacts (equivalent to “friending” on Facebook) you expand your influence; so the more connections you make, the better. When you have significant news, update your profile and all your contacts will see the update in their news feed.

Don’t be afraid to connect with people. Connect to anyone you have ever worked with and anyone who you have ever worked for. Connect with people who you could imagine needing your services. Maybe I find a young man trying to promote his start-up. I design websites and think I could definitely help him get some attention, so I connect to him. Just be careful to not get too random with your connecting decisions. Get too aggressive and people brush you off like a spam email. Here’s an article that describes more ways to make the most of LinkedIn.

For an individual with a start-up company, an unemployed individual, someone who works for himself, or any small business entrepreneur, LinkedIn is an excellent tool. These individuals just need to be familiar with the system and how to get the most out of LinkedIn.

Personally, I think LinkedIn is more for the entrepreneur and Facebook for the larger business or company. The main difference between the two  are intentions. LinkedIn is made up of people who are purposely interested in making business connections, while Facebook is made up of people interested in socializing with some businesses thrown in trying to grab their attention. While Facebook provides a larger pool of potential customers with over 500 million users, its users may not want your business updates as distractions. LinkedIn users know what they’re getting into. They know it is going to be work chit chat 24/7 on that website. So take your pick and good luck in your ventures.

The points I list below are probably the most valuable lessons I have learned at Keystone over the past two summers. Being the office intern doesn’t just mean running to McDonald’s here, it actually means writing blogs, managing our social networking efforts, putting together our e-mail marketing campaigns, and applying SEO work (just to name a few). My intern lessons might be valuable to you and your business as you try to expand your influence on the world of the Internet.

#1. How to write a blog:

When I started at Keystone I had just finished up my freshman year of college. Early on in the job, Jeremy told me that I would be writing for the business blog. I’ll be honest, I was very overwhelmed. Writing for the business blog meant communicating Keystone’s values, teachings, and interests on the Internet… and the Internet is a very big place. Also, since I had just finished up a freshman English class, my idea of a blog was a well written, essay-structured, news piece. I eventually realized the more relaxed you are, the better your blog article will be. Blogs are not like essays; save those for college and proposals. Blogs are like conversations with your readers. And because you are constantly fighting the other blogs for readers, writing style is what can put you ahead. Humor is a great way to attract readers, one way I still strive to perfect, and readability. Make your blogs very easy to read by keeping them to the point and interesting.

#2. The importance of social media for small businesses:

It has been said probably millions of times, but I’ll say it again. Small businesses should definitely take advantage of social media for marketing to a large audience. The social media market has really taken off recently and beats paper marketing any day. With sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, a business can get its message out to hundreds of people with just one status update, or just one blog post. I have also learned that there are tons of online tools out there to make social media marketing easier. For example, HootSuite lets you send the same status update to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others. HootSuite is probably the best tool of its kind because it has both iPhone and Droid applications as well as letting you access multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts. With this tool or something like it, social media marketing becomes easier than ever.

#3. The importance of E-mail marketing:

Since I became the most frequent blog poster I started watching our site’s stats frequently. If the stats were super low for one day, I would assume my article didn’t appeal to our readers and if the stats were great, I’d try to write more posts like that one. One way that always guaranteed high numbers for the blog was by sending out the KeyNote. The KeyNote is our E-mail marketing newsletter filled with links to great articles that we send out every two weeks or so. By including some of our own blog articles in the KeyNote, I am making the KeyNote more Keystone centralized and I am driving traffic back to the blog. We love Emma for e-mail campaigns because of its easy to learn system and its advanced stats analysis. Sign up for our biweekly KeyNote here.

#4. What SEO means:

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. On my first day of work here, I would not have been able to tell you anything about SEO. But today I feel so confident in my SEO knowledge that I’m actually writing on it! That’s a big step for me. Back to the point, SEO is certainly important to any business with a website (which should be most businesses). Getting your website to been ranked higher on Google seems like an unreal dream, but with SEO it can happen. SEO is a strategy, if you will, that web developers must integrate into the website. By using the most descriptive text and pulling keywords from that text search engines are more likely to rank that website higher for that keyword. This is only one small aspect of SEO work. There are hundreds of criteria that Google goes by when ranking websites. Some others include external links to your website, your domain name, the age of your website, how often your website is updated, and many many more. Just be weary of those other businesses promising SEO without really knowing what they’re promising.

Other than these few lessons I have also learned how to make the perfect 12-cup pot of coffee, the quickest route to McDonald’s, lyrics to too many Jamie Holland favorites, how to type without staring at my hands, how to pull an Adam Arnold joke on Adam Arnold, where the extra pens are, how men think, and who to go to when I need a funny YouTube video.

Similar to Yahoo! Answers, Facebook Questions lets you ask a question about anything and direct it toward your Facebook community. There will be a new “Ask Question” button on the homepage that gives you easy access to the Questions feature. Even though this sounds an awfully lot like Yahoo! Answers, there are a few characteristics to set it apart.

Let’s say you have a picture of the amazing cake at a party you recently attended. And man, you really liked that cake. But you wish you had the recipe… Well you can post the picture of the awesome cake on your Facebook with a question attached like “Did anyone get the recipe to this delicious confection?” Maybe the host of the party will let you in on their culinary home run. This scenario leads me to think of other examples that might be in the future of this feature. Think Texts from Last Night meets Facebook… Eek!

Anyway, another advantage of this Q&A is the large pool of voters you’ll have. Asking an opinion question like “Should I go see Inception? Or save my $10?” I know, I know. I don’t see how you’d get two sides to that argument either. However, asking any kind of multiple answer question on Facebook will allow you to do a little polling. Facebook has 500 million users, remember? That is quite a sampling pool to pull your conclusions out of.

You can also use the Facebook tagging feature within questions maybe to direct your question at someone specific or to narrow your audience (or to compare cuteness of friends). Facebook also allows you to follow a question from its birth to its end. That way you’re not left wondering forever what the answer was. You will also be able to browse through Facebook questions by category. Categories have to do with the topic of the question. Or questions can be sorted by author.

Happy Facebook questioning!

Like Facebook, the movie has generated a lot of attention in a very short time. Maybe it got that attention because it’s about Facebook and Facebook is pretty popular (500 million popular), maybe it is because David Finch (director of Se7en, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, among others) is the director, maybe it’s because Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor is doing all the music, maybe it’s because Justin Timberlake plays a lead role and all the old N’Sync fans are still secretly in love with him, or maybe it’s because the trailer makes it look so awesome.

The plot surrounds Mark Zuckerberg’s journey and struggle to the top, revealing all the litigation that ensued when the original creation team split ways. I’ll be honest, when I first heard there was going to be a movie about Facebook I thought it would definitely be lame. However, because all the  people creating the movie are so talented, they will prevent it from being a total flop. The trailer and the tag line, “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies,” tell me this movie will be pretty awesome. Here is one of the newest trailers for the movie. After you watch it, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

With almost 1% of all Internet activity dedicated to Facebook, the turnout for the movie should be impressive. Be prepared; it’s supposed to hit theaters October 1^st, 2010.

This little publicity stunt has a specific name, a social media campaign. Pepsi has one as well in the Pepsi Refresh Project, which is giving away $1 million in grants to projects that you submit and vote for. The Old Spice man definitely took the social media campaign to a new level. Using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and various other websites, Old Spice managed to attract over 61 million people to their YouTube ads. Isaiah Mustafa responded quickly to different followers on YouTube without ever shoving Old Spice products in the audience’s face. Each response was hilarious, the perfect  combination of Chuck-Norris-seriousness and off the wall answers that will make anyone laugh. One of the last responses was to the actor’s daughter, Hayley Mustafa.

A social media campaign combines all ports of social media to get attention and tons of hits. Successful social media campaigns get as many people involved on the internet as possible, either by posting direct YouTube videos or by hosting a contest conducted completely online. The point is for as many strangers to see your website (or product) as possible. Humor is a great way to get attention; it obviously worked for the Old Spice guy.

The tricky part is getting one started. You need a solid base of following if you want a significant response. Be active on sites that are relevant to your business or product and make connections within your line of work. Then try to monitor all likely forums where your line of business is relevant. While paying close attention to these websites or forums, comment (appropriately) to get some attention back to your website. At your website, there needs to be something that will really grab the attention of all the traffic coming its way. The Old Spice campaign had new videos popping up (some within minutes of the previous one). Pepsi has the promise of $1 million worth of grants.

It’s a long road to pulling off something as big as the Old Spice social media campaign, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. This campaign definitely makes me view Old Spice differently, and if I weren’t a girl, it would make me want to buy their products. Here is another informative article to help you pull off a social media campaign.

Thanks for the pictures, Social Media Bandwagon.

TechCrunch came out with an interesting blog article today about new Facebook numbers. The interesting part is not that Facebook has risen past 140 million unique U.S. users in the month of June, but it is the fact that Facebook continues to gain users even after that big movement to quit Facebook on May 31, 2010. Remember that? Well, we do.

All that whining about Facebook security convinced 34,000 Facebook users to cut all ties to the social network. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that Facebook’s security had some major holes. And now I also realize that those hole would have never been patched without the whining of these few Facebook users’ rights advocates. It seems that about 50 million other Facebook users also think the security flaws are cured. TechCrunch reported that an online audience measurement provider, comScore, found that the number of unique U.S. Facebook users increased by 10 million in the month of June.

Wait a second. Didn’t we just say there was a quit Facebook campaign and yet now we’re hearing that Facebook actually increased its numbers in the U.S.?

Apparently the new privacy controls worked for Facebook’s American audience and convinced more of them to join the social media giant. The 10 million users increase was reported for the month of June, while “Quit Facebook Day” was scheduled for May 31st. I certainly hope that those 34,000 users who went through with deleting their Facebook accounts didn’t give into Facebook’s security updates in just a month.

USA Today reports that the spike in Facebook interest is probably due to its increasing number of mobile users. 150 million people in the U.S. now call themselves Facebook users. Worldwide, the number of Facebook users is a whopping 500 million.

I have to conclude that, while there was so much chatter about Facebook lacking significant security, people still love Facebook. They love connecting with old high school buddies, relatives, former teachers, and even some complete strangers. I also have a feeling that users are going to remain loyal to Facebook for a long time. Unless someone can show us a better way to connect with our teen-age buddies and grandparents in the same place, and manage to convince the 500 million Facebook users to ditch that “old” system of connecting, it’s not going to be replaced until teleporting becomes available in every household.

Backupify provides data protection for most of the big name social media sites and Google Apps. With this service, you can recall an old Twitter direct message or an old blog article on Blogger that you accidentally deleted. Backed up data can either be downloaded to your PC by an IT Administrators or you can access stored data on the web. If you operate your business with Google Apps, Backupify says you can use its software to backup all your business’s information in “Gmail, Google Docs, Contacts, Calendar, and Sites for your entire domain.”

For an example of social media backups, the software will store the last thirty days worth of your Facebook status updates, comments, activity, et cetera. Not only on Facebook, Backupify allows you to choose from a huge pool of social media sites to be backed up. Once you have selected what social media sites you want to backup, you have to give Backupify all your account information (username, password, etc.) for backing up to begin. Once you have configured your accounts, Backupify will provide you with access to past data in PDF form.

Backupify for Google Apps users is priced at three levels. The most basic level being only $10 per month and the premium being $60 per month. The differences between plans are storage space provided and number of accounts Backupify will support. They will also allow you to try a 30 day free trial without any promise to purchase later.

For social medial and personal accounts Backupify has three different plans. The basic version of Backupify is always free but only grants support for one account and only provides 2GB of storage. The next level up, the Plus plan, will support 5 accounts with 10GB of storage for $40 per year. The top level, premium level, will support unlimited number of accounts and provides 25GB of storage for $60 per year. For all kinds of legal cases or disaster recovery, Backupify is the perfect precaution that can be taken.

Many people did not think that Facebook would remain in the spotlight for so long. Like Myspace, it was expected that a new social networking site would have come along by now to knock the big FB out of the limelight. Maybe Twitter was supposed to be the next big hitter but the blue whale of death is around too much for Twitter to be considered a threat. Well Google is attempting to be the next Facebook with their new ‘Google Me’ social media site.

Yesterday, June 29th, a former Facebook executive confirmed rumors about the existence of a Google social media site modeled after Facebook. On Quora, a site compiled of questions and answers on any topic imaginable, Adam D’Angelo said,

“[Google Me] is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.”

Google is a very ambitious “little engine that could.” They didn’t fear Microsoft when launching Google Chrome browser and operating system. They weren’t afriad of Apple and the iPhone 3Gs when developing Android. Along with the number one search engine, email service, etc.  Google’s list of achievements could go on and on. A fairly recent project, Buzz, was meant to compete with Twitter by allowing any Gmail users to update his or her status and provided an option to follow friends. So it is not surprising that Google will be gunning for Facebook next. In the same post on Quora, D’Angelo also says,

“[Google] realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off Facebook. Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google.”

High priority project probably means highly secretive. Right now is definitely a good time for Google to come out with a Facebook competitor because of all the criticism Facebook has faced recently. You can bet Google’s social website will take into consideration and avoid all the fundamental mistakes of Facebook.

Facebook has been under fire quite a bit recently because of unsatisfactory privacy settings. If you remember Cheryl Smith’s story from last summer about Facebook’s misuse of her picture, then you know what I’m talking about. Facebook has been in the headlines day after day with the reoccurring theme of privacy (and today is no exception). In this case, Zuckerberg didn’t have to pull a Jesse James-size apology for Facebook’s flaws but he did acknowledge the mistakes Facebook made in its early years of development. He describes the privacy settings as “missing the mark” from the very beginning back in 2004. He tells how, originally, Facebook’s defining factor was its users’ control. Different from MySpace, Facebook allowed complete control over what information was shared and who that information was shared with. But now users want that same control (or even more) in a simpler fashion. Zuckerberg says, “The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark.”

Overall, Zuckerberg points out that Facebook has had quite a few struggles- like when they came out with a new privacy policy that allowed some third-party advertisers access to Facebook users’ information without their consent- and says they are addressing these problems openly. New, simpler control settings (including a feature that will allow a user the option to completely hide his or her information from all third-party advertisers) will hopefully be out by late summer. I’ve got to hand it to Mr. Zuckerberg for keeping his cool and addressing the criticisms so diplomatically. And I can’t wait to be able to hide my profile and pictures from all third-party Facebook partners!

Update May 26, 2010: New privacy settings launched today. Read about them here.