How to make social media work

Social media is more than a buzz word.

In fact in the US, it is such a big movement, there are companies that specialise in making sense of the social patterns people hold with their networks. Data mining and behaviour targeting might come to mind, but all that basically means how can marketers use these relationships to sell their brands. There are loads of campaigns/gadgets made to fit brands into social networks but most are done very inconsiderate failing to really provide reason or value for people to actually use these branded tools to enhance their socializing experience on their respective networks.

In a nutshell - Social media has effectively challenged marketers to rethink how they need to talk to their fans/customers.

Recently Burger King has created a new app for Facebook users - You can check out the website here. The idea is brilliant, once you have installed the app - you just sacrifice 10 (unwanted) friends from your profile to claim a free whooper! The brilliance of the idea rests with the social nature of Facebook, it is fair to say everyone has a few viritual friends that they don't really need....so Burger King has effective used a real scenario to make their app all the more valuable and easy to reclaim the brand interaction via a tangible prize.

Ironically though, due to such a huge adoption for the App, it was only effective on Facebook for One day. Due to according Facebook, there are privacy reasons to temporarily disable the App.

If you are keen to learn more about social media tools and how it fits in with the Open standard introduced by Facebook called Facebook Connect - Check out the feature Mashable did on top10 tools.

For a brief overview on how the Internet has evolved over the years - check out the video by Mehlil Belgil appropriately titled - History of the Internet!