Dont see so much significance in their changing fan to like, kind of splitting hairs imo. Know I dont like facebook though … not even sure how they qualify as a social network .. since Ive been told contacting people you dont know is against their TOS … they are full of themselves. Trashed privacy for their users, took away contests and promotions for the fan pages admins … w/o facebks mighty approval being given o course ( now coming out with place pages )

Facebk obviously thinks its too big to fail and we can all diligently follow their rules and embrace whatever changes they decide to make … or go home. The sun that all our pathetic lives rotate around.

As an internet marketer I find them frustrating and annoying … but with over 500mil and growing. Also find them a necessary evil … shrugs. Ahhh arrogant corp greed at its best, gotta luv it.

Keep hoping it falls on its face … kind of rooting for a reemergence of myspace or summin … at least they gave their users a ridiculous amount of control over “theirspace” on the web. Odd thought, think myspace was ahead of its time … had it come out a few years later. When highspeed internet was more widely available … and other advances in IT … software/hardware. The dreaded myspace bloat … wouldntve been such a big deal for people.

Which myspace is still a major player in the soc net arena. Could cross our fingers and hope something better emerges to beat them all out. That actually operates in a social way with its users, for its users. Watching FB scramble to come up with each and every way possible to monetize the site … makes me dizzy sometimes.

As for google adwords … with all the local listings changes … who knows where it’ll end ?
Sheesh they recently announced 2 million local SMB’s took them up on it, around 1 in 10 !??!! Might be the info-age where data moves at the speed of light. But apparently alot of people are stuck in the slow lane.

Makes me think of an old saying … power corrupts, absolute power … corrupts absolutely. For better or worse when talking about google or facebk … in terms of the internet they are all powerful entities. We must all tremble at their every utterance and adjust to their whim.

For some reason, your comment was in my spam folder. So glad that I checked! I totally agree that brands are the trust filter for advertising– such that good brands effectively get favorable treatment for good behavior. And why shouldn’t they– isn’t that how it works in the real world, too? I’m excited by all the new social advertising options now coming into play.

I love your article on the Golden Days of AdWords, which was before the days of default options that maximized the performance of Google’s earnings and not necessarily your conversions. I welcome new players from Facebook and Apple to keep Google and the other ad channels on their feet!

AdWords went from a brilliant system that delivered highly relevant advertising for each search which generated consistently strong conversions for advertisers to a system that focuses on quantity over quality, intentionally returns results with poor relevancy and perpetrates distribution fraud on advertisers – by their own design. I explained those changes in my post You Missed the Golden Days of AdWords circa 2003.

Google’s CEO has publicly stated that he plans to “clean up” the Internet by favoring brands: “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool“.

AdWords was once excellent for small businesses and could be again IF they had any interest in doing so.

Why should Facebook be any different? When analyzing their actions one must first determine what their TRUE goals are. They are not going to be what they SAY they are but there will be clues in what they say.

People have become used to the concept of liking or agreeing to something, but just because im a fan of AT&T doesn’t mean i like AT&T or agree with everything. But as a AT&T subscriber I want the connection to the company and happy to show a public link. The concept of the like may not sit well with all users/fans as it is a drastic change which Facebook users don’t usually react well too….

I can see the logic in their plans to expand the Fan platform to be a module on Facebook connect which can form part of your site or be its own unique micro-site.

The issue around the suggested language means that internal feedback was that its possibly confusing so if this is changing is it really upto the brand to re-educate its possible fans if they click the link or banner what is the action that will result.

People understand being a fan and often can be a fan of two opposing football teams, but they may not like both football teams all the time…