Henry's article isn't incorrect in its assessment of Twitter's challenges for growth. The microblog does tend to appeal more to those in tech circles than others, and it has a relatively high barrier to entry because it works best after you've dedicated time to find, follow and list the people you care to track. But it is the way Henry equates traffic and users to mainstream that makes me think we might need a different yardstick by which to measure mainstream.

According to the article, Twitter has 145 million users worldwide, but Twitter.com only welcomes slightly less than 29 million unique users each month. On this basis, it might seem to be more niche than mainstream, but if 29 million is not mainstream, then neither is:

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As I see it, there are two big challenges when global companies use social media:

1. How do you best leverage social media resources from one country (be they staff, technologies, partnerships, or content) across other countries to improve your efficiency and effectiveness?
2. How do you keep social media messages that are appropriate for just one market (because product availability, or specifications, or pricing, or marketing message can vary from place to place) from "bleeding out" to reach users in other markets?

I'm planning to write some research on this topic in the near future and would love to hear your thoughts! Please join in the discussion on the Forrester Interactive Marketing Community, or drop me an email at nelliott at forrester dot com.

Facebook itself inadvertently demonstrated the value of relevance and what is most wrong with the current Facebook user experience. The Facebook Places announcement event two weeks ago was the geeky event you’d expect, but there was an unexpected moment of clarity and beauty in the midst of the typical discussion of APIs, partners and functionality. Facebook VP Chris Cox told a story set in the future that defines the true promise that social networking has yet to fulfill:

“In 20 years our children will go to Ocean Beach and their phone will tell them this is the place their parents had their first kiss, and here’s the picture they took afterward, and here’s what their friends had to say.”

It’s a great story, isn’t it? But today’s Facebook experience offers no chance this experience could actually occur. Instead, here’s what would happen based on the current Facebook functionality: Those kids will visit that beach and their parents’ precious story will be nowhere to be found on the Ocean Beach Places page. That wonderful 20-year-old status update and picture will be buried under 500 pages of less meaningful messages such as “Don’t buy a hot dog from the snack bar,” “Here’s a picture of some hot babes I took here,” and “Beach kegger party this Saturday night, dudes!”

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The reality is that both sides are wrong. On one hand, advertising has done a poor job of incorporating social media. For instance, why was the idea of Old Spice actually responding to the audience through social media such a big deal? Considering all of the hype over the past couple of years, you’d think this was something every TV campaign included (for the record, I completely agree with Augie Ray’s assessment that the campaign was a great use of social media). On the other hand, there are still many social media “experts” who believe that paid media has no role in social media marketing. This is also wrong.

In fact, paid and earned media can have a very close relationship and should be leveraged together (along with owned media) for the best results. Here are some ways in which paid and earned media can work together:

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So do you want to succeed at social media or social media marketing? The answer is the former, but many marketers focus on the latter. I’d like to make this difference more real by sharing two examples–the first in the entertainment industry and the second my own experiences in a mall this weekend.

Snakes on a Plane (SoaP) is the entertainment industry’s greatest pre-release social media success story to date. The Guardian called it, “Perhaps the most internet-hyped film of all time.” Fans produced their own T-shirts, posters, trailers, novelty songs, and parodies. Producers organized a contest to select a fan's music for use in the movie. The filmmakers added shooting days in order to implement changes suggested by fans on the Internet (including Samuel Jackson’s famous and unprintable-on-this-blog line about “m&f%*#f+!@ing snakes”).

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Of course, providing users with a new feature is one thing, but getting them to adopt a new sort of social behavior is another. Facebook has done much to ease the adoption process for users, starting with some smart decisions about privacy. It is evident that Facebook has learned from past privacy missteps. By default, when users check into a place, this information will only be shared with friends and not the whole world. This reflects a different and more user-centric approach than Facebook has taken in the past.

Of course, it's nearly impossible to launch any new social feature without some level of privacy concern, and it remains to be seen whether users will like or dislike the fact that they can be checked in by their friends. Facebook says this is intended as an advantage — since not every person has an advanced smartphone, not every Facebook user can check himself or herself into a location for the time being; by allowing people to check in their friends, more Facebook users can participate. People can turn off the ability for friends to check them in, but by default this is permitted.

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The social media world is abuzz. Take one hot trend (geolocation) and add one blazing hot social network with a history of privacy missteps (Facebook), and you have the making for an interesting news story.

That's not the only reason curiosity is high about tonight's event–there's also a lot of money involved. While consumer adoption of geolocation check-in via services like foursquare and Gowalla is still nascent, there is little doubt that consumers will increasingly share their location via social networks. They share their profiles (who), their activities (what) and their hopes and wishes (why), so why not the "where"? And this data becomes yet another piece of the puzzle for advertisers wishing to build promotions, loyalty programs and more personalized and targeted advertising.

Then, of course, there's the foursquare vs. Facebook angle, which I expect will disappoint those looking for a battle royale between the heavyweight champ (Facebook with 500 million users) and the young upstart (foursquare with 2.5 million users). Facebook seems less likely to launch a "foursquare killer" and more likely to create a geolocation platform upon which others might build. Think of it this way: Facebook doesn't create social games, but instead creates the platform on which third-party social games thrive. Despite the Facebook vs. foursquare hype, the two are likely to end up more complementary than competitive.

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• More content and ways to search
• Richer search engine interfaces and ads
• Overlap with social and mobile
• Increased automation
• Improved analytics

But what stood out to me as the real future of search marketing was that these changes will actually force search marketers to think more like business planners than like channel managers. Tactically speaking, this means thinking about “search marketing” as not just SEM and SEO but as an umbrella term that applies to using any targeted media to help an advertiser “get found” (including, perhaps, biddable display media, social networks, and mobile applications). Strategically, this means focusing more on user intent, your business reasons for using search (and not other media which also drives leads), and fostering collaboration and an awareness of the value of search across your organization.

I've explained these ideas more fully in an article on Search Engine Land. Or Forrester clients can access the full report here.

At the core of the article is an accurate and interesting conflict, which Jerry Wilson of Coca-Cola describes well: "The personal branding process can create stress within a corporation. People will see if you are merely trying to advance your own career, as opposed to contributing to the success of the organization." This conflict is one that will evolve in the years to come as social media continues to change the way we communicate, form relationships, foster corporate culture and manage our careers. But rather than explore this conflict in any interesting way, the article dumps on social media-savvy employees.

The examples presented include:

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