Facebook is so worried about Twitter that they are creating monetary incentives to keep people on Facebook to check their statuses.  Mashable provides great coverage, as always:

Facebook Credits seem to (be) Facebook’s baby steps into the world of virtual currency. Right now, users can only give credits to friends for sharing great posts or having a status people like. However, it isn’t a far stretch for credits to be the medium in which people pay for things on Facebook applications or even pay for things on other websites via Facebook Connect. Imagine connecting to Amazon and buying a new mouse with a couple thousand credits.

But seriously, will anyone buy these to give to their friends?  Facebook has struggled with monetization of gifts for friends, and this is no time for users, particularly in Facebook’s demographic, to be spending money frivolously.

Rather than paying for credits, which seems to be unrealistic, Facebook should study its data to find the best creators of content and provide them with free credits to get the virutal economy in information rolling.  Giving credits to the best content creators will allow them to “trickle-down” the credits to those they recognize as providing great content.

Great Content Recognizes Great Content

• We can safely assume that Facebook knows more about us than our actual friends do.  Facebook should mine their data to find the users who share the most links, that are most commented/liked, and that are re-shared with others.
• Users who can create good content are more fitted to recognize great content than users with money to burn.  Having good users recognize content increase the value to Facebook for that recognition.

Let Great Content Providers Trickle-Down the Facebook Wealth

• Selling Facebook Credits will put power in the hands of those with wealth; this conflicts with a basic principle of Social Media, let the users determine what is good content.
• Good content creators can give credits to other good creators who will then do the same continue to “spread the wealth”.  Sound like socialism?  Well, it’s actually more like the theory behind Trickle-Down economics.

Existing creators of good content rewarding others who can create good content will provide Facebook with much more relevant, and therefore more financially valuable, data.  By selling the credits, not only will the program look silly and likely fail, the data created by the program would not be as valuable as allowing the best users to highlight where others are doing the right thing.

A great post at davefleet.com outlined eight questions to ask Social Media experts.   Josh Peters at shuaism.com gave some great answers.  Almost as common as Social Media experts are Social Media teams in organizations.  I thought this excerpt was very relevant:

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of seeing people sign up for Twitter, follow ten thousand people (many of whom follow back) to build a substantial following, then start spouting advice as though followers equals expertise. Some of them are experts, for sure. Others, however, seem to have little beyond a big mouth to back their words up.

Almost as annoying, but just as dangerous, are the hordes of traditional practitioners that have realized they need to include social media in their pitches nowadays, but have no experience whatsoever using those tools.

Every company is starting a Social Media group/team/initiative, here are 6 questions to ask your organization’s Social Media team:

1 – Will the team have access to any tool, technology, or website they want?

• Watch for any hesitation towards full and complete access
• Probe for the process required to get access from tech admins and compliance teams
• Sounds like a ridiculous question, right?   It’s not, if admins don’t trust their social media teams, chances are that management doesn’t yet trust them either.  You’ll be surprised how many times you hear “well, we just don’t support Firefox.”

2 – What is your “VPV” – Visitor Value Proposition?

• Watch for any answer that could be translated into “Build it, and they will come”
• Probe for specific examples on why this improves upon the current solutions available to potential visitors
• Many otherwise brilliant senior leaders expect the love they have for their organization is common….but unless you are providing visitor-driven, stunning content, no one cares about your company.

3 – How does the organization deal with negative feedback?

• Watch for a sugar-coated answer that is too good to be true
• Probe for examples of leadership acceptance and response to negative feedback
• Social media teams are trained to expect negative feedback but rarely does management understand the true essence of negative comments that customers, partners, and employees post.

4 – What is the biggest regulatory/compliance restraint facing the social media strategy?

• Watch for answers at the extreme, positive or negative
• Probe for the ability for the organization to respond quickly without bureaucratic constraints
• Every organization faces regulatory constraints.  An answer like  “we’re free to do whatever we want” is naive.   However, some industries simply can’t maximize social media’s potential because of their industry regulations.

5 – Who does the social media team report to?

• Watch for organizational layers without a direct reporting structure to top management
• Probe for the strategic objectives of the function that Social Media is most closely aligned
• I’ve heard of social media groups in marketing, strategy, technology, innovation, and even customer service.  Ideally, the social media team will be it’s own function with a a direct report to the CEO to make management buy-in quicker.

6 – What metrics are management using to measure success?

• Watch for a direct answer with narrowly defined metrics or an ambiguous answer with little thought
• Probe for measurements in other functions that tie to social media objectives and for a set of metrics that work together to measure progress
• Social media has multiple ways to impact the bottom line, but the answer here shows strategic thought given to the business model.  The metrics don’t matter as much as the thought process behind them.

What are good answers to these questions?  What else would you include in this list?