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.

Now that all your friends have stopped wondering whether or not they like the New Facebook Changes, we can study what this is doing for Facebook and it’s users.  First, here’s Jared W. Smith with a great summary of the changes:

The area where you enter status updates has been made into a more ambiguous “publisher” which will post status updates, notes, photos, and the like. …  A lot’s been made of a comparison to Twitter, but I think FriendFeed is a far more effective analogy because of the range of items you can share … Facebook was pretty straightforward to use because a status update was a status update, a photo post was a photo post, and the like. It’s all been melded together now…

Where’s the Real-Time Search?

With all the recent talk about Twitter threatening Google (unlikely, Google has massive amounts of personal data) why didn’t Facebook include a Real-Time Search like Twitter?  For example, this weekend I wanted see which friends were at the South by Southwest conference (SXSW) but couldn’t.  So I went through hundreds of updates trying to find out.

Facebook is Forcing  Friend Categorization

The seemingly intentional omission of real-time search suggests that Facebook’s strategy is to solve for real-time search by forcing Friend Categorization.   I found myself wanting to organize friends into a “tech” friend group because those would be the most likely attendees of SXSW.

Friend Tagging/Categorizing is Insanely Valuable to Facebook

Facebook benefits if users are labeling, tagging, and categorizing their network.  Most of us aren’t self-aware enough to properly label ourselves, so having our network label us (anonymously) provides a hyper-accurate categorization of who we are.

Search is probably coming…but not until we’re all labeled

It’s easy for Facebook to implement real-time search and it is valuable to users.  Facebook is intentionally waiting to roll it out until we’ve all done our job helping Facebook categorize ourselves.   As a user…I don’t know if I’ll ever spend the time to organize everyone.  As a strategist, I congratulate you Facebook.  Great move.

Mashable’s wonderful update on new Facebook explains many of the changes, including a link to the most relevant changes for social media marketers.  In the Opportunities section, they highlight these 4 points:

Opportunities

1. Stronger Interaction with Fans
Because the Wall tab will become the focus, Pages will feel much more active and dynamic than ever before. This will encourage more participation and interaction between brands and their Fans.

2. Increased Virality
Content posted on the new Wall will also show up in Fans’ News Feeds more often. This means that posting updates to your Page is much more viral and has the potential to drive significant traffic to your Page.

3. More Ways to Communicate

The Status Update will provide a powerful way for Pages to share short interesting blurbs with Fans in a way that is less obtrusive than an Update delivered to their inboxes. Brands that use Twitter can sync their accounts so that selected Tweets will automatically post to Facebook as Status Updates.

4. Specific Landing Page for Non-Fans

The Wall tab will be the point of entry for all Fans when they visit a Page (with the idea that they’ll first be exposed to the newest content). When it comes to non-fans, Page admins will be able to choose which tab they’d like to use as the landing page. This means that if a Page has a new application or custom content that they’d like to promote, they can set this as the point of entry for all new visitors to the Page.

But seriously…how many brands are you a fan of?  Probably your company and a few others to make former high school classmates think you’re cooler now than when you were 16.

Don’t recycle Twitter Content

The biggest implication is in Mashable Opportunity #3, More Ways to Communicate.  Specifically, “a powerful way for Pages to share short interesting blurbs with Fans”.  However, don’t take the lazy way out and recycle your Twitter messages; your fans are interested in you so give them more interesting stuff than what you are spamming to the legions on Twitter.

Create short URLs from your domain

If you are providing links to content you host, don’t bog your URL down in a mess of directories.  Additionally, if you have to use a URL shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl.com avoid the random letters and make it your own.  Simple is key, for example, a post from CareerBuilder.com offering advice for job seekers should read like this

“Tips to make your resume stand out to recruiters – careerbuilder.com/resumetips”

Provide “How-To”, not “Buy Me”

No one wants to see an advertisement in their news feed, that’s why facebook puts their ads on the side.  Make your updates a source of information to help your fans make a purchase decision.  Sorry Skittles, not much you can do here…however Guitar Center, pay attention.  A great Guitar Center status update would read something like the following:

“How do guitar strings affect the sound of your music? – http://bit.ly/GuitarStrings“