Everyone in the tech world wondered when Facebook would create a geo-location based application and take over Foursquare‘s ‘unfair’ share of the market.  Well it happened last week, to their chagrin, it has been met with a lot of criticism. But Facebook has become the number one place for relationship building/marketing for many brands and perfecting Third Screen integration is just a matter of time.

According to Advertising Age, “For many marketers, their Facebook fan bases have become their largest web presence, outstripping brand sites or e-mail programs either because a brand’s traditional web-based “owned media” is atrophying or because more consumers are migrating to social media.”

The danger is that you are putting all your “eggs” in their [Facebooks] “basket”.
Also without educating yourself on the “best practices” and “FBML” for customizing Facebook Pages, it can be difficult to make this phenom work for you.

I have clients who have set up a personal account as a business account and are completely devastated when Facebook pulls the rug out from under them for violating Terms of Service. Granted, we all walk a fine line here and I am not saying I don’t mix personal with business. It does concern me that one Social Media platform has so much power over my online business branding.

I work mostly with people in the Entertainment/Music industry. They still cling to the “MySpace” tactics where you send out a bunch of friend requests every day, Facebook does not like you doing that, and will suspend your account after too many requests. What is too many friend requests? They really don’t say but I see it happen all the time.

You have to keep in mind that there is so much happening so quick and the best advice I can give is: diversify! Think BRAND first, then sprinkle it across various sites on the internet (this is also great for SEO).  MySpace has been amazing for the music community, Media players/plugins on your own website, Twitter is wonderful to generate traffic to any site, Photos on Flickr with key words to you and your brand, YouTube has an wonderful and supportive online community, iLike has been a successful tool for many people too…the point is don’t put too much into any “one” platform…will close with this great quote from Leo Laporte wrote yesterday about Google Buzz:

“Thank God the content I deem most important, my Internet and broadcast radio shows, still stand. I believe in what I’m doing there, and have been very fortunate to have found an audience.”

Agreed, if you are doing something you are passionate about and realize that every great idea requires hard work you will see how the extra time it takes to build your online relationships is a great investment of your time!

What do you think and what has been your experience with different platforms?