When the Toronto Star published an article several weeks back announcing that roughly 700,000 Facebook users belong to the Toronto city network, my phone rang off the hook from clients asking what their Facebook strategy will be.

SEP has been working with Social Media, at a variety of levels, for some time, so the announcement that General Motors Europe is launching a “social media newsroom” caught my attention.

Essentially, GM Europe’s new website will allow downloads of its photography from Flikr, a link to their video collection in YouTube and news to be “republished, commented on, shared and tagged by a large community where the boundaries between news provider and news consumer continue to blur,” it said in a statement.

Last month I blogged about the death of the Yellow Pages being premature. The next day, R.H. Donnelley continued its aggressive online push by acquiring Business.com for $345 million.

Today, R.H. Donnelley, the No. 3 Yellow Pages publisher in the US, announced it has begun selling ad placements in Yahoo! Local, according to a News Observer report.

The beauty of social networks is that they engage users and facilitate enjoyable forums to discuss a variety of topics.

One of the significant trends of social networks is that they are beginning to develop a distinct local flavour. Facebook
alone has over 1 million members from Toronto.

With this level of engagement it’s tough for traditional local print media to ignore, particularly the Yellow Pages, who have among the most complete local online business listings around. So when will Yellow Pages become social? According to Darby Seiben, Senior Manager - Traffic, Distribution and eProduct Management with YellowPages.ca, they already have.

 Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, on “wisdom of the crowds”:

“In general, I’m pretty skeptical of the idea. And I’m very skeptical of it being applied to Wikipedia in particular.”

The concept of a self-regulating online community where the best bubbles up and the worst gets buried, is a myth.

MySpace bars 29,000 sex offenders
Digg Riot in Full Effect Over Pulled HD-DVD Key Story
Digg Caves in to User Protest: Risks Company
Wikipedia: A Nightmare Of Libel and Slander
Spock Thinks You’re a Pedophile 
Users abuse Facebook
Staff use Facebook to abuse customers

I came across Tyler Reed’s blog who posted this great e-conomy presentation:

It underscores that consumers trust word-of-mouth more than any other form of advertising. In fact, 76 per cent of consumers don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertising at all.

According to the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association, yes, there really is such an organization, over 90% of purchases made online were a direct result of some kind of word of mouth action and being a known brand website came in 2nd.

Despite the fact del.icio.us has been around for quite a while I really didn’t fully understand its popularity. I saw del.icio.us as a facebook/myspace for bookmarks. This all changed when I started blogging.

I’ve always been a news hound and pour through tons of articles from a variety of sources covering dozens of subjects. After taking a closer look, I quickly found out that del.icio.us makes it easy to store them all in one place and, if tagged properly, access them from any computer in an organized and timely fashion as I needed them.

The most popular question I’ve been asked by co-workers, associates and friends upon my arrival has been “why did you leave the Yellow Pages?”. The question doesn’t appear ominous until you consider the smug look on their faces. Immediately, I know what they’re thinking. They’ve read Bill Gates’ now infamous quote “Yellow Pages usage among people below 50 will drop to near zero in the next five years.” Their perception is that I jumped from a sinking ship. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

It reminds me of a scene in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”….…

In what may well be a sign of things to come, it appears Google has removed 30% of organic listings on local market searches in some markets.

Note that in the above images, local maps appear, however, where there was once 10 organic listings there are now 7.

Do maps qualify as organic results?

Could Google increase the page to put the 10 listings back? That would mean they have to reassess the paid landscape on the side and that’s unlikely.

These results are not typical of Google.com, but are pervasive in alternate Googles.

There is an absolutely fascinating article on TheStreet.com (also interesting because the URL string tracks the source): eBay Snub Suggests Google’s Big Troubles.

It’s not so much interesting because it espouses everything I’ve said for the past couple months, not the least of which include the whole ebay thing and the fact that the loss or removel of paid advertising does not necessarily impact traffic IF (BIG IF) you have the organic results in place. (BTW ebay does, both in organic listings and in product listings.)

Do users really care that Terry Semel has left the building? Do they care that Jerry Yang and Susan Decker are the next net generation?

Do users really care that ebay has publicly stated that they won’t rely on Google Adwords with quite as much dependence having finished their ten day “test” and realized it’s a risk they can afford to take?

I doubt it.

There’s an interesting article today in Business Week regarding vertical or niche search.

And in watching everything that’s gone on recently regarding Yahoo, MSN, ebay and Google, my first thought was that Google was bullet-proof and had pretty much sewn the game up.