The New Year's Diet has become a staple resolution for many—not us, of course, but other people—and for good cause. In the course of a busy week, our thoughts of eating well and exercising quickly devolve into a maelstrom of fast food, microwave dinners, and "quality" time in front of our televisions. It's rarely intentional—it just ... happens.
As I write, the clock has yet to chime midnight on December 31; however, all indications are that 2009 was the Year of Facebook, for both personal and business communication. The five-year-old social network has become a behemoth of users and capital, and marketers like myself have been forced to spend hours wading through silly farm games and virtual Yankee Candle giveaways to better understand how the service may be used by our clients.
One of the fairy tale selling points of social media marketing has been that it presents a level playing field. That is, small businesses and organizations could compete just as effectively as the big boys.
"Methought I heard him think, 'Ay! I am fairly out and you are fairly in! See which of us will be the happiest!'" — John Adams, describing what he believed George Washington was thinking upon retirement
The Drupal world has been abuzz, of late, mostly owing to the news that Whitehouse.gov, one of the many online mouthpieces of President Obama's administration, has been moved to Drupal. Indeed, this has been hailed as a victory for all open-source technologies, and one outlet after another has offered mostly pleasing remarks about the switch.
With 300 million active users and a massive amount of external funding, Facebook is really more like a goodly sized, upstart country with no borders and even fewer threats. As such, it's little surprise that the social network has become a marketer's playground, and Facebook's masters have been quick to embrace the corporate world's rush to establish a presence there.
