Faced with an online culture that promotes openness, sharing and expression, news organizations are now scrambling to restrict the online Twitter, blogging and Facebook habits of staffers. According to various industry trackers, big publishers like The New York Times, Washington Post and Bloomberg have all informed employees to watch it when it comes to Web 2.0.

For example, according to LA Observed, Washington Post reporters were told via memo to, “Consult your editor before “connecting” to or “friending” any reporting contacts who may need to be treated as confidential sources.”

Bloomberg employees can no longer “publish Web sites, blogs other online journals that discuss companies, people or topics covered by Bloomberg News…” according to Valleywag.

The New York Observer (via Valleywag) claimed that New York Times editor Bill Keller opened a recent newsroom address by warning attendees not to tweet the proceedings:

Before we get going, I'm going to say something I perhaps should have said Monday, when we did our digital update in this auditorium...You wouldn't Twitter something you overheard at the coffee cart without asking. You wouldn't Twitter the Page One meeting (although it would probably get you thousands of followers.) So I'd be grateful if you would lay down your Blackberries and iPhones, and treat this as a conversation among colleagues.

It will be interesting to see if this crackdown results in any high profile violations and terminations. The whole crackdown reminds me a bit of how reluctant the film and music industries were to embrace new technologies and distribution methods like Napster and bit torrent.

Of course, “news” is a less tangible product than a song or film, but if authenticity and transparency are driving force behind success in the blogosphere and social media realm, how narrow is the vision of media outlets trying to rein it in?

Conventional teen wisdom: once your parents embrace something, it is no longer cool. So, inspired by a recent Facebook friend request from my mother, I am boldly declaring on this blog that Facebook is so over.

With Facebook’s rapid growth, (More than 200 million active users), it was only a matter of time before it reached a critical mass and spread to the squares… and even the technology-impaired, like my mother.

The numbers back this up. According to the Inside Facebook blog, the number of Americans over 35 on Facebook has nearly doubled in the past two months alone, now compromising 30% of users. Of those, the fastest growing demographic is women over 55. Pulling back a bit, there are now more users old enough to have kids (ages 26-65) than there are kids (ages 13-25 – Facebook forbids users younger than 13) on Facebook.

Will the adult presence on Facebook have a chilling effect on the lewd behavior conventional wisdom says teens chronicle online? Perhaps. And if it’s no longer safe for a teen to post compromising photos of alcohol consumption and obscenity filled wall-postings, where will they turn for their daily debauchery? Twitter perhaps?

Perhaps not, according to Reuters’ MediaFile, Twitter’s recent rise in popularity is due to adults:

But Twitter devotees are grayer than one might expect: The majority of Twitter’s roughly 10 million unique Web site visitors worldwide in February were 35 years old or older, according to comScore.

In the U.S, 10 percent of Twitter users were between 55 and 64, nearly the same amount of users as those between 18 and 24, which accounted for 10.6 percent of the total.

Fans of pioneering online sports writer/pop-culture critic Bill Simmons have been bugging the ESPN.com columnist to join the increasing number of journalists tweeting on Twitter. His thoughtful response:

...Twitter and Facebook reflect where our writing is going thanks to the Internet. In 15 years, writing went from "reflecting on what happened and putting together some coherent thoughts" to "reflecting on what happened as quickly as possible" to "reflecting on what's happening as it's happening" to "here are my half-baked thoughts about absolutely anything and I'm not even going to attempt to entertain you," or as I like to call it, Twitter/Facebook Syndrome.

I've long maintained that social media enthusiasts who claim Twitter and Facebook are communication devices for networking and sharing are off base. The driving force behind Web 2.0 is exhibitionism and expression. This is particularly evident if you take a look at Facebook’s application directory sorted by “Most Active Users:”

• Super Wall - The best way to find and share entertaining videos, pictures, graffiti, and more with your friends!
• Causes - Make a difference, on Facebook!
• Top Friends - Own your profile with Top Friends! Now you can CUSTOMIZE your Top Friends Profile! Choose your skin, add music and more. Give and receive exclusive awards, show off your mood and keep tabs on the people you really care about with Top Friends News!

Each app allows the user to essentially shout out to other users, “HERE I AM, I AM WRITING ON YOUR PROFILE WALL, I AM CONCERNED ABOUT THESE THINGS, I AM BEST FRIENDS WITH ALL THESE WONDERFULY ATTRACTIVE HIPSTERS!”

It is the exhibitionist quality of Twitter is what makes it a success with users (though not a money maker, as I may have mentioned), because everyone tweeting wants to be heard -- or read. Unfortunately, as Bill Simmons observes, many of them have nothing interesting to say.

For proof, check out Twit or Not, an addictive take on the infamous Hot or Not which allows users to vote which tweets are the most boring. Go ahead and kill a couple hours. I just did.

... nothing, if you are Facebook.

According to Comscore via TechCruch, Facebook drew 222 million unique pageviews last month. Even more impressive, that translates to 80 billion pageviews and 22% of total Internet traffic. Yes, more than 1 in 5 internet users worldwide have been to Facebook. Still, Facebook has no real way to monetize that number... they just can't make money.

So, our eyes turn to MySpace. The much-maligned networker's traffic has held steady at approximately 100 million unique pagviews per month. And although it is still the nation's largest social network, it trails Facebook worldwide by about 100 million users. But, with the backing of the mighty News Corp, and its flexible ad streams, it outearns its more popular rival considerably. In a comment to TechCrunch, they said:

We are laser focused on building a sustainable global business which we measure by profits and revenue - not just eyeballs. In a tough economic climate, our international revenue is up 35 percent year over year and we continue to focus on those markets with the strong monetization opportunities. Additionally, MySpace continues to dominate the U.S. market–where the bulk of online advertising revenues reside–both in terms of monetization and user engagement with more than 76 million unique users and a 40% spike in engagement year over year.

Looks like MySpace is still ahead where it counts. With headlines like these, how can MySpace not make money?

Mom indicted in MySpace suicide case
Myspace murder trial turns graphic 
Man gets three months in MySpace sex case

(credit: ComScore)

CNET News staffer and social media commentator Caroline McCarthy had some interesting insight into “social media’s hidden bubble” this week. “As the recession rapidly sucks the momentum out of Web 2.0's heyday,” she writes, “with it may go one of the era's most defining terms: the job title ‘social media expert.’”

I certainly welcome a thinning of the social media expert herd, if not the outright extinction. Social media expert has become a meaningless title, as the only qualification one seemingly needs for the label is a Twitter account and Facebook profile.”

Judging from Caroline’s anecdote, that is enough to fool some companies.

One digital-strategies czar at a small media company told CNET News that a while back, before she was brought on board, her employer had enlisted a freelance "social media expert" to give the company a presence on Web 2.0's most buzzworthy communities. It was a disaster, she said. The consultant charged $200 an hour for what was effectively a bunch of Facebook fan pages and a Twitter account that most full-time staff wasn't particularly sure how to use. The final bill tallied almost $40,000.

Of course, the web is filled with hundreds of examples of companies using Facebook and Twitter effectively to get their message out to the masses. However, success takes an engaging product and a healthy respect for the community. After all, authenticity in the Web 2.0 world is and always will be key (see the migration of users from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook, as I commented here).”

There is also that little consideration if the product is geared toward the 2.0 world, as one astute observer opined:

Even now I read blogs on respected websites giving advise (sic) on how to make the most of social networking without any consideration for whether a company's market is even actually present on those social networks, let alone whether the effort helps achieve high level marketing goals.

I fear that social media experts are the new SEO experts, who, in turn, were the new snake oil salesmen...

"We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives." - The Amazing Criswell

By far, my favorite example of "go-to" journalism is the prediction piece (narrowly edging out the Thanksgiving-themed "Turkeys of the Year" and its cousin, the Yuletide "Naughty/Nice" list). At the end of every calendar year, journalists and commentators of various industries bang out 500 words of both bold and vague prophecies, all to inform the reader of the things to come in the new year.

BusinessWeek's Media Predictions for 2009 was the first such piece to catch my eye this year, and I'd like to share some of media critic Jon Fine's feckless forecasts.

Regarding media ad spending: It gets much worse before it gets better.
Regarding media ownership: Media ownership consolidates.
Regarding online advertising: Online advertising demonstrates it isn't immune to gravity.

And some of his gutsy guesses:

Radio rolls out a sort of hipster-lite format aimed at urban thirty- and forty-somethings consumed by jobs and parenting. It draws surprisingly good ratings in a few markets. (JC- Huh?)
New York Times Co. sells About.com to buy time for its flagship paper. (JC- Gawker spread that rumor around last month.)

Of course, Mr. Fine has probably forgotten more about media than I have ever known, so I am in no position to criticize. But, he was the man who claimed in his 2008 prediction column that "Amazon's Kindle e-book reader is stillborn."

Allow me debunk with a quote directly from Amazon's Kindle order page:

Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is sold out. Please ORDER KINDLE NOW to reserve your place in line. We prioritize orders on a first come, first served basis. This item will arrive after December 24. Note that Kindles cannot currently be sold or shipped to customers living outside of the U.S.

Not to be outdone, another BusinessWeek writer opined two years ago in Seven Internet Prediction for 2007, "Facebook's efforts to expand beyond students and recent graduates will be largely unsuccessful. Moreover, the company won't sell itself to a large Internet company, especially if its asking price is $8 billion or more."

Just for the record, Facebook has more than 100 million active users, and as I stated in a previous blog post: judging by Microsoft's $240 million Facebook investment, Facebook is valued at about $15 billion.

All of this is to suggest that BusinessWeek an Criswell are in the same business. In Tim Burton's Ed Wood, Criswell claims, "If you look good, and you talk well, people will swallow anything."

There is a great article in Slate today, A Radical Business Plan for Facebook, in which Farhad Manjoo suggests the seemingly absurd idea of Facebook actually charging users for social networking privileges. Manjoo cites developer David Heinemeier Hansson for reasoning:

"We've found out that having a price is really cool for making profits," Hansson pointed out last spring in an entertaining presentation called "The Secret to Making Money Online." "You have customers, they pay you money for the product or service, and you get profits! It's almost too simple to work."

Indeed! In fact, Hansson also reveals, "I've heard that over time—hundreds of years actually—this has been how most businesses have made their money."

So Manjoo lays out a simple proposition for squeezing a few nickels out of the 100 million Facebookers, a company that according to its founder Mark Zuckerberg is still looking for a business model.

Judging from some of the folks in my social network, a sizable minority of Facebook users have hundreds of "friends" and check in to the site multiple times a day—call them superactive users. Let's imagine that Facebook became a tiered service. A free plan would limit you to 200 friends, one status update per day, or some other non-Draconian combination of restrictions. But for $5 a month, the limits would be lifted. Certainly, many users would balk; tens of thousands would join Facebook groups to protest the new pay model. Let's assume that 95 percent of users will refuse to pay a dime. That still leaves 5 percent, or 5 million people, to pay $60 a year. That's $300 million in the bank.

$300 million is nothing to sneeze at, but judging by Microsoft's $240 million Facebook investment, Facebook is valued at about $15 billion. So Facebook may earn its full potential in 50 years. I hope Facebook's investors aren't holding their breath.

No doubt Facebook’s value is in the 100 million active users. However, does a massively popular site like Facebook, or Twitter (another Web 2.0 favorite lacking a business plan), lose its geek-chic and credibility when it places financial considerations anywhere near user considerations (see Facebook's ill-fated Beacon rollout or Napster’s attempt to go legit)?

Twitter certainly seems to agree with that thought, though there are rumblings of a Twitter business plan in the works. In an interview with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington last July, Twitter cofounder Evan Willaims claimed, "We’ve thought about it. We had to do some thinking about that to raise a bunch of money, but it’s not actively in development right now."

To bring it all back to the title of this post, I quote a piece by Simon Dumenco of Advertising Age:

What if not everything that flits across our screens -- computer or cellphone or whatever -- can be contorted into serving as a profit center? As I've said before: I don't think every tweet or blurp or bloop or fart that emanates from a human can or should have ads sold against it or be otherwise monetized.