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Facebook and students: A happy marriage, or a receipe for disaster?

As you'd expect, the answer isn't so simple. A study and rather lovely infographic (see below) produced by OnlineEducation.net ponders this question from several different viewpoints.

As those tied to email all day can testify distractions hurt productivity, and the same is true when studying. Unsurprisingly, flicking between Facebook and studying results in 20% lower grades. Sound obvious? Turns out 79% of students don't believe it.

They're also less likely to be paying their way whilst studying, with Facebook user's working less than 5 hours per week, whilst their social-media-phobic counterparts clocking in an impressive 16 hours per week. Still, that's what student loans are for, right?

Social Media Week London generated so much coverage that it's taken us a little while to pull together all the information. Our first review brings together the video, slides, pictures and coverage from The Future of Social Search hosted by i-Spy Marketing.

The event investigated how Search and Social fit together, influence one another and how Facebook Advertising will be the next big thing.

Founded by ex University College London student Rich Martel, Floxx, "dating" social network Floxx is hitting the headlines. In its first day online the site managed to attract a whopping 6,000 visitors and, over the following few days, over 1,000 posts.

Pretty impressive but could it be the next Facebook?

Floxx officially went live on Jan 10th this year but quietly sneaked online a few days before that on the 3rd. Like its old incarnation Fit Finder, Floxx is aimed at students; letting them post messages online, on a public platform, about an attractive stranger who has caught their eye.

As a near-constant social media user it’s interesting watching the gradual shift to an increasingly connected lifestyle. We’ve clearly passed a tipping point in terms of how willing people are to openly share their personal lives online, be it their holiday snaps, favourite restaurants or even the minutia of their daily lives.

For the purposes of Social CRM though, we’re only just crossing over the edge of the New Frontier as people begin to wonder just how comfortable they really are letting companies get involved with their online lives.

Thus far the majority of web users have happily come to accept how services such as Amazon and iTunes are able to track their usage in order to not only tell them about other products they might enjoy but also what other users with similar tastes are purchasing.

Q: What happens when you let an intern loose with 10m lines of data and some processing power?

A: In the case of Paul Butler an intern with Facebook's data infrastructure engineering team, something rather special.

There’s no question that when it comes to Social CRM and accurately measuring the success of all your online activities some metrics are essential and some are entirely misleading.

It can be hard sometimes trying to explain this to clients whose starting point is that they want to get 100,000 fans on Facebook or 50,000 video views on YouTube, without having thought through what these numbers really mean and how valuable these “followers” are. If you get too focused on these numbers you can end up following the “stupid metrics”.

Funnily enough, I was reading the Metro this morning on my way to work and I came across a very interesting article.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the web, has gone on record saying that Facebook, other social networking sites and large corporations are threatening the freedom of the internet.

As a result of organisations becoming increasingly aware of the burgeoning power of social media and consequentially seeking to grow their online presence, a new breed of candidate has emerged.

The self-proclaimed ‘social media guru’, but with no bench mark set to aspire to and no qualifications to back up this status, couldn't anyone call themselves a Social Media Guru? And what effect will this have upon the industry as a whole?

With their most recent development Facebook will be bringing together Facebook chat, email and SMS into one location for users: Facebook Messaging.

Facebook released their unified social inbox just two days ago. Facebook messages will now be aggregated together, including emails and every Facebook user will be able to get a @facebook.com email ID.