We’ve discussed the prevalence of social networking on this blog in pretty substantial detail. By know you know the kind of pull that sites like Facebook and Twitter have on the world, in both a personal and professional way. With more than 550 million users on Facebook and 190 million monthly users on Twitter, there was a resounding issue facing developers of these sites – what should be done when a user is no longer alive?

Facebook has had a policy on users passing away for a while now – they call it “memorializing” an account. At this link, you can report a deceased person’s profile and either have it removed or memorialized. When an account is memorialized, friends of that person can leave remembrances and other messages in the person’s memory or for the person’s family. This has been a successful procedure that Facebook has developed. According to numerous reports, families have found a lot of peace from the messages left from friends and relatives on social media sites.

Now Twitter is following suit, with a specific procedure for reporting the death of person with a profile. However, according to this article, some experts in the industry don’t think that Twitter’s policy is good enough:

“Jeremy Toeman, CEO and founder of Legacy Locker–a site that acts as a digital safe – [wrote that]‘…[t]his policy lacks the concept of desired intent. What if an individual wanted their Twitter stream archived (and not just by the Library of Congress)? What if another user wanted it wiped out (a challenge with any service, we acknowledge) completely? What about any situation wherein the desires of the user who dies are in conflict with those who support them, or a conflict within the surviving family members?’”

That’s the major difference between the two social media powerhouses policies – Facebook allows the total shutoff of the profile no matter if it’s deleted or not. There is no administrator access to the profile, it just acts as a public remembrance. Twitter, on the other hand, will remove the account and/or help the family save an archive of all public tweets, which leaves something to be desired by some critics?

What do you think? Which policy works better?

As we wrote about last week, Facebook launched its Places feature, which is little more than a direct knockoff of foursquare, the uber-popular location finding app for iPhone and iPod Touches. The Places feature allows you to share your location with whomever you choose on Facebook and also lets you check in at events so that you can find out who else you know is at the next open mic or music festival you’re at.

There are a lot of cool features to Places but its launch is a little curious, coming just weeks after CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public relations snafu over handling public vs. private profile option on his social media giant site. Web critics have reacted with hesitation about the new feature:

“Foursquare happened to be the highest profile company to speak at the event because they were the most at risk of being damaged by Facebook Places. Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare, is still optimistic however, despite appearing to be left in the dark on this one. He told VentureBeat, ‘If Facebook thinks that location is a good idea, then we are on to something.’ Yes Dennis, you were definitely on to something, which is why Facebook just took your idea.” - Nick O’Neill, All Facebook

So if you are concerned about the effect that Places may have on your privacy on Facebook, here are instructions on how to block Facebook from releasing your location to any and every one:

1. Log on to your profile and choose Account > Privacy Settings in the upper right hand corner

2. Go to Customize Settings and choose ‘Only Me’ next to the list item ‘Places I Check Into’

3. Make sure the box next to “Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in” is unchecked.

It’s that simple – now no one will be able to see your location if you accidentally turn on geo-tagging.

With all of the hubbub surrounding various social media sites trying to take attention away from Facebook (i.e. Google’s rumored ‘Google Me’ project), CEO Mark Zuckerberg certainly isn’t letting any of them get the best of Facebook. The case in point lies with foursquare, a smartphone app that allows users to reveal their location to gain badges towards being a discoverer of new things around the country. Instead of conceding this feature to a stand alone app like foursquare, today Facebook announced its new Places feature – which allows users to reveal their location. Sound familiar?

In a blog post about the new feature, Facebook says that “[w]ith Places, you can discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time.” This functionality takes it past foursquare, which primarily focuses on one person at a time. It seems that when Facebook releases a new product, it tends to usurp any other site attempting to do the same thing by increasing the number of features available to users.

Since this is the direction that Facebook is moving in, it is definitely possible that the announced Facebook Questions feature is going to try and grab as much of Twitter’s audience as possible. We discussed the Questions feature a few weeks ago in this blog – in short, it will allow users to ask a question of all other Facebook users with the same topic tagged, instead of posing a question to your friends through a status update. Along with the obvious Twitter comparisons (hashtag = topic tagging), Questions also bears resemblance to Yahoo Questions, AnswerBag and other forum-type sites where users can ask a community for answers.

At the same time, it looks like Facebook is making a play for the text question, text answer market embodied by ChaCha and KGB. While ChaCha gives out answers for free with an ad attached and KGB charges per question asked, Facebook is looking to quash that market entirely. Granted, Questions will be integrated into Facebook as a free feature (as with all others on Facebook), but money will certainly be made by companies that seek out their specific topics and trends. With the ability to target specific consumers in Facebook’s API, businesses should look at Facebook as a new stomping ground for new customers.

There are just so many reasons why companies and businesses should be jumping on the social media bandwagon. One primary reason is the sheer potential of new consumers that you can attract – just a few weeks ago, Facebook hit the 500 million user mark, a staggering number for any site, never mind the social media kind. This audience, paired with effective advertising on Facebook, can bring a huge breadth of new users to your business.

A recent research study by Nielsen found that the phone call is becoming less and less popular by the month, particularly driven down by teenagers and adults up to the age of 34. While phone calls have gotten shorter and less common, texting has more than doubled in the past two years. Combined with the popularity of social media technology, this information shows just how important technology can be to your company. Teens are using their smartphones and other devices to connect to sites like Facebook several times daily, and knowing that the number is only going up is significant to driving traffic to your web site.

To give you an idea of how often teens use online media as a means of communication, one 19-year-old renegade speeder wrote on a car forum about his dangerous driving. After an anonymous tip, the teen was picked up by police not long after. The amount of information (like this) and interests that teens and social media users are willing to give up online can be used effectively to promote products to appropriate buyers.

Basically, if your company has not established itself as a social media brand, now is the perfect time. No one can predict how long the Facebook boom will continue and with over half a billion users, you can’t afford not to make your business present on this kind of network. It could make a huge difference in your business future.