Luckily, there’s a lot of publishers online who DO have beta accounts, so you can get a look at Google Wave in advance even if you are among the unwashed. Of all the short treatments I’ve seen so far, the one I’ve liked best is from Mashable. This was first published in May and updated several times since — it’s still a hot topic on Mashable for good reason.

Now, if you want the long treatment, take a look at this free ‘Complete Guide to Google Wave‘ by Gina Trapani and Adam Pash.  Edited by Trapani with an assist from Pash, you can browse through chapters online at the site in the link.  You will also be able to purchase a PDF download any day now.  Maybe right now.  Thanks to these guys for putting this together.

My biggest problem in this post is that I don’t know how to categorize it.  The Wave is something new.

Hitwise recent research shows some huge changes in the social media world over the past year. Facebook’s surge seems to be continuing as it climbs toward 400 million subscribers worldwide. First, here’s the numbers as reported in Online Media Daily:

The fall of MySpace must make Rupert Murdock’s teeth ache.  It still has lots of loyalty (a class-leading time on site nearly 30 minutes), but the numbers are hard to look at from an ad network’s point of view.  Nothing here about the demographics on MySpace, but my guess is it stills skews very young which makes it a good target for lots of products aiming at the college kids and younger.

Facebook, though, is catching on with the older crowd.  Fastest growing group on FB is 55+ — all those jokes about Grandma spying on her grandkids by getting on Facebook have been overtaken by the reality that Grandma’s circle of friends is getting into the game as well.  And Facebook is still about personal networks of friends keeping up with each other efficiently and in a convenient way online.

Now that search bar in the upper right corner of your FB page takes you to a new search page where a great array of results wait for your browsing pleasure.  This is keyword-driven (like all search) so it’s not too useful if you have a really complex query (use Aardvark for those!), but if you’re looking for something more common, like ‘restaurant’ or ‘music’, you’ll get lots of ideas.

The image below is from my own search for ‘music’, filtered by ‘events’.  I found a lot of concerts advertised on Facebook!

Facebook's New Search Interface

On the downside, when I tried to find ‘music san luis obispo’ there were no results. Come on SLO musicians!  Get with it and get on Facebook.

This is another example of Facebook’s huge advantage of having all that profile information from hundreds of millions of users and businesses.  You couldn’t usefully add a search capability to a small network (not enough results possible), but when you have this kind of scale, it becomes valuable.  The network effect means that FB will continue to grow because it has these capabilities.  The big get bigger.

I wonder if there will come a point where the personal connection people feel with their networks gets so diluted that the information in the network overall begins to degrade, in quality and/or in quantity.  In a way, that’s what happened to MySpace.  Thinking of the goose that laid the golden eggs here.

Sid Kirchheimer, writing in the AARP Bulletin (yes, I am THAT OLD), profiled a Facebook scam that the victim could only watch as it unfolded.  A thief somehow hacked Bryan Rutberg’s Facebook profile and changed the passwords so Rutberg no longer controlled it.  He then posted a status update telling Rutberg’s friends he was in trouble overseas and needed money.  Some sent it to a fake address in London and into the thief’s hands.  Rutberg tried to warn his friends via his wife’s profile, but the clever thief has ‘defriended’ her, so the messages were not delivered.

Kirchheimer theorizes that Rutberg may have inadvertently downloaded a program that sent his keystrokes to the thief, who could then gain control of his accounts.  This kind of identity theft is only going to increase and it will be global.  Kirchheimer offers some very useful tips for increasing your security online:

• Don’t click on links provided in messages—even from friends—unless you check them with a phone call or off-website e-mail.

• Get program updates by going to the company’s website, not through a provided link.

• Make your Facebook account private so that only friends can see your details.

• Scan your computer regularly with an updated antivirus program

• Be suspicious of anyone—even a “friend”—who asks for money over the Internet.

Sad.  But human nature is not a thoroughly happy thing, is it?

While 74% of the 18 – 34 group report having a Facebook or MySpace account, only 8% of them subscribe to Twitter and just 4% use it to send messages.  Twitter use to send messages is actually a bit higher among 35 – 44 year olds, at 5%, but the use of it drops to 1% or less for everyone over 45.

I still think Twitter will prove to be a game changer.  I don’t think it’s primarily a communication tool, however, which is what Facebook is.  It is a news source, and a search tool.  And as it grows (OK, if it grows) it will gather enough volume to allow specialized conversations about narrow topics of intense interest to any number of groups.  General news will spread virally among the groups through their interconnections, and search tools will capture information about queries in almost real time.

At some point, nobody will tweet about what they had for breakfast.  But they will report interesting things to people who care about the same things.

When I first signed up for a Twitter account, my very first impressions were a lot like the ones comedians make fun of Twitter for:  someone told me every personal thing they did in tweet after tweet — and I stopped paying attention.  I have been a poor follower and worse tweeter (twitterer?) since.

But reports keep rolling in about how effective Twitter is as a real time communication tool, and most of these are about one thing:  search.  Our friend Martin  in Portland talked about how his team, working with the tourism industry in Oregon, started something called the ‘Twisitor’ Center (in this blog, you will also find posts about how Visitor Bureaus across the country are using Twitter).  You simply Tweet a question including the #inpdx hash to have your query posted to everyone following that conversation — and almost immediately you have an answer.

Most of the other success stories I hear about are similar.  Someone at a conference needs a laptop charger.  Someone else there has one.  They connect and problem solved.

I know the other famous stories about Twitter are things like the fact that the first reports of the Mumbai terrorist attacks were sent in tweets.  These real time alerts are important, but for the day to day, I think the search function is the killer app. It’s a perfect extension of the interactive logic of the Internet.

So, Web 3.0?  If we can have user generated content = Web 2.0, why not user generated search = Web 3.0?  OK.  I agree,  neither one is really a game changer in the biggest picture.  But the growth of the Internet tools we have — enlarging and enriching the network — is pretty amazing.

The largest group now on Facebook is aged 35 – 44, and the fastest growing segment is age 55+.  Don’t have your parents in your network if you don’t want them to hear about that long weekend fling, OK?  Some very interesting inter-generational things going on here.

But is it really ‘uncool’?  Not yet.  The numbers only show that the older generations are catching up.  Facebook is still the #1 Internet destination for college aged people, ahead of Google and Yahoo.  The big numbers are there for ALL generations, so if you target youth, go for it.  If you want to aim at their parents, still go for it, knowing that the proportion you will reach is less than for the young set (but growing).

As always, stay tuned.  This is moving so fast that we could see that sharply UP trajectory for Facebook to turn sharply down overnight as people get tired of keeping up with their online networks.  Or, what might have the same effect, prune them back to what they really wanted in the first place:  a network for real friends only which would be in most cases much smaller, much less ‘viral’.

The details in the horserace are interesting. In the first place, nearly every social networking site they tracked had substantial gains for the year.  The biggest traffic sites continue to be #1 MySpace with a 10% gain and #2 Facebook with a 57% gain — which confirms our earlier post about how Facebook is taking it to MySpace.  Facebook is growing fast from a large base, and that’s impressive.

The only losers in the chart are Yahoo Groups (minus 13%), Webshots (minus 21%), and bringing up the rear, Windows Live Spaces (a whopping minus 57%).  Poor Microsoft.  Another loser.

In other words, SEARCH and using online resources to learn about products and services is so common at all ages that it is a MUST for marketers no matter what you are marketing.

Greg Sterling over at Search Engine Land posted some nice graphics about Pew’s Generations Online project.  I’ll share a couple tidbits here, but you might want to check it out.

It wasn’t surprising to me that the Gen X (ages 33-44) and younger Boomers (ages 45-54) make up a big chunk of the adult Internet population (45% of it between them), although the younger Gen Y group is proportionally larger (ages 18-32 with 30%).  And it wasn’t too surprising to see the pattern of certain Internet activities across these generations:  the younger you are the more likely to play online games, use social networking sites, or create a blog.

But what was a little surprising, and encouraging, was that for some activities, there is very little difference in participation rates across generations.  94% of Gen Y use email; 91% of the Silent Generation (ages 64-72) do.  90% of Gen Y use search engines; 85% of Silent.  65% of Gen Y makes online travel reservations; Silent: 69%.  Research products online:  Gen Y – 84%; Silent – 73%.

You get the picture.  Why it matters is this:  the activities that are most likely to lead to sales are common across generations.  Until we get a better handle on how to use all the social sharing, social networking, social news sites out there for marketing products, this will probably continue to be true.  And the change toward social media marketing is not going to be an easy road — the participants in those networks are sophisticated about their independence, and they (mostly) do not want direct marketing appeals.

We are left with limited options for social media marketing.  One important avenue is brand development.  Companies that operate in niches where they can have an impact via brand can benefit from participating in social media.

Of course, then they have to actually participate actively and faithfully, and that’s another story.