A lot of us don’ t always have a real purpose as to why we visit social media sites other than to kill some time and put an end to boredom. There is one organization, however, that is using Facebook to try and accomplish something with a real purpose. Bring Abducted Children Home (BACHome) is an organization working to bring home U.S. children that have been abducted and brought to Japan. According to their web site, BACHome.org, “no child kidnapped to Japan from any foreign country has ever been returned since 1952 when the Japanese sovereign government was established” and “in the past decade, more than 230 American children have been kidnapped to Japan”.

This morning NBC’s Today Show ran a story on Chris Savoie, just one of the many parents trying to locate and bring home their children from Japan. Savoie’s two children, Isaac and Rebecca, were both abducted and brought to Japan by their mother after she and Chris divorced last year. Chris warned U.S. courts that his wife intended to bring the children to Japan, however the judge ruled that a restraining order on his wife would not be necessary after she swore under oath that she didn’t actually plan on doing it. Unfortunately for Chris and other parents in the same situation Japan does not abide by an international agreement to return children abducted by parents back to their home nation. When Chris attempted to get his children back himself he found himself him Japanese prison and was only allowed to return to the U.S. after promising not to pursue his children any more.

BACHome, which leaves the ‘K’ out of their name because the kids are missing, lists 14 active cases on their web site. The organization’s goal is to influence our government and governments of other nations around the world to pressure Japan into doing everything in their power to locate and return abducted children. They utilize a Facebook page to share stories, information, and organize meetings. Currently there are over 650 people who ‘like’ the page.

The reach of Social Media extends far beyond bored teens. Organizations, like BACHome, are great examples of how social media can be used for a greater good.

This QR code links to our Facebook page

According to the guys over at TechCrunch Facebook has started to roll out the implementation of QR codes, or Quick Response codes, on personal pages and fan pages. QR codes are like bar codes, only they can store a lot more information and can be read by most modern camera phones. They can be used to link to your facebook page, a photo or video, text, product price, or something else. They’re meant to be a way to link people to information through mobile devices. Want to be able to instantly share your Facebook link with people on your business card? Print a QR code on it so people can snap a photo with their phone and open up the link!

Anybody can make QR codes for free with online QR code generators. The future might be filled with buses, billboards, print ads, and other things having QR codes printed on them. People will be able to get more information about those things just by reading the QR code. This is called ‘mobile tagging’.

On Facebook the links to create QR codes have been appearing on your page under your profile picture. We’re not sure how long it will take for everybody to get this link, or if it’s just them testing out the concept, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless.

Myspace got about half the number of mobile visits as Facebook, with 11.4 million users. The number of people who accessed Myspace on their mobile phone actually dropped compared to January of 2009, when they got visits from 12.3 million people. Facebook surpassed Myspace’s mobile browser audience size in February of 2009, 3 months before it overtook Myspace’s visits via personal computers.

A big reason for such a huge increase is the increased popularity of smartphones like the Droid, iPhone and Blackberry. 30.8% of smartphone owners accessed social media sites with their phones in January compared to just 6.8% of people using feature phones.

comScore says that the real number of people accessing social networking sites on their phones is actually even higher. This is because their figures do not include data from the 6 million people using mobile applications to get on social media sites; It only includes data of people accessing the sites with a mobile web browser.

Facebook announced on their developers site that early 2010 would bring about a major change for applications to the popular social media site. All facebook applications will be excluded from pages, profile boxes, application info sections, and the Boxes tab leaving tabs as the only way to integrate. This means saying bye bye to annoying notifications from applications, posts on your profile wall from friends taking social quizzes, and that top friends box sitting on the left of Jane’s profile page. For many this will come as a relief; the popularity of facebook applications has grown so rapidly that it’s hard to weed out the trash and find the real information you’re looking for.

Of course, some applications you may have become very fond of such as the memorable web address or dogbook (yea, you know you love it – or at least some people do – they have 957,410 monthly active users). In order to keep those applications on your profile you’ll need to add a tab to your profile for that app. Memorable web address sent out a notification with a diagram on how to do this as well as a request to email you notifications from now on as all contact with users through facebook will be cut off.

What do you think of the new change to facebook applications?

What I found best about the commercial was how nicely it integrated social media. The boy in the commercial states that he created a group on facebook for people who dunk their Oreo Cakesters and the father’s rebuttle is that he will create his own non-dunking “face space group”.  While I can’t locate the TV commercial online, you can watch the shortened version of it presented on their facebook page (you can also watch it here).

The facebook page engages visitors to interact by answering the question: “Do you dunk oreo cakesters in milk”? You then can choose to side with the boy and be on team “Dunkers” or on the father’s side, team “Non-Dunkers”. No matter what side you choose, all that talk about Oreo Cakesters really makes you want to go out and grab some to try them out!

Do you know where your friends are?

…in the new facebook homepage? If you answered “yea, in the News Feed, duh” you’re only partially correct.Where is Joe X you know from college or Tiffany X that you met at a networking event last week? If they’re not being active and publishing that activity to the News Feed, you’re not going to find them there.

Previously, facebook had a handy little “Friends” link at the top navigation that you could click to view all of your friends regardless of whether or not they were being active on facebook. The new homepage design got rid of that link and replaced it with a “Friends” link on the left navigation which is quite deceiving. Clicking on the new friends link won’t display all of your friends, it will display all of your friends that are active. That’s why numbers pop up next to the new friends link to notify you when there is new activity. Click on that link and you’ll discover “oh wow, Nina X changed her relationship status” along with much more useless information that you weren’t bargaining for…that is, if facebook decides to work at the time you click. Be ware of the ever present “Oops! Something went wrong. We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can. You may be able to try again.” Hey, thanks facebook!

So, if you are intent on adding a friend to a list you previously created (let’s say you forgot to add your boss to your “work” list which only allows people to view your photo and info but not wall) – good luck with that. You’re not going to figure it out unless you do a little digging like I did.

You are accountable for your friends

That’s right, a full list of your friends are now located under the account tab in the top right corner of your browser. A drop down list appears which displays a link for “edit friends”. Clicking that link will have you sighing with relief as the recognizable friends list reappears.

What do you think of the new change on facebook?

While many have been talking about the “new, simplified” homepage layout on facebook, I had yet to experience it for myself until today. I’m still not clear on the process by which profiles get switched over from the old to new layout as some of my co-workers were switched last week, yet my account didn’t make the change until today. Anyone know how that works?

The most prominent change in the layout is the moving of the notification bar from the bottom of the screen to the top left navigation. Now only the chat box appears at the bottom of the browser. The new left nav begins immediately after the facebook logo and places your friend requests, messages and notifications right before the new, larger search bar.  Although I think the placement of the links is a bit unnecessary (why not just keep it where it was instead of confusing people?), I do like the drop down feature when you scroll over the messages tab. You no longer have to click on the messages tab to get a quick view of your latest messages, convenient.

Following down the left side of the page you’ll find navigation links for your News Feed, Messages, Events, Photos, and Friends and then by a new feature: Friends Online. This is basically a snippet from your chat box in the bottom right corner, however it is a nice way to engage users to use the chat feature more often…thus keeping users on facebook.com for longer.

The middle of the page remains mostly unchanged except for the lack of the “View Live Feed”…well, actually it’s still there but now it’s called “Most Recent”. I guess facebook received enough feedback about the confusion between the News Feed vs. Live Feed and decided to change it.  Now what you’ll see is just a “News Feed” with two link  options on the right: “Top News” (the old news feed) and “Most Recent” (the old live feed).

Overall, I like the new homepage layout on facebook. It’s always good to continually evaluate the usability of your website and it’s clear that facebook is concerned about this. Although their frequent changes to their homepage layout may be frustrating for users at first, they ultimately introduce useful additions and changes that make for a better site experience. So, what are your thoughts on the new facebook homepage?

A report by IDC pointed to a survey of workers that showed 57% of them used social media at least once per week for business purposes. It only makes sense that these tools, which have been optimized for usability and customization, are the tools of choice for business purposes. Workers find sites such as Facebook and Twitter much more user-friendly when it comes to communicating both internally and externally than some systems implemented by the companies themselves.

Workers are doing more promotion as well, regardless of whether they work in marketing, accounting, IT, or any other department. Sure, there are plenty of reasons to argue against allowing workers to use social networking sites while on the job (see Farmville) but the benefits can potentially outweigh the risks if the company takes the right stance on social media. Creating a Fan page and Twitter account for your company and then giving permission to employees to post to those social media portals periodically throughout the week can bring invaluable brand recognition, improved customer relationships, and can make consumers more likely to view your brand as a person rather than as a corporation. By connecting with people on a more personal level company’s can more successfully use their social media portals to promote sales, new products, and events without seeming like a robotic spam machine.

Some companies still see social media as a fad, but they will be playing catch-up with those companies which are “socially aware” – a term used by ChannelInsider.com to describe businesses who use social media to their advantage. Choosing to ignore social media can be a death sentence to companies, especially if they are part of an industry full of socially aware competition.

Creativity and ingenuity usually lead to success in Social Media campaigns, but sometimes you can be creative and successful by going old school. Volkswagen is doing just that by bringing back the old “Punch Buggy” game. Remember it? Every time you passed a VW Beetle on those long family road trips you and your little brother would exchange punches. It’s a game that pretty much everybody can remember being a part of at some point, which is why it makes for a great social media campaign. People can relate to it and get a tingly feeling of reminiscence.

So, starting with an ad during the 3rd quarter of this year’s Super Bowl, VW is reinventing the game and calling it “Punch Dub”, referring to their nickname “Vee Dub”. The new game allows punches whenever any VW is spotted, not just a Beetle. The modern version of the classic game will feature celebrity comedian Tracy Morgan (from SNL and 30 Rock). Fans of Volkswagen will be able to share their excitement over the reemergence of the game by going to VW’s Facebook page where they can become “Punch Dubbers” and dole out punches of their own and also get a chance to win a new VW CC.

The combination of bringing back a classic game with a chance to win a car and a popular comedian is something that will almost surely turn into a successful campaign. While most companies can’t afford Tracy Morgan, or a Super Bowl ad, the formula can still be followed by small businesses. Connect with your fans on a personal level by inviting them to get involved with a fun and quirky activity and offer them incentives to do so. Chances are, if you remind people of something from their past that they enjoyed, even something small like the “Punch Buggy” game, they will see your brand as more human and more fun. While it might not last long, such a campaign can leave a lasting impression on people and can leave them seeing your company as more Social Media-friendly.

We saw a huge shift in 2009 from portals like MySpace to Twitter and Facebook. Blogs became increasingly important in any social media marketing campaign as did social bookmarking and a presence on YouTube or other video sharing sites.

What is your prediction for 2010?