Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, though seemingly immune to socio-economic divides, are experiencing the consequences of differences in race, class, and income.

Moreover, such social tools are making inequalities, perhaps thought defused, active culprits again. Net researcher Danah Boyd spoke on the phenomenon last week at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York saying, “Social media are making the old social divisions obvious in totally new ways.”

While ComScore data released in June showed both Facebook and MySpace with 70 million users, Boyd argues teens’ social identities impacts their decision to join one network over the other. One teen Boyd interviewed went as far as to pinpoint what social groups Facebook appeals to versus MySpace.

Findings showed, the more affluent and educated groups tend towards Facebook- what Boyd calls the “modern incarnation of white flight.” Boyd also points out that unlike e-mail, a communication barrier exists between the two as messages cannot be sent back and forth.

Advertisers who rely on the internet as a medium that bridges inequalities will no doubt be disappointed at Boyd’s findings. Such information suggests advertisers will have to utilize more targeted strategies in executing their campaigns since the internet fails to serve as an equalizer.

If you haven’t noticed Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube offer beefed up targeting strategies based on demographics and interests.  For example, if you’re on Facebook and you’ve recently gotten engaged, you will immediately begin to notice a plethora of ads pushing all types of wedding services.  This is what many in the advertising world believe is the future of smart advertising.

According to respondents in a recent survey this is a good thing.

A study by Q Interactive, and reposted on Mashable, offers some interesting insight for advertisers. Notably, 56.6% of US internet users between the ages of 35 and 44 would view and advertiser favorably based on online ads tailored to their interests.  56.2% of this same age bracket also prefers to receive free online services and information in exchange for the use of their data to target relevant data to them.

According to the study, while some suggest creating ads targeting a consumer’s interests would be excessive, the study found consumers welcome it.

This is just one of the many ways in which social networking sites provide advertisers with plenty of data that can be utilized to make ads as effective and potent as possible.

For political campaigns and issue advertising, this is the beginning of an important new trend. Political advertisers put tremendous stock in the ability to target audiences.  As it’s been determined long ago, voters rarely act in one mass group, voting for people based on one overarching issue.  Voters, like consumers, have niche tastes and interests, and vote according to which candidate appeals to them on the issue(s) they care about most as an individual or member of a particular demographic.

While most voters get weary of the constant drumbeat of ads touting one or two specific campaign issues, this new advertising method, based on interest targeting, may prove more welcome.

Gavin Newsom produces a high level quality web video to open his campaign for governor of California.

The testimonials from average people, strong economic imagery, and tight positive messaging fits a ‘new kind of candidate’ and campaign for 2010.

I also like the references to his website,  Facebook and Twitter – giving people a place to go to follow the campaign and get involved.

Here I stray from the business of politics:

Recently, I joined twitter.  And like the many other people using this online social networking / information pushing platform, I have an opinion.  

I was hesitant at first to join twitter.  My first taste of this online platform was not inspiring.  I read a colleague’s cross twitter posts on facebook, covering all details of personal travel, fast food preferences, home supply store visits and what they were serving for breakfast and dinner.  Not only could I care less, I was quickly becoming annoyed.  

While I appreciate online social networking for the ease by which I can follow friends, family and colleagues’ lives personal and professional, I really don’t care to receive a running commentary on their every move or the minutiae of their daily decisions.  I was reluctant to join twitter, as I believed this was another online place encouraging useless and time consuming social commentary.

It wasn’t until recently, on an outing with a small group of new media specialist friends of mine, did I get a taste of the type of important and interesting information being produced on twitter.  

I was encouraged so I joined.

At first, admittedly, I was a bit lost.  While, I take pride in my understanding of a vast array of online platforms and new media technology, I was perplexed by the almost bare bones format and feel of twitter.  I was eager to figure out how I fit in with all the other twitterers.  What did they gain by their participation and who cared to read what I was doing?

I turned to my friend, Liz Mair, who gave me a quick tutorial on twitter’s most relevant features and characteristics.  I was making my entrance and I sure didn’t want to trip onto the main stage.  If you do join, I recommend calling someone you know who is on and ask them a few questions…I’m sure they’ll be happy to guide you.

So here’s what I learned.  I hope these tips on initial steps help some of my other friends considering joining twitter.

1. When you join twitter pick a recognizable handle (meaning: one that best displays the closest recognition of your name)
2. Allow twitter to rummage through your contacts, like facebook friend finder, so you can view who else is on twitter that you know.  This will allow you to instantly begin following what others, who you know, are saying.  By doing so, you can quickly pick up on the lingo, etiquette  and culture of the twitter platform.
3. Use the “find people” feature to look up your favorite news sites, blogs, websites, celebrities and anyone else of interest to you  professionally or personally.  You might be surprised to see who is on.  Follow them.
4. Set your preferences on how you would like people to view your tweets (messages).  Some people are open others are more private, choose what fits your personality.
5. Start writing tweets.  These are short messages that allow you to convey anything to the world or to your “followers” (people who have shown interest in seeing what you write). The more you write, the more comfortable you get with the platform.
6. Use good judgement on your posts.  I liken information sharing on social networks to behavior you would expect in any public square.  Most people in a public setting would not choose to say wildly inappropriate or offensive things.  Also, in public settings people tend to not take interest in every minor detail of your existence.  These same truths tend to hold true in the online social interactive domain.  Often times this behavior leads to a lonely online experience…and who wants that?

From my short time on twitter, I’ve found it to be, not only interesting and fun, but very helpful in getting news and information at a very fast  pace.  I always enjoyed learning from collective wisdom.  As a political operative and consultant, I rely heavily on collective wisdom for better understanding news, people, events and cultural implications.

Twitter allows you to be hand fed information, commentary and links to articles on the many things you may find interesting and moving.  I chose people and entities to follow, whom I already knew and trust.  I now surf the web less, because these respected sources are gathering and sharing much of the information that I would normally hunt for on bulky websites.  

I’ll leave this last example of a recent event that really hit home twitter for me.  Earlier this week, I found out about the US Airways flight going down in the Hudson river, by the many tweets of the people I’ve been following.  I quickly went on news sites to find out more details and information.  The news didn’t even make most of the sites I quickly scanned.  The ones that did report that quickly, had no photos and little information.  Then I saw someone on twitter post a link to guy whom they knew, also on twitter, who was on the ferry closest to the plane in the water.

This guy had posted up close and personal pictures that he took from his handheld.  His quick comments also provided a feeling of excitement and concern as he was first on the scene to the crash landing.

See my twitter post: defining moment in twitter history ***http://tinyurl.com/8hj3ru***

This guy, whom I didn’t know had scooped all the media – in NYC no less!!!  It was then, an hour later, did I see his very images on the homepage of drudgereport.  

Not all posts are this exciting or interesting.  Some are funny and some are boring.  But my conclusion: tail is starting to wag the dog.

Find me on twitter…..http://twitter.com/BrianFDonahue.

I’m back – after a few days hiatus.  This one will be of interest to all you Facebook friends.

You know a communication medium has officially made it when you begin to see political attack ads being sponsored and purchased within it’s purview.

EMILY STEEL reports in an article for the Wall Street Journal, titled FACEBOOK POLITICAL ADS TEST LIMITS, that the notorious Moveon.org has started the practice of purchasing ad links on Facebook made to appear as legitimate news story posts.

Read below:

“AP Says: Palin Lied,” reads one ad, accompanied by an unflattering photo of the vice presidential candidate. Another ad — accompanied by the same photo — reads, “Washington Post breaks ANOTHER Palin scandal. Charging tax payers for her sleeping at home.” Another with a picture of John McCain grimacing reads, “Time’s Joe Klein has had enough of McCain’s dishonorable campaign lies. A must read.”

Clicking on the ads takes visitors straight to a story on the Web sites of those publications. People who click on the ad that reads “WSJ Says: Palin Lied,” for instance, are directed to a story on The Wall Street Journal Web site about the contradictions in Gov. Palin’s record regarding the “Bridge to Nowhere.”

But none of the publications cited in the ads bought them — or even was aware of them. The buyer — though never identified anywhere on the ads or on the pages that you land on after clicking on them — is the liberal group MoveOn.org. It’s the latest example of fuzziness about who’s behind what when it comes to political ads online.

I support political communications on social networking sites. Where there is speech there is debate and that is good for a democracy.  If we limit speech in budding communication mediums, we will be forever doomed to mediocrity and meaningless chatter.

However, this form of misleading communication is dangerous and wrong.

Proper and reasonable notification of whom is responsible for any political communication is absolutely necessary.  Any medium where mass communication is accepted, and paid political communication is present there must be proper disclosure.

Otherwise, people and will be subjected to harmful, misleading and slanderous claims that are irreversible.

Faceless groups and movements can appear to morph into any halfway legitimate entity and lay false claims intended to mislead people – This is exactly what Moveon.org is doing.  

They are hiding behind the tiny legal exception given to groups or candidate committees so that they do not have place a long silly disclaimer on pens and other small knick knacks.

They are also heading down a path, which will open up a Pandora’s box of veiled Facebook attacks, undoubtedly leading to an FEC ruling or some other government action to limit it or force disclosure.  This is what happened with mail and television commercials that were sponsored by smear groups in the ’80’s and ’90’s, which led to forced strict disclosure giving us the awkward disclaimers you see and hear at the beginning and end of TV spots.

Groups like Moveon.org always test the limits of political messaging, in attempt to mask their identity.

Why? Because their identity is meaningless, and in some cases, very negative in the minds of average Americans. They don’t represent businesses, union members, or people with one legislative agenda.  They are a group that was created on fighting Republicans.

They have a right to exist and communicate, but they continue to force needless action against other groups in the political arena because of their hidden agenda.

A few months ago I came to the conclusion that the cable news networks (FNC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC) would do considerably well during this presidential season – outperforming 2004 and general expectations.  I also made the assumption that the cable news networks would do even better during the course of both Party conventions.  Now, I’m not claiming that these predictions were anything earth shattering, as anyone who pays attention to voter viewing habits, election coverage and ratings probably could have come to the same conclusion a few months ago as well.

However, I was so sure of this magnetic effect of viewership to the cable networks that I made several arguments in the past few weeks to clients and buyers to consider putting much more emphasis into purchasing airtime during nightly convention action.

So it does warm my heart to see hard data reaffirming my prediction.

In a story posted today, Matea Gold of the L.A. Times reported a small piece on the convention viewership draw to broadcast and the cable networks.

The opening night of the Democratic National Convention drew more than 22 million TV viewers, a 20% larger audience than in 2004, according to Nielsen Media Research.

NBC drew the most viewers, pulling an average of 4.71 million viewers for its hour long special anchored by Brian Williams, up 4% from four years ago.

Overall, the picture was even rosier for cable news networks, whose decision to devote nearly all their programming to convention coverage paid off.

CNN averaged 4.27 million viewers, beating the broadcast networks for the first time with its convention coverage.

All three posted major gains over 2004. 

There are a few reasons for the substantial increase that I predicted.  Here are a few supporting points – some are more obvious than others:

Check out after the jump

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