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Surely there is no way to top the best book on social networking, or any other subject, as there is no the best one. The industry grows at an incredible pace and during the last year there were published hundreds, or even thousands of books on related topics. Moreover, each book coming to the print can already be outdated.

However, to compose a list of Top10-20 books most people rely on as portable source of information might be very useful. That's why I decided to host a discussion "best books on social media and interactive marketing" on LinkedIn. To prepare a productive ground for the discussion I decided to nominate some books featured by industry acclaimed experts. The discussion has been kicked off.

It was exciting to see many knowledgeable professionals expressed their thoughts and shared their favorite books. Being united by a good mission to create a resource for others we decided to avoid any rating system. So, initial composition of our nominees was as follows:

- Naked Conversations, by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel
- Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi
- Join the Conversation, by Joseph Jaffe
- The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
- A friend in every city, by Penny Power, Thomas Power, Andy Cootes
- The Virtual Handshake, by David Teten, Scott Allen
- The Wealth of networks, by Yochai Benkler
- Secrets of Social Media Marketing, by Paul Gillin
- Buzz Marketing, by Mark Hughes
- The future of knoweldge, by Verna Allee
- Social Networking for Dummies, by Manny Hernandes
- Synthetic Worlds, Edward Castronova
- Emergence, Steven Johnson

Good list, with some truly brilliant participants, however, still it needed to be completed and discussed, so here there was a public help with its list of suggestions (the number corresponds to votes for that book):

- Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff - 3 votes
- Social Media Marketing for Dummies - 2 votes
- Inbound Marketing, by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah - 2 votes
- Trust Agents by Chris Brogan - 2 votes
- Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, by Dreirdre Breakenridge and Brian Solis - 2 votes
- Cult of Amateur by Andrew Keen
- Socianomics by Eric Qualman
- Everyone by Clay Shirky
- Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
- Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott
- We-Think by Charles Leadbeater
- The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson
- The Longer Long Tail, by Chris Anderson
- The Tipping Poin by Malcolm Gladwell
- Twitter Marketing for Dummies
- World Wide Rave by David Meerman Scott
- Viral Loop by Adam L. Penenberg
- Friends with Benefits by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo
- What Would Google Do?, by Jeff Jarvis
- Made to Stick by David Weinberger
- The New Rules of Marketing and PR, by David Meerman Scott
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, by Al Ries and Laura Ries
- The Digital Handshake by Paul Chaney
- The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
- Six Degrees of Separation" by author John Guare
- Social Media Bible by Safko/Brake
- Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
- Dan Zarrella's Social Media Marketing Book

Although, there wasn't any rating whatsoever, the number of votes showed that masterpieces such as Groundswell, Social Media for Dummies (despite its title), Inbound Marketing, Trust Agents, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations are classic. Despite technology and strategies change quickly in our highly-digitalized world and internet full of useful information I think books still play a key role in our success as they provide those fundamentals of marketing and branding which will always remain same.

Note from author: Personally, I am very grateful to all the participants, who willingly gave their time and generously shared their recommendations. It has been a privilege and an education to undertake this discussion. Hope this work will be of great use for those who make first steps in social media or those with long track-record. Please see original LinkedIn discussion here.

Okay, we're all in the Internet and it became the main information channel on the planet. Businesses start to use the Internet as a sales point, customer service, office representation and many other areas. Website climbed to the top of marketing strategy and marketing over the Internet has seen a dramatic increase year on year. From email marketing to web marketing to search engine and pay-per-click marketing to social media and interactive marketing - internet marketing has made a long journey during last decade.

The next big thing is Social Media - where Facebook became a lifestyle and Linkedin major business platform, while mainstream media fell in love with Twitter and Youtube. Social Media quickly appeared in marketing programs providing unparalleled opportunities to connect and interact with prospects and existing customers, to identify their concerns and preferences and based on it address their challenges and improve perception of the brand.

As a result in today's highly-digitalized world many companies in developed countries almost completely eliminate any signs of traditional marketing approaches in their corporate strategies and focus on their websites and internet presence activities. Leading newspapers and magazines have seen a fall in demand while online publications and portals have benefited from increasing advertising demand. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo have seen large increase in demand over the last few years. Social networking websites reported a similar rise in advertising demand. Online advertisements forms the largest revenue stream for many established websites and portals. Also there is a growth in online video and mobile marketing.

But, how about other marketing channels? Yes, Internet has more than 1.5 billion users and grows every second, but still it only represents 1/5 of world population. How other people are reached? Is there any opportunity for traditional channels to survive in modern world?

Some said that Social Media market is already saturated, with incredible amount of Tweets; Facebook - MySpace - LinkedIn updates; Youtube, Flickr, Photobucket media content; Slideshare presentations; Digg, Delicious bookmarks and many many other things piercing our minds on daily basis. An amount of that data growing each day. Recent studies estimate that an average American users consumes more than 30 GB of the content per day, including 100,000 words of information - quite impressive, isn't it.

This environment might be incredibly hard for new services to appear. However, global reach and delivery power of Social Media from other side can easily help any of new services to become popular. And Social Media eagerly demonstrates its power helping companies such as Apple and Google to market their products and services. First, iPad, then Buzz an incredible pace of information spread through Social Media channels brought Google Buzz, new Gmail social platform to millions of users.

The most interesting thing, however, is that Social Media not controlled by the organization, so in case with Buzz the services that were set to be a competitors to Buzz eventually helped him to reach users. In the day of lunch services such as Twitter and Facebook were full of messages about Buzz. As a result Buzz has gotten off to a great start in terms of attracting users.
Google said in a blog post that over 9 million posts and comments had been created, and they were seeing over 200 posts per minute during first days of lunch. Even though Google automatically turned on the service for its 176 million Gmail users and pushed the message through its channels, still much of its great start was due to incredible capabilities of Social Media.
Although, there is another side of Social Media - it's only been a few days the whole world began talking about Buzz, but not about its features or usability though. The main topic was its huge privacy flow that could automatically made users contacts list public. The buzz in the tech world around Google Buzz got instant dislike. Google, however, to their credit has promptly fixed some privacy issues. After privacy storm, there were lots of parallels with Twitter and Friendfeed and whether it's better or worse as well as feelings of overwhelming by the information users already get via these services.

Most users are still in a search for ways to use Buzz from PC. And surely for most Google Buzz is still a new toy and they still need to figure out the way to use it, but seems like one guy already found how to use Google Buzz, not from PC though.

In his article Mike Elgan shared his thoughts on the potential of Google Buzz in mobile world. At this time Buzz accessible for mobile users with latest iPhone and Android devices. Mike predicts Google Buzz soon become an amazing and indispensable application and closely associates its great use with two great features of Google Maps, called "Near Me Know" and "Explore Right Here". Quintessence of these features is like a virtual graffiti that allows posting invisible messages in the air, which could be read by someone in that same location. "Near me now" and "Explore right here" functionality is baked right into the mobile version of Buzz. That, combined with cell phone GPS capability and Twitter-like posting, is mobile magic. When you launch the mobile Buzz app and touch the "Nearby" button, you'll see all recent posts near your location, listed in order of proximity.

A button just above the message area lists all the businesses nearby, also listed by proximity. You can choose the restaurant or store you're at, or choose the "best available location" option. This time Google engineers took better care about privacy allowing to hide user's location at all, user can choose to reveal his general location or specify exact location.

Giving an overview on the opportunities that Buzz provides for mobile users Mike called Google Buzz on PC as a closed experience in two ways: First, you need Gmail to fully experience it. Second, you get messages only from people you're following. With Google Buzz on a PC, you're blind to non-Gmail users, and also to everybody you're not following.

Google Buzz on a phone is the opposite: You don't need Gmail. And you can see the tweets of people whether you're following them or not. In the "Nearby" mode, you're automatically "following" whoever happens to be or has been near wherever it is you are. And they're following you. When you leave the area, you stop "following" them and start "following" the people near your new location.
According to Mike, such capabilities and reach power can help users to make the following things better:

1. Promote business - with twitter helps selling cupcakes and Korean barbecue by tweeting when fresh cookies coming out Google Buzz can broadcast availability of special and sales to anyone in that same location to business

2. Share business information at industry events - Buzz Nearby mode can allow broadcasting information to industry attendees

3. Find a lost pet - again nearby mode can help you search your fluffy in your neighborhood

4. Read and write restaurant reviews - being close to restaurant or several ones you can read the menu or read the reviews

5. Talk to other people at a concert or other public event - take part in the Buzz conversations on major events6. Get Help - Need help to get around in unfamiliar city, looking for some special shop use Buzz to get instant answers

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Just came across one very interesting article with anonymous Facebook employee telling about Facebook's privacy. Here it is.

Rumpus: You’ve previously mentioned a master password, which you no longer use.

Employee: I’m not sure when exactly it was deprecated, but we did have a master password at one point where you could type in any user’s user ID, and then the password. I’m not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out ‘Chuck Norris,’ more or less. It was pretty fantastic.

Rumpus: This was accessible by any Facebook employee?

Employee: Technically, yes. But it was pretty much limited to the original engineers, who were basically the only people who knew about it. It wasn’t as if random people in Human Resources were using this password to log into profiles. It was made and designed for engineering reasons. But it was there, and any employee could find it if they knew where to look.

I should also say that it was only available internally. If I were to log in from a high school or library, I couldn’t use it. You had to be in the Facebook office, using the Facebook ISP.

Rumpus: Do you think Facebook employees ever abused the privilege of having universal access?

Employee: I know it has happened in the past, because at least two people have been fired for it that I know of.

Rumpus: What did they do?

Employee: I know one of them went in and manipulated some other person’s data, changed their religious views or something like that. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but he got reported, got found out, got fired.

Social media took a wild ride in 2009, and this is a fact. Companies became more serious to use their web presence as a viable business tool while mainstream press fell in love with social networks and mirco-blogging services. Linkedin grew to a major business generation platform, while Facebook became a lifestyle. While this evolution opened up completely new horizons for users, it also brought a completely new set of challenges to professionals embracing social media as a business platform. Starting from difficulties in measurement and monetizing throughout to creating compelling message and engaging in conversation, marketers facing great puzzles as to how make social media more effective.

It's no secret that social media and web presence should be an integral part of your online strategy, which has gained more value during last year. But, only creating messages and promoting them is a friction of job. To make your social media strategy really effective you should put it into very organized way that will allow to strengthen your online footprint. Below there are some tips to make your social media efforts more effective.

1. Pay Attention to the Metrics
You can't manage what you can't measure. Chief Marketing Officers are going to pay more attention to metrics and tie in social media more directly to overall business goals, not just web-related goals. When starting up new project agree on what the metrics should be and what goals are appropriate.

2. Scale Good Habits
As you grow, make sure you match your structure, policy and guidelines to your organization size. What works with 2 people won't work with 20 people. All in all your structure should encourage good habits. Your entire team should be motivated to respond quickly, post consistently and talk like a human. Speaking of policies and rules...

3. Have Rules, But Trust People
As your social media strategy matures, you'll add in more rules and guidelines. However, you can't have a rule for every situation. You need to trust your team. Lead by example, don't manage with rulebook.

4. Creativity & Personality Trump Big Budget
Social media is definitely one of those areas in life where more money doesn't always win. Two of the most powerful ingredients in social media are creativity and personality. They are the key to having a viral message and to being a trusted resource. They are also essential to discovering useful strategies and tactics. You can't be afraid to try something new or go against the grain.

5. Listen Listen Listen
Don't focus so much on you and your message. Put that farther down on your To Do List. Focus first on your customers. Hear what they are saying, see what they're up to. Once you've been able to connect, and figure them out, then see how you can help.

During last year there were a lot of buzz about the competition between two major social networks, LinkedIn and Facebook. Although, initially the two had been designed to play in different leagues (Facebook for personal communication and fun, while LinkedIn for professional and business interaction) eventually they stack up and people start to use them in both ways, which is actually more applicable to Facebook.

LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye said last year that there's no fierce competition and there’s room both social networking sites, but is this statement reflects the reality? especially with those numbers and segment penetration demonstrated by Facebook during last years (Facebook has more than 350 million active users).

Yes, there is a true that LinkedIn provides a different set of functionality than Facebook, and for business purposes and recruitment LinkedIn is more geared up, but Facebook got incredibly innovative, especially with its platform strategy opening up new horizons for itself. More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries work with Facebook platform brining to users more than 500,000 active applications. So, If there is demand for professional features that are missing, anybody can come in and build them.

From other side there are opinions that Facebook prompts to more active and enjoyable communication and collaboration with its Wall and its features, while LinkedIn missing some useful features e.g images. But, do professionals need all that cool stuff in business interaction?

Maybe Facebook will become all-in-one service for young professionals, who used to such features. Or, maybe LinkedIn and Facebook make a linkage and build applications to each others. What do you think? Would you be happy to have dual social sitizenship, or you'd like integration?

Technology have irreversibly changed our lives, and this is the fact. The Internet become the main information platform, while social networks on their way to become a major communication medium. Along with all that changes and benefits technology has brought, it also became the main source for news, stories and rumors. From a 6-year-old boy that was caught in a runaway home-made helium balloon to the American, who updated his Facebook and Twitter accounts during the wedding ceremony, the world was full of various stories related to technology in 2009.

There is a small portion of some popular tech stories:

"Standing at the alter with @TracyPage where just a second ago she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss the bride" is how Dana Hanna kept the world posted between "I do" and that kiss.

The two White House gate-crashers celebrated their triumph on Facebook, when from other side Dutch lawmakers were told off for tweeting in parliament and in Canada an MP had to apologize for insulting a rival on Twitter.

In New York, five "restroom ambassadors" got jobs tweeting from the toilets at Times Square: greeting tourists and shoppers -- and then sending short dispatches on their encounters.

Britain's High Court ordered its first injunction via Twitter to stop an anonymous Tweeter impersonating someone else.

The U.N.'s World Food Programme sent text messages to Iraqi refugees in Syria so they could redeem the virtual vouchers for fresh food in local shops.

Although, many surveys show that people less than enthusiastic about how far we have come in technology by the dawn of a new decade we have to admit that today we live in much more digitized world than a decade ago, and technology opened up new horizons for us.

However, in our race for modernization and informatization we often overlook the practical and moral side of the question. While new technologies help us to do many things better, faster and synchronously, from other side they present a hard-to-resist challenge. A U.S. survey found that one in five drivers read or sent text messages from behind the wheel, and this is not so funny as stories above.

I think that instead of desperately concentrating on technological advancement we should pay more attention on applying already existing technologies in a wise way.

Incredible growth of Social Networks in 2009 has irreversibly changed the Internet landscape. Social networks, micro-blogging and sharing services have opened new communication horizons allowing users to share any type of information, participate in common projects, play games and do many other things in real time being anywhere in the world. Such popularity and growth have created a whole new industries specializing on creating specific applications and services for social networks. Designed to improve and diversify social interaction online yet social networks represent an ideal vector for cybercriminals. The explosion of various applications on services such as facebook along with rise of URL shortening services such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com will help hackers to take advantage of trustfulness of social networks.

According to Web security firm McAfee Labs social networks will face increasingly sophisticated hacker attacks in 2010. McAfee said hackers were expected to try to take advantage of the proliferation of URL shortening services. "These services now appear in all sorts of communications -- making it easier than ever to mask the URLs that users are asked to click," it said. "This trick will play a more predominant role in 2010; it's the perfect avenue to direct users to websites that they would normally be wary about visiting.

A new handy tool invented in Google Labs. The tool allows to see what portion of the site users can see without scrolling. Check browsersize

The story with the picture appearing at the top of the list in Google search results for Mrs. Obama query has gained a rather controversial tone lately. As a result Google placed a text ad above the image with title "Offensive search results", however web giant denied to remove the image from search results completely saying that its apologizes someone has an upsetting experience using Google, but the search engine does not remove images simply because of unpopular content or complaints."Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority" it says.

However, the web giant says it will take down certain images, if required by law to do so. Such cases already took a place in countries like China, where Google conform to moral and cultural principles set by the government of Republic of China.

Is there a need to introduce some kind of regulation for search results? And who should regulate it, search engines or competent authorities?