Alas, an early spring chirp was finally heard this week signaling a possible resurgence. At the Chirp Conference Twitter execs announced a series of significant changes that address much of what the industry has been crowing about:

• The really big news is promoted tweets, a new advertising platform where advertisers can buy access into a topical Twitter stream. With some similarities to Google’s AdWords platform, this might just start building a justification for the billion-dollar valuation the revenue-neutral service has earned thus far.

• User Streams, a new data service provided by Twitter to desktop applications. This allows developers access to real-time data directly from Twitter. Look for a flock of new Twitter-enabled applications in the near future.

• A developer roadmap to calm the fears of developers and marketers about the service and where it is going. Look for increased functionality around location awareness, annotations, and other features.

• A new home page to address the high abandonment rate of new subscribers. Early tests show a 20% increase in retention.

Along with the technical discussions, Twitter management also shared data about the service that has long been speculated and rarely confirmed. It turns out that Twitter is bigger than we all expected. According to cofounder Biz Stone, Twitter has nearly 106 million registered users and 180 million unique visitors a month—far above many previous industry expectations. To date, the service has been tight-lipped about this type of information. Even more impressive, Twitter is growing at a rate of 300,000 new users a day, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Twitter still has a rough flight ahead. Archenemy Facebook is gearing up for the annual F8 Conference, which promises the unveiling of new features and direction for the 400 million user–strong social network. But for now, Twitter can enjoy the warm glow of springtime optimism.

1. Respond quickly
2. Address the situation
3. Stay positive

In theory, this advice makes perfect sense. In reality, it doesn’t always work. Take one of our experiences for example.

Round 1: A young, vocal detractor posted a negative review on a client’s Facebook page. I would categorize it as a somewhat merited attack expressed in a very vengeful manner. When the post was discovered, we proceeded with the customary strategy:

1. Responded promptly.
2. Addressed the concern of the detractor, thanked him for bringing it to our attention, and provided some insight into what steps were being taken to resolve the perceived problem.
3. Invited the detractor to contact the company (provided a name and number) to discuss any questions or concerns in person.

Textbook fix, right?

Result: Apparently, this particular book was a “choose your own adventure” volume—and the detractor chose an alternate ending. Within minutes of our client’s posted response, the detractor began a full-scale attack campaign, recruiting friends and family to join forces in harassing the company through Facebook. One negative comment turned into eight, which then turned into a photo album, leading to the grand finale—an “I Hate” Facebook page. Why did this happen, when we’d done everything “right”?

Round 2: We responded, again inviting the detractor to an in-person meeting to discuss concerns. Each direct response actually seemed to motivate the detractor to step up his smear campaign, leading to an increase in negative postings. We obviously needed a new strategy:

1. Against all common advice, we did not post immediate responses to the continued negative comments. The attention only encouraged the detractor.
2. Since each personal response fueled the fire, we addressed the perceived problem globally through status updates and addressed it to the entire Facebook community instead of responding personally to the detractor.
3. We invited everyone in the Facebook community to contact the company if they had any questions or concerns regarding the perceived problem.
4. We began proactively posting status updates about any and all steps or programs in place addressing the perceived issue.

Result: Brand ambassadors began speaking up, complimenting the company and posting positive reviews. The attack campaign fizzled. Since we became more proactive with our posts regarding the perceived problem, it has left little room for negative feedback. We continue to monitor the “I Hate” page, and activity there has significantly decreased.

In Conclusion: I have every confidence that the detractor will come back, but we are prepared. The standard steps for handling negative feedback on social media sites are a good starting point, but that is all they are … a starting point. The response an unhappy consumer may take to those steps is unpredictable. If things take a sharp turn toward the unexpected, you may have to take the time to re-evaluate your steps and pursue an unexplored path—one that is customized to your unique crisis. As we all know, the exceptions make the rules.

My paternal great-grandfather presented a unique engagement ring to my great-grandmother. Small by today’s standards, the ring featured a half-carat, semi-rare yellow diamond set in gold with etchings consistent with the period. Stunning. This ring was passed down to my grandmother, then to my mother, and now sits comfortably in my jewelry drawer. Or at least it rested there until two weeks ago. At 3:38 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, my phone rang. On the other end? The mom of the second-grader for whom my son Luke has a deep crush. Seems Quinn came home from school and sheepishly revealed to her mom that Luke had asked her to be his girlfriend and, upon seeing her nod, presented her with a small gift. Yes, you guessed it … my precious, sentimentally charged ring.

Think about it. Within a 24-hour period, that ring went from its warm nest in my drawer, to my 7-year-old’s grubby fingers, into the goldfish-cracker-lined zipper compartment of his backpack, all the way to school, then into his tiny pocket, out to recess, through a few rounds on the jungle gym and, when the time was right … onto Quinn’s tiny finger, which, as you can imagine, was way too small to adequately keep the ring securely in place. I can only surmise that Quinn, upon returning from recess, tucked the ring “safely” into her pink backpack’s goldfish-cracker-lined zipper compartment, before boarding her bus to go home.

Phew! Thank goodness Luke is drawn to smart women. Instead of secretly placing the ring in a random special box, Quinn decided to divulge this news to her mom. Obviously, this story has a happy ending. No need to rehash the events that followed, only to say Quinn now has a different token, and my great-grandmom’s ring is back where it belongs, nestled comfortably between an heirloom gold bracelet and my favorite Tiffany tear-drop earrings. Life is good.

But I digress. The subject at hand (or, should I say, ring finger?) is sentimentality as it relates to Facebook. If your high school years are a distant memory and you’re juggling home/job demands while raising a family, there’s a strong likelihood that you are a fan of Facebook for reasons that have more to do with the past than with the future.

Call it sentimentality, nostalgia or basic curiosity, but there’s just something intriguing about reconnecting with peripheral friends and hearing the nuances of their lives. Granted, some details we can do without (“Just took the dog out for a walk,” or “Heading to John’s soccer game.”) But more often than not, we get a fascinating glimpse into the lives of people we’ve always cared about but simply don’t have the time to catch up with this easily via any other form of technology.

Case in point. Jennifer, whom I haven’t seen in 20 years but spent my K-12 school years with, is now a Facebook friend. She recently posted about a dilemma she was facing involving her young son, birthday-party invitations and a bully. She needed help and turned to “us.” What ensued was a delightfully entertaining stream of motherly advice, pearls of wisdom and a ton of “been there, done that.” The exchange was both humorous and educational. Jennifer, who once trusted us with silly teenage secrets and turned to us for fashion advice when she bought her first pair of Jordache jeans, was turning to us once again — only the subject matter has changed. It seems we’re all wading through the same life-stage stream, and Facebook provides the comfort factor of having a familiar face to the name when we seek advice online.

When polled, most of my Facebook friends site: “reconnecting with old friends” as the primary reason they enjoy Facebook and stay active on it. One of my more feisty friends commented, “I love that Facebook offers me the opportunity to peruse through the photos of people I haven’t seen in 20 years and occasionally marvel about how they’ve let themselves go. … I know I’m going to h*ll for that one.”

Few would dispute that Facebook has the capacity to evoke sentimental feelings, by the sheer nature of its design and functionality. And sentimentality can be a strong marketing tool.

Key takeaways from Steve Chitwood, Director of Digital Media and Online Strategy:

• Social and Location Integration:
  • Moving forward we will see more integration with social channels such as Facebook Connect that do things like allow users to interact with a website and simultaneously publish updates to social channels.
  • We will also see a tying together of social connections and discussions to specific locations. Having discussion with friends that are near one another or topically connected to a location is all the rage.
  • Mobile applications such as Gowalla and Foursquare were this year’s “golden children.” Facebook and Twitter are now the old guard, or platforms for these newer applications to build off of.

While the Aardvark addition pales in comparison with other acquisitions in recent years, such as the $1.6 billion paid for YouTube (now the second-largest search engine, masquerading as a social video-sharing site), it continues to extend Mountain View’s reach into the social web while taking another competitive swipe at perennial runner-up Yahoo! – this time targeting the popular Yahoo! Answers service with which Aardvark competes using a decidedly social media flair. The upstart leverages your own social network connections to provide answers to a user’s questions.

Earlier this week, Google Buzz came thundering onto the social scene offering much the same functionality as Facebook. With Buzz, users can create profiles; embed media from sharing sites such as Picassa, Flicker and YouTube; share information; create groups of friends; post status updates, etc. ¬– all from the comfort of a couple hundred million existing Gmail accounts. While disrupting Facebook’s momentum seems unlikely, the heft of Google’s offering, its reputation for solid technology and its immediate availability to the vast Gmail user base make it a social networking contender worth watching. While I was writing this post, this tweet came across my screen: “Google Buzz makes Facebook look like some college kids’ computer science project.”

One could catch the buzz about Buzz by following the very popular trending topic on Twitter. You could also point your browser to Google and take advantage of Google Social Search. For the last couple months, real-time content from Facebook, MySpace.com and Twitter has been integrated into traditional search results, blending in wall posts, blog entries, tweets and video tags and bringing real-time relevance to users’ queries.

Few dispute that social media is here to stay, that the rise of social networking has truly changed online behavior and that new technologies and evolving trends promise to maintain the dizzying momentum we have seen over recent years. Even fewer should dispute that, however social media matures, Google will be an ever-strengthening force.

I read an article in Brandweek magazine that discussed the advertising strategies for partnering brands, all of which incorporate social media from the get-go. The level of integration and the central focus on social media in each of these plans is no surprise and only reiterates the change to digital in the past year.

With social media connecting fans to the games, it’s also no surprise that people are becoming more involved with the Olympics than ever before – you can now become a Winter Olympics “advocate”, commenting on blogs, winning contests, and getting retweeted by sponsor handles. Here’s a few examples:

Samsung –  “Mobile explorers” will record their experiences at the games via blog posts, Youtube videos, and Twitter updates. On the microsite, you can also help Samsung promote its company blog about the games. If you are the “Gold Blogger,” you win a trip to the Olympics to write about athletes and their performances.

Visa – Its “Go World” microsite features big-time athletes such as skier Julia Mancuso with their own videos, photos and widgets that connect you to Facebook and other social networks. The site also has plenty of contests that result in trips to the games.

McDonalds – “How do you McNugget?” Athletes will record themselves showing how they eat McNuggets in creative ways and will share their videos on McDonald’s YouTube channel.

NBC Universal – The main sponsor has collaborated with Twitter and Swarm Collective to produce Olympic Pulse, where visitors can view athlete tweets, NBC Olympics blogs and top trending stories on Digg.

I’ve never been one to hold those all-day-all-night Olympic marathon parties, but with all of these fun games, contests, and ways to get involved, I just might have to. What about you – has the integration of social media heightened your excitement for the Winter Olympics? Do you use these sites and applications to gather information about which games you want to watch? Do you feel more inclined to comment or blog about the games with its huge online presence? I’m curious to know.

We have all witnessed the rise of embedded Facebook applications by major brands. Recently, Gap and Southwest Airlines deployed sophisticated campaigns centered in the social network. Pepsi, in a newsworthy announcement, shared its plan to abandon the expected Super Bowl TV spots in lieu of a social marketing campaign. But new opportunities for innovation abound, and not just for those with eight-figure online marketing budgets.

A small San Rafael specialty coffee roaster has recently taken a subtle step that just might foretell a gathering storm. Armed with a relatively simple software product from San Francisco start-up Milyoni, Equator Coffees & Teas launched their ifanstore – an e-commerce application embedded within the company’s Facebook page. Rather than using Facebook, like millions of others, to promote a product and drive traffic to an external website shopping cart, Equator has brought the store to the masses. It has rolled its espresso wagon right into the middle of the conversation.

While Equator will probably never compete on the scale of a major brand like Pepsi or Gap, I would expect the trend they are at the forefront of to rapidly grow. Amidst all of the video and interactivity of Gap’s Facebook jeans promotions, it seems like a logical next step to simply order a pair of jeans without having to leave the party. Southwest does a great job drawing me into the conversation and whetting my appetite for a cheap weekend adventure. Why should I have to leave Facebook and head off to another website? Just let me buy the ticket and invite my online friends to join me.

Perhaps it was intrigue over a new approach to a classic online marketing problem. Perhaps it was just the prospect of a great cup of coffee. Regardless, I purchased a pound of Equator’s coffee after reading what other followers had to say, and posted my success on my own Facebook wall. I could probably use a new pair of jeans, and I could definitely use a weekend on a sunny beach, but I’ll settle today for the prospect of a great cup of coffee and continuing the dialogue.

Rest assured, this trend will grow. The advent of the Facebook applications platform and the growing sophistication of related tools and add-ons has begun blurring the lines between a company’s website and its Facebook page. Embedded e-commerce, though in its infancy, accelerates that trend and leaves us all wondering what’s next. Where is the line between a company Facebook presence and a website? Do we need both? Please leave your comments below to continue the discussion.

This is an open letter to people who do not see the benefit of social media in marketing – namely, my husband, who thinks “social media marketing” is just an excuse to cruise around on Facebook while at work and who to this day is the only person I know without an account. First, let’s take a quick look at the history of censuses. They began during the early Pharaonic Period in Egypt and were used to issue land grants and for taxation purposes. The first U.S. census was conducted in 1790; a census is done every 10 years to record the population, which also helps determine the number of United States Representatives each state receives (thank you Wikipedia).

So, the goal is to count EVERY American. In 2000, the census counted more than 281 million people…talk about a daunting task. This year, though, they have social media to help the campaign. Below are reasons why I think this is cool:

1. If this ancient practice can evolve into the social media landscape, any business can.

2. The U.S. Census Bureau’s sole goal is to reach as many people as possible, and it is turning to social media to help accomplish that. Those wary of social media in business, think about it…the census needs to reach everyone. If social media can help with that, it can certainly help reach different target markets and customers.

3A. I can’t remember hearing a word about the census 10 years ago. I was also in college and had recently turned 21, so that may have had something to do with it. Different priorities.

3B. My 22-year-old brother HAS heard of the 2010 census because it’s being talked about on Facebook and in different blogs he reads. That doesn’t guarantee he will participate, but it certainly presents a better opportunity.

4. It’s mind-blowing to think about how social media/online applications will be utilized in the future and even more exciting that we have the opportunity to help shape it. Will the entire census take place through Facebook or iPhone apps? That means my husband probably won’t be counted as a human because he still won’t be on Facebook.

5. It’s interesting to watch how social media continues to infiltrate different aspects of our lives. We no longer have to look for information, it finds us. The census found me, and for the first time, I will be accounted for.

The numbers reported for Black Friday and the new Cyber Monday proved that their involvement is paying off. Black Friday, the largest shopping day of the year, brought $595 million in online sales, up 11% from last year. And Cyber Monday, a new term for the start of the online shopping season following a long Thanksgiving weekend, increased sales by 13.7% from 2008.

Retailers recognize the importance of the online conversation, seeing a positive correlation between their participation and profit. And Twitter is the perfect place to announce sales, hot items, contests, and ongoing promotions. Why? Because it gets the message across quickly in the simplest form to the largest audience possible.

Some Black Friday and Cyber Monday examples:

• Best Buy’s TwelpForce , which includes 2,500 of Best Buy’s employees in an online question and answer session with customers, was available around the clock for the weekend.
• Toys R Us created its own Black Friday tab on its Facebook fan page, showcasing its Black Friday deals on toys.
• Gap tweeted where its “Cheer Squad” would be handing out free merchandise in New York City.
• The Washington Post created a “Black Friday Sales Twitter Aggregator,” which posted tweets of popular brands by category.
• @BlackFriday, @BlackFridayWeb, @BlackFridayList, and dozens of other Twitter handles were created solely to tweet on the best bargains.

Social media will continue to be an integral part of the holiday season, with ongoing campaigns advertising month-long specials, custom gift idea pages, and printable coupons. Retailers speculate another jump in online traffic the few days before free shipping or rush shipping on merchandise ends. So, will you be a social shopper this holiday season?

With the onslaught of communication channels people expect “transparency”. While I am not a big fan of this buzzword, I think the idea it conveys is here to stay. Put simply, today’s consumers demand companies and individuals to be open and honest. If a company or celebrity tries to hide from an issue, it will certainly spiral out of control. Please note, that if a situation is legal in nature other rules apply.

Now, take the recent situation with David Letterman. Okay, I definitely do not condone his actions of infidelity, but the way he handled the situation publicly was a good example of how to deal with a crisis situation. It was obviously painful to address his infidelity on air honestly and openly, but it squashed rumors and allowed him to own up to what he had done and whom he hurt. A very humbling experience indeed. In my opinion, the fact his fans heard the confession firsthand will certainly bode well for him.

With nearly two decades in the public relations business, I have always counseled my clients to get in front of a crisis. It is important to communicate YOUR message as the conversation will go on with or without you. This is an approach even more important in a world that includes instant communication tools – such as Twitter and Facebook.

At the end of the day, it is only human to respect and appreciate when people are open and honest. I remain amazed at how many companies are still afraid they will lose control if they say too much. Let’s be honest, in most situations if don’t speak up you will lose even more control!

As the Harvard Business blog says, Letterman’s ability to manage the crisis on his own terms helped him contain the damage.