With Twitter, Google+ and Facebook already part of the online world’s daily routines, I can’t help but wonder whether there’s still room for social media marketing and the companies that deliver such services. I remember when I was still active in the search engine scene, the “in-thing” back then was of course – search engine marketing. Still remember SEM? I’m sure you do. Or perhaps many of you still engage in such activities.

So how about Social Media Marketing? Is it still relevant today, with the exponentially growing popularity of Twitter, Facebook and Google+ as the media for product or service marketing and advertising. I mean, anyone can engage into product/service marketing for brands. All you have to do is to create an account for your brand in any of the mentioned social networking sites, gather your followers and then start formualating marketing strategies with the hopes that each of your followers share your marketing ploy and eventually lead to more followers for your social networking accounts.

Social Media Marketing has become a simpler task for brand promotion. Unlike before where your company has to vie for worthiness in search engine algorithms to get the premium spots in search engine results pages (SERPs). SEM as compared with Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a more complex task.

So the question now is, does social media marketing companies has a place in the social media scene? What I mean by social media marketing companies are those that offer services that puts premium to your ad campaigns keywords and promote them on various social media sites as Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can find many social media marketing companies just by simply searching for the right keyword on Google. For example, try searching for keybrokersocial and you’ll find a good example of social media marketing companies.

Try checking out these companies and see whether their services are still useful for your brands. Then you can leave a comment here to answer my question – Is Social Media Marketing still relevant today?

Finally, after several months of waiting, Facebook has officially released its much awaited Facebook for iPad app. The official Facebook blog has announced it and the official product page on Facebook is also live now. If you have previously installed the Facebook iPhone app on your iPad, you’ll see the iPad app as an update. Tap on the update button and your existing installation will be updated into the iPad version.

Here’s the Facebook for iPad News Feed view

Facebook for iPad Notifications tab

Facebook for iPad Profile view

Facebook for iPad photo gallery

Facebook for iPad update status

Overall, the long wait is truly worth it. Facebook has successfully created an iPad app that essentially captured all the things that you’ll look for in a mobile version of Facebook.com.

Get Facebook for iPad now, folks!

Related articles

• Are We Going to Finally See the Facebook iPad App on Oct 5? (ipadnewshub.com)

Google-owned Photovine has just opened up to the public. It was previously on closed beta and the only way you can get in is if Google likes you enough and hand you down an invite. Well, that was before. Right now if you install the Photovine iPhone app, you can now sign up and enjoy vining.

But wait, what is Photovine again? Well, it’s a photo sharing app just like Instagram, PicPlz and others where social networking is done by sharing with the world how good of a photographer you are. If you’re familiar with Instagram you will be able to adapt to Photovine easily. Unlike Instagram though, Photovine doesn’t have those cool photo editing presets that you can apply to your photos before sharing them

But unlike Instagram, Photovine has more sense and directions because you just don’t upload and share photos for the sake of displaying your iPhone photography skills. You upload and share photos based on a central theme that you think others will be able to understand and follow by uploading their photos aligned with the theme.

So for example, you can start a new vine about your daily gadgets, take a photo of your gadgets, upload it to Photovine, tag and describe and wait for other users to upload photos of their gadgets as well. Soon enough, you’ll see your vine grows.

Photovine as it is right now is a pretty promising mobile app. It may or may not kill Instagram depending on how far Google will want to push this app. The app still has some more rooms for improvement. One feature that I will really like to see is of course the photo editing facility, because come to think of it, iPhone photos as they are may not be too enticing. Photo presets add more vibrance and flair.

Photovine is available now as a free download from the App Store.

If I remember it correctly, it’s almost two weeks now (or more?) since Google has introduced its social networking service, Google+. As of today, there are probably more than 18 million users of Google+ already. And Google has yet to release this to the public. The more than 18 million Google+ users just grew through the “by-invitation” process that Google employed to build the Google+ userbase. Hence, at the growth that it is growing, the social media has suddenly shaken up by Google+.

Many were not expecting Google’s social networking service would be quite a hit. Many thought it will be just like Google Wave and Google Buzz which never really took off. But then, the inevitable happened – Google managed to successfully launch a new social networking service which in time will give Facebook and Twitter, two of the most popular social networking/social media services a run for their money.

Gradually, Google+ is carving its niche in the social media sphere. Although it’s still not allowed, several businesses have sneaked in and managed to create an account for their companies. Can you imagine how the userbase of Google+ will grow once businesses such as web hosting providers, restaurants, brand companies and others are allowed to create their Google+ account? I could just imagine how threatened Facebook and Twitter is right now.

If you’re running a business, especially technology-related and you want to promote your products or brands, Google+ is the right place to do so. Currently, the Google+ ecosphere is inhabited by geeks and techies who are actively interacting with one another, sharing information and links they find cool and interesting for fellow geeks.

Google+ will soon compete with Facebook in the brand advertising space. Google lives by its advertising revenue. So, expect Google to leverage on the growing popularity of Google+ and once the business model is in place, expect business companies ranging from the technical ones such as those offering dedicated servers to the more consumer-based products such as food and beverages among others – to come knocking on your Google+ account’s door asking you to add them to your Circles.

Google+ is shaking up the social media ecosphere, there’s no doubt about that. How other social media sites are going to react will be quite interesting to find out.

If you’re using the Facebook app on your Android or iPhone, go check it out right now and when you’re at the main menu option, tap on Places which sits right at the center of the screen. Yes folks, Facebook Places is now available in the Philippines. Facebook has not officially announced this yet but I’m pretty sure they will in no time at all.

So if you’re using Foursquare for checking to places you visit and you’ve set the option to automatically post your Foursquare check in to your Facebook account, you may now stop using this and use the Facebook Places instead.

via Mobiputing

Guess what is the fastest rising search term on Google Zeitgeist for the Philippine market? JEJEMON! What a shocker, right? Why are we so engrossed with “Jejemon” anyways? Interestingly, the second fastest rising query was “iPad.” I guess many are searching Google to find out when the iPad will be released locally.

Here’s the rest of the fastest rising query on Google Philippines in 2010:

1. jejemon
2. ipad
3. pyramid
4. lyrics
5. facebook
6. emoticons
7. justin bieber
8. plants vs zombies
9. glee
10. tumblr
11. crossfire
12. google chrome download

The rest of the Google Zeitgeist 2010 for the Philippines can be found here. You’ll be surprised!

If you’re like me who “lives on the internet,” so to speak – you’ve got to watch this video put up by Google.  It’s the annual Google Zeitgeist, and for 2010 Google decided to create a Zeitgeist year-end video. It’s cool and if you’ve been living on the web for the past year, you’d feel kind of nostalgic while watching this as i did. Hit that read more link before you can watch the Google Zeitgeist video.

Unless you’re living under the rock, you’ve probably heard about this movie called “The Social Network.” Yes, you guess it right, it’s a movie about Facebook. If you’re excited about this as I am, you might want to check out the second trailer released  just now. JT by the way stars in the movie as Napster founder Sean Parker. Mark Zuckerberg  is portrayed by actor Jesse Eisenberg  from the movie Zombieland. Check out the trailer and tell me, is it intriguing or what? Are you excited about the movie?

Earlier today, some BlackBerry users received this SMS alert asking them to forward on the BBM message to their contacts to maintain their BBM service. The SMS alert claims that the message was issued by RIM.

But obviously, the message was a hoax. Here’s an information alert posted by the BlackBerry Asia Groups in Facebook.

Rest assured that this BBM message did not originate from RIM and that it does not impact the security of BlackBerry smartphones. It is simply a hoax chain message. Unfortunately, many social networking applications face this scenario, whereby any message, including a hoax message, can be forwarded to a user from one of their contacts. We recommend that users simply ignore the message and do not forward it.

So have you heard about the latest tech buzz? If not, check out the video explaining what Google’s take on social sharing and online collaboration – Google Buzz.

After that, if you want you can follow me on Google Buzz.