While I am a huge fan of Facebook and use it everyday for updating my status, touching base with colleagues and friends and monitoring my groups – I haven’t been much of a gamer. However, after yesterday’s news I’m starting to think I was missing the boat!

In case you live under a rock – yesterday the popular game, Scrabulous, was taken off Facebook. And let me tell you – you wouldn’t believe the kind of coverage this is getting. Not only was it in a dozen newsletters that I read, but my friends were outraged enough by it that it was in their Facebook status and I even heard somebody talking about it yesterday (Yes, in the REAL world).

What exactly does this mean? For social media? For Hasbro’s marketing? Weigh in and let me know your thoughts. I’m very intrigued!

Recently, MySpace announced its plans to redesign its social networking site. Based on a series of online surveys, the company determined it needed to change its adolescent image to reach a more diverse audience.

This announcement is the latest example on how social media has changed the game in the business world. Sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter are realizing its customers are no longer just teenagers searching to see what friends are up to on the weekends but rather men and women sitting behind corporate computers, hoping to build relationships with colleagues in their field.

Public relations practitioners have sinced jumped on the new media bandwagon and embraced the tool as a way to converse with co-workers, clients and even reporters in a laid-back setting. It’s a place where we can locate upcoming events, hear the latest news, and network through current friends. New Media has taken building relationships to new heights and made it clear that the days of issuing a simple email or making quick phone call have evolved.

Vantage Communications has signed a client whose technology revolves around social networking, Loomia. Offering a SeenThis? social convergence application, Loomia enables consumers to view items that are popular within there personal circles as well as products related to their individual interests. Both clients are strong representations of the direction of the industry.

In essence, public relations no longer consists of just issuing a press release but spans to the depths of new media sites and perhaps even knowing what your favorite reporter or colleague is having for lunch. And as we all continue to log-on and send messages, it seems more and more social media sites are going to have to rethink how it caters to its customers and revaluate its target audience to focus on the business world.

As more and more content is strictly online, it is increasingly vital to become involved in the many conversations happening online. As we’ve mentioned before, joining social networks, uploading interactive content to relevant websites (including video) and following industry blogs are all an essential part of the game these days.

Cece Salomon-Lee recently discussed The Role of SEO in PR on her blog, and she offered some tips for optimizing PR efforts, one of which was regarding blog posting and commenting.

She mentions that “…the key is including links to pages that need increased visibility…this means linking key phrases or words to create an association to your company. Another consideration is to include the page in the URL field when submitting a comment.”

This is a great tip, and one we as PR professionals discuss with our clients on a frequent basis. At Vantage, we are doing this by SEO optimizing all of our press releases, as well as recommending that each client have its own blog. The more we can push messages out to the media, through every available outlet, the better the return will be through search engines.

We continually tell our clients that social media is here, now. Magazines and newspapers are putting more and more content online, sometimes ONLY online, and some are even moving away from any form of print publication. More and more magazines and newspapers are creating social media groups on their own websites for readers to interact with each other. Some publications even have specific sections for guest bloggers or short videos and contributed content.

Recently primetime TV has jumped on the bandwagon, showing that viral marketing and social media is an effective, new way to reach out to consumers. ‘LOST’ created a viral marketing campaign, complete with billboards in Los Angeles. ABC released a (fake) e-mail stating ‘Oceanic would resume flights to nine worldwide cities…” and then a billboard then showed up in each city. This prompted fans worldwide to create theories by the hundreds, and many believe the billboards were placed in the cities LOST characters are actually from.

The buzz created by these viral marketing campaigns involved the fans. They created a buzz for those few consumers who aren’t yet fans of the show and ultimately kept everyone on the edge of their seats until the next show.

Other shows, like ‘The Office’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ have created fan pages on Facebook. Fans become involved with the show in their virtual lives, and can then recruit their friends to become fans, essentially recruiting new viewers to the show. And at virtually no cost for the studio.

As public relations continually evolves, these examples show that social media and viral marketing are the here and now. It’s important to hop on the wave now, before it’s too late. We currently upload all client release to our Facebook pages and to various groups. We have also worked with many clients to create Facebook groups for their company or their industry. And utilizing our in-house video production, Vantage Video, we release timely, relevant industry videos for all our clients to increase exposure and keep up with industry trends.