Manchester United has issued a statement saying that players will not be using social networks and that all official statements about the club will come through the web site.  The club has been accused of sitting on a pedestal and failing to capitalise on or engage with all the conversations their fans are having through social networks.

It does not make sense. Think of the commercial opportunities they are missing to reach out to fans around the world who are on social networks.

Interesting piece by Amy Porterfield about the relative merits of Twitter v Facebook as a marketing tool. Amy points out that Twitter is more outward-facing and therefore less sticky than Facebook. She also refers to a report about how marketers predict they will be using social media. Worth a look.

It has often been said of new innovations that they are technology in search of an application.  You can make what looks like a breakthrough but actually has no practical use.

This is one case where the opposite has turned out to be the case. Social networking is so natural, and so much a way of life for many people, that the technology sometimes struggles to keep up.

There’s a rather poignant example of that from the Haiti earthquake.   For all the destruction to the infrastructure Haiti citizens are keeping in touch with the rest of the world via Facebook.

One woman posted heart-wrenching messages about pulling people from the rubble, and was clearly so much in touch with what was happening that people in the US and elsewhere who had friends and relatives in Haiti bombarded her with requests for information. That triggered Facebook’s spam filter and the account was temporarily disabled, which turns out to have happened to many other users in Haiti as well.

The site clearly can’t keep up, although be fair, it probably never have envisaged usage of this type and this scale. When pressed, the site’s spokesman said this might happen in ‘rare cases’ and that it would now screen messages for the word ‘Haiti’ and allow them to pass the spam filters.  I wonder if this has happened in other contexts, and how easy or difficult it will be to adjust automated systems to cope with it.

The Economist has kindly agreed to give a talk to members of the Social Media Leadership Forum.

As many of you know, we set up the forum at the end of last year to enable large organisations to collaborate with one another, share best practice and discuss common issues relating to how best to engage with social media.

Our excellent members include: Royal Dutch Shell, Aviva, Asda, Motorola, First Direct, SAB Miller, Unilever and Microsoft.

The talk with The Economist, who are using social media in some fascinating ways, is part of the new programme we are putting together for 2010. Members will also be sharing with other members the work they are doing, the lessons learned and sharing advice and tips.

If you are a representative of a leading FTSE 100 company and you would like to know more about the forum and are interested in joining so you don’t miss out on opportunities to hear directly from experts in this new important communications field, then please get in touch.

You can email me directly: justin.hunt@itsopen.co.uk or call on 0845 0542299 and ask to be put through to me.

Thanks in advance!

Hope to see you at the Social Media Leadership Forum soon!

Justin