Welcome back to the work week! I hope everyone that was affected by Hurricane Irene is making a speedy recovery. Let’s get started with this week’s round-up.

In an effort to enhance the live experience, Ticketmaster recently integrated Facebook into its interactive seat maps. What does that mean exactly? It means that you can tag your friends and let them know where you’re sitting for an event.  I’m pretty excited about this new feature. It will make coordinating group concert outings with friends 100 times easier!

It would appear that the social network that just won’t quit is making a comeback. MySpace has some pretty big plans for its renewed positioning as a music hub. It’s got its sights set on competing with iTunes, Spotify and Vevo. Best of luck MySpace, I’m rooting for you!

For those of you who didn’t know, Blink182 is also making a comeback after nearly 8 years without a album release. In an effort to re-engage its fans, the band released a unique video for a new single. Blink scoured YouTube for videos that were uploaded using their music without permission, and then they cut it into their very own music video. It’s such a great idea that turns fans into the stars!

Finally, enjoy a laugh this morning, compliments of comedian Nick Kroll. He offers his wisdom on social media etiquette. My favorite is #9, because it’s oh so true, “When you comment on a current event, please make sure it’s accurate, because at this point I get more than half of my news from piecing together the story from people’s Twitter jokes about it.”

Because we don’t have enough to think about already, marketing strategists are now being asked to decide whether to “Like-Gate” Facebook pages. Perhaps you’ve run into this already when trying to enter a contest or retrieve a promised discount. The company drives you to their Facebook page, but then forces you to “like” them before providing your reward.

Part of the purpose of like-gating is to get consumers engaged and involved. If you ask them to do something for you and they agree to do it, the theory is that you’ve already taken one step in the engagement process with them. Other companies are trying to drive up their number of Facebook fans because that bumps them up on ranking charts and search engines.

As with any strategy, we have to be careful what we wish for. If we offer a reward and get ten thousand responses, but nobody buys the product, is that really a success? I know I’ve had Stouffer’s show up on my news feed for weeks because of some contest, but I haven’t bought any meals from them. Besides, shouldn’t I become your online brand evangelist after I’ve gotten to try your product? How weighty, really, is my ill-informed, blue thumbs up endorsement?

Perhaps the bigger question for us as content marketers is not whether we should like-gate, but whether we can sustain a like-gating strategy. While offering an incentive to sign up may be a quick and easy way of generating fans, they are going to fall off if we don’t provide them with a continuous stream of interesting content after the initial contact. We all love a free sample, but we can be quickly disappointed, turned off, or just plain bored without the promise of continual intrigue.

If you can’t back up your promises with relevant content, you’ll lose fans as quickly as you gained them.

If your strategy involves a like-gating approach to generate awareness, you should have a plan mapped out for the next three, six, twelve months for how you’re going to continue engaging your fans. You might have a story of the month, tip of the week, smaller contests along the way, short surveys to gather feedback, or client testimonials lined up to roll out on a regular basis. This is even true for companies trying to establish a Facebook presence without a like-gating strategy. Being unique and relevant means people who like you will take the time to read the content you send out, and maybe even share it with friends, thereby building a less volatile, more sustainable online community. For an example of this, visit Discovery Channel’s Facebook page; they have gained over 3 million fans with no like-gating, but plenty of entertainment.

Once again, the success of the like-gating strategy is based on the strength of the content that comes with it. If you can’t back up your promises with relevant content, you’ll lose fans as quickly as you gained them.

Everyone’s in a stir over Facebook’s latest move, but after some use of the new feature, I’m not all that impressed. In a nutshell, Facebook’s decided to add a “Send” button to the options that users will have when sharing websites, videos, and articles of interest with their Facebook buddies. It’s an alternative to the “Like” button, but it allows you to be more selective about your social media sharing.

Let’s say, for example, you want to share a raunchy George Carlin video you found on YouTube with some of your pals, but you don’t want the link splashed all over your Facebook wall for your boss or your mother in law to see. “Send” lets you pick and choose which one of your Facebook friends are granted access to your perverse (and some might say impeccable) sense of humor. “Send” also lets you share with groups, a previously unavailable functionality.

That’s all fine and well. But in order to make room for “Send” (which you can expect to start appearing next to “Like” more often on your favorite websites throughout the interwebs) Facebook has decided to phase out the “Email to a Friend” option you’re probably used to seeing. Confused? Don’t worry. You’re not alone.

The thing is, Facebook is a social media website that’s so far ahead of the pack that it’s now hitting a clumsy, uncomfortable-to-watch lurch in its evolution akin to puberty. And it can’t be easy being under the social media microscope all the time. The bottom line is, changes like these aren’t really all that news-worthy. If you find that you couldn’t care less whether you’re going to have to hit “Send” or “Email to Friend” or “Convey Via Smoke Signal” to share something with your social media pals in the future, you’re perfectly within your rights to consider this a non-issue and tune out. Unless, of course, you happen to operate a website or a blog. In that case, you should probably pay close attention.

First, the comparisons. “Send” and “Email to a Friend” are sort of like twin siblings, with the exception that one (“Send”) has the power to be in more than one place at the same time. Not quite a Creepy Evil Twin, but certainly more like a Super Twin. With “Email to a Friend,” if you’d read a particularly hilarious blog and wanted to share it with a select group of people, you would have had to key in the recipients’ email addresses individually. But now, instead of forwarding that link to a bunch of individuals, you can kill 47 birds with one stone just by clicking “Send” and posting it to the wall of a Facebook group. This way, the shared blog’s visibility is increased tenfold – maybe even more. You still have the ability to send the link to an individual, either directly to their Facebook account or to an external email address, but it’s just a lot less work.

“Send” and “Email to a Friend” are sort of like twin siblings, with the exception that one (“Send”) has the power to be in more than one place at the same time.

So what are the implications of “Send” where SEO and search engine visibility are concerned? That’s debatable. You could say that by giving people the option to share with groups instead of individuals, you’re bringing greater visibility to a wide variety of online content. But you could also argue that by giving people the option to share with a smaller group of friends instead of everyone at once (as happens when you “Like” something) you’re limiting the amount of exposure something gets. And in a day and age where social media marketing plays so heavily into search engine visibility, that’s naturally got some people worried.

In the end, we can all take comfort in knowing that Facebook will probably come along in another couple of months and replace “Send” with something else. Bearing this thought in mind is what’s kept me from getting too excited about the change. I mean, it’s not like anything on Facebook is permanent. Just ask the “Share” button, wherever he is now. He’ll tell you.