In the last couple of years, Facebook has eclipsed MySpace as the world’s most popular social networking site. Facebook now has 95 million active users, compared with only about 65 million on MySpace.

What’s more interesting than these numbers is the way that users of the sites appear to break down along demographic lines. In an NPR story that aired on 10/21, students at an elite private high school in San Francisco explained that Facebook is “safer and more high class” than MySpace, which is “trashy.”

Another group of San Francisco teenagers—the mostly Latino, mostly lower-income students in an art class at a community gallery called Southern Exposure—had a different take on the difference between the two sites. As 19-year-old Diego Luna put it,

“I have friends who are white . . . They are my white people friends and they are mostly on Facebook. That’s why I use Facebook. My brown people are on MySpace.”

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In the scramble to reinvent bookselling, video advertising is emerging as an industry unto itself. A New York Times essay from January explains that it all began in 2002 when an aspiring romance novelist named Sheila English founded Circle of Seven (COS) Productions, a social media marketing service for books, authors, and publishers. The company—which has trademarked the terms “Book Trailer” and “Book Teaser”—specializes in “creat[ing] an atmosphere that says ‘Books are entertainment.’”

COS has experienced exponential growth since 2006 (12 projects that year, according to the Times; 140 in 2008).  Their services are tailored to a wide range of budgets, from the bargain basement “Cover Story” (the only image is your book cover) for $300, to the “Platinum Teaser” (special titling, effects, photoshop scenes) for $2,500.  (To shoot an author interview, or a full blown trailer with a script and live actors, call for a quote.)  For a taste of the drama and intrigue that COS can create in a 36-second “Level 2 Mini Teaser” ($1,500), check out what they’ve done with Baited (2006), a romance novel by Crystal Green.  (Or for a more literary interpretation of the book video, see what Harper Collins did for Rivka Galchen’s critically acclaimed Atmospheric Disturbances [2008].)

Meanwhile, many authors on shoestring budgets are embracing the guerrilla marketing spirit, posting homemade book videos on YouTube, MySpace, their own websites, and elsewhere online. 

And why not bookstores? Green Apple Books of San Francisco, one of the best-loved independents in the Bay Area, is creating an atmosphere all its own with videos to promote its Book-of-the-Month recommendations. Created “in the lo-fi style” by SF-based French Press Films, these videos feature scruffy-looking but enthusiastic staff members hamming it up in testimonials, “dramatizations,” and “reenactments” related to the featured book. Can videos like these drive foot traffic to Green Apple or increase sales?  Green Apple Commercial #1:  Book of the Month!  (in which staff bolster their endorsement of David Benioff’s City of Thieves with a money-back guarantee) has been viewed nearly 1,200 times since it was posted in June 2008—although the only comment it has inspired (or provoked) is “dorks!”  Still, the videos have some infectious appeal, and they’re getting more sophisticated.  Their latest effort, Green Apple Commercial #7:  Conquest of the Useless!, shot “on location” with bookseller Stephen Sparks doing his best Werner Herzog,  is my favorite:

Many businesses are turning toward social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to increase visibility. I think it’s a great way to provide a public “face” and to open the doors to interactive communication. Our business, Thomas Riggs & Company, operates in a virtual office, and we are scattered across the globe. Since we all live in different cities, it’s good for us to find ways to feel more connected with others. Services such as Twitter will not only help us form a community but also introduce our company to the online world.

So we’re planning to use Twitter to make announcements about upcoming books and events and to get to know our Twitter friends better. It should be a lot of fun, so please join in and follow us at http://twitter.com/ThomasRiggsCo.

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