There’s a new issue of In the Spotlight: the biweekly email newsletter highlighting the best content marketing and social media stories from around the web, found automatically by OneSpot from over 500,000 different sources.

This week’s stories include:

• Put Down Your Twitter Toys & Get Back to Work!

• The Quentin Tarantino Guide to Creating Killer Content

• Your Company May Own Your Tweets, Pokes, and YouTube Videos

• Google’s Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years

To read these stories and more, check out our newsletter: In the Spotlight

Not yet subscribed? Sign up now to Get the Spotlight for our Social Media Marketing, Health, Law, or Fashion Newsletters.

There’s a new issue of In the Spotlight: the biweekly email newsletter highlighting the best content marketing and social media stories from around the web, found automatically by OneSpot from over 500,000 different sources.

This issue’s stories include:

• No Tweets for You! NFL Bans Tweets Before, During, and After Games

• Help! My Boss Wants To Be My Friend On Facebook

• Why You Should Stop Sleeping With Your Laptop

• Are we too worried with finding the ROI of social media?

To read these stories and more, check out our newsletter: In the Spotlight

Not yet subscribed? Sign up now to Get the Spotlight for our Social Media Marketing, Health, Law, or Fashion Newsletters.

There’s a new issue of In the Spotlight: the biweekly email newsletter highlighting the best content marketing and social media stories from around the web, found automatically by OneSpot from over 500,000 different sources.

This issue’s stories include:

• Facebook’s Own Estimates Show Declining Student Numbers; Now More Grandparents Than High School Users

• Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: It Doesn’t Feel Safe

• Introducing the Google Chrome OS

• How will you respond to a customer complaint in the age of Social Media?

To read these stories and more, check out our newsletter: In the Spotlight

Not yet subscribed? Sign up now to Get the Spotlight for our Social Media Marketing, Health, Law, or Fashion Newsletters.

Michael Jackson’s death has been receiving a ton of coverage, both from media outlets and on social media sites. During his memorial, Facebook averaged 6,000 status updates per minute. Michael Jackson was truly an icon and will be missed.

I was tweeting during the memorial and one user mentioned that people are grieving more for Michael than they did when Diana died. I initially responded that it was because Michael was an American icon (arguably global), whereas Diana was fairly isolated to the UK. After thinking it over, I realized that all this grief and coverage of Michael’s death was amplified because of social networks: real time, minute-by-minute coverage and commentary. Twitter, much less any social network, did not exist when Diana died.

I also began to wonder if we would ever see this sort of world-wide pause for any modern celebrity. Do we have any icons today in a world of Twitterlebrities? Michael Jackson was in the limelight for over 3 decades, entertaining audiences world-wide. He contributed greatly not only to music, but to the entire entertainment industry: many actors and models gained popularity from appearing in Michael’s videos and those same videos helped to shape MTV. Few have received the mass grieving of Michael, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, and Princess Diana.

There are a couple of icons still present today that may elicit world-wide news, but not many: Madonna (though, of late she has been more tabloid fodder than entertainment), Oprah, Sean Connery, Elizabeth Taylor, and a few may grieve for Britney. These stars have been entertaining for at least a decade. Can you think of any other major timeless entertainers?

The presence of social networks changed the interaction around Michael’s death, but they also have changed the way celebrities are perceived, popularized, and destroyed. Everyone has access to content production these days, thus everyone can truly get their Andy Warhol “15 minutes of fame.” But as soon as one thing hits big, something else comes along to replace it. Take, for instance, Susan Boyle. She became an internet sensation overnight after appearing on “Britain’s Got Talent.” All the talk shows wanted to interview her, people were tweeting and retweeting her video, and her performance became water cooler fodder. However, I was watching “America’s Got Talent” the other night and couldn’t even remember her name, much less the name of anyone who has won these talent competitions. “Celebrity” has become a fleeting concept.

Susan Boyle is an extreme case of here today, gone tomorrow. But many entertainers these days have abbreviated careers thanks to social media and mass quantities of content/noise to consume. We are no longer in the era of 4 TV channels to watch, 5 movie production studios, and a handfull of record labels. Anyone can produce content; individual audience members are their own gatekeeper. We are in an era where obtaining celebrity status is brief: just a blip on the radar.

“It all went by so fast, didn’t it? I wish I could do it all over again, I really do.”- Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson will be remembered forever (or at least as long as my lifetime) because he came from an era of superstars, with only a handful received the money, promotion, and attention needed to rise above other artists. We need our global grieving period because it is nearly impossible to be in this world and not know who Michael Jackson was or not know his songs (unless you were born after 2000). While we may grieve like this when Madonna dies (if she ever does), do you think we would mourn the deaths of Paris Hilton, Megan Fox, or Kim Kardashian? What about Ashton Kutcher, Miley Cyrus, or Amy Winehouse (if she isn’t already dead)? In this era of “blip” celebrity, few entertainers are known world wide; few entertainers will be remembered a decade from now; few entertainers will have the impact Michael Jackson had on the world.

Facebook announced on its blog last Thursday that it was going to redesign the inbox.

While this may have excited a couple of tweens who are on Facebook 24-7, the majority of the response so far has been more apathetic: “So what?” Most users receive email alerts when they have a new message and, aside from spam and interest groups, many simply call or use the direct email address since Facebook is about “real friends,” not just “followers.” The only party benefiting from Facebook messages is Facebook: a user must visit the Facebook site, increasing page views, in order to respond to a message through its app.

Last Friday, Facebook made another big announcement: Facebook in Persian in response to the Iran Election.

The translation of the site into the Persian language came nearly one week after the Major News Outlets versus Twitter scandal in which Twitter was able to report, react, and discuss the Iran Election faster and more effectively than Major News Networks, specifically CNN.

While I understand there is time needed to revise a website for a new market and even more time for a new language, this along with the inbox redesign begs the question: is Facebook two steps behind the market?

When Facebook first opened its network to everyone, MySpace found it difficult to keep up with the simplicity and ubiquity of Facebook’s functionality. Some would even consider MySpace dead (the extensive layoffs are not helping MySpace’s outlook). Now with Twitter booming and becoming the first stop for news and networking, it seems Facebook is having trouble keeping pace with Twitter.

No matter your business, it is important to:

Listen to customers’ needs: It is important to touch base with customers, and even former customers, to learn how they use the product, what features are most important to them as well as least important, and what they would like the product to do in the future. There is no point spending time and resources adding or enhancing a feature that is not within the customers’ wish lists.

Now, I am not saying that Facebook did not do their research. they may have had multiple focus groups and email survey campaigns. However, based on its history for making a major change with customer backlash/boycotting, it would not surprise me if its focus group included only the marketing and development team. Whether you are B2C or B2B, it is important to look outside of your team to customers using your product.

Watch the market: In order to compete in today’s real-time global economy, you must stay on top of marketing trends large and small and react quickly to trends. I say stay on top of even small trends because you never know when a small trend will explode (after all, Twitter was a minor social network until 6 months ago when it started becoming the communications tool). By preparing for any small trend to explode, planning contingencies for those trends, you can react faster to the ever changing marketplace (I’m also talking about you, CNN…)

Facebook’s Persian language support is almost irrelevant: yes, it is great to have support for that language, but with even the White House supporting Twitter for Iran Election coverage and free speech, Facebook feels more like a copycat than a trend setter. In early 2008, Facebook started rolling out international language support and within 6 months, Facebook was in 55 different launguages through its translation app. While Persian is not in the top 20 worldwide launguages, there are 60-80 million worldwide native speakers. In addition, the region has been politically active and on the US News radar since the beginning of the Iraq war. With less government censorship than China (already on Facebook), Facebook should have been ready to deploy in Persian at a moment’s notice. With a higher barrier to entry for customers than Twitter, Facebook should have been ready before the Irani elections, regardless of the outcome.

It can seem overwhelming for some startups to do customer research, but a simple phone call or personal email can make the process easy. There will always be customers who want to share their opinion, the good and the bad, so just spend a few minutes asking customers. Or create a customer advisory board of key customers to periodically survey and test regarding new features.

Staying on top of trends is easy using social networks. By using a desktop Twitter client like Tweetdeck or Seesmic, you can set up search alerts and easily follow customers, competitors, and potential leads. You can also set up Google alerts or use a content aggregation service (like OneSpot) to stay on top of your industry.

By listening to customers and anticipating market trends, it is easy to stay relevant in a real-time global economy. While Facebook has many more issues to work out than just releasing extraneous revisions or arriving late to a market need, this past week’s updates have been a great learning lesson for any business participating online.