January has been an exciting month; I finished the first version of There Is No Secret Sauce, a tactical guide to social media, and I also had a really nice redwood fence constructed in my backyard. It took my wife and I a long time to save up enough money to build the fence, and it's got me thinking a lot about what's been happening lately in social media: a lot of lines and alliances have been drawn, but everything seems to be more interdependent than ever.

When I started writing these strategic guides last month, the idea was to focus in on a series of important developments in the last month, and give actionable strategy upon which brands can make decisions that make things happen in social media. So, here goes.

Development #1: Online Video Traffic Rises Sharply

The 12-week old writer's strike has cost the American entertainment industry somewhere between $300-600M, thus far. And it has sent quite a bit of traffic to online video sites. But no one was expecting new Neilsen study numbers to indicate 100% increases (in the 18-49 age group) to the question: "Have you used a video site yesterday?"

Why It Matters: The use of online video, while still slightly skewed towards males, is also seeing the greatest increases in less affluent and less educated groups of the population. Regular use of online video is also on the increase by women.

Business Value: Video is a critical part of the increasingly visual social media mix, and brands need to examine who their communities of customers are, and whether those communities like to use video; the answer is probably "yes".

Actionable: If your brand has no video strategy, begin to investigate what that strategy might look like. Ask around to figure out what kinds of video content are relevant to your brand - can customers talk with customers using video on your web properties? If not, could that be a place to start?

Development #2: Social News Site Digg Changes Their Algorithm

Why It Matters: Brands that don't have a lot of experience executing in social media may think that it's really easy to get their press releases or stories told using social-news aggregator Digg. While the site is wildly popular during the weekdays (1-1.5M unique visitors, many of whom are regulars), it's no longer going to be all that easy for marketers to "game" it by sending a sudden rush of votes at the site, unless those votes are widely distributed (by IP address, and, probably geographic location)

Business Value: Marketers need to know what role social news sites and aggregators play in their social media strategy, and they need to be transparent in the way that they work with these sites.

Actionable: Make sure that any story submitted by your brand to an aggregator or social news site like Digg bears enough news value or interest to influencers that it will get virtual thumbs-ups based on its own merit.

Development #3: MySpace Stats From 10/07 Come Out

Why It Matters: This social network, if it were a country, would rank, population-wise, somewhere between (#11), Mexico and (#10), Japan, with its 110 million members. Even though social network Facebook's current growth rate (with 60 million active users) is poised to catch up in 2009, it hasn't happened yet. If one of the groups of behaviors that your brand includes in its behavioral targeting include "searching for information about consumer products" or "searching for entertainment," this is a property that can't be ignored. Here are the key stats, from Jeremiah Owyang's excellent web strategy blog:

• 300,000 new people sign up daily
• 1 in 4 Americans are on the site
• 85% are over 18
• 14 Billion total comments on the site, 20 Billion total mail messages
• 50 Million mails sent per day on this site - more than A-list mail services Yahoo, Hotmail or Google
• More than 8 million bands and artists on MySpace Music

Business Value: Marketers and brands need to understand that, give or take a little bit, 25% or more of their current or prospective customers spend time in this highly conversational social network every month.

Actionable: If your brand doesn't yet have a MySpace strategy, download There Is No Secret Sauce and begin to devise one.

Development #4: Google, Facebook and Plaxo join Data Portability, an open standards group that will allow people to move data from one system to another.

Why It Matters: Data Portability is the standard by which a lot of social networks are going to move closer together in 2008 and 2009. It will likely allow applications to migrate in between networks, and, eventually, allow users to migrate their data between networks.

Business Value: It came as somewhat of an unexpected surprise when Facebook joined the group, as Google's OpenSocial initiative's initial aim was to "out open" Facebook. Data Portability may be of high value to consumers, and as you design applications or social media initiatives, going forward, keep it in your field of vision.

Actionable: Make quarterly check-ins on Data Portability's wikipedia page to stay abreast of what companies and languages are involved.