In one of our previous posts we mentioned that Coke had the #2 ranked Facebook page. Just like Nutella, Coca-Cola‘s fan page was set up by loyal fans.

The page was created by Dusty Sorg, an LA based actor, and he maintains it with his friend Michael Jedrzejewski, a writer. Neither of them had any idea that their fan page would become as popular as it is. It’s second only to Barack Obama’s page – pretty good. Sorg started the page in August and by December it had 1.2 million fans.

At the time Sorg set up his Coca-Cola fan page, there were already more than 200 coke related fan pages on Facebook. But for some reason Sorg’s page took off and continues to grow and currently has about 3.3 million fans. So what made this Facebook different from hundreds of others?

Michael Donnelly, Coca-Cola’s group director of worldwide interactive marketing, suggests that the difference could have been as simple as a professional look. “They chose a great image,” he says. “It was a high-resolution picture of a can of cold Coke, and it was just perfect.”

So it looks like Coke’s success in social media was totally accidental. While it worked for Coke, other companies shouldn’t wait for their fans to do the heavy lifting. “It gives us an opportunity we didn’t have in the past,” says Mr Donnelly. “It’s a great way for us to expose a huge number of people to what we’re doing at no cost.” Coca-Cola and Sorg now jointly administer the page.

It’s crazy to see that a fan’s Facebook page has become such an asset to one of the most influential and successful companies in the world. So for those who are still skeptical of the benefits of social networks, specifically Facebook, this is a perfect example of the impact they can have on your relationships with your customers.

Think back about three years ago. You had just set up a MySpace account and were totally addicted to it. You check your account every ten minutes for updates. It was the first time you experienced stalking or asked to be friends with a 50-year-old named Bill whose only friends were scantily clad 12-year-old girls.

Now jump to present day. When was the last time you checked your MySpace account? About 4 months ago? Sounds about right.

MySpace used to be synonymous with social networking but has recently been losing popularity. Facebook‘s traffic is now more than double that of MySpace. “MySpace had 124 million monthly unique visitors last month, a decline of 2%, according to the marketing research company comScore. Facebook, by contrast, racked up 276 million unique visitors, an increase of 16.6%.”

Bebo’s popularity has also threatened MySpace’s dominance and Twitter is claiming more and more users’ attention spans.

MySpace has also lost three key executives recently – Amit Kapur, COO, Jim Benedetto, Senior Vice-President of Engineering, and Steve Pearman, Senior Vice-Presidentof Product Strategy. There is also speculation that the co-founders, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, will also be leaving MySpace.

While Facebook, among other sites, seem to be taking over the world of social networking, the battle isn’t over for MySpace. Let’s be realistic, there are still tons of preteens that need to express their angst and sexuality.