Social Media: Karma or Carney-Barking?

Now Here This! I Am Socially Marketing At You!!!

I saw an advertisement this week for a course called:

“Social Media and online marketing for businesses taster course – for business owners looking to make the most of the internet!”

Who should attend? According to the ad: “Any business looking to get more leads, more clients and more business through social media and online marketing!”

Granted there is a wide range of social marketing skills amongst small business owners and this course is geared towards those who are on the “late adopter” side of the equation, but I was seriously upset that there are people out there espousing to be experts, charging $235/day to teach people to be obnoxious, transaction-oriented, list builders, who alienate their customers and blow it with potential prospects before they even get started.

What is social about “Carney-Barking” on social networks? Where is the “give to get” mentality?  What happened to using social networks to build relationships with your audience?

The ad continues: “Looking to get more potential customers to your web site and grow your business?”

So social marketing is all about dragging people back to your own site and stuffing them in the marketing funnel? Let me guess, we will measure engagement with conversion metrics.

Finally: “Our one day intensive course will help you get to grips with social media and online marketing and add value to your business’s reputation.”

Reputation? The course should be called “How to Blow Your Reputation Online By Carney-Barking Your Wares in the Most Obnoxious, Disruptive Ways Possible”

I’m sure there are courses like this taught all over the world every day – people trying to make a quick buck off of buzzwords and trendy topics.  I feel bad for the poor suckers that waste their money on them.  If they implement any of the tactics supported, the cost of the course is likely WAY higher than just the cash outlay.

Have you ever attended one of these type seminars?

Pinterest’s Impact on Social Media is Worth So Much More Than 1,000 Words

Last week, Mashable’s Sarah Kessler authored an article about Pinterest clones which focused on sites that have copied the look, feel, and/or overall functionality of social media’s most recent phenom. What I haven’t seen though, are posts that put forth some higher order thinking around the act of curating content and what that means for individuals and for social media in general.

Before going any further, let’s agree on a definition. Content curation does not include generating content, but amassing content from a variety of sources, and delivering it in an organized fashion. Anyone interested in finding relevant content pertaining to a specific category and funneling this information to an audience (public or private) in a mash-up style is a content curator.

Let’s face it. Pinterest is beautiful. The images that we are pinning make it so. However, content curation is not only about collecting beautiful, funny, interesting images. It is about collecting information for future use, reference, enjoyment, etc. Pinterest has put a pretty face onto a very important concept and one that we should examine deeper.

What if you (or a loved one) recently received an unexpected medical diagnosis? I bet first thing you would run to Google and start searching for answers, reading everything you could to understand all you could. But then later, how could you share with your family what you have learned? A piece of content from WebMD, a snippet from the Mayo Clinic, an article from the New England Journal of Medicine. “Wait? Where did I read that? I wanted to be sure to ask my Doctor about that one thing…” Some content I might want to keep private and share only with select loved ones, while there are other scenarios where I might be willing to share my learnings with the world.

Imagine a student doing research on a topic from World History WWII to present. Instead of providing a bibliography at the end of his paper, he would provide the mash-up of sources used including news articles, official websites, pictures, music, and audio/video broadcasts. The student would spend more time interacting with the content instead of searching for it, and the class presentation would engage his peers at higher levels than ever before.

There are no limits when it comes to the types of content that can be curated. When you think about it, any piece of online digital content that can be shared can be curated.

Will there come a day when we replace the role of researcher or analyst with professional curators? Maybe. The more we flood the Internet with content (useful and otherwise), the more we need curators and the more we need to become curators ourselves.

Hats off to Pinterest for using the concept of pictures (each being worth 1000 words) to show us the importance of collecting and for sparking a whole new wave of thinking about content and the way we consume, create and share it.

Spotted Online

Checking in on foursquare and Facebook is no longer good enough for social media fanatics.  We now have to keep friends and family updated on what we are listening to wherever we are.

Facial Recognition: Creepy, or Cool?

Facial recognition software: it sounds like something out of a science fiction movie – but it’s not.

Facebook recently unveiled its latest trick in the form of automatic tagging.  At first I thought it was cool, being able to mass tag friends in pictures rather than having to select each face individually; but then it started to creep me out a bit.  All of a sudden I realized that Facebook could actually tell the difference between all of my friends’ faces, suggesting peoples’ names as pictures uploaded.  The line between cool and weird began to blur very quickly.

This line blurred even more quickly when I tried to log into my Facebook from a new computer the other day.  While on vacation I accessed my account from a “foreign” device, prompting a quiz to appear in order to verify my identity.  One of the ways to verify my identity was to name friends in selected pictures.  I suddenly got very nervous.  For the first time I was afraid that the computer would win and I would be locked out of my own Facebook account – was this some kind of cruel joke?  I think I identified six different people, some of whom I barely even know in real life.  At that point I was sufficiently freaked out.  You know the saying, “the student becomes the teacher,” I felt as though Facebook was wagging its proverbial finger at me.

When new technology like this is released into the mainstream it is invariably met with some discord, and this addition has European Union members in an uproar.  Apparently people don’t like being ushered in to the world of facial recognition without proper notice.  Society always takes a while to catch up with technology, but has Facebook gone too far this time?  Admittedly, users can log into Facebook and turn off the auto-tagging feature, but those upset by the new addition argue that the option should have been to turn on the feature instead.  Automatically implementing this new technology without properly notifying users ahead of time is one of the main concerns in the EU upheaval.  People don’t seem to be as upset by the software itself but rather by the way it was implemented.

Although there is so much debate about the invasion of privacy the idea behind the new feature is genius.  Every Facebook user has experienced the mundane task of tagging friends in group photos, and now that feeling may be obsolete.  Regardless of protests, users will get used to this change just as they have adjusted to all the others over the years.  The only question now is: what’s next?

Sources: http://news.consumerreports.org/electronics/2011/06/eu-probes-facebooks-facial-recognition-software.html

Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Apps Style

The battle of the app stores.

Apple currently has 350,000 different apps in its app store, with Android trailing behind at a steady 250,000.  The question is: will you ever be satisfied with your apps?

Jay Deragon, CEO of Social Flights, LLC recently published an article discussing the amount of satisfaction users gain from their use of social media.

Deragon divide’s users’ social media engagements into three categories, summarized as follows:

1. “Must be’s”: these are the apps and social media access that you have come to expect on a daily basis, strictly basic things like Facebook and Twitter.
2. “More is better”: a step above the basics, this is where things like yfrog.com come in.  You have Twitter, it works great, but you find that you like adding photos and videos to your posts.
3. “Delighters”: Nobody expected to be sucked into the world of social media, but now you can hardly leave your house without “checking in” to foursquare.  Maybe you even have a check-in at your house.  Stranger things have happened.

What does all this mean?

The average young adult will pick up a new Smartphone and update their Facebook status before they even leave the store.  Young adults these days have a good sense of what they expect out of Smartphones and the social media that comes with them – here are their “must be’s.”  This same age group will rapidly progress to Deragon’s second social media engagement of “more is better” with the greatest of ease, Tweeting pictures and uploading video streams.  Last but not least comes the “delighters.”  Whereas Facebook and Twitter were expected and yfrog.com was a seamless transition, the phenomenon that is social media takes its toll and people are “checking in” wherever they go.

Although not every app deals with social media it is easy to see that social media applications are the big ticket items.  Take Twitter for example: should you download Tweetdeck, or opt for Hootsuite?  People get all riled up about the best way to synchronize all of their accounts.  Upon entering the world of the almighty apps people may not expect to fall so far down the rabbit hole, but Jay Deragon’s research on the social media phenomenon breaks it down for consumers.

Whether or not users are satisfied with their social media outlets depends entirely on their expectations.  There is, therefore, a Catch-22: peoples’ expectations are continually rising.  Not very long ago camera phones were just gaining popularity, but now they are almost standard.  The thing about consumers is that they will never be fully satisfied if the bar keeps rising, and that lack of satisfaction keeps the social media engineers on their toes.

Have you visited your app store today?

References:

http://socialmediatoday.com/jderagon/277591/social-media-usage-satisfaction

http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-of-the-week-ipad-competition-is-toast-2011-3#google-is-closing-the-gap-on-apples-app-store-3

We’ve Come A Long Way Baby

I ran across this video from 1994 where Bryant Gumble and Katie Couric were trying to define the Internet.  This wasn’t actually on the air – they were just taping during a commercial break.  Take a look. The video is kind of funny but it made me think too.  So much has changed since the mid-nineties – the way we work, the way we entertain ourselves, the way we learn, the way we stay informed.  Beyond the economic impact, it’s simply amazing to think about how our world has evolved.  What do you think?

A Decade of Chatter

The year 1997 marked the introduction of a tiny little instant messenger called AIM.  Ask anyone who came of age in America during the turn of the century: this was the beginning of an online generation.

Before the introduction of chat engines such as AIM, children would run home and pick up the phone to call their friends – online chatting changed this forever.  In my personal opinion it is the chat world that opened the doors for online interactions on mega-sites such as Myspace, Xanga, Facebook and Twitter.

From early on AIM allowed users to post brief profiles linked to their user names, places where they could describe themselves, post favorite quotes or write shout outs to friends.  These profiles were the first step toward an online culture that would take America by storm.  As soon as AIM took off, corporations such as Yahoo, MSN and Google followed suit, fully aware that online communication was the way of the future.  As soon as users could begin forming online identities, sites like Myspace, Friendster and Xanga began to take off.  As the years went by it didn’t take long for these sites to begin incorporating chats, photo albums and walls on which users could post.  These were all baby steps toward what we know as social media today.

These other companies were merely testing the waters of what was to come in the 21st Century, but no one could have imagined the storm that Facebook would begin.

Once Facebook entered the scene all other interfaces quickly plateaued, and once Facebook added a chat function – well, the world was his (Zuckerberg’s, I mean).  The funny thing is how the culture of online chatting has remained steady.  Sure, the mode of doing so has changed, but think about what you’re doing every time you update your status: posting a statement and waiting for a reply.  Status updates became such a part of our online culture that Twitter emerged as one giant status site.  Now users are communicating in posts containing less than 140 characters, waiting patiently for someone to reply, re-post, or rebuff.  Are these brief posts much different from the tentative messages sent to seventh grade crushes via AIM?

Humans are social animals by nature, and with technology increasing on a daily basis we find ourselves with more and more outlets in which to be social.  Basic communication via chat services such as AIM lit a fire beneath Americans, a fire that raised demand for more and more social media.  Today clients such as Jabber and Tweetdeck profit because they consolidate some of the numerous ways in which we communicate with one another, ways that date back to the advent of instant messaging in the late nineties.

Beginning in 1997 and harpooning into 2011 social media has evolved from the early throws of instant messages.  We now get notifications instantly sent to our phones when someone comments on our Facebook wall, and we reply just as quickly.  Every Tweet is matched with a reply or a re-post, every upload warrants a comment.  We are a messaging nation that is constantly exploring new ways to communicate, I cannot even begin to imagine what will happen in the next ten years.

TIME for Facebook’s “Golden Boy”

Every year since 1926 TIME, the world’s largest weekly news magazine, has chosen one person as their Man of the Year. Well, now the more politically correct title, Person of the Year.

Previous people of the year include aviator Charles Lindbergh, U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Queen Elizabeth II. TIME did not choose a former president, civil rights leader, or Queen of England to represent this year – instead they chose a 26-year old Harvard drop-out.

TIME magazine chose Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.

Unlike previous people who have graced the cover of TIME magazine’s December issue, Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t run a country or rallied for racial equality; he merely created a web site. Is this a sign of what our nation has become? Are we so consumed by social media that one of our country’s leading magazines celebrates a website creator over anyone else? Is that a bad thing?

In 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev graced TIME’s cover as Person of the Year. Just over 20 years later a redheaded kid is on the same cover. To some that may be an insult, equating political giants with college drop-outs; I think it’s merely a sign of the times (pun intended).

The world has become much smaller in the past decade thanks to people such as Zuckerberg. It may be hard to see now that Facebook is such a part of our daily lives, but Zuckerberg has irrevocably impacted the modern (online) world.

People across the globe have never been more connected. The social networking site operates in over 75 languages and boasts more than 1 billion users – staggering statistics for a website created in a dorm room. Maybe Mark didn’t win a peace prize. Maybe he never ran a country. The truth, however, is undeniable: Mark Zuckerberg has forever changed the way people connect with one another.

So this holiday season as you update your status to send holiday greetings to your friends, take a moment to thank TIME magazine’s Person of the Year.

Source: TIME magazine December 27, 2010.

Facebook: An Individualist or Collectivist culture?

Last month Catharine P. Taylor wrote about the fact that Facebook is a network of individuals.  Perhaps this statement is somewhat paradoxical, but personally I think that it’s genius.

No matter how many groups you join, events you RSVP to and places you “check-in” as a Facebook user one cannot escape the fact that you are ultimately alone in the online world of social interaction.  Every time you log in to your Facebook account you are doing so on a personal level – you use your own password, you control your own profile and you de-tag any pictures that you don’t want your boss to see.  You are in control.

People may be increasing their online presence on a daily basis, but they also are gaining more and more control over that presence.  While you may be documenting every mundane moment of your life online (how many status updates do you post every day?) you also have the ability to filter out those less-flattering moments (Cinco de Mayo 2010 anybody?).

It is this contradiction that makes Facebook an “Individualistic Network.”

People join Facebook because they want to connect with their friends – whether they’ve actually met them in real life or not.  However, when you first set up your Facebook profile you fill out information about yourself (favorite books, music, movies etc.) and choose a picture in order to create your new online identity.  Creating an online identity is a process of reinvention, like when you’re starting high school and you can be anyone you want to be because nobody knows you there.  All of that sounds pretty individualistic to me.

Once you establish your new identity online you begin to join networks and groups in order to connect with people you may know.  All this connecting may seem pretty collectivist, but the thing is that you don’t have to connect with everyone.  You have the choice to be as involved as you want to be.  You are now an individual member of a collectivist system.

Confused?  Yeah, I am too.  I joined Facebook to network with people, now old Markie Mark Zuckerberg is telling me all the ways I can prevent people from seeing my information.  Seems a bit strange if you ask me, but then again, nobody really asked me at all.

Adapted from Catharine P. Taylor’s article: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=137263

Zuckerberg Reveals New Facebook Features

On October 6th, 2010, Mark Zuckerberg and company revealed from within the Facebook Headquarters – a place that resembles my high school cafeteria – three major renovations to the Facebook experience.

First, in order to downplay his portrayal as a self-absorbed monster in The Social Network, which is currently the number one movie in America, the crafty billionaire planted the idea in listeners heads that Facebook now cares about user-privacy and user-control. To achieve this goal, Zuck told the audience that Facebook will finally give a user the chance to “Download Your Information.”

When using the “Download Your Information” feature, a user can navigate through the Application Settings section of Facebook, locate a feature called “Download Your Information,” and request a downloadable ZIP file to store on his or her personal machine. The ZIP file will contain every piece of data a user has ever posted to Facebook, encompassing such things as photos, messages, wall posts, friend lists, profile information, and anything else imaginable.

What I truly hope happens with the “Download Your Information” feature is similar to that of an alcoholic confronting an overflowing trashcan of wine bottles and succumbing to the reality of his or her addiction. I hope that when a Facebook user takes advantage of this feature, he or she examines this ZIP file for what it really is: evidence of a problem. Remember: The larger the ZIP file, the greater the obsession.

The second announcement Zuckerberg mentioned in his trio of transformations is one that allows a user to control the information sent to third-party websites through Applications. The new “Application Dashboard” feature gives a user the ability to view a command-center filled with Application data that displays what information is being transferred to external websites and when the last time an external website acquired personal information.

Although at first glance the “Application Dashboard” seems like an altruistic move by the former privacy monger, Zuck has made locating the Dashboard quite difficult. Instead of accessible through the sensible “Application Settings” section of the “Account” tab, the Dashboard can be found tucked-away in the bottom left corner of the “Privacy Settings” screen, displaying in 8.5 font-size: Edit your settings. I had to pull out my monocle for this one.

Last but not least, the 35th richest person in America unveiled a new “Groups” feature – not to be confused with the groups we all joined five years ago – that lets users create a collective Facebook wall that only specific users defined within a Group can access. Also, Group members, when online, can interact with one another in a real-time group chat setting.

Zuckerberg and friends sold the Groups feature by trying to convince viewers that we need to filter out the statuses and updates from acquaintances – the Facebook friends that we do not seem to care about – and create a more personalized way to interact with our “real-life” friends by creating a “Group.”

While I tend to agree that there is a need to eliminate some of my “friends” status updates, especially the ones that contain a picture of an eight-month pregnant belly, I think that the Groups feature is diverting from Zuckerberg’s vision of a more “open and connected” world.

How are we supposed to become open and connected when we are invited to close off our friends? And will we actually be more connected if we end up using the Groups feature, or will this submit us deeper into to the virtual world we have become so accustomed to?

I fear that eventually – without realizing it – people will be sucked into this virtual community we call Facebook, if we are not already. I believe, and I hope that I am wrong, that people are using Facebook more and more as an end and not as a means to an end.

Think about it. When is the last time you heard a Facebook friend’s voice rather than read his or her words on your wall? When is the last time you interacted with your family member by observing his or her body language and facial expressions rather than looking at his or her static pictures and funny emoticons?

What we now consider a real-life conversation is slowly shifting from tones to text. From sound to silence. And from face to Facebook.

Article first published as Zuckerberg Reveals New Facebook Features on Technorati.