Tag Archives: Facebook

Organize, Display, and Share: Two Start-Ups Take Aim From Different Perspectives

Posted on February 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

Chances are you may have at least heard of Dropbox and Pinterest. Dropbox is web-based file-hosting and sharing service––think your “My Documents” folder synced to a “cloud” and accessible within seconds (if not instantly) to other devices and synced computers. The service also makes it very easy to share documents or folders with anyone via a link or email. Pinterest, on the other hand, is a visual, social photo-sharing website and app. Users can “pin” photos, videos, and discussions onto a board that can represent whatever commonality or association they desire. The end result is a series of visuals linked by an author-determined common theme. The posts can be re-pinned, “liked,” or commented on across public posts or among friends.

Stand back for a moment. Both Dropbox and Pinterest were new functionally to the market. Both applications define a new, compartmentalized function (synchronized online file-sharing/storage and social photo-sharing, respectively). Both applications are based on the sharing of content, whether that content is files or visual content organized on “boards.”

Both Dropbox and Pinterest have simple concepts and are beautifully designed, but they do something that the average user doesn’t seek. They provide an innovative method for sharing files and visual content in an organized and intuitive manner. Innovation! Both are thinking about traditional functions in other mediums or systems and reapplying the concept to an online use. Any social media user, specifically someone familiar with Facebook, knows that with the expansion of the “Like” and “Share” buttons to every website, it has become easier than ever for any user to share content on Facebook. In turn, the content shared on friends’ news feeds has become less and less useful. An application like Pinterest enables you to collect visual content (that you may or may not have shared on Facebook or other social channels already) and curate it on a board conveying some general idea. Single-function, well-designed applications that are built on a social backbone enable users to filter out the noise from the deluge of content plunging down our news-feed waterfalls.

In contrast, Dropbox is a natural progression of cloud-based file storage and sharing, but the cost of the application (free up to 2GB) and desktop/mobile app compatibility make relying on it second nature as we use our mobile devices more and more. Draft a word doc on your iPad on the train on the way to the office, open the same file on your desktop and make final changes, then run to a meeting and send a link to the doc to your colleagues from your iPhone––simpler and more seamless than carrying thumb drives or the email-download routine.

Dropbox and Pinterest––use them, get to know them, try to break them. The apps and their core functions are the future of concentrated, single-purpose content sharing. Learning how to use new applications early on can help you develop a clearer picture of how you will interact and share content in the future as the world becomes more and more mocial (mobile social).

Author: John Carew

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Creating a Public Persona of My Personality for Personal Branding Purposes

Posted on February 1, 2012 | 1 Comment

I started my second personal blog the other day. I won’t shamelessly promote it here, but my friends have been inundated with requests for support. I received an interesting response from my good buddy Joe. After reading a few posts he wrote to me, “Impressed how easily you put yourself out there to the masses. I find it easy to present a character for audiences, but feel less comfortable broadcasting myself. Brave.”

Although brief, I was taken aback by his commentary. Was I really wearing my heart and soul on the sleeve of this blog? Was I laying it all out there for the world to see? Surely I wouldn’t be so stupid as to be one of those people who just say whatever comes to their minds, right? You know the type. The blogger who thinks the world gives a damn about the mundanity of his or her life: “Today I bought shoes and already I have blisters. Wait, hold on a second, need some water. Okay, I’m back. Anyway.” Or someone who shares inappropriate confessions, driven by insecurities and the need for drama: “My boyfriend isn’t romantic and often looks around the room when we kiss.”

Is this who I’ve become but in a less exaggerated sort of way? The answer, I’ve come to discover, is maybe. If some of the things I write about come from a place of truth, then maybe I really am broadcasting myself to the world. The thing is, it doesn’t feel like that. For years now I’ve considered these public displays of personality to be fiction.

I’m talking about personal branding. I’m talking about the line, which has become incredibly blurred, between who we are and who we pretend or act like when we participate online, particularly in social media. When I think about the message I put out there for the world to view, I wonder if it’s really me. And again, the answer is maybe.

Personal branding is not a new topic. In fact, it’s become our way of life. Today, people can obtain or lose jobs based simply on the way they brand themselves online. What I wonder is, are we even aware we’re doing it anymore?

I’m reminded of my Facebook page from 2005 (Ah, the gloriously elitist days when you needed a .edu to get in). The page allowed you to fill in fields about your personality: favorite songs, books, movies, etc. They still exist today, but they’re certainly not as exposed and important as they were back then. I remember all the clever things I’d post: Favorite artist—post-mortem Tupac; Favorite activity—avoiding death; Interests—onesies; Favorite quote—“Sometimes I question your dedication to Sparkle Motion.”

It became a persona—a way for me to make fun while having fun. It was also the loss of my creating-a-personal-brand virginity (and just as experimental). It was me choosing to show the world, “Hey, I want you to think I’m funny!” And this has carried on for years. We all do it. Every time we post a Facebook status update or send out a tweet, we’re communicating something about ourselves. We’re making a choice, cognizant or not, about who we are or who we want people to think we are.

Larry Kimmel of the Direct Marketing Association recently said to our company, “Kids today begin branding themselves at the age of 16.” In fact, he’s right. The millennials today learn very early on how to portray themselves in social media. I think it’s going to become harder and harder for future generations to recognize the difference between this online community and the community of our neighbors.

Thanks to my pal Joe’s insightful observation, it made me realize that maybe we’ve all gotten a little too comfortable with our pen names. We ought to step back and think about the content we’re putting out there for the world to see. Whether it’s for privacy concerns or some other reason, unintended vulnerabilities could come back to hurt us. And if I get hurt, you may end up reading about it in my blog.

Author: Eric Swenson

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Three Mobile and Social Apps That Should Be on Your Radar

Posted on January 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

Our online associations basically represent relationships that exist in real life, relationships that we document by adding people to particular social networks. In today’s world, the act of researching someone’s online presence before (or after) a meeting, date, or social interaction might be a requirement. LinkedIn can give you an idea of a person’s professional résumé, a Twitter profile might reveal his or her publicized interests or influence, and if a Facebook profile exists, well, you can learn possibly far too much about an individual depending on what he or she shares and how open the profile is to an outsider. Putting account settings and user preferences aside, apps that make connections to our physical social networks and marry those networks with our location via a mobile device are very interesting. These apps can show users how their social networks connect with strangers they pass on the street, but they can also teach users the value of real-life networks that are stored, structured, and validated online. Let’s look at three apps and how their features redefine our online social networks, showing the power that mobile, social, and location-based apps can have on our everyday life.

Sonar

Foursquare + Facebook + Twitter = invisible connections around you. Next time you check in on Foursquare to one of the busier spots in your area, an app like Sonar would display a screen indicating how you are linked to people in your immediate location. Sonar can tell you that you share three Twitter interests or two Facebook friends and enable you to see those specific connections and those users’ photos. You can then introduce yourself in person, if you want. Don’t fret about security, either––you opt in, so all Sonar users have chosen to associate their Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts in order to see their relationships.

Path

As Path advertises, Path is “the smart journal that helps you share life with ones you love.” It’s Facebook boiled down your real friends and not the extended network of acquaintances and familiar faces that Facebook has become just to see the friend-count edge higher. The app has a fresh way of displaying important content with a beautiful user interface. Path has the same sharing and “journal” status-type features that are found on the other social networks, but the platform enables smaller circles to interact with pertinent content more easily.

Localmind

As its tagline reads, “Know. Now.” Localmind is seeking to build “a real-time, location-based Q&A platform that sits on top of existing check-in services.” Localmind uses location-based check-in services likes Foursquare to allow users to send a question about a physical location and receive answers from users who are currently checked in to that location. It lets users contact someone outside their network or circles to determine what is happening at a particular check-in spot.

All three apps provide very different services, but all are based on mobile technology and how it can augment our interaction with our traditional, terrestrial social networks and our location on terra firma.

Bottom line: Use these apps, learn what they do, and be aware that these features will be the next thing to come baked in to our mobile devices. Jumping on the edge of the wave can increase the position of your company or application earlier.

Author: John Carew

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Top 5 Technology

Posted on November 10, 2011 | 1 Comment

These are the 5 need-to-know things in technology for 2011:

1. iPad domination: The late Steve Jobs said that 2011 would be the year of the iPad. The numbers confirm this: iPads are outselling Andriod tablets 24 to 1, and Condé Nast says its Newsstand subscriptions have increased by 268%.

2. Social media continues to grow: It is predicted that by 2012 Facebook will reach 1 billion users, and with that the demand for privacy will also increase. Social media by nature will become more mobile.

3. Smartphones have outsold PCs worldwide: Over 100 million smartphones were shipped in 2011, while only 92 million PCs were sold. The processing power of mobile phones now rivals PCs, with most phones coming with a standard 1GHz processor.

4. Supercomputer: Earlier this year, a supercomputer named “Kei,” or K, was introduced in Japan. K is capable of making a quadrillion calculations per second and is equivalent to one million computers. Supercomputers will not be showing up on your desks in the near future; they are used for climate modeling, rapid stock trading, and earthquake simulations, as well as for other large calculations.

5. HTML5, CSS3, JQuery and JSON: All these developer tools help a developer to make a fluid site without relying on Flash and other animation tools. They open the cyberworld not only to developers, but to designers; fonts are not limited to the web-friendly few, and these items can be viewed on all devices.

Click here for an example of  HTML5 and JQuery.

Author: Susan Hallinan

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Are cross-media hooks, hashtags, and social badges the new footer for advertising? A study of 7 magazines reveals that use of cross-media hooks is low.

Posted on November 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

 

The introduction of the Internet as significant competition for traditional advertising sources opened the door for wider adoption of hooks, or cross-media connections. Now advertising is containing more and more integrated forms of communication geared to take people from one medium to another. The medium in which advertising is consumed is a factor in the success of the campaign, which accounts for the massive advertising industry with its unique niches carved out by agencies vying for some of the more than $100 billion spent on advertising (last year’s figure) in the US. Whether in out-of-home mediums like rail and subway advertising or the sometimes-more-focused print magazine advertising, cross-media hooks like QR codes, social media badges, and hashtags are used today across various market segments. Based on a recent casual survey of the latest issues of seven magazines, however, cross-media hooks are not used as frequently as one might guess.

 

Cross-media hooks in these magazines included references to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn either by use of the traditional square badge, tag line (“Follow” or “Friend”), or URL. Among the seven titles reviewed, no one cross-media hook was used by more than 20% of the advertisements in each title. So here we have a market of 4.8 billion mobile phones worldwide, with 428 million units sold in 2011 alone, many of which may correlate to a significant portion of the 175 million Twitter and 800 million Facebook users worldwide. Why don’t more magazine advertisers focus on implementing cross-media hooks? In the age of the downward spiral of circulation and poor conversion to electronic media, why aren’t more magazines pushing the use of cross-media hooks in their advertising sales and internal advertising efforts?

The higher use of QR codes points to the prevalent misuse of the technology, as many of the codes in the sample group lead to non-mobile-optimized webpages. With the right social media metrics platform in place, traffic from cross-media hooks leading to social networks like Facebook and Twitter can lead to a better understanding of how particular market segments respond to advertising.

This all begs the question: With the massive expansion of social media and the use of cross-media hooks, are we isolating any one group of our target audience? Fifteen years ago, with use of the Internet rising, many advertisements contained references to mailing addresses and 800 numbers for consumers who wanted more information. Websites were in the minority, but now a company logo, tag line, and website (and legal disclosure) are standard for virtually all advertisements. In other mediums, like out-of-home advertising on mass transit, the use of cross-media hooks like hashtags and social media references are significant. They tell the viewer, “Look, we are trendy and current––find us on social media.”

 

Are we isolating the portion of the target audience who doesn’t get the contextual clues of a square of color with a letter or bird and an octothorpe (#) used in front of a word? Yes, we are, but the numbers don’t lie. The exponential adoption of Internet-capable devices with cameras and an operating system capable of supporting third-party apps shows that the collision of mobile, social, and local is the future of visual communication. Use cross-media hooks and integrate social media into marketing and advertising efforts to be one step ahead of the curve.

P.S. Infinite Utterly Orange points for anyone willing to submit a book report on the ISO 18004:2006 IT specification for automatic identification and data capture techniques––just the type of winter reading this author loves!

Author: John Carew

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Tear down this paywall Mr. Zuckerburg!

Posted on September 30, 2011 | Leave a comment

Bird Scarer

The Internet is built on information, and often the information that is time-sensitive gathers the most traffic, i.e. news. Back in the day, AOL and their keyword ivory tower tried to keep users in their “portal” for as long as possible to keep the targeted advertising in their face while raking in the results. One little glitch though, the Internet grew beyond the walls which AOL had built and they would fall into history remembered for “you’ve got mail,” that annoying AOL Instant Messenger icon with sound and, last but not least, they would be known for littering the planet and landfills with millions of mostly useless CDs.

Fast forward to today and we see Facebook following some of the very same footprints which AOL laid, made some cash and then fell extinct. In March 2011, Allfacebook.com, the unofficial facebook resource, covered a story depicting how the New York Times handles inbound links to their content from social sources versus search engine traffic. The key difference was the inbound traffic from social sources would receive unlimited reading on the NYT site, while search engine driven inbound traffic would receive a cap of five free visits per day. Any Facebook user has probably experienced someone in their network sharing content from a major news outlet, but wouldn’t it improve the user experience if the news source pushed their content directly into a social platform like Facebook?

Why yes, it would, and the Wall Street Journal announced last week the availability of WSJ Social, which lets users share content directly through Facebook. The service is free for now, but with financial partners like Dell and Intel, one can only wait so long for the paywall to be erected around that content.  Yes, paywall in a social network, you are not suffering from double vision. As news media history can reinforce, news organizations have no idea how to properly price their product in a digital market. News companies are used to the model where they controlled the distribution of their content with little outside intervention, except for a few strategic partners. Now, they have to negotiate getting a vehicle in the right market which carries an optimized form of the news content to the receiving device or online platform. Not only has it complicated the distribution channels, but it has also introduced significant technology learning curves which even the largest organizations in both news media and magazines have yet to truly understand. Communication-minded professionals learn technology mostly by experience and not by discipline, where technology-minded professionals are taught from the ground up how to build a platform and market that platform. Both parties need one another as a complement to either side of the brain if nothing else, but failure in the digital market backed by the speed at which content is shared on the social web, can make or break any marketing communication effort.

Facebook and a paywall model for organizations requiring that level of division is a natural step for the mega-social site, but will it improve the social web? A better solution would be to build a split advertising model where both the social platform and the news service get paid for clicks and views to their ad content. Any online effort that puts a barrier of any kind between a user and their desired content will eventually be made extinct by a more creative method to attain that same desired content. The wild west entrepreneurial spirit of the net, made innovations like Netflix, Groupon, and Craigslist. Competition to the social web behemoths like Facebook from the likes of say Google+, will push the platforms to innovate and maybe bring better features to the users. Either way, as communication professional in any field, remember that every barrier erected between you and your desired reader/audience/customer/client make the communication less effective. Share content in the social world to gain visibility and expand your brand presence, but don’t muddy the waters with convoluted revenue mechanisms which separate the haves from the have-nots.

Author: John Carew
Photo Credit: Jonathan Baker-Bates

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Google+: Facebook’s Competitor, Plain and Simple

Posted on July 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

Google isn’t perfect––Buzz and Wave flopped. Although both Google and Facebook are supported by advertising, the companies’ origins may prove to be the deciding factor in the race for social media supremacy.

Stats Compared

Facebook Google+

Users

 750,000,000 10,000,000*

Launched

 February 2004 June 28, 2011

Ad Revenue

 $1.86B (2010) $28.2B (2010)**

*Estimates reported by the media––no official numbers have been released by Google.
**-Total ad revenue for Google, including all Google products.

How It All Began
As the legend goes, Facebook started as a dorm room project at Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg and team. It was a techie way to view classmates in a dynamic personal directory format with functions for communicating. The platform quickly expanded beyond Harvard to other Ivy League schools, then to other universities, and ultimately to anyone with a valid email address over the age of 13. Google was the research project of two Stanford PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and was based on an algorithm that used relationships between sites to determine page rank and search results. The algorithmic love child of two soon-to-be entrepreneurs was received as a fresh way to find content online. No one saw the full potential of either company. Fast forward to today: Both are powerhouses commanding the attention of millions of users’ eyeballs for a lot of time each day.

The Matchup
The big difference between Facebook and Google lies in their draw of new and returning users. Facebook attracts new users through the forces of human nature, specifically the desire to shout down a long hallway hoping people listen (i.e., the desire to communicate or, more specifically, to silently stalk or whine incessantly about mundane things). Most users come to Facebook to share, comment, play, stay connected, or some combination thereof. While eyes are glued to the blue and white goodness, advertisers pay to get their messages to you backed by the delightful demographic info that Facebook uses to target ads to users.

Google, on the other hand, built free tools––often some of the best free alternatives on the market––for its users and then built an advertising model around it. Stamped with the “do no evil” mantra and avoiding the missteps of the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo, Google’s free approach was refreshing and adopted by users of all types. Google has an audience of users who already use its core applications like Gmail, Google Calendar, Contacts, Picasa, Google Maps, Google Earth, etc., across multiple devices––from desktop to mobile to tablet. These users have Google accounts and already understand how the arsenal of Google products interacts. Adding social media to that arsenal is easy and natural. Instead of receiving an email or pushing notifications to a mobile device or Gmail account, you can receive notice of social interaction through the status bar now found at the top of many Google applications.

Facebook is continually adding new features. An underlying function of many of Facebook’s new bells and whistles has been to keep users on the site longer. Facebook users already spend an average of 14 minutes on the site per day, and the longer users stay, the more ad revenue Facebook earns. Facebook has added features like Chat, Games, and iFrames integration to its business pages, where companies can create engaging experiences that will keep users on Facebook instead of clicking out to other sites. Google, on the other hand, already has users coming to its sites daily to use core productivity applications like Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. Those key productivity functions combine both business and personal use, and it is these overlapping reasons for visiting Google sites that is a massive advantage for Google.

Facebook has fumbled with privacy and security issues over the past five years, and limited differentiation between groups of “friends” makes sharing content complicated. Facebook added “Lists,” allowing users to combine groups of friends and share limited content, but the feature was added years after the start of the platform. The security and privacy settings for Facebook have been complicated from the beginning, and with each new release and update, the settings have become even more complicated. The average user may be sharing content with the world and have little knowledge of what he or she is sharing. Many argue that it is in the best interest of companies providing social tools to educate and protect their users’ privacy above all else. Facebook has failed its users again and again in terms of privacy, but it is Facebook’s failures and missteps that can guide Google+ toward larger user adoption.

Google+ Circles vs. Facebook Friends

Let’s be honest, few people really have hundreds of friends if you define friend as someone close to you with whom you share personal thoughts or experiences. Many users with hundreds of friends (Facebook claims the average is 130 per user) would consider only a limited number among their close friends. Facebook doesn’t provide an intuitive way to share content with specific groups of people. Google+ is based on the concept of “Circles,” or groups of friends combined by any label the user chooses. By default, Google+ offers Friends, Acquaintances, Follows, and Family. With the ability to make your own circles, the sky is the limit, not only for sharing but for parsing the streams of content each circle shares in order to further connect with your contacts.

As Google+ increases its user base and Google+ “Entity Pages” (for businesses and brands) are introduced in the coming months, the competitive pressure from a different social media platform will make waves across the net. Facebook needs to adapt to the pressure, but based on its history, the adaptation will hinge on user adoption and innovative features, which Google has also proven itself capable of over the past 5 years. Hang on folks, it may be a wild ride, but why not join both and compare Google+ and Facebook for yourself? Now we must begin to think about whether to include a new platform in our social media mix…

Author: John Carew

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Are You Location-Aware?

Posted on July 1, 2011 | 1 Comment

A few months ago, the world learned that their every step was being recorded! Well, maybe that’s an overstatement, but let’s get down to the details. Since 2007, over 100 million people have purchased iPhones. In April of 2011, these people learned that Apple was recording their location and storing this information on their phones––forever! This data contains the phone’s latitude and longitude coordinates with a related time stamp. When this story was scooped up by the mainstream media, it was a fire storm for about a week, and then it died. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Personally, I love the fact that the iPhone records my location; it helps jog my memory if someone asks me, “Where did you go today?” With over 20,000 data points stored in my phone, I have a pretty accurate record of my whereabouts. I can even load up a map of all the data points and then run through them in chronological order. I fear that I am in the minority, though; most everyone that I have talked to about this is up in arms. So, this got me thinking, how else are people sharing their location without knowing it?

Photo Sharing: Do you like to take photos on your smartphone and email them to your friends? Did you know that inside the photo’s metadata is the time when and location where you took that picture? Sometimes this metadata carries through when you post pictures to social media outlets, too.

Check-ins: Love to check in at local hot spots on Foursquare, Facebook, or any other social media application with check-in capabilities? Surely you know that this shares your current location with all of your connections!

What this all boils down to is this: If you don’t want people to know where you are, then you have to be very careful about what you do on your smartphone. If you do want everyone to know where you are, then continue on with business as usual! And don’t think that this is just on the iPhone. This is integrated across all smartphones these days––I just chose the largest population for this article. Yes, it may be concerning to many that Apple (or others) can get access to your whereabouts, but what can they really do with this data? The answer is: not so much. They basically want this data to feed back to the service provider for use in determining which areas need more signal strength. This is not real-time tracking and is most often very inaccurate! So, unless you are the President of the United States or someone who is in the witness protection program, this probably doesn’t affect you negatively. But you would be in the majority if you said you didn’t like this!

If given the option, would you switch off all location services on your smartphone?

 

Author: John Mehl

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From AdAge.com: Facebook Forced to Address Legal Gray Area of Kids and Advertising

Posted on May 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

From Irina Slutsky’s article on AdAge.com:

A big part of Facebook’s advertising strategy is to turn user “likes” into advertisements that show the user’s name and image. And that strategy is a major reason brands love Facebook so much––if a user “likes” a brand page, Facebook will spread that endorsement around the network as far as the user allows it to go. But what if that user endorsing a brand happens to be a child?

A recent Consumer Reports survey found that as many as 7.5 million Facebook users in the U.S. are under 13, a violation of Facebook’s user policies. But an additional 14.4 million are between the ages of 13 and 17, younger than the age of legal consent in most states. Should the images of these minors be used in advertising?

To continue reading this article, visit the source.

Author: Eric Swenson

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Facebook Enters Coupon Arena

Posted on April 29, 2011 | Leave a comment

On Tuesday, Facebook introduced Facebook Deals, its answer to online coupon source Groupon. Deals leverages Facebook’s 600 million users, letting individuals share, comment on, and purchase deals directly from Facebook. The service will roll out in Atlanta, San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, and San Diego this week.

Deals competes with the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial for consumers’ cash, but the Facebook backbone gives extra strength to this online coupon service. Facebook has had Facebook Credits (a virtual currency system in which one dollar buys ten Facebook Credits) up and running for some time, but until now, the closest a user could get to purchasing a real-life product was a movie rental. Now users can purchase online discounts using Facebook Credits, which accepts credit card and PayPal payments.

Recently, a professor at Rice University published a paper claiming that more than 30% of businesses reported losing money as a result of a Groupon promotion. In most cases, Groupon takes more than half the sticker price of the deal, but depending on the specific offer by a business, results may vary. As Facebook Deals hits the market, will the competition lower the Groupon and LivingSocial margins in favor of higher profits for businesses and lower prices for consumers?

Author: John Carew

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