Are You Getting Frammed? Spammed by your Facebook Friends?
February 5, 2009 by guruofnew
Filed under social media
Too many people are getting FRAMMED these days.
FRAMMING is being spammed by your so-called Facebook Friends including:
Fram hurts more than traditional spam because, after all, it’s the ultimate in permission marketing. You haven’t merely signed up for an impersonal newsletter, you’ve opened the door wide to your life. You’re not an address on some database sold and re-sold by dead dotcoms. You’ve willingly extended an invitation to participate in your own personal universe.
Yesterday I received an avalanche of plaintive emails from friends concerned about how to handle Fram, especially how to keep the shameless promoters at bay. Major peeve: How do I keep a supposed friend from cherry-picking through my Friends list, friending the juiciest ones and then barraging them with annoyingly transparent self-promotion?
Of course we could all be wiser about whom we confirm as our friends. But what tends to happen is we fall for the ‘Friends in Common’ ploy. If Victoria is friends with my friend Jen, then she must be okay, right?
These days, even the most solid of your friends may be drinking the Social Media Koolaid. Social Media been promoted as the solution to whatever ails you, baby. This means that even your smartest friends may jump on board and go a little loco, particularly if they’re worried about job security or finding new gigs. In the midst of fear, when everything you read says: You must be on Facebook or else! it’s hardly surprising when people overreact.
One pal of mine felt terribly guilty for letting a shameless promoter loose among her real friends. Another had a spring-cleaning day, de-friending those who weren’t friends in the first place. With the explosive growth of Facebook and Twitter, nearly everybody is re-considering how and why they want to use the powerful social media tools out there. We should all be thinking about how to use social networking honorably and ethically.
Given the creeping FRAM, it might be time to devise your own Social Media Policy. Consider:
These questions are the proverbial tip-of-the-iceberg, meant only to provoke us all to think about our goals and intentions for using social media. Naturally, it’s much easier to come up with a plan if you’re new to Facebook. If you’re already active, the fixes for FRAM may be trickier. Keep reading for some very useful tips.
Undoubtedly someone will leap up and offer a FRAM workshop/webinar/training for the special network price of $$ within five minutes of my posting this. ::sigh::
In the meantime, here is an excellent and hugely useful article: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know written by Nick O’Neill and posted on AllFacebook.com.
What do you think? Are you getting Frammed, too?
Guru’s Note: I am obviously a major fan of Social Media. Gulping Koolaid, that’s me. But my reasons for loving it are based on the nitty-gritty of having experimented and discovered the good, bad and the ugly of it all. For me, it’s been almost all good. But there are moments …
Should We All Be Required To Go To Obama’s Ethics School?
February 2, 2009 by guruofnew
Filed under Featured Home
Now that President Obama’s staff is required to take an Ethics class, I am thinking we should all go to Ethics School. As the media tells us 24/7, there is a barrage of bad business behavior out there, from acts deserving of an orange jumpsuit, to merely bad pool or bad karma (if you live in California).
Our kids go to Character Counts, Anti-Hate Days, Matthew Shepard plays and Tolerance field trips. Even if these attempts to teach respect and compassion don’t appear to work or seemingly only work on the ‘good’ kids, at least the discussion is firmly placed on the table.
But grown-ups? Whatever we once knew about the Golden Rule apparently disappears once we sprout hair and hormones. Turn on the news (Blago anyone?) (AIG’s spa trip?) (John Thain’s $68,000 credenza) and it is clear that it’s past time for a refresher course.
The explosion of social media on the Internet has given us new technologies with which to behave badly. From the cacophony of scammers to the unnecessarily nasty to the outright tragedies such as Lori Drew’s murderous masquerade on MySpace, we have swiftly turned these revolutionary tools into weapons.
So drumroll, please, here’s the Ethics School concept, stream-of-consciousness style:
Trainings, workshops, classes are modeled after the Obama version. Courses may be developed and facilitated by the private sector — giving small business a chance to profit.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if this course was mandatory? Because nobody is ever going to own up to needing an Ethics Class, particularly the biggest rogues among us.
How about:
Want your Stimulus Check?
Want your tax refund?
Want to renew your Passport?
Want to renew your drivers license?
Then you must Pass the Ethics Class. (Can you see the bumper sticker?)
Also a given: The Ethics course is free to the unemployed, underemployed, and anyone who once held an AIG policy, banked at Indy Mac, invested with Bernie Madoff or has not flown a corporate jet to D.C.
What is absolutely imperative to the success of the Obama Ethics School is the cooperation and enthusiasm of American business. Just as Community Service programs in high school started as the right thing to do –and eventually morphed into a golden ticket to our premiere colleges, businesses must view anyone who has taken the Obama Ethics Class as worthy of a leap up the short list when filling jobs. Savvy hiring managers would use keywords: Obama Ethics Graduate when searching online resumes.
Our business and professional organizations should make Ethics a priority topic this year. This is already underway at the new Hatch Network. The soon-to-launch entrepreneurial education network is building an Ethics class into their curriculum and is making it a pre-requisite for completion.
One of my favorite organizations, WOMMA, (the Word of Mouth Association) has made an Ethics Code a major priority.
How about when you pass the class with flying colors, you then paste your badge on Linkedin, Facebook and the social media of your choice?
On Inauguration Day, there were 1.5 million Obama-related Status Updates on Facebook. How about we ‘donate’ our Status to those who have just graduated from Ethics Class?
How about that uber-cool icon of success — the iPhone — featuring the new Ethics app, all download fees donated to the ‘ethical’ cause of your choice?
Viralize videos from the Ethics School (I like what Kaplan U has done with their timely new TV campaign) and ensure that Ethics becomes our national conversation.
Our new President must continue to shine a light on unethical behavior as he did last week when he labeled the payment of billions in bonuses from our tax money ‘shameful’ and ‘the height of irresponsibility.”
As part of a new national conversation about Ethics, we all need to speak up, refuse to put up, and overall, take back our own power. This is more apt to happen is if we’re all operating from a similar (USA) Owners’ Manual. Once upon a time, the Bible served this function but after being largely commandeered by political groups over the years, perhaps we need Jon Favreau to come up with something new while sitting in Starbucks.
Today’s HARO (entrepreneur Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out) has the announcement of a new book from the Stanford University Press by authors Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey called The Ethical Executive. It describes “45 ethical traps to which anyone can fall prey.”
This book sounds like required reading for Obama Ethics School.
So let’s get our (digital) pencils sharpened and get ourselves back to school. This time when we re-build our American Dream back into the Land of Opportunity, let’s do it right. Let’s make sure our foundation is not faulty but firm and true.
IMHO.
Your thoughts?
Guru’s Note: According to the Sun Sentinel in Florida, apparently some enterprising PR firm has already registered ethicscollege.com and the like. Well, at least, the conversation is heating up in a the traditional American way.
PPS: Like gazillions of other citizens, I just received an email from President Obama informing me of the upcoming Economic Recovery House Meeting and video. He talks of taking ‘steps to ensure an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability.” Sounds like the cornerstone of an Obama Ethics Class.
Image, many thanks to: lifesciences.byu.edu
(Love the exuberance!)
