The Number One Reason The Great Facebook Name Grab Rocked.

Why did the Great Facebook Name Grab rock? It’s more than those 3 million new vanity URLS.

Could it be the 200,000 usernames registered in the first 3 minutes? That’s an amazing 1111 names registered per second, according to the geeks at Mashable, who are much better at math than moi.

Could it be that by 10:01 PM PT, only one frenzied hour after Nerd Night launched, around one million custom URLs had already been nabbed?

Could it be the smooth way it all went down, with nary a bump or crash, despite record traffic?

Or could it be that I got MY vanity URL, beating out legions of pesky Sarah Browne poseurs, porn stars and Prime Minister’s wives?

Nope.  While the above milestones are delightfully droolworthy, the Number One Reason the Great Facebook Name Grab rocked was because we finally had some fun with Social Media again. 

Or haven’t you noticed it’s been stone-cold sober and Provigil-serious in Social Media Land lately? 

But Friday eve, at the appointed witching hour, Geeks galore were gleefully proclaiming their name grabs, tweeting about their victories and it wasn’t all about SEO, boosting Friends/Follows or shameless self-promotion. Yes, there is business benefit in ‘owning’ your Facebook personal URL; so yes, it was smart to spend part of your Friday night clicking, crowing and claiming your name. It also was a blast.

Look no further for proof of this newfound wit and wackiness than this list of Goofy Usernames just nabbed:

• Starting my world domination plans early: http://www.facebook.com/yourlordandmaster
• Cat ran over my keyboard:
  http://www.facebook.com/alksjfalskjfoiwefalsdlasfaslleseouaiwejndlsknjkdfs
• The entire QWERTY keyboard:
  http://www.facebook.com/qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm
• Try harder: http://www.facebook.com/aaaaaa
• Fantasyland: http://www.facebook.com/JackBauercouldwhoopChuckNorris
• Someone who actually wantsto be the customer service guy?http://www.facebook.com/techsupport
• Don’t even ask:  http://www.facebook.com/dballs
• My personal favorite: http://www.facebook.com/rickroll

Guru’s Nudge: Small businesses on Facebook — remember June 28. That’s when you can nab your business vanity URL.

Thanks again to Mashable.

The Great Facebook Name Grab Is Hours Away.

If you’ve logged on to your Facebook Profile anytime in the past week, you can’t miss the drumroll-please message. In a matter of hours, starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, Facebook is (finally) letting users pick their own Facebook profile usernames on a first-come, first-serve basis. Sure, this technology has long been standard at MySpace, Twitter and Linkedin but with Facebook’s exploding growth, personalizing your Facebook URL smartly ups your personal brand presence. Plus, these enhancements mean an end to that Facebook.com/26537215 numerical gobbledygook and the beginning of a faster, easier way for your peeps to be able to find you online. Here’s what the Facebook blog says about the new vanity URLS:

“Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names.”

See you tonight on Facebook where I’ll be mightily scrapping with legions of other Sarah Brownes. I got name-jacked on Twitter and if you saw what the current @SarahBrowne was tweeting, you too would be chomping at the bit in this FB Great Name Grab. (Follow me @guruofnew)

Are You A Small Business with a Facebook Page? If So, Good News!
There’s been a lot of confusion about eligibility for usernames for Facebook Pages. Originally, Facebook would only allow Pages created before May 31, 2009 with a minimum of 1,000 fans to be eligible for the vanity URLS. After Admins of Small Business Pages rightfully complained, (me!) even forming a Facebook protest group, the powers-that-be in Palo Alto relented.

So remember this date: Sunday, June 28. On this date, “All Pages created after May 31, 2009 or that had less than 1,000 fans on that day will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28.

If you have more than 1,000 fans and the Page was live on Facebook prior to the cut-off date of May 31, 2009, then go for it on June 13 along with your personal Profile.

Guru’s Note: Please check the Facebook blog for Page eligibility updates. Rules and dates keep changing as often as Heidi and Spencer exit the jungle.

Are You An E-Hole? The Six Tell-tale Signs.

Normally, when I’ve told friends “Hey! I’m writing a book”, the response is polite to vague to “I’m so sorry. I’ve given up reading for Lent.” In LA, they’re likely to suggest a fair exchange: I’ll read your book if you read my screenplay.  In Silicon Valley, they look blank until you explain that a book is kinda like a giant Wordle app or literary widget.  In New York, they immediately kvetch about agents while in Paris they offer to read it once smoking is reinstated in cafes.

But this book?  Amazingly, people have not only urged me to write it but to write it laser-fast. Three of my Twitter pals have already asked if the guide will be published in time for Christmas stocking stuffers. I’ve almost been persuaded to write an e-book first and then follow up with hard copy.

Is this because I am such a crackerjack writer? Although I’d love to say yes, the true answer is ‘probably not.’  The fact is, there is a clear and compelling, even urgent, need to make sense of the good, the bad and the blurry of the digital era, particularly the consumer-friendly, tool-rich phenomenon known as Web 2.0.  The Internet does genuinely ‘change everything’ — including the ethics and etiquette of how we use these tools. Countless books have already been published on this subject, many of them scholarly works of genius from academics that probe everything from user-generated content to mass collaboration to digital innovation and citizen marketing.  

If you’re looking for books of this decidedly brainy ilk, click to close and move on to Amazon or your local library. The goal of my upcoming guidebook is quite simple: to help keep you out of online doo-doo and encourage you to dip into this dynamic digital world. And maybe have some fun while you’re at it.
 
Here’s a small sampling from my new book:
How Not To Be An E-Hole:  The Ultimate Guide to Online Etiquette and Ethics.
 

Are You An E-Hole? The Six Tell-Tale Signs.

Sign 1:  Is Social Media all about you?  Social Media can indeed be Me Media.  Today’s tools make it fast and easy to get the word out about your inherent rockstar-ness. Isn’t everybody fascinated by the ham sandwich you had for lunch? Doesn’t the world want to know about your cool car, your hot bod and the gaggles of groupies hanging on your every tweet?  Smart folks see that switching from Me to We is the secret to shining at Social Media.  And yes, it is possible to be an E-Hole in only 140-characters:  http://tweetingtoohard.com/

Sign 2:  OverSharing  Over-sharing can occur on any of the Social Media channels. Over-Sharing is defined as sharing anything from the too-intimate details of your world (tweeting during your during your prostate exam) to the too-mundane (I had scrambled eggs for breakfast) to the too-frequent.

Sign 3:  Are you a FRAMMER?  Friends just ain’t what they used to be. In fact, my buddy Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Correspondent at CNN, who covered my recent Facebook Addiction story, believes the very definition of Friendship is at stake: “What exactly is a friend these days?”  Well, it sure isn’t FRAMMING them. Friend Spam is being spammed by your so-called Facebook Friends including:

• A barrage of shameless self-promoting links, events, fan pages, webinars, promos, etc.
• “Cherry-picking” among a Friends List — picking the most ‘useful’ for marketing and networking.

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.

Sign 4:  Uber-Exuberance   Apps, widgets, links, videos, photos — it’s a smorgasbord of Social Media tech and toys out there. Are you so sure all your friends want that ‘growing gift’ of cactus, that beer or cup of coffee you’re dying to send? Does everybody want to take that quiz, play 25 Random Things and beat you at movie trivia?  The sure sign of a Social Media newbie (and often Accidental E-Hole) is assuming everybody will appreciate these occasionally amusing time-wasters.

Sign 5: Where are the Privacy Police when you need them?  It’s true: Facebook keeps changing its interface, which confuses the heck out of who can see what. What was private on Tuesday may be part of a News Feed on Wednesday. So if you’re not careful about the changing-rules, your mother-in-law may be able to see the pictures of the dinner party she wasn’t invited to posted prominently in Highlights.  Or your boss might see that comment you made about ‘blowing off work’. Or your sorority sister might post racy stories about an era you’d prefer to forget on your Wall for all to see.  The secret to avoiding E-Holism?  Use the Privacy settings!

Sign 6: Keep It Social, Stupid.   Keeping it social means you never forget these new tools are all about people and being personal. Keeping it social means you avoid using robots as well as acting robotically. So personalize your Friend, Follow and Connection Requests, say no to Auto-DMs on Twitter, and develop new online relationships authentically. Don’t think you can FRAM like mad, never bother to check the youtube links your buddy proudly sent of her kidlet’s concert, and then expect favors, shares and RTs (Re-Tweets on Twitter).  Keeping it social is keeping it reciprocal. Friendship is a two-way conversation, not a Me-megaphone. 

Guru’s Note: Please send me your favorite E-Hole stories. Were you an Accidental E-Hole? Do you know an Intentional E-Hole? Do tell all. Email me at: hello@guruofnew.com or post a comment. Thank you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should Sears Go Social?

 

I’m a Sears girl from way back. My Dual Action Agitator copy, in tandem with the poetic “Save $40 off on this big Kenmore Refrigerator” was nothing short of Steinbeckian. My advertising Alma mater, Ogilvy Chicago, worshipped on the altar of Sears.

So of course I was intrigued by the giant’s latest move — launching a new social network called MySears.

Brandweek reports the chain has registered more than 200,000 MySears users since it rolled out the site in late March. The look-alike site for sister chain MyKmart just launched a week ago. Both are powered by Chicago-based technology company Viewpoints Network.

Retail chain passionistas visiting MySears can express themselves via these increasingly ubiquitous Social Media features: taking polls, connecting with your fellow Sears buddies, creating a social profile, uploading photos, tagging, blogging, and participating in (my favorite part) the Ideas section.

Lest your passion for Sears not be completely fulfilled, consumers can also follow MySears and MyKMart on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter.

According to the Brandweek report, Rob Harles, vp-community for Sears, said the chain’s goal is to glean new insights from customers and give the brand more of a human face. “Ultimately we’re going to try to use this to first and foremost learn about our customers and secondly use those lessons and use that to integrate that into the shopping experience,” Harles said.

Hmm. Translated from the marketing-ese, that sounds suspiciously one-sided. ‘First we’re going to study you and then we’re going to use what we’ve learned to figure out how to sell you more stuff.’  The headline for the site lays it out clearly, assuming you’re there to shop : “Get Advice Before You Buy.”

Obviously I’ve no quarrel with using Social Media to figure out how to better reach customers and improve sales. Profit rocks, especially these days. But it doesn’t take more than 30 seconds of rudimentary Social Media listening tools to tap into the existing conversation about Sears. Much of what’s being said isn’t pretty. Shouldn’t some of this chatter be answered first? (Kind of like cleaning the house before we invite a gaggle of guests over for a big party) Shouldn’t resolving negatives be the first priority of any customer-first company, much less the mission of a new participatory consumer site?

A sampling:

RITBeast: Reminder: Never have any dealings with #sears unless you feel like gouging your own eyes out and stepping on them while being nut-kicked.

legallush: Listening to Sear tech suck dryer lint from my hoses in laundry. Stupid dryer gets hot but doesn’t dry. #sears

glamorousamanda: Rant end. Do not buy products from #Sears. They will not honor their warrenty nor do they care if your home catches fire from products!

MySears Ideas: Listen Sears…….. people WANT to buy from you but you make it harder and harder.

Do we really need all the Social Media window dressing around what should be the main course — serving customers? Couldn’t we just have one colossal: CLICK HERE FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE button, with some seriously vetted reviews posted below it and an in-depth Peer 2 Peer Forum?

This road feels strangely familiar. Over the years, in Customer Experience projects for both Microsoft and Yahoo, we worked hard to ‘put a human face’ on these mammoth empires via an array of social media features. But whatever we tried, all anybody ever wanted to do with these pieces-of-corporate-humanity was find somebody to fix their email, browser, software, personals ad or just plain rant. This is why Yahoo Answers was such an instant hit. Human beings simply want their questions answered, especially when said questions revolve around things they paid for. They don’t necessarily need Friends or Polls or Pictures, unless it’s a photo of that broken microwave door they need replaced.

So what should this new MySpacian MySears do to avoid the fate of the late, not-great The Hub, built and quickly dismantled by Walmart back in 2006?

• Let MySears evolve organically. Let the community spell out over time what it wants and needs from the site and its satellites. Are users primarily interested in broadcast tweets about upcoming sales? Are they flocking to the discussion boards? Engaged communities vote with their attention.
• Manage site expectations. Research whyconsumers are visiting and where they came from. Did the majority find their way there because they think the site is devoted to customer service? Did someone post a Craftsman discount link on a couponing site, sending an avalanche of users in search of it? 
• Accept that consumers create their own uses for sites and social media features – including their own ideas of how products should be tagged –which may have little to do with your intentions for your brand. Just for fun, go visit Amazon’s Customer Communities and check out some of the Revenge-Tags, including some of the DefectiveByDesign tags.
• Find your Frank Eliasons (@Comcastcares) and empower your staff to participate as Tony Hsieh has done so successfully with @Zappos. Be careful of ‘ghost’ tweeters or posters. Don’t rely on your Viewpoints vendor to substitute for real Sears employees. Kudos to BlueCrewGuyinMA, who’s all over the site, answering questions and in general acting as the site’s Go To Guy.
• Encourage usage of the Discussion section, with its fledgling Peer to Peer type forum.  Many of your customer-service seeking users will be satisfied with this kind of help, as they frequently do yield real solutions to customer problems.
• Research potential Passionista segments a la the Craftsman Club and nurture them with ego-rewards as well as discounts and insider information.
• I like the potential of the Ideas section on MySears,which reminds me of Dell IdeaStorm. Like Dell, after the Dell Hell debacle, Sears needs to heal itself before it can roar back. So far, the “We Listened. See Ideas in Action” is empty. Let’s hope this changes soon.
• And finally, have some fun with the site.  The intrinsic beauty of social networking is that it’s supposed to be lighthearted. So have a Tweet-Up in the Craftsman aisle. Partner with Family Journaling site Plumkeeper and have a “Kids Say the Darndest Things (About their Dads)” Contest and invite your Facebook Community Moms to enter. Set up a Linkedin group for Retail Innovators.

So should Sears go social?

Guru’s Note: What I found oddly fascinating is @MySears use of Twitter — particularly its choice of who to follow. Smart Tweeters often check a Twitter ID’s first Follows as it can reveal either strategy or the threat of spam. In this case, @MySears has 923 Followers so far — and is Following 1995. But here’s the reveal: the first SIX of rows of Twitter IDs @MySears has chosen to follow are all variations on Mama: @CursingMama, @PsychoMama, @GeekMama, @Baby_Mama, @TheCreativeMama. So far, none of these Mom-tweeps appear to be tweeting like mad on behalf of @MySears like @ResourcefulMom does when promoting one of her many popular Site-Warming Parties. So one can only assume either all these Mamas are close personal friends of @MySears or that someone has advised them to cozy up to Influencer Moms on Twitter. Given the robust purchase power of the 80+ million Moms in the US who spend some 2 trillion every year, it’s no surprise @MySears would sagely search keyword: Mama.

What’s Wolfram/Alpha and Why Should You Care?

I’m feeling somewhat Ginger-like, with a smidgen of HAL 9000 thrown in.

True Geeks will remember when Segway was dubbed ‘Ginger‘ and Geeks as notable and prescient as Steven Jobs and Jeff Bezos claimed it would be as ‘big as the PC’.

We all know HAL 9000, the soft-spoken. lip-reading computer.

So when I started hearing about a revolutionary new search engine called Wolfram/Alpha and the usual pundits began to wax nerdily eloquent, my Ginger-be-smudged cynicism seeped in. Was this “computational knowledge engine” a Google-killer? Would we all soon be getting answers to our raging questions rather than diligently searching for them? And didn’t we already try the Q & A thing via a perky butler named Ask Jeeves?

The newfangled search engine Wolfram|Alpha is different than Google or Yahoo. Ask it a question — one that involves something like National Pi Day or a wallop of statistics– and it will speedily deliver an answer based on its avalanche of curated data and ‘Mathematica’ technology. One hundred brainiacs, led by Brit Stephen Wolfram, a physics prodigy who won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” at 21, are sitting in Champaign, IL, feeding the knowledge base reams of data.. As you might guess, science is Wolfie’s strong suit, but it also knows plenty about technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, music, and more.

Let’s say you start with some ego-surfing questions. Try your birthday or your name. This is how I discovered Esther Dyson and I have the same birthday and that there are 871,156 Sarahs currently alive in the US. Wolfie will also candidly admit when he’s stumped, and tell you he’s not sure what to do with your input. I got that response when I typed in: “Brett Favre, Packers.” (Truthfully, NO ONE knows what to do with that input.)

Wolfram/Alpha ponies up graphical answers when appropriate, and also suggests other sources of information.

The Geeks on Twitter have been playing with the search engine since Friday night’s official launch via Justin.tv — and as of noon today, Wolfie already had some 4100 fans on its Facebook page. Many are already discovering Wolfram Alpha’s ‘Easter Eggs’ tucked inside its masses of data, just waiting for the perfect question to show off its geeky humor.

Zenspace: Mashable’s 20 Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs are why I LOVE the Internet — http://tinyurl.com/p24mb8 and http://bit.ly/14rCRW #wolframalpha

nickhebb: Wolfram|Alpha is fun. If this is baby’s first steps, imagine what it will be like when its old enough to drive

Jaielle: #wolfram alpha still needs more work… it can find “square root of ten million” but not “square root of 10 million”

For all its obvious brilliance, I don’t expect Wolfram|Alpha to go mainstream anytime soon. But then I didn’t expect the new Star Trek movie to go mainstream either!

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Aye, Maties! Facebook Lets You Talk Like A Pirate Everyday.

If there’s one burning question that’s plagued our civilization for centuries it would have to be: Pirates or Ninjas?

In the midst of this eternally raging battle, along came a swarthy crew of real Somali pirates and as quickly as you can say yo-ho-ho, all ‘ayes’ turned away from the landlubbing Ninjas. Now Facebook has joined in on the rogue-ishly viral fun with its Easter-eggish language pack switch, which allows you to change your language to English (Pirate). Simply scroll down to the bottom of the page and ‘Arrrrrrrr —!’

So don’t wait for International Talk Like A Pirate Day on September 19th — walk the plank today, me hearties!

On Twitter: #pirates, #facebook, #ninjas

Guru’s Note: This feature was available back in September but I only recently discovered it via a Tweet last week. Facebook’s Pirate English is a trip, if a little bizarre when you try to decipher the Blackbeardish lingo on your page. But here’s what I love: I am so heartily tired of the deadly serious tone Social Media has taken. Share has been buried by sell; analytics are intoned like gospel; even the @aplusk (Ashton) versus CNN million-followers contest was blighted by pseudo do-gooder games and Machiavellian manuevers. Folks, this is Social Media. It’s supposed to be at least a little bit lighthearted. I watch as the posts roll in and and OMG, it’s pure pontification. Yes, it is business (in all candor, one I make a good living from) but Mon Dieu! Even the ad world eventually figured out their viewers don’t want to be bored to death. Maybe a bottle o’ rum might help?

Seven Signs You May Be Ready for a Social Media Detox.

I gave up Facebook for Lent.  For forty days and nights, I will not be updating my status, becoming a fan, poking anyone or commenting on 25 Random Things.  I will not be turning to page 56 and finding a sentence, sending good Karma or sipping along with my A Glass of Wine Solves Everything group.
 
My decision has absolutely nothing to do with any religious fervor, other than being fervently grateful to the Episcopalian calendar which served up a handy excuse to log off.  Said calendar also delivered a mighty reason to take a look at Social Media’s impact on my life.
 
What I saw was not pretty. 
 
And yet my addiction is on the mild side, more like a low-grade fever than a full-on infectious case of Facebook-itis. I may have sampled the Social Media Koolaid, but I’m not chugging the stuff like many of the ‘tweeple’ I know.  I’m enamored but not enslaved. In fact, I’ve only made my way through a smattering of Chris Brogan’s 100 Personal Branding Secrets.
 
Still, as a market researcher and passionate digital anthropologist, I knew it was time for a dig. Like Yahoo’s Internet Deprivation Study of yore, I wanted to understand the grisly details of deprivation.  I wanted to know what I would miss about Facebook; what I actually value; what I would be overjoyed to leave behind.
 
By the time I posted my last status update shortly after Ash Wednesday (which I pretty much only knew about because of Joe Biden’s forehead), I realized I was more than ready to not only give up Facebook for a time but also consider a complete Social Media Detox.
 
Ask yourself: Do you need to do a Social Media Detox?  Here are seven signs you might be ready:
 
 
Are you an Early Adopter? 
Ho-hum. Are you sort of over it? Those of us who are perpetually on the bleeding edge of new, sometimes either want to ditch it when the vox populi show up in droves or simply because it’s no longer the pretty shiny new thing.  We thrive on beta. We thrive on sneaking behind the velvet rope. When they let everybody in . . .  On the other hand, there are enough cool new tools popping up virtually every second, especially for Twitter, (Twiddeo) and a parade of nichey new social networks to keep boredom at bay.
 
Does buzz equal biz?
Despite the constant chatter from all directions about ‘putting yourself out there’ via networking, much of this buzz is total BS. Even if you aggressively transform yourself into a social media rockstar via the notorious TweeterGetter, your newfound fame may not automatically translate into mucho dinero.  Those shameless self-promoters swarming over every social network may generate noise but that doesn’t mean they’re doing much real, sustainable business. The dirty secret of social networks? Too many sellers, too few buyers. Consider: What’s the benefit of social media to your bottom line? Show me the money, folks.  
 
This doesn’t mean social media tools aren’t valuable –I’ve met terrific people, gotten great projects and leads, mined countless consumer insights, and overall, found the tools to be worthwhile if sometimes overwhelming.  But to be blunt, I have solid skills and talents to back up my putting myself out there. I am not using them to shill for an empty suit.

Who owns your stuff?
Facebook’s recent Terms of Service switcheroo shocked many into re-thinking how they want to use the social network.  Although they’ve since reversed themselves and formed a consumer advisory group, the brouhaha was tantamount to social media shock therapy.  The pivotal question:  who owns my content? Do I want Facebook to ‘own’ it even after I’ve deleted my account?  And for businesses who routinely recommend Facebook as part of a social media strategic plan, what are the guidelines for who owns and retains an advertising or promotional campaign that’s appeared Facebook?
 
Are you blurring your business and personal life?
You may have jumped on to Facebook early on and populated your profile with real-life friends.  Then along comes the barrage of networkers, business colleagues and in betweens. Now you’ve got a quixotic stew of business and personal.  Sometimes it works just fine. It can be a joy to get to know colleagues and clients in a more human way. Last fall’s political campaigns pointed up a growing issue:  For example, do you want your clients to know your thoughts on Prop 8? (I do!) And then there’s its discretional corollary: Do you want your Great Aunt Hazel or favorite high school teacher to see your tipsy party pix?
 
Is social media a time and energy suck for you?
How do you find time to blog, tweet, update Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace, post your pix on Flickr, your articles on Mixx, Digg, Biznik and Kirtsy, your favorites on Delicio.us, your sites on Stumbleupon, your art on etsy, comment on relevant blogs and networking email lists, search for juicy links to share — and oh by the way, also do your real work? Sure, some Tweeters are using a variety of time-saving organizational tools (Tweetdeck, Friend Feed) to manage their activities.  Even so, putting your best business face forward across multiple social media platforms is a challenge. (Quite a few rely on Virtual Admins like the awesome @jkvirtualoffice). 

I don’t know about you, folks, but I need time, quiet and focus to serve my clients well and feel good about what I do.
 
True Value
In the immortal words of Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks:  How can I miss you if you won’t go away?  
Perfectly said, Dan. I’ll soon know what it is, if anything, that I miss about Facebook.
 
Do you have a personal social media strategy?  Should you get one?
Last night, social media pioneer Chris Brogan mentioned on Twitter that he had already deleted 350 of his Facebook friends. I don’t know his reasons but I do know more and more people are re-defining how they want to use social media. They’re pondering social networking’s role in their lives and rejiggering the balance of business and personal. My neighbor here on the Monterey Peninsula, @fuzznfeathers, recently took a short break from Twitter and enjoyed the extra offline time. Jumping off-the-grid results in more time and energy available for face to face connection. According to research I’ve recently conducted, the blend of online + offline touchpoints turns out to be one powerful combo for increasing engagement.
 
What have I learned already?
I already know, mere days after exiting Facebook, that I don’t miss the Frammers who weaseled their way into my list of Friends. I do miss seeing the new pictures of my baby cousins and the parade of polls, surveys and beer-apps from my dear sorority sister, Kimberly. I do miss the pithy and often intriguing posts from Laurie Peterson, Eric Weaver and Katherine Ruppe.   

But most of all, I miss my daughter’s ever-changing profile pictures, usually taken in the dorm around 2 a.m. while she’s avoiding writing a term paper.

Easter’s so close I can almost smell the egg-salad sandwiches.

Facebook Blinks.

Update on Terms
by Mark Zuckerberg Today at 10:17pm

“A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input.

Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.

More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.

Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we’ll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.

You have my commitment that we’ll do all of these things, but in order to do them right it will take a little bit of time. We expect to complete this in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we’ve changed the terms back to what existed before the February 4th change, which was what most people asked us for and was the recommendation of the outside experts we consulted.

If you’d like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we’ve created—Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I’m looking forward to reading your input. ”

Guru’s Note: And here I was just about to remove the Facebook Share below.

Are You Getting Frammed? Spammed by your Facebook Friends?

Too many people are getting FRAMMED these days.

FRAMMING is being spammed by your so-called Facebook Friends including:

Shameless self-promoting links, events, fan pages, webinar promos, etc.

“Cherry-picking” among your Friends List — picking the most ‘useful’ for marketing & networking

App-spam –your Friend sends you something (coffee, flower, goat) but when you accept, you give the app permission to access your Profile info.   (You have a choice here - don’t accept.)

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:

How comfortable are you mixing your personal life with your business life? How will your clients, colleagues or boss react to your political posts, 25 Random Things list and party tags?

Should your Facebook profile be for only real friends, that is, people you would recognize in the check-out line at Safeway? (Sure, they can behave badly too, but at least you can track ‘em down!

Should you blend your virtual buddies with your f2f?

Should you set up a page just for your business; a business-only zone?

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 …

Stanford Offers Free Facebook Course for Parents. Will Twitter be next?

Although I still haven’t forgiven them for ‘The Game’ in 2007, I will admit they know their ‘Internets.’ Stanford University is now offering a free class called Facebook for Parents. The course is being offered by Stanford psychologist Dr. BJ Fogg, head of the Persuasive Technology Lab, and his sister Linda Phillips, a cyber-savvy Mom with kids ranging from 5th grade up to college.

The class experience has been designed for busy parents with kids under 18 years of age. (Parents of college-age students are also welcome.) An optional lab comes before each class, where parents can work hands-on with Stanford students who will coach them in using Facebook. (*Or maybe they could just take a Field Trip over to the Facebook offices, mere blocks away?)

Five Steps for Parents on Facebook

#1. Join Facebook.

Yes, you should sign up for Facebook. This service was once just for college students, but today it’s for everyone. Parents need to be part of this world.

#2. “Friend” your kids.

To “friend” someone on Facebook means connecting to them. Your kids will probably complain about you “friending” them. That’s normal. But if your kids are minors, you should “friend” them.

#3. Review your kids’ profile pages.

Go to the profile pages for your kids and review the content. At first, you’ll see the “Wall.” But don’t stop there. Click on the tabs for “Info” and “Photos” to see more.

#4. Review who is “friends” with your kids.

On the profile page for your kids, click on the words “See All” in the Friends box. You can then see who is linked to your kids.

#5. Select “More About” for your kids.

Watch for an item about your kids in your News Feed. Click on that item and select the “More About” option. This tells Facebook to show you more about that person in the future, sort of like turning up the volume.

What’s Next?

After these five steps, parents still have more to learn and do, but this is where to start. Sign up for the free newsletter for more info and to stay updated with the ever-changing world of Facebook. In addition, each newsletter explains new skills kids can learn on Facebook that will benefit their future.

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