Here is what is discussed in New Facebook: 6 Things you Need to Know:
1. Top Stories and Most Recent now in one News Feed
2. Ticker becomes official
3. The Subscribe Button
4. The New Friend Button with Smart Lists
5. “Profile” disappears
6. Last but not least…
– Business pages do not need 25 Likes for a custom URL.
– More emails from Facebook
– The “Translate” button
– Links to track the path of a shared post
Yep….once again Facebook is leveraging other social networks knowledge and incorporating into their own space. Facebook has introduced a new privacy setting to allow you to select who can see a status update.
This is a radical shift in the way they allow users to present information. Before, you had to navigate to a group, page, meeting, or another space to communicate to a specific group. Now, this can be done via the status bar, allowing you to select who will see your status update.
Hmm…this seems very similar to Google+, the way you can make an update and select which Circle will see the update.
Here are the items/updates Facebook has made to adjust privacy settings:
Privacy Controls: Profile Editing
Tag Approvals
Photo Tag Approvals
View Profile As
Great Control of Status Updates
Adding Locations to Status Updates
More Control Over Photo Privacy
Privacy Controls: Profile EditingTag ApprovalsPhoto Tag ApprovalsView Profile AsGreat Control of Status UpdatesAdding Locations to Status UpdatesMore Control Over Photo Privacy
There are some real cool things out there companies are doing to cross the bridge between Facebook and traditional media like television. Lately I have been noticing more and more television ads creating innovative campaigns to drive traffic to their Facebook pages. This one is cool and thought, so I thought would share. I “Like” the WCNC News Channel 36 Facebook Page. Why? I used to work there many years ago and have many close friends who still do. I enjoy seeing the statuses come across from the different weather updates and on-air talent giving me news of the day.
This Facebook post came across and I just thought it was smart. Featuring one of the Facebook Fans as “Friend of the Day.” Each day they pick a new person that has clicked the “Like” button on their Facebook page as the “Friend of the Day.” This is also featured on their newscast during the morning shows, showcasing this “Friend of the Day” online and on television. Good stuff, what a cool and easy way to engage your fans to watch your newscast. Thumbs up you guys/gals up there at WCNC News Channel 36. They are also on Twitter (@WCNC). I am also good friends with Bobby Sisk (@BobbySiskWCNC) and their Chief Meteorologist Brad Panovich (@WXBRAD). Good peeps doing some good stuff on the social outlets.
If you think back to 2008, well many of us do not want to go back in time. It is October 2008 and in one single week, we witnessed a financial fallout of epic proportions. I remember sitting in the office of a business we just started; our fresh new furniture, big ole office, watching on the 52 inch HDTV as the market crashed. I knew right then and there, we were in trouble.
At that same time, we were in the upswing of one of the biggest online movements we have witnessed since the web was WWW. Yes, the Social Media Revolution. Twitter was growing faster and faster…here is a video in June 2008 of CEO/Founder Jack Dorsey presenting the idea of Twitter and actually beginning his talk by explaining Twitter as an idea.
Now most of you know that Twitter is not the only outlet that has defined this Social Media Revolution…but while Twitter was ramping up, gaining users…Facebook was growing just as fast. YouTube was growing and getting ready to become the second largest search engine behind Google.com. So how did all of this happen, well I have a few theories…and it is this premise that I think has totally shaped how Social Media influences marketing efforts today.
It comes down to jobs. Yes…jobs. It also comes down to community based innovation. As the stock market crashed, millions of American’s lost jobs. Businesses closed their doors. More American’s began using online resources to connect with friends, look for jobs, become entrepreneurs, and connect with opportunities. The job market was bleak so many groups around America began having social events, finding ways to connect and leverage relationships in the search for work. So we began seeing more and more groups created…and Twitter, Facebook, and other Social Media outlets were the connectors of these networks.
These groups were teaching each other how to connect with others, using technology to connect; building new spheres of influence, and generating innovative ideas. These social media connectors were “new” and fresh. The numbers on these networks began to shoot up, more and more people were using these networks and learning the in’s and out’s of how to leverage them.
At the same time, big box businesses were suffering. If you remember…there was a huge scare around Christmas shopping. Were people going to shop for gifts in 2008. I remember we bought most of our gifts that year using American Express points. No one could afford to buy cars, buy houses, buy gifts, etc…so big box companies were struggling with ways to connect with the consumer with their brand, then turn it into dollars. At the same time, Social Outlets were growing in numbers and they became a hot bed for consumers…a place to “hang out.” This is the critical point where those who were looking for new income streams began to realize…they could market how to use these Social Media outlets to big box businesses. Social Media entrepreneurs were being born left and right. They understood the consumer and how the consumer used these Social Outlets.
As the market began to recover, business began to recover with more dollars to spend. These dollars could be spent with people that understood these social communities and the technology that supported these same communities. Big and small business were being formed with the sole purpose of helping organizations use Social Media outlets. We began seeing more people speak at big conferences about these outlets, and small civic groups were entertained by local advocates for this community and technology.
Now as we fast forward to 2011, the market is flooded with individuals, plans, strategies, and businesses that implement social media strategies for companies. The numbers have grown so much with this big shift with more online engagement of social exchange. Now in 2011, there are social outlets that measure other social outlets, measuring the influence of individuals and communities. This velocity has completely shifted the way many organizations market their goods and services.
This Social Media Revolution created a culture, a series of communities, that now command the perception of brands. So why should we care? It is this culture, the Social Media entrepreneurs that are now influencing how many people are doing business. It is shaping the way we broadcast news and information. Everyday, someone else wants to figure out how to measure the success of a community in dollars in cents. But we have to think back…how did all this happen. How the hell did Twitter, Facebook, YouTube begin to shape the way we communicate?
Some of the best and brightest innovation comes from a time of economic recession. I am not a Rhodes Scholar…but I think it because people are forced to find ways to generate revenue to support life, and they have time on their hands to generate these ideas. This time leads to new market ideas that leads to new innovation. This culture was a community of innovation that is shaping the way we communicate and do business today.
Hello friends, here are my links for the week. As you can see…they include storytelling, Medicaid budget cuts, Facebook, Yahoo, and Del.icio.us. I hope you enjoy and let me know your thoughts about any of these articles!
Storytelling is not a Conversation Nathan Ford
“Markets are Conversations.” Ten years after the Cluetrain left the station spouting these words, many advertisers are still left behind, desperately clinging to the romantic notion that they are storytellers. On the net, though, such ideas are fast becoming anachronisms. For the last fifty years or so, there were a few ways for a person to be influenced by the outside world (radio, television, printed materials, actually leaving the house) and advertisers had every base covered with their brand-related stories: a billboard with a smile, a commercial alluding to Orwell’s 1984, an ad that talked about cars like normal people do… each expertly tuned to play on our emotions. CLICK HERE to read more. Budget: Medicaid, DSS, prisons hope to run deficits
$264 million-in-the-red proposals to be discussed today by board December 14, 2010 | GINA SMITH
Three state agencies will ask a state budget panel today to run deficits totaling $264 million. With the state facing a mountain of unprecedented financial woes, Gov.-elect Nikki Haley and the state’s congressional delegation met behind closed doors Monday and discussed some of those urgent budget needs, including shortfalls for education and the state’s exploding Medicaid program. CLICK HERE to read more.
The 2011 Listening Platform Landscape December 15, 2010 | Zach Hofer-Shall
After an entire month without any acquisitions in the social media data space, there is no excuse but to get back to normal blogging. I assume I’ll be back to posting on M&A again soon, but in the meantime I’ve been busy working on some big research and now it’s finally ready to show off. Today we’ve published “The 2011 Listening Platform Landscape,” a report aimed at helping Marketing and Customer Intelligence professionals navigate a crowded and fragmented array of social media data tools and technologies. CLICK HERE to read more.
December 16, 2010 | Jennifer Van Grove Facebook accidentally went live with a handful of prototype features earlier today, including a site-wide yet short-lived overhaul of Pages. Roughly 45 minutes after the mistaken update, Facebook disabled the site, reverted back to its previous state and then tweeted apologetically about the downtime. But that brief span of time was enough for Facebook members and Page admins to get a sneak peak at new features in the works. CLICK HERE to read more.
December 16, 2010 | Alexia Tsotsis For a couple of days now, we’ve been hearing rumors that the Yahoo layoffs included the entire Delicious team. Now Former Yahoo employee and Upcoming founder Andy Baio has tweeted out the above Yahoo! product team meeting slide that seems to show that Yahoo! is either closing or merging the social bookmarking service as well as Upcoming, Fire Eagle, MyBlogLog and others. CLICK HERE to read more.
It is certain, that if you want to have control over your web presence, then you cannot depend on Facebook. Why, because it will always be changing and it has complete control over the interface, look, and user interaction. With the recent Facebook Personal Profile update, this gave business a first hand look at what is to come with their Pages for business.
Today, I noticed a Tweet come across citing that Facebook made an “accidental” update that allowed business to see what their Pages will look like with this new integration. Mashable.com has a complete write-up about the temporary release, and from this article…this is what I gather. The first thing I noticed, just like the new personal profiles, no Tabs. Yes, the tabs are gone moving the navigation to the left hand column. So those of you using the FBML application, it is definitely noticed with the FBML icon next to the Tab name. BLAH. Many organizations have spent tons of time and money working on the creation of their Tabs and the interface that is revealed once you click a Tab.
It also looks like you can “Login” to the Page which brings the questions about how Administrators will manage the page. Along with this, it looks like a “Lightbox” feature will be added to the photos area for a slick way to flip through pictures in a “Slide Show” mode.
Regardless of these updates, that either enhance the experience or change the design for businesses, it is proof that business do not have control over the platform. The platform was built to provide a place for people to connect and share with an interactive experience. But with this comes the same experience as a new update from Microsoft Windows, Office, or any of their other products. You receive the update and the whole interface changes. But the difference, you pay for those Microsoft updates where Facebook is a free, online experience for individuals and businesses to engage in a single platform.
Would businesses be willing to pay for an more “Enterprise” level experience with their Facebook presence? Considering how much they spend in other areas of their online marketing message, I would assume they would consider paying…given the audiences that are interacting within the platform. Imagine the opportunity to have control of some of the rich code to create a more interactive experience within the framework. The same idea as WordPress and Joomla yet inside a platform where audience already exist. But this “Enterprise” level system could swing the balance away from the community driven roots of Facebook. This could give marketing engines a more controlling atmosphere where the experience is more about the marketing message and not the community experience.
So bottom-line…if you are an organization and you want to have “control” over the platform that contains your brand and your message, Facebook should not be your only outlet. But, really…Facebook is not really a “Website” for a company. Facebook is a community driven platform and if used correctly, can engage and connect people of like minds. So who cares if they keep on changing it…the people will stay hang out as long as they can connect; and business will just have to deal with it.
All of this is hypothetical, because the real release has not been made yet!
Hello friends, here are my links for the week. As you can see…they include doctors tweeting, social media, medical social media, Elizabeth Edwards, and Leadership. I hope you enjoy and let me know your thoughts about any of these articles!
I’m 16 and, unusually, I use Twitter quite a bit. I say unusually because perhaps you’ve heard that teens don’t tweet. This first came to light last year when a 15-year-old Morgan Stanley intern wrote a report [PDF] where he explained that teens “realize they are not going to update it,” and that “no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless.” CLICK HERE to read more.
December 9, 2010 | Bryan Vartabedian, MD
I learned this only recently: people vary in how they like to consume their content. For the longest time I managed the distribution of my blog content passively: push it out on RSS and Twitter. Then let the chips fall where they may. CLICK HERE to read more.
I’m frustrated. Finally, after nearly a year of relentless campaign promises and bickering about everything except the real challenges facing our nation, this campaign is over. CLICK HERE to read more.
A legendary story about Tom Watson Jr., who guided IBM in its glory days, bears repeating in any discussion about smartfailing. According to the story, a vice president who had lost the corporation $10 million on an experiment that failed was called to Watson’s office. CLICK HERE to read more.
I recently read an article from a 16 year old about why teenagers choose Facebook over Twitter. The article is titled “Why Teenagers Don’t And Won’t Tweet.” It was rather fascinating to hear this teenager’s perspective. The one thing that I took away from this article is this…teenagers are social creatures and picky about their online friends. Facebook gives them the opportunity to interact exclusively with their friends. They can manage who sees what, who reads what, and how they interact with others. Teenagers are finicky little creatures. But what they want is real relationships. Twitter is so nebulous to their world, it is hard for them to grasp the mass audience of Twitter.
I know that each time I start a new semester at Clemson, I ask my new students…”What social networks do you use?” All use Facebook, and at a most two students per class (of 20) say they are using Twitter. The same amount that use Twitter have a blog. Teenagers just have a hard time with talking with a mass audience. They want to feel connected. They also have a limited attention span, thus not wanting to invest in another social network that does not bring immediate results. Facebook to them is easy, because they meet someone new, look them up on Facebook, look at their pictures, make an assessment, then decide whether to ask to become friends. They can keep in touch with friends when they move away or when everyone splits up to go to college.
Teenagers are picky. They do not want to share with lots of random people, they enjoy their networks. They enjoy interacting people that they have met in person and regularly interact with in physical space and not just a digital space. They understand the power of human contact. They look at relationships based on some level of trust, trust that begins in-person and extends to the digital space.
Lately, I have been feeling the need to trim down my list of people I “Follow” on Twitter and who I consider “Friends” on Facebook. I talked about this in my post “Fall cleaning, raking leaves, and cleaning-up the social space.” I think a lot of the social complexity and anxiety has come from the Twitter platform. I know I opened my account in the Fall of 2008. I had no idea how to get started? The Twitter “handles” or usernames were so weird to me. It was hard to find people you knew because people were creating weird usernames. I just used my real name @BobbyRettew. So, you started following people based on who your “New” friends were following. You would find someone, then go through the list of who they were following, and clicked “Follow”, “Follow”, and “Follow”.
The terminology of Twitter led to this whole idea of “Thought Leadership.” I will “Follow” you and what you say. Then terms like “Social Media Rockstars” started emerging, placing significance on those who had the most followers. So the natural thought was to go out, follow as many people as possible in the hopes they would follow you back. No real relationship building, just choosing to run through a huge mass of people like walking through the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport during the holidays. You could pass someone, but had no idea if you were following them. Why would a teenager want to sign up for something like this? I challenge each of you to go into a room of 20 plus teenagers and convince them that they need a Twitter account. It is like talking to a room of crickets…and fingers clicking as they tune-out and look at Facebook.
I have also been noticing many people mentioning that they are trimming back who they “Follow” and see as “Friends” online. We are not finding the “relationships” but rather noise. Why did we fall for the idea of friending and following people we did not know, all in the hopes to be followed back. Were we trying to build a sphere of influence or real relationships? Or are we just “push” marketers at heart spraying our information? Regardless…we have lots to learn from teenagers and why they choose Facebook…engaging with exclusive relationships.
Hello friends, here are my links for the week. As you can see…they include social media, Facebook commenting, and hospital social media. I hope you enjoy and let me know your thoughts about any of these articles!
Why Social Media for Doctors Doesn’t Make Sense November 19, 2010 | Bryan Vartabedian, MD of 33Charts.com
When I discuss social media with physicians they often giggle and look confused. It’s as if none of it makes sense. And probably for good reason. Doctors have changed. CLICK HERE to read more. Should OSHA create work rules for physicians in training? October 2010 | Richard Leff, MD for KevinMD.com Blog
Recent rules issued by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) for resident work hours have further limited the consecutive and total number of hours that medical trainees may work. These measures, originally created because of safety concerns, are intended to decrease the number of fatigue-related errors made by physicians in training. CLICK HERE to read more.
Four ways to get more value from digital marketing MARCH 2010 | David C. Edelman
Companies that make the deep strategic, organizational, and operational shifts required to become effective digital marketers can become more agile, more productive, and accelerate revenue growth. CLICK HERE to read more.
Facebook Comments: Protected Speech or Personal Branding Nightmare? November 24, 2010 | Dan Schawbel of SocialMediaToday.com
We all know that people overshare. It’s easy to write a quick status update when someone bothers you at work or you’re frustrated. And in today’s world of social media and instant communication, it’s not surprising that quite a few people are taking heat for posting inappropriate content—especially when it comes to their careers. CLICK HERE to read more.
5 Reasons Facebook Will Be the 2012 Marketing Requisite November 24, 2010 by Patsy Stewart of SocialMediaToday.com
Facebook has generated a lot of BUZZ lately with its unveiling of a new location based “Places” with local deals. Successful companies are integrating Facebook into their marketing strategies. Fortune 500 companies are racing to see who can get the most “likes” and companies like WalMart are banking that you will share their deals with your friends. CLICK HERE to read more.
Enough of this Follow Me stuff! Seriously, I follow enough stuff already. Follow me tells me you are going to push your brand, your thoughts, your ideology on me…one tweet, one post, one update at a time. Really, are we so self-indulged to think that everyone has something so important to say that we must follow everything. That is not social…it is a dictatorship of push notifications.
Say yes to join! Join the conversation, join the community, join the fun…join not follow.
Think about it the next time you set-up a campaign. But who really wants to create a campaign, everyone creates campaigns. Why not create communities. Communities do not follow everyone in the group, they join a conversation. They area community of people with common conversation.
How about just share! Share the conversation.
We are so excited that we have created a social media account, we want to stamp it on every freaking media outlet from television, print, websites, post card, etc. We place icons on these pieces with something that says “Follow Us.” But how do we follow you when you do not even put the URL for us to click and type. I guess “you” spent so much money on these campaigns, you feel like you have to tell everyone and include the social networks to make sure the “target audience” follows the message. But what happens after you follow? Seriously, what do I do after I follow. Should I sit back and feel excited that you are now going to overwhelm me with updates and not even let me join the conversation. Because when I follow you, you do not even have the common courtesy to respond with a conversation after all of your push notifications.
We are so excited that we created these campaigns, we do not even think of the un-sustainable effect they will have with a “Follow” mentality. Why…because what is going to happen when the person who is pushing the information leaves, changes, looses interest in the campaign. If it is all push, then the community is not leading the charge…the community is the sustainable part of the message.
Say no to Follow and yes to Share! Go find the community and build the technology around the community to facilitate engagement.
