What you can do with your social media rules…

This post can be found at my current blog here:

http://mollybob.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/what-you-can-do-with-your-social-media-rules/

Sorry about the confusion, I was typig too fast to notice I put it on my old (no longer used) blog here.

Every so often I come across posts and declarations about particular social media platforms where people are laying down rules about how I will use a platform. They’re telling me how it’s going to be.  I have never responded particularly well to such outbursts, mostly because I consider myself intelligent enough to think for myself, and consider someone blindly telling me what to do as a gesture that disrespects me as an individual… but when it comes to social media, it’s not just my attitude toward blindly following authority that’s the problem, it’s about something different.

I see social media as a social construct. Let me briefly explain what I mean there. ..

I’ve moved blog.

I’ve moved! I started up another blog at www.mollybob.wordpress.com called “Mollybob Goes to School”, can’t really explain why, just felt like the right thing to do at the time.

“Your Twitter profile is worth: $108″… but how?

One of the first things I saw when I opened up Twitter this morning was the below post from @paulrasmussen

Being the ever curious person I am, I decided to have a click on the link and see what all the values were about. Assigning a monetary value to my profile? Could I possibly use this twitter value to buy myself a new pair of shoes?

So I had a look, and relieved that I was not required to enter my password anywhere (it is optional), I entered by username and BAM!

Cool! That’s enough money for a pair of shoes! How’d they work it out? …and that’s where things started to fall apart. TweetValue was only happy to give me vauge details about someone’s Ph. D algorithm and public information. Well, blah. That feels a bit like selling me a car but not disclosing the size of the engine, no?

So being a bit curious and only slightly bored, I decided to google Jonas and TweetValue and see if I could make any sense. Was this a massive phishing scam for those that opted to enter their password? Was there an interview with Jonas Lejon anywhere? Is he even real? This is what I found in brief:

• It was released around November 2008
• Jonas is indeed real, he is a web developer
• It’s been compared to Twitterank and Twitter Grader
• NOONE can tell me about the measurement

So what does it actually achieve?  It’s a bit of fun, sort of like a popularity test while also helping to raise awareness that social networks have value and influence, which larger companies are now starting to pay attention to.

I know it’s not designed to be much other than a superficial tool, but it did spark my interest in deeper questions. How do you assign financial value to a social network.. or social capital for that matter?  What do the calculations look like?

Education for change, not education as a result of change

I just read a really positive article on Flux about Intel, Microsoft and Cisco getting together and to call for a change in the way we “do” education called Time for a change? Largely I agreed with it. Certainly, we need a change, we need our education to reflect the way we do business…. wait wait wait. Zip it right there.  I think we need education to reflect the way we’d like to do business.

The flux article states the trio’s position as being:

“They argue that in contemporary business people work in teams across disciplinary boundaries and use a variety of social, digital and physical resources informed but unconstrained by disciplinary to solve complex ill structured problems”

I think this is an idealised perception about what happens in the business world, either that or I’m just too young to remember a time when things were worse.  What I generally observe is a younger generation who have been educated slightly differently and had different life experiences wanting change (impetuously and vehemently demanding change in some cases) managed by an older generation who tend to sway more towards the opinion that knowledge is power, technology isn’t entirely trustworthy, and flying people in for big meetings is the way to go.

Before you think I’m doing a bit of management beating here, let me explain. I’m trying to show the other side of things as I all too often read about this rosy and positive view, but I don’t see it and hear about it in the real world. I think that the kinds of people who contribute online largely already have the said mentality to some point, as sharing something online is a movement toward collaboration and knowledge sharing. If we want to see more of the changes that are so enthusiastically heralded, we need to start spreading our attitudes we show in the online world to the workplace at the management level.

Education doesn’t just need to reflect what we do in the workplace, it needs to reflect the way we’d like things to be. Our future managers need to be educated in a manner that reflects how we’d like to do business, not how we actually do business now.

Twitter – Facebook. Apple – Orange.

So a while ago I read a post called Twitter versus Facebook: Should You Choose One? on the twitip blog.  It got heaps of responses from people, me included. I didn’t feel the urge to respond in detail until @valeriestevens raised the issue on a twitter post again today that got me thinking. Thanks @ValerieStevens!

So my take on twitter versus facebook?  It’s like comparing apples to oranges, or your toaster to your oven. They are two totally different tools that serve different purposes with a small crossover in the middle.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging tool, by which I mean you use it to post short (140 character or less) updates onto what is essentially a time ordered message board.  You connect with people on twitter by “following” them and replying to their messages, you can even send them a direct message if you feel the need. Relationships are not automatically reciprocal unless you’ve got the settings geared that way, and there’s a much greater sense of immediacy with tweets generally being more frequent and up to date than facebook activity. For example, people tweet current events as they happen, such as the recent bombings in India, or the inauguration, but most people update thair facebook status once or twice a day at best.

Facebook

Facebook  is much more complex than a microblogging tool like twitter. Your status update on facebook is like a microblog all on its own. When I fill in my status update on facebook  e.g. “Molly is writing a blog post about twitter and facebook” that’s a microblog all on it’s own.  You can even connect your facebook status to your twitter if you feel the need.  Additionally if someone wants to see your stuff on facebook, they have to “friend” you  and you have to grant them permission so the relationship is reciprocal. 

A special mention about facebook requests and twitter links

Based on feedback from the twitterverse, I’ve given a mention about facebook’s notifications, why they exist, and an attempt at the apple-orange comparison to draw a parallel in response to twitter. This is my take on things.

Things on facebook are often a little more complex, and may not occur at the same breakneck speed as they do on twitter. Facebook’s more complex features mean that the main activity tends to stay within with bounds of facebook, which I think is why facebook users receive so many requests and invites, because we use these to essentailly promote aspects of facebook.  On the other hand, my twitter network often sends me outside twitter with blogs to read, reports to bookmark, webinars to attend and so on.

Be a glutton if you feel like it

I don’t think you can compare the two and come to any meaningful conclusion. I think they complement each other and there’s no need to select only one.

Reverse Image Searching with idee’s New Offering Called TinEye

One of today’s nuggets from the Twitterverse is a reverse image search engine called TinEye which allows you to paste in an image file or URL and see where an image has been used.  So my experience went as follows:

I created an account in TinyEye easily, confirmed it and got to work. My immediate first reference was my profile picture which is stored on my desktop here at work as I know that image is floating around the internet. Strike one. No such luck, it cannot find my image so any dreams I have of being famous or appearing on a magazine cover in some faraway land only to marry a rich prince and live happily ever after are shot.

So after my initial failure, I thought I’d better read that yellow highlighted bit on the screen which says “Wondering why TinEye couldn’t find your image” while thinking “awesome, maybe rich prince accounts are blocked”… but no.  What it actually tells me something far more useful. TinEye is in beta and their search library is currently quite small.  Read in my mind: you are not that important, get over yourself and use this site properly.

So I came up with the idea to find an image online of Barack Obama, hes important right? I mean, my own profile picture wasn’t making the grade.  Setting my narcissism aside, I figured his image was more likely to have more reuses than my profile pic. I experienced instant success. There were pages of results for this image, showing me the image over and over with information about the size of the image and which website it was used on. 

The good things

• I found it extremely easy to use, all I had to do was enter a URL or file
• The interface is clean and intuitive in design. I was never at a loss about where to look, infact it felt a bit like Google
• You can subscribe to their what’s new page which tells you when changes are made to the site. I really like this feature because it means you don’t have to go searching for informtion. Very effective communication.
• its FAQ section does a very good job of explaining how it works in plain English. Even I could understand what they were talking about!
• They aren’t taking any copyright or ownership when you run a search on your image
• The scans will apparently pick up slight alterations to images you’ve submitted for search, so close but not identical matches will show. E.g. someone’s made your pciture other colours, or adjusted the size.

The not so good things

• TinEye says it’s beta, and the size of its image library probably reflects this
• You cannot see dates on the search results as TinEye does not return that information
• If you’ve pirated people’s copyrighted images into the public domain, this search engine may not be good news for you (can’t say I’m that sympathetic either, tsk, tsk)

Some possible uses for it

• If you want to check where else an image has been used before using it yourself this is a good way of doing it.  It wouldn’t be too good to use an extremely political image accidentally in your blog or whereever
• Because of the way it works, if someome is really silly and links to your image you can catch them, if they’ve captured it using something like SnagIt and renamed it, TinEye isn’t going to find them.
• If you’re a narcissist like me you can go through your whole Flickr account and see if anyone’s used your images (you may also choose to get really really excited when they do and get an over inflated ego).
• I’m sure there are others too…

So from my perspective, “the not so good things” are far fewer that “the good things” , so I’m suggesting that I like it. If I didn’t, this post would have been alot shorter.

Sex (promise thereof), Lies, and Witchery

Witchery, a popular Australian fashion label seems to be painfully cutting its teeth on the whole social media thing with attractive 24 year old Heidi Clarke supposedly searching for the male owner of a jacket that she supposedly felt a connection with left at a cafe.

“A Lost Jacket and a Stolen Heart” – a touching story

I first read about the story in the Sydney Morning Herald over breakfast yesterday and didn’t think it was that weird but I was very interested, so I checked out the YouTube video and website the article spoke about.  I admit that I was not one of those who immediately identified the video as a fake, although some of the things that struck me while watching the video were:

• that apartment in Elizabeth Bay is disgustingly nice for a 24 year old shop assistant
• she looks like a model, good looking people tend to have certain advantages in life
• why is she talking about the lining so much?
• I can’t see the label on the jacket, and she hasn’t mentioned it. That’s a bit wierd
• If this guy has a girlfriend, she may have a bit of an insecurity complex after watching this
• I can see this is Jet cafe in Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building, why isn’t she telling us that?

A touching story that is possibly untrue

So when I read NineMSN’s story today, outing the video and associated website as a fraud I was interested, and dug a little further to find they are not alone in their thoughts, although there is discussion about who is behind the video.  NineMSN report that people were commenting on the video suggesting that Ms Clarke’s body language was suspicious, and that the jacket was part of a new men’s range that Witchery has not yet released, recognisable by… surprise surprise… it’s distinctive lining that Heidi spoke much about. However, Witchery denies any knowledge of Heidi or the video.

Arrogance… well, that’s advertising

While I tend to agree that the video is probably an attempt by Witchery to gain publicity through a viral campaign, or they have by chance had an absolutely gorgeous girl pick up a pre-release jacket and want to talk about it online, it has still gotten the point across.  I don’t like being manipulated by the media and think it is arrogant of an advertising agency to think they can and should make up stories and tell us they are real to get us to buy their products, but you know, that’s what advertising is.  It’s basically manipulation so that we feel compelled to buy things we often don’t need. Why else would my wardrobe be filled to the brim with clothing, much of it with ”labels”… and where did those five Polo shirts come from, the ones the same as those from Target, but with a price tag inflated a couple of hundred percent? Either I’m silly with my cash all on my own, or someone has created a brand and image that I am trying to buy into by essentially telling me stories.

But let’s not get too comfortable with the deception

It’s just like the fashion magazines, and the stars in Hollywood we idolise, let alone 2006′s lonelygirl15 on YouTube. It seems we like to be told stories, if we didn’t we wouldn’t be watching, but when we look at the case of lonelygirl15 in particular we can see we only like them when we think they are true. While I think this attempt was crude and feels as though someone has tried to get traditional marketing and cram it into social media, it did work, at least temporarily.  I did wonder if my partner would be interested in a men’s tuxedo jacket like the one “Heidi” was holding, and I have gossiped with two girlfriends already. So while social media’s “age of marketing innocence” is certainly on the way out in Australia, and I hope that advertising agencies get better at putting the message across without making up ”real” and insulting stories, it still worked. I watched the YouTube video and told my friends about Witchery’s men’s line, along with their lame foray into the social media world. Hmmm… perhaps it didn’t work so well afterall.

“Facebook shuns Burger King app”… Makes sense to me

I saw a link yesterday about  a marketing campaign from Burger King which was a facebook app designed by Burger offering a free whopper to anyone who dumped ten friends from their network. When I read it I thought, “what a stupid and nasty way to get publicity”, but I did acknowledge that it was probably going to be widely successful in achieving that aim because it created a talking point.  It was too, until facebook decided to bar the app because it told people when they were being removed from someone’s friend list.

While I agree with the TechCrunch article in thinking that facebook’s reasoning is a bit weak, I don’t agree that this is a “great example to show the Madison Avenue agencies on how a big brand can get real engagement from users”.  I think it may have gotten people to slim their overinflated friend counts, but seriously, did the advertising agency think about the medium they were using? I am also at a loss to see any engagement benefiting facebook as the campaign is about disengagement between facebook users. Sending an “Angry-Gram” via the Burger King app creates conversations about Burger King, which is great, but is still essentially damaging facebook’s engagement with its users.

I also disagree with the casual dismissal of the consequences of the app stated in the article as “all that happened is the user being dissed got a message telling them, which helps the application spread virally”. In this instance, the further the app spread, the smaller facebook’s social footprint because it caused connections to be broken, not created. This means that as a corporate entity Burger King were using facebook (also a corporate entity) to esentailly damage its own connections (and its revenue source) and get Burger King publicity and revenue in the process. Why should facebook put up with something that essentially goes against its basic tenet of connecting people? Facebook obviously made the decision that the benefits of a large scale marketing campaign of this nature were outweighed by the damage it was doing to their network, and who can blame them?

I don’t agree with lots of things facebook do (your not-so-new layout still sucks guys!), but in this instance I can see why they acted as they did. I think in essence, Burger King’s campaigns are good, but facebook has obviously decided that the damage on this one outweighs the benefits to them and canned it.  As a business, that’s their prerogative.

Flickr perversion: a response

For the last two days I have been seeing @courosa tweet about Flickr perversion. I’ve looked over his Flickr photos a few times and they convey to me that he’s a family guy with a cute little boy and girl.  I wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about, and just thought it was about inappropriate groups making the site a bit sleazy or child unfriendly. But then I read his post about Flickr perversion and was moved to feelig physically off.  People on flickr had been favouriting images of his very young daughter, and not in a nice way. These people had no photos available for anyone else to view, just a collection of favourite pictures, all of young girls. If you are thinking what I am, one word springs to mind: Paedophilia.

In his post, Alec invites some responses to his questions.  I was moved by his post in an unfortunate way and have responded below:

1) What must parents know about the realities of the Internet in regards to how we deal with the photos (and identities) of our children?

This experience shows us that we need to protect our children online, as we do in the physical world.  I guess it’s a call for digital literacy, by which I mean understanding the medium we are using.  You were lucky that you were literate enough in the medium to go look at this other person’s favourites – what about the parents of those other girls that weren’t so savvy? How do we reach them and help them recognise these potention dangers.

I’d hate to think it means we should shut our children out of this world all together, as the case of Al Upton and the Minilegends, as the online world is where this generation will live a significant portion of their lives.
2) What are the benefits of an open vs. a closed reality? Are the benefits of openness (e.g., in regards to our families) worth the risks? And, what are the credible risks?

Despite the horrible experience you’ve had, I too like to believe in the positivity of humanity. I think that the benefits of humanity ARE worth the risks.  What is living if we are always wrapped in cotton wool? But that being said, you’re talking about something very real and awful here and I in no way want to diminish that, just to suggest that there are so many of us in online communities out there that have positive intentions.

I guess some parallels can be drawn between the online and physical worlds here. Parents need to assess the environment and decide how best to keep their children safe. The old addages of “stranger danger” can be applied here.

It’s still just awful though, and highlights that maybe things need to not be so totally “wide open” when it comes to our families and loved ones.

 

3) What precautions should we take, or perhaps, what precautions do you take in the presentation/development of your family’s digital identity?

 I personally don’t normally put photos of my family and friends on Flickr, I’ve never articulated why, even to myself, just that I don’t feel comfortable being the gatekeeper of their digital identities. I would never have contemplated that some pervert out there would use the photos the way they did with your daughter though.

I have quite a few self portraits on Flickr, and being aware of the risks opted to put them online anyway, but family and friends are a differernt matter and those photos generally go on facebook where it’s much more likely only my network will view them.

If I do choose to use images of other people on Flickr in the future, I will do my best to make it clear where the photos will be, and how they may be used. In light of your experience, I will be more cautious in explaining the medium, rather than a basic “you know everyone will be able to see them” kind of statement.

As  for still using Flickr for photos of family? If the images aren’t for open use, putting a restriction around only family and friends viewing them may be an answer, but again that is still reliant on defining your family and friends, and then having them create a flickr identity.
4) What rights and responsibilities do we have as parents to protect the digital identities of our children?

In terms of responsibility, I can answer this more confidently than protection. I would hope that in taking responsibility there is less need for protection.

I think we have a responsibility to teach our children how to use the internet safely, which means teaching them about not using full names or disclosing too many details, and giving them an idea of who will see what they are putting online. I think education and experience in this area are a better strategy than closing the online world off to them.

Given your experience with your daughter, I think it is important to be careful how we represent our children and be aware that their risks may be a little different to our own.  They need more protection and guidance.  By monitoring their online activity and doing things like checking where their images are being used, as you did, is a way of protecting them.

In terms of protection, I wish there were a way we could prosecute people like those who favourited your daughter’s image. In that respect, the online world is not as safe as physical world, which is a sad thing.
5) How do we proceed from here? How do we help other parents to understand these important issues (from a rational perspective)?

I think getting the word out there in a non-alarmist way is important. Your post is a good start. People’s responses to your post are also another key to the puzzle.  Perhaps getting the word out in the Flickr community via the message board could help. Messaging those users whose children’s photos are in these groups could help them protect their children and start spreading the word too.

I think it comes full circle to my first response, which is that we need to develop digital literacy to help parents understand the benefits and risks in the medium, and how to negotiate them.

A case study in using facebook as a promotional tool

I’ve got a friend. A facebook friend that is. For the uninitiated or less familiar, the term “friend” on facebook is someone you have permitted to view your profile, write on your wall, view your photos, and most pertinently for the purposes of this blog, invite you to events.

How the facebook friend came to be

This facebook friend was an old friend in high school. He knew me reasonably well at one point, and would still know me well enough to know roughly what I am and am not into.  When I accepted his friend request I didn’t think too much of it, I mean, he’s an old high school friend, now he’s a DJ. Cool.  He doesn’t spam me with application requests or dodgy chain letters, but he does do one thing which is both clever and annoying at the same time.  He invites me and his other 700+ friends to all his gigs via facebook. He also lets us know about every single gig and mix he’s got going.

Inviting every man and his dog to your facebook events

Clever: Sure, he’s a real person who I know and he’s asking me to an event he’s playing at. No worries. If I were into his stuff it’d be a great way to stay in touch with where he’s at.

Not clever: He knows me. He *knows* I am really not into the club scene. Never have been, never will be. I’ve nothing against it, it’s just not for me. So WHY am I getting what I consider to be spammed with event invitations? Inviting me to all his facebook events seems to be the modern equivalent of sending me an impersonal chain letter. I think there should be some way for him to discriminate with who he is and isn’t inviting along.

Transforming your facebook page into a commercial shell

Not clever: His profile, once a typical facebook profile, now consists of his DJ name only. All status updates are about where he’s playing, and how to download his latest mix. Pretty much all photos are gigging photos only. There’s not much personal about his facebook page. The biggest crime about this to me? I asked him why he did it and he told me his agent told him to. His agent essentially told him to lose his actual personality and use facebook as a commercial promoting machine.

Clever: It one sense it’s good PR because when his extensive group of facebook friends tag him at his gigs, there are cool pictures for everyone to see. To his credit, he has avoided having any pictures of him doing stupid things posted and most look great. He’s also got a good way of finding out if his latest mix is downloading properly from the host site by asking us through status updates.  There’s also no incriminating and possibly daggy wall posts or status updates. Hearing about his heartbreak, family reunion, and other mundane normal stuff that makes us real is out of the question.

Some lessons from his profile

He’s using his profile as a marketing tool which given his target market is a very wise idea, but it’s too much of a commercial shell. I don’t think it would be a good idea to separate his profiles into personal and DJ as facebook is all about connecting people with people, not people with brands, so it’s a fine line he’s running.  His profile just needs to have a little more personality, not heaps, nothing that’ll damage his image, but something a little more conducive to connection.

Talk to us

Instead of just asking us if the mix is downloading properly in your status update, ask us what we think. If we’re devoted fans, or even just mates, we’ll probably give you some good and real PR through our positive feedback.

Be real

Keep the DJ name if that’s working for you. Don’t tell us every daggy part of your life, but give us a little more of the real person.  I think the agent has given directions which are too strong about creating a brand on the page, and the life is being sucked out of it a little.  The occassional normal photo, or non push-type status update would help make this profile alot more real so people can feel some sort of empathy or connection to it.

Know your audience

Many of your facebook friends may like to hear about your latest gig via event invitation and that’s great. I think it’s a really good use of the event tool, but please remember that maybe not all your friends want to know about every single gig you have. Try to weed out those who won’t want to know.

personality + brand = success

Fundamentally, the profile needs to still have personality. Turning a profile into a brand with a squeaky clean image that diminishes its realness is actually damaging. Society has been saturated with these types of faceless commercial messages for so long that we switch off. It’s a fine line, but it is possible.