Facebook Takes Tagging To A New Level

Not sure if I missed this new feature on Facebook due to my focus on the Page (Business/Fan) changes that launched on 3/11/11 or perhaps it was buried in some secret memo, but I happened to stumble across a new tagging capability this week. I’m not sure what my feelings about it are at this point, since this is fresh news for me, but as always, I see both the positive and negative sides to the application.

Facebook users now (eff. 3/11/11) have the ability to use Tagging within comments and not just Status Updates on Profile or Page Walls.  Tagging allows you to bring up a list of your direct contacts (friends), Events, Pages, Groups and Apps by using the “@” sign. There is still a limit of six tags to an update or comment and the tags are hyperlinked to the actual Profile, Page, etc. where your “privacy” settings determine what others can see (to a point).

In the social/digital community that I exist in, my friends and colleagues have known for years that there is no such thing as privacy on the web.  This new capability should help to really underscore that truism. As a purveyor of social networking sites, social graphs and their culminating social currency and having been raised in the marketing giant world of Procter & Gamble, I totally understand why enabling others to join a conversation is crucial to the spread of the message and the fostering of increased interaction.

But there can be a dark side to this capability.  Let’s examine a negative use scenario:

Let’s say Rick is venting about his ex, or boss or neighbor in a Facebook status update and his Facebook Friend Joe thinks it would be funny/malicious to comment on Rick’s post and Tag the ‘vented-about person’ into his comment due to his Friend connection with them.  Rick is not friends on Facebook with the person he is venting about, but Joe is, and due to their connection with each other all three parties come together in one moment of potential fire-works.

As more and more companies (and divorce attorneys!) search for information about potential hires or employees online, then we can clearly see how tagging could be used to someone’s detriment.

As a parent and advocate of raising Digitally Responsible Teens, it has been my personal passion to help educate parents, kids and school administrators on social networking safety and reputation management.  Some teens abuse online networking sites and use them as bully pulpits to tear down other teens, often anonymously.  Just delve into the postings that go on at Formspring.Me. Some of the things I have seen posted there about other kids go far beyond teasing and enter the realm of bullying and slander. Tagging will be added to my discussion points as I bring my Social Networking Safety/Reputation Management Program for Teens to area parents and schools.

So just a word to the wise, know that everything you say on Facebook can potentially be seen by anyone in the world……

10 Tips to Address the Pint Consulting Phenomenon in the Digital Media Industry

Pint Consulting: Coffee < Information

Let’s face it, Digital/Social Media Marketing is a HOT industry topic right  now. Facebook Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, just made Time Magazine’s Cover Issue as Person of the Year for 2010. Everyone wants a piece of the information pie…..

CC Chapman’s ( speaker, author, digital marketer) 12/15/10 blog post :  “Nice Guys Get Paid Too” addresses the growing phenomenon of people seeking out industry knowledge holders to siphon off their expertise for free.  Whether it’s an individual, a company or a group seeking a keynote speaker, the trend seems to be that information is not a product to be purchased, but rather something to be shared and passed around freely.  Chapman notes that numerous conferences offer no remuneration for speaking services, nor travel expense reimbursement, claiming that the mere appearance of an audience should lead to increased business for said speaker.

Chapman mentions that often the individual or small group offer is to meet for a cup of coffee or for a beer at a local pub which he refers to as “Pint-Consulting”.  While many folks in the social/digital field are extremely giving of their time and knowledge, they simply can’t be a veritable public library for the removal of information on a 24/7 basis.

What I want to address here in this space are those individuals and small companies who are in the “Pint Consulting” camp and those individuals who are not even tuned in enough to be part of that group.  How many times have you been approached by someone who basically wants you to do a core-dump over the phone for them?

I believe in giving back to the community and count myself as one of the more generous souls out there (to the consternation of my financial advisor!), but even I have had to draw the line.  As CC states:

“I make a living as a consultant, speaker and creator. In order to continue doing that, I must be paid for the services I offer.”

Here are some tips for parties on both sides of the coin:

Seeking a Knowledge Consultant:

1. Be brief and to the point- explain what you are looking for.
2. Offer how this might help the consultant.
3. Treat them to lunch or dinner (come on, not coffee!) and allow for general overviews on your questions.
4. Want deeper info? – Pay for an hour of their tim.e
5. Need a speaker? Be up front about what you can offer: fee, gift certificate, notoriety…

Knowledge Consultant:

1. Choose your speaking engagements wisely. A good friend and 5- figure speaker gave me some great tips years ago.  She chooses her engagements based on these factors:
   1. Fees- does it meet her requirements, including travel expenses?
   2. If not: – Will the audience be made up of potential clients?
   3. Is the conference notable?  Would it look good on your resume to have spoken here?
   4. Is the venue or city enticing?  Does it offer some other value to you?
2. Don’t feel that you have to give away the farm.  Set a limit on the time or amount of information that you are willing to share.  I have met with quite a few people over coffee who took pages upon pages of copious notes on everything I said to them…..and never offered to pick up the tab for my single cup of java.
3. Set a limit to your pro-bono efforts per month.
4. Offer folks a chance to sign up to meet with you for a free consult.
5. Choose a venue that is most convenient for you and set a time limit to your meeting.

I recall seeing one digital marketer solve this “Pint Consulting” situation by inviting individuals and companies to sign up for a couple of monthly slots on his web-site that involved taking him out to lunch for the chance to completely pick his brain for those 90 minutes.  This put a limit on his pro-bono, gave people a fair and equal chance to meet with him for the cost of a lunch and also gave him their coveted email addys so that he could continue to connect with them through his newsletter, etc.

Hopefully this post will raise awareness on both sides of the coin.

Knowledge is Power.

Knowledge has Value.

CC Chapman says it best:

“So, the next time you think about reaching out to someone to pick their brain or to give them exposure so your company/event/organization can make money, stop and realize that they need to make some as well.”

Would love to hear your thoughts…..

Facebook Friend Pages Privacy Fail

Facebook Friends Reveal ALL

Woke up this morning remembering a post that flew by my radar screen yesterday.  You know the ones, where something catches your eye, but you don’t have time to read it. You keep the tab open on your browser hoping to get back to it and then Mozilla crashes and you can’t do a restore and it becomes lost in the ever-flowing river of new content across your screen.

In this case I was hoping it was just a bad dream from the night before.  Googled the keywords ‘Facebook-New-Friends’ and discovered this lovely post from the Facebook Blog written yesterday (10/28/10):  Telling the Story of Friendships No dream but a potential real-life privacy nightmare!

Writer Wayne Kao states:

A few months ago, I began a small project to build a page devoted to friendships. A few interns and I started a prototype during an all-night hackathon, and then one of our designers jumped in. For all of us, it’s been a labor of love.

Basically Facebook has created a way for all of the interactions between ‘Friends’  including comments, pics, videos, events you have RSVP’d for, etc. to be depicted in one place.  Very similar to the Wall-to-Wall conversations that you could see between friends that you were also attached to.

So I see this as major voyeurism with huge stalker opps and a good reason why you should choose your Friends wisely.  I realize that we are all responsible for the content that we put out and that a basic assumption should be that absolutely nothing is private on the net, but there are still those moments when you are alone with your phone or pc screen and you forget that there is a whole big world out there watching you….

(And don’t even get me started on the teens & young adults who post like they’re in the lavatory….)

So take a look, check out the new Friends Pages and let me know what you think.

Facebook Groups: It’s the End of the World…

It’s the end of the world as we know it…….

Perhaps I’m being a bit melodramatic here, but I certainly feel a cosmic shift due to Mark Zuckerberg’s launch of the new Groups tool on Facebook. Membership in various Groups (all professional at this point) is thrusting my personal Facebook profile out on the world for all to see.

Because “Friends” can automatically add me to a group, due to their personal connection with my private profile, I am now visible to others in the group. Yes, I can remove myself from the group and receive this pop-up nasty-gram from Facebook that makes me think twice about hitting the ‘remove’ button. But these groups are extensions of organizations that I am a part of in RL and virtually on LinkedIn.

 

Leaving a Facebook Group

 

Why so paranoid? While I have many friends who claim they maintain a combo persona on social media sites (Personal/Professional) and spout rhetoric that this practice makes them completely authentic and transparent. I disagree.  These self-avowed combo profiles read more like professional profiles to me. Their personal comments, status updates and choice of links all scream professional and industry-related content.

My personal profile talks about real things in my life:

• My family
• My church/faith
• My friends from 4th grade
• High school antics
• Correspondence with relatives that I never knew
• Pictures of my children’s awards/first day of school/braces removal
• My poetry
• My short stories which can be shocking
• My fail moments
• and yes, some industry posts & links

I wouldn’t wish my personal profile on my worst enemy!  My friends, family, and close colleagues put up with me, or at least dial me down in the Facebook algorithm. Some of the stuff I say is what you would say to your best friend at a back-yard BBQ and NOT what you would necessarily say to the CEO of P&G at a business dinner. There is a DIFFERENCE!

And that, my dear Blog friends, is the critical disparity to which I will not acquiesce.  I want you to know about what’s going on in the realm of social media; how it’s revolutionizing the way we communicate and interact with each other and the repercussions that we will reap in the future.  I don’t think you give a flip that I’m a former PTO School Board Secretary and Girl Scout Leader and that my daughter scored a perfect 99th% on her high-school entrance exam.

So the cultural shift for me is that my Facebook personal profile which has been hidden from Search Engines and within the Facebook platform search (except for Facebook Friends) and even has the ‘Send Me A Message’ option disabled, is now being found by many ‘Friends of Friends’ within these Facebook Groups. And I now have the unenviable task of explaining why I won’t accept a Friend request.

If you want to connect with me on Facebook, I invite you to find me here on my FB Business Page or join me on LinkedIn; otherwise marry one of my many cousins and get an instant entrée into the personal side of my life.

It’s just business as usual…..

Disabling Facebook Places to Maintain Location Privacy

Privacy is still a huge issue making the internet rounds today, especially in reference to location based services. Foursquare, now nearing three million members, has added some privacy measures of its own in advance of their partnership with Facebook Places.  Both foursquare and Gowalla launched their services a little over a year ago at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in 2009.

Fast Company does a great job of discussing the differences between these two geo-location-based start-ups in this post. Location-based services were the main topic of discussion at the March 2010 Cincinnati AMA Interactive Marketing SIG meeting. You can read Rob Bunting’s post here.

Facebook users are already a little suspect of the social networking site’s seeming disregard for privacy measures. Facebook rolled out the location based service, Facebook Places last week with little warning on the site. You may have seen some unusual posts in your news stream in the last couple of days indicating the location from which people are posting their status updates. I saw one from a newly found cousin of mine that stated that he had  checked in from home. Clicking on the link took me to a map of his location. The red balloon seemed to be pointing to a cemetery. Not sure if he lives near one or was just being funny, but it certainly got my curiosity going. It made me wonder whether he knew that his location was being updated into the Facebook newsfeed.

Image via C3: Creating Connections Consulting, LLC

Learning how to set the controls for location-based posts might be a good thing to do as Lifehacker points out in this post, He mentions that your friends can check you into places without your knowledge.  This could make for an embarrassing moment, especially if your friend list includes colleagues or even your boss. Your location can also be shared with your friends’ applications which is another way to lose control over your privacy.

The Facebook Blog states:

“When your friends check you in, it is as if you have checked in at that place yourself. You also will appear checked-in to your friends.“

Take these steps if you would like to disable the location ability on your Facebook account:

Image via C3: Creating Connections Consulting, LLC

Step 1:  Go to Privacy Settings under the Account Tab in the upper right hand corner of your screen

Step 2:  Click on Customize Settings on the bottom

Under Things I Share:

Step 3:  Go to ‘Places I check in to’- and choose the setting most appropriate for you: Everyone, Friends, Friends of Friends, Custom (meaning you can block people) which also includes an Only Me option

Step 4: Go to “Include me in ‘people here now’ after I check in”. This is visible to friends and people checked in nearby. Leave the Enable box unchecked if you don’t want to be included.

Image via C3: Creating Connections Consulting, LLC

Under Things Others Share:

Step 5:  Go to “Friends can check me into places”. You need to actually indicate Disable or Enable with a check otherwise the default option will occur.

That’s it! Now you can update from any place and your whereabouts will be unknown.

Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin~  2010~All Rights Reserved

Cross-posted at Cincinnati Social Media Examiner

Creating International Connections

I love meeting new people and speaking to them in a deep and intentional way.  I tend to ask probing questions that go far beyond surface talk, because I truly am fascinated with people and want to know their inner core.  I want to know what they think, what they feel, and what their dreams are. I want to make a connection.

I recently met someone quite famous in a really weird, ‘no one would ever believe it’ kind of way.  The thing is I had no clue of who he was when we met.  As I spoke to him, I automatically began assessing his characteristics, qualities, etc. and I gave him my candid impression of his “personal brand”: rocker, writer, sensitive guy, yada, yada. These were all characteristics that he did not mention himself. Apparently, I was dead on because he was a little freaked by my description and asked if I knew who he was.  Considering that he was from another country, I was quite certain that we had never crossed paths in any way before and he certainly didn’t look the least bit familiar to me.

He told me that he was indeed a musician and a songwriter and gave me the name of his band and one of their biggest hits. I was so clueless that I had to ask which was the band name and which was the song.  Being the skeptic and ardent Googler that I am, I quickly did a search and came up with a very slick video on YouTube for the song in question. Yup, the guy I was talking to looked like the guy in the video sans dark black eyeliner and tight leather pants.  Still slightly skeptical, I half-joked that if he was a celebrity, he probably had a Twitter account.  I assumed he would tell me that he didn’t, instead he promptly gave it to me and suggested I send him a Tweet later.

We could have left it at that and gone our merry ways, but curiosity got me and I later found the Twitter account he mentioned and sent an @message to him. He immediately followed me and fired back with a response. Did some research and discovered that he was truly the lead singer and front man for the group that he mentioned. Apparently they were very hot in the 90’s, disbanded for a time and reunited in 2007.  They have released 4 albums; received two Juno nominations; and one of their albums has received platinum and gold awards.

Their music has been described as Industrial Alternative Rock which means, according to a musician friend of mine: “..a mix of techno and heavy metal. See Nine Inch Nails and/or Marilyn Manson.” They have a pretty keen social media thing going on: MySpace, Facebook Page, Twitter and a very cool engagement campaign on Indie GoGo where fans can contribute dollars to the band’s next EP release in exchange for a hierarchy of fan goodies (signed CDs, limited edition T-shirts, personal phone call, show tix, etc.).

My new Twitter friend comes across as being very intelligent and creative with a keen sense of what is important to him: entertaining audiences and sharing his creativity vs. a focus on purely making money.  He is sensitive and articulate and was a pleasure to bump into. Really glad I did.

And the mystery Tweeter is?

Meet Trevor Hurst of Econoline Crush

Be part of the action on their new EP

Listen on MySpace

Check out the EC vid below:

Privacy vs. Transparency

Image from C3:Creating Connections Consulting, LLC

I still get an eerie feeling when people that I don’t know approach me as if they know everything about me. I realize that by now, this shouldn’t freak me out. I have a pretty extensive on-line presence and intellectually I “get” that this comes with the territory, but the über-private side of me still gets spooked. Did you choke on the term über-private? Thought so. Yes this is a complete contradiction, a dichotomy of sorts for a ticket carrying passenger on the social media highway to even whisper the word p-r-i-v-a-c-y. But I like to draw a line between my business persona and my private life persona. I could be limiting myself and preventing others from having a richer experience of what I bring to the table, but I feel strongly for a variety of reasons to have that invisible line traced sharply in the sand.

I talked to someone at an event recently who gave me the “I know everything about you” look. I approached the person asking if we had met before, as they looked vaguely familiar. Turns out we had both attended the same meeting the previous week and had just happened to walk by each other extending casual ‘hellos’.  Somehow the person knew who I was and where I lived as they recounted my possible mayorships on foursquare.

I even get surprised when people tell me that they have liked a particular article or blog post that I have written. Writing is a solitary endeavor: it’s me and my pen or keyboard or tiny little keys on the Qwerty of my Droid Original. I am alone with the sounds of the night cloaking me in near darkness or the morning sounds of commuting cars, chirping birds and buzzing cicadas.  My words are birthed from the essence that is me and I momentarily forget that once they are launched into cyberspace, they become visible to the world to take in, digest and comment back. Connection occurs through the act of communication, and so if you truly want to know me fully, then let’s create some connections over coffee. Hey that would be a great name for a company, Creating Connections Consulting……

Here’s a little lagniappe for you.

Deep Thought and Texting Can Co-exist

The Thinker

I am a deep thinker. I ponder possibilities and study behavior as if the world were my laboratory. The movie Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio really got my cerebrum churning.  The movie was created on such a deep and complex level, that I truly believe one needs to see it at least twice.  The rich complexity and thought-provoking questions that the film raised are perfect starting points for a spirited discussion.  Pre-web 2.0, the best option would have been to meet in person, perhaps at a local coffee shop or quiet night cap spot to discuss each facet of the movie. Second choice would have been to hold the discussion over the phone.

Today there are so many options in which to share opinions about the movie or any other topic: IMs, Blogs, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Email (although the time lapse would ruin it for me), Texting, etc. This increased ability to connect with anyone in the world and at any time, opens up opportunities that simply didn’t exist before.

I happened to have an amazing conversation about the movie and the integral themes of dreams, reality and freedom all on my smart phone via text with an old friend. Don’t automatically assume that our texts consisted of abbreviated chat language, because they certainly did not. It was a rich and dynamic discussion in real time between two people hundreds of miles away. The beauty of this is that we could have been complete continents away and it wouldn’t have mattered. The message was the same. Sure it’s always better to be face-to-face or at least ear-to-ear, but for those times that you can’t be, digital media is a great assist.

Here’s a peak at a small portion of our texting:

Him: The ambiguous nature of the ending really drives home the theme of the fragility of our mind’s perception of reality. Check out Haruki Murakami and James Joyce.

Me: Perception is such a key part to our reality, and we can powerfully make ourselves believe anything; sometimes as a matter of emotional survival.

Him: I love that throughout the movie, his wife was the personification of his guilt and doubt.

Me: I loved that he finally recognized in the end that his guilt was feeding her existence in the dream world and that he could let go because he had in fact kept the promise of growing old together

Me: Free is a figment of the collective imagination.

Him: Philosophically, yes, but if a man imagines himself free, then his imagination achieves freedom.

Me: I totally disagree. In your example he would merely be dreaming.

Him: You underestimate the power of the imagination.

Me: Hardly.  In this example, man would be dreaming because reality would be flowing around him IMHO.

Him: The reality flowing around him would be the reality of others. Reality only exists as it does if we give it our imagination.

Me: Ahhh, interesting point…..

Note: Just don’t text & drive…..

Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2010 ~ All Rights Reserved

The ‘Jessi Slaughter’ Story: A Horrifying Example of Viral Cyber-bullying

Have you ever come in contact with something on-line that just completely made you shake your head and wonder ‘What the h***??” I stumbled upon a post recently about an on-line bullying incident that caught my eye due to my work with parents and schools on internet safety and reputation management programs/presentations for tweens and teens.

The story reads like this:  an 11 year old girl with the on-line name of “Jessie Slaughter” and too much time on her hands, created several videos that sparked the biggest example of on-line bullying ever seen.  She was harassed about her alleged sexual experiences (ummm, eleven years old…….) and relationship with singer Dahvie Vanity as reported by Gawker.com (note: StickyDrama is a tabloid site from Stickam-live streaming video- consisting of self-submitted stories from the site’s community, rumors and gossip written by and about tweens):

“Earlier this month, Sticky drama—a crowd-sourced gossip website for 13-year-olds who loiter in mall food courts—dubiously linked her to the lead singer of emo band Blood on the Dance Floor, Dahvie Vanity.”

This led to the video she created to address the “haters.” One direct quote from her “Haters… Piercings… StickyDrama (kerligirl13 reupload)” video on YoutTube just makes my jaw drop:

“…if you can’t like realize that and stop hating, ya know what, I’ll pop a Glock in your mouth and make a

brain slushie…”

Releasing that video unleashed a torrential bullying maelstrom. She has received death threats and the event has spawned several YouTube video spoofs of her original videos as well as average citizens weighing in with their thoughts on the situation in blog posts and video replies.

A second video in which her dad angrily and publicly threatens the harassers only added to the backlash. Warning- this is very upsetting to watch.

As of this writing Google is showing 2.8 million results in search on her moniker.

Google Results for 'Jessie Slaughter'

It horrifies me that this situation could have spiraled so quickly into a viral phenomenon and social meme. There are a number of things here that are just so innately wrong, for example:

• Parent awareness (or lack thereof) of Jessie’s on-line activities
• Level of profanity coming from this child’s mouth
• Subject matter (murder, sex, etc.)
• Angry father addressing on-line audience in a subsequent video
• Viral back-lash and posters who say she deserves all of the harassment

Comment posted on Gawker.com web-site.

She and her family recently appeared on Good Morning America (GMA video) to discuss the situation.  The bottom line is that despite her actions, she is still an eleven year old GIRL- unfortunately many couldn’t see this. The story of Jessi Slaughter is an example of just why it is so important for parents to be in tune with what their children are doing on-line and to open up discussions on appropriate use of social media sites and subsequent reputation management.  Unfortunately for her, these 15 minutes of Warhol fame are going to affect the rest of her life.  Hopefully this story will make a difference in the life of your child.

Get involved.

Get educated.

Protect your kids.

Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin ~2010 ~ All Rights Reserved

The Power of Influence: Fast Company’s Relationship Experiment

What does the term ‘influence’ mean to you? Thinking about this question due to a recent post on Facebook with a link to Fast Company’s new virtual experiment: The Influence Project. The premise is that each person who signs on to the project is given a profile page with a pic that will ostensibly grow larger (more on that in a bit) and space for a short 140 character bio. A personalized link is created for users to share and spread the word. The more people who click on your link and create their own link, the more juice is generated that enlarges your pic in the graph.

Here is Fast Company’s explanation of how this works:

“The scale of your influence, and therefore the size of your photo, is based on two measures.

1. The number of people who directly click on your unique URL link. This is the primary measure of your influence, pure and simple.
2. You will receive partial “credit” for subsequent clicks generated by those who register as a result of your URL.”

Read more here.

The question for me is, “Does this truly measure influence?” What exactly does ‘influence’ mean? A Fast Company Influence Project (FCIP) user can launch their personal link out to many social media outlets and depending on reach and virality and yes, notoriety, can watch their picture grow. Are they really exercising influence? Could they be accused of spamming?

The Dictionary definition of influence is:
“The capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others”

While I tend to think of influence as power to create (positive) change on a large scale, the act of getting another person to take action, in this case, clicking on a link, does fit the dictionary definition of influence. While this may be true, I tend to see the Influence Project more as Pavlovian operant conditioning and the need to satisfy the curiosity factor in all of us versus some true delineation of the power of influence that is wielded.

Here’s what Fast Company has to say about the power of influence:

“Influence is not only about having the most friends or followers. Real influence is about being able to affect the behavior of those you interact with, to get others in your social network to act on a suggestion or recommendation. When you post a link or recommend a site, how many people actually bother to check it out? And what’s the likelihood of those people then forwarding it on? How far does your influence spread?”

Leadership = Influence

I see a huge difference between influencing someone to click a link, whether the end result finds them here at my FCIP page or a link to a Mashable blog post vs. having them click a link that calls them to a greater action that makes an actual difference in the world or in the life of another person. Sounds like my view of influence borders on personal leadership.

It will be interesting to see pictorially just who has bought into the project on someone’s behalf. Everyone participating between 7/6 and 8/15 will have their image (at the appropriately influential size) displayed in the November issue of Fast Company magazine.

Want to help track the Cincinnati ‘influence’? Follow my link here, click and join up if you like!

Some other Cincinnati Social Media folks participating in the project include:

Dave Knox, Brand Manager, Global Branded Entertainment at P&G
Michael Rubin, Social Media Strategist for Fifth Third Bank

*Cross-posted here on Cincinnati Social Media Examiner