Hurricane Sandy Social Media News Blunders

story first appeared on usatoday.com

The story of Hurricane Sandy unfolded quickly on social media: a poignant photo of soldiers standing guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, a picture of a giant wave slamming into the Statue of Liberty and a TV report that 3 feet of water flooded the New York Stock Exchange.

None of it was true.

Social media served as a useful tool for family and friends to keep tabs on each other during the storm, but Hurricane Sandy exposed a dangerous underbelly of social media: False information can go viral.

"There were a lot of rumors going around," said Emily Rahimi, the social media strategist for the New York Fire Department, who writes and monitors its Twitter feed.

She said even though rumors spread on the fire department's social media, it was just as easy to use the site to debunk rumors. At one point, she posted a message that read, "There is much misinformation being spread about #Sandy's impact on #NYC," and pointed people to official city Twitter feeds for accurate information.

Several photos went viral. The photo of the soldiers at Arlington Cemetery was taken in September, not Monday. Others that showed ominous clouds over the New York City skyline were photoshopped, or were screen grabs from a movie, or were stock photos.

A post that the 109-year-old building that is home to the stock exchange was flooded with water became the subject of debate Tuesday after CNN reported it.

In an e-mail, CNN spokeswoman Bridget Leininger said the station's weather correspondent Chad Myers referenced a National Weather Service report that turned out to be incorrect.

The National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro said the news came from several local New York City media outlets who had posted it on Twitter, though he didn't know which specifically.

The digital news website BuzzFeed identified the original source of the tweet as Twitter user @comfortablysmug, who identifies himself as a Mitt Romney supporter interested in finance and politics. His Twitter feed included other erroneous tweets, including one that all subways would be closed for the rest of the week and that major lines were flooded and another that Con Edison was shutting off all power to New York City. Con Edison corrected the tweet, saying it may shut down service in low-lying areas.

Twitter user @comfortablysmug did not reply to a request for comment. A message posted to the Twitter account late Tuesday apologized, saying, "I made a series of irresponsible and inaccurate tweets."

Without identifying himself by name, the message said he had resigned from the congressional campaign of Christopher Wight, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House in New York.. Wight's campaign website said the candidate had "accepted the resignation of campaign manager Shashank Tripathi."
Debra Jasper, a co-founder of the social media consulting company Mindset Digital, says fact-checking is as quick on Twitter as the spreading of misinformation.

Indeed, posters immediately began asking the source of the information on the flooding at the stock exchange.

Jasper's Mindset Digital partner, Betsy Hubbard, said the other phenomenon occurring more often after a big event is "newsjacking," when someone or a company try to use an event for their gain.

It happened with Hurricane Sandy, too, when American Apparel sent out an e-mail blast for a 20% off sale for people living in the affected states, with a tagline that read, "In case you're bored during the storm."

An immediate backlash followed on Twitter. "I don't care if it's 'relevant,' social media 'newsjacking' is gross and opportunistic," wrote one poster. Another wrote, "American Apparel showing how not to do it with a Hurricane Sandy sale."

"It's not a good idea to try to use these tragic events to your advantage," Hubbard says.

Rahimi, who monitored the department's Twitter account all day Monday and through the night and early morning Tuesday, said more good came out of using social media despite the bad information that circulated. At one point, she said, a rumor spread that the Fire Department headquarters was evacuated. So she set the record straight, sending messages directly to people who had posted the erroneous information.

For the record, the headquarters building wasn't evacuated.

Facebook IPO Is Unheard Of

First appeared in Wall Street Journal

Facebook Inc. filed for an initial public offering Wednesday that could value the social network between $75 billion and $100 billion, putting the company on track for one of the biggest U.S. stock-market debuts of all time.

The company hopes to raise as much as $10 billion when it begins selling shares this spring, said people familiar with the matter. Potential buyers got their first look at its financials Wednesday, which showed the company produced a $1 billion profit last year from $3.71 billion in revenues. The company derives 85% of those revenues from advertising, with the rest from social gaming and other fees.

In just eight years, Facebook has become the world's social bazaar, where friends gossip, play games and swap 250 million photos per day. It has also emerged as a potent political tool, helping to topple regimes across the Middle East last year.

But for all its success, the question remains just how Facebook will manage its growth into a mature, global business, keeping both advertisers and subscribers happy while balancing demands of privacy and profits. The filing left a few clues that Facebook's founder, 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, is worried about how wealth and public scrutiny may change the company's culture.

At Facebook's offices, employees went about business as usual Wednesday, said one person, enjoying a lunch of lobster bisque, braised beef, Moroccan couscous and apple, cream and honey galette for dessert, said another. A stack of giveaway posters left in a kitchenette at Facebook headquarters read "Stay Focused & Keep Shipping," according to a photo shared by Facebook employees. Mr. Zuckerberg shared a photo on Facebook of the flyer on his desk.

Looming a few months away is Facebook's giant offering, which would top rival Google Inc.'s 2004 IPO. It holds the record for the largest U.S. Internet IPO by raising $1.9 billion at a valuation of $23 billion. Among U.S. companies, only Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless have held larger offerings than $10 billion. In the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook said it is seeking to raise $5 billion, but that figure is a placeholder and will likely grow.

While Facebook is growing fast—revenue grew 88% from a year earlier—the sales figures it released were lighter than some had expected. One widely cited outside estimate from research firm eMarketer pegged Facebook's revenue for 2011 at $4.27 billion.

Still, Facebook's membership growth has been staggering. The company said in its filing that it has 845 million users globally, up 39% from a year earlier.

The IPO is set to unleash a wave of wealth across Silicon Valley and yield potentially $100 million or more in fees for Wall Street banks managing the offering, including Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The company chose "FB" as its ticker symbol but hasn't decided whether it will trade on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq Stock Market.

Mr. Zuckerberg had been famously reluctant to push forward with an IPO. In early 2010, he told The Wall Street Journal that he was in "no rush" for Facebook to go public.

The CEO owns around 28% of the company and holds 57% of its voting share power, according to the filing. Mr. Zuckerberg will sell shares in the IPO and will use the proceeds to pay taxes, it said. The filing doesn't say how many shares the CEO intends to sell.

People familiar with Mr. Zuckerberg's thinking said he has long been fearful of the damage an IPO could do to the company's culture. He wants employees focused on making great products, not the stock price, they said.

Mr. Zuckerberg's thinking began changing when Facebook realized in 2010 that it would have more than 500 shareholders by the end of 2011, which would trigger a regulatory requirement that the company start publicly reporting financials. Mr. Zuckerberg decided it made more sense for Facebook to go public and reap some financial benefit from an IPO.

Facebook also still faces questions about its commitment to its users' privacy, an issue that had dogged it since its earliest days. Despite a settlement last year with the Federal Trade Commission in which the company agreed to independent privacy audits for 20 years, privacy advocates worry about the vast trove of user data it owns. Mr. Zuckerberg has promised users he is committed to protecting their privacy.

Facebook takes pains to mention the importance of privacy, mentioning the word 35 times in the filing, and even listing its "privacy and sharing settings" as one of the ways the company creates value.

In a letter to potential shareholders, Mr. Zuckerberg—who has long eschewed the business side of Facebook—said he plans to continue focusing on building products, rather than sales growth. "We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services," Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. "These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits."

Overall, Facebook's annual revenue growth is slower than other tech companies who have staged IPOs recently. Groupon's revenue grew 695% for the nine months ended September 2011 from a year earlier. Zynga's revenue more than doubled for that same time period.

Unlike some other newly public Web companies, Facebook is profitable, with 2011 profit up 65% from the year earlier period. But growth has its costs. The company's research and development expenses ballooned last year to $114 million in 2011 from $9 million in 2010, primarily due to growth in employee head count and equity compensation. Facebook's costs and expenses are going up faster than revenue. It employs 3,200 as of December, up from 2,172 a year earlier.

Debra Williamson, an eMarketer analyst who had estimated Facebook's 2011 revenue at $4.27 billion, called the company's revenue "disappointing."

But Kevin Landis, portfolio manager of Firsthand Technology Value Fund, Inc., which has bought Facebook shares in the secondary market, said he wasn't disappointed and hopes to buy more stock when Facebook goes public. "This is a company that has only just begun to scratch the surface of making money off those hundreds of millions of people getting on Facebook every day," he said.

Social gaming has become an increasingly important part of Facebook's business. The company generated $557 million in revenue from partners such as Zynga who sell virtual goods last year.

Facebook's revenue is still driven by online ads. The number of ads delivered on the site grew 42% and the average price per ad grew 18% over 2011 from 2010, according to the filing.

The company attributed the improvement to a vast trove of information that allows marketers to "show their ads to a subset of our users based on demographic factors such as age, location, gender, education, work history, and specific interests that they have chosen to share with us on Facebook or by using the Like button around the web or on mobile devices."

Spam Attacks Social Media

First appeared on Wall Street Journal

"Spammers have decided to move where the people are and where the defenses are weak: Facebook and Twitter," says Chester Wisniewski, an analyst at security firm Sophos Ltd.

Hackers commonly sow social spam by creating false Facebook profiles and then "friending" people they don't know. Once the new friend clicks on a bad link, the spam begins propagating as his other friends do the same. And it can get started through nefarious third-party apps, or when people download malware outside Facebook or Twitter that gives hackers control of their computers.

A common social-spam attack on Facebook, known as "like-jacking," involves duping users into clicking on an image that looks as if a friend has clicked the "Like" button, recommending it.

More nefarious are come-ons for seemingly irresistible posts—like getting a free iPad—that lead people to run malware that can take over a Web browser, or even entire computer. Some social malware impersonates users, starting eerie one-on-one Facebook chat sessions with friends. Security experts also warn that a growing volume of sophisticated hacker attacks take information gleaned from social-networking profiles to trick people with convincing targeted messages.

San Francisco resident Clint Wilson discovered firsthand that his Facebook account was spamming his friends when his co-worker, who shares Mr. Wilson's account for work purposes, clicked on an offer for free dinner vouchers at the Cheesecake Factory. The offer was fake, and included a link that installed Web-hijacking malware.

Mr. Wilson, chief executive of software maker Cazoomi Technology Corp., quickly posted a note onto his Facebook account warning his friends to ignore the spam. "It's worse than email spam, because it's hard to stop," he says. He eventually figured out how to uninstall the malware from his Web browser, but estimates it cost him $500 in lost productivity.

Fighting social spam requires manpower because spammers move quickly. At Facebook, the company's site-integrity team spends its days and nights scanning for spikes in what users report as spam, and other unusual activity, such as friend request rejections. Every day, Facebook says it blocks 200 million malicious actions, such as messages linking to malware.

About once a quarter, Facebook gets hit with a big attack—and it's all hands on deck until the spam is destroyed, say employees. Weeks like that turn into "a very intense battle," says Mr. Stein. A poster on his team's wall features a unicorn slaying a spam monster.

Spammers' weak spots are typically things that cost them money, such as Internet addresses to house malware or the human effort required to set up and manage accounts. Facebook can't prevent spam, but it is stepping up measures to make it harder to create and use fake profiles.

When Facebook is suspicious about an account, it asks the owner to prove his identity, even if he has the correct password. Sometimes it does this by asking users to identify their friends. The point is to ensure that a real person—not a computer—will have to complete the test, thereby increasing the costs of spamming.

Some of the combat efforts may be working. Twitter says its "spammy" tweet rate of 1.5% in 2010 was down from 11% in 2009. Those being affected by spam and the number of spammer accounts escaping detection are "not tracking in an upward direction," says Del Harvey, Twitter's head of trust and safety.

Facebook's Mr. Keyani says he is taking the long view: "This is a game where there is never going to be a winner or a loser. We're just going to be battling it out."

More Than One Mark Zuckerburg?

First appeared on Mashable

Facebook has threatened to sue Mark Zuckerberg, an Israeli entrepreneur who recently took the social network founder’s name. The new Zuckerberg, born Rotem Guez, legally changed his name Dec. 7.

Zuckerberg II’s website, MarkZuckerbergOfficial.com, states that he first filed a lawsuit against Facebook in January, after the social network refused to give him access to his profile, which it had shut down.

Zuckerberg (all further mentions refer to the Israeli entrepreneur) co-founded Like Store, a social marketing company, which sells companies Likes for their brand pages. The site states (translated), “Are you sad no one’s visiting your Facebook Page? We have a solution! Need 1,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you. Need 5,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you. Need 10,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you.”

In September, Facebook’s law firm Perkins Coie threatened to sue against Zuckerberg, claiming the Like Store violated the social network’s Terms of Service, by selling brands fans. The threat instructed Zuckerberg to shut his company and never return to the social network for any reason.

Zuckerberg officially changed his name Dec. 7. In the below video of his trip to the Interior Ministry to make the switch official, he says he plans to change his family’s names as well. One week later, Facebook again threatened a lawsuit against Zuckerberg’s still existing Like Store. Little did they know, they were threatening someone with the name of their own founder.

Though legally Facebook can, of course, sue someone named Mark Zuckerberg, it makes for quite the funny tale.

Perhaps anticipating the media attention he would receive, Zuckerberg has set up an Internet campaign for his new persona, including a Facebook Page and Twitter account, @iMarkZuckerberg, suggesting that he’s ready to make a splash with his new identity. His Facebook Page includes photos of his new identification card and passport.

Google Social Media Upsets Little Girl

First appeared in Washington Post

Father Rich Warren sounded off on social media sites Reddit and Google+ about his upsetting morning: He had woken up to find that Google had suddenly, without warning, shut down his daughter’s e-mail account and blog. His daughter had used her Gmail to send e-mail to her grandparents, friends and classmates, and had started the Blogger blog as a class project.

Warren said he believed both accounts were disabled because his daughter was underage. Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Web sites collecting information from children under age 13 must take a number of steps to protect the child’s privacy. Warren says he’s not upset with Google for complying with COPPA, but how they went about it.

Back in May, Google seemed to encourage children’s memories be shared on Gmail, YouTube, blogs and other services. In a viral video commercial dubbed “Dear Sophie,” a father is shown creating a Gmail account for his baby daughter, and then using it to send her photos, videos, and messages that chronicle her growing up, so that she can read and see them when she’s older:

The difference between “Dear Sophie” and Warren’s situation is that Sophie’s father did all the actual uploading of information, not his daughter. But how does Google know that? And how did Google realize, after several years of ignoring it, that Warren’s daughter was underage? Why, as Warren asked in his Google+ letter, did the company not inform him or ask his consent before disabling the accounts? And how can parents work to make sure this doesn’t happen to their children?

A Google Support page provides some answers, writing that accounts can get disabled if a child enters a birthday indicating they are not old enough to use Gmail. Warren’s daughter may have filled in that information if she joined Google+.

In one part of his letter to Google, Warren laments, “Remember, we're talking about letters from grandparents and friends. I can't even log in and back them up. They're just gone.”

That’s not necessarily true. Google writes on its support page that accounts can be re-enabled if a parent sends a government ID or credit card information over email or fax to prove their age. Accounts can be re-enabled after several days, or even go back up instantly.

Warren’s post sparked hundreds of comments, in which many Google users argued about whether the online giant should be at fault or not. Several parents, saying they’d had enough with Google’s attitude toward child usage, suggested using different, more kid-friendly e-mail providers altogether.

Update, that afternoon:

A Google spokesman responded to request for comment on Warren’s letter, saying:

Asking for age information helps us provide features like age-appropriate settings to our users, who are interacting more every day with the people they know. Under our policies, Google doesn’t allow users who are under the age of 13 to have Google Accounts, unless they are using Google Apps for Education accounts through their school. This is similar to a lot of online services, as it's very complicated for many providers to offer better solutions for children that meet the relevant regulations. It's not as simple as just asking a parent for consent to let their child have an account — there are associated implications for data and privacy involved. 

We know that this data is important to people, and we want to help by finding the right solutions. We're also working on designing special safety settings for teens.

Regarding the [“Dear Sophie”] video, the email address in the spot belongs to the Dad... The implied understanding is that the girl in the story does not have access to the account, but that she will have access to it “someday.”

Easier Navigating at Tweaked Twitter

The Wall Street Journal

Twitter recently revealed the most dramatic overhaul to its website since the social network's debut four years ago. Some tech-savvy Twitterers who use apps like TweetDeck scoff at the idea of tweeting via the original site. But the newly enhanced Twitter.com may change their minds.

 I, too, have long viewed Twitter.com as much less robust and useful than third-party apps. So I was surprised to find that the new site offers a good number of fresh features that enhance the social-network experience. The site now works a lot like its own app, with fewer clicks needed to navigate and more ways to see content without leaving the current Web page. The site is noticeably faster with more pleasing visuals and easier ways to follow or unfollow others.

According to the company, 78% of Twitter users use Twitter.com at least part of the time and about half of all Twitterers use only the website.

But many people who use third-party apps will keep using them because Twitter.com still doesn't provide a way for users to shorten long URLs in tweets before posting them, nor does it provide a simple way to insert photos or videos into outgoing tweets. It also lacks the ability to pull in content from other social networks, like some third-party apps do with LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace. And its method for retweeting doesn't let you add your own comment to the tweet you're retweeting, or reposting to your followers.

Not everyone can use this website yet. Twitter is slowly rolling this out over a period of weeks, so just under half of the 160 million people who use Twitter can currently access it. A spokesman for Twitter says all users should have access within the next two weeks.

This website was redesigned so as to give people a more efficient way to get information on Twitter. One of the ways it does this is by using a details pane, or a column that slides out on the right side of the page to show more information about something you've selected. The details pane helps users avoid going to an entirely new Web page for the information.

If I click on someone's profile photo, a details pane opens and shows me a mini profile of that person. Likewise, if I click on a tweet, a details pane shows me information about that tweet, like usernames mentioned in it; other tweets that mention the original user; and who retweeted the tweet. Small icons beside tweets indicate that a tweet contains a photo, video or location tag; clicking on these icons will open the image, play a video or display a location map.

You can use a details pane to see conversations around tweets, something that wasn't possible on Twitter.com before. A small word bubble icon beside a tweet indicates that at least one person replied to the tweet, and the details pane shows the conversation associated with that tweet.

Helpful tabs appear at the top of the Twitter.com home page for quick navigation to a section of the site. These tabs are labeled Timeline, @Mentions, Retweets, Searches and Lists. The Retweets are broken down into retweets by others; retweets by you; and your tweets that were retweeted. Searches include terms you search most often and save for a fast check of that term. And Lists includes any Twitter lists you follow.

A Messages section at the top of Twitter.com lists all direct messages or DMs, as they're called in Twitter lingo. This is incredibly helpful if you use direct messages to exchange several back-and-forth tweets with someone and want a simple way to keep track of those messages. The Messages section also uses a details pane: When a tweet is selected on the left, a details pane opens on the right to display the whole conversation string. And a number beside each tweet indicates how many back-and-forth tweets were exchanged.

The new Twitter.com constantly checks for new tweets and indicates the number of new tweets posted since you last checked the page. This number appears at the top of the timeline, as well as beside the Web page name in the frame of the browser window. But the page doesn't automatically refresh to show those new tweets. A Twitter spokesman said the engineers made a deliberate decision not to refresh the screen without users doing it so they wouldn't lose their place in the timeline or feel out of control.

To see a set of keyboard shortcuts for the home page, just hit the question mark key anytime. These shortcuts include hitting the period key to refresh a timeline of tweets and jump to the top of the screen; hitting the "g" and "u" keys opens a floating box into which you can type someone's name to search for a Twitter profile.

Search now offers ways to narrow your results according to tweets, tweets with links, tweets near you or people. But I found that while it is better, searching on Twitter.com still needs more improvement. When I searched for a friend's dad on Twitter, I saw a huge list of results that matched his first name, but not his first and last name, which I had entered. I even tried putting his entire name in quotation marks, but it didn't help.

In early August, the Twitter.com site began suggesting people who you might want to follow, and these suggestions carry over into the new site with four suggested names. Several factors determine these suggestions, including who you follow and who those people follow. In the future, these suggestions will also take into consideration the tweets you choose to retweet to others. In my experience, Twitter's suggestions exposed me to some people that made a lot of sense for me to follow, including popular Twitterers as well as some who weren't so popular.

Twitter.com now uses infinite scroll, or the ability to let you scroll down limitlessly without having to click a "More" option to see additional tweets in a timeline or names of followers, depending on what you're reading. Again, this helps people click less on the page, and saves time by keeping them from opening a new Web page.

The revamped Twitter.com offers richer features and makes it much easier to navigate through the social network and its sea of tweets. But certain features, like better searches and ways to shorten URLs in tweets, are necessary if Twitter wants to keep its users on this site.

Google's Social Gaming Plan: More Than Just Rumors?

PC World

Even The Wall Street Journal suggests that insiders (unnamed, of course) reveal Google has something big planned -- and not just with Farmville.

 

 

If the rumors are accurate, Google is planning something big in social gaming, and not just with Farmville.

The Wall Street Journal’s “people familiar with the matter” say Google is negotiating with a few heavy hitters of social games. Not only has Google reportedly invested in Farmville maker Zynga — between $100 million and $200 million, according to an earlier rumor from TechCrunch — but the company is also in discussions with Playdom and Playfish, owned by Disney and Electronic Arts, respectively.

The rumors don’t tell us what Google’s gaming service, and for that matter a bigger social network reportedly called “Google Me,” will look like. Asked whether the service will resemble Facebook, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said “the world doesn’t need a copy of the same thing.” Seeing as Zynga, Playdom and Playfish are all entrenched in Facebook, Google’s social glue would have to be quite different for Schmidt’s statement to hold up.

Also, I hope the talk of partnerships with major publishers doesn’t mean Google is neglecting the little guy. Sure, social games are a big business now, but Playdom and Playfish were two- and four-person operations at first. It was only after they helped change the gaming landscape that the major publishers came looking for acquisitions. Similarly, Facebook didn’t negotiate to bring in Farmville after it became a sensation. That game was built on Facebook, and its bond with the platform will be hard to shake.

Negotiations with big publishers is a sign that Google is increasingly serious about gaming, but Google also needs to look out for the next big thing, and I don’t see it coming from the three companies mentioned in the Wall Street Journal’s report.

Businesses Failing at Social Networking, Study Says

PC World

 

Companies are doing a poor job of using social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to engage their customers and employees. In fact, 70 percent of consumers want to interact with businesses via social media, but only 30 percent of companies are equipped to handle it. The grim news comes from a study by research firm Yankee Group, commissioned by Siemens Enterprise Communications.

Most customers and employees would rather use social media for business communications, but one-third of enterprises either lack formal social networking polices, don't allow their employees to use social networks at work, or are unaware of their company's participation in social media, the study showed.

By failing at integrating social networks, including corporate blogs, into regular business communications, enterprises are missing a golden opportunity to engage their customers and enhance worker productivity.

"Social media is changing the way businesses, customers and employees interact, and this creates significant opportunities for contact centers and the enterprise as a whole to leverage the integration of these tools into business processes," said Yankee group research Zeus Kerravala, in a statement.

Other study findings show the importance of a strong social media presence for business:

• Fifty percent of survey respondents use social networks daily, or several times a day.

• Social media boosts devotion: Almost 60 percent of customers say that business outreach via social networks would improve their loyalty to a company.

• Enterprises should monitor social networks for consumer feedback, customers say.

• Employees love social media. Nearly 70 percent of workers want better tools to manage social networks for business. Example: They want the ability to launch a Web conference and invite people from their social and work networks.

The Siemens news release for the study included a pitch for its OpenScape software tools, which help enterprises unify their communications services with social networks. The self-serving nature of the announcement ("Your social media strategy stinks, so buy our software") might lead some to question the veracity of the study's conclusions.

However, the Yankee Group's findings corroborate earlier studies that essentially say the same thing: Most businesses are too disconnected from social media for their own good.

A poor or nonexistent social media presence gives customers and employees the impression that your business is out of touch or disinterested in open communication--a strategy that could drive business elsewhere in the long run.

Stop Wasting Time on Social Media

Bloomberg Business Week

BNI.com's Ivan Misner explains why small business owners aren't getting the most out of such tools as Facebook and Twitter, then offers tips

Entrepreneurs are spending too much time on online social media and have unrealistic expectations about results, says Ivan Misner, founder and chairman of business networking organization BNI.com. Misner, author of 10 books that include his latest, Networking Like a Pro (Entrepreneur Press, January 2010), spends a lot of time teaching small business owners how to market online. He passed along some tips in a recent interview with Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

Karen E. Klein: Most entrepreneurs know they should be using social media, but beyond establishing a Facebook page and a Twitter account, they're kind of lost. What are they doing wrong?

Ivan Misner: There are three problems. They're spending too much time on it, they don't understand how to leverage their time, and they anticipate immediate results, which they're not going to get.

Here's what happens: You go to LinkedIn or Facebook and you read a comment and it takes you to another link and now you're on YouTube, watching someone's video. Pretty soon something weird happens in the space-time continuum and you look up and you've lost two hours.

How should they be leveraging that time?

There are great services they should be using like Ping.fm, Seesmic.com, and Hootsuite.com. You can go there and it ties all your social media together. In other words, they're probably logging on to their Facebook account and going to their page and typing in their message, and then going to Twitter and LinkedIn and doing the same thing. It kills time. If you use sites like this, you write one message and they ping everything so you're not spending 20 minutes to do what you can in three minutes.

Is it okay to post the same content to all your networking sites?

I think it's alright to put the same content on most of them, perhaps with some variation. The key is that you've got to be putting good content up. If all you do is say, "Hey I'm at Starbucks getting a latte," nobody's going to follow you.

You need meaty content, but occasionally a personal touch is good. I was in Big Bear on my deck one time and a bald eagle flew 20 feet above me. I happened to have my camera on hand and I took a shot of it and posted it on Facebook. That was one of the biggest responses I've ever gotten.

You can't go wrong with animals.

It starts a dialogue and that's what social media is all about. That's also why you should respond to some of the comments you get. Say, "thanks," or "that's a good point," or "here's something I forgot." Engage personally—not with every comment, but with at least some of them.

All of this costs very little, but it is time consuming, isn't it?

Here's what I recommend: Set aside a certain time each day, and don't make it prime working hours. Do this at night while you're watching American Idol, during a commercial break. Maybe on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays you post your messages, make comments, and add content. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, do your friend requests.

When I started doing this, I would take bite-sized pieces of my books or articles and make up 50 or 100 of them in 140 characters or less. Then over three or four weeks, I'd Tweet them out or put them on Facebook. I schedule Tweets at CoTweet.com, so the same tweet goes out every six or eight hours when it's in the middle of the day where my clients are on the other side of the world.

There are so many social networking tools and websites. Is it easy to get overwhelmed with choices?

You have to find a system that works for you. If you're looking for the biggest bang from social networking, go with the big three: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Then look around and see what else suits you; focus on sites where you like the people. I'm on Ecademy and Xing, which are like LinkedIn, but different.

For instance, the people on Ecademy are highly engaged. It's very much about bulletin boards and a lot of dialogue. I did a blog post that got 25 comments but when I put it on Ecademy, it got 120 responses. So check out groups and find some that suit you and your focus. Just remember that building a powerful personal network is more about farming—cultivating relationships—than it is about hunting.

Does that mindset help avoid those unrealistic expectations?

Entrepreneurs need to understand that social media is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It's a way of building up you, your expertise, and your brand. In my latest book, I talk about a concept called VCP: Visibility, credibility, and profitability. It's a chronological process. You first have to be visible, so you have to get out there and network. Then over time you establish credibility, so people know what you're good at by reading your material, by seeing you in operation face-to-face, and through testimonials.

Only when you've gotten to credibility can you nudge it over to profitability. Networking goes bad when people try to jump ahead of the process. That's why networking sometimes feels so slimy. You're at a business mixer where everybody's passing out business cards and trying to do business when they have no relationship whatsoever. That's not networking, it's direct selling—and it's bad direct selling.

You're the founder of a face-to-face networking organization. Why talk so much about online networking?

Face-to-face networking is not going away in my lifetime. Unless someday it's like in Star Wars, where we have holograms of ourselves that are so big and impressive that we don't have to be at the table, it's still important. It's like a haircut: You have to be present. So whenever there's an option, there's something better about face-to-face. That's why we have 5,600 BNI groups in 44 countries around the world.

But you may want to sell to people all over the world, in places where you can't meet them face-to-face. That's where the online option comes in, and it's powerful word-of-mouth for your brand. Just make sure it's part of your comprehensive marketing strategy. That should include traditional advertising as well as networking.

Investment Firm Buys AOL's Bebo

San Francisco Chronicle

 

AOL Inc. paid $850 million two years ago for Bebo Inc., but on Thursday unloaded the slumping San Francisco social-networking firm in a deal reportedly worth less than $10 million.

Criterion Capital Partners LLC, a Los Angeles private investment firm that specializes in turnarounds, takes over a company that is more popular outside of the United States, but by far is overshadowed by social-networking rivals Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Exact terms were not disclosed, but AOL chief executive officer Tim Armstrong said in a memo to employees that the deal for AOL "will also create a meaningful tax deduction, which should allow us to more effectively manage our tax strategy."

Bebo has 30 employees working in offices in the same South of Market building that houses Twitter Inc. Bebo also has three workers in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters will remain in San Francisco.

In April, Bebo's future didn't look bright after AOL said it would either sell or shut Bebo down.

AOL was still part of Time Warner Inc. when it bought Bebo in May 2008 for $850 million, although Time Warner chief executive officer Jeff Bewkes has later said the company "may have overpaid."

At the time, Bebo was particularly popular in the United Kingdom, but Bebo's fortunes waned as Facebook Inc. overtook MySpace as the world's most dominant social network.

According to ComScore Inc., Bebo had 12.6 million unique visitors worldwide in April, down from 26.9 million one year before. Bebo's U.S. traffic dropped to 4.9 million visitors in April 2010, from 10.2 million the previous April.

Meanwhile, traffic to Palo Alto's Facebook zoomed from 307.1 million worldwide and 67.5 million in the United States in April 2009 to 519 million worldwide and 121.8 million in the United States in the same month this year, according to comScore.

AOL said Bebo also has members in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, India, Pakistan and the Netherlands.

Criterion Capital Managing Partner Adam Levin led the acquisition, joined by business strategist Paul Abramowitz and Web entrepreneur Richard Hecker, a news release said.

"The young, highly active user base, revenue history, presence in countries throughout the world and solid technical infrastructure make it an attractive media platform both as a stand-alone entity and in the context of our broader investment objectives," Levin said in a statement.

But AOL founder Steve Case, who is no longer with the company, used his Twitter account to voice his skepticism about the deal.

"AOL buying Bebo for $850 million and then selling 2 years later for $10 million doesn't seem like a winning strategy," Case said in the tweet.

Augie Ray, a social-media analyst with Forrester Research, said that "at this point, it does not seem Bebo has any serious chance to compete as an all-purpose social network."

However, he said, Bebo's best chance could be to concentrate on a niche audience, in the same way MySpace "is focusing more on social sharing around entertainment."

Or Criterion could "simply let Bebo run the course that it's on. It still receives several million visitors per month, and even though Bebo continues to shrink, those visitors still represent ad revenue," he said.

Analyists: Facebook Seeks More Revenue, Not Control of the Web

Computer World

 

Moves could boost Facebook's marketing revenue if they don't lead to another user revolt

Contrary to a lot of online buzz, analysts say that Facebook's moves this week don't indicate that the company is looking to take over the Web.

Facebook on Wednesday unveiled a bevy of development tools aimed at enabling the social networking phenom to extend its reach across a greater expanse of the Web.

The new tools let operators of other Web sites share user data with Facebook, providing the social networking firm with new online advertising opportunities.

Industry analysts say the moves could affect the future breadth and pervasiveness of social networking, extending it to many new areas of the Internet, including news and e-commerce sites.

"Facebook isn't going to take over the Web, as much as they might try," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "What this does signify is that social networking has reached the point where it's very big business and the stakes are high. Facebook sees the opportunity to make a power play and get into the online marketing game in a much bigger way. At this point, we don't know if Facebook has a gold mine here or not."

Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, agrees that Facebook is likely looking to position itself as a leader in the effort to create a more social Web so that it can better capitalize on its revenue potential.

"This is Facebook making strategic moves to own its customers and [get] the revenue these customers generate," said Enderle. "It is likely the first of a number of steps [toward] pushing [social networking] beyond what it is now. In fact, we may stop calling it social networking as it becomes an integral part of the Web experience."

Stuart Williams, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said Facebook is in a race to stake a position in the expanding business before other companies create alternatives tools aimed at attracting Facebook users and their marketing potential.

"Vendors -- Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, IBM -- are bringing social platforms to market all over the place for both business and personal environments," said Williams. "Users are getting more sophisticated about wanting more control over their online personas as well as their personal data, comments, photos, video and history. Facebook is monetizing the online personas of their users, by doing them the favor of integrating the Facebook environment with other social platforms and Web services. "

A key question, said Olds, is whether users will see the Facebook SEO moves as a favor or a flagrant misuse of personal information. Facebook users have a history of speaking up -- loudly -- about perceived threats to their privacy.

"It's not that this type of information - my likes, my dislikes, what I'm talking about now -- isn't already public in Facebook," Olds said. "It is, but it's primarily confined to my universe of friends and admirers. Facebook is going to give marketers a lot more information to pinpoint and direct advertising to me."

He predicted that "there's going to be a firestorm of criticism over this, Users are very touchy about privacy and being used against their will. This has the potential to mash those user hot buttons with a hammer."

Williams added that the new features could be a prime example of Facebook's tendency to simultaneously please and irritate its users.

"Users get more and easier access to other platforms but Facebook and its partners get more value from the aggregate usage and shared information," he said. "I see the clouds of a civil war on the horizon between users and the platform vendors as users want more discrete control over their history, privacy and data, and the platform vendors who drive advertising and data mining businesses."

Study: Young Adults do Care about Online Privacy

 

NEW YORK (AP) - All the dirty laundry younger people seem to air on social networks these days might lead older Americans to conclude that today's tech-savvy generation doesn't care about privacy.

Such an assumption fits happily with declarations that privacy is dead, as online marketers and social sites such as Facebook try to persuade people to share even more about who they are, what they are thinking and where they are at any given time.

But it's not quite true, a new study finds. Despite mounds of anecdotes about college students sharing booze-chugging party photos, posting raunchy messages and badmouthing potential employers online, young adults generally care as much about privacy as older Americans.

The report, from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania, is among the first quantitative studies looking at young people's attitudes toward privacy as government officials and corporate executives alike increasingly grapple with such issues.

"It is going to counter a lot of assumptions that have been made about young adults and their attitudes toward privacy," said Mary Madden, senior researcher at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. She was not part of the study but reviewed the report for The Associated Press ahead of Thursday's release.

Among the findings:

- Eighty-eight percent of people of all ages said they have refused to give out information to a business because they thought it was too personal or unnecessary. Among young adults, 82 percent have refused, compared with 85 percent of those over 65.

- Most people - 86 percent - believe that anyone who posts a photo or video of them on the Internet should get their permission first, even if that photo was taken in public. Among young adults 18 to 24, 84 percent agreed - not far from the 90 percent among those 45 to 54.

- Forty percent of adults ages 18 to 24 believe executives should face jail time if their company uses someone's personal information illegally - the same as the response among those 35 to 44 years old.

The survey, based on a 2009 telephone survey of 1,000 Americans 18 and older, did find some areas with generational differences in attitudes. For example, while 69 percent of all respondents said a company should be fined more than $2,500 for privacy violations, only 54 percent of those 18 to 24 years old thought the fine should be that steep.

Even so, the majority of young people generally agreed with their older counterparts in wanting more privacy, not less.

"Yes, there are some young people who are posting racy photographs and personal information. But those anecdotes might not represent what the average young person is doing online," said Chris Hoofnagle, co-author of the study and director of information privacy programs at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Although they grew up in the digital age, young people know surprisingly little about their rights to online privacy, the study found. They seem more confident than older adults that the government would protect them, even though U.S. privacy laws offer few such safeguards.

The lack of knowledge about the law, coupled with an online environment that encourages people to share personal information, may be one reason young people can seem careless about privacy, according to the study, which was conducted in July 2009 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

There is also some evidence that, by virtue of their age, adolescents and young adults' brains are hard-wired toward risky behavior, the report said, citing past psychological studies.

The researchers suggest that lawmakers and educators should not assume that young adults do not care about privacy and therefore don't need protections.

Rather, they say, "policy discussions should acknowledge that the current business environment ... sometimes encourages young adults to release personal data in order to enjoy social inclusion even while in their most rational moments they may espouse more conservative norms."

Yet that doesn't mean you shouldn't believe all the stories about younger people prolifically posting photos of their beer-guzzling, scantily clad selves.

"But there is not enough research to find out (whether) older people do the same thing," said Joseph Turow, professor at Penn's Annenberg School for Communication. "Older adults, they may not show up naked, but they may be releasing other kinds of (personal) information."

Once-Fading MySpace Focuses on Youthful Reincarnation
USA Today

MySpace Revamps, still not driving website traffic for other sites

BEVERLY HILLS — Facebook thumped it, and Twitter threatens it as a source for entertainment news and real-time searches.

But MySpace, nestled in the entertainment capital of the world, thinks it can survive — even thrive — as a repository for all things music, Avatar and Twilight for the under-35 crowd.

"It would be silly to count us out," says Jason Hirschhorn, who, with Mike Jones, runs the company as co-president. They replaced Owen Van Natta, who was jettisoned as CEO last month after less than 10 months on the job.

"There is a pulse of pop culture on MySpace," says Hirschhorn, a former MTV executive. "It is the place where 100 million people congregate, and hundreds of thousands sign up every day,"

They have their work cut out. MySpace, a unit of News Corp. Digital, has stumbled through two CEO resignations in the past year, while Facebook and Twitter surged. (Van Natta's predecessor, Chris DeWolfe, left in April 2009.) Nonetheless, MySpace remains one of the Internet's most enduring brands. It is profitable, and it is expected to haul in more than $350 million in revenue this year — mostly from ads.

Hirschhorn acknowledges that every major brand goes through plateaus, but says the strong ones overcome them. He and Jones concede that MySpace's online traffic had flattened last spring, user engagement was down, and its products lacked focus and vision. But with an ambitious rebranding now underway, they foresee a renewal in its fortunes. The company is hiring engineers designers and marketers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

MySpace is moving back to its original DNA: appealing to self-expressive, creative under-35-year-olds who are into games, music and movies. More than half of MySpace's estimated 100 million users are 25 and younger, according to market researcher ComScore. The 13-to-34-year-old demographic spends 84% of all user time on the service.

MySpace intends to appeal to that demographic with a mantra of "Discover and be discovered," a fancy way of saying it wants to be the online venue to find new friends, movie trailers, little-known bands and social games.

The rebranding is illustrated in design mockups splashed across the walls of a user-experience lab here: simple, clean pages with vibrant looks designed to draw artists, hard-core social-media users, brand managers and others. There is even talk of a new company logo.

In its pursuit of customers, MySpace has reinvented itself in several ways:

•New user home pages, released last month, are heavy on live personal content, but without the clutter once associated with the original MySpace design. "The product got too big and congested," Jones says, looking at a simplified new interface mockup. "It became unfocused."

•Forthcoming profiles for celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie are easier to navigate and offer encyclopedic data on their subjects.

•Social-gaming firm Playdom is helping MySpace reinvigorate its gaming channel. This month, it launches Wild Ones, a shoot-'em-up already available on Facebook, on MySpace. More games, including ones exclusive to MySpace, are on the way. "Thirty percent of our users play games; we think it should be at least 50%," says Jones, a former AOL executive.

•Through its constant tweets on Twitter, MySpace has developed into a heavy-duty entertainment news service for music, celebrities and youth-oriented movies such as New Moon and Alice in Wonderland. Twitter and MySpace have also synced services, so tweets or status updates on one service are automatically duplicated on the other.

MySpace is not only reinventing itself, but recasting the competitive climate. "When we think about Twitter and Facebook, we don't think about competition as much as we think about partnership, distribution and synchronization," Hirschhorn says.

Yet can MySpace — once the undisputed king of social networking — remain relevant as a scaled-down Web portal for music and entertainment news? Industry analysts, including Debra Aho Williamson, aren't so sure. They say MySpace faces an obstacle course of competitors, starting with the omnipresent Facebook and now including Google Buzz.

"For months we've heard about the company's plan to refocus on its historic roots in music and entertainment," says Williamson, of market researcher eMarketer. "But the turnaround has been painfully slow, and this shakeup will only reinforce the perception that MySpace can't be fixed."

Though millions of people use MySpace Music, the company "clearly needs to find its next big" thing, says Richard Greenfield, an analyst at investment brokerage BTIG. "This is no easy task and may require a meaningful acquisition, maybe of a social-gaming company like Zynga or a start-up."

Since Facebook's audience overtook MySpace last May — 70.3 million unique users vs. 70.2 million — it has widened its lead dramatically. Today, Facebook boasts 400 million members, about four times as many as MySpace.

As audiences melt from MySpace, so are marketers, says researcher eMarketer. Facebook will surpass MySpace in advertising revenue this year for the first time — a year earlier than expected, it says.

EMarketer estimates ad spending on MySpace will fall 21% this year, to $385 million, worldwide. It expects Facebook to rake in $605 million in ads worldwide this year, up 39% from 2009. If not for a three-year, $900 million search deal with Google that is set to expire by midyear, MySpace's revenue would be lower, Williamson says.

MySpace's Jones says his company is still in discussions with Google to possibly extend the deal, or it could partner with others in the future.

"MySpace has been good at monetization, and others notice that," he says.

Privately held Facebook, by comparison, could vacuum up $700 million to $1.1 billion in revenue this year, based on estimates from analysts including Forrester Research's Augie Ray. However, Trip Chowdhry, of Global Equities Research, says $350 million to $500 million is more accurate.

"MySpace rested on their laurels, got complacent and failed to innovate," says Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at market researcher Altimeter Group.

Return to its roots

Facebook's dominance notwithstanding, MySpace and others can thrive in fragmented spaces, such as music and entertainment news, says Eric Mandl, head of large-cap tech banking at UBS.

MySpace remains a force in music. More than 13 million bands, from Pearl Jam to garage bands, find it a vibrant tool to communicate with fans.

"Their brand was born in the music community, as a hub for attracting bands and fans," says Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, an online music service."There still is a tremendous loyalty toward MySpace, and it is a monster audience. They were the first mass destination and home for DIY artists. Bands remember that."

And, yes, MySpace's appeal lingers for celebrities and creative types.

Cindy Margolis, a former Playboy Playmate with 16,000 people on her MySpace fan page, still finds it a useful marketing tool. It is part of her PR strategy to promote her Fox Reality Channel show, Seducing Cindy. She also uses Facebook and a personal website.

"To keep my loyal cyberbuddies, I need MySpace," she says. "It is a huge vehicle to gain, and maintain, thousands of followers. Facebook is more intimate. They are two different spaces."

"It's great to get feedback on the shows that I do, which can be complicated," says Bobby Roth, who has directed episodes of Prison Break, Lost and FlashForward. He has 10,000 friends on MySpace.

MySpace's enduring appeal to millions, with the backing of Fox, has not been lost on software developers like Jon Siegal, CEO of Fan Appz, a Facebook application that helps celebrities and athletes market themselves to fans. Siegal and others are interested in working with MySpace.

"The game isn't over for (MySpace)," Owyang says. "They still have a strong foothold, the opportunity to try new tactics, if their management team — and internal culture — can quickly come into alignment."

Says Hirschhorn, "We will always be culturally relevant. And we'll be here in five, 10 years."

Some Ditch Social Networks to Reclaim Time, Privacy
USA Today

Facebook reports that it has 400 million active users worldwide. Make that 399,999,999. Laura LeNoir is done.

"I feel better, I feel lighter, I got my privacy back," says LeNoir, 42, an office manager at an educational software company in Birmingham, Ala., who logged off a few weeks ago. "People say, 'You'll be back.' But I read more, walk the dogs more. I'll be fine."

As the social networking train gathers momentum, some riders are getting off.

Their reasons run the gamut from being besieged by online "friends" who aren't really friends to lingering concerns over where their messages and photos might materialize. If there's a common theme to their exodus, it's the nagging sense that a time-sucking habit was taking the "real" out of life.



"When I first closed my Facebook account, I felt disconnected from the world and missed the constant updates," says Leanna Fry, 32, of Provo, Utah, who is teaching English in Erzurum, Turkey. She signed off after feeling harassed by strangers. "But I've discovered I don't have to know what hundreds of people are doing. Now I have more time for people who really matter in my life."

Even super-connected celebrities are bolting. Disney pop siren Miley Cyrus quit Twitter last fall, followed by British singer Lily Allen. Both women said the site was proving a distraction from their relationships. Allen signed off with "I am a neo-Luddite, goodbye."

That desire to unplug has made an unexpected success out of websites such as Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and Seppukoo (a play on the Japanese word for "suicide"), free sites that automate and turbocharge the otherwise laborious manual process of scrapping your online self.

Lucca, Italy-based Seppukoo helped 20,000 people erase themselves from Facebook after the site launched last fall. Two-month-old Web 2.0 Suicide Machine — where a noose dangles near a ticker tracking the digital mayhem ("181,898 friends have been unfriended, 329,908 tweets removed") — has been used by 2,600 people. Thousands more are waiting to be accommodated by the site's small server, says Walter Langelaar, 32, one of three programmers who created the "art project" for Moddr, a media lab in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

"We are not anti-social-networking," says Langelaar, noting that the program was conceived for a party the lab threw a year ago to encourage face-to-face interaction. "We do, however, feel things are getting so messy in that world that (the sites) just get in the way of people living their lives."

Facebook is not amused. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has blocked the servers of both sites and sent cease-and-desist letters stating that they violate Facebook's statement of rights and responsibilities policies by collecting user login data.

"Facebook provides the ability for (users) to use the site to deactivate their account or delete it completely," says Facebook spokesman Simon Axten.

Langelaar says Moddr has circumvented the block and counters: "We're not collecting login information; users bring their (data) to us. We are thinking of hiring our own lawyers."

Seppukoo, however, is now lifeless. "We have postponed any decisions until after our next Anti Social NotWorking art project comes out in the next weeks" is the cryptic comment from Guy McMusker of Les Liens Invisibles, a consortium of Web-focused artists responsible for the program.

Although Twitter is among the sites that programs such as Seppukoo can scour, the San Francisco-based micro-blogging venture has "no issues with people who want to leave," says spokesman Seth Garrett. "Our research shows that quite often they come back later."

Even tens of thousands of dropouts represent a fallen leaf in the forest of social networkers happily updating their status/thoughts/whereabouts at this very moment.

Facebook dominates that landscape, according to The Nielsen Co. It drew more than 110 million unique visitors in the USA in December, double its 2008 numbers. MySpace was second with nearly 60 million, a 17% drop from the previous year. Twitter pulled in nearly 20 million, and sites such as Classmates and LinkedIn had about 10 million.

Youth still rules in this domain. About 65% of kids 12 to 17 (and 37% of adults ages 18 and up) use a social networking site, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. "For many, the time and energy spent putting content up means it's hard to leave," says Amanda Lenhart, Pew senior research specialist.

That said, the 24/7 tech addiction is causing even diehard social site fans to set limits, says Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist with Intel. In a recent survey on mobile-device etiquette, Bell found that 69% said checking e-mail and sending texts in the company of others was unacceptable.

"This always-on lifestyle is being pushed as desirable, (but) there's a deeply rooted human need to have downtime," says Bell, director of user experience at Intel's Digital Home Group. "Perhaps tuning out of social networking is just a way of recalibrating that need for downtime."

Her recent interviews with users reveal that for some the ideal vacation spot is one without Web access. "We're starting to ask, how does all of this (technology) truly fit into our lives?" she says.

'Push back from this tide of technology'

One antidote to the always-on life is Freedom, free software that disables any Apple computer's Internet access for up to eight hours. About 100,000 Web users have downloaded Freedom since 2008, says Fred Stutzman, a graduate student in information sciences at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the program's creator.

"Freedom is a statement that it's OK to push back from this tide of technology and find some space to really think," he says.

People tuning out temporarily eventually could spell trouble for networking sites such as Facebook, says Danah Boyd, social media scholar at Microsoft Research in Boston. "A huge number of early adopters joined Facebook because they felt as though they had to, not because they were passionate about the site," she says.

Boyd cites the early networking site Friendster, which many users ditched for newcomer MySpace. "When the passion was lost, the group walked away. The folks who disengage from Facebook may not be vocal," but they're not to be ignored.

Another frequent user complaint: the barbarians at your virtual gates.

"With social media, there can be this critical moment where strangers take over," says James Fowler, co-author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. "Twitter could face such a danger, because it's this enormous spam machine now."

Mark Dockendorff, 30, an investment adviser in Cincinnati, initially liked the way sites "let you get to know people through their pages, which is so much easier than talking in a bar. But now a lot of my friends are putting their pages on the back burner and just not updating."

As is Dockendorff, who was put off by his mom friending his ex-girlfriend. "Awkward," he says.

A move to Beijing led Larissa Paschyn to leave Facebook when the site was blocked by the Chinese government. Now this "avid user" feels liberated.

"There are many other ways to meet new people and truly experience life," says Paschyn, 24, a television host for CCTV International.

She also has a confession. One of her Facebook guilty pleasures was "checking up on people who were mean to me in school so I could gloat about my life," she says. Being off social sites has "made me a better person and less self-centered."

'It was consuming my life'

When Julian Smith grew frustrated with Facebook, he got silly. His video 25 Things I Hate About Facebook, which has 1.3 million views on YouTube, shows him being literally poked by a friend (No. 2) and lamenting ads for hot singles (No. 21).

"It's the way people are using social networking sites that's lame," says Smith, 22, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. "Sure, it's a great way for me to let people know if I have a new film clip out. But to socialize with friends? Don't think so."

Dustin Blythe was initially elated when he joined Facebook. Then the snowball grew.

"I felt compelled to update my page every hour or so, even if there really was nothing new to write or show," says Blythe, 35, who registers voters in Mishawaka, Ind. "It was like (the sci-fi movie) Logan's Run, trapped in a society I couldn't get out of."

So he went cold turkey. Blythe now blogs instead, updating friends and family on his own timetable. "I have no regrets," he says. "Now I can post what's on my mind without the perceived pressure of keeping up with the Joneses and their BlackBerrys."

Getting off Facebook was tough for Roger Williams, whose love of technology earned him the nickname "Chaplain Geek" at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Stockton, Calif., where he's a grief counselor. But his New Year's resolution was to take a break from social networking.

"I liked that I could reconnect with friends from 30 years ago, but that soon turned into all sorts of people contacting me who I really didn't want to hear from," says Williams, 52, whose alma maters and friends-with-causes hit him up for donations. "I was getting hammered for money. I thought, 'Hey, I'm not a commercial entity.' I felt used."

Another frequent complaint from social networkers is that the variety of sites is overwhelming. Joe Ross recently used Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to wipe out his existence on MySpace, because he felt the site was getting too commercial.

"It was very cool to watch," says Ross, 26, a law student who works for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. But don't write him off the scene yet.

"I'm still on Facebook, and I'm a heavy Twitter user and blogger," he says. "Most of the people I'm friends with are people I wouldn't know if it weren't for social networking."

Ah, that word again. Friends.

Jim Hennessey was an avid social networker, using MySpace and Facebook for social updates, LinkedIn for work contacts, not to mention Meebo, Geni, Jiibe, Flickr and others.

The result? "I was so busy updating my various sites that there wasn't a social desire left in my body," says Hennessy, 42, a marketing consultant from Nashville. "It was getting impersonal."

So much so that when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma last year, Hennessey didn't get much support from his online community beyond a few messages. "I knew a lot of people (online), but it was a false sense of comfort," he says.

Though not willing to commit social networking suicide just yet, Hennessey, his cancer in remission, is now more circumspect about its powers and promises. And hungry for the human touch.

"A while back I met up with someone I got to know on Facebook, which was nice," he says. "But when she introduced me, she said, 'This is my friend Jim from Facebook,' as if it were a place.

"I just want to be Jim from Nashville."

Social Media Security Flaws Haunting The Internet
Scandals, Probes, Hacks
Social Sites Creating Huge Headaches Worldwide
Canada Privacy Office Launches New Facebook Probe
AP

Canada's privacy commissioner is once again probing Facebook over the online social network's privacy policies.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada said Wednesday it is investigating a complaint from a Facebook user over changes the company introduced in December.

The announcement came just five months after Facebook agreed to give users more control over the information they share with outside applications such as games and quizzes in response to concerns raised by Canadian privacy officials.

The latest complaints stem from changes Facebook made to give users more granular controls over what information is shared with others, while pushing users to be more open.

The complaint alleges that Facebook's new, "default" settings made more information exposed than the user had previously intended. Facebook insists those settings were merely recommendations.

Elizabeth Denham, the assistant privacy commissioner, said some Facebook users have been disappointed at changes that were supposed to improve protection of their personal information.

Facebook, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., said it has not seen the complaint but it is confident that its process last month was "consistent with user expectations, and within the law."

In the U.S., the Electronic Privacy Information Center and nine other organizations have also filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over last month's changes.

Squeezing Websites Onto Cellphones

The Wall Street Journal

When a group of engineers at National Instruments Corp. modified a 1988 Oldsmobile so it could be controlled by an iPhone, the company was quick to share the project on its online forum for customers.

A spouse "might not care about it, but our community eats it up," said Deidre Walsh, community and social media manager for National Instruments, a supplier of automation and computer measurement tools.

The Austin, Texas, company has a fostered dedicated online group of 125,000 engineers and scientists with do-it-yourself projects. Its strategy illustrates how companies have increasingly turned to Web communities to build their brand, address customer service problems and unveil new products.

But as people spend more time on their cellphones, many companies are considering taking their message boards, user forums and blogs to mobile devices. National Instruments is considering ways to build a mobile site, Ms. Walsh says but has to resolve issues such as how users can share programming code, which are large files.

Other companies, including technology giant Hewlett-Packard Co., are discussing ways to build their first Web sites specifically for wireless users. "We definitely have work to do to get our Web site mobile friendly," said Lois Townsend, H-P's director of community. "We know our customers want it."

H-P has a financial incentive to expand its community strategy. The forums, which often address problems before a customer has to call the service line, have saved millions of dollars in deflected calls, Ms. Townsend said.

The move to mobile isn't without challenges. Companies have to decide whether to create a barebones site accessible by even the most basic handset, or opt for a flashier application accessible by select smart phones. Different phones, screen sizes and platforms create headaches for site designers.

Mike Hardy, community manager for Pitney Bowes Inc., says moving the company's online forums to mobile devices is a "no brainer" though the postage-meter maker is still evaluating technologies to do so.

H-P and Pitney Bowes aren't the only companies without a mobile-friendly site. Among others without a significant mobile presence are retailer Ikea International A/S, Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. Samsung says it is exploring the possibility of mobile site but declined to comment further. Ikea and Apple didn't respond to requests for comment.

There are some who believe that the idea of a site designed for phones is becoming less relevant as mobile browsers improve. Most smart phones, for instance, are able to load up sites built for the computer.

Some companies are hesitant to build a mobile site because they want more than just a simple page displaying wares, said Robert Chimsky, a consultant for inCode Telecom. While there are still many companies without a mobile site or application, "given the way things are moving, having a mobile-enabled capability is going to be increasingly important," Mr. Chimsky said.

Companies, however, have to avoid overloading customers with information. "You have to be very careful of what you're pushing and how you're pushing it," Mr. Chimsky said. "It's that relevancy angle that's so hard."

The cellphone affords the opportunity to be more interactive with customers. That's where companies such as Lithium Technologies Inc. come in. The Emeryville, Calif., company's software runs the social components of many traditional Web sites, including those of H-P, AT&T Inc., and Best Buy Co.

Lithium wants to take those forums, blogs and other social-networking elements to cellphones with a service it plans to roll out next year. Beyond its own social-networking tools, the platform will draw in related feeds from services such as Facebook and Twitter.

"A lot of these companies don't have a mobile site, and right away, they'll have a lot of content," said Philip Soffer, Lithium's vice president of product marketing. "Because the community is active and based on addictive behavior, it's the kind of thing that works well on mobile phones."

Lithium declined to provide the pricing for its upcoming service, which would work on any phone.

It's not the only company looking to bring large corporate sites to the mobile Web. Rival Jive Software Inc., which powers communities for companies like Nike Inc., SAP AG and National Instruments, has opted to go with a program specifically designed for the iPhone.

The Portland, Ore., company last month unveiled an iPhone app that gives corporate workers access to Jive-powered message boards and blogs. While the app is a free download, Jive charges a company $10,000 a year for up to 1,000 users.

For BlackBerry users, the company has a simpler Web interface and email alerts on community developments.

Unlike Lithium, Jive is focused on smart-phone users, noting that sites specifically designed for the devices can do more. "We think the magic happens really when you're able to go deep with functionality," said Ben Kiker, Jive's marketing chief.

Researcher: Google Wave, iPhone and Android will be Heavily Attacked in 2010
USA Today

 

From the crystal ball of  Roel Schouwenberg: Google Wave, the iPhone and Android mobile phones will come under heavy cyber attacks in 2010.

Schouwenberg, a senior malware researcher at Kaspersky Lab Americas, predicts Google Wave will grab headlines in coming months -- but not necessarily for emerging as the next killer online networking app. Instead, he says, Google Wave is likely to become a top target of cyber criminals.

"Attacks on this new Google service will no doubt follow the usual pattern," Schouwenberg soothsays. "First, the sending of spam, followed by phishing attacks, then the exploiting of vulnerabilities and the spreading of malware."

Schouwenberg also anticipates a sharp rise in attacks on the iPhone and Android mobile platforms, following the successful probe attacks of 2009. "The first malicious programs for these mobile platforms appeared in 2009, a sure sign that they have aroused the interest of cybercriminals," he says.

Android users, in particular, seem ripe for plundering. "The increasing popularity of mobile phones running the Android operating system, combined with a lack of effective checks to ensure third-party software applications are secure, will lead to a number of high-profile malware outbreaks," he says.

Schowenberg's prescient orb also tells him that  the overheated race between Google, Microsoft Bing, and Yahoo Search to incorporate Facebook and Twitter posts in search results -- in real time -- is destined to aid and abet cyber criminals' deployment of phishing scams, banking Trojans and cutting-edge intrusions. "Malware will continue to further its sophistication in 2010," he says.

Hotels Using Social Networks To Build Connections
As Originally Posted at PR Web

TravelCLICK Launches Social Media Optimization Solution at ITB in Berlin

Chicago and Berlin (PRWEB ) March 11, 2009 -- With the increasing number of social media and consumer-generated content (CGC) sites, people are spending their time online differently. Today it's about conversations--interactions that go beyond the one-on-one to one-to-many through a series of networked relationships that connect us to people, places and events like never before. To avoid being left behind, hotels need to consider being on the sites where consumers now spend their online hours. According to Jerome Wise, vice president of eCommerce for TravelCLICK International, the challenge for hoteliers is to understand these evolving channels and how they can be used to reach new markets. "Social media can provide an essentially 'free' sales and marketing channel for building connections, community and, ultimately, commerce for hoteliers who are savvy in the new order of online marketing," said Wise.

Understanding how to leverage this trend to grow brand awareness and consumer reach through proactive product placement in the social media sites is an essential element of the marketing mix for today's hotel marketers. Consistent, targeted branding and relevant messages are the keys to leveraging the power of these networks.

In response to this need, TravelCLICK is introducing a new Social Media Optimization (SMO) solution for hotels and cruise marketplace leaders. The personalized program is designed to harness the viral power of the social networks--such as Facebook, Bebo, and StudiVZ--to connect hotels with new target audiences worldwide. The offering leverages the expertise of TravelCLICK's award-winning Internet Marketing Services team to develop and implement a hotel-specific social media plan, including:

• Research and strategy to determine the most appropriate sites, depending on the hotel's profile and target guest demographics
• Creation of customized profiles on at least 10 sites (social networking sites, consumer review sites, media sharing sites, mapping and CGC business sites, and user-generated content sites)
• Submission of content and reviews on all target sites
• Support and ongoing monitoring of engagements
• Quarterly reporting on interactions and responses

The benefits of SMO go beyond leveraging social networks for their marketing value. By having a targeted strategy across sites, hoteliers and purveyors of discount Canada cruises can increase traffic to their website and also enhance their search engine optimization ranking by increasing the amount of strong content and relevant links to and from their hotel website.

"According to Google™, networking is going to be the second-most popular online activity by 2012, overtaking shopping and surpassing both communication--such as email--and entertainment," added Wise. "Hoteliers who explore social networking early on in its development will have a clear competitive advantage as it matures."

With this new capability, TravelCLICK brings even more power to its comprehensive online Internet marketing solution, which includes award-winning website design, robust content management, customized landing pages, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, and linking--all designed to drive bookings through a hotel's most profitable channel, its own website.

About TravelCLICK Inc. (www.travelclick.net)
TravelCLICK, the leader in hotel e-commerce solutions, provides a continuous flow of high-value online bookings to hotels and discount Mexico cruises worldwide. A uniquely comprehensive one-stop solution, TravelCLICK offers market intelligence, distribution, electronic marketing, and media solutions delivered with personal attention and local market expertise. With revenue optimization experts in every global market, we help our clients make better business decisions, generate greater demand from the right mix of channels, convert more shoppers to high-value guests, and increase revenue and profitability. Serving the hospitality industry since 1999, TravelCLICK has more than 13,000 customers in 140 countries with offices in Barcelona, Chicago, Dubai, Houston, Phoenix, Melbourne, Shanghai, and Tokyo.