Is Privacy A Thing Of The Past?

As I sat and watched Mike Arrington of TechCrunch interview Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, I heard them discuss the future of privacy.  It seems that Zuckerberg is evangelizing the death of the doctrine of privacy.  With Facebook being the largest social network out there, that is a pretty scary notion given the fact that we all are signing up and turning our social life over to the Internet.  I wonder what privacy will look like in the next few years?  In fact it seems to be changing at a rapid pace and evolving with every new application.

I recently helped present a series at my son’s school on “Cyber Safety”.  In addition, local law enforcement also presented on the dangers of the world of social networks and what our children are doing online and the predators that are out there and their methods.  It was very sobering to figure that there are that many people out there trying to harm our kids via the Internet and social networks.  An yet, we are all flocking to these networks as our new playgrounds and the place to be and all from the safety, or so it may seem, of our own homes.

I am particularly interested in geo-location or geo-tracking applications that are becoming more and more popular.  Twitter themselves have opened up location based Tweets so that people can determine your whereabouts as you click away at 140 characters.  These software applications are so new that they have yet to become mainstream uses for evil but it can only be a matter of time until we begin to hear of predators using them and suddenly you will hear of their evil deeds on the prime time news.

Is privacy going away?  Is our notion that we are protected by privacy laws and common sense enough?  Have you read the terms of service of each and every software application that you are using today?  Perhaps you have agreed to give up your rights to a private life by participating in that latest cool place to hang out on the Internet?  In 2009 I deemed it “The Year of Listening” as that was the new marketing mantra.  If that were the case, we should probably listen to what I am now calling “The Year of Privacy.”  It could turn out that our privacy will then turn into the “Year of Living Dangerously.”

photo via Alan Cleaver_2000

Is Facebook The New Television In Advertising?

As we approach the Super Bowl this weekend, it is that time of year when we all gather around the television to watch our favorite event, not the game itself but the commercials that are aired during the game.  There have been parties centered solely around the advertisements, and they have sites dedicated to them, and those that have no idea what American football is that turn on their TV’s.

I was recently aware that Pepsi has decided to go in another direction for its advertising that normally takes place during the super bowl.  Many other companies are now getting online as well.  I think we are about to see this as a trend.  What is it that is capturing the hearts, minds, and most of all the attention of the public?  Facebook.

It used to be that the television was the pinnacle of the advertising world, and for the most part it still is, but that trend seems to be changing.  With Facebook now entering the hundreds of millions of users, brands are beginning to rethink their use of their advertising dollars.  In addition, the target is more precise and they are getting more conversions.  I have been try8ing to understand the metrics behind the idea of television advertising as well.  We used to hear of the millions of viewers that this show garnered, or the numbers of people watching each show, but there was never any real metrics to determine other than polls and ratings.  With Facebook and other applications, we can see the clicks, the landing pages, the exit pages etc.  It has a more precise feel to the campaign.

This is the way ot the future as it relates to advertising, and once the Facebook’s of the world can get millions of dollars to get your attention for 30 seconds, the next big thing will come along.

Twitter Losing Trust

twitter_logoI was going through my feeds last night and funneling all of my reads as I tend to do in the evenings and sharing some of what I found to be interesting to my community through Twitter.  This is becoming more and more of a habit with me as I tend to pour through a lot of data.  What I think might be of interest to my followers I share.  I am generous that way.  Actually it is part of my overall plan to let the blogosphere and other platforms know that I exist—I network therefore I am.  I see a t-shirt in the makings here.

As I approached the 11:00 pm hour I noticed that my Tweetdeck was acting up.  I am the type that wants everything just to work.  I don’t care about the Internet service and other stuff I want it to work when I hit the power button.  The same thing goes for Twitter.  When I hit send and let everyone what is happening, I want it to work.  When it doesn’t I just chalk it up to another fail whale.  That is until today when I found out that Twitter was hacked.  Not  hacked by a 13 year old kid in his parents basement but by the “Iranian Cyber Army”.  Excuse me?  I was just watching a Leo Laporte show about Cyber Warefare and making fun of it actually on Twitter, but now I read that headline on TechCrunch.  You can see the rest of the coverage on Techmeme.

Twitter is starting to lose my trust.  Is this what we are going to expect out of Twitter’s future?  There has been numerous Phishing problems with Twitter and there are many other incidents just this year of them getting hacked and Google documents being obtained.  I am losing trust for Twitter quickly.  I hope they will learn from the recent attack and work on making adjustments.  Do you trust Twitter?  I’m not sure I would give them my user and password for…. Ooops!  [Runs to change password again]  I am clearly not trusting the Twitter world at present.

Just What We Need…A Twitter Song!

I think I have seen it all or in this case heard it all and then they come out with a Twitter song! This is awesome!

Dust Off Your Blog and Fix Your Foundation

I have been keeping ahead of the game of new and shiny objects by trying out the latest and greatest in tools that can be used for social media programs at companies. I have always come back to the main point of view as it relates to tools that work.  I was reading a recent blog post by David Armano related to this very idea.  David states better than I can about dusting off some of the old tools before trying out new and shiny ones:

Your Blog(s): Your company is blogging. Congratulations. Is anyone listening? Blogging was the bright and shiny object of 2006-2008 and many companies found out just how hard it is to do well. Good blogging provides value. It is interesting and generates a healthy amount of comments and conversation which in turn generates a good dose of Google juice. It’s also terribly difficult to sustain. It requires cultural shifts within an organization, and has to be prioritized (read: made part of someone’s job). Frankly, I rarely see outstanding examples of a good company blog. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing (if it makes sense strategically), but doing it well is another story.

Many companies have still not taken on blogging as a tool that will work for them.  They have gone straight to Twitter or Facebook fan pages or none of the above as yet.  I am of the camp that blogs are a place to start, and a place to start a social media foundation.  I am dusting off the blog here and trying myself to get back into the swing of blogging for business.  This is the message I mention in most conversations.  Is you blog dusty?  Perhaps a little cleaning is in order and some attention given. Then you can go off to find a new and shiny tool.

Tags: , , Bloggers For Hire, ,

The Social Media Revolution

I am behind the times on this one but I wanted to get it on my site to refer to it later.  This is a great video and worth the watch.

Some of the information in this video is already obsolete.  Social Media is moving at a rate that none of us can keep up with, and I for one sometimes must take a step back to look at the big picture to keep up with the rate of growth.

TechCrunch Snubbed From Twitter 101 Resource Page

I am not sure that anyone in the tech world has written about Twitter more than the popular news site TechCrunch.  You may have a hard time picking out the single most popular Twitter post since after 38 pages of search results on the subject I lost count of the number of articles.  The most popular recently was the scandal involving ill-gotten documents from the folks at Twitter which Tech Crunch promptly published. But more on that in a minute.

Twitter launched today their Twitter 101 pages and of note was their "Key Resources" page which is contained under the domain related to http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/.  I quickly glanced at the people that were listed on the page, and noticed right away that TechCrunch had been snubbed.  Not a single time was TechCrunch mentioned.  You would think with 38 pages of info on the company and some of the best Twitter evangelists on the planet, they could have worked a link back to TechCrunch somewhere.  Some of the best Twitter information contained anywhere is contained on the TechCrunch site.

Now this could just be a matter of numbers or it could be that they could not find a good snapshot overview of their service or it could be some other political reason that Twitter was quick to leave TechCrunch off the list as I mentioned above and wrote about in the TechCrunch and the Twitter Documents post.

This is not going to be too unlike the "Suggested Users" list and I am sure there will be plenty of folks that will be screaming about why they were not one of the featured resources that are listed.  Congrats to Chris Brogan for getting on this page with his 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business.  Okay, their might only be 10 in there but 50 was a good number.

Sorry TechCrunch I can assure you that the folks at Twitter are not going to cut you much slack from here forward, but keep up the good reporting and evangelizing!

[Hat Tip to Laughing Squid Links for beginning the inspiration for this post through the photo above.]

Tags: , , , Twitter Business 101,

Want To Be Heard On Twitter? Get Added To A Twitter Roll

It used to be that in order to be seen as an influencer or to be really taken seriously in your niche or genre, you had to be on someone’s blogroll.  Being added to a blogroll gave you some credibility and it also helped you get read by others in your group.  You got to be one of the cool kids if you were recognized on a blogroll.  The goal was to get listed on a blog roll by someone with lots of readers as well.  It also helped you get read by others, or it helped your voice get heard. Being on a blogroll was the gold standard.

Now with the likes of Twitter we get more of a situation of more noise less signal.  It is difficult to be heard. 25 Million people all hoping their 140 characters get in front of someone to read.  You may have the best ever 140 characters in the history of the world, but to broadcast it to Twitter is to cast it into the sea of information hoping to find a home. I liken it to casting an SOS note in a bottle into the ocean and hoping someone finds it.  Chances are it may never get read by the person that matters.  Twitter can be the same way.  It seems that many online marketing types believe this a great way now to broadcast their message.  They think a message in a bottle is a good way to broadcast.  Cast a net big enough and sooner or later someone may hear what you have to say.  This is not the best case scenario unless you get on someone’s list or in a group.  Instead of blogrolls, we now can put our Twitter friends or followers into groups.  I use the popular application Tweetdeck, and I have many groups of my followers distilled into readable tweets.  I have my social media colleagues and I have technology people and parenting bloggers and no, even though I joke about it quite a bit I do not have a "Hottie" Twitter group. This is how I track what is being sent via Twitter by those I want to listen to and want to hear. I want to hear all 250 Million people out there but I have yet to figure that out sans some special paid for application.

This is how I read most of the important stuff on Twitter.  I go through a specific group and see what they are talking about and what they have to say.  It may be an hour after the fact when I re-tweet something or I comment or take notice, and the reason is, I don’t have time to scan the river of noise going by at 10,000 people a minute. In the instance I am talking about you get added to my group if you provide me good thoughts or value. I don’t want to miss your tweet.  The only thing is, my groups are not public.  I need to find something that allows me to show you my groups.  I need a public app that shows my Twitter groups, my blogroll of twitter friends. I need to develop this as a widget for blogs or web sites.  You can get on my group in in my Twoops (URL taken I checked)?  Anyone? 

Photo via Mykl Roventine

Tags: , Blogrolls, , River of News, Noise vs. Signal

Twoogle?

twoogleI am trying to wrap my had around the idea that Google may possibly be the next owner of our beloved golden child in the world of social media, Twitter.  Are we ready yet to turn the keys to the Twitter kingdom over to the folks at Google?  I have been a serious watchdog lately it seems talking about Twitter ethics and the gaming of Twitter and the eroding of all things pure about the application.

How about if we turn it over to Google and make it a part of that empire?  I know Techcrunch talked about it in terms of Twitter search and that it is becoming the real time search engine.  It makes sense actually and since they turned down the money offered by Facebook due to valuation issues and Facebook’s stock, I think it could be said Google has the bank account for it.  Google and the leadership at Twitter have had dealings in the past with Blogger so in fact there may already be that relationship.  We will see how this unfolds.  I am hoping to get some further analysis from some of the people in our industry to help me grasp the idea but for now I will just try to fathom a life of Twoogle.

Update:  You can read more about it at Techrunch and the rest of the folks on Techememe.

Social Mediasphere TV Launched

smtv-logo1-300x177I have recently launched Social Mediasphere TV and added it to my list of blogs including this one and including Bloggers For Hire in the long list of blogs I contribute to and provide.  Social Mediasphere TV is an extension of the radio I was doing on Blog Talk Radio.  You can still go over and take a look at my archives at that location and I may still continue my on location live radio using that service as it seems to be a very simple solution to the technical issues related to live radio.

I will be doing my show continuing here forward on Tuesdays at 5:00 p.m. PST and 8:00 p.m. EST.  We will be discussing all things Social Media and as always we will have special guests, commentary and even you as listener can call in and ask questions make your own comments or just be a guest yourself.  I am still working through all of the issues with using the applications of the trade, but I have been given some good advice and help from many friends that are cheering me on to make this new project a success.  See you all on Tuesdays!