Alternative title: Are Facebook and LinkedIn the largest Twitter aggregators?

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all provide streams of content – the content can either be created on the service or the content can be posted automatically from outside sources – typically either RSS feeds or from one of these services to another. Both Facebook and LinkedIn have content outside of the stream while Twitter is completely based on the content stream.

What I’ve noticed more and more over the past few months is that the stream on both Facebook and LinkedIn is dominated by Twitter updates. And since I follow basically the same set of people on all 3 services, I see the same update over and over again. I understand that everyone is different but I have to assume that for many people, their overlap is somewhat similar.

This overlap of content creates several issues – I’ve discussed a few of them in years past when FriendFeed was still an active service.

The biggest issue I see with the mass sending of content updates to every possible social network is: where to comment to get a reaction from the status creator. As a basic example, if you look below, Anil Dash has posted an update on Twitter which was sucked into Facebook. Three people have commented on Anil’s content. Will Anil respond to these comments? Does he even know that these comments have been posted? And do the people commenting understand that Anil may not even know that these comments exist? While it might not be important for a typical status update, if I ask a question seeking help, then it is important that I see the replies.

There is always talk that some updates belong on Twitter, some on Facebook and some on LI. But the truth is that it seems like people just want to pass along their content to whatever service will take it (most of you know my view is that 99% of updates are not needed). I am hoping that in 2012 both Facebook and LinkedIn will offer the option to turn off third-party aggregation. Such an option would instantly clean up my streams on all three services. The downside from the company perspective is that they would lose the updates that are so important for monetization.

One note, I didn’t include Google+ in this post because they don’t currently support external aggregation. Once they do (and that will be soon I am sure), then my stream on Google+ will follow suit with Facebook and LinkedIn.

Here’s part of my Facebook stream — the highlighted pink sections are the Twitter updates (click the image to view the full stream):

And here is part of my LinkedIn stream:

Find more stories about: Facebook, LinkedIn, social media, Social Networking, Twitter

During one of the cases on Judge Judy, the plaintiff provided a printout of some messages from Facebook. After the judge went over the messages related to the case, she spent the next 30 seconds providing possibly a great overview of the majority of messages, photos and videos posted as “social media”. Below is the video clip and here is a transcription:

• Judge Judy: can I ask you a question?
• Plaintiff: yes
• Judge Judy: this is your Facebook page?
• Plaintiff: yes
• Judge Judy: and this is you in this bathing suit?
• Plaintiff: yes
• Judge Judy: and i just want to know
• Plaintiff: yes, it is me up there
• Judge Judy: is there any reason you think this is an appropriate picture to send around the Internet?
• Plaintiff: I did modeling and this is a picture that I like and I feel that I wanted to post it
• Judge Judy: (breathes) I need to take deep breaths, I need to take deep breaths
• Bailiff Petri Hawkins-Byrd: It’s only going to get worse

Maybe the next time you post something on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Path, etc., ask yourself this question before clicking the submit button, “Judge Judy is wondering, is there any reason you think this is an appropriate x to send around the Internet?”

Find more stories about: Facebook, social media

One of the deals that Living Social ran on Black Friday was a deal offering a year of the Shoprunner service for $30 with a $20 rebate for a net price of $10. Shoprunner is a service that is similar to Amazon Prime where you get free 2-day shipping from a number of online merchants including Newegg  and Lord & Taylor. Shoprunner is offered for $79 so the $10 LS deal was considered pretty good and seemed to attract a number of buyers – for example, in Dallas, Living Social notes over 3,000 purchases.

Today Shoprunner posted their own deal which bests the Living Social deal! I am not sure I have ever seen a company that just ran a deal on a national deal site run their own deal with even better terms. If you hit “like” on the Shoprunner Facebook page, they will give you a year of the Shoprunner service for free. Of course you already know, as with most “like” deals, that you don’t actually need to hit Like to get the deal- here’s a direct link to the signup page.

There’s only one problem – clearly Shoprunner wasn’t ready for the “deal effect” (kinda like the Digg effect but bigger) and so the site is barely functional. In fact there have been over 1,200 comments on the Shoprunner Facebook page regarding the deal and people complaining that they can’t get the signup page to load. I am disappointed that Shoprunner is requiring a credit card to signup – and so far I can’t get the signup to complete – keep getting all sorts of error messages.

UPDATE 3pm Eastern: Shoprunner has posted the following message on their Facebook page:

Folks – this is Mike Golden. I am the President of ShopRunner. We are so sorry for the aggravitation we have caused today. We just got more overwhelmed with traffic than we ever anticipated. I have made the decision to keep this open all day because it simply wouldn’t be fair after you tried so hard to deny you a free membership…Once again I want to give everyone an update. There is no question our systems are still struggling to keep up with the load. While the majority of attemps are successful, there are still plenty of folks experiencing error messages.

Again, there is another option. You can send an email to Promo@ShopRunner.com and we will send you a unique PIN# that will allow you to set up your ShopRunner membership for Free when things have settled down. No reason you should have to spend your valuable time filling out forms and getting error messages, so feel free to take us up on that offer. Again – that address is Promo@ShopRunner.com

I wonder if today’s deal will push the new crop of deal sites including Living Social and Groupon to force merchants who use the services to sign agreements that they won’t promote their own deals for a period of time before and after their deal runs on the deal sites. Today’s Shoprunner deal makes Living Social look bad because a consumer may opt to wait to see if a better deal might come along rather than running for their credit card as soon as LS posts a deal.

If you want to get this deal but can’t get the page to load, you might checkout the Amex Giftchain deal which seems to be giving out mostly Shoprunner subscriptions as the freebie.

Find more stories about: Black Friday, Facebook, LivingSocial, ShopRunner

Facebook is holding an all-day, free event on November 2 in Austin at the Sheraton hotel (would have been great if the event was held at the Facebook office). The day will start at 9:30 AM and end at 5PM and will include lunch. The event will center around the Facebook Open Graph and will include talks on games, mobile and marketing. There is a keynote presentation but the speaker was not noted.

If you want to meet a Facebook developer, this looks like a great opportunity to get some time with their team. It looks like the event will host about 100 attendees so it might be a good chance to meet other local developers.

Here is the overview of the event from Facebook:
“This is a unique opportunity to get hands-on experience with the new Open Graph technologies recently launched at f8, Facebook’s Developer conference. During this all-day program, Facebook will host technical deep-dives, a Q&A with our Developer team, and an opportunity for you and your team to share 1:1 time with Facebook Engineers during ‘Office Hours’.”

You can register for the Facebook event here.

Find more stories about: Austin, Facebook, social media, Social Networking, Texas

As most of the world knows by now, Facebook began rolling out new “features” on their social networking service this week. Besides the ability to go back to 1950 and note the first time you drove an Edsel, the other big change is that now you will be able to share what you are doing without clicking anything – it’s “frictionless”. You should take a moment and read Dave Winer’s post which looks at why you should logout of Facebook and Dan Lyons hilarious post about how all of our lives have been changed forever.

When I watched the livestream of the Facebook announcements, I immediately commented wondering how long before a wife divorces a husband because she sees that he is browsing Victoria’s Secret for panties that are a different size than she wears. I still give it about a week before the first stories of inappropriate business are posted. Back in 2007, a man was fired because his employer-provided GPS showed him leaving work early.

It looks like an example of what is to come on Facebook hit eBay this weekend. Found via Darren Stuart, a man in Swindon in the United Kingdom is selling a Tom Tom Go model 700 GPS receiver on eBay. This might be the most hilarious auction I’ve seen – of course the story is a bit emotional as the man found out that his wife is/was cheating on him. The auction is currently at a price of £10,000,000 which is just over 15 million USD.

From the auction (read the full description on eBay):

This was my wife’s, may her knicker draw be infested with the fleas of a thousand Camels…The Go 700 was once the top of the range Sat Nav from TomTom, with an internal Hard Disk Drive instead of the traditional SD Card, and had full Bluetooth and Wireless capabilities.  I bought this for the back-stabbing harlot, some four or five years ago, before she met Nigel with the Little Penis, and it cost me over £400…

Her infidelity was discovered when I took her car for an MOT, and while waiting, I was tinkering with the Sat Nav and noticed that all her recent journeys had all been to Nigel’s…So, like any normal human, I reprogrammed Nigel’s address to one in a town far far away…

There are over 100 questions posted on the auction and the seller has responded to all of them. The auction ends on September 28th so you have a few days to decide if you want to up the bid from $15 million.

Find more stories about: eBay, Facebook, gps, social media, Social Networking

Two years ago I wrote a column with the results of my first Facebook Ads campaign. Interestingly, one of the screenshots I used in that post in December 2008 showed a picture of television personality Rachael Ray with the caption, “The Rachael Ray Diet”. As I use the Facebook website, I’ve often wondered if anyone actually verifies any of the ads that appear on the site.

I think the world of Rachael, she has busted her butt to get where she is. Several years ago I had the very lucky opportunity to spend a couple of days on the set of her 30-minute meals television show. The fun pictures I have of Rachael and me on her set are some of my favorites of all time. Just watching her at her craft from five-feet away was amazing. It is so hard to believe she would be endorsing so many different “diets” on Facebook.

Today I saw the following ad as I browsed through my feed:

There are two things that stood out to me immediately in this ad:

1. The incorrect spelling of Rachael’s name in the headline
2. The URL pointing to rachaelrayshow.com

The URL displayed in the ad is the correct RR show URL. However if you click the ad, you go to a URL that looks close to the correct URL with a “.com-2.tv” tacked onto the end. Does Facebook require that the displayed URL be the same URL before the slash? Or is there a bug with Facebook that somehow made the “.com-2.tv” url appear only as .com?

Clicking the ad takes you to a website where there are pictures of Rachael and some text that makes you think it’s Rachael’s diet when as you read more Rachael had a short segment about a drink which I guess is made from the same fruit as the pills this site is pushing. The website (I am not going to link to it) is full of affiliate offers and while it appears to be a blog that accepts comments, the comment form is completely fake. I think I dropped a few pounds just trying to close all the popup alerts the website displayed when I tried to close the window.

Facebook execs, ads like the one above are the reason I am not willing to give you more of the dollars in my ad budget. I know that when I give my money to Google, ads for my company will never appear near, or in close proximity to, ads like the one above. On Facebook, it’s likely my ad will be wrapped in ads for all sorts of berries, quick weight loss programs and other ways to remove my wrinkles. So many of these ads go to fake news sites that it’s hard for me to believe Facebook can’t ban these types of ads. If you are new to the fake news technique, Danny Sullivan has an excellent analysis.

Here’s a small portion of the website you are presented with when you click the above ad:

Find more stories about: Facebook, social media, Social Networking

As we all know by now, there is unrest in the Middle East. You can read about the latest news from worldwide journalists located in all of the countries. The stories are amazing to read and watch. From an Internet perspective, the AFP is reporting that access to Facebook was cut earlier today in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. The AFP notes, “From early evening it was impossible to access the popular Facebook site, and connections to other sites were either very slow or not possible, they said. The state of Internet connections in the rest of the country was not known.”

I had a good discussion with my friend Darren about this issue with regards to Internet access for the people of Libya and Darren raised a very valid question. He wondered what happens to the domain names that use the “.ly” suffix.

Back in October, the domain vb.ly was seized by the Libyan government. Alaeddin S. ElSharif, a spokesperson for Libya telecom and the country’s Web service Department said, “Pornography and adult material aren’t allowed under Libyan Law, therefore, we removed the domain.” Ben Metcalfe was one of the people who originally registered the vb.ly domain name and posted about the removal noting, “This is deeply concerning for everyone, but especially .ly domain owners, because it sets a precedent that all websites running on a .ly domain must comply with Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law in order to maintain their domains. This is especially concerning for anyone running a url shortener or hosting user-generated content on a .ly domain.”

A year ago, the Libyan Spider Network posted a notice that only companies registered to do business in Libya could register a two- or three-letter domain name. Companies that were already registered, including bit.ly, could keep their registrations. Ben ended his post by suggesting that the .ly domain name space is, “unsafe.”

Update: 10pm Eastern – Andrew Allemann at Domain Name Wire has posted some thoughts on this issue. The overall view I am getting is that the domain names would be cached and would live at least for a bit of time if Libya was to disconnect the pipe.

Update: 8:45pm Eastern: Rich Pearson, marketing VP for blogging software Posterous, noted on Twitter, “we will soon be changing to new short URL so you shouldn’t have to worry” — they currently use post.ly as their URL shortener.

But what happens if the country of Libya just turns off the Internet all together? Last week Twitter client Tweetdeck launched deck.ly, a service that allows you to write long messages which are partially posted on Twitter. What about popular URL shortener bit.ly? Or embeddable content service embed.ly? The list goes on and on…

And if Libya decides to turn off access to Twitter as they have apparently done with Facebook, could they turn off .ly services like bit.ly and deck.ly that are heavily integrated into Twitter?

While I know it’s cool and hip and trendy to have a .somethingotherthancom name, I’ve never been a fan of anything that’s not .com, .net or .org.

So what would hypothetically happen if Libya (or any other country) was to cut access to the Internet. Would domain names registered using that country’s suffix also be instantly cut? I am working to get some answers from domain experts now and will update this post as I get more information.

Find more stories about: bitly, Facebook, Libya, startups

Television shopping channel QVC has been working to integrate the latest technology into their offerings for a few years. Last year they hired Courtney Cason, their first “multi-media host”. From what I can tell, Cason created a bunch of holiday videos where she interviewed the on-air salespeople and she also provides live chats during some of the fashion shows. The network has also created mobile apps for all of the major platforms so you can look for and order items anytime. Overall I think QVC has done a good job in the online space and certainly a better job than their competitor HSN.

I’ve been following a thread on the QVC community forums for the last week. The subject of the popular thread is, “Get rid of the Tweets, Blogs, FB’s and the F.F.”

The gist of the thread is that the on-air hosts are spending too much time pimping their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts instead of talking about and explaining the actual products. As I noted above, Courtney (along with a few of the other junior hosts) appears to be hosting many of the live chats and she appears on air to read some of the comments and to get other shoppers to participate.

Here are a couple of the interesting comments from the discussion thread:

• I also have no interest in FB or any other social networking site, and it’s especially aggravating on a shopping channel. Seemed even more disruptive last night on PMS. It reminds me of Romper Room when they start reading off the names of those supposedly participating with Tweets, etc.
• QVC is a TV HOME SHOPPING CHANNEL…..We can’t actually see, touch, etc the items we are buying so its QVC’s job to give us as much detail/information about the item for the customer to make a decision. I don’t care about what people I don’t know are doing, buying, etc etc. Just give informative presentations without the nonsense.

QVC pushes their Facebook pages heavy during on-air presentations. The hosts tell you to “like” the page – either the hosts page or the main QVC page. Is their push working? The main QVC Facebook page has over 275,000 fans. The one thing the hosts don’t explain is that the real reason they want their shoppers to Like their pages is so that marketing messages can be streamed to them whenever QVC wants. And then those marketing messages can be pushed out to the customer’s network.  Also, shoppers grow to like certain hosts and this gives the shopper a belief that they can actually chat with their favorite hosts. Lastly, I believe this push is an attempt to appeal to a younger demographic to expand their customer base.

Even though these shoppers want QVC to stop with the constant push of social media during on-air presentations, as long as it generates revenue or builds counts on the social media sites, I highly doubt QVC will change course in the near future.

Find more stories about: Facebook, qvc, social media, Social Shopping, Twitter

One of the big movies last year for geeks was The Social Network, which provides a look into the early days of social networking service Facebook. The movie has won several awards and has been nominated for a variety of Golden Globes awards.

Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian has an in-depth review of the movie. Boris at The Next Web suggests you watch the movie as it will help tech entrepreneurship grow.

If you are like me, you didn’t get a chance to catch the movie in theaters. Good news for all of us, the movie will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray and in some of the rental machines tomorrow. You can pre-order the movie (it will ship tomorrow) from BestBuy and Amazon. BestBuy launched the movie on DVD at $16.99. Late last week Amazon matched the price and depending on your tax rate, you could save a buck by buying the movie on Amazon. You can pre-order the DVD for $12.99 from both outlets. The nice thing about the Amazon option is they are offering $5 in free Video On Demand movies when you purchase the movie in either the DVD or Blu-Ray versions.

There are a number of bonus items if you purchase the Blu-Ray option — I have two sources telling me that the failed interview at SXSW is included in a hidden track.

It does appear that The Social Network will also be available for $1 in RedBox and Blockbuster Express machines. This is how I will watch the movie as I can’t see any real reason to own this film. The movie does show up on Netflix although no date is provided regarding availability. And if you were planning to watch the movie via Amazon Video-On-Demand, you will have to wait until February 2, 2011.

Find more stories about: blockbuster, Facebook, RedBox, Social Networking

Happy new year to all of the awesome CN readers! 2011 should be an interesting year for tech as we see Android tablets battle the iPad, a number of startups moving closer to IPO, more bubble talk, a small shift in the tech blog space and I think I will finally purchase a new mobile device (goodbye Samsung Ace!).

I wanted to thank everyone for the birthday wishes on Facebook and other social networks. It’s great to wake up on the first day of each new year to such warm greetings and well wishes for my birthday. There have even been years where I’ve received virtual birthday cakes (in case you are wondering, don’t try to eat the cake).

There’s only one small issue…today isn’t my birthday. When I sign up for social networks and other online services, I typically select January 1st as my birthday if a response is required. If a birth year is also required to use the service, I will generally just pick something in the 1950s to make sure I get full access to the service.

Of course selecting a year way earlier than my actual year can lead to some odd responses when friends and colleagues think I am decades older than I actually am.

I’d bet that January 1st is the most popular birthday worldwide for every online service that collects this data.

Whether January 1st is your real or fake online birthday, I wish you a very happy birthday.

Find more stories about: Facebook, social media

It appears social networking site Facebook is currently down and out of action. Reports are coming in rapidly that the site is either completely not loading and/or the service is loading very slowly. I am unable to access Facebook currently from multiple Internet connections – I only get a blank page. Twitter users are also noting issues connecting to Facebook.

Update 4:45pm Eastern – Facebook is back – resume tagging photos, planting crops, etc. It does appear that they may have rolled back the changes that went live today.

I’ve had multiple people try loading the facebook.com site from different parts of the world and no dice – nothing loads.

Some CN readers have noted that the outage has been going on for over 15 minutes now although most reports are only a few minutes as of the time of this post. I also note that Like buttons are not loading as well – this will make it hard to tell the world about your love for Pepsi or the New York Yankees.

My favorite reply comes from Landon Palmer who notes, “Somebody should ask Time’s Person of the Year why Facebook isn’t working right now.”

The outage could have something to do with the changes Facebook made today including some massive changes to their Pages infrastructure.

We have emailed Facebook for more information and will update this post when we hear back.

Please remain calm during this time – you might want to use this time to do something productive.

As always, please report in if Facebook is down for you and also note what you are doing to occupy your time during this outage.

Find more stories about: Facebook, Facebook Down, social media, Social Networking

Earlier this week, we took a look into the offices of Russian search engine giant Yandex. Today Yandex has announced a new partnership with Facebook in which Yandex will integrate information from the social network on the Yandex website. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

From the partnership announcement, “Yandex makes its services more attractive for the users of social networks, including those with a Facebook account. So, the portal’s front page hosts a Facebook widget and the company’s own instant messaging service Ya.Online informs its users of new notifications on the networking website. In addition, Yandex will now add the data from Facebook into its blog search index improving its international search and boosting new, recently created pages’ indexing. Specifically, Facebook will provide Yandex with a syndication feed that gathers information about updates on its Pages and profiles created to represent public figures, businesses or organisations.”

If you click the Facebook widget (seen below), it does request access to basically your entire Facebook account. This is different than the Like badges seen on many blogs and websites.

Javier Olivan, Head of International at Facebook, noted regarding the new partnership, “We feel that this partnership will bring a lot of value for our Russian users as we would like the public information on Facebook to be easily searchable via Yandex.”

Find more stories about: Facebook, search, social media, Social Networking, Yandex

It appears social networking site Facebook is currently down and out of action. Reports are coming in rapidly that the site is either completely not loading and/or the service is loading very slowly. I am unable to access Facebook currently from multiple Internet connections. Twitter users are also noting issues connecting to Facebook.

On one connection, the following error message displayed on my screen, “Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): Unknown error.”

Today’s outage comes  just a month after several days of outages on the social sharing service.

Facebook website badges (like the one on the right side of this page) and Like buttons do appear to be loading at this time.

Some CN readers have noted that the outage has been going on for over 30 minutes now although most reports are only a few minutes as of the time of this post.

We have emailed Facebook for more information and will update this post when we hear back.

Please remain calm during this time – you might want to use this time to do something productive.

As always, please report in if Facebook is down for you and also note what you are doing to occupy your time during this outage.

Find more stories about: Facebook, Facebook Down

I’ve been suggesting for a long time that inch by inch, day by day, Facebook moves closer and closer to becoming AOL 2.0. I am not talking about the new AOL that’s a collection of blogs, I am talking about the 14.4 dial up, 3.5″ floppies, look at photos of Cindy Crawford and email “You’ve Got Mail” AOL.

It’s easy to see how hooked people are to Facebook when the service is down as it has been a couple of times the past month. It’s the same crack that had me and lots of my friends hooked to AOL back in the 90s and pushed my first bill over $600.

In February I took a long look at the components of Facebook and compared them to the old AOL. Facebook had a press conference today to discuss a variety of updates at the social networking service. Next Web has a recap of all of the changes. The Facebook Groups update was the most interesting to me. It was fun to watch how quickly everyone ran for a group and how many updates were posted on my Facebook page about x person joining y group. It was interesting to note that groups can have email addresses @facebook.com which is one of the items I noted back in February would be coming. I still believe we will see full username@facebook.com email addresses coming soon. Email was the core functionality of AOL so it’s easy to see why I think it will be coming to Facebook.

Email is really the only function left that keeps Facebook from being its own complete island. Almost all of the other services a normal Internet user uses on a regular basis are provided by Facebook. From photos to videos, groups, IM, chat, apps, games, what else is there where a person would need to go outside the walls of the Facebook?

While many compare Facebook and Google, I would actually suggest Facebook’s next battle will be with Apple.

I’ve been watching how my sister has been using Facebook as of late and it is EXACTLY the same way she used AOL.

So you say, “Allen but I need to use a web browser when I want to visit my favorite brands”. Not so! The PR machine has helped brands to understand that all they need is a Facebook page where they can easily communicate with their “fans”. Social Media Experts are pushing companies to create campaigns on Facebook — both page and ad campaigns.

I can’t wait until I receive my Facebook modem – I kind of miss that lovely noise that told me “you will soon be connected to others around the world”.

I am by no means suggesting that the slow move towards a full, standalone network is a bad thing. Now if I could only get back the full head of hair I had when AOL was big. Perhaps that’s coming next from Facebook.

Find more stories about: AIM, AOL, chat, Facebook, Social Networking

No idea what’s up with all the downtime over the past couple of weeks! It appears now social networking site Facebook is currently out of action. Reports are coming in rapidly that the site is either completely not loading and/or the service is loading very slowly. I am unable to access Facebook currently from multiple Internet connections. Twitter users are also noting issues connecting to Facebook.

From what I can tell the non-logged in Facebook is working but the portions where you need to be logged in to use are currently down.

I received the following message on several refreshes:

Internal Server Error – Read

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Reference #3.475e613f.1286340507.305b33cc

Perhaps this downtime is related to the press briefing on Wednesday afternoon. Two weeks ago Facebook suffered their longest outage.

Blogger Robert Scoble noted this evening that he will be interviewing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg tomorrow. I guess some of the questions will be related to the recent server performance.

Update 1AM Eastern – Facebook is back – resume posting photos, videos, other media and liking everything!

We have emailed Facebook for more information and will update this post when we hear back.

As always, please report in if Facebook is down for you and also note what you are doing to occupy your time during this outage.

Find more stories about: Facebook, Facebook Down, social media, Social Networking