Social Networking Archive

I’ve never been a heavy Facebook user — I’ve had an account for a very long time but I mainly used it to share posts from CN and to “friend” people who request that I friend them. Over the years I’ve changed my personal settings to be able to see the different types of ads that are displayed. Up until this month I’ve never had a profile picture and have appeared as women and men of all different ages.

Whenever I take a look at the main feed on Facebook, it’s mostly content imported from Twitter. I’ve written about this before and wish that Facebook allowed you to turn off certain sites from displaying in your feed (e.g Twitter, pinterest, etc.).

(As an aside, I have noticed that techies seem to like and share content a LOT less than people in other demographics.)

So why I am using Facebook more often than I ever have? Simple, the people that I am now interested in following and interacting with are on Facebook and don’t use the other networks, Twitter and Google+, as often or at all.

Some of you know that I am working on my health in a big way and I have been studying and researching all sorts of health and fitness topics across the web and in print. Most of the people and brands I want to interact with have popular Facebook pages. For example, my nutritionist has a very popular Facebook page and she does a good job of interacting with the people who like and comment on her content.

Whether I am looking to interact with people around a Vitamix blender, a Breville juicer or why candida is bad for you, there are pages on Facebook with people who are willing to reply and provide feedback when needed. What’s great is that unlike Twitter where you just talk to talk, on Facebook you expect to have a conversation.

The only area I’ve noticed so far that needs serious work is the search function and specifically with regards to Facebook Groups. Here is a sample of the search results for the term “fitness” – notice that every single result is exactly the same – and it is like this on every page of the results. I want to join groups but where do I even begin when every single one looks identical?!? Groups search should function in a similar fashion to how Meetup.com works.

If I was in a management position at Facebook, I would certainly be asking why we haven’t created a YouTube competitor. So many of the health brands have tons of videos and they all live on YouTube yet the brand uses Facebook to promote their messaging.

It will be interesting to see if Google+ can draw more normals (both people and brands) into their network. I haven’t seen the health and fitness brands pushing their G+ pages (if they even have them).

Continue reading “Why I’m Using Facebook More Often” »

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.

Continue reading “Does Twitter Own Facebook and LinkedIn for Status Updates?” »

Another day, another battle of “Google+ is the future” vs. “Google+ is dead”. I am guessing we will see these back-and-forth posts for a long time. This week the hot thing to do on Google+ is to make circles of the same brands everyone else has and then share those circles with your followers who have probably already created the same brand circles.

One of the earliest supporters of Google+ was Edelman EVP Steve Rubel. Steve heads up the Global Strategy and Insights division for the global agency. Steve is a good speaker and I have always found Steve to have interesting insights and enjoyed our in-person conversations. He seemed to post/re-share to Google Plus numerous times every day throughout the earliest days and summer. Then slowly his postings started to become less frequent. If I remember correctly, Steve held multiple internal conferences with his colleagues to educate them about Google+ shortly after launch.

In early September, Edelman announced that they were selected as Twitter’s new PR firm. Did this new client signing influence Steve to spend more time on Twitter than Google Plus? Some of the conversations I had since the announcement seemed to think so but I am not sold on this idea because Steve’s job requires that he understand all of the networks so he can position them properly to Edelman’s staff and, in-turn, clients. Google evangelist Louis Gray noted the new Twitter-Edelman relationship when Rubel shared a post that questioned whether Google+ would be around for the long-term.

On October 20th, Rubel asked if, “Anybody Home” and he received over 20 responses including one from me. There have been no posts from Rubel until one early this morning where he posted the following message:

I have decided not to post here for the time being. I will leave my profile up. Google+ is great. I wish them luck. Really i do. But I have to make choices about where I spend my time and for me that’s Twitter, Facebook and soon Tumblr – where I will be doing more so. It’s where I get the most value for the time invested. So, adios for now. See you on one of those networks. I may change my mind one day, but right now this is my plan. See you online. / Steve

Some have asked me if this is a bad sign for Google+. I am not sure if this should be considered any sort of death sign because I know Steve is crazy busy as it took me quite a while to get on his calendar a couple of years ago. It would be interesting to hear from Steve about how he will position Google+ to his colleagues and to all of Edelman’s clients going forward. I guess I will have to find him on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr to attempt to get the answer to this very important question.

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.

It seems like you can’t load Twitter these days without seeing someone talking about Klout. Apparently the company rolled out some updates to their “algorithm” which made a lot of scores drop and my sources tell me that appointments to psychiatrists have risen 23% since the update. Klout claims to pull together a number of factors from how you use social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Google+ to come up with a score. This score is apparently your “influence.”

God only knows how they compute the score and how they figure out what profiles go with which users. I assume if I make an account (I haven’t and don’t plan to) then I can associate that on twitter I am centernetworks, on Facebook and Google+ I am Allen Stern. I also don’t use Foursquare so I guess I can kiss those points goodbye. But since I have no account, I assume my score (I have no idea what it is) is impacted negatively because they can’t pull in all of my accounts and see how truly influential I am. I also wonder how they deal with the suggested user default lists which have given millions of free followers to accounts for celebrities and some select bloggers.

If you are interested in the earliest days for Klout, check out the video I recorded when they presented at the NY Tech Meetup in January 2009.

Should I care more about my customers who have a higher Klout score? Should I perk them more than the others? That will absolutely never happen, every customer of mine will be treated the same. Alexia from Techcrunch posted yesterday with the title, “Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Klout Score.”

But for a while now, I’ve started to wonder if Klout is really just another advertising play/network wrapped up in a score which is wrapped up in a game? A year ago the Twitter game was to tell people via Foursquare where you are. Now the new Twitter game is apparently to “+k” someone for something. Or to shill for a product you were given for free. And who knows what, if anything, happens with those tweets. In any case, it’s a brilliant marketing play by Klout because it infects a stream on a regular basis. I see more of these than I do of the,  “Top Stories of the Day” posts that no one clicks on. I assume people click on these Klout freebie tweets because they too will want a free subway sammich or umbrella or Windows phone.

Continue reading “Is Klout Really an Ad Network?” »

The big Google+ news today wasn’t that the message board service increased their traffic by 1,269%, nope, the big super huge mega news is that you can now share your circles with your circles (see what I did there?). Circles are the apparatus that Google+ uses (most services call them lists) to help you organize your people, friends, friends of friends, required marketing parties, people who are acting as brands, bloggers who you need to circle to help you get press later on, etc.

The truth is that many people will be emotionally joyous or very hurt by their status, or non-status, in a specific circle. For example, let’s say you think you are a person who is a great, news breaking, tech blogger. And one of your popular friends shares her circle called, “Great, News Breaking Tech Bloggers”, you are listed in there and are very excited. Naturally you +1 the thing straight away and re-share the previously shared circle which helps you show off how great and how news breaking you are.

I do wonder how many of the reshares of shared circles come from people who are listed in the circle – somehow I’d bet it will be a very high percentage.

But what about when you are left out of a circle that you think you should be a part of? What do you do? One person I follow on the Google Plus message board noted upon sharing one of her circles, ” If I missed you, leave me a comment so I can consider adding you!!” Oh gee, thanks, let me send you my resume and my linkedin so you can consider adding me to your circle, thank you so much for this consideration!!! I sure hope my Klout score is high enough so she will add me to the circle!

Continue reading “New CN Offering: Google+ Circle Exclusion Representation Service” »

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.