January 6, 2012
The New Social in 2012 Promises Variety
First published on Technorati by Lisa Stephens.
Social media, indeed, has gotten more social.
Only five days into the new year and your online persona already has new services which beg to get a turn. With so many ways to bring your brand to market, or your creativity front and center, best be strategic in putting them to good use.
We have professional and personal interests, and lots of connections within the life of an internet perception. LinkedIn, Facebook, blog platforms, distribution services, these all have their place in the web of intrigue a business can project. All of which today have a number or quantity of interested potential individually associated according to profile. These can be called upon to “like” or if all goes well, comment and recommend, on projects, services, interests, creative endeavors, whatever we feel compelled to share. These are now made more important by new services designed to spruce up and stylize a path.
While new platforms or services crop up or are at least discussed here on a daily basis, here are a few new services which show some originality.
Wooplr.com, though currently slow to load, and impressively hush-hush, calls itself a social shopping scene, and gives the impression of “your stomping ground” on the web. It asks you to “discover better” and provides a user with the voice, a place, and a system to write what they call “mini” reviews similar to Yelp, perhaps setting itself apart by supplying a point system and recognition to encourage reviewers to discover promotions and new haunts, while feeding the appetite for relevant participation.
Tumblr is fun. It’s easy to use, and un-fussy. Tumblr is less about the blog, and more about the blogger. It gives an indication of follower feedback, without lengthy, wordy and sometimes unjust commentary similar services encourage. This service calls itself a “micro-blog” which allows the user the freedom to better express through pictures, quotes, longer posts or re-posts of other users’ work. It’s fast-moving, but still projects solid commitment to a style.
Pinterest looks design-conscious, and reminds me of scrapbooking when I was a kid. Calling itself an online pinboard, it gives a subscriber an outlet to creatively display keepsakes or memorabilia which can be commented on by friends through posts which look a bit like yearbook recognition of personal triumphs. Looks like fun …
Don’t forget to keep security in mind as you participate. Careful not to share more than intended, and be aware of what’s going on with the profile should updates be through shared participation.
Social media in 2012 could be your best friend, with marketing benefits 
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Wikileaks Supporters Must Disclose Twitter Records
First published on Technorati by Craig Blaha.
A U.S. District Judge in Alexandria Virginia will require Twitter to disclose account information of three Wikileaks supporters in support of a U.S. investigation into the disclosure of secret government documents.
Wired News reports Birgitta Jonsdottir, Jacob Appelbaum, and Rop Gonggrijp are each part of the order to disclose account information now, despite the availability of an appeal. The judge reasoned (pdf) that the defendants request for a stay, or the ability to deny access to the Twitter records while the defendants pursue an appeal, should be denied because they are unlikely to win the appeal.
Judge Liam O’Grady based his assessment on the fact that courts have consistently found that the revelation of IP addresses is not a violation of privacy, and that the information being requested has already been disclosed to a third party – Twitter.
The original subpoena (pdf) requested all non-content information related to these accounts as well as Asange’s. A request for non-content information, or envelope information as it is more commonly referred to, is covered by the Stored Communications Act section of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act and is a tool commonly used by law enforcement to get account and routing information without requiring a search warrant.
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January 5, 2012
Leading Manager Forced out of his Job Because of his LinkedIn Profile
First published on Technorati by Adi Gaskell.
Professionals around the world use the social network LinkedIn as part of their job and to advance their career. For a manager in the UK however this usage has led to them leaving their highly paid job.
John Flexman, 34, a graduate recruitment manager at British Gas (BG) resigned from his position after his employer disciplined him for his LinkedIn profile.
The company claimed that Mr Flexman’s profile included the fact that he was interested in career opportunities. His manager phoned him whilst on holiday to demand that his profile be removed and to attend a disciplinary hearing upon his return.
At the hearing it was also claimed that amongst Mr Flexman’s achievements listed on the site were confidential details the company did not want in the public domain, despite Mr Flaxman suggesting that this information was already available in the company’s annual report.
Mr Flexman, who earned £68,000 a year in his role as graduate recruitment manager, is claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds from BG in an employment tribunal.
Mr Flexman, a married father of a two-year-old daughter, said: “In his email Mr [Antony] Seigel [Mr Flexman's manager] said that a complaint had been made about my LinkedIn profile and that I was required to remove it immediately.
“He told me to remove from my profile all information regarding BG Group except for job titles and dates. I did not think this was reasonable.
“It seemed to me that the focus of the charge sheet was the posting of my CV online.”
BG claimed that his use of LinkedIn breached their social media policy.
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January 4, 2012
Yahoo! Names Scott Thompson CEO
First published on Technorati by Allen Resha.
On January 9, 2012 Scott Thompson will assume the role of Chief Executive Officer according to the Wall Street Journal. Scott Thompson is the President of PayPal, a unit of EBay. Scott will be taking over for Tim Morse, CFO, who is the stand in CEO after the former CEO was fired.
In September Yahoo! fired CEO Carol Bartz who had filled the position of CEO for 2 and 1/2 years. Carol had failed to turn around the company and was losing grounds to Google and also to Facebook. After her failed attempts to gain ground against competitors she was let go according to LA Times. The companies stock price has not topped $20 in the past 3 years.
The last few years have been challenging to say the least for Yahoo! In 2008 the company’s co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down after criticism of his handling of bids made to buy Yahoo! by Microsoft. Microsoft had made a $44 billion bid to buy out Yahoo! In the recent years the company has formed a partnership with Microsoft in hopes of gaining grounds on Google. Google has approximately 2/3 of the search market share.
With the leadership that Scott Thompson will bring and his respect in the internet industry it makes the prospects of a buyout by the likes of Microsoft unlikely. People expect him to lead the company to greater standing in the industry. Everybody is anxiously watching to see what will happen with the change in leadership. Many still question whether Yahoo! has what it takes to come back from years of trouble.
On the other hand many are speaking out on the issue and the opinions are mixed. Many of those that are speaking out about Scott and his take over of CEO have positive things to say. Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan: “Yahoo has been lacking a unified strategic vision for several years,” Mr. Rohan noted. “We believe Scott Thompson may be able to bring that vision, as well as the know-how to build a healthy ecosystem around Yahoo’s core set of assets.”
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Google CEO Larry Page Named Boss of the Year
First published on Technorati by Adi Gaskell.
It has been a big year for search engine giant Google, with their new social network Google+ going head to head with Facebook for social media dominance.
Such performance has led to him being named the CEO of the Year by Investors Business Daily, an investors publication.
Page was chosen as the leading boss of the year for his success in reorganising the company’s management structure and for leading the buy-out of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc over the summer.
The year also saw Page lead Google into social with the launch of Google+ and Google Offers, in an attempt to rival Facebook and Groupon respectively.
Such moves have seen revenue increase by 32% and 33% respectively in the past two quarters.
The decision to give Page the gong however is not without a degree of controversy.
Firstly, he has only been in the job since April so has not enjoyed a full year in post. The results achieved at Google are also no more extraordinary than fellow tech giants Intel or Apple.
They are also attracting the attention of anti-trust authorities over their methods of promoting Google+ to users, whilst only this week they were forced to penalise their own Google Chrome pages after they were found to be using nefarious tactics to promote them.
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January 3, 2012
Social Media Profiles: Blurring the Lines Between Personal & Professional
First published on Technorati by Geoff Simon.
Not too long ago it was easy to keep your private life separate from your professional life, but advances in technologies are making this increasingly difficult. Advances in networking, social media in particular, makes blurring these lines easier and even convenient in most cases. Think about who can see your life’s most private moments such as weddings, your kids birthdays, holidays, graduations and so on. People who you might not know all that well, aside from maybe a social network, can access your photos and videos without much thought from you about their intentions.
There is also the professional dilemma, with more and more companies using social media to screen candidates, it’s important to keep your professional image unmarred of anything you might not want a hiring manager to see. A study done by the social monitoring service Reppler and Lab42 found that 91% of hiring managers polled said they use social media to screen prospective employees. Facebook is checked by 76%, Twitter 53% and LinkedIn 48% of the companies polled. It’s interesting to see LinkedIn, the most professional themed social site of the bunch, checked by the fewest number of companies.
What to do about it? The first and probably the most important piece of advice might also be the trickiest, figure out privacy settings and update your account so you know exactly who you are sharing content with. In addition, you can also find sites that specialize in privacy, there is one for photos and one for videos that are good to have bookmarked. Make sure you only share things that you would be comfortable with other people seeing, including prospective employers. Just because Facebook isn’t designed for career profiles doesn’t mean one risky photo or video won’t jeopardize a career opportunity for you. From the same study by Reppler, 69% of hiring mangers stated they rejected a candidate based on what they saw on a social network.
For photos, the free site 7moments looks promising, it’s currently in private beta but boasts rigorous privacy settings designed to keep photos secure. It also solves the problem of having to navigate tricky privacy settings on other photo sharing sites.
For video, the site givit.com allows free private video sharing that doesn’t allow you to re-share videos from people that don’t want you to. Video sites like YouTube and Vimeo even are built around getting the most “views” for content. The idea is to amplify your voice, not to share private videos. Givit has the unique advantage of being built from the ground up with privacy in mind, not as an after-thought.
There is a time and a place for everything, just make sure the time you have on video or photographs is in the right place. There are plenty of appropriate video and photos that are fine for public consumption but for the more personal, the more private, take care not to jeopardize your happiness and career by putting on display what would better be left private.
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Google Plus Social Network Forecast to Hit the 400m Mark
First published on Technorati by David Amerland.
When you have a social network which is growing at the rate of 625,000 a day the world may well seem to be your oyster. For Google, right now the prospect of hitting 400 million users by the end of 2012 certainly seems like a possibility.
While Google itself has been tight-lipped about the membership numbers of the service since it launched analysts have been busy looking closely at its performance. At stake is more than just the option to have yet one more social network in operation. Google’s approach to the social web is decidedly different from that of apparent rival, Facebook. Should there be an overall winner in this the chances are that the web we will end up being part of will also follow suit.
In the absence of solid figures from Google it has been left to analysts like Paul Allen and Global Web Index to step in and fill the gap through figures guestimated from statistics they can track. Paul Allen recently made the news when he announced on Google Plus that in December Google’s social network hit the 62 million mark with about 12 million signing up in the last month of the year.
Given the current rate of growth (well over half a million new users a day) Google Plus could easily hit the 400 million users mark by the end of next year. To put this in some kind of perspective it is worth bearing in mind that Facebook did not get to 60 million users until January 2008, over three years since its launch and although it currently stands at 800 million users, in its fastest growth period it only clocked up just over 250K new users a day.
There are two questions here which are important enough to be asked: A. Will Google Plus kill Facebook? And B. What does the exponential growth of Google Plus really mean?
Easy answers first and no, even if Google Plus grows at double its current rate, it will not kill of Facebook. The two social networks are totally different kind of animals and although they both call themselves ‘network’ the way they are used by their membership excludes the possibility of one killing off the other. Having said that however it is worth bearing in mind that online personal time for people does not automatically increase the moment a new social network hits the scene, so if Google Plus grows as fast as expected Facebook will see a downturn in its popularity.
Already Google, collectively, outstrips Facebook in terms of visitor numbers so the pressure for Facebook is very much definitely on if it is to maintain its dominance.
Second, should Google Plus reach the projected growth figures by the end of 2012 the nature of many of the things we do on the web in terms of both search and SEO will change considerably. The social web is already playing a huge part in search ranking for websites. And at the beginning of December Google President and former CEO, Eric Schmidt, announced at the LeWeb conference in Paris that Google takes into account social signals http://helpmyseo.com/google-news/585-social-signal-contributes-to-ranking-says-google.html to work out the ranking of a website.
As Google Plus grows and social media expands we should expect to see more and more of this kind of thing going on with Google. Search and social media marketing are only going to get more challenging in the year ahead.
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Distrust Factor Hammers Facebook Stores
First published on Technorati by David Amerland.
The online population has evolved sufficiently now to no longer be dazzled by a w-e-b-s-i-t-e or, indeed any other kind of platform. In a tech-savvy world where social media networks have turned communication across the globe near instant, online interaction is subject to the same nuances that the offline world has experienced for centuries.
In other words if you have any kind of web presence the primary aim has to be to gain and retain credibility and authority and then work to project this in such a way that it can translate into sales. Facebook has become the world’s social media darling by stint of its size which is almost over 10% of the world’s population, so at face value it’s a no-brainer that if you have any kind of eCommerce presence you need to be there.
Figures released in December 2011 by ThreatMetrix in partnership with the Ponemon Institute however paint a picture which should make every brand with a Facebook store sit up and start worrying. Quizzing Facebook users in a survey the firm found that 53% of those who say they are active internet users do not believe that Facebook’s storefronts are committed to protecting them against fraud, with a further 23% saying they are unsure.
Given the role social media plays in obtaining web traffic, driving brand awareness and increasing market share it becomes evident that in order for the effort and energy invested in these pages by Brands, to pay off, there has to be a change in the way social media marketing is carried out. How has to be as much of a change in the way social media platforms operate as in what those who create a brand presence there, do.
Facebook has had a number of issues in the past regarding social media and although the world’s largest social network is trying desperately to reposition its role through the ambitious roll out of its Timeline interface and a reworking of its Brand pages philosophy, the jury is still out on how successful it will be. The problem here is one of scale. Facebook’s juggernaut stature, which makes it hard to attack in terms of rival social networks, also makes it unwieldy. Things tend to happen haphazardly and changes often appear to be made as an afterthought. The result is that much of the progress Facebook needs to make in order to generate revenue becomes a hit and miss affair.
In business such environments do not last long. Facebook, right now, has a golden moment of respite. In absence of serious competition (Google’s G+ network is an entirely different kind of animal altogether) it can afford to make mistakes and try and fix them. This honeymoon period is fast coming to an end however. Given the quickening happening in the development of new startups the network which might kill it off may be just round the corner. If Facebook does not deliver soon, by the time it sees its rival, it will be too late.
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Will Facebook, Google, Twitter Shut Down in 2012 to Protest SOPA?
First published on Technorati by Steve Woods.
Sometimes in life dramatic action must be taken in support of something you believe in. The Occupy Wall Street movement, albeit scattered in focus, is one of these such actions, as thousands have been arrested for taking a stand all over the world.
If high-level whisperings are true, popular social and search sites we rely so much on for everyday interactions and real-time information might be readying themselves (and us) for an absolute jaw-dropper.
Despite a number of warnings from social network and web hosting companies about its potential for governmental abuse, some say that H.R. 3261, commonly known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, has a good shot at passage.
Should this happen, members of the online trade association netCoalition have had “serious discussions about” shutting down part (or all) of free society’s most popular websites and social networks, according to netCoalition head Markham Erickson.
To get a feel for how big this could be, members of netCoalition include search sites such as Google, AOL and Yahoo!, social network powerhouses Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare, online shopping stalwarts PayPal, Amazon and eBay, and Firefox founder Mozilla. Web founders of netCoalition include founders or CEOs of Netscape, Flickr and The Huffington Post.
Did that last paragraph get your attention?
If SOPA passes, netCoalition members are hoping a “nuclear option” of going dark with their sites will force a deluge of user emails, phone calls, and perhaps even angry mobs to the halls of Congress. If Google and Wikipedia’s home pages provided a simple description of why they’ve shut down, along with the legal ramifications of SOPA, that’s a lot of eyeballs getting an eye-full fast.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has said SOPA’s passage “would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.” Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone agree that unprecedented “power to censor the Web” would be given birth to.
Should the CEOs of our favorite social sites, with a combined userbase of more than a billion people, decide to go nuclear, 2012 could get ugly fast.
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Ex-Blogger Sued by Company for “Taking” Twitter Following With Him
First published on Technorati by Steve Woods.
The legal system and social networking are in another wrestling match, and if you spend time helping an employer with your social networking clout, the decision might affect you.
Blogger Noah Kravitz of Oakland, California, is being sued by his former employer, mobile device retailer PhoneDog, to determine ownership of the Twitter account he used while working for them.
Formerly known by the handle of @PhoneDogNoah during his company days, Kravitz changed his Twitter name, and now simply goes by @NoahKravitz.
PhoneDog is suing, saying that despite leaving the company on “good terms” in 2010, Kravitz’s taking his company Twitter account amounts to absconding their customer account list — the now over 25,000 followers that went along with it. According to Kravitz, he was told he could keep the account, as long as he tweeted about PhoneDog upon occasion.
Kravitz is now looking down the barrel of a $340,000 lawsuit, as PhoneDog is claiming damages of $2.50 per Twitter follower/month for the eight months since Kravitz and PhoneDog parted ways.
Kravitz has growing support, including a website and a Twitter account @SaveNoah, both created by an admirer. According to SaveNoahKravitz.com, PhoneDog’s lawsuit is retaliation, for an earlier legal filing by Kravitz over ad revenues owed him by the company. The site adds that Kravitz was an established writer before being hired, and started the @PhoneDogNoah Twitter account himself, not per any company agreement. The site claims that if Kravitz loses his legal fight, they will give him the @SaveNoah account to start over, and asks everyone to follow it.
It will be interesting to see how the judge rules in this suit, as a number of bloggers establish and carefully maintain their social influence, in hopes to cash in on behalf of a paying ‘brand’. Should the potential exist for their social identities to be claimed, at least in part, by an employer, the social-based business ecosystem could have significant damage done to it.
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