Alert Blog Reviews

Mark Zuckerberg and I aren’t Facebook friends. That’s cool; I don’t know him. Until recently, all I could see of his profile was his picture, networks and friend list. But this morning, either the Facebook CEO had decided that’s what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or even he didn’t know what the new privacy settings changed. I’m going to guess that it was B, because since the articles on True Slant and ValleyWag have run, Zuckerberg’s profile is a lot more private. On his Page (where you can be his fan, not to be confused with his profile), Zuckerberg defends the change: For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn’t see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear Oh, really? Because when I try to visit his profile, I get a “Mark only shares some of his profile information with everyone.” message at the top of his profile, and no photos. Zuckerberg does still share some of his info with everyone: his basic info, personal info (only the about me: “i’m trying to make the world a more open place.”), education and work, and five of the pages he’s a fan of. (These five rotate; screen caps from the privacy changes indicate he has 17 pages.) Also public: his links, friends and events. There is, of course, another possibility as to why some people like Kashmir Hill can see his photos—they have mutual friends (Hill’s is another Facebook employee). When you update your privacy settings, the new default setting for photos is to make them visible to “Friends of Friends.” (I’ve contacted Ryan Tate to see if he also has at least one mutual friend, but haven’t heard back yet. Mark and I share no friends.) But really, as Facebook is pushing more people to go public, and if Zuckerberg is really “trying to make the world a more open place,” he could do a lot more opening himself. The CEO of the site might be seen as an example to users—and if he really wants them to go public, should he be willing to do the same? What do you think? Was this an accident on Zuckerberg’s part, or because Tate and Hill have mutual friends?

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Even Mark Zuckerberg Isn’t Sure About Getting More Public

Leave it to Eric Schmidt to stir up a hornet’s nest more often than not. Of course, he is a favorite target of everyone since he is the CEO of the most recognizable brand on the planet. Whether by design or not though, he is often saying something or other that is getting people in a tizzy. Admittedly, it takes A LOT less these days to get people into this state and that is one of the downsides of this new digital age. Despite the sensitivity threshold being much lower when Schmidt appears to downplay the notion of online privacy, there will be blood. As cnet reports Google CEO Eric Schmidt is the latest Silicon Valley CEO to draw ire after suggesting that folks seeking privacy might not want to look to the Internet to find it. “I think judgment matters,” Schmidt said, appearing on CNBC . “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines–including Google–do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.” What has really drawn attention to this whole thing is the point of view of Mozilla . It has gotten under Mozilla’s skin so badly the suggestion is even made to go to bing because their privacy policy is better. Talk about biting the hand that feeds. Yikes. maybe this whole Chrome thing is making Mozilla a little more adversarial. “That was Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, telling you exactly what he thinks about your privacy,” Mozilla Director of Community Development Asa Dotzler said on his personal blog, referring to the CNBC comments. “There is no ambiguity, no ‘out of context’ here. Watch the video.” Watch the video? What a great idea! Isn’t it interesting that this whole discussion is brought up on the heels of Google’s widening of the personalization of search results to everyone? In essence, that means that the vast majority of people will be completely unaware of the amount of data that Google is gathering on them anyway. Privacy is for the opt-out crowd only! Ok, Pilgrims, is privacy something that we should expect online or has that gone the way of the dinosaur. If you do expect it, to what level do you expect it? Let us know your private thoughts in this very public forum .

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Google and Privacy: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Define Your Purpose Before you go changing anything around on your twitter profile to make it more professional you must decide what the purpose of the account is. Is your purpose to connect with friends and family? Is your purpose to share important updates to customers of your store or online business? Is your purpose to attract potential clients and to give them an understanding of why they should choose your product or service? If your purpose is only to connect with friends and family then you don’t really need to have a professional presence in my opinion. But if your purpose is business related then the following steps will help you create a professional presence on twitter. Sometimes people will have a personal and a business-related purpose for using twitter. In those cases I recommend having a personal twitter account and a separate business related account on twitter. 1. Get a custom background To create a professional presence on twitter you want to have your own unique background. The default background is used by millions of people and you want to set yourself apart. There are many websites that will help you create a customized background for your twitter account. And the best part is that most of them are free. To create a custom background for my twitter account I used Twitbacks.com. 2. Use a picture of yourself Twitter allows you to have a small avatar picture associated with your account and I recommend using a personal photograph for this. It doesn’t have to be a professional headshot where your hair and makeup is perfect; it just needs to be a picture of you. This allows your followers to connect your tweets and messages with a real person. This personal touch adds credence to what you say. 3. Your phone number I like to post my phone number on my twitter account for all of my followers to see. When followers see a phone number listed with a twitter account it gives them confidence that if they had a problem or question there is someone they could call. I know some of you will be uncomfortable doing this and it’s completely understandable. But if you run a small business or work in any line of sales then you really need to have your phone number listed on your twitter account. To my knowledge twitter does not allow you to actually list the phone number as part of your account. But you can have it be part of your background. In the example below you can see my phone number is on the far left side: 4. List your email address You will also want to list your e-mail address on your twitter account. Just as with phone numbers, you can’t actually list your e-mail on your account but you can include it as part of your background. I know some of you will be concerned about posting your e-mail and receiving spam. To deal with this I created a second e-mail address that I used specifically for my business. And this is the e-mail address that I post on my twitter account. Luckily Gmail has a very good spam filter and so I actually get very few spam messages in my inbox each week. 5. Be professional in your tweets People follow you for a reason. Whether it’s to hear about new products your store is offering or updates about the cause you represent, people are listening to what you say. And the minute you deviate from that you will lose followers. So before you post a tweet ask yourself, “Why are people following me? And is this new tweet something they want to hear about?” If the answer is no or if you’re not sure then do not post the new tweet. 6. Tweet regularly but don’t overdo it I will usually tweet something in the morning and then sometimes in the evening. 1 to 3 tweets today is optimal. You want to your followers to see something from you each day but you don’t want to overdo it. The last thing you want is for one of your followers to see that the last 20 tweets are all from you. When this happens to me I immediately unfollow the person. 7. Only follow people that you’re interested in A popular way to get followers is to follow a whole bunch of people and hope that many of them follow you back. This results in you having 3,000 followers and you are following 3,000 people yourself. When people see this it looks less professional. They know there is no way you can be listening to what all 3000 people are tweeting about. On the other hand it is much more impressive if you follow just a few people and yet have hundreds of followers yourself. When people see this they are more likely to follow you in my opinion here. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . 7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence

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7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence

The LA Times has updated their social media guidelines for their journalists and there is the usual ruckus about everyone being too restrictive. Originally written in March of this year the update makes sense since the 8 months or so that have passed since the first take is like a lifetime in the social media world. In fact, the real story here may be that the LA Times hasn’t taken a ‘set it and forget it’ approach to their social media guidelines so please take note everybody. Editor & Publisher and the Huffington Post are both talking about the updates. Interestingly enough, I heard about it from @michacha101 who is one of those people that I have no idea why I follow on Twitter but have gained value from doing so. Having said that (and given them a plug) I am learning more about the openness of the social media environment and the value that can be taken from it. Journalists drool over this kind of exposure and availability of information. Trouble is that for the sake of ‘objectivity’ or ‘political correctness or whatever there will always be rules and regs that restrict just how effective the medium can be. The Huffington Post tells us that some of the LA Times policies include Integrity is our most important commodity: Avoid writing or posting anything that would embarrass The Times or compromise your ability to do your job. Assume that your professional life and your personal life will merge online regardless of your care in separating them. Even if you use privacy tools (determining who can view your page or profile, for instance), assume that everything you write, exchange or receive on a social media site is public. Just as political bumper stickers and lawn signs are to be avoided in the offline world, so too are partisan expressions online. There’s a lot of detail that I am leaving out here and here’s why. I have to give the LA Times credit for being on the ball. You see the Huffington Post had only one comment but it was from Andrew Nystrom / L.A. Times social media guy / @AdNys who was completely transparent by saying: Thank you for writing about our new Guidelines. For the record, here are links to: - The full text of our revised Social Media Guidelines: http://latimes.com/socialmedia — our original Guidelines were issued in March 2009, before the WaPo or WSJ (and most other major media outlets) issued theirs. - Our directory of 200+ L.A. Times(@lat¬imes)-rela¬ted Twitter accounts: http://latimes.com/twitter - The full text of our 2007 Ethics Guidelines (currently under revision): http://latimes.com/ethics Hope this is helpful. I welcome all feedback. Nice move. So let’s recap. As a result of the social media ‘world’ I got data from someone that was of interest, that was about information that can be seen both positively and negatively depending on your point of view but was ultimately made completely transparent by the source which ultimately reflects positively on them. Pretty cool. So if you really think that people care about where you are walking and what you see it’s likely that you are just really enamored with yourself. What people really want is information that helps. Thanks to everyone who helped here.

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LA Times Social Media Guidelines Lead to Much More

By Peter Robert Casey – Follow him @Peter_R_Casey I’ll be frank. I never intended to leverage my personal Twitter account as a passport to sit courtside at Carnesecca Arena or Madison Square Garden with media credentials . It just happened that way. Thanks to St. John’s University and the progressive vision of Associate AD, Mark Fratto, your Twitter feed can now be considered a legitimate media outlet for covering college basketball, or any sport for that matter. This is only the beginning. Since St. John’s validated Twitter in early August, I’ve corresponded with the executive team of a reputable Division I Conference, multiple NBA team properties, and the NBA League Office. And guess what? They all embrace our favorite microblogging platform, too. Moreover, their peers across all sports, conferences, divisions, and levels are not far behind. My situation may have been undesigned, but press row Twitter access is now open for discussion. Here’s how you can position yourself for an opportunity: Stop, look, and listen. Stop running your keyboard’s mouth and stop taking shortcuts. If you created a separate email account for Twitter notifications that you ignore, stop; merge or monitor your inbox. How do you know who’s following you? Do you really comb your followers list on a regular basis? Get on TweetGrid, subscribe to relevant Twitter lists, and set up TweetBeep alerts to start listening to conversations. Mark Fratto conceived the credentialing idea, but I initiated the conversation. When St. John’s Basketball (STJ_Basketball) joined Twitter in late May of 2009, I was quick to publicly welcome them with an @reply. Who do you think started following me soon after? Focus. On what, you ask? Focus on building trust, relationships, and influence, not followers. Focus on being helpful, and creating practical, value-added content. Focus on one sport or one team, and own it. We can’t be all things to all people, and it doesn’t behoove us to try. You’ve probably heard this expression before: “There’s no ‘and’ in brand. The more specifically you define who you are and what you do, the better chance you’ll have of selling yourself.” This adage holds true on Twitter as well.. If you focus on giving and contributing relentlessly to your niche community, decision makers will take notice. Go off Twitter. As valuable as Twitter is, 140 character messages cannot replace the authority of a well-positioned, content-driven blog, vlog, or podcast. Long form media separates the desirous from the dabblers, and allows a publisher to hone and test their chops. Twitter may be nearing its fourth birthday, but to sports media brass, it might as well be four months old. Having an integrated and influential social media and search engine presence is essential to commanding a press pass. What does your blog or Google say about you? What outlets have you written for? Have you developed an offline relationship with the Media Relations/Marketing/Communications staff at your desired Tweeting destination? Make the ask. If your local college or professional sports team hasn’t approached you yet, it may be time to make the ask; but, only after you’ve listened intensely; established trust and productive relationships; focused on being a valuable and caring member of your Twitter community; shared helpful content and contacts; and built a well-recognized and respected, easy-to-find personal brand across various social channels. Before Twitter lists replace number of followers as the metric for influence, college and pro teams will still look at your follower counts, RTs, and directory-based influence ranks. Where do you stack up? When you’re ready for the pitch, do so privately and don’t burn a bridge if the request is denied. Most media relations departments are still trying to wrap their head around credentialing bloggers, so be patient. What else? I recognize that wide adoption of credentialing Tweeters will take time, but how can we, together, help the cause? Please leave additional advice below. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Tweet Your Way to Press Row

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Tweet Your Way to Press Row

This is part two of Secret to Getting Rich on the Internet , series. If you haven’t read part one, you probably should do that first. So if you are reading this you probably read last week’s post, where I promised that I would reveal a secret tactic that can make you rich on the internet. Before i do that, I want to talk about secrets in general for a moment. Quite honestly, most “secrets”on the internet are BS. This is because oftentimes they are bits of knowledge and advice that seem obvious to many, but practiced by few. This is generally because the best tactics are the ones that don’t show their true value until you have years of experience trying them out. Many of the most valuable “secret” tactics (including the one below) are things that many of us do everyday but are not aware of it. And the secret is… Building strong relationships with the people that matter most . Building strong relationships has historically been the cornerstone of success. Sometimes the internet and social media fools us into thinking that we can do anything we want without anyone’s help. If you think that, you are dead wrong. No one lives on an island–we all work and play in the same cyberspace. Building strong relationships can be a powerful tactic in advancing your personal and professional life because it enables other people to feel empowered when you succeed. The only downside to this tactic is, to do it effectively, you have to focus on the people that matter most. People that matter most?? Don’t all people matter? Unfortunately if you are going to use relationship building as a tactic you have to segment people effectively in order to get the most out of your effort. In short, you can’t be friends with everyone! So who matters and who doesn’t? For each person this may be different, but I like to break people down into two groups. People that are excited about what you are doing should be your first target for building relationships. When people are excited about something they generally tend to talk about it early on, and then as their interest passes they find something else. If you can effectively build a solid relationship with that person then you will be at the forefront of their thoughts as long as you keep the relationship alive. They will then turn into your strongest brand advocates because they want to see you succeed. People that you want to be excited about what you are doing should be your second target. These are the folks that are maybe influential in your industry. They are the ones that can help spread your vision into other networks that you aren’t a part of yet. Or they might just be the person that you know would truly benefit in what you are doing. So now we know which types of folks to target, the real question is how do we actually build these strong relationships? Well, I think that’s a topic for another post, but one way to start learning how to develop strong relationships is to follow a few folks, that I saw in Vegas, that are amazing relationship builders. Relationship Building Gurus: Dana Lookadoo Joanna Lord Jon Henshaw Dave Snyder

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Cup of Joe: The Secret to Getting Rich on the Internet, is in Las Vegas – Part 2

This is one of those subjects that I can say that my personal experience actually mirrors what the rest of the market is apparently seeing. Oftentimes that’s not the case since I can be somewhat of a contrarian in my views and habits. Apparently much of initial push back against ads attached to video, in particular pre-roll, is starting to give way to some level of acceptance. While I am still not thrilled with it, I do tolerate it much more these days especially when an advertiser actually gets that 10-15 seconds is not nearly as annoying as 30 seconds. The NY Times reports that news sites are finding more and more success with their online video offerings as ways to increase ad revenue. The impact is even being felt beyond the delivery of news. Beyond news sites, video is now the fastest-growing segment of the Internet advertising market. Digital video amounted to $477 million in revenue in the first half of 2009, up 38 percent from the same time period in 2008, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. I have wondered over time as to just how much video ‘regular’ people ingest and if there is room for growth. I am certainly not a ‘power consumer’ of video but I am finding myself watching more online offerings. I still avoid the ‘stupid human tricks’ side of the online video experience. In fact, any ads attached to that kind of offering will fall flat with someone like myself but I am just one point of view. What’s interesting is that the online news experience is starting to look more and more like one medium it is supposedly challenging: television. News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television. CNN.com and ESPN.com are featuring video much more prominently on their home pages, often prompting visitors to press play before they begin to read. Even The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center with a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com. The shift is likely a natural progression since there seems to be more news than ever. Of course, we have the same number of events that are newsworthy it’s just that the ability to now see more is exponentially increased. “Every watershed event leaves video more popular than before,” said Charles W. Tillinghast, the president of MSNBC.com, a joint venture between NBC Universal and Microsoft. So as the consumer becomes more accepting and the advertisers actually pay attention to what consumers will tolerate the combination of the two is starting to become a real player in the online advertising space. One drawback will be the cost to produce this content will keep competition down but the big guys actually like that idea. “It actually works really well,” said Brian Quinn, the vice president and general manager of digital ad sales for The Journal’s digital network. A 15-second pre-roll “followed by two to five minutes of high-quality content is a fair-value exchange,” Mr. Quinn said. Analysts say they expect the flow of online advertising dollars to video to continue. The research firm eMarketer projects 35 to 45 percent growth for the segment for each of the next five years, topping out at $5.2 billion in 2014. (Even then, it would hardly rival search advertising, which is projected to be a $16 billion business.) So as this option for marketers grows there will be the usual growing pains. Among those is people starting to confuse an event with actual news and then rushing to produce more noise and junk so an ad can be slapped on it. At that point, it will be up to the consumer to “Just say no!” so the healthy balance between news and commerce can be reached as quickly and painlessly as possible. How do you feel about ads attached to any video you would like to watch? Is it more acceptable depending upon the venue? Do you make exceptions abot your reactions to ads depending on what you are trying to find?

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Online Ads Attached to Video Working Well