Archive for “May, 2010”

Social Media Roundup for May 28, 2010

Youth get smart about privacy settings

Today’s youth may have a reputation for texting in short hand, but they are proving to be a savvy bunch when it comes to privacy on social networks. A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has sparked discussion about how young people are rising to the top when it comes to online reputation management. The study highlights how young people in the 18-29 age bracket are actively deleting comments that others have made on their profile and locking down privacy settings in an effort to maintain a clean image online, particularly those who are entering the workforce.

Google adds Moderator to YouTube

YouTube users are now able take their comments to another level with the integration of Google Moderator – a platform that lets users ask viewers to answer specific questions. Moderator lets you set up parameters for the dialogue, including the topic, the type of submissions, and the length of the conversation. Users are then able to vote questions up or down, with the top-voted submission responded to with a video post on the channel. Here’s an example of how The New York Times is using Google Moderator.

Mark Zuckerberg responds to privacy concerns

In a column in The Washington Post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about how Facebook missed the mark with it’s latest privacy settings. Users recently began to complain about the overly complex Facebook privacy settings, a move which Zuckerberg described as an attempt to give people more granular control over privacy settings. Zuckerberg promises that they will be releasing simpler controls for privacy settings in the coming weeks, which will help users easily turn off all third-party services.

Nike’s “Write the Future” ad goes viral

Nike’s latest ad, which captures the excitement of the fast approaching FIFA World Cup, broke all kinds of viral video records this week. The video captured 7.8 million views in it’s first week, breaking the previous record of 6.8 million which was set by Nike’s Tiger and Earl ad.

Check out the ad below (via CatchUpLady):

Does Your Online Community Have "Sitegeist"?

Theresa Nielsen Hayden, cofounder of the website Making Light, and community manager of Boing Boing, uses the term sitegeist to define the atmosphere of a website with a vibrant community:

“When you really get a community growing up around [a website], it is so much more than the blog entries themselves or the content itself,” she says. “It’s that gestalt of people talking back and forth to each other, the expectations they have of the website, and the sense they have of it.”

She’s coined the term “site-geist” to describe that environment: “Even people who aren’t really conscious of it will still have it, and they’ll assimilate the implications of even small changes to the site rapidly. They do it without thinking about it. One of the interesting things of moderating a community is being mindful of that.”

(Via Future Changes)

Social Media Roundup for May 21, 2010

Happy Birthday, Mukhtar!

A Copenhagen bus driver named Mukhtar got a big birthday surprise this year – a flash mob of almost 100 people celebrating his special day. Mukhtar was planning to take the day off for his 41st birthday but was asked to take an extra shift for a friend. A candid camera shows how his day ended with almost 100 people assembling to wish him a happy birthday.

The flash mob was part of a five week campaign undertaken by Copenhagen bus companies Movia and Arriva to promote public transportation and driver contribution.

Google TV is here

Yesterday Google, along with Sony Corp., Intel Corp. and Logitech International, announced plans to launch Google TV in the fall. Touted as “smart TV”, the TV will have many customization options to personalize content, with the main goal being to turn televisions into giant monitors for web surfing and increase ad revenue. The televisions will be sold exclusively at Best Buy, but no word yet on what the price tag will be.

Stay in touch with Facebook page rankings

If you’re looking for any sort of Facebook page ranking information, Fan Page List can connect you with the info you need. The realtime site ranks Facebook fan pages and shows how many users are being added each day. You can check out stats for a variety of categories, including products, actors, politicians and TV shows.

I checked out the brand page to get the scoop on the most popular pages as of today:

  1. Facebook
  2. Starbucks
  3. Coca Cola
  4. YouTube
  5. Disney

SMG Connects with the Web Community at mesh 2010

mesh conference, Canada’s web conference was this week in Toronto. We sponsored a pretty cool party on Tuesday, and our fearless leader Maggie Fox spoke to a packed room Wednesday afternoon about The Art & Science of Scaling Social Media. As with the best content at mesh, it certainly got people talking and was covered in posts by Matt Hartley at The Financial Post and David Brown at Marketing.

Pacman’s back!

Social Media Roundup for May 21, 2010 - Social Media Group Helps Business Navigate the Social Web._1274460750769

Pacman has resurfaced just in time for his 30th birthday and Google is celebrating in typical logo fashion. Cruise on over to the Google homepage to see the logo turn into a playable game of Pacman. Happy weekend!

New Rules Aim to Streamline Social Media for US Federal Agencies

Federal agencies that want to set up a Twitter account or use a wiki to engage with the public often face lengthy delays while ensuring compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, a 1995 law that requires justification of any activity that involves gathering information from the public, but doesn’t address the unique nature of online collaboration tools created in the last 15 years.

Recently, the Obama Administration issued a memorandum that will reduce paperwork and approval delays associated with using online tools, including Twitter, blogs, and wikis, to engage with the public.

(Via Future Changes)

SAP: Most Extensive Use of Social Media by a Corporation

A whitepaper released recently by the Aspen Institute, titled Leveraging the Talent-Driven Organization, written based on a discussion that took place at the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Talent Development, presents a very interesting thesis,

The new talent-driven firm is one that provides conditions for talent to learn, collaborate, and make decisions utilizing social networks and other tools that characterize our digital age. The talent of today expects to learn constantly, to grow steadily, and to exert leadership where he or she can. Structures and strategies need to follow suit.

Author Richard Adler suggests that rather than scaling operational efficiencies, to be truly competitive today’s top firms need to scale learning so that their people can get better, faster; that’s the true competitive advantage (see “The Big Shift“).

Mark Yolton, Senior Vice President for SAP Community Networks (communities described as possibly “the most extensive use to date of social media by a corporation”) participated in the roundtable and has some really interesting perspectives on how social media can support The Big Shift that’s required to keep up with the pace of innovation inside firms (one of the key theories is that what helped firms thrive and survive in the 20th century is actually crippling them in the 21st). Based on this incredibly large-scale implementation, Yolton provides a new model that contrasts these differences and provides some interesting food for thought (for example, “Vertically integrated vs. Horizontally networked”).

It’s absolutely worth a read. To download your own copy, click here.

[full disclosure: SAP is an SMG client]

Social Media Roundup for May 14, 2010

What else can we get Betty White to do…

Betty White sure is one popular lady. The former Golden Girls star started making headlines after a Facebook page campaigning to have her host Saturday Night Live (SNL) attracted more than half a million fans. The effort paid off and White hosted SNL this past week, bringing SNL its highest ratings in 18 months. With her successful hosting gig behind her, Betty White fans have turned to loftier ambitions now pushing to have the comedian host the Emmys and the Oscars.

Twitter followers gone wild

Last week Facebook experienced a privacy glitch that allowed users to see and accept or decline other users’ friend requests. This week it was Twitter’s turn to let users take control of follower lists. A bug on the site allowed users to type “[tweet] accept [username]” and force any user to follow them. Twitter jumped on the case quickly and patched up the bug, but for a short period of time, famous Twitter users like Conan O’Brien (who notoriously follows only one user) started to follow a much larger number of people.

Gmail continues to add drag and drop features

A few weeks ago, Google added drag and drop file attachment functionality to Gmail. Now, Google has wowed us again by allowing users to drag and drop images into email messages and resize files on the spot. Only Chrome users can take advantage of this slick feature for now, but Google promises they will soon be rolling out all of the drag and drop goodness to other browsers.

Fix your Facebook privacy settings in 2 minutes

If you’re still not feeling confident about navigating Facebook’s new privacy settings, Huffington Post has put together this video tutorial on how to fix up your settings in 2 minutes. This week, the New York Times reported that Facebook users now have 50 settings with more than 170 options to wade through to fully set up their privacy.

Balancing Community Growth and Personal Engagement

John Lepp questions social media experts who preach about the importance of engagement, but build such large followings that they either can’t – or won’t – make time to acknowledge and respond to the people who engage with them:

Bottom line: don’t ask for someone – be it a client, customer, donor – anyone – to engage with you and not acknowledge it. Don’t tell someone that these are the rules but you don’t need to play by them. Don’t complain that you are so important to so many people that you can’t do the very things you are constantly telling them to do. Especially when you are the “expert” in this kind of thing.

(Via Future Changes)

Social Media Roundup for May 7, 2010

Blackbird Pie – Twitter Media_1273244419937

Twitter Launches Embeddable Tweets

This week Twitter launched it’s new embeddable tweets feature called Blackbird Pie. The tool is really simple to use and produces a string of embed code that you can insert just like a YouTube video, making it easier than ever to showcase awesome tweets (this one courtesy of Big Bird).

Hope you weren’t having a private conversation…

Facebook experienced yet another major privacy breach earlier this week. A bug on the site temporarily allowed Facebookers to view other users’ live chat messages and pending friend requests simply by manipulating the “preview my profile” feature in the privacy settings. Facebook was quick to disable the chat feature when they were notified of the privacy hole, but I tried out the process shortly after TechCrunch broke the story and was able to access, and confirm or deny other users’ friend requests.

Facebook wants more personal information

Facebook is preparing to launch a new feature that will allow users to make location-based status updates. The service will compete with other location-based tools like Foursquare and Gowalla and will also be offered to marketers like McDonalds. With this week’s privacy breach and Facebook’s overall not-so-stellar privacy record, it will be interesting to see if Facebook users adapt a feature that will reveal even more of their personal information.

Mother’s Day greetings go social

If your mom’s on Facebook (and has friended you like 48% of parents), she’ll probably appreciate a custom testimonial to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. Hallmark’s Facebook page, called Meet My Mom, lets you build a virtual collage, including text, photos and video to showcase to mom. Hallmark’s Facebook page has attracted more than 5,000 new fans since the tool launched a few weeks ago.

Social Media and Regulatory Compliance: Avoiding Potential Problems

Regulatory Compliance is a growing issue for corporate social media efforts. Jessica Scarpati reviews emerging compliance issues that could cost a company millions if they’re not properly handled. For example:

“If you’re a registered financial advisor and somebody posts a tweet that says, ‘Everyone should go out and buy Dell stock’ … and you favorite that with a star, that’s an endorsement and you could be fined millions of dollars.”

This is why social media engagement needs to be guided by a plan that sets guidelines, addresses compliance, and provides training so employees are aware of the seemingly harmless activities that can cause problems.