How Social Media Is Working For Small Business [INFOGRAPHIC]

If you're in business - chances are good that you're a "small" business - and you're in good company. According to the 2008 US Census data it's estimated that there are about 27,281,452 businesses - of which 21,351,320 (78%!) are "Nonemployer" businesses.

Yeah, I never really heard that term before, either.

Here's how the Census folks define a "Nonemployer" business:

Most nonemployers are self-employed individuals operating very small unincorporated businesses, which may or may not be the owner's principal source of income.

They go on to say:

Nonemployers account for a majority of all business establishments, but average less than 4 percent of all sales or receipts.

Oh, yeah, on top of that  and ANOTHER 4,661,829 have 9 or fewer employees. That means 95% of all businesses have less than 9 employees.

That's a serious number of folks.

If you're in the upper 5% - you can skip the infographic below - otherwise - stop reading this and fire up your Facebook account!



SOURCE

Just How Popular IS This Whole "Twitter" Thing? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Although I was an early tweeter - and you can hardly swing a dead cat without running into a story (or watch a TV show, or get a piece of junk mail) that features the word Twitter in it or on it somewhere.

I came across this infographic - and the sheer numbers are simply astounding:



SOURCE

Swiping While Wiping

There's been a ton of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching in the publishing industry - and the blog universe about the "death of printed media." Everyone from media moguls to tech industry pundits to radio talk show hosts (yes, I know - radio is dead too - but that's for another post) - have been complaining about how the printed page is doomed - only to be replaced by (gasp!) electronic versions.

The Upside of Social Media

If you've read any of my earlier posts - you'll know that I've always had mixed feelings when it comes to social media.

On the one hand, it's a huge time-suck and it's easy to get distracted and spend useless hours updating your status(es), profile(s), and all responding to others' messages, opening cool links with YouTube videos in them, etc.

With so many social media outlet clamoring for attention - you also have to check multiple services with multiple logins - and then try to keep track of all the "friends" (or "followers" or whatever) you have on each service - and then post relevant stuff to that particular site.

Which site do you check most often? Where should you invest your time? If you have a Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, MySpace and Yammer accounts (which I do) - who the hell has time to check/update all those sites? Even with aggregation tools, it's a nightmare.

Every time I watch Twitter feeds live - I feel like I'm watching the matrix of humanity just like in the movie.

So, I've started to focus a lot of my attention on a couple of services: Twitter and Facebook. Just those two are enough for me at this point! Even then, I have a fairly large number of "friends" on Facebook - but it's nice to read the interesting status updates, browse other folks' pictures and just keep in touch with people.

There are a lot of sad moments, happy moments, silly moments and basically everything in between. I don't comment on a lot of the posts - I mainly just "lurk" - but there are some people who could just really use a bit of encouragement now and then - so I'll post a comment (or snarky remark!).

I don't know about you, but I feel a bit impotent writing "You're in our thoughts" or "You'll make it, don't worry" or some other equally dazzling comment. I mean, I really hope that person gets it worked out or that things turn around for them - or whatever - but it just feels like a store-bought card versus a hand-written one.

You never really know if what you said was even read - much less if it even helped the other person.

So, I've been sort of lax in my commenting of other people's status updates lately - but all that is going to change.

You see, this weekend I was on the receiving end of those comments - when Brenda went into the hospital with a heart attack scare (she's fine - heart is OK). Beyond the incredible support of our family (shout out to Theresa, Julie and my mom!) - the number of caring, thoughful posts on the status updates were something that really helped me out.

In the long hours sitting and waiting (and waiting, and waiting, and waiting!) - I was able to update my status multiple times - and would find myself checking back every 10 minutes to see if anyone responded yet... and 90% of the time - someone did.

It feel really good to know that others were out there lending a sympathetic ear and offering their encouragement and support.

It was beyond just what they said (which was really encouraging) - it was the fact that they took the time to read my status update (among the 100's they have in their News Feed) - and then took the time to formulate a response.

It really made a difference to me - and was very moving.

For those of you who don't have a Facebook account yet - sign up at Facebook.com - and if you are on Facebook - look me up: facebook.com/bobcusick and "add" me as a friend (there's no "acquaintance" or "some jerk" buttons, unfortunately).

Once again, I want to THANK all the Facebook folks who responded to our situation over the weekend from the bottom of my heart.

The Future: Less IS More

After taking this week "off" from my social media commitments - I jumped back (literally) into the "stream" of the social collective this morning.

Now, those of you who know me know that I'm not the most "social" person out there - and that at the beginning of this wave of social media - I was skeptical (at best). But after being "out of the loop" for a week - I found that I actually missed the time-sucking, endless noise filtering and discovery of hidden gems in my social networks.

Really.

Just due to the sheer number of posts and the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day and the fact that I actually need to do "work" as well - I'm finding that the thing I long for is not *less* information - but information that is categorized in the way that's important to me.

For example, I have limited my followings on Twitter to people that say stuff that I find interesting. Now, I'm only following 76 people - but damn Spanky - some of those folks Tweet in real time. Some of the time it's interesting, and some of the time it's just plain annoying to have (literally) 100+ tweets by ONE person a day.

Even if I could process 7,600 tweets per day (100 tweets * 76 people) - there's no way I actually could. I mean, seriously, can you process 500 of ANYTHING in a single day?

That's just one outlet - Twitter. Then there's Facebook. I have a fair number of friends - a lot of whom are really interesting people - and I make every effort to read their status updates and sometimes the links and videos they post. And, more times than not, they have great things to day.

Then there's the "real time" communications - instant messaging via AIM, GoogleTalk, MSN (yeah, I know!), ICQ, and Skype... these generally are the communications that take the place of a phone call. I typically have 3-20 conversations a day (some are really short) to ping friends, colleagues and customers.

Then, there's Skype, my land line phone and my mobile phone. Oh, and then I check my Gmail, email, SMS, and voicemail.

Then, I read blogs and articles, write blogs and articles - and then I check my snail mail.

Ummmm... yeah.

So this past week I entered my time capsule and have only answered phone calls, "traditional" email and voicemail ( ok, ok, so I did a few IM sessions as well) - and I found out that I really felt out of touch. Yeah, I know - it surprised me as well!

So I started looking around for some stuff to help me to collapse all these information streams so I don't lose (what's left) of my mind. Now before I get 1,000 comments, tweets, IM's, emails, voice mails, status updates - I know that there are a great number of tools that will help me manage the Twitter feed.

That's not the problem.

I need something that will help unify all the streams and then help me to put them in context. To help me keep track of my customer's outgoing and incoming communications, my friend's outgoing and incoming communications, my colleagues' outgoing and incoming communications. That way, I have a context in which I can interact.

One of the services I use is called Ping.fm - it helps me to update all my various social networks in one fell swoop. I use Twitterfeed for the same thing for the incoming Tweets. I use RSS readers for blog updates. I use FriendFeed to try to aggregate the social stuff.

The killer app of the future is NOT going to be another way to stream your thoughts or your content. The killer app of the future is one that will coordinate and help you manage all the stuff you're consuming and creating - by author, by group, by relationship type, by content type, by time frame. It will allow you to set a preferred communication channel for each of these contacts and then when you blast your own content - it will reach out and communicate to the masses - but also in a personalized way to the selected contacts you've indicated in the way(s) those contacts prefers to be contacted in.

The future is LESS, not more. Less programs to manage stream of outgoing and incoming communications, less time spent sifting through 12 different types of communications, less hassles in knowing how to communicate effectively with those you need to communicate with.

Yeah, I've seen the future - and less IS more.

Facetweet - Will Facebook Kill Twitter?

Well - as seen on numerous blogs around the world today - it's finally come out that Facebook really DID try to buy Twitter last fall. There had been rumors all over the place that Mark and team was vying to snap up the microblogging site - and roll it into their own offering.

So after the negotiations had come to an unfruitful end (from Facebook's perspective) - they took a play out of the Gates handbook for business 101 - and just decided to build their own microblog format. I say good for them!

Now I don't know Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter personally, and I don't have any inside information as to what they have in the works - but it just seems to me that if someone like Mark Zuckerberg and team come to you and want to buy your brand (for an "undisclosed sum" - read: HUGE cash) - then unless you have a really, really, really good plan to monetize your platform - you should just sell the damn thing.

I mean, really! So, you invented the space of microblogging. Bully for you! It's still not really caught on to the mainstream yet - and your own site's features are so anemic that a whole industry and dozens of others have stepped into the ecosystem to siphon off users from your site (read: less eyeballs for ads)...

So, you have a super simple site - which is a good thing. You have a medium that lots of tech folks (and PR folks) use as sort of a "live AP" feed - also good.

But... ummm... the idea and the tech behind it are... well... just NOT that hard to re-create. The barrier of entry to create another service just like yours is, well, trivial. Just look at all the Twitter-like, me-too spin offs that have come about.

Yeah, you have first-mover advantage, but the Facebook people have a little think called "150 million registered users." Oh, and a valuation that's backed by the largest software company in the world - Microsoft. Oh, and some really, really smart people.... AND... a really robust infrastructure.... AND... did I mention 150 million registered users?

I think it's a good thing that Facebook will put in a microblogging feature - I think that people will use it and that it will really be a welcomed addition to their service. In a way - it's already there. You can see the status updates of your friends, get a "live feed" of what others are doing... so it just makes sense that if you could "broadcast" your status to anyone... you're done.

So - Twitter - unless you're going to announce something (and soon) - I'm afraid you'll be relegated to the MySpace bid of "cool idea, first-mover advantage" slow death. The difference is - you didn't sell out for $850 (while the getting was good).

I hope I'm wrong. Maybe all the people who are addicted to Twitter will continue to tweet forever. I'm sure that people who have used the service for a long time will continue to use it. However, all the "new" people who are just discovering social media (both individuals and businesses) - they WILL sign up for Facebook.

And when they do - they will have a new option to "broadcast" their stuff to anyone on the Internet - as well as to "subscribe" to other feeds. All in the CONTEXT of their friends, customers and other relationships.

OR - they could choose to go to yet another source, start cross posting (or do what I do - and use the EXCELLENT Ping.fm to do it for me) and reading two sets of feeds.

Ummmm... yeah. In-context feeds all in one aggregated place with the largest social network on the planet - or a spartan interface in scrolling format.

My money's on Facebook to win and Twitter to place.

Microblog: Twitter Ethics

It seems like Twitter is gaining in popularity. I was watching CNN the other day - and they actually showed a reporter posting tweets - on the air! What the ??

If I'm watching CNN - I don't want to see people Twittering... or checking their email... or writing a blog post... I want to watch people report the news. If I want to read the CNN tweets - then I'll go on my mobile device or computer and read the tweets.

Some people are just NUTS when it comes to what they tweet. Take the guy who did a "lifecast" of his wife giving birth - yeah... on Twitter! Or what about reporters who get inside access to special briefings from the White House or on an analyst call? If they Twitter the juicy details before the others can write up and file a story - is that "fair?"

How about Twossip (Twitter + Gossip)? Does saying something about a person and then broadcasting it to all your "followers" constitute slander - or are you just doing a "really wide-reaching IM"?

What about the people that use Twitter as a stream-of-conscientiousness tool? I hate those type of people - and they only usually last one day on my "follow" list. I really don't need to read 40 (or MORE!) posts from you a day. I do NOT need to "hear" every single thought that crosses your mind - nor do I want to.

On the other hand - some folks don't tweet enough in my opinion. There are some folks who tweet maybe 2-3 times per day (or sometimes less) - that I actually look forward to seeing a tweet from (Tech show host and radio guy Leo Laport and Servoy developer Greg Pierce to name a couple).

So if you DO Twitter - say something funny, outrageous, whimsical, controversial - it'll just be more fun for everyone. BTW: You can follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bobcusick as well...

America 2.0

All I can say is "WOW." I literally just finished listening t0 president elect Obama... sorry - I mean President Obama give his inaugural speech. Man, is he a terrific orator!

I really am hopeful that he is able to execute on the promises and hopes that he has fired up. I hope and pray that he will be able to really cross the aisles of not just the US Congress, Senate and House - but to also cross the divide that has been created with the rest of the world.

It was really amazing to watch the coming together of people just flooding the Mall in the Capitol. All ages. All faiths. All colors. All Americans.

Even here in the office - we tried to get one of the video feeds going (to no avail) - but we were able to get a live audio feed from an ABC affiliate news station here (KNX News Radio 1070 am). I was able to get the audio feed on my laptop and pumped it out through my desktop speakers so we wouldn't overwhelm our own LAN 0r saturate our ISP with everyone having their own desktop feed.

It was almost like those pictures you see of people gathered around the radio back in the days before television. We were all listening - no one spoke. No one was checking email. No phones were ringing. It was really an almost surreal experience.

President Obama talked about a wide range of topics - including building out infrastructure, helping the poor, warning the crazies, and elevating science and technology back to prominence. However, one of the lines that really struck me was when he said:

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. (emphasis, is mine)

President Obama laid out what he sees as the most critical path to America's problems. He is an incoming leader that has a road map:

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.

We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Personally, I believe that it IS possible. We CAN pull together, weather the storm, re-invent ourselves and come out stronger and are all issues that need to be addressed by our country at some point in time.

Yes, I believe America can be re-made. It's America 2.0, if you will. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Maybe not next year. Maybe not during his first 4 year term. But we WILL do it. There is really no other option.

He seems to "get" the fact that technology and social media are an important part of the process - because his process is about PEOPLE, and PEOPLE communicate with each other using technology. I'm not just talking about YouTube and streaming audio. It's more than Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. It's the "old" technology of television and over-the-air radio. It's the technology of providing speech text in advance to all the news outlets. It's the fact that he has people that even give a crap about communicating using ALL mediums all at the same time.

There's a spirit of a level playing field in terms of communication. There's a spirit of a level playing field in terms of common goals, dreams and ideals. It's up to all of us to transform the vision, goals and dreams into reality. Godspeed!

Microblog:: Twitter Spam

Deep breath.... deep breath... OK. For those of you that have a compelling need to Tweet more than 15 times per day - here's my personal advice: Step AWAY from the keyboard (or cell phone or whatever).

The whole point of Twitter, and Pownce and Tumbler and ______ (your social network here) is that you share something RELEVANT with your followers. It's NOT a free-for-all.

If you're posting more than 10 Tweets per day - then you're a Twitter Spammer (you know who you are). Stop it! No, really!

Rather than posting what you're reading - or the fact that you just posted and "can't believe it" - there's another medium for you - it's called a "blog." You can rant the whole day - and no one will care (trust me!).

But putting out 150 status "updates" a day is just too damn much. No one CARES! Instead, take a deep breath (get your HANDS OFF the keyboard - no one cares that you took a deep breath) and form some funny or interesting thing to say, and then (and ONLY then) post it to your followers.

We're (I mean I'm) tired of all the spam. If you post and see your own face (only!) on the the entire first page of your XYZ feed - just say NO. NO to posting inane details of what you're doing. NO to inane details of a trip or who you're @ hanging with. NO BODY CARES.

NOW, I'm going to Tweet this post....

IRL - RIP

NOTE: For those of you over 40: IRL = "In Real Life"

So last week when Apple announced that it would pull out of MacWorld next year, and, oh yeah, by the way, Steve Jobs won't be doing the keynote THIS year... people went absolutely bat s**t.

There were 1,000,000 blogs on the topic - rife with speculation that Mr. Jobs had a spat with the organizers (IDG) and that they simply were "taking their dollies and going home." To add insult to injury - they offered up a Jobs Replacement - Phil Shiller. Now, I don't know Mr. Shiller personally, and I'm sure he's a great guy and everything, but geez... he for SURE no Steve Jobs.

Apple's cold press release about the fact that they were just dumping MacWorld - right before the show (January 6-9, 2009) was about as childish and stupid as you can get. It's like getting dumped via a text message.

Would it have killed them to have Steve get up and say "Nothing new... and one more thing... we got NOTHING new to pimp." Then in February or March, just come out and say that due to _______ (insert standard corporate crap here) they are "re-aligning" their tradeshow strategy with market conditions... or something?

The "other" big show that's going on at exactly the same time is the once-huge CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. There was a time where this show was like the old COMDEX show - 150,000 people strong. Where you would physically age while waiting for a cab. When the crappiest, dirtiest, keep-your-socks-on-at-all-times-people hotel room was going for $395 per night. Last year, not so much. This year, even less "so much."

I don't know if it's just a reflection of the recessionary times we live in - or whether people just really don't give a crap - but it seems like (to me at least) that tradeshows in general are just sucking wind. They're expensive for both the attendees as well as the exhibitors (I've been both, many, many times). Yeah, it's cool to get all the useless swag to give to your kids and all, but really - what function do these live, in-person events really play?

We live in a world of 140 character "blogs". A world full of "status" messages on social networking sites, and a world in which 25% of the paper wealth of everyone just vanished overnight.

And it's not just tradeshows. It's user conferences and gatherings. Just last week Novell just canceled their "BrainShare" (user) conference because a bunch of the people said they weren't coming because of restrictions on their travel budgets.

Personally, I say - good riddance. I think it's important to meet with customers face-to-face. There are certain things that Twitter, and emails can't convey. However, I think that the power of meeting with people IRL is the fact that they all share a certain love for a product, service or industry and they want to be around others who are like-minded.

The problem is that with technology being what it is - phones, and Skype and online meetings and webcams are slowly taking the place of speakers, presenters, drinks in the bar and good old fashioned business card exchanges.

I guess the change in the way we interact together was (is) inevitable. There was a time when I had physically printed manuals for all the software I used sitting on a bookshelf. Now I either just use the online help (usually F1 on a PC application) - or I use Google as my online manual. I don't need no stinkin' printed manual - and I don't need to go IRL with other folks to find out about any new developments in my industry.

I get 24 hour news, 500 blogs that report the absolute latest and greatest, etc. However, I think that if shows like MacWorld and CES go the way of COMDEX - a little bit of humanity goes with it. And once it goes, it's very difficult to get back.

Microblog: Short Attention Span Theatre

NEW FEATURE: Microblog entries. This is when something is just so stupid or insane, I must comment on it IMMEDIATELY. I'll label them as such, so you don't have to read them if you're not interested. Here's the first one:

12 Second TV! Are you kidding me? Has the whole world just gone to hell in a handbasket? I mean - are we going to all be reduced to a 140 character and 12 SECOND attention span?

According to TechCrunch - the site 12seconds.tv is coming out of beta - AND has a new iPhone application. This app will allow you to put 3 photos and - yep - 12 seconds of audio together and post it on their site. Ouch! I already have twitter feeds, yammer feeds, and social media to deal with - and NOW someone gets the great idea to have Twitter - but with video? Seesh... it's a sad, sad day, people.

DO SOME WORK! Spend some MONEY! Stimulate the economy! Quit watching 12 second ANYTHING.

I Am Therefore I Tweet

My social media experiment these past couple of months has been... interesting to say the least. Like most social newbies who finally figure out what Twitter is - I was posting about 10 times per day. Yes, I was "that guy" - who told my 4 followers all the inane details of the boring crap I was doing everyday.

I was checking Twitter incessantly - and adding people that I was "following" like it was no tomorrow. I would hit "refresh" multiple times per day - and read all the posts from all the people I subscribed to. I would tweet from my iPhone, from my browser, from a friend's computer... I sounded like a damn Minah bird - tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet!

Then I got a life.

As I cut down on the number of times per day that I would tweet and would read the posts on Twitter, I noticed something interesting things:

1. I actually got more work done
2. People don't really care what I had for lunch
3. Some people "spam" Twitter like a 5 year old with 100+ tweets per day (I've stopped "following" those people)
4. I look forward to the tweets with funny, observant or useful information
5. Only about 20 of the 50+ people I "follow" have anything interesting to say
   

These observations have lead me to be a better Twitter citizen. I now post only stuff that I think other people might be interested in, or might find useful. I've pared down my "following" list to just over 50 people that I actually want to hear from (mainly geeks).

I decided that if I wanted to indulge the "eating ham sandwich" side of me - that I should either set up a separate account for "blather" - or just do like everyone else and post that stuff on my Facebook page.

Then, just as I had completed the Twitter 12 step program, my wife suggests that we try using Yammer - a Twitter rip-off that is meant just for people inside of a specific company (people can only join yammer if they have the same email extension - e.g. @mycompany.com).

Well, Hallelujah! Within the first 24 hours most of the company was on Yammer and were... well... Yammering away. This time, though, no one put what they were eating for lunch. They said what they were working on, what projects where coming online, what interesting sales prospects were saying, comments and suggestions from customers... you know, real "work" stuff.

It's still in the experimental stage, but the results are pretty cool. We have employees in 6 timezones all over the world - and it's cool to be able to get a sense of what they're working on. I'm not sure how to explain it... but it's easier than sending an email, it's less intrusive than IM, and it's fast. The best part is - if no one want to read it (or respond to it), then it's up to them.

If you don't respond to an email or IM, then you're rude and sometimes will cause more than hurt feelings. But if you don't respond to a tweet or yamm (?) - then it's no big deal. You're broadcasting you status - hoping to be helpful, or to give people an idea of what you're working on. You can also ask for feedback, have people check out a link, spread the word about a new success story. It's like a living, Internal newsletter.

Well, with all this social media (special thanks here to Brenda Christensen for keeping the social media banner flying for Servoy!) - my wife (the "other" Brenda) came to me with another suggestion for a useful, online tool that would track what people were saying about any topic. It was basically a free service that would search some sites for any keyword you entered, and show you results on what was being blogged, twittered, etc.

Now I already have a Goggle Alert set up for some key terms - and that works great. But it's limited to what the mighty Google indexes - and not the rest of the world. The site that Brenda suggested - yacktrack - will show you the results of your keyword search across several sites (including Friendfeed, Technorati, Twitter, Google blog search, etc.). It's a pretty interesting service (free for now). The results are interesting - although if you are looking at the blog results, there's no link provided to the actual blog.

I found that the source of the search Google Blog Search - was much more efficient. But, it's nice to have a single service where you can enter a term, and get an overall feel for what the talk is on a topic, then if you're interested, you can always drill down to the actual search engines and get your "hands dirty".

Whew! Now I can finally Tweet-Facebook-LinkedIn-Plurk-Yammer about this entry!

In Social Media We Trust

My entry into the social media realm has been very interesting - to say the least. I've stayed mainly with the mainstream services: FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pownce (shutting down Dec 15th), Jabber, etc.

I've even been able to amass some "friends" on each of the services. I've been pretty careful about who I will add as a connection in each of them - but I was reading an article by Mike Elgan from ComputerWorld the other day that really gave me pause.

He was talking about the fact that it's possible for scammers, theives and other miscreants to "hijack" the identities of people you may really know - and pose as them - in order to gain your confidence for an a scam attack at some point in the future.

He points out some really interesting points: in the social media world we will trust another person who we (think) we know as a "friend." Now that person can see all of our other friends and their profiles. But what I never really stopped to think about was just how easy it would be to steal someone's identity and pose as that person.

Mr. Elgan calls it "How to steal friends and influence people":

Step 1: Request to be "friends" with a dozen strangers on MySpace. Let's say half of them accept. Collect a list of all their friends.

Step 2: Go to Facebook and search for those six people. Let's say you find four of them also on Facebook. Request to be their friends on Facebook. All accept because you're already an established friend.

Step 3: Now compare the MySpace friends against the Facebook friends. Generate a list of people that are on MySpace but are not on Facebook. Grab the photos and profile data on those people from MySpace and use it to create false but convincing profiles on Facebook. Send "friend" requests to your victims on Facebook.

As a bonus, others who are friends of both your victims and your fake self will contact you to be friends and, of course, you'll accept. In fact, Facebook itself will suggest you as a friend to those people.

Yikes! Just think about that for a minute. Someone out there could be on another social media site right now using your name, your photo and your profile to lure people into a scam, or worse. Now, the bad news is - the damage may already be done.

As a precaution, I would suggest that people who are "into" the social media scene (and who isn't these days?) - check out some of the other social media sites by searching for yourself. If you find a fake that's on there - you owe it to yourself to report it to the appropriate service and get the "bad" profile removed.

I've never had to deal with this personally (thank goodness) - so I'm not sure what the policy would be. Do you get to keep the profile up there - but you just take over the username/password? What happens when you want to join that same network after the offending profile as been removed? Can you even keep your same name (your real name) - or will it be blacklisted?

GREAT! Just one more thing to be paranoid about...

If any of you out there have experience with this - or know of someone who does - be sure to leave a comment.

Let The Carnage Begin

"Things always seem to get worse before they get better." If that quote holds any truth - then we're about to see things get worse.

The early indications - besides the Wall Street seesaw, the housing meltdown, weak "Black Friday" and the credit crunch - are starting to make themselves known. In the tech world - when social networking sites start closing (and/or get acquired) it's sort of the canary in the coal mine biting the dust.

This week a couple of sites announced that they were going into the deadpool - Pownce (co-founded by Digg’s Kevin Rose) and Twing announced they were shutting down. This comes on heels of the death of other sites over the past 4 months - sites that were fairly well funded and had some "good press." Some of them were even founded by very successful entrepreneurs. Here's a small sampling:

• Eyespot ($3.7 million in Oct 06)
• Uber ($7.6 million in funding - May 2008 - cofounded by former Friendster CEO and NBC West Coast president Scott Sassa)
• Wallop (from Microsoft's Research Team)
• Fleck (€225k - based in Netherlands)
• Social.FM ($5 million in funding)
• TripHub ($15 million, founded by Josh Herst, an early member of the Microsoft Expedia team)
• MatchMine ($10.5 million, founded by Mike Troiano, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Interactive and Brandscape)
• Akimbo ($56 million, investors including AT&T and Cisco)
• Capazoo ($12 million)
• etc, etc, etc.

My prediction is that we'll see a lot more of these bubble-2.0-social-media-with-no-business-plan company hitting the skids this month and on into the middle of 2009. I mean, didn't ANY of these people learn ANYTHING from the first bubble?

TIP #1: Eyeballs do not necessarily equal money.

TIP #2: You need money to stay in business.

TIP #3: Just by having a screwed up name that no one can pronounce doesn't mean you'll get money.

TIP #4: See tip #2

Speaking of folks that may have had too much Turkey - the good folks over at Twitter have turned down a $500 million (mostly stock) offer from Facebook.

Um.... yeah. Half a billion dollars for a site with zero business model - and a huge cost structure. Good plan! I know, I know you're "...working on a monetization plan for the middle of 2009...". Good luck with that.

Again, see tip #2...

Twitter Phishing

There's nothing that people love to do more than know where they stand in society. Don't believe me? What brand of jeans to you wear? What kind of car do you drive? How many iPhones/iPods do you own? What kind of mobile phone?

It's like we're all just walking around proving our rank to each other - even in the world of social media. How many friends do you have on Facebook? How many followers do you have on Twitter? How many contacts in Linkedin?

Come on, admit it. When you add someone to your social network - the first thing you look at is how they compare to you. "Oh, I see they only have 84 friends on Facebook... well, I hate to brag, but I have 142..."

And so on and so on.

It appears as if some enterprising person decided to tap into our collective egos and one-upsmanship and created a site called "Twitterrank". It's a very straightforward premise: "True to its namesake, it uses 'back references' of sorts to determine how worthy of a person you are in Twitterverse"

Oooooh - something shiny! Must... enter... my... secret... details... must... enter... my... secret... details...

There's a big disclaimer on the site that says:

I'm not out to steal ur twitterz. Frankly, I wish I didn't have to ask for your account info, but Twitter doesn't offer APIs using any other authentication mechanism (according to the docs). Read more about what I will and won't do with your account info/data in the FAQ.

I will not store your password. I will only use it once to calculate your Twitterank.

No, really, he won't. There's no "pinky swear" there - but it's implied. In researching a bit further, I came across a blog entry by Oliver Marks from ZDnet. In there, he points to a link with a screenshot of the source code of the application.

Well, if you look at the source code now - you'll see that those sort of offending remarks have been removed, and it appears as if Mr. Chijiiwa, the site's creator - decided it was best to take the criticisms of the social media community to heart - and has posted his site link and his resume.

Turns out he's a Google Engineer! Huh. Well, there's NO WAY that someone could put up a fake site or fake resume on the Internet... everyone knows that!

In the meantime, send ME your Twitter username and password - I won't store it either (wink, wink) and don't worry there's no way I would write an automated solution that would create 30 tweets an hour from your account that would point people to porn sites and scammer sites... I pinky swear!

Unified Contacts - NOW Please

So I've been working with various social media sites for over 2 months now - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Rejaw, Tumblr and I've also been using the hell out of my iPhone (yes, I'm one of those fanboy types who is not having any problems with my phone).

All in all, it's pretty cool. Except for one thing - my profiles. I have profiles on different sites and keeping them up to date can be a pain. It's sort of like keeping track of people when they move, change jobs, or get married and their contact information changes.

I have a copy of their email address and physical address and phone number in my email program, on my phone, and in a Christmas list database. For the contacts that both my wife and I know - she has a copy in her email program, her phone and probably written in her "big black daytimer" as well.

None of these things talk to one another.

What if I update my information? Then I would send out an email to the people I know, update all the social networking sites - and just HOPE that people that I know would even notice that I moved or got a new phone number or a new email address.

And, if you're like me - when you go to a meeting where you meet new people - you carry all your pertinent information on a little 2" x 3" scrap of paper known as a business card. The crappy part is - so does everyone else.

Then, after the event, you get to take those 20 little scraps of paper (sometimes with notes on it - like personal email addresses or a note about the person) and then I get to hand key that information back into my address book. And then find them on LinkedIn. And Facebook. And Twitter. And Rejaw. And Tumblr.

Then I go to the next person - and repeat.

Surly in 2008 - there must be a better way! I'm looking for some digital solution that would allow people to exchange basic contact information with social media sites, and have that data synchronize across my address book to my phone.

It would contain my basic information (like on a Facebook profile) - and allow me to specify what I would share with whom (name and company for strangers, mobile phone for family and selected friends, etc.). Then it would just automatically synch with anyone that has me marked as a friend (or follower or whatever).

I would have just a single place to update my stuff, and I would know that everyone that is linked to me has the most up to date information all the time. And, I would also know that everyone I'm linked TO is up to date as well.

As long as I'm dreaming, I would also put in my preferred method of contact (email, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) and I would be able to update my profile at any time to remove information (I didn't mean to publish my mobile phone number to everyone) and it would just automatically be removed from everyone's data store as well.

The technology exists. It shouldn't be THAT hard to do. The issue (like any other technology) would come down to one of adoption. Adoption of not just the people with the connections - but to people like handset makers who could build in a "update profile" button on their contact management apps, or software developers of either browsers, social media sites and email programs to all write to and read from a set of specifications.

Yeah, good luck on that! I guess I'll just re-order my business cards now....

Public Profile = PUBLIC

In going through all the interesting (and questionable) new business ideas coming out of TechCrunch over the weekend - I stumbled on one of them - iSearch - that, like other sites, will comb the web and allow stalkers of all sorts find out all the information they need about just about anyone.

It's really nothing new - there have been information "aggregators" around for years. They would troll the public sites of local government databases, and sometimes just perform Google (or Yahoo back in the day) searches to put together a "profile" of the person you're trying to stalk locate.

The interesting thing about iSearch is that it allows you to search by not just name and city or state - but also by phone number, or screen name. The site itself isn't "all that" - and it seems that there it's linked in large part to Intelus who appears to be the big aggregator of the information.

On thing I found quite fun - was the fact that it showed basically my LinkedIn profile, including a lot of the people I was connected to - and with a single click - you could get more information on them as well. I think this is just the start. If you leave a big enough digital, public profile - it's just a matter of time (and web services) until anyone will be able to get a full profile of you, your tastes, your music preferences, who your friends are (and their profiles, music tastes, etc).

It's also interesting that according to eWEEK, about 22% of hiring managers look to a person's online profile during the hiring process. When you have basically free access to "people" search engines that will aggregate a bunch of information together on a single person - this will definitely be a trend that is only going to get worse, not better.

The bottom line is that if you have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pownce, Tumblr, Rejaw life - expect it to be aggregated, analyzed and dissected by anyone at any time. For the paranoid of the group - you may want to have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pownce Tumblr, Rejaw "alter ego" where you can "be yourself" and keep your "actual" public profiles clean and fresh as the morning rain.

In the "old days" (even today) - I can pay a little extra extortion fee to the phone company to keep my phone number unlisted. I wonder what we'll have to do to get "unlisted" from sites like iSearch...

Social Media Tech Tools

So, I was bitching about social media sites a while back - and I was bemoaning the fact that since I had a "real job" - it was difficult for me to keep up on all the sites.

Well, I do still hold that opinion, however - I did find a tool that makes updating stuff (at least your "status") a helluva lot easier: ping.fm.

This nifty site (still in beta - but just request a login and in a couple of days they will give you one) - has made life so much easier when trying to post to all those media sites. Basically, it's an aggregation service that will allow you to input all your logins for all the social media sites you're a member of - and then blast your update to them in realtime.

It will also let you post to any single service by adding "@" and then a two letter abbreviation - e.g. Twitter = @tt. Not only will it allow you to do status updates and microblogging - but it will allow you to do full blog posts as well. To post a blog entry to blogger - you would use something like this: @bl This is Cool!^Body of my blog. Ping.fm would then post a new posting to your blogger account with title^posting.

I also ran across some very interesting other stuff when looking at the APIs of LinkedIn (still not public yet) and Twitter.

For LinkedIn there is a webservice widget called "Company Insider" that you can call that will see if there is anyone you know in any company. It's VERY easy to insert into any HTML page.

If you're into Twitter - there is some great documentation on their RESTful API here. Basically, a RESTful API means you can call it with simple URLs. For example - enter this text into a browser (Firefox or IE work best): http://twitter.com/statuses/replies.xml. You will be prompted to enter your username/password (use your Twitter login and password) - and you'll get back an XML string of the last 2 people that posted to you.

You can also get it back in atom, rss, or json formats as well - simply by changing the "xml" in the url to one of the supported formats.

It's basically the same thing for Tumblr, Rejaw, Pownce, Plurk, etc. They all offer a RESTful API that you can get XML or JSON files out of. This means that you can add all of this social media to whatever site you have. In fact, if you develop applications - it's conceivable to create a really cool social networking mashup/dashboard type of application...

Servoy developers - can you hear me now?

I'll Link-Twitter-Book-Face-Ster You Later

OK, so I'm here in Amsterdam with journalism heavy weights Joel Dryfuss, Amy Wohl and Dan Tynan - and we got to talking about Social Media over dinner last night at cool eatery called "Envy".

Between bites of "frog butts" and a cucumber gazpacho - and I asked them their opinion on social networking - and I expected that their much more informed, much more well educated, much more in-the-know experience would produce a lively conversation.

Well... it did.

Now I've said here that the whole social media thing really is hard for me to keep up with - as I have a "real" day job. I can barely keep up with all the email, snail mail, IM, SMS, and voicemail stuff - and now I'm having to check my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn account to update them, check for other missed messages, etc.

What was very interesting - is that everyone agreed on this point.

Really.

Wow! I mean these are professional journalists that pump out a huge amount of content for some of the best-known publications in the world (not to mention the SaaS book that Amy is writing, the child rearing articles that Dan writes and the "multiple book projects" that Joel is working on) - and they (we) all have the same problem: social media is tough to find the time to deal with.

The problem lies in the fact that there is no "one" outlet for people to be "social" on. In the beginning, there was MySpace, and tweens found it to be a place where they could "hang out" and be themselves.

Then came Facebook. Then came Plaxo, Twitter, LinkedIn, and about 200 other possible places for you to post the most intimate details of your life for all the world to see. That's fine.

The crux of the problem lies with friends. The more you invite and add - the more invitations you get. It's a never-ending cycle of adding (or denying) people with at least 6 degrees of separation between you and a "real" friend. It's like going to a family reunion and meeting 200 total strangers who are related to you (somehow).

To make matters worse - all these "friends" now leave you messages. And Twits. And write on your "wall." And send you virtual crap (drinks, animals, etc).

The answer? Just say no. Unplug. Hug your kid. Make love not war.

There's no way (unless you're extremely motivated and have loads of time) that a popular or busy person (with a life and a job) can go through all the possible places in the world that people can get in contact with you. Dan Tynan turned me on to FriendFeed (I'm sure there are 10,000 more just like it) as a way to manage the deluge... but you still have to plough through all the entries, etc.

I remember the days when you had one email address, one home phone, and one business phone. The end. I never missed a call, people would write "letters" or they would make arrangements to come over to the house and have a BBQ to catch up.

Now they just nudge-twit-wink.

The Day The Net Went Dark

I've never been accused of being an optimist - and maybe it's just the rainy, humid weather here in Amsterdam, but my thoughts today returned to the pessimistic side of my personality.

Hey, what can I say?

I was thinking about the botched launch of the iPhone, the fact that Yahoo is closing its music portal, and the merger is XM and Sirius digital music services... and I was fantasizing on what it would be like if all of a sudden all the popular services (the "cool kids") suddenly went dark.

What would it be like if Salesforce.com just shut down its servers Monday morning? How about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and eBay? What if, when we woke up on Monday, all these "staples" of our digital lives didn't exist? Worse yet - what if Google took a huge dump, along with all their related sites and services? What if the entire Internet crashed - and it took 30 days to reboot?

What would happen?

Chaos.... for about 3 days.

Then people would (gasp!) pick up the phone to schedule meetings, they would get on an airplane and actually meet people IRL (In Real Life). We would all start buying stamps and go to the (gasp!) post office to actually "mail" invoices and send "letters" to people. We would go to the corner drugstore to get (gasp!) "printed" pictures.

We would be forced to tell people to their face what we thought of them - rather than just typing crap on a "blog" - and fax machines all over the world would be pulled from closets and fired up.

Xerox and HP would sell a record number of toner cartridges and getting an appointment with a copy repair person would be like trying to get someone to install an air conditioner in Phoenix in August.

Paper companies and airlines and travel agents would be riding high - as well as hotels, rental car companies and restaurants. People would return to nightclubs and comedy shows and good old-fashioned dinner-and-a-movie dates.

People would actually buy "newspapers" (daily printed paper with world wide news that happened in the last 24 hours) and gather in "coffee shops" to talk about pressing national and international events.

There would be a minor "baby boom" as couples... well... coupled. Kids all over the world would actually get to talk to the adult "strangers" they call "parents" who previously occupied the dinner table with their Crackberries visible (on vibrate - of course) and their eye on the real time stock ticker and after hours trading on their NIKKEI index hedge funds.

Lines at government offices would get longer - and service would still suck. People would stand in line to make deposits and withdrawals using human "tellers" (people who actually work at a bank!). People would actually go to their mailboxes and receive mail that wasn't 100% spam advertisements.

At work people could finally concentrate on whatever it was they did before responding to the Pavlovian "ding" of arriving email. Bosses would be forced to actually "talk" to their employees and there would be a run on "interoffice mail" envelopes at office supply stores.

FedEx and UPS stock would be the new Wall Street darlings while the tech sector would be in the "fire sale" bin. Companies would be forced to hire "people" to answer their phones - and for one brief period, the entire population of India wouldn't be inundated with tech support and credit card activation calls.

Then, finally, after 30 long days of living in the "dark" ages... things would thankfully return to "normal."