Tag Archives: Facebook

May 21, 2012 · 9:59 AM

Is Facebook Already Dead?

Facebook stock is trading around $33.50 a share as I type this post, down $4.50 from its Friday initial public offering price.

I don’t want to call myself Nostradamus, but the events of the past few weeks, along with this commentary from L. Gordon Crovitz in today’s Wall Street Journal reminded me of an item I posted just over two years ago.

My theory at the time was that Facebook someday would have to sell out its users’ (more than 900 million worldwide) personal data in order to become profitable. While this anticipated move is both logical and predictable, the user backlash will be strong, ugly and likely elicit government action that will slow

Crovitz’s opening joke says it all:

Q: Why did Facebook go public?

A: They couldn’t figure out the privacy settings either.

CNN recently aired/posted a story on “why people are leaving Facebook,” which cited five reasons why a growing number of people are deactivating their accounts:

Maintaining a professional image
Focusing on “real” communication
Shedding an emotional burden
Avoiding a time-waster
Maintaining personal privacy

Little wonder a recent Associated Press-CNBC poll indicates Facebook may be a passing fad.

My own prediction is that Facebook will become similar to a television network, attracting a smaller number of heavy users (probably women ages 24-45), and that many other demographic groups will abandon the network in favor of the next big thing.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Issues Management, Social Media

Tagged as Associated Press, CNBC, CNN, Facebook, Jump the Shark, L. Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal

February 15, 2012 · 10:02 AM

Privacy, Weblining and a Government That Knows Best

I was amused by Scott Canon’s article in yesterday’s edition of The Kansas City Star on his ever-growing dependency on all things Google and concerns about privacy issues. One notable quote:

“I’ve long understood that I have been engaged in a digital disrobing that reveals my digital self click by click, and byte by byte. I dropped almost all my veils, eagerly, in full view of the computer mind of a multinational corporation. It’s just that living in a Google world is so easy.”

Canon’s point is delivered tongue-in-cheek, but raises a broader and more serious concern, expressed on Sunday by Chicago-Kent School of Law Professor Lori Andrews in her New York Times essay, “Facebook is Using You.”

“Material mined online has been used against people battling for child custody or defending themselves in criminal cases. LexisNexis has a product called Accurint for Law Enforcement, which gives government agents information about what people do on social networks. The Internal Revenue Service searches Facebook and MySpace for evidence of tax evaders’ income and whereabouts, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has been known to scrutinize photos and posts to confirm family relationships or weed out sham marriages. Employers sometimes decide whether to hire people based on their online profiles, with one study indicating that 70 percent of recruiters and human resource professionals in the United States have rejected candidates based on data found online. A company called Spokeo gathers online data for employers, the public and anyone else who wants it. The company even posts ads urging ‘HR Recruiters — Click Here Now!’ and asking women to submit their boyfriends’ e-mail addresses for an analysis of their online photos and activities to learn ‘Is He Cheating on You?’”

It’s not all bad, of course. As Jeffrey S. Trachtman points out in this response to Ms. Andrews’ piece, oftentimes, a site’s ability to deliver advertising offers that directly benefit both the site and the user, represents a win-win and is a positive outcome of data aggregation.

But the issue becomes more sinister when data are used to discriminate. More from Andrews:

“Now the map used in redlining is not a geographic map, but the map of your travels across the Web. The term Weblining describes the practice of denying people opportunities based on their digital selves. You might be refused health insurance based on a Google search you did about a medical condition. You might be shown a credit card with a lower credit limit, not because of your credit history, but because of your race, sex or ZIP code or the types of Web sites you visit.”

The key for me is the term “Weblining,” which could become a convenient excuse for greater government regulation of online sales and marketing practices. How many disgruntled consumers will it take before someone makes it his personal mission to ensure that no one is discriminated against due to his or her Web-surfing habits?

Where does efficient direct marketing end and Weblining begin? And is Weblining inherently a bad thing?

Stay tuned, sports fans. This is only the beginning.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Issues Management, Listening, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tagged as Facebook, Google, Kansas City Star, New York Times, privacy, Weblining

February 4, 2012 · 11:06 AM

Is Social Media Addictive?

Has this ever happened to you?

You would have finished a current work project a long time ago, but you just couldn’t ween yourself away from your Twitter feed long enough to concentrate.

You’re kind of depressed that you don’t feel as happy as all my your Facebook friends seem to be.

If the answer is “yes,” perhaps it’s time to admit powerlessness and get yourself to a meeting of Social Media Addicts Anonymous (SMAA), a new group for folks addicted to all things social and unable to manage their lives, careers and relationships.

If this sounds ridiculous, check out this post from Erik Sass at The Social Graf, or this December 2011 article from Danial Gulati in the Harvard Business Review.

In the former, Sass cites a recent study following 250 social media users (ages 18 to 85) in Wurzburg, Germany. As reported in the journal Psychological Science, when asked to give up all social media, subjects reported:

“…social media was harder to resist than a gamut of other behaviors: ‘In contrast, people were relatively successful at resisting sports inclinations, sexual urges, and spending impulses, which seems surprising given the salience in modern culture of disastrous failures to control sexual impulses and urges to spend money.’ Likewise, the subjects’ reports for alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine marked their desires for these substances at relatively low levels compared to social media.”

Social media more addictive than alcohol, caffeine, tobacco and sex???

Wow.

HBR’s Gulati, author of the book Passion & Purpose, observes three major trends emerging among heavy Facebook users:

A tendency to compare their own personal situation unfavorably to those of their “friends.” In other words, people read the happy posts and see the smiling photos of their online friends and begin to feel that their own happiness and worth are wanting when compared to others’. (I wrote about this Facebook-depression link in a previous post.)
Time fragmentation. We’re so busy checking our Facebook pages or Twitter feeds that we’re not able to fully concentrate on our work or everyday tasks. “Multitasking” has taken on a life of its own, to the point where people are switching back and forth between “real life” and social media on a minute-by-minute basis.
A decline in close personal relationships. Why get together with your girlfriend for lunch when you can get caught up with her via Facebook? Connecting via social media is just like having a real relationship without all the mess. You can share what you want and you can quit listening at any time.

Just as the addict seeks to fill the void in his life with drink or drug, a person addicted to social media crave the “connection” these technologies provide as a way to fill the holes in his life.

As marketers, we talk about using social media as a way to “connect” with consumers and how companies can use Facebook, Twitter, etc., to “humanize” themselves and “become more authentic.”

But are we really accomplishing these goals, or merely contributing to a global addiction that ultimately will leave us all distracted, disconnected and depressed?

At this point, no one knows.

As someone who sits at a desk the majority of the day, I know it’s hard for me to get out and actually have a real conversation with a live human being (which means listening as well as talking) as often as I’d like.

However, I have found through my professional experience that it’s that face-to-face interaction that enables the type of trust and personal connection that makes business work.

If you want your company to behave more humanely, consider the interactions between the humans who work for you and the humans who buy from you. Is technology helping or hurting?

Are you doing all you can to foster true connection? Or are you merely trying to seduce and sedate your audience into an unhealthy relationship?

See you at the coffee shop.

1 Comment

Filed under Listening, Social Media

Tagged as addiction, Facebook, Harvard Business Review, relationships, social media, technology, Twitter

June 22, 2011 · 10:58 AM

#RogerEbert, #SocialMedia and the #FirstAmendment

I kinda figured Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) wasn’t a fan of the “Jackass” television shows and movies (although I personally find them gut-bustingly hilarious despite my alleged high IQ and fancy college degree), but the famed film critic ruffled feathers when he posted the following tweet after “Jackass” player Ryan Dunn’s death in a car crash early Monday morning:

As one might imagine, response to Mr. Ebert’s missive elicited some angry responses, so much so that Facebook pulled his page from the site. Ebert fired back:

The thumbs and keyboards of Ebert defenders and defamers, as well as Ebert himself, have been working overtime ever since.

Facebook spokeman Andrew Noyes later was quoted as saying that Mr. Ebert’s page “was removed in error.”

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a libertarian when it comes to the First Amendment, and I applaud anyone who chooses to exercise this right and out himself as a jerk or an idiot….it makes life easier for demographers to sort them into target audiences boxes.

But the larger issue here is the impact of social media on the laws of free speech.

For instance, let’s say the leadership at Facebook tomorrow decides they really want to see Barack Obama re-elected next year, and that they’re going to pull the pages of every other candidate. In theory, it’s their bat and ball, and they can make up the rules as they see fit.

Same thing with Twitter. I doubt that’s going to happen, but it could.

I may be wrong here, but unlike the “equal time” rules governing broadcast media (which use the public airwaves to deliver their messages), there are no laws governing what private businesses can and cannot do with their online media properties.

And that means that anything you’re posting to a social media site belongs to someone else, and that they have the power to remove, edit, block or delete your content depending on how they feel on any given morning.

Your freedom of speech is only as free as the owners of social media platforms want it to be.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Issues Management, Social Media

Tagged as Facebook, First Amendment, Jackass, Roger Ebert, Twitter

April 21, 2011 · 11:53 AM

In The Race to Be First, You Lose

A thought-provoking post from Tom Gable in today’s Daily Dog, responding to a claim by the Harvard Business Review’s Joshua Gans that, “Facebook is the largest news organization ever.”

While Gable spends a lot of time distinguishing between the “news” value of your cousin Sally’s Facebook post about her labradoodle puppy and, say, the situation in Libya, the larger point he makes about social media and the importance of “being first” should keep your CEO and IR department awake at night. Gable writes:

“Professional journalism traditionally aims for accuracy, enlightenment and fairness. Some Bloggers and Twits claim to practice citizen journalism, which others dismiss as fluff, hype and churnalism. Legitimate media, including top bloggers, post corrections and updates when stories are wrong. Doing a search for corrections on Twitter doesn’t turn up much. Younger consumers of news and information may have difficulty discerning the difference between professional journalism and faux fast news. The race to be first is having an impact on financial news coverage as well.”

Gable cites an article entitled, “Twitter, tech bubbles, and the nostalgia of the technology press” by Tim Carmody, which notes that Twitter, bloggers and Quora are driving corporate stock prices, with information moving as fast or faster than the traditional journalists covering the industry.

When anonymous messages appearing from out of the ether have the same or greater impact as well-researched articles published by reputable news organizations, millions of dollars and jobs are at stake.

Today’s investor relations officer must spend at least as much time monitoring what’s being said about his company as he does getting the word out. It’s like playing Whac-a-Mole while simultaneously making a phone call and typing a press release.

Hope your multitasking skills are up to snuff.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Journalism, Social Media

Tagged as Facebook, Harvard Business Review, Joshua Gans, Quora, Tim Carmody, Tom Gable, Twitter, Whac-a-Mole

February 25, 2011 · 9:16 AM

Social Media Spreads More Than Soundbites

Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist, shares an interesting counterpoint to the notion that social media is about sharing ideas in tidbits and 140-character clips.

In “The Internet Helps Us Get Serious,” she notes with optimism that the ability for politicians to engage in serious political and philosophical debate has been greatly enhanced by Web-based technologies—an important and often-overlooked counter trend to the mass media soundbite world we’ve been living in for the past few decades.

Noonan credits social media for enabling citizens to share and digest “serious speeches” that enable them to analyze and understand where our political leaders stand on key issues, and to make informed decisions based on this knowledge:

“People in politics think it’s all Facebook and Twitter now, but it’s not. Not everything is fractured and in pieces, some things are becoming more whole. People hunger for serious, fleshed-out ideas about what is happening in our country. We all know it’s a pivotal time.”

Often, we in the communications business get so caught up in creating a clever headline or breaking off a quick Tweet in the hopes of garnering the attention that we forget to include the ideas that actually sell the product. And getting attention is a critical first step, as Alec Baldwin will tell you (starting at the 3:27 mark), but that doesn’t mean we should be afraid to put our ideas out there.

If you have 20 minutes worth of stuff to say, go ahead and put it out there…chances are good someone wants to hear what you have to say.

Just ask U.S. Senator Ron Johnson. Again from Noonan:

“[Johnson] was thinking of running for the Senate against an incumbent, Democratic heavy-hitter Russ Feingold. He started making speeches talking about his conception of freedom. They were serious, sober, and not sound-bitey at all. A conservative radio host named Charlie Sykes got hold of a speech Mr. Johnson gave at a Lincoln Day dinner in Oshkosh. He liked it and read it aloud on his show for 20 minutes. A speech! The audience listened and loved it. A man called in and said, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Another said, ‘I have to agree with everything that guy said.’ Mr. Johnson decided to run because of that reaction, and in November he won. This week he said, ‘The reason I’m a U.S. senator is because Charlie Sykes did that.’ But the reason Mr. Sykes did it is that Mr. Johnson made a serious speech.”

Don’t discount what you have to say. The people who care want to hear you.

1 Comment

Filed under Issues Management, Listening, Social Media

Tagged as Charlie Sykes, Facebook, Peggy Noonan, Ron Johnson, Twitter, Wall Street Journal

February 1, 2011 · 10:53 AM

Facebook-Generated Depression = Exploitation for Profit

Unscrupulous marketers looking for ways to exploit human frailty for profit may find a recent Stanford study of interest.

As reported by Slate.com last week, the study, entitled, “Misery Has More Company Than People Think,” published in the January issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (I know I never miss an issue), our human tendency to assume that others are happier than we are is made worse by social media, resulting in higher anxiety and even depression.

The study, led by one-time Stanford Ph.D. candidate Alex Jordan, observed:

“By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people’s lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles’ heel of human nature. And women—an especially unhappy bunch of late—may be especially vulnerable to keeping up with what they imagine is the happiness of the Joneses.”

Essentially, we’re all BSing each other through our own narcissism, and in the process making ourselves less happy than ever. How messed up is that?

What really scares me, though, is that marketers who typically prey upon human insecurity to sell stuff have probably figured out how to leverage the “happiness” of others to generate greater sales and profits.

Diet plans, cosmetics companies, fashion clothiers, etc. could make a comfortable living exploiting consumers’ anxiety for profit.

The technique is not that different than the way many companies have marketed through the mass media over the years, but it’s probably a lot more effective—especially when your “happy” friend “likes” the way she was able to drop 15 pounds thanks to Company X.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Social Media

Tagged as Facebook, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Slate, Stanford

January 31, 2011 · 1:21 PM

Get Outside Your Comfort Zone

Great post today from Gini Dietrich on the Spin Sucks blog.

I’ve been a subscriber to SS for a long time, and admire Gini’s ability to file a post each day of the week, plus a “greatest hits” post every Saturday. Where does she find the time?

In today’s post, entitled, “Your Mom Tells You What You Want to Hear,” Dietrich observes how frequently we gravitate toward those who think and act as we do, and how important it is to both listen to and engage our critics, particularly online.

I am conveniently ignoring her advice by agreeing with her, but believe there’s a larger issue at work here.

Marketing types expend a lot of energy talking about “authenticity” and “transparency,” especially when communicating online, but the truth is that when we are presenting ourselves online, there’s little authentic or transparent about it.

Example?

When’s the last time you posted a photo, a link or a comment that wasn’t carefully designed to position you in the best possible light? We’re all trying our best to leverage social media (e.g., Facebook) to present an image of ourselves that shows us as we’d like to be perceived, rather than how we truly are.

And we’re trying desperately to attract like-minded individuals to either tell us how great we are or to buy more stuff.

(When’s the last time you “liked” something you didn’t actually like? Or go out of your way to visit an “enemy’s” Facebook page or blog to mess with them?)

Generally speaking, your enemies are not going to come to you…you must go to them and be prepared for a less-than-fair fight.

In these encounters, you don’t get to control the message and any bulls**t you try to spew can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.

It’s like the bad old days of PR when working with the mass media—don’t pick a fight with those who buy ink by the barrel or videotape by the crate.

Dell Computer was only able to rehabilitate its image after sending one of its own to engage the “Dell Hell” blog. Eventually, the company was able to improve customer relations and shift much of the discussion to its own blog.

It’s when we walk through the fire that we discover who we truly are.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Issues Management

Tagged as Dell, Facebook, Spin Sucks, transparency

October 11, 2010 · 8:35 AM

People Better than Algorithms, Except When We’re Faking It

An item from this morning’s Wall Street Journal, which makes for an interesting read when contrasted with an article published by the Boston Globe last week.

Today, Facebook Vice President of Product Chris Cox speaks in an interview about Facebook’s plans to allow its users to drive the future of the social networking site—through tools such as the recently introduced “groups” and “places” features—rather than relying on computer algorithms that analyze and organize content to meet the same end. Cox calls this approach “social design.”

This is admirable and makes sense, except that so many of us have used Facebook to merely “manage” our relationships rather than seek genuine connection with our fellow man.

As Joanna Weiss points out in her Op-Ed from last Tuesday, the information we choose to share to the rest of the world via Facebook is often merely a front that helps us package ourselves the way we hope to be seen, rather than as we truly are. As a result, our online relationships are pretty flimsy.

If that’s the case, then perhaps computers, that are unencumbered by human frailties and self-deceptions, may in fact provide us with a better gauge of what’s truly important to us based on how we act rather than what we think we believe.

Sort of like when you ask someone if they’d be willing to take mass transit to help save the environment, most folks will answer in the affirmative…until Monday morning rolls around and they’re late for work and they’ve got a million things to do and their car is right there in the garage.

I applaud Facebook’s thinking, but wonder if human beings are as reliable as we think we are. And if we’re all going to be fake online anyway, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to let the computers do the thinking for us?

1 Comment

Filed under Listening, Social Media

Tagged as Boston Globe, computers, Facebook, fake, social design, Wall Street Journal

Tag Archives: Facebook

Get Outside Your Comfort Zone

Subscribe

Tags

Categories

The Author

Follow “Nation Ranch”