Socialmedialand

Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category

If you don’t follow @DanZarella you should. He does some really interesting research on Twitter. The latest thing he’s come out with is a tool that will give you a psychological profile based on the content of your tweets. It says it works better if you have over 1,000 updates and are conversational (not always promoting something) but I tried it anyways with my meager 600+ updates and these are the results I got:

Cognitive Content

1. Present tense
2. Tentative
3. Similes – I do love a good metaphor, simile or analogy…
4. Self reference - ouch…but I guess that’s partly the nature of Twitter…right?
5. Positive emotions - I like to stay on the sunny side..
6. Cognitive processes - I think, therefore I am
7. Sexual references - didn’t expect that one, don’t even know what it’s referring to!
8. Occupation & work
9. Senses
10. Insight – Nice!
11. Sad – ??
12. Media, entertainment & celebrities - #pop_tart
13. Future tense

Primordial, Conceptual and Emotional Content

1. Social behavior – Definitely me!
2. Abstract thought - I think this is a compliment?
3. Constructive behaviors - Yay for being constructive!
4. Affection –
5. Cold sensations
6. Moral imperative - Definitely see that…
7. Glory – !!
8. Positive affect - More positiveness, I like it.
9. Anxiety - ?? Hmmm…
10. Taste Sensations
11. Audio sensations – I’m apparently into all kinds of sensations
12. Order – I’m bossy…haha just kidding. I think this comes from things like “Check it out..” or “Read this..”

So there’s a glimpse into my Twitter psychology. Some of them I totally get and completely agree with, others are a little more questionable. I’m going to try it again when I get to 1,000 and see how it changes. Go to TweetPsych yourself and see what yours is (there I go being bossy again…) then leave me a comment with results so we can compare!

I know that there are already tons of reviews on the new Palm Pre out there but

1. I stood in line for 2 hours to get one on the first day so I feel like that entitles me to my own review

2. This review is from the perspective of a normal user, not someone completely versed in geek speak (I can understand a little but I’m not completely fluent…)

3. Did I mention the line I stood in?

I’ll keep it short and sweet, I promise.

What I love:

The OS: Palm’s new WebOS is the major attraction. This is how an OS should be built. It  integrates my digital life into conveniently packaged segments. This phone thinks about my life the way I do. For example, I don’t think about each message from a person as one message, I think of it as a conversation. I don’t think of each calendar appointment as an individual thing – I think about everything I have to do today regardless of whether it’s at work or home.

The Inbox is a true inbox – it imports all my various email accounts into one place where I can view messages all together or sorted by inbox and folder.

Same with the calendar, every type of calendar I have just layers into one interface, but then I can control if I’d like to look at one specifically or exclude another.

Contacts are awesome – I imported my Facebook and it automatically linked them to the phone numbers I had in my phone (note: I used first and last names in my phone which made this easier, if you don’t you might have to spend some time linking accounts together.) I also imported my AIM and linked the screen names to my friends names. Now when I talk to them, via text or AIM or a combo of the two, all the messages appear in one threaded conversation.

The Apps: Ok so the apps really aren’t anything new – a lot of stuff that’s already available on iPhone and Blackberry has been adapted to the Pre. What’s cool about it is that I can have up to 15 open at once (the store rep told me after 8 it starts to slow down but still…that’s 7 more than other phones…) So I can bring up my email, bring up my FlightView app, copy and paste my flight number in, add that to my calendar, and done. (FlightView is also cool because you can actually watch flights’ progress in real time!) I can have several internet windows running at once as well which can make things a lot easier to navigate.

Copy/Paste: Speaking of copy/paste - I’m really glad I have that function. Makes life a TON easier.

The Look/Keyboard: I know there have been complaints about the keyboard but honestly – I can’t stand on screen keyboards so I’m glad it has one. I wish it had been done horizontal rather than vertical and I miss my Treo’s buttons compared to these gummies but all things considered I like it. Also, the phone itself was smaller than I expected it to be and I really like the shape of it.

What I don’t love so much:

Power/Battery: The battery life isn’t so great. I’m comparing it to the Treo and not the other “hot” phones that are out there so I don’t know how it stacks up to those. But my Treo could go 2 days or more on a charge and the Pre really needs to be plugged in every night at minimum. I do use the Pre more because it’s so fun so maybe that will pass, but I still think the battery life could be better.

Speaking of plugging it in, someone told me that Palm says they make the only chargers for it – not sure if that’s a true statement from Palm or not but I do know that iGo makes a tip for the Pre that works like a charm. I say they make “a tip” because their chargers are universal and you just switch the tip out for whatever device you’re charging. I know this one works on the Pre because they gave me a charger to test. You’ll notice on the site that the tip number doesn’t list the Pre as a device yet (they’re still testing it in their own lab) but it will soon – and for a lot cheaper than Palm chargers. The touchstone looks pretty cool, a magnetized stand that you just stick your phone on and it charges it, it’s just pretty spendy so I haven’t got my hands on one yet.

One last note about power. I was talking to a good friend who I hadn’t heard from in a while, and my phone was running out of battery, I plugged it in and we talked for another hour. Being plugged in and in-use caused it to heat up pretty bad. Then right after we got off the phone my boyfriend called and about 20 minutes into our conversation the phone just gave up. I can’t explain it any better than that. It wouldn’t place calls, it wouldn’t accept calls, it just sat there. It’s only happened the one time but it was pretty frustrating. Short battery life coupled with the inability to have extended conversations while it’s plugged in could be a real issue for me. Since then I’ve just tried to manage the battery better so hopefully it won’t happen again.

Email set up: Without getting too technical, if you have Microsoft Outlook Exchange and you want to set up an EAS account you have to have a third party certificate. If you have a self signed certificate you have to go through this whole circus of a process to make it work and sometimes, that’s still not enough. You can’t ignore the error and there’s no way around it. I created a work around by syncing my Outlook calendar with Gmail but that only works for the calendar. I just saw an app appear in the store called “Pocket Mirror” that claims to sync your Pre with Outlook via the WiFi, so you sync it when you’re in the office and then I’m assuming you can’t do much but view your items when you’re away. I haven’t tried it yet but that’s my next step. It’s frustrating because a lot of people seem to be having this problem, even back in the testing and beta periods, and there’s still no actual fix from Palm. You can choose from third party work arounds or nothing.

Slider: When I slide the phone open and closed it always feels a little precarious to me, like it would be super easy to break.

Final Conclusion:

I absolutely love it. The pros outweigh the cons no contest. The pros are really about the integral functioning of the device, while the cons are minor gripes and things that can be expected with a new release and may evolve as the WebOS is replicated on new devices in the future.

Any one else get one? Want to share your thoughts? Leave me a comment!

I normally use Tweetdeck, so I didn’t even notice the change in Twitter’s UI until (ironically) people I follow started tweeting about it.

Twitter Integrated Search Functionality

Assuming you’re like me, you might not have even seen this yet so I’ll explain. Twitter has updated the side bar navigation to embed a search box and the trending topics list right there on your profile. The search results show up on your profile as well; they come up where your feed normally is. There’s an additional option to save that search – all your saved searches will appear as shortcuts under the search bar, above the trending topics.

Everyone is talking about how cool it is. And it is cool. But why? Why did Twitter spend the time to take the same basic functionality from http://search.twitter.com and integrate it into your profile? Here are my two possible theories (based on my thoughts alone):

Facts

Twitter is extremely popular. Their popularity has been growing exponentially in the last few months alone, and if I remember correctly (without double checking my facts) they’ve grown 1000% in the last year.

All those growth and popularity numbers are based on visits to the site, and they know that as many people as visit the site there are twice as many (probably, maybe more) who use applications like TweetDeck, Twitterrific or Twhirl instead of visiting Twitter.com.

People who use Twitter regularly know that they can often get updated news from Twitter before it hits anywhere else (think attacks in Dubai and the crash in the Hudson.)

Twitter is beginning to feel pressure to come up with an effective revenue model. Sure they’ve got venture capitalists. Sure they’re not quite desperate for a way to find money. But they must be thinking about it on a regular basis.

Conclusion #1

The update to the UI is a bid to make visiting Twitter.com more valuable than using services like TweetDeck, etc. If they make it so that you’d rather visit the actual site, their traffic numbers go up. If their traffic numbers go up…they could attempt an ad-based revenue model a la Facebook or Myspace.

I think it’s obvious that they are trying to increase the amount of people who use the site versus third party apps by making the site more appealing and easy to use. As for why they’re doing that, I’m just speculating. Twitter is in a unique position because their initial openness with their API (which everyone loves) has made it so that everyone else is able to capitalize and build on Twitter’s functionality and the result is that you don’t have to go to Twitter.com to use Twitter. 

The other networks didn’t start that way, which is why they can support advertising on their sites. For example, you have to go to Facebook.com to really be able to use it. Sure you can do limited things from other places, but you’re still probably going to go to the actual Web site most of the time; meaning there will be impressions for advertisers to buy. Twitter is the opposite. I get more functionality everywhere else and I only need to go to actual Web site for limited things – like checking on my followers and following people back.

What’s Next

I think we’re going to start seeing more updates to the Twitter UI to make it as robust as other services. As it is right now, this update doesn’t even come close to challenging TweetDeck or Twitterific for their users. From Tweetdeck, I can have saved searches, trending topics, AND I can organize my feed by groups, use built in URL shorteners, and share pictures and videos using Twitpic and 12seconds, all from the same interface. Until Twitter can do that, I don’t think they’re going to make a significant dent in the amount of people using third party apps.

Conclusion #2

My other theory is that Twitter is looking to get a piece of the Google pie. Since Twitter is quick and viral, it’s an effective way to get news out and get it spread to millions of people. The update to the UI was based solely on search capability and since Twitter lets you save a search, and create a feed of that search – you have instant access to that information and you can also export and display those results anywhere. For example, CNN could create a tip line where, if you include the hashtag #cnntip, it shows up in an “Twitter updates” box on their homepage. Of course that could be easily hijacked, so there are some logistics to work out. But imagine if the Twitpic of flight 1549 going down in the Hudson had been tagged with that – it would have gotten into mainstream news that much quicker.

This theory also explains why trending search terms were highlighted – to try to increase the benefit of the viral side of Twitter. If a topic looks interesting, you might search for it as well, and then if you retweet the news you find you’re increasing the volume of that same topic, continuing the trend. This would make Twitter a go-to place for news and information; like a leaner version of Digg with the search capability of Google delivered in a real-time updated feed.

What’s Next

Like I said, the logistics included in this are a little hairy, so I think we’ll see Twitter trying to work some of that out. Hashtags will get updated – they’ll become links in the tweets on Twitter (they already are on TweetDeck and other apps.) We might see a more “homepage” like entry portal to Twitter with trending topics and news displayed (making it easy to retweet…) Basically anything that will increase the viral nature of Twitter and help to classify tweets into topics and categories are activities that would support this theory.

In reality, these theories aren’t necessarily exclusive; a mix of both could be closer to the truth than either one. What do you think? Disagree with my conclusion, or have your own take? Leave me a comment!

Update: I saw this post on the possibility of Twitter using the tip link space for advertising in the future…hmm..

This is a topic that has come up in my own work recently:

In any given social media account; who are you?

It seems like a silly question but if you think about it, it’s critical. If you’re the person with the responsibility to be the personal voice of a company or brand, then who are you really? Are you still John Smith, a PR rep at XYZ corp, or are you XYZ corp, or are you some fictional manifestation of XYZ corp?

I read an interesting take about personalities on Twitter by Shea Beck last week and some musings by popular industry bloggers, like Jeremiah Owyang, regarding the level of personal content in their tweets. It all got me thinking about online identity in greater detail.

[Note: while most of the inspiration for this post comes from Twitter and the account setup on that network, keep in mind that it can apply anywhere: branded Facebook fan pages, brand accounts on popular forums, corporate blogs, anywhere where you are talking in a personal capacity on behalf of a brand or on behalf of your personal brand.]

There are several models for the branded online personality:

- Person first, brand second. This would be an account where the avatar is the actual person, the name includes the person’s name and then the bio or second half of the user name is the brand.

- Brand first, person second. In this case the avatar would be the logo, the profile name is the brand and somewhere in the bio it mentions who the actual person is that is responding from the account.

- Brand only. This is when the whole thing is branded and there is no mention of an actual person.

- Brand mascot. An account where a fictional personality represents the brand, they’re the avatar, the account name and whoever is writing is pretending to be that person. Jack from Jack in the Box is a great example of this.

So what model works best? I think it varies depending on the brand. But the rule on how to decide what is right for your brand never changes: Choose the one that will make your purpose clear to the community. By reading your name and/or profile I should get a good idea of what being friends with you means. If you present yourself as an individual person who is going to share interesting information and then I follow you and find out it’s all branded messaging, that’s not going to make me happy. At the same time if I follow a brand and get a bunch of personal messages or my feed is full of personal photo albums, I’m going to be pretty confused.

How you clarify your online identity (whether that be for a brand or for yourself):

1. Identify the purpose of the account. Is it for keeping up with friends, talking about business, talking about a particular business, or a mix of several things.

2. Think about how to describe that purpose using the bio/profile picture/any other fields available. Is it about you or the brand? Is about your personal life or professional career? If it’s more than one thing, highlight the main objective and describe the secondary objective later.

Disclaimer: Just because you create a separate business/brand account as well as a personal one doesn’t mean you can say whatever you like in the personal one and think that it’s anonymous (it’s not – even if you try to make it that way, there’s a very good chance it will somehow come back around to you.) You still have to utilize basic social skills.

This is my recipe for online identity, what do you think? How should we present our identity online in situations where we may be representing more than just our personal selves?

As Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets gain popularity among the mainstream public it appears that some people aren’t entirely clear on the codes of conduct we have here in Socialmedialand. A recent event involving some people at work and our vendors led me to think it might be valuable to write a quick guide on manners to help everyone out.

Act Like You Would In Real Life

I was going to make a list of things to keep in mind but I really think that one thing covers it. If you were in a room full of people, good friends, acquaintances, business associates and a few people you hadn’t met yet – what would you say? Better yet, what would you literally announce to the room? What if you knew everyone there would have a historical transcript of everything you said, and anyone who joined the party later could see the transcript of what you’d said earlier. Then what would you say?

Would you tell your new boss that you will hate the work at that company?

Would you talk about an ongoing trial that you’re involved in?

Would you mention that vacation you took while you were ’having a family emergency’?

Would you say rude things about a city, your boss, your client, your {fill in the blank}?

Would you announce sensitive information about pregnancies, engagements, buying a house, or taking a new job without telling the people involved first?

No. you wouldn’t. So why would you say those things in a very public, permanent place? It doesn’t make sense. I wrote a previous post about being kind to others online – treating them how you’d like to be treated. Not saying anything at all unless you can say something nice. Now it’s time to take that a little further.

You’re online identity is no longer completely separated from your real identity. Like I’ve said before, privacy is now a tricky thing. The days of obscure AIM screen names are over. Even if you use an obscure word jumble as your Twitter ID or email address - it’s probably tied to your Facebook or LinkedIn which uses your real name – and clearly leads straight back to you.

So it’s time for another pearl of wisdom from our childhood:

Be Yourself

Don’t think you can say things online and they’ll disappear into cyberspace like a puff of smoke. Your words have meaning and they are linked to you. You don’t have to over-edit yourself; you can say how you feel about things, as long as you can take responsibility for having said them. Recognize that you are the same person online and offline and act accordingly and there shouldn’t be any more problems.

If you have any questions about specific instances – leave me a comment. It’ll be like a mini ”Ask Ms. Social Media Manners” column.

Photo credit: Someecards

Social media was made for amateurs.

It’s easy to use. The more intuitive a service or network is, the better it does. It’s not complicated. In fact, the beauty of it is how delightfully uncomplicated it is. It makes sense, it enables us to do what we  like to do best: socialize, connect, learn and grow. It just makes it easier and faster.

So I’ve had it with the whole “who is an expert and who isn’t” debate. Being an expert is not what it’s all about. Have you noticed that the only people arguing about it are the ones who work in this space anyways?

I wasn’t going to write about it. I wasn’t going to be a part of that noise, but honestly, I just can’t take it anymore.

The only reason there are social media consultants in the first place is because companies and brands weren’t built to work like humans. Individuals will find it fairly easy to naturally adapt to social media, whereas businesses find it “strange” and contrary to how they’ve done business over the last X number of years. Enter social media experts/managers/consultants/etc. They explain to businesses why it’s important and essentially how to behave properly and be successful here.

You’re doing it right if the company you’re advising is achieving successful results (however they’ve defined that based on their goals) and they’ve begun to act like a human – creating personal connections with their customers.

My coworker, Dustin, told me a story the other day about his friend who goes to the same cafe on a regular basis. He struck up a conversation with the manager about Twitter and how the business could use it. His only qualifications were 1) He was a frequent customer 2) He uses Twitter and 3) He knew what he would want. He wasn’t an expert. He doesn’t even work in this industry. He is an amateur. And you know what? The ideas he had were pretty insightful.

I’ve realized that my goal should be to think like an amateur, not an expert.

The amateur model of social media:

1) Think about the customers and their needs. If you’re not one yourself, find some to talk to.

2) Find out what social networks and services those customers use online. Where do they go and why?

3) Put those two together to figure out what they would want from this business online.

4) (or the *bonus* step) Learn, adapt and try again. Experts have to know it all, amateurs have the advantage of being able to continually grow and learn from their mistakes. It makes them a little more versatile in an ever changing world like Socialmedialand.

I’ll continue to give you my (amateur) opinion on social media and it’s uses – you can disagree with me, you can do things differently, and we can learn from each others’ experiences. But let’s stop arguing over who’s the expert. Ok?

Thank you.

Photo credit: www.amoeba.com

I wrote a post cautioning you against ignoring the giants - like email, Facebook, Twitter, etc when choosing tactics for your social strategy. But now I have to caution the major giants from ignoring the David’s of the world.

@Copyblogger sent a tweet out linking to this post about Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt’s, position on Twitter:

“Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems,”

“In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they don’t have a full offering. To me, the question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have storage, revocation, identity, and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do email systems themselves broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic?

I think the innovation is great. In Google’s case, we have a very successful instant messaging product, and that’s what most people end up using.

Twitter’s success is wonderful, and I think it shows you that there are many, many new ways to reach and communicate, especially if you are willing to do so publicly.”

It has the ring of “famous last words” if you ask me. To think that Google’s instant message is equal to Twitter is a little over the top in my opinion. They serve very different purposes and really aren’t comparable. Email, also, serves a different purpose than Twitter. Twitter allows you to communicate to a broad network of people, start dialogues with them, join into conversations already in progress and share the wealth of the results of these interactions with the world. When I “reply all” on my email I doubt that has the same type of reach.

I’m not saying email is dead. I’m not saying IM is useless. I’m saying that all three things are separate, individual things that serve different purposes and for Eric Schmidt to categorically dismiss Twitter as something that will either evolve into email/IM or fade away as a novelty is extremely short sighted in my opinion.

Enough about my opinion, what about yours? Leave a comment!

Sometimes there is a tendency for people, especially when dealing with cutting edge topics like social media, to be so obsessed with “the next big thing,” that they completely overlook the current big thing.

Jason Baer talked about the danger of putting the cart before the horse - he cautions us to focus on the basics before jumping into the “sexy and new(ish)” rage of social media ideas, campaigns and strategy. I completely agree that you have to start with a good strategy around traditional online media, such as email, before getting ahead of yourself in social media. But I think the same concept carries through once you are ready to engage with social media.

Don’t Forget the Big Guy

I feel like there’s been something of a backlash against services like Facebook - like it’s soo 2007  and the really hip social marketers wouldn’t be caught dead there. (I’m exaggerating for effect, but you know what I mean.) I definitely see the allure of being on the cutting edge, being on the little social network first – before it gets big. I’m not trying to deter you from your quest. If you find the holy grail of social networks, let me know! But in the meantime I think when you’re planning what tactics to use in your social media plan (because you’ve already covered the social media strategy and mindset right?) you can’t pass over the big guys.

They’re big for a reason – your customers use them*. Your customers, the average social network user, isn’t constantly searching to find the next network – they want value, and they get value from being on the same network as all their friends, who get value from being on the same network as all their friends, and so on. I received an email from ShareThis, a social bookmarking service, with the following graph showing percentage of shares by network, as well as growth from August 08. This is only one metric (from one source,) but I think it shows a compelling picture. This gives us an idea of where people are the most active and what their go to method of communicating with their contacts is.

Notice first, that email still controls a healthy majority (though it’s decreased since August) which reinforces Jason’s point that we can’t skip traditional online media in favor of social. After that you see that Facebook is the second most popular, followed by good old Myspace.  You can also see that Facebook and Twitter are the only two that have grown (besides AIM) since August. This growth is further supported by monthly visitors as reported by Compete.com

So the next time you, or your client, are thinking how tired you are of hearing about making a Facebook page or opening a Twitter account, think about this graph and grin and bear it. Step 2 can be creating a presence on that new little network you’ve heard so much about.

What do you think? Do you have more stats? Different stats? Opposite view of the same stats? Leave a comment!

*Use this nifty technographics tool from Forrester to really see where your customer demographic is. I was generalizing earlier and of course, when creating a plan, you need to do a little more specific research.

That seems to be the default response of the entertainment industry each time new technology comes out. My coworker, Austin, twittered a link to this image today:

Which I happened to see right after reading about the successful #blackout campaign that was started to fight unfair piracy laws in New Zealand and seems to have caught fire around the world. So that got me to thinking…

The problem with the entertainment industry, as well as some other industries I can think of, is that rather than roll with the times, adapt, expand and ride the wave of new technology – they think they have a right to maintain the “status quo” and that we, the citizens, should support them in that (monetarily, legally, etc) no matter what.

Well I’m tired of that. It’s survival of the fittest, if you can’t keep up you deserve to fail so that someone smarter and leaner can step up to the plate. That’s the free market. If you can’t figure out how to successfully sell copyrighted material on the internet in a convenient and cost effective way, you fail.

Ok, I admit it might be a little more complicated than that, but I know that we can find a way to protect everyone’s rights and continue the collaborative spirit of the internet. And striving to protect the “way it’s been” doesn’t sound like the best route to a better future to me.

I watched the segment on the Colbert Report where he interviewed Lawrence Lessig on his book Remix where he discusses a ” ‘hybrid economy’ — one where commercial entities leverage value from sharing economies.” I think that’s the kind of innovation business needs. Don’t try to stop me from doing what I want to do – I’ll just find a way around you anyways. But if you work with me you could find a way to profit by helping me to achieve the things I want easier and with less hassle. One way is a battle, the other is cooperation.

In the words of Michael Scott, it’s win-win-win.

What do you think? Am I being too harsh, do you agree but have a different/better idea? Let’s talk about it, leave a comment!

With everyone having mild panic attacks over the recent change in Facebook’s Terms of Service (TOS) – it got me thinking about the bigger picture here. This isn’t the first privacy fiasco for Facebook (we all remember beacon right?), nor the first privacy fiasco at all – Google’s street view maps are great, but what if you’re in the street view, doing something you don’t want people to know? (All 15 pics are worth looking at btw) And no matter what our political viewpoint is on it we all know that, as citizens in the US, privacy laws have been changing in general in recent years.

What is privacy when it comes to social networks and the interwebs at large and what are my expectations of privacy online?

This might go back to what I said in a recent post on being real, but when I personally put things up on the internet, I have a vague understanding that I’m losing any real control over it. I feel like everyone should present themselves as they really are in every instance, and that authenticity is what matters. I know that’s not a legal argument or anything with real weight but I think it is valid on some level. If you have something you’d like to keep private, consider emailing it, or sending it in a private message rather than posting it in a public place. Just a thought.

Now onto what happened recently and its implications: Facebook changed its TOS by removing a few lines that makes it so when you leave the service, and delete your account, your content will still be on the network.

Cue freak out.

Now, calm down. ZDNet posted this great explanation about how we’re all missing the boat on what really matters in this situation. The twist is that the change itself makes sense. Shocker I know. But think about it. If my best friend from college, who posted all our pictures and sent me messages and gifts on random holidays that bring back memories of our inside jokes, randomly decided that she needed to delete her account to go after that job in some very traditional corporate place – what happens to me? Do all the pictures I’m tagged in disappear? My wall deflates, my bumper stickers disappear, and my gifts vanish? That’s no fun for me, because that content is really just hers, it’s also mine because she shared it with me. That’s why they changed it.

The real problem is how they changed it. They just did it. They wrote a little blog post about it, that they didn’t publicize (I’m willing to wager that the average Facebook user doesn’t check the Facebook blog on a daily basis or have it in their RSS feed). Why didn’t they send out a note or a message or an update? They also wrote in a stipulation that by signing in, you accept the change – but I didn’t know that before I signed in. The problem here isn’t that they changed the TOS, they can explain to me why and I can understand. The problem is that they didn’t communicate that to us. They assumed that the users probably didn’t need to know because if you delete your account and the pictures you tagged other people in stay there on their account, you probably don’t care. And for the majority that’s true. But so what? That doesn’t lessen your responsibility to include the community in the changes and to let us know what’s going on. We do have rights. We give up some of them voluntarily to participate in the site – but you should let us know what the deal is. If it’s important maybe I’ll spend time deleting the things I don’t want left behind before I leave (AN: I’m not leaving, this is hypothetical).

Facebook is getting a little too big for its britches right now – they assume that they have full control and have a history of making major changes without consulting the crowd. The new vs. old Facebook is the only time I can think of that they did it right. It’s weird, but maybe the biggest social network needs a crash course on social media theory and practice.

So, what next?

Like I mentioned before, this isn’t the first privacy issue we’ve come across in social and new media and I bet it’s not the last. The key is the same as it’s always been. We are a community, I’ve said before that our social networks are like the nations we are citizens of which means their privacy statements are our constitutions and in America we once rebelled against the idea of “taxation without representation.” It’s the same principal – we need representation. We need to know what the laws and rules are in our networks and we need to know when they change, we need to have a voice over when, where, how, why that happens.

Ask us.

 In that spirit – I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

EDIT: I ran across this link to a story on linking privacy (Is it ironic that I just linked to it?How many times do you think I can say “link” in this paragraph?) where a law firm sued a website for linking to the public profiles of a few of their lawyers who were involved in various news stories. I couldn’t believe it was actually settled instead of thrown out. How can a link to a public page be considered privacy infringement? One legal blogger agrees with me (I hope it’s ok that I linked to him) – what do you think?

Side note: I guess I was right about the Facebook TOS not being the last privacy issue we come across…it’s been, what, 15 minutes?

UPDATE:

Facebook is finally asking the community to join the conversation.