For Facebook administrators: Who posted *THAT* content?

Here's one for the Facebook administrators, and a cross-post of an article I wrote for my company's blog:

Earlier this month, Facebook announced a new feature intended to help Facebook Page administrators by displaying the name of each Page post and Page comment author. This notation helps those companies working in teams to manage their Page directly via Facebook. By knowing which Facebook user posted an item, teams can better identify which administrators are contributing which content. More importantly, this solves a nagging puzzle that has often plagued Facebook administrators in teams, in that some content could be posted behind the relative anonymity of Facebook page administration. The discussion would often start at an alarmed all-hands meeting where the predominant question was: Who posted *THAT* content?

Facebook has started rolling out this new feature over the past few days, and while Facebook Page administrators working in teams have generally welcomed this functionality and notation, there are several important things to note to understand and use the feature.

First, this notation is only visible to you and those other Facebook users who help manage your Page. The presence of an actual person’s name alongside a Page post has caused alarm among some administrators with concerns that their names are now linked and visible on a Facebook Page. Be assured that only the other administrators of the same page can see who posted content; your audience is not privy to this authorship information.

Second, if you use a third-party tool like Spredfast for publication, this feature is redundant and can be misleading.  If you are a Spredfast customer, you should continue to rely on the Spredfast platform to determine “true” authorship. Just like before, Spredfast customers can use the publishing calendar to determine who authored, modified and/or approved any Facebook content.

When viewing your Facebook Page posts natively, you will notice that all publications originating from Spredfast are attributed to the Facebook administrator who authenticated the Facebook Page to Spredfast. This may not necessarily be the Spredfast user who authored the content within Spredfast.

While the rollout of authorship information for Page Admins will be a helpful tool for teams of administrators that manage their Page directly via Facebook, this should not interfere with how Spredfast customers track and manage post authorship directly within our Social Relationship Platform. Whether you publish natively or through a third party tool like Spredfast, know that only your fellow administrators can view this authorship information (and breath a sigh of relief!)

Armed with this knowledge, you can thoroughly understand and know where to look to learn “Who posted *THAT* content”.

Getting Draconian...Blocking on Facebook

You've had it.

Time to be tough.

It's time to embark on the on the ultimate in Facebook privacy...the Facebook block.

This is not for the person you simply think is a little loud, nor the person you wish would quit posting about what they had for lunch. This is big time. The block makes a person virtually invisible on Facebook, and also makes you invisible to him or her too.

When you opt to block, all of the following happen right away. People you block can no longer:

• See things you post on your timeline
• Tag you
• Invite you to events or groups
• Start a conversation with you

Add you as a friend, or be your friend.

In other words, it's over...almost.

There can be a few conditions in which a blocked person still sneaks through, but this is mainly if you are both in a common Facebook group, or if you both use a Facebook application that disregards your Facebook preferences. These, however, are rare. For the most part, you are severed.

If you decide to block, you can follow these steps:

1. Click the Settings (gear) icon in the upper-right corner of Facebook.
2. In the drop-down, click Privacy Settings.
3. In the left column, click Blocking.
4. In the Block Users section (typically the second section), type the Facebook name of the person you wish to block. You can also opt to type an e-mail in this section as well, which can allow you do to a pre-emptive block, assuming the person uses that e-mail in connection with Facebook. 

Keep in mind that if you block, then later decide to unblock, not everything is restored. You will NOT be friends, and you will need to re-initiate a friend connection if you want one.

Blocking...it's not often used, and that's good. Sometimes, however, you do need it, and who knows, it could leave you singing this....

 

To Friend or To Unfriend...That Is The Question

Back from a long, quiet spell...let's just say I've had my hands full with a marathon and a promotion at the office, but I'm back with some good stuff, again in the Facebook category.

What should you do with Facebook Friends that you would rather not Unfriend? Perhaps you  friended your boss, and now you are watching every move you make on Facebook. Or you have that Debbie Downer or overly political friend that inadvertantly takes over your Facebook NewsFeed and leaves you in a foul mood.

You have options that do not extend all the way to Unfriend, which they can eventually find out about. Consider these less draconian measures...

1. Use the Acquaintances option.

I hear you talking to your computer. "I have an Acquaintance option in Facebook?" Yep...congratulations...you do. And this is a prime time to use it.

The Acquaintance option is for Facebook Friends you don't need to stay in close contact with. And if you place someone on a Acquaintance list, Facebook will automatically cut back on the real estate those Facebook Friends get in your NewsFeed. That Friend will still pop-up from time to time for big events, but Facebook should pare back the Pinterest photos and hourly philosophical rants.

To use the Acquaintances option, just spot your Friend in the NewsFeed. Hover over their name. In the box which appears, click Friends and then choose Acquaintances from the popup. (And No, Lisa, you're not going on my Acquaintance list!)

2. Take 'em out all together.

You can nuke someone from your NewsFeed altogether. This means exactly what you think it does; the Facebook Friend disappears from your NewsFeed altogether. You can still, however, chat with them and you can still visit their Timeline to see what they have been busy with. But you don't have to see the NewsFeed stories at all.

To take someone's stories out of your NewsFeed, start down the same path as above. Find them in the NewsFeed. Hover over their name. In the box which appears, click Show in News Feed. Although not intuitive, that is actually an ON/OFF checkbox. Unchecking this takes them out of your NewsFeed.

Enjoy the peace.

3. Send them to the Restricted list.

This is probably the least known option, but one of the coolest. In this scenario, the Facebook Friend drops out of your NewsFeed. Mission Accomplished.

But additionally...they are much less likely to see your stuff in their NewsFeed either.

Read that again. Not only can you restrict what you see in YOUR NewsFeed, but you can restrict what content of yours that someone else sees in their NewsFeed. You can live in less fear of Mom seeing your 2am partying (and the resulting 9am hangover).

This feature lives one level deeper in Facebook. The first steps are the same. Find the name. Hover over it. Click the Friends button. Now click Add to another list... and then find Restricted, which is typically near the bottom.

Perhaps the best news about any of these options is that Facebook will never tell your Friend you have done any of this. And it helps you manage your NewsFeed into what you want to see. After all, it's YOUR NewsFeed.

The GRAPH APP Facebook Hoax, and what you SHOULD do

I'll be back with more on getting started with Twitter, as I have 1 or 2 more blog posts for new Tweeters, but I am taking a quick break to look at all buzz about Facebook's GRAPH APP, and your friends' desperate pleas for you to make changes in an effort to protect their privacy.

In a word...DON'T!

This is simply some outright false information, some misleading assumptions and some lousy recommendations spun in a blender and poured out as an incorrect strategy which has  virally spread across Facebook.

It looks something like this as an update from your Facebook friend:

WARNING!!! FACEBOOK HAS CHANGED THEIR PRIVACY SETTINGS ONCE MORE!!! DUE TO THE NEW “GRAPH APP” ANYONE ON FACEBOOK (INCLUDING OTHER COUNTRIES) CAN SEE YOUR PICTURES, LIKES, AND COMMENTS. The next 2 weeks I will be posting this, and please once you have done it please post DONE! Those of you who do not keep my information from going out to the public, I will have to DELETE YOU! I want to stay PRIVATELY connected with you. I post shots of my family that I don’t want strangers to have access to!!! This happens when our friends click “like” or “comment”… automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, we cannot change this setting by ourselves because Facebook has configured it that way. PLEASE place your mouse over my name above (DO NOT CLICK), a window will appear, now move the mouse on “FRIENDS” (also without clicking), then down to “Settings”, click here and a list will appear. REMOVE the CHECK on “LIFE EVENTS” and “COMMENTS & LIKES”. By doing this, my activity among my friends and family will no longer become public. Now, copy and paste this on your wall. Once I see this posted on your page, I will do the same……

Let's learn a little bit about what's going on here.

This is just simply false. If you have seen this, or if you have even posted this yourself, do not feel bad. It sounds very dramatic and urgent, but it is not.

The fact is, Facebook’s latest Graph Search does not make any of your personal data any more public than it always has been. Your information, your photos, your demographics and your data are available to the same audiences. All the Graph Search feature does is allow your data that your friends could have seen anyway appear if your friends search for something. If you post about Mexican restaurants in Austin, your friends will see your information if they search Facebook for Mexican restaurants in Austin. People that are not your friends won't see it. (And by the way, Hula Hut is my recommendation for location and great food. Unless you want fajitas, in which case you need to head here for the best in Austin.)

If you take the recommended steps, all you really do is remove your friend's updates, Likes and Comments from YOUR view. You are not protecting yourself, or them. You simply won't see their updates when you use Facebook. Why would you do that? Why remove your friends' updates from YOUR view? Isn't that why you are friends in the first place, so you can see what they are up to?

There are 3 recommendations I make to better protect your information, and they will quickly get progressively more draconian.

1. Reconfigure your Facebook Privacy Settings to Friends Only. Do this in Facebook by clicking the gear (Settings) icon in the upper-right next to your name. Then clicking Privacy Settings. This determines who can see your stuff, and that first line is critical. Setting that to Friends Only limits your data and your updates to your friends. Any line that reads Everyone is one I would trim back, as it means that information is open publicly, literally to anyone.
2. Set better boundaries on Facebook. If you really are that concerned about your friends knowing you like Mexican food, quit talking about it on Facebook. Or if you don't want to get Facebook ads about Caribbean vacations, stop clicking LIKE on all things Caribbean. It's really that simple. Every time you click, post, Like or Comment, Facebook learns something about you, and it is going to sell that data to its advertisers. To you, clicking LIKE is a game, a way of showing what you like. To Facebook and its customers, clicking LIKE is gold, signaling your interest in this, that and the other.
3. Get off of Facebook altogether. Yes, really. You are using a free service that allows you virtually unlimited communications in words, photos and messages with friends everywhere, for nothing. If you fear someone seeing a photo of your family, then honestly, it shouldn't be on Facebook in the first place. And perhaps you shouldn't be there either. Anything private enough that you fear it going public does not belong on your Facebook account. You didn't think Facebook was really truly free, did you?

Bottom line...don't take those recommended steps. You will only hose up your NewsFeed by blocking the very people sending you this message. And I would bet you a beer that 95% of your friends won't do a single thing if you sit tight. Really. Your energy is better spent considering what you are putting out on Facebook in the first place.

Unfriend and Unfollow...Who Done It?

The social networks do a fine job of telling you when you have new Friends and Followers. You receive an e-mail, and your mobile phone vibrates and makes a cute noise, and your count increments by one, alleviating and yet simultaneously enabling that 3rd grade fear about how popular you are.

YAY! I have a new friend.

Until...

That friend leaves...quietly...discreetly...hoping you won't notice.

The social networks generally won't tell you that you lost a connection. And I defy anyone to quickly notice that one person out of hundreds who quietly disappears from your NewsFeed.

Thankfully, there are some nice tools to help you figure out who left. 

For Twitter...
There is "Who Unfollowed Me" located at this link:
http://who.unfollowed.me/

This tool is VERY easy to use. Once you arrive, just click the big orange button at the top, then the magic begins. With your permission, this tool will begin tracking who has left you from that point onward. During subsequent visits, you will see who has left, and you can look at some helpful information exposing if this is a 2-way following, or just 1-way.

For Facebook...
There is Unfriend Finder located at this link:
https://www.unfriendfinder.com/download

This one requires some additional installation, but it is fairly easy as well. You will end up with some additional buttons integrated neatly into your Facebook page which will help you spot friends who have left, or those who simply never accepted your Friend request in the first place.

The key thing to understand about both of these tools...they only record your loss on a go-forward basis. In other words, they won't start working until the moment you first use them. This is because you have to let these tools take a look at your Followers and Friends, and only then can the tools determine when someone has left that baseline list.

So give it some time, and then you will have the inside scoop on who is no longer in your merry band of social media connectedness.

Facebook, the World's 3rd Largest Country

Some mind-blowing data concerning Facebook: In Autumn 2012, Facebook surpassed the  1,000,000,000 user milestone.

Facebook would be the world's third largest country, with a GDP of $3.71 billion. (You would think its leader afford more than a T-shirt.)

Facebook updates... to Photos

News coming from the universe of Facebook with regard to photos. In this case, I think these features are pretty cool, but they could leave you searching for some photo options that you were previously used to seeing right away.

There is one major surprise, along with some cool features, coming to Facebook Photos.

First, the surprise...

• Facebook will no longer present albums first but rather tagged pictures of you or the friend whose profile you're looking at.

If you are a world-class organizer, carefully and faithfully filing your photos into Albums, those are still present, but Facebook is going to surface photos of you or of your friend first. Not to worry, the Albums feature is still a click away.

When you land at the Photos page, you will start with Photos of You and see something like this masthead near the top of your Photos page. If you need to look at all of your photos, just click Photos. And to see your super-organized Albums, just click Albums to see your traditional Album view.

And now the new cool features....

• The new Photos section will let users highlight their favorite pictures, making them four times larger than other photos. 

To highlight a photo, just click the Highlight (star) icon in the corner of the photo. Facebook will grow the photo right before your eyes with a slick animation that shuffles your photos slightly, but remarkably leaves them in the same order.

In the example here, the Highlight (star) icon will appear once you hover over the photo. 

I

Once you click that Highlight (star) icon, the photo grows to 4 times its original size and shuffles other photos to make way for your now prized masterpiece. Show off those great photos and moments of your life by Highlighting those photos.

And that's not all...

• You can now issue Likes and Comments right from the Photos page. Again, hovering is the key. Just hover over the photo and you will automatically spot the Like and Comment buttons come into view. Your Likes and Comments will register right from these views without need to detour into a different Facebook page first. Nice to make some quick comments without surfing all over Facebook.

So some pretty cool stuff. And you are in the driver's seat of knowing what happened and how to navigate it. You're so smart!

Your Password shouldn't be password

How important is your password?

In the wake of what happened a little while back at LinkedIn, pretty important. In case you missed it, about 6.5 million passwords were hacked and released on-line about 10 days ago.

The problem is not so much that someone can access your LinkedIn account. Yes, I suppose they could do dastardly things like change your work experience or write a funny recommendation for someone else. But truth is, LinkedIn passwords themselves are not that valuable.

And now there is a value attributed to those stolen LinkedIn passwords: $1. With $1, a criminal can grab a large Diet Coke from McDonalds or your LinkedIn password.

If someone has your LinkedIn password, it is quite likely they have much more. The trick is that you probably use your password over and over and over again...

...for LinkedIn.

...for Facebook.

...for your on-line banking.

...for your company e-mail.

Getting nervous yet?

A few ideas for making your passwords more secure:

• Keeping your passwords varied, and not re-using them for at least one year.
• Avoid Querty-based patterns (for example, 12345 or asdfghjkl).
• Mix capital and lower-case letter formats.
• Substitute letters and mix in numbers whenever possible.
• Switch word orders.
• and PLEASE don't use the word password

There was a time when I could very often guess passwords. There were three tricks:

1. Use the word password 
2. Use the name of a child or pet
3. Flip over the mousepad.

Using just those techniques, I could break in about half the time. Seriously. Don't be that easy.

Secure those passwords, mix them up, and PLEASE CHANGE THEM every so often. I realize password changes are a pain.  But then so is fighting fraud and explaining that nasty-gram from your e-mail account didn't really come from you.

More About the Cloud, and How It Helps The Sun Shine

Ever used Gmail?

How about Yahoo Mail?

Or that passing fad called Facebook?

If so, you've used the Cloud. In fact, many people have been using the Cloud for a long time without every quite realizing it. For some reason, web-based applications like these have not registered with most people as being in the Cloud. Only when applications like Google Docs replace softwrae that you install onto a computer that has traditionally been locked inside a PC (like Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint) do people seem to twig to the Cloud angle.

Last time, I talked about why companies or schools might use the Cloud to power their computing environments. It frees business to focus on what they do best, and leave some of the very mundate and technical work of maintaining servers and drivers and patches and inventories to someone else, who will do it on a VERY large scale for a fee.

But what does the Cloud mean to everyday users who just want the sun to shine to have a good day.

Quite simply, the Cloud is a software application hosted in a central location and delivered via a web browser or other thin client. Rather than purchase and install the application on individual computers, people that use the application just access it from a computer..

..or a smart phone..

..or an iPad..

..or your friend's computer..

..or whatever device you happen to have.

Users--whether students or employees or everyday folks--just log on to access the application. The information in the application (like a Facebook update, or the fare for your airline ticket, or tomorrow's weather, or your bank balance) is not locked into a single computer that you tote around. Instead, it becomes available the moment you login, and how you login is up to you.

To the end user, the experience is essentially the same as if the application were installed on the user's hard drive. By having the application delivered as a service, however, people can update their Facebook status from any location, or check up on e-mail using most any device. HR managers can do payroll from the comfort of their living rooms; teachers can work on lesson plans after hours. What's more, users can utilize different devices without having to tote around thumb drives to port over updates, since the contents of the project are stored in the cloud. Want to share a photo? You can put it on a thumb drive and walk it around, or you can upload it to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, etc. Which is easier? Usually the Cloud-based choices.

From us everyday folks who just want to check in, we are no longer tied to a specific computer with a specific set of software. If I have an access point--often called a thin client--I have access.

And, from an IT perspective, there's a beautiful upside: No longer do you have to update software on machines scattered around a business or campus. Does Facebook send you a CD every time it updates its interface? No, and whether you like Facebook's changes or not, this ability allows applications like Facebook to innovate much more quickly. No more patches, no databases tracking installs and software updates. And the nightmare of keeping track of thousands of software licenses? Gone.

This freedom of checking applications anywhere, anytime, from almost anywhere, is what allows me to go sit in the sun without lugging around a specific computer to do my work, or check in, or update my status or watch a cute video of puppies. 

Things are easier, faster, and more accessible. And free you up from the nightmare of maintaining it all. And that is how the Cloud helps the Sun to shine.

Since When Did My Computer Start Handling Weather? Or What Is A Cloud?

What is "The Cloud" anyway?

You keep hearing about how "The Cloud" is changing computing forever, and you are wondering just when weather reporting and computing became related subjects. 


(Hopefully the techies out there will not cringe too much, because I admit I am going to oversimply this, but hey, that is the entire point of my blog.)


Truth is that if you ask 10 technical people what "The Cloud" is, you will get 10 different answers. But they will all tend to point in the same direction. The Cloud is the ability to use computing power and storage from powerful providers to make your life more simple.


The best analogy I have is the electric utility. At one point, our ancestors generated their own power. They built a windmill or water mill or something like it. With that came all the maintenance and energy of maintaining the power source. Then the electric utility was born. We attach a meter to the side of the house, measure how much power gets used, and pay for it. Period. We no longer generate our own power, we simply buy what we need from somewhere else that specializes in generating a LARGE amount of power and distributes it to a LARGE group of people or businesses as needed.


If I have a hot day and need more air conditioning, I do not figure out how to generate more power; I simply buy more power. Or if I am on vacation, I buy very little power. I no longer have to adjust up and down how much power I generate, nor do I maintain the whole infrastructure to generate power. So long as I have an electric line running to my home and an agreement to pay for what I use, I have power.


The Cloud is similar. If I need lots of storage, I can buy that from someone else (Google, Dell, Rackspace and Apple are examples) and I no longer need to buy a bunch of hard drives, and install drivers for them, and update them, and back them up. The Cloud provider will do all that for me.


This blog is hosted in The Cloud. I actually have no idea just where this text is literally stored. Perhaps Montana, or Oregon, or a few steps from the beach in Miami. And that is the whole point...I don't have to know. I just use it.


You are using The Cloud now. Facebook is essentially in The Cloud. Do you really know where your unfortunate pictures from last night are literally stored? No. That is Facebook's problem to manage, and they just let you access it (and they let all your friends see too! Lucky you!)


The Cloud is not in a single place, or on a particular computer. Rather The Cloud is an idea that you can simply use what you need rather than having to maintain a bunch of computer infrastructure in-house.


Businesses are using The Cloud to reduce their costs, because instead of maintaining a lot of infrastructure (and paying employees to run it), they buy Cloud capacity and leave all that hardware maintenance to someone else who does it on a LARGE scale. Depending on what they use, they pay fees and they get on with their actual business rather than deal with the infrastructure.


So don't be scared by The Cloud. You use it every day, and it helps you avoid maintaining a bunch of computers and lets you get to your important business (like removing that unfortunate Facebook photo.)

How to Tune Up Your Facebook News Feed

Is your news feed a long list of crap you don't want to dig through to find the few posts you actually want to read? You may have too many friends but it's more likely that you're not filtering anything at all. As much as we complain that Facebook does or does not let me see things from our friends, you do have quite a bit of control over how much or how little someone gets into your News Feed.

The News Feed is where most people spend their Facebook time. It is the list of stories that your friends and followed companies publish, and Facebook curates this list for you using a lot of math to determine what might be important.

Facebook does a decent job of deciding what's important and what's not, but your help is necessary. If you have a friend who posts mostly crap to your news feed, you can tell Facebook to filter out anywhere from some to all of their posts. Just hover over their message in your News Feed and watch for a downward-facing arrow to appear on the upper-right side.

You'll see that you're subscribed to the person who posted the message and now you have a bunch of choices about what you get to see.

If you are totally annoyed with a single piece of content (because perhaps it's that irritating photo that 16 other people already posted), you can click Hide Story. That removes the single story from view. Not to worry, Facebook will let you undo any of this if needed.

If you think the story is a piece of spam (and this applies more to companies in your News Feed than your individual friends) you can Report Story or Spam. That will also Hide the story like above, but be a little cautious, because it does something else under Facebook's covers. If the same story or individual or company gets too many Spam reports, Facebook will start throttling down the number of stories that person or company gets into News Feeds.

You have the option to receive All Updates, Most Updates, or Only Important Updates so Facebook knows how much to show you from that person. No more complaints that Facebook only shows you some things from a friend. You can demand that Facebook show it all to you.

Additionally, you can Unsubscribe from that person's updates altogether (without unfriending them). That means you remain Facebook friends, but absolutely no stories from them will appear in your News Feed. For that friend who posts nothing but cute cat videos, you can Unsubscribe and not see this anymore.

Depending on what the post was, and how it was published, you may see one or two other choices in there as well. If the post was a photo, you can ask not to see Photos anymore, but still get everything else. Or if your friend posted from an iPhone, you can ask that you never see their iPhone-posted content again. Not things I would use terribly often, but could be of use if you really want some advanced News Feed management.

So now, if you are tired of seeing Yahoo News in your News Feed, or you'd like fewer updates from that girl who uses Facebook a bit too much, you know how to get there. This is a great way to build a news feed without constant posts from people who annoy you.

Try it; I guarantee you'll feel like a Facebook pro.

Tagging Friends on Facebook...the way you want to

So you really enjoy tagging your friends on Facebook, especially in comments, but you would like to edit how that tag appears. Facebook loves to deliver "full" tags, but how often you to use "full" names in conversation?  You would really like to say, "Hey Mark, let's do coffee." but Facebook requires you to say "Hey Mark Zuckerberg, let's do coffee" which feels a little like always talking in 3rd person.

My good news...you can edit the tag, and I will show you how.

First, a bit about Facebook tagging.

• Facebook will start suggesting friends after you type 5 consecutive characters which match someone in your list of friends. If you want to tag Barack Obama (and you are friends with him), Facebook will offer him as a tagging suggestion once you type B-a-r-a-c .
• Facebook will also offer suggestions for names with 4 or less characters if you type the entire name. For example, if you want to tag Mark Zuckerberg (and again, you are friends with him), Facebook will offer him as a tagging suggestion once you type M-a-r-k .
• Once you spot the tag you want, just click or arrow to select it.

Onward, to editing the tag.

• Perhaps you want to tag your friend John Doe, but you also want the comment to read something like this, "Thanks, John, for being such a unique friend." You really want the Doe out of there.
• Once you have John Doe established as a tag, then hit your Backspace key to remove the last name. Facebook will remove the last name from the text, but will retain the entire first and last name for the tag. So John Doe will be tagged, but the comment will only have the first name of John.
• Alternatively, you can use your mouse or arrow keys to navigate into the tag. This way you  can take out the first name, if you desire. "Thanks, Doe, for being such a unique friend."

And now the disclaimers:

• Unlike some tags, you cannot entirely invent your own name, or use a nickname. For example, if I always knew John Doe as Scooter, I'm out of luck. Facebook will not let me use the text Scooter to tag John Doe.
• Facebook will require you retain either the first or last name for the tag. In other words, you establish John Wilbur Doe as a tag, you can use John or John Wilbur (from the beginning of the tag) or Wilbur Doe or Dow (from the end of the tag). You cannot use Wilbur by itself, because that is not the first or last name of the tag.

Give this a try. Like just about anything else I write about here, you will latch onto these little tricks once you try them. And this little one, easy as it is, will make you look like a Facebook pro. Somebody is going to ask you, "Psst...can you show me how you did that?" and you will be a genuis in their eyes.

Social Media 101

Do you use different social networks for different reasons? Here is a great infographic on when to use each social network.


Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Google+


Toss around one or two of these factoids and you will be the smartest one at the party! (I know this photo gets a little unwieldy on the blog. Just click the graphic or the link immediately to read it more clearly.)

http://mashable.com/2012/04/16/social-networks-tips-infographic/

Social Media Explained...with donuts!

All you need to know about social media, explained by donuts.

Help...Facebook is drowning me with e-mail...

Is Facebook drowning you in e-mail? Do you get notifications for everything happening to you on Facebook, and you need it to stop? Here is how...

By default, Facebook's settings do tend to leave you with a tremendous number of triggers which can result in e-mail messages to you. To reduce (or even eliminate) the number of reasons Facebook sends you e-mail messages:

1. Click the down arrow/triangle to the right of your name and the word Home at the top of your Facebook page. This will be in the blue bar across the top of most any page in Facebook.
2. From the small menu that appears, click Account Settings.
3. Near the top left corner of the screen, click Notifications.
4. Scroll down to the All Notifications section.
5. You will see sections for Facebook, Photos, Groups, etc. Each section has a Edit link on the right end. Click Edit for any section.
6. Within these sections are all the triggers for which Facebook could send you an e-mail message. Uncheck the boxes down the right for anything you would rather not get a separate e-mail about. When you are done with one section, just click Edit on the next to continue unchecking.

That's it! The more boxes you uncheck, the fewer e-mails you should get from Facebook.

Not to worry though...Facebook will still let you know of new updates, Friend requests and the like using the icons near the upper left corner of the Facebook page. You just won't get separate e-mails for all of this too.

I personally have turned off virtually all Facebook notifications via e-mail. Facebook already saps a bit too much of my time (which is my own shortcoming, not Facebook's). Nice way to stem that avalanche of email coming from Facebook, time you could spend connecting instead of reading about connecting.

How People View You on Facebook...Literally

Here is a curious article about how people look at your Facebook profile...literally. Researchers used eye-tracking technology to determine how viewers literally looked at social media pages.

If you ever consider using social media for business or to attract more interest, you should know that...


...on Facebook, Klout and StumbleUpon, the profile picture matters, big-time. So put a nice photo of yourself in there instead of your pet.


...on LinkedIn, the situation shifts...the job profile got more attention than the picture.


...good content at the top of the page rules the day. The further something is down the page, the fewer people view it.


Nice article...go check it out here...

http://mashable.com/2011/11/30/social-profile-eye-tracking/#36361LinkedIn

In just 60 seconds...

What's a GMail? (Part 2)

As promised, and finally, the second half of the GMail discussion. Back here I waxed eloquent about all the reasons I found GMail to be a great product. And it is. I can recall the days when using GMail required an invitation and having access was something of a mark of status, with people who had climbed about the GMail train trying to determine who would receive their 100 coveted invitations to GMail.

Now, GMail is available to anyone. All you need is a Google account and boom! You have email, calendar, tasks and all sorts of other cool gadgets at your beck and call...for free.

So what is the downside? What gives many people the shivers when it comes to GMail? It's the ads. The ads that GMail inserts onto your screen make some very leery of GMail.

When you search for something at Google itself and Google serves up the content you are after, but it also tends to place 2-3 links at the top or in the right column of the screen which companies have paid to have displayed. That is why you sometimes see the same search results twice. If you  search for AutoZone, just to select an example, you may see two identical results for AutoZone. One appears there because it is a match for your search, but the one at the very top (often slightly shaded in rose or yellow backgrounds) is there because AutoZone paid Google to have it appear there. And which ads appear depends on what you type into the search box, where you physically reside, sometimes even what you recently browsed for and a host of other information which Google is able to learn about you.

GMail does something similar. It delivers ads based on the content of your email. Rest assured, Google does not have a room full of peeping Toms reading all of your email and deciding which ads to place before your willing eyes. This is all done automatically, with Google essentially scanning the contents of your message looking for key words and phrases, addresses, etc. and then offering ads they have been paid to place there.


That scanning of GMail is the part that bothers some and fosters the idea that someone at Google is reading your mail. In reality, I have very boring mail, and if someone really gets paid to read about my Electric utility bill or a hilarious joke from my dad, they I feel awful for them. My life is just boring enough that I would likely run out to buy To Kill A Mockingbird so they can do something interesting with their reading time.


So use GMail for all its worth. I find it an amazing platform that I use on my laptop and smartphone. I integrate my work and home calendars very easily to make my scheduling more simple. And I will cover how to do some cool GMail things ahead.


Just venture in with the knowledge that Google is learning about you from your email and presenting ads which might be tailored toward you. No one has your email on a screen other than you and the people you email frequently, but if it bothers you that an automated process is reading your mail, then GMail may not be best for you.


(If you feel that way, just remember to shut down your Facebook account, your Foursquare account, and pull down your online photos too, because we give away far more coveted information within Social Media channels voluntarily than we ever give Google's scanning algorithms.)


All that said, I will venture into some more cool GMail features and advanced settings very soon. Stay tuned!