Tag Archives: Facebook

Distance yourself from social media

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That’s Mike Elgan’s advice and it resonates for me. If someone tells me they get their news from Fox and Breitbart that affects my opinion of that person. They don’t give a shit about my opinion, I get that. And if they spend hours a day on Facebook and Twitter (as I did for years), that tells me something about them.

Events this week prove that a social network’s public reputation can sour so suddenly and so thoroughly that, if you’re active on that network, it rubs off on you and damages the reputation of you or your company.

Elgan advises a return to older technologies.

The new imperative is to build your own social networks. Re-embrace older technologies that keep you in control of the access you have to fans, customers, colleagues and the public. […] Favor the content subscription model. Pour your energies and budgets into email newsletters, blogs with RSS feeds and podcasts.

How to fix Facebook

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The NYT asked nine experts how to “fix” facebook. Kevin Kelly (my favorite tech guru) offered the following suggestion:

“Facebook should reduce anonymity by requiring real verification of real names for real people, with the aim of having 100 percent of individuals verified.”

“Companies would need additional levels of verification, and should have a label and scrutiny different from those of people. (Whistle-blowers and dissidents might need to use a different platform.)”

“Facebook could also offer an optional filter that would keep any post (or share) of an unverified account from showing up. I’d use that filter.”

Why Dave Winer won’t point to Facebook posts

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He has two other reasons with which I agree, but this is my favorite:

“It’s supporting their downgrading and killing the web. Your post sucks because it doesn’t contain links, styling, and you can’t enclose a podcast if you want. The more people post there, the more the web dies. I’m sorry no matter how good your idea is, fuck you I won’t help you and Facebook kill the open web.”

I’ll have a blog till the day I die or I’m too far gone to maintain it. God willing, I’ll have an AI to take over at that point.

“Mobile is going to crush Facebook”

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“The logic for Facebook’s price decline is that they have a problem in mobile. They can’t offer all the games they can in a browser. They can’t offer the same ads or branding opportunities. All true,” he writes. “If you think mobile will displace online usage from PCs then you should immediately short Google and other ad plays and buy TV stations and networks. If you can’t buy an ad effectively on mobile and no one is using a PC to connect to the internet any more, then the only way to reach an audience is going to be via good old tv. And all that over the top video noise, forgettabout it.”

Mark Cuban on Facebook

Facebook Pariah

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A friend sent me a link to a post on Gizmodo written by someone named Sam Biddle. The title of the post is: “If You’re Not On Facebook,It’s Time to Get Over Yourself.” Here’s an excerpt:

“Everyone knows one of those self righteous Facebook abstainers. Social media luddites. Pushing aside modern society in favor of a purer lifestyle, devoid of pokes, tags, and feeds. Except really, these people aren’t defending anything except antisocial, extremely annoying behavior. And if you’re one of them—you need to stop.”

Sam goes on in this vein for several paragraphs. As one of those people that just can’t get the hang of Facebook, I hear this sentiment frequently. If you read the post, be sure to read some of the comments, too.

I’m guessing that most people reading this post are on Facebook. I mean, most people I know are on Facebook. So I’ll take this opportunity to take a little survey.

  1. If half of your fiends left Facebook and moved to a new service, would you follow them?
  2. If your ten most interesting friends left, would you follow them?
  3. If everybody EXCEPT your ten most interesting friends left, would you stay with them on Facebook?
  4. If ALL of your friends left for a competing social space, would you go too?

Most people I know who are hard-core Facebook’ers might have trouble answering these questions because they can’t imagine a future without Facebook.

But if it really is about engaging with your friends, the platform would be secondary, right?

Please don’t give me a lecture. You won’t be able to top Mr. Biddle. But you can answer those 4 questions.

“Feel free to play in their walled garden, but don’t forget to cut your own grass.”

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“Facebook is an amazing breeding ground for large-scale awareness, and an essential part of a social marketing strategy. But at the end of the day, it’s still someone else’s website. Someone else collects your customers’ email addresses and limits your ability to learn from and remarket to them. If you want to create real, lasting customer relationships, you have to figure out how to use Facebook to get customers back to the place where you have the most control – your own website. That requires a tightly integrated strategy that uses Facebook to deliver customers back to your domain.”

— Alex Blum (read full post)

Scott Adams: Facebook Killer

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“Facebook is primarily a record of your past. Imagine a competing service that I will name Futureme for convenience. It’s an online system in which you post only your plans, both immediate and future. As with FaceBook, you decide who can see your plans. You might, for example, allow only specific family members to see your medical plans, but all of your friends can see your vacation plans, or your plans to buy a new couch.

The interface for Futureme is essentially a calendar, much like Outlook. But it would include extra layers for hopes and goals that don’t have specific dates attached.

For every entry to your Futureme calendar, you specify who can see it, including advertisers. If you allow advertisers a glimpse of a specific plan, it would be strictly anonymous. Advertisers could then feed you ads specific to your plan, while not knowing who they sent it to. The Futureme service would be the intermediary.

Now imagine that you never have to see any of the incoming ads except by choice. If you plan to buy a truck in a month, you would need to click on that entry to see which local truck advertisements have been matched to your plans. This model turns advertising from a nuisance into a tool. You‘d never see an ad on Furureme that wasn’t relevant to your specific plans.”

“Information network” vs “social network”

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Ben Parr writes a column for Mashable called The Social Analyst. Here is an exceprt from his comparison of Facebook and Twitter:

“On Facebook, you’re supposed to connect with close friends. Becoming friends with someone means he or she gets to see your content, but you also get to see his or her content in return. On Twitter, that’s not the case: you choose what information you want to receive, and you have no obligation to follow anybody. Facebook emphasizes profiles and people, while Twitter emphasizes the actual content (in its case, tweets).”

“The result is that the stream of information is simply different on both services. You’re more likely to talk about personal issues, happy birthday wishes, gossip about a changed Facebook relationship status, and postings about parties on your Facebook News Feed. On Twitter, you’re more likely to find links and news, and you’re more likely to follow brands, news sources and other entities outside of your social graph. In fact, Twitter tells me that one out of every four tweets includes a link to some form of content.”

I think if you boil it down, for me it’s the difference between “Friending” and “Following”

“Unlike most social networks, following on Twitter is not mutual. Someone who thinks you’re interesting can follow you, and you don’t have to approve, or follow back.”