Re-Imaging our Social Media Selves: Facebook Rethinks Beacon "Creeptech"

Update Apparently 50,000 incensed Facebook users could be enough to make Facebook do something about Beacon--or, will Facebook continue (as in the words of MoveOn.org) to meet "the wish lists of corporate advertisers ahead of the basic privacy rights of Internet users." Sign the MoveOn.org petition here

More from Techcrunch: Facebook flips on Beacon

So, finally, something's gotten to the guys at Facebook, and they're beginning to see that their wonderful idea for rummaging around in the underwear drawer of your social networking purchasing private life--with a thing called "Beacon"--wasn't going to win them any new friends, and has alienated quite a few old ones (see above) Businessweek reported that not only were people none too happy with Beacon's "creeptech" sharing the most intimate details of your purchase history with everybody you know on Facebook, but that there was a particularly hinky opt-out system where you really weren't getting the option to "opt-out."

Several people complained they weren't given the option not to share information publicly, or that pop-up notices on partner sites were too subtle to notice. Kim Garvey, a 21-year-old junior at Chicago's DePaul University, says she found out about Beacon after friends were alerted to a restaurant review she posted on Yelp. "I didn't see the little thing that popped up, and I didn't mean to tell everyone," Garvey says."For me, that was sort of uncomfortable." She adds that she was surprised Facebook "is willing to invade people's privacy

Not to mention that privacy groups are readying complaints to be filed with the FTC regarding this particularly creepy little piece of creeptech...

Yet I'm somewhat stunned by the way some folks (esp. some marketers who seem to be losing their senses) have thought that Beacon is a "cool" way to find out what your friends like. Think about it though: are you such an open book to all your friends that you really want them knowing every purchase that you make? Do you truly believe--like some Silicon Valley folks--that privacy is "an old man's concern" and it's perfectly fine to be a perfectly open book to every entity that is capable of surfing your social networking profiles?

Or (more than likely) are you one of those people who keeps more than one online personna just so that you've got groups of friends who *don't* know about your super-secret self--and another group of friends who doesn't know you're really a mini-van driving, bad-fitting-chino-wearing, haus-mann?

In this short piece at The Register, Chris Williams points out one of the ironies of social networking sites:

It's a well known phenomenon that social networks encourage users to be "friends" with people they wouldn't have anything to do with in meatspace, however.

This irony is highlighted in Steve Outing's recent post at Poynter where he suggests reporters keep two Facebook profiles,, one for "fans" and one for their real "friends," just like the folks at ABC News (both terms--friend and fan--now being stretched just a bit by soc. networking...)

Wouldn't that then make it Two-Face'dbook?? And, what happened to that notion of transparency???

What much of this boils down to is how much of our Selves are we knowingly and willingly going to keep putting out there if marketers want to rummage in our unmentionables and reporters continue to want to keep us at arm's length by having "fans" on one side and "friends" on the other? What's really going on with Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and why do so many people seem to be resigning themselves to a loss of privacy in order to be part of the social networking world??

Perhaps what's truly going on here is a re-imagining of the public and private selves--notions prominent in Victorian times (and something pointed to in William's piece.) When the BBC's Adam Curtis was asked (in the third clip) if Facebook was the new TV, Curtis said that he believes Facebook was more about the re-invention of the public self. When "the central reality of our time" is all about putting the "me" in media, we are using social media to construct new public persona's in much the manner that the Victorians did. Curtis points out that people put up on Facebook who they want to be seen as and how they want to be measured by their communities--not totally their true selves (think about it: how many adults don't list their marital or dating status any more than they list their religion.) Our Facebook profiles *are* us, but only a version of us for the public gaze....

But don't we still want the ability to control what parts of our "public gaze" meets the "public gaze" of others? While we may get caught up in the hoopla of Facebook, and while so many may want to agree to the non-opt-out of Beacon creepware, there are many, many more of us who are interested in protecting our Selves (even if that Self is a filtered public gaze) from too much intrusion.

Let's hope Facebook makes a good, ethical decision before the FTC has to get involved...

Measuring Effectiveness of Social Media: Understanding the Power of Influence

There's lots of evidence all over the place that blogging makes friends--and just in my own little world, Mack Collier of the Viral Garden, who I met through blogging about marketing, recently tagged me for my thoughts on a meme on measuring the effectiveness of social media campaigns....

Now, I'm not going to claim I know it all about social media campaigns--frankly, I'm only starting to do some work on social media campaigns for clients, and I'm seeing how social media works both differently and the same for a company as it does for an individual looking to build a "personal brand"--

What I believe should be common to both building a personal brand as much as to a business is building influence through your blogging.

From influence can flow reputation...from reputation can flow business...

Now, I'm not going to get into the whys and wherefores of how to build a blog that creates influence. What I'm going to look at is how to know if you're creating that influence...

There are lots of measurements to help us understand what's going on with our blogs--but these measurements must be looked at quite carefully in order to understand them--and not underestimate them. What at first may seem like nothing--or even discouraging--can be, ultimately, a very big *something*...

In Mack mentions three criteria to help recognize when a blog is creating value for its readers:

1- Is your web/subscriber traffic increasing?

2 - Are the number of comments per post increasing?

3- Are you tracking more links to the posts you write on the blog?

And for the most part, these are very good questions to ask oneself. Let's ask some further questions to drill into the issues these questions raise--and I'm going to use my blog for an example, the way that Mack did....

1--how do you know your web/subscriber traffic is increasing? Well, this is where you have to look at your stats--whether you use Google Analytics or Sitemeter, or any number of stats tracking packages, you'll get the basic information on traffic increase. Most will also give you an idea of where your traffic is coming from--whether it's from links from other blogs, from Google or other search engines, or rss readers.



I haven't blogged in a few (well, more than a few) days, but I can see that I'm coming up regularly in Google search results, that a link from Masslive.com has brought someone in, as well as a link from some other blogs and someone following their comments with Co-Comment (a great feature I *still* have to sign up for)

Look carefully at the search terms, which are at the ends of the search strings--these will tell you the terms people used, what terms are associated with posts you've made to your blog. With Google searches, you can click to see what page --as in what number of results--your post came up in. Since some of the subjects of my posts are quite unique, my blog may come up fairly high in google's search.

This is part of how I've gained a rather high Google Page Rank even though my blog traffic is fairly low (really only 35-50 readers per day when I don't blog--sometimes up to 100 depending on the subject I blog on, as well as if I'm picked up by Techememe for blogging on a tech-related topic, or if I've received other links)

A much overlooked stat--which is a great measure of influence--is how long someone is staying on your blog If someone is reading, you're probably influencing them! Here's another page from my stats which will explain:



Note that several of the readers stayed for well over the average click-through. This means that I had the information they were looking for--not that I merely came up in their search criteria. Note that many of the folks who spent time reading also went to more than one page--and if you compare the top page with this page, you will also be able to see which search worked for them (it was Google's Blog Search) People who have found you once under the right search terms are more than likely to check out other pages in your blog--they may even subscribe, or at least come back to you again...

Which leads to the whole idea of subscriptions: which are great in theory, but, in practice, can be hard to track. That is, if you're using something other than a Feedburner feed. Emerging "industry standards" like Feedburner definitely make it easier to track subscriptions (not sure though if they track across different rss readers or not.) But if you don't use a Feedburner feed, you may be hard pressed to find out how many subscriptions you have over the varieties of rss readers out there. I know of the various subscriptions through various readers by examining my stats and getting details when I see "Bloglines" or "MyYahoo" or "Netvibes" or any number of other readers. Since my traffic is fairly low, I can give my blog this kind of personal attention--and could even come up with some way to track all of it if I sincerely desired to drill way into these stats.

But that's a lot of work--and not sure what it might tell me if I manually tracked this info. There are other ways to know if you're influencing...

Further who are all these subscribers anyway? It's sometimes hard to tell if your subscribers are other bloggers or just readers. Both are good, and both impact your influence, but knowing exactly whether you've got blogger/readers or just plain old readers is a bit tough...

Which leads to comments and links (Mack's #2 and #3 points). Let's ask these questions:

Are comments all that important? and How are you tracking links?

Let's look first at tracking links--do you rely on "trackbacks" to let you know who's linked to your posts? If you do, this might be a bit tricky, considering "trackback spam" or no-follow codes placed in your template that don't let you see who's linking to your posts. Registering with Technorati is still most helpful for tracking links, as well as Google'ing your blog in Google's Blog Search as well as regular Google. Also try smaller engines like Icerocket.com--which might yield some startling link results (such as LiveJournal, MySpace or splog links) Currently, Technorati says this blog has 509 blog reactions, with an authority of 145 and is ranked at 42,744 (also have a Google Page Rank of 5/10) not really all that bad for a solo blogger who writes on four different topics: journalism, media, tech, and marketing. :-)

Other folks I know, who have strong backgrounds in various "legacy" professions like marketing, journalism, television, or tech, do well when they blog within proximity to their legacy experience, while adding "personal touches" by blogging on something from their personal lives (parenting or travel.) The thing is to not sound stilted--be a person, whether you're blogging on more than one topic or if you're blogging on one topic, a "voice" is what can make a blog social, just as much as providing good information.

So, when we look at the set of stats that relates to tracking links, we have to situate ourselves within the rest of the blogosphere, and think of ourselves in a glass-half-full kind of way: did we have this influence before? Are our links coming from other bloggers and not from splogs (remember: splogs do not generate traffic for us)? Can we link back to the bloggers who linked to us and thus create a positive social relationship?

Now, let's consider comments: are comments all that important? Well, yes, in many ways they are--they're great to get (even when people disagree) and they are an immediate, visual example of interaction. Comments are for both you and for the people who come to your blog.

However, let's not forget what we found out about blog comments: that only 10% of readers will leave comments--the other 90% are "lurkers" a/k/a "readers." Lots of them may be the same folks who are subscribed to your blog, and may never comment, or only comment sporadically. If you'd like to increase comments can follow some of these suggestions that Darren Rowse has culled from a number of places--however, these often work in tandem with links and increased traffic from better positioning in search. Think of it this way: if you don't have readership, who are you inviting to comment?

Two more important points: never forget dual powers of email and networking! Depending on the age of your audience, the size of your business, its market, and the subject matter of your blog, some people may be more comfortable emailing you with questions about you or your product. So, make sure there's an email addy where people can get in touch with you. Also, some people may not be comfortable doing business with you until they meet you. I know that, with me, many people have wondered "who the heck is this big-mouthed broad"--yet when we meet f2f or via telephone, they're usually pleasantly surprised...

Email may not be hip, but it's still very social...and F2F meeting/networking is often underrated in all the social media hype...

Think of it this way: Social media can be part of a company or individual's marketing campaign, and sometimes influence is more important than the busyness of comments and links. Traffic stats are always the #1 measurement to consider for effectiveness and influence--they tell you who's coming in, where they're coming from, and how long they're staying. Subscriptions, links, and comments all add to credibility and help support traffic stats, but may be difficult to gather up in one place in order to obtain accurate measurements. Further, you may be blogging in a way that is situating you in a very narrow niche that might *not* yield big traffic, big comments, or big anything. If that's the case, your traffic stats are your best measurement, as well as looking at who's linking--you should be getting links mostly from bloggers (and other media outlets), not sploggers.

Ultimately, social media is one of many ways of connecting and creating awareness about your business/product/yourself--and in this growing media landscape, we need more than one outlet to connect with people. To be effective, consider social media along with other forms of media--and can facilitate "old fashioned" contacts through networking or email. Remember: in the social media landscape, one creates influence which leads to reputation, which leads to business...

Note: In reviewing this post, I noticed I focused on hard, statistical measurements of influence. I didn't talk about how one *creates* influence. That, to me, is something that's not easily measured. We can see influence in links, but how do we get these links? We can get people over to our blogs via the right search criteria, but this doesn't necessarily create links for us either. The keys are, perhaps, in the content--in what we're talking about as well as in how personable we are. Can people relate to us? Yet men and women "relate" differently--and striking the balance of where/how/who one relates can be tough. Some bloggers are great at transcending gender boundaries, while others appeal to one gender over another. Ultimately, the truly 'social' aspects of social media, the ones that make it work just the right way, are the ones that really aren't measurable in a statistical, numeric way--partly because we can't track *every* single stat (as I note here) but also because some things about us, that make our blogs work, defy measurement :-)

Journalism Moving Forward, Journalism Staring Backward

Between yesterday and today, two links came across my Facebook homepage that gave some indication how journalism might move forward and what might happen if it keeps staring backward to a Time just about Forgotten...

The first link was to Jay Rosen's announcement of his new journalism experiment BeatBlogging.org--which will attempt to combine reporting and social networking. David Cohn (former Assignment Zero colleague) sums it up nicely:

Beatblogging.org is the third major project of NewAssignment.Net, where we're trying to crack new media cases: pro-am journalism, distributed reporting, collaborative information gathering, blog-style reportage. We think the hyrbid forms are going to be the strongest forms, and this project is a clear test of that proposition. Check out both David and Jay's posts for more...

I've always agreed with both Jay and David on this--that the hybrid forms will eventually be the strongest--because hybrid ways, if managed properly, will get reporters back together with people in positive ways that do not exploit people for the sake of journalism's survival. (Almost forgot to mention OfftheBus, headded by my other Assignment Zero colleague, Amanda Michel, which appears to be going well...)

One of the main reasons that I continue to be supportive of Jay's efforts (as well as the efforts of guys like Dan Gillmor and JD Lasica) is their genuine desires to either listen to or work with people who are occupying this fascinating space we call the Internet. There's none of this trying to make people work with journalists in some kind of intellectual hothouse (or sweatshop, depending on how you want to look at it.) Jay's experiments are always designed to maintain a high ethical standard when it comes to how the two parties--the people and the press--are going to have a constructive and productive dialogue again....

Something that seems to have left journalism as it has more and more insisted on its practitioners having high-level journalism degrees in order to be able to get a position that will afford a decent adult living wage...

Which leads me to the second link, to Dick Feagler's column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Journalism can't be learned, it has to be lived....I loved reading these recollections from Mr. Feagle:

When I broke into this racket, more than 40 years ago, we weren't called journalists. We were called newspapermen. Even the women.

Now I hear you can get an advanced degree in journalism. Certainly a master's. Maybe even a Ph.D.

I don't know what they teach at journalism schools; I never went to one. To me, there is only one lesson you need in the trade of journalism: the libel law.

The rest of them - courses in "Ethics in Journalism," for example - are merely navel-gazing. Newspapering is a trade. And, like most trades, you learn it on the job.

Geeze, I love this stuff! I think about all those movies I saw as a kid, where the journalists were gruff, hardworking guys with seriously charming personalities (you had to have one of those in order to make both the mayor and warring city councilmen trust you.) These were guys and gals whom you could run into at the grocery store as much as you could run into them at a fire or accident scene.

But something happened somewhere in the 1970's and '80's--maybe it was Watergate, maybe it was the buying-up of small-town papers by big corporations, I don't know exactly--and we slowly started moving towards professionalizing--with expensive, high-level graduate degrees dominating what used to be seen by many as a "trade"...

As I went along reading Mr. Feagler's piece, I thought he might actually give bloggers a break. But he didn't.

Bloggers. Have they ridden with a candidate in the middle of the night? Have they covered the murder of a young girl lying dead in the grass but looking as if she's sleeping? Have they covered anything?

Well, all I can say to that screed is that it's pretty obvious that Mr. Fiegler doesn't know the many different bloggers that are out there--the ones who've started networks and citizen journalism sites and who have been fighting to get press creds to actually get on that darned bus he's talking about--only that it's often the snobby professionalists he disdains that have erected the "no entrance" barriers to bloggers.

Between Jay's announcement, and Dick's column, the true problems with the condition of journalism smacked me in the face like a cold fish: we can get things to change, but we have to get over the entrenched professionalism of the past 20-odd years that is blocking any sort of innovation and creative thinking that might bubble up from the people--who are the heirs to the trade, not the priesthood, of journalism....

But I fear that might not happen, as the Professional Class of journalists move into positions held by guys like Dick Feagler, and settle themselves in for the long haul.

Or are they?

Over the past year I've found out through my myriad of connections and more connections, that there are groups of mid-level journalists being either downsized or getting disgusted with journalism and moving into academia (or starting their own "citizen" outlets--think about it...you know who I'm talking about...) Some of them are great innovators, who see the writing on the wall with new media and are really striving to teach their students about blogging and the myriad of other tools and tricks out on the Internet--the same tools that help students to socialize with friends may be just the same tools that help them out in their reporting later in their careers.

Then, of course, there are a few curmudgeons, who may see bloggers as the ruination of all journalism, Facebook as a place to keep tabs on their kids and students, and who just might feel that they as former journalists must teach the "masses" (to use Andrew Keen's term) how to make their blogging conform to the standards of journalism...

So, one thing we may all agree on is that the solution to the future of journalism is far from near, but at least there are some brave folks trying new stuff, including some of the "unwashed masses" (who are often former members of the priesthood--if you think about it...) And in this space, there seem to be two paths in journalism right now--one that looks forward to getting reporters back in touch with people, and another that stands still, continuing to block innovation and creativity in order to preserve journalism's ivory-tower professionalization...

So, are you moving forward, or are you standing with your back against the wall, staring backward....

Just my $.02

The Arrington Controversy--and Why I Didn't Go to the BlogWorld Expo

Since yesterday, I've been following the ensuing kerfuffle over Mike Arrington not showing up at at the BlogWorldExpo that just finished in Las Vegas...

And, quite honestly, I thought it was a little weird when I first saw Mike's name on the roster--given his dislike of PayPerPost and PPP holding its first PostieCon right *after* BWE....(thus leveraging BWE...)

I had my own misgivings about BWE when I first heard about it--and got an "invitation" in my Facebook email from someone involved with organizing the conference...

I thought "cool! wonder what panel I'll be on"--because I usually don't get "invitations" unless it's to be on a panel. I always figured that's what an "invitation" was about. Turns out that's not what this "invitation" was about. Just something (some might call spam) telling me about the conference. Which I'd already heard about anyway. My ear's never too far from the conference ground...

So, I thought about the roster--and sessions--and it was a whole lot of stuff I'd heard before at so many other conferences. Some of it was even stuff I wrote non-blog articles about. So I felt it'd be better to spend my limited pennies somewhere else.

Besides, I wasn't really looking forward to talking with people who would say "oh! I'm a blogger too!" and then hand me a business card with a URL to nowhere, or use my business card as an excuse to spam me with their newsletters, or just talk about how their blog was going to make them money without even thinking about their blog's impact on other things than their pocketbook....

It then hit me what was bugging me about the whole BWE--the emphasis on monetization. Yes, there seemed to be some lipservice to ethics and such, but the overall sense seemed to be about how to make scads of money from blogging and how to turn yourself into a blog superstar.

Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make money from blogging--but it's *how* one wants to make that money. Money from blogging doesn't come easily. It takes a lot of hard--very, very hard--work.

Which brings me back to Mike...I read thru his Crunchnotes post, and honestly, I got where he was coming from. Maybe there was a miscommunication--it looks right now as if the right answer to the question of whether or not there was a mix up in communication will be contingent on who's side the reader wants to take on the matter.

But just maybe he is fed up with the whole conference thing....

Personally, I'd rather NOT see him at a conference then find myself seeing him AGAIN and smacking myself in the head and saying to the guy next to me "geeze, why doesn't that blowhard sit down and give someone else a shot at the podium..." ;-)

Yes, I can hear you saying "well, maybe blog conferences aren't for you any m ore." Maybe so. Which is another reason why I didn't go to BWE. It wasn't for me.

All bloggers are not created equal--even if they all use the same tools...

That all depends on where--and whom--we want to be in This Space...

So, in some way maybe BWE wasn't for Mike either. But his at least his "invitation" was a real one...

Further reading: Another interesting take on BWE from Chris Brogan--read the comments. There's good thinking going on there....

Update Rick Calvert, one of BWE's organizers explains the miscommunication that lead to Mike not showing up.

I just wish Rick would have advised his people not to have used the word "invitation" when they sent out their notification spam. Seriously. That's just insulting and, well, mean.

Update 11/21.07 Spoke this afternoon with Rick Calvert, who I seem to see eye to eye with on a number of issues...discussed the "invite" thing, and found out it was not from someone in his organization. So, it was simply someone using the word "invite" when he should have said "thought you might be interested in this." Yes, some might see this as a semantic argument, but, honestly, it makes a difference--how are we supposed to know if we're actually "invited?"

If you're sending off a conference announcement to a friend because you think that person might like to go, please say that you're just passing along the info, or "thought you might be interested"--don't "invite" or anything like that. Save the word "invite" for the folks sending out the stuff for speakers, thankyouverymuch.

Overall, I get what Rick's trying to do, and we'll hopefully have some productive conversations in the near future.

Happy Blog-iversary (to me)!

Believe it or not, I've been blogging for a full three years now...but don't look for confirmation of that in this blog's sidebar....here's the story so far...:

Three years ago I started blogging because I was a frustrated, unpublished writer whom everybody thought might end up like Emily Dickinson (only in black) if I didn't do something about it. My personal blog--which ended up getting stalked by two individuals--was shut down just this past summer. Mostly because I wasn't free to write what I wanted about my life anymore without *someone* *somewhere* getting really pissed off at me...

But I accomplished far more than I thought I could in three years.

No, I never published a book. But I did manage to create something that has, IMO, just as much value: influence....(and a seriously tiny career in new media)

and it's been an amazing journey...

Which has gone something like this: I wrote stuff about my life (sometimes graphically and rather personally) and made a bunch of friends.

I then made a bunch of friends in High Places because I went to some conferences. I asked for press passes to conferences, and got them (oddly.)

I started another blog (this one) because someone said that my personal blog wouldn't fit in his blogroll, but if I did something else, he might include me. Which he did.

Then, somewhere, somehow, I got a contract writing for something Corante was doing--and I'm still really not sure how that happened. Maybe it had something to do with showing up at some really small conferences where there were a bunch of Heavy Thinkers.

Then again, maybe it was my writing.

I kinda had a tough time with blogging for a network, because nobody had expected me to actually *blog* for someone else--and get paid for it. And doing something for someone else always requires following rules.

Which I'm not real good at. And sometimes forget to ask for help to understand the rules...

I kept going to conferences--I went to tech conferences and marketing conferences and journalism conferences. And I met a lot more really cool people.

A lot of really interesting and cool people. Many of whom are my Facebook friends and who remember me when I see them.

And I got to speak at some of the conferences I went to...

Think I got there with some help from my Friends...:-)

I then got to write for the Huffington Post,
and there were some other things...
I worked on Assignment Zero...
and helped out with We Media Miami...

And I kept writing. and that pissed some people off.
but everybody can't love me.
and sometimes I genuinely disagree with people,
even if I like them IRL,
and I'm not going to not tell them that every utterance is a great idea.

That wouldn't be me. Even if that's what they want to hear.

Truth to Power? Maybe...

Then some other people *really* started to take me seriously. Maybe it's because I say things that make sense--because I understand people in This Space.

Maybe, again, it was my writing.

But I have a little trouble merging This Space and IRL. It's that Rules thing, I think.

It's part of why I started blogging in the first place--because I just didn't get IRL and I felt people didn't take me seriously IRL. And weren't going to make a space for me IRL.

But IRL still impacts this space, and I'm learning a lot about IRL these days.

That's why I haven't been blogging so much these days. Trying to adjust to a certain synthesis between IRL and This Space and how it all might work to create money...

I've always seen This Space as a space of Ideas. Community. and Creativity. A Gathering-Place of people--some disaffected, some looking for a new "home." Some have drawn the analogy between the Internet and the Wild West--and in many ways, they're right. Not because it's lawless, but because it's generative and creative, where some of us can grow and become something that the mass media world we were born into wasn't going to allow us to become.

The mass media world grew too many gatekeepers with too many rules that kept way too many of us feeling as if we'd never Become....that we'd only be Also Rans...dead cut flowers in the bud phase...

And some of us just weren't meant to be Also Rans... or pretty unopened buds...even if we can't get with The Rules...

Maybe there are just too many of the wrong rules, and too many gatekeepers worrying too much about illusions of control...

But are we in a space where our wildest dreams really can come true?

Perhaps we should be careful what we dream about...
when we're in here.
Maybe the "walls" have ears...
and they talk back...

Perhaps you'd agree, it's been a fascinating three years....

Who knew?
I didn't.

Who knows?
I don't--that's for sure....I'm just here for the next destination...