Just when you think there couldn’t possibly be any more information coming at you on the social web (and I am using the term “information” very loosely), another source pops up. First it was just Facebook messages, then it was following people on Twitter, now there’s Google+ and LinkedIn and Instagram and half a dozen other newcomers — all producing streams of activity that compete for our increasingly scarce attention. David Shing, the “digital prophet” for AOL, said this week that he expects unfriending and unfollowing to become a major phenomenon, and I know just what that feels like: a friend unfollowed me recently, and it got me thinking about this attention economy we are living in.

As anyone who follows me through Twitter or any other social network probably knows by now, I am pretty active on a number of different services for a variety of reasons. I don’t use LinkedIn very much — mostly because it feels like a site where you go to post your resume, rather than a place you go to have a discussion with people about something — but I post links there when I have a new blog post, and sometimes check out LinkedIn Today for industry news. I mostly use Facebook for social reasons, to keep in touch with family, but I post links there too. And I am a fan of Instagram for photos, for reasons that Om has described, and have been trying to post more to Google+ as well.

Am I part of the solution, or part of the problem?
The result of all this is two-fold: I wind up posting many of the same links — to my blog posts, as well as to photos and other things — to multiple networks, because I don’t know which of them my friends and followers (and potential readers) are using the most. Like me, I suspect many of them use multiple networks for different purposes. And I often re-post links in Twitter, because as Bitly has shown with its link analytics, the “half-life” of a tweet is remarkably short, and so many people may not see it. The other effect of this is that in some networks, such as Google+, I don’t participate as much as I should, and I sometimes get criticized for just posting links and then not sticking around.

I try not to clog up my stream with unnecessary things, and I try to make my activity on any network a mix of professional and personal, with humor and conversation and photos mixed up amid the blog posts and other industry-related things. I think it helps when people, including journalists, are human in that way (although not too human, hopefully). But I can see how my stream could be noisy for some — and it certainly has turned out to be for one friend, who said recently that they were forced to unfollow me. I’m not going to name them because it’s not really important who they are, I’m more interested in their reasons; they said they unfollowed me because:

I’m frankly tired of people who talk about themselves or promote their work. Repetition just makes it worse. Bombarding me with the same content multiple times in multiple channels makes you uninteresting to me.

I was somewhat taken aback by this, I admit. I assumed people would just ignore the tweets or messages they weren’t interested in, as I do when I come across things in other people’s streams that I don’t find relevant. But when I asked this friend to explain, they described something that I thought was probably pretty common for some people — and something that might possibly become more widespread, as Shing described in his recent interview with The Guardian. In effect, this person said their attention was a precious resource, and that I (and presumably others) were wasting it:

Twitter is no different from any medium in this respect – I only follow what deserves my attention. Diluting my attention stream is a great way to tell me that you do not share my concern about allocating it.

Information overload and Shirky’s “filter failure”

I think this is a feeling we probably all have now and then, thanks to what some call information overload and Clay Shirky has called “filter failure.” Maybe we feel it when our inbox is filled with messages that have been sent by someone clicking “reply all,” or maybe when we get inundated with Facebook messages and photo tags, or — on the far end of the spectrum — when we try to follow someone like Robert Scoble on a new social network like Google+. The uber-blogger and social-media maven described recently how his own wife deleted her Google+ account because of the signal-to-noise problem caused in part by Scoble himself.

Facebook has only added to this phenomenon with its new “ticker,” which scrolls by as you watch the page, with every “like” and message and Spotify song appearing and then disappearing. Facebook seemed very proud of its new “frictionless sharing” social apps, but many expressed concern about the volume of noise that would be created — and I think rightfully so. In a way, these concerns are the same as the ones my friend has: where do I spend my attention? There is a finite amount of it, and so at some point we have to choose where to allocate it. I spend less time on Facebook in part because I have too many “friends” there and the signal-to-noise ratio is quite low.

How do we solve these kinds of problems? I don’t really know. Filters such as Circles and Facebook lists — or even a new network like Bill Gross’s Chime, which lets you follow only part of a person rather than everything they post — might be part of the solution, but they also just increase the flow. Do we have to get ruthless with our friend and follower lists, and prune them even if we risk offending someone? Perhaps. All I know is that the problem isn’t getting any better — if anything, it is getting worse.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users John Lambert Pearson and Kevin Dooley

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NewNet Q3: Facebook remakes headlines in social mediaPlayers and Strategies for Real-Time In-Stream AdvertisingFinding the Value in Social Media Data

Hi everybody.

I’m Rich. I work at 10 Yetis PR Agency. (‘Hiiii Rich’, you say in a soothingly choral sort of way).

And I’m an addict. (You clap empathetically, looking at me with a knowing approval and compassionately tearful gleam in your eye).

Read more on Are you addicted to early adoption?…

I ended last week’s post comparing the previous season’s buzzword ‘social media’ with gamification, and the need for brands to evolve their own way of utilising it. Though it’s easy to find a huge number of case studies that have been generated on the use of social media by brands to interact with consumers, the amount of material available on how the internal organisation has been wired to implement this, is relatively less.

At a broad level, both consumer facing social media and gamification are ways to interact with consumers and engage them better. But though a single function in the organisation might be handling this interface (I think the vast majority of organisations have not evolved to the advanced social media frameworks), its effectiveness depends on coordination between functions.

I read JP Rangaswami’s excellent post on Gamification and the Enterprise, on how the consumer and  the enterprise are changing and that new problems require new approaches and advocates a look at game design to solve these. I also read a counter-post by Sigurd Rinde which argues that gamification, dashboard and search are signs of enterprise failure. The disagreement seemed more to be on semantics, if you check the comments on Sig’s post.

Both agree that extrinsic rewards based gamification is not the way to do it. Not that my agreement much in the debate, but I do agree. To me, extrinsic rewards seems like a way to reward a process for its own sake, but intrinsic rewards might significantly work better to ensure that the intent is the bigger focus.

Which brings me to implementation. Usually, social media outposts happen first and then organisations scramble to make processes and frameworks out of it. This is probably because the social networks enable customers to have a conversation about the brand anyway without its having any say in the matter. In the case of gamification, though, there is a requirement to build game dynamics, mechanics and aesthetics and it seems that this would have to be done by the brand. That leads to a choice.

So should an enterprise first use gamification on the consumer side, finding ways to marry customer intent and business objective and then attempt this in the enterprise to ensure that employees work towards achieving these ‘ways’? Or should they identify business objectives and gamify the enterprise to ensure they are met and then attempt this on the consumer side, so employees can work on making the ‘ways’ smoother to execute? Or build both in parallel? I am swinging towards the first option. You?

until next time, end game, for now

Katya Andresen is chief strategy officer of Network for Good, author of Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes and blogs at nonprofitmarketingblog.com. You can find her on Twitter @katyaN4G.

So called “slacktivists” take easy, social actions in support of a cause – signing a petition, liking a Facebook Page or putting a pink ribbon on their avatar. But that’s pretty much where their involvement ends, right?

Slacktivists tend to get a bad rap: they lack real commitment, care only about self-satisfaction and don’t contribute to meaningful change. So, why waste time with these lightweight social activists?

Because new research shows just how valuable social actions (however easy) can be.

The Dynamics of Cause Engagement study by Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication and Ogilvy Worldwide shows slacktivists (whom I prefer to call “social champions”) are more likely to take meaningful actions.

In the 2010 national survey, people who frequently engaged in promotional social activity were:

As likely as non-social media promoters to donate
Twice as likely to volunteer their time
Twice as likely to take part in events like charity walks
More than twice as likely to buy products or services from companies that supported the cause
Three times as likely to solicit donations on behalf of their cause
More than four times as likely to encourage others to sign a petition or contact political representatives

The survey was conducted in late 2010 by TNS Global among a nationally representative sample of 2,000 American adults, ages 18 and over, with a margin of error of +/- 2.2%.

The bottom line? Just because people are doing something easy on social media doesn’t mean that’s all they are doing. In fact, so-called slacktivists participate in more than twice as many activities as people who don’t engage in slacktivism. Plus, the activities that slacktivists choose to undertake have a higher potential to influence others.

“This research shows good causes should focus like a laser beam on social champions because they will do more, spread more, and advance your cause more,” says Julie Dixon of Georgetown’s Center for Social Impact Communication.

Here are four important tips for people who care about advancing good causes.

Don’t stereotype slacktivists. Just because people are taking easy actions online doesn’t mean they aren’t willing – or already doing – more for a cause.
Social champions have real value, because they’re not only likely to undertake certain activities; they’re also more likely to spread the word. The same study found the second most common way people get involved in a cause after donating is by talking to others about it. Word of mouth is critically important, so focus on the people willing to spread it.
Slacktivists are like the rest of us. They exhibit varying degrees of commitment to different causes. The message here isn’t that all slacktivists are diehard activists. They may be willing to join a Facebook cause for one non-profit, but run a marathon and raise a fortune for another. It’s up to the non-profit to see slacktivist action as a sign of interest, and then to deepen that interest with strong engagement.
Measure your engagement with everyone, slacktivist or not, so you know your time is well spent. You really don’t know who is worth the most time until you pay attention to the actions people take. Make sure you have the systems in place to determine your return on investment.

Don’t slack off yourself when it comes to engaging with slacktivists. They may be far more energetic – and interested – than you think.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, AnthiaCumming

More About: activism, causes, Social Good, Social Media
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Do you "like" these Keds? Think they're #cute? Want to +1 pair to your sneaker collection? Well, unfortunately, you can't — not at the moment, at least. They're just concept kicks, created by graphic designer Lumen Bigott. They're also not-yet-available in Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube styles. It's only a matter of time. (Click image to get a better look.) [Social Media Shoes by Lument Bigott via Copyranter] More »

Slowly but surely, business leaders are shifting their attitude toward social media — from seeing it as a threat to discovering its very real opportunities.

And their attitude matters, a lot. Social media is about people, not technology. Its business value does not come from social software or a snazzy website, even one with 800 million users. Its value stems from how business leaders, from senior executives to managers, use it to foster new collaborative behaviors that materially improve business performance.

Leadership attitudes, and the organizational culture they spawn, are critical to social media success. They are among a company's most fundamental social media assets — or liabilities. Here are the six basic categories that business leader attitudes toward social media fall into:

Folly
Leaders with this attitude consider social media a source of entertainment with little or no business value, and they typically ignore it. Where a folly attitude prevails, the approach to a social media strategy must emphasize direct business value tightly tied to well-known and recognized organizational goals or challenges — and it must avoid flabby value statements around improved collaboration and stronger relationships.

Fearful
Fearful leaders see social media as a threat to productivity, intellectual capital, privacy, management authority, regulatory compliance and a host of other things, and often discourage and even prohibit its use. This attitude can reduce the potential risk, but it also stifles any possible business value. To counteract fear, the strategic approach should focus on relatively low-risk initiatives, even if other, higher-risk opportunities might offer greater business value.

Flippant
These leaders may not ignore or fear social media, but they don't take it seriously, either. This typically leads to a technology-centric approach where the company simply provides access to social media and hopes that business value will spontaneously emerge. This rarely bears fruit. Important in countering this attitude is convincing leadership that purpose matters, and that they should progress beyond the technology and identify good purposes for social media — causes that are strong enough to catalyze and mobilize communities of people to act in a way that delivers value to the community and the organization.

Formulating
Formulating leaders recognize both the potential value of social media as well as the need to be more organized and strategic in its use. The right approach here should build on this positive foundation, emphasizing the broader strategic value of social media and mass collaboration, with a succinctly expressed set of business opportunities that (1) demonstrates social media's potential impact across many areas of the business, and (2) is strong enough to capture the attention of the most senior leaders.

Forging
In companies where leaders have a forging attitude, the whole organization is starting to develop competence in using social media to assemble, nurture and gain business value from communities. To keep progressing, leaders should recognize previous successes, capitalize on growing momentum, advocate continued evolution and increase investments. They should also promote additional grassroots social media efforts as critical in becoming a highly collaborative social organization.

Fusing
This is the most advanced attitude, and still rare. Fusing leaders treat community collaboration as an integral part of the organization's work, ingrained in how people think and behave. This is a description of a social organization, and in such organizations the need for an explicit vision and strategy subsides — all business strategy and execution already include community collaboration where it's appropriate.

How do most leaders shape up? Right now, our analysis indicates that leaders of most organizations have yet to progress to the Formulating stage, which accounts for the high social media failure rate. We know treating social media as strategic can lead to tangible business value and competitive advantage, so the goal is for business leaders to move quickly past the Folly, Fearful, and Flippant stages and get right to Formulating. Ignoring social media, or throwing it over the fence to Marketing or IT could create serious business risk.

Where does your organization stand?

Take the Social Readiness Assessment and find out.

Yes, it is quite the shiny new object in the marketing/enterprise conversations around the web. One of the positives is that there are always new and updated resources in addition to some well thought out perspectives from advocates as well as naysayers on its applications on the consumer facing side, as well as the business side. For starters, I quite liked this ‘Gamification and its discontents’ deck (via Tom Fishburne’s post on gamification) that is meant to serve as a primer before marketers set out to apply ‘gamification’.

But though it’s very early days in terms of a structured approach to the concept of gamification, I’m quite upbeat on it. One of the primary reasons for that is its inherent application that has been happening throughout my life so far. The education system’s ranks and grades (performing x task well earns you y points) not only decide entry into schools, colleges, universities and the progression there abut also gets to dictate a lot of ‘real’ social experiences within (standing among peers, popularity) as well as without. (the varying reactions to the answers to ‘Where/what do you study’? in a social gathering) Many systems have even learned how to factor in different kinds of activities – say, sports and academics, as well as types of pedagogy. A constantly evolving ‘rank’ is built over time and the badges earned and the places they’ve been earned at also have a hand in the work stage that happens immediately after education.

From landing the first job to designations that happen later, we continue living in a world of points and badges. In fact, I had tweeted some time ago that gamification already existed in the enterprise in the form of designations. The badges also continue to affect real life through the other reward -the salary we get, which is a function of what we have done so far as well as what we are doing. Other acquisitions from that (car, house, vacations, contacts in the phonebook) decide social standing and open further ‘game’ opportunities. I can visualise life as one gigantic gameplay with said and unsaid rules. The badges and rewards were a system unto itself, until our own evolution made us rethink this. The result has been a linkage to a larger life purpose for many of us. Some of us do this within the existing structures, while others make their own niche/walled structures and rules. But that’s a different post. Meanwhile, unlike most other games, there’s only one life, and that’s what probably makes it more exciting.

When social networks came into our lives, we first had fun connecting with friends and potential friends, and then immediately sought to apply gamification by comparing number of friends and followers, #ff, recommendations, lists, circles and so on. Also arrived continually evolving systems to measure our activities – as a factor of presence, reach and credibility across networks – Klout, PeerIndex and Kred, for example. Increasingly, they will impact and even integrate with our ‘real’ game. My point is that we seem to inherently understand gamification and more often than not accept this. Hence, my belief that well thought out applications – consumer or enterprise, have a good chance of succeeding.

I just realised that the ‘introduction’ itself has been a long drawn one. So I’ll wait till next week to share my thoughts on application.

until next time, game on

The Dalai Lama has officially joined Google+ — and he’s already planning a Hangout with South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The Hangout, announced Friday on the Dalai Lama’s Google+ profile, will take place Oct. 8 at 10:30 a.m. South African time (GMT+2.00). That’s 4:30 a.m. ET in the U.S. The live video conversation will be part of the Inaugural Desmond Tutu Peace Lecture in Cape Town, South Africa. The event coincides with the archbishop’s 80th birthday on Oct. 7. A link to the Hangout will be available approximately 20 to 30 minutes before it starts.

The Dalai Lama had originally planned on visiting South Africa in person this weekend, but visa woes prevented the holy leader from entering the country. However, that didn’t stop the Dalai Lama from posting a video (below) on Google+, wishing the archbishop — an activist who first rose to prominence opposing apartheid in the 1980s — a happy birthday.

This was all done on the same day the Dalai Lama joined Google+. Another post on the social network welcomes the Dalai Lama’s potential Google+ followers with a mission statement of sorts: “He frequently states that his life is guided by three major commitments: the promotion of basic human values or secular ethics in the interest of human happiness, the fostering of inter-religious harmony and the welfare of the Tibetan people, focusing on the survival of their identity, culture and religion.”

While the Dalai Lama may be new to Google+, this isn’t his first social media presence. He also has a Twitter account with more than 2.5 million followers, along with a Facebook page with more than 2 million fans.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Jan Michael Ihl

More About: Dalai Lama, desmond tutu, Google, Social Media, social networking

Mid-morning September 20th, Google+ officially entered public beta, drumming up the level of interest of the site far and wide across the web. Although able to boast 25 million unique visitors after only four weeks of operation, Google’s newest attempt at a social network saw its user base dwindle as shown by a recent article from Chitika Insights.

To continue our coverage on this matter, Chitika Insights took a look at Google+ before and after it went public to see if the social network was living up to the hype. Reportedly, Google+ saw a surge in traffic of over 1200% due to the additional publicity, but the increased user base was only temporary, as was projected in an earlier insights post.

The data shows that, on the day of its public debut, Google+ traffic skyrocketed to peak levels. But, soon after, traffic fell by over 60% as it returned to its normal, underwhelming state. It would appear that although high levels of publicity were able to draw new traffic to Google+, few of them saw reason to stay.

Given the huge amount of publicity and resources Google+ has received, why hasn’t the social network taken off?

Despite its striking new interface, rapid release of new features, and focus on user interaction, Google+ does not seem to be able to drive unique visits in a sustainable fashion. We believe there are two driving reasons for this lack of interest:

The supply of users for social media sites is limited. To survive you must stand out and provide a service that others do not.
Features unique to your site must be just that – unique and difficult to duplicate – if they are not, the competitive advantage quickly disappears.

Google has recently been taking steps toward diversifying its services such as introducing Hangouts to Google+ or incorporating its search engine into the social network. Other innovative features include a new +1 button for ads and search results to increase relevancy of its product mix to its users. Perhaps if Google can accelerate their current pace of innovation on their social network offering, Google+ could becoming a competitive alternative to its arch-rival, Facebook. Otherwise, given Facebook’s clout and reputation of rapid innovation, Google+ might just be left in the dust.

In light of recent questions about the methodology used for this post, we have published the following explanation, viewable here.

Facebook user Benito Apolinar, who hails from the great state of Texas, had posted a loving status update to his Facebook page on the anniversary of his mother's death. Then he waited for the "likes" to roll in. You know how that is: One finds a strange sense of fulfillment in near-meaningless clicks of approval from friends and acquaintances and friends of acquaintances. More »

A recent photograph in The New York Times — for a story about cooking with chicken skin — has spawned the latest popular parody account on Twitter: @NYTchicken a.k.a. “Sexy Chicken.”

After The Times published “Chicken’s Attraction Is Truly Skin Deep,” the somewhat provocative photo in the story immediately caught the attention of social media users. The next day, @NYTchicken popped up on the web.

Since Sept. 30, the account has attracted more than 1,600 followers with 19 humor-filled tweets. Sexy Chicken even caught the attention of KFC’s social media team, which tweeted, “@NYTChicken For goodness sake, cover yourself. I recommend something in a nice Original Recipe.” (See collection of tweets below.)

KFC jumped on the opportunity to have some fun with Sexy Chicken because the humor in the situation fit well with the company’s playful Twitter strategy. “Corresponding with the Twitter account of a famous photo of a chicken fits nicely at the intersection of engagement and fun,” KFC spokesman Rick Maynard told Mashable.

PETA, however, didn’t find anything funny about the picture created by NYT photographer Tony Cenicola or the subsequent parody. PETA tweeted, “@NYTChicken If pic was decapitated & amputated puppy corpse who’d laugh? If ur veg pls choose less offensive pic nxt time.”

Q&A With Sexy Chicken

With all this attention thrust on such a young Twitter account, we couldn’t help but wonder what was on Sexy Chicken’s mind. Luckily, we got a hold of @NYTchicken for a pluckin’ awesome Q&A.

Mashable: How did you get approached to pose for the NYT article? And did you feel comfortable on set?
“I’m a professional, so of course I’m comfortable on set. However, since I am kosher, one rule I have is that I won’t pose with pigs.”
Sexy Chicken: “I’m represented by the d’management group in Milan. The New York Times contacted d’management looking for ‘a busty chicken model with excellent skin.’ I’m a professional, so of course I’m comfortable on set. However, since I am kosher, one rule I have is that I won’t pose with pigs.”

Mashable: How are you dealing with your sudden rise to fame?

Sexy Chicken: “It’s been amazing! I’m thrilled with the response. I feel a little like Scarlett Johansson.”

Mashable: What do you hope to accomplish with your new Twitter account?

Sexy Chicken: “I’m hoping it leads to more modeling gigs. It’s hard out there for a chick.”

Mashable: I see that you’re following only two people, @Pete_Wells and @ErnieAnastos. Why them?

Sexy Chicken: “I have to thank Pete for giving me such an opportunity to model for the Times. He’s a God in the poultry world. Ernie Anastos is my biggest fan.”

SEE ALSO: Top Fictional Accounts | Top Fake Celebs | Top Social Media & Tech Spoofs

Mashable: What’s your reaction to @PETA’s latest tweet and link?

Sexy Chicken: “Oh, please. Puppies don’t do anything for me anyway. I’m only attracted to animals on two legs, like roosters and George Clooney.”

Mashable: How’s your relationship with @kfc_colonel after its Original Recipe tweet to you?

Sexy Chicken: “Do I look like a Perdue chicken? I’m free-range and organic, baby. I wouldn’t be caught dead (so to speak) in a KFC bucket.”

Mashable: Boxers or briefs?

Sexy Chicken: “Commando.”

View “@NYTchicken, Twitter’s Sexy Chicken” on Storify

More About: parody, Social Media, the new york times, Twitter

When Klout announced in mid-September that Blogger and Tumblr would play a role in determining your Klout score, WordPress users immediately asked, “What about us?”

Klout responded by quietly adding WordPress.com to its scoring system, which already factors in 11 other services: Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Google+, Instagram, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube. Unlike its integration with those services, Klout didn’t publicly reveal the WordPress.com addition, but we noticed the WordPress button on the Klout dashboard anyway.

Update: Only blogs hosted on WordPress.com were added to Klout, an Automattic rep told Mashable. Self-hosted blogs on WordPress.org aren’t included in Klout scores yet.

“People love WordPress and have put a ton of effort creating their blogs and building and influencing their audience,” Klout CEO Joe Fernandez told Mashable. “Our goal is to measure influence everywhere it occurs. [Posterous, Quora, Yelp] and and many others are on our roadmap.”

Recently, the San Francisco-based startup also released a feature that lets users gain insights on top content influencers, as well as users who have received the most +Ks for respective topics.

“The big thing historically we have not done a good job on is helping people understand their scores,” Fernandez said. “Through the rest of the year, you will see us release a series of features that really address this.”

“I often think back to doing a Google search in 2000, the results were better than anything else out there, but they have had to constantly improve to be where they are today. That’s how I think of Klout. We are taking on a huge challenge and it’s very early in the game and we have a long journey ahead of us. The key difference is when you search Google and the result you wanted comes up third instead of first you generally don’t get personally offended. With Klout, we are putting a score next to your name and if a person feels like the data there about them isn’t correct it’s understandable that they get upset.”

BONUS: What Klout’s New Topic Pages Look Like

To populate a user’s Topic Pages (see screenshots below), Klout analyzes the user’s content created across the 12 networks it calculates.


Clickable Topics on Your Dashboard


On your Klout dashboard, you can click on a topic to open its Topic Page.

Social Media Topic Page


For example, here's the social media Topic Page, which displays top influencers and top +K recipients.

Journalism Topic Page


Here's the journalism Topic page.

Top +K Recipients


You can click on "Top +K Recipients" to get a closer look at which users are snagging the most +Ks.

Best Content Stream


The "Best Content" tab will show you popular content from the past 90 days.

More About: blogging, klout, News, Social Media, social networking, WordPress

The Social Media Infographics Series is supported by Vocus‘ Social Media Strategy Tool, a free, six-step online tool that lets you build a custom social media framework tailored to your organization’s goals.

Since its launch in the summer of 2006, Twitter has become the leader in microblogging, limiting even its most famous users to a concise 140 characters. This infographic details Twitter’s most influential content creators, staggering adoption rates, and struggle to turn a profit.

Curious about The Biebs‘ first tweet? Wondering which event caused the latest tweets-per-second record? Scroll on down for a bird’s eye view (see what we did there?) of the world’s favorite real-time information network.

Infographic design by Emily Caufield

Series supported by Vocus

This series is supported by Vocus‘ Social Media Strategy Tool, a free online tool which lets you build your own custom social media framework in six easy steps. It helps you determine your organization’s goals, explore the latest MarketingSherpa research data, and create your own workbook packed with the strategies, tactics and resources you need. Try it today!

More About: features, infographics, mashable, Mashable Infographics, Social Media, Social Media Infographics Series, Twitter
For more Social Media coverage:Follow Mashable Social Media on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Social Media channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

The advent of Facebook's new Timeline feature gives you, your colleagues, and your customers a whole new set of reasons to share your moment-by-moment news, photos, and reflections. Instead of a flat list of stories on your wall, and a glob of biographical data on your profile, the new Timeline creates a visually attractive story of your life dating all the way back to the date of your (reported) birth. If and when Timeline gets rolled out to Pages (as Facebook is already hinting), we will see brand presences change in much the same way: into dynamic, chronological, and visual stories.

But the business impact of Timeline will be felt long before it arrives on brand pages. As Timeline rolls out on individual profiles, anyone who has both a professional career and a Facebook account will have to rethink the relationship between them. Timeline is going to change the way Facebook interacts with our professional lives. Here are the changes to watch for &#8212 and the ways you can make them work for you instead of against you:

1. You'll know too much about your colleagues: If the folks in the C-suite have remained largely inscrutable until now, expect at least some of them to fall prey to Facebook's enhanced charms. Just as it's hard to resist mugging for a camera, it may be hard to resist Facebooking just to make your Timeline look prettier, more interesting, or simply less food-centric. That can easily lead to oversharing &#8212 which is especially problematic if the person sharing Too Much Information is the public face of your organization. And you don't have to be the CEO to worry. The Timeline lays so much out in a browsable form that you need to assume that it will be used as part of hiring processes, client assessments, and even just colleagues wanting to know the name of your new puppy.

You can take full advantage of Timeline without oversharing yourself. If you want to build a Facebook Timeline as a personal scrapbook or intimate communications channel, set up an "inner circle" friends list and make it your default level of privacy for all your posts, or even set your default privacy levels to "only me."

2. Your colleagues will know the "propersonal" you: If you were holding onto the idea that Facebook could be your personal haven while you build your professional profile on LinkedIn, it's time to let that fantasy go. The Timeline offers an opportunity for you to tell the story of your career in a uniquely compelling way, so you need to consciously tackle the challenge of building a propersonal profile that will position you appropriately in the eyes of employers, clients, or colleagues.

To create a strong propersonal profile, you have to start by burying any inappropriate content. Use the new privacy setting called "limit the audience for past posts," so that your entire history becomes invisible to everyone except a select group of friends. Then, go back through the timeline and select a representative, but flattering range of posts and photos that you will share publicly. Complete your career information and flesh out any gaps with additional posts or photos (which you can backdate). Review your new Timeline and make sure the story it tells is consistent with the chronology in your résumé, and more importantly, with the way you present yourself in other professional contexts.

3. You'll know more about yourself: Even those of us who use Facebook for professional purposes rarely look back further than the past few weeks' worth of updates and comments. Facebook Insights may tell you the longer-term story in analytics, but that is different from re-reading the cringe-worthy, tone-deaf update you wrote on your first wall post back in 2007. Now that Timeline encourages us to turn back the clock, many of us will get a fresh perspective on how we present ourselves to our colleagues and the world &#8212 and we may not like what we see.

That perspective could be as valuable as a year's worth of executive coaching &#8212 if you seize the opportunity to take a hard look at where you spend your time and attention. Before you check out your Facebook Timeline, jot down the professional highs and lows of your past few years. Now look at your Facebook Timeline and compare: Did your big work breakthroughs come when you were barely updating (and perhaps a bit more focused on your job)? Or did your flurries of online activity correlate with the times when you felt especially alive and attuned to the pulse of your organization? You may gain surprising insights into the relationship between your social media life, your professional success, and your personal satisfaction.

Facebook's positioning of Timeline as a kind of digital scrapbook suggests that Timeline will primarily be used as a way to look back on one's own life. Every experience we've had with social media to date &#8212 including Facebook itself &#8212 suggests the opposite. Each new way of sharing or curating our life experiences becomes another opportunity for self-narration, and we spend as much time investigating, critiquing, and engaging with other people's presences as we do in reviewing our own. With the advent of Timeline, that balance needs to shift &#8212 at least until you're confident that the story you're telling is a story you can live with.

The last few weeks have kept me busy, thanks to a career crossroad. I had a few options, each of which presented its own share of pros and cons. At a larger level, there was a dilemma on whether to stay as a consultant or get back to a job. This tussle is something I’d like to document in depth, so that’s a story for later.

It was made even more difficult because the major consultancy option was with an organisation whose work I respect and whose domain is a personal interest area. I also had a couple of ‘smaller’ consultancy options, which offered work in interesting domains, in addition to my regular Bangalore Mirror columns. There was also a job option which would allow me to work with a couple of people whom I’d gotten to know through Twitter, and whom I like and admire for their perspectives.

After much consideration and with a little help from invaluable friends over DMs and chats, the update on the LinkedIn profile now reads ‘Head -Social’ at Myntra. In addition to various personal priorities, I chose to go with this opportunity because it gave me the maximum scope to implement the concepts I frequently write about on the blog. The organisation is at that rapid growth stage where I can work towards making ‘social’ inherent in processes across domains. In addition to the ‘social’ piece, I’ll also be working on a couple of other domains.

So, in addition to the regular kind of posts here, I’ll hope to share the experiences of creating a ‘social’ strategy and implementing it on the client side. The mandate is to embed social in fashion, not be social after a fashion, and so, I think we’re in for a lot of fun.

until next time, job 2.011

There are some movies I watch multiple times -- whenever they show up on TV. One of them happens to be the 2010 version of The Karate Kid, featuring Jackie Chan (as Mr.Han) and Jaden Smith ( as Dre Parker). And the fact that one of my favourite scenes is the ‘snake woman’ is only a coincidence, and nothing to do with my alleged (by Cyn) affection for snake scenes in movies. Actually the part that interests me is the conversation after. (do not quote  this line out of context)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=inZWX5ipBZU

Dre: “She was doing the Cobra thing.   She was like…(makes movements)… copying the snake. And it was like…  right here, and she was like…”
Han: “You did not watch closely enough, Xiao Dre… It was the snake that was copying the woman.”
Dre: “What? I don’t get it.”
Han: “Look.” (points at pool of drinking water) What do you see?”
Dre:“Me, well my reflection.”
Han:“Yes. (whirls water). Now, what do you see?”
Dre:“It’s blurry.”
Han:“Yes. That woman was like still water. Quiet and calm. In here (puts hand on the head) and in here (puts hand on the heart) .
Dre: “So, the snake reflects her action like still water. Like a mirror?”
Han: “Yes.”
Dre: “So, she controlled the snake by doing nothing?”
Han: “Being still and doing nothing…  are two very different things.

(via)

The conversation interests me because the snake’s behaviour is typically the way I react to events and people that life throws at me. The aspiration is to have the clear and calm mind that will allow me to change the relationship equation. It’s an extremely difficult task, thanks to stimuli received from all around, especially social platforms. The real time knee jerk reactions characteristic of ‘social media’ also start influencing the way I make decisions even when they are not involved.

It’ would probably be easy if I just closed myself to these stimuli, but that’s not really practical, or the best way. The better, and more difficult way, is to be there, and yet, not allow it to affect what I am and do. As John Wooden said, “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” That’s something I am trying not to forget, even as I try to make the character as objective as possible. It’s ironic that the platforms which started out (for me) as places to express myself are now trying to ‘force’ me to conform, to become part of cliques, or maybe that’s just the way it’s supposed to work when networks become media.

until next time, character limits

After yesterday’s rather slow news day and a frustrating moment involving my iPhone 4 crashing and wiping my entire address book clean, I settled in for a bit of stress-relieving fun online. Fortunately for me, my “stress relief” involves goofing off on social networks like Google+, Facebook and so on, which, according to my friends who think I work too much, ties in with what I write about all day here on The Next Web.

When peeking at my Google+ notifications last night for, cough, research, I noticed one very different and perhaps overly exciting feature that impressed me then and there: Gaming notifications. Yes, games have been on Google+ for a while, but this was my first time actually seeing them pushed at me on the platform. And unlike the typical eye roll I usually react with to the spammy game notifications I frequently receive on Facebook, my first thought was, “This is surprisingly clean.”

When it comes to gaming, Google+ just does a much better job of getting the “social” part right. The current library is small, yes, but what little there is to actually play on the budding platform still has my notifications going off with invites and so-and-so has sent you a gift updates. This leads me to believe that Google+ gamers are already engaged and actively social.

But what makes Google+ Games better than Facebook?
There are a couple of reasons why Google+ Games don’t annoy me in quite the same teeth-gritting fashion that Facebook games do. For one, game invites don’t flood my notifications with individual spam-like messages like I’d normally find on Facebook. Instead, G+ Games come packaged neatly in one brief notification blurb where all of my invites have been conveniently grouped together, keeping me from being overwhelmed by the constant sharing.

Clicking on the Google+ Games notification category brings up an entirely separate group of notifications where I can browse through my various game invites, sent gifts, etc at my leisure. In the event that I may not actually want to receive game notifications, there is also the option to completely mute them altogether, preventing them from popping up to disturb me (though I can’t see why I’d want to mute them, as G+ has already made game notifications painless enough).

Then there’s the actual gaming experience on Google+ which is marginally more enjoyable than Facebook’s gaming experience. Reason being: Google+ dedicates an entire page just to the game itself. No advertisements lingering in the sidebar and cluttering the user experience, no annoying news ticker updates distracting me from the actual game, no sponsored stories etc — just pure and clean gaming fun.

Now, here’s what Facebook games look like when you pull them up:

Ah yes! Just what I wanted to see while playing Crime City — advertisements to check out the WSJ news app, clearly well-targeted ads leading to Canon’s Facebook Page, and what’s this? A Rocky Mountain Chair Massage? Gee, Facebook. It’s like it can read my mind or something!

For comparison, here’s what Google+’s gaming experience looks like:

See the difference?

Google+ has turned social games into an entirely separate feature on the platform. Google+ Games has its own large and impressive feature section where you can browse all of available titles, spam your own personal gaming stream with shares, updates and invites, and even check out the notifications and invites from those who have shared with you as well.

My predictions for Google+ Games
Assuming Google+ sticks to the same formula (though there are bound to be a few tweaks in the future as more games are added to its current library), my prediction is that G+ Games will become infinitely more popular than Facebook games. By this, I mean that users will be more likely to spend lengthier periods of time on one specific title since they have the ability to effectively “full-screen” a game without the added distraction of advertisements and useless clutter.

With gaming having its own dedicated section, Google+ can further iterate and add more robust features to the channel without worrying about how it will affect the overall user experience on G+. If it wanted to, it could even add a “news ticker” tab of sorts to its gaming section where G+ users will be quickly be able to find out what games their friends are currently playing.

Again, because games have their own dedicated section on the platform, those who come to Google+ specifically for gaming will be able to focus on what they want to see, versus what networks like Facebook predict for them. Games and game consumers alike get the very niche attention that they deserve on Google+, and because of this, games on the platform have nowhere to go but up from here.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some games to play.

What do you think? Assuming Google+ adds more games to its current library, will you be playing more on G+ or Facebook? Which platform do you prefer for your social gaming, and what games are you playing now? Weigh in below.

My LLC, twaggies.com, just published its 500th crowd-sourced, illustrated tweet! To celebrate, here’s twenty Twaggies I thought you guys would enjoy!

1. @thesulk

2. @globetrottgirl

3. @ProdigalSam

4. @TweetComedian

5. @iNuskus

6. @TheRealLadyLuck2

7. @resila

8. @BoyMeetsWorld

9. @ryan_duncan

10. @awescar

11. @derekasaurus

12. @9to5Life

13. @DamienFahey

14. @HellRaisinBGrrl

15. @howtogeek

16. @beingtheo

17. @luckyshirt

18. @OneLinersPlus

19. @AgememNomNom

20. @yoyoha

Follow @twaggies for the funniest tweets, illustrated.

Colleague Gabe Donnini discussed the various browser versions that regularly hit our network of websites from social media on Friday. Today, Chitika Insights continues this theme by investigating the various operating system versions that generate web browser traffic to our network.

Using a one week sample of North American traffic, similar to our browser distribution study, Chitika found some interesting distributions on each of the websites:

While facebook maintains the Windows share most reflective of web browser traffic (as it is used by over 750 million people in the world), our other websites have more interesting traffic.

Given the “stone age” reputation of Myspace, it is no surprise to see that a large percentage of our referrals from the site are from a Windows machine, but Twitter? One could theorize that its popularity among professionals in various fields makes it a popular “work” website, when traffic is most heavily biased towards Windows OS. Unsurprisingly, given what we know about their browser market share, Stumbleupon sees relatively little Windows traffic.

While the share of traffic originating from Windows is inversely related to the share of other operating systems, the various distributions highlight interesting user profiles:

Twitter sees almost no web browsing traffic from mobile, a clear deviation from Facebook, which sees almost 10% of its browsing originate from mobile operating systems. This can be readily explained by the simple fact that while people continue to use a more traditional browser for sites like Facebook, mobile operators lean almost exclusively to the mobile app for Twitter.

Also of note is the unofficial “champion of mobile browsing” in Digg. While Digg has obviously fallen behind Reddit, and Kevin Rose is off to his next start up, they still seem to be popular among mobile users; almost 12.7% of their traffic on the Chitika network originated from an iOS or Android device, vs. just 4.8% for Reddit.

Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, Stumbleupon is the “Mac king” of our group of social media sites, with over 30% of its web browser traffic originating from a Mac OS X device. Among mobile users, Android owners seem more biased towards browser usage, while iOS usage leans towards usage of the Stumbleupon app. Google+ also sees a lot of Mac, and not a lot of mobile, browsing; this however may have more grave implications for the site that was supposed to surpass Facebook.

Understanding the characteristics of a user from a particular website is crucial towards optimizing one’s website to the particular user base. Are the differences in operating system distribution a real difference in the traffic each individual site receives, or merely an indicator of the time and day usage patterns?

As most of the world knows by now, Facebook began rolling out new “features” on their social networking service this week. Besides the ability to go back to 1950 and note the first time you drove an Edsel, the other big change is that now you will be able to share what you are doing without clicking anything – it’s “frictionless”. You should take a moment and read Dave Winer’s post which looks at why you should logout of Facebook and Dan Lyons hilarious post about how all of our lives have been changed forever.

When I watched the livestream of the Facebook announcements, I immediately commented wondering how long before a wife divorces a husband because she sees that he is browsing Victoria’s Secret for panties that are a different size than she wears. I still give it about a week before the first stories of inappropriate business are posted. Back in 2007, a man was fired because his employer-provided GPS showed him leaving work early.

It looks like an example of what is to come on Facebook hit eBay this weekend. Found via Darren Stuart, a man in Swindon in the United Kingdom is selling a Tom Tom Go model 700 GPS receiver on eBay. This might be the most hilarious auction I’ve seen – of course the story is a bit emotional as the man found out that his wife is/was cheating on him. The auction is currently at a price of £10,000,000 which is just over 15 million USD.

From the auction (read the full description on eBay):

This was my wife’s, may her knicker draw be infested with the fleas of a thousand Camels…The Go 700 was once the top of the range Sat Nav from TomTom, with an internal Hard Disk Drive instead of the traditional SD Card, and had full Bluetooth and Wireless capabilities.  I bought this for the back-stabbing harlot, some four or five years ago, before she met Nigel with the Little Penis, and it cost me over £400…

Her infidelity was discovered when I took her car for an MOT, and while waiting, I was tinkering with the Sat Nav and noticed that all her recent journeys had all been to Nigel’s…So, like any normal human, I reprogrammed Nigel’s address to one in a town far far away…

There are over 100 questions posted on the auction and the seller has responded to all of them. The auction ends on September 28th so you have a few days to decide if you want to up the bid from $15 million.

Find more stories about: eBay, Facebook, gps, social media, Social Networking
This story posted on CenterNetworks.

The media is already dissecting yesterday's Facebook event, where the company unveiled major new changes to their platform. Par for the course, really. Drama always accompanies any change to the Facebook site or platform.

But I see drama brewing in a place unaccustomed to it, and involving a different kind of media — the media buying agencies that wield most of the money spent on advertising on the Facebook platform and the companies they represent.

It would seem that the more time consumers spend on Facebook (over 53 billion minutes a month, according to Nielsen), the more the advertising economy would benefit, as more advertising inventory — what Facebook sells and media agencies buy — becomes more plentiful.

But alas, something appears to be broken, or breaking.

The classic, traditional media buying agencies (the big ones, most of them owned by the ad agency holding companies) are used to buying nouns — impressions, commercials, search results, clicks. These are "things" that display once, and then disappear, unless more of them are bought. Publishers have traditionally sold those "things" to them in an environment that operates with fairly little friction. Everything fit on a spreadsheet, or through an ad network. Even when optimizing to a transaction, they do so with tacit knowledge of what each transaction is worth.

One of the most significant new Facebook platform changes emphasizes their move towards making consumers' connections to content and activities more meaningful. Simple and vague "likes" are giving way to "listening to", "read", "hiked", "eating". The Facebook graph is becoming verb- and story-based. It presents a tremendous opportunity for advertisers to create and amplify positive engagements consumers are having with their products, or the lifestyles those products represent.

If all this doesn't sound like something that media agencies do for a living, you're right. Earning, amplifying, and optimizing towards engagement is just not what media agency systems and personnel are meant to support. Technology platforms here and there sprout up to help them do it better, but even those platforms become commodities if engagement-driven efforts are not handled and managed expertly, in an always-on way. Facebook's massive reach and importance to the web at large, and its major engagement-maximizing changes on the horizon, mean engagement-led (and not impression-led) advertising has never been more important.

To make the most of Facebook's changes, brands must:

Understand what the value of each kind of consumer engagement is to their business.
Be comfortable with the fact that they are generally not actually "managing communities" on Facebook, but rather, programming content and engagement channels.
Create experiences that enhance other experiences.
Find each and every way to ensure that as many of the right people have those experiences as possible, so they can efficiently affect their short- and long-term business goals.

Engagement across — and through — the Facebook platform will demand that these aspects be managed holistically and be optimized towards engagement. And as Facebook finds its way into other areas of media and our lives, this will become even more important. Siloed agencies don't help make these kinds of things happen. Silos are for storing. And Facebook is about sharing.

Media agencies have always been about breadth, reach and conversion. Advertising in social media should always be working towards a goal of delivering meaningful engagement at scale, and augmenting the value of the media that exists between people. This requires complicated planning, strategy, and execution across disciplines that are not in the wheelhouse of traditional media buying agencies — or in the wheelhouse of many agencies for that matter.

It is not all a loss for the classic media buying agency. As Facebook collects more data, and (likely) eventually begins powering display advertising infused with its data and intelligence, impressions can continue to be bought at scale, helping to deliver a brand message to as many people as possible — which will always be necessary.

But a comprehensive advertising plan now demands an engagement component that complements reach and frequency models. The dawn of the engagement age and agency is near, and the upcoming Facebook platform changes will only bring it about sooner.

Be prepared.