Here is a screenshot of the NYTIMES.com website when viewed from Malaysia. There’s a Malay ad in there!
No matter where you are in the world managing your online identity should be a priority. There are many reasons why you should be aware of where and how your details are being used on the Internet. Social networks collect and store so much personal details about you, your network and thoughts and so it is important to make sure you understand and know where you are spreading yourself.
Applications
If you’ve been on Facebook for a while now, chances are you would have replied to some of the hundreds of application requests in the past. You may have added them and authorized many random applications like Blood Lust, Booze Mail, Hatching Eggs and/or the hundreds of others out in Facebook ether. These applications collect information from your profile, remix them and serve it out for their own purpose. Maybe you’re aware of the apps you’re using but there are many that you have probably lost interest in and aren’t actively using anymore.
One of the ways to manage your profile well is to make sure you delete all the apps you are not using and revoke rights to access your profile if you are not using them anymore.
Removing Applications
You do that by going to your applications page and deleting them off your account. If you have only selected to not show it on your profile, chances are these applications are still lurking in the background with access to your profile and usage behavior.
Stop Authorization to Access Profile
To make doubly sure that those applications can’t do anything anymore with “new” information about you, select the Show: Authorize option on the pulldown menu on the right hand side of the same Application Settings page and begin deleting the programs you don’t wish to have access to your profile.
You may not be paranoid about what the people behind seemingly harmless programs like “Hatching Eggs” and “Hug-a-Friend” want with your information, but intent has nothing to do with what actually happens to your data. There is a high probability that your information would be used without your awareness such as access to your friends list, behavior and profile that could transpose to a sea of unwanted spamming and aggressive marketing in the future. Your information can be spun out of context if you don’t manage it carefully.
Generally I would advise for serious social network users to consider several accounts to serve different purposes. These can include but are not limited to a business, professional, personal and anonymous account.
Business Accounts
For business accounts the general rule is to crowd-hoard at the beginning and progress to using that account for PR, marketing and support. If visibility is your intent the formula is simple. Maintain and/or grow your audience and continue to use the account for anything from announcements to damage control. The business account angle is best used by companies and brands announcing new products and service packages, but mostly this is should really be a PR channel for businesses.
For larger organizations, there can be subsets of the business account (several accounts forming the larger social network strategy). Employees with special roles such as the CEO or CMO would be able to engage with social networks that way.
Professional Account
Think of the professional account as a PR channel for an individual’s career. These accounts should be purposed for tweets that are only related to a person’s profession. This would be a perfect account to use to announce blog posts related to what you do professionally, also the account to use on your business card and portfolio website. Depending on the type of profession you’re in generally it is best to use your real name for professional accounts. On the flip side, I wouldn’t suggest total visibility if your job involves discretion. (i.e.: Doctor, lawyer, accountant, policeman, etcetera). Those roles represent practices or firm which can be represented by business accounts rather than an individual’s professional account. Of course that discretion is up to you but definitely, weigh the risks and benefits associated to the open promotion of your profession before you talk about a patient’s punctured left spleen or your civil cases as that could be illegal. In other words, think before doing!
Personal Accounts
Whether you are a social butterfly or like to keep your tweets between your friends and family, keep your personal account separate from your professional account. This is where statements like “I baked some brownies today for 200 people” would be best served. If you do not want the world to access your tweets, you can set them to private. The amount of visibility you have on the Internet is completely up to you though I would advise to use a nickname instead of your real name for your personal account without direct references to your full name.
This is not a shady rally (you can do that with an anonymous account)! The use of nicknames is simply a smarter way to minimize the gate-crashing of your personal tweet-party from the rest of the Internet. (I.e.: potential employer/client with Google access).
Anonymous Account
For those needing a canvas to vent and rant about things that may not be socially appropriate, there’s always the option to create an anonymous account where you can be completely honest about how you feel about a host of things without worrying about offending or upsetting anybody who knows you. This option gives your mind the freedom to roam, which for some people is an essential space to have. Needless to say, extra care must be employed when tweeting as you have to consider the damage to your professional and personal life should any of your tweets lead back to your name and face. Perhaps this is a cowardly way to say what you truly feel, but consider the fact that not all your thoughts should be shared with people you know. You would be wise to keep this account a secret if ultimate freedom is your goal, though bear mind that you are not above Twitter’s terms of use and neither are you immune from law enforcement if your tweets begin to sound wayward!
Inactive Accounts at Other Social Networks and Websites
Import all your contacts from places where you are inactive to the social networks you are currently using (manual or otherwise). Eventually data portability will become a reality but until then, a phasing method of directing visitors using a link with a near-intention of closing inactive accounts should be the plan. It only makes sense to erase your presence in places where you are not present anymore. Remember to keep receipts of all the places where you have been present as being aware of your online footprint will help you manage your identity better. Knowing where your accounts have been closed is a good thing as you maintain a macro view of where you’ve been and and how you’ve used the Internet. This will minimize unpleasant phenomena such as identity theft, phishing and a host of other horribly inconvenient experiences.
By managing your online identity, your lifetime experience on the Internet would likely be more pleasant as you minimize the potential for unsolicited flack. It is time to put on your french maid outfits before all that stuff comes back to bite you in the back!
I have been thinking of creating a social network for global epicureans for a while now and have finally decided to use Ning and the city of London as a starting point. I’m still debating whether or not to modify and scale the social network on Ning, and that largely depends on how popular it gets. Here’s the social network I created to share my culinary adventures in London. http://dishez.ning.com
RESEARCH
This project prompted me to search for suitable white-label social platforms to run my social network on and there are many out there. Jeremiah has maintained a list since 2007 and there are a few new ones that have popped up here and there. I have reviewed about a dozen social platforms today from OneSite, Pluck, PHPizabi, PeopleAggregator, KickApps, Momo, Drupal, Kwiqq, Converdge, and TamTamy to name the main ones.
FEASIBILITY
I am equally glad and humbled by the fact that there are predecessors like menuism.com, friendseat.com and dishola.com out there who have beat me to the chase in terms of initial crowd-sourcing and strategy formulation. This creates contrast and challenges my business case, as I see the need to spend circa 400 hours to develop a social network of any true value.
Since there are already existing dish review and rating sites out there I must think of an even better product that would create more impact and be easier to deploy. My consolation is that Google was a latecomer in the search engine game and was able to triumph over search engines we don’t even remember anymore. The technologist in me says yes but the planner in me is putting down an emphatic “no.” At least not until I have passed my ideas through a feasibility study, analyzed the business side of things and plan this like any other client project.
RESERVATIONS
I am struggling to see when these websites will make real money and whether or not the resources invested into the content strategy formulation and development of these social networks can be justified. A cool idea is just that. If it doesn’t have a clear direction, is a dead-horse that sucks up resources and does not make money, we don’t have a project. The imperative is a business case. Until I have that clearly mapped out I will simply just use original content to fuel interest in testing and reviewing the different white-label social platforms out there.
Do leave me your thoughts.
This is a short but useful post while I am busy working on a major piece. I wanted to share more documentation and project management templates with project managers and folks who have real businesses to run from OnProjects.net. There’s a wealth of project management templates and project toolkits from Cornell University, The Tasmanian Government, and even some more Prince2 templates thanks to the blogger called Duardo. Let me know what you think!
I wanted to share this blog post, Letting your Community Create your Advertisements by Jeremiah Owyang. I think what Dell has done with their Regeneration campaign and the way they are pointing in terms of how the advertising industry will pick up from this is not something to be ignored.
Here is Pete Cashmore of Mashable.com streaming the crazy queue to get the iPhone 3G at 5th Ave in NYC minutes ago. I know I’m one of the least sensationalistic people when it comes to i-anything, but at the kind of prices the iPhone 3G is going for (approx. US$199) for the features it provides, it is understandable what the hype is all about!
Check out these guys in New Zealand who dismantled the iPhone 3G they so laboriously waited in line to buy!
For those of us in web development, the birth of another browser is trouble amplified 100 times as we now have to add another browser to the QA list, but for users however, anything newly enhanced and improved as far as browsers go is as sweet as honey on the lips.
Never mind how grateful I am of the speed of Firefox 3.0, today I want to talk about this handy add-on tool Adblock Plus which enables users to block banner ads directly on websites and what that means to the online ad industry.
The first thing you have to realize is that we are not talking about pop-up blockers anymore. We’re blatantly talking about “Ad” blockers, that’s right, particularly AdBlock Plus which was developed by Wladimir Palant. This add-on literally shuts off all banner ads with the click of a button to all the websites that display ads. Major media owners like Yahoo are not exempt from it either. No ad space can escape the eradicative powers of the AdBlock Plus.
There is no harsher reality to the traditional online advertising industry than this. Adblock Plus has logged 21,434,766 downloads (as of today). That’s 21 million 4 hundred thousand and bla bla bla… people and their machines, and that is only for the Firefox browser; I think you get the idea.
I downloaded and tried it and it stripped and got rid of all the ads on all the websites I frequent, no joke.
Here’s an example of what RedHerring.com looks like normally.
This is what RedHerring.com looks like after I enabled AdBlock Plus on Firefox 3.0.
Here’s another example of what CNET.com looks like normally.
And here is what CNET.com looks like when AdBlock Plus is turned on.
Notice there are no ads!
With 21.4 million downloads to AdBlock Plus, this renders all banner ads useless because it won’t even show up with the tool turned on. This feature is not media-owner controlled, it is user-controlled so there goes your audience. They choose not to be your audience!
I question how and why internet advertisers believe their ad banners are communicating the right messages across. Common sense stuff… people are hating banner ads to the core because they are distracting, intrusive, and annoying. The only banners they don’t mind clicking on are (frankly) from sources that they trust and the deal has to be really, really good. For example, if HSBC advertised an offer of a “no-questions asked” 10% interest paid on a month-to-month basis on your Savings account if you switch from your current bank to HSBC, yes, you’re going to get millions of people clicking on it. Still, with AdBlock Plus, even ads I don’t mind clicking won’t be showing up anymore.
People channel surf on TV during advert slots. With the web, they’ll turn you off completely because they can. The only way users cannot turn you off is if you infiltrate and build your brand and products into the very marrow and breath of the content they bask themselves in.
Although this post is not about my proposed strategies (you can hire me for that ) a good example would be to have a brand like Pizza Hut build an online ordering facility for home delivery into a virtual world for online RPG games like the SIMS, instead of offering coupons online via ad space.
There are no absolute answers and ad space will still generate revenue for media owners, but with things like the AdBlock Plus being allowed to exist, online banner days will soon come to an end.
