A Open Letter to Channel 10 ABC(WPLG) Twitter Account: @talkto10

Dear  @Talkto10,

(the Twitter account for the Local ABC affiliate in Miami WPLG)

I understand sometimes mistakes are made in social media strategy.  In fact, I’d go as far as to say if you haven’t made any mistakes, you probably haven’t done much of it.  But with that said, you are being a total douche.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for traditional media expanding into new media.  And there are tons of wonderful examples of people doing it right. They engage with other users, they retweet and they follow.

Here are some good examples:

• http://twitter.com/sunsentinel
• http://twitter.com/miamiherald
• http://twitter.com/fox5newsedge
• http://twitter.com/10TVnewsdesk
• http://twitter.com/SunTimes
• http://twitter.com/ColonelTribune

As of me writing this, @Talkto10 you are NOT one of them.

Although, you wouldn’t know it from reading what you wrote on your website (about Twitter).

It’s another way to engage a two-way conversation with Local 10, as JustNews.com’s Barb Besteni says.

Barb,  NEWSFLASH!!  Have you seen how many people @talkto10 is following and talking with on Twitter?

A  two-way conversation implies the number 2, which means there would be 2 people talking , NOT a  “Broadcast”, or an RSS feed, but two real people exchanging information.

What you are doing is attempting to apply old school broadcast rules to new media game.  But rather than adding value, you are just adding more noise in an echo chamber, which is already very large and already very noisy.

Why should I get the news from you, when there are thousands of other news sources on Twitter, who do want to interact with me, and are more transparent.

It’s not a one way street! It’s not TV!  And you’re most definitely not developing a loyal base or acquiring any actionable data.

You are essentially making Twitter into a news feed.  That’s not social or two-way!

But that’s not the biggest problem between us, not only do you have a horrible Social Media strategy and totally do not understand the point of Social Media or Twitter.  But now you have delved into the Social Media Spamzone and are beginning to piss off a lot of  the Twitter users in Miami and elsewhere, by doing the Follow/Un Follow hustle.  Not only once, but 4 or 5 times to the same people.  It has become dead obvious what your up to!

Have you become so delusional in your hunger for followers that you have followed and unfollowed the same people 3 and 4 and 5 times? All in an attempt to inflate your follower count?

Please don’t claim ignorance, either. Back in  early March when @theduedean originally brought this to your attention you understood what you were doing was spam and you still continued to Follow/Unfollow people.

http://twitter.com/talkto10/status/1302521828

http://twitter.com/talkto10/status/1302595890

Now don’t go postal on Me @talkto10,  its not all fire and brimstone.  I actually like you the best of the 4 Local TV stations.  Your always calm and comforting on TV.  Not like some of the other guys who hype everything up, and make every piece of news that comes across their desks Breaking and NEW.  So there is hope for us but only if you get help.  Your going to have a lot of amends to make.  You’ve  pissed off all my twitter friends, you have deceived them by following them and then unfollowing everyone. Amassing more followers as you go on,  in one sick follow/unfollow cycle .  I know, you were playing the numbers game!! (Pats @talk210 on the shoulder)

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the value of having a lot of Twitter followers.  In fact, there are people willing to pay up to half a million dollars just to be a recommended user on the Twitter sign up page.  Why??  Because they have done the math and figured it would be worth the traffic it would bring their website.  And I agree to some extent.

But if your going to gain these followers on a false pretense (i.e. fake giveaways, fake donations to charity, following and unfollowing), then  you’re missing the whole point and shooting yourself in the foot in the process.  It’s a very shortsighted strategy.

What makes what you’re doing  different than someone spamming my email box with Viagra offers I didn’t ask for, or creating fake twitter accounts around the names of popular users?  It’s all down hill from there.

@Talkto10 What is your point of differentiation?  What’s your value proposition to Miami’s TV and online content consumers? Ask yourself, why are you on Twitter?  If it’s to create a news feed, then state it.

But, if as you claim on your site, you want to “engage a two-way conversation” then start talking to/following some local people that engage you.

To be fair, @talkto10 is not the only Media Twitter account that doesn’t follow anyone @nytimes, doesnt,  nor does another Miami local TV station @wsvn.  But you are the only ones which I have seen following and unfollowing people in bulk over and over again.

Sincerely,

Steaprok

I’ve been using Facebook Ads for a little less than a year now. And contrary to my initial thoughts and most of the posts I’ve read about them, they have worked out pretty good for me and my clients. Just to be clear, it has nowhere near the scale or robustness of Google Adwords, but it does provide some opportunities Adwords does not. So with that said, I figured I’d write a quick rundown of how Facebook ads work, how to set them up and what tracking and optimization features they offer.

The place to start your Facebook campaign research is Facebook Lexicon Keyword Tool. It allows you to see the trends for different words and phrases on Facebook Walls. The data is calculated by counting the number of occurrences or posts for every keyword (ex: “vampires”) across profiles, groups and events on Walls every day. All personal information is removed so there is no way to track data back to a specific person. You can use Lexicon to identify new trending keywords or topics to target with your Facebook campaign.

You don’t have to be a Google Adwords Expert!
Setting up a Facebook campaign is fairly cut and dry once you understand the key elements that make up Facebook Ads (Ads & Creative, Targeting, Bids & Budgets, Analytics & Optimization). Although each part of the campaign is important, I cannot stress enough how important it is to test targeting segments, creative and landing pages. If you don’t test, your campaign is pretty much doomed from the get go. So test, test, test.

At the moment Facebook is offering multiple marketing platforms: Facebook Pages, Facebook Applications, Facebook Connect, Facebook Events, Traditional Facebook Ads, Facebook Social Ads or Engagement Ads. I am only going into Facebook Ads and a little into Facebook Social Ads on this post.

Ads and Creative

Facebook Ads accepts 2 types of ads, a Facebook Ad and a Social Ad. The Facebook Ad is a straight forward branded ad, linking to either an external site, a Facebook application or a Facebook Page.

A Social Ad is also a fully branded ad, but it ties in social interactions performed by user’s friends with a brand. Facebook then uses that action as the headline of the creative for the Social Ad and displays it in their Mini Feed. (See Example Below)

Here are the 3 types of Social Ads explained by Jeremiah Owyang much better than I can.

1) Comment Style Ad: Members can now leave comments on these advertisements, much like wall posts. Brands that are focused on entertainment, new product rollouts, autos and apparel are well suited. The ad can show up to 4 comments per object, and the activity spreads to the users newsfeed.

2) Virtual Gifts Style Ad: Brands can now create virtual items that users can share, spread to each other. This wildly popular behavior within applications and Facebook is suitable for consumer products, entertainment, and some media.

3) Fan Style Ad: A play off the Facebook pages, users with a persona affinity for a product (like Apple) can become a fan, triggering a notification to their network, and could then tie on social ads. Will work great for established brands, like guitar hero, passion products, luxury products, or any brand with a rabid customer base.

For smaller to midsized companies without a large enough existing brand following, I suggest staying with the standard Facebook ads in the beginning. You can start by using Facebook ads to build up a larger share of voice and transition over to Social Ads once you have grown your number of followers on your Facebook Page. You can decrease the amount of time this takes substantially by incorporating Facebook Connect on your sites, to encourage and make it very easy for your visitors that are Facebook users to connect with your Facebook Page and share content with their Facebook friends. When executed properly the exponential effect is huge! In fact you can also kick start your efforts by design a Facebook Ads campaigns specifically targeted to generate brand awareness and grow your company Facebook Page fans via ads and Facebook connect.

Once you can develop a good number of Fans on the company Facebook Page, you can begin using Social actions on a much larger scale. “Social actions” are the “Golden Egg” of Facebook Ads. Once you get Social Actions going, your likelihood of your message going viral increases dramatically. Your ads will begin appearing on the Walls and Mini Feeds of your Fans Friends. The more Fans you have, the farther your message travels within the Facebook network. The more users interact with your Facebook Page and Ads, the more you come out on their friends Walls. It’s that simple.

Don’t go overboard when developing the creative. Use simple and clear copy with a attention grabbing titles. That doesn’t mean to write an irrelevant or false title like a lot of the Facebook Ads I’ve seen, just one that sticks out. Your titles are limited to 25 characters and 135 characters for the body. So don’t try and cram every service or product you offer on the ad, leave some content for your landing pages. Create multiple versions of each ad with different images if possible so you can do some A/B tests. Always use an image on your ads. The images should be 110 x 80 pixels and less than 5 megabytes. If the image is larger or smaller than 110 x 80 Facebook will resize it automatically, so don’t stress it too much! They do not accept animated or flash images.

Example Social Ad

Example Standard Facebook Ad:

Complete list of the Facebook Ad creative and landing page guidelines

Targeting

Facebook has fairly robust targeting options compared to Adwords. They allow you to target by State, City, Gender, Age, Keywords, Workplaces, Relationship and Sexual Persuasion. According to Facebook, there are 33,849,820 targetable persons in its network. 14,350,900 Men and 18,548,300 Women in the US.

Facebook determines geo targeting via user IP, NOT their geographic network on Facebook. A very useful feature is the ability to target by specific workplaces or universities. Although you can target to High School students via the age targeting, you CANNOT through school networks. When setting up targeting make sure to only select areas serviceable by your business. When selecting keywords to target use Facebook lexicon to see estimates and find keywords. Step out of the box and try and identify new relevant keywords.

Bidding and Budgets

Facebook allows you to set daily budgets at the campaign level, starting with a minimum of $5 per campaign or 2X your Minimum CPC/CPM. The current minimum CPC is $0.01 and the minimum CPM is $0.15. But don’t expect to start with a $5 campaign at $.01 CPC, it won’t work! I started my first tests with $250, I suggest you start with at least that much. I say this because with less than that, I doubt you will be able to gather enough actionable data to make educated decisions on creative, landing page optimization and testing.

Facebook assigns an internal Daily Spend limit of $250 when you start off, which they increase over time depending on your daily spend and after 5 successful payments. Budgets and prices are going to vary based on your targeting options, but don’t be fooled, there are A LOT of impressions on Facebook, so plan accordingly. Make sure you set your targeting right, set the daily budget at what you want to spend, and test from there.

For the most part, I would suggest going with CPC model on Facebook. Why you ask? For several reasons: #1 CPM based bidding is dead #2 and more importantly both on my campaigns and other Facebook Ad case Studies I’ve read CPM ended up costing more because of the very low CTR% on Facebook.

Analytics and Optimization

Once your campaign is set up and running you’re ready to start collecting data. For this, Facebook has Facebook Insights. If you are using a link to an external site you can tag the link and gather data with Google Analytics or any other analytics program. But for this post, I will be focusing on the metrics available via the Facebook Insights.

There are 3 main reports I use. Responder Demographics provides the aggregate age, gender and geographic location of the users who have clicked on your Facebook Ad. Responder Profiles provides psychographic information of these same users, which is aggregated from user profiles and shows common interests, favorite TV shows, movies, books and music. This is a great report to identify new targets by finding new keywords, locations and interests of the users clicking on your Facebook Ad.

The Advertising Performance report provides an exportable version of the metrics you see in the interface: impressions, clicks and click-through rates, data by unique user and performance data specific to your ads that contained social actions, if you’re using Facebook Social Ads (see definitions below). In addition, you can also summarize your report by Account, Campaign or Ad .

The Account level report aggregates data across all campaigns, ads and targets, while the Campaign Reports breaks these statistics down to the campaign level, and the Ad reports break them down further to the individual ad level, etc, etc.

Within the Facebook Ads system, there are 2 types of promotion of ads, Organic and Paid. Organic promotion refers to News Feed stories generated based on social actions taken by users on your Facebook Page or Facebook App. There is a huge opportunity here to make it go viral, by testing actions and headlines and identify the ones with best distribution rates. Paid promotion refers to Social Ads created specifically to promote traffic to a Facebook Page.

Facebook Insight Metrics Defined

Date: The date on which the activity reported in the row of the report took place. Please note that monthly reports will be dated on the first of each month and weekly reports will be dated on the Sunday that marks the beginning of the week.

Ad/Campaign Name: The name of the ad/campaign reported in the row.

Ad/Campaign ID: The unique ID number of the ad/campaign reported in the row.

Total Impressions: The total number of times the ad referenced was shown has been shown on the site.

Total Clicks: The total number of clicks on the ads tracked by that row in the report.

Total CTR: CTR stands for click through rate. The CTR for an ad is calculated as the number of clicks the ad received divided by the number of impressions (times the ad was shown on the site) in the given time period.

Total Average CPC (US$): The average cost per click in US dollars for the given row.

Total Average CPM (US$): The average cost per thousand impressions in US dollars for the given row.

Total Spent (US$): The total cost in US dollars for the given row.

Unique Impressions: The number of people who viewed the ad(s) tracked by the given row of the report.

Unique Clicks: The number of people who clicked on the ad(s) tracked by the given row of the report.

Unique CTR: The unique click through rate. The unique CTR is calculated as the number of unique clicks the ad(s) received divided by the number of unique ad impressions.

Total Social Impressions: The total number of views (impressions) for ads with social actions attached to them for the given row. Not all ads have social actions attached to them.

Total Social Clicks: The number of clicks on ads with social actions attached to them for the given row. Not all ads have social actions attached to them.

Total Social CTR: The click through rate for ads with social actions attached to them. It is calculated as the number of “social clicks” divided by the total number of “social impressions”.

Unique Social Impressions: The number of people who viewed ads with social actions attached to them for the given row of the report.

Unique Social Clicks: The number of people who clicked on ads with social actions attached to them for the given row.

Unique Social CTR: The unique click through rate for ads with social actions attached to them. It is calculated as the number of “unique social clicks” divided by the number of “unique social impressions”.

Header Photo Courtesy of DanTaylor

The 2008 presidential campaign has had the largest online ad spend of all other U.S. presidential elections combined. With that said, we still have a long way to go to catch up with traditional media when it comes to total dollars spent.

As of September 2008, TNS Media Intelligence estimated that the candidates have spent an estimated $7 million in online advertising and estimated $300 million on TV since February of 2007. To put it in perspective, the 2008 Presidential election online ad spend was just over 2 percent of the traditional media spend for the same period of time, compared to an estimated 7 percent of total ad spending in the US. So on pure percentages, these presidential campaigns spent less per dollar than the average US spend.

More interesting than the unprecedented amount of dollars which are being spent, both on and offline, is how they are spending it and the wildly different strategies they are employing. With election day closing in and Obama dominating TV and Radio with his massive amounts of money, it seems the McCain campaign has doubled up on their online efforts , McCain’s display ad impressions jumped by over 250 percent, and his text-based search ads increased by over 40 percent in August and September.

In the last weeks before Nov 4th (election day), Obama is generating twice as many Search queries as McCain in the swing states, according to a recently released Yahoo report

Although Obama has the bulk of the search queries, its not all good for him. Many of the searches indicate that people still have a lot of questions about Barack Obama. For instance, according to the the recent Yahoo report and the Hitwise reports, for the four weeks ending on October 25, 2008 “barack obama birth certificate” was the fourth-most common search term driving traffic to BarackObama.com. “Barack Obama Antichrist” comes in at 26. Other top keywords driving traffic were “Obama Biography”, “Obama Grandmother”, “Obamas GunControl Platform”, “facts about Barack Obama”, “Where was Obama born”, “Barack Obama religion” and “Obama Barack Muslim”

Complete List of Obama Search Keywords

Complete List of Mccain Search Keywords

Percentage of Paid Search Traffic for Barack Obama

Percentage of Paid Search Traffic for John McCain

Graph by Spyfu Kombat

In contrast Obama’s keywords consisted mostly of variations of candidates’ names; they bid on very little issue related keywords. And even on the keywords Obama was bidding on, McCain was out performing him. In fact the McCain campaign was faster than the Obama when he announced Biden for VP. They had landing pages and campaigns ready to go instantly. When the Sarah Palin “Branchflower Report” was released, the McCain campaign immediately bought up all the related keywords like “Branchflower Report”, “troopergate”, “Palin report” and others. They were testing various creative and created custom landing pages w/ tons of information to refute the report, successfully diverting some of the traffic to the original stories which would have been more damaging. Not only that, but they turned it into a fund raising opportunity with a donation form right above the fold.

In fact, on Oct 31 while finishing this post, when I searched for Barack Obama on Google, position 1 and 2 were a John McCain site and GOP Party site with custom landing pages. Where was Obama’s PPC ad? In Position 5!

In non paid search organic traffic or SEO, Obama has a huge lead with an estimated 4.5 million unique visitors, more than double the estimated 2.5 million visitors to McCain’s site from search engines according to Nielsen Online and Compete.com.  Obama also has the Social Media space on lock. He dominates McCain in views, followers and interaction.

Obama Google Rankings for Top 250 Keywords

McCain Google Rankings for Top 250 Keywords

One thing that’s very obvious when looking at these numbers. The McCain campaign dominated Paid Search, and the Obama campaign out spent and strategized them everywhere else. According to WSJ/Neilson, in July the McCain campaign had 15 Million Search text ad impressions, as opposed to 1.2 Million for the Obama campaign. In contrast Obama campaign had 416.7 million image ad impressions, compared with McCain’s 16.5 million.

That means that McCain was out buying Obama in Paid Search by 22 to 1 search ads according to Nielson. (PDF Download). Obama’s image ad impressions fell sharply by nearly 50 percent, and his sponsored text-based ads were down nearly 20 percent as well.

John McCain’s campaign stepped up its online advertising in August, particularly in image-based impressions, which increased 254% month-over-month. Sponsored search links were also up for the McCain camp – by 43%.

With the campaigns finally coming to a close and with the clear differences in marketing strategies and availability of funds between the McCain and Obama campaigns, I wanted to dig a little deeper and take a look at how both the candidates had used Search Marketing and Social Media and if they had been effective.

As mentioned earlier, in paid search McCain has consistently outbid and out spend Obama. In addition, McCain’s strategy has had a much larger scope than Obama’s with McCain having close to 9 keywords for every 1 of Obama’s. The McCain campaign has executed a multiple pronged approach with their search campaign. First they were bidding on issue or peripheral type terms, like “gas prices”, “abortion”, “Iraq war”, “U.S. economy” and “housing crisis,” which take visitors to Web sites outlining Sen. McCain’s plan on those issues.

According to Nielsen Buzz Metrics and Technorati on straight blog mentions, Obama also has McCain beat but not by much. And in Mobile/SMS, Obama campaign has a full mobile website containing news, videos and ring tone and wallpaper downloads, where the McCain has neither and a non existent program compared to Obama’s.

Barackobama.com Search and Social Campaigns by the Numbers

Search Marketing

PR 8

Pages Indexed in Google for www.barackobama.com 3210

Pages Indexed in Google for barackobama.com 3,930,000

Links to barackobama.com on Google : 10,400

Sub Domains: 59

Percentage of #1 Rankings: 35 #1 out of 214 Pages Ranked

Keywords Driving Traffic: 5794 Keywords

Percentage of Keywords Paid Traffic: 20%

34 Keywords in 1st Position in Google

Highest CPC: $.78

Estimated Daily PPC Budget: $145.68 – $1.02k

Keywords Driving Paid Search Traffic : 50 – 173 Keywords

PPC Landing Pages: 17 Variations

Social Media

Facebook Supporters: 2,169,943

Facebook Pages: 12

Myspace Friends: 726,042

Twitter followers: 100,922
252 updates since April 2007, mostly focusing on live events and interaction

Videos on official Obama YouTube channel: 1589 Videos
YouTube Channel Views: 17,248,219
YouTube Subscribers: 102,522

Linkedin: 500+ Connections

Meetup: Members 14,504 Meetups 2,624

Ustream views: 809,261

Stumbleupon: 35 Stumbles and 201 Reviews of barackobama.com home page

Digg: Both my.barackobama.com and barackobama.com are listed in the top 1000 sites submitted to Digg.

Obama was the 17th most popular word in submission titles with 1157

my.barackobama.com Total Posts 27 Total Diggs 38683 Total Comments 6777
barackobama.com Total Posts 49 Total Diggs 716 Total Comments 2455

Flickr: 116,291 Images with “Barack Obama “ in text and 45,945 images tagged with “Barack Obama”

Analytics

Analytics Software: Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Double click

Mobile

SMS: 2.9 Million Numbers

________________________________________________________________

JohnMccain.com Search and Social Campaigns by the Numbers

Search Marketing

PR 8

Pages Indexed in Google for www.johnmccain.com: 29,200

Pages Indexed in Google for johnmccain.com: 31,700

Links to johnmccain.com on Google: 8,820

Keywords Driving Total Search Traffic: 2767 Keywords

Percentage of Keywords Paid Traffic: 15%

49 Keywords in 1st Position in Google

Sub domains: 59

Highest CPC $1.46

50 – 924 Keywords

Est Daily Ad Budget: $552.48 to $5.24k

PPC Landing Pages: 50 Variations

Social Media

Facebook Supporters: 581,438

Myspace: 177,839 Friends

Youtube channel videos:
Youtube Subscribers: 25,698
Youtube Channel Views: 1,813,460

Twitter followers: 3,363
Updates 25 since Sept 2008 (Mostly attacks, negative or in defense)

Linkedin: 500+ Connections

Ustream Views: 196,966

Meetup: Members 1772 Meetups 246

Stumbleupon: 35 Stumbles of Home Page with reviews 81

Digg : JohnmcCain site was not in the top 300 sites submitted this year, but “McCain” was the 18th most popular word in title submissions with 1025.

Flickr: 3,254 images tagged with “John McCain” and 18,951 images with “John McCain” in text.

Analytics

Analytics: Web side story

All of the data for this post was compiled from various sources and tools. Below is a list of tools and sources for the data in my post. Many of the data might have changed from initial research. I know it is not exact, but it is indicative of the general trends. If you have any additional data to share , I would love to hear from you.Compete

Hitwise

Spyfu

Google Trends

Nielson/Buzz Metrics

Technoratti

Yahoo

Below are additional sites I used for quotes, data and graphs. Thank you to all the authors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000649.html

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/obama-drawing-twice-as-many-searches-as-mccain

http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/efile_search.shtml

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121988099541678063.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122524577359178845.html?mod=rss_whats_news_technology#project%3DNETPOLL08%26articleTabs%3Darticle

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20080808_6873.php

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080809-172535

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2008/08/mccain_v_obama_search_and_wiki.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603111.html

http://www.netratings.com/pr/pr_080908.pdf

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/search-findings-from-third-presidential.html

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20081030005210&newsLang=en

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

http://adon.typepad.com/pvmg/files/obama_mccain_socialmedia.pdf

This is a first in a series of guest posts by Yogini. Detailing how to use Social Media to raise awareness for charitable causes. In the coming posts I will go into much more specific detail on tips and techniques used to do this.

Things YOU can do to Raise Awareness RIGHT NOW

• Creating a blog with Wordpress or Blogger.
  

• Registering with social networks like Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Friendster and Livejournal.

• Registering and starting communities in sites like Ning and PBWiki.

• Registering for microblogging sites like Twitter, Jaiku and Plurk.
  

• Registering for video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo.
  

• Registering for news  submissions sites like Digg, Mixx, Reddit.
  

• Creating Ads on Craigslist & other free online classifieds

• Joining and taking part in Online Forums and groups like Mixx, Google Groups and  Yahoo Groups.
  

Social Networks can be used as a private journals, blogs, discussion forums, content distribution and network site. They allow you customize your profile page, network and get the word out. A good suggestion, is start by adding people you already know to build up some momentum.  Make sure to use “keywords” related  to the missing person within the profile pages so that they start appearing in the search engine results pages like Google , Yahoo and MSN.

These are professional networking sites. Plaxo has an online contact management feature which  is very handy to share information and  links with your connections. Linkedin allows you to ask questions from professionals in any industry. You can ask questions to professionals in Non Profit sector or Marketing sector for ideas to get your message out. You would be surprised at how many useful answers you will get.

Using Video Sharing Websites to Find Missing Persons

• YouTube
• Vimeo

Using Online Picture Sharing Sites to Help Find Missing Persons

• Flickr
• Pikchur

• Twitter
• Plurk
• Identica
• Jaiku

Examples of active Missing Persons related social media sites

(Consider joining these if you have a missing loved one and need help!)

• Flickr Missing Persons Group
• Friendfeed Missing Persons Room
• Care2 Missing Persons Group
• Missing Children and Missing Persons Community
• Justice in Miami

• National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

North America Missing Persons Bureau – Listing of officially reported missing persons

Listing of officially reported missing persons

Listings for missing persons who are US military veterans.

Help Find the Missing – Listing of officially reported missing persons.

Social Media Video – Social Media Networking in Plain English

It is my sincere wish that this be able to help someone find their missing loved on. If this was useful, please let me know. I would love to hear from you.

Want to reprint this post?  Feel free to reprint headlines and excerpts with a link back to the post’s permalink. To reprint the entire post, contact me first.

On July 23, 2008 right after the f8 Developer Conference in San Francisco, Ca. Facebook opened up its Facebook Connect program. Initially it is launching with 24 Partners including Digg, Hulu, Six Apart, CBS, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney/ABC, Seesmic and Vimeo. A notable statistic is that 33% of the initial partners are from the Online Video space.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, the 24 year old CEO and founder of Facebook, “Facebook Connect is the next evolution of the Facebook Platform — enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook into your own website“. In addition Dave Morin emphasized these 4 points on the Facebook Developer Blog describing Facebook Connect.

Trusted Authentication
Users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity
Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access
Users count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites. Developers will even be able to dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy
As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.

What does Facebook Connect do?

Facebook Connect allows users to connect their Facebook account and data with any site on the web. It also lets Facebook users find existing friends that also use a Facebook Connect website, allowing them to share information and actions with their Facebook network.

Users can also publish information to Facebook based on the actions they perform while visiting a Facebook Connect site. For example, when a user takes an action like purchasing or reviewing a product, or posting content (Videos, Testimonials, Pictures) on your site, it generates a News Feed story on the user’s Facebook profile. Consequently, allowing for distribution of your products and content across the users Facebook network. You can also have the user add an application tab or box to their profile, listing their recent activity on the Facebook Connect site, or incorporating Facebook social context like user’s name, profile picture and/or their Facebook status, with their user experience on your site.

In addition, when a user visits a Facebook Connect site, it allows them to see what their connected friends are doing on your site by dynamically displaying which of your site visitors are already connected on Facebook and which friends already have accounts on the site

Ben Ling of Facebook gave this example “If I link my Facebook identity to my Yelp identity, I’ll be able to port over my profile, my content, my reviews. Also, I’ll be able to see if any my Facebook friends are also members of Yelp — and be able to automatically have our friendships authenticated and visible on Yelp.” http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2008/05/facebook-connec.html

Here is a live demo of a Facebook Connect site which provides a look at the various elements at work: http://www.somethingtoputhere.com/therunaround/

How does Facebook Connect work?

There are two ways for a user to connect their account on your site with their account on Facebook.

First being when the user logs in to Facebook from a website, and the second is by accepting a Facebook Connect request on Facebook from another friend who has already connected their account on a website with their Facebook account.

Facebook Connect works on the Facebook Platform. It allows you to incorporate the REST API and FQL, onto any website, also offering new technology like XFBML and Friend Linking.

To get started developing some test Apps and Facebook Connect applications check out this link, it shows you how to add Facebook connect to your site with 3 tutorials that vary in degree of difficulty implementation and in integration points. http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Trying_Out_Facebook_Connect

A big plus for Facebook Connect integration, is that there is no need to build a complete Facebook application. You simply need to get a basic application API Key and provide the callback and canvas page URLs).

How Facebook Connect interacts with the Facebook API. http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/How_Connect_Interacts_with_the_Facebook_API

How does Facebook plan on monetizing with Facebook

Connect?

Although Mark Zuckerburg said that Facebook isn’t currently focused on monetization and will be looking to extend their platform’s reach first. I think its obvious they are trying to monetize, and this is how.

By sending personal info on likes and dislikes, you are essentially telling Facebook a little more about you every time you connect via a Facebook Connect site. Now envision the deluge of personal data coming in from all of its Facebook Connect partners.

Each connection is a tiny bit of information you feed Facebook, along with your onsite Facebook activities this allows them to generate an overall picture of who you are, what you like and what might interest you. With all that personal information at their disposal, Facebook can monetize their platform quite quickly a la Google Adwords/Adsense.

What do I think about Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect is the higher reincarnation of Facebook Beacon program, the first, much maligned effort of Facebook to monetize its platform. Now the realquestion we need to ask ourselves is can Facebook Connect out maneuver MySpace, Google , Yahoo Open and all the other “ Open ID” type projects, to win the Data Portability Game and monetize its platform while they’re at it. Currently Facebook Connect is only available in Sandbox mode , which means you can develop and test integrations and apps, but cannot make them publicly available until Facebook announces Facebook Connect is ready for launch, which is supposed to happen in late summer 2008. Facebook Connect has a lot of potential. But it becomes a double edged sword for Facebook, In order to to please users and follow their privacy best practices, they have to get very stringent with who they allow into the Facebook Connect program, managing thousands of users personal info. And like when they And that is probably going to piss of some developers when they do.

Another interesting side note to this rivalry is that Facebook has banned Google Friend Connect from interacting with its data, since it violates their terms of service. This is what Facebook has to say:

“Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.” http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=111

Acording to Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft Corporation,

“The real reason that Facebook is banning Google is that “ Friend Connect works by developing an OpenSocial wrapper over the Facebook API, which exposes it to other web sites as widgets and to OpenSocial gadget developers via APIs. Thus Google is pretty much proxying the Facebook social graph to other sites and developers which takes control of safeguarding/policing access to this user data out of Facebook’s hands.”

I totally agree!

What can go wrong with Facebook Connect?

Enough Said!

Below is a video screen capture of Facebook Connect in action. I will be updating with a better video soon!

Resources:

Facebook connect FAQ

Anatomy of Facebook connect

Facebook Connect on Giga Om

Facebook Connect on Forrester

Facebook Connect, Friend Connect and Open Social Comparison

Official Facebook Connect Site

Facebook Connect API

The rooms are very easy to set up. Just click the ‘rooms’ tab on the top right of the friendfeed page. A useful option is the ability to make the ‘room’ either private or public. I think it has great potential as a collaboration or Brainstorming tool. It’s also fairly easy to invite current friendfeed users, or contacts from other services. The Bookmarklet also makes it very easy to share valuable content within your groups or your main friendfeed.

The basic idea behind friendfeed ‘rooms’ is to set up ‘mini feeds’ of contextually relevant information which encourage interaction between the ‘room’ members. Allowing other like minded members to comment and share as well. I believe the intention is to create “mini micro blogging communities”, but this quickly becomes like being stuck in a tiny elevator with 50 people talking across and over each other. Just as with friendfeed, ‘rooms’ need filters or some other method of information management.

I really like the concept behind friendfeed. Although sometimes, it’s a bit like a time draining event horizon. I have found A LOT of great articles, videos, photos, posts and people. The thing is, it’s too noisy. The information comes very rapidly, too rapidly to manage.

Social Aggregators are still in their infancy, and I’m sure, with time we will find many more uses for them. Until then, it remains one big clusterfuck of social media circle jerk.

1) Built in Media Sharing

Flock has built in support for Photobucket, Flickr, Facebook, Piczo, Picasa, YouTube and more.
That makes it really, really easy to share everything from pictures to videos to links to text. Just Drag and Drop from the Media Bar or right-click to send to email or to a blog.
You can even carry photos, videos and text, wherever you go online, right on the Media Bar or on the Web Clipboard. This feature alone saves me so much time, allowing me to drag and drop media at will, making working online much easier. Another very cool feature is “Media Streams”, if you find someone who has media you like online – Just click on the the small star next to “Media Streams” to subscribe. You will then be notified every time they upload new media across various social sites like Flickr, Facebook, Youtube and others. You can also search photos and videos on Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Truveo or YouTube right from within Flock UI. Just click the arrow to scroll across the various search results across the Media Bar, without it affecting your tabs.

2) Built in Social Networking

Flock has built in support for LiveJournal, MySpace, FaceBook, Blogger, Delicious, Twitter and more. Once you configure ALL your social Network accounts, Flock automatically populates your People Bar with all your friends. This makes it a cinch to receive and share media with friends across various social networks. You can also drag and drop photos, videos and text from the web or the Media Bar to share with your friends in the sidebar. Flock will also notify you when any of your friends upload new media with an orange Media icon next to their profile on the People Sidebar. All you have to do is click on the logo, and the new media will automatically be loaded into the Media Bar or Web Clipboard.

3) Built In Blogging Support

Flock has a One Click built in blog post editor. You can drag and drop pictures, videos and text right onto it, and start editing your post within Flock. This is a feature I LOVE! The blog editor allows you to post to multiple blogs across multiple platforms, including self hosted blogs.The Flock blog editor has all the standard features of other popular free blog editors. Below are some of the blogging platforms supported by Flock.

Blogger
Blogsome
LiveJournal
Typepad
Wordpress
Xanga
Self Hosted Blogs
ATOM
MetaWeblog
Moveable Type

4) Built in RSS reader

Flock has a handy built in RSS reader right on the sidebar of the UI. It also has automatic RSS feed detection and a one click subscription button. If the site has a feed, Flock will tell you by highlighting the RSS button. The built in RSS reader works great to organize and share your feeds, just email to friend or blog it with just one click. As of today, I have not imported the mother-load of feeds to my Flock browser. I will do a follow up post, and let everyone know how that works out.

5) Enhanced Search and Bookmarking Functions

Flock has built-in one click search and bookmarking enhancements, which makes it simple to add, edit and manage favorites and bookmarks. Just click on the orange star on the UI to bring up the Favorites and Bookmarks Side Bar and categorize the current site.Click on the star twice to edit Favorites and Bookmarks It also has a great folders feature for categorization. Tags can also be used to find or organize sites with similar characteristics or in similar groupings. Another VERY helpful feature is the Live search results from various sources.
Live results are generated as you type from: Amazon, Craigslist, eBay , Favorites, Technorati, Wiki, Wink People, Yahoo, Ask, Google.

Since Flock is based on Mozilla/FireFox, it is compatible with most of the important add-ons and plugins. So far I have installed and tested the following Add-ons: Stumbleupon, Mixx Bookmarklet, GBookmarks and several others. For a full list visit this link:
To give Flock a try download here:

Disclaimer: Yes, I like Flick this much. I have no incentive or motive, other than wanting to share it with others.

Others, with a bit more internet prowess, accessed the information via AP , Google News, You Tube or other forms of RSS feeds. But those of us active in the Twittersphere, were receiving updates in real time. Thanks to LaunghingSquid, we had not only Twitter updates, but also videos and pictures

It’s no wonder print is on that horrible decline. With information exchanging at this rabid pace, who the hell is willing to wait a whole day for news? I mean don’t get me wrong, I love to chill on Sundays with my coffee and my NYT. (Yes , I roll like that).

Check out some of the Tweets, Videos and Photos here

http://twitter.com/laughingsquid

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/sets/72157604458841560

I have to confess, I fiend for the Twit, I love Twitter, I can’t get enough of it!
That being the case, I have to ask myself ,what is that important on Twitter that I have to have it on a PermaTab on my Firefox browser?
It reminds me of watching MTV. I mean the old school MTV that actually played videos all day.There was something so hypnotic and addictive about sitting through those 25 shitty videos, to see that 1 kick ass Beastie Boys video. But even that got old really fast.

Twitter is the same to me, because half the stuff that is tweeted, I don’t really care about. Either, because it’s not relevant or because it is some abstract reference to an inside joke between friends that I just don’t get or care to get.
But this brings me to my point, We need to have a better way to organize our followers and friends.

I really hope with all the wonderful apps. on deck for Twitter, that someone can develop a way to categorize friends and followers. Possibly, something like Twitter channels or stations, based on interests. Or, If we had the option to group friends and followers by tag based categories and sub categories. Anything to allow us to tame the crazy beast, that’s taking over my life.

With the popularity of Twitter growing ,this is going to be become more and more of a need.

This will be a 3 part series of posts. In the first, we will cover all of the buttons on the Excel toolbar and what they do. The second will discuss various uses for each of the buttons/features and a more detailed analysis of algorithms’ and techniques used by MSN to gather the data for this toolbar. The third will discuss various uses and combination uses with Google Adwords editor.

Keyword Extraction
Extracts commonly used keywords from a given website address, which allows the user to see what keywords are in popular use on that site. Great for competitive analysis and finding new keywords.

Keyword Suggestion
Enables quick generation of a large list of relevant keywords from an initial list of Keywords entered. Works something like the Google Suggestions or Yahoo.

Campaign Association
An algorithm option under Keyword Suggestion. Keywords are suggested based on association and on competition/ advertiser’s keyword bidding behavior.
Another great option to find new, niche keywords.

Contained
An algorithm option under Keyword Suggestion above. Keywords are suggested based on past user searches that contained those keywords.

Similar
An algorithm option under Keyword Suggestion above. Keywords are suggested, which are similar in context to other keywords used on the World Wide Web.

Search Buzz
Returns the top keywords by vertical market, for the given time period. Two keyword trend research options are offered Date Ranges available: past 1, 10, 30 or 60 day period or a custom range

Monthly Traffic
Allows the user to look at monthly historical and future, forecasted query counts for the given keywords. Date ranges available: past data for 1, 3, 6, 12 or 24 month period forecasted for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months

Daily Traffic
Provides the user with daily query counts for the given keywords. Date ranges available: past data for 1, 7, 10, 30 or 60 day period — or you may specify a time period.

Keyword Categorization
Input keywords, then the algorithm suggests a category based on the Microsoft Contextual Taxonomy.

Geographic
Provides location information of searchers for specific keywords (user can specify country, state or city) about the input keywords within a set time period. Date ranges available : past data for 1, 7, 10, 30 or 60 day period — or you may specify a time period.

Demographic
Provides demographic information on searchers (by gender, age group) about the given keywords within a set time period. Great research tool to use for a PPC Demographic targeting tests. Date ranges available : past data for 1, 7, 10, 30 or 60 day period — or you may specify a time period

Advanced
This feature allows users to set the algorithm parameters for the features to suit their preferences, algorithm or needs.

Options
This feature allows users to change general settings, KSP server settings and algorithm Settings, to suit their preferences or needs.

Monetization
This feature allows users to gather KPI (Key Performance Indicators) Monetization Information for the selected keywords. This feature has two sub-features: Monetization and Vertical KPIs as described below. Date ranges available: past day, week or 30 day period.

Monetization KPI
An option under monetization above. This feature provides KPI information about clicks, impressions, position, click through rate, cost per click, and match type within a date range. Date ranges available: past day, week or 30 day period.

Vertical
An option under Monetization above. This feature returns KPI Monetization Information for selected verticals and keywords within a date range. Date ranges available: past day, week or 30 day period.

Top Spiky Keywords
Returns the keywords whose trends are sudden and spiking (i.e. not overall popularity, but demonstrate flashing and surging popularity). Similar to Google Trends , but still has a long way to go. Date Ranges available: past 1, 10, 30 or 60 day period or a custom range.

Top Frequent Keywords
Displays the keyword trends for the overall most popular keywords. Date ranges available: past day, week or 30 day period.

Keyword Wizard
The Keyword Wizard button assists users in implementing all applicable features available. Wizard through the program in order to set up a working keyword profile.

This tool would be a lot more useful if MSN could manage to scrape up a little more than 10% market search share. Because the reality of it is, not only does MSN hardly provide enough traffic, but the traffic they do provide is extremely inconsistent.

It fluctuates week to week with no rhyme or reason. Their interface is constantly running at the speed of molasses. And their customer service is practically nonexistent, and that’s with a dedicated rep. Now, with all that said and out of the way, I like the tool. It’s genius is that it integrates right with excel. Granted, MSN tool looks much cooler than Google Adwords Editor. But, Adwords Editor is sooo much more useful in day to day PPC management and development than the MSN tool.

Although used in combination, they add a powerful tool to your PPC war chest. (And if anyone from Google Adwords Editor Team or MSN Ad Intelligence team is reading, why not steal the others idea and develop a tool that incorporates the great research and historical data features in the MSN tool, with the practical and useful features for creating, editing and manipulating Google Adwords account data with Adwords Editor. ; )