Which superhero would each platform be?

This post is inspired by the mobile superhero post from Big in Japan and by a conversation with @Jax989 about what 3 superpowers I’d want (in case you’re curious, they are teleportation–to avoid traffic, telekensis–also to avoid traffic and telepathy).

Facebook: Superman

Who can leap building in a single bound? Facebook can. Its the all-performance, all powerful social media platform of choice. If you need to connect with someone Facebook is the first choice. It also offers every app imaginable (for great justice!). It exists in every time and place, it allows you to tweet, blog and show pictures. It is the website of steel. However, like Superman, Facebook has its kryptonite: privacy. Unfortunately all the awesome things that Facebook offers can be instantly over-shadowed by a single brush with its single Achilles heel. Privacy issues have continued to plague Facebook’s massive growth, threatening to strip the social media giant of its powerful grasp on the internet. Hopefully Facebook will overcome this evil (or it might be reduced to MySpace’s social media superhero persona: Aquaman—in other words, still have followers… they’re just fish.)

Twitter: The Flash

Need to connect with others at the speed of sound? Find Twitter and find it fast. Always on the go, always getting the most news and conversation in quick bite-sized servings, Twitter has all the powers of the famous Flash. It also latches on to some of The Flash’s best and worse qualities including witty sarcasm and a sense of arrogance (its okay Twitter users, we all know you think you’re better than other platforms). Most serious Twitter users converse in real time with a application like Tweetdeck or Seesmic. Or they connect on their phone. Either way they except all their news and conversation right now. The problem is, Twitter as a company might be too caught up in how wicked fast they are to notice their need to catch up with their users.

Linked-In: Professor Xavier

Solid, thoughtful and constantly in your head, Linked-In keeps all your contacts in line so you don’t have to. If a social media platform could be psychic, this one would take the cake. Professor Xavier had a much tamer ability than other X-men, but was the leader and the most powerful. Linked-In offers the same, while not offering the same robust social atmosphere, Linked-In calmly offers professionals what they need most, tools and connections. It does this without forcing you to log-in every day, and allows you to download or interact as needed. While often overlooked, Linked-In is an immensely powerful networking tool. It certainly leads the charge for unruly mutants.

What super powers do your social connections give you? Tell me in the comments!

The overall message of this video is find where your audience is and go there. More and more young people, Gen Y, Gen X and rapidly even babyboomers use some kind of social media. So charities need to be on these sites if they want to reach people. The old ways just aren’t good enough and its not enough to rely on Word of Mouth to reach the younger generations.

If you already love social media, or technology, help out the causes you are passionate about. They need volunteers to help them utilize new technology and get with the trends!

Finally, if you don’t have a cause that speaks to you yet be sure to check out Captain Hope’s Kids here in the Dallas area.

Captain Hope’s Kids Blog – NEW

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Apparently everyone who doesn’t use it.

A good friend of mine who follows me on Twitter and Facebook suddenly says, “I think I’m going to stop following you.” So say, “What? Why?” And she says, “I’m so sick of those FourSquare updates. I could care less. They are annoying. No one wants to know you’re ‘mayor’ of your church.” And then Edward says, “Tell me about it. Its even more annoying when you’re with her and she’s checking in every 5 minutes.”

Of course I immediately defended myself saying, “I use it to let clients and other tech people know where I am. Or to connect with people in the same place. Or to find out more about a particular area of town.”

But they both just rolled their eyes at me. And then it occurred to me, before I started using FourSquare, I hated it too. I would see all these updates from FourSquare on Facebook and I’d be like, “Who care?” Until I got in on the fun. Then I forget about how irritating it was.

Of course the more I thought about this, the more I realized its true of almost all social media. If you don’t use it, you HATE it. People who aren’t on (or want to be on) Twitter can’t stand that other people use it. They say its stupid and pointless. Same with Facebook. Non-facebook users feel that Facebook is a waste of time. Before that it was IMing, or web-surfing.

I’m not saying the FourSquare isn’t just a little bit silly. I’m not saying it will last forever. But I will say, to the people who don’t use it: don’t knock it til you try it.

And to the people who do use it: if someone just doesn’t “get it” don’t worry. They’ll either catch on or just be grumpy and neither effects you. If you lose a follower or two, you might want to re-evaluate, but I say so what? If you know them in real life, connect there. If you know them online and a FourSquare update offends them, forget about ‘em. Be yourself online! (Even if that person is a trend-obsessing, constantly-updating, tech nerd, like me.)

I’m doing a series of workshops for the Center for Spanish Language Media at UNT.

Register

Facebook Event
Linked-In Events
CSLM Facebook Page

Contact Denisse Olivas (denisse.olivas@unt.edu) to attend multiple sessions.

I realized after attending the Microsoft SparkStart event that I often repeat the same advice over and over again, just with a new angle. So instead of doing that today, I’m going to point you to posts I wrote over the last year that still make sense right now! Believe it or not, the social media game hasn’t changed that much in a year. In fact, marketing as a whole hasn’t changed that much, we just use a different medium.

So here are some posts that might be relevant for you today:

Why Social Media is important:

• Social Media: Personal Touch in a Virtual World
• The Business of Social Media

The Facts:

• Facebook: Making the Rest of Us Look Bad
• Tools for your Belt: Demographics & Surveys

The Etiquette:

• Top 5 Ineffective Social Media Accounts
• Social Media Compared to Offline Networking

A lot of the truths of marketing still exist in the digital age. Are there any principles you use over and over again in your own marketing (online or off)?

Twitter should give me a paycheck. Seriously. I might as well be a rep, for how much I talk about them. I’ve brought them at least a dozen new users in the past month. But even though I feel that the potential of Twitter is limited, they could still stand a lesson or two from Facebook.

Can you Hear me Now?

My last few blog entries have revolved around Facebook and some of its new updates. Facebook has spent a long time listening to its users and then implementing their suggestions. I think its fantastic.

We all know how great it feels when someone takes your suggestion and puts it into action. I remember once suggesting a new approach on a friend’s website. I wasn’t getting paid, it was just friendly advice. I remember my friend came back ecstatic that she got so many compliments and it just felt good to know I helped.

The opposite is also true. When you try to offer thoughts or suggestions and someone isn’t listening, it hurts. Especially if they blatantly ignore you.

Twitter has some growing pains but its important, even during these times, to listen to your customers. Twitter has a single major avenue of communication: email. And right now if you email them a question it takes up to two weeks for a response. Even then, your response may be: “Please check with our other open tickets.”

Hopefully Twitter will realize the importance of listening soon. I already know people who had a question or couldn’t retrieve their password and stopped using the service because they never received an answer.

Have you contacted Twitter before? Was the experience positive or negative? Did it impact the way you use Twitter?

Image by DuChamp

Disclaimer: If you haven’t, read this post first so you know what I’m talking about.

This week comparing the amount of business potential a number of social media services have. While Linked-In has made a fair amount of updates recently, its little overhaul still doesn’t compare to Facebook. You can go see their changes here and when you log-in you can read all about the improved search functions. Group recently went through a make-over as well. I willing give kudos to Linked-In, but it’s still just not as impressive as the massive amount of work that I can see at Facebook.

To me Linked-In is a bread and butter type of website. You need to be on there. Linked-In is my Rolodex and I tell people as soon as you have an email address you need to go create a profile, even if your website isn’t up yet.

Personally, I think the ways to do business on Linked-In is limited. Sure, the questions and groups are great but the versatility just isn’t there. At least, not like Facebook. To me, Linked-In is much more like an introduction than an actual relationship. Linked-In says “Harry, have you met Sally?” and then you do the work. Facebook says, “Romeo, this is Juliet, oh and here’s her family history before you do something dumb. Oh and, wait a few days before you drink the poison.”

I feel like Linked-In is taking stock of their users and listening, but carefully choosing its path based on predetermined goals. On the other hand, Facebook says, “Hey, how do you want to connect with others? How can we make that happen?” And is more than happy to evolve into what its users want, even to an animal they didn’t originally intend on being.

Linked-In provides a necessarily and important service. But I think their desire to step beyond that is limited. So, here’s your silver star, Linked-In, don’t let it go to your head.

What about you? Do you think Linked-In deserves second place? Are they listening and moving with business better than Facebook?

P. S. Veribatim now has a Facebook Page.

Love it or hate it, MySpace did one thing right: it paved the way for facebook.

A few weeks ago I spoke to a group about social media, concentrating on Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In. At that time, I gave Facebook a very basic review and moved on. But after hearing about the changes being made to the site I started to do some more research. It blew my mind what Facebook was doing. So much so that I’m going to devote this week of blogging to comparing Facebook to what I believe are the other top two social media sites: Twitter & Linked-In.

Disclaimer: I am not saying these three websites are the same. In fact I think most businesses should establish a presence on all three. This is more about me organizing them by greatest  business potential.

Today I want to talk a little bit about some of the exciting stuff happening behind your Facebook profile and the key to what gives Facebook such awesome potential. Last week I covered the exciting new Facebook pages and if you regularly check your profile, you’ve probably already noticed the changes to your news feed. So, let’s talk about lesser-known gems that you might not have heard about unless you religiously read Facebook’s company blog.

Somethings you might not know:

• Facebook is available in Hebrew and Arabic. (70% of users are not from the U. S.)
• Facebook Causes have raised $4.5 million from 90,000 unique donors. (How’s that for making an impact?)
• Facebook has a wiki just for developers.
• Facebook book is listening. There are multiple ways to give them feedback.
• Facebook puts all their statics on their site.
• Facebook does a ton of research (with your permission). You can participate even if you don’t have an account!
• Facebook has made a ton of its coding open source.
• Facebook Connect allows you to integrate information on Facebook with other websites.
• It took me 5 minutes to find all this information.

Most of us log on Facebook, respond to mail, update our status, play around a bit and we’re done. But there is so much more to Facebook. By looking a little deeper I realized that Facebook was listening, truly listening to what its users needed. The number one question I get from business owners is “But how do I use Facebook for my business?” And the answer has always been somewhat convoluted. Facebook heard that question and said, “Hmm… how can we make this better for businesses while still making the same social impact?”

They’ve done a ton of research on their new ideas. I know, I know, a new homepage makes most of us balk, (what? I have to think before I click?) but I have faith that the Facebook team picked what they felt would be the most intuitive and simple solution. In a month we won’t even notice.

Facebook’s philosophy, however is what really makes them stand out from other media. Share and Connect. That’s powerful. And they are actively pursuing it in visible ways. I couldn’t tell you what any other social media site’s mission even was.

So what do you think? Do you hate the new layout? Did you learn something new from my little list? Are you ready to be in up in arms defending other social sites this week?

Big news on Facebook! No, its not more user-agreement debates, its Facebook Pages! The main thing to know is that Facebook wants your business to have a page with similar features to your profile. So here’s the dirt.

The Highlights

• Enhanced Wall: Now you can share content to your Facebook Page Wall. (Much like profiles now, any video, photo, action will be posted there. Soon it will also show up on your Fans’ newsfeed!
• Statuses: Like Twitter’s “What are you doing?” Facebook allows you to post a status. Businesses will now be able to share what they are “doing” as well!
• Tabs: Profiles now have tabs with different organized information such as Info, Wall, and so on. Now your business can have Info, Wall and Photos provided by you and your fans.
• Analytics Tools: Wanna know who is viewing your feed? How many comments you get on each post? Facebook plans to make measuring tools available. They’ll be called “Insight Tools”. Spiffy huh?
• Boxes Tab: This is a tab specifically for applications. Examples of applications are: Discussion boards, Videos, Reviews, Photos, Events, and FTML (Facebook HTML) to create whatever you want for those of us with programmer tendencies.

Quick and Dirty
Pro: Woah! That’s a lot better than a mostly static page with a wall. Awesomeness.

Con: OMG, the pages I’m fans of are going to spam me constantly.

Tips on Growing

Get in on all this new Facebook Page-y Goodness. Go read the full pdf about all the new features and start getting yourself out there. But resist the temptation to use your Facebook page like a Twitterfeed for your business. Use this to encourage interaction, not stifle your fan and followers. As with all things in life, everything in moderation.

Have you started using the new Facebook Page features? What do you think?
Image by hoyasmeg

The past few posts I’ve been focusing my research and attention on the phenomenon of social media. I have to admit it fascinates me, but the goal of course is to make it work, from a business stand point. How can online social networking help your business? And how do you choose from the hundreds of sites that make this available?

I’m going to deal with a number of well-known sites, each one I have reviewed in the last few weeks. Now I’m going to list out each service’s pros and cons so they can all be compared.

Pros:

• Networking Intensive
• Open and chatty community
• real time answers.

Cons:

• Time intensive
• Navigation not intuitive
• Leans towards the internet savvy

Pros:

• Great way to “poll”
• Close to Real Time but simple to use
• Ability to automatically feed blog posts

Cons:

• Too much down time
• Often Tweeple are more interested in getting follower than networking
• Superfluous information

Pros:

• Community Opportunity
• Clean Profile look – user friendly
• Ability to create applications, events and blog posts

Cons:

• Audience not “marketing” friendly
• Networking more social
• Ability to be tagged in notes and images that may not be work appropriate

Pros:

• Massive Audience
• Forum opportunity
• Widely-Accepting to advertising

Cons:

• Spammy
• “Bathroom wall of the internet” – reputation isn’t great
• Friend Collectors instead of clients

Pros:

• Simple, Clean, Business-friendly
• Opportunity to get business feedback
• Chance to get reviewed by clients

Cons:

• People may “reject” your link because they don’t remember you
• Many users don’t check-up on their profile regularly
• Not all people network with others they actually know

Pros:

• Viral effect for blogs
• Simple way to get noticed
• Easy to use

Cons:

• Many people “digg” things because their friends do, not because they like it
• Hitting the front page of Digg has been known to crash websites from too much traffic
• Millions of submission to compete with

Pros:

• Easy for any website
• Allows for site indexing
• Allows for reviews and keywords

Cons:

• Takes a little more time
• Can be bad for niche sites with advertising
• Allows the opportunity for people to rate you negatively

Pros:

• One of the longest standing Social Bookmarking sites
• Allows you to import bookmarks
• Ability to share of keep private based on user needs

Cons:

• Usefulness is merely just an extra link without good user connections
• A hassle without a toolbar extension
• Format is not instinctive

Are there any other social media sites you’d like to see reviewed and added to this list? Let me know what business tools you use.