Zuckerberg Redefines Pretentious

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has been getting a lot of flak in recent weeks about Facebook’s attitude and handling of privacy for its users.

During a recent interview Zuckerberg was asked several times about privacy. He failed to give a convincing answer.

Watch the entire interview to see how Zuckerberg, yet again, redefines “pretentious” once again.

At the same conference Apple’s Steve Jobs also fielded a question on privacy. Jobs’ reply is so different to the attitude of Zuckerberg that it’s worth quoting:

Silicon Valley is not monolithic….We take privacy very seriously….We do a lot of things to ensure that people understand how their data is being used. That’s why we curate the App Store….Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for–in plain English

Fantasy Animals, Pets and Pretzels More Popular Than Businesses

If you frequent the “twittersphere” or Facebook you’ll often come across businesses and their staff trying to market their products and services to you.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Of course, how they actually do it is another matter entirely …

But how successful are most of their attempts to “tap in” to “social media” and “maximise” their “potential”?

You’d have to wonder at times, especially when you look at how few “fans” or “followers” some of them actually have.

Fantasy animals, however, manage to get a reasonably respectable following..

Common Unicorn, for example, has over 1400 followers on Twitter and is listed 50 times:

Twitter's "Common" Unicorn

Twitter Unicorn

The unicorn is eclipsed by a Squirrel, however, who has managed to attract over 13.5k followers – being listed 660 times!

Twitter Squirrel

Twitter Squirrel

What about Facebook?

Facebook seems to be a great place to find oddly named “groups” for just about every possible “idea” under the sun, but a Danish pineapple has managed to get over 167k fans! Not to be outdone, Germany has a pretzel with over 379k !

And we shouldn’t forget that even cats, dogs and other pets are also finding a following on Facebook…

Why do I bring this up?

Well to start with it amused me, but also it puts things into perspective. A lot of people seem to be making a lot of money from businesses that want to “tap into” social media as part of their marketing. While there is nothing exactly “wrong” with that you’d have to wonder what kind of metrics they are using to sell their services to their clientele.

If a fruit or a pretzel can get  huge following on Facebook without it actually selling anything to anyone, how well can a “normal” business expect to do?

What is a measurement of their “success”?

The reality is that there probably isn’t a simple way to “measure” success. There are a lot of different factors that come into play.

But I digress..

Maybe the real “takeaway” from these rather silly examples is that they all share one thing in common – fun. They’re all frivolous fun. People use and interact with social media sites in their spare time, as well as during office hours. If you look at the kind of links people share, the pictures they post etc., you quickly realise that they don’t go to “social media” to buy or to be “sold to” or “marketed to”.

If you can instill some level of “fun” into your “presence” maybe you’ll find that you are actually more successful, though getting the balance right might not be that as easy for a business as it is for a fantasy animal.

Google Buzz Boosts Buzzword Bingo Industry

Google Inc.
Image via Wikipedia

Social Media gurus rejoiced this week with the launch of Google’s latest service – Google Buzz

Expect to see plenty of “tempting” offers in the next few weeks from “experts” on how to “maximise” your “potential” using the latest Google service.

Google Wave was meant to revolutionise the web, so Google Buzz will, of course, flatten Twitter and takeover Facebook….

Or will it?

Does anyone really care?

Christmas Is A Time For Sharing With Your REAL Friends

Social media networks; Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace etc., etc.

How many of your “friends” are actual friends? How many of them actually care about YOU?

If you’re completely caught up in the “follower count race”, then you’ve probably already entered “social media hell”.

But.

There is light at the end of the tunnel

You can disconnect.

You can reconnect with real people. I know this may sound shocking, but you could try to actually interact with a real person for a change.

Forget about vampires, random farm animals, mafia members or fantasy beasts (Twitter is infested with unicorns.. )

Removing yourself from all the social network sites takes time, so some nice person has actually automated the process – the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine does it all for you

Here’s how it works:

WEB 2.0 Suicide Machine Promotion from moddr_ on Vimeo.

So there you are. You can save yourself from social media. You can get back your REAL life.

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Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or simply a blog people sometimes forget that their audience is fickle.

If you spend too much time and energy “planning” and making grandiose promises of “things to come” will anyone really care or notice?

With Facebook “pages” there is little to be gained from putting up a “holding page” – you can simply choose not to make your page public, so you can tweak settings and layout privately.

With Twitter, however, it’s not that evident. Granted, you could choose to “protect” your updates, but you wouldn’t be able to hide your profile page and if you plan on using Twitter for your business “protection” may seem odd.

There has been plenty written about what Twitter is and isn’t, but ultimately if you don’t actually use it nobody will either notice or care.

Of course, conversely speaking, if you used it badly people would notice and probably criticise you …

However if your business’ Twitter status is frozen with a “coming soon” style tweet, then maybe you’ve really misunderstood the medium completely. A blank account would probably seem saner.

Hype Gone Mad – Facebook Custom URL Madness

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

Earlier today Facebook launched their latest “service” – custom URLs for your profile or page.

Talk about hype gone mad!

While a lot of the other social media hubs have offered people the opportunity to use a short and memorable URL to reach their profile page for ages and done it as if it were “no big deal” (it’s not really!), Facebook has managed to make a simple “feature” appear as if it were “the next big thing”.

Expect to see lots of inane blog posts about in the coming days…

Reality check.

Facebook is, in many respects, a “walled garden”.

If you are not “friends” with someone chances are you either can’t see their profile at all or you can only see a very small and not particularly useful page.

In order to see everything you need to be logged in.

The “pages” are a different matter and have been reachable via relatively “sane” URLs for ages.

So what’s all the fuss about?

Frankly, I can’t understand it, so I had to giggle when I read Anil Dash’s post on the entire thing. One to bookmark!

It’s the summer – maybe people just need to go lie on a beach for a while with a good book instead of worrying about their usernames ….