Irish Public Servants To Get Premium Social Media Training

You gotta love Ireland.

In the midst of the doom and gloom of an economic crisis somebody somewhere got the “bright” idea of sending councillors off to learn about social media. At the cost of about €500 a person of taxpayers money you’d have to wonder what they were thinking ..

More here and here

German Lawmakers Seek To Limit Usage of Social Media Info By Employers

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

Germany seems to take privacy pretty seriously.

According to reports this week Germany is seeking to enact legislation that would restrict the usage of information about prospective employees garnered from social media sites by employers. The legislators are drawing a line between “pure” social networking site and the more professional ones.

“The bill would allow managers to search for publicly accessible information about prospective employees on the Web and to view their pages on job networking sites, like LinkedIn or Xing. But it would draw the line at purely social networking sites like Facebook, said Philipp Spauschus, a spokesman for the Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière”

No idea how they’ll classify Twitter or FourSquare .. though I can see FourSquare being used to keep track of supposedly sick staff … .. Or am I just cynical?

Full story here

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

KLM Shines – So Where Is Aer Lingus?

The Iceland volcano eruptions have had a very “interesting” impact on travel throughout Europe. The skies over Ireland and most of Europe have been practically empty for the last few days.

This is an “act of God”. It’s not something that you could have planned for or expected and while airlines have a “duty of care” unto their passengers this mess is also costing them millions of Euro.

What has, however, been very interesting to watch is how the various airlines have been handling communications.

British Airways have an official Facebook page, but they’re not updating it.

Aer Lingus – if they have an official Facebook page it’s hard to find. There seem to be about a half dozen pages, but I don’t think any of them are official. In any case their communications aren’t exactly stellar.

RyanAir – No idea if they have an official page or not. There are active fan pages though ..

KLM, however, is the true star.

Prior to the Icelandic volcanic ash grounding Europe KLM had already been using Facebook to promote themselves using some pretty quirky marketing techniques.

Once the issues with the flights arose they took complete “ownership” of the communications medium and have been doing an absolutely fantastic job at letting people know exactly what is going on.

Aer Lingus, who I was meant to be flying with twice this week, have been pretty much silent. Sure, they update their flight disruption page a couple of times a day, but you wouldn’t want to be relying to heavily on them!

Bebo Shutdown or Sale Iminent – So Where Does All the Content Go?

AOL bought Bebo a couple of years ago. At the time they probably thought they’d got themselves a bargain. Bebo was doing really well in the UK and Ireland. It wasn’t doing so well in the US, but that could have changed..

Of course it didn’t change. Bebo’s traffic shrank and upstart Facebook came along and stole their thunder..

But what of the content?

If you’ve uploaded photos and other content onto Bebo you could easily end up losing access to it all completely.

Tip: Back it up now. Or simply move on.

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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Spontaneous Success Cannot Be Created

It may seem obvious, but you cannot force something to be spontaneous.
Spontaneous is that – spontaneous. It cannot be contrived or manipulated.
If you don’t believe me check the definition in any good dictionary.

Can you trust this man?

Can you trust this man?

Why is it that some “experts” believe that they can “cod” people (their clients and the media) into believing that they can manufacture spontaneity?

The most obvious example is any one of the multitude of “social media agencies” that have sprung up in the last year or so. While there is a need to help people engage more effectively online, making crazy promises cannot end well. Someone will get hurt.

A “viral” marketing campaign cannot be invented.

You can try to do something that will capture people’s imagination and interest. If you do it well and you are lucky, then maybe, just maybe, you will reach the “Holy Grail” and it will go “viral”
But you cannot guarantee that people will be interested enough for that to happen.

Everyone wants their product or success to become a massive success. We’d all love to become overnight successes, make our fortunes and be able to relax on a tropical island, wouldn’t we?

UPDATE: An interesting related post worth reading

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