Nominations are open for the 1st Irish Social Media Awards. There are also full details on how to submit a nomination for the awards and what information you need to supply.
The awards ceremony will be held May 26th 2011 in Dublin’s Mansion House, which is a great venue.
If you’re going to use “social” as part of your online strategy you need to remember a key concept.
Permission.
Earlier this morning I got an email “invite” from a contact to join a site that likes to see itself as being “social”.
I ignored the invite but the wording of the email really touched a nerve:
Skillpages unsubscribe email footer
Why on earth would I “unsubscribe” from something I’d never subscribed to in the first place?
Who gave them permission to “subscribe” me in the first place?
It is possible that this is just bad wording on their part and that what they actually mean is that clicking on the link will “block” my email address from being used ..
Now why don’t they actually say that?
It’s also worth noting that Facebook’s notifications include equally misleading wording, so Skillpages aren’t alone in this.
Today being April 1st the web is awash with April Fool’s jokes and pranks.
Some of them are pretty clever, while some of them are downright silly.
One that caught my eye was LinkedIn’s
If you go into the “people you may know” section you’re in for a surprise:
LinkedIn April Fool Joke 2011
Heinz have launched a special offer via their Facebook page that allows “fans” to buy a “limited edition” ketchup.
Heinz limited edition ketchup
Unfortunately it’s pretty clear that the people behind the integration don’t really understand security or privacy.
In order to order the ketchup you need to fill out this form:
Now why do they need ALL that information to send you a bottle of a ketchup? A delivery address is obviously going to be needed, but why would you need my date of birth?
Sorry, but that’s really intrusive.. too intrusive really
Of course to get to that page you really have to trust Heinz .. because whoever setup the “social commerce” doesn’t know a lot about secure certificates or ecommerce judging by this:
Heinz SSL error
I’m sorry, but unless you can actually get the ecommerce basics like SSL certs right then all this talk about “social commerce” being the next big thing are just more fluff
And if a company the size of Heinz can’t get it right I doubt smaller ones will ..
It looks like Facebook is getting set to make a serious play in location based services in Europe.
According to an article in today’s Guardian the social networking behemoth is about to launch of “Deals” which would give users benefits and discounts at local retailers.
The company has announced partnership deals with several “heavy hitters” including Starbucks and Debenhams:
Through deals with partners announced today, the first 30,000 Facebook users to check in at Starbucks stores in the UK can claim a free coffee, the first 1,000 to check in at Debenhams will receive a free mascara and makeover and the first four to upgrade their contracts and check in at O2 stores will win a free Xbox or Playstation.
Last night Facebook suffered an outage.
It wasn’t a particularly long outage, but due to the site’s sheer size the impact of the outage was felt globally.
Millions of people were forced to talk to their spouses, girlfriends, co-workers and neighbours face to face (in real life).
Oh no!
Unless you have been avoiding the news and social networks for the last few weeks you’re probably aware of the TSA’s latest.
The TSA was setup after 9/11 to:
…strengthen the security of the nation’s transportation systems while ensuring the freedom of movement for people and commerce. Within a year, TSA assumed responsibility for security at the nation’s airports and deployed a Federal workforce to meet Congressional deadlines for screening all commercial airline passengers and baggage. In March 2003, TSA transferred from the Department of Transportation to the Department of Homeland Security.
TSA employs a risk-based strategy to secure U.S. transportation systems, working closely with stakeholders in aviation, rail, transit, highway, and pipeline sectors, as well as the partners in the law enforcement and intelligence community. The agency will continuously set the standard for excellence in transportation security through its people, processes, technologies and use of intelligence to drive operations. (source)
However, they are not exactly the most popular organisation.
In the last few weeks there has been a lot of backlash with respect to how TSA are scanning passenger’s and touching them. And no – that wasn’t a typo.
So it’s not that surprising that there’s now a spoof Twitter account that is sending out gems like this:
Travel Advisory: Playing dead does not get you out of a rub-down. Neither does actually being dead
or
The confusion at the security gate is manufactured. Confused passengers are submissive passengers
I somehow doubt the TSA are amused, but if they try to remove the account the backlash will be a LOT worse.
For a lot of people a business is known for its staff.
In the case of very small companies the staff are the company.
So if you are in business and you are using Twitter / Facebook bear that in mind. If your “personal” account is going to be associated, even indirectly, with your business account just take a moment to reflect before you post.
Reflecting does not equate with modifying or changing your personality. Personality is important.
It just means that you should think a bit before you tweet. Once you’ve posted it there is no going back.
A lot of very big companies use Twitter.
There’s an interesting article over on Social Media Today exploring how 5 such companies do it.