Facebook has more than 500 million users. That would be the 3rd largest country in the world if it was one. The network is a great place for businesses to interact with their customers, clients and target market. Yet knowing how to do it right isn’t as easy as it looks.
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This morning at 12:01am all hell broke loose over the social web. Over Twitter the discussion of user names on Facebook was the hot topic. People came in from the bars early (according to their posts) to get their user names. From my point of view everything went well. I ended up getting http://www.facebook.com/sethmgoldstein , due to the fact that the more famous Seth Goldstein got sethgoldstein. It was really neat to experience the pure geekyness of this pursuit of the perfect user name on Facebook. It really shows the power that Social Media has on the world at large.

With in the first 3 minutes (according to Mashable.com, who had the exclusive coverage of the event) more than 200,000 user names were chosen. The Mashable chat room was going wild and was quite annoying with all the binging sound effects. The editors of the online Social Media magazine live streamed the event over the Interwebs.

This event for the Geeks of the world seemed to rival the new years celebration in 2000.

Here is Mashables interview with some people on the front line at Facebook last night:

I want to here your thoughts. Post them below in the comments.

Image Credit: Max-Bro.net

Today across the Web, people have been buzzing about the new Terms of Service over at Facebook. Upon reading the TOS, the legalese makes it appear that Facebook owns your content once it’s put on the service. The TOS also states that Facebook can use the data for whatever it wants.

Now, as expected, people were outraged at this new clause. There were strong debates across not only throughout the Internet, but the Twitterverse and the Blogosphere.

Finally, Facebook head honsho Mark Zuckerberg, obviously seeing the chaos that the TOS has caused, released the release below on the Facebook blog to set the record straight (the post is below in complete). Users own their data on the service.

Now in the post, he says that they are trying make the rules more understandable. They are? Did I miss something.

I’d  like to hear your take below in the comments.

A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users. A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I’d like to address those here. I’ll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people’s information.

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.

We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.

Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.

We’re at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It’s difficult terrain to navigate and we’re going to make some missteps, but as the leading service for sharing information we take these issues and our responsibility to help resolve them very seriously. This is a big focus for us this year, and I’ll post some more thoughts on openness and these other issues soon.

via The Facebook Blog | Facebook.

Like many of you I have a profile on Facebook. And like many of you I’ve become addicted to the social media site. Facebook is great for connecting with old friends and classmates, family members and collegues, but when does this social media paradise become dangerous? Like all social media platforms, Facebook has it’s set of privacy settings to limit who can see what about you. This is good if you use the service for both professional and personal use. In the following paragraphs I’m going to do a walk through of the privacy settings in Facebook and what I personally do to make sure I know what certain groups are seeing.

One of the first things and most time consuming tasks you’re going to need to do if you want to allow different people is to setup up groups for all of your friends and classify them. Below is how I have people grouped:

Now this grouping of people, especially for those who have been on Facebook for a long time, will be a bit painful but it’s well worth it especially when your job or even life might depend on it.

You first need to go to the privacy page in Facebook:

Once on that page you’ll see the different areas where you can set privacy levels:

We’re going to first go into the Profile property area:

As you see above, I have it setup so that only certain people can see certain information. The key to limiting certain peoples access in a more pin-point way goes back to spending the time setting up groups. You’ll see that I’ve limited some areas to exclude specific groups. This will keep them from seeing that particular part of information. This is great to make sure potential or current employers don’t see the pictures of you riding a bull at a bar or of your 21st birthday party.

Now the next step is to go to the second tab and do the same for your contact information.

When you’re done that we can move on to the more interactive parts of your profile.

When you first get your Facebook account, it is a clean slate and is about a pourus as a fishing net. Everything you do is completly transparent and everyone can see what you’re doing, who your doing it with, and… well you get the idea. A lot of this is unknown to many users until they get really into Facebook and often this can be too late. A good way to prevent a crisis before it starts is to spend some time with the the tab called Newsfeeds and Wall. (I skipped over the Search, but we’ll go back to it after this.)

When you get to the News Feed and Wall area your screen will look like this:

Now this is more cut and dry than the profile privacy area. This is because you’ve already set your preferences for who can see what about you. This is more fine tuning. This area is rather self explanetory so dive right in. I’ll wait here and when you’re done we’ll continue.

Okay. Welcome back. Go back to the main privacy area. You’ll notice right above the News Feed and Wall link there is a button for Search. This area will allow you to specify how much a person can see prior to becoming your friend.

In my opinion, I would let everyone find you. That makes Facebook a great way to reconnect with old friends and what not. Keep in mind that very stripped down Facebook page will appear in search results in Google and the other major search engines. But as you can see from mine, it’s not much.

So, in my opinion let everyone find you. It’s up to you to determine who is your friend.

Now the last MAJOR issue with privacy is controling how much a Facebook application can say about you to your friends and others. To edit this you’ll need to go to the settings area in the top menu and select Application settings.

Now in order for most applications to run, they need to have access to your information. Facebook does regulate what information they can actively keep on their own servers and they treat violations of their development rules strictly.

To edit a what an application says about you click edit settings. You’ll be greated with a popup options menu:

This dialog is worth investigating and tweaking. Essentially what you are controlling is how much information is posted when you interact with a particular application. Even with some control, still pick your applications wisely. Some are just ploys to get information out of you about your computer usage, where as others are lots of fun and worth checking out.

I hope this quick primer to the Facebook privacy panel was informative and helpful. Please feel free to share this post with your friends, just please attribute it back to this blog with a link.

I’d also link to hear your thoughts, post your comments below! Thanks!

Social media guru Perry Belcher has a great new video out on how to organize your thoughts coming out of your brain. Check out the video below. It’s really neat how Perry is using YouTube to share his messages with his fans and build his social media chops. I’d like to hear your comments on it. Post them below as well. Thanks!

Enjoy! Post your comments below!

Social Media’s uses for Business and Personal Gain from Seth Goldstein on Vimeo.

TwiTip.com has a great post on what the differences and what the similarities are between Facebook and Twitter. The article highlights the pros and cons of both services and what type of person each service appeals to.

A very interesting article. Below are the pros and cons of each service. Take a look.

Twitter Pros

* Easy to navigate and update, link to and promote anything

* Reach far beyond your inner circle of friends

* One feed pools all users; anyone can follow anyone else unless blocked

* Pure communication tool, rapid responsiveness

* You don’t have to be logged in to get updates; you can just use an RSS reader

* Very interactive, extensible messaging platform with open APIs

* Many other applications being developed (Twitterific, Summize, Twhirl, etc.)

* Potential SMS text messaging revenue from wireless networks (although Twitter states they are not currently getting any cut)

* Potential future advertising and/or enterprise subscription-based revenue streams\* With its “thin” overhead, Twitter is probably more scalable than Facebook, giving it a cost advantageTwitter Cons

* Limited functionality; find people, send brief messages, direct replies

* Limited to 140 characters per update

* Not all people find it immediately useful

* Over-emphasis on follower counts

* Easily abused for spam and increasing the noise level

* Relatively smaller installed user base

* As yet no readily apparent monetization strategy

Facebook Pros

* Application mashup; find people, make connections, email, instant messaging, image/video sharing, etc.

* Most people can quickly grasp the value of connecting with friends, family and established contacts; some people report they use Facebook instead of email and IM

* More emphasis on deep connections with others vs. who has the most connections

* “True Friends” feature increases your transparency to selected connections; almost like having private and public profiles

* Huge, rapidly growing installed user base

* Inherit stickiness, third party applications, “gift giving” and personal data collection make Facebook a powerful advertising platform

Facebook Cons

* More difficult to navigate and update

* Requires investment of time to realize sustained benefit

* Opt in model requires a user to allow others to connect

* Less immediate responses; unless you stay logged on continually

* Overhead of mashup and “thick” applications could limit scalability, bloat cost structure

via Facebook vs Twitter.

Image Credit: Junta42.com

There is an interesting term circulating on the Web lately. The term is Social Media Marketing and it has become the newest hip thing to offer clients. Many marketers are touting the skill. Is this wrong? No. Is it wrong to boast a skill that you really don’t have? Yes. That’s exactly the problem. Many are saying they offer it but don’t have a clue how to leverage it for business purposes.

I know that when I decided to offer “Social Media Marketing” as a service to my clients, I decided I needed to know as much about the inner workings of these social media sites as possible so that I could explain them to my clients in simple terms that they could understand. I immediately went to Amazon and bought as many books on services like Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter as well as books on the philosophy behind social media and how use it to grow your business. After all this reading was I ready to offer the service to my clients? No. I still had to test it out on my own brand first to make sure I was able to do it. Have I found success? Yes and no. Social Media Marketing isn’t an overnight task. Like Search Engine Optimization, it takes time to grow a community around yourself and your brand and gain their trust.

A good example of how I’ve slowly built up my brand and myself in social media is on Twitter. I’ve been a member of the microblogging service since September 2007. When I first signed up, it was merely to see what it was all about. I didn’t quite understand the power of it. Honestly, most didn’t at that time. Slowly I began to gain friends on the service and build relationships. About a year and a few months later I have 550+ followers and I’m slowly seeing the effects of my hardwork.

I’ve started to do some social media work for my clients and before I start I always tell them that it takes time. They won’t see results overnight and they need to be patient and actively participate in the discussions and discourse on these services. Honestly, if any “social media marketing guru” tells a client that they can do it overnight, show them the door.

I think “Social Media Marketing” is becoming a buzz term that is popular because it has a good ring to it. What bugs me is those Twitter users or Facebook users that say they’re social media gurus but have no website with examples of how they’ve applied it to their own company. Why would you hire someone to grow your company if they haven’t even tried to do it for themselves first.

The best test-subject is yourself. Before you go to market with a product try it out on yourself first. Iron out the bugs and figure out how you can apply it to other people. Only then do you market it to others. Not before.

Even with the growth of this new industry, people are going to continue to claim skills that they don’t really have. It’s up to the customers to find the ones that really are the real deal.

I want to hear your views on this. Please post your comments below!