Last week I received a message from a friend noting that there was some less than flattering buzz going around on Facebook regarding something my wife was being accused of doing (she didn’t). Apparently someone we do not know had been ‘wronged’ and tracked the wrongdoer to a physical address – in fact the address where we used to live, having moved out three months ago. The affronted party got the home address from the police and checked it in a reverse lookup. Of course we were still listed as living at our old address as records are not always updated promptly – no surprise there. It went downhill from
there.

Thinking that the offending party had been found out this person went on a social network and began to post a vitriolic rant on how my wife was a terrible and horrible person and that the police were involved. Naturally my wonderful wife was shocked and had no idea what was going on – at least not at first. By piecing things together she was finally able to figure out what took place.

My wife tracked down and contacted the person who had been posting the incorrect information. She received a lukewarm apology but without any or at least enough contrition.
You’d think that a person would be horrified at erroneously accusing an innocent person of wrongdoing in a public forum like a social network. But the idea of going public in the first place to embarrass someone due to a personal grudge is unfortunately not all that uncommon these days.

What I am suggesting is that if you are going to go the route of publicly calling out someone for wrongdoing in a social network or other public forum – AT LEAST GET IT RIGHT! But in my opinion better if you don’t do it at all and approach the person one to one first. If then you are not satisfied and want to go public – do it at your own risk.

This all comes as a backdrop as Yahoo appears to be both on and off the market. Last week Jerry Yang Yahoo.com co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang said that while Yahoo’s board is famously exploring all its options, it’s not necessarily up for sale. “The intent going in is not to put ourselves up for sale. The intent is to look at all the options,” Yang said on stage at the AsiaD conference in Hong Kong. http://bit.ly/vGcKmQ

There are apparently many potential suitors interested in Yahoo and Yahoo’s still impressive reach. The list moves from AOL’s Tim Armstrong, to Microsoft, to Jack Ma of Alibaba.com (Yahoo owns 40% of Alibaba.com, a stake that Jack Ma had been trying to buy back from Ms. Bartz before her departure).

The real question many people (including me) are asking is, (despite what Mr. Yang is saying) does Yahoo have an independent future? Or will it need to be part of another company’s platform? In the case of Microsoft (think Bing) – Yahoo and Bing would together comprise nearly 35% of the search market (the balance is nearly all Google) and would be a formidable player in the search marketplace. I don’t see as good a fit with AOL (two somewhat tried and tired brands) or Alibaba.com but they have their reasons for wanting a piece of more than 100 million Yahoo unique monthly users (includes email).

Right now the valuation to buy Yahoo is as much as US $20 billion. The three leaders as noted above all have the wherewithal to make it happen. And of course Mr. Yang is a potential buyer himself.

How will this play out?

The survey studied the buying habits of fewer than 1,500 people. A fairly good-sized sample and the results were that 50% of people who follow a brand are more likely to buy that brand’s products. The article also notes however that it is not all that easy to get a Twitter user to follow a brand. I would agree with that as I am not one to follow a brand on Twitter although I have done so on Facebook to some degree. In fact only 21% of Twitter users follow brands.

Also significant was the statistic that 75% of people surveyed said the never ‘un-follow’ brands after making a ‘commitment’ to them. Although I don’t really understand how following a brand shows my commitment exactly.

Mashable lists the study’s five main reasons for following a brand on Twitter:

• 64%: I am a customer of the company
• 61%: To be the first to know information about the brand
• 48%: To receive discounts and promotions
• 36%: To gain access to exclusive content
• 28%: To receive content/information to retweet and share with others

The article also noted that Twitter’s follower numbers closely mirror a Facebook study that also found that 56% of users on Facebook who like a brand’s fan page are more likely to recommend that brand to friends while 51% of consumers who like a brand Facebook fan page are more likely to purchase that product. I expect that this comes as no surprise to anyone.

Twitter continues to evolve (check out Simon Cowell’s comments on his personal turnaround on using Twitter as a listening device in today’s New York Times http://nyti.ms/vuE6dT), and personally I find myself following fewer overall people and culling out people I am following if they don’t put out tweets of interest to me. I am following over 900 people and there’s no way for me to sift through that many people’s tweets.

Brands are doing a better job of leveraging social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. For me it starts and ends with what kind of engagement the brands offer, as well as what kinds of offers the brands offer!

But there’s still room for improvement don’t you think?

AdAge released a pretty thorough overview yesterday – http://bit.ly/o6Mdv1 noting that Google’s reasoning was that Zagat was truly local and this fits with Google’s desire to elevate Google Places to a higher value proposition. The New York Times called Google’s purchase of Zagat a ‘consolation prize’. I agree.

While Zagat has a good history of delivering solid user reviews I have become accustomed to Yelp’s easy to used location based application and am dubious that Zagat and Google can improve upon the user experience provided by Yelp – http://www.Yelp.com.

Zagat does not cover many places I visit and consequently it would be of no use to me in a small town that Zagat does not cover. However that’s not the case with Yelp. Yelp’s main drawback as far as I am concerned is the paucity of user reviews when it comes to individual restaurants. The sample reviews are often too small to trust.

When it comes to Yelp I do love the amount of choices that the location based service offers me – the distances to the locations are very helpful, and Yelp goes far beyond restaurants – bars, attractions, movies, museums and much more. Did I mention that the downloaded Yelp app is free?
Google did ‘try’ to buy Yelp a couple of years ago for $500 million. (The terms of the Zagat sale to Google were not released). The article in AdAge notes there are conflicting reasons why the sale did not go through. Rest assured if Google really had wanted to buy Yelp the deal would have happened.

I can see the deal making sense from the family owned perspective of the Zagat’s. It probably is exactly the right time for them to cash out and work on other things as the company they started 32 years ago is in a much different marketplace today. I am betting they would rather spend their time (and money) doing other things.

Google has made a lot of really smart moves (see YouTube and Google+ for instance). However I think they bet on the wrong horse in this race.

How do you find places to eat when you go to a new city – or want to try any new restaurant?

The download was fast and easy – we were actually corresponding while entering the request for video chat, and the download took less than one minute. The next thing I saw was a real-time video of my daughter and the quality was the best I’ve experience when it comes to video chatting. It was as if we were looking at each other right in person.

There is also a group video chat function that works just as well. Important to remember is the fact that you need to be FB ‘friends’ in order to engage in FB video chat – so it’s not as if it will replace Skype or other video chat applications (like ovoo.com), but for my friends that I wish to video chat with, Facebook has become the new default choice.

Here’s a questions – why doesn’t LinkedIn have a video chat option? It may not be appropriate for most LinkedIn interactions but it seems like it would be a simple yet high value enhancement for that platform. Keep in mind that should you wish to not video chat, you as the operator always have the option to decline to video chat.

But for family and friends that are not nearby, video chatting is better than – well than not having video chat. Facebook has done a really good job here and I am very surprised as to how I was unaware of that feature up until now.

How about you? Have you used video chatting? Do you like it? Is Skype your normal choice? Have you tried FB video chat? And if not what else might be you be using?

Even with social networking ‘Greek’ life on college campuses around the United States have retained their appeal to many students. The friendships and connections can last a lifetime. It is a uniquely North American ritual most popular in the United States. While ‘pinning’ has gone by the wayside, the Greek system is representative of many of the things that take place on Facebook and other social networking sites, except that it is not virtual. However if you are familiar with hazing in real life you should also be familiar with virtual hazing on social networking platforms. It happens and it’s not good.

The fact that sorority recruiters are forced to deactivate their Facebook accounts (one assumes that for now Google+ accounts are allowed much to Google’s chagrin?) demonstrates the way college students interact. Mark Zuckerberg doubtless would be proud and aggravated at the same time.

A Ryan Tate article Monday on Gawker http://gaw.kr/oqbE0y highlights how colleges and schools can turn people into Facebook maniacs. I assume that asking current sorority members to deactivate their accounts during rush is some sort of defense against turning the rushing frosh’s into maniacs. I presume that fraternities are not doing the same thing but maybe that’s my gender prejudice.

While Greek life during my undergrad days was very popular I chose to not participate yet had many good friends who enjoyed their experience so I am not judging the positives or negatives of being in a sorority. Up until now I have given little thought to how online social networking might impact real-life social networking. The power of Facebook has met with the power of the Greek system. Facebook appears to be the loser in this round. Or is it?

The offers at nearby places on Foursquare are slowly getting better and more frequent. Yet in the lighting fast world of the social web I am surprised at how long it is taking for a truly enhanced version of Foursquare (for users) to be offered. CEO Dennis Crowley seems to be focused on creating value for merchants – he would be wise to keep in mind that the users might be getting a bit impatient with the slow rate of progress toward what I think is still a good platform with strong legs.

One big question I have is how much more social Foursquare will get. Aside from checking into places where friends might ‘meet-up’ and offering nearby potential customers a reason to come into a particular establishment I am not sure people will embrace and interact with yet another social media platform. Mr. Crowley and his team are counting on that – what do you think?

While Foursquare was making its changes location based Yelp.com made a few changes in its application as well. I use Yelp when looking for nearby eateries, bars, or movies wherever I am in the United States (it does not work outside the U.S. nearly as well).

Last week an update to the application popped up and I installed it but since then the application has suddenly lost its ability to recognize where I am currently located. Good thing I am not depending on it. And before you go asking – all my other GPS based applications are working just fine and I changed nothing in my Yelp profile. Not good. In fact I ended up using Bing to find a restaurant near me this weekend and it worked out satisfactorily. For Yelp that is also not good.

In order for social media applications to continue to gain in value they have to deliver the basics – they have to work (always), be fast and accurate. Once users lose confidence in a social media app’s ability to enhance their lives the downward spiral is underway. I hope that Foursquare and Yelp respectively fix what ails them.

Are you using Foursquare or Yelp?

As one of those not cool Dads I have engaged quite a bit with social networks – primarily Facebook, LinkedIn and more recently Google+. There are drawbacks such as the great time suck that occurs when perusing people’s posts, photos and threads to videos and articles they suggest you read and feel are of interest.

The ability to connect with people you have not seen in many years, or people that live in faraway places is the obvious benefit of social networking. Over the weekend I attended a mini-reunion of people I went to high school with a long time ago (I’m talking late 1970’s). There were many interesting facets of how it all came together but social networking and Facebook in particular were integral to making it happen. There was no reunion company specialist arranging the get together (I posted in 2009 about those reunion companies possible extinction due to the advent of social media – http://bit.ly/piT6in ) and it was the work of a couple of cool people – thanks Barbara and Dave that made our event happen.

The invitations were made on Facebook, for those that paid attention there was a list of attendees and everything came together without a hitch and the evening was intimate and fun. Afterward there were photos that were posted and tagged (BTW – I don’t know about you but I don’t love being tagged in photos on FB).

On the other hand over the past few weeks I was opted into a group (without my consent) of people from my hometown under the ‘you know you are from…if’. The flood of posts from people I did not know about things I did not care about or relate to became a deluge. I reset some my notification settings but even that only stemmed the tide a bit. I finally left the group entirely – perhaps prematurely since my guess is the initial creation of the group prompted seemingly constant updates that would eventually (hopefully?) die down.

It did make me shake my head on how much time people have to spend reading and responding to social media posts. And while there are mobile social media applications my sense is these people were working from a tablet, desktop or laptop computer.

We tell our children to be careful about what they post on social networking sites – photos, comments etc. since what’s posted lives on the web forever. What we don’t tell them is how much is too much – is that because nobody really knows? At least until it becomes too much. And I bet you know will when that happens.

An article in DM News http://bit.ly/pMMuZF highlights increases in LinkedIn’s revenue – and it was from Friday August 5th shortly before the stock took a pounding.

My work in developing our China business requires expertise far beyond that of my regular circle of contacts. LinkedIn has offered me a way to engage total strangers by asking for help, offering help and simply offering my opinion on something they might have written or said. What continually surprises me is the rate of return on what I consider to be a very minor investment.

Of course not all my inquiries are responded to. And I know I need to be careful since there is a rating system on LinkedIn such that if enough people complain about being spammed or contacted inappropriately you can be blacklisted from making outreaches to people you don’t know using a feature on LinkedIn called ‘Inmail’.

But I am here to tell you that if you are not using the Premium or Pro access on LinkedIn you are missing out on opportunities to connect with people in way that has never before been possible. However I do wonder how long this open-networking will last. If people begin to be deluged with requests from all over the map the opportunity conduit that LinkedIn offers may well become unworkable and unusable.

In case you are wondering I try to be as open as possible myself when it comes to answering questions posed to me on LinkedIn. I also receive offers to Link In with people I don’t know but my policy is to not Link In with total strangers. Yet answering a question for a total stranger (provided it is a relevant question and something that I can help with) is something I always agree to do.

I believe LinkedIn is the best of all the social networks in offering a value proposition. Yes better than Facebook and better than Google+ (which is on the rise as far as I am concerned).

How about you – are you getting everything out of LinkedIn that you could? Or do you think it’s too much trouble and a waste of time?

The current field trial of Google+ allows Google to hear the noise and then tweak what they feel needs tweaking. The crash and burn of Google Buzz has learned Google a few things as the saying goes. Katie Boehret of the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday did a nice job of laying out her viewpoint on Google+ and I agree with many of her observations here – http://on.wsj.com/qnCmdR and an accompanying video here http://on.wsj.com/qTnaFB.

One of the most attractive features of Google+ is the ‘Circles’ aspect. I like the way you can organize friends, colleagues, family, enemies, or whatever into their own circles. Nobody can see what circle or circles you’ve put them in but it offers you the categorization of relationships that continues to be lacking on Facebook.

I am sure there have been many times when some obscure professional or work acquaintance ‘friend requested’ you on Facebook. The normal reaction is to shake your head and then click ‘Ignore’. But what if your boss sends a ‘Friend Request’ on Facebook? With Google+ you can share what you want to share with any particular circle. Or not. BIG +.

I haven’t used the Google+ ‘Sparks’ feature as yet, nor have I used the group video chat module called ‘Hangouts’. I can see the value of both and the Hangouts group chat (up to 10 people) could become popular among some users (but probably not me). The Google+ mobile feature offers group texting (it’s called Huddle) and I can see that being useful and another separator from Facebook.

So overall I feel Google+ has done a good job of taking the things I like about Facebook and enhancing them. But unless the people I interact with (my friends and family) on Facebook migrate en masse over to Google+ I personally don’t see myself giving up my Facebook account nor do I anticipate many other people doing that either. And the thought of having to manage two social network profiles will be a non-starter don’t you think?

I will continue to use Google+ for a while at least. If you’d like to be invited to try it, just send me a note and I will invite you to try it as well. But if you do I’d love for you to come back here to my blog and let everyone know what you thought. It’s all about the conversation isn’t it?