Archive for May, 2009:
A great post for anyone with a Twitter account who thinks that you have to follow everyone back who follows you and then spend hours scanning through messages just to end up wasting your time and getting frustrated.
http://sethsimonds.com/why-i-unfollowed-everybody-on-twitter/
As a company rule Net Mania will follow anyone with an interest in Social Media, Internet, SEO, Marketing, Web, Technology (to a point), Most businesses, NZ orgs and individuals, Australian orgs and individuals and any other Twitter account we find that uses Twitter in a unique or interesting manner.
We have expereinced accounts that we follow being initially genuine then notice that after a while we are offered quick rich schemes, mens mediation and host of other materials of which we have stop following if they persist.
Our advice is that you should not feel obliged to follow anyone on Twitter regardless of if they are following you and that you should only follow accounts that you are interested in. We also recommend that you do not use Twitter to update your every move through out the day. There are applications such as TweetGroup you could use for such Tweets for family or close friends.
Twitter is not about the number of followers you can gather but about sharing and receiving worthwhile information.
MySpace New Zealand have today launched a new ToolBar that allows people to more easily interact with MySpace.
The key purpose of the ToolBar is to allow you to remain logged into MySpace permanently and receive notifications and emails with out the need of logging in to MySpace. A great incentive to those with a MySpace profile who may forget to log in to check messages.
Some of the features include IM chat (pop out ability similar to FaceBook), Alerts from friends and invites, updates, direct access to music and videos as well as an intergrated search option with Google to search the web or MySpace.
The key feature that MySpace is promoting is Email to Multiple Recipients and the ability to “ Add / Remove recipients (Not available on Facebook) “. Interestng that MySpace have made this claim about FaceBook but a sign that MySpace is desperately trying to get market share abck.
According to MySpace the toolbar has some limitations as it only works in Windows Explorer and FireFox 2 and FireFox for the Mac. It does however appear to work in Google Chrome once you have logged into MySpace.
As a point of interest, we have just realised that MySpace .co .nz has been squatted so make sure you visit www.myspace.com to avoid risk of criminal activity.
Almost everyone has a FaceBook account and at least one other social media account. Debt collection agencies, employment agencies, government departments and dubious characters are using social media to gain information.
3 recent New Zealand cases from the past fortnight and one international case are briefly outlined below to highlight this issue. There was also a murder of a jealous lover who apparently used FaceBook to track his victim but we can not find suitable details to include in our list.
WINZ the New Zealand government department who distribute welfare within New Zealand actively use social media to track down benefit fraud. Their investigative unit in Wellington has recently attracted unwanted media attention when they caught a benefit fraudster via FaceBook. WINZ have not publicly disclosed their tactics but it does raise a general awareness that people should be careful what and who they add to their profiles.
Employment. At least 85% of employment agencies in New Zealand have either dedicated staff or it is part of their staff tasks to filter out candidates via social media such as FaceBook. Recently I spoke with an unnamed senior HR consultant who explained that a recent senior position had short listed 2 candidates. Candidate A was about to be told he/she could not get the job but then candidate B had a FaceBook profile that appeared to promote regular social drinking with friends. Hence candidate B was not employed.
It is certainly common to ask to network with employment consultants via professional networks such LinkedIn. In fact we promote this whether you are seeking a job or not.
Police have recently been in the media for a range of intuitive uses of social media including catching criminals and finding missing people.
Debt Collection Agency It is common practice for debt collection agencies to utilise social media to track down debtors whom they otherwise could not track down. Recently an American company gained much unwanted and wide spread media attention for the un-ethical use of social media to track down debtors.
Many email addresses can be tracked to a physical address as can a cell phone number or landline number. Users need to be cautious of what information is added to their online presence.
Below are some of the most common tactics used by ethical and unethical organisations/criminals who target anyone for fraud, harassment, stalking and sometimes worse offences.
- A picture of a model female or male is created with false information about the person. This fake profile then targets people of interest to be their friend. Then all of your updates, comments, photos and any conversation you may have are then used to learn about you.
- These fake profiles may ask you leading questions to garnish information.
- If you do not accept friends from someone you know, then organisations and criminals will target your friends so they can access your information.
- Searching photos that may have been tagged of you.
To avoid the above
- Do not accept invitations from strangers or even old friends whom you do not particularly want to get back in contact with again.
- Restrict how much personal information you write about yourself. Even adding your relationship status to your profile could cause trouble with criminals.
- Regularly search for tagged photos of yourself and remove an tags that you think need to be removed.
- Google yourself or set up a Google Alert on your name.
- Use the Privacy options available and create user groups so that certain people can see certain things. An example a group for your friends and a group for work colleagues may have access to different information.
- Follow our simple rule “If your Mum, Grandmother or boss would have any issue with anything on your profile then you should not have it on the Web”.
If in doubt hire an expert such as Net Mania
FaceBook and Twitter popularity in New Zealand and Australia will continue to grow with a new Regional Manager for Facebook and VodafoneNZ and Telecom soon to offer tweeting from mobile phones. This coupled with Bebo updates to Vodafone mobiles.
The ever increasingly growing gap between FaceBook and MySpace/Bebo with already large numbers of traditional Bebo users migrating to FaceBook as all of their friends and family are there, will soon be dictated/reinforced by mobile phone access. We could possibly see a return back to Bebo and MySpace if the mobile access is greater for these social media sites.
We should see greater access to all social media in New Zealand via mobile phones much like most of the world already does as the NZ mobile monopoly is being reduced with the new players.
Vodafone has said it will announce prices next week for Tweeting from its mobile and Telecom on May 29. Considering New Zealand has more Pre Pay customers than contract we expect the price to be minimal but estimate that there will be contracts for unlimited tweeting from a mobile.
Again this highlights the need for businesses and organisations of all sizes to consider how Social Media can be best utilised for their organisations.
Many small New Zealand businesses fall victim to large national hosting companies expensive and often confusing manner to use their own web site address as their email address.
This practice essentially obligates the business to remain with the same ISP for perpetuity as all of the marketing material has the ISP email address as the business contact email. An example “companyName@ISP.co.nz” while their web site address is “www.CompanyName.co.nz”.
By using an ISP email address, small businesses are promoting their ISP and not their own business. With your own email address people can go directly to your web site if all they have is your email address. From your web site you gain new customers. All from advertising your own business email address.
Your own web address/domain name for your web site should automatically and with out any further charge be able to be used for company email address. Average annual price is about $35 per annum for the address and there are many free and commercial options for web hosting.
There is a myth that a company should use one of the larger ISPs as they are experts and are a safe option. Many web host providers are technical experts but may not offer you the best advise in terms of marketing or cheaper options, in the same manner that the larger organisations may not.
Unless your data is mission critical and resides on data servers and you are happy with your site and email being guaranteed accessible for 99% of the year, then you need to use your own email address for marketing purposes and find the best deal available to you.
