Archive for the ‘social media’ Category:
It has been a number of months since FaceBook released vanity URL’s (your name in the URL) for personal pages and then to Groups and Fan Pages. An example is our FaceBook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/NetMania .
Initially a FanPage or group required 1000 members or fans to be eligible for a vanity URL.
Sometime later FaceBook publicly announced that it had reduced the limit to 100 users. Both requirements caused many small organisations to cry out and ask for the requirements to be reduced.
FaceBook without any major publicity announcements changed the criteria to a minimum of 25 members or fans thus creating new opportunities for millions of Fan Pages and groups.
Now many admins and would be creators of groups and Fan Pages are asking how to obtain their new vanity URL.
Simply log into FaceBook and then visit http://www.faceBook.com/username or as we mentioned in our earlier post http://fb.me/username .
FaceBook recently added a new shortened URL “fb.me” to make it simpler to access pages, profiles and groups.
Initially it may appear that there is no need for such an URL shortener as most people have heard of FaceBook and know the FaceBook Url www.faceBook.com .
But there are 3 main advantages:
- The increasingly popular Twitter service with its 140 character limit can show readers that it is a facebook link and promote your brand at the same time.
- The popular mobile market that access the web via their smart phones and other mobile devices.
- It is much easier to give people a short URL to your pictures on your profile.
There are 2 main disadvantage at the moment.
- There is no way to track how many clicks your links are getting which will make online marketing with the fb.me URL difficult to analyse its success.
- If your Fan Page does not meet the minimum criteria of 25 Fans then you do not have a vanity url and therefore your Fan Page will not have a memorable fb.me URL.
The benefits of having statistics and other analytical tools associated with a URL shortener are so emence that we would expect that FaceBook will roll out the new features in the near future.
Popular Social Bookmarking service http://tr.im yesterday announced that it was discontinuing to offer its services but would honour those existing shortened links and redirects till at least December 2009 leaving many organisations with broken links.
This has left many businesses without any method for their customers to reach their blogs, websites and ecommerce pages.
If you are one of these businesses that have used the http://tr.im service we recommend that you immediately perform the following tasks to minimise disruption to your business.
1. Register your own short domain. There are many two letter domain names available including <.ie>, <.im> etc.
2. Create your own short URLs using your domain name and forward as required. If your web host does not offer free url redirection then you should reconsider your hosting arrangements.
3. Do a stock take of all instances you have used a tr.im url. This may involve searching your own Blogs and Tweets.
4. Put a notice on all relevant pages from your stocktake giving people the new shortened URL.
5. Get creative with your new URL and promote it with more direct links to your products and services.
Immediate benefits from performing the above is that you are able to create more human memorable names as well as more favourable search engine names.
FaceBook users at sign up and from their Friends pages are presented with a service called “Friend Feed” – an option to import their contacts from Gmail, HotMail and various other email and Instant Messenger accounts and services. http://www.facebook.com/find-friends/?ref=sb
Most of us used FriendFeed as an efficient manner to keep in contact with friends and colleagues who were already on FaceBook or to perhaps invite them to join Face Book.
In the past several weeks users may have noticed that their “Friends Suggestion” list increased substantially in size and was often rather accurate for no known reason. Although there has been speculation that FaceBook had kept peoples contacts on their server, FaceBook had never admitted it till now. But now, when a user uses the Friend Feed service a dialogue box appears with the following text:
“We will not store your password after we import your friends’ information.
We may use the email addresses you upload through this importer to help you connect with friends, including using this information to generate Suggestions for you and your contacts on Facebook. If you don’t want us to store this information, visit this page.”
Now users can clear their stored imported contact lists by using the new Face Book tool at http://www.facebook.com/contact_importer/remove_uploads.php
FaceBook will release Vanity url’s ie a FaceBook address with your option of a name in it such as http:/www.facebook.com/JohnSmith as opposed to the current system of un memorable names. Release date is Saturday 13th at 4.01pm. Countdown clock here http://www.facebook.com/username/
Users can choose a name for their profile and Fan Pages (If you have 1,000 fans before May 31). For individuals and companies who have common names you should be ready at 4pm to register your names before some one else does. The consequences are significant if you miss your prime name as eventually vanity URL names will become the normal way to find companies and individuals on FaceBook. If you miss your company name then your competitors will be gaining your traffic and visitors.
Your vanity url should be the same as your organiastion domain name to avoid future confusion with your customers.
For individuals you should consider future employment prospects will be able to find you more easily so you should use a name that you will still be happy with in the future.
FaceBook have made names non transferable. This means you get one chance at your vanity url name and removes much of the motivation of cyber squatters to bulk register and resell names at a later date.
FaceBook vanity URL’s are now in line with Bebo, My Space and the many other social networks who already offer vanity URL’s.
Today we launched our Face Book Fan Page which will be used to offer exclusive FaceBook tips and special promotional material prior to using other Social Media.
In the comming weeks we will be announcing applications for sponsorships and giving you the very latest news from FaceBook.
If you are interested please visit our Fan Page and become a Fan at http://facebook.netmania.co.nz . We would love to see you there and have a chat with you. Perhaps you are interested to see what others may say about us.
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.
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.
Page squatting or Cyber Squatting is becoming popular on the Internet. Likewise cyber squatting of celebrity names, brand names and other public figures in social media is common.
Squatting refers to the act of an individual or group using your name and brand to create a presence on the Internet by utilising FaceBook, Twitter, web pages and any other social media sites.
Cyber squatting has been an issue for organisations since domain names were first introduced to the Internet, with domain names being purchased for minimal amounts and on sold for sometimes for millions of dollars. But more recently Page squatting is becoming popular within Face Book and other social media sites where people with good and malicious intentions are impersonating brands, celebrities and individuals.
Searching for most brand names in FaceBook will yield many results and it is often difficult to differentiate between what is a squatted page and what is a genuine page. The detrimental effects for your business are to many to mention here.
With Face Book currently not taking action on this issue with their preference to leave it to the courts it is up to brand name owners to take action before they are squatted.
Net Mania recommend that your organisation promote your Face Book page on your own web site, within your organisations email signatures and by offering special promotions in your Fan Page.
Thus promoting your legitimate organisation or brand page. Also make your clients and Fan base aware of the squatted page so they do not mistaken it for your Page.
To effectively promote your Face Book Fan Page or other social media site as opposed to using the hard to remember default Face Book address, Net Mania sugest your organisation should use a sub domain from your current domain name. For example Net Mania have implemented a sub domain http://facebook.netmania.co.nz which goes to our Fan page.
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