Online Privacy: Some Ways To Protect Yourself

Some joked that the Internet (or WiFi) is now part of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which is true to certain extend if your work actually involves you accessing the internet on a daily basis. While the internet is great, it does have a darker side to it.

Online privacy has become a major issue in the past few years or so. Simply because people are ignorant, and not many people even know what it actually means. In layman terms, if your online privacy settings are weak or set to "default", most of your personal information from websites you visit, from social media content you consume on Facebook, Twitter, etc becomes public information.

Recently, there was a case of a website showcasing a collection of photos of girls (some of which are almost nude) to which most of them are underage. It's shocking because these girls innocently upload their photos on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, without realizing that once it's up, it's available to the public. When I refer to public here means anyone (not necessary someone you're friends with or know) will be able to save your photo or use it for malicious intend. You can read about the full story here.

In a recent article from Social Media Today, you can see that 67% of Facebook users check their privacy settings only once a year or never at all, and that 50% never ever used the "View As.." function to know how others view your profile (I'm sure some of you don't even know that this feature exist on Facebook right?).

Photo credit: socialmediatoday.com

Another thing about photos being uploaded on the internet, they do carry location information of where the picture was taken if you use a mobile device. There used to be a site called icanstalku.com (service now disabled) which you can upload a photo and they can show you exactly where the picture was taken. This is possible because mobile devices allows location services where you would use it for apps like maps and check-ins (Facebook & Foursquare). This will allow wannabe stalkers to know which places you usually frequent and plan their "attack".

Be vigilant!

Do remember, while the internet is great, there are some steps that you can take to minimize the abuse of cyber stalkers.

1. Review you Facebook privacy settings. Create groups and permissions of who gets to see what content and photos. For me, I only allow friends or people I know well enough to view my photos. To acquaintances, I only allow them to view selected updates. Once you created the groups, read this: https://www.facebook.com/help/120939471321735 on how to select who to view what content.
2. It does not mean that you have to change your profiles to "protected / private" mode. What I post on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are very different. I post photos of my family and friends on Facebook simply because I have privacy and permission settings to control who views them. As for Twitter and Instagram, I chose not to post photos of my family simply because I would like these profiles to remain public and I wouldn't want the public to start stealing photos especially that of my family members.
3. Be careful of "Check Ins". "Checking-in" can be fun (especially on Foursquare), but it can also be dangerous. Only allow people you know and trust know where you are. The easiest way to avoid this is by looking through your Foursquare friend list. Remove anyone who you think you do not know well enough as a precaution. Only add friends who you know.
4. Blogging only of the past. I know this is something rather hard for people to do especially if they are going to an exciting destination or some place really nice. But think about it, if I want to take advantage of that, all I have to do is to read where you will be going and on what date and time in order for me to plan my "attack". In my view, if you must blog about it, limit the information about date, time and with who for security reasons. The best is to only blog about past events to avoid the hassle.
5. Check your privacy / security settings regularly. As services like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram changes their privacy policy from time to time (and they don't usually inform users until someone discovers it), it is important to always check your privacy settings from regularly. Checking once every 2-3 months would be a good habit. 

Things Not To Do On Social Media #243: Do Not Take Sides

Usain Bolt, currently the fastest man on the planet is also probably one of the most marketable athlete in the world. With brands around the globe just lining up for his endorsement, there are just some things that you cannot do on social media - taking sides.

Though it's not a crime to express a liking for a particular football team, you cannot down play or "insult" the other opponent's team as it is often seen as disrespect and cheap.

In this case, Usain Bolt who just posted a picture of him together with Arsenal legend, Thierry Henry.

The problem is, Bolt cheekily mentioned that he was a fan of Manchester United, one of Arsenal's fiercest rival in the English Premier League and how Henry "played for the wrong team". Although this picture got a lot of "likes" on Instagram, there were a couple of comments from followers (presumably Arsenal fans), who were not too impressed.

The only plus is that this is on his personal account and not for a particular brand. Imagine the PR nightmare the brand has to go through if this were to happen? However, personal or not, if you want to be a well respected ambassador for brands, you should not take sides let alone belittle the competition.

Social Media Revolution

Just exactly how big is social media? Well, it's pretty hard to imagine, but social media is now part of our everyday lives. You are immerse in it, exposed by it or using it either conciously or sub-conciously.

Just to illustrate, here is a video written by international best selling author and keynote speaker Erik Qualman (@equalman). It's part of a series of social media videos that are the most watched in the world. You'll be amazed with some of the stats. Enjoy!

About Erik Qualman
Erik Qualman is an American author of Socialnomics, Digital Leader and Crisis. He is also an international keynote speaker speaking on Gen Y motivation, digital leadership, digital media and future trends.Wikipedia

Why Are Some Companies Not Keen In Social Media?

This is a problem I commonly face when dealing with some companies. Apart from additional budgets needed to maintain Facebook pages or corporate blogs, it all boils down to lack of resources and knowledge about the media channel. Recent stats by Meltwater Group shows that 38% of corporate companies lack resource and time to devote to social media.

With the rise of social media, it is up to media / PR agencies to take the lead and advise corporate clients the benefits of using social media as part of their marketing and branding strategies. One collective issue that I can gather from the chart above is that corporations lack the knowledge simply because they lack the monitoring tools for them to understand and to monitor as well. Unknown to many, there are a wide range of free buzz monitoring or social media monitoring tools available that can be used to keep tabs what is happening in the social media space.

Online tools such as Socialmention can monitor trends as well as positive or negative sentiments about a brand in the social space or using a tool by Momentus Media to conduct a Community Health Check to see if your Facebook page is "healthy". Both of these free tools are amongst the many available free tools that corporations can use to do surface level monitoring as well as keeping tabs on their competitors. Although these tools only give surface level numbers and information, there are of course more in depth analytical tools which are only often available to agencies who purchased them.

The role of a media / PR agency would be to then to come up with social strategies to support their business and marketing objectives. But before anything else, it is important that corporations need to be educated and understand how social media works plus the benefits that the monitoring tools can bring to their company/brand before anyone goes to pitch to them on a social media strategy.

Facebook Set To Revolutionize The Internet

The "Open Graph"

Facebook recently announced the launch of new “social plug-ins” at the f8 conference that will revolutionize the internet and how people are connected to it. Mark Zuckerberg talked about how Facebook intends to connect parts of the Web that other social sites are building, as part of what he described as the "Open Graph." People are increasingly discovering information not just through links to web pages but also from the people and things they care about and through their experiences. Facebook has always been focused on mapping out the part of the graph around people and their relationships. On the other hand, other sites and services have been mapping out other parts of the graph so users can get relevant information about different types of things.

Imagine this: Yelp maps out the content based on businesses and services while Pandora maps out which songs are related to each other. Facebook now helps bring your friends from Facebook to share experiences on these sites or personalize them to you. So if say you liked a song you heard on Pandora, or say you liked a service that aided you on Yelp, you can now tell your friends on Facebook about it by simply clicking on the “like” button on the site and it will appear to your friends as part of your “News Feed”.

With the new social plug-ins, brands would now be able to gauge how well their products and services are doing in terms of public reaction to the number of “likes” or “recommends”. One sample implementation is on CNN.com, where you can see which of your friends “liked” which article from the site.

CNN.com now includes Facebook's Open Graph

Noticed the “Friend’s Activity” section highlighted? Those are actually people I know from my Facebook friend list who have “liked” certain articles within CNN.com. This serves as some sort of “recommender” to people on what to read or what to do, assuming it’s their first time to a particular website. Zuckerberg himself mentioned that the new changes announced constituted "the most transformative thing we've ever done for the web." …well how true indeed. 

For more information:
Mark Zuckerberg during f8 Live
Available Facebook “Social Plug-ins”

Brand Yourself Online

Whether you like it or not, you are a brand. How you behave and how you react is what makes each person unique. Having said that, whatever you say or do in the online world is a reflection of who you are. People who like to rant a lot on blogs or via status updates on social media sites are usually whiny people too in real life. In social media is all about the power of influence. It’s therefore very important to note that you need to be extra careful and witty on what you put up on Twitter and Facebook because the general public might not necessarily perceive it the way you really meant. And if you’re a fairly well known individual, it could be rather damaging to oneself.

Similiarly to consumer and service brands, people might lose confidence should they have a bad experience with a particular brand. So the next time you update that "status message" of yours, do remember to put extra thought to your content and also put yourself in your intended audience's shoes and see it from their perspective.

Google Buzz = Buzz Kill?

Google recently launched Google Buzz, a service to share updates, photos, videos, and more. There are a lot of criticisms when it went live 2 days ago, I for one am a skeptic, but also understand what Google is trying to achieve by doing so.

It certainly looks like a mediocre attempt to emulate Friendfeed and it certainly feels like it's a half baked product in terms of features. But if you look at how Google is positioning it in terms of a marketing stand point, it looks more like a beta or even alpha version of the upcoming Google Wave. Right now, Buzz is available as an extension on Gmail while they improve on Google Wave.

What I don't like most about it it's the way it's presented. Latest "buzz" threads are not displayed in reverse chronological order like Facebook or Twitter updates...which means users need to scroll all the way down to read new updates in a particular Buzz thread. Active Buzz threads are on the top, while the less active ones are below. Although it’s annoying, it does kinda make sense, because “buzz” is really what it’s all about; which are the more talked about topics/threads.

There also isn't a clear indication of who has updated what thread, unlike Facebook have with their "Notifications" tab. Also base on my usage, I’m only notified on Gmail on the threads that I’m participating in, and don’t get updates on those which I’m not. I might be wrong though. Bear in mind, you can also now share photos, videos and links using Buzz…nothing new really...all features that can and will expand into Google Wave in future.

In summary, I think Buzz is released to do what it's meant to do; to create "Buzz"...simple as that...nothing more in terms of function. If you ask me, Google definitely did a good job by getting users like you and me to use Buzz as a test platform for the development and enhancements for Google Wave in future.

Don’t Use Social Media If You Don’t Know How

In today’s digital world, online presence has become a necessity in order for companies to survive and to reach out to their customers and clients. Social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter has provided everyone with a platform to do just that. As with everything else, there is always a tendency for companies to want to use these tools, simply because it’s the current “in thing” and that everybody is doing it.

Based on my personal experiences, many companies here come to me to ask if I can incorporate these tools as part of their online marketing strategy, but they have no clue whatsoever on how these tools function. My job is to educate them on how these tools work and how it will benefit their company. The first question I always ask my clients, “Who is going to maintain it?” Often times, I will get blank stares from them as though that I’m speaking in some foreign language. But the truth is, unless there is an appointed PR company or a qualified spokesperson from within the company to manage and maintain the use of these tools, I wouldn’t recommend companies venturing into them as yet. Here are 3 reasons why:

1. Tools such as Facebook pages and Twitter require constant interaction between companies and their customers. The whole idea of using these tools is to add a “human touch” to the company or brand. Unless of course you have an automated robot intelligent enough to answer questions and respond to each customer directly.
2. Updates. One major use of Facebook pages and Twitter is to push promotions and updates to your followers. If the page is just there for the sake of being there, followers will get disinterested very quickly just like how no one likes visiting a website that hasn’t been updated in a long time.
3. Being professional. I have personally seen some companies on Twitter that often times respond to their customers with lame jokes and casual conversations totally irrelevant to the nature of business. In my opinion, while I agree that companies need to provide a “human” response rather than a template one, they also need to know where to draw the line. Responding to questions casually is still acceptable, but it’s totally unacceptable if it’s got nothing to do with the company product, service or whatever they are set out to achieve. Companies need to know their boundaries on how they respond as it represents the company or their brand as a whole. Which is why I highlighted that it’s very important that these tools are managed by a qualified person who understands clearly of what the company’s objectives are and how they want the public to perceive them.

To sum it all up, my advice is not to venture into social media just because everyone else is doing it. I think companies who are serious into social media must first know how to use it and understand the mechanics of how it works. Only then, social media will be beneficial to the company, otherwise few months down the road, they will be wondering why is there no ROI or participation from the public even after using these social media tools.

David Armano on Brand U.0

David Armano, Senior Vice President of Edelman, talks about Branding U.0 and branding on a personal level.

Key points:

• "A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service or organization." - Marty Neumeier
• Branding is about building trust and interactions.

• Everyday people like yourselves are brands - publishing, creating content - having the ability to share and influence others. Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey who is highly influential, are brands.

• Everyone on the web has influence.

The 5 B's of Buliding Brand U.0

1. Be Ubiquitous: Create multiple streams of "you"
   - If you're really serious about building a personal brand, you got to figure out which one works for you. If you're going to be on Facebook, how are you going to use that? If you're on LinkedIn, how are you going to use that?
2. Be Social: Effectively manage your "social systems"
   - You got to figure out how to effectively use these social network and these tools to create our own social system, that aligns with our personal brand and make the most of it.
3. Be Interesting: Write, photograph, share, give
   - Share what you know. Write and share the things that you see to make it interesting.
4. Be remarkable: Do something worthy of a remark
5. Be yourself: Let your personality shine through
   - Personality has to be true to who you are as an individual.

Sources:
http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/about-me.html
http://www.slideshare.net/darmano/brand-u0-presentation