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So what’s the follow-up on the Facebook Terms of Service fiasco?

This week, in response to all of the upheaval that occurred earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg announced the future of Facebook decision making. 

Facebook users now have an official role (if they choose to use it) in determining policies on the site. There are two governing documents to pay attention to: The Facebook Principles (set of values that guide the development of Facebook) and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (governs Facebook’s operations). Users will be able to review and offer thoughts/changes and eventually vote on these documents in the coming weeks.

From here, whenever Facebook amends one of these documents, the site will notify users and offer them time to make comments or vote about any changes if there is a lot of debate over a certain topic.

In a wrap-up of all the Facebook ToS drama this month, I think that the site is setting a social network precedent for user engagement in the decision making process. In a Brian Solis PR 2.0 post, he writes “the company is employing one of the social web’s greatest assets, people. Facebook is banking on a new genre of user-generated governance (UGV) to improve brand equity as well as customer interaction and loyalty.”

As a fellow Gen Yer, I’m a fan of Zuckerberg. He’s created a social nirvana and has made mistakes in a very public forum while developing it. He’s remained transparent when he’s made these mistakes. He learns and responds fast–all needed leadership traits in a 2.0 world. Another thing I’m a fan of? Facebook officially opened up their corporate blog to comments. Time to listen Facebook. And if you do–we’ll help you avoid shooting yourself in the foot next time. Promise.

There are a lot of Twitter search tools. How do you search on Twitter?

The two search tools I use most often are Search.Twitter.com (which is from Twitter) and Twellow. Not only can you search to your heart’s desire on Search.Twitter, but it also gives a top 10 ranking of the hottest Twitter searches right now. As I write this blog post #snowmageddon (Minnesota is getting hit hard with snow apparently), Safari 4 (Apple’s new browser released last week), and Rocky Mountain News (closing of paper) are the top 3 searches.

Twellow is an easy way to find people by name or industry. If you’re new to Twitter it’s a fantastic way to find people to follow based on common interests. I knew about Twellow way before I even knew about or used Twitter’s own search function! There’s something on Twellow I just noticed called Twellow Hood, which directs you to people in your geographic area. I find it hard to believe there’s only 885 people in the entire state of NH on Twitter-126 in Manchester. Some people don’t put their location so that may cause the numbers to be low. This is very cool to find people local to you.

There are plenty of other search tools. Here’s a good list of them.

What are your favorite Twitter search tools?

What are you giving up for Lent?

Thanks for asking, since I purely want to talk about this in terms of social media.

Imagine giving up Facebook for 40 days. Or Twitter.  A life without tweets, status updates, photo sharing, link loving or wall posting. I know I thrived in a world without all this once (high school?) but can’t imagine going back to a place devoid of the social technology millions of us have grown accustomed to.

Granted, my job and life revolve around these social networks at this point in my 23 years of existence. So, it really isn’t something I could give up. I represent one extreme. How would giving up a social network affect you?

What do you think of the titles given to people who work in the social media realm?
I recently met someone who was an engagement manager. Two years ago I would have thought this person planned weddings or did some type of counseling. Thankfully it’s 2009 and I now have a clue. There are social media specialists (like Meagan), community managers, information architects, new media managers, digital strategists, and social computing strategists, which are some of the more common ones.

These are all positions that didn’t exist five years ago so I think the new titles are progressive and positive. They get people to look twice at your business card or even email. Hopefully these new titles inspire people to ask questions about what you do because they certainly all don’t mean the same thing. Meagan, you will recall, an article we referenced in selecting your new title was from Jeremiah Owyang’s Blog. He’s a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research: Social Computing and has compiled a pretty diverse listing of titles by industry.

Titles, particularly in the social media world, can be an effective conversation starter. LinkedIn is a near effortless way to find out more about what a person’s job entails and their work history. Here’s an example of my public profile on LinkedIn. If you decide you want to pursue a business connection with someone you meet, invite them into your network via LinkedIn and you will be given access to more detailed business history and information.

Social media titles are fun and hip, but let’s be honest, businesses wouldn’t be creating these jobs if there weren’t business opportunities. These titles are meant not to confuse, but to highlight areas of expertise and responsibilities. Or you could do as my sister’s company (Dowling & Partners) does and skip the titles all together. Now that’s an idea!

Please share what other social media titles you have come across…

What is a hashtag?

This question comes up a lot. Let’s talk the basics.

A hashtag is a way to organize community thoughts on a subject in real-time on Twitter. You put a hash symbol (#) directly in front of a keyword (ex: #redsox) which effectively tags and indexes your tweet. 

So, anytime someone tweets about the #redsox it is tracked and organized with other tweets from people talking about the same subject. You can track these hashtag conversations on hashtags.org. Each hashtag is organized as a subject stream which updates instantaneously and has an available RSS feed so you can subscribe to these constant updates. The #redsox hashtag stream looks like this. For Twitter users, you’ll want to follow @hashtags for the service to recognize and index your hashtags.

You can check what hashtags of interest already exist by visiting hashtags.org or using Twitter search. Keep in mind there are a lot of Twitter tools out there that help with hashtag tracking. I find Tweetgrid an organized option to stay on top of hashtags and keywords of importance. 

I find hashtags great for conferences, live events and sporting love but try to avoid using them in excess in everyday tweeting. 140 characters is short enough without constant #this and #that! 

For a more advanced hashtag education, including helpful commands, check out this post from TwiTip. 

Other helpful posts:

How to Start a Twitter Hashtag

An Introduction to Twitter Hashtags

What was your take on the Social Media Breakfast NH today?

I’m glad I went. The crowd was diverse. The speakers were good. It was convenient to me, well planned and interesting. I met tech folks, writers, free lancers, marketers and a few people looking for a job. This is a great networking opportunity for job seekers by the way. A large portion of who I met worked at Massachusetts-based companies and as an outgrowth of the Cambridge/Boston Social Media Breakfast that seems to make sense. Some of those people work from offices in NH which is great.

The theme of the breakfast was Building Bridges and there were three 10-minute speakers. I found it interesting and actually refreshing that as much time was dedicated to networking as to the speakers. Everyone had their laptops and Blackberries going and I wonder how speakers nowadays feel about an audience that isn’t looking up at them. I found it takes a lot of concentration to be updating on Twitter and still paying attention to what the speaker was saying. Particularly doing this blog post, I wish they had printed handouts.

Jen Zingsheim from Custom Scoop was the first speaker. She talked about social media best practices and bridging the gap between old and new media. I didn’t know many people in the room, but I had met her at a Yankee Chapter PRSA event before (on what else, but social media!). Since I was Tweeting and only hearing the speakers for some periods of time I came to the conclusion that the second speaker, Wayne Kurtzman from Hello Direct, sounds like Casey Kasem. I wonder if anyone else got that connection. He gave some history on social media and also conveyed some aggregation sites for Twitter which were new to me (Twitter Search and Tweet Grid). Good sense of humor.

The event was capped of with David Hurlburt from WMUR-TV (though he made it clear he was there representing himself). He talked about trends in television broadcasting and how newsrooms and reporters are learning to adapt and change to meet the today’s news standards. Citizen journalists are now accepted and welcomed which is certainly a sign of the times. I have a disclaimer too: my husband is a reporter for this station.

These events are going to be held monthly. It was a full capacity crowd with a huge waiting list. No doubt the rest of these will be successful. Would be interested in others’ feedback on the event. Join in!

What has got you all a-twitter?

This is a short post today in anticipation of tomorrow’s first Social Media Breakfast NH. Social Media Breakfasts (SMB) have been going on across the country since 2007. Boston was the host of the original SMB (organized by social media evangelist Bryan Person). The aim of these events are for “social media experts and newbies alike to come together eat, meet, share and learn.” The breakfast (theme of building bridges) is hosting three local NH speakers to share their thoughts on the social media landscape.

NH’s breakfast was passionately organized by Leslie Poston (@geechee__girl on Twitter). One thing I’ve learned in social media is that passion is usually a safe describer for the people involved on these networks. In Leslie’s case, she  wanted NH to have the same fun/creatively rewarding networking opportunities as our sister city to the south and beyond. She mobilized and made it happen. Breakfast tickets (100+) were sold out two full weeks in advance. 

So, Tara and I will be attending SMBNH tomorrow morning at Southern New Hampshire University representing PW & Media Talk. We’ll be live tweeting from the event (see our Twitter streams: @meaganfish @tarahersh) and blogging here afterwards. 

My coworkers joked with me about the breakfast before I left work today. Images of social media addicts huddled around tables tweeting to each other about how they like their eggs. 

Guess you’ll have to check my Twitter stream to find out.

Heard any news lately about your generation embracing social media?

I read an article recently on Twitter from Time that said that the 35-44 year old population is the largest demographic on Twitter. I have to say I feel personally proud. Our generation didn’t grow up with technology, certainly not in high school. College was my first introduction to computers – mainframes. Work stations were housed in one room and connected to a mainframe. Whenever you needed to do a project you’d trek to the closest computer room. Computer programming classes taught us how to write in DOS language. I really enjoyed that class because of the logic involved. Little good it does for me 20-plus years later, right? Wrong. What they were really teaching us, which I think schools now more than ever stress, is the ability to think critically.

For us Gen Xers computer technology has been thrust upon us and from the stats it looks like a good portion of us have embraced it. Schools today recognize that technology is constantly evolving. Continuing education in today’s fast paced work environment is vitally important no matter what your age. Computer programs come and go like fashion trends, but the ability to learn, adapt, and think strategically, now that’s a recipe for long-term success.

What’s going on with Facebook and their terms of service?

If you haven’t read about it yet, on 2/4 Facebook updated its terms of use. On 2/15, the Consumerist pointed out the changes and sparked debates across the web about content ownership. In a nutshell, the new terms stated that once you’ve posted content (ex: share a photo, send a message, post a status update) on the site, even if you delete your profile, that the content still exists and is owned indefinitely by Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, posted a response on the Facebook blog to reactions about the new terms on Monday:

“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.”

Today on Facebook there was a posted notice and another blog post that the terms of use are reversing until they resolve the issues that have been raised since the initial changes. You can share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms here. Nearly 60,000 Facebookers have already joined this group to speak up.

What do you want to talk about today?

Friday the 13th is a good day to talk about how social media can go wrong. There have been a couple Twitter blunders lately. An advertising agency executive, who ironically was presenting to his client about digital media, made a not-so-enthusiastic remark about being in their city. Another mistake occurred when a reporter was upset at a marketing consultant.

So, it is perhaps a good time to review some principles of new media.
1. Twitter and blogs are public forums. You never know who will see what you write. So be careful.
2. If you put it out there for the whole world to see, you must accept the consequences. Don’t attack unless you’re ready for everyone to hear the other side.
3. If you write when you are all worked up have someone else look at what you post before it goes live. Or type your response but put some time between the emotion and hitting send or publish. Even better, pick up the phone and work it out with the person.
4. Don’t speak negatively about clients. Seems like a no brainer right? Well, apparently not. Best to take mom’s advice “if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I’m sure there are others I could think of but it’s Friday night, dinner is waiting and with today’s luck my computer will crash. Please feel free to add to this list.

Juicy stories grow legs fast. Just because we have this new great technology doesn’t mean it should replace traditional ways of communication especially when your personal reputation is at stake.