Don’t let your social networks become your enemy in lawsuits
Greetings Readers,
For a long time now, I have advocated being very careful of what you put on your social networks. From compromising photos on your facebook page to tweets about your desire to become the next Hitler, anything you post on social networks can and will likely be used against you if you don't think twice before posting them. Not only can those drunken party pictures damage your chances of landing that great job, but they can also screw you out of winning a lawsuit.
This week, a man in Canada who was suing for damages resulting from two car accidents in 2001 and 2003 had many of his claims rejected because what he had posted on facebook was the complete opposite of what he was alleging in his lawsuit. Long story short, he claimed that his social life had gone down the tubes and that his friends wouldn't speak to him, but his facebook pictures showed him hosting parties and socializing with a good number of friends. The $1.3 million lawsuit only got him $40,000 thanks to the photos.
If you are going say one thing, especially in places where it really maters like a courtroom or a job interview, it is generally a very bad idea to have evidence to the contrary on your facebook profile, flickr page or any other social network to which you belong. Not only can the truth come out and screw you (that is what you get for being dishonest), but social networks are a better way for people to get to know you which might not be a good thing depending on what you want them believing about you.
In the end, you have two real options, be completely honest with everybody at all times incase they want to check up on you, or think twice about what you put online and what people will think about what you post.
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Is Twitter Good or Bad for the Swine-Flu?
Greetings Readers!
After seeing non-stop coverage of flu fears, I decided I should write my thoughts on the relationship between swine-flu and twitter.
If you haven't heard of the swine-flu, especially if you use Twitter, you are likely living under a rock on another planet and don't understand any human languages. The swine-flu is the talk of all of the news outlets on tv, radio and the internet. While I will admit that I believe that the massive amount of coverage that the swine-flu is getting in mainstream media is beyond overkill and done to either increase ratings or cause panic (which would be another story to boost ratings), I think the real story is how it is being talked about on social networking sites, in particular, Twitter.
Twitter can be a wonderful tool for spreading information quickly and efficiently (assuming that the service is actually working), but it can also be a tool to cause more harm than good. With people constantly retweeting the latest bit of information, which many times can be inaccurate, it is easy to see how such a service can take an issue such as swine-flu and blow it so far out of proportion that it causes panic. I believe that this is what is happening. While I will admit that there has been some good discussion and some informative links that have been passed around, most of the twitter chatter hasn't been helpful to the swine-flu cause. Whether its jokes that try to make light of the seriousness of the outbreak or those that tweet out of a state of panic because the flu is in their area or those that just flood their twitter stream with any swine-flu related link, no matter how inaccurate it is, many of the people that are discussing the swine-flu on Twitter are causing more harm than good. If you have uninformed people in a state of panic sending out information about what they are panicking about, then it only serves to create even more uninformed people in a state of panic. The last thing we need on twitter is more FUD.
How should we be twittering the swine-flu outbreak you ask? There are several ways you can make sure you are a part of the solution and not part of the problem. First, if you see a new link going around that has already been tweeted by several people you follow, especially those with hundreds of thousands of followers, there is no need for you to retweet the same information again. All that will do is annoy your followers because instead of posting something original, you are just copying the same thing that everybody else is posting. Second, make sure you have the most up-to-date information available. Twittering about old reports won't help anybody, especially when older reports tend to be more inaccurate than what is new at the time since many places don't bother to update their stories. Last, unless you have a confirmed case of swine-flu, don't twitter about it. I realize that being sick sucks, but saying you think you have swine-flu just because you have flu-like symptoms only serves to create panic in your community.
If you have suggestions for how people can be part of the solution instead of the problem, please post them in the comments.
- Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
How Do You Pick Your Social Networking Friends?
Greetings Readers!
Last night, I was playing around with the cool new website, socialmedian, when I came across a post about the dangers of random friending. This story got me to thinking about how I choose my friends on my various social networks. After giving some thought to it, I thought it would make for an interesting blog post, so here it goes.
How do you decide who to friend on social networks? Do you have have different rules for friending for the different social networks? Personally, I have different rules for friending depending on the social network and what the use of the social network is. For example, with only a couple of exceptions, if I friend somebody on a site such as Facebook, which I find to be a more personal social network as that is where I keep much of my contact information and various other things, it is because I personally know you or have had contact with you at some point. This differs greatly from other networks that I am apart of. On Twitter, I would say I am about as picky about the people I follow, but its based on different criteria. When it comes to Twitter, I have two main criteria for me to follow you. First, I will likely only follow you if you tweet about things that I find interesting or helpful. Links to things showing me how I can do better with things such as blogging, podcast or others is probably the best way to have me follow you. Second, you can't tweet too much. I don't like it when people tweet excessively (20+ times a day). If you are using your tweets to send great links and information, I usually overlook this, but I don't want my twitter stream to be flooded by a single person. While I love Twitter, I don't want to spend all day staying up with my feeds because one or more of my twitter friends insist on Twittering until their fingers fall off. Different yet again, is how I use FriendFeed. If I friend somebody on FriendFeed, it is solely based on the content the produce and share. If I like what you are posting, I will follow you to make my FriendFeed use more valuable. It is kind of the fire hose approach, but I find its the best way to keep from missing out on great content.
One of the great things about social networking is that you can use the networks however you please. It can be a great way to keep in touch with friends and family as well as a great promotional tool. However you use your networks, I think the idea still remains that you are judged by the company you keep. When I introduce somebody to a network such as Twitter, I will be showing them my profile and I want them to see that I can get value from Twitter by following people that are intelligent and willing to pass along information that I find helpful or informative in some way. Being able to give myself a valuable experience based upon the people I friend on social networks is great, but it is also a great way to get new people on the service because they can see how such a service can provide value.
For many people, social networks can be about having great conversations. I rarely use my social networks in such a manner, but that is based on some personal preferences that I might discuss at a later time, but it centers around having the option to respond but not feeling obligated to respond to what somebody has to say. For people who use social networks for conversation, friending people largely becomes about who is an interesting person to have a conversation with. I don't know about you, but I don't have much use for people that can't hold up their end of the conversation. I'm not looking to have 'yes men' as friends (my ego isn't that big), but I do like to conversate with somebody who has an opinion about something and can support their position intelligently. This is part of how I choose guests for my podcasts as well.
No matter how you choose to use the multitude of social networks, you likely have an opinion as to what makes a good social networking friend and how your choose your social networking friends. How do you choose your social networking friends? Do you take a cautious approach and friend only a few, or do you friend everybody and cut back on the people you don't think fit well with how you want to use a particular socail network? Tell me how you handle freinding on social networks in the comments!
Follow me on Twitter!
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Twitter vs FriendFeed
Greetings Readers!
I have been using Twitter for close to a year and FriendFeed maybe half that time at best and I feel its finally time for me to declare which service is better. Before I announce the better service, I should say that their overall function is similar but not exactly the same.
For those that don't know, Twitter is a great "micro-blogging" tool. With Twitter, you are encouraged to tell people what you are doing. You can also have conversations on Twitter and share the really cool things you find online with all of your friends. The number of things that can be done with Twitter is practically limitless. Twitter also has a huge community around it to the point that there are tons of programs that allow users to interact with the service, such as TweetDeck, something not common with other services. FriendFeed on the other hand is this (minus the large community) and more.
FriendFeed allows you to do the same things as I mentioned above with Twitter, but you can do much more with it. FriendFeed is about aggregating your online presence and sharing it with other people who can share it with their contacts if they choose. With FriendFeed, whenever you write a blog post, put a picture on Flickr, Digg a story or do pretty much anything else, it will be put in your stream for all you contacts to see and comment. When a friend likes or comments on your posts, the content is shared with their friends which allows for content to spread to many people very quickly who would likely have not known about the content otherwise. With threaded comments that are essentially open to anybody assuming an item shows up in your feed to comment on, FriendFeed allows for much a much greater discussion with many people than can be done with Twitter.
Given this comparison, FriendFeed clearly seems to be superior to Twitter, but its not a perfect service. With Twitter, you can follow many people, but the more people you follow, the less valuable the service becomes because you tend to miss tweets and don't always know what is going on. Personally, I find the maximum number of people I can follow while not becoming completely overwhelmed with Tweets is around 200, but I would say that 150 is a more reasonable number. This depends of course on how often the people you follow tweet, but it seems to be a good number for most people. FriendFeed on the other hand, the more people you follow, the more valuable the service becomes. Since the conversations are opened to everybody and not just to a friend or two, there isn't a real negitive impact for following a large number of people. I find that the more people I am subscribed to on FriendFeed, the more cool items that I find interesting come across my FriendFeed. Since many of the people I follow comment on similar things, while my feed is a little busier, it doesn't seem to become overwhelming. Also, with the more people you follow, the more cool things you will find. The only problem here is that FriendFeed only has a fraction of the users that Twitter does.
As I am sure you can tell, I prefer FriendFeed to Twitter for many reasons, but I still use Twitter (whos messages are aggregated into FriendFeed) because it has more users who I have a closer relationship with than my FriendFeed friends. If my Twitter friends were on FriendFeed, I would be likely to leave Twitter. I do think that this will change in the future as more people see that more value can be gained from FriendFeed than Twitter. Until that time comes, its really about where the people are at, which at this time is Twitter.
While Twitter is a great service, one which I use many times of day, I think it is no where close to providing the value that can be offered by FriendFeed. Not taking into account the community surrounding the service (various apps that use the service such as TweetDeck), the only thing that Twitter is better for is the larger number of users. FriendFeed is better in most every aspect which is why I think it is the better service.
Winner: FriendFeed!
What do you think about FriendFeed and Twitter? Which do you think is a better service?
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Integrating Facebook Connect into your Wordpress site
Greetings Readers!
With all the excitement surrounding Facebook Connect this week, I thought I would help WordPress users like myself get it working on your site.
If you aren't sure what Facebook Connect can do for you and your WordPress site, I found a video showing off a Facebook Connect WordPress plugin.
If that is cool enough that you think you want to install it on your blog, you can download the Facebook Connect plugin here.
To see just how to get the plugin up and running so you can utilize Facebook Connect on your WordPress install, here is a how-to video.
That is all you need to integrate Facebook Connect into your WordPress site!
I will be integrating it with the Global Geek News Blog, Global Geek News and Geek News Daily in the next day or two. Check back to play with it once its up and running!
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Has Facebook Shot Itself in the Foot with the Verified Apps program?
Greetings Readers!
Yesterday, Facebook announced their new Verified App program. For an app to qualify as to be a Verified App, it must be trustworthy. It must be secure, respectful, and transparent. Oh, and you must also pay $375.
What does the app get for this high price? Apps that get the Verified designation will be given a special badge to place on the application, designation on the application directory, plus a few other bonuses like advertising credits and easier rules on how many notifications, emails and invitations they can send out to users. Even though developers get all of this great stuff, Facebook only expects about 10% of its current 48,000 apps to qualify.
The real question is whether its worth it for developers to pay such a high price to become a Verified App? I really don't think it is. While it may be just a drop in the bucket for bigger companies that have Facebook apps and might seem worth it to show their customers that their app is trustworthy, I really don't see any point in it. If Facebook users have been getting by without that trustworthy guarantee or even caring about the applications they use enough to look into the security, I don't think that the majority of Facebook users will care of the applications they use are verified. Most probably won't even know what it means to be a Verified App other than the fact that it stands out from other applications that don't have it. If people really cared about how trustworthy the apps are, they would take the time to read the privacy statements and terms of use for each individual app that they use.
If the users aren't demanding an application be verified, then the developers shouldn't bother with the program. If they users don't care about whether the app is verified, what incentive is there for developers to make their apps verified and pay $375. Given the current state of the economy and online advertising, most people with simple apps can't afford that kind of price and it would take a long time to make enough money to cover the expense. Unless the developer is a large company, it really isn't worth it to pay that kind of price. I don't know any other open platforms that charge such a fee for anything, rather-less to just sport some badge of trust.
Facebook can certainly make some money off of this new program, but I don't think it is worth it. Because of the large money amount involved in getting this badge, I believe it will alienate more developers than will embrace it. When you have small developers who make applications for fun, they often do it because it is easy and cheap. The less of a barrier to entry there is, the more attractive it becomes to smaller developers. By creating such a program that insinuates that they have an application that isn't trusted because they don't have the money to get the Verified App badge, is essentially slapping the smaller developers in the face. Considering how big apps have become to the Facebook social network, snubbing the smaller developers is not a good move by Facebook. Insulting developers with high fees is not the way to make friends or grow the database of applications.
By Facebook turning its back on the smaller developer and basically saying they aren't big enough to matter, Facebook has shot themselves in the foot. While the idea might give the Facebook users some piece of mind, it shouldn't come at the expense of the developers. To create a sucessful platform, you must be able to balance the users desire for trust and security while keeping the barrier of entry to developers as low as possible. If Facebook wants true sucess, they must be willing to do everything they can to maintain this balance, but they are already off to a bad start. Hopefully they will see the error in their ways and make the appropriate changes to their program.
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
Yammer won the TechCrunch50?! What were the judges smoking?
Hey readers!
This is my fist on a good number of posts coming out of the TechCrunch50, a truely amazing conference. Before I start posting my thoughts on many of the other companies that were at the conference, I figured I should start with the winner, Yammer.
For those of you that weren't at the conference, watching it on Ustream or reading the many blog posts from it, Yammer is basically a threaded Twitter clone for the enterprise environment (speaking of which, you can follow me on Twitter!). The creators apparently decided to steal the threaded conversations idea from Friendfeed, throw it into their Twitter clone and make it enterprise exclusive in the way that Facebook was exclusive in the early days where only people with university email addresses could join. In this case, its only for people with a company email address.
If you attended or followed the coverage of the conference, you would most likely agree that this was far from the most deserving company. They didn't even bother to change the Twitter look to something unique. Like many things that presented there, I would consider this more of a feature than a company. It would not take much for Twitter to do the same thing, plus they already know the micro-blogging space and have a good bit of experience under their belt. There were a number of truly revolutionary products unveiled at the event, but this was not one of them. Adgregate Markets and Swype were just two of the truly industry changing products that were far more deserving of the honor than a Twitter knockoff. I will of course be writing about those companies and many more in the next few days.
With over a thousand applicants to the conference, this makes me wonder just how bad the applicants were that didn't make the cut. I don't understand how this could have even been a finalist unless there were some kind of kickbacks to the judges or if the judges were too drunk from the parties to make a logical decision. I am completely baffled by this decision. They came up with a business model for Twitter, good for them. Sell the idea to Twitter, don't try to create a company out of a feature, especially when the same job can be accomplished in a more organized fashion with a simple message board.
Anyway, this is the first of many blog posts on my thoughts about what was presented at the conference. Over the next couple of days, I will be covering my favorite companies and companies that made me ask myself why how they got got past 1,000 other companies to get into the conference. I will also be doing a Global Geek News podcast in the next week also with more of my thoughts as well as on many of the other big topics, so stay tuned for that!
-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray
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