Modern Life on the Go

POLL: What Will Facebook’s Closing Price Be After Its First Day Of Trading?

admin — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:55:56 +0000

We now know that Facebook’s initial public offering will open at $ 38 per share (tomorrow morning. But what price will it reach at the end of the trading day?

Ireland-based bookmaker Paddy Power placed the following odds on Facebook’s closing price Friday:

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2009 Study On Facebook Engagement Holds True

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:45:43 +0000

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Julie Andrews on May 14, 2012 1:16 PM

Engagement is social media’s new hot-button metric. But much remains unknown as to how to most actively engage whatever fan base there is and how to split resources between furthering engagement and expanding the network.

An interesting study on social engagement a few years back revealed these valuable tips that still hold water for how to boost engagement. At the time of the study, a non-tech brand by the name of Starbucks (heard of it?) ranked most socially engaging across 11 social networks, outpacing other tech-based companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Dell.

A key takeaway within San Mateo, Calif.-based Altimeter Group‘s report was to act according to your budgets. “It is better to be consistent and participate in fewer channels,” read the report, “than to spread yourself too thin.”

Read: Don’t just show up on Facebook and leave it at that. If resources are strapped, carefully select a few social networks (might we suggest Facebook, the largest?) to participate in and work them — meaning, actively participate in them.

Additional takeaways gleaned from the report included these ways to boost engagement:

Add fresh content regularly: Post updates, add to profile information often, and keep making efforts to expand the network by increasing likes and followers and getting users to talk about your page. Allow us to add: Post a plethora of content types including photos, updates, timeline entries, events, teasers to blog posts and articles, and, of course, videos.
Be active and responsive: Respond to comments and, perhaps even more important, moderate comment sections to keep them appropriate and on-target.
Work by the numbers: If you have the manpower and strategic structure in place, make an appearance on all of the social networks. However, if resources are limited, choose just as many social networks as you can be actively tended to and regularly updated.

There was a time when content creators were encouraged not to partake in comment streams, the thinking being that letting the stream evolve organically was best. Now, responding to comments is supported as a recommendation to grow engagement. Of course, monitoring comments requires manpower.

Among the suggestions, the most noteworthy was this: Make social media part of everyone’s job, not just limited to a few people or one team. The recommendation went that employees across the organization should participate to an increased flow of content on social networks, all the more with which to actively engage with customers in “channels that make sense.”

This raises many questions, though: Should all employees be required to spend a set number of minutes daily or weekly interacting with customers on Facebook? Or could this open the company up to liability issues if an employee untrained in customer service misspoke in a social-network interaction?

Should training in social media communications be required? How is your team dealing with managing its social media presence and content creation? Are all employees posting to Facebook on behalf of the company and engaging with customers there?

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An IPO-Worthy Executive Hoodie For Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

admin — Fri, 11 May 2012 00:37:22 +0000

Julie Andrews on May 10, 2012 6:31 PM

Now that what started as an exclusive network for college students of the Ivies has grown up, could it be time for the wardrobe of its mastermind to graduate, too?

Apparently, yes. Ah, but without laughter. We’re tipping our hats to our punchy comrades over at The Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Runway blog and TechCrunch for getting down to the real business of the Facebook initial public offering: the trademark hoodie 27-year-old Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is wont to wear.

Oh, how we chuckled at their note-to-Zuck posts urging him to, what else, give the ole hoodie a style makeover of the executive-class variety.

They even went so far as to suggest one for the man-boy social media maverick (understanding, surely, that he doesn’t have much time for shopping these days).

Is it a suit? Is it a hooded sweatshirt? Well, let’s call the online-only Betabrand executive pinstripe hoodie a hybrib.

Some corporate-minded critics have said of late that Zuckerberg should step up his style, and that throwing on a pajama-like hoodie to go to an IPO meeting signals “immaturity.” (Or, say we, is he merely baring his flying stripes, because the hoodie is the techies’ uniform…or perhaps, it’s a show of an inability to conform….or perhaps lack of time to shop.) The point is: Does his clothing matter?

Regardless of what the critics say, the man who raised $ 2.34 billion in funding likely couldn’t care less. He doesn’t have to. And investors, if they are smart, would do well to focus on what they’re contemplating buying instead of playing stylecaster.

Indeed, the Betabrand executive pinstripe hoodie is super fine. But will Zuckerberg go for it?

Readers: Do you think Zuckerberg’s clothing is fair game to critique?

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Another Facebook Acquisition: Mobile App Glancee

admin — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:38:10 +0000

David Cohen on May 4, 2012 10:36 PM

Facebook’s May 18 initial public offering hasn’t slowed its acquisition frenzy, as the social network gobbled up location-based mobile application Glancee for an undisclosed amount.

One of the rumored reasons for the delay of the IPO was the revised paperwork Facebook had to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission following its $ 1 billion acquisition of photo-sharing service Instagram and its purchase of about 650 former AOL patents from Microsoft for $ 550 million.

Glancee, an app for Apple iOS and Android devices, allowed users to sign in with Facebook and discover other users within a specified distance with similar interests.

The app has already been shut down, and Glancee’s three co-founders, who were also its only employees, will join Facebook.

Facebook issued the following statement:

We are thrilled to confirm that Facebook has acquired Glancee. The acquisition closed today. We can’t wait for co-founders Andrea, Alberto, and Gabriel (Chief Executive Officer Andrea Vaccari, Chief Operating Officer Alberto Tretti, and Chief Technology Officer Gabriel Grise) to join the Facebook team to work on products that help people discover new places and share them with friends.

And a note on the Glancee homepage read:

We started Glancee in 2010 with the goal of bringing together the best of your physical and digital worlds. We wanted to make it easy to discover the hidden connections around you, and to meet interesting people. Since then, Glancee has connected thousands of people, empowering serendipity and pioneering social discovery.

We are therefore very excited to announce that Facebook has acquired Glancee and that we have joined the team in Menlo Park to build great products for over 900 million Facebook users. We’ve had such a blast connecting people through Glancee, and we truly thank our users for being a part of the Glancee community.

If you are a Glancee user, download your data. If you want to connect with us, send us an email.

Readers: Do you think Facebook’s acquisition of Glancee will affect the timing of its IPO?

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Report: Facebook Users Negligent About Privacy

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:18:00 +0000

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David Cohen on May 3, 2012 8:58 AM

Despite efforts by Facebook to raise awareness, nearly 13 million of the 150 million-plus U.S. users of the social network either have not accessed or are not aware of its privacy controls, according to a new study by Consumer Reports.

The Consumer Reports Annual State of the Net survey, which will run in the magazine’s June issue, also found that 7 million households reported issues such as log-ins being used without permission, harassment, and threats via Facebook in 2011, up 30 percent from 2010.

And only 37 percent of Facebook users have customized how much personal information is available to applications by using the social network’s privacy tools, Consumer Reports found.

Notable potentially dangerous privacy gaffes uncovered by Consumer Reports over the past 12 months include:

39.3 million Facebook users identified a family member in their profiles
20.4 million included their birth date and year in their profiles
7.7 million liked a Facebook page pertaining to a religious affiliation
4.6 million discussed their love life on their walls
2.6 million discussed their recreational use of alcohol on their walls
2.3 million liked a page regarding sexual orientation

Consumer Reports Technology Editor Jeff Fox said:

Facebook really is changing the way the world socially communicates and has become a successful service in part by leveraging copious amounts of personal data that can be spread far wider than its users might realize. Our investigation revealed some fascinating, and some disquieting trends — but ones always worth knowing for consumers who wish to keep their personal data under better control.

Consumer Reports added that Facebook Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly stressed that the social network runs tens of billions of privacy access checks daily, and Facebook has launched initiatives to give it users greater access to their personal data, and to monitor apps’ use of personal data , and a spokesperson for the company told the magazine:

We have a dedicated team that reviews apps using a risk-based approach to ensure that we address the biggest risks, rather than just doing a cursory review at the time an app is first launched.

Consumer Reports offered the following suggestions for Facebook users to protect their privacy:

Think before typing: Even if a user deletes his or her account (which takes Facebook about one month), some information can remain in Facebook’s computers for up to 90 days.

Regularly check Facebook exposure: Each month, users should check out how their page looks to others. Review individual privacy settings if necessary.

Protect basic information: Set the audience for profile items, such as town or employer. And users should remember: Sharing information with “friends of friends” could expose them to tens of thousands of people.

Know what can’t be protected: Each user’s name and profile picture are public. To protect one’s identity, they should not use a photo, or use one that doesn’t show their face.

“Un-public” the wall: Set the audience for all previous wall posts to just friends.

Turn off tag suggest: If users would rather not have Facebook automatically recognize their face in photos, they could disable that feature in their privacy settings. The information will be deleted.
Block apps and sites that snoop: Unless users intercede, friends can share personal information about them with apps. To block that, they should use controls to limit the info apps can see.
Keep wall posts from friends: Users don’t have to share every wall post with every friend. They can also keep certain people from viewing specific items in their profile.
When all else fails, deactivate: When a user deactivates their account, Facebook retains their profile data, but the account is made temporarily inaccessible. Deleting an account, on the other hand, makes it inaccessible forever.

Readers: How extensively have you used Facebook’s privacy controls?

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Facebook Adds Names To Friend Thumbnails In Timeline For Profiles

admin — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:16:57 +0000

Facebook made a change to the friends box on timeline for profiles, adding users’ friends’ names to the eight thumbnail images that appear in the box.

The previous version contained only the thumbnail images, and users had to pass over the images with their cursors to view the names of friends.

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NetworkClean Joins Facebook Reputation-Management Crowd

admin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:54:50 +0000

The Facebook reputation-management field just got a little more crowded with the launch of the beta version of NetworkClean, a free tool that offers multiple options.

NetworkClean will look to carve its niche in a field that already includes Reppler and Secure.me, among others.

NetworkClean also includes a feature that it calls “Reputation Visualization,” which provides users with an overview of their presence on Facebook. And its “My Info” feature offers information such as which Facebook friends mention them the most.

NetworkClean solves a critical need for social media members by placing the control back into the users’ hands, enabling them to monitor and protect their own social image around the clock.

Readers: Are you concerned enough about your reputation on Facebook and other social networks to use a service like NetworkClean, Reppler, or Secure.me?

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Facebook Doubles Its Lobbying Ahead Of IPO

admin — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:48:42 +0000

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Jennifer Moire on April 20, 2012 10:11 PM

Facebook filed its first quarter lobbying reports with the U.S. Senate today and the numbers indicate that the social site is on pace for another record year, spending $ 650,000 so far in 2012.

That’s a hefty price tag, especially since the first quarter figure represents nearly half of what Facebook spent in all of 2011, another banner year for the company’s lobbying balance sheet which grew to a hefty $ 1.35 million.

The irony is that the quarterly report is filed with the U.S. Senate in the midst of what the tech industry is calling Cyber Week, when a number of cybersecurity bills which Facebook has an interest in will be considered by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The quarterly figure just reported by Facebook is almost two-thirds more than the social networking site spent this time last year. It’s also an enormous leap from the first quarter lobbying spend in 2010 of $ 41,390.

Since then, of course, Facebook has expanded its Washington office, hiring staff from Capitol Hill as well as expanding its privacy team.

In the past, Facebook’s lobbying records, while steadily growing over time were modest compared to other technology companies. As of this writing, Google’s report has not been filed online. We will try to update this post as more information becomes available.

What do you think of Facebook’s growing lobbying budget?

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Sun, Sand, and Mickey

admin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:22:29 +0000

Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from the big, bad world. As a Modernist on the Go, I see a lot of troubling things in my travels. The United States is descending more and more into a police state. Many other countries are following the same downward spiral. There are, of course, bright spots to go towards, but by and large there is a lot to worry about.

While these problems should not be ignored, they cannot be focused on exclusively. The human mind needs to take a break from seriousness every now and then. A vacation is in order.

And where can you really take a break? Disneyland! Duh!

Pick up yourself some disneyland tickets and head over to sunny California (on the cheap of course) and immerse yourself in make believe where the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and the difference is clear.

If you have children, that’s even better, but by no means required. It’s OK to be a grown up and be amused by amusement parks. That’s why they are named that way!

While I don’t recommend living or working in The People’s Commie Republic of Kalifornia, I do recommend the weather, the wine, and the scenery. Basically, it’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. After all, the ring of fire is heating up, and that’s definitely a place you don’t want to be. But until that happens, it’s a great vacation!

Browser Plugin Promises Better Facebook Searches

admin — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:36:05 +0000

A free browser plugin launching tomorrow promises to put a more powerful search bar onto your Facebook homepage.

Sociabell promises better Facebook searches that includes the entire web in addition to the social network, plus the ability to share search results with friends.

Facebook may be working on its own upgrade of the native search bar on the site, but until then third-party solutions like the one promised by Sociabell could tide us over.

The video embedded below explains how Sociabell works. Let us know what you think of the footage by posting in the comments section beneath this post.

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