Fade to Play

On May 14, I was one of the speakers for a workshop organised by the International Internet Marketing Association. It was a fun event and I was able to learn a little bit about how businesses are using Facebook for advertising, brand marketing, and networking. I am really glad I was able to be a part of this event. There were about 70 people in attendance and the questions during our presentations and the subsequent panel were beneficial in helping each of us better understand some of the needs and objectives of business people.

One lesson to take from the workshop is that businesses are using Facebook to find information about potential hires especially questionable photographs or content on one’s profile page. For example, having a status update message about getting drunk every night could get your name removed from a short list against equally qualified candidates. Some people were also surprised at the amount of time and effort that is necessary to maintain a Facebook presence (e.g. updating a company page, responding to wall messages, or organising events).

Regarding one’s profile page, my advice would be to keep your profile friends-only (maybe even only be searchable by friends) and to create friends lists where you can hide and share personal content based on the closeness of your friendship. I am very careful about who I add as friends and even more careful about who sees my full profile.

My presentation was divided into 3 sections that I perceived to be of most relevance to the Internet Marketing audience. I first focused on how Facebook can be used as a networking tool to enhance real world meetings and potential connections made at events and conferences. I then discussed how Facebook can be used to create a brand identity and the importance of understanding the privacy filtering available. I used the book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman as example of how you want to create a persona through Facebook — “I’m who Facebook says I am”. I closed with examples of how Facebook can be used as an information management tool and the importance of the News Feed feature to share and gather information of specific relevance to one’s work interests.

Both Maureen McCartney of Citizens Bank of Canada and Michael Fergusson of Kinzin had excellent presentations of their case studies. Unfortunately I was unable to take notes as I focused on running through my own talk.

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Relevance: A useful opportunity to find out how business people are using Facebook and have an informative discussion of its value as a marketing, communication, and organisational tool.

Last night around 2am I received an email from Facebookmail. I was a little bit cautious so I googled the terms “facebookmail” and came across this post on SpeakGood in which a similar thing happened to them.

Yes, Facebookmail exists and it is how they contact people. They emailed me to let me know that I needed to change my password as my old password was no longer valid. I can only assume that somehow my account got compromised and they decide to act accordingly. I guess it was that unprotected WiFi that I accessed Friday afternoon while downtown. It was a stupid thing to do, next time I will be alot safer.

From: Facebook <xxx@facebookmail.com>
Date: 17.05.2008 02:45
Subject: Facebook Password Security Alert
To: Phillip Jeffrey

Hey Phillip,

We have reset your Facebook account password for security reasons. You will need to use the link provided in this email to create a new, secure password for your account. Do not use your old password. In the future, please make sure that when you log in to Facebook, you always log in from a legitimate Facebook page with the facebook.com domain. To reset your password, follow the link below:
https://login.facebook.com/xxx (If clicking on the link doesn’t work, try copying and pasting it into your browser.)

Please contact info@facebook.com with any questions.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Relevance: Very cool that Facebook caught this, responded accordingly and contacted me to change my password. Thanks.

In a couple of hours I will be giving a presentation entitled Facebook for Business: How to build relationships, express identity, and manage information in a social ecology. It is for a workshop being organised by the International Internet Marketing Association (IIMA). I am very excited and actually pretty nervous as I always get nervous speaking in public. I feel privileged to get this opportunity and I am in excellent company as UBC Internet Marketing professor Ean Jackson, Maureen McCartney, Web Marketing Manager at Citizen Bank, and Michael Fergusson Chief Products and Innovation Officer at Uniserve and the Founder of Kinzen will be speaking prior to myself.

Their biographies are available here.

What You’ll Learn:

* start with an overview by UBC Internet Marketing professor Ean Jackson that gives some background on the phenomenally-successful social networking application and how it stacks up with contenders such as MySpace and LinkedIn.
* Case Study - Citizens Bank of Canada. Maureen McCartney, Web Marketing Manager at Citizens Bank will share how a financial institution used Facebook to promote brand awareness and drive business results.
* Case Study – Uniserve/Kinzin. Michael Fergusson Chief Products and Innovation Officer at Uniserve and the Founder of Kinzen will talk about how and why he created a Facebook application that now boasts 1.5 million users
* Facebook How-to Workshop. Phillip Jeffrey of the UBC Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC), will take you on an entertaining voyage of discovery as you learn how to use Facebook for your business

Unfortunately it has been sold out for a little while now, but there will be a similar event in the Fall. I will be placing my slide deck on slideshare tonight.

Relevance: Although Facebook has been public since Sept 2006, many people still are unaware on its value as a tool for productivity, business, and getting things done.

  Studying on a Spring day
As we move into the exam period, some students here at my university are minimising distractions by deactivating their Facebook account until their exams are complete. The idea of a deactivation means that it is temporary, rather than a deletion which is permanent. If you ask them, they will tell you that they just want a break for a period of time and that they know that once exams are over they will be able to reactivate and they are confident that their profile will be as it was.

When I asked one of my friends about why and when she deactivates Facebook (she has done it multiple times), she said that she will do it when she has exams or assignments. She considers herself to be addicted to Facebook (”I am a Crackbook addict”) and felt that alot of time would be spent there if she didn’t deactivate.  Her concern is that Facebook is how she keeps in touch with everyone back home and elsewhere. When she is deactivated, a cheaper alternative for communication is unavailable compared with skype or her mobile phone.

Relevance: I wonder what students that use the dactivation option would do if this option wasn’t available?

Phillip Jeffrey and Olga Skutina @ Vancouver Sun
Last month I was contacted by Chantal Eustace, a writer for the Vancouver Sun as she wanted to interview me about social networking/Facebook within Canada. I was interviewed over the phone and I went down to the Vancouver Sun offices for a follow up photo session with my friend Olga Skutina and to make a video of us demoing something cool on Facebook.

A week ago, the article and related video was released online and in newspaper format. You can view the article entitled “Net Friendships: Part 2″ here and the video entitled “Social Networking with Facebook” is here. (I had lost my voice due to a cold).

[Phillip Jeffrey] likes to know what his friends are up to, browsing photos and checking out new events and parties: “It’s sort of like a social-friendly stalking.”

He’s been a Facebook user since 2005, when he e-mailed the once-college-focused site to ask it to include University of B.C. in its networks.

Jeffrey doesn’t just use Facebook though, he’s also a Twitter.com-user and an Utterz.com-user, along with a list of others.

Jeffrey predicts that in 2008, social networking will cater more to “user-generated” video content.

“Witness any concert or live public event and you will see audience members using cellphones or digital cameras to capture the moment for later sharing,” Jeffrey says.

“I see user-generated content as an example of how young people are increasingly more willing to communicate and develop digital identities for sharing personal aspects of their everyday life using social media.”

Relevance: I enjoyed sharing information about Facebook to readers that may not be full aware of its advantages and benefits.

Matt Mullenweg

Last month I was privileged to speak at the Northern Voice Social Media/Blogging Conference in Vancouver. It is a fascinating social event and it is one event that I am sure not to miss each year. It is an intimate affair with about 250 friends paying $60 for 2 days of socialisation, good conversation, and awesome speakers. It sells out every year and is divided into the Moose camp session (like barcamp) on Friday and the more formal accepted speaker session on Saturday. This year’s keynote was Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress.

So my slides on Slideshare are embedded below:

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And for a more indepth summary of Northern Voice, please see any of the links here:

Rebecca Bollwitt
Duane Storey
Stewart Mader
Boris Mann

Photos were tagged nv08

One of the coolest parts of Northern Voice were meeting people like Keira-anne whom I had followed online, but never met IRL:

Post Northern Voice Brunch at Havana

Brunchwalk with friends
Sunday morning some of us went out for Brunch at Havana’s which morphed into a photowalk as the weather was absolutely stunning.

Relevance: Northern Voice feels much more like a family affair than a formal event. I will work on getting some of my SXSW friends to attend next year.

On Monday I attended the Vancouver Facebook Garage 2. I had attended the first Vancouver Facebook Garage last October in which the room was packed and I knew that this would be a beneficial experience.

Megan Cole of Kinzin

It was great to see motivated local programmers creating useful applications for Facebook. Rebecca Bollwitt officially liveblogged the event for miss604.com where you can read about the demos. Megan Cole was the host. Both women gave exceptional performances. Duane Storey was the official photographer and took excellent pictures as he always does.

Ben Neville, MainSocial

Thanks to Gerald Bauer for organising an informative event. Please join the Facebook group.

Rebecca Bollwitt

Relevance: Another example of how innovative Canadians are getting together to share and learn from one another.

Team Kinzin at Launch Party Vancouver 3
Kinzin will be on CBC Vancouver tonight according to Megan Cole.

Big day across the airwaves for Kinzin. Tonight, the CBC is airing a story about online privacy and security in the wake of the MySpace breach. Michael Fergusson is featured in the story with his take on social networking and the privacy issue, and speaks in reference to Kinzin’s latest application These Are My Kids. Catch the story airing on CBC local Vancouver news tonight at 6pm. (Thanks to Tod for sending them this way!)

I have seen two demos of Kinzin’s These Are My Kids application at the Facebook Developer’s Garage last Monday and at Launch Party Vancouver 3 last Friday. Michael does a great job promoting Kinzin and I wish Kinzin success with their endeavors.  Tune in if you can.

Michael Fergusson @ Vancouver Facebook Developer’s Garage 2

Relevance: A local success story as their previous Facebook app has over 1 000 000 downloads.

Last June I gave a presentation for the e-strategy town hall at my university on Facebook which I subsequently blogged about. I provided a number of tips and suggestions for university administrators, staff, and professors regarding how Facebook could be used for academic or research purposes.

I provided a number of examples of incoming UBC students that had created Facebook groups (e.g. UBC 2001) as an information space to share and discuss relevant issues (e.g. what classes to take, what their residence would be like, etc.) with other students. These grassroots initiatives build on the wisdom of crowds concept prevalent in web 2.0 technology.

According to an article entitled “News Feed Update: Universities sign on to Facebook“, in the Globe and Mail, a number of Canadian universities (e.g. Mount Allison University) have launched Facebook groups with the goal of recruiting students.

Simon Behrens is a student in Germany, hoping to come to New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University next year. When he arrives, he’ll have plenty of connections. He already has 263 friends.

Mr. Behrens is a member of Mount Allison Class of 2012, a Facebook group for prospective students that is up and running long before any bags are packed by next year’s freshman class. That’s because it was created by an existing Mount Allison student who works closely with the school’s admissions staff. Besides the Facebook group, there are student-made videos on YouTube and student blogs, commissioned and paid for by the university.

It would be interesting to see how effective these campaigns on Facebook are. Although students are on Facebook, is it still viewed as a fun, social space for one’s friends or is it perceived acceptable to have universities creating a presence there as well? In addition, are user-generated spaces and social networks such as YouTube and blogs being widely used by other Canadian universities beside Mount Allison? What other digital avenues are bing explored? Are there examples of a 2012 twitter group or 2012 Flickr group being created to recruit and assist incoming students? What are the downsides to these new forms of digital recruitment when the rules and conventions for using them are still not fully developed?

Mr. Sheridan-Jonah at Mount Allison points out that even without an official effort the university is well represented on popular Internet sites. Getting involved in a Facebook group allows staff from his office to answer students questions directly and correct misinformation. The only downside he sees with the growth of such sites is students’ increasing tendency to rely on each other for information, rather than contacting schools as they did in the past.

Relevance: According to Facebook Stats, there are nearly 2 million new users signing up each week around the world. Of the more than 59 million active users, over 7 million are Canadian. Is Facebook a viable place for universities to recruit students?

Darren Barefoot and Julia Szabo have edited written an e-book entitled “Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook.

I have first met Darren at Northern Voice last February and we spent time chatting at Barcamp Vancouver when he flew in from Malta this summer.

This week they published an e-book and it would be a good purchase for anyone interested in social media from the perspective of research, business, or general marketing knowledge.

I was fortunate to be consulted for the section on Facebook, part of which is below:

Phillip Jeffrey, a University of British Columbia grad student researching social media and user-generated content, says the most popular applications are “visibly social”. That is, they display interactions with your friends and other users on your profile. But another way, visibly social apps provide con- stant, unmistakable evidence of your popularity. They’re the virtual equivalent of flowers from your boyfriend on your desk.

Please view the website and Facebook fan page for the book and share this information with others that may be interested in Social Media.

Relevance: An informed opportunity to learn about Social Media through case studies and expert opinion from a various of perspectives.