Poked

MJ vs. Obama on Facebook today: guess who wins?

When Michael Jackson died, Internet traffic surged such to the extent that it almost crippled many social networking sites -- Twitter, for example, had to disable its "trending topics" feature (a search function that lets you know what the hot topics are on Twitter at the moment) for a while to keep things going.

So perhaps it's no surprise that Facebook is telling reporters that as of today, the day of Michael Jackson's memorial service, his fan page now probably has the largest single following of any public figure on the Internet, eclipsing President Barack Obama by more than one million fans right now. UPDATE #2: When I checked on it, the page had almost 7.5 millions fans (full dislosure: I'm one of the half a million people who fanned the page on Tuesday). Facebook's Brandee Barker tells me that 6 million of those people have joined since June 25, when he died.

Facebook also says the free Michael Jackson glove gift is the most popular its ever had, with more than 800,000 given away.

They're tabulating numbers so they can do a comparison on Michael Jackson's activity during the memorial service to Obama's inauguration. UPDATE #2: Facebook put out some numbers Tuesday afternoon, saying that about 1 million users posted roughly 800,000 status updates related to the live online broadcasts by CNN, E! Online, ABC and MTV of the memorial service.

That compares to 1.8 million Facebook status updates that had the word "Obama" in it the day of his Presidential Inauguration.

Facebook wasn't able to provide comparison numbers with how many people viewed both the inauguration and the memorial service on Facebook.

Starting dialogue on Twitter takes work

This week, Poked reader Bob Knotts wrote in with this question about dialogue on Twitter:

I've had little luck (OK, none) in starting a dialogue with fellow Twitterers. I comment on some of their posts and retweet (RT) others. Our material is interesting, I think. It does often draw comments on Facebook. I get the feeling that so few people actually READ tweets. I'm amazed when I read about companies that get great responses from Twitter. Any suggestions?

Twitter has a myriad of purposes for many people: Some use it for personal chats with their friends, others use it to share information or connect with like-minded strangers. We've seen companies use Twitter most effectively to promote sales, brands or as a customer service tool.

With that in mind, we tracked down your business' Twitter account and we noticed a few things you can do better.

Take the time to properly use the reply function in Twitter so they can see you're responding to them. Use the @ symbol before their username. (That's how people identify themselves, and how they know you've mentioned them, even if they don't follow you.)

Twitter can be difficult to handle if you're just using Twitter's website to see conversations. There are plenty of free third-party applications you can download like Twhirl or TweetDeck. Not only do they help track people who mention your Twitter account, but they can also track topics or conversations you might want to jump into.

Finding those conversations helps you meet people who are talking about things that are important to you. Follow them, and you'll have a base of folks with common interests -- and people who are more likely to want to engage in conversations with you.

Finally, when you are sending out tweets, make sure you're actively reaching out. Don't just push out a link -- explain what it is or ask for feedback.

There's a lot of noise on Twitter, and it gets louder the more people you follow, so it is easy to get lost in the shuffle. We find there are times that get noisier than others -- especially from late morning through afternoon, during the week.

That's also a good time to post, because the more eyes that are on, the better chance you have of someone stumbling across your tweet. This is all the more reason to make sure what you say has value.

If you're having netiquette troubles, you can find us on Twitter through our real life names, @NialaBoodhoo and @BridgetCarey. If you're old school, you can drop us a line at Poked@MiamiHerald.com.

Self-imposing limits on social networking sites

Everyone's always talking these days about doing less with more -- or really, doing several people's jobs at once because so many others have been laid off. That does make workplace productivity more of an issue. Which brings me to a site I came across recently that can help monitor how much time you spend on social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. It's a Mozilla Firefox plug-in called Leechblock -- and if you worry you waste too much time online -- this might work for you.

Here's how the developer himself described it: "LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them."

It really is that simple. You can specify, in sets, which sites you want to block - you can set a time limit (say, no more than 10 minutes every hour) or block access to the site for a set period of time (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday). Either way, it will block you out of the site after you reached that period.

I installed it a week ago to test it out. So far, it seems to be working fine. I'm not at my desk that much during the day, but I imagine this is a perfect way to police yourself if you are -- or if you're just curious exactly how much time you're spending on various web sites.

I'm curious to hear from other folks out there if they use this or other tools to minimize time spent online -- and maximize productivity --  during the day.

Facebook unveils new privacy settings

Hip, hip hooray! Facebook just announced a new series of privacy settings that will give users much more control over who can see what on Facebook.

Basically, their new Publisher Privacy Control will allow you to choose, each time you publish, exactly who sees it. They're rolling it out slowly, to a small group of users, but it will soon be available to everyone.

Here's how Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly described it in the blog post: "For example, you may want to make some posts available to everyone, while restricting others to your friends and family. You should be able to make that decision every time you share something on Facebook, and soon you'll be able to do this."

We're thrilled. Finally, you choose, each time you post something, if this is something you want your coworkers, family or friends to see without having to mess around in the confusing privacy interface. You will even be able to send things directly to just two or three people's walls. And, if you're the type of person, like Bridget and I, who have created "groups" of people, this makes those groups suddenly much more useful.

Boca Raton-based Multiply already had this option since 2004 - Bridget wrote about it back in May for its redesign. (If you want to read Bridget's whole post on it, it's here.) Here's an image what it looks like when you upload something to Multiply:

It's not the first time we've seen similarities between the sites. Multiply's CEO Peter Pezaris says they had a news feed before Facebook launched its own version. 

Either way, we think it's great that Facebook has acknowledged what a pain their privacy settings have been to use. We're sure this will be a learning curve for most users, as well, considering some people still can't figure out the difference between a wall post and a status update.

We're looking forward to using this feature - and wondering how well it will work to keep certain parts of your Facebook life private.

UPDATE FROM BRIDGET:

I spoke with Michael Gersh, Multiply's COO and co-founder, who talked about how the social networking site has had this privacy feature since it launched in 2004. Multiply's audience tends to be families, aka the "Digital Moms," who want to post high resolution photos of baby's first bath with close connections. He said because of that, connections on Multiply have always been set up so they go into categories, like business contacts or family -- meaning not everyone is a "friend." And you can see what friends of friends have publicly posted without connecting to them.

"Facebook added a lot of features after we had it," Gersh said, adding regardless if Facebook modeled it after them or not, "people look to others for innovation."

How are your mobile manners?

Here's tomorrow's newspaper Poked column today, for our online readers:

Pop quiz: You're in the middle of listening to a client presentation. Is it OK to sneak a peek at your Blackberry to answer an e-mail?

If you do it, odds are you'll be offending at least half the people in the room.

A recent study done on behalf of Intel by Harris Interactive shows that 54 percent of adults were peeved by people who typed on cellphones while in the presence of others.

In all, a whopping 82 percent said they have been annoyed by others inappropriately using smartphones in public places.

We get that being wired means that you're on the job and connected almost all the time -- at least, during the work day. But when you whip it out, you're telling whoever else is with you that they're not worth your full attention.

That's painfully obvious when there are just two of you in the room. We're amazed at how much this happens to us, both in our work and personal lives. We're guessing people don't realize how rude this is.

The funny thing is, while most said this kind of behavior bothered them, only about one-third admitted to being guilty of doing it themselves.

Not sure if you're one of ''those'' people? Do your friends joke about how often you're texting, e-mailing, Twittering or logging on Facebook? They're probably trying to give you a hint to PUT DOWN THE PHONE.

The only time we think you can get away with pulling out a phone is when you're in a long meeting with a large group of people. If you can do it discreetly and quickly, you're probably OK.

If you're not sure, ask your boss. If you're the shy type, e-mail this post to your boss to ask what he or she thinks. (We have found that people tend to have strong opinions on this one!)

In the meantime, we're collecting stories of the worst mobile etiquette (preferably on the job) ever. Post a comment or email us at Poked@MiamiHerald.com.

Privacy settings aren't always a guarantee on Facebook

Here's tomorrow's column, that we just posted online a few minutes ago. Basically, it came from a post by two new bloggers at FBHive, who described themselves as two Facebook lovers.

In their inaugural post, the two exposed a big hole in Facebook -- with what they described as a fairly simple hack, they were able to see all of my personal info -- something I have set to be viewed by my closest friends only. They invited people to email them to test it out, so I did.

I got a response from one of the bloggers, Tom, from Brisbane, Australia within minutes: all of my personal information on Facebook: my birthday, networks, hometown, the fact that I'm interested in men, how I describe my religious views.

In the email interview that ensued (it was 2 a.m. in Australia, so Tom and I just emailed back and forth), Tom said Facebook contacted them and was working on fixing the problem.

In fact, Facebook responded to an email Bridget sent by saying they had ''identified the bug and closed the loophole,'' adding in an e-mail that they had no "evidence to suggest it was ever exploited for malicious purposes.''

The FBHive guys also said they didn't intend to be malicious hackers. They describe themselves as big Facebook fans, but they said they first reported the hole to Facebook a few weeks ago and received little attention. Facebook did get in touch with them immediately after the blog post.

''Could the average user have discovered it? No. I'm in my final year of an IT degree, so I consider myself a tiny bit more savvy than most,'' Tom wrote in one e-mail. "That said, if this was to be released online as a tutorial, I suspect anyone who could use Facebook could pull it off if they followed it step by step.''

Still, consider it a cautionary tale about your information online. For identity theft reasons, I've never allowed her birth year to be shown on Facebook -- so the FBHive guys couldn't uncover that.

But it's a good reminder that even information we consider ''private'' really isn't.

Last month, we moderated a panel about social networks and security for the local group of Women in Technology International. (You can read our entire blog post about it here.) One of the panelists was Jay Patel, a senior manager of IT advisory services for KPMG. He mostly avoids social networks precisely because of security risks like this one.

His advice? Don't post ANYTHING online unless you're OK with ''four billion people'' seeing it.

We say this all the time, so we don't mean to sound like a broken record. But this morning's incident should be a fresh reminder.

NYC's Emergency Management on Facebook

Yesterday New York's Office of Emergency Management launched a Facebook page to communicate with New York City residents during, you guessed it, emergencies. In a press release announcing the new page, OEM Commissioner Joseph Bruno said that "more than half" of the participants in their annual preparedness poll reported that they use Facebook to keep informed about events in New York City.

“If Facebook is where New Yorkers are looking for information, OEM needs to be there with answers,” he said in the statement. Right now, they're using the page also for emergency preparation, so it's full of stuff like notifications that go directly into your Facebook feed, like this one:

Obviously, it begs the question as to what we're doing here in Miami-Dade County, now that we're into the third week of hurricane season. I called the County's Office of Emergency Management & Homeland Security spokesman, Jamie Hernandez, to see what's happening.

Hernandez said that while his office does have the capacity to use Facebook for such things, their research shows that just 10 percent of the population here uses social networking sites like Facebook. So, Miami-Dade officials are concentrating more on its website and traditional forms of communication. 

In the meantime, Hernandez told me that Miami-Dade's OEM office does send out text alerts, by zip code, to notify people about emergency stuff you need to know: not just hurricanes, but floods, tornadoes and the like. Sign up for those here.

Read this to avoid legal trouble on Twitter

If there's one thing we preach to people getting on Twitter, it's this: Think before you tweet!

So Bridget was really pleased to have a great conversation on that theme with Web attorney Gaida Zirkelbach (@Gaida), who works with Gunster in West Palm Beach - so much so that we made it the topic of tomorrow's newspaper column. 

Zirkelbach originally presented this at a meeting last week of the South Florida Interactive Marketing Association, but basically, it's just five tips every worker/business owner needs to know to avoid creating some serious legal trouble on Twitter:

• Exposing company secrets -- Workers can inadvertently send out tweets that convey proprietary or confidential information about the company or its clients.  "'A lot of people don't think twice about sending out a tweet,'' she said, adding this is the most likely culprit in the horror stories she hears.
• Retaliation/wrongful termination -- Say you want to fire a worker because they're constantly tweeting about how they're slacking off, or worse, complaining about a boss. If your company doesn't have a formal social media policy, firing over tweets can backfire if that worker sues you for wrongful termination.
• Defamation -- This is obvious, but tweets could become the basis for a defamation lawsuit. The offhand criticisms you make about someone could be interpreted as malicious.
• Contracts -- Badmouthing about other companies can be dangerous if there's a contract involved. Say your competitor has a deal you would love to have. Zirkelbach says knowingly interfering with that contract -- even if the tweets are seemingly lighthearted critiques, or attempts to get business -- could one day cause serious legal trouble.
• Trademark infringement -- Tweets can misuse, dilute or cause confusion regarding a trademark. Lots of folks are on Twitter posing as celebrities and public figures. Recently, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa filed a lawsuit against Twitter for allowing someone to tweet offensive messages under his name. Zirkelbach has yet to hear of anyone getting into serious legal trouble with a fake account -- usually the name is just taken away and given to the real person.

The point: We get that the lure of Twitter is how fast it works - that's why we like it. But be careful. Use the same filter for your tweets as you would when having a conversation with your boss or client. It may end up saving you a whole heap of "twouble.''

Local Social Media Club talks about being authentic online

I was at a Social Media Club of South Florida event last night where the group convened a panel of "creatives" - that is, an only-in-Miami mix of artists and the like:

• Irina Patterson, a doctor-turned-public relations professional-turned balloon artist (I'm not making that up!)
• Maria Lemus, a freelance writer
• Carlos Miller, a multimedia/photojournalist
• Onajide Shabaka, an artist
•  Steve Roitstein, a musician

I've never been to one of these events, and must give props to the moderator for controlling a rather rowdy crowd at Transit Lounge (the panel had to be moved inside because of the rain, forcing the social media types to try to talk about their thing while regulars drank at another side of the bar).

What the event got me thinking about what what Onajide Shabaka said about "being authentic" online -- being a whole person -- not just pushing out your art, your brand, or whatever -- but also being you. That's also good advice for people who don't know where to start on social media.

I was also really interested in the fact that many said though, even though they were definitely people, not just brands or their companies or whatever online, (mostly through Twitter, but also blogs) that they were careful about not being too personal - there are some things they just don't share except in real life.

All sounded great to me, and sounded like they had pretty clear ideas of what they do online versus real life. The great thing about Tweetups like last night, where Twitter folks meet up in real life, is they get to intersect.

Coming this weekend: rush Facebook to preserve your name

The Twitterverse and all other things social media have been abuzz today with Facebook's blog post about incorporating your user name into a personal url address for your page. Oddly, they're called " vanity urls" -- although I don't really get why wanting to use your actual name is a "vanity" (it's not a license plate like ASSMAN!) but that's just me.

Before, if people wanted to find you on Facebook, it was a barcode-like collection of whatever numbers make up your user id. Now, it can include your real name - making it ever so much easier for people to find you.

Just to generate more hype, and if for some reason you can't figure out how long it takes to get to 12 midnight Friday, Facebook has created a 24-style countdown clock.

Want advice on what name to use? Shouldn't be a surprise to you that Bridget and I recommend you use your real name. (We're not into identifying ourselves as LonelyGirl305 and LonelyGirl954.) Make sure you think about it -- because it's a name you'll be identified with on Facebook forever. If you've got a name that's not Niala Boodhoo, perhaps you're more of a Bridget Carey, and worried about being taken, you can always go for the Bridget.Carey or something that looks as professional as possible.