Tech Thursday: Facebook Privacy

Comic from Joy of Tech, by Nitrozac & Snaggy

Short but sweet Tech Thursday this week, filling in for the vacationing Scottie. I want to talk about privacy on Facebook.

How the Mayo Clinic Uses Social Media

For me, the Mayo Clinic is in the Buffett Zone - I will read anything about them, because I find their achievements so interesting. I was surprised to discover how extensively the Mayo Clinic uses social media, as Guy Kawasaki (who is great, by the way) describes in his interview with Lee Aase, the "syndication and social media director" for the Mayo Clinic.

Tech Thursday: Website (un)imagination

This could also pass for weekend comedy, but I'm stealing it for this week's view into the "tech world". Matthew Inman is the author of The Oatmeal, a rather random, yet highly entertaining one-stop shop for comics and quizzes (21 seconds, btw). His latest post talks about the 8 websites we/society need to stop building, and I have to agree with him (particularly 1 and 4). I think it's about time the world stops creating stalkerbook clones to allow me to follow random acquaintances, but only if I register so that they can spam the living daylights out of me. Your thoughts?

PS If you think this post is really just a lazy, half-assed (yes, those are different) attempt at a Tech Thursday post, you'd be the opposite of wrong. I'm exhausted. Sue me. (Please don't, though, cause it would just be a waste of all our time - I've got nothing of value).

PPS This post from the NY Time Bits blog is an interesting look into just how dominant Microsoft is in the business software department: 94% market share and $19B in annual revenue - even with free products in abundance? Impressive.

PR for the Layman

Last Monday, our friend Nicole Antoinette from More is Better made the following statement in her latest Unetmplater post:

Maybe what social media teaches us is how to be a creative secret keeper, how to put exactly what we want in front of the eyes of the world, and how to hold everything else behind the curtain.

 

So, are we approaching an age in which the layman needs a PR-type to control his/her image?

Neville Hobson: 5 Examples of Twitter Innovation

Neville Hobson, a blogger about social media (albeit from an older generation than C-Mac, et al) recently wrote about Five examples of innovation with Twitter from five major companies.

He in turn is pulling these examples from Entrepreneur magazine, as linked in his blog. To be honest there isn't a lot of analysis here beyond a vague description of the campaign. But look at the total number of followers - 6,000 for Subway, 4,700 for McDonald's, 38,000 for Dunkin' Donuts? And have you looked at what those accounts post? As Aaron explained yesterday, this is almost a lesson in how NOT to use Twitter, right?

How Do We Crush It? F*ck if we know...

Grace Boyle has posted an interesting contest related to the new book by Gary Vaynerchuk titled Crush It: Why Now is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion (full disclosure: I've already ordered the book on Amazon but it hasn't shipped yet). We of course remember Gary Vee from his antics on Wine Library TV and his social media thoughts. Here is the prompt that Gary lays down for Grace:

"Take this quote from Gary in Crush It: “Skills are cheap, passion is priceless,” and write a blog post about how you’re crushing it, your dreams to crush it, and what this phrase means to you.



But what to do if you lack skills and passion? Every single 'personal branding expert' will advise you to pick a single topic, be really passionate about it, and then proclaim that you are an expert in that subject. Well, our whole premise is that we just talk about stuff we find interesting, with no discernible focus or expertise. Hence the self-conscious blog title. But maybe we're actually crushing it by just doing what we feel because we like it, critics (and readership) be damned?

Facebook Was Losing Money?

I just read in BW that Facebook hit a milestone - it made more money than it spent during the last quarter. Zuckerberg's exact quote is "cash-flow positive" for Facebook. I infer from this that during its five years of dominating social networking online it hasn't been profitable? How is that possible?

Brazen Careerist

Today there was a re-launch of the networking site Brazen Careerist, which is run by Penelope Trunk, a blogger who we discussed in the context of her very personal blog a while back. I already have a feed of our blog on Brazen which is linked to my profile there.