What’s wrong with this picture?

Meet Gump Worsely, who played goalie in the National Hockey League.

Gump was famous for playing without a mask and helmet long after almost everyone else in pro hockey had adopted this protection. Slap shots would fly at his face at speeds often exceeding 100 miles per hour, but as Wikipedia says (so we know it must be true!), he told reporters he went without a mask because, “My face is my mask.”

I guess it was his choice, as he was grandfathered in and didn’t have to follow the new rule.

I think of Gump when I hear people complain or express anxiety about their privacy in Facebook. One of the things I want to ask them is…

Did you remember to put on your mask and helmet?

Facebook has extensive built-in privacy protections that you can control. And next week I’m going to have a course to show you how to configure your settings according to your preferences. You can go to your Facebook privacy settings to start exploring right now, if you’d like.

On an interesting side note, I discovered this other side of Gump in my extensive Wikipedia-based research for this post:

Worsley was also well known for his fear of flying. He suffered a nervous breakdown in the 1968–69 season after a rough flight from Montreal’s Dorval Airport to Chicago on November 25 en route to Los Angeles, and received psychiatric treatment and missed action as a result. It is said that when he came out of retirement to play for the North Stars he was assured that, as Minnesota was in the central part of the continent, the team traveled less than any other in the league.

Air travel was significantly less risky than having high-speed projectiles shot at his unprotected face. Yet Gump’s fears didn’t match the comparative risks of the two activities.

Next week we’ll work at easing any fears you might have about your privacy in Facebook.

Still think Facebook is a Fad?

If you are dealing with skeptics questioning whether social networking is worthwhile for your organization, maybe this post (and the Washington Post article that inspired it) will help you make your case.

From yesterday’s Washington Post:

In 2010, Facebook pushed past Google to become the most popular site on the Internet for the first time, according to two Web tracking firms. The title caps a year of rapid ascent for Facebook in which the social network hit 500 million users and founder Mark Zuckerberg was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. It also marks another milestone in the ongoing shift in the way Americans spend their time online, a social change that profoundly alters how people get news and interact with one another – and even the definition of the word “friend.”

“This is the most transformational shift in the history of the Internet,” said Lou Kerner, a social-media analyst with Wedbush Securities and former chief executive of Bolt.com, an early networking site. “We’re moving from a Google-centric Web to a people-centric Web.”

According to Experian Hitwise, Facebook jumped to the top spot after spending last year in third place and the year before ranked ninth. The company found that 8.9 percent of unique online visits were to Facebook this year, compared with Google’s 7.2 percent. Meanwhile, ComScore, another firm that calculates Web traffic, said Facebook is on track in 2010 to surpass Google for the first time in number of pages viewed. Each unique visit to a site can result in multiple page views….

Another interesting element from the story is the comparison of market valuations, which pegs Facebook at $45 billion, roughly a quarter of Google, despite the search giant having more than 20 times Facebook’s revenue.

This reminds me of a post I did three years ago, in which I said Facebook was worth more than the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Cubs, the Los Angeles Times and YouTube…combined.

Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and their Microsoft (MSFT) colleagues had given Facebook this $15 billion valuation, buying 1.6 percent of Facebook stock for $240 million.

This seemed like an outlandish valuation at the time, even before the 2008 economic meltdown sent the prices of everything crashing.

Facebook still isn’t publicly traded, but the latest figures suggest it has tripled in value in just over three years.

And now it’s the most-trafficked site on the Web, adding nearly a million users a day.

It has about 8 percent of the world’s population among its regular users.

If your organization’s work involves interacting with humans, Facebook is definitely worth your time and attention.

If you’ve got one of these…

…why would you not get a Facebook page for your business or organization?

Here are four reasons why a Facebook page is better than a Yellow pages ad, and why it’s not even a close call.

  1. A Yellow Pages ad is expensive. A Facebook page is free.
  2. A Yellow Pages ad typically has a distinctive cast that suggests jaundice. Color is even more expensive. Your organization’s logo (or other photo) goes on your Facebook page in full-color for free.
  3. A Yellow Pages ad is limited to text and maybe a photo or two. A Facebook page can have unlimited photos, not to mention videos. (Well, I guess I did just mention videos.)
  4. A Yellow Pages ad reaches a limited geographic market. Anyone in the world can see your Facebook page, except for citizens of repressive political regimes or employees or corporate regimes with a blocking philosophy.

I could go on, talking about how on Facebook your best customers can interact with you and share the love with their friends, while a Yellow pages ad is static. And how the paper directories can get lost on a snowy doorstep (at least here in the frozen tundra.)

I’m certain those with a proprietary interest in Yellow Pages (or Yellow Book, or whatever post Ma Bell-breakup variety you have in your area) would be quick to point out how they also have online directories as part of their package.

But that misses the point. The yellows used to have monopolies when people were looking for a particular category of service. It was expensive to produce a paper directory and deliver to every household in an area.

Now with Yelp and Angie’s List and countless other similar sites, it’s easy for potential customers to get information (including contact phone numbers) for local service providers.

And don’t forget local search in Google.

My point is not to run down the yellow directories, or to say you shouldn’t use them. That’s a call you have to make. Maybe they work for you, and should be part of your mix. If their publishers are doing their jobs well, they should be continually adding features to improve their value proposition.

But if you’re spending substantially for Yellow Pages, why wouldn’t you use the free option, too?

Facebook 140: @ is where it’s @

Those who have used Twitter are familiar with the @ lingo: When you put @username (e.g. @LeeAase, @MayoClinic, @MeredithGould) in a tweet, you are replying to or mentioning that Twitter user in the public space.

Facebook developed similar functionality several months ago, but I have to confess I haven’t used it as much or as well as I should.

Hearing my friend Alan De Keyrel mention the @ tag in Facebook as a key strategy for building connections caused me to take a more in-depth look. I think it’s definitely something people in charge of maintaining Facebook pages for an organization should be exploring and using.

As with all powerful tools, it can go terribly wrong if abused. So in this course I’m going to give the overview of

  1. how the @ tag works,
  2. some ways it could be used productively, and also
  3. some cautions on what to avoid.

How it works:

When you are posting a link or a status update to your wall in Facebook, you can create a link to any of your friends’ Profiles, Pages you like or groups to which you belong, by typing @ in your update and waiting for a list of relevant pages or friends or groups to appear. It will look something like this:

When you hit your enter key to select the relevant page, profile or group, the update will look like this, just before you post it:

The cool thing is that this shows up not only where you posted it directly, but also on the linked pages. Here’s how it appeared briefly on the Mayo Clinic page (before I quickly removed it):

And here’s what it looked like on my wife Lisa’s wall:

How the @ tag can be used productively:

The @ tag is essentially like tagging an individual in a photo, but it goes beyond that. It’s a great way to share content with your friends and with their friends.

So, for example, I just posted a link to the Austin Packers Fast Break Club site (a blog we use to share highlights from my son’s high school basketball team) to my sister-in-law’s Facebook profile using the @ tag:

You will note that I tagged both Kris and the Facebook group for the Fast Break Club. Here’s what it looked like on her wall:

As you can see, this can be a really powerful way of spreading information on Facebook. But as Uncle Owen told Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.” This leads us to the third point:

Cautions on what to avoid in using the @ tag

Mainly, don’t think like an advertiser. Advertisers look for ways to interrupt people and push their messages, whether the recipient wants them or not.

In my first example above, I did post something to Lisa’s wall that may not have been all that interesting to her, although I did refer to her as my beloved. She understands when I need to experiment. Part of the price of being married to the Chancellor.

In the second post, though, I was sharing something with my sister-in-law about her nephew’s basketball team. I had every reason to expect she would find it interesting and welcome.

The side benefit is that some of her friends, such as other family members, will see this on her wall and may also like it. They may also decide to join the Facebook group or subscribe to the blog.

If I just started randomly tagging other friends in the post, that would have been a quick way to lose friends and not influence people.

The same is true for your use of @ tags relating to your organization’s page. It’s one thing if your friends or page connections decide to tag your page on their profiles, or tag their friends in a post or status update. It’s completely different when you use the @ tag to spam pages or profiles.

It all comes down to not being “that guy”

Think like a real person. If you’re using the @ tag mainly to drive traffic and not to connect people to information that will be interesting to them, your effort will not be successful in the long run.

But used wisely and with integrity, the @ tag can play a significant role in helping you make connections with people who share your concerns and convictions.

Facebook for Business: The Video

A week ago today I participated in a Rochester Chamber of Commerce seminar on Facebook for Business. I led off the discussion and then took lots of notes from Alan De Keyrel’s keynote presentation, which I summarized in this post.

Now Alan’s company has posted the video from the event so you can see it for yourself. Since it’s on Vimeo, I’ve embedded it below:

Alen De Keyrel on Facebook for Business from CWS on Vimeo.

Check out the CWS site for more resources.