Facebook Privacy Setting Change Was A Bug
December 13, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Phew! It turns out that the Facebook privacy setting change from last week was in fact a bug and it has now been fixed by the folks at Facebook.
You can read more about it here. But rest up now and know that you can talk to your fans from your page despite privacy settings!
Tags: facebook privacy setting bug
Anarchy in Dublin 3….
December 12, 2010 at 8:29 pm
Last night I realised that I am now in fact an Anarchist! I always thought of those people as black jumper wearing, nail biting, nobodies, but I am now one of them.
Why do I say this?
Because I firmly believe that we need to make a paradigm shift in the way this country is run. When Lehman Bros bank collapsed, I thought it might have been an opportunity for the world to shake up the banking system and realign it to represent what is needed today, utilise technology to match those with money and those who need it, and remove a lot of the fat.
But that didn’t happen.
Now I am certain that a paradigm shift needs to occur in Ireland to ensure that what is happening now NEVER gets a chance to happen again.
What do I want to see?
The best people for the job in each of the main depts – Finance, Health, Education, Justice. A system that’s based on a model of social principles, and commercial efficiency. Not one that is based on old school party politics. I support many of the things that Fintan O’Toole asks for in his petition – you can read and sign here.
I was told last night that what I describe is Anarchist - – if that is so, let that be my new belief system. This revolution will not be televised. We know that. But it sure as hell can be Facebooked, Tweeted, Flickrd, blogged, and of course Youtubed. I’m ready and willing to my bit if I’m asked. But there seems to be a lot of talk, and nobody doing the asking.
What do you think?
Tags: Anarchy Ireland, Ireland IMF Scandal, Politics Ireland
Facebook Change That Impedes Engagement
December 9, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Facebook have introduced a new change that’s going to cause havoc for Page owners. Brought to my attention by the poor people at Tommy Tippee baby bottles, they were unable to comment back to me on a post I made on their wall. Why was this?
Because Facebook has introduced a change that means page owners cannot communicate with fans unless they have their privacy setting for commenting set to “everyone”. I have all my settings so that only friends can see what I’m up to. But if you want to allow Pages that you are fans of to comment to you, you must make the following change:
- Click on account / privacy settings
- Click on customise settings
- Scroll down to ‘things others share’
- Can comment on posts – change it to “everyone”
This little change is going to cause much moaning on Facebook unless they sort it out fast.
If you are a Page owner, you need to be ready for this. If you find you are unable to comment back to a fan, try sending them a message and ask them to change their setting in the message. Good luck and let us know how you get on with this.
Tags: facebook privacy setting
Decembeard
December 8, 2010 at 10:25 am
Because Movember is so last month! Check out this fun little app from IdeaWorks in Australia: Decembeard. And for every beardy pic created, they donate $5 to charity.
Here’s me:
Tags: decembeard
United We Save
December 7, 2010 at 8:31 am
On this dark day of Budget 2011, I came across this very interesting (and rather cute) little site: United We Save.
Set up by Dubliner, David Slattery, it’s a group buying scheme for households. Much has been talked about and written lately about the rise of group buying schemes in Ireland. United We Save seems to be a slightly different take. Instead of the site only offering deals, we the people can pitch the kind of deals we want and the site will go off and negotiate discounted prices for us. I like the idea, particularly as I got stung with a rather large home heating bill last week! Even 5% discount would = significant savings.
Visit the site today and support another new indigenous Irish business. Sign up (it’s free and easy). Join a group based on what you need to buy. Let them get you a good price. Then save.
Note: while this blog post might sound rather gushy, I have nothing to do with United We Save, they are not a client… and I have to commend their designer as it’s very cute!
Tags: group buying schemes
Facebook Relax Promotions Rules
December 2, 2010 at 7:08 am
Collectively SME’s breathe a big sigh of relief as Facebook has decreed that they can now run promotions on their pages without having to reach a target advertising spend. (In practice, many were already doing their own thing anyway.)
This time last year, Facebook changed it promotion/sweepstakes rules so that anyone wishing to run a promotion or sweepstake on its page had to first run it by FB for approval and, more onerously, be spending upwards of $10,000 in advertising. This week they’ve changed it back again so that:
- We no longer require prior written Facebook approval to administer a promotion on Facebook.
- We no longer require a minimum media spend investment to support the promotion.
This means that you are not required to have a media campaign on Facebook to run a promotion, nor do you need to ask for approval on the contest T&Cs from the Facebook team.
Hurray indeed! What I’ve seen over the course of 2010 is that advertising your promotion on Facebook really powers the numbers, so it’s not really worth your while to invest in an app and not allow budget for promoting it. So Facebook are probably finding in practice that most if not all promotions will have media spend tied to it – although perhaps not in the region of $10k.
The real reason they’ve changed their minds is most likely because they are finding it takes ages to approve all the promotions and is likely costing them money! E-Consultancy where I heard this news makes a good point that we can probably expect to find Facebook insert itself in this space. So while they’re giving with one hand, they might take away with the other. But for now, it’s all joyful and pre-Christmassy, so let us rejoice!!
Tags: Facebook Promotions
Top 5 Tips For Selecting A Social Media Monitoring Tool
December 1, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Recently I carried out some pretty extensive research into social media monitoring tools. No small feat, there are literally hundreds to choose from. Where to start? I did a little digging around Slideshare which turned up an interesting report from last July that by a UK based consultancy called Ideya that analysed about 250 paid and free tools on a number of factors. That formed the basis of a long list. A very short pitstop on the vendor websites didn’t yield that much information. Most maintain their proprietary information and only make it available when you set up a ‘test drive’. 17 test drives later, I can safely say I have a very good idea of what to ask for when selecting a social media monitoring tool. While every organisation will have different needs, there are some general things to look out for which I’ve detailed below:
1. Coverage – where does the tool crawl for its information?
You’d expect Facebook, Twitter, and blogs at a minimum – but I was surprised to discover that some of the tools can’t crawl WordPress blogs for example! Some tools have incorporated Foursquare and Gowalla, and I’m sure there’s a race on now to be the first to offer Facebook Places (I’ve not come across any yet). Some specialise in types of media, for example, video sites only. But for a general all-purpose for you and me, I’d be looking for FB, Twitter, all blogs, forums, ratings & review sites, photo & video sites, and some mainstream media.
2. How often does it update its sources? What is the data latency? Does it come with historical data?
You pay more for tools that offer direct access to the platform’s API’s. And you pay more for products that come with access to historical data. Perhaps the Number One learning of all that… you pay more. Oh boy! It depends on what your organisation does as regards how updated the feeds need to be. For the average organisation, I’d suggest 12 hours would be sufficient. And whether you need historical data really depends on whether you want to be able to search for trends in your data, or whether you’re happy to simply listen to what’s being said now and respond to it where appropriate. If the latter, don’t pay for historical datawarehouse access. Which brings me on the next point…
3. Does the vendor offer training or an analyst service?
We’ve seen it all before – the bells and whistles software is purchased but the bells are never rung… how many times have you found yourself in a situation where you’re forced to use an expensive piece of kit to do more or less mundane tasks? Be really clear on what you want your software to do and what kind of situations you wish to monitor and only buy what you need. There is no point in going for the tool that offers 27 languages if you operate in just one or two. When selecting, make sure to ask about the level of training you get. And not just the how to use it variety either… find out if there is an analyst service available where your team can work with experts from the vendor side to really show you how to get the most out of it. In some cases you may have to pay extra for this, but if your team is not expert in Boolean analysis, then it’s good to allow a little budget for this.
4. Workflow & Reporting
Good tools allow your team to communicate and escalate and assign tasks to each other. When you’re listening to a sales pitch, ask yourself “is this little more than glorified email?”. If the answer is yes, walk away. I was truly surprised to see how many tools that charge a mighty wad of cash include little workflow and nothing more than a built-in notepad feature! Likewise, reporting. Surely to God if you’re creating a tool for monitoring and reporting, you’d invest heavily to get the reporting right. At a minimum, include good-looking graphs, customisable, exportable, and drillable downable (or uppable!) as the need fits. When you’re buying into this software, ask yourself if you’re happy to pay big bucks and then have to export all the data into csv’s in order to be able to make some good reports. If you don’t want to do that, then look at the reporting and see how much can be done from within.
5. How does it identify Influencers? How does it handle Sentiment?
Every tool uses its own algorithm to assign values to the level of influence that a person has. Obviously you need to know if someone called Stephen Fry is talking up/down your product on Twitter! Many tools uses Klout which I think is OK. I’ve written about this before. But a lot of it is down to quantitatives like numbers of followers. Some tools offer the ability to overwrite this and customise the data but you have to pay more for this. I like the idea of tools that learn from overrides. Sentiment is a little more straightforward. The software can tell whether people are talking you up, or speaking negatively. Again, this can be overwritten in some tools, but not all.
So there’s my top 5 things to be looking for. The one thing I didn’t mention in that is PRICE. Save yourself and the vendor a lot of time and establish a budget in your head and, before you take a test drive, make sure that what you’re looking at is within budget. There’s no point going to the candy shop if all you’ve got is a rusty penny. 
Tags: social media measurement tools, Social Media Monitoring
