Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.

Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.  This week’s theme is “The Changing Face of Facebook,” but I’ve also included a bonus link from Chris Brogan.

#5: Federal Board Says Employees Shouldn’t Get Fired Over Facebook Posts

The National Labor Relations Board has filed suit against a Connecticut company for firing a worker who complained about her supervisor on Facebook. This will be an important case study to watch and will have implications for how wide or narrow employer social media policies can be.

Link: AllFacebook

#4: Livestream For Facebook Lets You DIY Live Stream Video On Fan Pages

More and more small businesses and sole proprietorships are using Facebook fan pages as free surrogates for a website. Depending on the business, they may or may not be able to get away with this. Either way, Facebook is continuing to chip away at the reasons why you can’t do this (see #3 below).

Link: TechCrunch

#3: Microsoft’s Docs Now Supports Facebook Groups

One of my web pet peeves is the lack of decent group collaboration tools available. Google Wave had promise, but was too complex and “weird” to catch on. With Ning euthanizing its free product, there is a rather large opening that Facebook seems to be moving toward. In addition to providing a means for communication and discussion, Facebook groups has now made it easier to share documents. Now all they need to do is add audio and/or video chat and they’ll really have something.

Link: AllFacebook

#2: Facebook’s Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday

This entire week has been abuzz with rumors that Facebook will be announcing its Gmail Killer on Monday. There have been lots of clues, leaks, reading between the lines, and it’s obvious some sort of email solution is on its way. But not everybody is on the same page about what they’ll be announcing (see #1 below).

Link: TechCrunch

#1: Why Facebook Probably Isn’t Launching an Email Service

This is a pretty thought-provoking article. It’s predominately a semantics argument about what exactly constitutes an “email” solution. The important aspect of this article is the discussion about the future of electronic communications. Many of us are aware of the fact that only about 11 percent of teenagers use email and many colleges have halted the practice of providing freshmen with “edu” email addresses. From my own anecdotal experience, I’ve watched my two teenage daughters shift much of their communication away from text messaging and toward Facebook instant messaging. My guess is that Facebook is grabbing onto that trend with both hands and rather than trying to kill Gmail, it’s looking to serve the users who aren’t using email at all.

Link: Fast Company

Bonus: Don’t Do This – Speaking

I think most speakers are guilty of this until they learn otherwise. But it’s still far too common, so I’m doing my part to wipe out this scourge by sharing this brilliantly simple doodle from Chris Brogan:

Don't Do This, from ChrisBrogan on Flickr

Link: Chris Brogan

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What do Steve Ballmer and Steve Jobs have in common these days?  It’s an odd question considering how frankly Steve Jobs has expressed his distaste with Microsoft and their business approach.  That’s why I had to chuckle the other day when I heard Jobs’ comments on Apple’s earning conference call the other day.

…Apple strives to the integrated model so that the user isn’t forced to be the systems integrator. We see tremendous value at having Apple, rather than our users, be the systems integrator… And we also think that our developers could be more innovative if they can target a singular platform, rather than a hundred variants. They can put their time into innovative new features, rather than testing on hundreds of different handsets.

In other words, Apple wants to make it as easy as possible for developers to create applications that iPhone, iPod, and iPad users download from the “integrated” iTunes store. Jobs is arguing that their “closed” platform means “integrated,” while Google’s “open” platform (and at least one prolific developer challenges whether or not Google is really open) actually means “fragmented.”  Apple is creating an ecosystem that will thrive based in large part on the diversity of stuff you can do with their devices.

Microsoft (founded by a couple of developers) understood this point from day one:

Windows was successful in large part because they deliberately created a developer-friendly ecosystem that led to an explosion in application development for their operating system, eventually becoming the de facto standard.  Some may argue that Microsoft is more similar to Android than iOS because it still wasn’t very tightly integrated and while there is a valid argument to be made there, I’m referring more to the business strategy than the technical realities.  After all, this blog is really about inbound marketing.

Speaking of which…

So What’s the Inbound Marketing Takeaway?

This whole point crystallized for me when I read “Is an App a Tool or a Behavior?” by John Jantsch on his Duct Tape Marketing blog. Jantsch wrote the forward for a book titled “App Savvy” that provides guidance for building apps that people will want to use.  He is encouraging us to think of apps in a different way than perhaps most of us do:

When you come to view your app ideas and execution with a “feeding a behavior” mindset, ideas and the carrying out of those ideas will flow more freely.

So here’s the bottom line: apps are another channel that help you spread your ideas.  They’re another means for achieving the third step of inbound marketing, promotion.  Think about the gifts you can offer to your target market and ask yourself, “Is there an app for that?”

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Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.

This week’s High Five theme is, “Facebook is changing the game.”

#5: Nielsen: Facebook’s Ads Work Pretty Well

According to this Nielsen article, “The study of more than 800,000 Facebook users and ads from 14 brands in a variety of categories shows a marked increase in ad recall, awareness and purchase intent when home-page ads on the social network mention friends of users who’ve become fans of the brand in the ad.”  One of the comments regarding this study was “What it doesn’t do is give the cross-media understanding of how does this piece fit into overall marketing plans.”  The irony is that Facebook’s announcements this week provide the backdrop for those plans.

Link: Advertising Age

#4: Microsoft And Facebook Join Forces To Crush Google Docs

There have been hints from pundits and observers for quite some time about Facebook (and Twitter for that matter) challenging Google in the search space.  The announcement that Facebook is going to throw its hat into the document collaboration ring came a little bit out of the blue (at least for me).  Combined with the other announcements this week (see below), there is no doubt that Facebook intends to be the ultimate power in the universe.

Link: Business Insider

#3: How to Delete Facebook Applications (and Why You Should)

As Facebook takes bold, new steps to spread its influence across the web, users need to be aware of the implications new Facebook privacy policies.  One major change is that your Facebook friends can share your information without your knowledge.  Another change, discussed in this article, is a loosening of the restrictions previously placed on applications like Farmville and Photo of the Day.  These applications may now store your personal profile information whereas they previously had to retrieve it from Facebook’s servers every time they wanted it.  This opens up additional security vulnerabilities, which prompted this article that describes some sensible steps to audit your privacy settings.

Link: ReadWriteWeb

#2: I Think Facebook Just Seized Control Of The Internet

If it’s possible for an eight hundred pound gorilla to fly under the radar, Facebook is doing it (did I just mix some strange metaphors?).  The announcements made at Facebook’s f8 conference this week could fundamentally change the way we use the Internet.  And that’s not hyperbole.  The social plugins and Open Graph integration have the potential to shift the balance of power from Google’s algorithms to Facebook’s social relationships.  It boils down to this… When you execute a search, what do you value more; the stuff Google thinks is important or the stuff your family, friends and colleagues think is important?

Link: TechCrunch

#1: Facebook’s ambition

If the previous article scares you at least a little bit, then that just means you’re paying attention.  This epic article from Robert Scoble provides a litany of benefits, concerns, dangers, and challenges associated with these developments.  Some people and organizations are jumping into the pool with both feet, while others are pledging never to subjugated.  ”May you live in interesting times.”  Indeed!

Link: Scobleizer

Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…

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Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.

This week’s High Five is about crowd power; for better or worse.

#5: Microsoft’s Creative Destruction

Categorizing this article as “crowd power” is a little bit of a stretch, but it had to be included in the High Five nonetheless.  In the wake of the iPad product announcement, this fascinating article describes in great detail how the mob-like corporate culture of Microsoft didn’t simple stifle innovation; it barbarically tore it limb from limb and left the pieces scattered across lobbies and conference rooms as a warning to the next group of would-be world changers.

Link: New York Times (Op-Ed)

#4: NFL.com aggregates Super Bowl tweets and pics

The National Football League has jumped into the social media gauntlet with both feet for Superbowl XLIV.  They’ve announced an “official” (doesn’t everything need to be the official “x” of event “y”?) Twitter hash tag (#SB44) and Flickr photo stream, both of which will be aggregated to a dedicated page on their site.

Link: Pro Football Talk on NBC Sports

#3: We’re turning comments off for a bit

This unfortunate announcement was made on the Engadget web site early this week because the environment “has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations… and that’s just not acceptable.”  The situation illustrates one of the darker sides of social media and the tough decisions that must sometimes be made.  It’s a manageable task to moderate these forums unless and until they become a victim of their own success and simply grow too large.  I see this as the new job role for public relations professionals in the future – once they finally come to the realization that their current role of shaping messages is gone forever.

Link: Engadget

#2: Facebook COO: 175 Million People Log Into Facebook Every Day

While the total number of registered Facebook users (over 350 million) gets lots of press, this number is eye-popping for a couple of reasons.  First of all, the sheer size is obviously impressive.  That’s a lot of eyeballs.  Second, the adoption rate of 50% is astounding.  We heard just a few weeks ago that 70% of Twitter users are active more than once a week and 30% never post a single update.  This number is evidence that Facebook is not just growing at a break neck pace, it is retaining users and providing compelling reasons for them to log in every day.

Link: TechCrunch

#1: 20+ mind-blowing social media statistics revisited

Well, I’d certainly say “impressive” but can’t say that my mind was blown.  Notwithstanding the sensationalized and overstated title, this is a valuable page to bookmark for your next blog post or sales pitch for social media.

Link: Econsultancy

Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…

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Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.

This week’s High Five is all about cyber security.  There are a couple of stories about protecting yourself, and two very important stories about protecting critical infrastructure.

#5: EU Wants Consent for Every Web Cookie

This is a story about the nanny state run amok.  Cookies are little chunks of text that web sites leave on your computer so that they can remember who you are when you return to their site, and store some information about your preferences and habits while on their site.  Limiting their use will lead to a greatly reduced user experience, not mention tremendous expense to all web site providers who will need to rework their architecture.

Link: TechRadar.com

#4:Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft’s Security Tools Are Good Enough

Lifehacker makes the case the the free suite of security tools from Microsoft have reached the point where they are at least as good as the paid versions like Norton Antivirus.  The reality is understanding how to avoid scams and dangerous web sites is at least as important security software.

Link: Lifehacker

#3: Banned Xbox 360s Flooding Craigslist, Ebay

If you’re looking for used bargains this Christmas season, be particularly wary of purchasing used Xbox 360 consoles.  Microsoft recently began “actively banning consoles from Xbox LIVE that have been modified to play pirated games.”  These castrated units are now finding their way to the classified ads.

Link: PC World

#2: Cyber War: Sabotaging the System

60 Minutes broadcast an important story about vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and the threats posed by hackers and nation states.  While parts of the story are a bit sensationalized (I know, shocking) if not downright misleading.  However, we still need an awakening with regard to cyber security and the crucial role every user plays in keeping our systems safe.

Link: CBS News

#1: Control system cyber events, 60 Minutes, disclosure, and FUD

The previously mentioned 60 Minutes story touched off a firestorm of discussion on a cyber security mailing list I subscribe to.  This article is a response by Joe Weiss, who is one of the world’s foremost experts in cyber security of process control systems and has even testified before Congress.

Link: ControlGlobal

Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…

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