But for me it is my least favorite of the big social media tools. I try to like it. I try to use it. It doesn’t work for me because of small irritations, and I find myself just going in to housekeep friend requests and “suggestions”, block applications, that kind of thing.

While I have been looking at different strategies I have seen some small glimmer of usefulness. It has enough potential that I want to persist, no matter how annoying I find it.

I have been thinking about how Facebook could be made more useful for me and other small business users.

1. Ignore fan page requests forever - After I have ignored a fan page suggestion for the fifth time, sometimes in a week, I yearn for a button that says “No and I never ever will”. This behavior is caused by the fan page owner inviting all their friends repeatedly, this should be either fixable at the recipient end (block forever) or have a restriction on how many times a person can be invited at the senders end.
2. Block every application suggestion – I want to be able to opt out of every application suggestion, request or invitation. Instead I would explicitly seek out and join the ones that do interest me.
3. Filter friend requests – If someone has MLM, teeth whitening or the name of my school anywhere in their profile then most likely I do not want to have anything to do with them. The few who I would miss through this system I would seek out or find through connections.
4. Change “Fan Page” to be named something less sucky – Really, “Fan” page? Who wants to be a “Fan” of someone? Couldn’t they make fan page be something less objectionable like “Contact” page or something? OK, my suggestion isn’t much better but at least it would not feel as ego-ish to have one.
5. Granular application permissions – Why does a map application need access to all my details? Apparently applications are going to get access to our email addresses too? I want to be able to set how much applications can access as I seriously do not trust any of them with my information.

All of those are irritations and requests to make the experience less of a chore but I have a big suggestion that I think could make Facebook way more useful.

My big suggestion? Be able to hold events on Facebook!

I see it as being a video conference feature. Individuals could talk to friends, family and contacts 1:1 like with Skype (possible to do via simple flash application which would overcome the technophobe aspect of getting relatives to use desktop applications). Webinars and teleconferences could be held directly on Facebook, so you could use the invite and event features but not leave the system.

Picture someone with a huge audience like Gary Vaynerchuk sharing an invite with all their contacts and the recipient just needing to hit one button to be taken directly to the event with no software, accounts or settings to be added or changed? I can see this being a great tool and revenue opportunity.

I’m sure Facebook will not see any of these suggestions, much less act on them, but I enjoyed writing this as social media therapy

It seems Bit.ly is now starting to warn visitors using their shortened URLs about bad sites being linked up using their service. This is excellent news and I wish the other website address shortening services would follow suit.

What is the issue, why is it a problem, and what can we do about it?

Website address shortening services came about because some times the page you are visiting can have a URL that is extremely long. If you want to send this web address to a friend over email, internet instant messaging, cell phone SMS text messaging, internet relay chat, or more recently, via a Twitter tweet, these addresses could be so long they either break when the person receiving your link tries to click it, or be so long they are rejected by the service altogether.

So rather than send the exact address that you find in the address bar of your web browser, instead you would copy and paste the address into a URL shortening service that would in turn create a shorter URL for you to use.

When someone then clicks the shorter URL they are “redirected” from the service through to your intended destination.

Sounds good so far, right?

The problem is, when someone sees one of these short URLs, instead of seeing where they will be taken, they see an entirely different address. We can not tell anything from the URL we are given about the nature of where we will be taken.

A safe but annoying example would be for us to be sent a “Rick-Roll”, that is we are given a link that purports to be some breaking news or cool site, only to be taken to the famous Rick Astley YouTube video instead. Ha ha. Got me there.

Rather than safe but annoying, more and more malicious and inappropriate content is being shared this way, spread via spam, trolls, phishing emails, and now Twitter.

You might be sent a message saying “Get a free iPod Touch!!!!”, but when you click the link it takes you to a malware site, or something that you would not want your family or boss to see.

How to Avoid Being Caught Out

1. Do not trust email messages or Twitter users that you have not got to know first.
2. Log out of important services when not in use, especially Twitter.com – “Cross Site Scripting Attacks” often make use of people being permanently logged in to web services.
3. Use TweetDeck or equivalent Twitter desktop tool to avoid Twitter.com and to translate the short URLs back into long URLs

The biggest tip I can give is … If in doubt, do not click!

Obviously the vast majority of links you will come across are going to be safe and harm free, but it does not take much for someone to be given a big problem just by clicking an innocent-seeming link. Better to be safe than sorry, eh?

Got any tips to share? Please let us know in the comments …

This service is called Posterous and while it appears to be a stripped down blogging service (and it can be used for that) in fact I have been using it as a media and cross posting service.

You see what it has that none of the others can do is really intelligent multimedia handling and posting via email.

• Email Posterous and your text appears as a blog post
• Blog posts can be automatically cross posted to your real blog
• New posts get tweeted and added to your FaceBook updates
• Send a photograph as an attachment and it is uploaded to Flickr and posted into an article
• Send multiple photographs and you get a gallery widget
• Attach a video and it posts to your blog and YouTube
• Want a podcast? Record an audio note and send it over and you get a media player widget for your mp3

So unlike FriendFeed that aggregates your lifestream, Posterous allows you to post to it. For smartphone owning social media fans it is the ultimate mobile blogging tool – you can keep your friends up to date with everything you are up to in complete multimedia.

Pretty cool, huh?

Yes WordPress and some blogging tools have had post by email before, only Posterous has this level of ease and functionality. There are more features to come, including themes.

Here is a video shot by Steve Rubel interviewing the founders.

Another neat feature is you can point your own domains at it, rather than use the lame *.posterous.com domain. My own Posterous account is at http://www.chrisg.co.uk for example.

This means should anything happen to the service at least you have not lost all your link equity. Take regular backups and you might be able to salvage the whole thing, or move over to WordPress when they inevitably steal all these great ideas.

Once you are a member you can comment and subscribe to other folks Posterous, and comments can also be posted as status updates to keep the conversation crossing over into social media.

I got so into this I think it could be the rebirth of the personal blog after Twitter has had the spotlight for so long. What do you think?

It is clear from website traffic reports that not all stumbles are created equal.

Traditionally the rule has been to get as many votes as possible. Quantity is of course an important factor, it is a lot like a popularity contest in this regard. Using the share features, the web based toolbar, and Twitter to garner more votes has become commonplace.

Variety is also important, you do not want the same faces voting on the same domains, otherwise it looks suspect and the system shuts those votes down or discounts them.

There is more to it though. As well as quantity of votes, there seems to be a quality score going on as well.

1. Weak versus powerful accounts send fewer initial visitors
2. Votes after discovery amplify the original strong or weak vote, almost like a multiplier of an initial score
3. More subsequent votes amplify the original review more or less strongly

Getting votes from strong accounts is essential if you are going to reap the full benefits of StumbleUpon.

So how do you create a good StumbleUpon profile?

Here is the official stumbleupon definition:

Top Stumblers are our most active and helpful community members. These members frequently suggest new sites to be included in our database, and frequently rate new sites they stumble upon.

When you submit a site, it is shown to other stumblers (for evaluation). If those people like your suggestion (by rating it I-like-it! often) your community ‘Karma’ will increase.

Your Top Stumbler rank will also increase by frequent rating. You do not need to rate every site you see, but if it stands out as particularly excellent (a website you really like) or bad (you don’t like it, or it is spam), make sure you rate it. This regular participation will increase your Top Stumbler rank.

That is useful to know for growing your own power account. Essentially, participate. A lot.

• When you see something cool, review it
• Use the SU toolbar a lot to discover sites, and vote them
• If something is bad, spam or otherwise stands out in a negative way, also vote
• Give testimonials to other users, and get reviews of your StumbleUpon profile too
• Make use of StumbleUpon as a bookmarking tool to get into the habit of using the service.

As well as having our own good accounts, we also need to make friends with other stumblers. How do you recognize someone who has a good account?

These are the very top StumbleUpon users. Notice anything about them?

Essentially a strong account will show a level of activity over the norm, a high number of “favorites”, and a high number of “subscribers”. Plus you can tell if they are a quality user, see how many testimonials they have and the kind of bookmarks they favorite.

Also look to see your compatibility rating to see if they like the same stuff as you do.

If you take a look at my StumbleUpon profile, I have a fairly good account even though I spend less than 30 mins a week on it. It is not up there with the best, but pretty decent.

There are a good number of positive reviews of my stumbling, and I actually participate in the service rather than pimping my own stuff

That is the key to most social networking, it is about participating and adding to the community rather than just taking from it.

With StumbleUpon what you put in you get back out. Your participation is rewarded.

As I say above, you do not want to be stumbling the same domains over and over, and that includes your own.

The main benefit of having a powerful account is to help other people. By doing this favor you will get noticed – people look at their web stats and see traffic coming from StumbleUpon, then look to see who submitted and reviewed.

Consider it another valuable “pay forward” tool in your social networking portfolio!

I didn’t have time to explain fully so thought I would write up the process here for you now.

1. Start talking/tweeting about your event in advance – Building anticipation, expectation, and sharing the news is vital. People need to book diaries, and also you need to show that it is worth looking forward to – an event, not just an appointment.
2. Add event to FaceBook, Upcoming, LinkedIn – Use all the community tools to share the event date and details, not just for logistical reasons but also social proof.
3. Blog, Tweet, leading up to event – Keep up the momentum and the information flow. Help grow the anticipation. You will have lots to talk about, from polls, through to adding speakers.
4. Add opt-in to event registration – A crucial step is to get people onto an event email list, so you do not lose contact with anyone.
5. Gather Questions – When you get the persons opt-in details, also get them to provide questions they have, these become fodder for your presentations.
6. Go viral with send to friend and tweet-this – Use WordPress plugins, FaceBook features, Twitter, to get attendees to spread the word. Make it easy and people will bring along friends, growing your participation and also making more likely to attend and get value out of the event. People want to stay consistent with their own recommendations.
7. Decide twitter hash tag and flickr tag for your event – Attendees build further buzz through back channel discussions, so make sure these can be found by aggregating chatter around one hashtag.
8. Use multimedia during the event - Share pictures before, during and after using Flickr tags/groups, TwitPic, Qik, FaceBook groups and YouTube channels, and encourage attendees to to the same
9. Provide recordings and downloads – Downloads also have chance to go viral if you encourage sharing
10. Build your list for the next event – Benefit from the “compounding” effect
11. Follow up – Don’t leave your audience hanging. Use groups, forums discussion after event to consolidate your new community.
12. Gather feedback for how to improve – You want each event to build on the last one, learn each time. Social media is excellent for gathering feedback.
13. Call for Questions/Topics - Use crowdsourcing to create your next event.
14. Deliver what people want – Start planning next event around supplied answers and you will be confident you are delivering what is needed and desired.
15. Keep communicating – Build anticipation early, consistently and often using FaceBook, Twitter and your email list
16. Repeat!

Two good examples of how social media can be used to promote events are ThinkVisibility in the UK and the SOBEvent in Chicago. I am also involved in a purely online series of events that are very exciting and are using social media to the max, but I can’t talk about them right now so look out for the above tips being utilized in my Twitter stream very soon!

Do you have any good tips or examples of events promoted through social media? Please share in the comments ….

I am getting increasingly annoyed with Reddit. Not so much the service, but the voting system.

One of the best, and most frustrating, aspects of Reddit is the fact you can see how many up and down votes a submission has received.

This is a great feature and a surprisingly uncommon one amongst these kinds of social bookmarking services.

Unfortunately great stories get down voted and you have no idea of why. OK, at least on Reddit you can see that you have been down voted, on some competing services you are just left wondering what went on with zero clues.

Now on Mixx you can see not only the votes, but who voted. That is a good start.

The Flaw in Thumb Downs

What would be even better, would be to see who voted, and if they voted, WHY. In theory the comments should tell you, but they don’t. If you actually got some feedback you could improve your next submission, making the whole service much better.

Ideal would be to get actual justifications for down voting, but a compromise would have to be made in the form of check boxes or some sort of list. My concern with that is I don’t think many of the down votes are justified, and giving someone the ability to randomly pick a reason would keep the whole thing going down the same path.

Not All Votes Are Made Equal

A solution to THAT would be to penalize anyone who repeatedly abused the voting system. If they are marking “spam spam spam” perhaps they would have to justify one in five spam submissions, or perhaps they would get flagged as habitual down-voter and their votes count for less.

I’m sure a lot of down votes are simply because the voter has a competing story they want to promote.

Split “Taste-Bias” Votes from “Quality” Votes

At the very least, some distinction needs to be made between “I just don’t like this, it is not to my taste” and “This is factually or morally wrong”. It makes me sick how many times people down vote because they don’t like blogs. Some down votes are because people don’t like commercial and for-profit sites. These same people happily watch cable television stuffed with ads but don’t think web publishers should be allowed to make money from their creativity. You see it in the comments all the time. There are people who actually believe blog = spam, hello?

How would you fix Reddit voting?

Once you really get into it though there are a couple of tasks you would like it to perform on your behalf. For example many people have gone to complicated lengths to follow everyone who follows them. I once considered that, but after a thousand or so people the system breaks down and there are just too many messages to keep up with.

Another aspect that would be nice to be built into the system is to pre-post messages to be delivered at a certain time, for example if you are going to be speaking at an event with a live feed it would be cool to say “Log on to xxx to hear my talk”.

Tweetlater is a service that aims to fill these gaps, and also has been used in a cunning way to help build a friends email list.

Firstly as the name suggest the service allows that pre-post idea, which is cool in itself.

But then if you register you will see there is an option to automate a “Send a Welcome Message” allowing you to welcome new followers either publically or privately – nice touch.

Michel Fortin told me about this feature, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of it before. It really does make people feel welcomed, and so easy. I immediately thought about using it on my “chrisgarret” (the misspelled version) Twitter account to warn people they had followed the wrong one.

Then I heard from Dr Mani about a cool way he was going to use it to build his email list. His approach is much more automated and more directly builds his list but I have another approach based on the same idea. As an auto message offer a free download, which of course you get by subscribing. Twitter user meets you on Twitter, follows you, gets a greeting, clicks the link, signs up to email. Nice!

What other ways could this service be used?

Social networks are all the rage right now but the mass-market, generic social networks do not have the focus that you might need. Enter Ning, a service that allows you to create your own social network.

These social networks do not have to be public either, they can be private, invite-only affairs too.

I was looking for a place to create some Mastermind groups, groups of people to discuss business ideas and marketing tactics with. Then I remembered an SEO group I was invited to join had been created using an online service. Yup, it was created with Ning and looked like just what I needed.

Ning allows your members to

• Create profiles
• Invite friends
• Post events
• Discuss topics in forums
• Build groups
• Add notes, videos, photographs

Essentially it becomes your own mini-facebook

Once you have added your new social network you have a lot of flexibility to customise it.

As well as adding features, moving widgets and tweaking the appearance of your new site, you can also add premium paid features such as using your own domain.

If enough people join my site and get use out of it I will be adding my domain and removing advertising, but until then I am quite happy to be promoting this free service and allowing them to make money off my page views.

You can check out the site I created here at mastermindhub.ning.com, join if you like

In fact, I think it’s not a secret to anyone who spends much time watching the industry news as well as partaking in these services and sites.

You know when these companies are gaining billion dollar valuations, you know how those figures are arrived at?

They do a head-count of their “user base” livestock. Whatever the going rate for a warm-bodied user is, multiplied by their active registrations.

Perhaps there is a premium for payments, subscriptions, and so on. If I was doing the valuation I would much prefer to see some sort of income! But in most cases recently the price has been set by eyeballs, potential for future eyeballs, and some vague idea that ads might pay for everything. Sound familiar dotcom1.0 folks?

The fuel for all this activity is euphemistically described as “User Generated Content”. From the service owners point of view this means they build infrastructure, promote it, and watch the users create the real value.

Think YouTube, Digg, Squidoo, WordPress.com and any social network you could name.

Without users they have no content, without content no users. Without users, no value.

But you get the impression that they have a different view, that users are bottom of the food chain. A replaceable and value-less commodity. Numbers on a spreadsheet. Unless you are a Scoble or an Arrington they can treat you like so much dirt brushed from their $1000 Italian lofers.

Going back to the Apple and FaceBook application woes, doesn’t this seem like the same attitude?

Without these application developers both companies have less to offer end-users. With fewer options they have lower attraction or consumption, and therefore lower profit potential. You wouldn’t know it from how they act, though.

The lesson for the rest of us? If you play in someone else’s sand pit, expect to get some kicked in your face.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

That’s fighting talk! I wonder what Google are thinking … as for me I am thinking “So what?”. After a certain size it is relevance that matters. It could only return one result from 10 but if it was the right result you would be happy.

Cuil is apparently pronounced “cool”. Hyeahright. Nobody I have shown the word has made that connection. “Kew-il” and “Quill” are the main attempts I have heard. Not quite “Go Google it” territory.

From the searches I have done, I don’t see that they are the biggest, but as the company is founded by ex-Google employees I guess they felt qualified to make that bold claim.

The service is brand new and therefore suffering many bugs and outages, but from what I see they have a pretty need search engine here. Most noticeable is the categorization of results, almost predicting what your next search would be.

Seeing as it is my birthday today, obviously my first search is for my own name.

It does a pretty good job, obviously I would prefer my own site ranks first, but it hits the Chris Garrett’s I would expect to see. Strangely it mixes up and miss-matches the images. Bizarre.

Google has both mindshare and is sitting pretty built right into firefox. Microsoft is throwing millions at trying to reverse this very issue, even while having billions of desktops and IE installations as leverage. My guess is the company will go majorly on a PR offensive aimed at VC cash and big buyout exit plan. End users will just be a way to getting access to Silicon Valley wallets.

Obviously it is early days but it might well be a search engine to keep an eye on … at least until Microsoft or Google buy it.

More coverage:

• http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017804.html
• http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080728-075255
• http://scobleizer.com/2008/07/27/a-new-search-engine-appears-will-you-use-it/
• http://searchengineland.com/080728-000100.php

What do you think? A danger to Google or just a dud?