Over the last few months at Jack Morton I’ve been working with the team producing videos for Gillette to be posted on YouTube and a variety of other social video sites around the web.  Well, they are finally wrapped, posted and generating millions of views.  Watch and enjoy.

What’s the Perfect Length for Your Man?

How Often Do You Do It?

How Do You Like It Shaved?

Show Some Skin at Work

Shaving Scenarios Gone Social is a post from: Trumblog

Anyone who follows someone on Twitter who cross-posts their Foursquare updates to Twitter knows how annoying it is.  If I want to know where you are then I’ll check Foursquare.  I’m not following you on Twitter for updates that you are at Starbucks again, unless there’s some value add to your update (like a special, a celebrity sighting or something good and snarky about your visit).  Keep it up and I’m liable to unfollow you.

TweetDeck, who just added Foursquare updates (as well as LinkedIn and Buzz), knows how annoying those cross-posts can be and gives you an option to remove them from your All Friends Tweetstream.  For now I’m leaving this unchecked, so I don’t potentially miss those snarky comments, but it’s great to know that TweetDeck is giving me the option.

TweetDeck Hates Cross-posting Foursquare To Twitter Too is a post from: Trumblog

As I pointed out yesterday, if you are concerned enough about the privacy of your data on Facebook to consider deleting  your account then you should make sure that your data is restricted now rather than risk it being open to the public until Quit Facebook Day on May 31.  Therefore here are some tips for checking the privacy settings of your account and the accounts of your friends and family.

Review Your Privacy Settings

Yesterday I mentioned the video from The Huffington Post that describes how to fix your privacy settings.  For those who would prefer a check list here you go

1. Account > Privacy Settings > Personal Information and Posts > Posts By Me – the default setting is “Everyone” you should probably change this to “Only Friends”
2. Account > Privacy Settings > Personal Information and Posts > Photo Albums – here you will have to tweak the privacy settings of each photo album individually
3. Account > Privacy Settings > Friends, Tags and Connections > Photos and Videos of Me – you’ll want to lock this down as well so that friends with lower standards of privacy don’t sabotage your privacy when they tag you
4. Account > Privacy Settings > Contact Information – here you need to tweak how contact information like your phone number, home address, email address, IM screen name and website is shared.  There are even if options for adding you as a friend or sending you a message is visible to certain people.
5. Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites > What You Share – at the bottom of this page is a link to a list of applications that you have allowed to access your profile, they will abide by the settings that you managed previously, but if you see applications listed that you never use or used only once consider deleting them.
6. Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites > What your friends can share about you – this is another place where you can ensure that your friends don’t inadvertently divulge your private information
7. Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites > Instant Personalization Pilot Program – this program shares your information with with partner sites for personalization on them and sharing information with your friends.  Don’t like that?  Uncheck the box and opt out.
8. Account > Account Settings > Facebook Ads – change “Allow ads on platform pages to show my information to” from “only my friends” to “no one.”

Scan Your Privacy Settings

Now that you’ve tweaked your privacy settings it’s time to check your work.  ReclaimPrivacy.org has a great little bookmark that will scan your profile to see how secure your profile is with things like Instant Personalization, how your personal information, contact information, information on your friends, tags and connections can be shared and if friends or applications can share your personal information.  The bookmark gives you a score and you can fix some of these issues with the click of a button.

See What Facebook Information Is Public

Finally you should dig in an see exactly what of your information on Facebook is being shared with everyone.  Here are a few tools to do that. The Facebook API browser displays exactly what personal information on Facebook is publicly available through their API.  Just paste the ID or alias of any Facebook account and this website will comb through your the Facebook API and display what is there.  For example the information publicly available from my profile is limited to education and work history, about the same as is on LinkedIn, and is exactly how I intend it to be.  But if you haven’t tweaked your privacy settings you may find embarrassing and personal things being completely public.

Bridging these two options is Profile Watch that scans your profile, gives you a rating for privacy AND shows you what of your personal information is public in a slightly more user friendly interface.  Frankly I think that this rating is not that useful when compared with the Reclaim Privacy bookmark that shows what categories of data are private or not, but the display of the data itself is much nicer than in the Facebook API browser and is a good double check.

While I hope that Facebook will address this privacy issue and make understanding what information is public or private and modifying those settings easier, I suspect that it’s going to be some time before they do.  Until that time, or May 31, I suggest that you check your privacy settings for yourself and address any privacy issues that you have.

Do you have other suggestions for privacy settings that should be reviewed or tools to check your work?  Let me know in the comments.

How To Check Your Facebook Privacy Settings is a post from: Trumblog

So Facebook is pissing you off with their privacy policy and the loss of control of your data and profile and now you are thinking of closing your account.  I understand your frustration and while I’m not sure that I’ll be joining you, I won’t try to convince you to stay.  I will however leave you with a few thoughts about moving on.

1. Lock up before you go – just because you have decided to leave Facebook on Quit Facebook Day doesn’t mean that someone isn’t casing the joint right now.  If you really are concerned about your privacy and data then don’t wait to lock it up. The Huffington Post has a nice video that walks you through setting your Facebook privacy settings.  If you haven’t changed your settings yet, or don’t now, then you should ask yourself are you really that concerned in the first place and should you consider other options.  Even if you don’t plan to leave check your privacy settings (and the settings of your parents and kids).

2. Don’t lose your keys – remember Facebook Connect?  Did you use it to register for any websites?  If you delete your Facebook account you will lose access to websites that you registered for with Facebook Connect. Some websites that you registered on (probably most websites)  you really don’t care about and you can register again if you need to, but there may be some that would be a pain to lose access to.  As far as I can tell there is no easy way to identify the sites you use Facebook connect to register with and then change your registration except by remembering and checking for yourself.  If you know a better way let me know in the comments.

3. Clean house – it’s unclear whether deleting your Facebook account is like wiping a hard drive, but based on the cost of memory dropping every day and value of that data, I suspect that it isn’t. Therefore  you should assume that any data that you have added to Facebook will remain on their servers despite your deleting your account. I suggest that you start by archiving all of your Facebook  data because you probably will want those picture and videos at some later time.  You should then delete as much data as you can including photos and videos.  Untag yourself in other people’s photos.  Delete all information about yourself, delete applications, unfriend everyone, etc.  Assume that all data on Facebook will remain when you delete your account so you want to leave your account a blank slate.  Finally, you can delete or deactivate your account.  Make sure that you know the difference and do what you really want to do with your account.

4. Have a forwarding address -I know that Diaspora* is getting a lot of press right now, but remember that there’s no there , there yet.  Diaspora* won’t be ready to move in until the end of the summer.  You are in for some time with your online profile sleeping on other people’s couches.    In addition, social networks are of little value when the population is small and Diaspora* is likely to be pretty small when it starts.  There are a lot of questions about how it will work, how easy it will be to set up and whether it will be much more private than Facebook is so who knows if it will take off.  I suggest that you have backup plans for your profile or be prepared to go without.

5. Consider a pied a terre – Facebook may have betrayed you enough that you no longer want to make it your primary residence anymore, but you could keep a “foot on the ground.”  Lifehacker has instructions for how to create a minimal Facebook account for communication between you and your friends.  This option is a pretty good one for letting you dip into the Facebook network when you need to, but keep your personal data intact.

Regardless of whether you are planning to leave Facebook or not I suggest that you check your privacy settings and consider your options.  Facebook could go the way of Detroit and we’ll all be moving on soon enough.

Photo Credit: “Moving-Sign” by Enigma
Thanks to @livimauri for instigating the post

5 Things To Do Before Moving Out Of Facebook is a post from: Trumblog

My BlackBerry died again on Wednesday so while I await a real replacement I’m rocking this beat up BlackBerry 8700.  I tried adding a few apps to help with Social Networking, but the old gal’s not having any of it (and since I’ll be handing her back on Monday I’m not jumping through any hoops to make it work) so any updates will need to be performed via the mobile web.

Consider it an experiment and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Don’t Expect Much Social Media From Me Today is a post from: Trumblog

I used to be very active on Yelp. I hadn’t added any new reviews in a while, but yesterday I wanted to give a little love to the taco stand where I’ve been getting lunch lately so I added a review and while I was there thought that I’d update my friend list. I go to the friend page and these are the options I get:

Yup, it’s all email based. I can add email addresses or link with my Windows, Yahoo, AOL (people still have AOL email accounts?) and finally GMail, but there is no option for connecting with other social networks. I have a lot of friends on Twitter and Facebook that I would be very happy to connect with on Yelp as well, but I don’t have many of their email addresses.  I could get them if I needed them, but it would take some digging and I’m not going to put in that effort for Yelp.

Limiting the means of connecting with your existing social graph to email is going to be a significantly limiting factor leaving many potential connections unlinked.  All those folks I met at SXSWi and who I’m following on Twitter are probably on Yelp and posting reviews that would be useful to me and drive me back to Yelp, but without a way to merge these social graphs the opportunity is lost.  In addition those connections from other social networks are more likely to engage with another social network than the general population in your and my address book.

My takeaway in 140 characters: Help members import existing connections to a new network with multiple ways to reconnect; Twitter, Facebook & email

For Social Network Success Provide Multiple Ways To Reconnect Your Social Graph is a post from: Trumblog

Twitter has joined the ranks of other social networks and social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare and LinkedIn and now Twitter has an official BlackBerry application.  I’m pleased to say that despite the significant issues that I had with the beta version of this app that I had a couple weeks ago and Twitter’s denial of its official status, this app is no red headed stepchild.  It’s a quality app that is worth a try.

Like most of the applications that I mentioned above the Twitter app is fully integrated with the BlackBerry OS so alerts appear in the alert header of the home screen and Messenger app and the browser and media libraries are linked with the Twitter app for easy link and photo sharing.  The app is also structured like the others, with a row of icons at the top of the home screen that give you access to most features and then you can dig deeper with the menu.  For the Twitter application these features are

• Home – your tweetstream and tweet entry field
• Mentions – all @replies directed to you
• Lists – your lists and link to create new lists
• My Profile – for reviewing and editing your profile
• Direct Messages – all direct messages to you and a handy direct messaging tool
• Find People – search for twitter accounts
• Search – search tweets including saved searches and an incredibly detailed advanced search feature
• Popular Topics – current and recent trending topics

The Twitter BlackBerry app is particularly good for exploration. For example, double clicking a tweet not only opens it for actions like replying, favoriting and retweeting. It opens the twitterer’s profile giving you access to information like their name, bio, a link to their website, location, number of followers and a link to who they are, number of people who follow them and a link to those followers too, lists subscribed to, favorited tweets and finally options to friend them (handy with Twitter’s retweet style) or block them (handy with stalkers).

The search functionality is similarly feature rich. Not only can I access saved searches from Twitter.com, but the Advanced Search allows me get really granular in searching the tweet stream.  I can search by a set of words, an exact phrase, a hashtag and even eliminate keywords from my search.  I can set the language of the search results, limit the search by who said it or who was referenced in the tweet, where the tweet was sent from, when it was sent, the attitude of the tweet (positive, negative or asking a question) and finally whether the tweet contains a link or not.  Yes, it is THAT granular.  The Popular Topics screen also has two different ways of taking the pulse of the tweet stream. I don’t know what the difference in timeframe is for “current” versus “recent,” but the current tab has a list of popular topics and the recent tab shows a tag cloud of different popular topics.

The Twitter BlackBerry application compares well with Seesmic and ÜberTwitter that I have reviewed in the past.  It looks good, usability is excellent and there are no performance issues that I noticed in my few days testing the app.  It shares most of the same features as the other two applications, but it falls short in a three critical spots. First, it does not support multiple accounts.  This is probably not significant for most users, but for we power users it is.  Second, it does not support @ completion.  Again for power users it’s handy to be able to type “@” and then access a list of friends, which makes finding a Twitter handle easy and ensures that you spell it correctly. And third, retweeting is limited to the new Twitter style, not old school addition of comments to a retweet that we power users prefer.

For more details on how these three applications compare to each other, here’s my chart of features:

Twitter, Seesmic and ÜberTwitter Comparison

The “semi-official” BlackBerry application is a worthy addition to the options for twitterers with BlackBerries. It’s good looking, easy to use and feature rich.  With a few additions it would easily rank up there with Seesmic and ÜberTwitter as a favorite of mine and a recommendation for power users.  It is certainly an application that Twitter should be endorsing and proud of.

Review: Twitter Application For BlackBerry is a post from: Trumblog

Sometimes online social media campaigns are just too complicated for their own good.  Case in point, Wrigley’s 5 React gum experience.  Let me quickly run through the 12 steps of this campaign for you.

1. Go to 5React.com
   
2. Select “Are You Ready?” to begin their “personalized sensory experience”
3. Connect with Facebook
4. Watch a Flash-based movie with pictures of you from Facebook and a determination of whether you are “chosen” or not.
   
5. If chosen (I assume everyone is chosen, because I was, but who knows maybe I have the demographics of a gum chewer and others don’t) enter your home address to receive something for the next step of the campaign.At this point a status update is added to your Facebook profile that you were chosen
   
6. Receive a package in the mail, fancy black box, 3D glasses, code, and gum.
   
7. Go back to 5React.com
   
8. Select “Continue Your Sensory Experience”
9. Enter your code
10. Connect with Facebook AGAIN
11. Put on your 3D glasses for a trippy 3D fractal animation of your photos
    
12. You can also share your experience of chewing 5 Reach gum with other people or watch their experiences, though honestly they all look pretty much the same.
    

So if we assume that we loose 10% of the audience for every step (a pretty low estimate i think)

• only 65% of the audience who started will end up letting their friends know about the experience via a Facebook status update and then receive their gum sample,
• only 53% will return to the website after they get their glasses and code,
• less than 35% see the fractal animation, and
• only about 30% will share their experience with anyone else.

Now, I haven’t even factored in whether people like the gum or not (though it’s safe to assume that if you don’t like the gum you are not likely to go play with those 3D glasses), nor have I mentioned that the fractal animation is pretty boring and not that customizable (which is likely to suppress sharing as well), but we can reassure ourselves that the 30% who share are probably the most dedicated fans of the gum (that and the ones who have nothing better to do or need a topic for a blog post).

I just have to wonder if it is all worth it?  Wasn’t there a way to whittle this from 12 steps to a less formidable 6?  Isn’t this just too clever for it’s own good? Did anyone ask themselves what consumer is actually going to do it, and for those that do have we ensured that the payoff is worth it?  Too many steps and too little value tick off the consumer and at that point your ROI is negative.  Keep that in mind for your next complex campaign.

Complex Campaigns: More Steps, Less Return is a post from: Trumblog

In the last month I heard Evan Williams of Twitter speak at South by Southwest and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare speak at the Boston Ad Club.  I couldn’t help but notice that a topic that came up for each of them was that rather than focusing on the features or the interface of their applications they highlighted the importance of the network.

Evan Williams of Twitter discussed the ecosystem that has grown up around Twitter and felt that it was a positive thing and a sign of the network’s health, not a missed business opportunity because he is focused on the network not the application.  The Twitter network he stressed is not as a social network, but an information network with as many uses are there are needs and as much value as there is information within it.  It doesn’t matter whether you retweet one way or another, if you are a lurking follower of 3 accounts or have several thousand followers and constantly @ replying.  The network of people and information and the opportunities and possibilities are what matter.

Dennis Crowley talked about the value of the network in how the user experienced the second screen.  He was answering a question about competition from Gowalla, Loopt, etc, not to mention Facebook and Twitter that are adding a location component to their social networks.  He said that checking-in, or geolocation in and of itself was not so important.  What is important is what takes place on the next screen. It’s the value of the network in connecting us with nearby friends, providing us with useful tips about what to do at that venue or giving us a special price.  The check-in is valueless.  The interface is valueless.  It’s what gets delivered as a result of that check-in that is the value and the differentiator for those services.  In other words.  Bring on your check-ins.  Show me what YOU are going to do with them.

Too often I think we focus on getting status updates and check-ins and less on the value that we provide as a result of those actions. I think that we need less focus on the features and functionality for those actions and more on how, as marketers, we add value to those actions and thereby reap the rewards of the network.

It’s The Network Stupid is a post from: Trumblog

Following is a liveblog of a conversation between Dennis Crowley, Co-founder of Foursquare, and Wade Roush, Xconomy’s  Chief Correspondent, that took place at the Boston Ad Club on April 5, 2010.  During the discussion they talked about the founding of Foursquare, issues that Foursquare is facing in growth and specifically how they are working with brands and marketing companies.  Crowley talked at length about the background for why Dodgeball was created, the sale to Google and then the dissolving of the Dodgeball team, what were the differences in the market that made Foursquare a bigger success, their philosophy for involving marketers, the difficulty of finding time to collaborate with marketers and how they decide to add features.  Overall it was a very interesting glimpse into a rising social network riding the wave of one of today’s greatest trends.

20:53:13 PM: Dodgeball was broken becuase of SMS, lack of GPS, not enough people.

20:54:43 PM: Game mechanics were added to Foursquare in order to entertain people until community mass was achieved.

20:57:35 PM: Dodgeball was supposed to be a better NYC City Search, locations could be updated in real time. Make cities easier to use

20:59:14 PM: Dots on a map should be opportunities to meet.

21:01:20 PM: Social consequences of geolocation was @dens thesis. Dodgeball was hacked up proof.

21:04:15 PM: Twitter, Facebook and GPS phones made the difference between Dodgeball and Foursquare

21:05:28 PM: Dodgeball was based on the first 10 pages of @dens thesis. Foursquare adds the other 90 pages

21:11:17 PM: Facebook and Twitter taught us to use social media, iPhone taught us to use phones to answer Questions. Primed the pump for Foursquare

21:12:51 PM: The screen you use to check in isn’t important, it’s the information on the next screen @dens

21:14:10 PM: It’s not interesting to say where someone is, but to help someone find something cool based on your location @dens

21:15:49 PM: How do you let someone live better through your brand (via @foursquare) and how do you make it fun?

21:17:19 PM: Making opt in a requirement earns user respect. You have to friend Bravo to earn the Bravo branded badge.

21:19:18 PM: Checkins are mini ads from friends that support local merchants. Foursquare gives merchants Google analytics style stats

21:19:55 PM: Foursquare is not charging for analytics yet. Yet.

21:21:48 PM: Foursquare tipping point out of nerd/ tech ghetto was NYT writing about brand opportunity, media company involvement

21:22:59 PM: If you can get people through 10 days of using Foursquare they will love it. via @dens

21:25:32 PM: Foursquare has 1 biz dev guy who is also a full time MBA student at Stanford.

21:26:21 PM: Foursquare’s next challenge and hire is biz dev.

21:28:15 PM: Foursquare is partnering with Pepsi. Pepsi donates to charity for each person who checks in at events around the country.

21:29:17 PM: Foursquare builds equally for user and vendor 50/50 for time.

21:30:41 PM: Perfect mix of privacy is when you say where you are. @dens

21:31:25 PM: The check in is the poor man’s Tweet. via @dens

21:32:43 PM: Foursquare does not want to get too slutty with badges, but badges are what users want. Via @dens

21:34:31 PM: Fake venues (events, TV shows, hell) are the equivalent to Twitter users creating hash tags and retweets

21:36:56 PM: Tristen is the Foursquare biz dev guy.

21:41:24 PM: Big shift is connecting all the info we put in our phones about where we are, when we do things, who we hang out with

Foursquare And The Rise of Location Based Social with Media Dennis Crowley is a post from: Trumblog