The Facebook freak out continue,s but hidden in the midst of it is a shining example how great PR and how to run a company right. Nate Weiner got his blog post to the cover of Digg.com with the story of Facebook’s new ads invading his privacy on the gaming webiste Kongregate. He lamented the lack of control given him over his personal data and explains in the post how to block Facebook ads using a Firefox extension.
But the real news is in the first comment. The CEO of Kongregate was the FIRST POST, apologizing to Nate and explaining how his company was going to fix the problem. The comments that followed contained many a impressed shout-out and thank you to Kongregate for a fast and fair response.
This is how to treat users and get customers to love you. Well done Kongregate.
So the Interweb is freaking out about the new Facebook Ads today. Facebook’s plan is to change the face of “brand advertising” by turning your friends in to marketers - the old idea that a trusted recommendation from a friend is the best advertisement.
The problem is, this works with only a very small number of brands. Most products and brands are commodities, are marketed poorly or are just plain bad. People use them because they have to, but don’t recommend them because of a lack of: Love. I highly recommend Kevin Robert’s Lovemarks book in which he explains what seperates a traditional brand from a “lovemark” - Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy (the same components in a good relationship). My guess is that Facebook’s new system will quickly show the world which products are simply “brands” that no one really cares about and which are “lovemarks” that people are passionate about. While different people have different products that they love there are a lot of products that are either 1) Loved by Most (i.e. Apple) or 2) Loved by no one (i.e. Sprint).
Of all the thousands of products and brands I interact with, there are only a few that I love enough to actually talk about: Apple, Sandals Resorts, Google and Bodos Bagels. I already passionately recommend these to my friends.
My advice to would-be Facebook advertisers. Stop and first check to see if you are a “lovemark” (do you have a passionate follow already?). If not, don’t get on Facebook. Build some love first. Facebook is in real danger of flooding users with recommendations for products that no one really cares about.
Techcrunch is reporting on the soon-to-be-released advertising additions to FaceBook: namely, their Project Beacon which will allow third-party stores such as Amazon.com or Orbitz to publish stories to your FaceBook Newsfeed whenever you purchase something (like a book or plane ticket). For example: Someone might purchase FixTunes and then a message would appear on the news feeds of all their friends: “Daniel just purchased FixTunes. Click here to see it”.
This is great news for advertisers and e-commerce sites. The news feed already serves as an excellent tool for virally spreading information (look at how fast the Stephen Colbert group formed), and knowing that your friend purchased a product is about as good an endorsement or review there is. We would definitely be excited to integrate this into FixTunes.
That said, from a user/consumer perspective, I’m not sure how this will play out. I am already starting to feel like my Facebook News Feed is starting to resemble my email inbox - full of spam. Not spam in the viagra-nigerian-dictator form, but spam in the form of somewhat useful information that I technically asked for but don’t have time to care about. I’m already overloaded by notes on all my friends changing relationships, adding pictures, getting hungry, joining groups and so on. What they bought may just be too much. Could this be the beginning of the end of Facebook?
If you are a graphic designer living near or around Charlottesville, Richmond, Harrisonburg etc., we are looking for you. Cloudbrain has a number of upcoming projects and we are looking for one (or more) graphic designers that can help with everything from the creative, conceptual design phase through final layout. No coding necessary - just hip taste and mad Photoshop skills. If you are interested, send a link to previous work / portfolio to jobs@cloudbrain.com. Additional questions are also welcome.
The video below wasn’t created by professional. Its exactly what it looks like: a kid doing cool things on a skateboard and getting filmed by his friends. Watch it. Its amazing.
This kid was just offered his own shown on MTV, doing exactly what he was doing before. No he didn’t spend tons of money trying to meet the right people. No, his dad doesn’t own MTV. They just found him. On YouTube. Doing this.
Coming on the heels of the Anderson PR War, Bokardo has a great article on the difference and implications of private vs. public identities. What if everyone had to attach their real name to every comment and review they left around the Internet?
That $15 billion dollar valuation doesn’t seem quite so certain anymore. Google is starting its own open social networking platform with participation from at least MySpace, Six Apart, Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle. Overnight Facebook became the Internet prom queen wondering if she actually had any real friends after all (while the geeky Google has the last laugh). Read More.
In other news, if Facebook deletes you, do you really exist at all?
One of the big stories of the last two days: Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine, got fed up with the amount of unwanted, irrelevant and targeted PR (spam) press-releases he was getting he compiled a list of 300 or so PR people whose addresses he had blocked. He then published the list of blocked emails on his blog.
Insanity quickly followed. Three comments were quickly posted on his post fighting over the rightness or wrongness of 1) Sending spam 2) Emails sent to purchased mailing lists aren’t spam or 3) Is it ok to “out” all those people and publish their emails. A lot of people are upset / angry / embarassed / happy / scared / crazy. Its all very funny. Check out this catfight. Chris’ response to the aftermath is here.
Lesson learned: never ever send out a mass email unless you are absolutely positive that every single recipient will be thrilled to receive and read it. No exceptions.
The Facebook freak out continue,s but hidden in the midst of it is a shining example how great PR and how to run a company right. Nate Weiner got his blog post to the cover of Digg.com with the story of Facebook’s new ads invading his privacy on the gaming webiste Kongregate. He lamented the lack of control given him over his personal data and explains in the post how to block Facebook ads using a Firefox extension.
If you are a graphic designer living near or around Charlottesville, Richmond, Harrisonburg etc., we are looking for you. Cloudbrain has a number of upcoming projects and we are looking for one (or more) graphic designers that can help with everything from the creative, conceptual design phase through final layout. No coding necessary - just hip taste and mad Photoshop skills. If you are interested, send a link to previous work / portfolio to 
One of the big stories of the last two days: Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine, got fed up with the amount of unwanted, irrelevant and targeted PR (spam) press-releases he was getting he compiled a list of 300 or so PR people whose addresses he had blocked. He then