Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude

Facebook: A Ship Lost in the Dark of Night

Tue, 29 May 2012 12:57:37 -0700

Facebook went public a week and a half ago. The IPO, thought by many to be the grandaddy of them all instead was a dud, as the stock barely rose on the first day of trading and actually fell an additional ten percent on the second day. After that, came allegations that investors had hung the company out to dry by selling the stock off prior to open because they felt like the social network did not have a viable monetization plan. The money, while made by those who were in the company early, is for the most part gone. Everyone who has gone in since is now in the red.

I’ve been rather harsh on the company since its opening. Even though I’m in social media and work on community management for a living, I have always found it necessary never to fall in love with one particular social network unless there is a true and tried business purpose. For me, Facebook has been that revolutionary tool that has changed the way that we communicate, but the more and more you view the site with its ads (and if you use the mobile app, more is on its way), newfangled features, the more you realize the social network that we have come to love is lost. In other words, they too understand that the Internet is finally bored.

Don’t get me wrong however: Facebook has come a very long way in the past 8 years from the dormitory of Mark Zuckerberg post-female rejection to a site that has as many people as 16 percent of the planet. From the point of a view of a product, there has been great success, but from the point of business even though the company has had the luxury of being on top, there have been many cracks. The $1 billion purchase of Instagram and subsequent releasing of its own app, for example, shows that Facebook is scared of what might be. The bringing back of college roots to its communities after it left the very concept 5 years ago is yet another example of a company that isn’t sure what to do, but codes for the sake of coding, with the anticipation that something fun and useful might come out of it - like Facebook chat.

The other aspect of the company that is particularly frustrating for users is the usability in general. Recently as I have typed to people, I’ve gotten the notification that I might be typing spam. In fact, after congratulating Zuckerberg on becoming married to his wife Priscilla Chan, I was banned from posting a comment on pages I subscribe to for a week. It is however, not as bad as many individuals I know who hit networking caps and cannot go over 5,000 friends despite literally knowing everyone they meet and adding value to their lives. With engineers running a company who don’t socialize (and hey, what is the point when you make hundreds of thousands anyway?) creating a company whose sole point is to socialize, this creates a conundrum, and one that I find is very troubling.

The next few months are going to be interesting. For the industry, the end of Q3 should be a rather poignant look at where Facebook is in regards to advertising and its revenues. Will people pay $2 to get their status updates featured? Will more people click on advertising? Will the company try to change up the interface again to make things look more streamlined?

Time will tell. Come back soon and we’ll analyze it!

The Loss of Competitive Intellectual Advantage

Fri, 25 May 2012 13:03:28 -0700

There used to be a time in human society when intellectuality and knowledge were commodities. Back in those ages, knowledge was held by the teachers in society who entertained those who wanted to learn more. For the most part, the rest of society didn’t really need to know much anyway out of the day-to-day tasks of managing their lives and building up a civilization.

With those who had the knowledge, came the building of Universities. Universities became the center of learning and the center of discussion of contemporary issues, and were also the beginning of sweeping intellectual change. Many Enlightenment era Philosophers were also professors of the time, and their thoughts contributed to eventual revolutions such as that of the French, American as well as social-political upheaval in the 19th century.

The rise of the Middle Class in the 20th century was the beginning of where overall intellectuality and knowledge were spread further out. Families and individuals now without the need to cover their daily needs on such an explicit level now found it in their daily life to be able to go attend school, acquire knowledge and apply that knowledge into their occupations. Access to undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs now became more widely available to everyone, and those who could complete those courses were held in the highest regard. You no longer needed that connection or family blood in order to be someone above the rest.

Digital technology advanced the whole of society further as the Internet went live in the 1990s, followed by Wikipedia and social media becoming venues of discussion. No longer was intellectual conversation confined to a University lecture hall but now found in blog comment sections, Facebook walls, emails, live chat rooms as well as Skype and Google+ chat rooms. Elite institutions such as MIT and Stanford now even offer courses at no charge on both iTunes as well as their own websites, further lowering the need to have to go to a physical college. Some, such as entrepreneur and ventur capitalist Peter Thiel, have encouraged others to forgo college for $100,000 and instead consider starting their own businesses.

Is the ivory tower crumbling at the expense of social media and digital technology?

I had this discussion with my manager at Cisco the other week, and we both came to the agreement that this was true. You can become educated anywhere now, whether it is reading articles on Wikipedia, going to your local library, taking courses off iTunes U or going straight to the source of some college institutions and checking out electronic courses that they may have for free, such as at MIT and Stanford. The only place that still has the barrier to the rest of the public lies in journal archives and journal websites such as JSTOR and Lexis-Nexis, where fees (not cheap) must be paid in order for people to read peer-reviewed journal articles and theses.

In other words, this means that there is now a loss of competitive intellectual advantage. If you have access to a device that allows you to access the Internet, one could almost argue that there is no excuse to not be ignorant. You can do everything from learn how to cook and tie a tie on YouTube to learning the details of nuclear fission and fusion on Wikipedia, and crack the basics of how to code an app on Codeacademy and the genetic structure of humans through lessons on Khan Academy. You might not be as smart as the PhD student down the street at school, but there is no doubt that if you wanted to understand what he was doing, you could go many places to read up on what he knows and have a stimulating discussion.

So what does this mean for you? The answer is relatively simple: We live in a society where knowing people matters just as much as acquiring knowledge. If you have a lot of knowledge, but don’t know anyone to share with it, that potential is just as small as knowing a lot of people but not knowing anything to share with them. As competitive intellectual advantage falls and continues to fall, the cost of knowing things falls as well, and therefore the value of people rises. Therefore, it is only in your interests in the long term to get to know as many people of quality as possible, so you can advance your thoughts and capabilities.

The ivory tower is crumbling. What are you doing to take advantage of that for you and your society?

Albert Qian is a writer for Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude. Join him in his social media ivory tower today and send him a Tweet to @albertqian.

The Yellow Pages are Done: It's All in Social Media

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:01:00 -0700

A couple of months ago I walked into a shopping center and saw a pay phone. It seemed awkwardly out of place, like a relic in the wrong era. In a day where our mobile phones can play games, pay for items and buy coupons on Yelp, this pay phone could only push numbers and call people.

Attached to this pay phone was a copy of the yellow pages. The yellow pages hung off the phone booth, lonely as ever and the pages fluttered in the wind.

Truly obsolete.

In this day and age of social media, Yelp and Google search, searching through the Yellow Pages is a dirty process, right down to the ink on your fingers at the end. In the time it takes for anyone who can type on a keyboard to find a business, Yellow Page users are still flipping through the alphabet to see if their business is under a letter or a particular category.

In just a few short years, social media has:

Made the Yellow Pages search an inefficient one, compared to social media
Consumed excessive amounts of paper, even recycled - Millions of pages are printed each year to be put on the steps of households that never even look at them, but turn them into high chairs for little kids instead.
Given businesses and consumers a chance to engage in real time on social channels. On the Yellow Pages, you cannot Tweet or share the business you found unless you physically clip out the ad. Do you have time for that?
Lowered the barrier of entry for advertising. If you advertise in the Yellow Pages, the costs are crazy. A one inch spaced listing can range from $252 to $2,500 depending on location, and there is no guarantee that someone could see that small text when glossing for businesses. A larger page listing can run you anywhere from $10,000 to $90,000 depending on your location, and you don’t even get the chance to change the content displayed. A Facebook page is free and you have the opportunity to add content of your own from photos to videos as well as partner with other businesses over social media. Can your Yellow Pages do that? Imagine what an investment of $10,000 could do for your social media presence and bring in more business. The gains would be substantial.
Created viral brand campaigns that really, really allow for more reach. Neither you nor I may ever visit Chuck Testa in Ojai Valley to have anything taxidermized, but we know about his services through the viral video he created with the help of Rhett and Link and the help of Reddit. Yellow Pages are static. Social media moves mountains.

If you’re still using the Yellow Pages for your business, you’re not spending your money wisely, but rather tossing it at an institution that has seen its days long gone. More so, if you expect Generation Y and the Millenials to use the Yellow Pages to find you, that’s not going to happen either.

The experience will probably look like this:

Don’t be that business that advertises in the Yellow Pages. Join the future of marketing and customer engagement. Let me know how I can help you transition into the future of marketing, content management, video production and social media.

Albert Qian writes for Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude and has not used the Yellow Pages seriously in 10 years or more. Join him and move your business forward today.

Thoughts on the Facebook IPO (Take Two)

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:40:07 -0700

It was quite a week for Mark Zuckerberg. He had a birthday, got married, and oh - his company went public at a valuation of $104 billion dollars.

The debut of Facebook was rather interesting. Depending on how you think about it, the introduction of Facebook on the NASDAQ was either a dud or perfectly timed. Closing up 23 cents can be viewed either as a perfect valuation or signaling that social media is a bubble or that there were external factors affecting the stock price, such as the debt crisis in the European Union that currently has the overall stock market on a tumble. I think in nicer times, Facebook might have seen the 10% uptick that most were expecting.

I reviewed my thoughts on the Facebook IPO earlier in February of this year when they first announced that they would go public. I did not purchase any stock Friday, but I do have some new thoughts since that have come off the IPO.

Social media has arrived - Not that it hadn’t before, but Facebook’s day one trading volume certainly shows that its here. Whether to stay is another thing.
Social media is already on our minds - Of the 19 Social Media IPOs in 2011, 82.4% of those stocks (16 stocks) are trading below their opening day value. And because of that, investors are wary.
A Maturation of Time Past, But Still Lots to be Done - I would argue that the IPO was a maturation of what Facebook has done for itself over the past 8 years. There are some wonderfully rich folks out in Menlo Park now, and the effort is certainly deserved with the money made. Facebook Pre-IPO has served as a great place for information, news and political gathering, but post-IPO sees a different world in the need to monetize through advertising. 44% already don’t click on Sponsored Stories, General Motors just dropped a $10 million dollar ad campaign and 46% think its a passing fad. We also thought video games were a passing fad too, in the 1980s, by the way - and look where that went.
Monetization - A Question of How - It’s going to be argued how Facebook will monetize off the rest of us. As much as Zuckerberg and his team of engineers can tell us, the end users, that they will focus on shipping good code and making a good user experience, shareholders are going to ask for more. And when a product is based upon the efforts of its users, Facebook is going to ask for more clicks on advertising, the buying of $2 status update features and possibly even ads on its mobile platform. Will users click? Will the user experience suffer? Will we see a defiant CEO push back and as a result, see stock price drop in favor of what the engineering crowd sees as optimal? A curious quandary indeed, and it should be interesting to see play out.

These are some of the initial thoughts that I have on the IPO. Going forward towards the end of Q2, Q3 and Q4 we’ll see more numbers on Facebook earnings calls that will tell us if users truly respond positively or if its the beginning of something else. I’ll share my thoughts then.

In the mean time, tell me what you think. Did you buy stock? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @albertqian.

Albert Qian is the writer for Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude.

Social ROI: The Beast in the Room

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:02:02 -0700

If there were a business buzzword hall of fame, I have no doubt that the phrase “Return on Investment” (ROI) would be one of the initial inductees.

Social Media ROI was a topic of great discussion last week at the Ragan Conference. As has been the case with social media, ROI has been a huge topic for the past three to five years. The question at the end of the day is always what ROI denotes in social media, whether it might be tweets, fans, followers, pageviews, page hits or Klout score.

This question has never had a definitive answer, at least in the discussions I’ve had with people over the past several years. In executing social media after all, unlike every other process, the problem lies within the fact that ROI is not direct. That is, that social media can help in garnering a sale, click through, view, or a conversation, but directly speaking, the ROI is pretty much zero. Suffice to say, just starting a Twitter account or having a Facebook page is not ROI. Using the account and posting to the page might.

For me, the answer is not simple either, but at the end of the day comes down to relationships. As fluffy as a word as that may be, that’s what business is all about. In the example of a brick and mortar store, a lack of relationships means that sales are depressed. Obviously as customers none of us would ever go to a store that treats us badly. Comparatively speaking, none of us would engage with a Twitter account that spews back hateful trash.

But how do you measure relationships? Relationships are of course a perspective widely held by the parties involved. A “friend” on Facebook or a “follower” on Twitter after all is not the real-life equivalent. The digital method is not really any clearer. Just because someone spends 5 minutes on your site and clicks through to various pages doesn’t signify true ROI either, even if you sent them from a social channel. Marketing funnels too, can tell some of the story, if you can do a deep enough dive, but not all companies have that technology.

In the end of the day however, the basic point is that relationships are what take the cake. Building them up to a point of sale is the tough part because of the involvement in emotions and other issues. Treat social media like a party, where you are constantly introducing people to each other and making friends. It works like this in basic business, and it will surely work on the social graph.

How do you build relationships on social media? How do you answer the ROI question? Share with me on Twitter @albertqian.

Cisco-Ragan: A Reminder That Social Media is Social

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:01:05 -0700

I had the pleasure of sitting down this week at the Cisco/Ragan Social Media Summit in San Jose. The opportunity afforded me the luxury of sitting in front of luminaries like Mark Ragan and Brian Solis as well as social media strategists from Scottrade, Lawyers.com, IBM, Southern California Edison and Neiman Marcus.

As someone who has geeked out and engaged in the space for three years now, a lot of the topics found here weren’t new, but served as an update and a refresher to what social media is. If you observe the industry from a top-down view, you’re exposed daily to varying viewpoints from those who believe that social media is a fad, a bubble or something that simply isn’t to be dabbled in. Doubters will always exist, but with social media the going notion is that something some day will lead to its demise and that it’s just here as a hobby for most.

The Cisco/Ragan social media summit to me was a good friendly reminder that social media is still about being social and about creating meaning for customers through social channels. Namely:

Communicating and being responsive to customer needs in times of great crisis
Leveraging technology and gamifying the customer engagement process
Empowering those internal and external to your company over social media
Having fun in the entire social media process
The main audience for anything can be found over social media

As we move forward through 2012, it will be more and more important to understand and apply these processes on both a personal, enterprise and small business level. The conference to me is a good reminder that there is a lot of work to be done, but already there are a lot of great examples and samples of how taking advantage of a platform can already work wonders.

With that in mind, how will you use social media this year?

Give me a shoutout on Twitter @albertqian. Look forward to hearing from you.

Who You Know, What You Know

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:01:02 -0700

Yahoo, the technology-content-search company everyone has come to enjoy piling on these recent weeks careened further into illegitimacy this week as recently installed CEO Scott Thompson was exposed for not having the computer science degree he claims to have, but only having a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration with Accounting from his Alma Mater. In the process, this has uncovered 12 years of lies, as Thompson was formerly also the CEO of PayPal as well.

Business is a trust based, people-oriented center of activity. Thompson’s exposure sends us all a reminder that when we network and speak to people, the need for honesty is paramount. Granted, while some get away with a little extra fibbing, there is a fine line between that and outright lying, which is what Thompson is to have appeared to have done. When we lie about who we are however, we not only hurt the people who are looking at us as talent acquisition, but also hurt those who help us get to where we are.

In social media, it works the same way. Trust is a fragile commodity because you can blatantly lie about your age, your looks, your family and every aspect of your identity. People take you for who you are, and much like in business, if you lie, you hurt those around you as well. As a business on social media, fostering that trust is important. Breaking it can create social media backlash that can go for days and weeks, and really tarnish a well built reputation. As is the case both with people and business, you can spend 30 years building something up, and destroy it in a matter of seconds.

Consider the consequences in both social media and in person next time when you think of what to say and how to characterize yourself.

Albert Qian is the writer of Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude. Connect with him on Twitter @albertqian.

"Can you make the Facebook button display more likes? We want it to look like people use our website."

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:52:10 -0700

“Can you make the Facebook button display more likes? We want it to look like people use our website.”

- (via clientsfromhell)

Social Tip: Even if you want to take your social media presence by making it look like you matter, it still won’t make a difference in the end when people land on your page.

Engage, make your audience care about what you do, and the rest will follow. Success never comes by way of slackers.

Dear [Social Media] Graduate,

Wed, 02 May 2012 12:00:51 -0700

Congratulations. You’ve reached graduation.

As you tweet your way into your cap and gown, snap photos on your smartphone and capture each moment from the commencement speaker to the tossing of the caps, you inch closer and closer to the real world. When the gowns finally land on the ground, you will have been welcomed in.

You’ve been told all your life that this degree wrapped in a bow and on special paper means something. Life is your oyster, they say. Your future is before you, others repeat. Still others keep saying that now that you are a graduate, it is your turn to go out and change the world, and leave it better than your forefathers found it. That as you walk out of the stadium, building, park and auditorium, you have all the power, might in the world to change what you are about to enter into.

Times have changed many fold since you entered into college, just a short four years ago. In that time, you’ve witnessed a recession that in some sense, continues on with sky high unemployment that still doesn’t seem to end. Among all the hope that commencement speakers around the country will tell you, what they won’t do is sprinkle it with the realities that life will bring. That despite the fact that you have the power to change the world, your prospects of finding that job are low. That despite the fact that the world is your oyster, that monster tuition loan bill you took out four years ago still needs to be paid off, and is collecting interest.

This world you enter into: It’s not pretty.

Yet as you enter into it, there is much opportunity. As a social media graduate, you’ll get to work in one of the fastest growing fields working with technology that changes by the day. You’ll encounter some pretty tough managers along the way - some who have never learned social media and spend all day on Tweetdeck, without a clue as to what a Sponsored Tweet is, and you’ll encounter some pretty awesome ones too, who while being twenty years your senior can reply to a re-tweet faster than you can, know how HootSuite works and engage with you on “Follow Friday”.

The greatest lesson you’ll learn however, is the investment of people. That no matter how much you work, how many hours you sit at your desk and how many spreadsheets you finish, the end of the day will always be about the people you work with and those you meet on the journey to your destination. There will inevitably, always be work to be done. People on the other hand, will not always be there. Invest in people, for they add value to the work that you will be doing, day in and day out. Get to know your manager, the people you meet on social media and the people you meet at networking events. Though its never mentioned in any place in the classes you take in school, this will be the single post determining factor of your success.

So go out there, tweet it up and have fun. It’s been a tough four years (or two), and within that, you’ve conquered the midterms, homework, projects and quizzes. Go out there and make a difference, and remember what you do, always remember to pay it forward.

Happy Graduation, from The Social Media Dude

PS: Connect with me on LinkedIn. Let me know who I should introduce you to, and I’d be glad to help you out.

Social Media: Accelerating The Referral

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 13:02:10 -0700

I’m often asked by non-social media professional friends about social media. With social media news taking over the world on a daily basis, it seems like a reasonable thing to ask. The question I get the most is how social media is particularly useful, especially since there seems to be so much noise about who is acquiring who and what the bubble seems to be, the point of the industry.

For me, the power of social media lies in the referral. Whether its a tweet, a LinkedIn introduction, or a Facebook message introducing two people, social media puts relationships front and center. Nowhere else on earth can you connect two people and get things done, personal or social.

Have you used social media to connect and make an impression today?

Connect with Albert on social media. Twitter @albertqian, LinkedIn, and Facebook today. He writes for the Social Media Dude blog.

Branding Needs to be Simple

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:01:23 -0700

On Monday, Adobe decided to come out with Creative Suite 6, a part of their powerful lineup of media creation products. For those in the creative industry, this a big move because it finally gives users the ability to access Adobe Software in the cloud. The move is definitely a game changer for the future.

I glanced upon the price offerings today, and I am overwhelmed. If you look at the image above, seen in closer view on the article linked, you’ll notice there are a lot of different price points across all the different types of collections.

In other words, its crazy complicated.

Most companies love to do this. In the effort of offering everyone access, they create multiple levels, resulting in confusion. No one wins in the end.

When you create your social media strategy, take the approach of simplicity. Realize which networks your audience are on, and craft a simple yet powerful message to get your brand name across. The more complicated you become, the more people will tune you out. The less complicated you are, the more you relate to others.

Albert Qian is the author of Albert Qian, The Social Media Dude and believes in simple marketing. Contact him on Twitter @albertqian!

Social Media Analysis Should Tell a Story

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:02:58 -0700

Social media metrics are a key part of every social media strategy and campaign. I swear by them, and if you’re in the industry, so should you. Running metrics is like telling a story, with each engagement, activity, and moment of impact told in the form of a story.

Wired Magazine ran an article yesterday called “What Your Klout Score Really Means” and in my eyes, didn’t do anything more than give the company the typical once-over, from Joe Fernandez’s idea in a coffee shop to the interesting celebrities that have a Klout score, such as Justin Bieber and his score of 100 (I for the record, am at a 63) and of course, cite the critics. It doesn’t actually tell you how your Klout score is calculated, but that’s beyond the point.

What troubled me was the story that they led in with:

Last spring Sam Fiorella was recruited for a VP position at a large Toronto marketing agency. With 15 years of experience consulting for major brands like AOL, Ford, and Kraft, Fiorella felt confident in his qualifications. But midway through the interview, he was caught off guard when his interviewer asked him for his Klout score. Fiorella hesitated awkwardly before confessing that he had no idea what a Klout score was.

The interviewer pulled up the web page for Klout.com—a service that purports to measure users’ online influence on a scale from 1 to 100—and angled the monitor so that Fiorella could see the humbling result for himself: His score was 34. “He cut the interview short pretty soon after that,” Fiorella says. Later he learned that he’d been eliminated as a candidate specifically because his Klout score was too low. “They hired a guy whose score was 67.”

Partly intrigued, partly scared, Fiorella spent the next six months working feverishly to boost his Klout score, eventually hitting 72. As his score rose, so did the number of job offers and speaking invitations he received. “Fifteen years of accomplishments weren’t as important as that score,” he says.

I talked about Klout here last year when they did their re-score and created an uproar. Since then, the network has been relatively quiet, merely adding partners like Gilt and giving those with high Klout scores access to a variety of perks.

What worried me about the story here was not really so much about Klout. The platform serves as a great tool for understanding one’s influence, but as the vignette indicates, for some the tool serves asthe onlymeasure of influence and breadth of activity. Much like how asking how many Twitter followers you had 3 years ago was the hip form of social media measurement, the measurement today tends to gear towards what your Klout score is.

And that’s wrong.

The Story of Social Media Metrics

I have no doubt Mister Fiorella is a capable individual. His resume according to the article indicates that he’s a man who’s worked in great positions at Ford, Kraft and AOL and has accumulated 15 years of experience. Yet despite not knowing what Klout was, he was shoved out the door with not much else asked, with his Klout score of a shade under 40. And while he has since raised his Klout score, the fact that there is religiosity on this topic raises a clear problem.

It’s time to tell a story.

When I teach my interns and others interested in social media about measuring their strategy, I spend time on Klout but I also direct them to TwitterCounter, TweetStats, Tospy, Bit.ly, Google Analytics, Facebook Insights (For Pages), Tweriod, Empire Avenue, PeerIndex, Kred, TweetSpinner and others. Because social media is so fragmented, these tools are not only optional but mandatory for understanding your social media strategy. Just as a story is not usually linear, but a combination of plot lines, character development and action, your social media metrics strategy should reflect that too. Don’t look to just one dimension. Integrate it.

An integrated social media strategy brings in multiple viewpoints. on TweetStats, paired up with TwitterCounter and Bit.ly, you can see why you might have grown in followers, who re-tweeted you most and which links were clicked. Added in with Klout for example, you can then see why your true reach grew so much and why you are getting +Ks from your audience. When you have one point of view, your depth of understanding is shallow. Additional points of view create a much more open mind. They create the richness that we seek when we read a great book, and they create the richness we see when our social media results come into plain view.

So when you do create your social media strategy and measure the results, take note of what you are doing. Don’t be addicted. Integrate the numbers and take a look at the entire story. A social media result is like a story, and Klout is like a cover. If you judge it solely by that, you’re missing the entire point.

Albert Qian writes for Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude

Instagram, Facebook and Internet Boredom

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:01:00 -0700

The dust has finally settled on the Facebook/Instagram merger. A week later, many are still asking why this acquisition ever happened, and the answers number in the many. Whether you believe its the competition from Pinterest, the defense against Google or just Zuckerberg being Zuckerberg and hustling as CEO, the reasons could be endless. All I know is that there’s a party cooking in this valley, and boy, the cooking is better than ever - Almost like you’d think its 1999 all over again.

The Internet has become an interesting place in the last 20 years. Since Tim Berners-Lee launched what we call the Internet revolution, the landscape has gone from rotating GIFs and Geocities pages with poor design to a more mature area. We bank online, shop online, message others online and find the love of our life online. With the advent of Facebook, we now make friends online, stalk past lovers online and see how others embarrass themselves. Everything that you came to know in High School in reality, is now plastered all over your Facebook timeline as well as your news feed.

As Facebook prepares on its eve of going public next month, its important to consider what the Internet has become and where its going. The purchase of Instagram is not as much Facebook’s show of power that $1 billion dollars is a drop in the bucket, but more so that the Internet is Facebook as much as Facebook has become the Internet and our reliance and our fourth need in today’s world, beyond food, water and sleep. Most major sites that you go to now give the option for Facebook login for commenting, account creation as well as Liking. Two have become one.

But as much as two become one and the Like button becomes a part of our personal ecosystem of habits on the Internet, the Instagram acquisition by Facebook points to a larger picture: Facebook relevance. Much as we talk about Yahoo! and Google in the natural lexicon of day to day conversation, both have become engrained in our heads. There is nothing special anymore about the two, besides the fact that you can get your email on both, use both to search, get your news and watch the occasional happy video featuring kittens and some home furnishings.

That’s right - I’m implying that Facebook has officially become boring.

The Instagram acquisition for Facebook points to the fact that the Menlo Park company wants to remain cool, and wants to retain the image of being the thing you should talk about everyday, all day. Whether you believe that the move was to circumvent Pinterest’s rising popularity, Google’s potential purchase or just because Zuckerberg felt like it, the ultimate point is that Facebook is again showing why it wants to be Facebook, and not MySpace, Google, Yahoo, Cisco or any other major Silicon Valley tech giant that has faded into everything else. When the core product is watching what others do online and connecting each other to be closer, you can only go so far. Humans after all, no matter how social, do get tired of each other. As one person told me today, “Facebook is boring now”.

So as we move into the middle parts of 2012, we’ll undoubtedly see one of the greatest IPOs ever to come across Wall Street. In the cocktail parties afterwards, people will discuss how Facebook has officially made it, and that social media is here. Our news networks will replay the story of the boy who dropped out of Harvard, struck it gold and invested with Sean Parker, all while inspiring an Oscar winning biopic. The problem however, lies deeper and beyond the billions that will be invested and the nice Yachts purchased - all that is about the now and the present and what happens in 2013, 2014, and so forth. Beyond what growth and power social media has - and that is here to stay - the networks that we engage upon with for social media will change. The battle for that change however, will go to the company that promises to change the game with attention and spice, rather than defensive and luxury acquisitions.

And that fight for attention, brings us to this new era. Let’s make it a good one.

How Politicians Can Use Social Media for 2012

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:03:16 -0700

The American political system is an unfortunate sprint to the finish every four years. Politicians never stop campaigning for a coveted spot in their community, state, city or country.

I was lucky enough several years ago to help run a campaign by a dear friend, Chad Greer for District 9 City Council in San Jose, California. Social media in 2010 was much different than now - the networks were more sparse and I wasn’t aware of as many tools. Two years later, that’s all changed.

In the year 2012, everyone has gone social. For a politician to ignore social media completely would be a death sentence to their political campaign. Don’t ignore the network - it might save you a job.

Check out these five ways that a politician (you?) can use social media to succeed in 2012. Aside from the obvious Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels, these look at ways to further understand how you are being seen, what you can do about it and other creative methods. Tell me what you think!

1. Solidify the content strategy

Content is king on social media. On the local level, content matters even more because news media doesn’t usually get to all the stories unless you bother them to. So make your own stories and borrow the stories from elsewhere. a content management platform like BundlePost can do just that - spend a part of your day putting in articles for the next five, schedule them, and spend the rest of the time talking to constituents about the local issues that really matter.

2. Target the right market

Twitter unfortunately does not have the right search functionality, but TweetSpinner does. Target the individuals in your community complaining the most about every topic that matters to them. Target those who say the right tweets and target your competitors as well. You will still have to kiss babies, however, and you never know where you might find your next devoted follower.

3. Measure Your Pulse

Social media is better when there are numbers to back up the talk. Its even better than the numbers when you turn that talk into sentiment. On a national level this is important but on the local level just as key. A tool such as Mantis Pulse Analytics will be able to help in being able to see how you are faring against your foe in the election — and perhaps you can see who wins the vote before votes are even cast.

4. Make it Mobile

As a politican its important to go out and see the community. When you do see that community, its also important to reward supporters for showing up. Using an application such as Foursquare is beneficial because it allows you to not only see who has checked into your event but also gives the ability to provide incentives for those that do. This is a perfect way to show ROI of who is at your campaign and how popular you might be.

5. Pin down the Causes

One great way to show how much you care about the community and garner the female vote is to visualize what matters to the community. Using Pinterest to start the conversation and display where you are from, what your platform is and what your goals are as a community leader is important, and visualizing makes even more sense. You can talk all day, but a picture tells a thousand words, and those thousand words are the story of why you are trying to make your community the place to be.

What You Post on Social Media Is Impacting

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:46:00 -0700

Last night, I was working on my website Socialize With Us, and was looking to use my Macbook’s webcam to shoot some video podcasts. Unfortunately, as someone who has grown up with a lazy eye (Ptosis), I have to deal with one eye being bigger than the other. Nonetheless, because my Facebook community is generally supportive, I posed a question. It was risky, but this is the screenshot:

You’ll notice the beginnings of the conversation. You can find the rest of it here and see that various friends are interested in helping me out and giving me tips that looks don’t exactly matter. I agree to an extent - they don’t, because if you can talk, sometimes how you look doesn’t really matter either.

I came home this afternoon from work and opened my news feed. To my shock, an acquaintance of mine from college who had lived with me on the same floor freshman year, had posted the photo to her friend’s wall, with some less than kind words. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that she posted this to mock and make fun of the fact of my looks.

The screenshot:

A little bit of research led me to discover that she works at a restaurant in Hawaii. The food business is one of people, where people serve others to quench the need of food and satisfaction of hunger. While most brush off this important concept, the point is pretty clear: this is a breach of ethics, and poor taste in people.

I have since emailed the restaurant, tweeted the head chef and left a review on Yelp stating my dissatisfaction with the employee. Regardless of what happens with these messages, the underlying point is clear: If you want to make fun of, ridicule, insult, badger and mock people over social media, your best choice is to do it offline where no one can see you.

In a world where social media posts go viral and come back to hurt others, its important to pay attention to what you do, much less try to hurt someone who has a career in social media and understands the channels of communication to get a message across.

And because its a Friday night that I’m posting this, its even more important to note. What you do on social media can be detrimental to your reputation, your brand and who you are. What you do as a brand to protect is important, and what you do as a content producer matters as well.

Albert Qian is a Social Media Consultant and the author of Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude, living, working and playing in Silicon Valley. Chat with him on Twitter today @albertqian

What Gregg Williams Can Teach You About Social Media

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:59:38 -0700

If you follow the world of American football, no doubt you’ve been following the New Orleans Saints and their bounty controversy. While rough play is a part of the Football pastime, to pay for the reckless injury of someone is way out of line. Additionally, to speak of taking someone out of a game as Gregg Williams did (Video NSFW), borders on the line of practically wanting to murder.

Sports might be entertainment, but its entertainment with a smidgen of business on the side. In the world of business, its the business of people. And when you ignore people and instead vilify them, you open yourself up to immense criticism. Because of this audio, Gregg Williams may never, ever coach again.

While Williams failed to consider the consequences of his actions and who it would affect during his tenure as the Defensive Coordinator for the New Orleans Saints, it does not mean that you should not. Here are three things Williams can teach you about your social media policy and strategy:

1. Use Social Media to Empower, Not Destroy
Bullying is an unfortunate part of today’s social media culture. Luckily there have been the campaigns against it, but the fact that people still hate using the Internet is prevalent. When you’re on social media, use it to promote community among people, not to create hatred. While acting as a brand, do the same, for it creates loyalty, friendship and customers that are willing to go the extra mile for you.

2. Realize That There are Consequences for Actions
For every action you do, there are positive or negative consequences. Nonetheless, for every social media post you garner, there are actions and consequences as well. If you post content, have goal in mind and a point that you’d like to make. If you’re in a crisis mode, bear in mind the type of responses that you expect to get. If you’re on your personal account, know what types of responses you’ll get if you post something religious, political or potentially offensive. Realize that as a result of what you post, you may either lose your brand image, connections, friends or all three.

3. Compete to Connect, Not to Harm
Social media is used today as a business platform to connect more people to each other than ever before. That said, compete to connect with as many people as possible, not to harm them. If you can build connections, even among your competition, its all the better for the end customer.

What do you think? Share your thoughts below or tweet me @albertqian.

About Albert Qian
Albert Qian is a social media advisor living, working and playing in Silicon Valley, and the author of Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude. Find him on Twitter @albertqian and chat with him today.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Social Media

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:16:00 -0700

The market for social media valuation is hot in Silicon Valley these days. Instagram, the photo sharing app that everyone came to love, just sold for $1 billion dollars to Facebook despite having zero revenue and zero monetization. My buddy Robert Caruso talks more about the photo aspect of this over on his blog, and looks at the acquisition of Instagram from a competition perspective with Pinterest.

While some company founders are now very, very rich and flush with cash - and probably moving on with their lives to their next project, the rest of the social media world is left to wonder why. Reactions, all over the web, indicate that many users were pretty unhappy with the acquisition, and in many minds, wasthesellout of sellouts. The app that many were happy to snap up, become instant photographers and famous among their own friends for knowing how to apply a filter, became instant millionaires.

It is a constant agony, and constant ectasy.

The acquisition of Instagram is no doubt a game changer for the industry. For a platform that changes like the sun rising and falling, this will point yet again to more changes in your news feed and social experience. The Timeline release, already confusing and hated by many for its complex approach to fitting your profile in a scrapbook (See a quick primer), has been constantly complained about on my news feed to no end. Yet despite the fact that I like it, for every one person like me, there are about ten more who would rather have the Facebook they remember from 2004-2007.

The tech community would call these folks Luddites for not accepting new technology. From a business perspective, the better phrase to be used might just be “out of touch”.

What happened to the user?

Simpler Days
I remember Facebook back in its simpler days. Up until the appearance of the live feed where it was displayed every single activity you did on your profile, the social experience was relatively simple. Until today when Facebook released its new feature for colleges, Facebook was just that. You needed an email from your college to sign up, and the usage method of Facebook was to say hello to friends, upload a few photos, tell everyone where you were, and that was that. I even remember using Facebook and having cookie cutter status updates to choose from, like saying that you were home or at work.

Simpler days of course, gave away to business needs. Even though the company was receiving a ton of funding from venture capital firms, the basic point of any business is to make money. If you’re in it just to make friends, you’re in the wrong kind of arena. And so users saw the rise of advertising, the creation of brand pages, and now, when you log out, a goodbye message sponsored by a company. If you have a mobile phone, this will soon also have advertising. Imagine getting served an ad after writing a post on a friend’s wall, much like after you beat a level in Angry Birds - the experience will soon be no different.

The User Economy
Next month, Facebook will have its initial public offering on Wall Street. Zuckerberg and company will be on the trading floor ringing the opening bell, and FB will be traded on NASDAQ. It will probably be the biggest public offering in the history of all histories, and people will be made rich. National headlines will glorify the Harvard dropout who created Facebook at first to compare girls. People will point to the Aaron Sorkin film and talk about that as a watershed moment in human history where someone singlehandedly created a platform that has delivered news faster than the mainstream media, has helped the Arab World come out of its clutches and served importance in divorce cases.

As for the 800 million users? Thanks for logging in. While Zuckerberg and a lot of the early employees who held stock will be vacationing and enjoying the riches and luxuries of their new found wealth, the rich, will get richer. Beyond the users like me who use Facebook to promote business and promote others, the average person who logs in to check on their aunt, cultivate relationships with those farther than a car drive and hang out with friends will never see a single cent. And like the users who saw and loved their beloved app in Instagram, these users too will feel a slight ting of hurt, a hurt brought on by a love of business.

But still, they will stay.

The Agony and the Ecstasy
Yet despite the changes that everyone knows will come to Facebook, people will still likely stay on the platform. The Internet is still a part of daily life, and people will log in, even if Facebook begins to look like Geocities. The social need in itself, is now understandably inelastic, and even the folks who work on Google+ know this too, that no matter how many changes they make, people still might not use them beyond a simple Hangout. Like Ronald Reagan, Facebook has become the Teflon network, unfazed mostly by changes. While sites like Gawker see tremendous site traffic drops after changes in user interface, Facebook has somehow dodged the bullet, and rightly so. People after all, can get their tech, celebrity and life hacking news elsewhere, but there is nothing so quite like being able to chat with a long lost friend on Facebook.

As I observe this, my question is mostly, “Why?” I see and observe the agony and the ectasy of social media every day. For every fail whale, random notification and slight news feed tweak, there are cries for incompatibility, wails for new changes and threats to leave. But nobody does. The platform gets bigger, and we are willing to sell out for the platform that itself, will sell out, and starting in May, sell out quarter after quarter at the expense of the average user. I for one, won’t be going anywhere - this my career, but the customer who uses it for the social purposes will. And this, while making my life easier, is an interesting look at what has happened to the human psyche. That much like millennials won’t move to a new state to get better employment, people similarly, are unwilling to leave a social network because their friends are there. In the follower-leader world, we, for the most part, have become followers.

Where that leads us, is a mystery still. But I predict, that it might be pretty dark.

Will anyone ever wake up?

Socialize With Us: Bringing Social Media Pros Together

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:00:58 -0700

If you know me, I’m a man of many different projects. Perhaps its merely a Silicon Valley thing, where nobody just works one job and one job only, but I like putting on many hats.

Several months ago, Morgan Barnhart approached me with an idea. She and I are both social media advisors to multiple companies and wanted to bring together social media professionals for the good of sourcing ideas, providing good opinions and creating meaningful conversation that went beyond the simple “Like”, Follow and blog post. And so Socialize With Us was born.

Socialize With Us is a site for social media professionals, by social media professionals. In a world where its made to sound so easy and so complicated, this site seeks to simplify the understanding of social media into bite size pieces that everyone should go for. From topics surrounding music, health, food and drink to entertainment, business and entrepreneurship, there are topics for just about everyone to take in and learn more about how and why social media impact the industry.

The site is still very new and in its early phases of development. Because of the newness, we’re looking for writers who are willing to share their own ideas and spread their knowledge of social media. If you want to write, leave a comment in the space below, ask me on Twitter, or go to this page.

In the meantime, come Socialize With Us and learn more about social media!

About Socialize With Us
Socialize With Us is a site founded by Morgan Barnhart and Albert Qian in 2012 for social media professionals, by social media professionals. Follow the page on Twitter or Like the page on Facebook.

Twitter at 6: A Happy Belated Birthday

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:00:06 -0700

Here’s to another six years - with less Fail Whales and more success stories. Connecting people, closer than ever!

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Facebook EdgeRank

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:00:06 -0700

One of the oddities of using Facebook is the EdgeRank platform. For marketers, this is a welcome technology because it gives the ability for content to go viral. Even if something was posted last month, and there is a comment today, friends of the poster will be notified of the event happening, giving potential new life for content.

For individual users, the existence of EdgeRank can be an absolute pain. If you comment or say something on someone else’s posts, your posting can be seen across every one of your friend’s feeds, even if they aren’t friends with your friend. So if you have your significant other on Facebook, make sure not to go off and like everything they post, for it could get very, very awkward.

Albert Qian is the author of The Social Media Dude and has many odd run-ins with Facebook EdgeRank. Comment on his stuff on Facebook today and make your feed look awkward. Follow him at @albertqian.