My Baby Toe is On Facebook: The Economics of Oversharing

You are now entering the Facebook profile of my Baby Toe.

My Baby Toe is currently recovering from a case of fungus. He resides in Riverview Florida, where he enjoys a scenic view. His past life includes a brief stint at Kforce. Hobbies include: swimming, eating, and torturing those two pesky housecats. Mood: friendly. Age: Approx 3. Species: Beta Fish.

After Digg's Kevin Rose's cold rang up over 1200 followers on Twitter in one day, and people began subscribing to the twitter stream of this lady's cats, I figured all my "Facebook Friends", including family members, the people I work with, went to grammar school with, and don't even really know would want to know about the musings of our pet beta fish, right?

You thought I was talking about my ACTUAL baby toe? Gotcha.

Are these examples of creative uses of new media at their best or oversharing meets boredom at its worst? I'll let you be the judge.

Each to It's Own Purpose, Everything in It's Right Place

Lately they seem to be crawling out of the woodwork. "They" being old friends from my past. People I haven't spoken to or thought of in over ten years at the minimum. I moved across the country after graduating college, and I am definitely not the best person at keeping in touch via phone. Ask my best friends, including the ones in town. :)

With each connection, a new memory is ignited. Riding bikes down the street as a child, being chased by my friend's little brother. Sleepovers and riding my bike to the pool. Dance routines and being scared to death of Nightmare on Elm Street. Fast forward... driving around with my friends looking for stuff to do, U2 blaring. Biology lab, Homecoming, English class, walking to school, parties, crushes and spring break in Cancun. Fast forward again... autumn leaves, red brick, libraries, rushing, and disco dancing at 11am before a football game in full costume, more than a little tailgating tipsy. More dances and parties, and some dancing on tables...I think.

Why this sudden reconnection with the past? Social networks, of course. LinkedIn is great for the professional world, networking with current and former colleagues, highlighting your talents, link building, and in my husbands case, finding good job candidates. I use FriendFeed much the way I used to Twitter (although I just can't seem to quit you)- to stay on top of the the latest and greatest from those early adopters and techies I don't quite know, yet love. More linkbait there. I still use social bookmarking sites occasionally.. to bookmark. (Del.icio.us I'm looking at you). My husband uses MySpace in his avid, continual hunt for the latest band that doesn't exist yet. However, I am busier these days, and less promiscuous in my tendency to jump on the latest network bandwagon. Case in point: I lasted on Plurk exactly one day.

Networks are only as strong as their user base. Most people I know in real life are not the FriendFeed type. This may be because I live in Tampa, not the Silicon Valley. When I talk about Twittering, they think I am talking dirty. I use these tools each for their specific purposes. But Facebook... to me you are a tool for professional networking, as well as a window into my life both past and present, ages 6 and up.

The Internets Are Watching

Last week on Twitter, a prolific user tweeted their social security number in a completely nonchalant way. "My Social Security number: 555-55-5555." You get the drift. I would go back and find the post and poster to give this person props if Twitter had better search archive functionality, but I can't. Twitter, are you listening?

Whether or not it was their real social security number, I do not know. However, I almost fell out of my chair from the sheer genius of it. Twitterville is (currently) a trusting and open community, with people posting often intimate details of their daily lives. Was this person testing the waters to see what the implications of tweeting their social would be? Were they making a commentary about how our personal information really is available for anyone to find? Were they being snarky? Perhaps a combination of all of these things.

Lately there has been talk by some major bloggers (Tamar Weinberg and Danny Sullivan in particular) about the transparency of social networks such as Twitter and FriendFeed and the implications for daily life. Some of the blog posts were concerned with the implications for the safety of their children, and rightfully so. Someone can easily "know" Mommy or Daddy very well online and be a complete stranger. FriendFeed is very useful, yet it also allows everyone to see exactly what you are doing on the net. Let's call it "FriendSpy" if you will.

I think the trust and community we place in our social networks allows us to sleep at night. They are cyber-neighborhoods. However, by putting our lives on display for public consumption, we are essentially enabling stalking on a global scale, are we not? As a non-celebrity, I don't let this worry me. Stalkers are more likely to find you in person. :) If I had children, I am sure I would be more concerned. Plus, if someone wants to see what I am bookmarking, I am OK with that because I try not to go overboard with it.

Telecommunication providers keep all phone and internet records on everyone for a minimum of two years. In many states, public documents that include your social security number and home address are readily available online in public databases. Once indexed by search engines, every blog post, website, picture, Facebook entry, etc., can be dug up after it's deleted by anyone who really knows how to find these items. I am not trying to fear monger. This is the reality of the internet and public communication today. We need to get used to it, and next generation needs to understand the possible repercussions of posting all their crazy antics. If a thief wants your social security number, they will get it, whether you tweet it or not. It is much better to open your eyes, realize that everything you do today is on display, and act with full intention.

Frankly, I am mostly glad that the antics of my college days came before digital cameras and Facebook. Someone would have to search hard for silly photos of me, in actual albums. Political campaigns are going to get a lot more interesting when Gen Y starts running for office and everyone's dirt is public domain.

Inspiration: Why Am I Doing This?

There are what often feels like a million great blogs about marketing, SEO, social media, the interwebs and the various topics I am writing about. What can I possibly add to the conversation?

While I have many years of marketing communications experience behind me, I am learning Social Media and SEO as I go. Honestly, I think that's is still the case for a lot of people, at this moment in time, 4/25/08. I'm not particularly thrilled with the work our outsourced SEO firm is doing. It's fair, not excellent. A lot of link building, but little else. The links aren't on industry-related sites. The article content- don't get me started. I think I can probably do better, time permitting. I am passionate person, which extends into my work.

My Dad is on Facebook is my opportunity to learn the best way I know-- by doing. To stretch my writing skills above and beyond corporate jargon and press releases. To write about topics other than work. To share amusing things with my family and friends, and maybe even some strangers. To finally get the code correct for the stumble upon and del.icio.us icons at the bottom of my posts in Blogger, which is annoying me. To grow, stretch my legs, stumble and pick myself back up.

Twitter is Still a Tween

The world is suddenly abuzz about Twitter. Twitter is just about everywhere. In actuality, the microblogging service has been around since 2006. However, Twitter has suddenly reached its tipping point and experienced a recent surge in popularity.

Twitter is a simple application with a 140 character limit that asks "What Are You Doing?" Enabled for Web or Mobile devices it is so simple and versatile it's brilliant. Full reveal- I actually had an account sitting vacant for months before I figured out exactly what to do with it. :) Find and follow some people-yes! They follow you back, you start a dialog. Now it's getting interesting.

To compare Twitter to a human in development stages though, I would say that twitter is in it's tween years. It has successfully grown from infant to strong child but is still hiccuping it's way towards the teen years to adulthood.

Why is Twitter a Tween? Besides the fact that the alliteration sounds cool? For starters, Twitter has amazing potential as a communications and networking tool. However, most marketers and communicators are still figuring out how to leverage twitter as a tool for major businesses.

Twitter has been highly adopted by tech/social media/marketing//communications/writer/ artist types. However, other industries are only beginning to scratching the surface. Recruiters, health care professionals, musicians, gardeners, etc- come out where ever you are and join the happy bandwagon.

There have also been some recent Twitter hiccups reminiscent of tween-type growing pains. Last Friday-Monday Twitter experienced a mass outage, broadcasting what seemed to me to be about 25% of the actual twitter posts from those I follow. Worse? Twitter itself did very little to communicate to users on it's blog or homepage about the outage, what they were doing to resolve it, or when it was expected to be back up.

Then news broke today that some very personal private direct messages were exposed for at least one twitter user (probably lots)- third party twitter application GroupTweet was the likely culprit. Yikes!

Twitter may not be responsible for the failure of a third party application, but these third party applications are still so new that users cannot separate the good from the bad, the fail proof from the buggy.

I love my twitter, but I think it's a tween. I can't wait to see what it grows into!

Sock Puppets in the Echo Chamber

Early in my career, I had a rather wacky boss that was fond of saying "the last original idea is the wheel." Another famous expression- there is no bad press. It may seem that there is, but on the web, controversy generates more links and viewers.

Having worked in Marketing Communications for over ten years, I have recently taken interest in Social Media Marketing in all its forms. Entering the game somewhat late gives me I a slightly different perspective on all this. As I observe the industry blogs and tweets frequently generate a running commentary on each other and the industry itself in order to produce more content and experts, with the hope that the cream will rise to the top. Industry term: the echo chamber.

A primary study of the echo chamber at work: the Shel Israel/ Robert Scoble/ Loren Feldman sock puppet video mockery debacle, made worse by publicity from TechCruch. GreyWolf summarized the situation on his blog well and Tyme White did a great critique of the situation on her blog to which Scoble responded. Shel also commented on the situation on his own blog. This is all very interesting for a Social Media Newbie or anyone remotely connected to PR, communications or the web to read.

Sure, Loren's sock puppet parody videos of Shel are amusing and funny- but the sock puppet idea is not exactly new. The bigger question is this-- if Shel (and Scoble) didn't exist, would the sock puppets? Would Loren's new media star shine as brightly without Scoble and Shel (or someone of their ilk) illuminating it?

If the major new media innovators don't produce content, good and bad, for us to comment and critique would we still hear the echo in the forest? We are all still learning to some extent, and that my friends, is the point. The interesting part will be to see what Shel does next. Can he turn a little sock puppet mockery his favor? I hope so. I'm sure Loren will find someone else in the chamber to turn his puppets on by then.

Me? I'm in the echo chamber myself.