Facebook will be launching several new features during their F8 conference on September 22, but prior to that they are slowly pushing out new News Feeds and navigation bars to users. As you can see above when the new News Feed kicks into gear you will be greeted with a basic explanation of what you will now see each time you log into Facebook. Previously you had the option to select between most recent updates and top stories, but now these are both integrated with each other.

What exactly does that mean?

Facebook is rolling out new features for F8, and will likely be expecting member backlash. Robert Scoble seems to have the general user response summed up well:

I like Mark’s leadership because he keeps pissing off his customers. Let’s see how:

1. Facebook used to be for only Harvard students. They were pissed when Mark let the Stanford ones in.

2. After he took over all the universities, Zuckerberg opened it up to everyone “oh, no” they cried, “my mom is gonna be on Facebook.”

3. After he got everyone on Facebook Zuckerberg introduced the news feed. That got a MILLION PEOPLE to protest. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1532225,00.html

4. Then he changed the privacy settings. That got him investigated by the government.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things he’s done to piss off the users here.

Yet we still are here. So, go ahead and complain. It’ll make you feel good, but you can’t hold back progress! Or, if you can, I guess you’ll join me over on Google+, right?

New-ish Navigation Bar

Prior to adding in new multimedia goodies like the super secret (sac mark) Facebook music program, simple features like the navigation bar have received a makeover. Below is the old version of the navigation that has two shades of blue and still shows “Account”.

Where as the new navigation strips the word “Account” from the navigation bar, and also removes the edit friends from the down arrow. Below is a screen shot from a Facebook Page profile; however, it is exactly the same for personal profiles as well with the exception of the mail/inbox feature.

Facebook Birthdays

If Facebook is good for one thing, it is to help us remember the 300 some odd birthdays of our friends and family members (for us married folks Facebook even gives us a 5 day warning prior to our anniversary, brilliant!).  Whenever it’s your birthday you can expect an onslaught of birthday greetings to takeover your Facebook wall. With the latest update adding happy birthday messages are even easier! (read: lazier approach). When accessing your News Stream navigate over to the usual area where you find birthday, event, and other timely notifications. Click on one of the birthday buddies names and a window appears allowing you to kill at least two birds with one stone. See below:

Concluding Thoughts – Marketing

So why exactly is Facebook doing this prior to F8? Elementary, my dear Watson. By creating additional negative buzz (and Facebook loves negative buzz), they will be sure to capture the interest of any news outlet that may have thought they could ignore the new features and updates. If enough users complain, and they are, you can expect to hear about it by mid-day on your local news channel. Did I mention that it is Google+’s official launch date? Like most online communities users emulate their role models. Facebook does a good job of stealing attention .

Whether you are getting ready for your own wedding, or in the event planning business it’s important to be prepared to incorporate new technology as it becomes mainstream. The use of social media in a wedding isn’t new as people have begun updating their statuses, tweeting and recording ceremonies during their ceremony.

One couple went so far as to update their Facebook relationship status during the ceremony itself, and tweeting [Tweet]. Dana and Tracy’s video of the ceremony has also achieved more than 2 million views since being uploaded to YouTube [Video]. There is also the story about a best man pranking a newlywed couple, which involves automatic a bed and other activities [Source].

Much like any corporate event it is important to plan ahead if you want to use these tools effectively, and if you have worked with weddings before you know planning is key. Don’t forget to ensure after the wedding that people can still find you after changing your maiden name [The Guide to Social Media Usernames After Getting Married].

Create a website with a blog

There are quite a few options for building a wedding webpage like the Knot and Google sites; however, you can also develop a WordPress blog with a domain that doesn’t cost very much. This blog can be your landing page for your story, registry information, venue directions, and anything else that would assist your guests prior to the wedding.

The wedding site I developed for my fiancée incorporated all of these features as well as some interesting interactive features that any social media addict would love to have.

Use Twitter and Create a Hashtag

If you’re a social media addict like me, you will likely have a few people on your guest list that also enjoy using Twitter. By creating a hashtag prior to the wedding you can have people send the happy couple messages. Wedding sites and blogs can also incorporate Twitter widgets so that messages from guests can scroll on the site.

The bride and groom can also update their guests with new information or provide links that may help them. Using a hashtag will allow it to scroll on the site, so it makes it even easier to provide information to guests that don’t use Twitter.

Another great reason to create a hashtag is allowing your guests from around the world to participate, and you do that by streaming the wedding online.

Stream it Live

Technology has become so prevalent that it’s quite easy and affordable to create a video stream of the wedding ceremony. HD web cameras can be relatively cheap, and if you don’t own a laptop it’s probable that someone in the wedding party does. Before you attempt to stream the ceremony though it’s important to note if your venue will have access to internet.

For locations that don’t offer internet access the iPhone and various smartphones have apps for USTREAM and other streaming sites. The video quality and audio may not be as useful, but it will at least allow you to provide another option for those guests who won’t be able to physically attend.

Putting It All Together

Effective communication, like at any event, is one of the most important processes in reducing stress, and achieving great results. By incorporating social media into a wedding not only are you making it interactive for your guests, but it allows people from around the world to join you on your special day.

The website I built called Our Charleston Love is a great example of how easily you can build out a communication portal on a website. On Friday, March 25 the culmination of all the hard work and planning put into the wedding will be complete when we stream our ceremony on the site.

Socially Interactive Website

As an example you can also see the basic layout of the wedding website I designed specifically with social media in mind. We placed a basic count down stating when the wedding will be, links for hotels, a scrolling Twitter feed, registry information and our engagement photos.  To build a website like this only takes a few hours, and basic knowledge of WordPress. You can even download the Arras theme for free that my site started from.

After revolutions have changed the world by utilizing Facebook and Twitter as communication tools, we find another example of how useful social media can be during worldwide events that our media outlets don’t cover. Jun Shiomitsu, MBA Student at the University of Cambridge, has elected to translate tweets coming from individuals in Japan after the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami struck.

Though there are tools like Google translate that allow you to convert Asian characters to English, they are not as reliable as a person who knows slang terminology, especially when it’s being used on Twitter. As news breaks and the world becomes smaller, it’s important to have a means to communicate with people from other countries especially in the event of a crisis such as the one in Japan.

So is journalism truly being replaced by social media? No. Citizens are picking up their mobile devices and becoming journalists and influencers, and reporting back to news outlets. Journalism and broadcast is changing, and the sooner media outlets utilize social media in an effective way the less there will be to complain about.

Another interested point has also come from Shiomitsu’s translations, and that would be how much context can be added to a single tweet when using Asian characters. No matter what language you use, you only have 140 to spare; however, as noted in many Asian writen languages each symbol can represent an entire word.

For example one of the tweets Shiomitsu translated uses 139 characters, but when translated into English it uses around 400 characters.

Translations

* BBCの報道

http://twitter.com/bozzo1985/status/46228470614855681

本当に感動。泣けてくる。⇒BBCめっちゃ誉めてる。地球最悪の地震が世界で一番準備され訓練された国を襲った。その力や政府が試される。犠牲は出たが他の国ではこんなに正しい行動はとれないだろう。日本人は文化的に感情を抑制する力がある。

BBC Reports

The words of BBC’s reports are so moving they make me cry.  They were praising us with words of admiration!  “One of the worst earthquakes in recorded history has hit the world’s most well-prepared, well-trained nations.  The strength of its government and its people are put to the test.  While there have been casualties, in no other country could the government and the people have worked together in such an accurate and coordinated way in the face of such tragedy.  The Japanese people have shown their cultural ability to remain calm in the face of adversity.”

Find all of Shiomitsu’s translations on his Facebook note.

I would like to also personally thank Jun, and anyone for that matter assisting in the spread of information that is otherwise ignored by media outlets. Good up the good work, and continue to empower the world with knowledge.

Storify is an excellent tool to help you build out stories based on real time updates (Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, etc.). For each set of articles that Social Media Today publishes of my work, I set up a collection of these related tweets that interest me the most. Thank you all for your thoughts, and please feel free to let me know if there are any other areas of social media or communications in particular that you would like to have researched.

So you have a business and you keep hearing how important it is to be on Facebook and Twitter, but where do you go from there? If you own a small business, it’s likely that you may not have the current funds to hire a full time social media and marketing employee. The next best person to work with is a social media consultant, right?

Not necessarily. A social media consultant is a niche term that relates to those who only work with a series of tools, rather than creating a strategic plan or communicate a brand effectively.

The common social media consultant will generally offer you increased follower numbers, setting up a basic blog and accounts for your social media voice, and basic training. While these can be beneficial as a start, what long term planning and results will come from this, and is it a sturdy foundation to build on? Essentially you will have the basic know how to post articles, tweets and status updates, but you will likely have to grow on your own in these situations.

If you hire a communications specialist or marketing consultant you will gain the same information, and often construct a strategic plan. To clarify, a consultant is not a person who works under your brand, they are there to educate and empower you. It is important to note what background they have so you have a broadened scope of what social media can do for you or your organization at the completion of their work. This information can also be applied to individuals you plan on hiring to manage your brands voice full time. For small businesses though, if the founder or upper management can utilize social media it will be more meaningful.

So what should all consultants be able to provide? A DEEPER look into social media.

Dependability
Education
Experience
Plan
Empowerment
Results

Dependability: A consultant or individual managing your social accounts need to be dependable. Social media never rests, so if a person can’t successfully manage discussions in a timely manner it could pose an issue.

Education: What is their educational background? If they have a degree working with development it probably won’t hold up well in a social environment. People with degrees in writing, communication, journalism or public relations will be your most suitable option. Even if tweets consist of 140 characters, it takes skill to reach different audiences.

Experience: What experience does the person have in a communication field? Social media sites are just tools to communicate directly with your members or customers. We’ve all heard the rule, don’t hire kids out of college that just simply use social media sites, but that shouldn’t negate their ability to communicate effectively. Ask for their Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin profile links. If they refuse that is not only a red flag, but a sign that they may not follow netiquette very well. Read through their tweets and status updates to see if their voice could benefit your brand.

Plan: One of the most important things a consultant can provide you with is a customized strategic plan that will help you build a foundation to grow on. In connection with empowering employees, creating guidelines and basic rules to follow should allow a business to articulate how they want to communicate with their members or customers. A consultant who will only manage your feed won’t be able to complete this, and if they manage other feeds your brand may not have the devotion required.

Empowerment: A consultant who empowers you as the user (rather than just setting up accounts for you, and managing them) is probably the best thing you can ask for. If they can education you and help you create a custom plan, you will have the power to actively engage your desired audience using social media tools.

Results: Numbers, numbers and numbers! Social media may be about words and engagement, but as the owner of a brand or business you want to see numbers. While followers on Twitter and Likes on Facebook are great, a consultant should be able to prove their experience successful web traffic metrics, engagement statistics after strategy implementation and goals they have completed.

Basic questions to ask consultants or prospective employees

How do you define social media?
Everyone defines social media in a different way. You want to be sure they include keywords like networking, discussion, and community. If the prospect can’t assert that sites like Facebook and Twitter are only tools, that may be a red flag.

Do you place importance on learning new sites like Quora, and how have you implemented these into your social promotional strategy?
Social media junkies should be on top of their game, as technology and tools in our field are ever changing. If they feel it’s important to only have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, ask them why. If your brand wants to become an expert in your field, it would behove you to contribute to related discussions in your field.

How do you monitor brand content internally and externally? (For those managing accounts)
Even if you have a small business, your community doesn’t just live on your site. Any mention on any website of your brand automatically builds itself into your online community. It’s important to monitor and respond to discussions related to your brand in a timely fashion.

TL;DR: Avoid hiring people who claims to be a social media guru or social media consultant. A communications or marketing specialist will be able to provide a strategic plan that includes not only social media, but empowers you to use it. A qualified candidate will be able to give you a deeper look and appreciation for social media tools.

Prevent a company Fail Whale by preparing your brand or organization before a crisis hits.

Your brand, logo, employees and products are all pieces to a whole. When any of these items are not monitored or regulated, a crisis is more likely to occur.

When jumping into the realm of social media, any organization or person for that matter should know to what end their messages will reach. Sure you can type 140 characters into Twitter and simply press the “Enter” key, but what that message contains typos or an ambiguous error? These issues can be resolved by having guidelines and plans in place.

Planning should consist of monitoring, cultivating, preparing, responding and promoting as needed.

To make this issue easier to understand, we will use the example of a made up restaurant, The Lying Cake, that sold unprepared chicken, resulting in complaints of food poisoning online. If a preparedness concept had been created before such an issue, The Lying Cake would know how to keep a level head through the process.

Monitor

When planning for a crisis, know about any current problems that have been reported or ones that could possibly arise. These issues can be monitored through various tools like The Archivist, Google Alerts, etc. Specifically in this example, The Lying Cake would want to monitor the companies name in connection with terms like illness, poor food, food poisoning or even service (to ensure there are no service complains).

In addition to social media sites, mainstream news sites for the surrounding area should be monitored, especially in user generated forums and comment sections.  Collect all issues into spread sheets, create graphs to compare negative to positive communications, and collect clips of mainstream media news on the issue.

If there are no known issues at the time, a weekly report of these findings would be sufficient, however, during times of a crisis, reports should be monitored vigorously.

Cultivating

Use the weekly reports to find what people commonly discuss your brand. If one individual is constantly complaining on their blog or Twitter, but has few followers, it’s still important to communicate with them. For people who large followings though, added measures should be put in place to try and rectify the issue. These individuals can out-weigh the impact of even mainstream media, and a simple press release will not solve the issue.

During times when The Lying Cake has few or no issues being reported, it’s also important to continue to update and communicate directly with those interacting with your brands account. Occasionally offering special deals will also be an extra perk for those who continue to follow the brand.

During crisis mode however, it’s important to continue to provide continuous support to anyone that may be an influencer of others. These people are generally defined by the amount of messages produced, how many followers they have and how credible their claims are. Speaking with these people in a personable, but professional manner may win them over. If they are pleased with your brands response, they may repost the information and correct their previous view points.

Interact with everyone during crisis modes, and put more emphasis on heavy influencers during regular periods of business.

The Lying Cake would now be communicating directly with the individuals complaining on social media sites. By successfully monitoring any claim of poor food quality, an issue may be resolved before the mainstream media can react.

Preparing

Preparing for the worst case scenario may seem like a daunting task, but no matter what, someone will find an issue with your product eventually. A official statement on your brands website would be efficient and useful for mainstream media, but social media groundswells can cause much larger riffs in business.

Have a portal for employees involved to locate pertinent and timely information. Everyone involved with the crisis management should be reporting the same information, and include time stamps with each response. Web applications like @Hootsuite are great for collaborating over social media projects. If there are two strategists combating the current food poisoning issue, they can see the exact same information.

Preparation for any issue should involve teaching employees how to use social media. If The Lying Cake has a 20 person staff, they must know certain guidelines to follow to ensure damaging information won’t be released. That is not to say the employees should not continue to use their sites as they usually would, but official statements concerning the food poisoning should only come from the crisis response team (communications department, and managers or brand owners).

Responding

The Lying Cake already has a website, blog, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube account. During regular business it’s important to continue to use each of these social media sites to their best qualities. Facebook is great for images, and news articles. Twitter is great for responding to individuals. YouTube can host your commercials and exclusive videos from fans of your brand. Lastly the website and blog will be a portal of all of your brands social media sites and source of a majority of your content.

During crisis mode all of these tools should be utilized efficiently and quickly. During the BP oil spill they required all of their employees to refrain from speaking to anyone about the issue, and waited far to long before official statements were being released.

Every minute, every second matters.

The Lying Cake during crisis mode would continue to correspond with each claim, with emphasis on those making the largest impact. It’s important to keep in mind that everyone matters, but sometimes it may be impossible to reach out to each person through sites like Twitter alone. Having a customer service e-mail address or hotline would be a more efficient way of addressing concerns, and also brings the conversation back to your own arena. YouTube can be utilized by the brand owner specifically to respond or address particular concerns. These videos often appear to be personable, and show that you are affected by the issue.

Promoting

Utilizing the same keywords as you did during the planning phase, you can purchase ads that correlate with these concerns. As many Internet users still use Google and other search engines to find the most credible and current information, having a promoted ad at the top of these results will reduce the amount of people looking to social media or blogs.

In the case of The Lying Cake, it would be important for all employees to remain positive, and continue to provide valuable information.

The most important concepts of a digital crisis meltdown is remaining timely and factual.

Blogging for non-profit organizations require strong guidelines to yield great results. We’ve drawn out the more important areas.

Non-profits require a personal touch, and consistent updates to keep supporters in the know. The following guidelines will help anyone just starting to blog for a non-profit. EFM is currently supporting CVHJP, so this has terms relating to their activities, but are interchangeable. Just remember, always remain factual and those who believe in your cause will support your work.

USC Annenberg’s Center for the Digital Future will be releasing their annual report this month, which shows a decline in print media use.

The 2010 Digital Future Report contains a great deal of information about how the world is currently using the Internet, but it also shows the drastic declining state of print media. According to the report, 82 percent of Americans are now using the Internet on a regular basis. Users are still finding it difficult to adopt new forms of media though.

“Although new media is used by large percentages of Internet users age 24 and under, overall large percentages of Internet users never go online to do instant messaging (50 percent), work on a blog (79 percent), participate in chat rooms (80 percent), or make or receive phone calls (85 percent),” as stated in the report.

Of the 82 percent of Americans using the Internet, only 56 percent of them still consider newspaper to be important. However, they do still feel that they are more trustworthy. “Only 56 percent of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them – a decrease from 60 percent in 2008 and below the Internet (78 percent), and television (68 percent).”

Additionally, people who used to get entertainment information from newspapers feel that they are no longer necessary. “Even lower are the percentages of users who consider newspapers important as sources of entertainment for them, now considered important by 29 percent of Internet users, and down from 32 percent in 2008 – also last among principal media.”

When asked if current subscribers of a newspaper would switch to the online edition or search for alternative print editions, only 37 percent said they would continue with print.

As technology becomes more mainstream and older generations of Internet users begin to adopt them, the importance of print newspapers will continue to decline further.

Even though the report shows a steady decline in the subscription to newspapers, the level of credibility and trust for Internet sources also continue to decline. “Sixty-one percent of users said that only half or less of online information is reliable — a new low level for the Digital Future Project,” as stated in the report. “Even more disturbing is that 14 percent of Internet users said that only a small portion or none of the information online is reliable – a percentage that has grown for the past three years and is now at the highest level thus far in the Digital Future Project.”

Internet Use

Twitter is in the news just as Myspace was during it’s prime, but the same annual report showed that not a single person would pay for it. According to the report, zero percent of users would pay for it, however in comparing to similar polled results, social media site Reddit has already taken in over 10,000 donations from their users.

The annual study of the impact of the Internet on Americans by the Center for the Digital Future found that 49 percent of Internet users said they have used free micro-blogs such as Twitter.

But when asked if they would be willing to pay for Twitter, zero percent said yes.

“Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

What do you think?

Do you feel these statistics are accurate? Would you pay for Twitter or Facebook if they required a monthly or yearly subscription fee? Tell us in the comments or take our poll. We will report the results later in the week.

[polldaddy poll=3527260]

[Highlights of 2010 report][USC Future Report]

The largest earthquake to hit Washington DC in decades has caused detrimental damage.

On Friday, July 16 at 5:04 am an earthquake with the magnitude of 3.6 struck Washington DC. The epicenter, located in Rockville, MD and damage has been seen all the way to Alexandria, VA.

The images below may be shocking, so please be advised of the graphic content.

Large trees have fallen, taking out power lines.

Local residents have taken to drinking large amounts of alcohol.

Violence has broken out in the city.

Jokes aside, earthquakes can be a very disastrous and the people of Haiti are still requiring much relief. Please don’t forget about the unfortunate people still living with the horrific damage each day. Although it may have fallen from main stream media, you can still provide assistance to them.

[Donate your food or time to Haiti]

Social Media

The largest results from the earthquake in Washington DC and the surrounding areas were simply information. There has been no true damage reported.

The local government officials have released information immediately through their alert system on aftershocks preparedness and what people should do in case of a larger earthquake.

Poll Results

We held a poll last week asking if you all would purchase the Xbox 360 Kinect, and the results are in.

From the 300 people that participated in our poll, it would appear that a majority of users were still split between whether they want to purchase the Kinect or not. Forty-four percent of you said you would purchase the Kinect, but 42 percent would not.

Judging by these close numbers, it would be safe to assume these results are due to a lack of information on the Kinect. The same type of results could be seen when the first iPhone was being advertised, but there was still a lack of user experience.

We will hold another poll on the purchase of the Kinect in November, a few weeks after it has hit the market. We will also compare these results with the initial sale numbers and see if they match up.