inspiredworlds.com

The Facebook blog currently reports that 150 million people are using Facebook and in the past year 6.6 billion friend requests were made in 2008. But don’t you feel at times, you have too many friends on your facebook account? People that you rarely know, you met once at a party and never saw again, that “friend” at primary school or university who you never spoke to, but all of a sudden wants to be your friend?

So Burger King has decided to flip the script on this. Delete 10 of your facebook friends and get a free whopper! I like this promotion because its poking fun about how we’re all adding friends and getting a bit overboard with the friend requests ( I mean 6.6 billion – that is a lot you know).

I can’t believe BurgerKing  in the US is actually doing this promotion!

You install the Burger King sacrifice widget on your facebook page, get rid of ten friends and then get a burger coupon.

Suddenly I feel the urge to clean house. Mathematically speaking, if I delete 40 friends does that mean 4 whoppers? No, because its only one coupon per facebook account. D’oh! Apparently 180k friends have already been “sacrificed”. Are you next?

And I would do anything for a whopper, because I love’em …..so I might start reviewing my list of friends!

I’m out like sacrificing your friends for a free burger,

Matthew Ho.

I mentioned previously that I had subscribed to the Digg’s RSS feeds. I now get updates on my twitter account by the minute and also in my Google reader account. The other interesting RSS feed i subscribed to was a customised search on “social media”. The purpose was to find out what people were “digging” or recommending as interesting social media websites.

Initially I was quite disappointed, because nothing came in over several days. I kept checking back into my Google reader account and there was nothing. However, this result came in and its a beauty. It’s about how to find the top blogs and the top posts within those blogs. Then on a systematic basis, you only subscribe to those top posts. Basically, it a social media cheat sheet.

It’s looks incredibly useful. I probably do some of the steps in trawling for new blogs and adding the feeds, but this directs you to the top posts within those blogs. I also probably haven’t fully exploited the usage of social bookmarking and readers.

I’m out like blog cheat sheets,

Matthew Ho.

You’ve probably seen that I’ve been sharing a lot of stuff lately over Facebook. I’ve also been sharing items through Twitter, Delicious and Google reader. The problem I had was that these were all separate accounts located on different websites, so you had to log in everytime. I was looking for a Delicious plugin for my browser, but I discovered something much greater…..

There’s a firefox plugin called “Shareaholic“, which has made sharing a whole lot easier. It gives you this little green icon on your browser, and from the drop down menu you can select which sources you want to share it on (like twitter, facebook, etc…).

Shareaholic

Its an ingenious application, which is only made possible through Mozilla open source for firefox, the various API’s (application programming interface), and the hardwork of developers. So I’m giving something back to these guys by giving them a shoutout!

Great work! Try it out here.

I’m out like Shareaholics,

Matthew Ho.

www.inspiredworlds.wordpress.com

I read about 5 – 6 different Google Blogs such as the Official Google Blog, Adwords Agency Blog, Adsense and the Gmail Blog. It’s necessary for me to keep up to date with what’s happening in the world of Google. The great thing about Google is that they have a lot of different departments blogging and keeping the dialogue open with the general community at large. They’ve got 100′s of blogs and I think it’s great. As soon as something new happens, these guys blog about it and it’s really setting the standard for other organisations.

One of the more interesting blogs I have come across is the Google Public Policy Blog. It’s probably not as well read as the other blogs but I would argue that its just as important. An indicator of how popular a blog is the feedburner counter (i.e. how many people subscribe). It’s only at 5,475 compared with 529,000 on the official Google Blog.

Its important to hear about Google’s views on public policy and government. As an organisation, it has really become monolothic and huge like almost overnight – its only really a decade old. Compare this with other other organisations of similar size which probably took decades to build  i.e. 30 – 100 years . It is a very influential organisation which interacts with millions of people on a daily basis through search, email, video, RSS, advertising, maps and so on.

Google is so dominant in the field of search it is without peer. Hence, when they tried to do a business deal with Yahoo to display ads, people were jumping up and down like mad. It has to deal with a lot of issues such as its monopolistic practices, anti-trust,  influence on the U.S government through lobbying on access to more bandwidth access for the community, net neutrality, green energy, etc..

The blog could be no more than a mouthpiece for Google’s lobbying efforts to Washington. But from what I have read, it has a lot of interesting information on its views and thought policies. I probably find this more interesting than most people as well, since I’m a qualified lawyer who now works in digital marketing.

On a related note, the interaction between law and the internet continues to evolve. One of the big issues at the moment are the legal issues around user generated content (UGC). I’m probably in a unique position because I’m one of the few people that subscribe and regularly read the Law Society and other legal publications and also marketing publications such as B&T. I can see that its attracting a lot of attention because the talk is heating up in these magazines and on the web. UGC is stuff that users of social media generate, e.g. facebook and youtube videos, flickr photos, etc… The legal issues are around ownership, copyright, defamation, privacy and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I’m out like a decade,

Matthew Ho.

You’ve probably seen these symbols at the bottom of a webpage and you’ve wondered what they were:

Well they are social bookmarks and reader feeds. It enables you to share the items with other people and to also subscribe to the website for updates. Lately, I’ve been really into bookmarks and I don’t mean the kind you put into books.  I’ve previously written about social bookmarking, tagging, taxonomies and folksonomies.

But essentially, for the uninitiated, social bookmarking is a way to publicly share bookmarks (i.e. websites). So instead of just saving it to your internet brower in “book marks”, your letting the world know what your interested in.

Initially, I thought it was pretty cool because I get to access my bookmarks wherever I am. Whether I’m using firefox or IE, at home or a work, on my desktop or laptop, in Australia or overseas. I was saving all my websites onto a webpage for all to see and for me to refer back to. But that was just for my own benefit. However, social bookmarking was wider benefits:

1. Quickly see what websites / newstories / trends are popular

I’m starting to on a regular basis scan the top ranked stories on Digg and Delicious to see what’s happening. With Digg and other social bookmarking websites, the more people that “digg” the article (recommend it) or save the article, the higher it moves up the ranking. It’s very useful to seeing pop culture trends.

For example Digg was able to call the US election well before the opinion polls with credible evidence. It had an option where you could “digg” whether you voted for Obama or McCain. Of course, it was a little bit skewed since people like me voted in the Digg election, but it had a basis for calling the election in Obama’s favour given his popularity on being recommended on Digg. Another skewing factor is that a proportion of Obama voters tended to be younger and more technologically savvy than McCain voters.

2. Results in finding more interesting articles that are relevant to you

There’s a team of thousands if not millions of people on Digg, Delicious, Slashdot, Stumbleupon trawling the web, so more people are going to find more interesting content. The web is an enormous place, kinda like a massive goldfield. When someone finds something, by bookmarking, they are letting the world know that this is interesting to them and they want to share it with other people. By bringing attention to it, they are drawing other people to their discovery and if they find it interesting, they’ll share it with even more people creating a multipler effect. So more interesting discoveries are found.

It becomes more relevant because users can apply tags, categories, and comments to the things they save. Essentially, its like trawling the web with a team of people that are cataloging it into a library. The benefit of a social bookmark like Delicious is that users can write their own tags (similar to labels) for websites. For example, I might come across a website with a DVD review of the TV series Entourage. So I will label it as “Entourage”, “HBO”, “DVD review”, and other relevant labels.  So when you browse categories for TV shows or Entourage or DVD reviews, that website would come up. You can funnel the search so your only looking at stuff in that category. If I am only interested in Entourage, then only search results labelled as “Entourage” by users would come up.

You can also follow the bookmarks of like minded people and also share them with groups. Say for example, you and your friend have similar interests such as hip hop, basketball, travel and instead of sending the websites back and forth, you can see the websites that he or she is saving. Or if you are working in a team on an academic project, everyone in the team can see the collective links that are being saved.

Which leads to……..

3.  Better search results, creating a more perfect search engine

Some proponents like myself think that having more chefs in the kitchen, will over time generate better tagging (labelling), offerring a more refined search engine. This is because users can elect to search exclusively within Delicious, Digg or other social bookmarks, and find things that actual users have tagged as opposed to Google’s web crawl agent which uses mathematical algorithims. Actual users will decide what category a website belongs in and what keywords to associate with it.

The problem is that this system of taxonomy (the science of classification) relies on the individual user and there are often no rules around it. Going back to our previous example, I might label the above website as “tv series” or even mistakely as another tv show. Different people will apply different tags according to their views, perspectives, and tagging patterns. Some people are more comprehensive in their tagging while others might tag at a minimal level.

HOWEVER…………..

If there are enough users, over time and through the collective wisdom of a group of people, more popular tags will rise to the top. If 1,000 people tagged the website, then more likely than not, they will develop a set of tags which have consensus. For example, Delicious will recommend to users certain keywords to tag, assisting in developing group consensus. Again, a lot of this will depend on how many users they are in the social bookmarking network.

Catch me if you can

For me, the main thing now is sharing with other people the websites that I am interested in and having a reference to go back to websites that are interesting to me.  You can find me on:

http://delicious.com/Inspiredworlds

I also have a Stumbleupon account but I don’t use it much. And I’m starting to get into the subculture of Digg. Check it out here.  What I have also done is added Digg to my twitter account. So I get frequent updates on the top stories on Digg with over 2,000 Diggs – its basically my way to keep my pulse on what’s hot. I also subscribe to an RSS feed for the top results for “Social Media” for Digg.

I’m out like saving bookmarks,

Matthew Ho.

p.s. Check out the music on Delicious! You can listen to hip hop music feeds.

One of the big topics out there on the interweb is the newly proposed Government’s internet censorship. The Australian Government is planning to blacklist websites:

“The Government plans to impose a mandatory filter for all internet users that will block sites found on the secret ACMA blacklist and blacklists held by other countries. But only half of ACMA’s list is child pornography, while the rest is mainly X-rated porn and sexual fetish material.

A second, optional filtering tier, which will also be tested in the trial, will block content deemed inappropriate for children.”

However:

“Laboratory test results released in June by the Australian Communications and Media Authority found available filters frequently let through content that should be blocked, incorrectly block harmless content and slow network speeds by up to 87 per cent.”

The intent was good (i.e. blocking out child pornography and other associated material), but it should be on a voluntary basis. It seems that the unintended effects will block out other content and slow down the internet. There are freedom of speech issues here, as users should be able to self monitor their activities. If parents want to monitor their children’s activities, then fine apply the filter.  However, if other legitimate content becomes blocked than the mandatory censorship rules need to be reconsidered.

In addition, Australia’s network speed rate is incredibly slow compared to other countries like South Korea and the US. Anything to slow it down, would put us behind the rest of the world. Users are consuming content at an increasing rate, including downloading, watching videos and rich interactive media.

Net Censorshop Comments

I was looking at these comments today regarding employer’s blocking websites at the workplace.

(Sidenote – sometimes the comments in a news article or a blog post are just as valuable as the article itself. And that is the beauty of Web 2.0 – the ability to interact and read other reader’s comments. At times, I read an article for the comments not just the actual article. )

I agree that we are paid to work and shouldn’t be accessing non-work sites. But who works every minute between 9 to 5? We should be allowed to access news sites, facebook, banking websites, weather, and non-work email. If it does not affect your work and you can still be as productive, then why can’t you look at whatever you want on the internet? Most people are responsible enough not to spend the whole day on Facebook, emailing on hotmail or checking NBA scores (except during NBA Finals, that’s a different story).

However, the article is important because of the parallel between employer censorship and government censorship. As one reader puts it, the employer owns the network and your time at work, but the Government does not:

“The comparison between workplace filtering and public Internet censorship is only valid to show the technical limitations – e.g. filtering errors, effect on bandwidth, and how easily it can be subverted. Ethically there is no comparison possible. In the workplace, the employer owns the network and the means of access to the Internet, so they can do what they like. I would argue that it is better for productivity to let employees access some sites such as news and Internet banking (rather than have employees away from their desks to buying a newspaper or queuing in a bank), but it is the sole decision of the employer – it’s not ‘censorship’ if you provide the access in the first place, then restrict some of it.

Effectively an employer is paying for employees time and are therefore entitled to place restrictions on how employees spend that time. Rudd and Conroy’s proposal, however, IS censorship of the worst kind. The ALP does not own the Internet or the ISPs, nor does it own the public’s time. Yet they proposed to place mandatory restrictions on what we can and cannot access on the Internet. This must be fought and defeated.”

Posted by: Papachango of null 10:48am today
Comment 63 of 69

That is so true. This comment is also gold:

“The winner of China Idol = Australia!”

Posted by: Trev of qld 9:25am today
Comment 29 of 69

I remember when I went to China 4 years ago, and I could not access any blogs. Total denial of freedom of speech. They are famously know for their net censorshop activities including banning certain news websites like BBC. And this is not to mention their control of State media. I just hope we don’t go down this path where their intent is to ban pornography and other material, and then it extends to other freedoms.

I’m out like Net Censorship,

Matt Ho.

I just came across this item today – it was one of those “gifts” that are commonly given across Facebook. e.g. some people will give you a balloon or a cake for your b’day. Well I saw that you can give a 2L bottle of Mt Franklin, a sponsored gift. As always, curiousty got the better of me, and I clicked on the link and it actually leads to the Mt Franklin Well of Positivity page.

Nice idea, but I don’t think its going to work. A lot of products have fan pages, but its those kind of products that endear itself to having a fanatical following like Nike shoes, fashion, Bringing back Monaco bars, etc… Don’t get me wrong, the Mt Franklin brand is quite strong and possibly the strongest brand in its category (and priced at premium to reflect its brand name).

But who’s going to follow a water fan page?

The Mt Franklin promotion is about promoting drinking more water during the party season (which is a good health message and great PR).  However, is it suitable for FB? Its not the appropriate place for a Facebook promo page. Check it out here. If you go to the actual microsite of Well of Positivity, it talks about the facebook page, but its not really up to scratch. There’s hardly the “diary of 2L participant” as promised and the comments are hilarious on the page – there’s obviously no one monitoring the page. I mean check out these comments:

You want to give freedom of speech in these forums, but you also want to moderate these comments which aren’t appropriate for the Mt Franklin brand.

Overrall, the promotion itself sounds pretty good. You register on the microsite, bring in 3 labels from the water bottles, and you get a 3 day pass for free at Fitness First. You can also enter the Woolworths promotion and score yourself a trip to the Maldives.  Considering how many bottle of water I buy and how much water I drink, I will probably enter it!

There has just been a failure to plan the digital strategy properly. A Facebook page probably costs next to nothing, but what benefits does it add to the promotion? If your not going to update it including putting 3 pics up which look exactly the same and not monitoring the comments, its a huge waste of time.

I’m out like not drinking enough water,

Matt Ho.

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=I-XbmIntWn8]

One of the funniest ads I’ve seen in a while. In fact, anything with Will Ferrell in it is incredibly funny!!

First of all, happy new year everyone! I hope 2K9 brings everything you wish for.

Just wanted to write a short post on twitter before I head off on my new daily run around the block (one of my new year’s resolutions – to get fitter!).

Anyway, my brother brought this up today – what is twitter? I’ve had a few other people ask me as well. It’s basically just short updates like facebook status updates. You can have 140 characters in there such as “I’m going to walk the dog”, or “Obama will win Ohio”, etc… You can’t post pictures or tag friends. You can only leave the updates and you can respond to them. Because you can update it from your phone, its always constant updates. Links can be shared but they are in tinyurl formats (shortened forms of websites so that it can fit within 140 characters).

Again, just like RSS and Reader tools, I don’t believe its widely used here in Australia. Its only for those early adopters, working in marketing, journalism, or those social butterflies (you know who you are). Its more popular in the states and for those with internet on their mobiles.

I believe it was made by some former Google engineers. Its quite a neat application, but it hasn’t really caught on. People can follow you on twitter and you can follow others. Its stemmed from the facebook status updates, and the idea of staying connected with your friends even when they haven’t logged on or sent you an email. Check out this video, twitter in plain english for a better idea. There’s also an interesting article here about top 10 uses of twitter and why you need to be looking at twitter (from a marketing standpoint).

Personally, I don’t use it that much. I only update it once in a blue moon, though may start to use it more in 2k9 to see what other digital marketers are up to and ongoing trends in the industry. Some companies have started using it like Comcast and Telstra, to see what customers are saying about them and to respond to customer complaints.  I don’t think its appropriate for all companies to be using it, but they should monitor it just like they monitor what is happening on the internet (i.e. what consumers are saying about them via blogs, their search results, online forums, etc..).

What I like about twitter and facebook updates, is that they are bite size snackable updates (you can get a lot of social information at once). From a corporate point of view, you better have something interesting to say in 140 words or I’m not going to bother reading it If Jetstar had one and constantly updated it with sales offers, yes I would follow you!

This is my twitter account, check me out (best yet, follow me)!

At work, we use a tool called Yammer. This is a offshoot of Twitter, like a corporate version. I don’t think its related to Twitter - they’ve just given it a corporate use for it. Essentially, its the same thing but its not open to the public like twitter. We have created a work group in Yammer, and only employees have been invited (like a facebook page for only employees).

Everyone provides updates of what they are up to, their moods, thoughts and so on. It’s pretty cool. Its a good way for our manger and the other staff to see what projects people are working on, who’s having a shitty day , and to have conversation around the office. 

Example 1:  Someone had a problem with twitter, they didn’t know how to reduce the amount of email notifications they get. So my colleague posted the problem on Yammer, and I responded within a few seconds.

Example 2: We had a lively discussion between a few staff about having a weekly status meeting. Someone suggested it, then it was fine tuned via 10 – 15 Yammer posts, and then viola! We had the meeting the week after.

Example 3: I needed to use the printer for 30 mins to print out some urgent stuff.  So I posted a message on yammer to stop all printing for the next 30 mins.

The thing I like about Yammer is that it reduces the amount of email that clogs up our email inboxes. It’s like having a blog and everyone’s contributing ideas and suggestions. I’ve actually gone as far as downloading the desktop app, so its like instant messenger rather than a webpage I log into. We also use MSN as well for private and quick conversations. It hasn’t replaced it, but its an easy way to speak to a lot of people.

I’m out like instant messaging,

Matt Ho

I was thinking about this exact article content today. Whenever I first jump onto to the internet, I immediately check my facebook account and see what’s new and then Google Reader to see new articles fed to me via RSS and then my various email accounts.

But Facebook and other forms of social networks have started to eliminate email inboxes. We no longer swap email addresses with new people we have just met – its now “facebook me” , or “add me via facebook”. Before that it was “give me your number” and then “drop me an email”.

I’m using less email today and more of facebook and other tools like twitter, LinkedIN, yammer to see what people are up to. It’s much faster to do some microblogging via my facebook status or tweet it, then to drop an email to 20 people.

The other thing is, I don’t see why more transactions are completed within facebook or other social networks. To me these are like portals to the internet, where one day we could be doing banking transactions, searching, reading news, applying for jobs, buying goods and services through them. I’ve read that some people are trying to develop this, and it makes sense since we spend so much time within these networks anyway.

But it’s still going to be a long time before social networking eliminates email inboxes. Consumers and business people still prefer email as a form of communication. It is a much more trusted than blogging. Something like 20% of consumers trust blogging, though that percentage gets up to 40% amongst actual bloggers. I do believe that social networking and in particular RSS will replace email, as more people use these tools and the next generation arrive into the workplace.

Personally, I subscribe to about 15 different blogs / newsletters via RSS. I did it initially because I wanted to try it out, but its so awesome! I get regular updates and the newer stuff moves to the top. If I dont read the older stuff that’s ok, and I can quickly scan all the articles that I want to read. RSS isn’t widely used amongst friends and colleagues, but it should be!!! Instead of clogging up your inbox, it actually frees it up.

I’m out like email,

Matt Ho.