Facebook has begun to roll out their new design.

3 things I love about it

1. The search bar will be centered across the top of the screen, giving it more prominence.  I find the search bar invaluable to quickly jump from page to page or profile to profile and hope its new location will encourage smarter use.
2. The left side bar will be more useful
   1. Your bookmarks will be on the left hand side
   2. You can update your status from anywhere.  Your status “bar” will be on the left hand side, giving you access to update your status anywhere in Facebook.
3. Notifications, requests and message icons will be at the top of the page.  (See Mashable’s screen shots here)  Having these as drop downs will ease readability.

Other changes include, a smaller chat bar, which I am not sure how I feel about.  If it makes it more browser friendly or mobile friendly, I am all for it.

The account log in / out function has been rolled into a single account drop down.

According to Techcrunch, applications are taking the biggest hit as they will no longer be able to publish notifications.

What are your thoughts on the “new” Facebook look?

Let’s start off with what the purpose of Facebook is:

“Facebook is not just a website. It is also a service for sharing your information on Facebook-enhanced applications and websites.”

Facebook wants you to share.  Facebook encourages you to share.  If you do not want to share, why are you on Facebook?

Having said that… Facebook has done a lot to give you control over the information you can share, but it has also opened some doors or “privacy holes”.

First step – MAKE LISTS!!!   (Friends -> All Friends -> Create New List) Lists are the most powerful, yet underutilized tool on Facebook! If you want to control who sees what information, making Friends lists is more critical now then it ever has been before.  A list will allow you to create wall posts, post up pictures, etc… and select who gets to see them.    The first list you want to pay attention to is “Limited Profile”.   That’s where you put the people you don’t know or have not assessed their “value” to your network yet.  I have a lot of people in my Limited Profile list.  They can not post to my wall, they can not see my personal photos and they are very limited as to what contact information they can see on my Info tab.

Next – go to your privacy settings:  Settings ->  Privacy Settings ->  Profile Information

This is where you can set all your default settings.  List who can see what information here.  I customize most of my settings by using the lists I created.   The same applies to your Contact information (Settings ->Privacy Settings -> Contact)

You can also control who can search for you and whether or not you want to be included in the search engines. Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Index.  The default setting is to allow all publicly available information from your profile to be indexed by search engines.  You can unclick the box to stop that from happening.  NOTE:  Anything that has already been indexed will not be removed from the search engines. (see my Facebook note about this that was shared from the Rotarians on Social Networks Fellowship page)

Applications and Website control in your profile:  Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Applications and Websites:

This is where things get interesting.  The reality is, it is in Facebook’s best interest to allow developers to access your profile information.  Data mining is a science.  By seeing what applications you participate in, thus, pulling information from your profile, Facebook can insert you in a demographic list.  Like quizzes?  If privacy is a concern for you, don’t take them.

Here is what Facebook has to say about applications:

“When your friend visits a Facebook-enhanced application or website, they may want to share certain information to make the experience more social. For example, a greeting card application may use your birthday information to prompt your friend to send a card.

If your friend uses an application that you do not use, you can control what types of information the application can access. Please note that applications will always be able to access your publicly available information (Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages) and information that is visible to Everyone.”

Really?  So when my friend takes a quiz, installs an application (that I am NOT using), the application can still pull data about me from it.   Use the Application controls to determine what data can or can not be pulled.

If you are posting something on your wall that you do not want the world to see – use the status update bar to control it:

The default setting is Everyone… but you can change it.  Again – consider why you are posting something if it has to be kept private.  I have set custom settings to most of my photo albums, with the exception of my portfolio.

Facebook is the 4th largest country, with 350 million citizens.  There will be abusers in there, there will be good guys, bad guys and those with less then stellar intentions.

The bottom line is this:  You can unintentionally share information about yourself if you are not careful.   If you are not on Facebook to interact and share, then you have picked the wrong social network.  I have shown my kids how to lock down their profile and their posts, and it is not 100% – but it’s close.

Review your settings.  Set your defaults so you don’t have to think about them too often.

KNOW YOUR PURPOSE!!!

I know that I am on Facebook to connect, share and market first.  While I do socialize, it’s not my primary purpose.   Knowing that makes it very easy for me to determine what I do and do not share and with whom.

I’ll give you an example:  I was involved in a discussion about tattoos, as I am designing a new one for myself.  I was asked to post my existing tattoo – I almost did, but held off.  Why?  It serves no real purpose to my end goal, and, as cool as my tat is, I don’t want that on my profile.  That’s a tad too personal to me.   I don’t discuss the details of my private life with the exception that people know I am a parent, I ride a snowmobile and a Harley and have interests other then work.  I think that is to my benefit, as it makes me a more well rounded person and gives people some what of an idea as to who I am.  I want people to know me, trust me and to eventually do business with me, or think of me when others need help in this space.  I am good at engaging people and getting them to think – I enjoy that.  But, it doesn’t mean I need to post a picture of my lower back for all to see

By going through my profile and my posts, you should have a pretty good idea as to who I am and what I am about.  Hopefully enough of one to want to engage me on a closer level via phone or email, and perhaps eventually in person.  That’s the point of a social network, and that is something that Facebook does very well.   Take a peek at my Facebook profile.  I look forward to meeting you!

What are your thoughts about Facebook’s privacy settings?

Did you notice this on your Fan page this morning?

The morning following Mark Zuckerberg’s open letter to Facebook we have a new icon on Fan Pages that allows you to target a sub-set of your fans.   You can customize who sees your status update, photo, link, etc, by geographic region and language.

How is this useful?

My first thought is that you can reduce the noise for your fans.  If you are posting a local seminar, odds are your fans across the country are not going to be attending.

I suspect this will soon be added to personal profiles, allowing people to show content to only a small group of connections or individual lists of friends. (See how important lists are???)

Why it matters:

While Facebook promotes the concept of “Open community sharing” the reality is, some people are not comfortable flashing their kids pictures to a thousand connections they may not know.  Other people may be hiding things from the boss (or their spouse?) – oh yeah, this opens up a whole new can of proverbial worms.  How can a Corporate Social Media Policy effectively cover all the “what if’s” now?   Corporations don’t want employees wasting time online.  If they are marketing on behalf of the company, great, but now, how can that be policed by management if employees can post things without the higher ups being able to see it?

With 350 million users, Facebook is the 4th largest “country” in the world.  Like other countries, Facebook has laws – these rules are enforced in an effort to protect the majority.  So, is this new feature designed to help Facebook Users police their own profiles?  Will this reduce abuse or give users an opportunity to abuse the system in a different way?

What happens if someone I am connected to posts a picture of me that I would not want up, but prevents me from seeing it?  How can I protect myself from that?

Facebook changes pose more questions then answers.  They usually figure it all out in the end, but when a change is first instituted, it ruffles feathers until a new comfort level is reached by users.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

What are your thoughts?

Good:

You have a personal profile that is about you, your life and your work

Bad:

Your personal profile is under your company name

Best:

You have a personal profile that is about you, your life and your work

You have a Fan page that is devoted to your work –  under your company name, product name, book title, service name, etc.  and not your name.

How to fix the bad:

• Click on Settings
• Click on Account Settings
• Next to Name – click on Change
• Enter in your REAL First name and last name.
• Save

Why? Fact:  People want to do business with people, not a company name or a logo.  You will gain far more sales by letting people get to know you then by keeping yourself hidden.

Imagine this,  you are a not-for-profit.  10 people from your organization are on Facebook.   Your organization has a Fanpage.  You and your co-workers can share personal stories about the non-for-profit’s work that you are involved in on your personal profiles.  Each of you can also share stories from those you’ve helped or other involved people (patrons, sponsors, etc…) on the fan page.  This all ties together very nicely.  There is nothing like a good personal story to increase awareness of an organization!  If you want people to invest in your cause you have to touch their hearts.

Below is my Radio interview with Paul Chaney and John Munsell, CEO of Bizzuka.  We had a great disucssion about how to use Facebook for Business.  We talked a lot about Facebook personal profiles vs. public profiles (aka Fan pages) and what it means to share in the Social Media space.

(Plus, it was just a ton of fun!)

You can visit User  Friendly Thinking Radio show at http://www.userfriendlythinking.com/ to listen to all their archived shows.

I have glanced at Alltop from time to time to skim through the what’s hot section, but never really spent a great deal of time on the site unless I was searching for blogs on a particular subject.  It is a fabulous resource when looking for information on any subject under the sun (and some of those subjects are quite obscure).  Now that I have finally set up my ”MyAlltop” page it has become even more useful.  I can now go to my page and skim through blog posts from my favorite blogs and quickly read what I want.

However, I do have two wishes:

1)  When I was setting up my Alltop list, I was searching to see if a particular blog was listed (in one case I knew it was somewhere in the Alltop directory).  When I went to search for it, my only option was to search by subject not by blog name.  That slowed down my additions. 

2)  When I am logged in, I’d like to see the green check mark next to blogs I already saved to my Alltop page. 

Other then the above, it’s infinatelly more readable the my Google reader and gives me the chance to skim my favorites and stay on top of the latest news.

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• Version 3 of Alltop(guykawasaki.com)
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According to MX Lab - there is an email going around stating that Facebook has reset your login information.  Delete it – it’s a spoof.

As I was reading the MX Lab post – I got this in my email.. Talk about timing!

According to All Facebook “This virus only appears to work on Windows computers as it runs an executable file when downloaded. Spoofing official emails from large companies is a pretty standard method for spammers and you should always avoid any email which asks you to download a file. For those that are unaware, we thought it would be useful to keep you up to date about this latest virus.”

Stay aware!

A simple tip that is often forgotten:  Have your incoming mail sorted in folders for logical reading and storing (if need be).

I never really thought about organizing my emails until I had to.  With upwards of 150 emails a day coming in for business, business associations and community organizations I am involved in, I was forced to organize them in a coherent way.   I also receive a lot of notifications from the various Social Networks I am a member of and the News Alerts I have set up for my business.

I use Outlook.  I created rules (Tools, Rules & Alerts) based on the sender, message subject or incoming email address.   As the message comes in, it goes into the appropriate folder for me to read when I can. 

I have folders for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Rotary, Business Associations and News Alerts for email to be “auto-filed” into.  I have a client folder that is further broken down by client name that I manually sort.  The same holds true for college information for my daughter and school notifications for either of my girls. 

My inbox has had as many as 1100 emails in it.   Currently I am down to a little under 600… most of which should be sorted into a sub-folder, but that is a task for another day.  At least I am one step closer and learning to practice OHIO = Only Handle It Once J

… even the ones you think are “just social”.

Many clients tell me that they are reluctant to join Social Networks for business because they do not want to bump into old high school and college acquaintances.  Well… let me tell you… I’ve been hired by both.  So don’t pass up an opportunity to connect with anyone because you never know where it will lead.

Image via Wikipedia

Set up some rules:  Anytime someone from my past or current social circle connects with me, I let them know that my primary purpose for being on a network is for business.  While I don’t mind some “personal” interaction, I have a very well defined line.  If anyone crosses it, they get an email warning that says something like “I appreciate you wanting to share, but please don’t put anything like that on my wall.  If you want to relive those memories, feel free to send me an email.”  If that doesn’t work, I will disconnect (aka unfriend) them with a note that says something like “I told you so”.

Our old college and high school friends have grown up, moved away, expanded their knowledge base as well as their position in life.  As such, they are an excellent referral source and it is just a ton of fun to reconnect and BS for a while.  I’ve been given several such opportunities and feel truly blessed for them.   My former college roommate has enlisted my help in her social media marketing campaign and a former high school buddy passed my name on to someone for an opportunity that I would have otherwise never had access to.

Whether or not either pans out is almost irrelevant (to me), the idea is, I reconnected with old friends, enjoyed the experince and perhaps gained some income as a result.

So… the moral of the story is… do not discount any connection as unworthy unless they prove themselves to be via spamming you, or treating you poorly online.  Life is full of surprises and some of them are much closer then you think!

The majority of my seminars focus on the why and how of Social Media Marketing via two tools, Facebook and LinkedIn.  Most business owners “get” LinkedIn – but when you compare them side by side, you can see how both tools can be very useful.

LinkedIn:  The online resume with gusto! 

Not only do you have the opportunity to share your past experiences with people you connect to, but you have the opportunity to tell them where you are going (or want to go) and why.  In the summary section, write about your why and give your connections the opportunity to gain some insight into your work.

LinkedIn is the ultimate recommendation letter.  A few rules here though… only ask for recommendations from people who you have actually worked with and only agree to give recommendation to the same.  If you recommend every person you are connected to, not only are you being less then honest, but you dilute the purpose of a recommendation and your word.

Participate in the Answers section and show off your expertise. 

Facebook:  Networking the whole you!

Facebook offers the above and a level or two more.  In Facebook you can share pictures, links, directly communicate with your connections publicly and offer greater insight to you – all of you, the person behind the business. 

In other words, you are networking the whole of who you are.  Like motorcycles, share it… avid reader, let your connections know.  Facebook allows your connections to get a closer glimpse of your who, what, when, where and most importantly why.  Facebook also offers fan pages:  Public profiles that focus on your brand, product or service.  IF you are an author, start a fan page for yourself and one for your book.  Niche away – just keep the pages active and engaging to encourage fan participation and create some advocates.

In my opinion, you need both – one to serve as an introduction to you and your business and the other to build closer connections with those you hope to help and do business with.

There are a ton of other tools out there… start with these and build up into your comfort zone, then look for more.