Instead of crazy white elephant gifts the conversations are about that person who unfriended another person on Facebook.

Really?

Last week I found myself in a group conversation where one woman was questioning the reason why she was unfriended on Facebook. “I can’t believe that she unfriended me, I was just saying that I didn’t agree with her GOP garbage!” she exclaimed.

Sad but true, in this beautiful Holiday Season of giving and good will towards me people all over the Facebook universe are being unfriended left and right. I think it’s a tribute to how much Facebook had become a major part of our everyday lives. Think about it for a moment… Facebook is everywhere:

• when you post pictures on a family vacation
• when you check in at the local watering hole
• when you comment on Tim Tebow
• and yes, when you unfriend a person that annoys you

Usually this time of year many blog posts follow one key criteria and that’s 2012 predictions. I really don’t need to predict anything, except that Facebook will become even more of a permanent fixture in society. I’ll put it right up there with the microwave as one of the best inventions of all time! When was the last time you warmed something up in anything other than a microwave – and when as the last time you said something without putting it on Facebook? When you dig deeper into social media and Facebook you can see that with the increasing explosion of mobile, Facebook will become even more of a life necessity.

Alright – I digress. Let’s get to some Facebook stats regarding why people unfriend other people. First, here is a great study conducted by the University of Colorado about why people unfriend others on Facebook (courtesy of David Kelly). One important social aspect that came out of this study was that just like in real life, there is also a social hierarchy on Facebook. They found that those making the friend requests are much more likely to be abruptly unfriended, while those who unfriend have the dominant role in the relationship.

Let’s look at a few info graphics (courtesy of Leslie Horn of PC Magazine). The average Facebook user has around 130 friends. The number reason why you have these friends is because you know them in real life.

What’s more striking is that 60% of Facebook users friend someone basically on a mutual friend basis. This speaks volumes about how we interact socially. So even if we don’t know someone, if they are a friend of friend, you are in! Hmmm makes you wonder.

So why do people unfriend people? The biggest reason (55%) is because of Offensive comments. This stat is pretty interesting, it points out a general rule of thumb. Think about it, if you are in a restaurant and someone is swearing to the wait staff do you stay? Or do you ask the management to remove this person? Proper language is a societal norm and people have translated this norm to Facebook.

The important takeaway from all this is that Facebook seems to have translated commonly held social values and incorporated them into the fabric of the social channel. You could almost argue that one of the reasons for MySpace’s failure was that people used MySpace to live a fantasy life with no social norms or values.

So before you get upset at the asshole that unfriend you on Facebook, take a look at the stats and see why you may have been unfriended.

I’m not one for pomp and circumstance… others close to me would disagree, but I’m happiest when I’m at the bar having a glass of wine and talking social media or politics with someone I just met.

I get asked to social media events a lot and for the most part I stay away (why)? I believe that what has been said in social, has already been said… brands need to to listen, organize, engage and measure. If you aren’t doing those four things than I suggest attending a social media event to learn how.

But… Thursday I had an opportunity to eat, drink and talk with Chris Hughes the co-founder of Facebook.

It was a great event and tons of fun. Now… I  basically I have a chance to be Kathy Griffin here and give you guys the “D” list breakdown of everything that happen at the WBBM NewsMakers Event.

Before Chris went on stage we had about 22 minutes of lunch conversation. My seat happened to be right next to Chris along with others (clients of SPECK), WBBM and Comcast executives also at the table. I have to say at 27 years old, Chris was very well spoken. When I was 27, the last thing I was thinking about was talking to CEO’s of Comcast. I was about what bar I was going to on Friday night and my conversations centered around women.

Obviously the conversation at our table was about social media. A lot of questions came up about the movie about Facebook the ‘Social Network’. Chris handled them really well, telling us that it was a purely fiction, that the details presented in the movie were modified in order to make it Hollywood material. The thing that interested me the most was that I was hearing these answers form the ‘the horses mouth’ not a from a blog or an entertainment column.  I mean, this was the real person that was in the room when Facebook was being created!

Most people at our table tried to be cordial about questions and topics and I probed a little more asking…

“So did Sean Parker really try to cut out Edruado?”

To which my answer was – NO

I wanted more but what I got was very little.

I will say the best part of the afternoon was the general conversation about social media with Mr. Hughes. He acknowledged that what (my business SPECK Media) is doing was correct, that the story is crucial to social media and he talked about establishing business goals as the number one priority when it comes to starting social media. A huge smile came across my face.  It was great to see the business leaders at the table hearing what I (and other) social media practitioners have been preaching for years.

Before Mr. Hughes had to go up and speak to (some 700+) people. He made mention to the fact that each social media channel should have a different set of goals. In my opinion this was a pretty profound piece of information that I started thinking about. As we enter year 5 of social media, the rush for companies to make their social channel more and more relevant is a number one priority.

Two Examples

- LinkedIn has allow business pages to post stats updates, ad videos and specific have advertising right on a brand page.

- Google+ has just started brand pages which has opened what seems like the wild, wild west of social media.

These two examples prove Mr. Hughes’ point… each channel needs separate goals. For example: why would your customer go to your new Google+ brand page if it’s communicating the same types of stories that your Facebook page is?

Companies need to rethink each channel.

• what’s the Game Plan
• who is our audience on this channel?
• what do we want to accomplish
• why would a fan or customer want to hear what we have to say on this channel?

These types of questions formulate a strategy for each channel and overall contribute to  channels success.

I think I kinda diverted from my ‘insiders’ take on the Chris Hughes lunch… sorry. Basically, the rest of the day was filled with picture taking and the normal pleasantries that you see at these types of events. I was really shocked at the amount of time I was able to have with him as well as the his candidness after his speech. When it comes down to it this guy is worth millions, but when you put things into perspective Chris and the other founders of Facebook were not looking to make millions and be famous. The goal was to innovate, to make more out of the web and to give the public a new way to communicate socially.

But, I’m scared for Facebook…

I’m scared because I think we are coming to a cross-roads when it comes to Facebook. For the past 6 years Facebook has safely balanced ‘coolness’ with un-coolness’ always on the side of the user. By coolness I mean, keeping ads at a minimum and keep users needs at a priority. Have there been changes along the way? Yes. Has it mattered, somewhat – but for the most part the Facebook user community has adapted and changed with Facebook.

Change is one of those necessary things when it comes to a social media channel.

One of the most important things I learned from website user experience is that users need small changes, websites need to keep users engaged in actions. Small changes keep an audience active and involved. You could draw a timeline (no pun intended) to MySpace, one of the reasons for MySpace’s demise was that it didn’t change – it gave users complete control over what they needed from day one (customize everything). Users were bored and left. Facebook has taken a slower route and kept more controls in place. Little tweaks and changes kept users involved.

To be fair – Another huge reason why MySpace failed was advertising flooded in…………………. Adverstising (isn’t cool) and when advertising hit MySpace, users left in droves.

But, let’s go back to the changes. Facebook has unleashed a new, new, new design. One that’s going to shock the public. It’s called Facebook Timeline. If Facebook thinks users are a little upset at the tweaks they made last week, just wait. A firestorm is brewing and it’s going to hit 10/1.

I’m scared for Facebook because the bubble could burst… users could get so upset by the drastic changes that they might leave.

What do you think?

Below are some of the best links to information on the Facebook changes:

• Privacy Advocates Oppose Facebook Changes – Washington Post
• New Facebook Changes will Help You Change The World – Huffington Post
• Facebook Changes, everything you need to know – Mashable 

(here’s a quick link to the details just in-case you don’t already know about it) Great article by MarketWatch by Al Lewis

What a shame I thought. Another perfect example of a company not utilizing social media. Is this really still happening I thought?

ATTENTION all the companies that have been out to lunch the past three years – social media provides the opportunity to ask fans questions, to involve them in decisions and ideas.

Poor Netflix, instead of engaging the millions of people that utilize their great service every month, Netflix decided to cut them off at the knees and make wholesale changes without even asking them if they wanted change.

Looks like Mr Hastings is going to have to read an earlier blog post of mine (Social Media Ecosystem & crisis management), because it’s totally crisis management time at Netflix!

Currently they are using every social media channel available to correct the issue.

• blog
• emails
• Facebook
• Twitter

Please stop the madness Netflix, and stop making it worse by telling your millions of fans that you care when you really don’t care. If you did you would have simply asked them a few questions about what you were thinking about doing.

Example: Hey Fans, we are contemplating splitting into two separate companies in order to serve your needs better. What do you think?

Honestly, I believe that if Netflix just asked their fans this question they would have done better in the long run. Sure, I think you would have had some people oppose this change but in the long run fans would have just been happy to know that they were consulted a little bit on the decision. It kills me how companies do countless amounts of research and spend hundreds of hours in meetings preparing decisions like the Netflix one and never think to actually engage fans and customers.

A company’s product or service is essentially a relationship with a customer.

When a company is one sided in this relationship, bad things happen (just off the top of my head I’m thinking about the Full Tilt Poker website thing).  But the fact remains, in today’s media driven landscape there is a two way communication that exist between companies and customers. Or a better of way of saying it is

“yo, communicate with your fans or be the joke of everyone on Facebook”

I still want to remain positive about the subject of asking fans questions and I thought that the best way to do that was to give some credit to companies that are using social media to there advantage. One of the strongest examples of social media communication is asking fans questions.

Big thanks to some great companies above, and to Domino’s Pizza, who I may have called out in a past blog post. Domino’s Facebook page is a real-time lesson in how to engage fans and talk to them via social media.

Before you stop reading… here’s some free and simple advice on what types of questions to ask fans and why?

1 – Questions about your brand, product or service: these types of questions engage fans, they help a company improve and promote positive awareness. They add to your marketing mix and work just as good as traditional marketing activities.

2 – Questions that are relative to your audience: Basically, people like to discus things that they have in common. If you sell books, talk about books and ask your fans questions about books. Keep in mind that your product or service is an extension used by customers.

3 – Questions that are relative to everyone: Overall companies want to be part of a customers everyday life. So ask everyday life types of questions. You don’t walk up to someone on the street and say.. buy my product or services. You say Hi, you say Where are you from?

That’s all folks – see, i was negative but also still very positive.

What do these terms mean? Absolutely nothing! I think the reason they come to be is because marketers and consultants in there quest for new business or to be called experts in social media find a need to conjure up a term from thin air and then give some type of meaning to that term – even if the meaning is a recycled definition of what we already know.

HUGE Disclaimer – because if I do’t post this, I’m going to be responding to negative feedback for the next 12 months.

My firm (SPECK Media) is guilty of this as well. In our first year of existence we made claim to the social media design process.

It sounded good at the time and I have to admit the graphic itself looks like an old car from the 70′s. What this model represented was a way for us to take all the key parts we understood about social media, categorize them and fit them into a strategy process. I think on some level it appealed to clients but for the most part it was our way for making sense out of the phenomenon of social media. This is what people do – in order to better understand something people make up models, graphics and terms that explain that thing.

Now after three plus years a new term is starting to make the rounds when it comes to social media, the term is… social business (I have to chuckle).

Here’s where I’ve seen the term social business used, keep in mind I am not criticizing these people or blog posts. I honestly believe that they bring up some very crucial and important thoughts when it comes to social media  - Headshift Blog, Sandy Carter, Positive Organization Behavior, and a very interesting one from Edelman Digital which tells companies how to go from social media to social business. 

To me, social business is just business.

No more, no less.

I don’t know of a business that isn’t social. Do you?

• You market products and services socially, talking to people and local community representatives letting them know what you have to sell and why it’s beneficial.
• You sell your products and services socially, giving customers information and support around what they purchased.
• You build a brand based on the reputation that your business has built in both the local and global community.

These are social principles of business

Somehow during the course of this roller coaster know as social media we forgot that social media follows the same exact principles above…

• You market products and services socially, conversing with fans on Facebook and looking for advocates to spread the word on Twitter.
• You sell your products and services socially, opening up two way communications on a blog and through a corporate portal.
• You build a brand based on your business’ consistency to listen and engage fans on all types of social media channels.

So you have to forgive me if I haven’t bought into the term social business as it relates to social media. I also think it’s hilarious that some social media companies try to brand them self as social business platforms (what?).

What’s a social business platform? If I’m asking this question, can you imagine what a CMO thinks? To me it’s just another way for these companies to sell services and stake a claim in the battle for social media. Anyone that tells you different is lying to you. For example, if you are the social business Leader, why wouldn’t a Fortune 500 Company buy social media services from your (right?).

Do organizations need to think more socially? Yes. Do they need to embrace this form of Earned Media? Yes.

Are there new tricks and methods within social media, of course. That’s why I hope that companies continue to invest money in letting social media firms help them out. Someone needs to show off the tricks, but anyone telling you that social media is a new form of magic is dead wrong.

The bunny is always in the hat, it’s how crafty you are at pulling the bunny out that matters.

I’m going to make you read this before I tell you (haha)

This past 4th of July weekend we saw a lot of interesting social media stories hit the headlines. Between barbecues and fireworks these three topics came up a lot.

Friday —–

At the start of the weekend there was Google+, Google’s newest and hopefully last-ditch effort at social media. For the past four years Google has been trying everything it could to lure users away from Facebook and Twitter and back to Google. Simply put, users just were not using Google anymore. A lot of this had to do with the average time users were spending on both Facebook and Twitter. What seemed like a fun diversion to the world was not so fun for Google. So, Google created a number of social networking site failures. I don’t really feel like naming all of them but for the record the last one was Google Wave. What went wrong with these sites? There are tons of conflicting opinions – one of the best ones that I heard was that Google was just to engineering instead of social. Internet engineers don’t get social.

Well.. the purpose of this post isn’t to judge, Google+ is here and it made a splash at the start of the 4th weekend. Tons of buzz and some interesting features (a full feature set is here).

One of the most interesting things I think it has to offer is ‘Hangouts’ – with Google+ Hangouts a user will be able to join a group of people who are talking about a certain subject using their video camera (of course on their computer). So say a conversation comes up about ‘taxes’ – 3 or 4 people can jump in and start talking about it.

It’s a very interesting concept especially when it comes to social – and it’s something that Facebook or Twitter doesn’t have yet. For a detailed look at Google+ Hangouts, checkout this review in the SF Gate by Matt Rosoff.

Saturday —– 

iPad 2 and not that there was an announcement around the iPad 2, more or less it was how much more I am using the iPad 2 (how much are you using it? – vote here). I already read every newspaper on this device. I tweet from it, I shop from it and this past weekend I watched all three of my kids use it. The iPad 2 is opening up computing to everyone making the traditional high-priced laptop a relic of the past. With the dawn of the new ios 5 on its way (all features for ios 5 listed here) the iPad 2 is starting to become ‘THE’ device. I really think that the killer feature in the new ios 5 is going to be text messaging from the iPad 2. There are so many times that I want to text or say something to someone but without texting I’m stuck.

With this missing link on the iPad 2 who knows how much time people will spend on it.

Sunday & Monday ——

Casey Anthony took to the Broadway stage. Her murder trial was crazy.. so much that I found myself watching closing arguments over the Men’s Wimbledon Final. Crazy but true. The Casey Anthony murder trial was blazing on Facebook, Twitter and through almost any social outlet you could imagine. So why was the American public so crazy over this Orlando murder case? You could say media (traditional media coverage) or you could chalk it up to the fact that every tweet and turn was caught not only in traditional media but social media. People want to react to a murder trial when famous people like Kim Kardashian are tweeting about it.

Conclusion —–

Which finally leads us to my question: What does Google+, iPad 2 and Casey Anthony all have in common? 

The answer: social media reach. You might be saying, huh?

Just what is social media reach? Basically it’s the ability to:

• attract
• communicate
• entertain

Social media reach is this gigantic arm of social power, it’s a new technology like Google+ that encourages new users to USE IT, to take a shot and participate. it’s also an old way of communicating with friends about topics using simple text messaging on a device like the iPad 2. And finally, its pure entertainment around a social event like the Casey Anthony murder trial. Social reach combines new, old and current into a formula that can only be likened to a wave of social awareness.

So what do you think? Do you agree? Let me know and Happy belated 4th of July!

Today at $100 a share people still belive that LinkedIn signals the end of the world. Jim Cramer is freaked!

The LinkedIn IPO is the kind of thing that makes a mockery of capital raising and stock trading in this country. Wall Street bloggers and investors are outraged by what happened yesterday. 

But, what really happened was very interesting and entailing. Let me slice up this crazy news two ways:

Yesterday we saw one of the first social media sites (LinkedIn) become public. From a Wall Street perspective this was a WIN. Why? Because Wall Street is looking, I would even dare say grasping for something anything to keep sparking interest in investing. Main Street represents ‘us the people’ but Wall Street takes what ‘us the people’ do and love and profits from it. It is safe to say that for the past 5 years ‘us the people’ have been spending a lot of time on social media sites. Yesterday’s news was the culmination of these two forces coming together in the form of a social media IPO. And it makes perfect sense, for a social media site that focuses purely on business (contacts, discussions, blogs and comments) to join the ranks of public companies.

Is there a lot of discussion on the share price? Without question. Is it overpriced, I don’t try to portray myself as an expert when it comes to Wall Street but I do agree with experts like Daniel Indiviglio who says…

When this sort of thing happens, it’s usually interpreted as great news for a company; after all, investors are very interested. In fact, this really means that the IPO was seriously mispriced by the bankers who structured it.

To me and most of the general public if the stock was mispriced, I’m ok with that.

The other way to slice this is away from the Wall Street buzz and simply look at this as WIN for social media as an industry and as a legitimate way for both organizations and people to come together and communicate. Social media has been winning (as Charlie Sheen would put it) for a while and now. In some ways it reminds me of the Dot.com days, but in some ways it doesn’t. Social media has a different feel – it is surviving and flourishing in the midst of one of the worst recessions this country has ever seen.

Do I think there is going to be a bubble? No, and if there is a social media bubble it won’t be that large. Keep in mind that the Dot.com boom introduced us to a new way of communicating and enabling transactions which caused a fundamental shift in how organizations sold products. Social media has nothing to do with that kind of change it really has nothing to do with change at all. We have been communicating with organizations for decades… social media makes this process of communication easier (keeping in mind that social media is communication between anyone, not just organizations).

So will Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and other social media sites follow LinkedIn’s IPO path?

They may or may not. I will say that LinkedIn has put a little heat on them to do so.

What do you think? Let me know?

I leave you with a YouTube video explaining what LinkedIn is… it is simple and to the point.

I believe that there is some intrinsic value behind the new social media site (platform, channel, whatever) About.me.

The first thing that really attracted me to it, was the simplistic way of taking every social media outlet a person is using and putting them on a beautifully designed page with a full color picture of themself – my example below

Is this really that important? In some ways ‘yes’ in others ‘NO” – many social media professionals and bloggers have been doing this for years (taking all the ways they can be contacted and collectively putting them somewhere). Will About.me be something that everyone starts doing? I definitely think they want it to be!

Underneath the pretty covers of About.me is a strong statistical engine giving the user (and I’m sure About.me as well) tons of data on who views, clicks and bounces around on your About.me page. There’s even data on how much time a user spends on your page. The data is what investor companies like: The New York Times Company, Radar Partners, AOL Ventures just to name a few are banking on.

My final take on this is that – I feel like we have reached another bubble when it comes to social media, as VCs are starting to slowly invest in companies, they are choosing social media investments. As much as social media startups will argue that social media is about enabling conversations and talking to fans, the VCs want hard data and raw numbers. I think we are starting to see the same types of social media sites evolve but the roots of these sites always remain the same – Accumulate and Store User Data.

Your thoughts? Also – join the discussion on Quora about the topic