Posts Tagged Facebook
The problem with planning social media (no problem)
By Cory Treffiletti
If you were engaged with digital media planning early in the continuum, say from 1995-2000, you regularly heard the phrase, “building the plane while flying it.” That cliché was used commonly to describe the exhilaration and similarly the frustration of media planning in an environment that was un-tested, un-standardized and extremely fluid when compared to its traditional brethren.
The same thing can be said for social media planning right now, because social media is somewhat tested, infinitely un-standardized and extremely fluid. What adds even more difficulty is, it is more about the platform than any of the individual players — which adds a level of complexity that can easily overwhelm an unseasoned planner.
When planning display in digital media, it’s easy to focus on the publisher as the location for placement, and each publisher has a forecasted, finite volume of inventory that can be planned. In social media, publishers are increasingly shifting their focus away from their sites and more to a distributed model that relies on third-party programmer development to create access points.
In a recent article in the Sunday New York Times, Facebook proclaimed its desire for a third party to developers to create new interfaces for accessing the social network rather than driving users to the host .com site. They are not as concerned with site traffic as they are with accessibility to the platform. Twitter is leaps and bounds ahead of the pack when it comes to this concept, with most people accessing Twitter through mobile apps such as Twitterific or desktop apps like TweetDeck.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter on May 22nd, 2009
Facebook phishing attack sought passwords
By Suzanne Choney
A Facebook e-mail phishing scheme was discovered early Thursday among users of the popular social networking site who may have inadvertently clicked on a fraudulent Web link included in a Facebook message to them.
The bogus link took users out of and away from the real Facebook to a fake Facebook site, where they were asked to log in again, giving their passwords, which may have been captured by those behind the scheme.
Facebook said e-mails with the fake link were blocked within the first few hours of being sent out, and that those who may have fallen for the ruse have had their passwords automatically re-set “so that any data the bad guys have becomes useless very quickly,” said company spokesman Barry Schnitt.
Users who did bite on the phishing lure will receive an e-mail from Facebook notifying them that their passwords have been re-set.
One version of the e-mail went like this: “Richard sent you a message. Subject: Hello. “Check 121.im” with “121.im” as a Web link and fake Facebook page.
The phishing scam grew rapidly because accounts that were compromised “immediately sent out hundreds of messages, all with the same content, with the same link,” Schnitt said. He said it is “too early to tell” how many of Facebook’s 200 million users were affected by the scam.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Facebook on May 14th, 2009
West African phishing scam hits my Facebook inbox
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
Over the past few months eBrand Media has consistently sounded an alarm about Facebook, and the cornucopia of information that people share so freely, and unnecessarily, on Facebook. I discovered the e-mail below in my Facebook inbox. It’s far superior to other phishing e-mail in that it’s targeted directly at me, by name, includes the specific name of a supposed relative in the body of the e-mail, and strives to convey a Kings English dialect. It was sent by a “James Desouza” which I’m sure is an alias. Please note the Yahoo! e-mail address. It’s reasonable to expect that attorneys would have a domain name for their law firm, and an e-mail address from that domain.
A search of Facebook delivers 57 results for the name, “James Desouza”. None have pictures.
“Dear Tom Polanski,
I am Barrister James Desouza, a solicitor at law. I am the personal attorney to Eng. J .B.Polanski, a national of your country, who used to work with Shell Development Company in Lome Togo. Here in after shall be referred to as my client. On the 21st of April 2005, my client, his wife and their only daughter were involved in a car accident along Sagbama express road. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost their lives.
Since then I have made several enquiries to your embassy here to locate any of my clients extended relatives, this has also proved unsuccessful. After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to track his last name over the Internet, to locate any member of his family hence I contacted you. I have contacted you to assist in recovering the fund valued at US$20.5 Million, left behind by my client before it gets confiscated or declared unserviceable by the Bank where this huge amount were deposited.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Facebook on April 30th, 2009
Social Networking generates leads, closes sales for marketers
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
According to a social media study by Michael Stelzner for the Social Media Success Summit 2009, 88% of marketers in a recent survey say they are now using some form of social media to market their business, though 72% of those using it say they have only been at it a few months or less. Marketer’s Use of Social Media Tools
Social Media – % Respondents Using
* Twitter – 86%
* Blogs – 79%
* Linkedin – 78%
* Facebook – 77%
* YouTube or other video – 41%
* Social bookmark sites – 38%
* Forums – 38%
* StumbleUpon – 28%
* Digg, Reddit or similar – 26%
* FriendFeed – 18%
Source: Social Media Marketing Industry Report, March 2009
Key survey findings about specific application show that:
Posted by Tom Polanski in Marketing, Trend Tracker on April 24th, 2009
Popular Facebook app: All talk, little cash
By Kim Hart and Megan Greenwell
It seems foolproof: nonprofits using the power of the Internet to raise money through a clever Facebook application. After all, the Web earned gobs of cash for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. And besides, going online means sending fewer fundraising letters, which makes it appealing to penny-pinchers and environmentalists alike.
But it turns out that approach doesn’t always work. The Facebook application Causes, hugely popular among nonprofit organizations seeking to raise money online, has been largely ineffective in its first two years, trailing direct mail, fundraising events and other more traditional methods of soliciting contributions.
Only a tiny fraction of the 179,000 nonprofits that have turned to Causes as an inexpensive and green way to seek donations have brought in even $1,000, according to data available on the Causes developers’ site. The application allows Facebook users to list themselves as supporters of a cause on their profile pages. But fewer than 1 percent of those who have joined a cause have actually donated money through that application.
The data conflict with the lessons many nonprofits took from Obama’s presidential campaign: that a well-run organization could raise huge amounts of money online. The problem is, nonprofit fundraising requires considerably more outreach than many political campaigns, which do not require as much relationship-building because they revolve around highly visible candidates.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Facebook on April 22nd, 2009