Category Archives: facebook

It’s just p….interesting….

Posted on January 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

My Farmville overalls have been hanging in the virtual closet for two years now.  They retired at the peak of my farm productivity and farm visual appeal.  My green alien cows and thought of building virtual vineyards just lost its appeal.  Since then I have been quietly searching for my next online time eater.   I am happy to announce I feel that I have found it, Pinterest.com.

“Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. It lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find in your life. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.”  - iTunes

We can spend hours and hours pinning our favorite things we see on the web and in our lives and then place and organize them on our own virtual bulletin board.  We can re-use or “repin” others’ favorites.  It’s scrap booker’s dream with the additional possibility of HD videos!

All of my drawers and folders of cut up home magazines, kitchen designs, paint samples that I will never use and recipes that that I probably will never make can all be compiled in one spot.  I can share them, collaborate with others to make even grander scale patches of greatness and beauty.  It will be fabulous.

I am looking forward to getting started.  I have downloaded my app.  Now I am waiting for my invitation.  To join an invitation needs to be sent by another user or you are placed on a “waiting list”,  geeze, I hope that list is not too long…..so much to do…..

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Posted in facebook, Pinterest, self-help, Twitter

Facebook, those are some crazy numbers!

Posted on May 30, 2011 | 1 Comment

This morning I came across some numbers about Facebook that made me stop and think.

  • Facebook is globally closing in on 700 million users
  • In 2010, 7.9 new account registrations occurred per second.
  • The average Facebook user clicks the “Like” button nine times, writes 25 comments, becomes a fan of two pages, is a member of 12 groups, and spends 55 minutes on Facebook a day.
  • In May 2011, Brazil had the largest growing Facebook registrations with more than 1.9 new users
  • The top 5 US States Using Facebook are California (19 million which is close to 52% of it’s population), Texas (11 million), NY(10 million), Florida(8.8 million), and Illinois(6.2 million)
  • The top 5 countries using Facebook are US (149+ million), Indonesia(37+ million), UK( 30+ million), Turkey( 29+ million), and India(25+million)

Interesting facts but what to do with them? Although Facebook is a social platform, it is also the forum for businesses to share their information and value.

The social science around how to best combine these two worlds and capture the benefit is just evolving. For example when looking on help on “when the best time to post?”, there is a variety of responses. It completely depends which blog or site you click on. It might have some data to support the answer or it might be completely the author’s best thoughts. One thing is certain, more money will be spent to dissect, define and fine tune how a post will best reach this mass audience. According to a CMO survey conducted by Duke University and the American Marketing Association, social media marketing budgets will grow from the existing 6% to more than 18% over the next 5 years.

I rather liked Facebook being a place where I could simply connect with old friends and family members. I realize that such large numbers of a captive member base are just too tempting not to target, but do you think our external analysis and targeting by these marketing groups will affect how or if we continue to use Facebook?

NPR looked at this subject from a political science point of view. It is an interesting post: Facebook Has Powerful Friends; Will Users Suffer?

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Posted in branding, career-rebuilding, career-transition, facebook, re-entering-the-workforce, social media marketing

Just check Facebook, really?

Posted on May 3, 2011 | 1 Comment

In my quest to learn what is new in the workplace I have been attending classes here and there.  Tonight in one of these classes I came across a concept that really got me thinking.  Our instructor told us that Facebook has now surpassed Google as the number one method people find information.  So, does this mean that we as a culture are moving from SEARCH to SOCIAL to get our information?

Upon quick reflection I thought of a personal example of how I witnessed during Easter celebrations.  I had a friend post on her Facebook page asking if anyone knew of any florists in her area that had potted tulips.  Instead of  looking up the florists in her area on Google, she used her own social network to laser her search and make the experience easy and one that was almost certain to bring the results she wanted.  She knew her friends would know her taste and style and only point her to those spots that carried what she would like.  Thus, moving her from SEARCH to SOCIAL.  It just made sense.  She reported that she had the perfect potted tulips on her doorstep for the occasion.

I found the whole concept of SEARCH to SOCIAL very exciting but did have one main concern, as the information becomes shared almost like a written conversation, isn’t there be more of a chance that the facts become distorted or changed?  What keeps a fact a fact?  What becomes our new baseline for our source?  I’m curious what you think on this subject.  How far do you think this trend will continue?

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Posted in branding, career-rebuilding, career-transition, facebook, google, re-entering-the-workforce, self-help, social media marketing