On the business side, it’s great to set up a check-in spot for your headquarters on Foursquare and Gowalla. There is little risk involved, and trends indicate that being present on these location-based services (LBS) will be beneficial to companies as proximity marketing gains momentum. (Proximity marketing: marketing that targets an audience based on their GPS location. Specifically in this case, through your mobile phone. We think this will be big.)

As a personal user, it can be fun to collect badges or prizes, to compete for mayorships, and just see where your friends have checked-in. There are risks, though. The tips below are helpful hints for minimizing risk on Foursquare and Gowalla, but they are by no means guarantees. The very nature of these platforms is to let people know precisely where you are, and there’s no absolute promise that only your friends will ever see that information.

If you accept those risks though, the tips below can help keep your information under your control.

1. Don’t become Foursquare or Gowalla friends with anyone you do not know. You might receive many requests from acquaintances, local figures, even from the newspaper or a nearby restaurant. You might know the owner of the restaurant, but do you know for a fact they are the ones reading the updates? When we suggest you only friend people you know on Foursquare, we mean a person (not a group) whom you literally do not mind knowing exactly where you are at any given moment. Just stop and think before you hit accept. This may mean you have 3 Foursquare friends, but truly, that’s better than total strangers knowing where you are.
2. Don’t “tell Twitter.” The second you push a check-in to Twitter, it’s public to the entire world. Hesitate even to let your friends on Facebook see that update. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Foursquare still has some pretty solid bricks in its “walled garden,” but the second that information gets to other platforms, it is way more likely to become public.
3. Before you check-in, ask yourself this question, “If all the walled gardens fell and everyone could see everything, would anything really bad happen because of this check-in?” If not (and the cards usually seem to fall that way), go for it!

We hope you will sign up for Foursquare or Gowalla, because they’re wicked fun and they’re catching on. Leave comments with more tips to help people practice safe checking-in!

Now this isn’t the end-all-be-all list of Facebook Post Categories, but after some consideration, we think posts from businesses fall into one of the following ilks:

1. Horn-toots for the company.
2. Horn-toots for an employee or employees.
3. Horn-toots for clients, partners, or causes.
4. Links to information.
5. Requests for response.
6. Idle chatter.

Now, there is a time and place for horn-tooting. And there’s even more time and place for horn-tooting the merits of others, like local business, your clients, or the latest fundraising campaign. But how much is too much? Dominating your customers walls is not the goal, and certainly being absent is not good either. What is the right ratio of types of posts to frequency that will leave you with lots of impressions, but few hiders?

Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing. Even assuming you are putting out a great ratio of self-promotion to outside-promotion and being an engager instead of yacker, it still depends on your audience. The number of times you appear on their wall varies by how much you post, of course, but also how many friends they have, how often they post, and whether or not they are set to “Top News” or “Most Recent.”

Then, of course, there is your content. How much meaty content can you reasonably expect to have in a given period of time? Is it better to only post good content, or post frequently enough to be a presence in the news feed?

Here’s the good news: you can ask. Ask your customers what they think of your content and your frequency. Ask them in person. Ask them on Facebook. Not only is this a great way to engage your clients, but it’s a great way to show that you care about their opinions. The fact of the matter is that everyone is constantly trying to adjust and update their social media presence. By it’s very nature, social media is ever-fluctuating, and so are the expectations. No one will hold it against you or think less of you for asking for advice on your strategy, because they’re probably in the same boat.

We’ll start. What do you think of our social media life?

We also have a clear impediment: an avatar is only 80 pixels by 80 pixels.

The design and layout of an avatar is usually simple work. Just upload a well-cropped photo of the person the avatar should symbolize. That doesn’t work for our company avatar, though, because the LunaWeb voice speaks for more than the person typing on Facebook, Twitter or this blog. This is the voice of the team speaking, and the avatar should show the team. But how do you represent all those people along with our iconic LunaWeb logo on the web equivalent of a postage stamp?

Well, we haven’t exactly figured that out yet. So far, we’ve been experimenting with the most literal representation of our employees, their faces.

In an attempt to avoid “floating heads,” we mocked this adaptation of our current avatar. Then with inverse colors.

And then the Brady Bunch version…which won’t really work because we have more than nine people. Alas, it is a difficult task, but it means a lot to us to get this right. All of LunaWeb is, and deserves to be, part of the public voice, and we hope our new avatar, whenever we finalize it, will be an accurate, albeit small, emblem of our collective voice.

If you have any creative layout ideas, shoot ‘em our way!

Take our friend, Mari Smith. Mari and I shared the stage at an unconference session on Facebook for Business in Seattle in 2007. We’ve both been blowing the Facebook horn ever since. Mari has educated and enriched so many people about the potentials of Facebook, and many of her fans are making realities of dreams. Anybody that’s ever spent more than a few moments with Mari sees Facebook in new and exciting ways. She’s also enlightened thousands on the merits of the feature that now leaves that bit of wisdom painfully empty to all but a small percentage (the Facebook affluent). Mari is a wonderful person. Solid, and she certainly would not treat people the way Facebook has. This conflict is why there is a deeper problem.

As a consultant, your clients are expecting you to know the best solutions from the best companies. You and your clients expect these companies to be morally compatible with you. There are a huge number of great people who consult and recommend Facebook. However, Facebook is tipping a moral scale. In order for consultants to continue to recommend Facebook, we will have to idealistically be divorced of Facebook. We will have to table Facebook as questionable while, for the time being, recommend Facebook while identifying the risk.

The risk in doing anything with Facebook is suddenly high. They’re a wild card.

This will hold true unless Facebook’s reputation becomes a liability instead of an asset. If we get to a point where people regard Facebook negatively, a business won’t want a Facebook badge on its website.

We want Facebook to get it together. Maybe you’d like to participate in a boycott next Friday, May 28 via Facebook Free Friday. Facebook is a great tool, but it can’t continue with these outrageous and repeated changes. Facebook’s story keeps repeating: “oh crap, we didn’t know this meant so much to you. Here, we’ll put this band-aid right here and make it feel better… because we care. Really.”

Do you feel Facebook is now high risk? Comfortable with Facebook?

facebook-privacy

Last week’s announcement that four NYU students were developing  a Facebook alternative suggests that they want its global dominance to shift: in the name of freedom. The students have more than raised their needed-for-development goal of $10,000 in 27 fewer days than scheduled.

But before the project, Diaspora*, is launched, we’ve found some articles that can be used in the meantime:

1) A timely article entitled “Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative” which discusses the viral, yet ambiguous, nature of its privacy laws, or lack thereof.

2) ReclaimPrivacy’s tool that allows users to scan their profiles for privacy intrusion.

3) Consumer Report’s Facebook rule of thumb: “7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook”

4) SaveFace: A tool that allows users to reset most user settings back to “Friends Only.”

We aren’t against Facebook; we just want our privacy back.

We’re calling that rule Step Zero.

Step Zero: If businesses become operative within social media without regard to their community, they become irresponsible and oppressive.

"Laptop Megaphone" by jj_pappas423 on Flickr

We’re aware of these boundaries in the real world: an overzealous sales associate who stalks each new customer with nonstop pleas for service:  “May I help you?” “Would you like to try that on?” “What are you looking for today?” A customer is likely to walk out of the store every time. But in terms of the web, it takes a different form: countless fan page requests, despite denial time and time again.  And then there’s the megaphone effect, when businesses use social profiles as a megaphone to broadcast their message, without actually participating in the community.

All other subsequent “laws” hinge upon this idea. We often forget that real world rules and courtesies apply within the web. Bombarding social profiles with requests and suggestions is no way to earn business. Once this intangible, invisible line is crossed, marketing efforts become oppressive.

People are generous to extend some level of accepting interruptions. By connecting with businesses online, customers are granting permission for marketing purposes, but don’t take advantage of this generosity. If business exceeds this level, the community will regard it as being socially irresponsible and insulting.

If you’re like many tweeters, it’s the latter. The trending topic that started back in January of last year with a single tweet by @Micah has grown into a well-known weekly tradition since its inception. But has it run its course? While the original idea seemed to be to mention or promote a specific tweeter based on quality content or common interest, now many of the tweets resemble endless strings of @ signs and Twitter handles with no information or discernible reason for following any of them.

It’s become something that you do because, well, it’s Friday and that’s what you’re supposed to do. Right? We sent out a quick poll to some tweeters last Friday to find out what they thought about the whole affair.

Of the 17 respondents we had, the vote was fairly equally split between those who follow the suggestions with some scrutiny and those who are tired of the trend or ignore the tweets altogether. Not surprisingly, no one said that they follow the suggestions blindly.

As early as a few months in to the trend, bloggers were already questioning its relevance, and some have suggested other ways to go about promoting quality content on Twitter.

We’re wondering if the value of the idea hasn’t been lost in the strings of Twitter handles with no explanation of who the person is or what type of content they typically bring to the stream. #FollowFriday is losing its steam and its relevance. What do you think?

Google Fiber promises Internet speed up to a one gigabit per second – that’s three hundred times faster than typical home broadband service. The real coup of winning a bid for Fiber, though, would be that Google plans to take this service to every home and business in the chosen communities, regardless of the neighborhood’s commercial potential. An investment of that magnitude could transform an entire city.

So where do you come in? If Memphis wants to be a real contender, then Google needs to hear from members of our community. Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton wrote in his blog ways that we, as Memphians, can help the cause. The first step and one of the easiest (but most important) things you can do is to fill out Google’s web questionnaire for community members, stating your support for Memphis, Tennessee.

Filing the questionnaire is simple. If you don’t have a Google account, then just click here to sign up. If you do, then go ahead and Nominate Your Community. When you are finished, press “submit.”

And if you’re looking to get more involved, there are other ways to help. The city is gathering video testimonials, written letters of support, web content and links to Memphis supporters’ Web sites this week only. You can help by making a one to two minute video of you or your friends talking about why you believe Memphis is the best city for Google Fiber. It doesn’t have to be anything over the top or expensive — even a cell phones video stating the case would make a difference.

E-mail the video file once it’s done and it will be posted to the city’s YouTube channel for Google to review.

Let’s not let this opportunity pass us by, Memphis — we want Google Fiber and we can be the ones to help make it happen.

We’ve posted their newest episode featuring Church Health Center below. Help support these guys and all the good they are highlighting in our city!