Hashtags Are Getting Out Of Hand

Holy cow! I just realized it’s been quite some time since my last post on here. Truth be told, there’s a lot going on. I realize that’s the easiest excuse ever for not getting something done and we use it all too often, but I’ll follow it up with the second most used excuse: seriously, there’s a lot going on.

I have taken notice to something though in my time away: Hashtags are getting out of hand. Does anybody know why hashtags were originally created? It was a communication tool to link anyone around the world to a conversation of like items. Such as #MyDayWasLike or #CookingProblems. Television and Venues were licking their chops at this: it was an opportunity to make your event interactive: You could connect EVERYONE watching The Voice to the same conversation with #TheVoice. Attendees at SXSW could find each other throught #SXSW. It’s been something I’ve been trying to integrate into radio with #request or #OZKTop20.

Unfortunately, hashtags have fallen victim to the masses; Most people don’t use social media to listen, they use it be heard. Good hashtag conversations are few and far between, falling victim to stupid things like #swag and #yolo. People don’t click on those links, they just use them to fill up space in their tweet because it takes less time to explain than a sentence.

It’s almost become an act of spamming. Entire tweets consisting of nothing but hashtags. What does that accomplish? Sure it may gain you an extra follow or two, but is having someone wiling to follow THAT a good quality follow? Plus, it takes away from any of those conversations you linked to, and probably lost you any additional follows you gained or more.

Perhaps the worst part is that this trend has carried over to Facebook. Hashtagging in status updates, most aren’t even linked to the Twitter accounts. Granted, this may change with their new Graph Search (hold off on that verdict) but do these hashtaggers realize IT DOESN’T LINK TO ANYTHING ON FACEBOOK?!?!? This proves my afore-mentioned point that the masses don’t use social media to truly listen to what their followers are saying, they’re merely waiting for their chance to speak.

Maybe this is the way of the future. If social media has taught us anything it’s that it can’t be predicted. Maybe this is the new form of communication. From full sentences, to shortened sentences to this. Maybe this is inevitable. Hashtags will just join the ranks of poking and profile songs as the ‘Unnecessary Applications Of Profiles’. I hope not though.

I don’t want this post to be mistaken for a complaint. I still think there’s value behind the hashtag and desperately wish to see it return to the reason of it’s creation: to link us all together in one really big conversation. End this madness.

#PleaseHelp

The Five Folks You Find On Twitter

The progression of ‘Should I?’ has reached another level.  In the initial conversations we have with new businesses on the subject of “what are you doing digitally”, it almost always comes up: what about Twitter? Is it beneficial for my business to tweet?

While there is no question as to whether or not businesses should be on Facebook, with over half the world on the site AND 52% of them on it more than once a day, it’s the perfect place to interact with potential customers and drive them to the store and or website, often times replacing a website entirely.  However, when it comes to Twitter, the purpose of use for a business gets a bit blurrier.

Twitter’s a much more niche form of social media. It has nowhere near the reach, but if it’s done correctly and with the best of intentions can lead to a true success story.  The first question to ask is this: Who are you trying to target? If your answer is any of the following, let’s talk.

The Actively Active Individual: Twitter is microblog that caters to the needs of the busy.  This person is all about conveniently quick (except fast food, which is horrible for the diet).  On The go, does everything from their phone and loyal to all things pro-active. A good group to target, but it would take some convincing.

The Hashtag Addict: One of Twitter’s greatest contributions to the social world: the ability to engage in any conversation of a similar topic just by putting ‘#’ in front of it.  It’s so popular tons of people use the same theme on Facebook, even though it does absolutely nothing.  Hashtags are also one of the things that are often abused.  Some are created and used with purpose, but when you see a Tweet similar to “Got some new clothes at the mall today #swag #crazy #lovemylife #followmeonFB” you know they’re probably not going to engage in any conversation and are posting for their own purpose. They do care about image though, so for retail this could be huge.

The News Reporter: These are the folks that are constantly reporting on niche topics.  Not really an opinion tweet, but something factual and could be found just as easily using Google.  They also tend to Retweet celebrities or more established journalists.  They’re up to date on everything, and a pretty good target for area events managers and promoters (they tend to want to be on the spot so as not to rely on Retweeting somebody who beat them there).

The Follow Wrangler: The only thing they care about is how many follows they get.  They tend to follow celebrities and companies. Could quite possibly be any business’s best friend.  They generally have a huge following because they, in return, are following a large number of people in return.

The Combo Pack: Literally every category mentioned before, all rolled into one.

Just like these 5 Individuals, Twitter can service a specific need.  In order to answer the question, you must first figure if these folks are indeed the folks you are after.  Also, be sure to learn how to use hashtags properly. #truth.

15 With Zuckerberg: A Conversation With Innovation

Everybody gets a different feeling when meeting a celebrity.  by that I mean a feeling unlike the norm.  Being in the industry I’m in has afforded me many opportunities to relive that feeling as well as seeing those who have wanted that opportunity for so long.  I admit I don’t necessarily get giddy unless it’s a St. Louis Cardinal or someone who has truly had a hand in shaping society. A true innovator that will forever go down as an individual who changed the world. A few Saturdays back, I had to opportunity to see a few of them.

My best friend of childhood Nick, accepted a position as a merchandise planning analyst at the Wal-Mart corporate offices in Bentonville, AR.  Since he started he has become a regular at Wal-Mart’s Saturday Morning Meetings. As I understand it, are ‘optional’ but usually get a decent attendance because corporate brings in some high profiles names to speak.  It just speaks volumes of the name the Wal-Mart brand carries.  Today was certainly no exception.  Nick called me about a week in advance and asked that I come down for this, stating that he could not “confirm or deny that a Mr. Clay Mathews, Mr. Kirk Herbstreit & Mr. Mark Zuckerberg would be in attendance’.  Couldn’t really pass that up…

The meeting began at 7:30am with the kind of production you would expect to pay for at a seminar.  Clay Mathews spoke of teamwork, effort and dedication.  Kirk challenged folks to come out and support a good cause in the name of competition at a game he had set up on Bentonville’s square for Wal-Mart’s 50 year anniversary celebration.  But towards the end of the meeting, the vibe started to pick up around the room.  We all knew what was coming.

Entering the meeting, signs were clearly marked stating ‘NO Photography’, yet when Zuckerberg came up to speak with Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke, cameras, iPads, phones, you name it. All were out and pointing at the man of the evening.  The man who changed the internet.

For 15 minutes, it was incredible.  Watching a ridiculous amount of our nation’s net worth having a conversation, bouncing ideas off one another. Before a room full of Wal-Mart employees, family, friends and myself, there was a lot to take in.  Zuckerberg is a rock star in the digital world, yet slightly awkward in reality.  His words came matter-of-factly, but not without great merit. I took away two things from what he had to say.

1) Move fast and break things: This is by no means meant to be taken in a literal sense.  Rather, it’s that if you spend so much time trying to perfect every single detail you are going to miss out on the opportunity for innovation.

2) Always ask yourself what decisions you would make were you not afraid to make them. So powerful.

From listening to this conversation, to watching what will most likely be the most expensive handshake I will ever see in my life, to the experience in general.  No doubt, it will forever change my life.

Dual Personality: The Perils of Having Two Profiles

Businesses, alter egos, celebrities or people who think they’re celebrities.  It’s not uncommon to see more ‘fake’ profiles scrolling down the newsfeed than names you actually recognize.  Some do this for promotion of a product or service they are pushing.  Some are doing this to socially separate their business lives from their personal ones. Some are doing it so they can actually live out their fantasy of having the last name ‘Bieber’.  Whatever the reason, it’s happening.  Like social media in general, there isn’t necessarily a ‘right way’ of doing it, but there are sooooo many wrong ones.

I say there isn’t any single designated ‘right way’ and this is due to the fact that social networks don’t properly know how to acknowledge this.  Facebook and Twitter have no way of regulating and the only site that has actually acknowledged this situation is Google. Which went oh, so well…

The first choice would be this: why allow it? When you think about it, it’s kinda taking on a false identity if you think about it.  But what about those celebrities that have amassed a following with their stage name? Or more importantly what about those who are going under a separate name to protect their identity from a stalker, etc.?  Hopefully your situation is not in that realm, but there is some food for thought.

• When considering another profile, be sure to delete the other one – you may be wanting to get rid of that profile your mom wouldn’t approve of, but to keep it around after creating a new one just causes confusion for everyone.  Dump it.
• If you do create another profile, be sure to make it unique enough to stand out from the other one – a great example of this is the station jock profiles we have at Journal Broadcast Springfield.  My personal profile is separate from my on-air personality profile and each stand out enough to where mutual followers can expect different content (hence, reasons to follow) from each profile.
• Make sure there’s a name differentiation – it’s one thing to have a Mike Jones (who? I know, I know…) profile, but to have Mike Jones and a Mike Jones Amcorp Marketing profile.  People won’t really be able to tell a difference and the cause is basically lost.
• Consider a page – So you can avoid the whole ‘logging out and logging in as your other profile’ thing, it may be easier to go with a page, but only do so if you have legitimate cause.
• If it’s possible to stick with just one, stick with just one – what’s wrong with cleaning up what you’ve got.

As stated earlier, there is no true ‘right way’ to do this, but there can be sooo many wrong ways.  The whole point of creating multiple profiles is to provide relevant and engaging enough content to appeal to each audience.  Besides, there may come a time when you’re alter ego gains a bigger fan base than your original. Trust me, I know…

Advertising & Music : The Happily Married Couple

It’s not much to say one is in a relationship anymore.  Used to be (at least I’ve been told, I really don’t know) when someone says ‘yeah, we’re married’ the appropriate response was ‘congratulations!’.  Now…it’s ‘ohh, for how much longer?’ The divorce rate is what, half?! Ridiculous.  It’s one thing to say you’re married, it’s another entirely now to say you’re happily married.  That’s the difference: that’s when you know it’s real, it’s pure and it’s going to last.  Happily married equates soul mates.  That’s advertising and music.

Advertising has been around as long as the pyramids if not longer, so has music.  Yet they didn’t really find each other until the origin of the jingle, which is unclear in itself.  Some say Wheaties, others say Lucky Strike. Whatever it was, this relationship got hot and heated…FAST.  The point of advertising is to persuade the audience to purchase the product advertised.  The jingle caught on so fast it quickly became such a saturated market that audience they were singing to couldn’t tell the difference between jingles.  It took a while, but jingles died out.

Yet this flame never extinguished between advertising and music.  The 80′s & 90′s saw some glorious passion, Pepsi teaming with Michael Jackson. Kool & the Gang performing in Wendy’s parking lot. The relationship was taken to the next level, advertising saw that it didn’t need to recreate the wheel to establish brand credibility, a loyal following could be attained through music and it’s mainstream artists.  Music saw benefit too, artist’s singles skyrocketed up the charts if they were featured in a commercial.  Talk about brand recognition…

There’s no doubt the relationship between advertising and music is a happy one, the question is this: who wears the pants? Does advertising reflect music, or does music reflect advertising?  I don’t think there is a wrong answer.  Present day is a great example.  Working in CHR Top 40, you get a very good view as to how the music industry moves (albeit slightly delayed, it takes time to get your favorite song to the top of the charts, person-who-hears-a-song-on-the-radio-then-says-’I heard that 6 months ago’).  Noticeably there’s been a shift to a more indie feel in the world of mainstream music, hence the popularity of bands like Fun., Gotye, Grouplove & The Black Keys. This is due to several things, among them resistance to another poppy beat with auto tune, respect for a unique sound and maybe even a catchy hook.  Definitely among them however, is the fact that they recognize it.  Thanks to advertising.  This was stolen from the 80′s (or before): as an artist, a goal is to get your song into a commercial.  Great example: Fun.  They ware relatively off the mainstream map…until the Superbowl when Chevy used ‘We Are Young” in a commercial.  How effective was it? 110 spins a week on a mid-market station in the midwest is a small example.  A promoter here in town was looking to bring them to in.  She contacted their people in late November, they were looking at around the $13k price tag.  After the commercial: the price jumped to $35k.  Recognition is key to mainstream success.

Like any relationship, it’s all about give and take.  Advertising can help music, music helps advertising.  Once again, go back to the 80′s. Pepsi gained a fan base by appealing to a target demographic: the demo that listens to Michael Jackson.  Same thing with American Idol winner Taylor Hicks and Ford in 2005.  Pepsi again in the 90′s this time with Britney Spears. These are all just going off the top of the head references, and that’s the point. Music can give advertising instant credibility, like how Kia was instantly on top with brand recognition when it had it’s hamsters dance to LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock Anthem’.  Crazy, but memorable.

There have been bumps in the road, like any other relationship.  They still argue about the jingle; whether to reinvent it (State Farm) or to never let it go despite evidence that it should (freecreditreport.com).  They’ve also seen surges, both being able to gauge popularity through social media like YouTube.  From the beginning though, advertising and music have always been about one thing: love.  Take that, divorce rate.

How Bout That Email?

Here’s the thing: this isn’t a post about the demise of e-mail, at least that is not my intention.  I still think email serves a purpose in today’s digital culture (and it better, businesses still charge clients a fair but decent amount of money to be a part of theirs), but really…I don’t know why.  I can’t justify it without some completely reasonable retort, I don’t even claim to be a huge advocate for the medium. I guess I just, do. There’s so many signs that point to the contrary, but like television, radio, and even print (for now) it’s still around.  There are pros to this:

One – Email is still the main source of communication in the workplace.  If you’ve ever seen Office Space, you cringe when you hear the term ‘TPS reports’, or ‘didn’t you get the memo?’  Fact is, these phrases are all but gone thanks to email.  It’s now, ‘did you send that Google doc?’ or ‘did you get cc’d in that last email?’.  My office laughed at me when I didn’t know how to work the fax machine, but they don’t think twice about coming to me with a question on Google Calendars.  Especially now that they’ve found how it integrates into their email.  It’s taken some getting used to, but corporate America is all about email.

Two – Email is still the most trusted way of getting something directly to someone as quick as possible.  Sure some use Facebook messaging, others Tweet it. However, email is the .pdf of the conversation.  Pretty much everyone can open a .pdf, and pretty much everyone has an email.  Not everyone’s on Facebook, whether it be for privacy concerns or sticking it to The Man.  Not everyone is on Twitter, whether it’s lack of time in the day, or ‘not caring what someone is eating for breakfast’.  Everyone has email, and more importantly if someone wants to get something to another person fast, they send it via email.

But here’s the rub: for as many pros, there has to be cons.

One – The next generation will always be a step ahead.  The generation before mine had cellular telephones and fax machines, mine has been baptized in email and smart phones with a dose of social media.  The next generation will have their own thing.  There are a crazy few that try to keep up with the trends, but in the end you just don’t get it man.  I’m really not looking forward to that moment.  Fact is, there are colleges no longer passing out email accounts but rather iPads.  There will come a time when children will read about email on their video feed from their Google Glasses (or whatever those Tron looking things are) and think “man, how did people live back then?”

Two – Social Networks are a competitive bunch.  It’s like a real version of the Michael Jordan v. Mia Hamm Gatorade spot with the tune “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better”, except it’s not sports it’s our digital culture and literally billions of dollars.  It’s an app eat app world out there, and only the richest with the most accounts tend to survive.  Case in point: Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram.  Great app (something Facebook doesn’t know much about) so instead of sitting by letting Instagram build a photo sharing empire, they buy it for a sweet price and continue to let it do what it does.  They did it to an up and coming force in the social world, don’t think they can’t do it to email.  There’s constantly rumors of when users can integrate email into their Facebook and just receive everything right in one spot.  It’s just around the corner.

Pros meet cons.  Each of you is valid, but arguments weren’t made to be tied.  10 years ago it was unheard of to say “yeah I got your email, Skype me real quick so we can go over the main points” or “I was about finished with your memo but my battery died”.  It’s amazing how far we’ve come.  Technology is introduced to help better our lives, and with that previously existing tools must die.  I don’t know when, but email will at some point meet it’s fate.  However, I truly think now is not that time.  It’s like religion: I don’t have solid, indisputable facts that email is here and strong, I just believe it is.  I still believe it has a purpose to serve.  I do know this: Go without Facebook for a week and you miss out on a bunch of useless status’, and barrage of time-wasting photos and maybe an invitation to that thing your neighbors are having but they told you about it in person anyway so you knew.  Go without email for a week and you could miss out on a major business opportunity or life changing decision.  For now, that’s power that can’t be bought.

The Social Media Workout Regimen

This has become the 2nd point of every CNA discussion for any new client: how’s your social presence? Ohhh man, these answers are varying, and fun.  Things ranging from ‘Oh you know, I’m on Facebook,’ to ‘I talk with my neighbors if that’s what you mean.’  Not many small business owners truly understand the concept of social media, other than I should probably be doing that.  However, in today’s society, almost everyone understands in some capacity the importance of exercise and taking care of yourself.  That’s why I’ve recently taken a habit to laying out social media for business owners in the format of a workout regimen:

Monday: Content Day.  Much like upper body days this should focus on bulking up the social presence and set the mood for the week.  Review what was hot over the weekend (top stories, etc.), see if your business can relate to it, and post it *with your opinion (this is huge, don’t steal, share and contribute). 

Tuesday: Visual Day. Let your business know what’s going on.  Images are a must, Video if you can.  Let them see what they would be getting themselves into should they walk through your doors / log onto your site. (by now, the wheels are turning.

Wednesday: Event Day. Let your followers know what’s going on in the near future with you and your business.  This is generally the day when people start thinking about plans for the weekend.  Tell them with an event why they should be spending some time with you.

Thursday: Hashtag Day. Try to build buzz around your weekend business plans by creating a hashtag to one of those events you created the day before and make an effort to see if it will go viral, at least on a local scale.  

Friday: Content Day. Follow up all that hard research you did on Monday, see what’s changed in the days between, and post accordingly.

Saturday: Visual Day. By now, hopefully you’re seeing the foundation of some results for your week’s efforts.  People will come through the door, if they have a good experience, capture that with a video testimonial.  If you had an awesome event and a crowd showed up for it, photos are a must.  Let those on Facebook see what they’re missing out on.

Sunday: Rest Day. Take a break, but be wary of the fact that others may not be. You’ll be kidding yourself if you think everything on social media goes smoothly.  People have a voice and they use it on these sites that your business takes part it.  They post experiences, good and most definitely bad.  that’s why….

Every Day: Interaction Day. NEVER let this go by the wayside, and consider this your cardio portion of the workout.  Every day, follow up with those that have taken the time to interact with your and your business.  You never know what social power they possess.

Just like any workout, the results we so desperately want take time, patience and persistence.  Don’t give up, it’s always tough before it’s easy.  With the right content, interaction and overall cause you’ll be flexing those ripped arms and running marathons in no time.

Are We Finally Past The ‘Social Media Is A Fad’ Fad?

I heard it in a meeting again the other day. Another decision maker shrugging off the notion that Facebook could get him a pretty legitimate ROI for his young business. “It’s cool if you’re looking to kill time or stalk people, but I don’t see any point in investing in a fad.” Facebook, a fad. What about Twitter? “Nobody cares what I had for lunch any more than I care about what they had.” Ok, well…at the very least what about having a LinkedIn profile? You know, something you can connect with fellow colleagues and network within the industry, area, nation? “What’s that?”

Social media advocates are used to this; I honestly think we get tired of defending it just about as much as they get tired hearing about it. I say just about, because anything more than that would be a lie. Social media is everywhere we look: online, on-air, on billboards. It’s clearly a battle we’re winning and those out there who still don’t see the value are bombarded with it every day. It’s, as we put it, just blind ignorance or fear at this point that is keeping them from all but submerging themselves into the depths of the deep blue ocean that is the digital marketing plan these days. However, I am a firm believer in not passing judgment until both sides of the story are not only heard but understand. With that in mind, I embarked for a great time trying to figure out what stance the anti-social media crowd had. Here’s a few key points:

There’s no control: Facebook choosing a single layout is like a 6 year old at the ice cream store…it’s not happening. And why should it? Facebook has put everything it has into becoming the #1 social giant, something that wasn’t going to be achieved by staying the same in every way. This has been known to aggravate the usual clientele from time to time, but they always seem to come around. Before we know it the Timeline will be accepted and we’ll be complaining about a new thing that Facebook has pushed us out of our comfort zone for. Brand pages are very similar, except unlike the regular profiles these pages are designed to appeal to the target audience and increase likes, interaction and the overall urge to get off the computer and walk through their respective business doors. To do so can require quite the strategy for layout, convenience, etc. None of this can be achieved every time Facebook decides to switch things up. Unlike a regular website where you have the full power to switch things up to your heart’s content (and reasonable boundaries), Facebook can take all that away with a single update. It is because of this many are cautious to add Facebook to the strategy.

There’s Market Over-Saturation: Back when social media really caught on, the cream of the crop was MySpace, Facebook & Twitter. That’s it. Each brought a different tangible to the game: MySpace was all about personalization, Facebook was all about connecting and Twitter was all about informing. Now there’s so many different things that can be accomplished and multiple sites that can accomplish them. It’s almost as if every single major player in the digital world got it in their mindset that the only way to be successful is to launch a social network. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr. Google has tried, and tried again. Apple has Ping, oh and MySpace is still around with Justin Timberlake bringing it back. This makes it difficult to pick an option, each has a slightly different audience but huge overlap and it’s almost pointless to try and maintain all of them…you’d run out of content and be spending so much time trying to change that, you’d all but forget you still have a business to run.

Government Involvement: Social media has brought us many things: the ability to connect, inform, network and advertise. Most importantly, it’s given us the opportunity to speak out. We’ve seen what Facebook can do in Egypt, London and New York (just to name a few). Much like the internet itself, social media is VERY loosely regulated, and in many ways rightfully so. However, you’re kidding yourself if you think it’s going to continue this way. Much like WikiLeaks, and online piracy before it, social media will inevitably meet the firm hand of government intervention. We can only hope the hands holding the reigns are good and honest with the best intentions. To the business owner, this can be a very risky overview.

Overall, to say social media is still in the stage of being a fad is to deny the future of our culture. Beanie Babies, Pokémon and slap bracelets were a fad. Having the capability to reach out to people around the world with a thing as simple as a tweet is not. The question for any business should not be whether to utilize this opportunity, but how to go about doing so effectively. To those of us out there campaigning for social media to become an accepted form of marketing, it’s easy to understand the caution flags when everything is put into perspective. Yet, much like Facebook, the kid in the ice cream store taking 20 minutes to choose a flavor, then changing it, we don’t have any choice but to go with it. You’re better off playing the game then sitting on the sidelines wondering why nobody is coming to your ice cream shop to check out your flavors.

Google+ Brand Pages, Missing Just A Few Things

It’s been a good month for social media.  In an industry that constantly changes, where this blog post will be outdated in two months, nothing changed.  Which is weird to say because so much change has taken place in the formats and applications on some of the major sites.  Facebook announced it was going to up its policy on user privacy, all the while with a secret agenda. Not to mention, the highly anticipated Facebook Timelines is set to unveil…soon.  All these changes have many in the social world wondering if Facebook will ever get dethroned, Google comes in and reminds us all that they’re still here.

Google + unveiled Brand Pages this last week. Something they had struggled to keep under wraps with an aggressive world of businesses out there trying to stay on the cutting edge of everything social.  I feel though that this launch may have been a bit premature, which is weird for Google, they normally wouldn’t do that (COUGH Google Buzz!). I do admit though there are several things I like about these pages, they are simple and equal; something Facebook Pages WERE until they found out how to make money off of them. That said, here’s a few things I’d like to see in Google Brands 2.0

1)    Multiple Admins: Right now only one person can commandeer the Brand Page. That’s either a huge commitment to put on one person for the long haul (although it’s some awesome job security) or a huge responsibility on an intern, seeing as how social media for some reason tends to be a task many businesses throw at interns.  In order to successfully run a Brand, you need multiple minds working on it. This should translate over the Brand Pages that Google offers.

2)    The Chance To Add Profiles On Brand’s Own Accord:  In an ideal world, Google has set this up perfectly: brands can follow other brands freely, but brands can only follow profiles after the profile follows them. Problem is we do NOT live in a perfect world and several businesses have already set up profiles for their respective shops and refuse to give up what they’ve built. I understand this is for the benefit of the public, but to limit that process of how brands connect is to limit the business in general.

3)    Analytics: Facebook Pages have a great analytics system, tracking everything from user base to the frequency of that user base.  The irony here comes from the fact that it’s Google inspired.  Google has one of the greatest analytics systems in the cyber-world, yet they can’t apply that to their social baby?

4)    Apps:  They’re everywhere. Steve Jobs made apps a necessity for every new device. So much so that companies can live and die by it. To avoid an applications option makes sense only in that it truly levels the playing field for all businesses in having to use what’s given to you.  This would be a great concept that could have huge success…were it not for Facebook and its thriving app business. No apps, no big business. That doesn’t sound like Google.

Google + has it’s flaws, from pages to profiles, but what social site doesn’t? That’s why it’s always changing, evolving and initially receives major criticism. That is until users become accustomed to them and another round of changes comes forth, then they complain about how why it wasn’t like the concepts before.  Google Brands are no different, this layout will not be he same a couple months from now, even weeks. Because the social competition is so high Google can’t afford to keep it the same. Or maybe it can. One thing we’ve seen Google become highly efficient at is getting back up after the 2-count and delivering a knockout. Like this last week, with Facebook unveiling and planning to unveil) all of it’s changes, Google comes in and throws a curve. It’s just Google being Google.

Facebook, The Monster We’ve Created

There’s recently been a lot of talk surrounding Anonymous and their proposed attack on Facebook.

Remember, remember the 5th of November

Didn’t even catch that reference until someone in the office pointed it out to me. Thank you Hugo Weaving for continuing to inspire anarchy present day.

So all of Facebook will be lost, should Anonymous succeed; At least for a few hours, maybe more. It’s hard to imagine Mr. Zuckerburg hasn’t surrounded himself with some employees capable of handling a serious hack(s). But the question is this: what can this possibly accomplish?

Anonymous states in their video that our ‘medium of communication we all so dearly love will be destroyed’, citing the reason that Facebook sells our information to governments around the world. It’s no secret that governments and Facebook have a connection. There’s rumors left and right that Facebook has distributed our information to the highest bidder, including national governments. However, it’s another connection that has our governments pulling for Anonymous (for once).

Facebook has recently become a hub for communication between revolutionaries to inspire change, albeit good and, as Steve Olenski points out in his article “The Dark Side of Social Media”, bad. The London Riots of 2011 are without question something that is a product of tension and rapid escalation. Several frustrated with the economy of no hope for improvement in the near future and a source for communication in real-time is a formula for riot, and that’s exactly what the world witnessed unfold on the London streets. Social media is also a major player in the Egypt Revolution of 2011, so much so that there are children in Cairo now named Facebook. That’s power.

So much so that the government is scared.

And they should be, we all should be. Social media has opened the doors to possibilities we have only begun to tap into, and if where we’ve been is any indication as to where we’re going, something has to give.

For the first time EVER, we have the ability to communicate around the world in real-time, inspire millions with a :30 video and establish a following with a single page or post. However, with this power comes tremendous responsibility (I apologize for being the millionth person to beat that phrase over your head, but it fits), this is something we are far from harnessing.

My home state of Missouri just passed a law banning students and former students from friending their educators on any social media platform. Although I disagree with this particular extreme, I can certainly understand it’s reasoning: there are simply some things that shouldn’t be shared and we haven’t yet figured that out. From a platform to launch potential sexual misconduct to a student seeing a photo album of his French teacher’s time at the downtown pub crawl last weekend, social media doesn’t have a censor. Millions everyday pour everything into their profiles, from those drunk photos that will likely endanger there careers down the road to credit card information, phone numbers and real-time location. What’s worse is we don’t think anything of it. Governments loved that. Everything has a price and it’s possible Facebook and our elected officials reached that price, that they very well could be using all that information to find out everything possible about us and keeping tabs on us.

It’s now like we were super protective of it though.

Log-in to Facebook: “You want my name/address & phone number?…ok”
“Now you want all my photos with all my friends?…cool, I can tag them!”
“There’s apps that reveal my exact location and games I can play with my credit card? I DO love zombie games and FarmVille…”

We did this to ourselves, so when you speak in anger over how much the government shouldn’t be all up in your business, just remember when you entered all that information there’s another person on the other side of that computer collecting that information, and he’s just as imperfectly human as you are.

However as I’ve stated before, social media has caused the government many a headache as well. From the Riots that HAVE happened due to social communication between revolutionaries and anarchists to the millions governments around the world have caught wind of and shut down before they got started, social media poses a threat to us all. So much so that governments are pressing hard for possessing control over them. This would most likely in turn lead to censorship, and thus defeating the purpose and ultimately social media altogether; such a shame for something that has the power to do so much good around the world.

I should say that I’m not labeling social media as a troublemaker, and that nothing good has come out of it. I love social media for all that it can do, and it’s impacted my world in a tremendous way. I’m not saying we all are guilty of giving ourselves away on social platforms, there are many out there that practice social ethics and serve as models to proper social power. But in this day and age, the actions of so few can affect so many, as witnessed by these riots. Social media has to evolve in order to sustain and we have to evolve with it. As long as we continue to abuse this power we’ve created, these issues will always exist. This is exactly what Anonymous is hoping to accomplish by taking out our most popular social hub.

What if they succeed? Facebook is shut down. It will be reopened, and the slate is clean. Do we move on, or do we rebuild? I vote for both: rebuild our social presence to entertain and influence our friends and followers (in a good way) and move on from the ‘Dark Side of Social Media’. Hack or not, this is an opportunity for change.

Remember, remember the 5th of November…AGAIN, Hugo Weaving…