On Profile Photos of Obnoxiously Hot Women

It's funny how quickly things change. In the MySpace days I would look at profile photos like this and think "low-hanging fruit", but today I just think "spambot".

Infographic: Global Social Network Ad Spend

Click to enlarge. (You'll have to.)

Are We All Just Chubbettes Obsessed with Movie Stars?

This afternoon I sat around on MySpace, hitting "Refresh" to see what ads I'd get. Must be a slow month in ad sales; every new banner was a weight loss pitch. Here they are, in order of how I received them:

And it isn't just MySpace that thinks my trunk could use less junk. Last month, Rachel Beckman of the Washington Post wrote an article about the "muffin top" ads that barrage her when she logs on to Facebook. I see them too. All that fleshy muffin-toppiness leaves nothing to the imagination:

So what's the deal, socnets?

A study from earlier this year found women are generally more concerned about weight than disease. And because I'm guessing this passel of tacky, over-obvious and insulting ads don't actually improve perceived site value (MySpace, whatever happened to your Cartier days?), there's just one explanation: women must actually click on these things.

I guess that's cool if you feel açai berry juice will really solve your deep-seated problems. But what about me? Why am I attacked with potshots of love handles five times per visit?

Does persistence ultimately persuade? Or maybe every chick just has a day where, in a rush of self-hatred, she finally wants to read Jen's fucking Weight Journal.

Chain Letters: Social Media by Early Man

Today I got a chain letter from someone I haven't spoken to in years. It was so deliciously retro.

It also presented an opportunity to explore how, with high-speed convenience, we started replacing face time with dancing GIFs, colorful platitudes and cause-related CTAs.

This particular email did a spam-tacular job of demonstrating: 1) my childhood chum continues to think highly of me, and 2) she has an earnest, deeply meaningful desire to save people from cancer. All that, and we didn't even have to dodder about the weather!

Subject line: "Pink Ant."

Hello, Pretty Lady!

You have been hit.
You have been considered one of the 10 prettiest ladies with a kind, warm and loving heart. Once you have been hit, you have to hit 10 pretty ladies with kind, warm and loving hearts. If you get hit again you know you're really pretty and kind. If you fail to forward this, you'll have ugliness for 10 years. So hit 10 pretty ladies to let them know they are pretty -- both on the
inside and the outside - and that they are loved and cared for.

SEND THIS TO PRETTY LADIES, TO BRIGHTEN THEIR DAY, INCLUDING THE ONE WHO SENT IT TO YOU! REMIND LADIES TO BE INFORMED, AWARE AND BE CHECKED FOR THEIR HEALTH'S SAKE. TELL THEM THAT NO ONE WANTS TO LOSE THEM -
All you are asked to do is keep this circulating (even if to one person).

In memory of anyone you know that has been struck by cancer.

That rhinestone effect really gives it somethin' extra.

Twitter Tools that in Theory Could Be Useful

A lot of these are the information-sifting equivalent of a glass unicorn collection: novelty crap that imbues you with a false sense of productivity. Fun if you're into that sorta thing.

Which, at present, I am.

I'll update this list as I discover more Oohs and Aahs. In the meantime:

• Twhirl. (Download.) Ports tweets into a user-friendly chat box. You will never use AIM again. Sift replies, file goodies and retweet at leisure. Discovered via @stevehall.
• TweetStats. Pop in a username and get colourful graphs on month-to-month Twitter use, aggregate daily and hourly tweets, people replied to most, interfaces preferred. There's gotta be a practical application for this. Indeed there is: identifying bots. Discovered via @griner.
• tweet clouds. Creates a tag cloud of words you tweet most. Via @WillWheeler.
• TwitterSnooze. Following somebody who's live-tweeting a really lame ad conference? Snooze that bastard. Customize length of days. Via @scobleizer, who invited people to snooze him at will. (There's a guy who's comfortable with his public persona.)
• twitterverse. Sorta like Google Zeitgeist. Tells you what people are tweeting about today. Via @mikedelgado.
• twitterlocal. Lets you filter tweets by geographic location.
  
• twistori. The reason I decided to compile this list. Zeroes in on when people tweet love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish. Click on one for real-time emo-vision. Sometimes it's mundane ("i hate the dentist") or provocative ("i hate not knowing"); other times just random ("i love burnt cheese." Me too, incidentally). Via @florianseroussi.
  
• Intwition. Tracks what links are, were, or will be popular.

Business Cards, Meet Dust Bunnies. Expect to Be Friends for Awhile.

After weeks mulling it over, I wrote a how-to on using Twitter to build brand integrity. It was published on MarketingVOX today.

I was pretty skeptical of Twitter at first; to be frank, I thought it was a load of time-wasting crap. Well, it definitely contributes to my procrastination factor, but it also did something really neat: it reconciled relationships to networking. (I've complained about the contrived feel of classical networking in the past.)

For real-time relationship development, and just generally getting people to give a crap about what you have to say, few things beat Twitter. Not social networking, not blogging. (Although they help.) I actually feel like I have a social life waiting for me every time I approach the monitor.

Which in retrospect is really kind of lame.

But there are offline elements to this as well. At ad:tech SF last week, I met Twitter friends in person and made new ones, too. That, coupled with whomever added me on Facebook, means I don't even feel the inclination to dig through the fresh stack of business cards I came home with. Everybody I want to know, I'm in contact with at any given moment.

Much nicer than the unwanted cold call and awkward martini meeting that follows (if you're lucky!):



While on this big evangelistic high, I considered preaching the merits of Twitter to my parents. Then I thought against it; my relatives are sort of religious. And then I wondered what Twitter could do for religion. 

Ooh. The plot takes a sinister turn.

I made something for you. It's a cape. Put it on.

I totally hoovered my morning covering the whirlwind drama of AOL buying Bebo (story here, stats here) for $850 million. Out of curiosity, I decided to check Bebo out.

That's when I found this. On Bebo's deliciously non-ugly, totally distracting homepage. I've had Bebo streaming Crackle cartoons in one of my tabs ever since.

Bebo. Kicks. Ass. If I were 14, I would totally be on it every day.

On Ensuring Social Networks Benefit, Rather than Harm, the Enterprise

MessageLabs has released a white paper called Online Social Networking: The Employer's Dilemma.

Its purpose is to distill the rift between social networking's popularity, and UK employers' attempts to yank it out of the workplace.

Social Networking Casualties

According to the white paper, social networking isn't the miracle of productivity some would have you believe it is.

Last we heard, the average active Facebooker logs onto the site about seven times a day. That's a lot of poking. "Social networking sites can be both addictive and time-consuming, damaging employee productivity," the paper reads. "Employees may spend an excessive amount of time on these sites."

No, we're not referring to the "social networking" implementation in your latest enterprise CMS.

Your employees network, all right -- on Facebook, MySpace and any of the hundreds of thousands of blogs of which they might be big fans. And productivity isn't the only thing that suffers; one fell (and totally traceable) comment made on your IP, or one irresponsible photo found on some intern's profile, and your company's image can be hurt, too.

"Employers may be identified and there is always the possibility of derogatory comments or disclosure of commercially sensitive information being made by an employee, which then becomes a permanent feature online," the paper preaches.

Damage Control

While an employer's within his rights to ban social networking from the workplace entirely (indeed, at least 43 percent of UK-based employers have), said employer is probably in for a morale backlash of epic proportions.

There are cases in which social networking is beneficial:

• It is easy to maintain casual, friendly contact with valuable affiliates
• It gives you insight on popular trends amongst those in your network (Facebook Newsfeed, anyone?)
• Loose information on social networks, like user-generated reviews, can prove valuable -- even crucial -- to making product purchasing decisions
• Strangely enough, appearing on a social network may construe a sign of legitimacy. Check out this story in which Steve Webb, a parliament member and one of the UK's Liberal Democrats, was kicked off Facebook on suspicion that he wasn't the genuine Steve Webb. Havoc ensued!

In other words, it isn't social networks that are bad; it's lack of education about the pitfalls and the possibilities.

Get it together!

• Educate your employees about the merits -- and dangers -- of social networking
• Consider compiling an enforceable and clear Acceptable Use Policy
• Make sure social networking behavior observes any regulatory policies that apply to you. eDiscovery may prove especially sticky for Stateside companies. Under eDiscovery, any digital information they convey -- even on their blogs -- during office time falls under jurisdiction of the company. It can be used against the enterprise in a lawsuit, in some cases. And employers have the right to track all of it. With that said...
• Use your best discretion to track employees' social networking behavior

Whatever you do, don't ignore the phenomenon.

"Given the ever-growing popularity of such sites and the potential consequences for employers of employee misuse, simply ignoring the issue can only lead to problems for the unwary employer," MessageLabs warns.

Download the MessageLabs social networking white paper, or check out what they've got on tap. (Did I mention they're a web security firm?)

We've Got Thumbs Now. Why Are They Still Using X's?

Facebook adds Digg-inspired feature to News Feed.

Benj (the boyfriend): "You like the feature because it gives you something to do when you log in, don't you?"

Yes. I do.

Facebook and MySpace: Batting for Two Different Teams?

When Facebook opened its back-end to outside applications in early spring, it gave users the power to act on preferences for how they'd like to interact with others.

Suddenly, you didn't have to wait until Facebook felt like offering you a functionality; you could just code one up yourself and disseminate it.

MySpace also gives users a freedom they don't have on that other site: they can "pimp out" their profiles. Some, like Tim Gunn's Guide to Style, don't even look like MySpace pages. For this reason, MySpace can be thought of as a personal Web publishing tool for those advertising either themselves or a product. Many do both.

Spacelift, a new Facebook app, suggests there's a bigger difference between MySpace and Facebook.

Spacelift enables users to import their MySpace profiles onto Facebook so they don't have to deal with the MySpace interface. (Check out before and after shots of a transitioning profile on Mashable.)

What once may have been written off as a "lifestyle preference" -- your love of a pink background versus a green one, and that MySpace lets you exercise that preference while Facebook does not -- may betray the reason why Facebook is increasingly the preferred site for social networking.

MarketingVox notes Spacelift could inspire "[others] that move regularly between MySpace and Facebook [...] to leave one in complete favor of the other."

That's a scary statement. The question is, why would users on the fence actually leave MySpace for Facebook? Don't they want access to a profile page that lets them be as individual as possible?

For one, the sheer simplicity of Facebook's design probably works in its favor. While MySpace may still boast the largest number of users, last April Facebook grew 106 percent to MySpace's 70 percent.

And in the UK, Facebook has already overtaken MySpace in terms of Internet searches.

The advent of Spacelift, however, suggests to me that maybe we've been comparing apples to oranges all this time. The users leaving MySpace for Facebook are probably not the same ones that significantly manipulate their MySpace pages, then use those pages to generate sales or draw attention.

Because that's another difference: you can't look at a Facebook profile unless you're part of a user's network, or already friends with that user. It's a walled garden. MySpace, on the other hand, gives you the option to make your profile visible to non-MySpace users.

Facebook's decision to keep a tight grip on its form, while letting users experiment with its functions, is a formula that forces users to focus less on the appearance of their profile pages and think more about collaborative opportunities.

If you're a social networking site, that's what you want: for users to interact with one another on your platform. This keeps them coming back.

That MySpace users spend less time networking than self-promoting may mean it's less a social networking site than a personal publishing tool. And if that's the case, this puts it in a completely different competitive realm.

Maybe in the future we'll be holding MySpace up to blog/community hybrid sites like Xanga or LiveJournal.

Originally published on CMSWire.com.