Verified Accounts Shifts Onus to User
Twitter launched a beta version of verified accounts recently, “to establish authenticity with people who deal with impersonation or identity confusion on a regular basis.”
We’ve had similar features on sites like ClaimID to help establish which online identities are really ours, and which ones are not.
This would shift the onus for celebrities and high-profile users to get verified, instead of suing retrospectively when others create an account in their name. And indeed, Twitter is starting with these folks first before expanding the feature to everyone else.
But you still have to be using Twitter in order to get this feature. Meaning that if you’re at all concerned about protecting your name or brand, you should be signing up for Twitter now, if you haven’t already.
Even if you refuse to Tweet even once.
These Are Also My Country of a Kazakhstan
I agree with Simon Chester, Borat was a “silly film.” The real country of Kazakhstan is making headlines, and few people online are laughing.
The parliament in that country has approved a new law that would allow criminal prosecution for blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites. Foreign sites considered unsuitable can also be blocked.
The government defends the recent move, saying it is intended for child pornography and extremist literature. But critics cay that it can also be used to censor content on elections, strikes, demonstrations, and inter-ethnic strife.
The popular blog site, LiveJournal.com, is already inaccessible to people in the country. In 2007, a pro-opposition blogger was given an extended sentence for insulting the president. Concerns of rendition to other states for the purposes of torture have also been raised.
Harout Semerdjian of UCLA accuses the country of a history of unlawful arrests of journalists and arson against Ak Zhaiyk, one of the largest independant publications in the country.
However, Kazakhstan is not part of the Axis, and will probably use these “untraditional methods” to oppress political groups in the name of fighting terrorism, so we probably won’t get as much coverage as recent political strife in Iran. Unfortunately this situation is hardly limited to these two countries, but the instances we do hear about are selective based on unrelated political tensions.
The main human rights watchdog in Europe, The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has also offered up their criticism. Perhaps slightly ironically, Kazakhstan is expected to assume the chair of this same organization in the next six months.
Your Facebook Can Be Hacked
Despite all the warnings about using privacy settings we’ve been hearing about, here comes a stark revelation: your Facebook account can be hacked anyways.
FBHive, a new blog all about Facebook, premiered today with a revelation that they can access certain profile information, even if the user has made it private.
Robin Wauters of TechCrunch confirmed that they were indeed able to access his private information.
FBHive claim that it has taken over 15 days for Facebook to fix they security hole. And they promise to give their secrets on how they do it within the next few days.
Yet another reminder that no matter how secure we think online data is, there are always ways to get around it. And for some “computer terrorists,” it will be as simple as a walk in the park.
Cross-posted from Slaw
Update
Here’s a video on how they did it.
The Dark Site of Crisis Communications
The World Conference on Disaster Management (@WCDM) started today in Toronto, with a heavy emphasis on social media. I attended the afternoon workshop sessions Boyd Neil (@BoydNeil) and Jane Shapiro of Hill & Knowlton on Best Practices in Crisis Communications.
The session started by stating that lawyers and accountants will almost always interfere with best practices in a crisis by wanting to wait before speaking to the public. They typically want to collect all of the information to assess liability and costs to the company before deciding on a course of action.
I’ve said before that the new Apology Act in Ontario may change things in Canada, but it hasn’t been around long enough to know for sure. The reality is that with new media, public citizens will often “report” on events via social media before first responders or reporters even arrive. This can influence perceptions of a crisis enormously, and it is the perception of an event that will usually give rise to litigation after the fact.
If you don’t at least try to give your message, others will give it for you.
In addition to social media monitoring, the panel suggested that companies create “dark site,” pre-formatted style sheets and web pages prepared in advance to a disaster that can be quickly formatted and filled in for a specific incident.
Ed Lee, one of my PR contacts prior to law, explains,
A dark site is a pre-developed, non-public Web site that can be published to the live Web in the event of a crisis….
Typically, a dark site contains pre-approved messaging and documents such news releases, pictures, official statements and other background information, as the specific details will only be added right before their release.
A dark site can be placed on a separate domain, be a distinct section of the main organizational Web site or totally replace the original. It could be saved on any of the corporate servers or be kept securely on a preferred external device.
A dark site would also allow social media widgets like Twitter feeds for real-time updates. This pre-crisis planning stage might be a more appropriate place for attorneys to be involved, in providing input about the type of information that should be included.
But if lawyers really want to be involved during a crisis, there may be other areas they can assist with. I asked the panel about moderating comments on a company Q&A dark site during a disaster. Neil said that it should be done, but with full disclosure, ensuring that all privacy legislation about suspects, victims, customers, etc. is adhered to.
Lawyers shouldn’t be left out simply because litigation concerns from disclosure are less of a concern - because everyone wants a piece of the action when a crisis hits.
Cross-posted from Slaw.ca
Use of Social Media in Canadian Politics
Here is a talk on the use of social media in politics, focusing on the Canadian scene, at the Miles S. Nadal Management Centre in the Ernst & Young Tower of the Toronto Dominion Centre.
Audio of the talk available here.
Using Shortened URLs
Short URLs are a necessity with the rise of micro-blogging. They also seem to have an added SEO benefit.
Dany Sullivan has a great piece on them at search engine land.
bit.ly: It offers all the key features you’d want in a service, with nice stats that show number of clicks over time, what sites are referring traffic to your twitted URL, locations clicks are coming from and Twitter conversations using the URL. It’s also the default in three of the four major clients — or three of the major clients, if you exclude Twitter itself.
tr.im: Offers all that bit.ly does other than not being built into Twirl. Tweetdeck support is coming soon. Stats are nice. Bit.ly perhaps offers more drilldown on the referrer front, from my fast review. Remember, a more in-depth review of tracking stats will come in the future.
cli.gs: Offers the same as the others above, though it is not built into either of the major clients TweetDeck or Twhirl. You do get TweetFeed support. Stats include showing which search engines have spidered your links. There’s a nice “social media mentions” section that show clicks coming off My Yahoo, FriendFeed, Google Blog Search and others.
More Choices
Snipurl / Snurl / Snipr / Sn.im: You kind of want them to pick a name and settle on it (like Sn.im). The service is currently in three clients, but it’s to be dropped from TweetDeck. Within Twhirl, it also uses the long Snurl.com domain. If you want sn.im URLs, you have to go outside the client to make them. Stats are simply the number of clicks — it’s not in the same class as services above. Finally, ZoneAlarm flagged it as spyware. It’s not, but that’s something to consider in case your visitors are running that software and trying to click on your links.
budURL: Being dropped from TweetDeck. Stats look extensive, if you want to pay. One of the longest domain names of any service.
Short.ie: Originally I had this down as not recommended, as it issued a 302 redirect. They got in touch with me and said not so! I tested again, and they are issuing 301s. They also provide custom URLs –I missed that. Both have been updated. Finally, they say that Twitterfeed support is coming. That with basic stats make them a nice alternative choice. However, they still can’t handle URLs with parameters (I tested that again, and it’s still an issue).
kl.am: Not built into any clients and the stats are fairly rudimentary.
POPrl: Semi-basic stats, being dropped from TweetDeck. No custom URLs.
idek.net: Very basic stats only, being dropped from TweetDeck. No custom URLs.
Best April Fool’s Joke of 2009
Harvard Economist Blames Twitter for Down Economy
A new study suggests that Twitter is the root cause of the current economic malaise. Policy experts predict a Twitter moratorium may be declared for Summer 2009 as part of an effort to stimulate economic production and reverse GDP declines.
Is there a lesson in all of this?
Now You Can Stalk Your Twitter Stalkers
Using Twitter for data mining and information gathering isn’t new. Most Twitter users effectively search for key terms using Summize, and for PR professionals this is almost a must-do these days to monitor your brand.
I regularly use Twitter (and other microblogs) to direct my “followers” to stories of interest, which can be pieces I’ve authored or news stories. But I have no idea if people actually like the stuff I post unless I get positive feedback (which I occasionally do). I do know that on sites where I have administrative control I notice a steadily increasing amount of traffic from these posted links.
One of the key tricks to posting links on Twitter is using a link-shortening service. TinyUrl was one of the first, but these days I prefer Is.Gd because it uses less characters. Less is more on Twitter because you can do more commentary.
But now there is a new link-shortening service that also has some incredible metrics built in. TwitClicks shortens your url, but also tracks everyone who clicks on it. This way you can see which stories actually attract the interests of your professional and social connections, and which ones are total duds. And hopefully improve on it in the future.
I tried it out a little on different sites and I was surprised how many people actually click on the stories I post. If you are reading this article from a link I’ve posted elsewhere, I used TwitClicks to do it. I was not surprised to see almost half of them come from Facebook and my personal site. But here is where it gets a little creepy.
In addition to the site that people click your link from, TwitClicks also tells you what browser they are using, their location, and their IP address. Using this information, they also estimate which specific Twitter user was likely the one who clicked on the link.
I can understand trying to fine tune my “tweets” to make them more popular. But do I really want to know which specific user is clicking on them, and what would I do with that information?
More importantly, now that everyone knows I can get that information, is anyone going to click on my links any more?
Cross-posted from Slaw
The Shorty Awards
The deadline is Dec. 31, 2008. You can nominate your favorite Tweeters, the people who produce the best content in less than 140 characters.
There is even a category specifically for social media.
Let the nominations begin.
Social Media and Politics, and the New Coalition in Canada
Here are the slides from a talk I gave on Dec. 1 at the Schulich School of Business in a session held for practicing marketers.
What I found most interesting from the discussion that ensued afterward was the suggestion that vote monitoring tactics observed during the U.S. Presidential election could be duplicated here, specifically for the proposed vote-swap.
The concept behind it was that all of the other parties would work together to ensure they all got as many seats as possible. Ridings where the race was close were identified, and participants were matched with a person in a different riding where a vote for the other party was needed.
The success of this strategy was limited because participants were often skeptical that their counterpart from a different party would actually follow through. Providing proof via cell phone photo might get us past that hurdle.
Although a new election has been averted for now, we might have an opportunity to see this in action sooner rather than later.
-
Family Chat- @jobucks why is that so bad? Capturing data is a good thing for a company. July 4, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
- Listening to Student Radio (my old start-up) now re-launched http://saeonline.com link at the top right to the tunes July 3, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
- @jobucks yep, cannot let them amplify their ideology Jo, can we?> July 3, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
- I joined twitter on 24 February 2007 - http://whendidyoujointwitter.com ? July 3, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
- @b33god well they will around these parts, few extra quid is all July 3, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
- thee photographs are bloody brilliant http://www.peterpereira.com/ July 3, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
- @MummaBear liking the cowgirl look July 3, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
- @blogginghannah you still opting into those get millions of followers things? July 3, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
- RT @parkylondon: RT @ewanspence "Andy Murray is Scottish again". LOLOLOL!!!1!!1!1 - bloody hell can't they win anything for us? July 3, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
- @b33god may I suggest a taxi service and a shopping list July 3, 2009 audio (Chris Hambly)
-
Get The Scoop
-
Social Media in Business
-
