How you are helping Facebook scammers

'How many faces can you see?'

'Like if you see the monkey'

'Type 'jump' and see what happens'

Hands up if you have seen these updates pop up on Facebook and wondered what their game was? Well, I'll tell you.... selling Facebook pages at $200 a pop is what it's all about - if you can come up with one of these a day, you could clear $1000 for a five-day week.

Let's face it, if you think about it, typing 'jump' in a comment is not going to do anything on a Facebook page - if you read the comments, half of the them are from disgruntled people complaining that it didn't work, I have news for you - it works perfectly.

It works perfectly if it is your task to build up likes and comments on a Facebook page, these are Facebook 'currency' making page updates appear higher in news feeds. When the page gets tens of thousands of 'likes' and comments over a few short days, the details of the page are changed and someone buys a ready-made highly-ranking fanpage. By clicking these links, liking and commenting, you spread the net around your friends aiding and abetting cyber-criminals in their quest for easy money.

The worst of it is that, while some of the pictures are funny, such as the bear creeping up on the man.. others are emotive pictures and statuses such as 'like if you want to fight cancer' or a picture of a disabled child, a disfigured person, an injured animal - imploring you to click, comment and 'like', exploiting the picture, and exploiting you the Facebook user.

OK no-one gets hurt, but if you are one of those that complains about unwanted news feeds and invasive Facebook activity, just make sure you are not falling for this scam. If we stop clicking, it stops happening, as simple as that!

The downside of the interactive web...

I am old enough to remember the hype around 'Web 2.0' some years ago when interaction started to creep into websites. The practice of leaving comments on articles and starting conversations crept into our lives and we ended up with the facebook generation that has bought us life lived out on a page...Social media suddenly took flight.
Now, I find Facebook a great way to keep in touch with far-flung friends, but I notice that other people tend to use it as a forum for discussion, which could be positive, but in my experience often results in insulting 'troll-like' behaviour. This is the downside of the interactive web, you give people a voice, and they will abuse it. This is why countries like the UK do NOT have 'free speech' as a right - it's because we understand that some people just shouldn't be allowed to voice their opinions as they don't have the social grace to understand how an inclusive society works. One of the worst offenders that I have seen is Yahoo where they allow users to comment on news - and they do just that. For example, I was just reading an article about recent lottery winners, comments were peppered with petty ill-disguised jealousy, some chose to roundly abuse the winners commenting on their appearance and suggesting that the male of the couple could now get himself a younger wife... No doubt, very funny if you are currently on school holidays and just graduating into long trousers, but of course each comment carries equal weight once it is posted. Added to this is then the opportunity to give a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to each comment - this interactive feature is subject to the same inane activity. One poster remarked 'Fair play to them, I really hope they enjoy it..' within a short time, two people had give a thumbs-down to this pleasant even-handed comment suugesting that there are at least two people reading the comments who hope that the happy couple DON'T enjoy their win.
I would prefer to stay out of these stupid spats, but I'm afraid I did jump in with 'What idiot gives a thumbs down for that?' (I got a thumbs up, but expect worse to follow..).
My feeling is that I know exactly why people do that, it's because we have some incredibly small-minded people out there - the internet makes it worse because the idiots who are too scared to be rude to your face are really brave when you don't have a chance of finding out who they are. I assume that the 'trolls' mask their identities, and if you are going to take part in these discussions, then I recommend that you do the same. By calling them 'trolls' we are lumping them all together, but in reality we are talking about a range of people. Some are ignorant, biggoted people, some are just idiotic nasty kids - both of these look the same on the internet and can be spotted by bad spelling and grammar. Others are sociopaths who have no idea of how to behave or interact with others, some have deep-held but basically flawed beliefs (conspiracy theorists and the like) who just love to bang their drum. Many are probably an amalgamation of the above.
This is the price of Web 2.0, you can't really stop it but I would offer the following guidelines:

• Don't put stuff in your online profiles that might be traceable (email addresses, phone numbers etc..)
• Don't get too embroiled in an argument because it may turn out you are arguing a serious point with a couple of 11-year olds... be prepared to walk away from the discussion if things are going in an unsavoury direction.
• Mark down or report posts that go againt the TOS of the site concerned - blow the whistle on the trolls.
• Be caureful about linking your comments into other social medai sites (loads of places like Yahoo will do this if you are not careful) -

Will Facebook live up to expectations?

I think it is probably now fairly evident that the launch of Facebook as a public limited company was vastly over-hyped, with punters mistaking 'popularity' for commercial opportunity. The public just love Facebook as a social interactive tool, of that there is no doubt - one the other side of the coin, it will be possible to make money from such a social interactive tool as long as it does not become overly commercial.

Advertising is the key here, and in the case of Facebook, 'targeted' advertising based on all sorts of variables that can be identified from a profile or activity of an individual. While this company offers a fairly unique way to target advertising, one still has to question the value of advertising to an increasingly web-savvy, skeptical public - many of whom will be difficult to reach as they will be using mobile devices which offer less opportunity for adverts.

I think in general, pricing of the company was largely driven by sentiment and excitement rather than hard-nosed commercial instinct, and I can understand that as a bit of a Facebook fan myself. In the cold hard light of day, it is clear that the company was over-priced. Whether owning a little chunk of the social phenomenon is enough of a reward for some investors is difficult to gauge, but for me FB as a social tool is great, as a commercial model, it's good, but will always have to hold back on all-out commercialism at the risk of losing it's only asset - fickle internet users.

Using social media

I have started using social media with a couple of websites just to see how they can be utilised effectively. My findings are thus:

I like Facebook as a feedback platform and have used it to link with two of my sites, my new cassette conversion site (you can see the FB page here..) and a home made cake site (you can see the FB page here..). I like the idea that you can interact with customers in this way, and hope that ultimately each of these pages will build up a lot of 'likes' - that way each update reaches loads of people directly on their facebook page.
I cannot say the same for Twitter, although I think using the RSS feed is a useful tool - to be really effective, you have to be a bit of a habitual twitterer (and I am not). I tend to do promotional stuff in 'fits and starts' (I wonder about the origin of that phrase?) by which I mean I will leave it months then devote a few hours to it, and then leave it for months again. You can certainly use Twitter in this way, but if you are displaying the RSS feed somewhere on your site (which is my preferred method of utilising it), It becomes obvious that there are large gaps between tweets - which may make the site look 'unattended'.

So, I am still not really 'into' Twitter as I have not experienced it actually doing anything for me, it has not bought me clients, although one of my Twitter accounts managed to pick up followers - with my sporadic tweeting, they are hardly likely to pay much attention. I must admit that one of the reasons for integrating these social sites into semi-commercial websites, was just so it would look good - as if linking with social media somehow in itself, endorses the site. I still happen to think that this is the case, much of this type of marketing is all about creating an impression. If Twitter and Facebook actually bring in customers, then that is just a bonus.

End of the Year

OK this might not be the end of the year for most individuals, but in the UK, this is the end of the tax year - the current (2009-2010) tax year runs to 5th April 2010 and I have just registered for 'self-assessment' on line...
I aim to be amongst the first to declare my (online) income as there is not a lot to report, it is all listed out in my spreadsheet, and I like to get things done in a timely manner. My first year of official online earnings has yielded £825 (in the region of about $1200) or so, a modest start, but a welcome addition to income nonetheless. I definitely intend to make some investments this 'year' and the first will be my new hosting plan which I have been considering for some considerable time. I am already thinking of sites that I can host for friends and new sites that I can build. I am half-way through revamping one of my main sites (offline) and am seriously considering social networks for promotion of my services. I am on several mailing lists, many which have recently been telling me that I need to use facebook and twitter to promote sites. I know in my heart of hearts that it is a solid idea, but it has not been until now that I have started to see the real potential of how I can engage with people using these sites.
I am planning to launch twitter and facebook services to co-incide with the re-vamp of my site, if it works out, I may launch another 'project' on Facebook and Twitter too - I feel like I am properly embracing 'online' for the first time even though I have been 'at it' for three years!