Six degrees of separation

I was on a photoshoot with legendary TV duo Richard and Judy (name drop!) yesterday and due to some strange co-incidences realised that we are all only a short step away from everyone. It turned out that two of the other participants in said photoshoot actually worked at the same place (at a different time) and had the same manager. Bearing in mind we were all picked randomly to be at the shoot, it was really quite freaky!

So I was interested to take part in a social media experiment being run by Yahoo! In their Small World Experiment they are hoping to find how closely connected we are by using the ultimate social tool, Facebook. As the blurb says "The Small World Experiment is designed to test the hypothesis that anyone in the world can get a message to anyone else in just "six degrees of separation" by passing it from friend to friend. Now, using Facebook we finally have the technology to put the hypothesis to a proper scientific test."

I immediately signed up and was given my person to track down via Facebook. The idea is you are located a random person and then through your contacts you have to try and connect with them in six steps.

I was all excited until I was told to locate Seunghee Jung from Korea... WTF?! I don't know anyone who lives there or has contacts there. It gets even more difficult as you can only choose one Facebook contact to carry on the chain, so the success of your hunt depends on whether they want to participate in this piece of detective work or if they have something better to do.

I've now also signed up to be a target (I hope it doesn't literally mean someone is going to take a hit out on me?!) so it will be interesting to see if I get found. Ooo, it's just like playing Peekaboo with my little boy...

Let me know if you've signed up and whether you've managed to track down your target. I can't wait to see the results. In the meantime, I'm off to find another target - perhaps I'll get Kevin Bacon this time?

Facebook launches new privacy settings... again!

Is it just me or does it seem that Facebook like to change their privacy controls every so often. The cynical part of me thinks it makes good publicity, but the other part likes to think they really have listened to their users and given them what they want.

This time, the main change is centred around tagging. From now on, if you tag someone in a post or a photo, they will have to approve the said tag. Apparently users have asked for more control over this and I can see their point. While it's fine to be tagged in a photo looking OK (like the one below), it's another thing to be tagged in a photo with your knickers on show while you puke in a bush - especially if your boss is one of your friends on Facebook!

Insiders say this move, along with more other more transparent privacy controls of limiting who can see individual posts and images, was probably brought on by the fast-growing service by Google +.

So has Facebook lost it's edge? Is it now going to be playing catch-up with Google +? We'll see how this social media showdown plays out - who knows maybe the next big Oscar movie will be have Google in the title?

Facebook wants your baby!

Ah, you've got to love Facebook haven't you? Not determined with having 750 million of the world's population on their social media platform, they're now targetting the unborn.

A new feature launched this summer allows parents-to-be the chance to list on their profile page that they are with child. Previously, users have been able to add family members to their profiles but they can now select an 'expected child' field and include information about the due date and possible baby name.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Having had a baby just last year, I found that telling people was actually one of the highlights of being pregnant. Seeing someone's face light up at the announcement sure made up for the morning-noon-and-night sickness and the inability to go for more than one hour without peeing! Yes, there were some friends who found out via Facebook, but to be honest, they weren't really friends, merely acquaintances.

My biggest worry however about adding an expected date to my profile would be how I would deal with the loss of a baby in such a public arena. News spreads so quickly on Facebook and it would be heartbreaking to be receiving congratulations from people when something so tragic has happened.

As much as I love social media, sometimes there is no substitute for a conversation over the phone or in person.

And while I'm here talking about children and Facebook, can we please just address my absolute pet hate? People who use pictures of their children as their profile pics. I don't want to see dear little Billy as your profile pic, I want to see you. I don't mind if your children are in the picture with you, but this is your page. Billy can have his own page when he's old enough. I'm friends with you, not him. Ok, rant over!

The Ten Social Media Commandments

I’ve been working online for the past 11 years (yes, I really can’t believe it either) and active within social media for work and fun for the last 4 years, so I thought I’d share some of my learnings along the way. First up, The Ten Social Media Commandments...

1. Thou shalt find the right social media network
Different social media platforms suit different customers. I’ve worked with brands who a presence across all social media however, you need to tailor campaigns to suit the audience. Plus, social media, even though it’s pretty cheap to run, is resource heavy so it’s better to participate fully in a couple of platforms, rather than across the board.

2. Thou shalt listen
Monitor what people are saying about you and /or your brand. Whether it’s Google Alerts or searches on Twitter and Facebook, ensure you know what people out there are saying about your brand. If it’s good, great, if it’s bad, listen and see what you could change.

3. Thou shalt engage
Social media is a two way conversation – if people are talking to you, you need to respond in a timely manner, otherwise they’ll think you’re ignoring them. This goes for Facebook, Twitter and for comments on blogs or your You Tube videos. You don’t want to be rude after all!

4. Thou shalt promote
Don’t expect people to just stumble upon your social media offering – promote elsewhere online and offline.

5. Thou shalt update regularly
Social media is 24/7 so if you only update once a week, you’ll lose that engagement. This will mean updating out of office hours and having some strategy in place to deal with comments outside of the 9-5. Social media never sleeps. The thing that annoys me about some brands who have Facebook/Twitter pages is that on Friday afternoon, they say ‘bye, have a nice weekend’ but the social media user is probably more active at weekends and evenings due to a lot of offices banning social media sites.

6. Thou shalt recruit advocates
Make friends with users, get talking to bloggers – these people can spread the word. Invite key tweeters to events, give bloggers an exclusive – make them your friend and they will reward you with a positive response. 

Savvy fashion houses understand this well – Burberry for example invited bloggers to their Autumn/Winter show earlier last year. They weren’t necessarily the most glamorous blogs, but they were influential and well read. It gave them lots of free positive publicity.

7. Thou shalt not ignore negative criticism
Deal with it quickly and without attitude. Sometimes the criticism can actually be useful and help you fine tune your customer service or whatever your particular brand offering is.

8. Thou shalt be active within social media
The more you participate in it, the more you’ll understand it. I’m always surprised when people who update social media profiles for businesses, don’t participate personally! How can you understand the mediums unless you use them regularly? 

9. Thou shalt create engaging content
Give people a reason to visit you social media offering. Create bespoke video and run it on You Tube and Facebook, create exciting interactive competitions. They don’t have to be fancy, sometimes the simple things work best.  I once ran a tagging competition on some photos uploaded for an event – we had over 25,000 tags in just 2 days. Simple, but effective.

10. Thou shalt admit their mistakes
It’s OK to muck up, as long as you admit to them and apologise – I’ve found that consumers of social media are very forgiving people! Hold your hands up, apologise and move on – and always apologise publicly. People are a lot more forgiving when you admit to your mistakes rather than deny any wrongdoing.

Any more social media tips? Share them in the comment box below!

My geek confession

Hi, I’m Jayne, I’m 38 and I’m a... geek! There, I’ve said it. Growing up in the ‘70s there wasn’t much of a chance to be a gadget freak as aside from Simon, every toy and game was of the non-electronic variety. However, in 1984, my life changed. It was Christmas and to my huge delight, I discovered the latest must-have underneath the tree – a BBC micro computer. 

Wow! It was literally like all my Christmasses had come at once. Sure, I used it to play games, loading up Chuckie Egg via a tape (yes, a tape and it took for-e-ver!), but mostly, I loved to make programmes.

They didn’t really do much – well, unless you count a big flashing star coming up on the screen with my name inside of it – but they made me feel amazingly clever. As the typical youngest child, I was always overshadowed by my high-achieving big sister but this was an area I had ownership off – she wanted nothing of this battleground, and I’m sure this added to my new sense of amazement.

Overall, academically maths and science have never been my thing. I’m a creative person. A words person. However, there’s always been an inner geek busting to get out and the new found world of computers and mobiles and eventually, the web, allowed me to tap into this lesser used side of my brain. 

Little did my 11-year-old self knew that one day, being a geek would get me a fabulous job! I stumbled upon the internet, after dismissing a career in newspapers, and was hooked from day one. I've worked for big internet giants such as AOL and Yahoo! and non-internet companies, and I've written about fashion, interviewed A-list celebs and produced content for kids, but the one uniting factor has been the web and technology.

I love it. I love how, unlike traditional media communications, it allows a democracy among people and I love the speed. I could never go back to working on a paper, when I’ve been used to hourly updates. As I sit here typing this, the hacking scandal enquiry is happening and the web came into its own – with everyone and their sister tweeting about the attack on Murdoch with a cream pie by a protestor. Tomorrow, it will really be old news...

Saying all this though, I am a girlie girl. I love fashion. I love nights out with friends. I don’t sit alone at my computer all day, but I do find solice in it.

Having recently had a baby (my DS is now 14 months old), without my iPhone I’d have been lost. It enabled me to talk to other mums via baby-centric communities who were up at silly o’clock enduring another sleepless night. It meant, via Facebook, I could keep up with friends, who were busy living their lives, while I adjusted to motherhood. It meant I could bore my friends and family witless with the many, many photos I took of my DS. It also meant I could keep in touch with friends further afield via Skype. 

Modern technology has enhanced my life and it can enhance yours too and this is where my blog comes in. I’ll be reviewing the apps that have the most relevance to real people’s lives. I’ll be choosing my favourite blogs and alerting you to fabulous new online boutiques. And I’ll be passing on my online knowledge, which hopefully after working in the digital arena for 11 years, is worth something.

So come along for the ride – Digital Dolly is here to prove geek can really be chic.