If it is too good to be true, it usually is.

Luckily, this spam attack was not malicious. It was annoying, and noticeable enough where Mashable wrote about the Southwest Facebook Scam. At the same time, I was getting many text messages about how my Hotmail account was spammed and sending out links to people. While the incidents were unrelated, I started to think about how to make things more secure.

I did some digging into Facebook and how secure a users experience is. I have noticed in the past that you would see https:// stating your visit is secure. Through the numerous waves of changes Facebook has implemented, unsecured browsing is now the default. Here are the instructions on how to make your Facebook experience more secure:

1. Verify if your URL is http or https. If you see http, keep reading.
2. Go to the top right corner and click on Account. From the drop down, click Account Settings.
3. In Account Settings, search for Account Security and click change.
4. You will see none of the options are checked. You will want to check the first option, which will say “Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) wherever possible.” Save.

What does this mean?

Any new visitor to your Facebook Page will not able to land on a custom tab, unless your Facebook Page has greater than 10,000 fans or the Page administrator has been working with an ads account representative. The problem with this is that it requires Page administrators to spend money on Facebook ads (and you need to spend a pretty penny to get an account representative), or have a large traffic base to build a large following.

Less than 24 hours later, and after a frenzy of disapproval from the marketing and developer communities, Facebook removed the “authentication” requirement for setting custom landing tabs on Pages.

The following was posted to the Facebook Developer Forum at 10:44am this morning:

Hello,

As of last night, we’ve removed the recently-added authentication requirement for setting custom landing tabs on Pages. The requirement was instituted as part of a Pages quality initiative, and we apologize for the inconvenience this caused to our developer and business community. We are re-investigating the situation, and will not make any further changes without first giving our community standard notice and lead-time.

Thanks for all your feedback,
Matt Trainer

The problem that Facebook continues to inflict upon itself is that they fail to be transparent with their audience regarding changes to their platform/services/privacy. This Facebook Pages incident isn’t the first time Facebook hasn’t acted in a social manner.  Also, given that Facebook has more than 400 million active users and it is the 2^nd most popular global website (according to Alexa), I’d think Facebook might think twice about doing whatever it pleases and forcing the community to obey its will.

Facebook, like any other social destination site, is not impervious to being abandoned by the community it helped create. Continuing to roll out drastic changes as they please, they may realize this sooner rather than later.

Why is social media right for sports teams? As with anyone using a social media channel, it is another opportunity to connect with people inside and outside of your network. You can keep the loyalists connected, and connect with disengaged fans.

Locally, there are teams using social media better than others. The Minnesota Timberwolves, for example, are using social media closer to its full potential than our other local teams.

On Twitter, the @MNTimberwolves provide injury updates, in game updates, and behind the scenes insight for the casual fan. For the serious fan, the Timberwolves are good at responding to followers, and following back fans as shown with their 7,574 followers and by following 3,357 back (as of the time of this post).

The Timberwolves also integrate social media with their traditional and other online marketing tactics by promoting their social media channels as part of Wolves Nation prominently on their website and with in-game promotions.

One team that is not using social media to its fullest potential is the Minnesota Twins. Their job should be one of the easier Twitter campaigns to manage, as they have a brand new stadium, a great product, and of course, Joe Mauer.

However, the @MinnesotaTwins have chosen to establish their channels, especially Twitter, as an elite club. Despite more than 9,000 followers, the Twins have chosen to only follow back 20 users comprised of Major League Baseball accounts, other local sports teams, Twins player accounts, and Andrew Zimmern.

The Twins have largely pushed their own content on Twitter, and they have handed out tickets to users who follow them, but by not engaging or following their fans back, they are essentially shutting the doors on them. Are Target Field’s stands only full of MLB representatives, Twins players, and celebrities?

On the Minnesota Twins’ Facebook page, it is more of the same. While their reach is significantly larger with more than 280,000 fans, the same behavior is taking place. On their wall, it is just the Twins pushing out their own content, and not responding to the numerous likes and comments on each status update.

Now this may not hurt a brand like the Minnesota Twins now, as they are enjoying great success. But, what happens if – or when – the Twins experience a long term losing streak like the Minnesota Timberwolves? It is very possible that the fans they chose to ostracize may not be there in tough times.

It is critical that any brand using social media take advantage of the connectivity that each channel allows. For some, this may be the closest one comes to connecting with the brand. If that person reaches out to them, and receives no response, it will most likely leave a bitter taste in their mouth.

What are your expectations when engaging with a brand? Do you want a response? Do you want to be followed?

What makes you feel connected to a brand?

Be sure to check back on Wednesday each week for the newest installment of Web Wisdom Wednesdays. You can also view our past episodes of Web Wisdom Wednesdays on our YouTube channel.

News has just been released that Facebook is rolling out its new Ad Conversion tool for Facebook advertisers to track not only how ads are performing, but also to “track activity that happens on your [the advertiser's] Web site as a result of someone on Facebook seeing or clicking your Facebook Ad.”

Sound familiar? If you answered “yes,” you’re correct!

This is all-too-similar to Google Analytics and AdWords. By allowing advertisers to assign specific values to actions on their Web sites, advertisers can get a deeper understanding of a user’s involvement with a particular ad, optimize ads more effectively and determine ROI more effectively.

Currently the tool is in Beta form, but will steadily be rolled out to everyone. This is huge for Facebook, as this will allow it to compete more toe-to-toe with Google in the multi-billion dollar online advertising market.

How do you think this will affect Google?

Today I saw an article in the Minneapolis Star/Tribune titled:  “Med-tech is shy on social media use.”

Among other things it praises a  medical device start-up for its innovative and viral use of  YouTube.  However, it goes on to explain that big medical device and other health care related companies are hesitant to use social media.  The writer points to legal concerns, especially retribution from the FDA as reasons for this.

Indeed, it would be foolish for Medtronic, St. Judes and other medical device companies to rush into the social media wave pool. But guess what?  It’s not foolish at all, providing they take the right approach.

With millions of people tweeting, posting to blogs, commenting on or posting videos to YouTube, chances are excellent that each of these channels are ripe with conversation about medical devices.  Just monitoring and amplifying these conversations hold huge value for an entire organization.  I know; I do this for several health care companies.

From the marketing manager to the CEO, the ability to listen to the unbiased conversation between your company’s staunchest supporters and most stalwart detractors provides insight and direction that no focus group or traditional market research investment ever could.

One need not chime into the conversation.  Remember the old adage: “You become wiser by listening than you do by talking.”   And guess what, no one will even know you’re in the room – not even your lawyers.

Am I off base here?  Is engagement the only real goal for a company with regard to social media?  Or does listening provide enough value on its own? What do you think?

Jason Douglas

Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Yesterday, Ric Bucher of ESPN sent a tweet from his personal account stating: ‘The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN. Kinda figured this was coming. Not sure what this means but’. On Monday, the Marines issued an order banning social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace within its network. Each is an example of censorship, but for two very different reasons.

ESPN, like many companies, have employees that are visible not only on television, but in the social media world. These employees are an extension of the brand that ESPN has built over the last 30 years. With that comes a large responsibility to represent your company as best as possible. There is a fear that within this ‘new’ method of communicating called social media and with information available instantly, if something improper is said, it will spread like wildfire and may have a negative impact on the individual and the company they represent.

There are two approaches to take here: you an either set guidelines for how to approach social media (in this case: Twitter); or you can choose to trust your employees, and allow them to interact with fans, readers, and other athletes who are using Twitter or social media as their platform to announce newsworthy happenings about themselves. We know which approach ESPN went with.

ESPN

Within ESPN’s memo full of guidelines, included were the following points:
• The first and only priority is to serve ESPN sanctioned efforts, including sports news, information and content
• Assume at all times you are representing ESPN

Maybe I am about to react because the above statements are hitting me differently than others. When you are hired by a company, does that mean you are, in a sense, owned by that company? Are you always on call for that company? Are you ever ‘off the clock’?

If this is the way that ESPN wants to treat social media, they are about to miss the point of social media: two-way communication. One thing about us here at Spyder Trap is that we tell clients that social media is all about communication, engaging with fans, followers, etc. Anyone that just pumps out their own content and does not try to engage with people will not be successful or respected in the social media world.

Giving fans of ESPN the opportunity to communicate and converse with their favorite personality increases the brand perception of ESPN. You are humanizing the personalities, and at the same time, gaining more fans of ESPN. This is now no longer possible due to ESPN’s restrictions.

Marines:

Their restriction of social media sites boils down to one simple word: security. This is an easy out for them. Within their memo, the following is stated:

“THESE INTERNET SITES IN GENERAL ARE A PROVEN HAVEN FOR MALICIOUS ACTORS AND CONTENT AND ARE PARTICULARLY HIGH RISK DUE TO INFORMATION EXPOSURE, USER GENERATED CONTENT AND TARGETING BY ADVERSARIES. THE VERY NATURE OF SNS CREATES A LARGER ATTACK AND EXPLOITATION WINDOW, EXPOSES UNNECESSARY INFORMATION TO ADVERSARIES AND PROVIDES AN EASY CONDUIT FOR INFORMATION LEAKAGE THAT PUTS OPSEC, COMSEC, PERSONNEL AND THE MCEN AT AN ELEVATED RISK OF COMPROMISE. EXAMPLES OF INTERNET SNS SITES INCLUDE FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, AND TWITTER.”

Really? In all caps?

This is an example how having certain restrictions can help solve security fears. Instead of banning social networking sites (SNS), implementing some form of privacy requirements, having an approval process for who’s following you, who’s your friend, what groups you are a part of, etc; would be a better solution.

I have a close friend who is in Iraq with the U.S. Army. Usually, we converse by writing letters and sending care packages, etc. Instead, I know he will be on Facebook at the same time nearly every day, which is how we are able to connect, via Facebook chat. I know that since he is able to communicate with myself and his family most every day in real time, his time over in Iraq has been easier to deal with. If that was taken away from him and the rest of the Army, it could be a demoralizing blow to each member.

Does your workplace have any rules regarding social media? If so, I would like to hear about your company’s policy. If your company instituted a policy restricting your use and presence in social media, would that change your perception of your workplace? Would you look elsewhere for employment?

I wonder how many Taylor guitars United Airlines would give to Dave Carroll now that his scathing music video blasting the airline has been viewed 1.4+ million times on YouTube (as of this writing). What’s more, I wonder the level of regret UA has now that the popularity of the playfully acidic video has hit traditional media including big city papers and the major cable news channels.

A nice Taylor costs about $2,500. If I was in charge of customer service at United, I think replacing the guitar broken by baggage handlers with a nice collection of about a dozen new Taylors would be a nice gesture today. I’m sure they could have gotten off much easier had they admitted their apparent mistake and just replaced Mr. Carroll’s Taylor.

Too late.

United Airlines might have been able to ignore the voice of a single unhappy customer in the past. But businesses had better wake up to the fact that the voice of that single customer can now reach millions of potential customers via YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook and other social media channels. And when traditional news media gets wind of that groundswell, look out.

So what can businesses do? Is it enough to just treat customers as if they matter? Or do all businesses need to engage in brand monitoring via social media? Will online brand monitoring ever become as important as market research Or is it already?

The next question is always… Why such growth and how should companies best to take advantage of these amazing statistics? Any thoughts? More to come soon.

Twitter:
- From March 08 – 09 Twitter grew at a rate of 2,565 percent – Nielsen. (Ning was number 2 at 283 percent.)
- Roughly 2.4 billion Tweets… on average about 11 million per day and growing – Giga Tweet

YouTube:
- 300 million users worldwide – YouTube.com
- 14.8 billion video “views” as of January 2009 – Comscore
- 147 million U.S. Internet Users watched on average 101 videos per person in January 2009 – Comscore
- Roughly 43 percent market share of video viewing as of January 2009 – Comscore

Facebook:
- As of February 2009 Facebook has the highest monthly active users of any social media site. – Compete.com
- 200 million active users. (Currently closer to 225 million)
- 100 million users log into Facebook daily

Today Research In Motion Ltd (RIM) – maker of BlackBerry devices – launched the BlackBerry App World, the official BlackBerry Application Store as their response to Apple’s iPhone/iPod Touch App Store. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise, as BlackBerry has been losing market share to both the Apple iPhone and Google G1 smartphones, both of which feature an application marketplace.

The BlackBerry App World features several free applications, from Social Media apps such as a Facebook, MySpace and AIM (sorry, no Twitter app…yet) to games, weather, and personal finance to name a few.  Purchasing apps is pretty simple, although users need a PayPal account first, as PayPal is handling all the billing for BlackBerry’s App World.  RIM is looking to work with carriers to allow users to make payments via their monthly bills.

Being brand new, the BB App World offers far fewer selections than Apple’s version. However, this should help BlackBerry grow in the future. Accordign to a post by TheMoneyTimes, “RIM said it expects about 1,000 applications to be posted on BlackBerry App World within a week. It is looking for applications from various partners including CC Media Holdings Inc.’s (CCMO) Clear Channel, Gameloft SA (GFT.FR), Viacom Inc.’s (VIAB) MTV Networks, the New York Times Co. (NYT) and Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM).”

So now that the long anticipated wait for BlackBerry Apps is over, what do you think of it? What are your favorite apps? What would you like to see in the future?