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“This Week in Social Media” Hot Topics: Week of Dec. 7

December 8th, 2009
by Greg Straface

Each week, the PJA research department surveys current topics in social media. A couple of these stories become the main topic for our weekly Internet radio show, This Week in Social Media. Here are ten stories that we think are worth knowing about.

1)    Groom Updates Facebook, Twitter at the Altar

• Dana Hanna of Abington, MD whipped out his cell phone to update his relationship status on Facebook and write a tweet following wedding vows at the altar. He also posted it to YouTube.
• He explains that he did it for laughs and that the gag was a surprise to everybody except the minister.
• Tweet from the altar: “Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where just a second ago, she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride. #weddingday.”

2)    Beware of Social Media Snake Oil

• The rising popularity of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media Web sites presents a tantalizing opportunity for businesses. When used correctly, social media can provide positive results.
• But these tools carry risks: employees can fritter away hours on social networks, spill company secrets, or destroy their image with one misstep.
• Over the past few years, an entire industry of consultants has arisen to help companies navigate the world of social networks, blogs, and wikis. The problem is, some of these self-proclaimed experts are leading clients astray.
• Consultants often use buzz as their dominant currency, and success is defined more often by numbers of Twitter followers, blog mentions, or YouTube hits than by traditional measures such as ROI.
• Critics complain that many of the new experts have adopted an orthodoxy that provides little flexibility for differing situations – or outcomes. But sometimes their strictures don’t make business sense.
• The buzz around social media has led to many companies buying these systems before they’re ready to put them to work.
• In October a little-known consultant launched a blog attack against Chris Brogan, declaring that he speaks well, presents well, is smart and talented, but isn’t an expert. Brogan responded by saying that social media metrics isn’t an exact marketing science, that it’s new and experimental.
• Social media practitioners, including consultants, need to shift the focus from promises to results.

3)    What Is a Social Media Expert, Anyway?

• The latest craze for “instant gurus” seems to be titling yourself a “social media expert.”
• According to this blogger, all you have to do is start using the term and vaguely talking about social networking sites, throw in some key phrases, ad the title to your business cards, increase your Twitter followers, and you’re on the way to the top.
• Having a lot of followers doesn’t make someone an expert.
• “Usually if someone says they’re an ‘expert,’ they aren’t.”

4)    MIT Team Wins Social Networking Balloon Hunt

• The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency set out this weekend to learn how quickly people could use online social networks to solve a problem of national scope.
• The answer: 8 hours and 56 minutes.
• The challenge, tied to the 40^th university of the Internet, placed 10 weather balloons in public places around the country. The first team to locate and submit the balloons; correct geographic coordinates would get a cash prize of $40,000.
• Over the weekend, Twitter and Facebook buzzed with offers to sell coordinates of sightings.
• Leader of winning team says he was less interested in the monetary prize than in the potential for social research.

5)    Facebook to Lose Geography Networks, Add Privacy Features

• Facebook users will soon lose the ability to join a network of friends who live in the same area but will gain the widely desired ability to control who sees every piece of information they post.
• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that the site has outgrown the usefulness of regional networks, and that the changes will ensure greater privacy.
• In the next couple of weeks, Facebook users will be asked to update their privacy settings.

6)    Pharma: Socializing in a Straight Jacket

• Welcome to the world of social media for regulated industries like pharmaceuticals: Epilepsy Advocate, an unbranded Facebook community run by pharma company UCB has to take a cautious line with its social Web efforts for fear of violating rules set by the FDA.
• The Facebook page doesn’t allow comments or even the ability to “like” an item
• If a user reports an adverse reaction to the treatment on the Facebook page, UCB would need to report it to the FDA. Also, phrama companies can be held liable by regulators for people discussing off-label use of their products on their sites.
• The dynamic back and forth of social media ends up getting replaced by a static experience.
• It is a common feature of pharma-related Web sites that the key social features are turned off.
• Some sites deal with this by moderating comments.
• Unfortunately these restrictions make the pages a mostly one-way communications channel.
• Some pharma companies have shied away from the first tenet of social media marketing: listening.

7)    Now You Can Turn Your Tweets Into Klingon

• 2009 has been a big year for the Star Trek franchise, but nothing could prepare us for the Tweet in Klingon Web site.
• The pure brilliance of this campaign is that this is all a promotional tool for the Star Trek Online MMOG that hits stores in February.

8)    Pink Glove Video Goes Viral on YouTube

• Over 200 doctors, nurses, and hospital staffers from Providence St. Vincent Center hospital became viral video stars. Their purpose? To save lives.
• The employees created their video, “Pink Glove Dance,” to the tune of a popular R+B song in order to raise money and awareness to fight breast cancer.
• The video features the staffers wearing special pink gloves that can be purchased for the cause. It has amassed nearly 2.8 million views.

9)    Social Networking Sites May Be Fitted with Panic Button

• Approximately 140 firms and other groups are considering utilizing the panic button system, which involves a prominently displayed means for children to report offensive, obscene and other inappropriate material on Web sites.
• The standards should also give parents greater control over children’s use of the Internet with controls that enable them to prevent access to pages with offensive content.

10)   Isn’t the Value of Social Media What Business Is All About?

• Social media has transformed the large corporation of the millennium into the Mom and Pop shop of the old days.
• The emergence of social media makes it more possible to connect directly with customers every day.
• Mom and Pop businesses recognize that their business is only as successful as their relationships with customers can make it.
• That’s the value of the direct connection to your customer, and that’s how every company can achieve success using social media.

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