Foursquare Shuts Down Location API for “Girls Around Me” App

A recent application that allowed users to spot the girls that were within their vicinity has had some of its rights revoked by Foursquare.  The app, called “Girls Around Me”, was scanning public Foursquare and Facebook to determine whether there were any females in your location.  If a girl had checked in to a location near you or had listed personal location information on Facebook, GAM would find this and show their position overlaid on a map.  Obviously, when this came to light people were a bit unnerved by the whole thing.
The app was first discovered by John Brownlee over at Cult of Mac and has since gone viral.  John tells the interesting story of showing this app to friends to set their “skin crawling”, and explains how the most worrying thing about the app is how it uses public information — nothing the app is doing is technically forbidden.  It raises a few questions for platform creators — questions that other services Tumblr have been facing recently: Do you draw moral and ethical boundaries on the content on your site?
It seems like the answer is yes for extreme cases like these.  There’s no reason to let this application continue to provide potentially dangerous information to people, and Foursquare took the opportunity to emphasize this by shutting down GAM’s access to the Foursquare location API.  This was followed by Apple taking the application down from the App Store.

How Is Social Media Evidence Used In Divorce Cases? [Infographic]

A new trend is emerging within the realm of family law—lawyers are turning to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to help them with their cases.  An exclusive infographic provided by California Divorce Attorneys takes a deeper look at this trend.

The infographic, ‘How Family Law Attorneys Use Social Media Evidence In Court Cases,’ not only explores how social media is used in litigation (and specifically divorce cases), but also explores a number of cases in which social media was key.

The infographic reports that, “Since 2010 social media has been a key part of nearly 700 cases.”  It is used to determine a person’s state of mind, evidence of communication between individuals, evidence of time and place (i.e. check-ins), and evidence of actions.

Check out the full infographic below and let us know what you think.  Does it make you want to go into Facebook, Twitter and other social media services and delete anything that may be incriminating?

Forget Photos and Video. SpinCam App Captures 360-Degree ‘Spins’

A new iOS app called SpinCam attempts to blur the line between video and panoramic photos, claiming to create a new type of photographic media entirely –- Spins.
Unlike traditional photos, Spins capture a 360-degree image of a moment that can be experienced interactively. Spins are created by holding your phone up and “spinning” around in a circle to create a panoramic-style photo, or spinning around a person or thing to create an image much like this one from outside our San Francisco office.
While you might use the app in place of taking a panoramic photo or shooting a short video, the folks at SpinCam are quick to point out that the app creates its own medium.
“Spins really fall into a new category of interactive media that is ideal for concisely sharing an experience,” SpinCam CEO Josh Aller told Mashable. “Though it takes just seconds to capture, viewers typically explore the spin for over 30 seconds. That inversion of capture time to viewing time is unique to this form of visual media. We see people using SpinCam to capture panoramas simply because it’s faster and easier than with panoramic capture apps like Photosynth. We don’t see Spins as a replacement for panoramic images but it’s so much easier to capture a Spin that many folks are using SpinCam for that purpose.”
“We also think it’s great that it’s mostly people that are being Spun, not places or things,” Aller added. “It’s a great way to share personality and group photos…we are seeing users do things with it that we could never have imagined. For example, a new meme has emerged that we are calling the “Matrix” spin in which time appears to stop and that meme has been copied many times.”
Spins created using SpinCam are saved within the app on your phone for sharing with others and can also be uploaded to Facebook. The app already has 200,000 downloads, and from that group of early adopters more than 6,000 are already sharing images. While shares are currently Facebook-specific, SpinCam plans to integrate email, Twitter, and SMS sharing in the near future. Spins you share are currently uploaded to a webpage, so while you’ll have to upload a spin to Facebook to get that URL, you can copy/paste that URL and send it to a friend elsewhere.
Long-term, SpinCam sees itself evolving into its own popular social network much like Instagram. Like Instagram, the app currently has Featured and Liked sections where you can browse through popular Spins shared by other users. As the community grows, those sections will ultimately be populated with more and more interesting spins. Plans are also in the works for an Android version.
“We see this as only the beginning of a new media form,” Aller said. “We see our purpose as serving our users in their creative pursuits. They are leading and we are along for the ride. We don’t know where this will go but we will evolve the product rapidly to meet their changing needs.”

Ethics and Social Media: Where Should You Draw The Line?

As social media usage continues to rise, it’s only natural that statistic correlations will be made about the individuals who use the medium. This isn’t a bad thing; it’s common to deep-dive into demographic information and behavioral data. While there will always be exceptions to the "correlations" that emerge from such data, universal truths about social networking usage and user behavior can be valuable.
The Ethics Resource Center (ERC) is the oldest non-profit organization in the U.S. dedicated to independent research and advancement of high ethical standards and practices in both public and private institutions. Since 1994, the ERC has produced the National Business Ethics Survey (NBES), available for free to the public, to gather information about employees’ perspectives of ethics in the workplace. Dr. Patricia J. Harned, president of the ERC, says the NBES is the only longitudinal study that represents the views of the U.S. workforce in business.
The ERC’s latest report is one of the first to explore the possible connection between ethics and social media. “Social networking has become very important in our culture, and we wondered if the technology is influencing employees’ views about ethics at work," Harned explains. "Additionally, over the past few years, we have seen companies establish policies concerning social networking in the workplace, so this year it seemed fitting to add questions on the topic.”
National Business Ethics Survey results
One of the most fascinating conclusions in the report is that "active social networkers show a higher tolerance for activities that could be considered unethical." But Harned says the findings are not an indictment about the character of social networkers: “It appears that they are more willing to consider things that are ‘gray areas’ – issues that are not always clear in company policies as wrong; and that’s an area for further study.”
The report also points out that active social networkers are at higher risk for observing misconduct. Harned stresses that it's observing wrongdoing, not necessarily participating in it. “You could also look at another set of our responses – particularly the high number of active social networkers who reported misconduct – and say that social networkers behaved appropriately,” she explains.
Defining ethics and influence Factors
In order to understand any potential connection between ethics and social networks, it only makes sense to step back and discuss what ethical behavior means. Jay Shepherd, author of the book Firing at Will: A Manager’s Guide, sums up unethical behavior with a sentence.
“It’s like pornography: You know it when you see it. It’s as simple as knowing the right thing to do, then doing the wrong thing.”
Harned adds that perceptions of ethics are influenced by many things. “One influence is the values that we learn as children. But another aspect is the influence of people along the way in our lives," she says. "It could be that there is something about the conversations and the world view that comes through the connections of social networks that influences employees’ views about what is right and wrong.”
Is there a logical connection between ethics and social media?
There is some skepticism about trying to draw conclusions about ethics based upon social networking usage. Shepherd suggests the study perpetuates old-school thinking. “The idea that social networkers are more apt to be unethical is absurd. It’s just that you’re more likely to hear about it. In my experience, social media participants are likely to be more advanced in terms of relationships and thoughtfulness – not less.”
One definition in the study that drew attention was the classification of “active social networker” as one who "spends 30% or more of their work day participating on various social network sites.” Shepherd says his reaction was, “Seriously? That’s a ridiculous amount of time. Those employees aren’t even working; who cares what they think?”
Maybe it’s exactly this time-wasting factor that creates the perception toward connecting social networking and ethics. Dwane Lay, human resources director at Missouri Baptist Medical Center, also feels the connection might not be directly causal. “Social media tools are the latest in a long line of time-stealers in the workplace, following in the footsteps of March Madness brackets, afternoon golf games, morning water cooler gossip or cigarette breaks," Lay explains. "But social media like Twitter and Facebook are more visible from a distance (of both time and space), so they are easier to criticize and quantify.”
Should ethics blend into social policies?
Both ethics and social media are important in the workplace, so the question becomes: What is the best way to manage them? Should they be treated as two distinct conversations? Or should ethics be addressed in social media policies? Shepherd recommends keeping it simple. “My social media policy is just two words but covers everything: ‘Be professional.’ Unprofessional employees are going to act unethically whether or not they’re plugged in to social media.”
Kristen Fyfe, senior communications manager at training and development association ASTD, points out the component that both ethics and social media must have in common to be successful. “Clarity is the most effective element for both ethics and social media policies," Fyfe says. "Companies that have not incorporated behavior expectations into their employee handbooks should make that a top priority.”
Ensuring both ethics compliance and social media success
Whether you choose to incorporate ethics into your social media policy or handle the topics independently, there’s agreement that setting expectations, conducting training and holding people accountable is necessary. Lay shares some practical advice on how to ensure employees are in compliance with corporate ethics, but it really applies to any policy, including social media.
“First of all, read the policy. Not fun, granted, but educational," he says. "Second, remember that if you identify yourself as a member of a company or organization, you are always on stage. Act like it. How you respond online will have as much or more resonance than in person, so either be on your best behavior or don’t act as a brand advocate.”
More questions than answers
Perhaps there aren’t any definitive conclusions about ethics and social media usage. After all, social networking is still in its relative infancy in the workplace. But we’re learning that social influence exists, and its true impact is just coming to the surface. Further exploration across the social landscape is needed.

The Value of Being LinkedIn [Infographic]

When Twitter and LinkedIn were hitting their first wave of buzz, waves of critics surfaced to let everyone know it was ‘too little, too late’ — social was already done by Facebook and better.  That juvenile analysis has given way to the realization that social is not just a single stream, but rather a rushing river of which there will be several branches.  One of those branches is the professional social space, of which LinkedIn is king.
So just how epic is LinkedIn?  An infographic from the infographic pundits at OnlineMBA shows a whole lot of interesting stats about LinkedIn, including:

• 1 million new users every 12 days means 1 new user per second
• 69% of users make at least $60K
• 39% make over $100K
• 2 Billion people searches on LinkedIn in 2010

Check out the infographic below.

The 5 Fastest Growing Social Media Skills on LinkedIn

If you’ve been on LinkedIn lately, you might have noticed that you can add keywords that describe your skills and expertise to your profile. It’s a great way to help prospective employers find your name in the search results, especially when your job title doesn’t fully capture your essence. Here are some of the social media-related skills that have taken off in the last year:

1. Social Media Monitoring – 52% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Public Relations and Communications
“A media monitoring service provides clients with documentation, analysis, or copies of media content of interest to the clients. Services tend to specialize by media type or content type. For example, some services monitor news and public affairs content while others monitor advertising, sports sponsorships, product placement, video or audio news releases, use of copyrighted video or audio, infomercials, “watermarked” video/audio, and even billboards.”

This is the 25th fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. Of the 11,000 professionals who claim social media monitoring as one of their selling points, 58 percent of them are between the ages of 25 and 34, while 20 percent are between 18 and 24.
2. Social Media – 47% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Marketing and Advertising
“Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.”

This general term is the 86th most popular skill on LinkedIn and also the 49th fastest growing.  There are 751,000 people who count social media as an area of expertise. The age ranges are a little more varied for this category, with 20 percent of them being between 35 and 44, which is slightly less than the 23 percent of social media professionals who are between 18 and 25.  The largest group was still the 25 to 34-year-old crowd, at 47 percent.
3. Online Community Management – 44% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Computer Games
“The online community manager role is a growing and developing profession. People in this position are working to build, grow and manage communities around a brand or cause. While the term “online community manager” may not have been used at the time, the role has existing since online systems first began offering features and functions that allowed for community creation.”

This is the 63rd fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are 3,000 professionals who have added online community management to their lists of skills. The 25 to 34-year-old age range still dominated the group at 59 percent, with 35 to 44-year-olds training behind at 22 percent.
4. Community Management – 44% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Computer Games
“Community management is the functional control of systems by communities or their representatives. It can and often does, but does not have to, include elements of community ownership, and involvement in day-to-day operation and maintenance. It is particularly reliant on clarity of ownership of schemes.”

Some skills sound so similar to one another that it’s good to read the description first for before you add it to your profile to see which one is the best fit. This is the 76th fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are currently 21,000 professionals who list community management as one of their skills, with 64 percent of them being between the ages of 25 and 34. Some congratulations are in order for the 1 percent who are between 55 and 64.

5. Social Media Marketing – 42% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Marketing and Advertising
“Social media marketing is a term that describes use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.”

This is the 71st fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are 259,000 professionals who have this skill in their arsenals and once again, half of them are between the ages of 25 and 34.
The “skills and expertise” option is great for social media professionals because they don’t all work at Facebook and Twitter.   And not all 751,000 people who are claim to be experts in social media are going to be right for any one position. there are a number of other keywords, like “social media development,” “social networking,” and “social outreach” that also made the list, but don’t have descriptions yet. Make sure that employers can drill down to what it is that you actually do – and be sure to have evidence to back it up.
Image by Elnur via Shutterstock.

Twitter Co-Founder: Spending Too Much Time On the Site is ‘Unhealthy’

Biz Stone, a cofounder of Twitter, told an audience in Montreal this week that spending up to 12 hours a day on the platform is not necessarily a great idea.
“To me, that sounds unhealthy,” he said on Wednesday at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal business conference, according to a report in The Guardian. Stone told the audience that users should leave the site after they found the information they were looking for.
“I like the kind of engagement where you go to the website and you leave because you’ve found what you are looking for or you found something very interesting and you learned something,” Stone said, according to the report.”I think that’s a much healthier engagement. Obviously, we want you to come frequently.”
Twitter doesn’t provide stats on the average amount of time users spend on the site. Alexa, however, pegs that time at about four and a half minutes a day on the site. According to a 2009 report by Sysomos, only 1.13% of Twitter users update more than 10 times a day. Some 85.4% of Twitter members tweet zero times a day and about 6.5% tweet once a day.
The relative healthiness or unhealthiness of compulsive tweeting wasn’t the only subject that Stone discussed. He also described how he thought it was important for entrepreneurs to take pride in their mistakes. Before Stone helped create Twitter in 2006 with Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass and Evan Williams, he created a company that let people send broadcasts to iPods. “We thought we were geniuses,” Stone said, according to The Montreal Gazette. “It turns out it was called podcasting and people were already doing it.”
Stone also outlined his vision of social media — including Twitter — as a positive force. “The more connected we get through all social media, the more humanity can move as one,” he said. “Maybe I’m just being hallucinogenically optimistic, but the idea that once we’re connected we’ll be able to move together, suggests we’ll be able to get a lot more done in a lot shorter time.”

Decide if Social Media Is Right for Your Business

Social media is often a big help when you're developing your brand. It allows businesses to connect to customers on a more personal level. But that doesn't mean it's right for every small business.
Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, believes that 9 million small businesses in the U.S. use Facebook.
Twitter and Facebook are useful in different ways. Twitter is known to be better for customer engagement, while Facebook helps funnel traffic to your site. Both sites help you better your search engine optimization (SEO).
Take three steps before launching Twitter and Facebook campaigns and decide which social media platform is right for your small business.
1. Is social media right for your company?
Remember the old question, “If everyone was jumping off a bridge would you do it too?”
The buzz makes everybody feel that social media helps their business. It's likely that's true, but it’s vital that you decide if social media is necessary for your business to succeed right now.
Though millions of small businesses have jumped on the social media train, your target audience might not be caught up in it. If you feel that's the case, it makes sense to hold off. Or, perhaps you aren’t ready to make the most of social media's benefits, so wait until your company is ready.
2. Timing is everything
Having a strong presence in social media takes a lot of time and a lot of resources. If you can’t dedicate the manpower to keeping up a quality profile, it might hurt your brand in the long run.
Look at your team and decide if your business can handle the workload. If it can, then be fully prepared to implement it. Like any good marketing campaign, your social media portfolio has to have a clear identity, and reach your target audience.
If you forge ahead, prepare the information you want to share each week. Figure out what time of the day your posts and tweets have the most impact by reaching your core customers.
3. Set goals and guidelines
In 2011, companies saw a 63 percent increase in marketing effectiveness. But businesses of all sizes are trying to establish a strong ROI when it comes to social media.
Setting goals for the next few weeks, months and years helps you decide if your valuable time is worth the effort and if you’re using social media successfully. It’s also important to set ground rules of who in your company will handle your social media sites.
Decide on what content is and isn’t appropriate to post. Learn how to handle customer interaction and what steps to take if something goes wrong. Then spend some time educating your staff before the first day of having a visible social media profile.
Once you have created a place for your business in the social media realm, look around your direct and indirect competitors' pages. It helps you understand what the best practices are to engage customers.
Also research the different ways social media platforms are reaching out to help small businesses advertise. See if those steps are right for your brand as well.
In the end, social media is another tool for your company’s toolbox. It will only be effective if you can take the time to learn how to use it properly.

Beyond Facebook: The Rise Of Interest-Based Social Networks

Editor’s Note: This guest post is written by Jay Jamison, a Partner at BlueRun Ventures, who focuses on early stage mobile, consumer and enterprise investments. He also serves on the boards of AppCentral, AppRedeem, Foodspotting, and Thumb. You can follow Jay on Twitter @jay_jamison or read his blog at www.jayjamison.com.
With the pending public offering of Facebook anticipated to be the largest tech IPO in history, it’s an interesting time to think about where we go from here. Some say “social is done,” Facebook is all the social media anyone would ever want or need. Unquestionably, as it nears one billion accounts, in the solar system of social media, Facebook is the Sun — the gravitational center around which everything social revolves.
But while some may pronounce that Facebook is all the social we’d ever need, users clearly haven’t gotten the memo. Instead, users are rapidly adopting new interest-based social networks such as Pinterest, Instagram, Thumb, Foodspotting, and even the very new Fitocracy. (Disclosure: BlueRun Ventures is an investor in Thumb and Foodspotting.)
The numbers tell the tale around users’ appetites for these new interest-based social networks. Pinterest, the increasingly popular virtual pinboard, crossed 10M monthly unique users in the US in January 2012, achieving 8 digits worth of monthly uniques faster than any site ever, comScore says. According to Silicon Valley uber-investor Ron Conway, Pinterest is growing like Facebook 5 years ago.
On Thumb, a community for instant opinions, user engagement has mushroomed in its short history. Users asking questions can expect to receive over 60 answers from other users within 5 minutes. As a result of this near instantaneous community engagement, Thumb’s average usage is currently second only to Facebook’s, and is far ahead of mainstream services including Pinterest and Tumblr, though on a smaller base.
What accounts for the fast growth of these interest-based social networks, and what does it mean for Facebook’s future?
Interest-based social networks have a markedly different focus and approach than Facebook. The Pinterest, Thumb and Foodspottings of the world enable users to focus and organize around their interests first, whereas Facebook focuses on a user’s personal relationships. Facebook offers us a social utility to deepen social connectivity with our existing social graphs, while these new interest-based social networks enable users to express their interests in new, engaging ways and offer authentic, high value connectivity with new people we don’t already know. The different approaches of these interest-based services are distinct from Facebook, and they are powering the massive growth and engagement we are seeing in these new services.
On Pinterest, I can curate and express my interests in Crossfit, cars and architecture, giving me the ability to create a strongly personal identity that draws me into new social relationships with people on the basis of my interests. Similarly on Foodspotting, I can easily express my love for ramen, which in turn connects me with other ramen fans who aren’t in my current social graph.
So if interest-based social networks focus first on an individual’s interest graph and Facebook centers on an individual’s social graph, which service will be the winner?
Both.
Humans are inherently social creatures, and we define ourselves both by the people we know and our interests. We make decisions about where to eat, what to buy, where to visit, etc. based on a complex matrix of social relationships, past experiences, location, long standing interests and future goals. Today’s platforms approach our lives from different angles but both are integral to how we define ourselves and interact with the world around us.
There are opportunities to establish differentiated, sustainable social media brands with large, passionate audiences. Much like the modern day media disrupters (e.g. ESPN or HBO or CNN), these services can establish new social media networks that are differentiated and unique, protecting them from the inevitable concern that they get squashed by Facebook. The traditional “Big 3 networks” (NBC, ABC, and CBS) used to be the only properties that really mattered, similar to how some view Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in today’s social media landscape. Emerging networks will be the new media brands and properties that augment social networking and media.
At the same time, the rise of these new interest based social networks does not really threaten Facebook, in fact, they are more likely to benefit Facebook. Specifically, Facebook has evolved itself brilliantly into not only an end user application drawing near to 1 billion accounts but also a robust, powerful platform other apps can leverage in order to drive more users to their services. Pinterest, Instagram, Fab, and many others have adopted Facebook’s Timeline API for precisely the reason of wanting to raise awareness of their services and drive more users to their sites. As these new services grow, more content gets pumped back to Facebook, Facebook’s platform gets more robust. Wash, rinse, repeat… Facebook’s positive feedback loop gains more momentum, and becomes more powerful.
In the words of Marc Andreessen, “Software is eating the world”, and in the world of social media, there is, for now, plenty of world to go around.

Barry Diller Wants To “Transform Television” With Aereo, A DVR In The Cloud

Barry Diller always enjoys riling the media industry from which he sprang. A few minutes ago at a press conference at IAC headquarters in New York City, Diller introduced a new startup IAC is backing called Aereo that is building a DVR in the cloud that broadcasts live TV to your iPad, computer, or TV.  Diller has always believed that Internet TV would be a healthy counterweight to “media concentration” as media companies increasingly want “to protect that closed system.”
The problem with Internet TV so far, says Diller, is that “there wasn’t a lot to watch” other than “cats swinging from chandeliers.” And other hardware solutions presented the problem of more boxes in the living room. “Who wants another remote, box, wires?” asks Diller. “Everyone already has enough of all that stuff.”
But he sees Aereo as a way “to transform television and how you receive it.” The way it works is it actually sends live broadcast TV to your computer or iPad. Aereo builds boxes the size small refrigerators with arrays of tiny TV antennas inside. Each of those antennas can be programmed and deliver broadcast video over the Internet to viewers . And this is how the company gets around legal barriers, it is just tuning into live TV. This is a similar approach in concept to what Slingbox did, but instead of tuning into your own TV, it tunes into a TV antenna in the cloud.
The iPad app looks like a program guide with DVR functionality. So you can record any show available on the system, but only broadcast stations like ABC, NBC, and FOX are available at launch. Cable channels aren’t available. The other limitation is that the service will be capacity constrained. It needs one tiny antenna per user in order to stream TV to them.
Aereo is launching live today in New York City. The service is invite only and will cost $12 a month for a virtual DVR with a dual tuner and 40 hours of storage.

IAC is a media conglomerate with a wide range of online assets. In November 2007, announced they would be separating IAC into 5 public companies. IAC will consist of: Ask.com, Bloglines, CitySearch, Evite, Excite, InsiderPages, iWon, My Fun Cards, My Way, Popular Screensaver, Smiley Central, Match.com, chemistry.com, ServiceMagic, Shoebuy.com, BustedTees, CollegeHumor, Garage Games, [Gifts.com], Green.com, Instant Action, Very Short List, Vimeo, 23/6. IAC is also an investor in Active.com, Brightcove, FiLife, Medem, Merchant Circle, OpenTable, Points.com and SHOP...

9 Ways Students Can Use Social Media to Boost Their Careers

Kate Brodock is executive director of digital and social media at Syracuse University, where she leads efforts in the space. Connect with her on Twitter at @just_kate and @othersidegroup.
If you’re a Generation X-er or older, you likely use social media to cut it in the real world. You may also use social networks for personal reasons, but it’s always with the understanding that you’re a professional.
But newer generations of college graduates began their social media experience as a very personal one. And the shift to using social media for career development may seem optional. But it’s a necessary evil at the very least, and can actually be quite beneficial to your future at the very best.
Here are a few things students should consider when starting to use social media professionally.

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1. It’s Not the Same

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Most teens and young adults have used social media to connect directly to friends and share personal experiences casual conversations with their networks. Yet interacting on social networks with an eye toward your career is different than doing so for purely personal reasons.
Using social media for professional purposes doesn’t mean you have to give that up. In fact, oftentimes it makes a person come across as more genuine and more approachable. But refining your language, highlighting content and information that’s more career-focused, and connecting and conversing with more people outside your immediate group of friends signifies that you’re interested in more than just the personal.

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2. Power in Connections

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Social networks offer endless ways to connect with a wide-range of people with little effort and to organize those connections — through lists, circles or groups — so you can use them more effectively.
Build each network to create relationships that can be nurtured through interaction and conversation. By cultivating and organizing the network you create, you’ll be more effectively able to act upon professional opportunities.

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3. It Can Help You Find a Job

 

Beyond the ability to connect and converse with people and groups from a professional standpoint, social media can actually help you find that job. Nearly every social networking site posts loads of job opportunities.
Less obvious, but perhaps more effective, is the ability to connect directly to the brands you’d love to work for, as well as the people behind those brands. While you keep your eyes peeled for job postings, take some time to engage with these brands and people, and establish a relationship with them.

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4. Learning Is Still Good for You

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By interacting with professionals, industry media outlets and experts in your desired field of work, you’ll be able to deepen your own level of knowledge of that field and stay on top of trends and current issues. It’s an excellent supplement to your in-class work and good preparation for the continuing learning you’ll need to do when you graduate.

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5. You Can’t Hide Behind the Curtain

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The speed and virtual aspect of social networks can tempt people to act less than professional. For instance, sometimes harsher or more sarcastic interactions are acceptable on social media. And some people believe that because social media is generally a public forum, they should be able to speak freely and openly.
No matter your stance, disrespectful interactions with others (strangers or colleagues) is a huge no-no. If you wouldn’t say something to a person face-to-face, it probably means it isn’t appropriate for social media either. The same social norms apply whether online or offline, and the same level of respect and collegiality is expected on these channels.

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6. It’s Not Just About You

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Constant self-promotion is almost always frowned upon in social media. Keep most of your posts (I suggest at least 80%) to conversation, third-party content, general comments and questions, and keep the sales pitches at a minimum. David Armano, EVP of global innovation and integration, discusses the overuse of the #humblebrag hashtag. You get the point.
Instead, think about what types of content will give your audience the most value, especially when it also suggests you’re open to educating yourself on a wide-range of ideas.

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7. Strut Your Stuff

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Social networking is a fantastic way to showcase your knowledge on your field of interest. Using many of the tactics suggested above shows you’re paying attention to your target industry and demonstrating a certain level of critical analysis.
By tweeting relevant articles, or commenting on industry trends on a personal blog, you can show your own level of interest and personal development outside of classwork and internships.

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8. You Will Get the Once-over

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Employers, future colleagues, industry leaders and other professionals do look at your social media activities. That being said, it’s a great opportunity to show your interpersonal skills, in addition to your own level of knowledge and interest in the field. College students sometimes get a bad rap, but by engaging with professionals, you can demonstrate your skill set and level of maturity.

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9. What You Do Now Will Pay Off Later

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Much like searching for a job, if you start curating your social media presence after you graduate, you’re already behind. By thinking about how to use social media professionally while you’re still in school, you can position yourself as forward-thinking, forge stronger industry connections, and strengthen your on-paper credentials, making you a much more attractive candidate to your future employers.
What other tips do you have for students to improve their professional social media presence? What can they work on and where do they excel?
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, atreides64, eyeidea

Socialbakers Brings Its Leading European Social Analytics Platform To The U.S.

With more companies vying for the attention of customers on social media channels, content producers, marketers and more are always looking for ways to better track the engagement and reach of their social media footprints — across the globe. Socialbakers, a young startup founded in 2009 has emerged as one of the leading social analytics platforms in Europe. Since raising $2 million in September from Earlybird Capital Ventures and breaking into the black, the startup has turned its sights to the U.S., becoming the exclusive analytics partner with Facebook and others to provide social media analytics throughout the presidential campaign.
The company is now officially getting serious about securing a foothold in the states, as it today announced the launch of its U.S. headquarters in San Francisco. To support its arrival on American soil, Socialbakers is also announced a new U.S. leadership team to be based in the Bay Area, which includes veteran technology executive Martin Huml as President and COO and Katrina Wong as VP of Marketing.
Huml, who will lead U.S. operations, has previously served as the company’s chairman, and founded a company which became an exclusive distributor for Apple in central and eastern Europe. He also formerly worked at Credit Suisse before founding San Francisco-based investment consulting firm, Runway Capital. Katrina Wong, who will lead the company’s go-to-market strategy, previously led corporate marketing at Zuora, and worked in marketing at both SAP and Salesforce.com.
The team plans to build on the traction of its social monitoring platform in Europe, which includes a roster of more than 750 customers and 275,000 registered marketing users (with companies like Danone, Vodafone, Samsung, Lufthansa And Peugoet licensing the premium version of its service), on top of the 60 U.S. brands already using its technology.
So what does the company do, exactly? Socialbakers’ analytics platform measures the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns across the major social networks, like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+ through its two flagship products. The first, called “Engagement Analytics,” enables statistical analysis of Facebook worldwide, including Facebook Pages, Places, Facebook apps, developers on Facebook, as well as advertising prices. “Engagement Builder,” by contrast offers benchmarking, competitive reporting, and integrated workflow functionality to enable businesses to track a variety of social media metrics.
Jan Rezab, Socialbakers CEO, tells us that he’s seen a surprising amount of SMBs failing to integrate competitive benchmarking and intelligence into their social media strategies, opting to simply tap into certain streams to monitor keywords. While it’s easy for companies today to hook into a search stream and look at individual profiles themselves, the key is obviously to build a robust set of metrics around those profiles and streams. Volume matters, as he says that companies can no longer assume that their users will engage with their Twitter or Facebook content.
By showing companies what works through an “Engagement Rate,” which not only tracks the low-hanging fruit like the number of fans and likes, but the number of comments, the type of engagement, how many people are picking up particular posts, how they’re sharing it, which pieces of content are going viral — and perhaps most importantly — how these engagement metrics compare to that of their competitors.
Much of the data on the platform Socialbakers offers for free (as most of it is public data that is openly available, just poorly aggregated), a resource used increasingly by marketers. Of course, the company also offers a set of “pro” SaaS tools, for which companies pay between $100 and $1,000 per month depending on the number of fans their pages have attracted.
The team believes that the U.S. is home to a fragmented analytics market, and by quickly scaling its platform over the course of the next year, it can become a player in the space. The CEO said that it plans to double the size of its U.S.-based team over the next two months, in addition to growing the international team to more than 100 employees.
“We want to help all the companies using Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and YouTube, get out of the dark,” the CEO said. While that’s no easy feat, we could definitely use a bigger lightbulb.
For more, check out the company at home here.

The Wrong Way to Market Social Media

Entrepreneur Kevin Ready tells a sadly humorous social media story in his book StartUp: An Insider's Guide to Launching and Running a Business. The airport parking company that he uses has a shuttle bus that runs from the lot to the airport terminal. Plastered on the bus windows are posters that say: “Like us on Facebook. Plus us on Google. Follow us on Twitter.”
"This makes sense doesn’t it?" asks Kevin. "Not. Let’s break it down.
A. Somebody at the parking company has been tasked with the job of handling social media.
B. Second, that person’s boss has probably established some sense of the metrics in the space: likes, plusses, and follows.
C. Since this is what the social media person is being measured on, he or she creates the sign as described and posts it in the bus.
D. The irony is that they've 'missed the bus' with the marketing collateral that she just made."
Sadly, this is how many small businesses are marketing their social media in an attempt to build an engaged following. So what’s wrong with it?
"Simple," says Kevin. "They're telling customers what the company wants. Why would any customer ever care what the company or someone's boss wants? Why, why, why? I would not be surprised if out of 50,000 customers per month in those busses nationwide, not a single one ever responds to this poster as it is written."
Every company needs to compose messages that get customers to do what the company needs done. But you shouldn't confuse your need with the customer's.
So what should the company have done? Kevin offers a three-point strategy:
1. Start with “why.” Under what circumstances would customers ever want to interact with messaging from her brand? What do they need? What are they interested in?
2. After identifying possible whys, evaluate your resources and see how you can provide a solution to one or more of them. This is the process of building a value proposition around that why. The mantra here is, “Provide value. Provide value.”
3. Finally, follow up by attaching the desired actions (in this case, like, plus, and follow) to that value proposition.
How about these?
“Get one free day of parking! Just ‘like’ us on Facebook to receive your coupon.” (Value plus desired action)
“Love Hawaii? So do we! We are sending two lucky families to Oahu—just follow us on Twitter and we will enter you to win!” (Value plus desired action)
“A lizard in a suitcase? The funniest travel stories ever told—only on our Facebook page.” (Value plus desired action)
By providing value, and arranging the message in such a way that customers who are interested in the value do what you are asking them to do, you greatly increase your chances of getting customer buy-in.

How Well Are Schools Using Social Media ? [Infographic]

Is social media a distraction for students or an integrated part of college life? This infographic shows how schools have joined their students on sites like Facebook and Twitter to make college campuses even more social.
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth conducted a Social Media Adoption study to see how social media is used in higher education. Not surprisingly, one hundred percent of the colleges and universities studied were using social media in some form.
The most common tool used was Facebook, which is used by 98 percent of the schools that participated in the study. The other tools used were LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs and message boards. The study, which lasted three school years between 2008 and 2011, showed some especially large growth rates for Twitter and LinkedIn in the last year.
LinkedIn recently enhanced its student profiles to include organizations, projects, awards, test scores and courses taken to make that first job out of college more attainable. Twitter users reported that professors used the microblogging site to make announcements about class schedules and tests.
Professional networking, outreach to current and potential students, and school pride were among the reasons listed for engaging in social media.  The Harvard University Facebook page, for example, includes articles from the Harvard Gazette, an ad for the “Tour Harvard Yard” mobile app, and pictures of life on campus in a folder titled, “As Seen at Harvard.” The posts drew comments from many hopeful applicants, as well as a few students.
The most social schools were John Hopkins University, University of Notre Dame, Ohio State University, Columbia University in the City of New York, and of course Harvard University, which was the school Mark Zuckerberg was attending when he created Facebook. None of these schools made Princeton Review’s list of top party schools in 2012, so the party must have moved online.
The infographic comes from Online Universities and includes some of the do’s and don’ts of social media at school. Take a look.