Facebook Creeping Toward Google+

Posted: September 15th, 2011 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Social Media News, Social Media Opinion | No Comments

Facebook made an announcement this week that once again shifts the ever-evolving service. The subscribe button added by the social media service allows you to subscribe to public updates posted by anyone on the site — even if they’re not your Facebook “friend”.

This move is being widely reported as making Facebook more like Twitter. I think those who are reporting that are missing something — this new feature makes Facebook more like Google+. On Google’s new social media service, you can add anyone to a circle, which adds their public updates to your news stream regardless of whether you’re in their circles. Sound familiar?

The question here is whether Facebook is a little concerned about the new competition from Google. We may never know, as this could be a feature they’ve worked on since before Google+ launched this summer.

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Shut Out by StumbleUpon

Posted: March 19th, 2010 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Social Media News, Social Media Opinion | 10 Comments

You may recall it was only a little more than a week ago that I wrote a blog post praising StumbleUpon, and giving tips on how it can be used. Well … my StumbleUpon experiment is coming to an abrupt end. I’ve not been banned, but apparently StumbleUpon has decided that the content I find should not be seen by anyone. Let me explain…

Previous to the last handful of days, when I discovered something and then submitted it to StumbleUpon with a review, it would receive anywhere from 50 to 200 “views” by StumbleUpon users. My network was growing on the site, and I was starting to stumble more and more content, including (of course) content that I didn’t write or own. Essentially, I was doing what I suggested in my previous blog post. In fact, I was sure that I wasn’t using the site improperly because I received this review of my previous StumbleUpon post from a community manager at the site:

A truthful and well-thought article from someone who understands StumbleUpon and how to properly use it.

Then … the bottom fell out. I discovered a client article last weekend, and it received only one view. I figured it was a fluke, because that’s happened before. Then, I discovered and reviewed a client news release from PRWeb. It received 12 views, which is well below average. I still wasn’t worried, though. The next three articles I discovered, stumbled, and reviewed received only one view each. This included the post I wrote here about the new Facebook Weekly Page Updates, which was well received elsewhere. Now I knew something was up.

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Tags: stumbleupon

Facebook’s Weekly Page Update

Posted: March 17th, 2010 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Social Media News | 16 Comments

I wanted to be one of what surely will be many Facebook Fan Page administrators to applaud a new offering from the social networking service. Today I received a handy little email from Facebook called the “Weekly Facebook Page Update”. Being an administrator on two of my own Facebook fan pages plus several more client fan pages, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of stats. These new weekly updates do it all for you. The email put all of my stats for the week in one easy-to-read list. Here’s a sampling:

Here is this week’s summary for the Facebook Page: Sheltering Arms Physical Rehabilitation

+8 Fans this week (188 total Fans)

6 Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week (5 last week)

130 Visits to your page this week (101 Visits last week)

It gave similar stats for the fan pages for SleepBetter, EndGame PR, FightSMA, and all of the others I administer or co-administer.

I get a LOT of junk emails from social networking sites. It’s nice to get one that, while unsolicited, is extremely useful to me!

Tags: facebook, social media, social networking

Facebook is Better for “Old Folks”

Posted: January 29th, 2010 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Social Media News, Social Media Opinion | No Comments

There’s a great post today on Mashable about something I’ve been talking about with clients and when I present to groups for quite some time — the fastest growing segment of the social media world has grey hair.

The article, Baby Boomers and Seniors Are Flocking to Facebook, has some great stats about the growth of the number of Americans 44+ on Facebook.

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Tags: facebook, social media

Again with the Privacy Issues, Facebook?

Posted: December 15th, 2009 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Social Media News, Social Media Opinion | 1 Comment

Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Cliche’?

Sure.

True?

Absolutely.

Back in February, users argued with Facebook so much over who owns the material they post on the social networking site, the site was forced to amend the privacy settings it had just changed. That change in privacy settings probably didn’t slow down Facebook’s exponential growth, but it left a lot of users with a bad taste in their mouths.

Now, it sounds like we’re having another round of issues with Facebook over privacy. Recently, the site changed its privacy settings again, and asked all users to review them. The site made recommendations on what settings users should utilize, and some are suggesting that if users take those recommendations, their personal information (pictures, videos, status updates, etc.) will be LESS private than before. For an example of some of the reactions from the web, we go to Jason Calacanis, who suggests the company has turned evil:

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