A New Year Checkup – Facebook: Step 2 - Privacy Settings and Friends

It’s a new year and it’s time for social media types to be more conscientious about their social outposts. As part of a focus on social media strategy this is the second in a series about Facebook.

Check your privacy settings

Facebook insists that the pending switch to Timeline for all 800 million of its users will not change any individual’s privacy settings. But this ignores the fact that Timeline will expose everything you’ve ever done on Facebook.

Besides, when was the last time you checked your privacy settings? Do you know what your current privacy settings are?

Given Facebook’s troubled history with privacy – since 2009 Facebook has automatically reset users’ privacy settings to public at least four times – now is a great time to check them. (You can click on the "Facebook on Privacy" link below or on your Facebook page go to the pull-down menu on the top right of your Profile page and select Privacy Settings.)

And while you are considering your privacy you might also reconsider your definition of a "friend" – because even if your privacy settings remain the same, your list of friends likely continues to grow.

This probably means your definition of a "friend" has grown over the years and now includes such people as parents, bosses and random people you met at a conference. Someone you didn't know in 2008 would suddenly have easier access to something you posted then.

This might be a good time to open up your friends list and do some pruning. A friend’s ex-wife? A sibling’s friend in another state/country? An acquaintance who has 2,000 friends and never interacts with any of them? It’s time to tidy up that list. And don’t worry: Facebook doesn’t alert the people you drop.

How to:
• Understand Facebook Privacy
• Adjust Important Privacy Settings
• Decide Who Sees What on Your Wall

Was this post helpful? Do you keep up with your privacy settings? Will you be doing it more regularly now?

Related links:
• Facebook Checkup Step 1 - The Timeline
• Facebook Checkup Step 3 - Lists
• Facebook Checkup Step 4 - Final Checkup

A New Year Checkup – Facebook: Step 1 - The Timeline

It’s a new year and it’s time for social media types to be more conscientious about their social outposts. As part of a focus on social media strategy this is the first in a series about Facebook.

Get ready for Timeline

First, consider whether you want to stay on Facebook once Timeline becomes the default way you interact on Facebook. Some privacy advocates are now concerned that the new Timeline will allow Facebook even more access to your information and will then share that data with others (businesses). For example the Electronic Privacy Information Center has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission outlining its concerns that Timeline violates the 2011 agreement between Facebook and the FTC on user privacy.

But if you aren’t ready to bail on Facebook yet you need to understand that sooner or later you will be on Timeline and how it will affect the information others will see on Facebook.

Timeline gives a much more personalized presentation of information, with a large photograph at top and a timeline of all your Facebook updates – a virtual scrapbook of your Facebook life. On the upside, users can fill in missing moments from birth until present day. On the downside, every update, every photograph you’ve placed on Facebook or been tagged in and every ill-considered or likely-to-be-taken-out-of-context moment is there.

That’s why you need to spend some time today, or at least this week, switching to Timeline (see links below) and looking through your Facebook history.

Once you switch to Timeline only you will see your profile in this new way for seven days. This grace period allows you to hide or delete material that you don’t want the world to see. For example, I’m not very active on Facebook, but in 3-plus years I had made several comments that, taken the wrong way and out of context, could seem unkind, rude or worse. They are now gone from public view.

It’s an irony that Timeline is really Facebook’s acknowledgement that it has been saving much of your data, even after you delete it. If this is a big concern for you … remember, you can always leave Facebook.

How to:
• Enable Timeline With One Click
• Decide How to Set It Up; What to Do and What to Avoid

Was this post helpful? What has been your experience with Timeline?

Related links:
• Facebook Checkup Step 2 - Privacy-Friends
• Facebook Checkup Step 3 - Lists
• Facebook Checkup Step 4 - Final Checkup

A social media - Twas the night before Christmas…

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

The only thing stirring was the click of a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that social media St. Nick soon would be there;

The children and adults were nestled in beds,

While visions of Facebook danced in their heads;

Would mentions of iPad on Twitter be met

With stockings stuffed with tablets once hard to get?

Would discussions of smartphones for using Linkedin,

Bring gifts of devices with keyboards, but thin?

Would plus-oneing that post about the spirit of Christmas

Help earn us the gifts we circled on Google+?

Would favoriting a YouTube video about Christmas afar

Help to deliver that coveted DVR?

No, it seems good old Santa may be unaware

Of our postings to networks both here and there

What his spirit seems to say about material needs:

Christmas is not about you, but about your real deeds

So as you sit with loved ones perhaps by a fire

Consider again your real social media desire

Is it followers, friends, business leads or even money?

Or is it helping others, giving often … even being funny?

You see giving is easy on social networks – they’re free

You really have no excuse not to give … times three

Next time you sit down to network or share

Tweet, share, like – but make sure that you care

Because the true Christmas miracle is giving not getting

Be sure to give more than you get in a social setting

Spreading goodwill in deed both big and small

Will help spread the spirit of social Christmas to all

Merry Christmas and goodwill to all!

Coal For These 11 Social Media Fails In 2011

I recently guest-posted for Butler/Till's Media Mosaic blog on who in social media should be getting lumps of coal for this holiday season...

I’m not Santa, although I have played him once or twice for various events. But it’s that time of year and while many social media platforms and events from the past year rightly deserve gifts and thanks there are those who absolutely deserve coal.

Here are my 11 social media tools, networks and “celebrities” who each get a lump of coal for their troubles in 2011.

To read the full post, go to Coal For These Social Media Fails In 2011

10 Rules for the Workplace (That Just Might Help in Social Media and the Rest of Life)

This week marks 34 years since I started my first full-time job (and more than 40 years since I started part-time work).

While thinking about that time I realized that I’ve developed some internal “rules” about working that might equally apply to my time on social media and, in fact, life in general.

I don’t know that working in 11 jobs across four countries and five time zones gives me any special qualifications for this, but I feel compelled to share it.

Therefore, here are my 10 Rules for the Workplace (That Just Might Help in Social Media and the Rest of Life) – I hope one or more prove useful to you:

1. Having fun is essential: There are always deadlines and pressures to get things done so if you’re not having at least little fun why are you doing it? If you can find ways to inject extra fun into your work you and those around you will benefit.

2. As much as is possible, get along with everyone: Work (and life) places us in situations where we must be with people we don’t agree with or would avoid at any other time, but be there we must. And because you never know when that person you don’t see eye-to-eye with may need to “have your back” a best practice is to find a way to get along with them.

3. Say what you mean and mean what you say: Double dealing and insincerity are toxic fumes. If you play it straight – you win; it’s that simple. Rarely this truthfulness will cost you something, but over time those small costs will be outweighed by bigger rewards.

4. Be helpful and giving: No matter where you are on the workplace ladder or the journey of life there are always those above and below you – and the more you can help others get what they need and want the more your stock will rise too.

5. Always do more than is expected: You may not be the smartest person in the room or on the network, but you can always be the hardest working – and many times effort is more valuable than smarts.

6. Be able to take criticism: Getting feedback from others is always a good thing and you can always dismiss any that isn’t relevant. But over time I’ve learned that inside even the most off-the-wall criticisms there usually lurks a truth.

7. Separate the work from the person: When critiquing the efforts of others be able to separate what they do from who they are. Just as someone’s work does not define them as a person neither does what someone posts to a social network fully define them.

8. Avoid small-minded people: The gossips, the mean-spirited, the thin-skinned and the trivialists are out there; don’t let them infect you and your efforts.

9. Be willing (and able) to fire someone: Sometimes the best thing for you and what you do is to fire someone else. It’s never easy, but over time I’ve seen that if it is done for honest (and not petty) reasons it leads to a greater good for everyone.

10. Live more; work less: It will always be true, no matter how much you work, when you reflect on your past it is unlikely that your work will define your life. Therefore find ways to live more fully in the real world – experiences there are the ones that make the warmest memories.

I hope this helps someone entering the workplace or someone reassessing their work lives. Equally I hope these guidelines might also help people figuring out their place in social media. What do you think? Are there things I’m forgetting?