Yesterday’s News: Fretting over Facebook changes.

Today’s News: Get over yesterday. Today, your life is on the Facebook timeline.

Now, the big question: are you ready to share it?

What you do with your Facebook profile is up to you.

For one of my students, Facebook was where she would display her horse show pictures. But, she didn’t have an account. So we set one up in class.

Sitting at a station in a college computer lab, she slid a CD into the drive. Soon enough, digital images of a horse show in the 1960s reappeared in her Facebook profile.

Not everyone wants to communicate in real time.

I’ve always thought Facebook was a good place to tell your histories.

We didn’t just want to design a place for stories and apps. Where you tell your story online is really personal. We wanted to make Timeline a place you can be proud to call your own. Timeline is a place to curate your stories so you can express who you are. We’re more than what we just did recently, so all the stories you’re shared over time fall off your wall and effectively disappear and today there’s no good way to share them. – Mark Zuckerberg F8 keynote

What Timeline means for marketing

We don’t – exactly – know yet. Facebook says the goal is to socialize the way business gets done. The open graph enables all kinds of new models to work, which opens up opportunities to reshape companies and rethink entire industries.

Some have theorized that the Newsfeed will now be even more hard on pages that get low feedback rates on their posts. That makes page posting best practices even more important. Best advice for now: Focus even more on getting higher feedback rates, and do quality posts two to three times a day. Watch your data and adjust accordingly. Source: allfacebook.com

Facebook Design Changes

Gigantic header

You select the header photo. I’m imagining photography, as important as it is now, will become a real identifier. What do you think?

Timeline interface

Off the wall into a timeline that can be backfilled as far as you want to go. How deep are your creative archives?

The Facebook wall has always been structured chronologically, but has become less and less favorable to browsing posts and updates from more than a few months ago. In timeline, that all changes. There is now a literal timeline embedded on your profile that will let anyone viewing it click back to any year where there are updates or content and view them. Source: gizmodo.com

Social “Canvases”
Zuckerberg used the term “canvas” to talk about apps as backdrops. Daily is a news canvas app from News Corp. Lifestyle canvas apps cover topics like fashion, walking, running and cooking.

The Ticker

Lighter weight activity floats in the ticker, a real time updating column on the right hand side of the page.

Open Graphs and Apps

The central idea here is that users will be able to share what they’re doing in Facebook-connected apps as they’re doing it. If your Spotify account is connected to Facebook, a message will show up in your Timeline and in the Ticker stating the song you’re listening to. If a friend wants to listen to the same song, he or she just hovers over the song in the Timeline or Ticker, and if they want, they can launch that song in Spotify too. Source: latimes.com

Personal vs. Professional: Was there Ever a Life-Line?

Now, there’s no question that you can present your entire life on one encompassing platform – if you want to.

This one life will come alive with chapters, sidebars, illustrations and notes in the margins – from you and your friends.

How hard will you wrestle with separating business and personal personas? Are they two sides or two subtle shades in the same hue?

UPDATE 03.01.11

Thanks so much to Facebook for restoring my account! After two weeks and three attempts, I’m back in. Two days ago I submitted my third or fourth request and today I got an from Rick in User Operations letting me know my account was restored. Yay! Thanks to everyone for all the kind words and if you’ve been hacked off, read this post. See you on Facebook.

One thing Mark Zuckerberg and I have in common: we’ve both had Facebook pages hacked. His is back up and running. Mine is still disabled.

It’s been five days since I got this message. “Your account has been temporarily suspended for security purposes. Our systems indicate that your Facebook account has been compromised by cybercriminals attempting to impersonate you. “

If you’re here because this also happened to you, first of all my sincere sympathies and feel free to share your experience or any helpful ideas on how to restore or rebuild accounts in the comments section. For everyone, please read this post and take precautions to protect you and your Facebook account today, or ideally, right now.

What you need to change right now: your email and Facebook passwords, especially if they’re easy to crack, they’re both the same and your email is tied to a free account provider like Yahoo! or hotmail.

Wondering if your password will be easy to guess? Take a look at the works in the graphic image that accompanies this post. [Thanks to Shutterstock.com for the popular password image.] Need directions? Here’s a helpful article on how to pick a safe password.

If you’re in this situation, the hacker may have an email and password combination that might unlock other accounts, too.

How I Found Out My Facebook Account Was Hacked

On Wednesday I opened my laptop to find another email address in place of mine on the log in screen. Checking two other computers, and my iPhone, I saw the same alien email address.

When other people checked my account, there were no recent updates at all. In fact, my wall was scrubbed clean. It felt so weird to see absolutely nothing. . .

Thanks to friends who alerted me via direct messages on twitter, email and this blog’s contact form that someone was posing as me. How did they know?

I’m never on Facebook chat and this person, the fake Barbara, was asking for money. When I entered my email address, Facebook didn’t recognize it.

I found out that a 419 scam disabled my Facebook account. Think you might have this issue? Thanks to Publicity Hound Joan Stewart for the link to forms to use and things to do if your Facebook fan page disappears.

The hacker took me off of my profile and now had access to my profile and all those I manage.

I immediately notified every client and group admin and asked them to delete me from their profile. By the time my clients got the message, Facebook had already disabled the account.

I was officially off of Facebook within an hour or so of first finding out my account had been hacked.

Poof! From Visible to Non-Existence in an Instant

Not to get too emotional about this and go into victim mode, but if you’ve also been hacked, here’s a list of what you might have lost. Think of this as the same kind of exercise you go through when you’re cataloging valuables for insurance purposes.

What you might lose if your Facebook account vanishes. . .

- ALL Content for personal and business pages, including updates, photos and videos not to mention your info page

- Friend connections [I had 887] and fans on all accounts

- Phone numbers, lots of phone numbers

- Numerous fan page connections with updates to communities and companies

- Group memberships

- Private family pages

- Admin role on client’s pages and SMC Chicago

- Tags in photos

- News feed from friends

- Access to the “walled garden” that is Facebook

- URL, in this case – http://facebook.com/rozgonyi

- Everything going back to the beginning [my Facebook start date: July 2007]

- Convenient access to sites that let you log in via Facebook

- All connections to your account from third-party applications

- A Face on Facebook

Yep, it was a bit painful thinking about all of that. What did I miss?

Living Life without Facebook

Granted it’s only Facebook and it’s only been five days. Life goes on and my account may be reinstated.

Is is possible to overreact to what may be a minor and temporary interruption of a Facebook account?

What I haven’t expected is the loss my friends and even my family feel. People who have my email address, phone numbers and address [i.e. , these people know how to reach me 24/7 on or offline, or doorbell] are frustrated because they can’t send me messages on Facebook.

Thanks to friends like Tim McDonald who called with some security tips and then said it’s weird not to see you on Facebook. I do feel locked out and left out.

When my daughter said, “Mom, I can’t find you on Facebook anymore,” with genuine dismay, I looked at her and said, “You’re looking right at me. You don’t need to find me on Facebook. “

“But I want to find you on Facebook,” she said. One of my last messages, sent to her, was a link to a post she needed for a school assignment. Yes, we have email and we also text and DM each other. So why do we need another channel?

Is it worthy crying over losing Facebook access? It depends on what the platform means to you and whether or not you’ve backed up your activity. I have to admit this is more emotional and frustrating than I expected it to be. . . especially because I didn’t plan ahead. So that this doesn’t happen to you, here’s a selection of ways to save your profile.

Ways to Back Up Facebook and Save Your Assets

1. Grab the RSS feed for your account, then send it to your reader or your email via feedmyinbox Tip: send feeds to a dedicated email just for that purpose to keep your primary inbox clear.

2. Add on to Firefox. ArchiveFacebook is a free tool that allows you to save content from your Facebook account directly to your hard drive. Archive your photos, messages, activity stream, friends list, notes, events and groups. That’s the official description. Note that I got a few warning messages when I tried to install it.

3. Backupify your social media. Ever the optimist, I hoped maybe I had somehow, some way already saved my account with a backup service. Turns out I did set up a Backupify account, which spit back 1616 pages of twitter data, but had nothing on Facebook. Why? Because I didn’t sign up for it.

Backupify is the leading backup provider for cloud based data, offering an all-in-one archiving, search and restore service for the most popular online services including Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter and more. With one account you get centralized access to all of your information, stored securely, easily searchable, and ready for restoration or transfer at a moment’s notice. Another official description straight off the site, this tool is one I do use and recommend. You’ll want to compare the free and paid versions to see which is best for you and your business.

4. SocialSafe is a digital diary that backs up your profiles and downloads them to you computer.

What other ways can you think of to save and secure social media content?

Will Your Facebook Account Be Restored?

After spending a few hours searching for answers, I was disappointed to find very few instances of restoration. One commenter asked: why you would want to restore a hacked account? Most people I’ve talked to anecdotally say a friend’s account was restored a day or two. But, if your account is restored how likely are you to post that update? [Rest assured, I will.]

How Long Before You Create a New Facebook Account?

If you manage accounts for clients, you’ll need to set up an account so you can check on theirs. Also, the longer you stay away, the more you miss out on what’s going on. The “out of sight, out of mind factor” is huge on social networks. Do you agree?

Reconstructing Your Facebook Profile

If you decided the wait is over and it’s time to get started with a new profile, here are a few thoughts on how to reconstruct your account.

Post a WTF update – thanks to Ramon DeLeon for this one. “WTF” means “welcome to Facebook.”

Use the Friend Finder to locate people you want to connect with.

Set up lists to categorize friends. If you didn’t create Facebook friend lists the first time around, now’s your chance to be more organized.

Ask a few friends to post a status saying that you’re back and your friends can friend you at the new profile.

Remember those pictures of you you actually liked being in tagged in? Go back and retag yourself.

Now that you have a fresh profile, you’ll need to go back and change the link everywhere, including on your LinkedIn profile, blog, site and FriendFeed.

And, you’ll want to make sure your account is as private and secure as possible. Here’s a list to get you started . . .

Facebook Privacy and Security Resources

Did you know that if you use your computer in a place with free wi-fi you’re safer surfing with an https connection that makes your connection secure by blocking out outside access?

You can set the Facebook and HTTPS Protocol [via mashable.com] to do that and to alert you when anyone tries to log into your account from another computer or device.

Or, you can secure your browser with the Firefox HTTPS Everywhere Extension or the Google Chrome HTTPS Extension.

Other Facebook security and privacy information you may find helpful . . . .

Facebook implements an account protections security status bar

How to protect your profile security on Facebook

How to Protect Your Facebook Account From Hackers and Phishing Scams

10 privacy settings every Facebook user should know

Prepare Your Company Now for Social Attacks by Jeremiah Owyang

What other help would you offer people who want to secure their social media accounts?

350M people send 4B messages on FB – every day. Is it time to modernize communications? Facebook says yes. Want to know more? Here are my press conference notes and a few videos, including a video interview with Facebook’s director of engineering, Andrew Bosworth [who went to 14 proms, according to his profile].

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, observed that email is too formal with weight, friction and cognitive load versus sms & Facebook chat. Code named Project Titan, Facebook‘s new messaging system’s three main features: seamless messaging, conversation history and a social inbox. Hat tip to FT.com for a first look at Facebook’s new messaging system with email.

Although they’re weren’t there, literally, Mom and Grandmother came up several times in the Facebook’s press conference. It’s clear the team values familial inter-generational communications. “One of the goals of Facebook is to make it easier to stay in touch with people you care about,” is a direct quote from the press conference. What do you think these changes mean for marketing and PR?

Reader’s Guide: Notes typed during the press conference. Accuracy is not guaranteed. Spelling and grammar are not perfect. Please feel free to correct any mistakes.

Notes from November 15, 2010 Facebook Press Conference

Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the conference with an introduction to the three main features.

Facebook Communication System Adds Email

1. Seamless Messaging
across all ways people communicate, including email, but not only email

2. Conversation History
thinks emails threading model is so archaic, a lot of the more modern communication is one thread that has a lot of interesting properties in the course of one conversation

3. Social Inbox
Because we know who your friends are, we can do some really good filtering for you. There are a lot of different classes of junk. The real way to deal with spam and filtering is to build lists, but nobody wants to make lists, on Facebook you can do that automatically without ever having to do any work at all.

Andrew Bosworth, director of engineering, went into more detail.
1. Seamless Messaging
Facebook brings all together: text/sms, Im/chat and email. Technology should get out of the way. You only need two things: a person and a message. A conversation is between two people. Facebook will match their username. The system is definitely not email, it’s more modeled after chat.

iPhone application is launching with the rest of the product.

People should share however they want to share.

2. Conversation History
Powerful idea. His grandmother has this – she has a box of letters from his grandfather in the closet. Context isn’t wasted, individually messages may not be profound, but collectively they mean something.

Modern messaging has to support attachments, extended photosharing Haystack to support photos. The biggest engineering team Facebook has ever put together for a product, 15 people.

3. Social Inbox
Mom deserves better than being sandwiched between a message from a bank and a bill. By default, you will see messages from friends and friends of friends only. Can move people into messages, other and junk folder. Every row will be a conversation. Other folder is things you don’t care as much about. Will be looked at maybe once a day. One of the last things, and most powerful, is that people get control over who gets their attention. Without the social graph, you don’t have that control.

You can now pick up with friends right where you left off on any device.

“We’re really proud of this. It’s a huge problem, not just scaling huge system, but on top of that layering email and other systems. This is not an email killer. This is a messaging system that includes email as one part of that.” What we think is happening, what we expect is more people will IM and engage because it’s simpler, more valuable and more fun. 1-2 years out – people will think that shorter messages are the way to do it – we’re moving more towards simple and real time.

Rolled out over next few months – starting off with an invitation system.

Questions about Facebook and email from the press . . . .

What does the system not do that Facebook wants it to do?
We want to have IMap support. IT already speaks email protocol; want it to sync with email systems. A lot of things it doesn’t do – having subject lines with multiple threads. You have a single conversation history with each person.

How do you decide which contact point the message gets sent to?
This is one of the complicated things they had to work out. A person can trigger from the interface – sms to phone. Try to deliver stuff as quickly as possible. If you’re online, a message can be delivered as an IM. Goal: to have it feel like a conversation. There’s a lot of dial to turn here. Tried to make it so that people don’t have to think about this stuff.

Any plans to add a VOIP or video component?
Sms, im email and Facebook messages – all text. This is a pretty big step to take by itself.

Advertising plans – impact on rivalry with Google?
Advertising works the same way it does for the rest of Facebook. Their ad system os based on what you put in. You put in that you like Greenday and you’ll get ads for concert tickets. “I think Gmail is a really good product.” The code name for this project is Titan the last one was Gigabox. This isn’t a Gmail killer, this is a Gigabox killer. This simpler kind of messaging is how a lot more people will shift their communication. This project also works with gmail users.

Gmail has a nice off the record chat feature
Users can delete conversations or be off view. All the different channels are unified.
People can say I don’t want info stored, can delete threads. Converging systems integrate channels.

Was this the biggest technical challenge to Facebook to date? How do you see Facebook changing the way people communicate?
Big challenge, but don’t want to compare to others. If users are used to IM, chat, email, they all will work the same way, Hope – we would feel like we’re a lot of continuous conversations with people we care about.

How does system allow you to refine the social graph?
The way people communicate is really important, focusing on people you say are your friends. That’s all private, that’s just for you. Doesn’t matter if a person is not a Facebook user, you can still communicate with email.

How does Facebook interact with people who are not on Facebook?
Facebook users have three folders: main, other and junk. If you’re not a part of the Facebook system, your info goes into the other folder to start out with, then the person can move you into their main folder. You’re using your network around you to make your world better – z

When you’re communicating with email versus Facebook – do those email addresses become a part of a Facebook users’ graph and how are you using that?
Messages from outside Facebook go into the other folder first and then you can use move them into the mail box. The email address is stored – have to do that for the product to work.

What happens to corporate email addresses?
After a long discussion, the farmbureau has agreed to give them fb.com. This was a big conversation internally. That brand is so important to the users, we really should give up Facebook.com and be something else. [The question may have been about corporate email addresses outside of Facebook.]

Many friends are more casual, does this mean that they can now start sending me emails?
With social design we’re always counting on meaningful relationships. Email is totally optional. At the same time, anyone who is already your Facebook friend, can send you messages.

One of the goals of Facebook is to make it easier to stay in touch with people you care about. The goal was never to expand the social graph, it was to map it out.

How do you send messages?
You can select send via sms. If your friend is not configured, Facebook will send an invitation.

How much storage space will each user be given? Can you forward messages?
Yes, you can forward and can add people to the thread. No specific numbers on storage.

More questions? Email Press@ facebook.com

Hey, what’s that you’re thinking?
Let us know in the comment box below.

Image credit: c2010 Phoebe Svoboda for thesociallens.com from the Arboretum summer set. For more information about the photographer or this image, call or text 630.207.7530.

“Why did they make a movie about Facebook? It’s just Facebook.” college junior watching trailers for “The Social Network”

Facebook. Is it just Facebook? Or, is Facebook something bigger than Facebook? How will “The Social Network” profile the business of communication – and capture the spirit of our time?

UPDATE 10.01.10 Today the movie comes out in the US. Thanks to Roland Lindner, a business correspondent for Germany’s FAZ
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, for interviewing me about the movie. I was also interviewed by a Polish journalist. And, now let’s interview you – what did you think about the movie?

On October 1, “The Social Network” premieres in theaters. I first heard about this movie from an independent film producer who predicted social networking in movies would be a trend to watch. That was about a year ago. Now that the film’s release is a few months away, the first trailers are out this week – as are the preview reviews.

AllFacebook.com Says The Social Network is Worth Watching

The much-hyped movie, “The Social Network”, which is a sensationalized version of the history of Facebook, has landed on the web. While not much more is revealed in the latest trailer, there’s a number of actual clips from the movie included in this video preview. It’s clearly aiming to be a dramatic movie and it’s actually looking like something worth watching. While Facebook is concerned about drawing negative publicity to the company, the clips don’t appear to be too damaging, although they definitely are drama-filled.
Source: AllFacebook.com Full Trailer for The Social Network Arrives

IMDB links to over 700 stories

IMDB fans can check out “The Social Network” on IMDB.
Did you know IMDB links to a new desk? Here’s where to find over 700 stories about “The Social Network.“

The Social Network Trailer

Scored by Nine Inch Nails
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails composed the score. Mashable calls him the “king of internet controversy.”

The Social Network Opens at The New York Film Festival

“The Social Network” was chosen to open the New York Film Festival on September 24.

““It’s exceptionally rare to discover a film that so powerfully captures the spirit of its time; The Social Network is such a film. David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin are a director/writer team, like [Sidney] Lumet and [Paddy] Chayefsky before them, that make this movie not only of the moment, but reflective of larger cultural issues as well, and confirm their position at forefront of contemporary cinema,” says Richard Peña, Selection Committee Chair & Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Last month, I taught a Facebook class. Three days before class started, one of my students heard about Facebook for the first time. How do you think this movie will raise awareness about social networks?

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile says, “I’m trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share.” Who do you think this movie is really about?

How do you handle negativity, privacy, branding, security on Facebook? Thanks to a reader who asked these questions about Facebook and their business. Have IRL [in real life] questions you need answered? Leave them in the comment box, text 630.207.7530 or email corywestmedia @gmail.com.

1. How do we manage negative feedback about our product/services?
Monitor comments, respond immediately online and contact personally. Most blogs give you the option of approving all comments before they go up. On Facebook, you can delete comments on your page. The biggest concern here is not monitoring mentions. You can almost always reply. If you don’t then there’s a comment out there against you.

2.How do team members manage security of their personal information vs. business information?
Set profile views to friends or connections only. Companies may choose not to list employees in their profile. Employees will show up automatically on a LinkedIn company profile. People may choose not to list their employer on Facebook or twitter.
Educate your team members on how to protect their privacy with resources like these USA Today on Facebook privacy and Facebook on privacy.

3. From a business ethics perspective, how do we keep from telling team members what they can or cannot put on their Facebook profile (which might be viewed by people coming to the company site?)
Unless team members are listed on the company fan page, people will need to search the company name to see who’s profile it pops up in. If the team member has an open profile, yes, everyone can see it. You really can’t control what people post on personal social media platforms. You may want to offer some suggestions like the ones in this Tech Republic article on Facebook company policies. You may want to let them know how much information they can share that relates to accounts, clients and business practices.

4.There is concern about the amount of time it takes to keep the site relevant. Who manages it?
Depending on how active your company wants to be, managing social site interaction can take as little as a few hours a week to a few hours every day. For most companies, having a main communicator and an alternate works. You can also share the responsibilities; having a consistent strategy will save time and be more effective.

5.What about the time management issue of team members spending business hours on personal Facebook?
Ask your team members for their input and think about giving them time for a social media break here and there. They can help monitor and report what’s going on within their own personal networks.

6.As for team members establishing their own personal Facebook “brand”, which face do we show our business audience? Our personal brand or the company brand?
ersonal and professional are merging into a hybrid approach. Presenting an online persona requires some thought and strategy. It’s okay to block off personal information from your business site. Every update reflects on you, personally and professionally.

Images: owl on van [in my driveway 01.18.10] copyright 2010 Barbara Rozgonyi. All rights reserved.

Your turn: How do your protect your privacy while promoting your personal brand on Facebook – or any other social media platform?