Allowing colleagues and co-workers to view your Facebook and MySpace page has been a conflict my friends and I have struggled with since graduating from college. Is it appropriate to allow your workplace access to your college pictures? And more importantly, will we be judged based upon these pictures? This argument has plagued my generation. When the following question came across our ASAE listserv, I couldn’t wait to see what other people thought. The original post was from a communications company looking to hire an assistant. While the employer was browsing applicants’ Facebook pages, they found “stuff that was disturbing and raises questions about the suitability for a couple of the candidates.” The employer wanted to know if it was appropriate to mention/question an applicant about his or her Facebook profile, and was “looking for tips on how to navigate this situation.” The listserv took off like rapid fire as my inbox proceeded to be inundated with opinions and tips from all over the map!

Some people felt the candidates should have cleaned up their Facebook page and that my generation is too open with social networking. One woman stated, “Bottom line: I think job seekers should be savvy enough to know their stuff is out there and self-censor, or not, as they feel is appropriate. A friend of mine de-activated her totally tame profile for a while during a federal hiring process, and I think that’s wise in this climate.” This really made me think: De-activate my profile over a frat party in college? Get real?!?!

The beauty of Facebook is being able to keep in touch with numerous people, as you can send messages, write on their wall, and even tag pictures of events you have participated in. In a day and age where time is valuable, it makes keeping in touch easy. I immediately knew there would be one person who could relate to me on this issue. “Pat you have to come in here. I can’t believe this,” I yelled to Pat Cauley, whose office is across the hall from mine. He was in shock too, “Do they even know how Facebook started?” he asked. “Obviously not, we have to set the record straight.” Pat and I collaborated and came up with this Listserv response, “I joined Facebook in the fall of 2004 as a college junior. At the time you needed an .edu e-mail address to even join the site, as it was an online social diary/interactive yearbook. As the place where we like to connect with and keep in touch with college and high school friends, this should not represent a young professional’s work ethic or ability. Imagine if your employment qualifications were based upon your pictures from Woodstock that suddenly surfaced online.” Again, my inbox was like rapid fire—e-mail, e-mail, e-mail, I couldn’t believe how many responses. Some responses agreed with my view while others didn’t. However, I found the most surprising post came from a CAE (certified association executive). He has hired two people in the past six to eight months and actually passed on dozens of applicants who had no findable Internet content. Why? He felt just because questionable behavior wasn’t on Facebook, doesn’t mean the applicant didn’t partake. He decided he knew more about those applicants who were engaged on the social web than those who weren’t.

So, I guess you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t? I welcome you to check out my page and let me know what you think. Or better yet, why doesn’t everyone relax and enjoy this humorous infomercial parody video of Facebook.

Katie White is ERA’s retailer relations manager.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

If you’re an events manager with a death wish, invite Jason Calacanis to deliver the keynote address at your next conference. Sure, Calacanis—a serial Internet entrepreneur who made the bulk of his fortune with the sale of his company Weblogs, Inc. to AOL—will deliver an engaging, thought-provoking and sometimes flat-out inspirational talk. But then again, he might just start a riot.

After all, this is the guy who, at SES Chicago in 2006, announced—to a group of search professionals—that “SEO is bullshit!” and compared those engaging in SEO to “snake oil salesmen.”

It didn’t go over well.

Having escaped Chicago, living to speak another day, Calacanis recently addressed a room full of affiliate marketers at the Affiliate Summit West. Apparently unruffled by the flap and furor over his SEO comments, Calacanis explained to the affiliate folks that the rest of the industry saw them as the bottom rung of the food chain, wired to make the quick buck.

There was no standing ovation.

But to be fair to Calacanis, he’s not some sort of egomaniacal misanthrope who gets a perverse pleasure out of standing on a stage and belittling the audience. (Actually, he might just take a little pleasure in it.) In fact, the point he’s trying to make is a valid and intriguing one.

First of all, Calacanis was over-generalizing for effect: he sees value in ethical SEO and understands that there are legitimate best practices to follow in designing, maintaining and promoting a site that will allow it to rank higher in search results. And he certainly doesn’t see anything wrong with the fundamental concept of affiliate marketing: engaging a group of websites to help sell product or generate leads as a sort-of extended sales force.

Calacanis has a problem with those interested in gaming the system to make a quick buck—whether it’s the black-hat SEO firm that exploits a weakness in a search engine algorithm to garner a temporary high rank for an undeserving website (until the search engine closes the loophole and the site plummets off the search results page) or the affiliate who steals content to game the search engines to generate more traffic and commissions, or the marketer who floods blogs, message boards and social networks with paid posts.

According to Calacanis, it’s all borne out of a misguided ethic that has pervaded the Internet since the mid-’90s: if one is technically capable of doing something, then it’s OK.

But he—and others—see reason for optimism. As more and more black-hat marketers exploit the various systems, these systems eventually break down, to be replaced by ones that are more resistant to gaming. Consumers are helping to drive change, too. We leave MySpace to go to Facebook and then to LinkedIn as policing technologies are developed that help eliminate spam or fraud. Sites like Angie’s List—a ratings and reviews site for home-improvement contractors—take off because they are curated to ensure the reviews’ (and reviewers’) legitimacy. In other words, because they earn our trust. Calacanis himself has developed Mahalo.com, a search engine that uses human beings to find and organize the best links for given search terms—and to filter out irrelevant or spam results.

A new ethic is evolving: trustworthiness is good for business.

Tom Dellner is executive editor of Electronic Retailer Magazine and editor of its supplement, Online Strategies

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

According to ERA’s most recently commissioned paper, Mapping the Path to Purchase, Forrester Research suggests that television drives online sales. Indeed, 44 percent of the study’s respondents went to retail to find a product they saw on an infomercial or home shopping channel and more than one-third of consumers visit engines (eBay, Yahoo, Google, etc.) to compare prices, with more than 50 percent of those making a purchase.

But wait, there’s more; now it’s the consumers themselves who are creating pathways and signposts. It’s interesting, looking at the apparent quick rise of the “consumer influencer.” It seems just yesterday when branding was king and PR, marketing, research and agencies pushed sales. But today, through the power of blogs, online communities, forums, boards, videos on YouTube, Facebook and more, customers are definitely in charge.

I wonder what retailers think about how this will all shake out? How do retailers leverage those consumer influencers?

Sieglinde Friedman is ERA’s vice president of strategy

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I have this little theory that social media (e.g., blogs, forums and social networks) open up a whole new behavioral change where it’s acceptable to be a little personal, a little less professional and more “off the cuff” with thoughts, comments and ideas. Facebook is the “great experiment” in which we are all now trying to figure out how much of our personal lives to share with who we allow to be friends.

It comes back to the transparency element of social networking in that you must be transparent and real about your level of communications. If too contrived or too rigid, it just does not work.

So, my conclusion is: it’s about time! We all have enough stress in our lives and really do not need any more when it comes to communicating amongst peers. So, let’s be ourselves, be comfortable with that, recognize every once in a while that we’ll have friends post things that are less than appropriate and all accept it for what it’s worth.

Do you agree? 

Aaron Kahlow is managing partner of BusinessOnLine and chairman of the Online Marketing Summit. He is a regular columnist for Electronic Retailer magazine.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I was having lunch the other day with ERSP Program Analyst Bob Hilleman and our former ERSP colleague Tessa Barrera. Soon, the conversation turned to the subject of traditional television and print advertising and how these promotional vehicles (though still packing a powerful punch) will soon be considered the advertising models of the past. We discussed how new outlets such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Second Life and Twitter have arisen as new outlets for marketers to explore. Yes, marketers are realizing that as technology advances so must marketing, and these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. However, perhaps looking at why traditional marketing campaigns succeeded can help guide the jump into exploring the new media.

Think back to the advertising campaigns that you remember: M&M’s “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands”; Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” and Campbell Soup’s “Mmm…Mmm good.” All catchy taglines tied to successful advertising campaigns that appeal to the consumer’s feelings of trust, quality and security. By building a recognizable brand, the advertising worked to reinforce and create the connection with the consumers by appealing to their emotional sense of quality, fairness and connection. What makes a successful brand and a successful advertisement is that emotional connection. Consumers have to invest themselves into the subject, the character or the product.

More and more, new technology is on the rise. YouTube or Vimeo features short, digestible clips. Twitter issues one-sentence updates. Tumblr is built for short and quick blogging. The focus is on content, quick, constantly updating, but never in-depth. This speed, this bite-size focus is being heralded as the wave of the future, but it doesn’t allow for the building of a brand. It’s focused on tiny bits of information ready now, not to be stored away but to create a temporary quick fix for a need of information. It’s exciting, it’s constantly moving, it’s cutting edge. Yet, it is also, as of now, fairly impersonal. Consumers are there for the speed of changing content, not for the emotional ties to others. Tubmlr is attempting to incorporate those two aspects—building on the social connections of a Facebook, but still on the speed of a Twitter. Yet still, even with the social networking tie-in, the speed of the information has not yet been harnessed to achieve emotional connections. (more…)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Earlier today while “Facebooking,” I saw that my friend Savannah had posted a YouTube video on my friend Emily’s wall. The video was a teaser/preview for an upcoming string of new episodes for MTV’s widely popular “The Hills.” Although the show is completely ridiculous, it is a mindless, guilty pleasure nonetheless. I quickly copied the link and placed it into e-mail to shoot out to a few friends, jokingly telling them to mark their calendars for March 24th when the show returns. Although I’m slightly embarrassed, executives at MTV should be thrilled that this viral transgression of its content happened. Moreover, it was my friend’s response to my e-mail that I found most interesting.

“Sorry bro, I can’t tube at work,” Boris said. It was at that moment that I realized ERA’s keynote speaker at the upcoming eRetailer Summit in Miami on Monday had truly made the map. Like its parent Google before it, YouTube has become an action verb! Join me in Miami on Monday to hear YouTube’s Brian Cusack discuss the promises and challenges of video in advertising.

Click on the video if you’d like a peak at the senseless L.A. drama.

Hopefully, I’ll see you in Miami where we can discuss issues that actually matter, involving not only your bottom line, but also your company’s future.

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

 Yes, the way we young folks consume our media has changed. On a recent Sunday evening with friends, I watched in awe as my MacBook became the center of attention in the room. “Press mute on the TV,” Steve said commandingly. It was only a matter of seconds before he had the YouTube homepage on the screen. He played songs and videos that he liked. He even played a sports-themed video on the site as we all ignored the actual live sporting event that played in the background on my television. Right as it seemed we were done with YouTube and ready to go back to the TV, next thing you know, my friend Melissa asked Steve if he was on Facebook or MySpace. Like everyone else in the room, he was a member of both.

Along with ignoring the sporting event, we were also ignoring the advertisements you paid such a dear price from your media budget. Are you happy with your return on investment? If my friends and I are anything like the norm, then media loyalty and viewing habits are rapidly shifting. Are you prepared to engage the Gen Y consumer on our turf?

-Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

Attention Sports Fans: Click here to see the ESPN Century video we couldn’t keep our eyes off of

Bookmark It

Hide Sites