Month: October 2009

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Refusing to Join the Social Networking Phenomena

Are you refusing to get a Facebook account? Do you think that Twitter is for people who have nothing better to do? The Washington Post print edition did an article last week on this new phenomena of young twenty to thirty somethings that literally refused to connect on Facebook. I found the article interesting reading and wanted to share my thoughts.

First in both cases the participants who refused to join their friends on Facebook either had a significant other keep tabs on Facebook for them or act as their “secretary” and also both said that they preferred “real face to face or phone to ear” interaction. Both mentioned that they were out of the loop with their friends. One missed important appointments for his band, the other missed auditions that the friends shared with each other on Facebook. Hmm, an interesting case study especially for the age of the individuals involved.

There are some who have decided to not join Facebook and purposely and rabidly declare that it is a waste of time. Usually the age of the individual is a factor on if they consider Facebook important. It is a real rarity to see a college student or for that matter really even and older high school student who is not using Facebook as an alternative to regular email.

Facebook is here to stay. In fact for many young people the email and chat function on Facebook now are their email and instant messaging programs. As for me, I think that Facebook is fun. It is a great way to stay connected with family and friends, and a wonderful way to deepen the interaction with colleagues and clients.

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Google the Webmasters Friend

Google with the improvements made in the webmaster control panel has rapidly become the webmasters best friend. So what are some of these improvements?

Well one of the first is to let you know if your website is spewing malware. In the spider section if you have a problem that Google has detected, they will now identify the page and the script embedded in your page that is causing the problem. Although this is not typically a problem for most websites, it can be a problem for blogs that have been hacked in some manner.

One of the next features that Google has added to the control panel is to allow you to identify and target the correct canonical address from within the control panel. With just one click you can let Google know if you prefer http:// or http://www in your links.

The HTML suggestions tab helps you to know and correct any duplicate meta title tags, short title tags, long title tags, and even non-informative title tags.

There is real value in verifying your website in the Google Webmaster Control panel, so if you are not set up, sign up for a free account today.

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Just How Connected Are You? Take Our Test

So just how connected are you to your business with your gadgets? Take our test below to find out. Each yes answer is worth one point.

  1. Do you take your cell phone everywhere you go including the bathroom?
  2. Did you grow your fingernails long and shape them into points so you can type better on your itty bitty phone keyboard?
  3. Do you now pay more to Verizon or your cell provider than you spend for food in one month at the grocery store?
  4. Do you text under the table during boring meetings?
  5. Do you tweet while you are waiting online at a store telling us how slow service is?
  6. Do your kids have to text you to get your attention while you are sitting in the same room?
  7. Do people call your cell phone first instead of your home phone or office phone?
  8. Do you actually answer your business phone after 9:00 PM?
  9. Do you carry refuse to turn off your cell phone even when the sign says to do so like at church or the doctor’s office?
  10. Do you have an internet and email enabled cell phone?

Score:

If you answered yes 8 to 10 times you need some help. Your family would probably be glad you had surgery to cut the umbilical cord that has grown from you to your phone.

If you answered yes 5 to 7 times there is definitely hope that with professional help you could break your addiction to the Internet in your downtime – if you have any.

If you answered yes 2 to 4 times it sounds like you have a life and should give me a call as I am looking for friends to do things with and it sounds like you may actually have some free time.

If you answered yes 0 to 1 time, you really need to get more connected. You may be out of the loop and friends and colleagues would appreciate being able to “hit you up” more frequently.

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Can You Ever Remove Personal Information From Google?

I had a client call me the other day and wanted to know how to remove information about herself from Google.com. She told me she went on a date and her date knew everything about her from doing a Google search including family member names. She wanted the information removed.

Wow, most people want more information on Google not less. Here is my answer in a nutshell, once Google has it in their archive, there is no removing it. If the information resides on other websites you simply cannot remove the information. This is the same for both good and bad news about you. Once something is in the public domain it is available forever and to anyone who looks online this includes dates and employers.

Fortunately for this client all the information was good. She is a celebrity in her own right and just now getting high media exposure and is shocked at how much about her life is available on the Internet to those who know how to search. She even mentioned that information that was in a family obituary popped up identifying her place with family members which was a personal concern to her.

If you are an expert in your field, a celebrity, or high profile person, you will never be able to control the message and reviews or comments that other people post or say about you online. Welcome to the world that Brittany Spears lives in! Even if the information is awful you cannot remove it once it is on the search engines. If the information is bad, you may be able to push it down the search results page with reputation remediation, but remove it entirely – not a chance.

It is important that you be careful of where you allow your name to be used. Who would have thought that an obituary posted online by a newspaper would end up in Google’s index. All of this is an excellent lesson for young people. In this time, where kids post pictures and comments online, not once do they think that this information will be searchable and may pop up under their name in 10 years when they go to apply for a job and the HR staff does a Google search and finds them in a compromising situation.

For this particular client I told her – welcome to the world of celebrity and now’s the time to get a pair of dark sunglasses and Google your own date before you first meet next time.