After years of blocking their contestants from online outreach to fans, American Idol has released a statement saying that they will allow contestants to communicate via their “Idol-managed” Facebook, Twitter and MySpace pages.  Sounds like a fantastic idea, but how will it change the competition?

Here are a few things I will be watching out for:

1. The influence of social media on the outcome
   As the Top 24 is narrowed to 12, we should see indication of popularity by visiting each participant’s social media site.  Can you imagine how much influence each site will hold as fans of the show try to rally their friends and family to support each contestant?  However, a new dynamic may enter as fans might become complacent and not vote if they see that their favorite has millions of supporters on their sites.
2. Each contestant’s ability to rally fans
   It will be interesting to see how each contestant uses their outlets to rally support.  This year’s winner could be decided on an artist’s ability to engage with fans to drive votes. A contestant’s social media savvy will be exposed.
3. Additional pressure on the contestants
   There is no doubt that each contestant feels pressure from the judges and live audience.  Will comments that critics place on the forums create more anxiety for the singers?
4. How much will Idol manage the forums?
   The true beauty of social media is unfiltered, transparent conversations.  I will be interested to see how much Idol allows.

Every year American Idol hooks me somehow, and now with this new dynamic, they have done it again.  How do you think the new social media policy will change the competition?

If you’re like me, in the first hour I used Google Wave, I thought…”eeh. Kinda cool, but I don’t need another thing to check, why not just integrate these features into Gmail? Well, I pretty much got my wish and more with Google Buzz. Now I’m not sure if it’s what I wanted. I think the integration of social media and multimedia-email-like-objects could be cool. I could talk about the potential positives with this new google product, but I think those are pretty easy to see, here are some potential aspects I don’t like:

(If you don’t know what google buzz is, here is a video. In short, its Facebook and Twitter meet gmail. It will be in every gmail account, whether you ask for it or not. (but you can turn it off if you want))

Social Integration

I don’t know if I want / need another digital social touch point. I already use Twitter and Facebook. I don’t see myself abandoning them anytime soon. So right now gmail serves a pretty specific purpose for me right now, it’s my email. I’m not totally keen on the idea of inviting the whole world into my inbox.

Privacy Concerns
If you’ve activated buzz you’ll notice it’s already set up people to follow. Ditto for others. This article put it best “The problem is that — by default — the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile.
In other words, before you ever touch any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see who are the people you email and chat with most.”

Must Google run everything?
To me Google feels a bit like the robber-barrons of the 21st century. Right now I have 1) a gmail account 2) an igoogle account 3)p google blog 4)a google phone 5) a google voice account 6) a google reader account 7) a google checkout account 8 ) a google wave account 9) a google picture account (picasa) 10) it’s my interne browser,  its also 11) my text and video chat client and of course, my  12) search engine.  Thats 12 prety major things, and who knows what I forgot. Twitter, Facebook and Apple are among the few major players I still interact with that aren’t google. Do I think google is pure evil like some people do? No. But I feel like I should be cautious. If they do turn out to be pure evil I don’t want them to be in control of everything I come into contact with, no matter how convenient it is.

I’m pretty set in my ways. Right now I like my social media with my social media and my email with my email. Can I resist or will I be fully dragged into the Googlesphere. I guess only time will tell.

(This was originally posted at Digital Pivot before being reposted here and at my website, but I did write it)

Quick what was your first thought?  Did you think about the last group of people you were with face-to-face, a mental list of co-workers, a fond memory of a very close friend, or how many people you have listed as “friends” on Facebook?

I have to say when I first joined Facebook, I was a bit leery;  I thought that if I truly had a connection with someone, then why would I have lost touch.   How would an online medium, seemingly so impersonal be the right avenue to reach out after all these years?   But everyone was doing it, so with trepidation, I developed an account and decided my strategy would be to wait and see who wanted to be my friend. 

My first “new friends” were people I worked with or who lived here in Greensboro;  I interacted with them on a regular basis.  No “reconnection” there, just confirmation that I was on their meter.  The next wave were close out of town friends, but again, I spoke to them frequently enough to be in the know of what was happening in their lives. 

Ah, then there was that first “blast from the past”.  Yay, a chance to reconnect, catch-up on what had happened since the last school reunion or chance meeting when I was home visiting my parents.  After “confirming” that we were indeed friends, I was ready!  I had this lofty idea that we would engage in some sort of conversation, something on a personally level and hopefully something with content. 

Well, I can’t say that my expectations were met with the one-on-one connection.  But I have readjusted my expectations and will admit I have enjoyed gaining a glimpse into people’s comings and goings.  I’ve even been surprised at request from people who I barely knew, and in some cases don’t even know.  This begs the question – When do you “confirm” or when do you “ignore”?  

And how do you define a “friend”?  Does “friend” mean the same thing as it did ten years ago or has it slid more to the definition of “acquaintance” with the evolution of social media?

As “social” continues to grow, so are the regulations. I find myself getting more tweets & updates about laws or regulations every single day. As a marketing professional, it’s extremely important to keep up with these changes, but it really is almost a full-time job. Sites like mashable.com make it a little easier, but it’s still very time consuming. The latest changes affecting brand pomotions came out December 22 with Facebook. Just when you think you have a social media plan nailed down with a client, along come more regulations!

For example, you can’t publicize or administer a promotion on Facebook if:

1. it is marketed to people who are under 18
2. the objective is to promote the following categories:

• gambling
• tobacco
• firearms
• prescription drugs
• gasoline

There are many more…take a look.

There is still much to be learned by brands on social media. The environment and it’s regulations are changing all the time. So, the lesson here is to do your homework and stay in the know!

So… while I wouldn’t call myself addicted to Facebook, I would say I am healthily engaged: I usually log in early morning when I get to work, see what’s going on, and update my status. I also glance over my newsfeed when I return from lunch, and again before I head out the door to go home. 

 This weekend, Brandon Griggs at CNN held a giant mirror to the Facebooking community and categorized “The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers“, complete with a handy quiz to see where you fall.  

I’ll be honest: that early morning status update can be tricky. I want it to be relevant, engaging, smart, hip, funny, etc. and would prefer there to be at least 3 comments or “likes” when I check back on it after lunch.

In this day and age of “wall spew” and too much information (see STFU, Parents), as a communication professional I have to be careful to not offer any insight into my clients’ work and also not look like a total flake to the world.  

So I took the quiz – apparently I have good status updates. But reviewing the 12 categories of annoying Facebookers, I have friends I’d place in each of those categories (and many of them have been “hidden” from Newsfeed view – sorry guys). It’s a good reminder for me to keep things interesting, and for others to stop asking me to take a quiz to find out what kind of shoe I am or let me know that “my boyfriend is truly God’s gift to women and OMG I am so, so, so LUCKY!!!”  

If you’re relatively new to Facebook (sigh, I remember when Facebook was a college-only thing and how exciting it was when UNC-Chapel Hill had their network set up in fall of 2005), or even if you are a seasoned user like myself, this quiz may come in handy.  

Happy updating…

Remember when waiting by the mailbox for snail mail or running towards the ringing sound of your home phone were the only ways for someone to reach you?

In the past few years, I have become increasingly addicted to the fast connections of the latest technology. And while I’m usually not the first to embrace opening myself up to the possibility of having thousands of people being able to reach me, there is something thrilling about receiving communication in a variety of mediums at any given time.
 
Upon a recent trip home to visit my parents, I was made aware quickly that I needed to “unplug from the world,” as my mother stated.  After receiving the ‘mom stare of death’ I plugged in the blackberry and vowed not to even look at the computer. The weekends conversations revolved around all the ways communication has changed over time. I mean, my dad can remember life without a home phone (and color televisions, but that’s another story.) Life pre-computer or ever, *gasp* pre-blackberry just isn’t something I like to fathom, nor do I have to.

After thinking about the many ways someone can someone reach me, (leaving out the obvious smoke signals, search light, sky writer and occasional flare) this became a fun challenge. I’m slightly embarrassed to share this list, but here it goes: 

- One can dial me at work, on my cell phone or even the dinosaur landline at home.
- Remembering the office fax machine still works, one can send me a fax.
- Anyone can peck out an email to me at one of my three personal accounts or at work.
- If you’ve got the digits, anyone can text me or even BBM me.
- Professionals can network with me through an email via LinkedIn.
- If I’m online, one can IM me either through Gmail, AOL or Spark.
- Friends and acquaintances can write on my wall, IM me, message me, comment on a photo or include me in a note on Facebook.
- One can reply to a tweet via my Twitter account and even direct message me there.
- If found while visiting cyberspace, one can comment on my blog.
- And, finally, if you’re feeling old-fashioned and have a spare stamp, you can pen me a letter and send it to my home or work.

Twenty-four ways I can be contacted – almost all without someone leaving a seated position. So….why haven’t I heard from you?

According to Facebook, I desperately need to diet and check my IQ. I am also a proud new mother of a baby, though last I checked, I haven’t birthed any children.

Facebook has been hard at work generating more robust, customized ad platforms for their highly popular social network, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing even more advertising options after they roll out their new home page design. Unfortunately, like most other Facebook users I know, I barely noticed these ads—that is, until I started getting a disturbing onslaught of ads parading babies in my face. The worst so far have been these ads with extremely creepy, multiple-eyed babies saying I should take an IQ test. These are usually presented with other ads telling me to check out a new fruit cleanse diet (Oprah tried it, and it worked miracles). I’m starting to think Facebook has characterized me as an overweight new mother with time on hand to take quizzes rating my intellect. We’re all aware that Facebook taps into our profile information for advertisers to target certain audiences. What befuddles me is that nowhere in my information does it say anything about babies.

The good thing about these ads, though, is that there is a function to give it a thumbs up, thumbs down, or refresh to a next ad. After the 12th time seeing the same mommy-and-baby photography services ad, I did the responsible thing and responded to the ad. I gave it a thumbs down and selected “irrelevant” as the reason why (other options include misleading, offensive, uninteresting, repetitive, or other). It felt good to help Facebook and its paying advertisers better target their efforts—I do it for a living, after all. One or two months pass, and I continue to thumbs-down the baby ads day after day. Oddly even more baby ads pop up, and this time creepy ones with four, six eyes. I start marking them all as outright “offensive.” The ads become even more unrelenting, this time even bringing in puppies and other innocent faces with multiple lifeless eyes. It’s gotten to a point where I feel like Facebook is just taunting me. I’m losing a battle being attacked by photoshopped nightmares of things once cute and cuddly, armed with only a two-click courtesy survey.

This whole ordeal ends up being good and bad for Facebook. Good because I started to actually notice their ads. Bad because I only started noticing these ads out of sheer insult. Even worse because I now question Facebook’s ability to really handle ad customization. Maybe as a coping mechanism I can join one of the various Facebook groups created against Facebook ads.