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Social Media

Barack Obama & John Mccain: A 2008 Presidential Election Search and Social Marketing Analysis

by Steaprok on November 3, 2008

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The 2008 presidential campaign has had the largest online ad spend of all other U.S. presidential elections combined. With that said, we still have a long way to go to catch up with traditional media when it comes to total dollars spent.

As of September 2008, TNS Media Intelligence estimated that the candidates have spent an estimated $7 million in online advertising and estimated $300 million on TV since February of 2007. To put it in perspective, the 2008 Presidential election online ad spend was just over 2 percent of the traditional media spend for the same period of time, compared to an estimated 7 percent of total ad spending in the US. So on pure percentages, these presidential campaigns spent less per dollar than the average US spend.

More interesting than the unprecedented amount of dollars which are being spent, both on and offline, is how they are spending it and the wildly different strategies they are employing. With election day closing in and Obama dominating TV and Radio with his massive amounts of money, it seems the McCain campaign has doubled up on their online efforts , McCain’s display ad impressions jumped by over 250 percent, and his text-based search ads increased by over 40 percent in August and September.

In the last weeks before Nov 4th (election day), Obama is generating twice as many Search queries as McCain in the swing states, according to a recently released Yahoo report

Although Obama has the bulk of the search queries, its not all good for him. Many of the searches indicate that people still have a lot of questions about Barack Obama. For instance, according to the the recent Yahoo report and the Hitwise reports, for the four weeks ending on October 25, 2008 “barack obama birth certificate” was the fourth-most common search term driving traffic to BarackObama.com. “Barack Obama Antichrist” comes in at 26. Other top keywords driving traffic were “Obama Biography”, “Obama Grandmother”, “Obamas GunControl Platform”, “facts about Barack Obama”, “Where was Obama born”, “Barack Obama religion” and “Obama Barack Muslim”

Complete List of Obama Search Keywords

Complete List of Mccain Search Keywords

Percentage of Paid Search Traffic for Barack Obama

Percentage of Paid Search Traffic for John McCain

Graph by Spyfu Kombat

In contrast Obama’s keywords consisted mostly of variations of candidates’ names; they bid on very little issue related keywords. And even on the keywords Obama was bidding on, McCain was out performing him. In fact the McCain campaign was faster than the Obama when he announced Biden for VP. They had landing pages and campaigns ready to go instantly. When the Sarah Palin “Branchflower Report” was released, the McCain campaign immediately bought up all the related keywords like “Branchflower Report”, “troopergate”, “Palin report” and others. They were testing various creative and created custom landing pages w/ tons of information to refute the report, successfully diverting some of the traffic to the original stories which would have been more damaging. Not only that, but they turned it into a fund raising opportunity with a donation form right above the fold.

In fact, on Oct 31 while finishing this post, when I searched for Barack Obama on Google, position 1 and 2 were a John McCain site and GOP Party site with custom landing pages. Where was Obama’s PPC ad? In Position 5!

In non paid search organic traffic or SEO, Obama has a huge lead with an estimated 4.5 million unique visitors, more than double the estimated 2.5 million visitors to McCain’s site from search engines according to Nielsen Online and Compete.com. Obama also has the Social Media space on lock. He dominates McCain in views, followers and interaction.

Obama Google Rankings for Top 250 Keywords

McCain Google Rankings for Top 250 Keywords

One thing that’s very obvious when looking at these numbers. The McCain campaign dominated Paid Search, and the Obama campaign out spent and strategized them everywhere else. According to WSJ/Neilson, in July the McCain campaign had 15 Million Search text ad impressions, as opposed to 1.2 Million for the Obama campaign. In contrast Obama campaign had 416.7 million image ad impressions, compared with McCain’s 16.5 million.

That means that McCain was out buying Obama in Paid Search by 22 to 1 search ads according to Nielson. (PDF Download). Obama’s image ad impressions fell sharply by nearly 50 percent, and his sponsored text-based ads were down nearly 20 percent as well.

John McCain’s campaign stepped up its online advertising in August, particularly in image-based impressions, which increased 254% month-over-month. Sponsored search links were also up for the McCain camp - by 43%.

With the campaigns finally coming to a close and with the clear differences in marketing strategies and availability of funds between the McCain and Obama campaigns, I wanted to dig a little deeper and take a look at how both the candidates had used Search Marketing and Social Media and if they had been effective.

As mentioned earlier, in paid search McCain has consistently outbid and out spend Obama. In addition, McCain’s strategy has had a much larger scope than Obama’s with McCain having close to 9 keywords for every 1 of Obama’s. The McCain campaign has executed a multiple pronged approach with their search campaign. First they were bidding on issue or peripheral type terms, like “gas prices”, “abortion”, “Iraq war”, “U.S. economy” and “housing crisis,” which take visitors to Web sites outlining Sen. McCain’s plan on those issues.

According to Nielsen Buzz Metrics and Technorati on straight blog mentions, Obama also has McCain beat but not by much. And in Mobile/SMS, Obama campaign has a full mobile website containing news, videos and ring tone and wallpaper downloads, where the McCain has neither and a non existent program compared to Obama’s.

Barackobama.com Search and Social Campaigns by the Numbers

Search Marketing

PR 8

Pages Indexed in Google for www.barackobama.com 3210

Pages Indexed in Google for barackobama.com 3,930,000

Links to barackobama.com on Google : 10,400

Sub Domains: 59

Percentage of #1 Rankings: 35 #1 out of 214 Pages Ranked

Keywords Driving Traffic: 5794 Keywords

Percentage of Keywords Paid Traffic: 20%

34 Keywords in 1st Position in Google

Highest CPC: $.78

Estimated Daily PPC Budget: $145.68 - $1.02k

Keywords Driving Paid Search Traffic : 50 - 173 Keywords

PPC Landing Pages: 17 Variations

Social Media

Facebook Supporters: 2,169,943

Facebook Pages: 12

Myspace Friends: 726,042

Twitter followers: 100,922
252 updates since April 2007, mostly focusing on live events and interaction

Videos on official Obama YouTube channel: 1589 Videos
YouTube Channel Views: 17,248,219
YouTube Subscribers: 102,522

Linkedin: 500+ Connections

Meetup: Members 14,504 Meetups 2,624

Ustream views: 809,261

Stumbleupon: 35 Stumbles and 201 Reviews of barackobama.com home page

Digg: Both my.barackobama.com and barackobama.com are listed in the top 1000 sites submitted to Digg.

Obama was the 17th most popular word in submission titles with 1157

my.barackobama.com Total Posts 27 Total Diggs 38683 Total Comments 6777
barackobama.com Total Posts 49 Total Diggs 716 Total Comments 2455

Flickr: 116,291 Images with “Barack Obama “ in text and 45,945 images tagged with “Barack Obama”

Analytics

Analytics Software: Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Double click

Mobile

SMS: 2.9 Million Numbers

________________________________________________________________

JohnMccain.com Search and Social Campaigns by the Numbers

Search Marketing

PR 8

Pages Indexed in Google for www.johnmccain.com: 29,200

Pages Indexed in Google for johnmccain.com: 31,700

Links to johnmccain.com on Google: 8,820

Keywords Driving Total Search Traffic: 2767 Keywords

Percentage of Keywords Paid Traffic: 15%

49 Keywords in 1st Position in Google

Sub domains: 59

Highest CPC $1.46

50 - 924 Keywords

Est Daily Ad Budget: $552.48 to $5.24k

PPC Landing Pages: 50 Variations

Social Media

Facebook Supporters: 581,438

Myspace: 177,839 Friends

Youtube channel videos:
Youtube Subscribers: 25,698
Youtube Channel Views: 1,813,460

Twitter followers: 3,363
Updates 25 since Sept 2008 (Mostly attacks, negative or in defense)

Linkedin: 500+ Connections

Ustream Views: 196,966

Meetup: Members 1772 Meetups 246

Stumbleupon: 35 Stumbles of Home Page with reviews 81

Digg : JohnmcCain site was not in the top 300 sites submitted this year, but “McCain” was the 18th most popular word in title submissions with 1025.

Flickr: 3,254 images tagged with “John McCain” and 18,951 images with “John McCain” in text.

Analytics

Analytics: Web side story

All of the data for this post was compiled from various sources and tools. Below is a list of tools and sources for the data in my post. Many of the data might have changed from initial research. I know it is not exact, but it is indicative of the general trends. If you have any additional data to share , I would love to hear from you.Compete

Below are additional sites I used for quotes, data and graphs. Thank you to all the authors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000649.html

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/obama-drawing-twice-as-many-searches-as-mccain

http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/efile_search.shtml

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121988099541678063.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122524577359178845.html?mod=rss_whats_news_technology#project%3DNETPOLL08%26articleTabs%3Darticle

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20080808_6873.php

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080809-172535

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2008/08/mccain_v_obama_search_and_wiki.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603111.html

http://www.netratings.com/pr/pr_080908.pdf

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/search-findings-from-third-presidential.html

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20081030005210&newsLang=en

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

http://adon.typepad.com/pvmg/files/obama_mccain_socialmedia.pdf

{ 7 comments }

Free Online Resources For Finding Missing Persons Using Social Media

by yogini on September 5, 2008

This is a first in a series of guest posts by Yogini. Detailing how to use Social Media to raise awareness for charitable causes. In the coming posts I will go into much more specific detail on tips and techniques used to do this.

Over the last 15 months, I have been using the Internet, specifically Social Media to raise awareness for my missing friend, Lilly Aramburo. Lilly is a 23 year old mother of a 2 Y/O child who was last seen on June 1,2007. If you wish to know more about her case, please visit my blog Justice In Miami. I took on the role of advocate/spokesperson for her family. She was my friend and I felt like I needed to do something to help. It has become a full-time occupation which I have taken on with much enthusiasm. You see, the main stream media has not been cooperative in telling Lilly’s story or at the very least, even displaying a picture of her on the local news. Sadly, that’s just one of the many obstacles faced by families of missing persons on a daily basis.

Today, I understand the struggle of these families. But it doesn’t make things any easier for them. Someone goes missing every 30 seconds and that’s a fact. The main stream media is not much (if any) help to missing or murdered persons which don’t fit a specific criteria. In addition to being ignored by the media, many families of missing persons run against the “Blue Wall” of justice, law enforcement agencies that refuse to do their jobs either due to corruption, inefficiency, laziness or lack of funds. Either way its inexcusable. The reality is that thousands of families go through this every day with no end in sight. I was forced to pursue alternate methods to get Lilly’s case heard. The police were not doing anything, the media wasn’t doing anything and time was passing. The only real viable medium available to me was/is the Internet. Thankfully, I work in the Social Media Industry, which was clearly an advantage.

I’d like to share these insights with you, in hopes that it will be of benefit for you in your search for your missing loved one. While embarking on your journey, it is important to focus on the actions at hand and not the end result. Creating awareness within Social Media is usually an incremental process and it will not provide instant gratification but with patience and perseverance it will provide results. It is very important to note that each of these sites have particular rules and norms and if you intend on generating positive awareness and inspiring others to help you in your search, you must make an effort to understand the dynamic of each community, participate and make friends. I also included some reference links with how to’s, and information on social media etiquette.

Some of these methods might seem pointless or redundant at times, but I assure you they posses the ability to spread your message farther than you ever thought. Within the Social Media space you have the opportunity of making real bonds with people interested in things just like you. And that goes along way. Yes, there is a lot of information here, yes it is very time consuming ,yes there are some rules, and yes it is effective and it works!

Things YOU can do to Raise Awareness RIGHT NOW

Creating a blog with Wordpress or Blogger.

Registering with social networks like Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Friendster and Livejournal.

Registering and starting communities in sites like Ning and PBWiki.

Registering for microblogging sites like Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and Plurk.

Registering for video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo.

Registering for news submissions sites like Digg, Mixx, Reddit.

Creating Ads on Craigslist & other free online classifieds

Joining and taking part in Online Forums and groups like Mixx, Google Groups and Yahoo Groups.

Creating and distributing Press Releases and Social Media Releases.

Registering and using Social Bookmarking sites like Stumbleupon and Delicious.

Plan on outreach by commenting on relevant Blogs and posting Blog link to get others help in raising awareness.

Each of these resources, networks and forums can be of tremendous help. To get started you must register an account with the services below. All you will need is an email address to start. I’d suggest creating a profiles and screen names using the name of the missing person. (ie MissingLillyAramburo). You can customize each profile with pictures, videos, links and other relevant information regarding the missing person. On some of the sites like Facebook, you can even create a group or cause for others to join, share and contribute. This is extremely beneficial in raising awareness and promoting your message.

Social Media Networks

The great thing about Social Networks is that many of these online community members share a common interest and are grouped as such. They are great place to get started. They are easy to sign up and easy to set up and customize. Once you are granted access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize by reading the profile pages of other members, finding groups to join and interacting with users. The friends that you can make are just one of the many benefits to social networking. It has very powerful viral qualities that will help to get your message out.

Social Networks can be used as a private journals, blogs, discussion forums, content distribution and network site. They allow you customize your profile page, network and get the word out. A good suggestion, is start by adding people you already know to build up some momentum. Make sure to use “keywords” related to the missing person within the profile pages so that they start appearing in the search engine results pages like Google , Yahoo and MSN.

http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/MissingPersons

http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=21916321012

http://apps.new.facebook.com/causes/95328?m=1a240&recruiter_id=3309056

With some of the Social Networks like Facebook and Care2, you can also create groups. Groups and Causes are theme centered pages which you can use to promote your message, share news and events with your community and start conversations, all in one place.

With these sites you can create your own network and community. You can invite others, and add tons of 3rd party widgets that allow you to easily add useful functions like embedded video of missing persons, scrolling missing persons feeds , missing persons news and more. You can also build a Squidoo Lens and promote it within your other social networks. It’s very easy, and they come out in the search results.

These are professional networking sites. Plaxo has an online contact management feature which is very handy to share information and links with your connections. Linkedin allows you to ask questions from professionals in any industry. You can ask questions to professionals in Non Profit sector or Marketing sector for ideas to get your message out. You would be surprised at how many useful answers you will get.

http://friendfeed.com/

Friendfeed is an content aggregator and lifestreaming site. It gathers content from most of the top social networks and displays in one convenient location where users can interact with it.

Helpful info/tutorials about Friendfeed

Using Social News Websites to Find Missing Persons

Below are some Social News sites. You can register for a free account and submit articles about your missing loved one. If you are just getting started, I highly suggest you take some time to look around the site and get to know how it works before you start submitting articles. Interact and socialize with others by commenting relevant and quality submissions. This is how you make friends and encourage conversations. However, submitting your own articles is not a good idea as they may get voted down or get you banned from the site.

Using Video Sharing Websites to Find Missing Persons

Video sharing sites assist in creating awareness and buzz around your message. A tangible, visual/audio representation of your cause, and people love to see video. Register for a free account and you’re all set to upload videos.You can use videos to create pleas for help in finding your missing loved one, put out videos or slide-shows memorializing your missing loved ones, announcing any rewards or important information regarding the missing persons case. The important thing is to get your loved ones videos in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Once you upload the videos, it becomes very easy to embed the video on your blog, or to share the video across the myriad of social media sites like Facebook and Stumbleupon. Videos are also very effectively included in Press releases and Social Media releases.

http://www.youtube.com/

http://vimeo.com/

Using Online Picture Sharing Sites to Help Find Missing Persons

Online Picture Sites are also a very effective way of getting your missing loved ones face and information out. There are several very good Missing Persons groups on Flickr, which allow you to upload pictures of your loved one, flyers, pictures of events, etc. Always make sure to include relevant information in the title, description and tags of each photo i.e. missing persons name, and variations of their name. remember someone might search for a different spelling , and never find you because your information never came up.

Using Online Microblogging Sites Like Twitter to Help Find Missing Persons

Microblogging sites are very helpful. You can update your status as much as you’d like with info about your missing loved one. These sites are a wonderful place to network, make friends with like minded interests and get the word out. Remember, the more you network and interact, the more likely you are to make friends. The more friends you make, the bigger your army is to help find your missing loved one. As with the other sites, there is a social etiquette involved in your interactions with others, start by making friends at a reasonable rate, interact and create awareness about your cause. A good place to start is to follow with the @MissingChildren and @Yogini.

Examples of active Missing Persons related social media sites

(Consider joining these if you have a missing loved one and need help!)

Resources

Some of these organizations can be of tremendous help. Most of them list missing persons on their website/blog.

National Center for Missing Adults - Listing of officially reported missing persons

http://www.theyaremissed.org/ncma/index.php

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children- Listing of officially reported missing child

http://www.missingkids.com/

FDLE- Lists missing children/persons from Florida done through law enforcement

http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/

North America Missing Persons Bureau - Listing of officially reported missing persons

http://nampb.7p.com/

Listing of officially reported missing persons

http://www.mispers.com/

Listings for missing persons who are US military veterans.

http://members.aol.com/veterans/warlib15.htm

Help Find the Missing - Listing of officially reported missing persons.

http://www.helpfindthemissing.org/missing_database/

The Outpost For Hope - Listing of unreported missing persons

http://www.outpostforhope.org/

America’s Most Wanted

http://www.amw.com/index.cfm?home=1

The Charley Project - Listing cold cases of missing persons

http://www.charleyproject.org/index.html

Polly Klaas Foundation - Missing child recovery

http://www.pollyklaas.org/missing/index.htm

Project Jason - Support for Families of the missing

http://www.projectjason.org/index.htm

CUE Center for Missing Persons - Great resource for families of the missing

http://www.ncmissingpersons.org/

Texas Equusearch- Search & Rescue Team

http://www.texasequusearch.org/index.html

Carole Sund Foundation - Reward money

http://www.carolesundfoundation.com/

Submit a missing person to Homeless Nation

http://homelessnation.org/en/node/add/missing-person

Justice Interrupted - Advocacy

http://justiceinterrupted.blogspot.com/

War on Crime - Advocacy

http://thewaroncrime.blogspot.com/

Kid Finders Network - Mobile billboards

http://www.kidfindersnetwork.com/

Search for Unidentified Persons

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System

http://www.namus.gov/

The Doe Network - International Center for Unidentified & Missing Persons

http://www.doenetwork.org/

Unidentified Decedent Reporting System

https://identifyus.org/

National Next Of Kin Registry

http://pleasenotifyme.org/

Online Classified Ads

http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites

http://www.backpage.com/classifieds/index

You can create a free milk carton for your missing person. Here’s an example:

http://mymilkcarton.org/home.php/2008/09/01/lucely-lilly-aramburo

Missing Person/Crime Forums

Forums are a fantastic place to not only generate awareness within Missing Persons communities, but also to network with other like minded individuals who are going through the same Missing persons ordeal. An additional added value is embedding a link in your forum signatures to your main blog. Make sure you include the name of your missing relative in the link. This will help your rankings in Google and other search engines.

http://p208.ezboard.com/bicaremissingpersonscoldcases

http://websleuths.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=21

http://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=40

http://www.projectjason.org/forums/index.php?topic=1121.0

Local Forums

http://www.city-data.com/forum/miami/index37.html

http://www.topix.net/

Create a Blog

http://www.blogger.com/ (very good for beginners - easy to use)

http://wordpress.com/

http://www.livejournal.com/

http://www.tumblr.com/

Google Alerts

Sign up for Google Alerts - email updates of the latest Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. You can set up an alert of the persons name and relevant info.

http://www.google.com/alerts

Social Bookmarking

Bookmarks allow you to save your favorite sites and attach labels and annotations. Use bookmarking services to keep and store, organize and search your bookmarks. Bookmark everything that has to do with your loved one.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/firefox_start.php - Highly recommended!
http://delicious.com/
http://technorati.com/
http://google.com/notebook/

Hook up Google Reader to sign up for RSS feeds related to missing persons.

RSS is your friend. When used properly it will save you hours of time. The general idea is to subscribe to RSS feeds of Missing Persons related blogs, news and content. An easy way to do it, is by searching for terms within technorati or ice rocket and subscribing to them via Google Reader. This will provide real time updates to resources and information relevant to missing persons cause. Here are some How - to’s on using Google Reader.

Submit Press Release

Reference Information and Statistics about Missing Persons

Using DNA and other Resources to Identify Missing Persons

http://www.dna.gov/uses/identifying-persons/m_person/

About.com - Info & statistics about the missing

http://crime.about.com/od/missing/Missing_Children_and_Adults.htm

Examples of the Power of Social Media

Missing People Social Media Mashup with a Twist

http://makehope.typepad.com/behind_the_button/2008/02/missing-childr.html

Twitter save Lives

http://blog.perfectspace.com/2008/02/22/twitter-could-save-lives-of-children/

Social Meida Primer

http://www.briansolis.com/2008/02/definitive-guide-to-social-media.html

Twitter and Missing Children

http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/02/twitter-and-mis.html

Communication the key to connect missing persons

http://www.missingpersons.gov.au/media-release/080804/

YouTube as a Crime Solving Tool

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/24338

Family and friends turn to social networking site to solve crime

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2008/06/20/2280727.htm

Social Media Primers

How To Get Started In Social Media

http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/how-to-get-started-in-social-media/

Social Media Video - Social Media Networking in Plain English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc

It is my sincere wish that this be able to help someone find their missing loved on. If this was useful, please let me know. I would love to hear from you.

Want to reprint this post? Feel free to reprint headlines and excerpts with a link back to the post’s permalink. To reprint the entire post, contact me first.

{ 6 comments }

Everything you need to know about Facebook Connect

by Steaprok on August 25, 2008

On July 23, 2008 right after the f8 Developer Conference in San Francisco, Ca. Facebook opened up its Facebook Connect program. Initially it is launching with 24 Partners including Digg, Hulu, Six Apart, CBS, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney/ABC, Seesmic and Vimeo. A notable statistic is that 33% of the initial partners are from the Online Video space.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, the 24 year old CEO and founder of Facebook, “Facebook Connect is the next evolution of the Facebook Platform — enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook into your own website“. In addition Dave Morin emphasized these 4 points on the Facebook Developer Blog describing Facebook Connect.

Trusted Authentication
Users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity
Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access
Users count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites. Developers will even be able to dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy
As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.

What does Facebook Connect do?

Facebook Connect allows users to connect their Facebook account and data with any site on the web. It also lets Facebook users find existing friends that also use a Facebook Connect website, allowing them to share information and actions with their Facebook network.

Users can also publish information to Facebook based on the actions they perform while visiting a Facebook Connect site. For example, when a user takes an action like purchasing or reviewing a product, or posting content (Videos, Testimonials, Pictures) on your site, it generates a News Feed story on the user’s Facebook profile. Consequently, allowing for distribution of your products and content across the users Facebook network. You can also have the user add an application tab or box to their profile, listing their recent activity on the Facebook Connect site, or incorporating Facebook social context like user’s name, profile picture and/or their Facebook status, with their user experience on your site.

In addition, when a user visits a Facebook Connect site, it allows them to see what their connected friends are doing on your site by dynamically displaying which of your site visitors are already connected on Facebook and which friends already have accounts on the site

Ben Ling of Facebook gave this example “If I link my Facebook identity to my Yelp identity, I’ll be able to port over my profile, my content, my reviews. Also, I’ll be able to see if any my Facebook friends are also members of Yelp — and be able to automatically have our friendships authenticated and visible on Yelp.” http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2008/05/facebook-connec.html

Here is a live demo of a Facebook Connect site which provides a look at the various elements at work: http://www.somethingtoputhere.com/therunaround/

How does Facebook Connect work?

There are two ways for a user to connect their account on your site with their account on Facebook.

First being when the user logs in to Facebook from a website, and the second is by accepting a Facebook Connect request on Facebook from another friend who has already connected their account on a website with their Facebook account.

Facebook Connect works on the Facebook Platform. It allows you to incorporate the REST API and FQL, onto any website, also offering new technology like XFBML and Friend Linking.

To get started developing some test Apps and Facebook Connect applications check out this link, it shows you how to add Facebook connect to your site with 3 tutorials that vary in degree of difficulty implementation and in integration points. http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Trying_Out_Facebook_Connect

A big plus for Facebook Connect integration, is that there is no need to build a complete Facebook application. You simply need to get a basic application API Key and provide the callback and canvas page URLs).

How Facebook Connect interacts with the Facebook API. http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/How_Connect_Interacts_with_the_Facebook_API

How does Facebook plan on monetizing with Facebook

Connect?

Although Mark Zuckerburg said that Facebook isn’t currently focused on monetization and will be looking to extend their platform’s reach first. I think its obvious they are trying to monetize, and this is how.

By sending personal info on likes and dislikes, you are essentially telling Facebook a little more about you every time you connect via a Facebook Connect site. Now envision the deluge of personal data coming in from all of its Facebook Connect partners.

Each connection is a tiny bit of information you feed Facebook, along with your onsite Facebook activities this allows them to generate an overall picture of who you are, what you like and what might interest you. With all that personal information at their disposal, Facebook can monetize their platform quite quickly a la Google Adwords/Adsense.

What do I think about Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect is the higher reincarnation of Facebook Beacon program, the first, much maligned effort of Facebook to monetize its platform. Now the realquestion we need to ask ourselves is can Facebook Connect out maneuver MySpace, Google , Yahoo Open and all the other “ Open ID” type projects, to win the Data Portability Game and monetize its platform while they’re at it. Currently Facebook Connect is only available in Sandbox mode , which means you can develop and test integrations and apps, but cannot make them publicly available until Facebook announces Facebook Connect is ready for launch, which is supposed to happen in late summer 2008. Facebook Connect has a lot of potential. But it becomes a double edged sword for Facebook, In order to to please users and follow their privacy best practices, they have to get very stringent with who they allow into the Facebook Connect program, managing thousands of users personal info. And like when they And that is probably going to piss of some developers when they do.

Another interesting side note to this rivalry is that Facebook has banned Google Friend Connect from interacting with its data, since it violates their terms of service. This is what Facebook has to say:

“Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.” http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=111

Acording to Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft Corporation,

“The real reason that Facebook is banning Google is that “ Friend Connect works by developing an OpenSocial wrapper over the Facebook API, which exposes it to other web sites as widgets and to OpenSocial gadget developers via APIs. Thus Google is pretty much proxying the Facebook social graph to other sites and developers which takes control of safeguarding/policing access to this user data out of Facebook’s hands.”

I totally agree!

What can go wrong with Facebook Connect?

Enough Said!

Below is a video screen capture of Facebook Connect in action. I will be updating with a better video soon!

Resources:

Facebook connect FAQ

Anatomy of Facebook connect

Facebook Connect on Giga Om

Facebook Connect on Forrester

Facebook Connect, Friend Connect and Open Social Comparison

Official Facebook Connect Site

Facebook Connect API

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Friendfeed “rooms”: Big Circle Jerk or Useful Feature?

by Steaprok on May 23, 2008

Yesterday friendfeed launched it’s ‘rooms’ feature. The “who’s who” of the Social Media crowd were there rubbing virtual elbows and commenting back and forth on each others “shares“. In fact, the first Social Media room was created by Muhammad Saleem within hours of the launch.

The rooms are very easy to set up. Just click the ‘rooms’ tab on the top right of the friendfeed page. A useful option is the ability to make the ‘room’ either private or public. I think it has great potential as a collaboration or Brainstorming tool. It’s also fairly easy to invite current friendfeed users, or contacts from other services. The Bookmarklet also makes it very easy to share valuable content within your groups or your main friendfeed.

The basic idea behind friendfeed ‘rooms’ is to set up ‘mini feeds’ of contextually relevant information which encourage interaction between the ‘room’ members. Allowing other like minded members to comment and share as well. I believe the intention is to create “mini micro blogging communities”, but this quickly becomes like being stuck in a tiny elevator with 50 people talking across and over each other. Just as with friendfeed, ‘rooms’ need filters or some other method of information management.

I really like the concept behind friendfeed. Although sometimes, it’s a bit like a time draining event horizon. I have found A LOT of great articles, videos, photos, posts and people. The thing is, it’s too noisy. The information comes very rapidly, too rapidly to manage.

Social Aggregators are still in their infancy, and I’m sure, with time we will find many more uses for them. Until then, it remains one big clusterfuck of social media circle jerk.

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5 Reasons I’m making the switch to Flock, and so should you

by Steaprok on April 14, 2008

I have been using FireFox exclusively for 4+years. I love everything about FireFox, the add-on’s, the themes and definitely the versatility. A year ago, I started playing around with the new Mozilla based social browser called Flock. Several versions later, I think I’m ready to make the switch to full time use of Flock for all social media related web browsing. Here is why I think you should to.

1) Built in Media Sharing

Flock has built in support for Photobucket, Flickr, Facebook, Piczo, Picasa, YouTube and more.
That makes it really, really easy to share everything from pictures to videos to links to text. Just Drag and Drop from the Media Bar or right-click to send to email or to a blog.
You can even carry photos, videos and text, wherever you go online, right on the Media Bar or on the Web Clipboard. This feature alone saves me so much time, allowing me to drag and drop media at will, making working online much easier. Another very cool feature is “Media Streams”, if you find someone who has media you like online - Just click on the the small star next to “Media Streams” to subscribe. You will then be notified every time they upload new media across various social sites like Flickr, Facebook, Youtube and others. You can also search photos and videos on Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Truveo or YouTube right from within Flock UI. Just click the arrow to scroll across the various search results across the Media Bar, without it affecting your tabs.

2) Built in Social Networking

Flock has built in support for LiveJournal, MySpace, FaceBook, Blogger, Delicious, Twitter and more. Once you configure ALL your social Network accounts, Flock automatically populates your People Bar with all your friends. This makes it a cinch to receive and share media with friends across various social networks. You can also drag and drop photos, videos and text from the web or the Media Bar to share with your friends in the sidebar. Flock will also notify you when any of your friends upload new media with an orange Media icon next to their profile on the People Sidebar. All you have to do is click on the logo, and the new media will automatically be loaded into the Media Bar or Web Clipboard.

3) Built In Blogging Support

Flock has a One Click built in blog post editor. You can drag and drop pictures, videos and text right onto it, and start editing your post within Flock. This is a feature I LOVE! The blog editor allows you to post to multiple blogs across multiple platforms, including self hosted blogs.The Flock blog editor has all the standard features of other popular free blog editors. Below are some of the blogging platforms supported by Flock.

Blogger
Blogsome
LiveJournal
Typepad
Wordpress
Xanga
Self Hosted Blogs
ATOM
MetaWeblog
Moveable Type

4) Built in RSS reader

Flock has a handy built in RSS reader right on the sidebar of the UI. It also has automatic RSS feed detection and a one click subscription button. If the site has a feed, Flock will tell you by highlighting the RSS button. The built in RSS reader works great to organize and share your feeds, just email to friend or blog it with just one click. As of today, I have not imported the mother-load of feeds to my Flock browser. I will do a follow up post, and let everyone know how that works out.

5) Enhanced Search and Bookmarking Functions

Flock has built-in one click search and bookmarking enhancements, which makes it simple to add, edit and manage favorites and bookmarks. Just click on the orange star on the UI to bring up the Favorites and Bookmarks Side Bar and categorize the current site.Click on the star twice to edit Favorites and Bookmarks It also has a great folders feature for categorization. Tags can also be used to find or organize sites with similar characteristics or in similar groupings. Another VERY helpful feature is the Live search results from various sources.
Live results are generated as you type from: Amazon, Craigslist, eBay , Favorites, Technorati, Wiki, Wink People, Yahoo, Ask, Google.

Since Flock is based on Mozilla/FireFox, it is compatible with most of the important add-ons and plugins. So far I have installed and tested the following Add-ons: Stumbleupon, Mixx Bookmarklet, GBookmarks and several others. For a full list visit this link:
To give Flock a try download here:

Disclaimer: Yes, I like Flick this much. I have no incentive or motive, other than wanting to share it with others.

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Twitter as a real time newswire?

by Steaprok on April 9, 2008

Today as the Olympic Torch drama was unfolding in San Fransisco, CA many of those who are passionate about Tibetan human rights issues, but not internet savvy, had to wait for reports on CNN, MSNBC or even worse the local news to be informed.

Others, with a bit more internet prowess, accessed the information via AP , Google News, You Tube or other forms of RSS feeds. But those of us active in the Twittersphere, were receiving updates in real time. Thanks to LaunghingSquid, we had not only Twitter updates, but also videos and pictures

It’s no wonder print is on that horrible decline. With information exchanging at this rabid pace, who the hell is willing to wait a whole day for news? I mean don’t get me wrong, I love to chill on Sundays with my coffee and my NYT. (Yes , I roll like that).

Check out some of the Tweets, Videos and Photos here

http://twitter.com/laughingsquid

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/sets/72157604458841560

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Proof that the Goverment is manipulating and watching user behavior in the Online Social Media Space!

by steaprok on November 20, 2007

“Watch out Uncle Spam is watching what your up to on Social Media!”

Check out this PowerPoint presentation I found on Google. It is entitled - Social Media -2007 Web Managers Workshop- by: The World Bank-US Government

It was presented to conference of Government webmasters and IT professionals earlier this year.

The presentation starts off friendly enough: “To encourage All Govt. Staff to use RSS readers to more easily monitor Government Properties online.”

Then it starts taking a darker turn when the Government starts to express how very scared they really are of the power of social media. So scared in fact , that they are providing their employees with tips on Social Media Optimization or better said Social Media Manipulation. How to’s on inserting themselves into the social “conversation” to manipulate and drown out any content they deem inappropriate. I believe they are walking a very fine line by encouraging employees to consciously and artificially drown the social space with propaganda. And they should be put on blast on all Social Media spaces to make sure to out the Government moles placed there solely to bury content or vote down videos on Youtube.

According the The World Bank and US Government Presentation :

“A Successful Social Conversation is:

· Authenticity

· Passion

· Trusting Staff ( Accidental Spokesperson)

· Putting Spin on Hold ”

· Putting Spin on Hold???, WTF, Is this one of the rules or pillars I missed?

And the presentation even goes on to encourage Government employees to submit videos to YouTube, and edit Wikipedia. Yes that’s right you read that right , the presentation put together by the Govt. and World Bank , encourages its employees to post videos to YouTube and edit Wikipedia on Govt. and taxpayer time. I’m damm sure they are not going to post anti government messages. (Remember the article where the Govt. was outed for editing wiki?) I mean for a corporation to do this, even though its a bit slimy I can deal, but for the Government to instruct its webmasters to purposely subvert the will of the people in the social space is BULLSHIT!

I mean shit, here it is, plain as day, the government sanctioning the manipulation of OUR social space.

Now, some might think it a leap to go from encouraging edits on Wiki to sanctioning manipulation.

Well I am one of the ones that say no its is not such a big leap, because how many of you think these Govt. employees are going to go back and post videos on the casualties of war in Iraq, or documentaries about the suicide rate of Iraq veterans when back home(which happens to be about 80-120 /week), or submit an article to Digg about how General Patrues and the surge are working out dandy. No, they are going to post videos purposely designed and fabricated to drown out the other videos, posts and content the administration doesn’t like.

They are going to post Pro Government propaganda and pollute our bandwidth with the worst kind of spam, Government Spam!

I mean the presentation even highlights how the social media apace is causing them to lose control of their image. (See slide 21)

It’s not like I didn’t know that Big Brother was watching us, but I just gives me such an icky feeling to read it and see it detailed like this.

Also pay close attention to the slides detailing where the government employees should go to monitor the opinions, posts, videos, podcasts, and profiles related to this administration and The World Bank.

Technoratti, Google Blog, Delicous, Wiki, etc….

Look familiar, yes I’m there everyday, for hours sometimes. If this PPT is available publicly, imagine what’s being done covertly to track and subvert anti government posts, videos, etc. And what’s being done to gather and monitor those found to be associated with anything even remotely anti government or against the grain of their message.

Look at slide # 23- 29 it upset them just to have the holes in Paul Wolfowitz socks written about. So imagine what levels they are willing to go to artificially insert them selves into our social space to drown out more serious messages about the statistics and reports our Government is not telling us about. What this presentation is purporting they do, goes at the very core of the beauty of the social space. This is the worst kind of Spam, Uncle Spam!!

URL’s to Presentation:

Your document is publicly viewable at: http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dqs5h9k_104dk9gcn

Or Check out where I found it.

www.usa.gov/webcontent/documents/Social_media_government_web_managers.ppt

Here is another presentation as well which has some interesting .gov link stats, and discusses Social Media, but not as dark and Orwellian as the previous. This one is focusing more on how the Govt. wants to use Social Media and the web to deliver personalized content.

usaservices.gov/ppts/BevFeb2007.ppt

If you want to try and cool experiment , go to Google, limit your search to file type ppt, and search for a subject. You’ll be astonished by what you find sometimes. And they same goes with other file types.

I guess someone should have told the webmaster of USA.Gov to use disallow if he didn’t want Google to crawl it!!

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