Status update

Hi all,

The Social Gnome has been awfully un-social over the last few weeks, mostly due to the fact that I have a new job that has taken up a lot of my time.

As of the start of May 2014 I am now the Chief Communications Officer for Sundaya, a solar energy company based out of Jakarta Indonesia.

The job opened up a lot of opportunities for me; not only am I in charged of setting up a whole new communications strategy for a emerging company, I also get to combine that with a passion for clean energy.

I get to do what I love, and I get to help the planet (which I also love) - one small step at a time :).

Part of the reason for why I accepted the new job was that I believe the technology to be good enough now to actually support a new for of communication when it comes to clean energy and solar. Up until recently the talk has been mostly that fossil fuels are killing the planet, and if you dont get of the fossil train, you (by association) are also killing the planet. I never responded well to that type of "threat communication" and never really understood why that seemed to be the bulk of everything pro clean energy.

Now we have gotten to the point where solar cells, and battery packs, are actually good enough to cover most of our everyday energy needs. It is no longer a stretch to use solar - you no longer have to give up any standard comforts - but you can rather easily make the switch, at least for some of the minor products (charging phones and computers for example).

For these reasons I am very excited to work for Sundaya, and I invite you all to follow our Facebook pages and our blog (both run by yours truly).

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sundayainternational
Blog: http://sundaya.com/blogroll/

Today we have published an interesting article on the blog about Light up Somalia, a project bringing light and jobs to the rural parts of Somalia using Sundaya products. Check it out!

Selfie Ban sinks Gym Chain

Earlier this week, Swedish new radio P3 News, reported that gym chain Friskis & Svettis introduced a "selfie ban" in the changing rooms at their gym in Stockholm . 

The decision came about because people were taking pictures and publishing in social networks, and other folks who were unfortunately unclothed in the background then inadvertently ended up on the picture online. To protect involuntary models from accidentally ending up on photos in social media so the chain has now introduced a policy prohibiting any photography from the the locker rooms. 

Problems arose however when the headliner at P3 News published the title "Selfies banned from Friskis & Svettis" which of course is not true. It is still allowed to take photos at the gym, just not in the locker room .

The news spread quickly on Twitter, and other news agenvies picked it up and ran the same error in the title. Even though the article itself set everything straight in the body, all to many people decided to just share and retweet the erroneous headline. The pictures below are from Swedens major news agencies; P3 News , DN, Metro and SVT.

Friskis & Svettis now have a small crisis on their throats, something they need to handle and explain quickly. I have already seen customers who want to refund their entire memberships just because they believe that the ban is just crazy. I myslef understand them, however I also wished they would have read the entire story, because I also understand and agree with Friskis & Svettis. 

When you see how fast a headline escalates in the media, and especially in social media, even though it is completely faulty and disproven in the article itself, it goes to show how damaging an uncontrolled spread like this really can be. I dont know how much revenue Friskis & Svettis has lost over this, but my guess is that it sure have dented their results, at least in their customer service department. 

As of right now Friskis & Svettis has yet to issue an explanation. 

Want Personal Data? Go Phish!

At least 2 million people received the email May 16 2013 notifying them that an order they had just made on "Wallmart's" website was being processed, though none of them had done any such thing.

Still, thousands of people clicked on the link in the email, taking many of them to a harmless Google search results page for "Walmart." Others weren't so fortunate.

The link led to the invisible download of malware that covertly infected their personal computers, turning them into remotely controlled robots for hackers.

Phishing, also known as “brand spoofing” or “carding”, is a term used to describe various scams that use (primarily) fraudulent e-mail messages, sent by criminals, to trick you into divulging personal information. The criminals use this information to steal your identity, rob your bank account, or take over your computer.

With spear-phishing they use social engineering – researching social media and other publicly available online sources – to profile high value targets and personalize bogus emails. Broader phishing campaigns may engage partners in crime to conduct high volume mailings, but very realistic looking emails will invariably hook a significant number of users who will download a malformed spreadsheet or click on a link to a fraudulent website.

Make no mistake, phishing and spear-phishing works. RSA recently reported that in 2013 there were nearly 450,000 phishing attacks and estimated losses of over $5.9 billion.

Even before phishing became so prevalent, legitimate businesses and financial institutions would hardly ever ask for personal information via e-mail. If you receive such a request, call the organization and ask if it's legitimate or check its legitimate Web site. Look for misspellings and bad grammar. While an occasional typo can slip by any organization, more than one is a tip-off to beware.

In the fake-Wal-Mart attack, people missed clear warning signs — such as the company name being misspelled and the sender's address being very long and strange.

The success of phishing is largely determined by the low levels of user-awareness regarding how the companies which fraudsters try to imitate, operate. Many legitimate sites contain special warnings saying that they never ask users to send confidential data in messages. However, users continue to send their passwords to phishers.

Phishing is a modern hydra, cut of one head and two more grows out. The only way to actually combat phishing is with awareness and to starve it out. I personally think this is a result of the young age of the Internet; people are simply not accustomed to online scammers the same way we are local market hustlers. In a few years phishing and scamming will probably have malnourished itself out of existence, but until then we all need to be aware. 

Please don't feed the phish. 

Facebook buys WhatsApp

Social network giant Facebook grows by acquiring Whats App, a messaging service for smartphones with 450 million users. The purchase price is set to $19 billion. Approximately $4 billion paid in cash, the rest is to be paid in Facebook shares.

WhatsApps founder Jan Koum will thus become a major shareholder in Facebook. He will also take place in the social network's board of directors.

Facebook have likely made the acquisition because they lack an operating system of its own, such as Google's Android or Apple's iOS. With its own operating system, Facebook can now pre-install apps, and programs and by doing so bring up the use of its own products.

Facebooks previous attempts to market it 's own user OS Home, which could be installed to Android, fell flat and become a flop. Facebook is now seemingly trying to redeem this venture.

After the announcement Facebook 's stock fell 4.4 percent, signaling that the market apparently doesn't share Zuckerberg's interest in WhatsApp. 

Marketing Technology Landscape Rewritten (again)

Scott Brinker at the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog recently released an updated version of the widely circulated landscape of Marketing Technology. The 2014 version has a few updates but also plenty of omissions. 

It comes with one main caveat: this graphic is not comprehensive. It is just a sample, albeit a large one, of the many different kinds of software available to marketers today. There are many more companies — indeed, entire categories — that were not included, merely due to the constraints of time and space.

And by the time you read this, it will inevitably be out of date due to new launches, re-launches, expansions, exits, and mergers. The pace of change in this field is breathtaking.

Click the image for a larger pic.

What are you Whispering?

Social networks expose us. They attach our names to our every photo and written thought. And we seem to kind of like it that way. We can't get enough of tooting our own horns.

Or can we?

There's a new social network in town that promises something the Facebooks and Twitters of the world cannot: anonymity. Whisper is "a FREE, anonymous social platform for people who want to creatively share and connect with others over experiences, feelings, thoughts and dreams that they can't communicate anywhere else," according to a press release from the company.

The site allows users to post 'secrets' or thoughts anonymously, through the use of pictures with bold eye-catching quotes at the top, much like internet 'memes' – which are described as units for carrying cultural symbols or ideas that virally spread across the internet. So, people can "heart" and reply to your posts with their own stylized messages.

The sentiment on Whisper is serious and thought provoking, and the content is often the kind of thing individuals would not want to shout about in public. The look is similar to the long-running PostSecret website, but Whisper has features which make it more of a social network.

Whisper has 4 million devoted users — the average user opens the app eight times each day. In its two year history, the app has received 2.8 billion page views. Each day, hundreds of thousands of whispers are uploaded each day, which are filtered by a team of 70 full-time moderators located in Manila.

Although a deep secret written in a funky font over a provocative picture hardly classifies as a "whispering," there is something very provocative about being able to say what you feel without fear of judgment or scrutiny from your friends or family. Is this the next artsy step up from SnapChat or just another way of sending dirty pictures over the Internet? And this time to anyone and everyone.

Is this your new social network? Are you already on it? Comment below…

Firebird TWTR

I wrote yesterday about the introduction of Twitter to the New Your Stock Exchange. Now 24 hours later, the results are astonishing!

A strong pressure to buy was probably the greatest factor, throttling the rate to $45 at closing compared to an introductory price of $26 - an increase of amazing 73%. Considering how most companies pop the bubbles if they break even on their first day of launch, this cannot be called anything but a huge victory for Twitter.

Twitter released 70 million shares at the IPO and, in case of oversubscription, an additional 10,5 million shares where going to be released. The shares were oversubscribed 30 times, which testifies to a colossal interest, and the price for the stock followed suit. At its peak, the stock price reached $50.

So how will Twitter fair in the future on the stock market? I think the first couple of months will now be wobbly. This in an uncertainty that has many factors, but I think the best one is reflected in the analysts' price targets that were ranging between $29 and $54. What this tells us is that the market has a extremely hard time valuing Twitters assets, and thereby also its market potential.

Twitter has 230 million users, including celebrities, politicians and journalists, and this is the main reason why investors are enthusiastic about the company. But Twitter has also never shown a profit, and how they are going to turn this around is still an unanswered question. The injection of money that Twitter now gets from the stock introduction is well needed, but without a solid plan ahead this is just a time saver.

Launching TWTR on a Thursday is also controversial; today is Friday, and the markets will now close for two days, possibly cooling what could have been a further increase. A lot of the initial 73% is a inflated value, and it will drop within the upcoming week, but giving it a few more days would have created a greater buffer softening the drop. Investors will now have two days to go home and rethink their decision to buy, and if there is something that is ALWAYS bad for stock prices it is investors rethinking.

Twitter's new business plan will most likely include an increase in ad, and sponsored tweets. When Facebook released its similar to the public, there was an outraged. People were arguing that Facebook would be too commercialized, however having lived with the ads for quite some time now, I cannot really say I notice them. Neither does the rest of the users (it would seem) since we are not hearing any complains, and the user count hasn't dropped either.

My take on this is that TWTR will flatten out during next week, and then drop some leading in the two weeks that follows. By the start of December, Twitter will most likely release a X-mas campaign, again sparking interest and the stock is going to go up. This is also the time to get on the wagon. TWTR will by then have found its place in the market, Twitter will have released their long-term plans for the company, and X-mas sales will fuel the increase!

Mark Dec 2 for acquiring TWTR!

Enter TWTR

The big new of the day is without a doubt the addition of yet another social media company on the New York Stock Exchange.

Following in the footsteps of big brother Facebook, and the more conservative cousin LinkedIn, Twitter is now making its trading debut. Pricing the shares at $26 on Wednesday, the total company would value the at around $14 billion - a fraction of Facebook's 122 billion.

A more relevant comparison would then be LinkedIn, which was listed on the NYSE in 2011. The stock
was priced at $45 on its initial public offering, but then roared out of the gates rising as much as 171 percent in their first day of trade on the New York Stock Exchange, and closed at $94.25, a total increase of more than 109 percent. The stock has since risen even more, valued today at $25 billion. 

A significant difference exists, however: while LinkedIn earned $ 3.7 million during the last quarter, Twitter has still some way to go to show a profit. For the year 2012 Twitter had a total revenue of $317 million, but still reported a net loss of $79 million. 

However, a lot of Twitter's attraction lies in the appeal of some of its users, rather than in its accounts. Every seems to be tweeting; form politicians and opinion leader, including President Obama, the Dalai Lama, the Pope Francis, a number of Nobel Prize winners to each celebrity with self esteem, keeps an active Twitter Account. Twitter is today a place for any exchange of opinion, both comical as controversial. 

For Twitters experts are predicting that the company's total revenue may increase to reach $620 million already this year. Operating profit is predicted to be $ 40 million, according to USA Today. The listing also adds a well needed $1.7 billion to Twitter's own financing. 

The real question of whether the listing will be profitable or not ties into what Twitter will do next to generate money. Is has speculated that mid-tweet ads are the future here. The fact that Twitter's core business is ads, means there's potential for Twitter to help marketers sell stuff, not just when users shop online or in stores after leaving Twitter, but right in the moment, within Twitter.com or a Twitter mobile app. Twitter has made it public that it sees huge potential here. In August they hired former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard as its first-ever head of commerce.

So, how would Twitter commerce work? Twitter could use information about users' location and interests to offer products or deals. Eventually we can expect Twitter to allow users to link a credit card to their account for one-click purchases within Twitter. Twitter could also partner with the likes of eBay, Amazon or Etsy to link accounts, so users could make a purchase without inputting credit card information.

So, in or out? My best best is to get in as early as possible. By all accounts it seems as the stock is undervalued, and missing the train now may mean that you cant get on it at all later. 

What do you think of the Twitter stock? Leave your comments below.

WeChat overtaking Facebook?

What is WeChat?

Reading the first news of this social challenger giving Facebook a run for its users, your first question will probably be; What is WeChat? And why haven't I heard of it before?

We know it's not Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. In fact, it’s a company that most people in the west never heard of. WeChat is a smartphone app, developed by Tencent in China, to send voice messages, snapshots and emoticons to friends.

Something that is already done by most smart phone, you might say, but that has not stopped the app from gaining massive ground.

WeChat's popularity has grown dramatically since its launch in 2011. Tencent announced in September 2012 that its users had increased about to 200 million. The vast majority are in China, though WeChat has since been launched across Asia, and have already established subscribers in both the US and the UK.

So what are is Tencent doing to sail past Facebook? First, it has managed to differentiate its product with some killer features that keep users coming back for more. On the messaging side, users can “hold-to-talk” and send free walkie-talkie style messages that bypass the need for voicemail. Yet what keeps its network growing are fun discovery features that can connect users locally and across continents.

WeChat has neatly fused together the open approach of social networks such as Twitter, where anyone can follow anybody, and more closed networks such as Facebook, which rely on mutual friend connections. Another neat option with WeChat is the ability to talk to any WeChatter around the world by simply shaking the phone. The app will then connect to another user also shaking their phone at the exact moment. That feature alone is enough for me to want to try it.

So will this knock of Facebook as the prime social network of choice? Mobile use is up, and by 2014 more people will connect to the Internet from their phones, than from desktops. Also, China is on a broad technological advancement, which surly affects the development of social technology. 

However WeChat will overtake Facebook is to early to tell, but it is clear to me that Facebook needs to react. Othewise the king just might fall.

X-stagram

In a funny twist of the geekier kind the first teaser for the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past was released yesterday. But before you start searching YouTube just yet, there is a twist to this; the video is (as of yet anyhow) still only available on Instagram. Close to 6 700 people have so far liked it, and it is spreading like wild fire.

Now why would 20th Century Fox decide to do this? My theory is as follows; more and more users today are accessing the Internet through mobile devices, actually is is pretty close to matching the regular desktop connections. With the young audience this is definitely true, where the smart phone is currently their number one source for Internet access.

Realizing this, 20th Century Fox looked at the different apps out there for making videos viral and found Instagram spearheading this specific task, something that is spot on. While YouTube do have an app, it is not nearly as simple or intuitive as Instagram when it comes to spreading and making videos viral.

The trailer will most likely make it on to YouTube and other video sharing sites soon (eat it Vine), but for now the only way to enjoy this teaser is on Instagram. Like it, share it, love it!

Are you popular? Do you think?

You're the least popular among your gang on friends. You are, its true, it has even been proven.

Don’t believe it? Consider this: the average Facebook user has 245 friends, but the average friend on Facebook has 359 friends. That’s right. The average person on Facebook has fewer friends than their friends do, a phenomenon commonly known as the “Friendship Paradox”. It may be seem to odd to be true, but it is - for nearly everyone.

The friendship paradox as a phenomenon was first observed by the sociologist Scott L. Feld in 1991. One way to think about this is to remember when you first joined Facebook. When you first created a profile, you started out with 0 friends. The quickest way to get friends was to add people who were already on Facebook. And since these people were already using Facebook, they already had a huge lead in friend count. And each time you added a friend, those people got to increase their friend count too! So clearly, it’s not that hard to see why your friends would have more friends than you when you first joined.

Of course, as you invite more friends and make contacts you can certainly overtake people in the friend count. The friendship paradox is not about the time you joined. It’s about this: on average, you will tend to add friends of people who are popular because it’s a social game. This is not a complete explanation but it should give you the idea of why this happens. And in the end, the average Facebook user ends up having fewer friends than their friends do.

Now lets do a practical example: Imagine that A and B are friends, B is friends with everyone, C is friends with B and D, and D is friends with B and C. A has just 1 friend, B has 3 friends, C and D each has 2 friends. Now we will count the friends of friends. A is friends with B who has 3 friends. B is friends with everyone, which makes for 5 friends of friends. Similarly we will find C and D each has 5 friends of friends. If we do some quick calculations we find that the average person A has 2 friends but the average friend of A has 2.25 friends. This is the friendship paradox!

A good example of this is Twitter; users on Twitter in general follow more people than they have followers them selves. This is because people are more likely to follow those who are popular than those who are not.

Thus, over 98% of Twitter users are subject to the friendship paradox. Or are just not popular. Either or. 

Login of Choice

It is almost universal now that we will be on a site wanting to comment on something and we are given the chance to login using our Facebook accounts. This avoids the need for creating a whole new account on this new website with all your details already stored. Well, many of us take that route and of course other social media sites have caught on and started to offer the same service.

Now that everyone else is in on the act Facebook is starting to lose its dominance as the Login site of choice with a very noticeable shift in the past year. Around this time last year Facebook accounted for 54% of the Login With activity, but just 12 months on that stat has dropped to 45%. This is a drop of almost 10% and it would appear that Google+ is the main site breathing down Facebook’s neck.

Google+ is the 2nd most popular site for Logging in with at 33% of the overall share at present. It would appear that Google+ picked up the vast majority of the 9% shift. However indicators do show that Google+ has stagnated a little over the past 3 months in terms of growth.

MaMaMarketing

A rapidly growing interest group among technology and social media today are women in the ages 30 and up. The next big thing within online marketing is (most likely according to trends) going to be an explosion within the older age groups (65+) using social media, and as a smaller introduction to this we are know seeing moms gathering their info online. 

Mom’s top two priorities are her relationship with her child and the quality of communications with her child. She values technology because it helps her with both of these priorities. Marketing strategies need to engage with the benefits mom gets from using technology (the benefits), rather than focusing exclusively on the features (the attributes) of the products.

Technology enables Mom in two ways:

1. It helps her communicate with her child, caregivers and significant others. As we all know, today’s technology allows for communicating in more ways than have been possible in the past—Skype, texting, Facebook, FaceTime, etc. Many moms feel that technology has allowed their family life to be as close or closer than their families were when they grew up themselves.
2. It helps her accomplish tasks more effectively, and makes her life easier. The iPhone’s turn-by-turn directions is a good example of this convenience, so Mom doesn’t have to locate directions before leaving her house.

Many moms also believe it is important for them to stay on top of technologies, both to communicate with their children in the way that is most effective, and as a tool to juggle their busy lives. Moms today are highly wired, using mobile and smart phones with texting and e-mail to communicate real-time information with their children and other caregiving adults. These technologies help moms navigate complicated family calendars with working parents, divorced parents, blended families and myriad extracurricular activities.

Marketing strategists need to keep in mind that Mom is tech-savvy, but she doesn’t necessarily care as much about tech specs or latest release schedules. She cares how technology can make life easier, improve communication quality and bring her family closer together.

goutube+

Like YouTube? Got Google+? If the answer to those questions is yes and no respectively then you have a slight problem. You see, the thing is that until recently, although it was convenient to have both a Google+ and YouTube account that are connected, it was not mandatory. However, now thanks to the new commenting system on YouTube you will now need a Google+ account.

Since its creation back in 2011 the social media arm of Google, Google+ has been steadily consolidating itself as vital to use other company products. It began when Google+ became essential to possess a Gmail account, then it unified Gchat with the social media site. Now obviously there are plenty of other E-mail providers out there and a whole host of messengers so there’s no big deal, you have options. However, how many other video sharing services match up to YouTube? Answer is simple, folks, let’s be honest there are none comparable. So, because you now will need a Google+ account to comment on YouTube videos you really have no other choice. You can of course still watch the videos but you just can’t have your say without a G+ account to do so from.

I have to say it’s a little bit unfair, but what the hell, you don’t have to actually use Google+, just sign up for an account. I have had mine for ages and really don’t use it for anything at all. It’s a small price to pay when you consider it to retain the ability to comment on YouTube videos. Remember, though, if you’re a complete jerkface, your comments will now be forced down the lists.

9/11 brand stress

Today marks one week since September 11 2013, and also one week and 12 years since the horrific terrorist attacks. Most of us would remember that day as a day of reflection and remembrance (perhaps you lost someone close) or just let it serve as a reminder of the small world world we now all collectively share. 

However some brands do not.

They see this day more as a opportunity to promote their cause and their brand, but needless to say this not an opportunity to market your business!

If you run a business, it’s tempting to use “current events and trends” to market your company. Everyone is talking about the power going out at the Super Bowl? Miley Cyrus twerking is going viral? You’ll look dumb, but feel free to share that pointless video of your employees twerking at a meeting! Now; It’s the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks? Well just… leave our thinking behind.

Here is a small collection of what the last week produced of people exploiting 9/11 to promote their brand:

I'm sure there's ways to promote your horses with out the Twin Tower sky line

(and potentially harming the animal).

AT&T is one of the worlds largest cellphone providers and should simply know better. 

Mr. Trump has always been known for having a great ego, but making peace over 9/11 is a bit much.

Charitability #1

Charitability #2

They couldn't have remembered with out promoting?

Speaking of remembering, remember how Kobe Bryant tied into 9/11? Neither do I...

Guest-lecturing at KTH

Today I will be guest-lecturing in Social Media Business at KTH. The lecture will be held in room D3 at 1 pm.

- drop by for an interesting look at how companies leverage social media to communicate with new and existing customers!

Iran becoming social ..?

At the risk of getting too political, this story is just too important to leave unmentioned. It has been the case for several years now that Iran has been a source of concern for the world at large under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was for so long a country shut off and secretive to the outside world and notably missing from the social media age. Currently, even under new President Hassan Rouhani, social media giant Facebook is still blocked from the populous of Iran but there are rumblings that this could soon change.

Apparently, even though Facebook is still banned from Iran’s internet services, there has been a recent influx of top ranking Iranian cabinet members to the site. Around 15 ministers have recently opened Facebook accounts as has in fact the President himself following his recent election victory and inauguration. The pages of these ministers can be viewed via the people of Iran via what is know as Proxy servers which are technically illegal in the country. Newspapers and the world at large are seeing this seemingly small move as a sign that the long closed of country of Iran is about to open up. This could create a great sigh of relief considering the nuclear posturing that became so much a way of life under Ahmadinejad.

Is this the new line for Iran? Leave your comment below!

Social Trends 2013

Social media networks were a novelty 5 years ago and today they are no longer debated around the dinner party table. Its old news, the conversation has moved on. Social media is not new, its the norm.

And with that norm comes expectations, development, and new trends. The Global Web Index recently compiled a study concerning the Social Stream of Q1 2013. Here are two key factors driving the social web in 2013:

• Mobile – with the number of people accessing the internet via a mobile phone increasing by 60.3% to 818.4 million in the last 2 years. 
• Older users adoption – On Twitter the 55-64 year age bracket is the fastest growing demographic with 79% growth rate since 2012. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook’s and Google+’s networks are the 45 to 54 year age bracket at 46% and 56% respectively.

It is clear that both the social platforms and the marketers that use them to engage consumers will need to adopt a mobile first strategy in future.

This brings with it significant opportunities for brands to leverage social, mobile, in-store, TV, outdoor, and print using creative, integrated campaigns and engagement strategies.

Ford Shows Social Humility

In end of March this year creative agency in India mocked up some ads featuring risque content and using Ford branding. The “rogue group” were attempting to have some fun and show off their creative talents. What they didn’t expect was the backlash. By using unauthorized Ford branding and putting these three ads online, the ad agency was opening themselves up to a full-on Global response from Ford. The ads went viral and began to spread across the web and controversy exploded.

The ad, in which former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi is shown with a bunch of gagged and crying women in the trunk of his car, was never meant to see the light of day and was made mostly as a spoof. However it somehow leaked to the Internet, and as we all know even though it never ran in paid media, once something's on the Internet, the damage has been done.
Scott Monty, Ford’s Global Head of Social Media, saw the article on Business Week right before boarding a plane in Europe. Their Asia-Pacific office was tasked with handling the fallout and subsequent buyer comments. Ford quickly issued an apology for the ad stating: 

“We deeply regret this incident and agree with our agency partners that it should have never happened. The posters are contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within Ford and our agency partners. Together with our partners, we are reviewing approval and oversight processes to help ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”

Thanks to a quick, honest and humble reaction Fords reputation was saved. Monty credits a well-integrated team and a globally coordinated effort paired with an excellent social media monitoring system for successfully staying in front of this potential crisis. For smaller companies, the lesson is to monitor your social media carefully and make sure you have a competent social media team involved before anything happens so you’re ready to handle it.

Hell Really is Other People

You know social media gives us an awful lot when it comes to staying connected. We can see things like where our friends are or have been recently on a host of platforms. This is, of course, all well and good but what if you have a lot of time-demanding friends you would just like a break from? It can so easily happen that you are out running errands and run into every damn person you know. This turns an hour of errands into several hours of catching up and blowing your free time with chit chat.

Well, as seems to be very normal these days, a university project may be the answer to ensuring a little alone time. While pursuing his Master’s degree in Telecommunications at NYU, Scott Garner conceived an idea for an app. This app is based on anti-social media rather that social because it was designed to help you avoid friends. Known as “Hell is Other People”, this app allows you to link up your FourSquare account. This will then tell you if your friends are or have recently been in a place that you plan to go. Using a simple color code system orange indicates places friends have checked in while green shows a safe area where you will likely not meet someone you know.

This really seems like an interesting concept because some days you just don’t want to be around other people. Garner, the app’s creator, admits freely that he is somewhat anti-social and that taking part in this project has helped him understand himself a great deal.