Just doing a small test of ScribeFire.

“The truth is, your brand is quite possibly “involved” in social media already.”

This statement is very very important and worth repeating. It’s why brands should be involved in social media even if they don’t initially see the intrinsic value. With any brand, the last thing you want to do is play “catch up” or caught needing to put out fires in a medium you’re unfamiliar.

Thinking about this more, the whole thing goes beyond brand management as a company - it goes much deeper. Social Media sites not only give a place to interact with people about the good and sharing what you like, but also talking about the bad, and possibly “venting” about your job. It may not even be you doing the venting, but it could affect your personal brand in the end.

Let’s go through a scenario. You work for a company that some employees have had reason (legitimately or not) to put some complaints online about said company. It may or may not be anonymous, but it relays various scathing statements about your company and several “managers.” (Typically the more anonymous, the more scathing to be sure.) You happen work for this company as a manager. Are you the one being discussed? Could the perception be that you’re one being discussed?

So now there’s a brand management issue for both the company and you. Can this commentary be easily pulled up in a Google search for the company’s name? What if a search for your company brings up the complaints before your company’s official website? (Yes, I’ve seen it happen.) Good luck on your next job hunt, because you’re now tied to the negative comments about the company whether you like it or not.

In all honesty, there’s not much a company can do about such comments, whether they’re on sites designed for venting about jobs, or platforms like MySpace and Facebook. They’re simply going to happen. People leave jobs and they take bad memories with them, but what do companies do to react? Or is that the problem in the first - reacting? This goes back to my original comments. Your brand is out there and you can either react or get in the thick of things and ensuring that your “positive” branding is coming out on top.  You’re not only doing this for your own brand as a company, but protecting your employees as well.

Recommendation: As a tie into this, I highly recommend that you set up a myriad of Google Alerts - but as part of your personal brand management.  You should know what’s being said about your company, so beyond setting up what should be your obligatory alert for your name, you should also set up one with your company’s name - maybe linked to your title with the company.  I personally have around 30 alerts set up with the above in mind and the results have been eye-opening.

Image via Wikipedia

More like a zzzzz… list blogger, huh?  Seriously, I’ve finally realized that I don’t need to write 300 word essays espousing my love for all things Web 2.0 with some sense of “purpose,” but just write the things I’m thinking about and just enjoy it.  I don’t have adsense, but I can certainly do nonsense.

Lately things have been interesting on the Social Media front, I must say.  I’m more involved than ever — continuing my love for FriendFeed, but also being more involved on commenting on a couple of blogs and a significant amount of tweeting.  Combining like members of FriendFeed and Twitter, I have around 150 people following me. This makes my “real friend” to “internet friend” (there really needs to be a word for that) ratio at about 1:25.  I can live with that.

I’m hoping to merge the worlds somewhat starting next week with attending the Louisville Geek Dinner at the BBC on Shelbyville Road.  It should be an interesting affair and with being the first time I’ve attended such an event, I’m very interested to see how people interact at such a function.

I’ve also made several connections on LinkedIn, with a nice split between people I’ve never physically met before and old friends that I haven’t seen in around 15 years.  I find LinkedIn fascinating as overall it gives a little more “true to life” version of a person’s history.  This is not to say that people lie on sites like MySpace or Facebook, but your work history leaves very little for wild embellishments.  The assumption, by having a profile on LinkedIn, is that you wouldn’t “mind” being approached about a job.  With that in mind, you want to present your profile as your resume and while I’m sure there is some stretching of the truth in areas, you’re going to be a little more restricted and expected to back things up when all is said and done.  Because of this, I feel there is a legitimacy in LinkedIn than some other social sites.

So, I’ve increased my participation, but what am I looking for from all of it?  That’s something I’m still not sure of, in all honesty.  I like the interaction with the people I’ve met, and I find the whole “Social Media” thing very interesting - and really starting to see that there is much more to it than just surfing the Internet looking for the next cool thing.  In the end, I think I’m just looking to have fun and I’m fine just writing about what’s on my mind - and being a Z-List blogger.

http://wphoneplugin.org

Hey Vince,

We have reset your Facebook account password for security reasons. You will need to use the link provided in this email to create a new, secure password for your account. Do not use your old password. In the future, please make sure that when you log in to Facebook, you always log in from a legitimate Facebook page with the facebook.com domain. To reset your password, follow the link below:
https://login.facebook.com/reset.php?email=vince.degeorge@gmail.com

(If clicking on the link doesn’t work, try copying and pasting it into your browser.)

Please contact info@facebook.com with any questions.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Right off the bat I think “phishing.”  It sure looks like phishing.  So I examine the email header careful, the link carefully and do some research and it turns out to be a legit email - just a dumb format to do such a thing.

My next thought is: “Why?”  Why did you reset my password?  Oh, “security reasons.”  I’m sorry, but that could mean many things.  Was it your security or my security?  Did someone track to repeatedly hack my account?  Did you have a security breach and someone may have access to my account information?  This is a pretty big deal to me.

So then I see this:

So apparently others have had the same thing happen, which makes me think this wasn’t someone trying to directly hack my account. There was either a breach in their data, or someone was trying some mass hacking with a script.

I am also curious if anyone else that may have had this issue also tried out http://pageonce.com. I did access my Facebook account with this yesterday and wonder if that has anything to do with it?  It had a lot of Internet coverage over the past day, and I would imagine many have tried it out - possibly with their access to Facebook being viewed as an attack?

Obviously this would not be an issue if Facebook was a little more clear of the situation in their email. I appreciate that they were doing this to protect my account, but a little more explanation would have made me feel better.

I’d like to get feedback from anyone else this may have happened to and any commonalities.  I emailed the contact given for questions, but I have yet to hear anything.

Update:

Hi Vince,

Facebook discovered a scheme that affected some users of the site. The users impacted by the scheme had entered their login information on a fake page that looked like our standard login page. The situation has been controlled, and we have reset the passwords of affected accounts so they are now secure. Rest assured that the email you received did come from Facebook, and that the link it provides is legitimate.

In the future, please make sure that you only log in to the site from pages that include the facebook.com domain (either http://www.facebook.com or http://www.facebook.com/login.php). You should also be careful not to click on any strange or untrustworthy links, even if they’ve been sent by your friends. If you see a page that looks suspicious, be sure to report it to us at privacy@facebook.com immediately.

Once logged in, you will need to update your password from the “Settings” tab on the Account page. To ensure the security of your account, please change your password to something new and unique. Make sure that your new password is at least six characters long and that it contains numbers as well as a variety of characters and capitalization. Please also create a new password that is different than other passwords that you use on the internet. Finally, you should make sure that any email addresses associated with your account are secure.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Audrina
User Operations

So, there ya go. I’m positive I didn’t go to a phishing page previously, but it looks like they did a mandatory change for some - possibly one of my contacts had gone to the page?
Facebook

You may ask why this branding may be important.  You’re just having fun, and hey, not even using your real name.  Remember, while you yourself have become more Internet savvy, so have your potential employers.  I’m personally a manager of a department in a company and I’m a potential employer.  I can also guarantee that I’m technically savvy.  If there is information about you on the Internet, I can find it (there is something connecting you to your pseudonym, I assure you).  To be fair, I have really never acted on any information I’ve found, but I have found plenty.  You’d be surprised (or maybe not) about how many individuals post negatively about their company and their bosses.  I’m not trying to be “Big Brother” on my end, but I feel I have a right to protect myself and my other employees and this means I need to know the people that we’re employing.  I usually don’t play “Internet Detective” unless I have a reason to dig deeper.  I’ll Google your name and see if anything pops up (also see: MySpace, Facebook).  If it’s something disparaging against my company or another employee, and I’ll dig a little deeper and as long as it’s not threatening, I’ll just file it away mentally.  If threatening, I’ll take the information to HR and they’ll take it from there.  Likely even then not too much would happen because the Internet still has a large area of gray associated with it, but do you want to take that chance?

Knowing what I know, I think about my brand quite a bit and what will come up with a search for my name.  The first thing for me is my FriendFeed account which will lead you directly to every presence I have on the Internet.  I keep this in mind when I share and post things across the Internet.  There are times when I may talk some politics, but that’s a passion of mine that hopefully can be recognized for what it’s worth, and even in that respect, I try not to post anything too controversial.   I try to keep my comments no worse than would be considered PG-13.

Some people stress privacy when it comes to the Internet.  I have friends that have NO Internet presence at all, which I find to be somewhat unusual and [to me] would send of a red flag as a potential employer.  Are they hiding something?  I take the opposite approach by saturating the Internet with my name, but I work to guide people to the direction I want.  I want something like my LinkedIn profile to be found easily.  There are two Vince DeGeorge’s that come up in Google easily in search and the other is a choreography and director.  I’ve made it very easy to figure out which one is actually me, as I’m cognizant of the fact that I’m a potential employee for someone.  I work to keep any active information on myself up-to-date and relevant at all times.  I also work to control my brand with Google alerts.  I have one set up for my name, usernames I’ve used, and other various combinations.  I certainly want to know if my name is attached to something that I may not be involved with.

At the end of the day, while I’m no Coca-Cola or Hershey’s, I’m pretty satisfied with my brand (though still in beta).  Are you?

A recent post on FriendFeed by Bwana McCall, orginally proposed by Shey, asked that we boycott Twitter usage one day to show that the people ARE Twitter.  Susan Beebe came up with the day called “Twit-out” (logo by Andrew Dobrow) and the rest should go down with history.  The recommendation by me is to use FriendFeed only, as I’ve been calling for the wide adoption of FriendFeed in the first place!  Who needs Twitter?!

The web takes up a lot of my time.  I’m not sure if I would classify it as a passion, or a hobby, or an addiction, but I’m on a lot.  I check my RSS feeds through my Netvibes homepage, check my email with Thunderbird (3 different google IMAP accounts), check in on things at work with Logmein, and recently I spend a big chunk of time at FriendFeed.  This would all be fine and dandy, but doing one of those other things will most certainly point to new things that I’ll discover and need to check.  About 30 minutes ago, I added blogger Louis Gray to my feeds (someone who I wish I discovered earlier, because he has a lot of great things to say).  I added Louis because I follow him on the aforementioned FriendFeed, and doing so adds to my cycle of things to check. I don’t consider that a bad thing or a burden, but know it will take up more of that valuable time.

I don’t really think I’m “addicted” to the Internet in the clinical sense.  I avoid using it at work so it won’t interfere with my job, I don’t neglect family or friends because of the Internet, and if just can’t get around to it, not having access doesn’t really affect me.  That said, it does take up most of my free time.  I gave up watching TV years ago.  I don’t need it and most of it simply isn’t entertaining to me.  (Note:  This is somewhat ironic because my job directly involves television media.  Not just some television media… ALL of it, particularly the news.)  I find the entertainment that’s on the Internet much more entertaining, interesting and importantly, personal.  Television is not “interactive” unless watching with a group of friends, but the Internet is interactive at almost every juncture.  I can vote things up, digg it, comment on it, bookmark it, favorite it and interact with others who are doing the same.  The bad part is that there is not a clear cut end to my Internet cycle.  Television shows have a beginning and end.  The Internet, as far as I can tell, never ends.

I happen to have a lot of time right now, with my wife and daughter out of town (until Mid-May, ugh), so I’m spending more time than ever doing my Internet “cycle” (Intercycle - the process and amount of time it takes me to check everything I MUST check during a web session.)  If I finish my Intercycle, and I still have time (not needing to go to bed, work, or eat), I’ll simply repeat the Intercycle.  Commenting and sharing is a built in function of my Intercycle and certainly adds to the time.

Unfortunately, because I currently have more time, I’m becoming more efficient with my Intercycle and find I have even more time after I complete it.  So, sometimes instead of the simple repeat, I’ll add more stuff to my Intercycle.  I’ll seek out new webapps, or sign up for multiple betas, or get more involved in the communities that are in my Intercycle.  While this isn’t intially a problem, when my wife and daughter are back, my Intercycle time will need to be cut dramatically and I’ll have to choose things to cut.  That’s always a tough process.

What is your Intercycle, and how long does it take you to “accomplish” it?

Other things:  My friends can’t keep up with my Intercycle, which allows me to introduce them the to a lot of new things.  Again, they can’t keep up, so I’m often telling them how I’ve already seen something when they try to show me.  My iPhone has taken on an Intercycle of it’s own, which can be problematic.