Social Media Learning Lab

How one “Make my day” image of Hillary Clinton wearing shades on a military plane has endowed her with Clint Eastwood cool.

Zinger humor that is a welcome counterpoint to the bombast and stress of this year's political wrangling, is helping Hillary capture a new state of femme cool, generally unknown in politics.

Tumblr, a photo-based mini-blog platform is proving a great platform for it, competing with Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr's other mini-blog rival, Posterous, which was just bought by Twitter.

Excerpts from Maureen Dowd's piece:

The meme, which exploded on Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter, was dreamed up last Wednesday by Hillary fans Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe, communications specialists here in Washington, at the gay sports bar Nellie’s.

It features invented tongue-in-cheek texts between the don’t-mess-with-me Hillary in dark shades and other famous people pictured on their gadgets.

• When Mitt Romney texts “Any advice?” to Hillary, she replies: “Drink.”
• She rejects a “friend” request from Mark Zuckerberg,
• cuts off Joe Biden when he tries to tell a bar joke,
• instructs a cooing Ryan Gosling to call her “Madam Secretary,”
• blows off Jon Stewart by saying she’s already booked on Colbert, and
• wields a put-down from “The Devil Wears Prada” on Anna Wintour.

• When the president asks, “Hey Hil, Whatchu doing?” she ripostes: “Running the world.”
• And when a young woman texts, “It’s 3 am and I think something’s happening,” Hillary snaps: “On it.”

Dowd's piece in the New York Times is here.

The Tumblr Texts from Hillary blog itself is here.   

"Yes, it was Vegas, Baby!   But more than that, it's about the trusted relationships you build on LinkedIn."

If you are local to SE Michigan and are a consultant, coach or small business owner, you might be interested in the one time live workshop covering all the Social Media platforms with Open Space that I'm doing on Saturday, April 21st, 8:30 to 3:00 at Spark East, Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Details are on this blog post, along with notes about some pending "People You May Know" updates on LinkedIn including:

• streamlining the user experience,
• improving the search algorithm for more relevant, accurate results, and
• offering a quick, new one-click filtering option for reviewing results from relevant associations.

When social media goes wrong what usually happens is someone wants to game the system in their favor.

Real or persona?  It was an issue for me when I jumped into social media in 2008, when twitter was new, Facebook was super cool for college kids (and NOT about baby boomers or grandparents accessing family photos) and LinkedIn was still in it's infancy, but drawing attention from recruiters and natural networkers.

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Full disclosure is ...used in building trust in blog exchanges, highlighting possible conflicts of interest, which is definitely going on here.

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I concluded that real was were it was at, learning from the digital strategy folks, and also seeing there are multiple points of view, like this one, as well as the privacy practices post earlier this week here.

Also, there was no "full disclosure" in this cautionary tale.  Full disclosure is a common statement used in building trust in blog exchanges, highlighting possible conflicts of interest, which is definitely going on here.  

I've also had LinkedIn network members message me privately on how certain LinkedIn users, unknown to me but showing up in my message box, "game" the system to build up their LinkedIn rankings.  In the end, what comes around, goes around, and disreputable networkers will be found out and may be thrown out.

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May the user be warned via LinkedIn when you don't know the reputation of someone key to your social media discussion.

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May the user be warned via LinkedIn when you don't know the reputation of someone key to your social media discussion.

Excerpted:

Sumit (name in discussion) did what most do in Linkedin, he offered his advice on how to best use Linkedin, while another asked the critical question “do we do a disservice to others by insisting linkedin delivers value for all.”

Then, we find out a key contributor to the discussion is a FAKE. 

A key question is, Who’s Ready For Honest Dialogue?  

A take away was that an author of a Linkedin program had thought it was a good idea to create a fake Group profile to make it appear like a third party discussion of their work.

Read the full post here.

"No Romulan cloaking device (or Harry Potter invisibility cloak) for your digital footprint, including email? The Times shares easy & many free ways to create less of a lighted trail."

Sharing on FBook, Google+ and ScooptIt. Heh.  

That said, I'd also say there's a balance of getting lots of services for free (Gmail, Google Search, Google Apps, tailored results) vs. the tradeoffs mentioned here.    Some say it's cool, not creepy.   Others, as here, say it is creepy, and NOT cool.   Here's a perspective to add to your digital learning landscape.   ~  Deb

Excerpted:

It’s probably impossible to cloak your online activities fully, but there are steps you can take to make them harder to follow.

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There are no secrets online. ...while it’s probably impossible to cloak your online activities fully, you can take steps, [some] quite easy and many are free.

The trick is to find the right balance between cost, convenience and privacy.

...security experts and privacy advocates said more worrisome were Internet service providers, search engine operators, e-mail suppliers and Web site administrators — particularly if a single entity acts in more than one capacity, like Google, Yahoo, Facebook and AOL. This means they can easily collect and cross-reference your data, that is, match your e-mails with your browsing history, as well as figure out your location and identify all the devices you use to connect to the Internet.

“The worst part is they sell this extremely creepy intrusion as a great boon to your life because they can tailor services to your needs,” said Paul Ohm, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder who specializes in information privacy and computer crime.

He advised logging off sites like Google and Facebook as soon as practicably possible and not using the same provider for multiple functions if you can help it.

“If you search on Google, maybe you don’t want to use Gmail for your e-mail,” he said.    ...But even with your own mail server, Google will still have the e-mails you exchange with friends or colleagues with Gmail accounts, said Peter Eckersley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group in San Francisco. “You’re less exposed,” he said. “But you can’t totally escape.”

"Great security notes for anyone doing business with digital.  That leaves out very few of us."

I've experienced "click-jacking" on Pinterest, we've had one of our Wordpress sites infected by a virus, and on it goes.  This is a helpful security post, from Buzz's guest post is by Andy Stewart, Security Services Manager at Fusion Alliance.

Excerpted from the list of Seven:

...the increasing monetization of cyber attacks by organized crime and with the increase industry regulations, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with everything going on in information security.

For that reason, here are seven information security buzzwords every small business owner should know…

1. Cloud Security  is a component of computer security which deals with the policies, technologies, and controls put into place to protect data, applications, and the associated infrastructure of cloud computing.

2. Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD)
Bring-Your-Own-Device is a term used to describe the phenomenon of employees using personal devices for work activities. This includes not only laptops, but smart phones and tablets as well.

BYOD often presents security problems for businesses, because the same measures used to secure company computers are often not taken to secure personal devices.

Deb:  Note:  In January 2011, Cisco Systems released its 2010 Annual Security Report, which said that smartphones were increasingly vulnerable to attacks from criminals.   Read more: Security Issues With PDAs & Smartphones | eHow.com 

5. Clickjacking
Clickjacking is a malicious script used to redirect Internet users to a destination other than what they see displayed or issue a command other than what they’ve intended. The danger of clickjacking is that it can cause users to reveal confidential information or even allow an outside entity to take over that computer.

7. Defense-in-Depth
Defense-in-depth is a term used to describe a series of security countermeasures that protect an organization’s information assets. Examples of security countermeasures include: security policies, firewalls and antivirus software.

See the full list via http://www.waspbarcode.com/buzz/7-security-information-buzzwords-smb-owner/

Photo credit:  Deb, iPads & iPhone4

I learned yesterday I'm on the cover of the Jewish News of Washtenaw (Ann Arbor, SE Michigan) with two co-presenters for the 8th annual women's event focusing on cyber-schmoozing.    

Excerpted:

How we communicate and socialize is undergoing rapid change as a result of the Internet and with the advent of social media technology. An online presence is increasingly important and is becoming more pervasive daily.

Three presenters will highlight different facets and trends in social media for the 21st century.

• Tilly Shames, executive director of U-M Hillel will speak about Jewish life among students of the iPhone generation.

• Dr. Polly Gipson, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Michigan, will discuss managing “screen time” and its effects on children and adolescents.

• Deborah Nystrom (me), a consultant and social media coach will talk about how to be cool on Facebook and other social media, while communicating with, and across generations.

Source: www.washtenawjewishnews.org/

For local business owners, consultants and coaches, there is the April 21st LIVE one-time workshop covering using the major social media platforms for business, referencing the newer arrivals on the scene (Google+, Pinterest and more), and using Open Space Technology to maximize our learning & exchange.

It will be a social media weekend for the locals in SE Michigan.