Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
Do you think that Facebook and MySpace are a load of crap? That so-called “online friendship” is absurd? Then maybe anti-social networking is the thing for you. Wired writes about the two Facebook parodies Enemybook and Snubster.
“For some people, Enemybook is about expressing their distaste for political figures or celebrities. And for other people, it actually is about spreading hatred for their despised co-workers and exes,” MIT doctoral student and creator of Enemybook Kevin Matulet said.
In a column in Dagens Nyheter yesterday, Hanne Kjöller writes about her worries regarding integrity online, a hot topic these days when we spend so much time on the web. And I agree, we should devote more time and effort to discuss who can do what with the digital traces of our online activities. Pär Ström is the guiding star in this debate.
Kjöller chooses Facebook, MySpace and Gmail as her “axis of evil” and suggests that consumers should consider to boycott these services because we can’t control how our personal information is used. And obviously we need to be careful what kind of information we share online. Kjöller writes “Too old? Probably. I don’t see the point with the website Facebook. But there are others who do. Business men and American terrorist hunters for example.”
By the way, isn’t that a strange phenomenon? Leading journalists that write negative articles about new media technologies that they don’t understand, but understand well enough to bash on a prime location in the paper. I suggest that you either get a better understanding of the technology/service/website first, or refrain from writing about it all together.
Anyway, I think that the age factor might, unintentionally, be where she hits the nail. According to a study by Pew Internet “two-thirds of teens with profiles on blogs or social-networking sites have restricted access to their profiles in some fashion, such as by requiring passwords or making them available only to friends on an approved list.” In other words, young people who are savvy online networkers are aware of the risks with being too open and act accordingly. Not that I’m entirely conviced that it’s enough to protect their integrity, but still.
Kjöller continues to discuss integrity issues and says that she doesn’t like that “the information on Facebook is used for commercial purposes”. Well, we probably need to accept that companies use information about their members to tailor marketing efforts, I’m sure that Dagens Nyheter does too. About a month ago, Resumé claimed that DN bought a community system from a company called Josh, with the purpose of building a community of their own. I don’t think that the paper will do that with any other purpose than a commercial one.
Either way, integrity issues are important and I welcome Kjöller’s suggestion about a Minister for Integrity, or some other political solution that helps protect us from “Big Brother”. But I don’t think the solution is to stay clear of all these services, but take the positive sides and deal with the negative. Just look at the number of Facebook users who signed up for Anton Abele’s group against violence, currently more than 52,000.
Note: I should probably reveal, before someone asks, that I am a frequent Facebook user, rarely visit my MySpace page, and I don’t have a Gmail account (don’t feel that I need one).
Tags: facebook, integrity, facebook, våld, integritet. Ping.
Both Expressen and Helsingborgs Dagblad have added Facebook functionality to their websites, writes Medievärlden. Users can now easily add content from the two papers to their Facebook profiles.
Update: Sydsvenskan too, says Pelle.
Update 2: And Nerikes Allehanda. Thanks Nicclas.
Update 3 (Oct 29): And Eskilstuna-Kuriren and Norrköpings Tidningar.
Nipples and Facebook seems to be a dangerous combination these days. Today, Dagens Media writes that the Swedish tv channel Kanal5 had bought ad space on Facebook for the tv show Myggan (“the Mosquito”). The ad displays a cartoon figure with no clothes on, but he conceals his private parts with his hands. But someone tagged the ad “topless man” which meant that Facebook didn’t show the ad as many times as they had agreed to do.
Per Lorentz at Kanal5 says that Facebook suggested that the character’s nipples would be covered with small black patches, which Kanal5 agreed to do.
The uncensored cartoon character can be found here. Just outrageous, isn’t he?
Tags: facebook, public relations, facebook, pr, myggan. Ping.
We recently touched upon the way Facebook handles its own public relations. Now the social networking site is the target of an uproar because it deleted photos of breastfeeding users and even suspended one Canadian mother from her account after she asked why her photos had been deleted.
The Toronto Star writes:
“Last month, Facebook closed the account of an Edmonton mother who had posted breastfeeding photos and the site deleted images many others has put up, claiming they violated rules about nudity and “obscene content.” Breastfeeding advocates set up a petition group on the social networking site called “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene.” It hit the news and within days, the petition had more than 20,000 members.”
This group has now in excess of 25,000 members.
Now any company can make mistakes. But it’s how you handle those mistakes that make the difference in crisis communications. See for example how Southwestern Airlines (eventually) managed to score at least some PR points after almost throwing a female student off a plane for having a too short skirt. In the case of Facebook, blogger and columnist David Wescott took the trouble to ask Facebook about how and why they removed those photos. Read his email correspondence here. I think it’s fair to say that Facebook’s approach to PR does not include a lot of conversation, which is a bit odd for a social networking site.
[Via For Immediate Release.]
Tags: facebook, public relations, facebook, pr, public relations, krishantering. Ping.
Jan Gradvall reflects (not online) over the five years that have passed since the launch of DI Weekend. Many phenomena that today dominate our daily lives did not even exist five years ago.
“MySpace opened in August 2003, Facebook in February 2004, YouTube in February 2005. What did people actually do at work in 2002?”
Tags: myspace, facebook, dagens industri, youtube. Ping.