You probably must have read about the recent murder case over a simple change on Facebook profile. Here’s the story below. Feel free to drop a comment 

LONDON (AFP) – A British man who murdered his wife after becoming enraged when she changed her relationship status on Facebook to “single” was jailed for at least 18 years late Thursday.

Edward Richardson, 41, stabbed wife Sarah, 26, to death in a “frenzied and brutal” attack at her parents’ home in Biddulph, central England, last May after she altered her profile on the Internet social networking site.

The couple had been living apart since the previous month, said Fiona Cortese, a spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service, which is responsible for prosecuting cases in England and Wales.

“Richardson became enraged when Sarah changed her marital status on Facebook to single and decided to go and see her as she was not responding to his (text) messages,” Cortese said.

“He gained entry by breaking the front door window and made his way into the property.

“Once inside, he found Sarah in her bedroom and subjected her to a frenzied and brutal attack with a knife and then attempted to take his own life.”

Sarah Richardson’s parents Beryl and Alan Boote said they were left “devastated” by her murder after the verdict at Stafford Crown Court, central England.

“We hope that Richardson will be an old man before he’s ever allowed out of prison,” they said.

Detective Inspector Andy Wall, who worked on the case, added: “She had decided that her marriage to Edward Richardson was over but this was clearly something he could not accept.”

 

“What a shame?” is what you would say. But then what you enter as your social status isn’t just a click. It says a lot more. Once I changed my status from “In a Relationsip” to “Single” and every friend on my list kept dropping comments on my wall. I found Getting in touch with your past is so easy …but also the detriment of your future an interesting article. It’s a must read.

-Paulette

MySpace and Facebook are the two most popular social networking sites, offering users the ability to create a network of friends, political contacts and business associates with which to share messages, photos and videos.

MySpace and Facebook are used by millions of people to converge and converse around mutual interests. If you happen to be in charge of PR or promotion for something of value to one of those interests, MySpace and Facebook allow you instant access to a potential fan base for your product. Additionally, by listening to the conversations you can get ideas and feedback on how to improve your products or services.

We discuss MySpace and Facebook here because they are the most generally popular, but there are a great many similar sites, each with their own focus and particular audience and interests. Depending on your organization’s goals or products, you may want to investigate several. Here is a list of about 125 of them.

Is MySpace/Facebook the place for you?

Should you put up a profile? Should you participate in a group? How do you know if it will work for you?

Most important thing: If people don’t gather around you in the real world, they won’t do it online. And remember, if you set up a network and then stop using it, then it will die. So don’t start what you aren’t going to maintain.

So, the first step is to figure out what’s already out there: What communities have already formed around your market, product or area of interest?

Your five-minute MySpace/Facebook monitoring program

If no one is talking about you, then repeat your search every couple days or so. And you can tell your boss you are monitoring MySpace/Facebook.

If they are talking about you, (or your products or your people or whatever may be important to your organization), read the posts and make a simple “problem/not-a-problem” decision. Divide the posts into “we-would-approve” or “we-would-not-approve” piles.

If what they are saying is not a problem, put it in a file and keep track of the themes or positive messages to learn what you are doing right. If what they are saying is a problem, then decide if it is a little problem or a big problem. If it is a small problem, put it in a file, keep track of the themes or negative messages expressed, and be prepared to discuss specific points and trends. If it is a big problem, call your boss and swing into crisis mode.

Worst case scenario: One of your periodic searches finds a big problem—something important that you have to deal with immediately. First, congratulate yourself that you identified it in such a timely fashion. Then warn your boss and swing into full crisis mode. Odds are that dealing with this will involve a full blown response in several media.

Why measure?

There are three basic reasons to measure MySpace/Facebook:

1. You are thinking of putting up a page, and you want to know best practices.
2. You have put up a page up and you want to know if it achieved your objectives.
3. You want to measure your own profile, or that of your competition. In other words: What are other peoples’s pages saying about you? And should you really care?

Here’s how:

1. You are thinking of putting up a page, and you want to know best practices.

Do not just jump in and create a page. First determine what the environment is for your product or service and how people are already discussing it.

When you set up your page, keep your page’s objectives in line with what you (or, more importantly, your bosses) want to communicate about your company or products. The point here is that when you start measuring your page, you want to be able to demonstrate that you communicated what you were supposed to.

2. I put up a profile: Is it working? Are we achieving our objectives?

To get started, you can assume that your presence is working if it communicates the right messages to a sufficient number of the right people. (And if you determine that your presence is not working, then try another site.) Eventually you will want to determine a definition of “working” that is specific to your organization and situation.

Now do an audit of your profile or group:

Profile audit

Analyze your profile, images, postings, affiliations and connections (friends). You want to demonstrate to your executives that your profile communicates the company messages.

Reach: You probably started your profile to reach a certain market segment. So, are you doing it? What people are your friends? How many, and of what sort? Look at a sample of them. On average people have 150 to 200 connections, so that is a healthy amount. If you have less than that, then you are new and the number of your connections is growing. Or perhaps it’s not the right site for you.

How do you know if they’re just not into you? If you’ve got less than 150 friends, then you probably ought to look somewhere else for your network. Your friends’ profiles should be the same as your ideal customer profiles or those of your stakeholder groups.

Groups audit

You want groups that relate to your organization. How many people belong to those groups (reach)? What are their demographics? What information is given on the group landing page?

Are there existing groups about you? If so, join them, don’t start your own (because what’s important is the network, not you). Read up and analyze their discussions. Find out who posts the most and what they talk about. Are they your target customer demographic?

Response times: If it takes less than a day for someone to answer a question, it’s an active group. If it takes more than a day and a half, it’s not very active, and can be thought of as less valuable or important.

3. Measure what other peoples’s pages say about you.

Discussion

Analyze discussions like you would YouTube comments. To what extent do they indicate you are achieving your original objectives? Check to see if they indicate any other important sentiments or reactions that you did not anticipate. Classify them by discussion and subjects:

• Positive or negative responses to your organization, brand or products
• Demonstrations of increased brand strength of loyalty
• Unusual engagement with product or company

Metrics

1. Who are they?

A key measure of success of any communications program is whether or not you are reaching your target audience. To determine this you need to look at the profiles of the most active members of the group. You may not get information on all of them, but a quick examination of the members’ profiles will give you a sense of whether or not this is the sort of crowd you want to have a conversation with.

2. What are they talking about? What information are they passing along?

By monitoring and analyzing the postings, you’ll get a sense of what information is appropriate. Just as you wouldn’t go to a cocktail party designed to raise money for the opera and start talking loudly about why people should give money to your favorite presidential candidate, you want to make sure that what you have to say is relevant and interesting to the people conducting the conversation.

3. How do those things relate to your brand or product or objectives?

You may well have to tailor your messages and/or product offerings to the interests of the specific group. Make sure that management is prepared to do so.

Active public vs. inactive publics: What percent are active, that is making posts, talking with other users, re-posting what you posted? It may sound obvious, but you will need to prioritize your efforts, focusing on those people that are most active and participatory.

Katie Paine is president of KDPaine & Partners. Peter Kowalski and Bill Paarlberg contributed to this article.

Tealium Social Media lets marketers measure the ROI of their social media marketing and online PR initiatives using the same metrics as other digital marketing channels such as pay-per-click, email and banner advertising. The solution helps users decide which social media initiatives they should invest in and which to drop, as well as which media outlets or categories drive the most traffic and conversions.

“Tealium Social Media lets us measure our online PR and outreach initiatives with tangible metrics that make sense to our organization: visits to the site and online sales,” said Chris Hassett, VP of Sales and Marketing at Restorative Remedies, a San Diego provider of natural-products food supplements. “The solution gives us apples-to-apples comparison between our online PR and our other marketing vehicles, all from within our Google Analytics account”.

“Tealium Social Media brings a whole new level of measurement to social media marketing and online PR”, said Olivier Silvestre, co-founder at Tealium. “Social media measurement can now be done in the same tangible way that online marketers are accustomed to, with true ROI analysis”.

Tealium Social Media is available as both a stand-alone version and a plug-in to popular web analytics solutions such as Google Analytics, SiteCatalyst, NetInsight, WebTrends, Coremetrics and others. Introductory pricing for the subscription service starts at $250/month and is based on the depth of coverage.

“Tealium has solved the black box of PR and social media measurement,” said Erik Bratt, CEO of Engage Social Media, a social media and public relations agency focused on monitoring and measurement. “We can now make actionable decisions for our clients that drive better business results through PR and social media.”

More information can be found from the Tealium web site at http://www.tealium.com/products/social-media/.

Social media tools are quietly crippling into our work space. Blogs are playing an important role in communicating among stakeholders. Project management teams have found its usefulness in communicating project status and progress, educating and providing end users support. Blogs when incorporated facilitate knowledge sharing and discussions.  Matthew Hodgson highlighted key points from CIO’s article on “How to use enterprise blogs to streamline project management” in other to get the best of social tools in project management:

1. Rules of engagement

Lay out what the rules of engagement will be. That will make the executives more comfortable with going forward.

2. Start small

Blogs work well when they catch on virally, so you need to introduce the idea to the right people, who will then sell the idea to the rest of the organization.

3. Curing the email addicts

The primary communication medium is still e-mail,” says Jonathan Edwards, a Yankee Group analyst. “We’re all so accustomed to it. You can’t change the way people work overnight.”. One way to wean employees from e-mail communications is to use the sister technology to a blog: Real Simple Syndication (RSS) with invitations sent through email.

4. “Tag It” or “Bag It”

Teaching employees to use blog-editing tools isn’t hard, since they essentially look like a lightweight word processor. Instead, the challenge comes in reminding them to tag their posts with keywords that will help with later search and discovery needs

5. “No” is not a good answer

If companies don’t adopt blogging technologies for the enterprise, line-of-business heads are just a credit-card purchase away from a hosted offering.

I’ve had this experience myself, where the project team has just gone to WordPress because its free and the internal support just isn’t there.

6. Wikis can be a challenge for users to learn

Although it’s easy to set up wikis, it’s not always so easy for users to take advantage of them. “Wiki platforms have a bit of a learning curve. You have to dig in to learn how to use it”. The use of wikimarkup instead of a WYSIWYG editor will definitely put some people off using it.

7. Diversify

Blogs can use embedded material from a wide range of sources, including YouTube for project and stakeholder interviews, Flickr for pictures of workshops, and Slideshare material of PowerPoint presentations to the Executive. Even your team’s useful internet bookmarks shared through Delicious are likely to appeal to people reading the project’s posts. This will help your posts appeal to a wider range of people.

8. Don’t create a blogger. Free one!

The best Bloggers are those who are motivated to write, so utilize their enthusiasm rather than forcing someone whose heart just isn’t in it.

9. Low barrier to adoption

Wikipedia works well because anyone can create and edit just about anything. Even when there are errors they are typically fixed within a few hours.

Rather than putting in place hard security models for approvals, leverage the rules of engagement and encourage discussion and interaction by having few barriers (if any) for participation in the conversation.

10. Two-way, not one-way

Social media like blogs are about conversation, not the one way dialogue that project reporting typically adopts. Be ready to answer questions and engage with stakeholders openly, honestly, and with transparency.

11. Have fun!

Adults often forget that ‘play’ is one of the most effective ways to learn. Experimentation with different tools within a project will allow you and others to understand their use so that when it comes to employing them for external communications you’ll be well equipped to know the ins and outs of social media — what works, what doesn’t, and why.

In the last 365 days Beezbox has been moving fast with the marketing and implementing of Enterprise 2.0 using Beezbox platform since insception. 2009 celebrate its first year. 

A Recap of 2008

Regardless of the global credit crunch in 2008, we are proud to still be at the top of our game. However, we have challenged pundits’ vision. Beezbox has continued to achieve performance, in its technology and programming, in its customer relationship and on its innovation and creativity in social media and e-services 

In one year, we have considerably grown, after launching our first internal application, Beetnic to showcase our savoir-faire; we rapidly got investors and innovation scouts attention.

2009-Our Activity Filled Year

We look forward to a lot projects in 2009 as we are branching into Africa and the Asian Pacific region. Social Media and e-services are now becoming a must worldwide, and Beezbox is proud to be a dynamic part of this movement.
 
Web 2.0, Social Networks, E-services, all these terms are now becoming familiar words to the internet community. Interestingly, as one of the only company in Europe to propose high level of customization in web 2.0, Beezbox offers you real expertise in this field and promises you the right application to enter this world.

Solofo Rafeno, Beezbox founder will be lecturing a conference on Enterprise 2.0 for the INSEAD Alumni. Topics will be about social media business benefits and best practices review. If you are in Paris at this time you are welcome to join us.

Beezbox’s Customer Experience 

  
Our first customer Balthazar, a Paris based management consulting and executives education firm, having launched the first ever “best management practices sharing services, Mnemos2.0 website, has enjoyed good response from its users. The methodology for better management is based on videos, and having a web 2.0 platform has offered the team at Balthazar the best way to share and show this content, enabling people to research what they want, and to exchange comments and documents. The social site is developing really fast. Private communities are being built for big companies to have their private training e-communities for management executives.

Footemotion is developing rapidly and attracting media’s attention with their unique concept. France Television FR3 had an exclusive interview with the team. They have leveraged the new Beezbox 3G Mobile Video Live upload worldwide unique feature. Today every Footemotion member could act as an anchor and broadcast live his/her local football match. One of their protégé, Sean, won the Freestyle Football World Cup in Brazil in 2008; you can follow all his « adventures » on Footemotion.  

• CRM 2.0, for improved customer relationship management with added socialization as key
• E-City 2.0, provides local and regional social and economic programs support and operation  
• Fans 2.0, get the best of your fans on a social platform that let you secure an always growing and auto-updated members database
• Extranet 2.0, for a secure collaborative business and multimedia documents  sharing services 
• University 2.0, to connect student and staff together for a better learning and cost effective administration

In 2009, we plan to launch our community service, Communibox, which will enable Soho, SMB and Nonprofit Organizations create their own Social Network in a few clicks, at an affordable budget.
Expansion of our global presence is key for us in 2009. Africa, Australia and New Zealand can now enjoy Beezbox products and services. 

Africa region:


Australia and New Zealand region:


What next?

We aim to bring our solutions worldwide very quickly with worldclass support quality, during the first quarter of 2009 we will expand to reach Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Stay tuned and watch out for the launch of our Communibox!

Footemotion’s social network is rocking the webspace and airwaves in France. Launched on Beezbox platform in 2008, Footemotion’s approach to employing social networking in business has attracted the attention of many and more recently the media. France Television (FR3) met with Footemotion at their La Souterraine head quarters in Central France. FR3 was interested in showcasing the unique concept Footemotion created through its social network and media platform powered by Beezbox.

Footemotion focuses its business on bringing together young football amateur players and kids interested in the game, parents, coach, and club administrator to share the fun around football. Running its own unique online community is helping Footemotion achieve this business goal.

In addition to that, Footemotion partners with professional football players, and also with young talents, such as Sean, world champion 2008 football freestyler. Learn more about Sean on Footemotion.

 Paulette

Yahoo on Wednesday reveals its Web TV  partners to bring about its internet and television “convergence” hoping that their initiative will finally connect  with consumers.

According to Yahoo, the application will employ the use of widgets which will allow viewers more interaction with programs they are watching…Read more

LAS VEGAS (AFP) – MySpace has expanded its popular online social-networking service from computers to television sets with technological help from chip maker Intel and Internet pioneer Yahoo!

A MySpace widget, or mini computer program, embedded in certain new television models will allow members to watch TV while connecting with online profiles and friends, according to the News Corp.-owned Internet firm…Read more

Do you know what your child’s profile looks like? Going through demography a good amount of the audience on social networks are youths. They spend a considerable amount of time hooking up and catching up with friends on their favorite social sites. It is not uncommon to post interesting content that is shared among real friends and “acquired online” friends.

Unfortunately most teens have gone beyond the boundary to post very personal details on their profile. Unknowing most teens have shared very personal information that could be used for probable abuse. Researchers concluded that almost 54 percent of the profiles they scanned on MySpace contained information on risky behavior, with 24 percent referencing sexual behavior, 41 percent referring to substance abuse and 14 percent posting violent information.

Social networking isn’t unsafe in it’s self but as safe as social sites might seem its use should be cautioned. Information posted over the internet is visible to public viewing and not left out are profiles on social networks. Further research has shown that unguided use of these trendy services could lead to a lot of dangers. Guardians and parents should guide their younger teens on appropriate use of social networks to reap great benefits than sorrows.

-Paulette

I’m normally in the habit of writing about my colleague Solofo and his interesting interviews in Europe. But now it seems the Nigerian web space is directing their attention to us. Oops!

Here’s my recent interview with Loy Okezie from Startups Nigeria. Loy sure had interesting questions about E2.0 take up in Africa and Nigeria in particular.  Let me know your thoughts on this. Feel free to drop me a comment.

Interview with Paulette Erijo – Founder, Letche Technologies

Happy reading!

Paulette.