I recently got a message from my friend Jesse Torres, CEO of Pan American Bank to look an interesting article on Human Resources Executives Online. The article highlights an internal debate on blocking popular websites within an organization. As much as we know Facebook is about the most popular site on the internet and has more traffic than any other site today. But before reading futher a question employers have failed to ask is; “What is the essence of blocking access to Facebook and a few other popular site sites when employees can easily access these sites via their smart phones and other mobile devices?”

Nokia, Blackberry, Samsung, HTC to name a few are perfecting their newer phones with commonly used applications like social media apps to keep users tuned in whether at work or relaxing. Does banning access to these sites at work really stop employees from visiting these sites? That’s a question to think about.

OpenDNS, a San Francisco-based provider of Internet navigation and security services, recently released its list of the top 10 most-banned websites by businesses in 2010 as part of its first-ever in-depth report on the topic, entitled 2010 Report on Web Content Filtering and Phishing (PDF). The report is based, in part, on the firm’s 30 billion queries it receives daily from users.

“Businesses have specific goals in mind when blocking websites,” the report states. “They need to ensure compliance with HR policies, while also increasing worker productivity by preventing what they consider to be employee cyber-slacking. … This list shows that businesses are concerned with singling out popular sites considered to be of little value in a work setting, especially if they consume a lot of bandwidth.”

“Overall, 2010 was all about social, and this trend is reflected in the data we’re seeing,” says OpenDNS Founder and CEO David Ulevitch.

“Facebook is both one of the most-blocked and the most-allowed websites, reflecting the push/pull of allowing social networking at schools and the workplace,” he says. “This trend was also apparent in the phishing data we analyzed, where Facebook and other websites focusing on social gaming were frequently the targets of online scammers.”

Ulevitch says the research also shows that Facebook occupies a unique place in the wired world… Read more

“We are making it so all Web sites can work together to build a more comprehensive map of connections and create better, more social experiences for everyone,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote Read more

Social media has cut through so many industries including the Learning industry. iLearningGlobal.tv recently launched its massive Leaning 2.0 platform. A learning service tailored to training and self development of today’s businessmen and women. The platform comprises of faculty blogs, high definition video podcast, audio podcast, e-books and all social tools that provide interactivity between faculties and registered members. It is sure the biggest Learning service today on the internet.

iLearningGlobal is a community of world top speakers, authors and trainers. With names like Brian Tracy, Libby Gill, Teri Murphy, Don Hutson, Patricia Fripp, and many more, you can’t afford to be anywhere else, but on iLearningGlobal.

In today’s competitive business world there’s no better way to stay ahead of your game than adding more value to yourself through continuous learning. iLearningGlobal has simplified this by bringing Learning 2.0 closer to all high minded thinking individuals, granting 24 x 7 access learning from anywhere in the globe via the internet.

Amazingly registered iLearningGlobal members get rewarded for introducing friends, families or co-workers who get registered as well. Cool deal I must say. It’s learning and income earning as well. Better still you can join Brian Tracy and others on iLearningGlobal to learn business success skills ranging from various topics.

The service is open to companies as well as individuals who would want to take advantage of real time training for its employees by industry experts at a lower and flexible price through iLearningGlobal’s Edge and premium packages.

iLearningGlobal is transforming the future of learning. Take a look  and join iLearningGlobal here.

-Paulette.

-Paulette.

Watch out for more details coming soon!

-Paulette.

Journalists are obsessed with Twitter. Obsessed. They use it, talk about it, analyze it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, love it, hate it, capitalize on it, become experts on it, monetize it, argue about it, and become micro-famous on it. They are mesmerized with what it is and they are as giddy as Tom Cruise on Oprah just thinking about what it could be.

Last Wednesday, MediaBistro held a panel discussion titled, “Journalists and Social Media: Sources, Skills, and the Writer.” The panelists included NYU professor and PressThink author Jay Rosen, NPR senior strategist Andy Carvin, BusinessWeek.com community editor Shirley Brady, and Daily Beast columnist Rachel Sklar. The four journalists discussed which social networks they liked best,…Read more

Social media networks harness the power of the web in an interactive way, allowing for more “face-time” with consumers. Recent findings from the Pew Research Center say the percentage of adults who have profiles on at least one social-networking site has skyrocketed to 35 percent, up from only 8 percent in 2005…Read more

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 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.