An Open Complaint to SiriusXM: The Hours Following the Post
A couple of days ago I wrote an article called Social Media Gone Wrong; An Open Complaint to SiriusXM, in which I threw the spotlight on the satellite radio giant for a number of issues both widespread and specific to me. Within hours of posting, the article quickly became one of the most viewed posts on my blog so I figured that in the interest of being fair and balanced the topic was worth a follow-up.
One of the claims that I made in the post was that SiriusXM had ignored all of the requests I made for help via social media (Twitter being the channel I turned to after numerous phone calls failed to solve my issue). While Twitter is not an official communications channel for the company I figured it was worth a shot, after-all one of the first rules of social media strategy is to monitor your mentions and reach out to your customers as applicable. Frustrated that no reply came after a handful of tweets over a 10 day period, I resorted to my blog, wrote the post, and published it through Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Admittadly, what happened next surprised me.
Content Sync Done Right; Soocial
Many of us struggle with the synchronization of our contact lists; we all use Facebook, we all use email, we all have phones, but what we never seem to get “right” is one common contact list. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed to send an email from my phone and not had the email address stored there. Sure a single Exchange or LDAP server solves the issue, but how many of us want to have to maintain Exchange, let alone run one at home. Enter, Soocial. Yes, there’s two o’s… probably because it’s twice as magical as you’d think, or maybe it’s because the two o’s look a bit like an infinity symbol… who knows.
Simply put, Soocial is a cross-platform contact synchronization service. And when I say cross-platform, I don’t just mean Windows vs. Mac; according to their website, Soocial supports over 500 devices and services, ranging from phones (Symbian, Android, iOS, etc.) to applications (Outlook), and services (Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo!, etc.). Once you signup and configure each device you want included in the sync, Soocial goes to work making sure that all of the contacts match on each device. Cue the cheesy “but wait, there’s more” music… Sure Soocial syncs your contacts (that’s what it “sells” itself as doing), but it also lets you download and store full backups of your contacts, import/export contacts, automatically remove duplicates, edit contacts (including photos) within the browser, and even manage and view versions of each contact (yes, it stores an incremental version each time a contact is edited).
Facebook Goes SSL
Good news for you frequent users of Facebook out there. Effective today (January 26, 2011), you’ll now have the option of enabling HTTPS secure browsing on your Facebook account. Conveniently, Facebook is happy to opt you in automatically when it comes to information sharing, but the “Secure Browsing” option is one you’ll have to go in and enable yourself. Secure Browsing will force Facebook to communicate over an HTTPS protocol whenever possible, but it’s important to note that not all applications and features will support HTTPS. Unless you just can’t live without your game that doesn’t support HTTPS I’d highly recommend you enable this option. Facebook is rolling out this option slowly, but it should appear as a valid option in your account settings shortly. For more information, read the official Facebook blog announcement.
Aside from the SSL announcement, there are several other fairly new security tools that have been largely overlooked. The one-time password feature allows you to obtain a one-time unique password that expires 20 minutes after issue, for use at internet kiosks, hotels, airports, etc. This password, requested via a simple SMS text message will only work once, and auto-expires if unused. In addition, the “Recent Activity” section of your account security page lists recent sessions your account has had on the Facebook network. This will provide a date/time, relative location, and type of device used to access the account, along with the ability to forcefully terminate the activity of any active session. Interestingly enough, I have yet to see sessions from the Facebook Android app displayed under “Recent Activity” so it’s possible that this feature hasn’t been rolled out to mobile devices. This functionality can help to monitor access to your account and help to detect unauthorized sessions on your account. More information about the one-time passwords and session monitoring can be found here.
(Personal) Brand Awareness
Successful brands have been balancing the line between print, web, and brick-and-mortar elements for decades. With the rapid adoption of social media, that trend has continued to the familiar social media tools we all use every day. The limitations of avatars, and sometimes little options for customization have forced us to be a little creative, but an uncompromising implementation of the brand is almost always possible.
Dell is one of those companies that has traversed the plethora of social media networks without compromising the integrity of the brand (which after-all, is the point). Support forums are easily recognizable with the Dell moniker, tweets carry the familiar Dell logo, the YouTube channel is heavily customized, and most importantly everything is consistent.
Now, you may be wondering why I put “Personal” in the title if we’re going to talk about Dell. The point here is that the same strategy of a major brand can also apply to your personal brand. There’s two schools of thought on personal brands: 1- branding is a big corporate term (so why should I care), and 2- there’s value in providing a consistent, recognizable, and professional image of yourself across multiple mediums. The first rule applies to those of you who are just casual users; you’re the people that use Facebook to just talk to family, Twitter to tell me that you and your BFF are going roller skating, and have no idea what LinkedIn is. For you, it doesn’t matter if your Facebook picture is a weekend snap of you drunk at a party, or your Twitter avatar is the default Twitter bird, because well, it just doesn’t matter. The second rule applies to anyone who uses a combination of these services in a professional capacity, such as selling a product, supporting a product, blogging, professional networking, or community involvement.
WD TV Live Plus
Almost four years to the day of giving my parents a custom built home theater pc, my phone rang seeking support of said machine which seemed to have just given up overnight. One day they were watching their favorite series, and the next day it wouldn’t so much as post (no error tones, no display output, nothing). After flying home for the holidays we tore it down to core components trying to isolate memory, display, power supply, and could only reach the conclusion that the motherboard had given up. As it was a four year old machine in a custom media form factor, the odds of finding a replacement motherboard were slim to nothing so we started searching the internet for alternatives. Enter the WD TV Live Plus from Western Digital.
Honestly, I was skeptical that one of these units were going to replace a full blown PC. I think we’ve all had experiences where “pull it out of the box, plug it in and it works” type hardware hasn’t worked as the clipart on the box indicates it will. Much to my surprise, this one did. It did ship with firmware that was 3 versions out of date, but even updating the firmware is just a simple option from the on screen menu. Setup was literally “take it out of the box, plug it in, turn it on”, and when turned on it instantly detected all of the other devices on the network. Once the firmware was current I had no issues playing full 1080p HD MKV files through the device (typically my go-to test for a media streaming appliance). The only complaint I have on the streaming is that it will not (that I can figure out) store the credentials to network shares, so you have to enter them every time you open the share. Even if you’re connecting anonymously, you still have to arrow through the username and password fields and “login”. Perhaps a future firmware will automatically detect if a directory has anonymous access enabled so you’re not prompted to connect anonymously. There’s also several online services included with the TV Live Plus, including Flickr, Facebook, Netflix and others. In my testing, the Netflix streaming was significantly slower than the Wii or Sony Bravia/Blu-ray applications. Once it loaded the stream was just fine, but it took 2-3 times longer to initiate and buffer the stream.
Part 2: When I got back to Raleigh after spending Christmas back home in New York, my home theater PC failed to boot. Apparently my bad luck was especially strong this December, or there was something in the air that was killing HTPCs. The good news is that the big box retailer with the big yellow logo had the WD TV Live Plus on sale for $99, so instead of screwing around with trying to fix another HTPC, I just drove down and bought one (so now I’ve setup two of these in the last week).
Extend your brand; Friendly social media URLs
It’s no secret that your social media identities really are an extension of your brand. They’re powerful (often revenue generating) assets that in some cases may generate more traffic than your website. If you’re a company or organization that’s very active in the social media world then it’s probably in your best interest to promote your various social media identities on your company collateral, website, business cards, etc. That said, several of the popular social media platforms have failed in making your content easy for people to access. Sure, twitter.com/webdes03 and facebook.com/webdes03 are simple enough, but I don’t particularly find “http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michael-greene/5/576/4a5” something that belongs on a business card–and it’s certainly not something people are going to remember.
Luckily there’s a simple way to get yourself a friendly URL to replace that ugly one, and provide a consistent URL pattern to all of your social media identities. If your website is hosted with a company that gives you access to cPanel, Plesk, or one of the other popular hosting management tools, you can simply add a new subdomain and redirect it to the appropriate social media identity. Here’s an example of the process you’d follow to set this up using cPanel.
Facebook Chat via 3rd Party Application
Having grown up with instant messaging as an integral part of communication (yes, I’m of that generation that would rather IM, Text or E-Mail than actually use a phone to make a call) I’ve obviously noticed that pretty much nobody uses AIM and those other chat protocols that we all grew up with. Just for kicks I logged into my AIM account to find maybe 3 people on my buddy list actually online. While protocols like Skype have made a dent in the market, having cracked the voice and video chat world, the big player now is actually none other than our illustrious Facebook. Continuing that trend of rooting itself in absolutely everything anyone does, pretty much everyone has a Facebook account, making it the ideal medium to keep in touch.
Facebook Privacy & You
There’s been a lot floating around in the tubes of the internet lately about Facebook’s radical new Instant Personalization program and the new Open Graph protocol (and more importantly what it means for you and your privacy; or lack thereof). While I’m the first to bring up the value of social networking (especially from a business perspective), there has to be a line drawn where your information is protected, especially in a platform as big and powerful as Facebook. It’s even rumored [albeit through a third party] that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t believe in privacy. The big question on everyone’s mind is of course, what this means for you as an end user.
Facebook started as a way to communicate with your friends, catch up with friends you hadn’t seen in years, and network amongst your peers. As the platform has taken off, the amount of personal information we all publish to Facebook has increased exponentially and simple pieces of information like your location, interests, and people you know provide an absolutely remarkable business opportunity for Facebook. Heck, I’d love to know who all of my customer’s business acquaintances are and what they like. A platform like Facebook is arguably the most developed targeted advertising platform in the world. As the years have gone on, there’s a clearly visible shift from the ease of protection of your data to the outright exploitation of that information for the benefit of advertisers, merchants and Facebook’s bottom line. Privacy controls are now far harder to understand than ever before, and with the Open Graph protocol it may not even matter if you’ve opted out or not (as your friends can still share information about you with “the network”).
