Helping my wife pick a Twitter handle
For those of you who don't know, Victoria just finished Princeton with her Ph.D in Art History. Very, very proud husband, I am. So, the lovely Victoria is finally getting on Twitter in order to promote her art history and provenance research consulting business. Provenance, of course, refers to the chronology of the ownership and/or location of a historical artifact, including art. Victoria's basically an art detective. It's pretty cool.
Victoria's consulting website is at victoriasearsgoldman.com (if you want to, you can check it out - it's a work in progress and you'll definitely see plenty of glitches). As such, ideally I'd go with @victoriasearsgoldman on Twitter - but that's pretty long. In fact, it's one-seventh of a tweet all by itself! At the same time, I think about brand consistency, and how that's so important to me in general.
Other ideas are @victoria-sg, @VSGresearch, @VSGprovenance, and @VSGartprovenance - but we're going to let you guys decide what would be best! What do you think would be the best pick, A) knowing Twitter and B) knowing what kind of work she'll be doing?
Chris Brogan closed his Linked Account. Should you?
This week, one of my chief influencers, Chris Brogan, blogged about how he had closed his LinkedIn account. Chris was kind of enough to post this screenshot.
My first thought was: wow. Anyone who can generate 143 recommendations is pretty darn impressive.
In his post, Chris indicated that he was closing it because he was having problems accepting people's connections, and had reported the problem without getting a satisfactory resolution. Maybe this is something that only happens to people with 16,000+ connections, as I've never had this problem.
While Chris is one of those guys I always tend to listen to, this is one of those areas where I'm clearly in the opposite camp. LinkedIn is such a valuable tool, it almost brings tears to my eyes. I'm in the "you'll have to pry my LinkedIn account from my cold, dead hands" category.
Chris writes he won't miss it "because it hasn’t done much for me for business." Just my two cents, but I fail to find any type of business that wouldn't benefit from LinkedIn. Can you?
The Facebook Sponsored Stories Lawsuit & Why It's a Big Deal
Quoting here from InsideFacebook:
Facebook today settled a proposed class action lawsuit that contested how the site uses names and images of users in its Sponsored Stories ad product.
The plaintiffs of Fraley et al v. Facebook, Inc. asserted that the social network’s new ad type turns users into spokespeople, and thus entitles them to compensation under California law. The company did not share terms of the settlement in court documents and representatives did not offer comment on the case. Had Facebook not settled, it might have risked what it sees as a major component of its future advertising business.
What's this lawsuit about, anyways? Well, California has a Right of Publicity statute that explicitly forbids a company from using any other person's name or likeness for advertising purposes without clear consent from the person being used. Facebook thought it was immune to this statute as a result of an exemption for topics that are considered newsworthy. Obviously, that argument didn't work.
Sponsored stories have been around for nearly a year and a half now - they debuted in early 2011 - and many advertisers feel they are cheaper and have better CTR thank traditional Facebook ads. Last year, TBG Digital revealed that a test consisting of 2 billion impressions found that Sponsored Stories received a 46% better CTR than traditional Facebook ads. Coupled with a 20% lower CPC, you can see why Sponsored Stories are a big deal. You'll find more on the original TBG Digital study here.
Now that Facebook is a public company, one can only expect greater scrutiny towards the world's largest social network. I think it's well-deserved, but lawyers should draw the line between breaches of the law (like this one) and simply going after the biggest target simply because it's easier to hit.
Related articles
- Facebook to settle class-action suit over Sponsored Stories (macworld.com)
- Facebook settles 'sponsored stories' lawsuit (news.cnet.com)
My Clickfire Media Mobile Panel Today
Today I'll be part of a panel by Click3X & Clickfire Media for Internet Week NY titled "Sweet Mobile Idea: How do you build it to fit your audience strategy?" Clickable thumb with more details below.
If you're interested in live-streaming the event, you can click on this link at 1pm today: http://clickfiremedia.com/iwnymobile/
