Dear Facebook, So Long and Thanks For All The Fish

dolphin

The sad truth is that the overwhelming majority of people, including highly technical capable people, don’t want peer-to-peer protocols. They don’t want to own their own data. They just want ease. Convenience. Someone else to take over and take care of their data problems. They want the Stacks.

via The Internet: We’re Doing It Wrong | TechCrunch.

I killed my Facebook page once upon a time in 2010 after some (now seemingly innocuous) privacy change I can’t remember.

That killing didn’t last long and I resurrected my page soon after and brought my Facebook existence back to life. However, I’m done. Facebook is over for me and I’m not looking back.

If you want to catch up with me, I’ll be here from now on. Please visit often.

I have a blog. It’s my main point of online existence. I love my blog. It’s fantastic (I think). It is paid for by me, controlled by me and points to things like my Twitter stream (I still love Twitter), my pictures, music I’m listenting to and thoughts I consider worthwhile to publish. If people want to hear those thoughts, they can visit my blog or subscribe to my blog via RSS.

I rarely check into Facebook. I do so about once a day. I flip through a dozen or so posts then move on. I understand that Facebook is the lifeblood of “the internet” for many people. However, I hope those “many” people realize the power of a web that isn’t controlled by one hub or one destination.

I’d much rather engage with people who take the time to set up and curate their own blogs, their own spaces on the web. Whether they pay for that or use a free blogging service, those are quality decisions that push the world to better.

Quite simply, I don’t want to encourage a web that relies on the spine of Facebook while my daughters are young. I want them to have a federated and distributed web like I did as a kid. That might not mean much to you, but consider what that means in the post-PRISM world and think about the ramifications.

What if we all started posting pictures and thoughts and ideas on our own blogs or name spaces instead of Facebook? What if the web didn’t have a walled garden as the social hub but instead relied on people actively subscribing to each other?

That is beautiful. That is where I want to belong.

As a marketing professional, I understand (trust me) the need to be on Facebook, but the need to be on Facebook is outweighed by the benefits of being elsewhere. Particularly on your own blog and in your own social spaces that you’ve created.

So, I’m killing my Facebook account. “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us…” and the world will be federated as one.

Go start your own blog and send me a link and I’ll subscribe in my RSS reader. We deserve better.

Let’s do this.

Press, Fever, and Freedom

I’m so excited that my RSS reader of choice on Android (for my Nexus 4 and Nexus 7) has rolled out support for Fever…

What’s New

1.4

– Fever support

via Press – Google Play.

Fever is a fantastic piece of software that does all the duties of something like Feedly or Google Reader (RIP) or FeedWrangler, but on your server.

That does demand that you have some familiarity with what having a server means and how to install PHP programs. It’s not complicated but it is a hurdle that 99% of the “market” isn’t willing to jump.

However, to have an RSS reader that streams me the news on my own terms whether I’m in a browser or on my mobiles gives me satisfaction.

If only more people decided that freedom on the web trumps four minutes of convenience…

What Does Google’s New Personalized Search Mean for Marketers?

When working with our clients on search campaigns, one of the most common conversations I have is about the nature of Google searches and how, if you’re signed in to your Google account, things aren’t universal (despite the “universal search” term).

To drive this home more, Google is now blending its (awesome) Google Now type features with the search engine:

Google today announced a number of search features that make it easier for you to find your own personal information through Google Search. The search engine can now find information about your upcoming flights “Is my flight on time?”, hotel or OpenTable reservations, package delivery information “When will my package arrive?”, your purchases and what’s on your calendar. Just like on Google+, you can also now use the regular Google search to find your own photos through queries like “Show me my photos of beaches.”

via Google Search Gets More Personal, Now Lets You Find Your Flight Info, Reservations, Photos And More | TechCrunch.

Google is quickly living up to its promise to index all of the world’s info (or at least yours). Translating and understanding what that means for SEO and paid search is becoming increasingly more detailed.

However, advertising and marketing always improve as the variable of relativity is increased. While the Panda and Penguin updates Google brought to its search algorithms over the past year have made it seemingly more difficult for some marketers to keep their search traffic flowing, there is great benefit for the agencies and companies willing to go to the whiteboard and figure out how best to use Google as a tool instead of relying on decade-old understandings.

Google has also performed a number of upgrades and changes to its AdWords tool (including the keyword tool) and Analytics package (adding a real-time API for one). It’s increasingly pushing publishers and companies to make sure they are using Google Webmaster Tools. In other words, Google understands these changes can be seen as damaging to their base of advertisers (their main monetary stream, of course).

This trend towards personalization is ushering in a new age of search marketing that is still shaking out and will take years to fully comprehend. In the meantime, keep an eye on Google’s updates to AdWords, Analytics and Webmaster Tools and do your due diligence on how search marketing is changing (for the better).

Will iOS 7 Be Popular?

When I write popular, I don’t mean in the techmeme indy-app eco-bubble, but in terms of the hoi poloi. I think about my “non-techy” friends and family who are all now on iOS (5 and 6 with lots of 4’s and 4s’ still in my circles) and who still have their 1st page of apps set with the default app that shipped with the phone.

I’m not so sure that sentiments like this will be true in the general market:

Aside from a technological standpoint, I think the most important factor to consider is that users cant wait to get their hands on iOS 7. The new version is a major change, and – at least based on my survey of non-geeky friends – I suspect that more people will upgrade more quickly than last year the launch of iOS 6 surely wasnt helped by doubts surrounding Maps.

via iOS 7 Apps and Aggressive Adoption.

While people like to claim that Google is the new Microsoft and Android is the new Windows, I think a little of the reverse is true.

iOS as it has pretty much looked for the last five years is a staid classic. It is the Windows XP of mobile operating systems while Android has gone on ahead slowly-but-surely building on the back of Linux in much the same way OSX built on the Unix desktop.

While Microsoft released Longhorn Vista and the excellent Windows 7 and the disaster of Windows 8, it almost took an act of Congress to get my family and friends away from Win XP and on to more current architecture.

Many of them eschewed Windows 8 because it was so radically different in the public chatterspace (even though it really isn’t) and I see more and more Macs or Chromebooks now.

iOS 7 has the very real possible future ahead of being “too different” from “what just worked.”

While I love Ive’s aesthetic and Apple’s “we know what’s best for you” design ethos, I’m not so sure that iOS 7’s radical color palate, icon design and gaussian blurs (having used iOS 7 for a few weeks for app development myself) will be a hit in the flyover states.

This is a critical time for Apple and iOS. The launch of iOS 7 and the iPhone 5s and/or 5c (and a retina iPad mini?) come at a time of a literal onslaught of excellent Android devices (Nexus 7, Samsung S4, HTC One, LG G2, possible Nexus 5) and Windows Phones (that Lumia one has a pretty nifty camera at least). Contracts are timing out with the release and people are going to be wondering if now’s the time to make a switch… to iOS 7 or something else.

Should be an interesting October.

Your Newsletter Will Be Deleted if Users Can’t Read It On Their Mobile Devices

From a new study by Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey on newsletters and mobile interaction:

The survey of 1,497 consumers found that 80 percent of smartphone owners say it is “extremely important” to be able to read emails on their mobile devices. The study also exposed what could be unfortunate results for marketers who have not yet taken mobile email display into consideration: 75 percent said they are “highly likely” to delete an email if they can’t read it on their smartphone.”

It’s worth your time to go read the full report.

Quotes like this should send a shiver down your spine if you’re still sending out long and non-mobile friendly newsletters to your subscription list:

“The fact of the matter is that consumers are opening emails on their phones first with increasing regularity,” said Jim Garretson, mobile product manager at Constant Contact. “The great thing about mobile emails is that shorter content and fewer calls to action actually perform better than complicated and dense messaging. By simplifying email marketing campaigns, marketers can take an essential and effective step towards becoming mobile-friendly.”

While the study was done by email newsletter provider Constant Contact, the data still points to something that I regularly try to convince clients of… less is more when it comes to newsletters.

Email newsletters are still an incredibly important piece to most, if not all, marketing campaigns. Making sure that your company’s mailings are mobile friendly is not just a nice feature but a requirement in 2013 and beyond.

Affiliate Marketing’s Bad Rap

From VentureBeat courtesy of Scott Jangro on FB:

“Be very careful when you sign up to affiliate networks. Do all your analysis. Profile the traffic, and then make an educated decision for yourself. Even though we were managing to get $200,000 a week of sales for all but nothing, this is not a sustainable business model.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/12/the-big-ugly-affiliate-marketing-scam/#f1Ue76oSercfP2GX.99”

To be honest, I can’t blame the guy. Despite the correct admonitions by affiliate marketing heavyweights in the comments, it’s a shame that an industry with so much promise continues to field a bad reputation from large scale brands (and state governments looking to make tax revenue from affiliate sales).

I love and believe in the affiliate channel, especially when it is “democratized,” but it only takes a few bad actors and not enough storytelling to ruin the message.

Women in Marketing

When I first started in the marketing business, I was in way over my head.

And now, two years later, I’m still in way over my head.

The transition from being a teacher in a classroom into the real world that we only talked about as we gazed out the window wasn’t too easy for me. My first problem was I was a pretty good teacher. I got good reviews. I solved parental issues. I even had the kids who had started the throwing erasers (they were the small pencil top ones) at me stop by Christmas. I still made mistakes of course, but overall I held my own.

But you can’t get buy just holding your own in marketing because even if you try your hardest and even if you blog everyday and even if you learn how to embed affiliate links (not to mention even learning what affiliate links are!), it doesn’t amount to anything if people don’t click and buy. You have to close. No questions. No discussions.

I can spend all day on lead generation and follow up from last week’s lead generation and in the end, it can amount to no money, no gas in the car, no groceries for the week. That was a wake up call to me. I couldn’t just show up and expect someone to give me a gold sticker and pat me on the back.

The second issue I encountered was moving from a profession in which females greatly outweighed males to a profession in which women were almost non-existent. There were many times I was the only woman in the room and many times I wasn’t even spoken to because the assumption was that I was a secretary or personal assistant of some sort.

I’m not going to lie, I spent time whine and whimpering over how unfair and hard it was to be a woman marketer (especially when the contracts I was preparing weren’t being signed), but it didn’t change a thing.

Marketing is hard. It’s hard for the people who have been in it for 15 years, it’s hard for the person who just signed her first contract. It never stops. There aren’t vacation days. Your whole day could change at a moment’s notice.

And here I am…still at it.

Why? Because there’s not another profession that doesn’t allow you to coast…that is if you’re doing it right.