Canada’s privacy commissioner has scolded Facebook in the past and forced them to make changes but Facebook is like the cat who came back. They keep making changes to their privacy because they want to monetize their site. I don’t have a problem with that, but it needs to be in a way that protects the contributions of Facebook users.

I think the best approach is to lock down your privacy as much as Facebook allows, going to “friends only.” I also have a policy of not adding people whom I have not met or are not identifiable. I have added a couple who do violate this policy, but I felt comfortable adding them because of connections to other people I know, so there’s no problem there.

There are some “friends” that I have not added that aren’t actually people but maybe something like Lucy the elephant. These profiles are more appropriate as fan pages and I have not added them. How do I know who is behind the profile or who has access to it? Deny. As a fan page I’d consider “liking” them.

It would also be wise to limit potentially embarrassing or damaging information on your profile. I hear stories about potential employers finding these types of things on Facebook profiles and I always wonder why these people have open profiles in the first place.

I don’t have embarrassing information in my profile, but it doesn’t matter. No potential employer is going to see my profile unless they’re already a friend, in which case they already know me well enough to know my talents and flaws (hoping the talents outweigh the flaws!).

Facebook advantages

Facebook is one of the primary ways I keep in touch with friends and family. I would be very reluctant to eliminate it from my life. That’s not to say it won’t happen if Facebook continues to abuse its position with the site’s users.

While I don’t talk to everyone all the time (who has the time for that), I do try to go through everyone’s profile on a regular basis just to see what everyone is up to. Status updates, in my view, are the seeds of conversation.

My advice to Facebook is to respect user privacy and find a way to make money that doesn’t involve selling out its users. You as a Facebook user create a lot of value in your activities.

Facebook knows that data miners love things like Facebook so they can learn new ways of selling you things. Consider yourself “ore” in Facebook’s eyes. Facebook has a huge deposit of 400 million or more users and that’s a lot of value.

All Mark Zuckerberg has to do is find a way to mine the ore without destroying the deposit. So far he hasn’t done such a great job, which is why government regulators have to step in and slap his wrists. Facebook is his to destroy. I hope he makes better decisions in the future.

Screen capture from 31 year old video from the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, it's happened before.

Watching this video was shocking. I know it shouldn’t have been, but it was. The parallels between the Ixtoc oil spill in the Gulf over 30 years ago are eerily similar to the spill now.

Ultimately, the solution to the previous blowout was relief wells. I’m guessing back then they actually thought what they were doing might work. I suspect now they know that what they’re doing won’t work except, hopefully, for the relief wells.

That being said, with this kind of experience and BP having had to have known about this previous blowout, why didn’t they focus more energy on preventing the oil from coming ashore?

I’m not sure how much more ridiculous this situation could get, but I’m sure we’re all prepared.

The real question is, if the government and oil companies already had this experience 30 years ago, why weren’t they better prepared for it now?

The only real answer is: money talks.

For over a month now, conservative estimates are that a minimum of 5,000 barrels a day of oil are gushing into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Louisiana. Recent revised estimates are now pushing that number to 12- to 19,000 barrels a day. Some estimates are as high as 70,000 barrels per day.

Either way, we’re seeing what may be one of the worst known marine disasters in history rolling out in the bountiful waters of the U.S. coast.

The U.S. government also shares a great deal of the blame for the situation and the inaction in cleaning it up and mitigating the damage. Obama is also being heavily criticized now for the government’s inaction, and rightly so.

Offshore drilling regulations

Once the immediate problem of the gushing oil is solved, there are a few major issues to be resolved. The lawsuits will go on for years, and BP is going to be in serious trouble.

Perhaps we will see sensible offshore drilling regulations in the U.S. and even more importantly, regulatory enforcement. If ever we’ve had a graphic illustration of the dangers of cozying up to the companies you’re regulating this would certainly make the case.

At the risk of opening up the discussion to a wider issue, I’m not in favour of government being cheerleaders for business. Government should be operating as a referee between citizens and business. Government should set a level playing field and enforce it to the benefit of all. It’s not good to tilt the playing field in favour of either group.

I also believe in a free flow of information, something that government and business are usually loathe to accommodate. I am not a fan of secrecy. Evil and stupidity tend to thrive behind veils of secrecy.

The cleanup

View of the top of the BP oil well blowout preventer in the Gulf of Mexico

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this whole Gulf disaster is the slow pace of protection and cleanup. From what I’ve gathered, the government seems to be bowing to BP to control the cleanup and protect sensitive environmental areas.

Had more protective measure been taken concurrent to BP’s attempt to stop the oil gushing into the Gulf, we might not be seeing the environmental damage on the Louisiana coast we’re seeing now. The fishing industry in the Gulf could potentially be threatened for generations.

This is another area where the Obama administration has been tremendously weak. The appearance is that the talk is tough, but there is no action to back it up. The administration claims it has its foot on BP’s neck, but the reality is that the public is going to have its foot on Obama’s neck if he doesn’t do something about this slowly expanding disaster.

BP keeping secrets

For obvious reasons BP has been trying to limit access to the beaches and affected waters. It doesn’t want the public to know the scale of the disaster. It doesn’t want the public to know how dangerous dispersants like Corexit actually are.

I believe the dispersants are actually formulated to keep the oil below the surface where the true extent and danger of the cloud of oil will remain secret. One has to wonder whether BP and the U.S. government have brought in oceanographers, water experts and other scientists to determine the true scale of the problem hidden below the surface of the Gulf waters.

With the top-kill attempts, BP is pumping drilling mud into the failed blowout preventer. They haven’t released how many barrels per hour they’re pumping into it, but if they were to be able entirely replace the flow of oil and gas from the well with mud, we would know exactly how many barrels per day were coming out of that well.

I am positive BP knows this number, but there’s no way in hell they’ll release it. Drilling mud isn’t cheap, and I am sure they meter it when they pump it. They know

The scary part is that they’re probably pumping as much mud into the well as they can but they’re still not completely displacing the flow of oil and gas. This means that however many thousand barrels per hour BP is pumping in are only part of what is escaping from the blowout preventer.

Public relations? What’s PR?

Information about this man-made disaster will eventually flow. I’m sure BP has consulted Oliver North on how to handle the back office though. Once that information is public, I think there will be even more outrage than there is now.

I think this is the key reason BP is so secretive. If the public knew the real extent of the problem, BP executives would be in serious danger.

On the other hand, BP seems not to have learned that in modern PR putting all your cards on the table as soon as possible is inevitably the best strategy. From a legal perspective, at least in the U.S., the crime never seems to be punished as severely as lying about it.

I am sure BP executives probably have their private jets on idle for when the arrest warrants and extradition orders are issued. I’m guessing they won’t be fleeing to any Caribbean countries though.

Once the flow of oil stops from this out of control well, the lawsuits are going to be out of control too. I think we’ll see BP executives arrested once the truth starts to come out. It may be only for their own protection.

The future of energy & government

I hope that efforts to stop the flow are successful soon. It sounds like relief wells could be months away, if they’re even successful.

To me, this whole issue illustrates the importance of moving away from petroleum as a primary source of energy in our society. As oil companies are forced into deeper and more dangerous waters and we recover oil from dirtier sources such as oilsands, one has to wonder why we’re not pouring more resources into alternative energy and distributed power generation.

We have the technology now and the means to put solar and wind power on homes and to create wind farms. This can happen far quicker than wide distribution of fuel cells or the creation of nuclear power plants. Perhaps if we subsidized the production and installation of wind and solar instead of oil and gas, we’d reduce our need for fossil fuels more quickly.

Mass production of electric cars really isn’t that far away either. The reality is that in colder climates, I suspect we’ll still be relying on fossil fuels to a greater degree, especially in a vast country like Canada.

There seems to be little political will to move more quickly on alternative energy, not unlike the lack of political will to deal with climate change.

Regulation and enforcement obviously need to be strengthened and the cozy culture of government and business needs to end. I’m not confident this is going to change soon though. Our politicians are too reliant on the perks, benefits, political contributions, bribes and post-politics jobs that flow from the businesses they loosely regulate.

Citizens are angry and need to let politicians know just how angry they are. If ever our planet has needed grass roots action, it’s now. The corruption in political circles across the planet these days absolutely sickens me and it seems to get worse by the day. Politicians had better understand that they govern with the consent of the citizens they represent. Around the world I think we’re going to see that consent increasingly withdrawn.

I’ve been a member of the mainstream media and I’m now a blogger. I’m on Twitter. The lines between media and social media are occasionally blurred. I don’t buy into the hype saying that blogging and Twitter will replace the mainstream media.

We still have radio, books, magazines, newspapers, television, etc. Nothing replaced them. New forms of media have simply changed them. They all still have their place in the media landscape.

Mainstream media is changing

In the summer of 2009 I heard an interview with David Black, CEO of B.C.-based Black Press; apparently it’s Canada’s largest newspaper chain with more than 150 newspapers. He’s still expanding his newspaper empire. Puzzling, considering how many are claiming the media is dying.

What does he know that the pundits don’t? He knows is that the media is not dying, but is changing. Technology has driven the change and the recession has accelerated it.

Small local papers will be around for a long time and some lessons can be taken from them. The biggest advantage they have is that they have a local focus and I believe this will be the primary advantage of successful newspapers in the future. Citizens want to know what is happening in their community and local media still is one of the best ways to do so.

Today the media landscape is littered with wire copy. It’s cheap and easy filler. It has its place and is important in finding out what is happening around the world. On a daily basis, local news tends to be most important to readers. So what’s the best way to get that local news?

The future of newspapers: new form of media organization

The first step would be to form a co-op and everyone in the company is going to earn the same amount. Everyone’s going to be equal, have the same vote and be an equal partner in the organization.

Co-ops aren’t exactly new, but it’s not a common model for media organizations. Journalists typically aren’t a particularly entrepreneurial lot. CHEK TV on Vancouver Island is a fairly recent example of an employee owned station. I believe it’s a corporation, but it’s a similar idea.

Maryland allows social or benefit corporations with California and Vermont possibly following their lead. It essentially allows a corporation to have social goals as one of their primary goals, and not just profits. It could possibly allow a corporation to survive a hostile takeover by a larger, richer media organization seeking to reduce competition. I wouldn’t mind seeing something like this in Canada.

Second, the newspaper would be entirely online. Traditional newspaper and broadcast media are increasingly finding life online, but it’s different, and not as lucrative (yet). By not having a paper version, operational costs are kept much, much lower. One of Black Press’ key advantages is its ownership of presses. It’s expensive and creates many difficulties. While traditional newspapers will still be around, online publications will be the key to the media’s future.

Third, it would be ad free and would be completely subscriber-based. Yes, the dreaded paywall. The idea is to have the newspaper be strictly focused on journalism and not on advertising. The logic is it would be a publication free of any perceived advertiser bias. Those who aren’t subscribers would be allowed some limited views of stories. Partial views of stories would also be allowed in Google News.

I think that people would be willing to subscribe to a quality newspaper free of any perceived bias from advertising. You might not cover the entire market, but could find a sufficient number of subscribers interested in quality journalism that could make the online newspaper a go.

Details: using Edmonton as an example

I’m based in Edmonton, and here’s how I can see it working. According to 2001 census figures, Edmonton has 265,000 households. Now, and including the surrounding area (Spruce Grove, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Leduc, etc), let’s roughly estimate that at 400,000.

Let’s give journalists a healthy wage of $50,000 each. Using the Edmonton Journal as an example, there’s approximately 90 people in its newsroom and production (estimated).

With an all-online edition, 40 people for an online only, daily publication, to start would be reasonable.

The total payroll would be $2 million. Allowing an extra 50 per cent for overhead such as office space, libel insurance and other costs, you would be looking at an annual budget requirement of $3 million. Seems like a lot, but without ads, how do you do it?

Well, how much would a subscriber be willing to pay? Getting the Journal every day costs $256 per year. Not bad, but would someone be willing to pay $100 per year to get ad-free news delivered to their inbox, online, iPad and to their smart phone? I think they would. With GST that would be $8.75 per month for daily news, or 29 cents a day. (Seattle Post Intelligencer is all-online now and I’m curious how well they’re surviving.)

With a $3 million budget and $100 per subscriber needed you only need 30,000 subscribers. That’s only 7.5 per cent of the households in the Edmonton metro area.

As of March 31, the Edmonton Journal had a paid circulation of 125,589. Readership is estimated at 268,900 to 458,000. The assumption with readership is that there are multiple people reading the same paper.

So, what happens if there are 60,000 subscribers? This would mean revenue of $6 million per year. There are a couple possibilities here. It would be wise to create a reserve of working capital for the operation, but then what? The excess earnings could be distributed to those in the co-op as a dividend. It could be donated to charities.

More importantly the newspaper could expand its coverage and team. It could begin to invest more in investigative journalism. These days the trend is to cut newsrooms, not expand them. Investigative journalism has suffered at a time when North American citizens need it most.

Should there be ads?

It’s certainly possible to produce a quality newspaper, online or otherwise, without ads. I’m sure there’s a large chunk of the newspaper audience that hates the ads. I think it would be a big selling feature for a lot of people. If readers know they’re getting a quality product with honest reporting, that’s also a big selling feature. That’s not to say that just because you have ads you can’t trust the reporting.

People do read the ads in newspapers, no question. Some people pick up newspapers for the ads. Many small community papers seem to be little more than something to hold all the flyers that get delivered.

If an ad-free online newspaper were to be started, it would certainly leave room in the marketplace for competing newspapers to offer space for ads. What would the potential audience think? Good question. Before a venture like this got started, it would certainly be wise to do a great deal of market research to confirm that there would be demand for it. Or maybe an “if you build it, they will come” approach could be in order.

Beyond one city

This model can easily be expanded to more than one city. I can see something like this spreading across Canada and elsewhere. With a common look and content management system for the web, you could brand the network and pull in news from everywhere into that network. It could function as its own wire service.

Ad-free news from across the country, and maybe the world? I would definitely subscribe to that. Surplus funds from larger locations could be used to help new “bureaus” get started in other locations and bring them into the co-op. Once one location was successful, the goal would be to self-fund the entire organization.

If you were an unemployed journalist, would you rather sit at home on EI, or get back to work? If a group of journalists were suddenly laid off at a major paper and got a settlement package, why not pool those resources and start a publication like this? Take a risk! I think it would be more than fair to repay those who funded the organization with surplus funds the organization generated.

Would it work?

I believe that this is a realistic model for future newspapers and helps to solve the problem of shrinking the newsroom as a way of increasing profits. I think that employees would be even more committed to the success of the organization because they share in its successes. It works for companies like Lincoln Electric and Westjet.

I would like to hear your thoughts on whether you’d be interested in investing in something like this, would subscribe to it or why you think it may or may not work.

A bit of a mouthful, but what it does right now is allows you to “invest” in people and websites who are part of Empire Avenue. You can buy and sell stock in websites and other site members using Eaves (Empire Avenue currency). Eaves might actually be worth more than the Euro these days (there’s an obvious similarity between the two symbols).

You can build your bank full of Eaves by performing tasks on the site such as filling out your bio, linking feeds to your sites like Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, blogs, YouTube and more. You’ll also receive dividends each morning from your investments and past day’s activity.

Achievements are awarded in Empire Avenue based on your activities. The more active you are, the more you can achieve. You will be rewarded by adding feeds, others investing in you, spreading the word about Empire Avenue, amassing levels of wealth, listing your favourite brands and interests, rating the feeds of others and much more.

There’s a lot going on in this new site already, and I suspect it could be somewhat like Facebook and Twitter in terms of its ability to consume your attention, if you’re not careful. I’ve already found it to be a lot of fun and it may also be a good way to promote your business or website in a fun and different way.

I have to give the site creators a lot of credit for the thought they’ve put into Empire Avenue. The site is still in beta and requires an invite to get in, but if you can find an invite, it’s well worth it. I’m eager to see how the site develops

Empire Avenue Tips & Advice

Empire Avenue is really a game, and when I try a new game, I’m always eager to learn winning strategies. I’m not going to profess to be any kind of investment expert, but I’ve noticed a few things that have worked in Empire Avenue so far, and some strategies I believe will work going forward.

If you’d like to amass a large amount of wealth, you need some starter capital. Empire Avenue starts you out with some Eaves (Fresh face achievement of 1500?) If you’d like to quickly build your bank, make sure to do these things ASAP:

• Fill out your bio (picture, country, gender, location, birthday)
• Add 50+ interests (Three keen interest achievements. If you’re stuck for interests, look at other profiles to jog your memory.)
• Add 50+ brands (Use the same advice in interests.)
• Add yourself to 3 categories
• Rate 500+ items (Look for these in feeds on other profiles. Thumbs up or down.)
• Convince people to buy at least 100 of your shares (Don’t be annoying about it. You can buy ads. Connect with people.)
• Review Achievements you haven’t got yet (New ones are added regularly and can be easy to get.)

Once you’ve done these things, you’ll want to take your small fortune and invest it in other Influencers. Like Tony Soprano, you want to get your money “on the street” working for you. As far as I know, you don’t collect interest on Eaves sitting in your bank. You have the opportunity for capital gains (increase in share price) and dividends (period earnings based on shares) if you invest in other Influencers.

So, get to it! I did the usual thing by starting small and investing in friends. I quickly realized that you’ll want to invest in those who are prolific and active on their RSS feeds such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Stumbleupon, Flickr, YouTube, etc. Why? You can’t just go around clicking on thumbs to make money. Activity in social media is rewarded with higher share prices in Empire Avenue.

You want to make sure to invest Influencers who are active. Their share prices should remain high, increase your portfolio value and perhaps pay better dividends. You can see how active the person is by having a look at the feed on their profile. If there are few updates, they may not be so active (or on holidays).

Are they a good investment? Well, that depends. They could be a good buy if their stock price has suffered lately, but you know they’re normally quite active. Maybe they’re in hospital getting their appendix removed. That’s known as insider information and, as far as I know, there is no penalty for that in Empire Avenue. It could represent a buying opportunity.

Keep no cash

I quickly used up all my capital and put it on the street. I invested it all! The only downside is you might miss buying opportunities as more people come on to Empire Avenue. You might consider reserving a little cash for those opportunities.

Active in social media

If you look at “My Profile – Connections” you’ll read this: “Empire Avenue is all about building your online Influence empire. Building such an empire requires you to be active all over the web. As an Influencer connects more sites and services to Empire Avenue their share price, their influence and indeed, their value, will rise.”

How obvious is that? You need to post on Twitter and Facebook, share links, blog, post photos and videos, Stumble, etc. The more you do, the higher your value and the higher your stock price. More people will invest in you (hopefully they see the value) and you get a bit of a kickback when someone buys shares in you too.

It’s important to note that before any of your RSS feeds will create value for you, you will need at least five people to endorse your feed. The quicker this happens, the better it is for you (and them).

Once those feeds are endorsed, make sure to blog, post photos, videos, Stumble, etc. The web feeds on fresh new content and so does Empire Avenue. I really like this because I know I become a little complacent (lax) about new blog posts, etc, so this might spur me on to blog more and get out shooting photos and videos.

Empire Avenue Feeds

I had some difficulty adding my Flickr account. Your feed will look like this (http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=19599223@N00) but there’s one key thing to remember: for your Flickr feed, add the verification code to the title of a recent photo. It will NOT work in the description.

I suspect almost any RSS feed you have will work. I wasn’t sure where they were in YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/AlainSaffel) or Stumbleupon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/alainjournalist/), but it appears that your main page address will work. Make sure to upgrade those feeds to blog status where possible.

Having more, active feeds will show investors you’re active and a valuable commodity. Hopefully you’ve actually got something decent to say too!

Empire Avenue Future

This is just a primer on Empire Avenue. I’ve increased my share value almost 50 per cent in just a couple of days by doing these things. Who knows where I’ll end up, or whether I’ll end up in the hospital getting my appendix removed, but I am hoping my share value will continue to rise.

If you’ve got some more advanced Empire Avenue investment tips, feel free to share them. I haven’t even touched on longer terms strategies such as buy and hold. Hopefully your friends understand when you dump their stock!

You can keep up to date with Empire Avenue news too.

(PS I noticed after I posted this that there’s a fairly detailed explanation on the home page when you login about how Empire Avenue works. Just go to the help tab. Yes, I’m the guy who doesn’t read the instructions first. I feel I gain a better understanding by putting things together and taking them apart several times.)

I'm alleged to have bought an ugly coffee table which may or may not resemble this one.

Do you ever have weird dreams? My wife informed me this morning she had a weird dream last night.

I was out at Tech Wing Wednesday at Hudson’s last night (for real) and apparently I had too much to drink (she dreamed). So, instead of calling her for a ride, I located a late-night furniture store (in dreams, stores have convenient hours) that was willing to deliver me, my new $650 butt-ugly coffee table and my scooter back to my house.

We had a good laugh about that this morning. My wife left early to go to work for a 1.5 hour course on how to enter her time sheet.

She didn’t look in the garage before she left.

I’m definitely 30+

While sipping on my coffee I picked up one of the many books lying around my house.

I cracked open Old Shite’s Almanac to a short piece:

Accepted indications you’ve reached the age of thirty

• You leave clubs before the end to “beat the rush.”
• Before going out anywhere, you ask what the parking is like.
• When sitting outside a pub, you become envious of their hanging baskets.
• Before throwing the newspaper away, you look through the property section.
• You buy your first t-shirt without any writing on it.
• You always have enough milk in the house.
• Instead of throwing out an old pair of trainers (shoes), you keep them because they might be good for the garden.
• You are unable to resist the lure of self-assembly furniture.
• You find yourself saying “is it cold in here, or is it just me?”
• Instead of tutting at old people who are slow getting off the bus, you tut at schoolchildren’s lousy grammar.
• You wish you had a shed.
• You have a shed.

I’m not guilty of all of them, but a good number! And, I do have a shed. I’m happy about that, but even better? I have a garage. A double garage!

Why haven’t I been blogging?

As you can see, my blogging has been rather sparse so far this summer, something I can attribute to a large amount of work on my plate. I had thought the summer might be slow for me, but it’s been anything but!

So instead of sipping Coronas on the patio, I’ve been in front of my computer all summer. Don’t take it as a complaint! I have added several new SEO and copywriting clients lately, which have contributed to what I think has been a good summer, but not in the traditional sense.

Will autumn be slower? I hope not, though I do hope I can take a bit of a holiday at some point. At the very least I promise to blog more on exciting topics such as Michael Jackson’s death and the healthcare debate in the US. I do have some blog posts in the works that should be good for a laugh as well.

The other post ended up being more like a manifesto than a blog post, so I’ll save that for another time. I just wanted to show my support for the Iranian people. They deserve free and fair elections, something they didn’t get this time.

The Iranian theocracy should see the writing on the wall. Their days are numbered. The protesters might not succeed this time, but demographics are working in their favour. They can see the freedoms and openness in other societies around the world. They want it. They deserve it.

WARNING – THE VIDEO IS VERY GRAPHIC.

After the death of Neda Soltani, a beautiful young Iranian woman captured so vividly on video, you’d think the Iranian government would realize they’re losing the PR battle around the world (and more importantly, at home), and it’s only going to get tougher. Unfortunately these types of corrupt dictatorships tend to hang on to the bitter end. Let’s hope it’s a very bitter one for them.

One of the more interesting aspects of all of this is how social media like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are being used to get video, audio, pictures and text out of Iran to let the world know what is happening. Despite the worst efforts of the Iranian government to stop the information flow by arresting and ejecting foreign media, the information is still flowing out. The government there hasn’t been able to stop the information flow, and let’s hope they don’t.

I am sure it’s been difficult for world leaders to talk publicly about this issue, but they need to condemn the actions of the Iranian government and take actions to support that condemnation. I understand they want to work with the Iranian government but how can you work with a corrupt, violent government like this?

The Iranian protesters are sacrificing a lot to change their society and I support them. The question I have is: would you be willing to do the same to support democracy in your country?

Facebook is making money. Whether they’re in a profit position yet, I don’t know, but they are running ads. I’m sure there aren’t many people out there who would begrudge Twitter and Facebook from actually making money off social media.

Okay, there are a few old-timers who think that everything on the Internet should be free and no businesses should be allowed on. Since universities and the military were the first on the ‘net, they can stay. *Yawn* When will these old-timers go away?

So, what’s the best model to make money? Facebook is making money from ads. That’s a start. Too bad they allow so many garbage ads on there. Now I routinely ignore them. Not sure, but I may start seeing erectile-dysfunction cure ads on there soon. (I’ll ignore those too. I’m a long way from needing those!)

Facebook has polluted its well by allowing junk ads. With pretty good demographic and psychographic targeting available with Facebook, you’d think advertisers would avail themselves of those tools and actually attempt to match up their ads with those most likely to act on their offers. I’m not sure who’s interested in six-eyed babies, or determining if they’re smarter than Barack Obama, but…

And if Stephen Harper really did have an $11,998 cheque waiting for me, I might just click on that ad.

I talk to people regularly about the garbage ads I see on Facebook. It’s sad that they’ve almost ruined a golden goose.

Good online ad model: magazines

I’ve said this many times before, but people don’t always ignore ads. You just need to give them the right ones. Do you have a hobby? Do you purchase a magazine related to that hobby? Let’s say you’re into four wheel drive trucks. You are quite likely to read the ads in a magazine related to it because magazines that are tightly focused on a certain hobby usually have ads directly related to that hobby.

The benefit? Readers typically look at the ads because they are directly related to them and their interest. The ads have information they may find useful. There are products the reader is very likely interested in purchasing. I get a few magazines and I do read the ads because they provide me with some useful and interesting info. I have bought products based on ads I’ve seen in those magazines.

The key here is focusing on the audience. Give them ads that are related to their interests. Facebook gives users plenty of opportunity to define themselves and their interests. There’s no excuse for Facebook not to serve up useful ads. Facebook allows advertsiers to focus their ads with a limited amount of demographic data. It’s not perfect, but there really is no excuse for advertisers not to try. Perhaps Facebook can have ad reps assist advertisers and also reject ads that are spammy, sleazy or deceptive.

It’s really a simple concept, so why do so many websites just not get it? I guess they’re desperate to have any kind of revenue at all, so they’ll run complete crap and call it advertising. It really is an insult to your user.

If you’re actually trying to make money online and do it via advertising, you’d better provide some value to the user. Facebook seems to have missed the point on this, although the ad quality had been improving slightly, lately. I hope that trend continues.

How much are you willing to pay? Are you willing to pay at all?

I woke up this morning to a story on CBC about the possibility of paying for Twitter. The comment was they have a long way to go to compete with Facebook’s 200 million users (I guess Twitter has 32 million).

I have heard this before, mostly from people who are likely users of one or none of the aforementioned services, that there is competition. Anyone who is familiar with both services understands that they are quite different. It’s not really about competition.

Though that is the case, Facebook has definitely tried to work in some of Twitter’s look, and with many complaints along the way. In the hopes of keeping users from falling off? Why?

Facebook’s purpose is quite different and many people have already integrated Facebook and Twitter, at least in terms of updating their status in Twitter and pushing it to Facebook. Maybe Facebook should make it so you can update your status there and push it to Twitter? Makes sense and Twitter makes it easy to happen.

Facebook is mostly about connecting with family and friends and rounding out your profile. I’m curious about the figures, but I’m sure there are many people in Facebook who don’t even update their status.

For me, it’s not an either/or proposition. I use both Twitter and Facebook and will continue using both.

Twitter: not making money in social media yet…

Twitter has already started some minor advertising on its website and I think they’re even selling t-shirts now. It’s just not enough to pay the bills I guess, so they’re thinking of charging users.

This is a path fraught with danger, and I hope Twitter tweads cawefully (sorry, had to do it) in this area.

Twitter doesn’t have a huge user base and I don’t think the community has grown to a critical mass that it can afford to alienate a large chunk of users. So what are some money making options?

1. Charge a flat/monthly fee
2. Advertising
3. Freemium model

Twitter: charge a flat/monthly fee

I think a flat or monthly fee would be the worst option, no matter what the cost was. Twitter really relies on new users growing the community. Many new users have no idea what it is all about and a lot don’t come back. Those users are not likely to sign up in the first place if they have to pay to play. The existing users may stay, depending on how much the fee is.

The story I heard this morning mentioned possibly charging businesses for an account. What about employees who occasionally Tweet about their employer? Or the guy who runs his own business, but Tweets under his own name? How do you police that? It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Twitter: make money on advertising?

So far it doesn’t seem to have gone so well. I’m not sure how they could work ads in without being too obtrusive. It also upsets a lot of people and they’ll likely be ignored, like most Facebook ads are. You can make money doing online advertising, but you need to do some serious thinking to do it well. Would it work well with Twitter anyway? I tend to doubt it.

Twitter: freemium model

In my opinion, this is the best option. There are many examples of companies already doing this, like Flickr. You give basic users simple, useful functionality. They test out the waters and decide if they’d like to upgrade to the premium service.

Flickr is a great example. You can upload photos at the basic level, but are limited in how many you can upload and your storage. With a pro Flickr account, you get unlimited storage and uploads per day. The kicker? It’s only $25! As soon as I saw that, I almost instantly signed up. At $25 per year, why wouldn’t I sign up for a Flickr Pro account?

Twitter could do the same. Money making strategies aren’t exclusive, so maybe premium users could avoid seeing ads. Perhaps they could use a standalone client that Twitter is hopefully developing. Maybe they could get 200 character Tweets.

Twitter freemium pricing

The trick is finding the pricing sweet spot. I have given this some thought in recent months and I like the $25 annual fee level. I think with many users, even up to $50 would be okay.

Don’t be greedy though Twitter. If you indeed have 32 million users, if even just 10 per cent signed up to a $25 freemium Twitter account, that would be $80 million per year. I am willing to bet there are 3.2 million people willing to shell out a measly $25 a year to get a Twitter freemium account. That’s about the price of a case of beer, and it’s good for the whole year.  A case of beer doesn’t last me a year or give me as much as Twitter does.

I would like to see Twitter stick around. I find it useful and I like the friends I’ve made there. I’m hoping Twitter makes the right decisions and really thinks it through when they’re deciding how to make money online. The wrong decision may just send people looking for their competition.

Tomorrow’s article: Advertising isn’t so bad if you do it well, Facebook isn’t

It is a little dark in Hundred but it's also a Blackberry photo.

I attended #TwilightYEG last night at Hundred Bar & Kitchen in Edmonton.

The Edmonton Twitter event attracted around 60 people and raised over $3,400 for the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation. Add that $3,400 to the #TwilightYEG pre-event at Lux last week that raised more than $400.

#TwilightYEG was organized by realtor Jerry Aulenbach and Shauna McConechy of Out Inc. Good job guys!

It was a lot of fun to see everyone dressed up and helping to raise money for charity. I didn’t bid on the BBQ, which @sirthinks ended up winning, by outbidding everyone at $1,700. One of the chefs at Hundred will BBQ for you and 10 people, if I understand correctly. That would be good!

Deciding to use Edmonton Transit was a good plan. I ordered what I thought was a pint of one of my favourite beers, Hoegaarden, and they brought me a massive glass of beer. Sure it’s not a schooner from Brewster’s, but a half-litre of beer is nothing to sneeze at. A couple of those, a pint of Guinness and driving is not an option. That being said, you really ought to try Hoegaarden. Great beer!

It seems like I’m at practically every Edmonton Twitter event there is! At least, that’s one someone pointed out at the last one I was at! Haha!

The fun continues tonight at Ceili’s where the YEGtwits will be looking to burst out of second place and take the trivia championship. We’ve been second three weeks in a row. It will end tonight!