@confessionality it’s interesting watching the movies again. Pick up on different things every time. A couple more to go. in reply to confessionality #

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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.

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.) :)

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?

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 was Democamp 7 and while attendance seemed to be off a bit from the last one (about 120 or so) I thought the demos were really good. I figured with the lousy Edmonton weather lately that more people may have been out.

I thought the demos went smoothly but the reason I thought it was the best so far is that I could probably use all the sites being demonstrated!

The other thing I liked about Democamp 7 was that the people asking questions seemed to focus less on the coding and technical aspects of the website and were asking those doing the demos about the marketing and business aspects of their creations.

I really don’t understand the programming side of creating applications and am not that interested, so it was nice to see more of a focus on the business side.

There were several suggestions from the audience that those doing the demos should be linking their website output to social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Great suggestion! If you can find ways to expand your product’s visibility and usefulness via social media, so much the better!

Twitclipper

The evening started off with Reg Cheramy and Sean Healy giving a demo of an app they created on the way down to Democamp Calgary recently.

I haven’t tried the app yet, but I understand that it’s a way of shortening text when you’re using Twitter. I can definitely see some uses for that when you’re limited by 140 characters. I’ll have to test it out and maybe report back on my findings.

I was impressed by the fact that they created the application, bought the domain and set everything up on their three hour trip down to Democamp Calgary. Good job!

SnackPanda

They call it Democamp but the Demos don’t always work as intended. That was definitely the case with SnackPanda.

There were some technical glitches with the LCD projector and the guys came back at the end after borrowing another laptop. That didn’t help as they had difficulty once they got the demo going.

Technical glitches aside, they have an interesting idea. SnackPanda is online ordering software for restaurants without an online ordering capable website. So, it’ll appeal to mom and pop restaurants who don’t have a franchise backing them up for ordering.

One thing I didn’t hear was whether they would do online payment processing for the restaurant as well. If they could set that up it might make the software even more useful.

LCD projectors – what a pain!

I have been to more than my share of presentations and it seems like every presentation I’ve been to someone has had problems linking up to the LCD projector.

I have no idea why this is, but I’ve heard the same thing from a lot of people. If you’re looking to develop a bit of hardware or maybe software, here’s a problem looking for a solution. Do you know of something out there to solve these issues? I wouldn’t mind knowing about it.

Maybe that’s why I’m reluctant to do any PowerPoint presentations. : )

LeagueSmart

Chris Olsen gave us a demo of LeagueSmart. What it does is manage your sports league. If you’re managing a baseball, soccer, hockey or lacrosse league, you can set up your schedule and enter game stats.

I haven’t ever managed a league, but I can see this kind of thing being useful, especially in setting up your schedule. Apparently he’s got a few competitors out there. The software seems to run well and he said he’s got a fair number of leagues already using the software.

I asked him if he’d thought of publishing the game results in Twitter or Facebook, and he said he hadn’t. A social media element to this software would make it even cooler, in my mind. Having been in a softball league before, it would be really interesting to let all your friends on Facebook, Twitter and other social media know about your team winning, the homerun you hit, etc. Maybe you could add YouTube video for when you got hit by a pitch too?

Idletime

James Matsuba demonstrated Idletime, a job board for freelance, part-time work.

James has demoed the software at a previous Democamp and it’s looking good. Apparently they’re ready to roll on it, and they are going to start with Edmonton.

Their basic premise is that most businesses don’t want to post jobs on Monster and those big sites because of the cost. Idletime is going to cost far less.

They’ve got a lot of cool features and I am planning on having a look and signing up for it. One of the best features, I think, is that the site will send you a text message and let you know about jobs that fit your criteria. Nothing like jumping on those jobs quickly!

They’re planning on rolling out city-specific sites once they’re out of beta, so keep an eye out for it. You may want to sign up anyway to check it out.

Tynt

Shawn Abbott gave a demo of the new Tynt. Tynt is another one of those demos we’ve seen before, but it seems they’ve completely changed their idea and kept the name.

Their product is Tynt Tracer. It tracks software that’s been copied from your site so you can get a good idea what your site’s users think is interesting and important. From a search engine optimization perspective, this kind of information is invaluable.

I am definitely planning to have a serious look at this software and its capabilities. It may be worthwhile for my SEO clients to be using this.

My only concern is that Tynt may be focusing more on the big websites with deep pockets. It’s in beta now, so you will likely be able to use it. I’m hoping that once they fully develop their fee structure that they won’t put it out of reach of small websites.

MapKat

Perhaps my favourite demo was MapKat. You can go on and develop maps that are tagged with text and photos of your adventures. The adventures of other MapKat users are available to have a look at as well.

With my trip to Belgium in the works, I can see something like this being a cool way of documenting your trip outside of the usual blog post approach.

They can link to Picasa or Flickr photos or can host them for you. Right now it’s only photos and text that can be put up but they plan on adding audio and video capability to it, so you can link to your YouTube videos.

The site also has the ability to do slideshows, rate trips and filter for certain types of trips, like hikes, car trips, etc.

At some point in the future geotagging of photos will be possible.

With my trip to Belgium I plan on letting everyone know what I’ve been up to and this seems like an ideal place to do it, along with my blog.

MapKat is another site that really needs to have the ability to link up with Facebook, Twitter and other social media. If you could update on MapKat and have the ability to transmit details of your adventures to social media, it would leave you more time for those adventures.

Room At The Top

As usual, a large number of Democamp attendees gathered at the RATT to continue the discussion. Can’t wait for the next Democamp. In the meantime, we can keep up with what’s happening in the Edmonton tech community by attending Tech Wing Wednesday at Hudson’s in downtown Edmonton. Look it up on Facebook if you’re interested.

The usual format is that there is a presenter who talks about the latest social media related project they’re up to, and then we have a group discussion about current social media topics.

iNews 880 – on top of social media

This Social Web Meetup had two presenters. First was Brittney LeBlanc, a reporter with the Edmonton radio station iNews 880 talking about how the station she works for uses social media.

Brittney is definitely an avid Twitterer (Tweeter?), and is, apparently, one of the first Edmonton media people to be on Twitter. Many other Edmonton media personalities have jumped on Twitter recently and are still learning. Brittney (@britl on Twitter) seems to have mastered Twitter.

Dub5 – web-based calendar

Also presenting was Adam Rozenhart of Dub5. Dub5 is a web-based calendar application being developed in Edmonton.

Adam said the genesis of the calendar project came about when a friend realized he’d missed a friend’s wedding. It was the day after the wedding and he woke up thinking about buying a wedding gift, wondering when the wedding was. He realized his error once he found the invitation.

It looks like an interesting application. I haven’t signed up for it yet (going to). It will send out text messages to people associated with an event to remind them it’s happening.

Adam said all the big calendar applications like Google Calendar, Outlook and others are all in their space. He said calendars seem to be an afterthought of those companies and aren’t as well-developed as they could be; something Adam’s company intends to remedy.

Good attendance for Social Web Meetup

The weather is getting better here in Edmonton and I was worried not many would show up for the social media gathering, but we had 28 people show up for the Meetup. I suspect the summer turnout, if the meetings happen in July and August, may be low. That of course depends on how the weather is then. Let’s hope our “spring” is no indication of how our summer will be.

I was surprised just how good the attendance was at Brewster’s Pub afterwards. We’ve made a tradition of heading over to the Oliver Square location after the meeting and this time we had around 25 people show up for that.

It’s always a good discussion after the meeting and good for networking too. I know most of the people at the Social Web Meetup, but we usually have a few new people show up to each meeting.

The discussion after the presentations was quite good, as usual. One of the main topics was whether or not the media is sensationalizing coverage of the swine flu outbreak. There’s too much to cover here, but it was fun.

My Edmonton SEO company

For me it was a good opportunity to hand out a few of my new temporary business cards for my Edmonton SEO company, Page One SEO. I’m making it official with my new website.

I’m quite excited and it’s been a long time coming. I’m doing search engine optimization, copywriting and editing and Internet marketing consulting. Many of you are already aware that I have been doing search engine optimization independently since October 2008.

So, if you’re an Edmonton company looking for search engine optimization, website copy, press releases or pay per click advertising campaign setup & management, I can give you a hand. I’d be happy to meet with you and discuss your Internet marketing needs.

It still looks a little hellish because of this blog template. It’s not your run of the mill free template though. I purchased the full package of Revolution blog themes before they changed up how they did things there. They’re powerful templates; probably too much for what I’m doing, so it’ll take a bit to figure it out and make it look pretty.

So, if you can be patient while I figure it all out, that would be great! Any tips on how to make it look better or get it working are certainly appreciated.

The future of journalism

The future of the fourth estate has been in doubt lately as media organizations have been folding, closing, laying off and generally suffering through the recession.

It’s a serious situation and it’s one I am concerned about. Keep an eye out for my take on what’s happening and how the journalism business might consider changing. I think if it goes the way I think it may, it would be a good thing for everyone.

I think it’d be best to just do a series of articles instead of a giant essay.

I’ll let you know now that blogging and social media such as Twitter will NOT be replacing the mainstream media, so get that out of your head right now. They’ll be part of it, but won’t replace it.

Comments:

1. Paul Says: December 23rd, 2008 at 2:39 pm I agree 100% about the tires. I’ll be shopping for a new vehicle soon, so it’s not worth the investment on this car, but wow…what a difference good tires make. Takes a lot of the stress out of driving.Great pics, also!
2. Alain Saffel Says: December 23rd, 2008 at 3:56 pm Paul, thanks for the comment. It’s surprising how many people don’t drive on the right tires. It endangers everyone. Quebec had the right idea about making snow tires mandatory.I hate driving in vehicles without the right snow tires. My truck is like that, which is why it tends to sit in the winter. Right now I can’t afford to buy the rims and tires for it either.Thanks for the compliments on the pictures. You can check out my Flickr account too. I’ve got the widget on the page here for my Flickr account.