Last night I noticed that there are hundreds of WordPress groups on Facebook but nothing for residents of British Columbia. So I started a new one – please join it here and post your discussions, comments, photos, videos, etc.

We have had three successful WordPress events this year hosted by Tazzu in April, BlueFur in July, and Rebecca and Duane at Barcamp in September.

I contemplated for a while if we need another event. I certainly think we deserve a larger event – all of this year’s events have been single day over a few hours with an audience of about 100 people, whereas the “proper” WordCamp in San Francisco is a full conference over a few days with various sessions and a few hundred attendees. Perhaps instead of throwing another event out there I should talk with the three organizers of this year’s events and see if we can collectively do something on a larger scale next year. That might work.

What do you think? Please post here or in the group on Facebook.

Anyway back to work :)

-k.s.

Basically in plainspeak the Facebook terms and conditions are saying “As long as your photos are on Facebook, you’re agreeing to give us the right to do anything we want with any of your photos for any reason. Once you take your photos off, we might still have a copy but we won’t use it. However, rest assured we don’t claim to own your photos so we won’t sue you for using your own photos, just so you know.”

Back in the day (as in.. a few months ago), you would have your entire Facebook friends list as one. Inviting people to events was both tedious and risky. You might invite the wrong person, and your finger would be tired by the time you got through the list.

Whether you’re doing marketing and promotions on Facebook for businesses or non-profits, you’ll want to make sure your event, group and page invitations get to the right people. So how can you do this? Well I’ve already talked about making multiple profiles. Although FB doesn’t like it – I think it’s a matter of choice. I have several profiles. One for strictly personal, family, fun stuff. Another for professional, work-related stuff. And yet another for marketing and community relations.

So how do you manage all those lists? The way to do it is to SEGMENT. You  need to go to your Friends list, and make individual lists of your friends. You can do this in the right-column beside where all your friends are listed. You can make as many lists as you like, and add friends individually or in bulk to each list.

Here’s an example of practical usage. You are on Facebook doing marketing for Barack Obama. You have 300 friends, from various locations throughout the USA. If you make seperate lists for the region of the country in which those friends live, such as East Coast, MidWest, etc., you can invite particular people to relevant Obama campaign events, groups, and pages. This will allow you to more effectively target your campaign marketing. Segmenting your audience list is a standard practice of email and conventional marketing, so it is no stretch to also apply it to your Facebook marketing.

Are you using lists? Any extra tips on this topic? Please share :)

-k.s.

Now… if only Facebook could pay attention to my wish list :)

So most of you probably have a Facebook account, but have you ever thought about whether one account is enough? Yeah, I know you’re probably thinking “is he crazy? I get enough pokes and vampire invitations already.” But hear me out.

Before they become habits, we all come to social networks with some type of agenda. In the case of Facebook, there are many reasons why people use it because although it began with students, its user base is continually expanding to the general population. Firstly, we use it to keep in touch with our current friends, relatives, and associates. Second, we use it to get back in touch with people with whom we lost touch. Third, we use it to network with professionals (i.e. people at work, people at school, people in the same field, people from the same discussion forum). Fourth, we use it to learn or teach about issues we consider important (e.g. Allow coloured profiles on Facebook, Don’t allow coloured profiles on Facebook, Leave Britney Alone, 1,000,000 Who Hate George W. Bush, etc.). There are other reasons as well.

Now, if you have one profile – and only one – it will be difficult for you to post images you want to share with friends, while you have professional associates on your Friends list. Likewise, if you’re in groups with strong political or religious motivations, it could have repercussions in your work or school situation.

I know that technically Facebook doesn’t allow or encourage multiple accounts, but I think it is essential. Here’s how I would go about it:

The Personal Account
Use this account for only your close friends, family, and people with whom you’ve grown up. People that you trust and who trust you. People who wouldn’t Photoshop your pictures and re-post them on Fark.com. This is the profile where you can relax a little bit.

The Professional Account
Use this account for your work associates, school non-friends and professors, and people to whom you’d like to show your most polished self. This one can have a more detailed “Career” section while not having to be filled with your favourite movies, books, etc. It’s a good idea to keep your profile on this one free from the clutter of applications like “Hot or Not” and “Pet Pupz” and instead make it look like a professional portfolio.

The Anonymous Account
Facebook doesn’t like anonymous accounts and they might try to stop you, but usually you can come up with a reasonable name that is totally anonymous. You can use this for activism. If there is a group that you want to join or start, but can’t be associated with, you can use this account. Some people might not like my suggestion here, but this is a really important tool for non-profits as well. Sometimes you want to promote a cause, but don’t necessarily want your organization to be responsible for the group. You can start a group with this account and still promote your cause and even indirectly promote your organization, but not be representing your organization. Note: in a legal sense, regardless of the name you choose, you are responsible for your actions and I do not suggest anyone to use this method for anything inappropriate or illegal. Use your head!

It’s important in the case of all three of the above to keep an eye on your privacy settings. Sometimes when you have your settings set too loosely, people can still see your profile although you’d prefer they didn’t. For example, when you send someone a message, they will be able to see, at the very minimum, your limited profile. So it’s a good idea to make sure you’re sending a message to a particular person from the appropriate account.

Fake Profiles for Spam
Be careful if you’re using an anonymous account. Only use it for good, and don’t get attached to it. If you use a fake profile for spam, that is EVIL! Don’t do it! You probably will get reported and it’s not good karma.

Source: JVManna on Flickr.

Next Up
Throughout the month of May (and some of June), I’ll be sharing my experience in the last two years with the following topics: “Facebook Marketing for Non-Profits” and “WordPress as a CMS” – Look out for it! If you have any questions for me you’d like answered, please post them in the comments or e-mail me: info [at] kulpreetsingh [dot] com.

You have to admit it – for most social people, Facebook is more a habit than a hobby. We’re so accustomed now to logging in, a few times a day, checking photos, notes, groups, etc. Posting on peoples’ walls, making graffiti, and wasting time defining our relationships. Facebook has us like coffee has… well most of the working population. Some people can’t get through a few hours, let alone a day, without their coffee. Now what happens when, the thing that you kind of depend on every day, is bought out by the super mega company that kind of monopolizes all computers in the world? Hmmm! Huge potential for evil!

According to Kara at All Things Digital, Microsoft has been gauging Facebook’s interest in being taken over.

After failing to court Yahoo!, Microsoft is a little anxious for a partner. Well, I think Microsoft-weds-Facebook would be a match made in heaven. You all know Facebook’s real goal is to control and influence large amounts of people to make profit from them. It’s like Orwell’s 1984 2.0. And who better than Microsoft, well besides Google, to help Facebook reach that goal?

Comic: Pooch Cafe by Paul Gilligan

This one’s a wish list, not a to do list, because although I can do something to fulfill my wishes for WordPress and other Open Source stuff, the most I can do for Facebook is send them e-mails and pray. But I wouldn’t want to waste my prayer time on Facebook so I can just send them e-mails. But they’d reply with the same generic message: “maybe we will some day (which means never) but thanks for your e-mail,” so… wish list it is!

1) A simple option in your privacy settings to turn of all new application requests. Why so lazy on something so obvious, Facebook??

2) An option when you’re inviting Friends, to invite them all. I understand most people have different types of friends in their list, but for a power user like myself – I have four of five different accounts with different types of people in each account. And I don’t want to click 100 names. [Update: Here's an awesome FireFox add-on called Check All which can help with that.]

3) The option to change the name of your group, within reason. They have a no exceptions policy on this, and I think that’s unfortunate. Sometimes you start a group, it gets big, and the mission or vision changes, but you don’t want to have to ask all 600 or 6,000 or 60,000 people to move to a new group!

4) Functionality to work with large groups. Usually on Facebook, after your group has more than 1,000 members, a lot of the functions stop working. You can’t message all members, you can’t make officers or admins. It just gets silly.

5) Better Video. Facebook’s video extension has issues. Sometimes videos that are being processed just disappear. Sometimes you can’t tag people. Strangeness!

One thing I am really liking, however, is the Graffiti Wall public gallery. Many of the full time artists are using tablets to draw it, but still some very nice stuff.

Image by: Anna Leychenko

Social networking websites such as Facebook are more effective than the emergency services and media at dealing with disasters, a new report claims. – Telegraph.co.uk