MindComet

Hanging with Mike Haines, Regional VP of Facebook

Ok, so I didn’t actually hang with Mike Haines, in like a grabbing a beer or going golfing sense, but I did have the pleasure of attending a speaking engagement he hosted through the AMA Central Florida chapter.

Overall, the presentation was very basic, and to Mike’s credit, he explicitly warned us in the beginning. It truly was the 50,000 foot view. However, there were a couple of interesting points that Mike shared, which I thought invaluable, no matter how much of a “guru” you are.

Facebook is all about news streams.

In an average Facebook session of 22 minutes, a user spends 19 minutes of that time in their news stream. That one tidbit has an obvious and significant impact for marketers and their Facebook strategies - break the confines of your Fan Page and get your marketing message in user’s news feeds.

If you’re struggling with ideas on how to do this, maybe you’ll be inspired by IKEA’s approach to this. It is insanely simple, yet brilliant.

10x views on a stream vs page

If you were to post the same message into your fans news stream and only on the fan page wall, the former post would receive, on average, 10 times the views as the latter. Same message, different delivery method, different results. Not surprising, but it’s interesting to know the metrics surrounding it.

All in all, a good event. Thanks AMA CFL and Mike Haines!

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Nov. 18, 2009

My public declaration to fight SPAM

Spammers are everywhere. And without a doubt, they are the anti-midas, turning everything they touch into another 4-letter word that’s not “gold”.

Take for example, Twitter trending topics. It’s s a feature that is ripe for spam and in my opinion is now almost completely useless because of spammers. Twitter lists, probably one of the smartest platform features that Twitter has rolled out, is already littered with spammers. My DM stream is now useless. And I’m constantly pruning my blog comments for Viagra and phentermine offers, neither of which I need.

So here’s what I am doing. This is my public declaration of what I’m going to do to combat spam.

All blog comments are going to require approval by me

I honestly dread this. To me, it’s really annoying when you post a comment and your told that it’s awaiting moderation. However, at this point, I’m at my wits end. I could implement Captcha or get really elegant and use Mollom, but I just don’t have the time. Moderation is the most effective solution given my already busy workload.

I’m pruning my Twitter following list.

I was for quite some time a reciprocal guy. You follow me, I follow you. This stopped a few months ago, however, because of the practice, my following list if pretty large. That is going to change, no matter how long and arduous a process it is.

DM me a crap/spam message and you will be unfollowed.

I’m not even looking at my DM stream anymore, but that will change. Nuff said. You’ve been warned.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Nov. 17, 2009