Woman Loses $4K to Scammer Posing as Friend on Facebook

September 8th, 2009 • 2 comments Identity, Legal Issues, Social Networks, Uncategorized
Tags: Uncategorized

Jayne Scherrman, of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was the unfortunate victim of a scam that turned her compassion and trust into a $4,000 profit, the AP reports. A still unknown crook hacked the Facebook account of Jayne’s friend Grace Parry and began to send Jayne messages, purporting to be Grace and claiming that she and her husband had been detained in London and were in need of money.Jayne figured if the couple could reach her only by Facebook, then they were in dire straits, indeed, and quickly wired $600 as per the scammer’s instructions. As is common in these kinds of schemes, subsequent messages were sent requesting additional funds. In this case, the huckster blamed the exchange rate when explaining the discrepancy between the funds needed and the amount initially requested.

All in all, Jayne eventually sent $4,000 via Western Union to the impostor before realizing that she had fallen victim to a scam. On August 26th, she alerted the authorities.

This tactic has been used before, but there ways to avoid a snakey scammers:

• First and foremost, never wire any money without speaking directly (on the phone, not via e-mail or Facebook) to any friend who requests your help financially.
• If you believe there is a plausible reason this friend cannot reach you by phone, don’t be afraid to ask them to confirm their identity. Ask questions that only they would be able to answer.
• Don’t ask about birthdays or hometowns, facts that could be readily ascertainable online, but instead about where the two of you first met, first boyfriends, or high school mascots.
• If you know or suspect a friend’s account has been hacked, try to alert that person directly. Then, warn all of your mutual friends, and finally contact the site’s administrators regarding your suspicions. Both your friend and shared pals will be thankful.

Follow these basic guidelines, resist your immediate urge to blindly offer help, and you’ll avoid falling victim to the widespread 419 scams that have taken a more personal twist when crooks ditched their Nigerian princess roots. [From: AP/Yahoo! News]

FYI PPL: Understanding the Communication Styles of Teens

September 2nd, 2009 • 2 comments Behaviors, Teenagers
Tags: Uncategorized

The other day, I received the following IM from my 14 year-old niece: “So, wats up? How ru? Gtg … mom is callin me. C ya l8r k? Byee.” (Translation? “So, what’s up? How are you? Got to go! Mom’s calling me. See you later, OK? Bye.”) To say that I’m concerned about my niece’s academic future — based on her communications skills — is an understatement. Recent research, however, has reassured me that while teens are heavily embedded in a tech-rich world and craft a significant amount of electronic text, they see a fundamental distinction between their electronic social communications and the more formal writing they do for school or for personal reasons.

According to a Pew Internet Project study , teenagers are utilitarian in their approach to technology and writing, using both computers and longhand depending on circumstances. Their use of computers for school and personal writing is often tied to the convenience of being able to edit easily. And while they do not think their use of computers or their text-based communications with friends influences their formal writing, many do admit that the informal styles that characterize their e-communications do occasionally bleed into their schoolwork.

• 57% of teens say they revise and edit more when they write using a computer.
• 63% of teens say using computers to write makes no difference in the quality of the writing they produce.
• 73% of teens say their personal electronic communications (email, IM, text messaging) have no impact on the writing they do for school, and 77% said they have no impact on the writing they do for themselves.
• 64% of teens admit that they incorporate, often accidentally, at least some informal writing styles used in personal electronic communication into their writing for school. (Some 25% have used emoticons in their school writing; 50% have used informal punctuation and grammar; 38% have used text shortcuts such as “LOL” meaning “laugh out loud.”)

All of this matters more than ever because teenagers and their parents uniformly believe that good writing is a bedrock for future success. Eight in ten parents believe that good writing skills are more important now than they were 20 years ago, and 86% of teens believe that good writing ability is an important component of guaranteeing success later in life.

So, next time I receive an IM from my niece, I can be assured that her informal writing style is not indicative of her future academic success. OMG, I <3 that.

Some of My Favorite Things: Musical Flash Mobs Brighten My Day

August 24th, 2009 • Fun, Industry News, Uncategorized
Tags: Uncategorized

Let’s face it: I’m tired of people being mean online.

The Use of Social Media in Business

August 13th, 2009 • Social Business, com.motion News
Tags: Uncategorized

I was asked to be on Business News Network’s show “Headline” last night to talk about the use of social media by businesses.

We were preceded by com.motion’s founder, Keith McArthur (now Senior Director for Social Media and Digital Communications at Rogers Communications) and ING Direct Canada’s CEO, Peter Aceto – check out their piece as well.

Here is the video, featuring Howard Green, Bob Pearson and myself having a great discussion.

The 2009 Gartner Hype Cycle

August 12th, 2009 • 1 comment Emerging Technology, Industry News, Studies & Research
Tags: Uncategorized

Every year, technology research house, Gartner releases what is known as a “hype cycle” – rating the expectations behind each maturing technology against their usefulness/adoption within business. It shows how technologies move through the initial spurt (technology trigger), through the peak of inflated expectations (can anyone say “Twitter”), through the trough of disillusionment, into to the slope of enlightenment and finally, the plateau of productivity and mainstream adoption.

This year is no different (see the graphic below)and an insightful write-up of the part of this year’s Gartner Hype Cycle which focuses on social media can be found on ReadWriteWeb.

It is interesting to note that Twitter, or more generally speaking “microblogging”, is falling from the peak of inflated expectations and into the trough of disillusionment. It is great to see corporate blogging moving up the slope of enlightenment and is predicted to reach mainstream adoption in “less than two years”. Personally I am surprised to see online video on the downward slope to to the trough of disillusionment and that it is being outstripped by public virtual worlds in the “race” to mainstream adoption.

It is also interesting to see what is moving up the peak of inflated expectations. Augmented reality is a very cool technology which you can see in action below.

Mobile robots sound very cool and Internet TV could make advertising far more interactive and contextually relevant – imagine watching a Liverpool match and being flashed an ad to buy a Fernando Torres shirt after he scores another screamer…and it being one click away on your remote. You can insert your own preferred sport/team

Most importantly of all for com.motion and our clients, the “Web 2.0” or social media phenomenon is rated as moving into the slope of enlightenment and that it will be adopted by the mainstream in less than two years. Judging by the exciting and innovative technologies on the hype cycle, we are in for an exciting time!

More on the Gartner Hype Cycle for consultants and agencies.

What KPIs Should You Use When Measuring WOM?

August 7th, 2009 • Measurement, Word of Mouth
Tags: Uncategorized

When developing a word of mouth campaign, being able to measure, track and compare the results is essential for a successful campaign. For organizations wanting to leverage word of mouth — especially those using Web 2.0 tools — it’s obvious that traditional analytics alone are insufficient.

For a successful WOM campaign, engagement and outreach efforts need to be carefully monitored in real-time to ensure that messaging is consistently being received by the target audience. Measurement should encompass KPIs such as sentiment, online engagement, and the successful integration of social media into existing campaigns.

Forrester Research, at their Forrester Research Marketing Forum, proposed a new metric, engagement that includes four components: involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence. Each of these is built from data collected from online and offline data sources.

• Ivolvement tracks site visitors, time spent, page views and more (old-school stuff)
• Interaction measures the contributions to blogs, photo and video creation and uploads, and purchases
• Intimacy tries to understand consumer attitudes, perception, and feelings about a brand through surveys or monitoring technology as well as applications providing an interactive environment between brand and consumers
• Influence measures the likelihood that consumers will recommend or advocate products or brands

Using engagement as a metric, you get a more holistic appreciation of your customers’ actions, recognizing that value comes not just from transactions but also from actions people take to influence others. Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to customer understanding.

WOM Integration Between Advertising and Digital Channels

August 7th, 2009 • Word of Mouth
Tags: Uncategorized

Consumers no longer move neatly from one touchpoint to the next, from branding to promotion to sales. Instead, they snack on digital content delivered through a dizzying array of devices. They share ideas about products, companies, and brands, with their brand awareness and purchase consideration formed just as much by trolling a few niche-oriented blogs or peer-generated odes to the product on YouTube as by a national branding campaign. They research online and buy in stores. They shop in stores and buy online. The Internet has shattered the entire concept of a linear purchase funnel.

The traditional advertising scenario is very front weighted with value, but it is constantly in a state of decline as time goes on. You pay for the creation of the ad and the media buy and then sit back and pray. You’re not wasting millions of untraceable impressions on TV, radio and print buys. You’re forming real relationships with people that spread their version of your message along the chain.

With social media, however, you invest up front, but your spending has to scale as your message spreads to new audiences over time. The value you get takes longer to build and catch up with the advertising model, but it will eventually exceed it. That’s a hard thing to budget, but it’s important to note.

It seems pretty clear right? But this is a huge mental leap for most marketing organizations. The new model is about building relationships that grow and spread to new relationships. Here is a graphical representation of this shift. Advertising will have diminishing returns over time as social connections will deliver more and more value.

It’s essential to have integration between traditional advertising and social media to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time to spark authentic word of mouth.