I’m sure that the details will vary with location and culture.  But generally most people around the world wouldn’t mind that their dry cleaner knows they like their shirts on a hanger. Or that the waitress in their favorite restaurant knows how they like their coffee, or eggs, or squid (depending upon local tastes.)  And I’ve known many people who fell in love with Tivo’s, Netflicks and Pandora, because it finds things they like but had never considered.  That’s very convenient.

It starts to get a little more murky when you get to Google searches and Amazon purchases.  People feel that’s getting a little more private and you find some people who habitually delete their search history, and cookies on their PC’s etc.   But lots of people share their Facebook TV/Movie/Music likes, but they get nervous when they think about marketers using that data to target them.

And when you take the totality of all of the information that Google or Facebook has about you, it starts to make you feel more uncomfortable. Because they can take all of that info and make some very accurate assumptions about you and your likes and dislikes.  I don’t want to be browsing Google or Facebook at work and have a coworker come up and look over my shoulder and see ads for (Fill in the blank with embarrassing personal products) on my screen.

Possibly the only people with a similar volume of knowledge about you is your bank or credit card company.  We don’t think about that too often, but the credit bureau’s and banks have been building files on all of us for decades.  And so far they’ve not done anything too scary with all of that data. Why?  Because they are very closely regulated by the government.  Will we need that with Facebook and Google?  Most likely, it will come to that.

We are approaching the “Creepiness Zone”.  It’s a hazy boundary somewhere near the top of the scale where convenience is trumped by discomfort.  It can best be illustrated by that feeling of unease you get when someone surprises you by knowing more about you than you had expected them to know.

Another new entry into the fray is Groupon’s new rewards program which only needs your credit card info to track your purchases and deliver the Deals to you when you earn them.  There are lots of loyalty programs out there from supermarkets to airlines to credit cards.  We’ll have to see where this Groupon deal lands, but I think it’s getting close to the Creepiness Zone for many people.

Groupon, Facebook and Google will be best served if they can avoid the Creepiness Zone and stay in the clear area where the cost of knowledge about us is easily out weighed by the value of the convenience.  That’s the equation each of us has to calculate; am I willing to allow them to KNOW me in exchange for the DEAL?  That equation has a million different solutions for each of us, at many different points in our lives.

Social marketers need to be aware of the Privacy vs. Convenience Continuum and learn to avoid the Creepiness Zone if they are to succeed in delivering services consumers want.  Can you give me 1 Good Reason for you to lead your company into the Creepiness Zone?

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So no whining comments about please, please, please tell me.  Because I won’t, you’ll just have to wait till next week to find out.

Now, I’m going to the Maker Fair this weekend- who’s with me?

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In joining A&P I knew I was taking a risk because the company was in Chapter 11 when I was offered the newly minted position of Social Media Manager.  For the last several months we’ve grown the social media presence of the company significantly.  Over that period the Facebook pages more than doubled their fan base and increased the number of weekly impressions over 8 times.  However, social media is a slow process that builds value and strength over time.  It’s not a good bet for a company in severe financial stress that needs a quick fix to generate income and sales overnight. Rarely can a new social media program give any company an immediate boost to the bottom line.

To all my co-workers at A&P, you’re a great bunch of people who are giving your all to make the company succeed. I wish you the very best of luck.  Facebook me if you want to chat

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However, the big problem with this stat is that when you actually think about it, 99.654% of the people posting to Facebook using apps are doing so for companies and business related reasons. (Yes I made that statistic up, but I added the 3 decimal points to make it sound more realistic.)  And as I go through my Facebook stream the most boring, inane, useless stuff is from businesses.

The real problem is that the halflife of any post on Facebook is shortening to a few minutes.  So it doesn’t matter if you post by App, using your iPhone (the preferred telecom device of Facebookers) or by physically visiting their offices and borrowing Marks PC.  Any of the methods will get your message out.

The important thing is that your message has some interest for your audience.  If you’re not saying anything that’s interesting, then it doesn’t matter how many people see it, because they won’t care.

Spend your time worrying about the contents of your content and not about the technology that carries it to the internet.  Be interesting, entertaining and enlightening.

Because when you are interesting, entertaining and enlightening people will spread your words for you.  And you won’t need to worry about whether you are using the approved Facebook input device.

Give me 1 Good Reason why you don’t spend more time polishing your content?

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So what in the world is going on here?

I have a theory: The hackers are validating their email lists using Yahoo’s Group function.  That’s because they can easily upload a few thousand email addresses to Yahoo’s make a new group system and then get Yahoo to send out good and honest emails to that list.  Emails from Yahoo’s groups section will make it through most spam filters to arrive in your inbox.  Yahoo will then dutifully report back when any of the addresses are no longer any good.

Also you as the recipient will say, wait a minute I never joined any Yahoo group!  And you will dutifully hit the “Unsubscribe” button- thereby validating your email address for the hacker.

Now why is all of this happening in September?  Because just like any big retailer who has to deal with large lists of online customers, the hackers are gearing up for the holiday season crush.  I have a feeling with the economy in the state it’s in, we’re going to see a bumper crop of spam, phishing, and scams. And with the economy down, the protection teams at Yahoo and other sites are feeling the pinch with layoffs and smaller teams needing to do more work.

So put on your thinking cap and be careful out there this cyber season because it’s going to be a hectic.

Have a great holiday weekend and I’ll see you in school in a few weeks.  If you’re interested, I’m teaching at Bergen Community College again this semester- Social Media for Business, a certificate course with 5 classes covering all areas of social media.

PS- sorry I’ve not written much recently.  I’ll need to write more in the fall or my blogging students will think I’m lame… stay tuned.

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