Facebook: Here we go again

It’s been a little quiet around these parts.  Sure stuff is going on at work and at home, but we have a new social media crisis brewing for the IT Girl.

I’ve been banned from Facebook.

Again.

But this time, we’re not talking about Dummies Man.  We’re talking about me.  Ellen Gerstein.  Real live flesh and blood IT Girl.  BANNED.

It started innocently enough.  I got a FB email from a co-worker, saying there was a video of me that I should see.  Normally, I would totally ignore something like this.  But said co-worker was not the type to send something spammy or illegal, so I looked.  And clicked.  And that’s where the trouble started.

Now, I am not blaming the co-worker in the least.  She didn’t have anything to do with setting up that video site.  What the site did was two fold - it downloaded a pesky hijack trojan and got into my Facebook account and started spamming people.  The latter is, apparently, why my Facebook account was shut down.

I emailed Facebook instantly and asked them to reinstate my account.  Emailed it to every address on the site I could fine, which wasn’t many.

That was Sunday night, and except for a form email saying that my email was received, I haven’t heard jack squat from Facebook.  I re-emailed them today and STILL have not heard anything. 

I’m kind of dismayed.  The lack of any sort of contact from Facebook is making me feel like I did something wrong.  Sure, I fell into a spammer’s trap and I SHOULD know better, but it wasn’t my fault, so why am I being treated like a criminal?  Why do I have to plead my case?  Why isn’t anyone from Facebook, other than our author, getting back to me?

Anyone else have horrible experiences like this with your account going bye bye?

 

Zuckerberg Keynote at SXSW - In case you were wondering, it was as bad as they’ve made it out to be

MediaBistrosummarizes the bloggers who have added to the conversation about Facebook founder’s Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at SXSW.  Most reports talk about how awkward it was to be in the room as the interview went on.  And then some, dude. 

I’m  almost to the point of feeling sorry for Sarah Lacy, but not quite.  Her tone from the beginning was off.  When she sat down, she basked in the applause meant for Mark by saying, what, not for me?  Then she proceeded to be swarmy, interrupt him and generally ruin what should have been a chance to hear from someone young enough to start a company that has people of all ages talking.  She even plugged her book - admirable, but totally out of place.  Admittedly, he is a tough interviewee, as any twentysomething taking the advice of PR people would be.  But that doesn’t mean you have to put yourself in the interview, put down who you are interviewing, and proclaim that you’re having a ”Leslie Stahl moment”.  Because you’re not.  It was like watching a train wreck, yet I could not look away. 

 

Dummies Man takes over Facebook

I’m a little late on this one, but I was thrilled earlier this week to see Facebook make “Dummies Man” available as a “free gift”.  This was accomplished to honor the publication of “Facebook For Dummies.”  Our wonderful authors Carolyn Abram and Leah Pearlman are Facebook employees and helped pull this off for us.  Thank you to Louise who sent me one as a gift and to Carolyn, Leah and Blake Ross for making it happen.  It was most appreciated!

 

Scrabulous Not So Fabulous

The news was all over Twitterthis morning…it seems that Mattel/Hasbro has issued a take down order on the popular Facebook application Scrabulous due to what they call a trademark infringement. 

I must confess, I don’t play this game, but I know many (Emilie, Dani, etc) who are totally addicted to it.  Someone on Twitter pointed me to a great blog post by Matt Dickman where he questions this strategy and wonders why it came to this.  While I don’t totally agree with the idea of keeping the lawyers out of the room, as the lawyers I work with are most helpful on these kinds of matters, it does show the kind of open mind that I hope my marketers are thinking with.  We run into this kind of stuff with Dummies a lot, and it is a trademark that we actively protect, while still allowing for some forms of parody. 

The person in the comments who talks about the Dodgers shutting down a fan site is the kind of thing that makes me want to bang my head on my desk.  Hard.  You can’t buy that kind of loyalty and support, and to crush it is the worst kind of marketing gaffe.  If I saw a site like that for one of my products, I’d be emailing them trying to send them all sorts of free stuff.  Oh wait, I have seen those, and that’s exactly what I’ve done.  Because I want to build good will, not crush it.   Here’s hoping to someone at Mattel coming to his or her senses and saving the masses from having to switch back to Soliataire. 

 

Scobleizer banned from Facebook

First, they came for Dummies Man.

Then they came for Robert Scoble.

Who will speak out when they come for you?

 

The return of Dummies Man to Facebook and the Beginning of My Identity Crisis

Some time ago I blogged about Dummies Man’s profile being pulled from Facebook.  I’ve got some good news and bad news about this. 

The good news is that my efforts with Facebook customer service have paid off and the profile for Dummies Man has been reactivated. 

The bad news (ok, maybe not bad, but not good, at least in my book) is that Dummies Man has a new name.  His name?  Ellen Gerstein.  Search for Ellen Gerstein on FB and you’ll see two of me.  One with my beautiful shining visage, the other with D-Man.  OK, there are some other Ellen Gersteins, but they don’t count here.

Here’s how this played out.  I wrote to FB and asked why “Dummies Man”, a character we own, is not permitted to maintain a profile.  This is the note I got in return:

Fake names are a violation of our Terms of Use. Facebook requires users to provide their full first and last names (i.e. no initials). Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited. Nicknames can be used in the form of FirstName ‘NickName’ LastName, but only if they are a variation on your real first or last name, such as ‘Bob’ instead of ‘Robert’.

If you would like to use this profile again, just get back to us with your real name, and we will reactivate the account for you.

So, in an effort to save the profile, which our intern Joe lovingly created, I got back to them as me, Ellen Gerstein, and asked them to reactivate it.  Then, I went into the rejuvenated account and tried to change the name.  Dummies Man/Ellen Gerstein was a no go.  As was Ellen “Dummies” Gerstein.  And many other variations.  Why?  Because…

Before confirming your name change request, please read the following.

• Your Facebook profile must be attached to your real name.
• You must include your full name.
• Celebrity names, nicknames, or other fake names are not allowed and will not be approved.
• Obscenity, curses, and swear words are not allowed and will not be approved.
• ISn’t~ ThIs <3 AnN0YiNg 2 ReAd? Non-standard capitalization and special characters are not allowed and will not be approved.
• Do not try to combine sentences into one word; Jane Lookatmysupercoolnewnickname Smith will not be approved.
• We review all name changes, so this may take a while.

This is getting really complicated.  Any suggestions for a name that ISN’T necessarily mine that could be used for Dummies Man and not be in violation of FB rules???  And, again, Fake Steve Jobs can be on the site as Steve Jobs, and Dummies Man gets banned?  Really!

 

Dummies Man still banned from Facebook

Here’s more on D Man’s big ig from Facebook that I talked about yesterday.  I’ve had a number of people (thanks Kris) say that Dummies Man should give up on the profile thing and create a page.  We’re working on that, but it’s not the same thing.  A profile allows you to do things a page cannot.

 And why, for the life of me, does Fake Steve Jobs allowed to have a Facebook page?  We are Dummies Man, even if he doesn’t exist.  Fake Steve Jobs is someone pretending to be Steve Jobs.  How is that allowed when Dummies Man is banned?  I’m not saying I want FSJ to be removed.  Far from it.  I think he can and should be allowed to coexist with D Man on Facebook, and hey, want not off.  Maybe they could do a spa day together or something?

 

Here we go again…Ipso Facto Plaxo!

That may sound like an incantation from “Wicked”, but no, sadly, it isn’t.  It’s yet another site to for me to practice my social network skills on.  I had signed up for Plaxo a while back when it was simply a place to keep addresses updated.  Then = simple, understandable purpose.  Now, it’s trying to be LinkedIn or Facebook or who knows what.  I tried to ignore it, but then I started getting connection requests coming in and I thought that I better check in (especially with someone named “Wiley” sent me a connection request.)  I claim somewhere to be a master of all things social networking - how can Plaxo elude me the way Twitter has? I clicked on the link to accept all of these, and it took me to a screen where the notice “that connection request has already been handled” came up.  Funny then that I cannot find these people in my connection list.  Did they try and connect and suddenly decide, nah, Ellen’s not my Plaxo type?  Did they fall into a Plaxo void?  No idea. 

I started with a whopping four connections (the usual Wiley suspects, my brother in law, and a friend from town.)  All of a sudden, I have 5 connect requests in my mailbox.  Why did Plaxo suddenly hit the radar screen for these folks?  I sent a note to the person who requested the most recent connection, who said he inadvertently requested connection with all his LinkedIn contacts.  That’s one way to build your network here, so I tried it and found a whopping 45 people on Plaxo connected to me already through LinkedIn.  So I intentionally sent connections to them.

So….now I’m connected, what should I be doing next?  This isn’t the most intuitive site.  I see a “Pulse Stream”  but so far only Jeff Pulver and Chris Webb have anything going in there.  Any suggestions from people who might have a better masterly of Plaxo than I of what to do next?  How to use this site for good, and not the evil that comes from time wasting?

 

Microsoft getting in the game

Microsoft is apparently looking to buy a minority stake in Facebook, according to an article in WSJ online dated tomorrow.  Some might see this as the ultimate jump the shark moment for Facebook.  Me, personally, I’m curious to see how Microsoft’s oftentimes closed development environment could play out on a site like Facebook.  Either way, you knew it had to happen, and someone was going to do it. Why not MSFT, to get the jump on Google. 

 

Blasts from the not so distant past

Recently, I was listening in on a phone conference, and hit one of those patches where nothing being said pertained to me or marketing.  When I’m working at home, I sometimes use these moments to stare at the inside of the fridge wondering if dinner will just jump out and present itself to me without any work, or if I’m actually going to have to pull the rabbit out of the hat again (all figurative, no literal there).  Since I had already given up on the prospect of my family having a hot meal that night, I found other ways to occupy my attention, namely organizing my IE bookmarks.  How quaint, you say, whether it be to using bookmarks instead of de.li.c.ious or using IE over Foxfire.  I’m old school sometimes, homies, and it happens.  In the course of doing so, I found a lot of bookmarks for sites I haven’t been to in ages, namely Yahoo & MSN groups and LiveJournal.  I used to run a community for some friends, and housed it in Yahoo, until their ad blasting got to much, and we moved to MSN.  The community for the most part has drifted away (and the story of that community and the drama would make a very good blog series someday, but I digress) but the members still communicate via email.  Some of them moved to LiveJournal.  I had a lot of friends on LiveJournal, many are still there in fact.  But I’m not.  I had an account, used to check it regularly and post stuff, but stopped.  Likewise, I logged into my Friendster account and was dismayed to see I had one friend, and it probably doesn’t count because he works for me (Hi David.)  Even MySpace is seeing me less and less, because it seems so busy that the screen gives me a migraine.  Facebook is still getting me, but the fervor of the first few giddy weeks has thankfully died down.  My blog seems to be the one thing that’s lasting, if you can call something that has been alive since July lasting.  So, am I the only one in this social networking evolution to abandon LiveJournal and crap out on Friendster before I even got going?

Today, if I had to find a place to host my online community of friends, I would probably host it myself on my own domain, maybe with a Hostboard account.  I might set up a blog for all of us to write on, although that loses the great threaded conversations we used to have.  Maybe I would go back to Yahoo, as their ads have gotten less obtrusive, or I would go to MSN.  Is it because we’ve gotten more savvy that we can do this stuff on our own?  Have the tools gotten better?  I think the answer to both of them is yes.  It’s definitely harder to maintain a community or a platform if you don’t keep innovating and changing.  Flavor of the month has translated online to à la minute and there seems to never be a minute to spare.  Innovate or die.  Facebook is definitely thinking to the future with opening their platform to application developers and their $10 million app dev grant.  Time of course will tell, but I wouldn’t count them out just yet.