This morning I was messaged by a friend of mine from college who told me that we was stranded in North Wales.  He continued to tell me that last night he was mugged and beaten with all of his cash, cards and cell phone were stolen.

I responded that I was sorry to hear that.  I immediately became suspicious because the English grammar wasn't so good.  I continued talking with him, waiting to see if he would ask me for money.  I asked him how his wife was doing and he responded that she too was beaten pretty badly. 

Eventually, after about 10 minutes, the chatter asked me to wire some money via Western Union to him so that he could pay his hotel bill.  At that point, I called a few of our mutual friends to see if they knew if our friend and his wife were going to Wales.  I also got my friend's cell number and tried calling - voicemail.  A few questions I immediately thought of is, "You don't have cash, cards or a cell phone, but you're chatting on Facebook?" and, "I know the hotel would allow you to call your parents collect to get money, why are you asking your friends?"

Finally, I asked the person I was chatting with for his wife's college roommate's name - some information that couldn't be retrieved from a Facebook profile.  The person immediately logged off and deleted my friend's Facebook account.

A similar convesation to mine is posted at TechCrunch.  Apparently, this scam is very new.  These phishers hack into a Facebook user's profile and gather as much public information about them as possible, including spouse, kids, education, etc.

As always, never send private information or money to anyone (including your good friends) without verifying information.  Just because it's your friend's account, doesn't mean it's them.

And, as TechCrunch stated, there's really nothing Facebook can do to prevent these scams.  It is technically impossible for a social environment to monitor and regulate illegitimate messaging.  I assume, the violator deleted the account in hopes of removing any IP route tracing that Facebook could determine to initiate.   I, however, doubt Facebook would expend HR to track down needles in haystacks.  They're busy doing other things, like redesigning the user interface (again). :)

In light of the YMCA changing its name to "the Y", I thought that it would only be fitting to show the Village People. Unfortunately, the party who posted the video, doesn't want it embedded. so you'll have to click the link in the video or watch it here. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past.

I work with a ton of marketing and sales teams.  Often, their contacts and leads are referred to as "potential" clients.  There's no such thing.

In what once seemed like a disconnected world, this may have been the case (though, not entirely).  However, in a social world, everyone is a client. While a contact or lead may not buy your product or service, they will still buy into (and sell, for that matter) your reputation.  That's what makes reputation management so crucial for today's business - it is just as important as sales and marketing for client acquisition and retention.

Not to toot my own horn, but just to prove a point...

As I meet with many business executives to discuss Social Media, many still don't entirely grasp the concept and, so therefore, their buy-in is often postponed.  However, those leaders still call me or e-mail with questions or concerns because I've been able to establish a great reputation.

We often just "potential" clients by what they can contribute to our bottom lines.  Perhaps, we ought to examine what they can contribute to (or take away from) our reputation.

There’s a local car dealership offering to buy cars from those who are in need of cash.  Unless they plan on downgrading on monthly payments or sorts, its a terrible idea.

While there may be many who are out of jobs this season, how do they plan on finding a new job and getting there everyday if they sale their car?

Same principle in business – don’t fire your sales team.

Currently, there are many companies cutting their sales time – non-salary, commissions-only sales associates.  Why?  They don’t get paid unless they make the company money.  Fire and consolidate the management first.  If a company let’s go of the sales teams, who needs management?  There’s nothing to manage.

To many this may seem like common-sense, but what kills me is there are companies who don’t get this basic principle.

For example. there are web development companies here in Atlanta, Georgia that have boards of directors.  First, why does a web development company need a board of directors boggles me.  But, these companies are letting go of their designers and developers – the workers responsible for product fulfillment.  They’re keeping their boards, though.  Stupid.

Don’t sell your car; don’t fire your sales teams.  These are the channels that increase you and your company’s income potential.

In my previous post, I shined a little light on the repercussions Facebook platform apps can have on the productivity and performance on an individual.  But, how does Facebook apps create sluggish, under-performing companies?

Again noted, Facebook can be an incredible contributor to a company’s bottom line.  It’s a fantastic resource for generating leads and promoting brands, goods and services.  Companies need to define acceptable usage policies for social media so that the incorporation of social media is effective within the overarching marketing strategy.

Facebook is a fantastic tool for acquiring leads and growing your business.  However, Facebook does offer a new set of distractions.

I’m splitting this post into two parts in order to direct the content to two different, primary audiences: the individual looking for work; and, the business owner.   Depending on your current position, you should be aware of the distractions that may be causing you or your business to be less productive. 

Also, these two posts may seem hyper-critical, but please realize, my belief is quite simple…If you don’t like what you’re doing or the results, stop complaining and either change your attitude or change what you’re doing.

Occasionally, Google will introduce an enhancement to its search engine allowing users to “opt-in” for use prior to releasing the addition live.  These enhancements are found in Google Labs (www.googlelabs.com). One current feature in the labs is Google’s Social Search.

Supposedly, Google offers subscribers the ability to search their own networks for relevant results to their query. Those results, in turn, may be given higher precedence than those results returned from outside the user’s network.  Notice the word “may.”  I’ve yet to see any such results.  Perhaps, my network isn’t big enough.  However, I would have thought with a few thousand friends, someone’s got to be talking about the same thing(s) for which I am looking.  Maybe, we’re just not compatible and I should find new friends.

Or, maybe Google has yet to penetrate the social community for the same issue with which it has always struggled. Furthermore, Google now introduces its own hurdle.

Website Magazine’s November issue lists 50 leading web sites for marketing and business development professionals. As one could imagine, the list paints a different picture than that which would have been constructed only a few years ago.

As Website Magazine points out, the use of social sites has increased among top enterprises.  Among the listed social sites are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning and Yelp.

Blogging sites have also become increasingly popular with enterprise trend setters.  Of course, the two most well-known, free blogging platforms, WordPress and Blogger, were ranked high in the list – #’s 9 and 11, respectively.  And, blogs could not receive nearly as much customer attraction if it wasn’t for the aggregators that push their content to subscribers and increase the blogs’ visibility.  A few aggregators, namely, Digg and Technorati, were included in Website Magazine’s list.

Finally, any company seeking to solidify their online presence, must now syndicate video content.  YouTube is now the second-largest search engine, following only its parent, Google, and provides easy and rapid traffic generation through professional and grass-roots video creation and delivery.  It’s no wonder that YouTube was #4 on the list.  Other video platforms like Blinkx, MetaCafe and Ustream.tv were included in the top 50, as well.

In conclusion, I must agree with Website’s disclaimer, “Keep in mind that the sites on this Top 50 are not an acknowledgement of their effectiveness but rather their popularity.” Website Magazine asserts that the effectiveness of the given sites still highly depends on the manner in which they are used.  Again, I completely agree.

Ever had issues like this while trying to fill your car with groceries?

On a previous post, I discussed the importance of diversifying your social media marketing channels due to the attacks on the social network Twitter.

As these attacks were taking place, marketers rushed to other channels such as Facebook and FriendFeed.  This, in turn, brought heavy stressed upon the infrastructure of these two servers making their responses to traffic requests quite sluggish, as well.

Over the past few days, we’ve witnessed some of Facebook’s own growing pains.