Every time Facebook makes an update, something terrible happens….

Users break out random garden tools, light the torches and start marching toward the rash of new Facebook Groups springing up declaring their hatred of the improved layout and convenient features. I get it, Mom packed you a sandwich for lunch and you always get PB&J. WHY, today, would she choose to change it to strawberry jelly, when you’re happy with (and expecting) grape?? It’s a comfort zone thing. It’s a new learning experience. But the end of the world, it is not.

Before you sharpen the tines on your pitchfork and do something foolish like threatening to return to MySpace (where nothing ever changes), try one of these and if they work for you, consider suggesting them to the village people in your anti-change Facebook Group as well:

Facebook Lite

Are you fed up with options? Do you want to look at one thing at a time? Do you prefer plain cheese pizza? If you answered yes to any of these questions, Facebook Lite may be for you.

A sub-domain of Facebook.com, Facebook Lite is completely devoid of any multi-tasking ability and squeezes your social life into a minimalist format. Don’t expect to play games or chat with friends while you browse. I’m serious, you’re only going to do one thing at a time. This is ideal for people who like to keep it simple and actually use Facebook to interact with friends and family (also recommended for new users over the age of 50 [love you Mom and Dad!]).

If you’re super happy about this, you can set your default view to Facebook Lite every time you sign in. You can always change it back to play games or see if there’s more updates to complain about even if they don’t affect you any more.

Try Facebook Lite | Set as Default View

Silverlight Facebook Desktop App

To be clear, you don’t run this in a browser. You download it (free), install it, and run it like a program. The process is super-streamlined so don’t sweat it. And yes, it runs on Windows or Mac OS X.

This is great for people who hate bright colors. The theme is dark and makes you feel more exclusive like Facebook is a government run spy program that you can access your social circle’s private information on… which may be a more accurate experience entirely.

My fave part of this app is the importance it places on photos. I love photos. I can’t see enough pictures of your cat, or what you made for dinner. Silverlight keeps the photo experience really slick – muting the photos on the side of your stream when you’re not focused on them, and cataloging friends’ photos either in albums or a nifty collage when you’re interested in seeing them. Sooo super-cool.

The in-line video player on the other hand is super-cheesy, but as of the time of this writing the program is still in beta and receiving great updates regularly. (Note: Not the kind of updates you need to freak out about, the kind that make your grape jelly taste better.)

So to recap, if you enjoy photo viewing, a darker theme, and feeling sexy, give this a try. Again, no option for games, goofy apps or chat here.

Download and Install Here

Tweetdeck

I love this app almost as much as lolcats , but let’s not get carried away. This is also a download & install program, but handles a lot more than just Facebook.

This is a social media multi-tasking playground. You can link multiple Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace profiles together, all into separate side-by-side columns. Better yet, you can update all accounts or selected individual accounts from one Tweetdeck box. This is hugely beneficial for me because I keep most of my personal friends on Facebook, business contacts on Twitter, and douchebags I stalk on MySpace.

So instead of three separate sites (and/or multiple profiles on each site), I can monitor all my social streams from one TweetDeck in the amount of time it takes to sip my coffee. To really geek out, you can even split photos, links, direct messages, @ replies and more into their own separate columns. It’s like a making dresser drawers for your social media content.

If you’re a neat freak and handle more than one social site on a daily basis, do yourself a favor and simplify your life with this.

Download Tweetdeck

Bonus

I’m going to go ahead and admit, this “bonus” section is completely self-serving. If any of the three options above strike your fancy but you’re not sure about leaving the horrible integrated Facebook chat, ridiculous Facebook apps, or privacy invading “games” *cough*FARMVILLE*cough* *aaaaaah*LEAVEMEALONEIDONTWANTYOURCOWS*coughcough* then I encourage you to consider the following alternatives to those as well.

Games

Pogo is owned by Electronic Arts, a company that knows all about making good (but sometimes mediocre) games. It stands to reason that you can find at least one game to play online here that’s not connected to Facebook and won’t require me to ignore you every time you hatch a chicken or whatever. Check it out. Go play. Facebook games are terrible, exploit & annoy your friends  and compromise your private information. It’s time you recognize that. I say that with love.

I’ll also tell you ahead of time, that you can connect Pogo with your Facebook, but ask yourself why. It’s a fun way for me to ask you politely to not do it.

Chat

WHAT?! Yes, if you want to chat, then use an instant messenger. AOL Instant Messenger version 7.1 now integrates with your Facebook contacts and slams them in with your AIM buddies.

Particularly awesome is that it’s also available for phones running Android, because you probably don’t have enough distraction in your life already. For those vehemently opposed to AIM, Facebook has opened up to all sorts of chat clients so click here to check them out.

As for the “Other” apps – just stop using them. If you don’t, at least skip the part where it’s an OPTION to publish to your wall or invite all your friends. (Yes, it is always an option, just look for it.)

Be So Shull

That’s my post for today, thanks for reading. Use the links below to spread the word to your annoying friends, relatives over 50, or Groups commanding the Facebook of old be returned. Or, leave your review of the services mentioned here in the comments section below to help others out, because that’s the social thing to do.

.nate

I’d stop talking to my best friend online if he had an agenda.

There, I said it.

I don’t care how carefully you tip-toe around, unless you’re “socializing and making friends” online with a bunch of other internet marketers, no matter how friendly or inviting your money-links are they will (almost) always be highly irrelevant to me when I’m busting someone’s chops online for liking the latest Black Eyed Peas single.

It seems marketers are so rabid to make something work in a social setting that they’re willing to throw out everything else we know about relationship selling. Go ahead, throw away years of proven internet marketing experience and tinker around with the coldest traffic available and calculate your ROI. Try “Social Media Sniping” because if someone is talking about their dog, they must want to hear about the latest dog collar line available at Amazon, right? That makes so much sense. Because instead of ranking organically for keyphrases or advertising, we can intercept them virtually in real-time now and engage them immediately mid-conversation.

Wait… what happened to framing your visitors? What happened to commercial intent? Where’s the lead-in, the follow-up, the free-line, relationship, reputation, authority, social proof, reciprocity….

Where’s the magic push-button to make this happen?

I’m about to save you weeks worth of work, if you’re willing to accept what I’m about to tell you:

The social tactics that worked 4 years ago, still work today. Nothing has changed except the number of people available and the speed of which you can research (not engage).

Sure they’ve been modified and polished slightly with the onslaught of Web 2.0 flexibility and availability, but “changed” it has not.

To understand social media, you sort of need friends to qualify (take that to the bank). Make me laugh. Give me two free movie tickets. Tell me my coin collection is awesome and you took time to calculate it and it’s worth approximately $7.

If you want to learn social media, then guess what, that book was written 73 years ago. Your choice. Around $10 for that book or up to $3,000 for a misguided “education” on a social monetization strategy.

Stop thinking like a marketer. You might actually find something more valuable than your ROI spreadsheet can calculate. You can get invited to be a guest blogger, be interviewed on a webinar, or asked for help on a product launch. These things are of incalculable value whether you’re an authority or not. Don’t charge for it. Just build the relationships.

Now go make friends.

But don’t start with me because I’m already mad at you for trying to pad your pockets with fake friendship.

Bonus!

Take the “Spot the Social Media Marketer” Quiz!!

Ok so check this out – I created a quick video for Site Source 101 on how to customize your Facebook Fan page to include a HTML widget (note: This is not currently applicable to your profile page).

If you aren’t doing this yet you need to be, especially if your fans are throwing your page around to their friends’ feeds. Think of all your options here. You could:

• Graphically link your Twitter and other Social accounts
• Include a picture and bio of the business or product owner
• Duplicate your website navigation for easy access
• Advertise coupons or promotions to your fans
• Highlight your favorite fan of the week

This is your chance to pull new visitors to your site the first time they land on your fan page. The video is less than 3 minutes long, so this is something you can learn and implement in less than 10. Watch the video, then take some time to consider how you could improve the value of your page to your fans and in turn increase the value of their visits!

Feel free to download or view the PDF for easy reference.

You can read up on FBML in Facebook’s Developers Wiki (welcome to Awesomegeekland).

Now just answer one question: WHO LOVES YOU?!?!

That’s right…. this guuuuuuuy.

Twelpforce is Best Buy’s answer to leveraging employee downtime to harness a little social media power with the intent to bring more customers in the doors. One awkwardly positive post praises Best Buy for their innovation in this initiative, though it should be noted that Dell actually pioneered this form of customer service in 2007 well before the Twitterverse explosion and saw a ROI of over $3M (source). But of course, I’m writing this because I’m not so optimistic for the ol’ boys in blue. Especially not after today…
I started digging and saw Best Buy Marketing Manager and TwelpForce launch supporter Mr. John Bernier’s tweet that nearly 600 people signed on to the program already. I thought, “Great! Time for a test-drive!”

I hopped on search.twitter.com, dropped in “TwelpForce”, and checked out who was already chatting it up. One ambitious employee was clearly happy about being paid to tweet, but I wasn’t sure why he’d attach the #TwelpForce hashtag to that post. I didn’t dwell on it long before I came across what appeared to be a hashtag-highjack, rather loudly proclaiming:

GET A NETBOOK FOR 99CENTS, REAL TALK! ASK ME HOW. #twelpforce
-RainbowSoulPoet

Voice inside my head: “Wow, spammers have already picked up on this hashtag?!” Again, didn’t dwell on it too long, until I saw the same spammer posting a suggestion to her fellow TwelpForce associates to add a pic and bio to their profile appear more personable. This recommendation coming from this profile page:

Now listen…. I’m a pretty open-minded guy, but I’m fairly certain that without too much work I could find some people who wouldn’t appreciate a Best Buy associate name tag explaining they’re a 27 year old black lesbian who uses biblical love making to define her relationship to music. And if somehow that didn’t ruffle some feathers, perhaps her wandering around the store talking about “ass cleavage” would do it. Further, let’s not forget the spammy $0.99 laptop post that nobody on Twitter wants to see (even though it was a legitimate BBY Promo). Are you here to help or here to sell?

Am I picking on one person? Yes, but it was just so easy. If this person managed to sign on and get paid for being derogatory, it’s worth mentioning, right?

Ok, enough about that, let’s see how it works. . .

I saw a few imaging associates seemed to be signed on, so I thought I’d ask a very specific imaging question about something that is actually not very well defined online despite many reviews on the product. My question as seen to the left was posted at 10:48am regarding what format the HD video records in for the purpose of loading it into my video editing software.

The response came exactly 20 minutes later and was in fact exactly right. Though I would have like to have received a little more specifics like, “1080p @20fps and 720p @30fps”, I was satisfied with the response and it didn’t take too long. This did however bring up another concern.

Notice the reply is not threaded. Whether this was the fault of the responder or a fault of their program’s API coding is unclear, but this poses two problems for the program.

1. Linking answers to questions is important for people to see the process working.
2. It is important to ensure clarity in communication (depending on the time lapse, I may be well into another conversation).

But then this morning, another problem arose that I thought their system would be handling when I saw John Bernier re-tweet my question to his team at 12:26am last night. If Best Buy’s administration isn’t tracking responses through their system, what is to keep me from getting 100 responses across the entire TwelpForce crew and all associates being oblivious to it? Then I thought back to the case of RainbowSoulPoet and wondered if Best Buy realizes that if their employees post something inappropriate, it can be deleted from the associate’s feed, but is already permanently indexed and can forever be found by search (plus, if any of the links in this post magically go broken, I have screen-caps already uploaded to my server to replace them).

My overall feel of TwelpForce quickly faded from poorly-polished to poorly planned and ill-fated. Social media is a tricky beast. Direct sales are not welcome. It is purely about building brand and trust. But that’s a post for another time.

Best Buy has already been laughed at for their Senior Manager job posting, citing a 7-year degree and 1-day on Twitter as a requirement (help them rewrite it?). But now it is becoming increasingly apparent what that position was created for and that maybe Best Buy really doesn’t know what they’re doing, nor are they aware of how damaging this can be to their reputation instead of augmenting it.

I’m sure some good folks from Best Buy will read this eventually, and I encourage you to sit down and study Dell’s process as an example. If you’re branding “TwelpForce” as “Twitter + Help + Sales Force”, I’m sorry, but you’re doomed already. If you’re going to help, then help. Don’t sell. And if you’ve made the mistake of hiring someone who claims to be a “Social Media Expert”, then I feel extra sorry for you.

I can be reached by any means on my contact card if you want to talk. Otherwise, good luck to you, and I trust you’ll use this as food for thought!

Update: John Bernier has demonstrated some terrific character in handling the response to TwelpForce’s launch, even going so far as to tweet this post to all of his employees and encourage them to re-tweet it. It’s refreshing to see a company respond effectively instead of launching a cover-up campaign. I applaud John and his team for the massive amount of scrutiny they’re taking on with this project and again wish them well!

As Web 2.0 continues to evolve, so do our chances of meeting people and networking with some real talent. There are a multitude of social sites to apply this strategy to, so just think of this as a “hey, maybe there is life outside the box” kick in the head in an info-product-but-it’s-free-info kind of way.

When the Affiliates Don’t Come to You, Go to Them.

Yeah, I said it. Swallow your pride and go head-hunting. If you’ve got a great product and competitive commissions, go find someone qualified in your niche and show them how to make money in your program. Twitter is all the rage lately, so let’s take a quick look at how easy this is to execute. Depending on the size of your niche, the length of this process will vary.

Start out at  Search.Twitter.com (this link is also found in the footer link section of any Twitter page). This is like Google, but exclusively searches tweets. If you’ve never used this service by Twitter, you need to sit and think for a minute about how powerful it is to find people at any time who are talking about anything in that same moment. That is typically how it is used – to find out what’s hot, what’s being talked about, and who you can communicate with about whatever is on your mind.

What I want you to do is flip the coin. Don’t just look at Twitter as a great place to meet potential clients who share your interests and could likely benefit from your product or service. Instead, find other professionals in your niche who are already offering valuable content to the same people. Here comes the “for instance”…

If you have a product for “[your keyphrase here]“:

1. Do a Twitter search on your primary or related keyphrase.
2. Look for the box in the upper right of the screen subscribe to the query RSS. It will look like this:
   
   This will create an RSS feed that updates every time a new result would show in the search query.
3. Review the results regularly and watch for links pointing followers to related products in your niche.
4. Start networking with the leaders already in your niche who have a decent following but understand that their following might be all fluff and they may not have a “real” list to work with. Take time to see how they interact with others and whether or not their followers respond.
5. Once you’ve felt them out over a period of time, direct message the ones you would like to work with and let them know you’d like to offer them a JV deal that you have determined could be instantly profitable for them based on their following.
6. Get them on-board and help them help you.

I came across this method by accident but I was surprised at how easy and effective it is. Make sure you both use tact and proper social-media-etiquette (don’t spam) to protect your reputations. This will either be highly adventageous for you, or ruin you both. No pressure.

Once you’ve run a successful JV, get a video testimonial from them, revamp your sales page, and it’s off to the races to test your new offer to potential customers and affiliates.

The added benefit of this is you will also have a chance to have your product or service critiqued by another professional in your niche since you will be working closely together and they may be able to shed some light onto why you’re having trouble to begin with.

You’ll be able to quickly sharpen up your product, pitch, following, and “stickyness” of your campaign in no time and start reaping the rewards you’ve been missing out on, all while making your first successful affiliate a partner in crime for a long time to come.

To your continued success.