My blog post entitled “Foursquare or Stalkersquare” got a lot of comments and feedback so I decided to poll my Diamonds Fan Page on this issue to see what they thought. “Creepy” was the most popular answer.

I also have had some conversations with industry experts on this issue. As of now, the general feeling is that users aren’t crazy about it, but marketers do (and should) love it. Facebook has taken the time to ask if you are a real place (by verifying tax id/business licenses) before you can advertise your “place”, so I’m ready to do some cool giveaways and promotions for my customers when they check into Samuelson’s Diamonds.

On the other hand, I personally don’t want everyone knowing where I am, and I certainly don’t want people tagging me at a place (much like you would in a picture) without me knowing. One more thing. You think Farmville is annoying? Wait until you see your feed clogged up with Places…it’s gonna be a lot of noise.

Here’s a link to an article that will tell you how set your privacy settings so that you’re not tagged, if you prefer.

What’s my take on Places? I have no idea! We won’t know how this will affect your Facebook experience until we’re at least a six months in, so all we can do is wait it out and see where it goes. My one observation is that Facebook is trying to be everything to everyone on the web. Where it was once just a social network, now it’s a place for everything. What’s next? I think dominating search is inevitable. I also think that your very own facebook email account (like gmail and yahoo) is coming up.

What do you think?

So is mixing messages ever a good idea? I’ve had my Foursquare and Twitter access off and on – I still can’t figure that one out, even after I wrote this post, “Foursquare or Stalkersquare?”. What do you think? Do you use sites like ping.fm to update all of your networks or use them all differently? Which go together like chocolate and peanut butter?

Now I really appreciate honest, no BS feedback, but one more thing that is also interesting. Aside from impacting business relationships, when does this stuff impact personal or family relationships? Because unfortunately, the message didn’t start out with, “How’s the family” or “Seen any good music lately?”

So what do you think, mix your updates or keep them separate?

Of course, my natural reaction was…PANIC! How could this be? I googled everything I could think of and nothing came up. In my mind, there were a few explanations to this:

DiamondFans.net

1) A certain country banned Facebook and all of those fans (I know they are “likes” now but I still call them fans) are gone.

2) Facebook was clearing out phantom/fraudulent accounts and there just happened to be 7,000 of them on my page.

3) People just don’t like diamonds anymore.

4) Facebook is out to get me.

Well, checking this page every five minutes was driving me nuts so I just accepted it and hoped that it would stabilize. Then, Friday night I did a twitter search (don’t do that enough) and found this article on InsideFacebook.com:

Note: Facebook Working on Fixing Fan Count Bug For Pages

Over the last couple days, some Page administrators have been noticing incorrect counts for the number of people who like their Facebook Page. Facebook has confirmed that this is a bug, and is working to fix it today.

According to a Facebook spokesperson, “There was a bug that caused an accounting error for the number of people who like a Page. We are working hard to fix this bug and restore the counts as quickly as possible. No fans or data was lost, and news feed distribution has not been affected.”

We’ll let you know as Facebook makes progress on fixing the issue.

Phew, that was a close one!

Then I found this post the next day on AllFacebook.com:

Facebook Bug Results in Decreasing Fan Counts

Over the past few days many Facebook Page administrators have noticed their fan counts decreasing. If you’ve seen this happen, you are not alone. We’ve reached out to Facebook but haven’t received a response on the issue, which means there is probably a bug which needs to be fixed. Unfortunately there hasn’t been any clarifications from Facebook, but don’t worry as many other people have noticed similar issues.

Logically, it didn’t make sense, and I needed to go with my gut and realize that Facebook can make mistakes. They do have 500 million users and an unbelievable amount of content and data.

So now we’re back up to speed and moving forward on making DiamondFans bigger and better. And I will not let Facebook glitches take me off my game anymore!

Las Vegas Strip

My wife and I would go to do some buying, but mainly to vacation, eat good food, gamble, sit at the pool and just have fun. I never went (or was invited to) any industry events. In fact, I don’t even think I knew or cared that they were going on.

The show has changed for a me for a couple reasons. One reason is the economy. The exhibitors (jewelry brands, wholesalers, etc) got knocked off their high horse and are finally starting to realize that they should be thankful for all of their customers, and not have the attitude that they’re doing us a favor by selling to us.

The show has also changed for me as my business progressed and I started building our store brand and, most recently, my personal brand.  Last year was my first year speaking about Social Media. We spoke to a pretty empty room. This year, we spoke to a jam packed room with a lively audience participation. I also had the opportunity to speak/present at the exclusive high end Couture Show at The Wynn. It was weird for me to be there, but I actually enjoyed that experience and felt like the audience responded to our talk.

JCK Las Vegas 2010

These talks provided me with the opportunity to share our new brand, The Social Jeweler. We soft launched it last week, and the response was great.  Right now, it’s about creating custom facebook pages for jewelers and jewelry brands.

As far as social events, we had a great time. There was a great party Friday night at Mandalay Bay, where the show is next year, and of course our annual Face-to-Face party at TAO Beach.  Both very fun, although I will say that the management at TAO is terrible. Wouldn’t let some of my guests in because of dress code stuff (come on, it’s Vegas and 107 degrees out). Also were very unaccommodating to me. The JCK people took the lead on this party so I was just along for the ride, and I should have known about the TAO people because they were the same way last year. Overall, all who attended had fun, however, looking back, it wasn’t a great move to have the party on a Saturday night at the most popular club on earth.  But..you live and learn, so next year we’ll have it at a more intimate place that wants the business.

Sleep, relaxation? No way. It was just work and fun and then up for work again. Overall it was a great show and although I didn’t buy much, I did sell a lot and meet some great people.

Here are the latest write ups about my talks:

Engagement 101 Video Shoot

JCK Las Vegas: Social Media Can Help Jewelers, Panel Agrees

ABJ Panelists Help Solve Social Networking Issues

I also shoot a very cool video with Engagement101 magazine that should be up soon.

Here’s the write up on that one:

Jewelry Fashion Week Roundup

See ya next year Vegas!

Yesterday, Samuelson’s Diamonds wrote a blog post about the fan page changes that Facebook made:

“… Facebook recently made a change requiring that Pages be authenticated before enabling the ability to set a landing tab beyond Wall or Info. To be eligible for authentication, a Page must have greater than 10k fans or the Page admin must work with their ads account manager…”

I thought about this change and although I understood why the change was being made, it upset me. It upset me because I have put a lot of time and money into our pages, most notably our “Diamonds” Page, which now boasts almost 350,000 fans. Not just Facebook ad money (we have spent a little) but actual jewelry prizes and a lot of TIME, which we paid our employees.  And although we have way more than 10K fans, I do not have an account manager.

On top of that, our Samuelson’s Diamonds Fan Page, for our local retail store, is hovering around 1000 fans. And, although the Diamonds Fan Page has almost 350k fans, we consider our smaller page to be of great significance to our business. We’ve invested a great deal of time and effort in building its content and appeal. Facebook’s determination that a fan count should decide how user friendly the fan page could be just seemed wrong.

How about all of the marketers, big and small, who are building fan pages for other companies? In fact, we are about to launch a new service for the jewelry industry, giving independent retailers and manufacturers the ability to create a dynamic Facebook presence for under $500.

Well not long after this change a message popped up on the developer site:

Hello,

As of last night, we’ve removed the recently-added authentication requirement for setting custom landing tabs on Pages. The requirement was instituted as part of a Pages quality initiative, and we apologize for the inconvenience this caused to our developer and business community. We are re-investigating the situation, and will not make any further changes without first giving our community standard notice and lead-time.

Thanks for all your feedback,

Matt Trainer

You can follow this topic by clicking here.

I say it’s great and thank you Facebook for taking the first step in caring about your customers.

I firmly believe that your website is still very important, but don’t forget to use your Facebook page to increase your database and talk to your customers. Both can and should work together to make your brand a stronger one.

Smart Jewelry Show Chicago

The party was a ton of fun. I want to thank my new friend, Mario Macias, for choosing the venue. The Billy Goat Tavern is a Chicago landmark, made famous from the Bill Murray SNL skit Cheeseborger, Cheeseborger. When I first went there to check it out I admit that I was a little hesitant. I wasn’t really sure if a bunch of jewelers would be willing to go to a complete dive under a bridge like this one. Luckily, I was wrong and it went over well. Check out the video from the party and my wife enjoying their signature drink “The Horny Goat”…

From the CNN article that I “liked”:

The announcement puts Facebook in further competition with other web companies like Google and Twitter, who are also trying to organize and make use of users’ preferences.

Facebook, which has more than 400 million members, says the Open Graph will make it easier for people to share information about their likes and dislikes all over the internet.

The social network will pull information about the websites a person visits, the news stories he or she likes and the music or athletes the person favors — and share all of that information with a person’s Facebook friends. That data will show up on Facebook.com and on other sites.

At Facebook’s f8 developers conference, WSJ’s Jessica Vascellaro gives Stacey Delo a post-game analysis of the social-networking company’s announcements, including news on its “like” button and what that means for ad targeting.

Of course, their big plan is to take over the web, and change the way people connect with one another. So far they are succeeding. Most experts that I have spoken to think it’s a smart move. What do you think? How is this going to affect the way you build your online presence/brand?

Now doesn't this look like FACEBOOK BEFORE THERE WAS FACEBOOK?

Way before the internet, facebook, twitter, blogs, and the idea of “sharing content” across your network , The Grateful Dead were sharing their music with fans across the world through tapes, not computers. They were one of the first bands to allow and actually encourage taping of their live shows. How often did you go to a concert and see “No Cameras” on the ticket? Or even asked to stop recording or taping? Never at a Dead Show, where there was always a “Tapers Section” with tapers even receiving special tickets and passes to do their thing. I recently read an article titled “Management Secrets of The Grateful Dead” which discussed,

the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created “customer value,” promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning…Much of the talk about “Internet business models” presupposes that they are blindingly new and different. But the connection between the Internet and the Dead’s business model was made 15 years ago by the band’s lyricist, John Perry Barlow, who became an Internet guru. Writing in Wired in 1994, Barlow posited that in the information economy, “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away.” As Barlow explained to me: “What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then—the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes. In the physical world, that works beautifully. But we couldn’t regulate [taping at] our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the Dead.” The Dead thrived for decades, in good times and bad. In a recession, Barnes says, strategic improvisation is more important then ever. “If you’re going to survive this economic downturn, you better be able to turn on a dime,” he says. “The Dead were exemplars.”

John Perry Barlow, lyricist for the Dead has a quote that really nails it and I’ll say it again, “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away.”

Now you can take a look on YouTube and see pretty much any band’s live show, and of course live concerts are taped on a regular basis. So next time you’re “Sharing With Your Network” you can thank the Grateful Dead for pioneering this idea!

Now we have some new social networks that popped up – Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite, even Google Buzz. These are social networks that share your exact location, using GPS technology, to your friends on Facebook and Twitter. You can earn badges and points if you “check in” to more places, so it’s like an addicting game (if you buy into it). When I first saw a status update or tweet saying, “I’m at Starbucks” or “I’m at the Safeway on York Road” I thought to myself, “WHO CARES!” Why do I care if you’re at Starbucks, Safeway, or Shell Gas Station? What does that do for me?

Well, before I trashed this idea, I had to hop on Foursquare myself to see what it’s all about. After all, there are some pretty bright guys invested in this company, including Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey. I wanted to find out what’s there from a marketing standpoint. I assume that they will find a way to make money from this. Once you know where someone is, you can market to them through their mobile device in all kinds of creative ways.

Since being on Foursquare, and even before joining, I saw a big problem with this concept. Then came the site that affirmed my paranoia called Please Rob Me. The site is basically a live stream from Twitter titled “Recent Empty Homes” and those people are labeled as “New Opportunities”. I am so glad that this site is out.  Read what they say on their “why” page:

Hey, do you have a Twitter account? Have you ever noticed those messages in which people tell you where they are? Pretty annoying, eh. Well, they’re actually also potentially pretty dangerous. We’re about to tell you why.

Don’t get us wrong, we love the whole location-aware thing. The information is very interesting and can be used to create some pretty awesome applications. However, the way in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information, is less awesome. Services like Foursquare allow you to fulfill some primeval urge to colonize the planet. A part of that is letting everyone know you own that specific spot. You get to tell where you are and if you’re there first, it’s yours. O, and of course there’s badges..

The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have “friends” who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.

The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc. Because all this site is, is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information.

Foursquare and other similar sites fill the self-promoting way of the status update and tweet. People LOVE to say “I’m at the beach” or “I’m on vacation” so others can see how cool they are and what an exciting life they lead. These sites feed right into that need. I found myself doing it in New York City last week. It was sooo cool of me to be at Radio City Music Hall watching a concert while all of you were home watching The Bachelor. Guess what? It’s stupid! My wife was home alone. In the jewelry business, it would be extra stupid for a salesperson to tell anyone where they are.

One other thought that is not addressed on Please Rob Me goes out to women who are telling us guys where they are all the time. Now, I’m a happily married man and a good person. But there are a lot of sick people out there! If you’re an attractive woman, do you really want every guy on Twitter to know where you are so they can happen to just show up to see you? Or even worse to hurt you?

Maybe I’ll eat my words and these sites will be the next Facebook, but remember that the internet is full of stalkers, criminals and psychopaths, so use some common sense here people!

What do you think of these sites?  Are they game changers or a stalkers heaven?