Facebook Safety Check Gets it Right: Twitter Moments Might Have Gotten it Right But Who Would Know?
As the story of the horrific terror attacks in Paris unfolded over the evening of November 13, I noticed two things on social media. To be honest, I only noticed one of them. Facebook activated its Safety Check feature that evening, and I immediately saw the effects when I logged in to Facebook arriving home that evening. A friend and neighbor happened to be in Paris visiting family, and I saw her “Checked in Safe” prominent among my notifications. People near the attacks were prompted to check in safe, making this a push notification on both ends, and a good one.* Certainly, it’s a much better feature than the temporary profile picture app, the result of which is that I can’t tell from profile pictures who is commenting on what thread on Facebook’s pages and groups.
Twitter Moments, on the other hand, had some great curated content from media partners and other Twitter users. However, I had to be reminded to go check it. On further examination, I found no intuitive way to be signed up for Moments notifications- if breaking news or other categories appeared in my mobile Twitter notifications, I would definitely sign up for that. I feel like it’s a missed opportunity, unless anyone can show me otherwise.
*Many people have pointed out that Facebook has been inconsistent in its use of Safety Check, with an attack in Beirut the previous evening held up as an example, and that’s a fair criticism, but beside my point here.
Perhaps They Should Change the Name to Tsu.me
In more conventional business competition news, some folks (“Some” = “those who have actually heard of Tsu.co) have noticed that Facebook has been blocking all links to Tsu.co, an apparently competitive social network. As this post in Boingboing points out, even their own post that contained links to the site was getting blocked.
I found one way around that, but it wasn’t pretty (see below). Is there a real value to blocking these links? The reasoning seems to do with Tsu paying users to post links on Facebook, violating the latter’s Terms of Service. Will Facebook continue to do it? I don’t really know but will be interested to hear if this happens with other sites that might be seen as competitive.
REI AMA FUBAR
REI recently announced that they would close their stores on Black Friday, a move that generated much goodwill, even if people like me suspected that they didn’t stand to sacrifice as much as other big stores by doing so. The PR machine got CEO Jerry Stritzke to do a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), which went predictably awry. Well, predictable only if you knew there were disgruntled employees out there (hence the hyperbolic healdine to this section, though the chat as a whole probably wasn’t that definitively off the rails). Does that mean one should avoid these things at all cost to prevent embarrassment? No- Stritzke posted a belated acknowledgment of the negative discussion; in my opinion that was late and could have been handled better live, but at least someone thought better of things to get him to write the note.
Good Trolls are Good
I know, I know, we should be relentlessly positive and non-critical at all times on social media, right?
OK, actually I don’t know that. I’ll distribute warm fuzzies if they are earned, but I will also secretly (or not) cheer Internet trolls who use their powers for good. I am particularly impressed with Buzzfeed Canada writer Scaachi Koul, who resorted to Absurdist performance art when targeted by “Men’s Rights” activists due to the anti-sexist and anti-racist nature of many of her posts (and the added crime of being a woman). Responded with out-of-context-but-maybe-creating-their-own-context quotes from the film Good Will Hunting? Childish, brilliant, and most likely Fair Use; I approve (not that she needs it).
There, I wrote something nice about Buzzfeed (Bonus!).
Excellent Advice for SEO Professionals
This is the only response to those who might want to post “SEO/Marketing/Social Media Leassons from X” posts, when “X” is little plausible relevance. SEO lessons from Taylor Swift? None. Zero.
Make your clickbait count, folks.