Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

[This is a follow-up post to "Foursquare Stalkers Go IRL."]

I usually don’t post my Foursquare location until after I leave. At dinner we decided to dine-in instead of takeout but by then the post was out and also over to Twitter.

As we waited for my salmon on brown rice plate, the cashier spoke my name into the microphone.

I never thought not to pick up the phone. Foursquare was fresh on my mind since I had recently written a blog post on PleaseRobMe.com, the stalker-enabler site.

As I went to the phone I figured someone was playing a prank and I would see this through. I didn’t recognize the voice on the phone that immediately started calling me “the biggest [insert homophobic language]“. There was nothing funny about that and the voice was even, as if he had done the same thing a dozen times earlier that night. I could tell from the stupid questions he was asking that he was trying to offend me, but still keep me on the line. I figured he was getting his jollies by recording the conversation so I hung up.

That evening I tried to figure out who it was and started closing up accounts and blocking people. My list grew longer and longer as I became more paranoid. Was it the PleaseRobMe guys, pissed because I linked to their Whois information on my blog post, exposing their address? Was it the Mayor of the place I visited, warning me off of his territory? I didn’t know.

The next morning I started some serious searching on Google and Twitter. Eventually I searched for “called me Foursquare” and found someone else who had the same thing happen to him. I kept digging and a reply to his tweet led to this PhoneLosers.com post. The site users had been stalking several people using Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook and posting about their exploits.

After looking through their site, I didn’t find my name on it so I couldn’t positively tell if they were the ones calling, but I was 99% sure. It was the same thing they did to the other guy. I figured the caller didn’t get enough satisfaction from my hanging up so he never posted to the site and went on to harass someone else.

Energy is very important to me. I’m very careful about the kind of energy I let into my life. After doing more research on the PhoneLosers site members, I saw some seriously creepy stuff so I left it and didn’t tweet about it or post about it for several days. It wasn’t until I told some people about it at a tweetup that I decided to review the site again.

They were now stalking dozens of people.

I felt bad that I hadn’t exposed the site earlier but I can’t do anything about the past. There is only the now and I’m acting now by working to close their juvenile operation.

I love our online community. I love playing in it and oversharing. And won’t let some loser site piss in my paddling pool without making waves of my own.

Related Posts
* Foursquare Stalkers Go IRL
* New Site Aims To Scare Foursquare Users – PleaseRobMe.com
* Are We All Asking to Be Robbed? (Mashable)

Twitter has been giving my @jesseluna account the cold shoulder, not displaying tweets from others for over 8 hours. It’s 9:09AM Pacific Time and the last tweet update was at 35 minutes after midnight.

Apparently I’m not the only as The Next Web reports that many accounts have been affected. TheTwitter blog has not posted any information on this freeze out yet.

I can see Replies and tweets that use hashtags that I follow but that’s it. The Next Web also points out that you can see updated tweets using the Twitter Lists feature.

Hopefully Twitter can patch things up soon. Until this gets resolved, I’ll focus on conversing (not just reading posts or retweeting) then probably head over to Facebook to see what’s going on in the world.

Did your account freeze up? Did you jump to another social networking site? If so, which one?

Will these self-identified stalkers ruin your cyber community? Or will we ban these bullies from our playground?

A site called PhoneLosers.com has been stalking dozens of people using Foursquare, Twitter search, and Facebook. Supposedly, their main goal is to prank people and get them to post about them or the event.

This is part of the PhoneLosers.com forum post by someone named RBCP (appears to also be @rbcp on Twitter), urging people to stalk Foursquare users:

Make a new thread in this board for each person you stalk. If that gets out of hand, we’ll figure out a different way to organize it. It would be cool to include a phone call with your stalking, but I guess a transcript would work too. Most Twitterers are such attention whores that they’ll post about being stalked too. Or they might Facebook it, so check their Facebooks too and post their reactions in the thread you create. – RBCP

The name on the Whois listing for PhoneLosers.com lists a “Brad Carter” as the domain registrant.

There’s also a @PhoneLosers Twitter account and it shamelessly tweeted out:

Stalking people on FourSquare is fun! Come and listen to the sound clips at http://www.phonelosers.com/index.php?board=61.0 – @phonelosers

I have emailed Foursquare, GoDaddy (the domain host), and Twitter so they are aware of the situation and can take action.

One of the best ways to tell your blog visitors about your Facebook presence is by using a Facebook Fan Badge. This allows users to click a button and join your Fan page and to click through to your Facebook account.

Quick note, are you looking for information on the Facebook Fan Widget? If so, click here.

To add the Facebook Fan Badge Widget:

1. Go to the Facebook Fan Badge Widget page. You will need to be logged into Facebook to access this page.

2. The “Select a Page” drop down box will show all of the fan pages you have joined. By default, the Fan Badge Preview section on the right will show the first fan page in your fan page list. Select your fan page and the Fan Badge Preview will update.

3. When you select your fan page, the “Copy the code below and paste it on your website” textbox will update with the correct code. Copy the code. Pro-tip: I like to keep a text file open (like Notepad) so I can paste in and label code. I do this in case I totally forget what I just copied and end up copying something else into my clipboard. It saves time and my sanity. ;)

4. Log into your blog, and add a text widget to your blog, paste in the code, and save your changes. This part of the process will be different depending on your blogging system.

For WordPress.com and WordPress.org (custom install) users
1. Log into WordPress.com
2. From your blog’s dashboard, go to the Appearance> Widgets page
3. Assuming you have at least one sidebar, click + drag a Text widget to your sidebar
4. Set a title. I used “Join My Facebook Fan Page” as the title
5. Paste in the code that we copied from the Facebook Fan Badge page. If it is no longer in your clipboard, you can copy it from your temporary text file mentioned in the Pro-tip above.
6. Save then Close and you’re set.

This is a screenshot of adding the badge to WordPress.com (click to enlarge):

Adding the widget to WordPress.com and WordPress installs is fairly easy but to add them to Tumblr and Posterous take more work and you have to muck around in the HTML. I’ll show you exactly how to do that.

For Tumblr users:
1. Log into your Tumblr account
2. Click on the Customize link button (upper right part of the page with the wrench icon)
3. Click on the “Theme” tab at the top of the page. We’re assuming you have Advanced HTML turned ON for your theme.
4. Navigate to the part of the theme where you want the badge to show up. I put mine right below a FormSpring widget which shows up under the Archive/RSS segment.
5. Click on the Update Preview button to see your changes.
6. After adding the exact code the box was slightly our of whack so you may have to tweak the colors a bit. Once you’ve done that, click on the Save & Close button and you’re set.

This is where I added in the Facebook code (click to enlarge):

For Posterous users (requires Advance Theme view to be turned on):
1. Log into your Posterous account
2. Go to the Settings page by mousing over the upper right section of he page and clicking on “Settings” button
3. Click on the big “Theme and Customize My Site” button
4. Click on the Advanced tab in the upper left hand side of the page
5. Once again, you’ll need to have Custom Theming turned on to proceed. If you do, you’ll see HTML template code in the top window. Expand the window by clicking on the “Expand” link
6. Navigate to where you would like to add your badgeand paste it in. I added my badge right below the “Subscribe via RSS” link

This is what the RSS link template code look like. Paste your badge code right after this section (it ended up being 90% down towards the end of the template page on my theme). Click to enlarge:

So we just learned how to add a Facebook Fan Badge to your blog site. If you desprately need help with doing this with one of the other blogging platforms, leave a comment below and I’ll update this blog post with those instructions. M’Kay?

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Whoa there big feller, how to I display the fan pictures and my Facebook feed like on some other sites?

Facebook has several types of goodies for sites and one of them is a Facebook Fan Widget (not the same thing as the badge). The Fan Widget uses JavaScript code so some blogging systems do not allow them. WordPress.org blogs do allow them since they are installed on one’s own server but WordPress.com does not allow them because of the JavaScript.

Bank robber Willie Sutton was once asked, “Why do you rob banks?” His reply, “Because that’s where the money is.” The AP is taking the same approach and sending some of it’s Twitter links to Facebook, because that’s where millions of people are.

I think this will be a short term marketing strategy. And even today they started sending people back to the AP site. Using Facebook as an additional outpost is a good idea, but not as a center point.

If you have a domain, use it. That’s where the true riches are.

Related Posts:
* The AP Is Using Twitter To Send People To Facebook. Wait. What? – TechCrunch
* AP is Visionary: They See a “Siteless Web” – Steve Rubel Lifestream

I’ve been buying IKEA furniture since the company first opened its doors in California. So when a Twitter friend tweeted about an IKEA social media case study video, I had to take a look.

IKEA ran a promotion this Fall on Facebook to engage its customers and fans. By cleverly using the picture-tagging feature built into Facebook, they drew in over a thousand friends for one of the store owners, Gordon Gustavsson, and spread awareness of IKEA’s products.

The IKEA promotion, as described in the video below, had three key features that made it engaging and memorable:

1) Easy – For Facebook users, the promotion was simple. All they had to do was friend Gustavsson then tag pictures. There were no spammy applications to install in order to participate and share with other Facebook friends.

2) Interactive – It required fans to keep an eye out for new showcase pictures so they could rush to them and be the first to tag a furniture item.

3) Clearly Defined – Facebook fans knew the rules of the promotion – that there would be limited number of showcase pictures to tag and that they had to be first to tag them to win.

I don’t have the numbers on the overall reach of the promotion, but engaging over a thousand fervent fans on Facebook is great way to build a fan base.

Did YOU hear about the IKEA promotion before this blog post? What would YOU have done to extend the reach of this promotion if you were in charge of the campaign?