Chris Saad is VP of strategy at Echo, the world’s leading provider of comment/conversation technology to Tier 1 publishers. He is also the co-author of the Synaptic Web Strawman, co-author of the Attention Profiling Markup Language (APML) specification, and co-founder of the DataPortability Project.

Last week, I wrote a post calling out Mark Zuckerberg for making a correlation between Facebook’s privacy issues and their altruistic pursuit of data portability.

Today I’d like to do something a little different. I’d like to examine some of the reasons why Facebook is finding it challenging to either a) implement data portability, or b) communicate about issues of privacy or data portability — and why ultimately, that might be OK, in the sense that it leaves room for the rest of the web to innovate.

I will examine the issue in three parts. These parts, I believe, make up the crux of any reasonable criticism of Facebook at this time.

Data Portability vs. Interoperability

First, Facebook tends to discuss data portability without acknowledging the significance of open standards and interoperability.

Data portability is not just allowing users to access their data. There is a silent “Interoperable” before the phrase that means the data, and the protocols to get it, need to be based on open standards and be interchangeable. Letting people code against your API is not the same as building the API in such a way that others (i.e. social aggregators or networks) could participate in the transactions just as easily.

Facebook’s challenge, however, is that they are pioneering many of these interactions and can’t necessarily wait for standards to emerge or crystallize before acting.

Standards emerge after a good pattern gets established. In many ways, Facebook’s leadership in demonstrating these patterns at scale shows the way (and provides the market momentum and emotional fuel) for standards to emerge. See the OExchange announcement earlier this week, for example.

The challenge for Facebook here is to balance their need (and obvious appetite) for innovation with architectural choices that allow for open standards and interoperable protocols to be absorbed by their system. To show true commitment, they must also quickly adopt standards as they emerge.

Taking these steps would put them in good position to avoid the Internet-scale forces that often reject proprietary platforms as fast as they emerge. In addition to decisive action, if Facebook clearly acknowledged this to stakeholders, it would go a long way.

Will they make these decisions rather than pay lip service? That seems unlikely.

Social Contracts vs. Open Culture

Second, Facebook confuses privacy concerns with anger over a violation of their social contract with users, specifically with regard to people pushing back on the general goal of human openness.

The potential for social media to make the world a more transparent and connected place is real and significant. I don’t think that any rational person who seriously considers the trends could argue against the idea that people sharing more in public, and reading more about others, could reduce fear born from any sense of ‘us’ vs ‘them’.

I don’t think that anyone really challenges Mark Zuckerberg on this point when he makes it. They shouldn’t.

The challenge for Facebook, however, is they began with a social contract — a promise to their users — of a private place for sharing amongst mutually confirmed friendships.

To their credit as a company, they want to continue to push the boundaries, and innovate and evolve as quickly as the market. And the market has evolved. Thanks to Flickr, Twitter and others, public is the new default, and Facebook needs to keep up. For them to change direction towards these open defaults, however, they must declare this intention clearly and unequivocally.

The team at Facebook tries to talk about the need for an open and connected society, and have continued to make incremental steps in this direction. But they have really failed to put it in the context of their history and our future. They need to tell the story of a cultural trend towards openness and explain that while they started as private place, their (new) unashamed goal is move towards a public one.

Doing it in small steps without explaining the end goal or the reason, or even acknowledging the fundamental shift, is a big (and unnecessary) source of criticism.

Open Culture vs. Open Technology

Third, Facebook tends to use the word ‘open’ without drawing a distinction between culture and technology

When the team at Facebook talks about wanting to make the world more “open,” I, and others who care about such things, hear them cloaking themselves in the mantra of Open Technologies when they are actually talking about open/transparent/public culture.

Trying to draw the distinction between Open Technology vs. Open Culture is difficult for Facebook, considering that their audience is not that of our little echo chamber but rather a very mainstream community that does not understand such nuance. So in some regards, glossing over these distinctions is understandable given their target market.

The problem, though, is that making the world a more open place using closed technologies all routed through a single company is not the way it can or should work.

A more interoperable, peer-to-peer method of achieving cultural transparency is critical for there to be true openness (of both kinds). There is an architecture that would allow each node (read: user/site/service) to be a first class citizen on the interoperable social web and to choose how public or private it is when it comes to sharing.

Facebook might know this, but their job is not to create an interoperable social web. They are the market leader — the clear winner — and as Dave McClure likes to say, “Open is for losers.” The nice thing about the web, though, is there are a lot of big, important, well funded and motivated losers who will ensure that Open will win in the end.

Facebook’s job, however, is to capitalize on their momentum and network effects to create maximum value for their shareholders. This is not ‘evil’ or even necessarily undesirable. Because like with open standards, oftentimes until someone shows the industry how it’s done (and frankly lights a fire under its butt), it’s often hard for us all to collectively imagine what the future might look like.

The challenge for Facebook — one they are more than capable of facing – is keeping up with the inevitable opening of the walls and the peering of the nodes. They are the most agile and innovative company at scale that has ever existed on the Internet. If anyone can do it, they can. The only question is, can the rest of the community execute as well?

Conclusion

In these three areas — Data Portability vs. Interoperability, Social Contracts vs. Open Culture, Open Culture vs. Open Technology — Facebook has made big moves and very high profile blunders. Their challenges are great and their ability to execute with ambition first, ask questions later and quickly clean up the mess is the very reason for their success.

Are these blunders a series of accidental missteps (a combination of ambition, scale and hubris) or a calculated risk to force their world view on unsuspecting users (easier to ask for forgiveness)? Only the executives at Facebook can ever truly answer this question.

What’s clear, though, is that their platform is tightly coupled with countless other websites and applications across the web, and their financial success is aligned with many influential investors and actors. At this stage, and at this rate, their continued success is all but assured.

But so is the success of the rest of the web. Countless social applications emerge every day and the rest of the web is, and always will be, bigger than any proprietary platform. Through its action and inaction, Facebook offers opportunities for us all. And in the dance between their moves and the rest of the web’s, innovation can be found.

The only thing that can truly hurt the web is a monopoly on ideas, and the only ones who can let that happen are web users themselves.

More Facebook resources from Mashable:

- Why Facebook’s Privacy War Is Not Over
- Why Facebook Must Get Serious About Privacy
- 4 Tips for B2B Marketing on Facebook
- In Defense of Facebook
- The Local Advertising War Will Be a Clash of the Internet Titans

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alwyncooper

Tags: data portability, editorial, facebook, open technology, privacy, social contracts, social media

Dallas Lawrence is Managing Director of Burson-Marsteller’s Proof Integrated Communications. He is a Mashable contributor on emerging media trends, online reputation management and digital issue advocacy. You can connect with him on Twitter @dallaslawrence.

The recent firestorm over Facebook’s approach to securing the privacy of its more than 450 million users continues to reverberate around the globe this week as thousands of news outlets cover the unfolding drama with almost breathless zeitgeist. And while traditional outlets are grappling with what it all means for the future of Facebook, online denizens have trumpeted their angst about the company’s most recent changes with more than 25 million blog posts.

The current crisis of confidence leveled against Facebook once again centers on the core issue of how the social networking platform manages access to its users’ information. PC World columnist JP Raphael noted earlier this month that with the significant new changes announced by the Palo Alto-based social giant, “achieving maximum privacy on Facebook now requires you to click through 50 settings and more than 170 options — and even that won’t completely safeguard your info.” According to news reports this week, the company may finally be reversing course (again) and returning to a streamlined security process.

To be sure, Facebook is no novice when it comes to navigating the controversies of privacy in the online marketplace, and it will very likely emerge from the current crisis singed, but not terribly worse for the wear. What is surprising however, and perhaps most troubling for a company that nearly all watchers agree must prove its mettle with a public offering in the next 18 months, is the voraciousness of the global opposition the recent controversy has sparked, and the apparent lack of corporate agility at Facebook to respond effectively to even the most basic crises inherent to an organization so intertwined in the daily lives of half a billion users.

The Lessons Facebook Can Learn from Google

Purported 7-year old texts from CEO Mark Zuckerberg are now lighting up the online community with an amusing, and some may say prescient peek into the then 19-year old’s views on privacy. The constant and steady drip of opposition forming around the most valuable social media property in the history of the Internet is beginning to paint a picture of a company that has failed to fundamentally understand that what got it to where it is today will not make it into what it wants to be: A wildly profitable public company rivaling the reach and prominence of Google.

The $200 billion search behemoth learned these same painful lessons of accountability earlier in the past decade as they became the public whipping boy for privacy issues. Regular Congressional hearings, editorial columns and tech-savvy thought leaders all lampooned Google for their approach to user information. Many began questioning its very core mantra of “don’t be evil” that had mightily bound Googlers for more than a decade. Google’s response was to aggressively educate global regulators and privacy experts while dramatically expanding their Washington, DC footprint. They further ramped up public policy and communications outreach efforts to ensure they were accessible and accountable to those most concerned about their industry and how they as a company approached the prickly issue of online privacy.

Transparency is Key to Facebook’s Maturation

As regulators and privacy watchdog groups from the EU, Canada and the U.S. begin to catch up to the social media revolution and the inherent policy concerns that came with it, Facebook’s maturation has reached a seminal moment in the platform’s life cycle.

For a brand built on the ideals of transparency (sharing your life updates with your friends and family), Facebook must begin to embrace the mantra of a transparent and accountable organization while remaining free from the constraints of life as a publicly traded, heavily regulated, investor-driven company.

Facebook’s chief policy guru Elliot Schrage appeared at least to grasp the challenges that lie ahead for the company during a question and answer session with The New York Times last week. “Another painful element comes from professional frustration,” Schrage wrote. “It’s clear that despite our efforts, we are not doing a good enough job communicating the changes that we’re making … We may not always agree about the speed and comprehensiveness of our response but I’m here because I’m confident Facebook’s future success depends on our ability to respond.”

Tough words and sound perspective from a smart, well-respected industry insider. If heeded, they may finally drive the internal changes necessary for Facebook to complete its startup evolution and graduate into the world’s most dominant — and profitable — communications platform.

More Facebook resources from Mashable:

- How Facebook Can Become a Money Making Machine
- Facebook vs. Google: The Billion Dollar Battle to Be Your Default Social Profile
- 5 Essential Facebook Privacy Tips
- 4 Tips for B2B Marketing on Facebook
- The Local Advertising War Will Be a Clash of the Internet Titans

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, malerapaso

Tags: analysis, facebook, privacy, social media, social networks

Rick Burnes leads the content production team at HubSpot, a marketing software firm that produces the Inbound Marketing Blog and Inbound Marketing University.

Chances are, most of the businesses you interact with as a consumer are on social media. Your local restaurant is blogging, your grocery store is on Twitter — even your favorite candy is on Facebook. Companies in mainstream, consumer-facing industries are all over social media.

But how about other businesses? Manufacturers? B2B service providers? Equine dentists? Are they experimenting with social media?

You bet. Here are five examples, all at different stages of their experiments, and all indicating the breadth of business use of social media. 

1. Equine Dentist Builds Relationships With Facebook

How do you turn a regional service business into an international destination for industry thought leadership?

Facebook.

At least that’s what worked for Geoff Tucker, an equine dentist based in Palm City, FL.

In a business driven by relationships, Geoff says that Facebook allows him to build new ones. “People do business with people who they’re friends with. Period,” he says. “And Facebook is a great way to get to know people. It allows people to see that I’m a person.”

As he builds these relationships using social media, Geoff is also expanding his company’s reach. He says it was his blog, his Twitter feed, and his Facebook account that helped him win appearances on Horse Talk Radio and HorseGirl.tv.

So what’s this done for his business? Geoff says that over the last year, Facebook alone has generated about 100 leads and 10-to-15 customers.

2. Steel Building Manufacturer Taps New Verticals

As a manufacturer of prefabricated steel buildings, SteelMaster was initially hesitant to get involved in social media.

“It’s steel buildings,” explains Michelle Wickum, director of marketing for the Norfolk, VA company. “How is that going to tie to Facebook? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but when we looked at the growth in Facebook and social media, we felt we had to get our arms around it.”

About a year ago, SteelMaster put its first toe into the social media water. The company discovered two important applications for their business. First, they found that Facebook is an excellent way to post pictures of customers’ steel buildings. Not only do the pictures engage existing customers — they also demonstrate to prospective customers the range of uses for SteelMaster buildings. “Photography for us is the hook,” Michelle explains.

Perhaps more importantly, SteelMaster found that social networks like Twitter and Facebook gives it exposure to and create demand in specific verticals where it previously had little traction. Chicken farmers and woodworkers don’t typically think to use steel buildings, but when friends and colleagues share pictures of their SteelMaster buildings on Twitter and Facebook, the farmers and woodworkers become interested.

3. Full Social Media Integration for Marketing Paint

Idea Paint is a Boston-area startup that sells paint that turns surfaces into dry-erase boards. The company uses social media throughout its sales and marketing process.

The company blog, where employees publish videos, images and stories of product installations, is the hub of Idea Paint’s social media activity. The company uses Twitter and Facebook to share content published on the blog — then to listen to, respond to, and interact with the community that content engages.

Marcus Wilson, Idea Paint’s head of marketing, says this system gives the company a level of customer intimacy and global reach and that was unheard of 10 years ago.

What’s this mean in terms of business results? Social media is now one of Idea Paint’s largest sources of leads and traffic — and it is growing steadily. Meanwhile, the company’s Twitter and Facebook reach grew 70% in Q1 2010, and is expected to grow an order of magnitude in Q2.

Idea Paint produced this video on their social media strategy, exclusively for Mashable readers:

4. Integrating Twitter Into the Paper Selling Process

One year ago, the marketing team at Neenah Paper, a manufacturer of high-quality paper products, confronted a growing problem: It was becoming harder and harder to reach new potential customers. Their traditional channels — phone conversations and in-person meetings — were not working as well. Prospects were tuning them out.

Jamie Saunders, Neenah’s marketing communications manager, noted that most of the company’s potential customers — designers, graphic artists and printers — were spending their time in front of their computers, and that social media could be a way to better engage them.

So Neenah took a step into the social media world. While the experiment started with Neenah’s marketing team, its sales team was one of the biggest beneficiaries. They discovered they could do prospecting and nurturing via Twitter. Today the company has 10 sales representatives across the country using their personal Twitter accounts on behalf of Neenah to close new business.  

Jamie says these sales reps are finding that social media is simply a more effective way of engaging with their prospects. “It’s an invitation to have a conversation. You’re getting permission to have a conversation — a conversation that used to happen in person.”

5. Leading the Online Aviation Maintenance Discussion

In November 2008, a handful of auto executives flew their private planes to Washington, DC to testify before Congress in support of federal aid for their industry. This perception of corporate excess created an outcry, and the private aviation industry’s image was damaged.

At that time, aircraft maintenance and support company Duncan Aviation had just started using social media. The company discovered that the new medium could be a way to positively shape the conversation — to add its perspective and improve the industry’s damaged reputation.

Beth Humble, now Duncan’s social media lead, explains that while social media is an important part of Duncan’s strategy, the company doesn’t aspire to create a Comcast- or Coke-like presence on the social web. Instead, the goal is simply to influence the right people.

“There are a lot of industry people that we network with that are on Twitter: Journalists, other aviation bloggers, and industry and media outlets,” Beth explains. “If you connect with the right few people, you can really get in there and connect with thousands of people.”

More business resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Market Your Small Business With No Budget
- 13 Essential Tips for Landing a Job on LinkedIn
- How Venture Capitalists are Using Social Media for Real Results
- Why Co-Working Makes Sense for Small Businesses
- What Facebook’s Open Graph Means for Your Business

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, FANDER09

Tags: business, facebook, List, Lists, small business, social media, social media marketing, trending, twitter

Leyl Master Black is a Managing Director at Sparkpr, one of the world’s top independent PR agencies. Leyl has more than 15 years experience driving high-impact communications programs for emerging technology companies.

A couple of months ago, we talked about ways to engage your fan base on Facebook. Several readers asked how B2B companies could take advantage of the tips we shared, and I know that some organizations are still wondering if it even makes sense to try to reach a business audience on Facebook.

In my view, Facebook presents a unique opportunity to connect with and educate your target market in a way that your website and even your blog can’t match. The trick is coming up with meaningful content that people will want to share, and that brings them back again and again.

Here are some tips for creating a powerful presence on Facebook that will engage a business audience.

1. Become an Industry Resource

Whatever business you’re in, chances are that you’re keeping up with industry news and maybe even writing about it on your blog. You’re likely running educational webinars or speaking at industry conferences. You’re also engaging with customers, helping to solve their business problems and maybe even documenting the process with case studies. This means that you probably already have a large number of resources to share. Why not funnel this content onto Facebook and make your Page the go-to place for insights and information on your particular industry?

A good example of this approach is 360i, an award-winning digital marketing agency. Tapping the deep expertise of its team, 360i keeps its Facebook Page updated with industry insights on topics that matter to the brand marketing audience, such as how businesses are taking advantage of Google Places or new trends with Foursquare.

The 360i team showcases industry research and reviews cool new technologies that marketers can use in their programs. They post a weekly summary of all the important industry news, and provide readers with astute commentary that puts the news into context. In short, they’ve positioned themselves as experts in digital marketing and become a valuable resource for their target audience on Facebook.

2. Engage the Community

In the past, your customers may have had little interaction with each other, and the outside world could only see a list of customers on your website (if you put them there). As a marketer, you wouldn’t know what all your customers were doing with your products, or even how to reach them.

Now, you can use Facebook to engage directly with your customers and make them part of your marketing efforts. For example, you can ask customers to share their successes on your wall and get feedback on new product features. You can encourage them to recognize great service people and reward them for their input with a discount or other promotion. You can also solicit customer references for case studies and media opportunities and find out who’s doing something innovative with your product.

BigCommerce, a company that offers e-commerce shopping cart software, routinely reaches out to its Facebook fan base to identify reference customers and uncover interesting use cases for the media. For example, when the company wanted to promote the success of its recently launched Facebook shopping application, they simply posted a query on their page asking which customers had seen a boost in sales from the application and who would be willing to talk to the media. Within 24 hours, the company had generated fifteen new customer references and were able to immediately turn this information into media coverage.

3. Expand Beyond Your Wall

There are now a host of different applications for Facebook that let you do more than post on your wall. If you’re selling B2B products online, you can set up a shopping tab on your page to drive traffic to your e-commerce site and encourage viral sharing of your products. Get Satisfaction, a popular social CRM and customer support platform, recently launched a Facebook version of its application so your customers can ask questions and get support right on your Facebook Page.

You can also set up a promotions tab using Fan Appz to offer special deals to your Facebook fans and even use these deals to support lead generation programs. For example, if you sell software licenses, you could offer a 20% discount on the annual fee for people who enter the promotion code at an upcoming webinar or bring the coupon to your booth at a conference.

4. Lighten Up

While many of us use Facebook in our day-to-day business, the vast majority are usually there to have fun and engage with friends. So no matter how serious your product is, inject some humor and levity into your page.

For example, if you’re selling enterprise security software, why not do a poll where people rate the most evil tech baddies in films like Hackers and The Terminator? If you’re a marketing agency, you could do a “Which Mad Men Character Are You?” quiz that assigns users an identity based on their answers, which can then be shared with their friends. Just keep it relevant to your industry and safe-for-work.

And even if your website needs to stay “all business,” Facebook is where you can give a face and personality to the company. You could do an “employee of the month” feature on the page where you profile someone who’s making a big difference at the company or who achieved a significant milestone. Include photos or even a short video.

You can highlight what the company or employees are doing in the community or in support of a particular cause, which has the added benefit of putting the weight of your fan base behind these efforts. You can also consider posting behind-the-scenes photos of engineers hard at work on the next product release, or a smiling customer service rep on the phone with a client. All of these ideas will help your fans make a stronger and more personal connection with your company.

These are just a few examples of how companies can use Facebook to engage with B2B customers, and I’m sure there are many more out there. If you’re using Facebook to market to other businesses, I’d love to hear what else has worked for you!

More business resources from Mashable:

- 10 Essential Social Media Tools for B2B Marketers
- 13 Essential Social Media Lessons for B2B Marketers from the Masters
- How Venture Capitalists are Using Social Media for Real Results
- Why Co-Working Makes Sense for Small Businesses
- What Facebook’s Open Graph Means for Your Business

Tags: b2b, business, facebook, List, Lists, MARKETING, small business, social media marketing

Leyl Master Black is a Managing Director at Sparkpr, one of the world’s top independent PR agencies. Leyl has more than 15 years experience driving high-impact communications programs for emerging technology companies.

A couple of months ago, we talked about ways to engage your fan base on Facebook. Several readers asked how B2B companies could take advantage of the tips we shared, and I know that some organizations are still wondering if it even makes sense to try to reach a business audience on Facebook.

In my view, Facebook presents a unique opportunity to connect with and educate your target market in a way that your website and even your blog can’t match. The trick is coming up with meaningful content that people will want to share, and that brings them back again and again.

Here are some tips for creating a powerful presence on Facebook that will engage a business audience.

1. Become an Industry Resource

Whatever business you’re in, chances are that you’re keeping up with industry news and maybe even writing about it on your blog. You’re likely running educational webinars or speaking at industry conferences. You’re also engaging with customers, helping to solve their business problems and maybe even documenting the process with case studies. This means that you probably already have a large number of resources to share. Why not funnel this content onto Facebook and make your Page the go-to place for insights and information on your particular industry?

A good example of this approach is 360i, an award-winning digital marketing agency. Tapping the deep expertise of its team, 360i keeps its Facebook Page updated with industry insights on topics that matter to the brand marketing audience, such as how businesses are taking advantage of Google Places or new trends with Foursquare.

The 360i team showcases industry research and reviews cool new technologies that marketers can use in their programs. They post a weekly summary of all the important industry news, and provide readers with astute commentary that puts the news into context. In short, they’ve positioned themselves as experts in digital marketing and become a valuable resource for their target audience on Facebook.

2. Engage the Community

In the past, your customers may have had little interaction with each other, and the outside world could only see a list of customers on your website (if you put them there). As a marketer, you wouldn’t know what all your customers were doing with your products, or even how to reach them.

Now, you can use Facebook to engage directly with your customers and make them part of your marketing efforts. For example, you can ask customers to share their successes on your wall and get feedback on new product features. You can encourage them to recognize great service people and reward them for their input with a discount or other promotion. You can also solicit customer references for case studies and media opportunities and find out who’s doing something innovative with your product.

BigCommerce, a company that offers e-commerce shopping cart software, routinely reaches out to its Facebook fan base to identify reference customers and uncover interesting use cases for the media. For example, when the company wanted to promote the success of its recently launched Facebook shopping application, they simply posted a query on their page asking which customers had seen a boost in sales from the application and who would be willing to talk to the media. Within 24 hours, the company had generated fifteen new customer references and were able to immediately turn this information into media coverage.

3. Expand Beyond Your Wall

There are now a host of different applications for Facebook that let you do more than post on your wall. If you’re selling B2B products online, you can set up a shopping tab on your page to drive traffic to your e-commerce site and encourage viral sharing of your products. Get Satisfaction, a popular social CRM and customer support platform, recently launched a Facebook version of its application so your customers can ask questions and get support right on your Facebook Page.

You can also set up a promotions tab using Fan Appz to offer special deals to your Facebook fans and even use these deals to support lead generation programs. For example, if you sell software licenses, you could offer a 20% discount on the annual fee for people who enter the promotion code at an upcoming webinar or bring the coupon to your booth at a conference.

4. Lighten Up

While many of us use Facebook in our day-to-day business, the vast majority are usually there to have fun and engage with friends. So no matter how serious your product is, inject some humor and levity into your page.

For example, if you’re selling enterprise security software, why not do a poll where people rate the most evil tech baddies in films like Hackers and The Terminator? If you’re a marketing agency, you could do a “Which Mad Men Character Are You?” quiz that assigns users an identity based on their answers, which can then be shared with their friends. Just keep it relevant to your industry and safe-for-work.

And even if your website needs to stay “all business,” Facebook is where you can give a face and personality to the company. You could do an “employee of the month” feature on the page where you profile someone who’s making a big difference at the company or who achieved a significant milestone. Include photos or even a short video.

You can highlight what the company or employees are doing in the community or in support of a particular cause, which has the added benefit of putting the weight of your fan base behind these efforts. You can also consider posting behind-the-scenes photos of engineers hard at work on the next product release, or a smiling customer service rep on the phone with a client. All of these ideas will help your fans make a stronger and more personal connection with your company.

These are just a few examples of how companies can use Facebook to engage with B2B customers, and I’m sure there are many more out there. If you’re using Facebook to market to other businesses, I’d love to hear what else has worked for you!

More business resources from Mashable:

- 10 Essential Social Media Tools for B2B Marketers
- 13 Essential Social Media Lessons for B2B Marketers from the Masters
- How Venture Capitalists are Using Social Media for Real Results
- Why Co-Working Makes Sense for Small Businesses
- What Facebook’s Open Graph Means for Your Business

Tags: b2b, business, facebook, List, Lists, MARKETING, small business, social media marketing

A former local newspaper reporter, Tanveer is a student at the Medill School of Journalism learning all things digital and entrepreneurial. He also writes about political figures for WhoRunsGov.com and hopes to own the high score on multiple Ms. Pac-Man machines one day.

While many government agencies still tend to employ the “broadcast” model when using social media, some are engaging through hashtags, community building initiatives, and geo-location analysis. These efforts are helping to better inform the public and alert them to public safety emergencies in real-time.

A good recent example of this is how the team of energy companies and government agencies responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are putting these strategies to use.

Here are ways other government agencies, from local law enforcement to the National Weather Service, are seizing on these tools to improve their services.

Building a Transparent Community

At the most basic level, social media is about community building. Government agencies have adopted this mindset to varying degrees as a way to foster trust and dialogue with people. “It is truly a national town hall that has never been attempted during a disaster,” said Commander James Hoeft of the U.S. Navy, who oversees the cleanup effort’s social media team.

The idea has been implemented in parts of the U.S. government to varying degrees. In 2008, Admiral Thad Allen of the U.S. Coast Guard sent out a service-wide message saying, “[To] modernize the Coast Guard we must learn how to effectively use social media tools to enhance our ability to perform as a more transparent, change-centric organization.”

The Coast Guard has since deployed a series of Flickr, YouTube and Twitter accounts, both at the headquarters and regional levels, as a part of The Coast Guard Compass. Some are better than others, with many serving simply as multimedia RSS feeds. But there are stars, like the Twitter feed for the Portsmouth, VA-based District Five, which discusses their latest coastal rescue operations.

Much like the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency also has a multichannel scheme in social media. Its FEMA in Focus Twitter feed serves as a way to disseminate information in a timely way. The agency has a series of regional accounts, as well.

At the local law enforcement level, Web 2.0 technology has been implemented in some departments to give people details about what officers have been up to. At the Bellevue Police Department in Nebraska, Twitter is used to solicit help from the public and Facebook is used as a comment and complaint board for residents. In Great Britain, the Merseyside Police website personalizes information according to neighborhood, also appealing to the public for help as needed.

Social Media as a Real-Time Investigation and Response Tool

While the more traditional means of sharing information with people, such as press conferences or releases, will always be necessary to brief the public in detail about events, agencies are turning to social media to keep the public informed in real-time.

On April 3rd, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Payne of the West Midlands Police in the United Kingdom used Tweetdeck to keep an eye on demonstrations involving two controversial and politically opposed groups; the English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism. He checked out Facebook rumors of stabbings and vandalism, and posted on Twitter when the information was found to be false — potentially quelling violent backlash. “This is groundbreaking stuff for policing in the UK. We have used social media as a broadcast platform during protests in the past, but we have not had immediate updates from officers on the ground, enabling two-way conversations,” Payne wrote after the event.

Lauri Stevens, a Massachusetts-based social media consultant for law enforcement, said that such tools have been key in enhancing the reputation of agencies. “Cops are just getting the interactive engagement thing,” Stevens said. “I think the law enforcement’s policy should state you have to be competent with this stuff.”

Tracking and Creating Hashtags

Law enforcement and emergency response agencies alike are also becoming more sophisticated in how they use Twitter. While monitoring hashtags is commonplace, some agencies are creating them to denote specific social media priorities — particularly, getting users to document certain events.

During the 2009 PRIDE Parade, the Toronto police encouraged the use of the #PrideTO hashtag to keep an eye on any suspected crimes related to the LGBT community’s event.

The National Weather Service is enlisting the help of Twitter users, asking them to use the hashtag #wxreport to share significant weather reports. The website gives precise instructions for how to report damaging winds, snow, hail, tornadoes and other potentially serious weather events. As the website notes, the project is “experimental.”

Spot Trends Before Science Can

Researchers at government agencies are experimenting with social media to try and spot possible issues and trends before more scientific measurements can be taken.

During last year’s H1N1 outbreak, the Internet famously took a starring role in illustrating how the swine flu epidemic was spreading across the globe. Now, a group including researchers from City University London, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and Britain’s National Health Service are teaming up ahead of the 2012 London Olympics to develop ways to detect and respond to epidemics via Twitter.

Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Twitter Earthquake Detector (@USGSTed) is a prototype that gathers real-time Twitter updates during seismic activities faster than scientific equipment can be tapped for more precise measurements and alerts. It examines earthquakes at an anecdotal level, and complements scientific analysis, according to the project’s overseer, Paul Earle.

“The skepticism comes when they think we are trying to provide public alerts that an earthquake has happened based on Twitter information,” Earle said. “We’re not doing that, we are augmenting our current tools.”

Conclusion

For government agencies, social media not only sends and gathers information instantaneously — it fosters relationships and trust, while encouraging users to share important information. While not all social media use needs to be creative, agency engagement with these platforms can help show people that government organizations are listening.

More social media resources from Mashable:

- 5 Ways Government Works Better With Social Media
- How the U.S. Engages the World with Social Media
- How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change
- 6 Ways Law Enforcement Uses Social Media to Fight Crime
- Why Open Source is the New Software Policy in San Francisco

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Veni

Tags: facebook, government, government 2.0, social media, twitter

A former local newspaper reporter, Tanveer is a student at the Medill School of Journalism learning all things digital and entrepreneurial. He also writes about political figures for WhoRunsGov.com and hopes to own the high score on multiple Ms. Pac-Man machines one day.

While many government agencies still tend to employ the “broadcast” model when using social media, some are engaging through hashtags, community building initiatives, and geo-location analysis. These efforts are helping to better inform the public and alert them to public safety emergencies in real-time.

A good recent example of this is how the team of energy companies and government agencies responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are putting these strategies to use.

Here are ways other government agencies, from local law enforcement to the National Weather Service, are seizing on these tools to improve their services.

Building a Transparent Community

At the most basic level, social media is about community building. Government agencies have adopted this mindset to varying degrees as a way to foster trust and dialogue with people. “It is truly a national town hall that has never been attempted during a disaster,” said Commander James Hoeft of the U.S. Navy, who oversees the cleanup effort’s social media team.

The idea has been implemented in parts of the U.S. government to varying degrees. In 2008, Admiral Thad Allen of the U.S. Coast Guard sent out a service-wide message saying, “[To] modernize the Coast Guard we must learn how to effectively use social media tools to enhance our ability to perform as a more transparent, change-centric organization.”

The Coast Guard has since deployed a series of Flickr, YouTube and Twitter accounts, both at the headquarters and regional levels, as a part of The Coast Guard Compass. Some are better than others, with many serving simply as multimedia RSS feeds. But there are stars, like the Twitter feed for the Portsmouth, VA-based District Five, which discusses their latest coastal rescue operations.

Much like the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency also has a multichannel scheme in social media. Its FEMA in Focus Twitter feed serves as a way to disseminate information in a timely way. The agency has a series of regional accounts, as well.

At the local law enforcement level, Web 2.0 technology has been implemented in some departments to give people details about what officers have been up to. At the Bellevue Police Department in Nebraska, Twitter is used to solicit help from the public and Facebook is used as a comment and complaint board for residents. In Great Britain, the Merseyside Police website personalizes information according to neighborhood, also appealing to the public for help as needed.

Social Media as a Real-Time Investigation and Response Tool

While the more traditional means of sharing information with people, such as press conferences or releases, will always be necessary to brief the public in detail about events, agencies are turning to social media to keep the public informed in real-time.

On April 3rd, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Payne of the West Midlands Police in the United Kingdom used Tweetdeck to keep an eye on demonstrations involving two controversial and politically opposed groups; the English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism. He checked out Facebook rumors of stabbings and vandalism, and posted on Twitter when the information was found to be false — potentially quelling violent backlash. “This is groundbreaking stuff for policing in the UK. We have used social media as a broadcast platform during protests in the past, but we have not had immediate updates from officers on the ground, enabling two-way conversations,” Payne wrote after the event.

Lauri Stevens, a Massachusetts-based social media consultant for law enforcement, said that such tools have been key in enhancing the reputation of agencies. “Cops are just getting the interactive engagement thing,” Stevens said. “I think the law enforcement’s policy should state you have to be competent with this stuff.”

Tracking and Creating Hashtags

Law enforcement and emergency response agencies alike are also becoming more sophisticated in how they use Twitter. While monitoring hashtags is commonplace, some agencies are creating them to denote specific social media priorities — particularly, getting users to document certain events.

During the 2009 PRIDE Parade, the Toronto police encouraged the use of the #PrideTO hashtag to keep an eye on any suspected crimes related to the LGBT community’s event.

The National Weather Service is enlisting the help of Twitter users, asking them to use the hashtag #wxreport to share significant weather reports. The website gives precise instructions for how to report damaging winds, snow, hail, tornadoes and other potentially serious weather events. As the website notes, the project is “experimental.”

Spot Trends Before Science Can

Researchers at government agencies are experimenting with social media to try and spot possible issues and trends before more scientific measurements can be taken.

During last year’s H1N1 outbreak, the Internet famously took a starring role in illustrating how the swine flu epidemic was spreading across the globe. Now, a group including researchers from City University London, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and Britain’s National Health Service are teaming up ahead of the 2012 London Olympics to develop ways to detect and respond to epidemics via Twitter.

Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Twitter Earthquake Detector (@USGSTed) is a prototype that gathers real-time Twitter updates during seismic activities faster than scientific equipment can be tapped for more precise measurements and alerts. It examines earthquakes at an anecdotal level, and complements scientific analysis, according to the project’s overseer, Paul Earle.

“The skepticism comes when they think we are trying to provide public alerts that an earthquake has happened based on Twitter information,” Earle said. “We’re not doing that, we are augmenting our current tools.”

Conclusion

For government agencies, social media not only sends and gathers information instantaneously — it fosters relationships and trust, while encouraging users to share important information. While not all social media use needs to be creative, agency engagement with these platforms can help show people that government organizations are listening.

More social media resources from Mashable:

- 5 Ways Government Works Better With Social Media
- How the U.S. Engages the World with Social Media
- How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change
- 6 Ways Law Enforcement Uses Social Media to Fight Crime
- Why Open Source is the New Software Policy in San Francisco

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Veni

Tags: facebook, government, government 2.0, social media, twitter

Adam Rosenberg is the Online Community Manager at Salsa Labs. Most recently, he was the New Media Manager at the Center for Democracy & Technology where his work focused on Internet privacy, data protection, cybersecurity and open government issues.

The latest changes to Facebook have seen their fair share of criticism, with many users examining more closely the definition of “public vs. private.” Some users have been turned off enough by Facebook’s envelope pushing when it comes to privacy to go so far as to contemplate a mass Facebook exodus.

Whether or not the changes become the final blow to Facebook’s tenuous relationship with privacy remains to be seen. However, protecting your privacy is important on any social network, so while you’re still on Facebook, here are a few important privacy tips to keep in mind as you navigate the site’s newest incarnation.

1. Lists: Learn to Love ‘Em

The list function seems to be one of the most underrated privacy tools on Facebook. All privacy snafus aside, the past year has seen Facebook improve the granularity of privacy control settings by leaps and bounds. Users often forget that the tiny dial in the lower-right corner next to each post they share gives them an option to make that item visible to “Everyone,” “Friends Only,” or even particular lists.

It’s important to know that “Everyone” doesn’t just mean all Facebook users anymore. According to Facebook’s own website, it means the entire Internet. This is a good thing to keep in mind if you select “Everyone” as a share setting for a post. A search for the term “soo drunk” with Facebook’s “Posts by Everyone” option reveals some openly available results that were probably not intended for public consumption.

Lists can be extremely valuable for both privacy advocates and marketing professionals. The privacy cautious may want to use lists to restrict co-workers or professional contacts from knowing their relationship status, favorite movies, political views, etc. The marketer can use lists as a way to keep groups aware of products, announcements and events. And with “likes” now a very open cluster of data on the web, the list function is a more important privacy feature than ever.

To create and edit lists:

• Go to Account
• Click Edit Friends
• Click Create New List (or Edit List if it’s for an existing list)
• Add friends to this list

To use lists:

• Go to Account
• Click Privacy Settings
• Click Personal Information and Posts
• Select different areas and click Customize

You can also use lists on every post and update you make on your profile. Just look for the “lock” symbol and follow the “customize” directions above.

2. When in Doubt, Just Log Out

While the ability to “Preview My Profile” can be used to find out what specific people in your network can see, it still doesn’t give you the full picture of what the general public will find when they come to your page.

Sharing personal information with friends is one thing, but it’s important to be aware of the content you present to the world from Facebook. A great way to check this is simply to log out of your profile, refresh your browser, and then visit your Facebook page. If you see something there that you don’t want available to the public, go back in and make the change.

Another option is to completely remove your profile’s visibility outside of Facebook. To do this, simply:

• Click Account
• Click Privacy Settings
• Click Search
• Uncheck the Public Search Results option
• This makes your profile invisible to non-Facebook users.

3. Audit Your “Likes”

Many Facebook users are eager to “Like” (previously, “Become a Fan Of”) many brands, causes, entertainers, etc. But the recent privacy changes have shined a brighter spotlight on the issue of “oversharing” information through social networks.

Unfortunately, the pages you “Like” cannot be masked through Facebook’s privacy settings, so anyone who has access to your profile can see them, and consequently make assumptions about your personality. While it may not be a big deal for people to see that I “Like” my employer’s Fan Page, or my favorite band, there may be things in your fan history that you’ve forgotten about — things you may or may not want the world to associate you with.

To combat this, it’s a good idea to edit your “Likes.” The easiest way is to do the following:

• Click Account
• Click Edit Friends
• Click Pages on the left-hand column (remember, this includes pages for things in your activities, music, and movies sections of your profile, in addition to anything you’ve “liked”)
• Go through this list and ask yourself, “Do I want this to be public?”
• Then ask yourself, “If I want it public, would I be comfortable with strangers networking with me through these channels?”
• If something doesn’t meet your criteria, click Remove Connection (click the X).

4. Spring Clean Your Third-Party Applications

One of the big changes to Facebook is the “Instant Personalization” feature, which allows several sites, including Microsoft’s docs.com, Yelp, and Pandora, to automatically connect to your feed by default.

Facebook has allowed these trusted partners access to your profile information in an effort to “create a better user experience.” Those who aren’t interested in these auto-connections, or who have privacy concerns, are required to manually opt out — and it’s not a very straightforward process. Here’s how to do it:

• Click Account
• Click Privacy Settings
• Click Applications and Websites
• Click Instant Personalization Pilot Program

While opting out will stop the flow of information to these partner sites, your Facebook friends who use them may still share information about you, unless you block the application altogether. To do that, you’ll need to visit the application pages for Docs, Yelp, and Pandora and click “block application.” It’s probably a good idea to login to your accounts on these sites to make sure you have opted out on that end as well.

Facebook organizes your applications in categories so you can easily see which ones have been granted access to your profile information. The trouble is, they also make it difficult to simply find a list of “all” applications that you can manage in one place. If you only do an audit on one “section” of applications, make it the “authorized” section, as these apps have access to more data and information than others.

It’s not that connecting to these sites through Facebook is necessarily a bad thing. It’s just important to understand how your information is being shared, and make the decision yourself about how much you want to put out there.

5. Control What Friends Can Share About You Through Applications

In December 2009, Facebook introduced a new privacy setting to control what information could be shared with friends through applications. This is a key privacy feature because it relates to not just information you post on your profile, but what your friends could offer up about you to an application or website they are using through Facebook.

For example, your friend might use the “Give a Dog” application, which can access information you have made public including your name, gender, birthday, photos, videos, etc. Your information is used and collected by the app developer, even though you were not the one to actively share it.

To manage these settings:

• Go to Account
• Click Privacy Settings
• Click Applications and Websites
• Uncheck everything you don’t want applications to share without you knowing
• Click Save Changes (Note that most Facebook settings pages will auto-save for you, but application privacy settings require this extra step)

This somewhat confusing section is really just asking you what information you want collected and shared by third-party applications using your friends’ profiles as a conduit. It will not affect how much your friends can see on your profile. If you want to be in control of all of your data, we advise that you uncheck all the boxes here.

What other privacy settings have you found useful or important on the “new” Facebook? Be sure to share them in the comments.

More Facebook resources from Mashable:

- Facebook Open Graph: What it Means for Privacy
- HOW TO: Disable Facebook’s “Instant Personalization” [PRIVACY]
- HOW TO: Find Long Lost Friends on Facebook
- HOW TO: Add Facebook “Like” Buttons to Your WordPress Blog
- What Facebook’s Open Graph Means for Your Business

Tags: facebook, List, Lists, privacy, social media, trending

Geoff Livingston co-founded Zoetica to focus on cause-related work, and released an award-winning book on new media Now is Gone in 2007.

Throughout the non-profit world, organizations struggle with social media’s impact on the volunteer and donor cycle. The rise of “slacktivism” — doing good without having to do much at all — challenges organizations to rethink the way they cultivate their core volunteers and donors.

There are some important social media strategies for transforming those one-click “slacktivists” into fully engaged activists. Here are five tips from some of the best in the non-profit business.

1. Stop Thinking of Them as Slacktivists

The term slacktivism has its own baggage. While social media can drive action on an unprecedented and exponential scale, labeling this previously untapped crop of casual contributors “slacktivists” punishes them out of the gate for doing good. In actuality, the new era of online cause action should excite non-profits.

“It irritates me that we have invented this term as a pejorative way to describe what should be viewed as the first steps to being involved in a cause in 2010,” said Katya Andresen, Chief Operating Officer of Network for Good. “Let’s not whine that people want to do easy things that make them feel they’ve somehow made a difference. It’s okay if someone’s initial commitment is modest -– and it’s truly an opportunity that it’s easier than ever to spread information, create new initiatives for social good, and take action.”

“What the world needs now is far more engagement by individual citizens, not less, and simple steps such as signing petitions or even sharing opinions/tweeting are steps in the right direction,” said Randy Paynter, CEO and Founder of Care2. “As Edmund Burke once said, ‘Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.’ Because small steps can lead to bigger steps, being critical of small steps serves no good. It simply disenfranchises folks.”

2. Steward People Up the Engagement Ladder

Social media provides a new first step on the engagement ladder. The methodology of approaching stakeholders and encouraging them to take deeper actions requires acceptance of their current level of activism, and well-crafted approaches towards deeper commitment.

“There are some slacktivists that will become fundraisers, but if you are messaging correctly, they will mostly self-select,” said Dan Morrison, CEO and Founder of Citizen Effect. “But the fastest way to lose slacktivists is to ask them [to do] what they hate doing the most — getting off their butt and [doing] something. My advice? Send out great content targeted at recruiting more fundraisers and driving people to donate, and empower the slacktivists to spread the word for you.”

“It is important to know how to meet people where they are at, and craft your conversation starters and calls to action appropriately so as to match the specific interest and commitment,” said Beth Kanter, co-author of The Networked Nonprofit.  “Organizations need to have good processes and strategies for stewarding people toward ever higher levels of engagement with their causes and campaigns.”

Full Disclosure: Beth is a partner of the author in Zoetica.

3. Reevaluate the Donor Funnel

The new volunteer and donor cultivation cycle changes the traditional “funnel” approach to getting stakeholders to act. Instead of sending out messages and expecting results, non-profits need to participate in larger online social ecosystems where hotbeds of activism are already taking place. Initial economic research shows this work is well worth it.

“Non-donors who take action online are 3.5 times more likely to donate than non-donors who have supplied their e-mail address (say, for a newsletter) but haven’t taken action,” said Paynter. “Donors who also take action are better donors.  Existing donors who’d taken action online were 2.3 times more likely to donate than donors in the e-mail file who hadn’t.”

“Our current funnel goes something like this: Blast out marketing, see who responds, ask them for money, send them a receipt, ask them for more money,” said Andresen. “The new funnel should work like this: Go out to where people are talking about our issue online, listen, reflect back on what you’re hearing, invite small acts of engagement, thank people and tell them the difference their small acts made, listen some more, invite them to speak, then ask for bigger acts.”

4. Shift Your Attitude

A non-profit’s tie to the casual online participant is a tenuous one at best. Their relationship ties are often personal and emotional, embedded in a social network, and conversational in nature. They are often committed to an issue, but not any specific organization, and thus have little incentive to interact. That means non-profits need a new approach than simply asking.

“Value the whole funnel, not just the top or not just the bottom,” said Kanter.  “Non-profits need to get into their stakeholders’ heads and understand what the hot buttons are to trigger their support from one level to the next. Small actions add up … Incorporate some sort of emotional tie – [understanding] that the clicking is a form of self-expression or love or way of helping.”

“I think slacktivists — like anyone else on social networks — need to be cultivated and feel appreciated for their contributions, as small as they may seem,” said Carie Lewis, director of emerging media at The Humane Society of the United States. “We message our cause supporters individually, and respond to (almost) every message that comes into us via social media. It takes a lot of time, but this individual engagement is what has made us successful.”

5. Create New Calls to Action

Activist behavior and attitudes on social networks challenge non-profits to deploy new forms of engagement. Instead of simple “donate now” links, non-profits must create meaningful and repeatable ways for activists to take small action steps and foster long-term relationship development.

“Nobody joins these ‘I bet this potato can get more fans than seal clubbers’ type groups so that they can be involved in the group,” said Lewis. “They join them to make a statement. Facebook Causes is similar. Yes, some non-profits including us are raising real money. But its more about showing the world you believe in something, and showing your support.”

“Don’t focus on asking them to give, focus on asking them to retweet any and everything you tweet, post on their wall, forward e-mails, etc.,” said Morrison. “Focus on that, because that fits in their behavior pattern. Now, every once in a while, you can make a [money] appeal [to] the ones that [send] you a signal that they may be emerging from slacktivism.  If you build a relationship with them, they will naturally graduate up the value chain. You can give them a nudge, but trying to force them will make them leave in droves.”

More social good resources from Mashable:

- 8 Tips for a Successful Social Media Cause Campaign
- How Does Twitter’s New Social Good Initiative Stack Up?
- How Non-Profits are Using Social Media for Real Results
- 9 Ways to Do Good With 5 Minutes or $25
- 5 Ways Mega Charity Events Can Harness the Power of Social Media

[Image Credits: Edward L, Beth Kanter, Fritz Liess]

Tags: activism, charity, facebook, slacktivisim, social good, social media, twitter

A former local newspaper reporter, Tanveer is a student at the Medill School of Journalism learning all things digital and entrepreneurial. He also writes about political figures for WhoRunsGov.com and hopes to own the high score on multiple Ms. Pac-Man machines one day.

While kids may rely social networks for personal use, there is a place for them in K-12 education, as well. In 2007, half of all students who used the Internet said they use it to talk specifically about schoolwork, according to a National School Boards Association survey. Still, most schools continue to discourage or outright ban the use of the technology in school. This is often due to a lack of understanding, its status as a distraction, or both.

The fact is, social networks are here to stay, and with or without rules, kids are going to use them. Here are four tips for educators on how to develop a technology policy that seizes on social networking as a learning tool and teaches children how to use it responsibly.

1. Let Down the Filters, Cautiously

Schools have been understandably cautious in allowing students access to social media sites. After all, they are required to filter content under U.S. federal law. In the NSBA survey, 52% of schools said they prohibit any use of social networking sites on campus. Some districts are working toward making those sites more accessible to students, but they need an educational justification to do so while ensuring usage won’t be abused.

For many schools, it is easier to apply broad filters that restrict access to inappropriate sites and social networks alike, allowing for minimal supervision. Dan Weiser, who is working on the digital policy for the Pajaro Valley Unified School District in California, said his district allows teachers to work around the filters to access sites, but doesn’t have staff that could monitor and customize usage on a regular basis.

While dedicated staff should soon, if not already, be a necessity, there are simple ways to monitor access. Patrol computer labs, place computers where staff have a presence, and install management software allowing monitoring from one computer, says Justin Reich, co-director of EdTechTeacher.org.

2. Add “Digital Citizenship” to the Curriculum

Weiser also said his district won’t open up social networking sites to students unless a curriculum explaining how to use them is in place. “How do you teach ethical use if you can’t access it?” Weiser asks.

Enter “digital citizenship,” or the idea that with the growing importance of the social web, students should be taught about digital ethics. While children are usually savvy when it comes to using new technologies, they aren’t necessarily aware of the issues that come with them. Behavior is as important as know-how, and the framework for this type of curriculum addresses issues like intellectual property, security and privacy.

Susan Brooks Young, a former educator who is now a technology consultant for schools, likens children’s social media usage to driving; neither activities are going away. “We really guide them through the process of driving to make it as safe as we can. Social media in a lot of ways parallels that. You would never just give that child a set of car keys.”

3. Keep One Eye on Student Conduct, the Other on the Law

While schools can regulate what students and teachers may do with on-campus computers, their ability to police usage both off-school grounds and with students’ personal devices becomes murkier in terms of the law and technological ability.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this. Different states and countries have different rules, and a variety of factors come into play including the devices used, whether the communication took place on or off school grounds, and the context of what was said or done online.

Many states have laws giving schools authority over off-campus conduct if it disrupts in-school instruction. Francine Ward, a California-based lawyer specializing in social media issues, expects the number of cases involving social media use and schools to climb in the next few years. The best way to get ahead of this is to amend every school’s “Code of Conduct” to include online activity, if only to have a policy in place when something does erupt. Adding social media policy to student handbooks sends a message that schools take online usage seriously.

4. Teach With Social Media

One way to keep social media use from being a distraction in schools is to find ways to use it in existing curricula.

A 2009 survey commissioned by PBS shows digital and social media use by teachers is on the rise, but social media usage in classes lags behind other types of media. While 76% of American K-12 teachers say they use digital media in class, only 29% say they use a social networking site or social media community for instruction.

Part of the delay is because educators are at a loss about how to incorporate social media into lesson plans. But there are ways educators have seized on using social media tools like Skype, cell phones, and Twitter to connect the classroom with the outside world. Teachers have also used accounts at Wikispaces, an free online Wikipedia-style software system, which even first grade classes have found a use for.

Not surprisingly, there are social networking sites devoted to use in the classroom. Classroom 2.0 is a good community for bouncing around some ideas.

Conclusion

Instead of dismissing social media as distracting or destructive, schools should embrace it as an essential part of the curriculum. Not only does this limit the potential for students to abuse the technology, but it opens a new set of valuable educational tools.

More education resources from Mashable:

- 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology
- How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement
- Why Banning Social Media Often Backfires
- 5 Ways Classrooms Can Use Video Conferencing

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, morganl

Tags: Children, education, educators, facebook, Kids, school, social media, social media policy, teachers, twitter