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Death on Facebook

16 Jan
Death and Facebook

Death and Facebook

Funny, not long ago I was thinking, in a purely random chain of thoughts, about how people use social media- namely blogs and Facebook- to deal with the death of loved ones. And then I experienced the death of a beloved aunt, and I got to put those purely theoretical thoughts into action. We have taken the ancient human instinct for memorializing the dead online, building community and memorials in the wake of sudden deaths.

It is often said that the rituals associated with death- funerals, wakes, obituaries and the like- are about the living, clearly not about the dead (as my Dad says, “I don’t care what you do when I die. I won’t be around!”). So it is that when a loved one dies, many people rush to Facebook to post on the page of the deceased, sharing memories and photos, and in many cases, creating special groups and memorial pages. I found a lovely one here- poor Cheyenne Baez died at the age of 18, and 10,869 people have joined a memorial page in her honor. 74 posts were left in the discussion group “What happened?”. On a smaller scale, I recently saw that a friend of a friend- an acquaintance from college- posted a photo album in homage to his grandfather, and it felt both voyeuristic and like a true honor to view, in about 30 photos, the life of a man I never knew. A young gymnast with a chiseled physique; a wedding photo where the man looked radiant; a beloved grandfather with his grandson on his knee. I felt privileged for the brief peak into the life of another person, a total stranger. Several mutual friends commented on the pictures, saying things like “I remember him well. I’m real sorry, man”. Someone who may have only known the man as Bill’s Grandpa got to see him as a young man. We all got a fuller look at someone’s full life, and people who knew him could commiserate together.

At the ClickZ Search and Social Accelerator Conference in San Francisco last year (with very interesting speakers, highly recommended), I heard a presenter, a sort of Twitter evangelist, state that with the advent of social media, for the first time in history we can leave a digital footprint so that our descendants can see photos and video of us when we were young- decades into the future. It was one of those grand pronouncements you often hear at professional conferences that confounds you, seeming both overly bombastic and insightful at the same time. Think about it: instead of feeling uneasy about leaving a digital footprint in your wake as your photos, thoughts and web postings stay online forever, you could see it as a boon to future generations. Long after we are gone, our descendants, whom we may never know, can see video of us when we were young and vital. What I would give for video of my Great Aunt, proudly wearing her Air Force blues or practicing her French in Paris.

It feels as though the least I can do is post a picture on Facebook of myself with my Aunt from a few Christmases ago, where she looks regal and content. It’s a mini public memorial. Ironic, since my Aunt was a notorious techphobe- she never liked voicemail, and thought the internet was a giant waste of time. She wouldn’t have understood that this medium is helping my parents get out news of her passing, exchange pictures and memories with relatives, and disseminate information on the funeral. I think Aunt Rose would approve.

The Three Social Media Lives of Me

10 Jan
The Three Social Media Lives of Me

The Three Social Media Lives of Me

I have profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and boy, they could not be more different from the others.  When managing social media strategy, we often have to stop and remember that different people use social media differently. My 10 year old second cousin and my 78 year old great aunt are both on Facebook, and both use it differently.  Yet it is often instructive to think of how we use social media ourselves.  Different purposes call for different media- a retail giveaway may work best on Facebook, whereas a survey of industry professionals would be ideal on LinkedIn.  Similarly, I have been thinking recently of how I use social media personally. Each social network breeds a different persona.

When it comes to LinkedIn, I have a fairly open door policy.  If I meet someone at a professional function, I will gladly offer to connect with them on LinkedIn. Former classmates, business contacts from old jobs, previous coworkers, and those “potentials” who I hope to do business with. It’s a fairly open door policy, although I have been asked to be introduced to connections, so I know it’s important to not connect to total strangers.  I don’t think of privacy at all when on LinkedIn. I also feel free to boast on the site- if I have received a degree, been published, or am attending a conference, I say so.  In that sense, for me at least, LinkedIn is uni-directional. I promote myself professionally, let people know what I’ve been up to, and search for professional contacts. The version of myself that exists on LinkedIn is a professional dynamo that interacts little with others.

The me that exists on Facebook is much different. Professional accomplishments have no place there- I would feel too embarrassed bragging to my friends and family.  I am often acutely aware of appearing to brag or overshare on the site, so I try to keep status updates and photo sharing to a minimum- only the really good stuff, folks.  I feel that the site is much more about sharing- I see what my friends, old and new, those I see every day and those I haven’t seen in years, are doing, and so we interact. While I am hesitant to share details that are too personal, Facebook is possibly the one social site where my personality truly comes out.  Granted, I hold back because, when you have 200+ friends, not all of them will be close friends, and I shy away from controversy (I would love to post more political observations, but I have received feedback from conservative relatives and far left friends, and I have now learned that I just don’t want to go there. Ever.). But even this tendency towards being diplomatic is a hallmark of my personality. So Facebook is more or less where the “real” me resides online, along with a host of friends, family and acquaintances.

Now, although I hesitate to share political opinions on Facebook, since almost everyone I know is on there, I feel a bit more free to express myself, briefly, on Twitter.  The social media life I conduct on Twitter has the freedom of anonymity.  My real name and picture are on my LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, but Twitter is pseudonymous.  A handful of my Twitter followers have met me in real life and know who I am, but many others don’t. I’m just the user with a Tapatio bottle for a face. The anonymity is freeing. Political opinions? Check. Retweeting corny jokes or gossip news? Check. I really don’t care who knows. The Twitter account is mostly for fun, and I have particularly found that the LATISM family on Twitter- that’s Latinos in Social Media– has been a wonderful community to find- Latinos from all over the U.S., of every social and political bent, reminding me what a dynamic community we have out there. My Twitter use is infrequent- I may check in once in the evenings, maybe once during my lunch break- but I always read something funny, something insightful, and find others to connect with.

Three different personas, three different ways of being online, all in different communities and for different purposes. Our social media experiences are what we make them, regardless of what social networks we use and why we use them. How do you use social media? And are you a “different” person on different social networks?

Thank You, Fresh Press! A Response to All the Comments

23 Nov

Well, what a surprise this morning to see that my most recent blog post had comments.  That never happens right away!  And then more…and then more….and then I saw that my humble blog, which I began about 10 weeks ago, was featured on the WordPress homepage as a Fresh Press post of the day! All of a sudden, people were reading my blog- A LOT of people.

I don’t know how the folks over at WordPress determine which posts are deserving of a fresh squeeze, er, press. Nevertheless, I am grateful that my thoughts on personal use of social media found such a wide audience.  I think this is the most effective way to acknowledge all the comments, rather than going through them one by one and responding, though I wish I could (I’ve got stuff to do, people).  I WILL promise to look at each and every commenter’s site.  Thanks again for stopping by my hummus-filled blog, and I do hope you bookmark it and visit again.  Follow me on Twitter at Lebanexican.

Impulse Control and Social Media

22 Nov
Control Those Impulses!

Control Those Impulses!

You’ve been there before- you are walking along, going about your business, when an amusing thought crosses your mind, and you think, “That would make a great status update”.  Well, congratulations- Facebook has invaded your mind.

Now, when the clever thought occurs to you, do you post it instantly via your iPhone? Do you wait until you get home and then share your undeniable wit with everyone then? Or do you let the clever thought fall by the wayside, figuring that every passing thought is not worthy of spilling to the world?  I admit that I usually tend towards the latter course of action, but it takes a certain degree of willpower.  Without a certain degree of impulse control, it can be too easy to let the use of social media become an extension of the ego.

This idea that people feel compelled to express every opinion, joke and observation is not just limited to tweeting our physical locations and updating our status constantly.  I recently read the blog of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle- a film critic who I like to read more for his skill with the written word than for this reviews of movies- and he wondered whether the people who leave mean comments all over the web are disproportionately mean individuals, or are normally decent folk who let their id run wild.  Anonymity, after all, means never having to own up to your rudeness (ironically, the people who left comments on this blog post were very well-behaved).

This brings us back to the idea of why people leave traces of themselves all over the internet.  It’s a medium for self-expression, for connecting to others, and in a way unlike we connect in real life.  There IS indeed more anonymity, more immediacy to it all.  And yet.  Just as we write ourselves on the web, we read others on the web. And just as we can grow tired of the rantings and ramblings of our friends and family- even those we admire; have you ever tried following ?uestlove of The Roots or marketing guru Guy Kawasaki? forget it!- others, naturally, can grow tired of us.  If we choose to let our brain leak out onto our feeds at all times.

A bit of impulse control is in order.  I don’t tweet from my phone and rarely use Facebook from my phone, precisely to avoid the impulse to share those random brain droppings with the world.  I have many amusing thoughts (or at least, they’re amusing to me).  But it is rather nice to keep most of them to myself.  I see Facebook and Twitter more as fun tools for connecting, personally and professionally, than as a way of projecting myself to everyone. Ick. I still cherish some sense of privacy (you’ll notice this blog is NOT under my real name).  Is it possible to impose some level of control on our more social, more connected online selves?  Let’s hope so.

Why Gap Should Have Stayed With the New Logo

20 Oct
Old Gap Logo, Meet New Gap Logo

Old Gap Logo, Meet New Gap Logo

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That was the prevailing wisdom when Gap recently suffered backlash from its unveiling of a new logo (to the right in the image at left).  The ensuing Gap flap left people wondering not only why Gap would abandon its old logo, but also why it would roll out the new one in such a hasty manner- and then backtrack, calling the whole debacle a failed experiment in crowdsourcing. Oh, if I were Gap’s Director of Social Media Marketing.

For one thing, I would have had a better idea of why the new logo was replacing the old one. Was it as part of a broader rebranding strategy? Targeting a newer demo -people who like sparse, Nordic design? Surely the new logo was part of an overhaul of old aspects of Gap brand marketing. A new ad campaign would be announced, new in-store materials, perhaps new spokespeople? And at a time of year that was natural for big pushes from retailers (back to school or Christmas, when Gap’s campaigns excite)?

Nein. Nyet.  No. Unless I missed something, Gap simply introduced the new logo, waited to hear feedback from people who are online all day (not that there’s anything wrong with spending all day online- some of us do it for our jobs!), and thought things would work out well? Naturally, people didn’t like it.  Cause it was new and people don’t like change.  But, rather than defend its bold new logo as the first step in a bold new direction for the company, Gap retreated. Big time. So long, new logo, hello old logo.

This indicates to me that Gap didn’t have a strategy in mind. It was reactive rather than proactive. On defense rather than offense.  And claiming that the whole effort was an experiment in crowdsourcing? Lame.  I won’t venture to guess what is going on in the marketing department at Gap, but I will say that the logo didn’t get a fair shake.  If you’re going to begin a radical redesign, stand by it.  In my opinion, the new logo is light years better than the old one.  The old logo has a font out of the 1600’s, whereas the new one has a refreshing white background, allowing the light to dark blue swatch to stand out.  And the slimmer font in that very black black is just what the Gap needs: a shot of boldness.

Next time, know ahead of time why and how you are executing your brand redesign, and by all means, stick with it.  Your reputation is on the line. ESPECIALLY online.

There is no More Privacy. Period.

13 Oct
Tyler Clementi

Tyler Clementi

For me, the sweet irony of the movie “The Social Network” is that, despite Mark Zuckerberg’s continually shrugging off the concerns of privacy advocates who say Facebook doesn’t do enough to shield user’s privacy, Zuck himself has had his character (or some version of it) laid bare for the world to see in this movie.  Try as you might, but as one of my favorite songwriters, Jorge Drexler wrote, “Nada es secreto en los vericuetos de la informática” (Nothing is secret in the winding paths of the information superhighway).

To a certain degree, we’ve all become accustomed to this fact in 2010.  I often think of how different online use is now from back when I first began exploring these winding paths in the mid 90’s, when my friends and I in high school would enter AOL chat rooms and pretend to be models in New York City.  The internet was a place to subsume your real identity and surf anonymously.  Now, Google and Facebook know everything about what you’re looking for and what you’re clicking on- and it can all be traced back to YOU.

In this new internet age, we boldly assert our likes and dislikes online, through Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and blogs.  We choose what we broadcast to the world- but not necessarily what others broadcast about us.  Which leads me to the twin cases last week of Tyler Clementi and Karen Owen.

Tyler Clementi had, quite possibly, the world’s worst freshman roommate.  Maybe I’m a little too old for my generation, but I cannot comprehend how someone could record their roommate remotely, via webcam, without said roommate’s knowledge, and then broadcast it to other students.  I can’t sympathize with that impulse to humiliate, especially as someone who was humiliated.  So did Tyler kill himself two days later because of bad grades, family trouble, a broken heart?  Signs point to the young college freshman taking his own life because of the humiliation of having his private moment broadcast for all to see- without his permission.

Sometimes humiliation comes at the hand of a slut who gives herself a personal high five for every varsity athlete that she has sex with.  There are a myriad of questions raised in the mock thesis written by hoebag extraordinaire Karen Owen– lack of sexual discretion, modern hookup morés, how a girl like her could have gotten the SAT scores high enough to be admitted to Duke University.  Out of prurient curiosity (and a dull Thursday nigh), I perused Karen’s thesis.  It felt like rubbernecking at a car accident, and I had to stop.  Once again, chalk it up to generational differences.  I don’t read the nastier gossip sites, because I want to gaze and admire, not snicker and sneer.  I can’t delight in laughing at other’s shortcomings (I can’t stomach D-listed). So I can’t call it feminism when a girl shares every last detail of her every sexual experience in college for her friends to see.  Has she never heard of the forward button?

So I feel for the young men in these stories, who had their intimate sexual experiences broadcast for the world to sneer at.  Nothing really is secret anymore in the winding paths of the information superhighway.  At least not when we share about others what (we would hope) they would never share about themselves.  And then we laugh at them.

Latinos Networking : Thoughts on Latino2

20 Sep
Latino2

Latino2

Though I am feeling tired after 5 hours on Highway 5 from L.A. back to the Bay Area, I write this from my home in San Francisco with a sense of pride and contentment that I am working, though in a small way, to improve the landscape for Latinos in social media.  I feel like I ended up in this field almost by accident, but I’m so glad I’m here, participating in the conversation.

Held at the L.A. Convention Center, Latino2 brought together the efforts of blogueras, like Ana Flores of  SpanglishBaby, ad agency executives representing firms such as Sensis, and culminating in awards presented to top contributors to the California Latinosphere (I helped assemble the awards, woohoo!).  Despite valuable presentations by the different panelists, I always feel at professional conferences that the best part of attending is meeting interesting people who are passionate about the same things I am. And in this sense, Latino2 did not disappoint.

What can I say? Latinos who are passionate about technology, about connecting, about pride in their cultural heritage and in helping brands and marketers reach us in the best way possible- this is what I found at Latino2. Intelligent, passionate creative individuals who are doing their part to advance the conversation around Latinos, marketing, and social media.  I met some great people- young, old, male, female, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and more. And all Latino.

472 Ways to Go Viral, or, What makes you a Social Media Expert, anyway?

1 Sep
Social Media Marketing Expert

Social Media Marketing Expert

I’ll be the first to admit it- though I work in social media, I am far from an expert.  Before December of 2009, I had no idea how to use Twitter, and thought it was for narcissistic loners.  I’ve come to embrace Twitter as a business tool, and it seems as though every day in the Twitter feed there is a steady stream of links to blog posts with names like “How to Maximize your Facebook Page as a Tool for Converting”, “My Top 10 Ways to Increase the Impact of Your Social Media Strategy”, and on and on.  Which makes me wonder, what is with the proliferation of social media experts? And what, exactly, makes one an expert?

The very nature of social media is democratic.  My 14 year-old second cousin is on Facebook…as is my 52 year-old first cousin.  Everyone can figure out the basics, but what many of us seek guidance for is how to BEST use social media.  How to find influencers and become influencers…how to generate business leads…seek the latest industry news…and read what Dwight from The Office is posting on Twitter (for reals, he is funny.  Check out Rainn Wilson!).

I recently attended a professional conference on search engine optimization and social media strategy, and the conference program was filled with the smiling faces of a litany of…experts.  I appreciate technical advice, but when a social media expert instructs me to “focus on what you know” or “use these tools to connect with others”, I can’t help but think…isn’t this obvious?  And who is listening to any (or all) of these social media gurus? I suppose there are people out there who really need the reminder that social media is about being…social.  And listening.  But who can tell amidst the chatter of all of these experts?

Now, it’s my turn to listen to you.  Am I being overly cranky here? Is there a way to tell who is a truly valuable social media expert amidst the many out there in our newsfeeds? Is this generic advice about the importance of communication not that obvious to others? How do YOU think social media should be used?

Inaugural Post

30 Aug

Bienvenidos!  What do I envision with this site? Not a self-indulgent list of what I ate, thought, drank and otherwise consumed, media and food-wise, throughout the day (that’s what Twitter’s for, silly).  This site is for thoughts, reflections, analysis and pithy musings on Hispanic culture, Hispanic marketing in particular, and of course, the mixed-race experience, both my own and that of others.  Mixed? Gee, what’s your mix? See name of blog, above.

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