For the sake of clarification, this isn’t a post about privacy. That horse is being flogged repeatedly and everything about the topic has probably been covered already. I use Facebook all the time and am of the belief that you can protect your privacy well enough by simply being discreet about what kind of information you choose to supply. If you don’t put highly personal information in, people can’t ever get at it, and we’ve all heard about sites like Pleaserobme.com.  A modicum of common sense goes a long, long way.

With tragedies like the one involving Ms. Pilkington it’s easy to look to blame someone. The classmates, Facebook, the parents, all in some way, shape or form can make tantalizing victims for a blood-thirsty media outlet looking for a attention-grabbing angle. I’m a big proponent of parents having tighter relationships with their kids, schools taking a more active role in monitoring student activity and everyone making more responsible decisions to make the world a safer place. In this case, several classmates used the virtual world to torment Alexis to the point of suicide. Their crimes were so egregious that they even kept taunting the poor girl even after she was dead. Could the Pilkington tragedy have been avoided? I don’t know, but I don’t think Facebook and it’s bevy of privacy issues are the problem here. Whatever the means, some people are going to act aggressively and stupidly whether the technology is there to help them out or not.

The disturbing thing about cyberbullying is that it’s most often done by someone you know. In cases like that, your privacy isn’t what has been violated, your identity is. We’re obviously not talking about identity theft here, but rather blatant attacks on your personal identity; how you feel about yourself, and what your outward persona is to others. What makes cyberbullying so damaging is that the teasing can be incessant and come from all angles, all in plain view of your circle of friends, 24-7. It used to be that when kids picked on other kids, they could at least look forward to escaping the pressure by getting on the bus and going home.

The internet has the ability to bring everyone into our personal space, whether we like it or not.

As I write this, Facebook has very quietly been asked by some parental groups to install more safety features to help protect kids. In England for instance, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOPC) has asked Facebook to include a “Panic Button” on all group pages. The feature would allow kids to alert someone in the event they feel threatened or unsafe. Facebook has flatly rejected including any such features its site, declining to comment as to why.

So this begs 2 relevant questions:
1. Why won’t Facebook provide more safety features on its site? And,
2. What features should they provide if they were willing to do so?

Mark Zuckerberg’s well documented abhorrence to personal privacy aside, I don’t think Facebook is deliberately obfuscating its responsibility of providing a safer community experience. I do think they worry about the precedent it sets. If you live in New York, from time to time there will be visible and formidable increases in local police and security forces in the subways. If you’re like me, the first thing you do is to feel a bit safer, but then you might begin to wonder: Why are the extra forces are needed? Is something going on? Should I be worried? It’s this very thinking that I believe Facebook is looking to avoid. If you begin to see features like panic buttons and parental alerts, I’m sure the next logical question parents will indeed ask themselves is whether Facebook is safe at all.

We all want to feel safe as long as we don’t have to think about the danger.

So what kind of tools should Facebook, or any social site for that matter, be developing? While not an exhaustive list, here are a few that I can think of.

1. A simpler privacy settings dashboard
Privacy issues for Facebook users aside, the dashboard and default settings for restricting access to personal information are a joke. Facebook should create a much simpler system for managing these features and have them all located in one place, rather than scattered throughout your profile. And, by default, they should all be off so that users would have to opt in to making information available. Their recent updates to the privacy settings system are a good start, but not remotely close to optimal.

2. An online cyber safety councilor
For anyone under the age of 18, a councilor, trained in helping people who feel they are being threatened would automatically included in the chat list of a user when they come online. Don’t want to include a panic button? This is the next best thing. A trained specialist could help guide individuals through what to do and where to go for help in the event that they feel unsafe when on Facebook. You could even take this idea one step further and have a councilor’s chat window automatically appear and offer to help should someone type a phrase like “I’m thinking of committing suicide.” Think of it as a real time 9-1-1 operator.

3. Sentiment bots to detect predatory conversations
Facebook claims that it already has tools like this in place, but if they are anything like some of the tools most social media agencies use to analyze conversations, they are most likely woefully weak. Conversation analysis tools can’t detect things like sarcasm or humor, so honing in on keywords becomes essential to determining relevancy. If these tools do exist, beef them up. Make the API open source and offer $10,000 to the person or team that could make them more accurate. Would it be perfect? No. But it would be a good start.

4. Educational programs
There already exists a page on Facebook dedicated to understanding cyberbullying, but if I hadn’t searched for the words “Facebook + cyberbullying,” I probably wouldn’t have found it. Plus, I’m not entirely sure Facebook sanctioned this. The bottom line is Facebook has the ability to drive awareness, education and support to lead the charge on this issue, and their efforts to date have been muted at best.

Privacy issues not withstanding, in my opinion, Facebook is at a crossroads. The site is already getting heat from congress about their “opt-in” privacy options, and have, to date, capitulated to a certain extent. This has made users a tad more anonymous, but not necessarily safer. Tragedies like the one that befell Ms. Pilkington are horrible, and should be met with a swift and decisive eye towards preventing a repeat occurrence. But for now, Facebook seems inert. I can only pray it doesn’t take another, higher profile incident to make them rethink a more proactive stance on the subject.

What do you think?

Strategies evolved that more or less correlated to success. People got smarter. The tools got cheaper and easier to use while the barriers to working the ‘net got smaller and easier to manage.

Inside of pharma, regulators and brand managers alike struggled to define how to use the Internet properly. Adoption happened slowly. Things seemed risky. Hands were wrung, and decisions delayed until others took the lead.

More case studies were needed.

Soon everyone was an Internet ‘expert’ and the scrum began. Every agency, freelancer, and Johnny-come-lately tried to get digital work. Innovation was sought at the expense of meaningful results. Things had to be new. They had to be shiny. And they had to have lots and lots of Flash.

Prices fell. The talent pool swelled. Expertise was defined by what you’d just launched. The noise level rose. Soon it became hard to tell what was great from what was working. Flashy was the new good.

Now, reread the previous paragraphs and replace the word ‘Internet” with the words “Social Media.” All of this has happened before.

Then, terrible things happened. The economy tanked. 9/11 occurred. The dot–conomy imploded. All those people dreaming of their Internet riches and piles of stock options e-lost all their virtual iDollars and ended up in thepoorhouse.com.

The party was over.

But that tragedy led to the rise to an aristocratic class of digital talent that had gained the specialized skills needed to survive while living through those volatile experiences and creating bigger and better tools. These are the survivors. These are the few. These are the Digerati.

Look around any major marketing meeting. Chances are there’s a late thirty something “smartest-person-in-the-room” that knows everything about anything digital you could want to talk about.

Strangely, I see the lessons of the past not informing the decisions of today. Social media is too new. It’s too different. It can’t be measured. Sound familiar? It should. All of this has happened before.

What I find most astonishing about this is that the very people who seem so flummoxed about how social can be applied to real business challenges are the very same people who should know better. They lived through the pain, and they fought the battles and struggled to be relevant. Yet, here we are again. Square one.

The same regulatory challenges that slowed the adoption of the Internet are playing themselves out all over again in this socially driven age. Remember when the biggest concern about creating a website was whether showing images of packaging  would somehow lead to fraud or a rise in fake products being sold? It may seem quaint now, but the fear was very real and very, very time consuming to navigate.

The challenges faced during the beginnings of the Internet age may be somewhat different than those of today, but the methods for success formulated during those times are just as relevant now.

So where does that leave us? Looking back at the past it occurs to me that 4 key lessons emerge. These may seem like “well, duh” tips, but I assure you, they are often ignored, usually at the expense of some really great ideas which never end up seeing the light of day.

1. Have a defined objective.

The seduction of new tools and technologies are that they generate opportunities to create some really “wow” stuff. That’s all well and good, but often the tried and true works better. Have an objective. Stick to the plan. Generating buzz can be a perfect objective for some programs but is definitely not a one size fits all outcome. Chase the shiny object only if it gets you somewhere. After all, it would be far more valuable to have 1,000 highly targeted, highly engaged patients than 10,000 outliers that will never ask for your product.

2. Understand your audience.

Your audience wants value. They want you to fill a need. If they’ve raised their hand by fanning your page, give them something in return. If your social strategy is merely to repurposed content that already exists elsewhere, chances are you will fail. People in social channels want content and experiences that are useful and in some way shape or form entertaining or interesting. How you write for social is going to be fundamentally different than how you write for a website. Giving them yet another BMI calculator isn’t going to get it done. Location based tracking tools for Alzheimer’s caregivers? Now you’re getting somewhere.

3. ROI matters.

More often than not, I read articles and blogs proclaiming that social media is too unique to measure, that it’s more important to experiment than worry about results. The problem with this mindset is that we all work in a results oriented culture, and showing how every dollar made an impact is very applicable to ensuring you have dollars available next year and the year after, let alone a job. Digital people use metrics like time on site, page views, opt ins, click through rates, likely to be referred, lifetime value and a whole host of other data points to justify the exorbitant money thrown at e-marketing tactics. If your agencies or consultants tell you that they can’t measure the impact of a social program, fire them. Do it now. There are plenty of smart people out there that can help you get the data you need.

4. Put your money where your brain is.

The proximity bias dictates that for the most part, people will go with what they know. I’ve seen brand after brand push money into failing programs simply because they are familiar and “seem” to work. Take a look at how much money you spend on display ads. What’s your click through rate? 2%? How many websites do you have? Do they need to be redesigned? Why? Amazon hasn’t changed its interface in 7 years, but it does reinvigorate it’s offering all the time. Other programs, especially in social may be able deliver far better results for far less money. Challenge assumptions. Push innovation. Demand value. Hard metrics are your friend.

The era of social is here, whether you like it or not. It’s an exciting time, one fraught with challenges, opportunities and adventures. But the lessons of the past should inform the decisions of today and tomorrow, not be forgotten. Mistakes should be learned from and strategies adopted. After all, all of this has happened before.

But it doesn’t have to happen again.

*Get off my lawn, you damn kids!

TRANSCRIPT–

WILLARD: Only 15 billion bucks. All right guys, can the power of social media change the world? Toyota would probably tell you it already has. The company is trying so hard to keep its stories about recalls and other problems under tight control. However, the Internet was abuzz with people tweeting, re-tweeting and Rebecca re-tweeting about Toyota’s problems.

So what can a company do when the information they want controlled is out of control through the people in the media outlets that they truly have no control of? Work with me, guys. Bill Evans is from Fleishman-Hillard Public Relations and is the senior VP of their Digital Strategy Division. I call it “revolutionomics”. Whether we’re protesting the Chavez in Venezuela or we’re being angry about Toyota trying to hide problems they can’t stop the revolution.

BILL EVANS, FLEISHMAN-HILLARD SVP, DIGITAL STRATEGY: That’s right, Cody. We’re talking about moms in minivans and cars and safety, I mean they strike very much at the core of what people value. And so I think what Toyota is learning almost the hard way is that people are going to come together, they’re going to share their experiences. They’re going to make purchasing decisions based very much on what they hear and what they feel and Toyota is really at a crisis at this point.

BOLLING: But this is the way of the future. I mean the information is out there now, whether it’s politics or business, Toyota recalls anything –

EVANS: Yes.

BOLLING: The social media has really brought information to everyone, right?

EVANS: Yes. I don’t think it is about necessarily bringing information to everyone. I think it is empowering people to bring information to each other, so the era of advertising really defining what a brand is or what a message is, is over. So you’re going to have a story that you want to tell, FOX is going to have a story it’s going to tell.

Toyota is going to have a story it’s going to tell. But people are going to come together and sort of measure the credibility about that and what they feel and align themselves to people that are alike themselves as well. And the Internet is really giving us a visibility into that we never had before.

DIAMOND: And so how does the company then — you’re a public relations expert.

EVANS: Yes.

DIAMOND: How does the company then contain this balloon that’s out there that’s just growing –

EVANS: Sure.

DIAMOND: — getting, you know, bigger and bigger until it pops with social media? They have basically no control over it.

EVANS: I think the — the way we counsel clients at Fleishman (ph) it’s not about controlling the story. It is about establishing credibility. I mean Toyota is learning that trust is a global commodity and it’s really not about controlling the spin anymore. I think people want them to come out, own the story on the situation. What did you know, when did you know it, be very transparent and tell us how they’re going to fix the problem. I think that will go a long way to establishing or re- establishing their reputation as a very trusted brand.

WILLARD: So it ends up being — it’s something we talk about on the show all the time. If America would focus on quality and not propaganda –

EVANS: That’s right.

WILLARD: — perhaps American companies would once again prosper.

EVANS: That’s correct. And I think you know Toyota could take a page from Ford back a number of years ago when they were having some issues. President of the company, Bill Ford, came out, took ownership of the problems, said here is what my plan is to fix this and this was before social media really became a prevalent channel.

I think Toyota if they were going to put a plan forward to the American people and people at large, say here’s how we’re moving forward. Start to show some of the stories of how people are engaging in success, what’s it’s been, how people are getting their cars fixed and really getting back to some core fundamental values and establishing trust that will go a long way.

BOLLING: Do they get it now? I mean you look at Toyota, OK, so they dropped the ball. They probably thought they were you know too big to fail.

EVANS: Yes.

BOLLING: Tiger Woods, it’s the same thing –

(CROSSTALK)

BOLLING: Am I — it’s the same — it’s a good theory, right?

EVANS: Same theory. I think the idea that they’re somehow tone deaf to the opinion against them is the lesson here. I don’t know that they still quite got it. The fact that (INAUDIBLE) allegedly they knew about this problem for quite some time exacerbates that they didn’t have a plan ready to go and engage in people and really tell their story. I think Tiger Woods is a great example. He tried to shut the story down, control it, hope that it would go away. It actually just fueled the fire.

DIAMOND: Or maybe, on the same lines, Eric, that they were just too confident. They were too — like Tiger said, he thought was too good, he was entitled, and he — you know, the same with Toyota. They’re number one. They’re growing. They’re, you know — they’re Teflon.

EVANS: That’s right.

DIAMOND: But you know, they didn’t realize that, hey, you can be taken down, as well.

EVANS: Yes. And I think, again, the lesson here is not to be tone deaf. I mean, if you look at conversations, how people talk about your brand, your reputation of your brand, that’s much more valuable than your Q score with an ad campaign. So I think Toyota needs to really start to measure value of how their consumers perceive them, as opposed to how things test in advertisements.

BOLLING: That’s Bill Evans. We’re going to have to leave it there. Very nice tie…

(CROSSTALK)

BOLLING: Nice tie.

DIAMOND: The power of Twitter!

BOLLING: All right, on tap, it’s the much anticipated return of the sizzlingest segment on TV, “Street Meat.” Back, baby. And in “The Diamond District,” President Obama looking to block health insurance companies from raising rates. Can his proposal work? Rebecca’s got the details when “Happy Hour” continues.

WILLARD: Are you guys on Twitter?

Typically, users are fine with adopting new systems or interfaces if they feel the bother will make their lives or the experience of using products better. But Facebook seems to be moving things around simply for the sake of doing so; sometimes, building in critical user experience errors in the process.

Lately, I started realizing I’ve been really kind of “meh” about Facebook for a while now. Maybe it’s because I work in communications and use social tools all the time, but that I think is only exacerbating the issue, not causing it. It was only after I read Dan Lyons article on Newsweek, that my feelings started to crystallize.

“…in general Facebook is becoming so overwhelmed with spam and useless junk that the noise-to-signal ratio is about 100 to 1.”

Bingo. Facebook is becoming polluted with noise. I don’t care how many herds of future veal parm sandwiches you raised in Farmville, or how many hookers you raped in Mafia Wars. Why would I? Have you ever sat and watched someone play a video game? It’s boring. This is worse. It’s like cleaning up after a party without actually having been there.

I joined Facebook to keep in touch with friends, to see what they were up to, to chat. But wading trough the endless swamp of activity-spam is really killing the vibe.

I admit that this is a fine line for me to walk. Facebook is one of the largest social networks in the U.S. and a big part of my job is helping brands find a way to be relevant and make money in the space. For a while this was all well and good as consumers, in every piece of research I have read, found social networks far more trustworthy than websites. Partly this was because they leaned on their own friends and networks for advice, and partly because advertising wasn’t as common or as prevalent as other places on the web. For the first time in a while, that credibility and trust has declined, and I think this is why.

As more and more brands drop their adverteasing into your news feed, the less and less tuned in you become. More noise = less signal. Less attention = less trust. Say what you want about Twitter but its very simplicity makes it an infinitely more valuable tool. Brands can’t simply clog my feed with crap unless I tell them to. It doesn’t matter what any of my friends do online, that activity won’t make its way to me unless I allow it. I would think most users prefer this. Some people complain about the minutia that gets tweeted, but at least they opted into that data stream. If you want to play an online game, fine. I don’t need to read about it. My attention span is short, my time is limited and my patience is thin.

All of which brings us back to our friends at Facebook. I realize you need to make money; we all do. But heck, it was only about 10 minutes ago you turned profitable. You seem to have no problems re-engineering the design on a whim, so how about we try some value added fixes for a change? Here goes:

• Give me a user experience I can love. With all the recent hullabaloo about your redesigned interface, something got lost. Instead of providing me with a better core experience, or one that’s more flexible to my needs, you’ve simply moved the furniture around. How about giving me the flexibility to segment my news feed, say, by friends only? Now I simply have 2 options: ‘top news’ (anyone have any idea how this is determined?) and ‘most recent.’ Even better, give me the option to customize the layout as I see fit, sort of like the widgets screen on a mac. Do I really need my chat list in 2 places? How about allowing me different layouts if use more games and apps than the news feed? How about better more customizable notification settings? Can’t I just pick?
• Find the next PayPal. Everyone is trying to figure out how to monetize social and drive sales through your site. Build or buy something please. (See the previous bullet). Or better yet, allow me to put some functional code inside your site. This seems to be a hit or miss proposition at the moment.
• Give me better metrics tools. Let’s face it, and I can say this because we’re friends. Your metrics tools suck. As a brand marketer you’re not helping me bring more of my clients to the table, which in turn would bring you more money. Right now if I want to have anything even approximating a decent analysis I need to roll my own tools into your system. You’re an internet company, please report out like one. Plus, better more robust ways for me to measure would allow mw to rely less on dumping content into your users feeds. This would make the core experience better as well.
• Focus, focus and for crying out loud, focus. One thing that Apple does very well is focusing on it’s core value proposition and only deviating from that when they thing it’s worthwhile. It’s fine to offer a lot of varying features, but your core is interpersonal connections, not becoming a activity notification system. Concentrate on the people more than the stuff.

So Facebook, if you’re listening… it’s time for an intervention. My fear is that one morning you’ll roll out of bed, splash some cold water on your face and realize you became the one thing you never wanted to be.

Friendster.

*Editors note: How many of you have actually ever typed “the plural of anus” into Google? None of you? I thought not. Well then move along, nothing to see here.

Normally, I love when clients do this. It means they are ready to move outside the comfort zone of stable but predictable results and really go for it. My team is usually chomping at the bit with a whole slew of innovative ideas that simply require a client with some cojones to pull them off. The table is set.

And so it begins. You conduct brainstorms. You pull the research and write the deck. The pitch is awesome. The concepts are killer and will launch a tidal wave of internet memes. That’s when this happens…

“I love it. Can you bring me some case studies that show how others do this?”

Oh noes.

For better or worse, the availability bias is stifling your innovations. At the risk of oversimplifying, the availability bias is how the prefrontal cortex evaluates risk based on the availability of similar situations it can readily recall when making decisions.

Case in point. You’re far more likely to die driving in a car within 25 miles of your home than in a fiery terrorist induced airline crash. But on a daily basis the media bombards us with images of crashed planes and terror scares while auto accidents, even fatal ones, barely make it out of the local papers. Thus, your prefrontal cortex will most likely associate flying with danger.

If someone you know is more afraid of flying than driving to Target, that’s the availability bias in action.

So what does this have to do with pharma? Well, everything. As most of you know pharma is, at its core, a risk averse culture. Everything is based on minimizing liability. The marketing and communications practice groups are oriented completely around legal and regulatory reviews, with every aspect of a program analyzed and inspected to insure nothing could be misconstrued or misrepresented.

When creating innovative programs, this can be a challenge. As the prefrontal cortex finds it harder and harder to associate innovation with success, new ideas become more difficult to sell in. As communicators see risk takers get punished and homogenous ideas get approved, a sort of mediocre groupthink sets in. At that point the lawyers don’t become the roadblock, the culture does, since things that are new begin to feel risky, regardless of whether they are or not.

This concept came to life for me recently as I was meeting with a client reviewing online media plans. 99% of the plan was a mix of sites that you’d normally expect to see, but we found an online gaming property that would perform far better than the rest. The site was respectable, had no sleazy ads, and over indexed in their target audience. We designated 2% of the budget for a 1-month test.

Client: “We can’t do this.”

Me: “Why? “

Client: “Because we’ve never bought media there before. No one will go for it“

As simple as it sounds, recognizing this little Jedi mind trick is the first step to making it work in your favor. The brain wants to draw on experience to feel more comfortable. As such, the more you can provide, the better off you will be, but how can you do this when an idea is totally new? Try these 3 things and you should have a better success rate getting to yes:

• Facilitate a culture of learning. The more new concepts and programs you can feed your clients, the less risky new ideas feel. You want to train them to look at new things and teach them that new, well, happens. Lunch and learns are great for this.
• Get the regulators to participate. By including legal in these sessions, they too begin to think in new ways. This will also provide you with invaluable insight as to how they think, what they look for, and what they need to feel comfortable saying yes.
• Show what got you there. It’s rare that an idea isn’t in some way built upon a previous one. Even Einstein admitted to standing on the shoulders of giants. Whenever possible, show the things that sparked the idea. It will help the clients get there too.