Tour of New Facebook Places, Better Communication, Less Privacy

When Facebook rolled out with “Places” last year, like many of their feature upgrades, it came with a feature called “Tag Friends with You” turned on by default. This feature would allow your friends to check you in anywhere, even if you weren’t there, and even if you didn’t want to be checked in. It turns out that the new Facebook Places brings this feature back, but you can’t prevent people from tagging you at all, you can only remove the tags from you own profile.

 

While usually, Facebook tends to count on the trade blogs, like this post by All Facebook last week about the changes, to spread the word about new features. Unfortunately, the average Facebook user is unlikely to figure all of that out for months, or longer.

 

However, this time they are giving out the information in the form of a tour:, which is a step forward in its communication strategy. Let’s just hope that they roll out all new features in a similar way:

 

New: Control Privacy Inline

 

There is still a privacy area to fine tune settings, but many of the settings can now be applied post by post, and can even be changed after a post has been put up. However, if you do most updates from an app on a smartphone, you may not be able to change them and new posts will be stuck on the last setting you posted with.

 

 

 

The New Tagging Feature: Who You Are With

 

You still have to go to Account > Privacy > How Tags Work > Edit Settings > Tag Review to chose to moderate this setting.

 

 

 

In your privacy settings you can turn on the profile review feature (see image below) and have Facebook ask you before adding the tags to YOUR profile. However, you can’t prevent your friends from adding the tag to THEIR own profile. Not ideal, but at least clear. In the last iteration you could prevent anyone from “checking you in” to a place, now it seems we have lost that choice.

 

 

TIP: While you are in your “How Tags Work” settings, be sure to consider disabling Tag suggestions if you want to make sure Facebook doesn’t recommend you be tagged in friend’s photos that Facebook thinks look like you (another feature Facebook turned on without much warning earlier this summer).

 

Facebook Has Moved the Places Checkin to Updates

 

The big news is that you can now check in anywhere you post with the nifty little push pin button. Beware that once you set this it is skicky and defaults to the last setting. So, coming home from a conference where you may have wanted to check in, you might use your smart phone app and unintentionally check in to your house when you just wanted to give an update.

 

 

 

Control Privacy of  Single Post

 

Actually this isn’t new, but it was great for Facebook to add it here. You can also edit each photo album from it’s “Edit Album” settings. So if you want to share photos of your kids with your Mom and not your social media friends, you can get that granular, or just with friends, or with a list of people.

 

 

 

 

 

If you want more information, go to the Facbook one-pager about the new Sharing settings here. What do you love and hate about the new changes?

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How to Recover When Rumors About Your Brand Go Viral and Become Urban Legend

 

How does the average person know if an urban legend is true or false?

 

It has happened to all of us. You get an email from a parent, a friend, the guy who likes to send jokes.

 

Usually it looks something like the image of the email below which claims Tyson Foods  is eliminating the American Labor Day holiday for the Muslim Eid Al-Fitr holiday.

 

Usually it claims that the company in question did something horrible, unAmerican, and insert your own concerns here.

 

Usually, these types of claims are only partially true or worse yet, patently false.

 

What if Your brand gets hijacked by an urban legend?

 

 

Usually when I get one of these emails, I head over to Snopes.com, a website that does a pretty good job of getting the details of these rumors right. In this case, the email received above had a warning at the end that they checked it out on Snopes, and they found an article from 2008 corroborated their point of view.

 

However, the article is from 2008, and as I write this it is 2011.  This was about a single Tyson’s plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., that was negotiating with its largely Somali refugee workforce. Within a few days, the union negotiated to keep Labor Day and let workers choose between a birthday and the Eid holiday.

 

What Can Companies Do About These Rumors?

 

When I received this email, I contacted Tyson directly to get some idea of how they were handling the rumors, something very few people do as they pass on an email, ReTweet a message on Twitter or pass something along on Facebook.

 

Tyson’s is hardly alone in being caught up in persistent rumors like these. P&G underwent something similar with its Swiffer brand, and many others have done the same. You can see the Top 25 Urban Legends of the moment over at Snopes.com.

 

Step 1: Get Out Your Own Statement

 

The first step is to put out a statement out your own media room or blog. It helps to have a balanced view out there when people go to search. You can click on the photo above to see how Tyson handled its Labor Day Rumor.

Step 2: Submit Up-to-Date Info About the Rumor

 

 

Snopes.com is the go-to source to learn about the veracity of many rumors. Other sites also deal with rumors, including FactCheck.org, which focuses on political rumors, and even debunked this one about Snopes.com.

 

The site at Snopes,com has a Contact section, as well as sections to submit a rumor and/or a video. According to those that have done this, Snopes doesn’t necessarily respond immediately, so be persistent.

 

About.com also has a rumor section called About Urban Legends, so be sure to contact them as well.

 

Step 3: Get Third Parties to Pass on Correct News

Illustration of David and Barbara Mikkelson by Matt Weems, and used by permission of Yahoo.

 

Most rumors start with a kernel of truth, Snopes founders David and Barbara Mikkelson say in this interview in the New York Times last year.

 

There are many people (like me) that always take the time to look up rumors and get back to the person who sent it on to us. It seems that if a few reporters and bloggers tell the real story it leaves electronic breadcrubs for others looking who are reticent to just pass things on by like to get to the bottom of a story – lIke this opinion piece by Stephanie Salter in the Edmondsun.com, which takes chain letter writers to task and mentions several brands that were targeted by this practice.

 

Some people won’t believer the true versions of facts, but these breadcrumbs allow a brand to point to third-party debunking of the rumor and to minimize damage.

 

Step 4: Contact People Directly

One way to stop rumors is to respond to emails that are incorrect with up-to-date information. Also, if it is a blog post, to leave a comment as a brand representative with the correct info and a link back to a statement, like the one Tyson Foods has on its site. At that site I might also add a link to Snopes and other third-party and credible information.

 

 

Has your brand over faced a rumor like this? What would you recommend that other brands do when they find themselves in a persistent and untrue email chain letter, Facebook campaign or Twitter scalding?

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