Here’s a quick look at what we’re reading this morning:

Facebook has a bunch of new ways to make money off your personal information:

Facebook spilled the beans on its new stab at ad cash in a public blog post that most people will never even read. So, we’ll break down each section for you in Human English. Let’s begin: here’s what’s changing.

Facebook Exchange (FBX), or “We Watch What You Browse”

Facebook can now make an agreement with another website to swap (for money) information and sell things to you. Let’s say you visit J.Crew’s site and check out a new tie you like. If Facebook and J.Crew have an FBX agreement, you could see an ad for that very tie as soon as you hop back over to Facebook. How? The two companies will share information based on the cookies my browser stores. Facebook says “we only work with providers that agree to technical and policy requirements that protect the privacy of personal information,” and I have no idea what that means.

Make sure you click through to read all the other ways Facebook is mining your personal data for cold, hard cash.

Does owning a tablet make you smarter? At the very least, it appears it makes you better informed:

Almost half (43 percent) of tablet owners say they are consuming more news after getting a tablet, and 31 percent say they look at new sources for news and spend more time reading the news.

Because of this hunger for news, we are more concerned with getting our news from trusted publications. Sixty percent of readers who consume longer articles only read them from a select group of trusted news sources, whereas only 39 percent will read long-form articles from various sources.

As we discussed briefly yesterday, Facebook is encouraging marketers to get away from “clicks” and focus on reach and frequency:

“Smallwood also rolled out some new data from a study conducted with Datalogix that found 99% of sales generated from online branding ad campaign came from consumers who saw ads, but didn’t interact with them. “
“What’s the ROI of a press release? What’s the ROI of putting your pants on every day? It’s hard to measure but there’s negative consequences for not doing it.”

To illustrate his point, Buday (head of marketing and communication at star pupil Nestle) showed slides of Nestle brand Skinny Cow’s highly engaged Facebook Page. “If you look at the typical Facebook Page, it’s rarely this good,” Buday said immodestly. To achieve its high level of success, Nestle not only followed Facebook’s recommendations for reach and frequency (both of which are enhanced by ad buys), but adhered to a strict rulebook on communications on the platform.

Finally this morning, Mashable has given us a list of 10 office technologies that we on their way out. How many of these relics will you mourn?

While it’s unlikely many workers will mourn the loss of the fax machine, some may be more nostalgic for other vanishing fixtures of office life like the Rolodex or business cards (which ranked 12th on the list.)

Here are the top 10 office tools and trends that professionals think will vanish in the next five years:

1. Tape recorders (79 percent)

2. Fax machines (71 percent)

3. The Rolodex (58 percent)

4. Standard working hours (57 percent)

5. Desk phones (35 percent)

6. Desktop computers (34 percent)

7. Formal business attire like suits, ties, pantyhose, etc. (27 percent)

8. The corner office for managers/executives (21 percent)

9. Cubicles (19 percent)

10. USB thumb drives (17 percent)

Happy Tuesday!

The post What We’re Reading: Facebook Finds More Ways To Make Money Off You appeared first on 435 Digital.

Here’s a look at what we’re reading today:

While rumors of Facebook’s penchant for making your private messages public has been greatly exaggerated, there IS a Facebook bug out there that can make posting on your (former) friends’ timelines problematic. Or a whole lot more fun:

A recently found Facebook bug lets you post un-deletable messages to friends’ walls.

Here’s how it works: Once you’ve blocked a person on Facebook, he or she can no longer see content you’ve posted on the social network, including posts you’ve made to their own wall. Since the content is no longer visible, it can’t be deleted. The only way either party can see the post again is if the block is removed.

In a way, Facebook lets you know that’s going to happen when you block someone in the first place: “Blocking means you won’t be able to see or contact each other on Facebook,” reads a message that pops up when you decide to block someone (see screenshot below). However, it’s a one-sided agreement: The person being blocked isn’t notified, and all of the content you’ve previously posted on their wall remains intact but invisible to both of you.

Are you relieved to know that people you have blocked might have written un-deletable comment about you on your wall? We knew you would be.

Speaking of Facebook, is your brand over-posting? Turns out, too much content, no matter how brilliant, is one of the fastest way to lose fans:

More is not always better when it comes to Facebook. Ignoring the fact that most fans never return to a page after they like it, people get frustrated and annoyed by constant posts. Worse than that: now you, the social media professional, has to come up with a large amount of posts. When posting three or more times per day, most of those post are worthless with little value to the fans.

Here are some great stats from an article from the social business:

One-to-two posts a day is more effective than fewer or more posts per day. One or two brand posts receive 32% higher “like” rates and 73% higher comment rates compared to posting 3 or more times a day.

Engagement is highest when brands post four to five posts a week. Posting one to four times a week produces 71% higher user engagement than five or more posts in a given week. Posting less than that, does not maximize your opportunity to target your fans as often as possible.

Meanwhile, over at Google, another algorithm change is on the way, this time to reduce low-quality, exact-match domains from ranking so highly in search results:

The head of Google web spam fighting team Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google will be rolling out a “small” algorithm change that will “reduce low-quality ‘exact-match’ domains” from showing up so highly in the search results.

Cutts said this will impact 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. He added it is “unrelated to Panda/Penguin. Panda is a Google algorithm filter aimed at fighting low quality content; Penguin is one aimed at fighting web spam.

This should come as no surprise, as Cutts said a couple years ago that Google will be looking at why exact domain matches rank well when they shouldn’t, in some cases.

Likely over the coming days, you will see shifts in the search results where many sites that may rank well based on being an exact match domain may no longer rank as high in Google’s search results.

Finally this morning, take a moment to read this Sikh woman’s response to a mean-spirited photo of her posted on Reddit:

A Sikh woman’s classy, thoughtful response to a mean-spirited photo of her posted on Reddit has not only warmed the hearts of people around the globe, it has even forced the man who posted the photo to look at his actions and repent.

The original poster, a student at Ohio State University who goes by the handle “European_Douchebag,” posted the above photo with the caption “I’m not sure what to make of this.”

Classmates of the woman in the photo, Balpreet Kaur, a neuroscience and psychology student who also attends Ohio State, alerted her to the post on Facebook. Kaur is Sikh, and will not alter her appearance because of those religious beliefs.

In a response to the post, Kaur shared the reasoning behind her appearance, and why what appeared to be a big deal to the man who posted the photo didn’t matter to her at all.

“If the OP wanted a picture,” she wrote, “they could have just asked and I could have smiled.”

According to Kaur, Sikhs believe in the sacredness of the body, because “it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being… Just as a child doesn’t reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us.”

Tolerance 1, Internet Trolls 0.

Have a great Monday!

The post What We’re Reading: Facebook Privacy, More Google Algorithms, and Reddit Strikes Back appeared first on 435 Digital.

NextDoor hopes to do this by tapping into the power of  “the neighborhood.”

“Neighborhoods are really one of the original social networks,” says Nirav Tolia, CEO. “ It seems like we have lost touch with the neighborhood. NextDoor  is a technology platform where neighbors can come together and create a private and bounded website, an individual website for their neighborhoods.”

NextDoor has incorporated several features into its platform that resemble its social network cohort. But it is designed to populate  itself very differently .

We use Facebook to make friends and connect with family. We use Yelp to rate restaurants and other services. And CraigsList helps us buy and sell, trade, giveaway and connect with opportunities. Of all of them only Everyblock was initially organized around rough geographic area, the almighty zip code.  But in each of these networks, users are filling in the very specific dots of our neighborhood map from the top down.

In NextDoor, neighbors fill in the dots from their addresses up.  So you talk about the restaurant on the corner.  You borrow the screwdriver from the guy two doors down [maybe you never knew his name before.] And you discuss Halloween plans and post photos to folks who live next door. As a social network Nextdoor’s identity emerges from the dots – specifically our addresses and proximity to one another: our neighborhood. And your activity is invisible to search engines and to those who are not your neighbors.

Nextdoor has licensed information that allows them to guess at a neighborhood’s boundary. They’ll provide that as a first draft to users who want to start a neighborhood site. From there neighbors can expand or contract boundaries based on their needs. NextDoor provides help along the way.

The company has found that good size for a neighborhood is between 75 and 2000 households.

“You need to have at least 75 households to feel there are enough people,” Tolia says. “More than 2000 is too big and no longer feels intimate.”

He said a homeowners association, a natural landmark, or a subdivision make an easy start to boundaries.

“When we thought about making the right environment, we felt that online privacy is essential,” Tolia said. “We did not want to have a website where neighbors felt what  they were posting was visible outside their neighborhoods.”

“We did what our users told us,” he said. “They said they did not want their posts searchable in Google.”

People using NextDoor want to be able to share the names and ages of their children and openly share when something does not look right.

Tolia showed me several  pages of existing neighborhoods that had given permission to be shown. It was Halloween, and parents were posting pictures of their kids and houses on their blocks, telling stories, much like you’d see on Facebook.

“The context is fine for that neighborhood,” Tolia said. “But it is not relevant for people outside the neighborhood.”

Every neighbor uses real name and none of it is available on search engines.

Here’s Tolia’s description of how NextDoor verifies name and address.

There are two paths to verification: Nextdoor Verification and neighbor verification.

Nextdoor Verification is how things get started. You cannot join unless you verify in one of the following ways:

1. Request a postcard sent directly to your home address with a unique code

2. Request a phone call to your home phone which must be directory-tied to your home address

3. Enter your credit card which must have a billing address that matches your home address

4. Get a previously verified neighbor to vouch for you directly through a special invitation

None of our 10k+ plus members have “gamed” this system, but in case they did, we would move to Neighbor Verification.

Neighbor Verification is where a neighbor reports a new member that looks suspicious or unknown. Every new member is announced to the community and can be easily found on the map and directory – so if someone entered the community and did not look legit, the other members would notice and report to us asap.

“We have been working on this a year,” Tolia said.  “We wanted to make sure that we had a ton of user feedback, “ Tolia said. “It’s been wonderful to see people tell us they want to take charge of bringing back a sense of neighborhood to the community.”

In the first year beta, 176 neighborhoods in 26 states set up sites on NextDoor.  The company plans to have 1000 neighborhoods signed on by the end of the year.

NextDoor has investors and I’ll bet a solid  revenue plan. Its sustainability is based on very local advertising within a neighborhood. At some point, a mechanism will be developed to share information across neighborhood boundaries.’

“Our members and neighbors want to support local business,” Tolia said.

But Tolia says the team is first concentrating on perfecting user experience.

“We just want to connect neighbors,”  he said.

As to what I see as its most  similar friend, Tolia says Everyblock is about news and information while NextDoor is about connection and community.“Everyblock is a great company,” Tolia said.

The possible government tie-in with a NextDoor is compelling, and in fact, Malcolm Smith, Communications Manager is lighting up all of Redwood City with Next Door.

I’m dreaming that NextDoor could become  a gigantic Kumbaya of a social media mashup. And Tolia talks that way, offering only praise for his brethren including  emerging independent online news publishers as well as other sites that are part of the ecosystem that serves neighborhoods

While Facebook has succeeded in getting nearly everyone online, the strategic intersection of local and social is still a coveted revenue frontier being aggressively pursued by Facebook, Google and other smaller players.

The mad rush into local advertising continues to build. In the past few days, Google street view went live inside businesses this week.  And Google announced that it is now indexing Facebook comments.

But Tolia says NextDoor won’t be rushing into local advertising. “It takes a long long time to get these local businesses  online,” Tolia said. “We will take our time and get it right.”

I’ve been watching for something like NextDoor to come along and integrate all the different players in the local space in a flexible and seamless way. I want to experience my neighborhood online in much the same way as I experience it on my daily walks. It will take a gamechanger to make that happen and we’ll see soon enough whether NextDoor can fit that bill.

As usual, I’d love to hear what you love and what you hate about NextDoor.

View a short video describing Nextdoor.

Here’s the front page of a NextDoor neighborhood page. Note the drop downs at the top.

Here’s the classified sharing page that resembles Craigslist, FreeCycle, OhSoWe.

Here is the directory of neighbors.

NextDoors’ initial list of recommended businesses as built by neighbors. 

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In February, Phoebe Prince, 15, hung herself after alleged repeated bullying at her high school in South Hadley, Mass.  In October, Tyler Clementi, 18, jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his college roommate allegedly streamed online his sexual encounter with another man.  In the two weeks following Clementi’s death, three more teenagers committed suicide–all of them after alleged bullying regarding their sexual orientations.

The statistics alone are grim. Twenty percent of students report being bullied; among gay and lesbian students, that number reaches 90 percent.  When students are bullied for an extended period of time, they tend to withdraw from activities and friends they once liked, their grades slip dramatically and they can become severely depressed.

Fortunately, many state legislatures have quickly created laws to criminalize cyberbullying. Forty-five states now have anti-bullying laws, and many states also mandate school districts to teach students about all kinds of bullying. Teachers are trained to look for signs of all bullying in their students and respond accordingly–whether to the students’ parents, school administrators or even the police if necessary.

The challenge, though, is that the age-old problem of bullying is now exacerbated by new technologies like texting, emails, instant messages, blogs and social networks. Called cyberbullying, this kind of bullying can be missed by adults who aren’t digital natives and don’t understand how to use these new platforms. They may not realize a child is being stalked in a chat room, a middle school student is being harassed through Google Chat or a teenager is being libeled on Facebook.

To prevent cyberbullying, parents in particular need to be pro-active.  If you are a parent, here are tips you should  keep in mind:

1. Understand how a new technology works before letting your child use it. This holds true for smart phones, instant messaging software, blogs and social networks. Learn how your child will use it, who he/she will communicate with and what information he/she could potentially share.

2. Always set up privacy settings on any new technology. My Mobile Watch Dog lets parents monitors the texts, emails and phone calls their kids’ cell phones are receiving. Net Nanny is a software that can be downloaded onto a computer and can schedule Internet access, block social networks,  stop inappropriate chats, stop illegal file sharing and monitoring where children are going online.  Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have many privacy settings themselves. To understand how to set Facebook’s privacy settings in particular, watch this segment 435 Digital recently did with ABC-7 in Chicago.

3. Talk with your child about cyberbullying. Encourage your child to tell you immediately if he or she is being harassed online or contacted repeatedly via email or cell phone by an unwanted person. Also explain to your child that cyberbullying is harmful and unacceptable behavior. Be sure to outline your expectations for what is responsible online behavior and make clear what the consequences are for inappropriate online behavior.

If a child is being cyberbullied, you can look for certain signs. As with any kind of bullying, your child might become more withdrawn from favorite activities, school subjects and friends. With cyberbullying in particular, your child may spend increased amounts of time online or using his or her cellphone. He or she may turn off the computer or put away a cellphone when you are present. Alternatively, he or she may stop using computers and cell phones all together.

If you suspect your child is being cyberbullied, follow these guidelines from Stop Bullying Now.

1. Encourage your child to stop communicating with the cyberbully.

2. Do not erase any photos, video or texts–you’ll want to keep all evidence. Take as many screenshots and print them out if possible.  Cyber Bully Alert is an online software the lets children using computers automatically alert their parents when they are being harassed online. As soon as the child presses a button, the software takes a screenshot of the computer and immediately alerts the parents via email or text.

3. To have content removed and/or ban a user, contact the website, your email provider, cell phone provider. They have protocols in place to handle this situation.

4. Try to identify the cyberbully if he or she is anonymous. Your Internet Service Provider (like Comcast or AOL) should be able to track them. However, if the cyberbulling is criminal–or you suspect it is–contact the police and ask them do the tracking.

5. If the cyberbully is another student or the cyberbullying is taking place on school computers, contact your school board. They also should have guidelines in place for handling this situation.

6. If you know who the cyberbully is, consider contacting his or her parents. It’s important to do this with caution, however, because parents can react negatively to accusations about their own child.  You should not contact parents face-to-face. Rather, put it in writing and show them evidence of the cyberbullying. You’ll want to hold on to all written communication with the parents of a cyberbully should you need more evidence later.

7. Talk to a lawyer if necessary. Or, again, if you suspect the cyberbullying is criminal, contact the police immediately.

Cyberbullying is a scary and troubling act for parents and children alike. For more resources and advice, take a look at websites including isafe.org, stopcyberbullying.org and cyberbullying.us.

To be sure, technology like blogging and social networks can combat bullying. Just read the incredible story of Katie Goldman, 7, who was bullied at her school in Evanston, Ill. for being a girl with a Star Wars water bottle. Her mom blogged about the bullying on ChicagoNow and within days, her blog post went viral among Star Wars fans worldwide.  In December, more than 30,000 people wore Star Wars-themed clothing in support of Katie.

Katie told the Huffington Post that she’s happy “so many people are standing up for me.”

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