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25 Things

If you are on Facebook and haven’t had the pleasure of reading a 25 Random Things About Me note about one of your friends yet, you are missing out. Normally not a fan of chain letters or tagging memes, I will admit the 25 Things activity on Facebook is fascinating.

History of Facebook 25 Things Notes
Facebook notes were launched on August 22, 2006, but didn’t receive heavy usage until 2009 thanks to a new viral phenomenon that started off as “25 Random Things About Me.” Memes using notes on Facebook are nothing new, entire websites have been put together to catalog and inspire various memes-most as lame as the emails that have been going around for over a decade.

The Velocity of 25 Things
The earliest entries I can find via various search tools for 25 Things is mid-January. I really saw it taking off in my personal network starting in February. Using Google trends, I compared 25 Things searches to searches for an older site people might be familiar with: 43 Things.

25 Things Chart

As you can tell from the chart, 25 things searches increased rapidly, easily overshadowing 43 Things despite the fact that users won’t find Facebook notes entries doing this search, nor will they find definitive information about the origins of it.

How to Find 25 Things Notes
If you do want to find all your friends 25 things postings, I suggest you follow these steps:

1. Login to Facebook and make sure you are on the main page (click Home if you are not sure).
2. Click the drop down arrow for more feeds (blue arrow next to live feed button)
3. Choose notes.
4. Scroll down and you will likely see activity around 25 Things postings.
5. Click show more posts at the very bottom if you want to look for more postings.

Facebook 25 Things Learnings
There are things we can all learn from Facebook’s 25 Things success:

  • Patience is important in business. Facebook could have easily scrapped notes long ago due to low activity.
  • Never underestimate user-generated content.
  • Viral successes are often luck
  • Providing a platform where UGC viral successes can happen is important

I noticed a lot of people commenting on how Facebook didn’t make sense to them until they started reading other people’s 25 Things posts – this simple meme has created an amazing amount of value for Facebook and their traffic reflects it:

Facebook 25 Things

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SEO For Independent Filmmakers

IndieGoGoI wrote a guest post over and IndieGoGo, a cool fund raising and awareness tool for filmmakers, on the topic of using SEO (and SEM) to attract an audience for your film.

Here’s a teaser:

Making a film is a big enough challenge in itself, but if you are like most low-budget independent filmmakers, you’ll quickly discover that finding an audience for your film can be even more challenging.

Outside of widely known marketing methods like submitting to festivals, inviting people to special screenings, and attempting to make friends on social networks, most filmmakers fail in allowing their audience find them on their own.

Read the rest of the post: Build Your Film’s Audience Using Search Engines

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Mashable Open Awards Voting

I’ve had the pleasure of judging the Webby Awards, the Web 2.0 awards, an international pageant, and now the Mashable Open Awards.

Like many awards, there is the judges choice and the people’s choice (both an honor to win for any website). Below is the form you can use to submit your choice (cast your vote before midnight Sunday, November 30th):




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LinkedIn Apps Arrive

Just received an email from LinkedIn announcing LinkedIn Apps. Here’s a quick look at the apps they’ve launched with and my thoughts on how they might help you with your career reputation management.

LinkedIn Applications available at launch (in decreasing order of first-glance importance) with my quick thoughts:

  • Company Buzz by LinkedIn – Very handy way for non-twitter savvy users to gauge what people are saying about their company.
  • WordPress on LinkedIn – Another way to promote your blog to your connections or future connections.
  • Google Presentation on LinkedIn – A way to share some of your work in a public way (only presentations right now, but wouldn’t be surprised to see other Google Docs added soon). Great way to promote your presentations.
  • Bloglink on LinkedIn – A handy way to keep up with your business network’s latest blog posts.
  • TripIt on LinkedIn – Keep tabs on where your network is traveling. May help you better connect with your network in person.
  • SlideShare on LinkedIn – Share, view and comment on presentations from your network. Use in a promotional way, or use it for pre or post live presentation feedback.
  • Amazon on LinkedIn – Insight into what your network is reading.
  • Box on LinkedIn – Share files on your profile and/or collaborate with your network.
  • Huddle on LinkedIn – Helpful private project management collaboration abilities.

Obviously many of these applications are available on other sites or in other ways, but having them associated with your LinkedIn business network may bring about some interesting opportunities. It will be interested to see how popular these become and what other applications are added.

So far, I’ve installed Blog link (so far first person in my web savvy ~400 person network), WordPress (more control and better profile display than blog link), TripIt (two connections on it thus far), and company buzz (didn’t add to my profile, however). Of the three, I noticed blog link may suffer from speed issues (plus I removed it from my profile as I didn’t like the way it displayed) and company buzz doesn’t work very well compared to other twitter search tools.

Love to hear your experiences and thoughts about LinkedIn Apps.