KnowEm Logo

KnowEm is a service that offers the tantalizing promise of being able to take control of your (or your company’s) social networking image through signing up on hundreds of social networking sites.  Does KnowEm work well?  It actually does, but there are a few things that it could do a little bit better that would make it an absolute must-have service.  That does not mean that KnowEm isn’t a must-have service right now, but before we get too far there is one thing that KnowEm should really be able to do but does not.

Name Suggestions

The entire premise of KnowEm is that the company will handle social networking signups and possibly even profile creation depending on the plan one chooses.  This is a great idea, but there is a small flaw in the execution that will hopefully be addressed soon: the lack of suggestions.  Any time one registers a domain, looks for an e-mail address, or even signs up for a social networking service, there is a good chance that the name they want is already taken.  Most top-notch services offer suggestions at this point, and this is where KnowEm falls a little flat.

KnowEm lets users search over 300 social networks for username availability, but it does not offer suggestions on new usernames.  Given the relatively low probability of one username being available on over 300 social networking sites, this would seem to be a very good idea.  Instead, KnowEm allows users with business-class accounts to select more than one username.  This might seem like a minor gripe, but it would be a very nice addition.

Other Than That

Over 300 networks

Other than that rather minor quip, what KnowEm does it manages to do very well: sign up for social networks.  If one were to measure the amount of time that it would take them to establish a presence on a few hundred social networks, write down the passwords, upload pictures, and fill out profile information, they would probably be looking at dozens or even a hundred hours worth of work.  Weighing this against the cost of public relations damage that could be caused by some agitated customer or jilted rival copying one’s popular social networking username and running amok on dozens of networks can be incalculable.

KnowEm offers a solution to both of these problems, as they will handle all of the sign-up information and even upload pictures/handle profile details for those with Agency-Class plans.  Personal plans can be free, which is really more of a sampler, or $99 for one with enough features to be truly useful.  For $99 KnowEm will handle the initiation process for 150 of the top social networking sites, but that still leaves hundreds of sites for hooligans to run amok on.  Step up to the Business plan for $249 nets one fewer sites (100 vs. 150), but also includes profile updates.  The Corporate plan for $349 is identical to the Business plan but covers 150 sites, while the Enterprise plan covers 300 of the most popular sites for $599.  The Business, Corporate, and Enterprise plans are all considered to be Agency-class plans, and that comes with one other perk: the possibility of brand protection.

How Clear is Your Crystal Ball?

Who knew Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter would take off like they did?  The answer is: almost nobody until it happened.  Can your business and/or web presence afford to let some new social network become popular without your profile being reserved?  If the answer is no, then KnowEm has a solution: a $49 monthly Brand Protection Program that will automatically sign your organization up for another 20 to 30 social networking sites.  This includes the full profile creation, and this service is only available to those who avail themselves of an Agency-Class plan.

Bottom Line

With a free KnowEm account that lets new users see the value of KnowEm, and there is a lot of value in keeping one’s message concise and from a single source, it is only a matter of time until they upgrade.  The free Basic account has nothing wrong with it, but it involves a lot of manual work.  For those on a shoestring budget, the manual data entry is not so bad.  For those that value their time more than a few dollars, the Personal and Agency-Class plans are simply beyond compare.

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BrandGoLive's Logo

BrandGoLive has an interesting idea to bring to the market: mass-automatic social network signups.  Of course, BrandGoLive does a little more than large scale social network registration, but that is their core competency.  Why would anyone want to be automatically signed up for hundreds of social networks?  That is an interesting question, and it actually has a very good answer: brand protection.

What’s In a Name?

There is little doubt that social networks are effective avenues of reaching potential and existing customers, both of which are obviously important to any venture.  The question becomes one of how can customers know which username(s) one uses on which social networking website(s)?  While it would be easy to establish a small list of different names on different social networking websites, that could be confusing.  Furthermore, the lack of name uniformity opens the door for imposters to create all kinds of mischief using similar names.  Add to this the fact that nobody knows which social networking site will become the next Twitter of Facebook, and the entire idea of signing up for only a few sites and hoping for the best seems foolish.

Rightly so, and that is why BrandGoLive has an interesting idea.  The only thing missing from BrandGoLive’s repertoire is the ability to do a social-networking-wide name check, which seems like something of a glaring omission considering their target audience.  On the other hand, BrandGoLive covers over 300 social media websites, and the chances of all these sites offering an API that handles name checking is fairly low.  Still, a social-networking-wide name check feature would be very welcome.  That being said, everything else that BrandGoLive has to offer seems to be quite good.

Having one’s brand name reserved on hundreds of social media networks helps eliminate confusion and ensures that someone does not start running amok with one’s hard-earned good name.  Image is a very difficult thing to restore, and for that reason alone even those organizations that do not have social networking plans in the immediate future should take the time to consider their long-term social media strategy.

Going The Extra Mile

Top social networks

BrandGoLive offers more than just social media network signups…a lot more.  The most obvious next step would be to include profiles.  Profiles are important for many reasons, but they may be less important on the hundred or two hundred sites that may never gain traction.  This is why BrandGoLive offers selective profile signups on the top sites that they feel are most worthwhile to a general audience.  The number of profiles that BrandGoLive will create will depend on the plan one purchases, and more on that in a minute.

While signing up and adding profiles are obvious steps, BrandGoLive still has more to offer.  BrandGoLive’s R&D staff has come up with a way to use links in a way that search engines seem to digest and rate highly.  BrandGoLive refers to this as LinkVantage, and can yield great results when paired with active bookmarking and local optimization.  Together, these are virtually guaranteed to impress, and what better way to be impressed than by using Google Analytics to see the results.  By the way, BrandGoLive helps anyone who purchases a plan from them to sign up for Google Analytics.

Before getting into the plans there is one last thing worth mentioning: a free article.  There are many sites that can connect site owners with content writers, but BrandGoLive offers a free article for all of their pay-for plans.

The Plans

On the subject of plans, it is worth noting that BrandGoLive offers a free plan that requires no investment of any kind.  This plan walks users through the process of establishing up to 50 profiles at no cost, but there are no additional frills to be had without paying.  The Silver plan is the most affordable plan (take that bronze!) and costs $97 for 50 profiles of a single website and also includes the Google Analytics and free article.  The Gold plan costs $197 and covers 125 profiles for 2 websites, includes search indexing, the top 5 active bookmarkings, local optimization, Google Analytics, and the free article  The Platinum plan costs $397 covers over 300 profiles for up to 4 websites, the top 10 active bookmarkings, the Google Analytics setup, and the free article.

A common thread in this review would be the fact that BrandGoLive consistently goes above and beyond the call of duty.  There is one more area in which this is undeniably true, and the company calls it a brand protection plan.  For $49 per month, BrandGoLive will register a customer for an additional 25 social networking sites.  How many of those sites will be worth it?  Who knows, but the one or two that do prove to be worth it are certainly worth considering assigning a value to in order to make a wise value call.

The Bottom Line

In the online world, a name is all one might have in the eyes of many potential customers.  BrandGoLive is a great tool for ensuring that one has the ultimate control over what is being said in their name, and it is almost impossible to put a price tag on that.

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I started running some tests today on Facebook’s new-ish Facebook Flyers Pro program. It’s fairly new but significantly different from the normal Facebook Flyers ad system.

Facebook Flyers is similar to CPM – you pay $10 per 5000 “impressions”. Facebook Flyers Pro is cost per click, which is more like Google Adwords, where you pay for clicks as opposed to just impressions (which you can burn through at a ridiculous rate). The CPM system doesn’t do much for you unless you’re a big brand advertiser – and even then it’s questionable.

Facebook Flyers Pro (or should I say Facebook CPC) is really meant for smaller type ads – there’s a daily spending cap of $50. The advantage of the system is that it allows you to target very specific demographics. It’s even better than MSN’s demographic targeting – and probably a lot more accurate. You can choose:

• country and/or city (good for international ads)
• sex
• age
• political view
• relationship status
• education status (with the ability to drill down further)
• workplace
• keywords

This is awesome targeting. Here’s an example: “You are targeting about 8,200 liberal men between 18 and 24 years old who are single in the United States who are sophomores in college and like Red Hot Chili Peppers.” It’s a marketer’s dream, assuming you have something good to market. And yes, that’s the actual number of people who fit that precise demographic. Notice that it gives you the precise number of people you’re targeting.

The type of stuff you can advertise is limited. Here are some things you’re not allowed to advertise:

• ATF (alcohol, tobacco, firearms)
• Gambling
• Ringtones
• Software downloads – freeware, or shareware
• Pharmaceuticals
• Adult friend finders or dating sites with a sexual emphasis
• Web cams or surveillance equipment (No X10)
• Web-based non-accredited colleges that offer degrees (No Devry)
• Politically religious agendas or hate stuff, or inflammatory religious content
• Political content that exploits political agendas or uses “hot button” political issues (so no FOX News?)

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of Facebook users are there for social reasons (and are probably not in the buying mindset). So if you have something really targeted that’s not too commercial, it’s probably a good advertising channel. The jury is still out on whether it’s good for targeted affiliate marketing.

I setup a few flyers in the system and have learned a few things along the way. I already had a dating ad shut down (even though it did not have a “sexual emphasis”) so I’m assuming all dating ads are disallowed. Here was the message I got after a few minutes:

An This ad has been disabled and should not be run again on the site under any circumstance. Generally we disable an ad if it violates our Terms of Service of Advertising Guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms and Guidelines if you have further questions.

Anyone else have any experience with Facebook ads?

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Since some people are speculating that Facebook’s valuation might be 15 Billion dollars, and there are 34 million active users (by last estimate I could find), that equals to $428 per user. Can that be a realistic lifetime value of an average Facebook user?

I know this is an oversimplification, but it is still a way to look at the staggering number in terms of one of Facebook’s most valuable metrics.

What is the average lifetime value of a Google user? Does anyone have any idea?

Maybe it all makes sense in the end, but when you’re throwing these sort of valuations around for websites (whose visitors tend to be historically fickle) it starts sounding a little crazy.

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The above is exactly what you need to be asking yourself whenever you write a post – if you’re trying to build an audience online. Or to be more precise, anticipate this question from your readers. It’s an acronym for:

“What the f*ck, what’s in this for me?”

Writing about your average experiences or something mundane about your day is called a journal. Actually there’s about a million of these and they’re called Live Journal accounts – and nobody cares about any of them outside of each writer’s few close friends.

It’s easy to fall into this line of thinking: your life is important to you, therefore anything that happens is important to the outside world. I’ve fallen into this trap myself. Crap, see there it goes again. Ok, let me rephrase this:

Avoid using the word “I” in your posts. If something is important enough to be said, you can state it as a generality. Not only will it help you avoid the mundane, but it will also carry more weight and assumed authority, assuming you have any to begin with.

Bryan Clark once wrote that “you” and “because” are the most important words in the English dictionary. He’s right. This relates to writing and specifically writing to build up an audience.

What does it take to build an audience online with your blog? Thousands of new blogs and websites come out each day and most end up garnering extremely small audiences.

You Need to Be Remarkable, Controversial, or Already Well Known.

If you’re not a Hilton and you don’t want to piss off tons of people by being a Calacanis, you’re left with being remarkable. One of the best ways to be remarkable is to consistently help your audience. Whether it’s teaching new information, compiling resources, giving advice, or making your audience laugh, you need to be remarkable if your efforts online are to be anything other than a playful exercise.

So before you start out a new project or put out a new post, just remember this little acronym: WTF, WITFM. The better and more realistic the answer, the better off you will be.

And if you haven’t yet, subscribe to Copyblogger – Brian Clark’s insight into writing and building audiences is consistently remarkable.

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This Thursday I wrote an post for Center Networks called “Dear Kevin Rose, Please Create a Photo Section” which was an ad-hoc petition to gauge support for the suggestion. The Digg received over 6,600 votes (and counting). Kevin Rose himself added a cryptic comment to the Digg: “hmm :)” (which received 400+ thumbs up). Friday Techcrunch picked up this story and also linked to the post.

I went through and read almost all of the comments on Digg, Center Networks, and Techcrunch – I was interested to see people reactions and commentary. Some of the users had great suggestions of their own – particularly about grouping the photos into either an art section or consolidating everything into a media category.

The main reason I want to see this change is that I don’t like seeing (often relatively mediocre) photos on the home page. But many Digg users do like seeing photography (judging by the number of diggs that photos receive).

After having some time to digest this, I think a separate Media section would be the best option – and I’d like to see a part of it on the home page, but separated from the main news section. This way you would have your popular stories, your top 10, and a block (perhaps above the top 10) with thumbnails for the top 3-5 videos and photos. Some people might think that it would create clutter, but having what I describe as the default would probably suit most users.

I also think we’re going to see a move towards more personalization on Digg, which will allow users to setup exactly what they want to see and allow them to arrange whatever sections interest them. Google is moving in this direction, so why wouldn’t Digg?

It doesn’t look like the podcasts feature has taken off as much – it’s a static list, which doesn’t really fit well into the “Digg culture”. They could add the podcasts into this media section as well.

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A few days ago Techcrunch mentioned a new service that just came out called Linked in a Box, which lets you embed a compact widget on your site or blog with a summary of your LinkedIn profile.

When I first read the title, I thought it was intended to be a pun. But reading their blog, it seems like it could be entirely unintentional.

So to all the fellas out there with ladies to impress [with your resume], it’s easy to do just follow these steps:

1: Cut a hole in a box
2: Put your linked in that box
3: Make her open the box

And that’s the way you do it.

(NSFW)

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In 2006 I became a huge fan of open source projects. It’s online karma. The more you give away to the world – the more the world brings back to you. WordPress is probably my favorite example. There are a lot of plugins and themes available for the platform, most of which have been “donated” to the community at large by people who have created them.

A little while ago I changed the licenses of a large part of the photos in my Flickr collection to Creative Commons Attribution license. This means anybody can use the photos in anything they want to create, provided they cite the original source of content (preferrably with a link back ;). My personal rule was to exclude photos of people and photos that I am particularly fond of.

To be honest it’s a little daunting to give up this control. You don’t know what will happen to your work if you set it free. Who will use it? How? After a while though, it’s pretty liberating.

Why did I do this? Mostly because I hope others would do the same. I have found other people’s photos by running a creative commons search that I have been able to use for presentations, websites, etc. I am really just reciprocating, as I hope others will too.

If you were a fledgling photographer and you licensed your work under creative commons, your work would get distributed much wider than you could ever do yourself. It’s essentially the butterfly effect at work. If you want further proof that this works, read Mark Glaser’s post about the Creative Commons Effect.

To me, it’s just a digital version of karma. When more people are willing to share their work, everyone wins.

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I’m a pretty big fan of Mybloglog and I really like using it, but I see some significant problems that may end up spelling its demise if the MBL/Yahoo crew don’t make the necessary changes soon enough.

1. Security issues – Shoemoney has covered two of them and I’m sure more exist. One is a flaw that lets anyone hijack your “top 5 links” to enter in their own spammy keyword-laced links. Another is a way that uses a MyBlogLog cookie exploit to make people seem like they author websites (when they in reality do not). To me, the entire cookie-based system has some worrying implications beyond this, but I won’t get into that here.

2. “The Myspace problem” – I think bloggers are far less tolerant of visual garbage than the “MySpace crowd”. Currently MyBlogLog allows animated gifs as avatars and has no apparent file size limits. Here’s an example of an avatar that is not only distracting, but weighs in at 735 Kb – That’s huge! That will slow down the loading time of any blog where that member visits. MyBlogLog either needs to disallow animated gif’s altogether or allow publishers to select an option that allows them to prevent animated gifs from showing.

3. Spam – I’ve seen a lot more “racy” photos crop up thoughout the web as people are catching onto the “sex sells” method. These are photos of beautiful (and “under-dressed”) women that seldom have anything to do with the actual visiting member. This spam issue is also closely related to #1 and #2 above and even though it may not be perceived as harmful by some – I think it degrades the original purpose of MyBlogLog and introduces too much noise into the system. If it goes on unchecked, it might erode the way people perceive the system over time.

If MyBlogLog does not address these and any other problems soon after they arise , they may end up becoming the next Friendster.

Update: Seems like a lot of prominent bloggers are talking about comment spam, author hacks, and other My Blog Log issues today – John Chow, Darren Rowse, Danny Sullivan. This is a huge issue for MBL – they better get into reputation management mode, plug the holes, and respond to every one of these posts before this starts to snowball. As of this morning MBL’s blog says they’ve fixed the co-author problem – which is good to see – but what about the other issues?

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Flickr (who are now owned by Yahoo) just made a huge mistake. Yesterday they announced a number of changes to the Flickr service, which have received an overwhelmingly negative response from their community. Among the changes:

• You will now be required to have a Yahoo ID to log on. Users will now be forced to have a Yahoo account.
• The number of contacts a user can have is now limited to 3,000. There are no grandfather clause exceptions – if you have 5,000 contacts, you have to delete 2,001 to be able to add one more.
• Each photo is limited to 75 tags. Personally I don’t think this one is a big deal.

The Flickr community has just about rioted over this – you can read the reactions on their forum page. I know Yahoo has been having branding problems, but this really sheds light on how badly tainted their brand has become. They also just launched Brand Universe site, which seems like an attempt to remix a lot of their user-contributed content into vertical niches (to try to make even more money) – seems like a half-hearted attempt though.

The best alternative to Flickr right now seems to be Zooomr. I haven’t tried Zoomr yet personally, but I’m guessing they’ll get a good percentage of Flickr deserters if this misstep by Yahoo does indeed result in mass exodus from their service. This reminds me of the time Facebook intruduced their “stalker feed” – there was a lot of noise, but most users still stuck around. Flickr users are definately passionate, so it remains to be seen if their actions will actually reflect their complaints.

One take-away: The more passionate your users are, the lighter you have to tread when making changes.

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