When you lead a digital life, it’s only a matter of time until death makes its way online.  

The Lien Foundation, an organization seeking to improve care for the dying, allows people to ’befriend’ Death on Facebook and ‘die-logue’ with him. The Foundation’s Life Before Death initiative also offers tools for the living that can improve their ‘quality of dealth.’

Last Playlist  - Create and share a song playlist to celebrate your life when you’re ready for the afterlife. Top Last Playlist songs include, “Bad Romance,” ”Call on Me,” “More than Words,” “Dancing Queen” and “Man in the Mirror.” How long before “Highway to Hell” climbs the chart?

 Bucket List – Create and share your bucket list (things you want to do before you die) on Facebook. Popular bucket list items include backpacking Europe, publishing a book, earning a million dollars and getting a tattoo.

Say It – Make and share public declarations before you die. Send a message of love, regret or confession. Unload that secret or long-overdue love note. Post it online before it’s too late – whether it’s a tribute, thank you or expression of regret – some things are better said now than gone six feet under.

In July, the Foundation released a Quality of Death (QOD) index, the first-ever global study on the quality of death.  The United States ranked ninth in the study for overall QOD behind leaders such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and five others.  The United States ranked 31st (among 40 countries) in the affordability of ‘end of life’ care.

Madisoan-based Entrustit offers Account Guardian — a more practical afterlife tool for the living.  This tool creates a secure list of your digital assets, nominate an executor and decide which assets should go to which heir and which should be destroyed. Your data can never be viewed by anyone until after we’ve double verified that you’ve passed away. All Entrustit data is encrypted using 256-bit SSL provided by Verisign.  In upcoming months, Entrustit hopes to offer a new tool called “account incinerator” that deletes accounts privately upon verification of death.

Tools offered by Entrustit and other companies like Legacy Locker, help protect and retain our online legacies (digital photos, journals, blogs, etc.) and ease the burden on our loved ones. 

Credits: Cartoon courtesy of Doug Savage, SavageChickens.com.

The Meaning of Life: Death

Try and be nice to people. Avoid eating fat. Read a good book every now and then. Get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations. (Monty Python, 1983)

Video is popular. The most recent comScore study indicates that 183 million U.S. Internet users watched an all-time record 33.9 billion online videos in May, 2010.

Video is social. YouTube is the most popular site for viewing online video (43 percent) and content viewed on YouTube and other sites is often driven by sharing on social networks where users spend the majority of their online time.

Video is effective. As it turns out, a moving picture is worth 1,000 words. Internet video are just as educational as their text-based equivalent. According to a study by Eyetools Inc, individuals who watch educational videos have nearly the same recall as individuals who learn the same info from traditional text.

Although YouTube recently (July, 2010) increased the maximum length of videos from 10 to 15 minutes, the attention span of online users is significantly less. YouTube video completion rates aren’t given, but many viewers click away from a video before it ends. That is why the average duration of a YouTube video is significantly less (four minutes) and why the most popular educational videos (from companies like CommonCraft) target 2-3 minutes.

Thankfully, online videos have more real estate to offer than their offline predecessors: the Internet.

YouTube allows companies to add interactive commentary to their videos; add background information about the video; and insert links to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video using video annotations. Companies can utilize viewers’ access to the Internet and include links to lengthy credits, citations and disclaimers that increase the length (and decrease the effectiveness) of their online videos.

Disclaimer Example:

Although the publishers of this video have made every effort to ensure that the content of this video is accurate, this video is provided “as is” and [company name] makes no representations or warranties in relation to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained therein.

The author, publishers and marketers of this information disclaim any loss or liability, either directly or indirectly as a consequence of applying the information presented or in regard to the use and application of any of the information contained in this video.

[company name] cannot ensure that the information will be kept up to date, or that this video will always be available for use. Moreover, [company name] does not warrant that the servers that make this video available will be virus or bug free; and therefore, you accept responsibility to make adequate provision for protection against such threats.

Nothing in this video should be taken to constitute professional advice or a formal recommendation and we recommend that you seek out a competent professional before you decide to act on any of the information contained in this video.

[Company Info]

Linking to video-related content (like the above disclaimer) instead of including it in videos makes videos more effective, interactive and social. It also makes related content easier to manage. Credits can be enriched with links to related bios and websites. Citations can be added. Facts can be updated. Disclaimers can printed. Discussion forums can be added.

No internet video is an island.

Credits: Image courtesy of Jakob Nielsen’s website, useit.com.

Many mobile users have tinkered with location-based social networking in the past 12 months.  However, things are expected to get serious now – as Facebook enters the fray.

The location-based social networking space is currently dominated by Foursquare with more 2 million users. Foursquare is a mobile/web application that allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location. 

Social aspects of Foursquare are slim — Users earn points and badges for checking into locations; they attach ’Tips’ to a locations; and they publish their check-ins to Twitter and Facebook.

Despite Foursquare’s hype, according to a recent survey from Forrester, 84 percent of web users are unaware of the application and its lesser-known counterparts such as Gowalla and Brightkite. According to the Forrester survey, only 4 percent of U.S. online adults use location social networks on their mobile phones. And, of these, only 1 percent use them more than once a week.

As Facebook offers location features,  location-based social networking will become mainstream overnight.  There are more than 500 million active facebook users. Of these, more than 20 percent already access Facebook regularly using mobile devices. Additionally, Facebook is expected to offer an API for application developers (including Foursquare, Gowalla, and BrightKite) to reach Facebook users directly. 

Facebook’s entry into location-based social networking — and API offering – is exciting:  it will drive rapid exploration, innovation, and widespread adoption of location-based social media using mobile devices. 

Credits: Photo courtesy of handheldmuseum.com.

Where’s Waldo?

When Facebook integrates location services for its 500 million users, privacy settings will become EVEN MORE important.

Until recently, your chances of being recommended by Twitter were rare and the rules for being added to Twitter’s suggested user list were vague.  It made unknown individuals like Anil Dash, spontaneously famous. Why? When a new user signs up for Twitter, they’re presented with a list of about 20 “default” accounts to follow — which often included Dash for no apparent purpose.

“I’m obviously not a better tweeter than 99 million other Twitter users, ” Dash blogged. “I never asked to be on the list, and it’s never been explained to me why I was chosen. Ultimately it’s clear that the decision of whom to feature is essentially an arbitrary choice by Twitter , and that at best, I represent something they’d want to show new users.”

Dash said he had 18,000 followers in October, 2009, before being added to the suggested user list. By the end of the year, his follower base grew close to 300,000. Well above the 25,000 he expected.  Today, Dash retains more than 335,000 followers — most of which he attributes to Twitter’s suggestion list.

Now, Twitter suggests followers using a new crowdsourcing algorithm (in the ‘find people’ section of your profile).  The suggestions are based on several factors..most notably, the  people you follow and the people they follow.  This new approach benefits EVERYONE on Twitter, since you’ll be suggested as friend for many of your existing twitter friends.

Since the algorithm was introduced a few weeks ago, I’ve seen stead additions to my list of follower…And, I’ve added 20-30 new friends that I probably wouldn’t have found without browsing the individual follower lists of my 200+friends or 1,500+ follower.

The only danger I see in this approach is that it does reward Twitter’s most active followers the most.  This means that users that accept friends and followers without discretion could viewed as having more substance than they actually have.  However, I’ll trust Twitter’s user relevance team to address these concerns as they fine-tune their new friend finding logic.

Credits: Cartoon courtesy of Geek and Poke.

Follow Me

“Follow Me” is a single by Uncle Kracker. It was released in 2001 and went to number one on the ARIA Charts in Australia. It was a huge success, reaching #5 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, and is one of Uncle Kracker’s highest charting song to date.

Wave, Google’s innovative web application for real-time communication and collaboration, was a collaborative silo. This is why, on August 4, 2010, Google announced the suspension of Wave development: “Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.”

The collaborative tools of Wave were fierce… It bundled email, instant messaging, threaded conversations and rich media as “waves of content” to be shared with others.  Wave updates were available in real-time — and historically via playback in chronological order. Any participant of a wave could reply anywhere within the message, edit any part of the wave, and add participants at any point in the process.

However, the distribution model for Wave was flawed. it was only released to 100,000 developers as a preview. Thereafter — until May, 2010 — it was only available by special request or invitation. As a result, people who obtained Google’s collaboration tool had few people to collaborate with.

Google’s distribution model based on ‘exclusivity’ was a poorly-chose approach for a collaboration tool.

Meet Doctor Wave

Product manager Greg, a.k.a. Dr. Wave, gives an introduction to Google Wave and points out parts of the user interface. (Note: This is meant to be viewed inside Google Wave.)

In the current, tough economy, this story is common:

What makes Marie’s story unique, is that her favorite store was the Facebook Gift Store, which ceased operation this month. Almost half of all businesses fail within the first four years, and it seems that the Facebook Gift shop is no exception. Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, allowing users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appeared on their friend’s profile. Each gift was priced at $1.00. In 2009, Facebook began offering ‘Facebook Credits’ as virtual currency (10 credits for a dollar) that users could spend on premium gifts.

“Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts,” product manager Jared Morgenstern wrote on Facebook’s official blog. “We’ll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the ‘Like’ button and the Wall.”

The gifts that users have already received using the Facebook Gift Shop remain visible, and they can still view their sent and received gifts on their gifts page. However, to send new gifts on Facebook, users will have to utilize third-party Facebook applications, such as ‘Celebrations‘ that allow Facebook users to send gifts for free.

In the end, it may have become difficult for the Facebook Gift Shop to compete with free, third party gift applications. Or, the Gift Shop’s toughest competition may have been the Facebook Wall itself — which users routinely utilize to post birthday sentiment without attaching e-cards or gifts.

Nevertheless, Facebook Credits remain big business within games such as Farmville. According to Inside Social Games, the market for virtual goods generated more than one billion dollars in revenue in 2009 — and could hit 1.6 billion in 2010. About 80 percent of the virtual goods revenue on Facebook is being generated by third-party application.

Going Out of Business Sale

Unlike many other businesses that failed in the current economy, the Facebook Gift Shop doesn’t have to worry about liquidating it’s remaining inventory.

Nearly 200 million people in the US share their address and phone number in phone books — this is roughly equivalent to the number of people who publicly share personal info on Facebook.

In both cases, sharing private info is a personal choice.

Security concerns over Facebook were highlighed again when security consultant Ron Bowes collected the names and profile URLs for 171 million Facebook accounts from publicly available information and shared it with the world.

The file shared by Bowes contained information for 20 percent of Facebook users. Nothing is dubious or illegal about Bowe’s actions, though, because it simply shares data that is available to the public.

I get a bit frustrated when people describe Bowe’s act as a ‘leak.’  It’s not a leak. Facebook security was never compromised. No one’s privacy was exploited. The info from these 171 million profiles that is publicly available — even now — to everyone. It’s information that people are choosing to share. 

Bowes was just the first opportunist to highlight how important it is for individuals to adjust their Facebook privacy settings.

Credits: Cartoon courtesy of Daryl Cagle.

What’s the Face of YOUR Facebook profile?

We created the following video at American Family Insurance to inform employees about Facebook privacy settings. Now, its available for everyone. Enjoy!

But they’re wrong.

Effective social networking isn’t about HOW MANY PEOPLE you connect with: It’s about HOW WELL CONNECTED with each individual you are that matters. That is why LinkedIn’s core networking philosophy is that users should send connection invitations only to people with whom they have a prior relationship.

LinkedIn requires users to know someone’s email address to invite them to become part of your network — but LinkedIn users users who play the numbers game (LinkedIn Open Networkers, or LIONs) circumvent the requirement by publicly posting their email addresses in their profiles, and letting others know that they openly accept invitations from ANYONE.

Linkedin actively discourages these activities in a number of ways. For example, they added “I don’t know this person” as standard response to connection invites.  And, LinkedIn users that get flagged by five of these are automatically restricted.

A more-effective way of “playing by the numbers” is to identify four to six of the most beneficial connections your have on LinkedIn and to foster deeper relationships with these key individuals — as your personal Board of Directors.  Just as a company’s board of directors offers their experience to guide decision making, your personal board of directors can do the same in your personal and professional life.

“Your Board is a small group of people who know your strengths and weaknesses, but are not necessarily tied to the emotional outcome of your decisions,” said Amy Dorn Kopelan of Guru Nation. ” The commonality is people who are able to help you think, and can be objective.” The board should not include only friends and family members. It should be a diverse group that can pose the big questions that need to be asked. Although you can communicate frequently with board members by phone, email and social networks, try to meet with board members face-to-face occasionally — over coffee, breakfast or lunch — and ALWAYS pick up the tab: It demonstrates the value you place on your board members’ relationship, advice, and time.

Use your board regularly, but without overtaxing them. Like muscles, social networks grow stronger every time you exercise them properly — but they can also be easily strained.

Credits: Cartoon is courtesy of Rob Cottingham.

Chairman of the Board

Chairman of the Board was one of many heroic epithets used to describe Frank Sinatra. He was also known as ‘The Voice’, ‘The King of Crooners’, and ‘Old Blue Eyes’. Enjoy this video tribute to “That’s Life.”

During the 18th century coffeehouses throughout Europe were popular meeting places for artists and socialites. Today, they remain hubs of social activity… but a lot of it happens online. Coffee shops patrons are paired with laptops or smart phones instead of human companions — which makes coffee shops much much less interesting than they used to be.

On the weekends, 80 to 90 percent of tables and chairs in my favorite coffee stops are taken up by people using computers.  Some patrons camp out at the best seating locations for six to eight hours — without buy anything and without interacting with anyone else around them.

Call me ‘old school,’ but I still utilize coffee shops daily for face to face interactions. I do my online social networking at home with my first cup of coffee in hand. I get up, fire up my Keurig single-serving coffee machine, and great the day on social networks before the rest of the household wakes up. The first cup lasts 15 to 20 minutes… which happens to be the perfect amount of time to manage the bulk of my social network activity.

During my first cup of coffee, I read the incoming Facebook stream from friends, respond to Facebook comments on my wall, check my FB inbox, send birthday greetings, and tend to my Twitter profile as well.  This timing works great — as long as I stick to routine tasks without being distracted by social network games, quizzes, or applications.

Social networks have replaced the newspaper in my morning routine.

I’m not the only one who’s integrated social networking into their morning routine: According to a recent study by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed research,  one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up — even before going to the bathroom (a urological feat to men over 40).

Dennis Leary on Coffee

My favorite part of his rant: “Coffee doesn’t need a menu, it needs a cup,” says Dennis Leary. “That’s all it needs.”

What can drive the fastest growing website in the US in one month and obliterate it the next? Facebook.

Using a free development platform has its costs. In December, 2009, FamilyLink.com was rated by ComScore as the fastest growing website in the US.  In January, 2010, the site attracted 17.7 million monthly active users and 1,000,000 daily active users. The site was ranked in the top 100 Web sites in the United States.

Until (virtually overnight) it wasn’t.

The site’s  growth was crippled when Facebook removed the notifications functionality from their API, effectively cutting off FamilyLink.com’s ability to communicate with their customers. The end-result of this API change was a 80 percent decrease in traffic — and related revenue.

Most experienced Facebook developers have similar stories. A week ago (7/1/2010)  Facebook’s blog announced “The attachment functionality of the Publisher is being deprecated.”  To a typical Facebook user, that doesn’t mean much — but for some applications, changes like this can be devasting. In this case, it means that applications that allow you to attach items to Facebook status updates are being ‘kicked out’ of this valuable real estate — so that the Facebook gifts application doesn’t have to complete with third-party applications.

Facebook functions come and go — with little warning or notification — and Facebook applications rise and fall (mostly fall) in the aftermath.

It’s chaotic. It’s frustrating. It’s reality.

Facebook’s success has been the result of its openness and the availability of applications that keep users engaged and entertained. According to Facebook:

• Facebook attracts more than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
• More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
• More than one million websites have integrated with Facebook Platform
• More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month

Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook. Their results (as demonstrated by FamilyLink) vary greatly based on the Facebook.

I’ll say it again: Using a free development platform has its costs.

Credits: Cartoon is courtesy of clangnuts.com.

Promises. Promises

At F8, Facebook provided developers with a stream of new information and data using Open Graph. However, developers don’t need to be reminded that Facebook controls all the knozzles in their datastream.