The Social Path

Happy National Rebound Week! (Per Facebook, at least.)

Ah spring... love is in the air!

Oh wait, what's that? The bitter stench of rejection, heartbreak, beer and sunburns? It must be Spring Break!

The above chart isn't necessarily new, but it's relevant as Spring Break-bound college students all over the country prepare to party, and according to David McCandless, prepare to be single. 

According to their research of 10,000 Facebook status updates over a year, more breakups occur in the weeks leading up to and during Spring Break than any other time of the year. 

So cheer up, downheartened ladies and gents. If you got dumped before spring break you're definitely not alone. Maybe raise your glass a little less and your standards a lot more.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Hat tip to Sharpton for providing the graph.

Log in as your Facebook Page and maintenance will be a breeze.

I've had a number of conversations with friends and small business owners about the maintenance of their Facebook Pages and what deters them from using it.

One of the biggest obstacles was the lack of a notification tool for new comments, especially when they were posted to older content such as photo albums. Recently, Facebook enabled the ability to receive e-mail updates about new comments on your Pages, but this can leave your inbox bombarded with notifications.

So if you're having trouble keeping track of comments, questions, and potential new customers, you might want to make a habit of logging in as your Page to make it all a bit easier.

The process is pretty simple, but here's a quick primer:

On the right side of your business Page, select "Use Facebook as (your Page)." When you switch over, in place of new friend and personal notifications, you'll get new fan updates and page activity notifications. You can log back in as yourself any time.

It's an often overlooked benefit of the new Pages, one that's simple and could save you mountains of time.

On a related note, we've had some questions about the ability to comment on your Page as yourself instead of under the Page's name. Sometimes this can be a nice way to "humanize" your Page, or just to introduce yourself to customers.

However, commenting as yourself on a Page is a bit trickier than you might think.

In the upper right  corner of your Page, select "Edit Page" and then "Your Settings." Uncheck the first box, "Always comment and post as your page" to be able to comment as yourself when not logged in as your page.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Join us for Birmingham Twestival 2011, benefiting children's literacy.

For years, Twitter has faced constant consternation for being too shallow, too inane, too muddled in minutia of daily life.

But the reality is that Twitter can be an incredible resource for building and strengthening community. It brings us together and reminds us, in real time, that we’re part of a real world.

Few events have highlighted the power and potential of Twitter quite like the annual Twestival, an international day of fundraising that has generated more than $1.2 million in donations from more than 200 cities across  45 countries.

And when Twestival 2011 arrives on Thursday, March 24, I’m excited to say that our hometown of Birmingham will be taking part for the first time.

Sponsored by the team here at Luckie & Company, the Birmingham Twestival will benefit United Way of Central Alabama. Specifically, all money raised during our one-night event will help United Way support Imagination Library, which provides free books each month for children across the region.

Here are the details:

Birmingham Twestival 2011

What it is: A casual happy hour mixer benefitting United Way and Imagination Library

When: 4-7 p.m., Thursday, March 24

Where: Parkside Café, 4036 5th Avenue South, Birmingham (across from Avondale Park)

Who’s invited: Anyone who likes Twitter, supporting good causes and chatting with smart people in their community

What it costs: No cover charge, but we’d love it if you brought a little scratch to donate (see below for details)

Best of all: Every dollar donated at Birmingham Twestival, up to the first $500, will be matched by Luckie & Company.

How you can help:

• Spread the word!

• RSVP on the Facebook event, and share it with friends.

• Follow @BhamTwestival on Twitter

• Bring a donation check made out to UWCA, with “Imagination Library” in the memo line. Cash is fine, too.

• Every $30 donated is a year’s worth of books for one Alabama child, so feel free to consider that amount as an easy donation level.

• Can’t attend? Donate directly to United Way of Central Alabama, and be sure to let us know so we can add you to the fund-raising tally!

Hope to see you there!

UPDATE: Thanks to your generosity, Birmingham Twestival was a huge success! We surpassed our goal and raised $1,027 for Imagination Library. That will provide lots of literature for our kids.

Again, many thanks to everyone who made this event such a success.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Beluga fills the void: Mobile group chat made simple.

Over the past few years, easy-to-use group chatting has been often attempted but rarely achieved.

Google over-reached with its collaborative tool Wave, and Facebook recently made some headway by retooling its Groups into private chat rooms of a sort.

But creating mobile, group conversations has remained an elusive goal. Until now. Group chat was one of the big buzz areas of this year's South By Southwest, and one name seemed to surface the most: Beluga.

Founded by former Google staffers and recently aquired by Facebook, Beluga brings simple and addictive group chat to iPhones, Android devices and the Web.

You can begin by finding friends who already use the app, or invite them via e-mail or phone number.  You must sign in using your Facebook profile, which might be a deterant for privacy-phobes and Facebook holdouts. Otherwise, it's really very sleek.

Groups are called "pods" and can be assigned names, like "Lunch Bunch" or "Party Planners." The application has push notification, making it easy to keep up with conversations. You can also share your location and images — ie, things you might not be inclined to share with the world.

Friends who haven't downloaded the application can still participate through text. I'd assume this means Blackberry and (gasp) non-smartphone users could chat through their text messaging platform, but I'm not sure because I don't know anyone who still lives in 2007.

As you can see in my screenshot, Luckie's Finest (yeah, we said it), are big fans. Beluga offers a simple, streamlined way to chat with specific groups of friends without the clunkiness of group texting or the public exposure of Twitter.

Have you tried Beluga, or competitors like FastSociety and GroupMe? Can you think of any features Beluga could improve/add to make it go mainstream?  Let us know in the comments.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Don't tweet yourself into the unemployment line. Here's an easy tip.

At best, errant tweeting can leave you embarassed. At worst, it can leave you unemployed.

This week, a social media professional accidentally tweeted inappropriately from the Chrysler account he managed, lost his job, and now his agency has lost the account.

But this isn't an isolated incident. Last month, a Red Cross employee accidentally tweeted about a night of drinking; she didn't lose her job after the misfire. And there were plenty of similar cases before that one.

All of these faux pas were honest mistakes, but they show how disasterous inattentive tweeting can be. Realizing that most of these errors occurred while using a phone-based application, we at Luckie decided it was time to put serious thought into a policy to address this issue.

We put our heads together during an all-day, non-billable think tank and came up with an extensive crisis-aversion plan. And now we'll share our ingenious idea with you:

Use separate applications for professional and personal accounts.

Frighteningly simple fix, right? There are dozens and dozens of Twitter applications, and you're probably very fond of your choice application. But simply find a comfortable second option. I'll be using Twitterific and Twitter for iPhone. My colleague David Griner will be using Echofon as his backup to Twitter for iPhone.

Share your favorite applications in the comments, and if you've topped our brilliant resolution to this problem, please share that as well.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Photo credit: Zac Peckler on Flickr.

Google HotPot: The best app you didn't know existed

Toward the end of 2010, Google quietly launched a great new review application called HotPot. It's sleek, user friendly and thorough. You can search and rate everything from restaurants to toy stores to parks, all from one easy application. 

In order to vote, all you have to do is sign in to Google (so if you're on Gmail right now, you're already logged on). You also must create a username. The voting has a few easy, fun steps to complete, all without leaving the main page. When you select the star rating for the item you'd like to review, the selection flips like a baseball card. Then you can fill in your stats, write a description if you'd like and submit.

In addition to submissions from HotPot, Google aggregates reviews from all over the Web - so instead of nine crummy reviews from one application, you get a true measure of the place's value. 

HotPot is built into the Google Places iPhone and Android applications (without the HotPot name attached at all, which is weird) and is every bit as simple as the Web application. Google recently announced Twitter integration of HotPot in its Google Maps for Android app, but Twitter sharing is noticeably absent on the Web-based and iPhone applications.

This is one of Google's best ventures into social applications, and in time I believe it will become the most reputable and popular. So be sure to step up and claim your business to get into the game early.

The Social Path's vote is five stars! Great service, atmosphere and value - but now we're starving.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Facebook puts fan comments back in chronological order.

We recently noted the lack of any clear organization with how fan comments were displayed on Facebook pages. For some reason, Facebook had abandoned chronological order in favor of some unpredictably algorithm, and the decision quickly became the least popular aspect of the recent Page redesign.

Well now we've got good news. During the night, Facebook changed the wall format for business Pages once again, defaulting back to "Most Recent" posts.

There were a few subtle, related changes as well. But the most important shift was the new wall settings available for Pages set to show "Everyone" (which includes fan comments, compared to the setting to show "Only Posts By Page"):

If you really want to use the "Top Posts" system that supposedly puts more popular items higher on the Page, feel free. But most admins will likely choose "Most Recent," which is the default.

Facebook deserves credit for listening to its Page admins and changing this issue so quickly. Besides the odd decision to randomize the Page photo strip (although we've certainly had fun with it) I'm officially out of complaints and, gosh darnit, I think I might even be happy. 

Do you have any remaining quibbles with Facebook and the new Page design?

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Photo credit: Mademoiselle G on Flickr.

Fresh on the scene: Alabama Social Media Association.

Just a quick note of congrats to our local friends who've just launched the Alabama Social Media Association, a new professional organization dedicated to helping businesses and individuals use social media more effectively.

The group's leadership team includes a diverse pool of bloggers, community organizers and communication professionals, and I've really enjoyed watching the organization come together in recent months.

Here's a brief description from their website, which officially launched today:

The Alabama Social Media Association (ALSOCME) is a professional organization open to anyone who wishes to share ideas or advance their knowledge of social media and how it is used by businesses, organizations, and consumers.

The group's first event — a presentation by Birmingham social media icon Ike Pigott — is already sold out for March 30, but you can try signing up for the waiting list. You can also sign up for their e-mail alerts on Facebook.

Congrats again to everyone involved. We look forward to seeing the group grow into a true asset for Alabama's digital community.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Look before you tweet: Hasty posts can have harsh consequences

It's a frustrating byproduct of our hyper-connected world: Breaking news has become old news.

In an effort to be in the know and more importantly, in the conversation, we have neglected accuracy or education for the sake of urgency. I believe Ricky Bobby put it best when he explained, "If you're not first, you're last." We all race and read headlines and maybe, just maybe, scan an article or news story before we hastily text, tweet, post, or comment.

Most of the time the average person gets away with it without consequence but that wasn't the case for Nir Rosen, a journalist who lost his fellowship at NYU over hasty tweeting. Nir posted a link to this article from CBS News on the sexual assult of reporter Lara Logan with the comment, "Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson [Cooper]. Where was her buddy McCrystal?" He then went on to defend his statement in further tweets having still not read the article to discover that the assult was of a sexual nature.

All this from a journalist.

It's not a new phenomenon for people rush to form opinions before being properly informed. What is new is the speed at which we can diseminate misinformation. I count myself amongst the guilty masses but marketers, brands, and writers must use caution.

Last year Mashable posted a link to an article about MSNBC's purchase of BreakingNews.com, with a tweet leading people to believe Mashable had in fact been purchased by MSNBC (we wrote about it at the time). So no more quippy, fun headlines? I guess not. If you need help redirecting your snark, contact Griner.

I don't mean to climb on a soapbox about society. I'm sure we all agree this is a dangerous trend and I'm betting 95% of you are guilty of hastily retweeting before reading. What I'm curious about is....

• Are you guilty?
• Have you had a misinformed "reader" raise hell about you or your brand, and what was the result?
• And what have you seen as a solution, if any?

We're not gonna change the social habit of uniformed opinions, but is there anyway to control misinformation?

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Carlos Adampol on Flickr