I’ve just come across an excellent post titled the 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy by Sharlyn Lauby (the president of Internal Talent Management), in Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Journalists section.

Sharon starts her post by claims that their are two extreme approaches to social media policy making.  The evolutionary way, or by having a clear policy from the outset.  She then lists 10 tips you should most definitely consider.

The list is:

1. Introduce the purpose of social media
2. Be responsible for what you write
3. Be authentic
4. Consider your audience
5. Exercise good judgement
6. Understand the concept of community
7. Respect copyrights and fair use
8. Remember to protect confidential & proprietary information
9. Bring value
10. Productivity matters

Sharon also includes a sample social media policy from the Headset Bros.

Mashable is a site that claims to be “the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news” – well worth a regular visit!

To reflection the influence that social networking sites have had on the English vocabulary in 2009 the Oxford English Dictionary has added, amongst many other words:

• Tweetup – to organise a gatherings through Twitter
• Hashtag – one or more words or phrases prefixed with a hash symbol (#) so that Twitter users can search tweets …
• Unfriend – to drop a contact from Facebook

The Economist newspaper plans to triple its number of fans on Facebook, and gain an eight-fold increase in followers on Twitter.  All within 6 months!  All with a marketing budget of “tens of thousands of pounds”.

The “core” of this strategy is to make the Economist more “social”.  Facebook will help acquire new readers, and develop “a deeper level of engagement” with existing one.  The Economist already has 180,000 fans on Facebook, and a mere 90,000 followers on Twitter – on which they plan to be “a lot more active”.

Ben Edwards, publisher of Economist.com, in which the Financial Times owns a 50% stake, stated that “people aren’t accustomed to being charged for conversations”

In the foreword to Clara Shih book The Facebook Era … (Mar 2009), Marc Benioff (Chairman and CEO of salesforce.com) states “more than ever before, the lines are blurring between the consumer and enterprise worlds … bringing together social networking and enterprise applications represents the next phase in this evolution”

Email is failing.  It was never envisaged to do what we now expect of it.  Email messages grow too long, too difficult to follow, too difficult to track, get lost, and attachments go backwards and forwards with no version control.  Should I read the email where I’m only cc’d?  Can I remember which internal group I’ve just emailed that grumble to? Why do we still use it?  Is there no alternative?

Let’s take a blank page.  Take the best of Facebook.  The best of Twitter.  The number of users of these communication tools,  after all, is growing astronomically.  Something must be right.  Merge all that functionality into one place, sprinkle in filters, user controlled groups, and let it inherit all the robust and proven user control and security of an enterprise system.  Then give it away – free!

This is what salesforce.com’s Chatter is all about.  Expect it to be disruptive.  Expect to see it cloned … every organisation is going to need it to stay competitive.  Everybody in the enterprise is going to use it – it will enable networking, it will encourage collaboration, and, be warned, it will ignore the existing hierarchy.  All you need do is Activate it, nurture it, and wait until it reaches that critical mass of users …

Salesforce.com’s User Profiles (a collection of settings and permissions that defines a user) will be extended to include the users Chatter settings – including a current photo (user controlled, of course), and status: “Working on major marketing campaign, anybody have any experience of using VerticalResponse?”.  Twitter like status updates will appear on the users home page – in real-time: “there’s a new vacancy in the London office“,  “the printer on third floor is now working“, – but also, from salesforce.com Workflow triggers, and alerts: “Major donor not been contacted for 90 days!“, and “Large donation made by Corporate Sponsor“.  The user will have full control over the feeds (however, there’s some ambiguity from what I’ve read and seen as to whether email will be included in this – it aught to be), groups (small, and large – added instantly by the user; both public and private; and even secret groups: where that discussion on the “up and coming merger” can continue with confidence), the display can be filtered to show just Object (a salesforce.com term!  Think of Record), a team, Tweets on that competitor you’re following,  …

Better still, when it’s made available in Spring 2010 to all salesforce.com editions for free, all existing applications including those developed by third parties (or, downloaded from the AppExchange), will automatically acquire all this Chatter functionality.  And, of course, it will be on your mobile.  And, of course, it will come with a Desktop app (for when your not logged in to salesforce.com).  And, of course, it comes with a full set of APIs. And, …

Oh, these are interesting times

A Norwegian Consumer Protection Agency has just won a three year legal battle with Apple.  Flush with success the Agency are now targeting Facebook, followed by Twitter, followed by LinkedIn, followed by …

The Agencies battle was specifically against Apples iTune, the online music store.  Following the intervention of the European Commission, Apple are required to change their DRM (Digital Rights Management) terms of reference.  The Agencies contention was that iTunes terms of reference were rarely read, rarely understood, and were not in line with even the most basic off-line contractual and privacy laws.  Essentially, Apple has no unilateral right to change the terms of reference at any time, and no unilaterally right to terminate a contract at any time.  Similarly, users had no right to know what information is stored about them, where it’s stored, and no right to correct wrongful on-line information stored about them on iTunes (e.g Data Protection Act)

The Agency, in preparing their case, conducted a year of research of the use of Social Media networks in Norway.  They found that some 96% of 15-30 year old are members of at least one Social Media network.  The also observed a 20% increase in the membership of Social Media networks by over 51 year olds.

Source:  Matthew Magee, Out-Law Radio (the podcast can be downloaded here).  Out-Law Radio is part of the International law firm, Pinsent Masons LLP.

Working on Setting Your Social Media Strategy?  Then this video, from salesforce.com’s Dreamforce 2009 (the “Global Gathering” of nearly 16,000 people in San Francisco – http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF09/site/), is a must

The presenters are Jamie Grenney (Sr. Director of Social Media at salesforce.com), and Vida Killian (Social Media and Community Technology Manager at Dell – with some 10 years experience of Social Media at Dell).  Dell are a salesforce.com user

In the video Jamie presents a slide showing some quite astronomic growth in Social Media usage.  This includes:

• Facebook: 124 million “actual users” with 202% growth rate year on year
• Twitter: 26 million “actual users” with 660% growth rate year on year

(source: complete.com 2009, growth rate Oct. 2008- Oct. 2009)
Continue reading…

OK.  It is another salesforce.com video – but it’s good about explain SaaS … enjoy.