I’m not sure I can put an actual date on when my mood and feelings toward Facebook changed. It used to be all the rage – checking up on friends, sharing photos and getting input on important life decisions from your closest friends.

Today, Facebook feels like a chore – blocking and hiding irritating “friends” who seeming take to Facebook for two reasons – (1) to bitch about the horrible experience they had at {insert store here} or (2) to play {insert annoying game here}. I’m no longer leaning toward my screen, engrossed in the content, but instead covering my eyes and holding my nose from the rancid stench of rotting brains.

Retailers aren’t fairing much better. Lame post after lame post has me nearly comatose. I mean, the only reason I liked you is because you offered me a free chicken sandwich. Why not go clean the restrooms that I complained about on your page last week?

Facebook put themselves in this position. Before they introduced sponsored stories and apps that leaked all your information to third parties, they essentially decided to play both sides of the fence. The site began with only user profiles, but then businesses wanted in. The fan page was created and marketers rejoiced. They could interact and “engage” in conversations with their customer. Facebook liked (see the pun there) this because businesses meant deep pockets and lots of revenues.

See, the thing is, for every change that Facebook makes to their platform (which they have every right to do), they take something away from either the users or the advertisers. Rarely has a change benefited both parties. And since Facebook has plenty of users who are addicted out of their mind, the changes usually benefit the advertisers. It’s like the cigarette industry is behind this or something.

I could get all cliche’ and use the “It’s not you, it’s me” line, but I think it’s actually you (Facebook) this time. I’m not worried that I’m being tracked or what you might do with my data, it’s just that I’ve got too many problems of my own. I no longer want to spend my precious time lining someone else’s pockets and cleaning up the social mess you’ve made. I think I’ll be deleting my Facebook account soon… if that’s even possible.

Update:

The Atlantic Wire has a piece with updated information about the addition of ads in your stream.

The downfall of Facebook is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

I could be reading way too much into this, but I’m going to be interested in seeing how this evolves.  This could be the beginning of Facebook’s take into live user-streaming video content.  Instead of having all their users leave the site to record their “hauler” videos on YouTube and UStream, Facebook Live could allow them to record and interact with their friends and fans directly on Facebook’s site.  It could go even deeper to take on such services like Hulu and actually stream live TV right to the web.  That would be cool.

Just my 2 cents.  Am I taking this prediction too far?  Let me know in the comments below.

Crazy Prediction: Facebook Live Set to Take On YouTube, Hulu and UStream is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

The only problem I see with this is that if a user is going this route to create their ads, they’ve probably not put much time into naming their pages or doing any SEO work behind the scenes in terms of adding meta descriptions, ALT tags, etc.

Also, don’t forget to add your call-to-action!

Have you tried this?  Did  you even make it this far in the article?  If so, click the like button below.

via Marketing Pilgrim

Instantly Create Facebook Ads Without Burning Those Brain Cells is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Question Of The Day is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

ReclaimPrivacy.org has a handy bookmarklet that shows which potentially insecure and privacy-invading settings are enabled on your Facebook account when you click it.

ReclaimPrivacy’s bookmarklet focuses on just a few key areas where Facebook can share information with the public—having your contacts, connections, and tagged photos exposed to the public, as well as allowing your friends to accidentally expose that information themselves. It also looks at your relationship with Facebook’s personalization, applications, and other aspects to see what Facebook and independent developers can find out about you, then rates your exposure level in simple Good, Caution, or Insecure levels, along with offering links to change those settings.

ReclaimPrivacy Bookmarklet Rates Your Facebook Exposure Levels.

Threat Level Orange. Find Out How Much of Your Life is Exposed on Facebook. is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

How it works and their vision -  Instead of you posting an update to facebook and then facebook pushing that status to all of your friends (centralized solution), they believe social networks should act more like real people do. They believe you should be able to send out a status and directly interact with your friends on your own, without having to give facebook access to all your personal information.  They call it Diaspora and it’s essentially a decentralized hub that gives you full control over your identity online.  They believe offering this service will be helpful to non-technical users who are worried about their data and privacy online.

How you can help – Go check out their page at Kickstarter and make a pledge.  You’ll only be charged if the project actually gets fully-funded, but as a backer you actually get a piece of the project as well.  A pledge of $5 gets you a version of the software that you can run as your own server.  Of course, bigger donations get you greater access to the project and more freebies.  Signup is simple and donations work with your existing Amazon account.  You’ve really got nothing to lose…except your privacy. Support Diaspora.

Diaspora: Personally Controlled, Do-It-All, Distributed Open-Source Social Network from daniel grippi on Vimeo.

Take Back Your Data. Be A Backer For Diaspora. is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

I Read These Articles, You Should Too is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Working and doing a lot of online marketing, you find some loopholes, but there are also some drawbacks.  The bad thing is that its hard to actually openly search for a job while you have an active blog and social profile.  The things you rely on heavily to communicate with and get the word out, can’t be used as they should when lots of ‘different’ people could potentially be reading it.  You almost have to do it ninja style, sending cryptic DM’s and communicating under the dark of night.

Thinking to myself, I wondered how could I show off my skills to those few ‘dream job’ type of companies. I didn’t really expect I’d get the job or even take it if I did, but it was more an experiment on my own to see if it would work.  So here’s how I got interviews with 2 of the most influential web companies in the country.*

You’ll kick yourself for not thinking of this yourself and come to find out, I’m not even one of the first.  But all I did was buy a couple of Facebook ads and directly target folks that worked at those few companies I was interested in. In the ad, I mentioned who I was, my specialties and if they could introduce me to a hiring manager.  The ad featured my picture which led the user to my resume** located on my site. Boom, I had 2 calls within 4 days for a grand total of $12 spent and less than a hours worth of time.

If you’re new to buying Facebook ads, check out my 101 presentation from Social Camp

That’s it. I wish there was some magic formula to it.  Have you seen creative resumes or ways that people are getting interviews? If so, share them in the comments below.  I promise I’ll work on posting more often too.
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*I’ll keep their names a secret, but the first interview came from a company whose name combines a utility that a man shaves his face with and an aquatic animal and the second interview came from a company which combines a word that defines a market consisting of a street lined with shops common in the Middle East with the the distinctive quality or pitch/condition of a person’s speech.

**Much love for all the time and hard work that Jay put in on my comic.  He took my vision and blew the doors off of it.  With his help and a little time with Comic Life, my resume really stood out in a crowd.

Hack Your Next Job Interview is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

In short, here’s how they did it.  Facebook pages will limit the amount of javascript that can be run on a page.  Google Analytics requires javascript to work correctly.  As a workaround, they’ve created a tool that allows you to embed your Google Analytics code in an image instead of using the standard javascript.  You’ll have to create an image for each page you’d like to track.  For example, if you have separate custom tabs set up on Facebook to display your products,  talk about your services and give users an option to contact you, you’ll need 3 different image tag codes.

To get started, set up a Google Analytics account or add a new website profile if you already have one.  Find your account number within the tracking code they provide.  It will look something like UA-1234567-74. Finally, use their tool to create a custom image tag and then place it at the bottom of each page you need to track. FBML is a great tool to add HTML to your Facebook page.

If you’re super-cool, you can even host the code yourself.  Hosting it yourself gives you the ability to see traffic to and from your site to your Facebook page.

The biggest benefits to using Google Analytics over the package that Facebook provides is the ability to track all users, not just the few that have become fans.  Google also gives you all of the other functions like time on site, keyword tracking and map overlays.

Google Analytics For Your Facebook Fan Page is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

My predictions

• Everybody gets their own iPhone and mobile app.  Sites like MotherApp, GameSalad and Swebapps make it too easy.
• Apple, Facebook or Google will open up and allow publishers to do micro transactions across web with ID & buy digital content everywhere.
• Google Nexus One phone = game changer.  Google will disrupt wireless industry, create new business model for cell phones.
• Buzzword of the year will be “experience.” Companies figure how to create engaging touches  &  inject customer love in every level/dept.
• ^^ above companies forced to create small hybrid groups of PR, Mkting, HR & Cust Service focused on set of clients rather than specific duty
• Adwords gets a 2010 upgrade – smarter, better customer choice, maybe even image ads in results…gasp.  Advertisers forced to get better.
• Advertisers & Marketers will put QR codes everywhere – ads, websites, physical products. Objects will all be connected & enhance experience.
• SEO gets disrupted because of personalized search and Google Caffeine.  Folks who dominated will whine as they lose position.

Predictions from friends

• @clayhebert - Consolidation, mainstream adoption, snake oil exposed, budgets shift from trad to digital, real experts valued & rewarded
• @buckdaddy – Whrrl beat FourSqaure in location based social network. FTC rules will hurt 1 person badly like w music piracy. Available SM jobs will grow
• @jtrigsby – Multiple feeds will converge and enable filtering to produce a more usable life stream of information. Some are doing it now, look for more
• @skippytpe – Social games continue further into meat-space. Mobile media consumption continues to outstrip capacity. Revolution: there’s an app for that.
• @jtrigsby – Number of followers will become less important than quality of friends. Numbers will still be important though, so maybe friend tiers?

Give me your thoughts/predictions/wishes in the comments below.

2010 Digital Marketing Predictions in 140 Characters is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!