Digital Family Reunion
It’s a holiday tradition for social media enthusiasts and technology executives…The Digital Family Reunion in Los Angeles.
On Wednesday, December 11, 2013 from 6pm – 10pm, join Southern California’s largest holiday gathering of technology and digital media professionals at the Skirball Cultural Center. In partnership with socalTECH.com, DFR ’13 will honor the inaugural socalTECH 50 list of emerging visionaries, technologists and entrepreneurs most likely to create the next breakout company, technological leap, or otherwise influence the industry in a significant way.
The event started off as a gathering of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 strategists and has evolved to being the holiday party of the season.
Now, it’s no secret that the SoCal tech scene is on fire. Google, YouTube and others have opened major offices in LA. Incubators abound, and start-ups are emerging once again from garages, coffee shops and co-working spaces across the region. Even in December, it’s going to be hot hot hot!
Who Will Be There?
With 40+ community partners and sponsors reaching out to their core constituencies, it will be a mash-up of who’s who in social business and tech. This cross-disciplinary affair ensures a room full of people you just have to meet, including those being honored at the socalTECH 50.
Tickets are $50, but we’ve got a promo code to save you $20.
REGISTER NOW at http://www.digitalfamilyinc.com and use promo code DFR30 at check out.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Experts Say Some Women Face Violence Through Social Media
When I was asked as a cyber-relations expert to contribute to an article about cyberstalking and social media safety for Women’s E News, I was honored to provide my two cents worth.
The story appeared in the Ottowa Citizen, Cyberstalking turns web technologies into weapons. The article headline is pretty powerful and will raise several digital eyebrows.
Before you accuse me of being a “Debbie Downer,” you should know that I absolutely love social media. It’s changed all forms of communication, marketing, journalism, and helped develop strong bonds between people who have a voice that should be heard.
When it was pointed out to me that the U.S. National Violence Against Women Survey reported that 60% of cyberstalking victims were women, I realized that we all have a responsibility as friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter to take notice if any of our digital friends are in trouble.
In the U.K., a cyberstalking study conducted by the British Electronic Communication Harassment Organization at Bedford University found that harassment via social networking sites, mobile phone, and email was greater than stalking in-real-life.
As an estimated 4% of cyberstalkers appear on traditional online dating sites, my advice in the article was as follows:
“If a date goes bad or someone breaks up, the jilted person can use the very sites through which they met their victims to turn around and harass them,” says Julie Spira, creator of the site Cyberdatingexpert.com.”
It’s my mission to help people safely navigate the web, both in matters of the heart and in everyday life. Cyber-safety is at the top of my list and I hope you join me in making the the world-wide-web a safer place to reside.
Julie Spira is a cyber-relations and online dating expert and the author of the bestseller, The Perils of Cyber-Dating. She’s the CEO of Social Media and More and Editor-in-Chief at CyberDatingExpert.com.
Photo Credit: © MacX – Fotolia.com
Countdown to BlogWorld in Los Angeles
In less than 24-hours, over 4000 bloggers and social media enthusiasts will congregate in Los Angeles for BlogWorld and New Media Expo.
Here’s your last chance to save 20% on tickets to BlogWorld, being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on November 3-5, 2011.
I’ll be a featured speaker on Friday, November 4th at 1:45 pm in room 518 to talk about The Rules of Netiquette: How to Mind Your Virtual Manners.
Following my speech, I’ll have a quick meet-and-greet and will head over to the Barnes & Noble BlogWorld bookstore to sign copies of The Perils of Cyber-Dating at 4:00 pm.
If you’re planning on attending, do connect with me on Twitter @JulieSpira during the conference.
For a sneak peek of my presentation, you can watch this video.
I look forward to seeing you there!
7 Google Plus Link Shorteners
Still waiting for your Google Plus vanity URL or are wondering how to shorten your Google+ URL?
With all of the excitement of Google +, it’s not hard to feel frustrated about having a long profile user name. As of now, Google is not allowing custom or vanity URL’s for their new social networking site, leaving us with a series of numbers that even most mathematician’s wouldn’t remember.
To let your friends and social media colleagues join you on Google+, there are a few great custom URL shorteners to select from. In my digital opinion, I say grab them all to protect your brand name. All you need to do is type in your long Google profile URL. Mine is https://plus.google.com/114190935413397701623/ so look for the long series of numbers on your profile page.
Add in your desired custom user name on the list of shorteners below. I used my first and last name, juliespira, to be in digital alignment with my twitter profile, as seen below.
The only trick will be in remembering which of these shorteners you’ve decided to use to promote your profile on your facebook, twitter, linkedin, or other social networking page. I’ve been favoring Gplus.to, but they’ll all work just fine.
Link shorteners
- Gplus.to/juliespira
- Glpl.us/juliespira
- Plusya.com/juliespira
- Gplus.name/juliespira
- gPlusNick.com/juliespira
- GooPlu.com/juliespira
- Myplus.name/juliespira
Feel free to connect with me if you’d like to hang out or join one of my circles. It’s an exciting time for social media enthusiasts and I look forward to seeing you there.
Imitation Isn’t a Form of Flattery
As the World-Wide-Web becomes more and more like the Wild-Wild-West with the addition of new social networks such as Google+ as well as the MySpace cyber face lift, it’s time to pause and take a look at how we are representing or mis-respresenting ourselves in the digital world.
If you ask any Hollywood agent, they’ll tell you there really aren’t any original ideas out there. To stand out in the crowded digital playing field, you need to have a unique voice and build your brand.
So what happens when you see your company logo on another’s profile on a social networking site? Perhaps they’ve found it on Google images or were just hoping you wouldn’t notice. Between Google alerts and your friends in the blogosphere, one can only hope that you’re keeping a digital eye on your brand.
Recently, I shared the story on Huffington Post of how my personal identity was copied on Twitter for the second time in two years. Twitter doesn’t take this lightly. They call it impersonation. I say, imitation isn’t a form of flattery.
In the first case, I notified Twitter. Five days later, the account of the copy-cat was suspended due to suspicious activity. In the second incident, I was fortunate that a social media friend spotted it upon first tweet. The person using my logo apologized and removed it from their profile.
Without further digital adieu, here are my recommendations on how to protect your brand identity.
- File a copyright registration for your logo at copyright.gov
- Create a Google alert for your personal name, company name, and tagline at google.com/alerts
- Create a search with your keywords on Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, or other social media software management tools
- File a trademark for your company name and logo at uspto.gov
- Take any digital dispute offline
- Report any blatant incidents to the social network
Social media attorney Adrian Dayton agrees with this approach. “Social networks take identity theft extremely seriously, most people don’t realize that if they are a victim the first step is to notify Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook immediately,” said Dayton.
Dayton knows about this first-hand as one of his clients, an NFL player, had noticed that someone had used his name and jersey number to create a fake account and started tweeting critical messages about the team. “All it took was a single email to Twitter and the offending account was removed. It may take more than that if you aren’t somebody famous, but most social networking sites will take action,” Dayton added.
At the end of the digital day one can only hope that our friends become each other’s social media police. We need to keep looking out for each other.
Have you experienced impersonation of your company or personal brand? Comments are welcome.
Social Media Day Los Angeles with Mashable and CBS
Mashable and CBS News joined together at the rooftop studio of CBS.com’s What’s Trending for the second annual Social Media Day in Los Angeles.
The event, created by Mashable and held in 90 countries around the world, included 1400 meetup’s. I was fortunate to have attended the Los Angeles gathering at CBS’s What’s Trending headquarters along with many of my social media friends.
Adam Ostrow, Mashable’s editor-in-chief welcomed us at the rooftop party with a 360 degree view of Hollywood. Shira Lazar, producer and host of What’s Trending gave us a tour of their studios, where Evan Lowenstein, founder of Stageit was performing and streaming live .
Jeremy Pepper, Marsha Collier, Adam Ostrow, and Julie Spira
Guests enjoyed cocktails from Veev, wine from One Hope, a photo booth from Polite in Public, and snacks from Pop Chips and Pretzel Chips.
No social media event would be complete without a contribution to social good. HeadBlade, who provides razors and grooming products for the shaved head look, donated $1 for each tweet with the hashtag of #SMDayLA to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a volunteer-driven charity committed to funding the most promising research to find cures for childhood cancers and give survivors long and healthy lives.
Among the attendees were my social media friends Amanda Coolong, Marsha Collier, Curt Buthman, Michale Pilla, Heather Meeker, Matt Meeker, Melissa Rowley, Marla Shulman, Seth Shapiro, Calvin Lee, KW Low, AV Flox, Alana Joy, Robert Moran, Kevin Winston, and Andy Sternberg. Many thanks to Marsha Collier for taking the photos.
How did you celebrate Social Media Day? Share your thoughts and follow Julie on Twitter @JulieSpira and like us at facebook.com/SocialMediaandMore
What was it Like to Be First In Line for the iPad 2?
Ever since Steve Jobs announced on March 2nd that the iPad-2 would be released on March 11th, I waited with enthusiasm for the day to arrive.
The fear of standing in long lines at the Apple store resulted in my calling the Apple sales line early this morning to find out the details on how to purchase my iPhone 64 GB 3-G model. It’s expected that over 600,000 iPad 2 tablets will be sold this weekend and I was determined to be one of them.
The sales representative at Apple was extremely helpful and told me there would be a 3-week wait to receive the device. Impatient as many others were, I called Verizon Wireless to see what their turn-around would be and found out that the local store would be getting their arrival at 4:00pm, local time. iPad enthusiasts had the opportunity not only to purchase their iPad today at their local Apple Store, but the tablets were also sold at Best Buy, Verizon Wireless stores, Walmart, AT&T, and Target.
The sales associate at the Verizon Wireless store told me to stop by just before 5:00pm and assured me there wouldn’t be a wait. It sounded too good to be true, so I decided to arrive 2-hours early at 3:00pm, local time along with a book to read and my own folding chair. I checked in on foursquare and happily tweeted that I was first in line waiting for my very first iPad.
Unfortunately, there was some confusion at the local store and we were told we needed to sign a 2-year data contract. Angry purchasers insisted the information was wrong and a confrontation erupted. The information was indeed incorrect. No apology was given for the miscommunication.
Those waiting in line shared which model they wanted to purchase. I knew I wanted one in white. The gentleman behind me wanted one in black. One woman was buying an iPad-2 for her fiancé as a birthday present.
Unfortunately, the local Verizon store only received four boxes of the long-awaited tablet in their shipment. There were many angry people who waited in line for over an hour, only to find out the store was out-of-stock after the first few in line finished their purchase.
At 5:10pm, I went home with my new iPad-2. Although my first choice of a red leather cover was unavailable, I realized I was one of the chosen few in the neighborhood. I’ll be using the iPad-2 for presentations, editing in iMovie, and to write content for a variety of websites and blogs.
Did you get an iPad-2? Will you wait for the frenzy to be over?
Why You Need a New Google Profile
You may have a social networking profile on Facebook and Linkedin and spend time tweeting with friends on Twitter. What you may not have is a Google profile, which I highly recommend.
I view my Google profile as a combination of Linkedin and Facebook profiles. It allows you to have a bio about all of your work, not just one particular industry or job. As I’m the CEO of two companies, I direct many people to my Google profile. It allowed me to have a photo gallery of pictures from Picasa or Flickr. It allowed me to add links to articles I was featured in as well as links to my book page, sizzle reel and more. I was socially in love with my Google Profile.
Although Google profiles have been around for a while, when Google Buzz, their version of sharing your updates and whereabouts was introduced, they made a big mistake and forced that to become their landing page. Many of us were upset. If you found the profile, you never made it to the beautifully customized “About Me” page. We were stuck with Buzz and I stopped posting. The only way to get rid of Google Buzz as the landing page was to deactivate it, and along with that your entire Google profile which would disappear completely. As an end around, I created a bit.ly/JulieSpira which would go directly to the “About Me” page, but it was a social bandaid.
Finally, last week I took a peek at my Google Profile and was thrilled to share that they did a cyber face lift to make everyone ecstatic. The new look and feel is perfectly aligned with other social networking sites. You could select your 5 favorite photos, looking quite like Facebook’s profile stream. They call it the Scrapbook. Even better than the Facebook profile, you could actually describe what you do at the top under your name.
The only problem with the new version of the Google Profile is they shortened the space for your custom links, so the description appears to be cut off. At the end of the day, it was worth getting my profile back. You can still enjoy sharing on Google Buzz as it now appears as the second tab on your profile. I’m sure everyone is thrilled with this change and I’d like to thank Google for making this long overdue revision.
At the end of the day, everyone needs to have a Google Profile. Click here to get yours at google.com/profiles.To view mine, visit google.com/profiles/juliespira
If you need help with your social media and creating your Google Profile, let us know at SocialMediaMore.com/contact
Using Social Media to Create Brand Loyalty
It was an honor to be a featured speaker at the 8th Annual Internet Dating Conference in Miami Beach.
My presentation, Dating 2.0: Using Social Media to Create Brand Loyalty shows examples of how online dating sites are successfully using social media. For more information on how Social Media and More can help your brand become more social, contact us at SocialMediaMore.com/contact
37 Tips on What Not to Do on Social Media Sites
Mike Michalowicz , on the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur blog curated a list of 37 social media experts with some of our best tips on how to avoid social media blunders.
Social Media and More is proud to be on this list as the number 11 entry with our tip, Tag, You’re Not It.
Many of us are enjoying roaming down memory lane as we reconnect with people from childhood to the present. In your enthusiasm of scanning photos onto Flickr and Facebook, remember don’t tag unappealing photos of people on Facebook or post on your favorite social media sites. The man who tagged a photo of a woman from 35 years ago where she was 50 pounds heavier, got de-friended in a New York minute. When in doubt, don’t.
Thanks to Julie Spira of Social Media And More
For a complete list, visit the TPE blog
PICK MY BRAIN!
Have a question about Social Media? I'll critique your site or blog, take a quick peek at your social media, and give you my expert opinion. Get 20 valuable minutes of my time to ask me anything.
CONNECT WITH US!
