September 8, 2010
There is a new kind of home page and its not where you’d expect – check out the best new facebook landing pages that introduce mashups of corporate social presence, address audience segmentation, and are as rigourous as any home page you’d see on a corporate website.
American Red Cross is my new favorite page.
The landing page is the default for first time visitors, after which, on repeat visits, you end up on the wall post page. [I didn't know you could set cookies on facebook]. This page is definitely informed by an information architect/usability specialist – see the top utility menu and e-mail prompt for alerts, clear alignment, great labelling, rss news feed capabilities, maps, integration of other social medias – clearly making all the digital assets work very hard, very integrated all on one page.
Strategically – this is an exceptional play. Facebook continues to capture a large portion of internet time away from the long tail of the web [that is - all other websites including most corporation's branded sites]. With the decentalization of the net, companies with strong facebook assets have ample opportunity to create hard working facebook pages to meet their customers where their customers spend the most time.
Understand the facebook consumer behaviour: If, when a visitor comes to a facebook fan page landing page instead of the traditional ‘wall post’ landing page – they will often go to the wall page anyways. The wall post page is, after all, the heart of company led and consumer led conversation fused together. And so – to introduce a landing page default can make for a more effective use of a visitor impression.
Now make that landing page a home page like American Red Cross.
I haven’t seen this in Canada yet – but noted that Coca Cola has something similar.
Leave a Comment » | 
Facebook, customer experience, fans / loyalty, social networks | Tagged: Facebook fan page, American Red Cross, landing page for facebook, facebook innovation, best facebook page | 
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Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk
July 21, 2010
Guest post by Lisa Dillon, Professor, Demography U of Montreal –
Do you want a country which maintains a reputable, effective statistics-gathering agency, which provides the reliable data necessary to understand how our society and economy are evolving over time, from the national to the community level? OR do you want decision-makers in government, charity groups and a variety of other institutions operating in a blind fog?
If the long-form census is replaced with a voluntary survey, not only will that survey (at the cost of $30 million) be biased against some of the very groups we need to study, incomparable to census data from the previous 150 years of census taking, from 1852 to 2006, but other surveys conducted by StatsCan as well as private groups will not have the data necessary to judge the representativeness of the surveys and create weights to adjust for problems of representativity.
To be well-informed, check out the actual 2006 long-form census
Leave a Comment » | social networks | Tagged: canadian census, census, lisa dillon, long form census, stats canada, statscan | Permalink
Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk
July 9, 2010
Please sign the petition to save the Canadian long-form census :
The census is under threat.
My sister, a professor in Demography, has asked for my help in communicating this issue. In reading about this issue, I find it unsettling and agree with her that we need to protect the census. Please retweet, repost, link and promote.
==================================================
Dear colleagues,
You have probably already read in the press about the cancelling of the long-form census questionnaire for 2011. In 2011, only the short-form questionnaire will be implemented, and the long-form questionnaire, which normally goes to 1 in 5 households, will be replaced by a new National Household Survey. This will be the most severe cutting of the Canadian census since the launching of nominal censuses in 1851/52 (and since Brian Mulroney’s attempt to cancel the 1985 census, which was thwarted). Heather Juby at CIQSS passed me a list of useful links about this situation, including responses (see bottom of this message). See in particular this article by Richard Shearmur in the Montreal Gazette ” Canadians Must Be Able to Count on Statistics Canada“
[Laurie: or today's Globe and Mail article entitled "Don't mess with the census"]
I contact you to ask your opinion on this subject and to enjoin you to sign a petition to keep the long-form census : http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-the-canadian-census-long-form.html
I and many other scholars are concerned that
- The Canadian government will not have the same commitment to the NHS as it had to the long-form census,
- As a volontary survey, the NHS will be biased against certain populations, particularly vulnerable subgroups who we particularly wish to study (and we will have no way of weighting the data to compensate, except with respect to the basic questions asked in the short-form census)
- Researchers (including those at Stats Can) will not have the census data needed to evaluate the representativity of other surveys,
- We will lose the possibility of conducting long-term comparisons and
- Our ability to conduct in-depth analyses using a broad range of control variables, examining small population subgroups, including racial minorities and at a very refined geographic level will be erased.
Finally, the imposition of this change by the Conservative government with no consultation of Statistics Canada and other expert users is intolerable.
Please let us know of your reactions, so that we can unite in fighting this cancellation.
Thank you very much,
Lisa Dillon, Professeure agrégée, Universite de Montreal.
16 Comments | social networks | Tagged: canadian census, census, long-form questionnaire, statistics canada | Permalink
Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk
May 20, 2010
There is another wave of facebook privacy concerns – driven in part by the new ‘instant personalization’ feature that Facebook is now offering.
In general, Facebook is allowing websites to tailor their online content by showing what your facebook friends like and share. This is explained far better by Liz Gannes in a recent post about Facebook Instant Personalization. As Liz explains Facebook is also allowing deep sharing with three partners Microsoft, Yelp and Pandora – which is cause for upset.
I have seen a number of new privacy options by Facebook – finally, I can control who sees my crazy wall posts but the changes happen so rapidly that most users have facebook ‘default’ privacy settings. My other personal privacy complaint is that I can not control who sees which fan pages I’ve joined. When I join a fan page, for instance, most of my friends get blasted with this update. No controls on this yet.
Fascinating is today’s public reaction with several well known tech profiles publicly announcing quitting facebook over privacy concerns. Not to mention that google searchs for “how to delete my facebook account” is at an all time high. For the record, I am not quitting facebook – I use it too much and I’ve narrowed down my privacy settings. I do restrict my foursquare access now to friends only.. but I digress.
And then there is MYOPENBOOK.org
Openbook is a new site that allows any online surfer to search key terms like “divorced”, “dna test” or “cheated” and get publicly available facebook wall posts by individuals with loose privacy settings. The site is created by individuals who want to outline what information is now public (see the green learn why this is bad button).
Fortunately Openbook also provides a link to Reclaimprivacy.org, a great new scan tool for understanding how private your facebook settings are. (note: to drag the tool to your bookmarks toolbar – you have to make sure that it is a toolbar that is active and viewed. Go view, toolbars and ensure bookmarks toolbar is checked off).
Leave a Comment » | Facebook, privacy, social networks | Tagged: Facebook privacy, openbook, quit facebook | Permalink
Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk
