So I was disheartened this past week when Adobe announced they had found a security issue in Photoshop CS5.5. The good news: they let everyone know about. The bad news: they wanted people to pay to upgrade at CS6 in order to fix the flaw, which is basically unheard of. From the security bulletin:

Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop CS6 (paid upgrade), which addresses these vulnerabilities. We are in the process of resolving these vulnerabilities in Adobe Photoshop CS5.x, and will update this Security Bulletin once the patch is available.

I could understand if this was a $0.99 app. Photoshop and the Creative Suite is an expensive piece of software. It’s worth every penny, but it’s an expensive upgrade, especially considering that CS5 came out in April, 2011.

The web, unsurprisingly, lost its collective mind about Adobe not issuing a patch for CS5, a product it still claims to support. I saw many tweets, posts and tumbles about it last night and this morning.

Now comes word that Adobe is changing its position and will update CS5 with a patch at an undetermined time. From their blog:

We are in the process of resolving the vulnerabilities addressed in these Security Bulletins in Adobe Illustrator CS5.x, Adobe Photoshop CS5.x (12.x) and Adobe Flash Professional CS5.x, and will update the respective Security Bulletins once the patches are available.

The good news is that Adobe has seen the error of its ways and will issue a patch. What I wonder is how such a decision was made in the first place. If there has been a security patch for any type of software, operating system or not, it’s always been patched. Heck, even Microsoft says it will issue security patches and other fixes for Windows XP until 2014, and it came out in 2001.

How far up the chain of command did this idea go, and why didn’t someone along the way say “hey, people are going to freak out about this”? Now that we’re firmly in the social age, a company such as Adobe must realize that the word of something like this can spread around the globe in literally seconds.

tl/dr; Adobe will patch Photoshop, but at what cost to its image and reputation?

In Alaska, an oil drilling team struggle to survive after a plane crash strands them in the wild. Hunting the humans are a pack of wolves who see them as intruders.

I was watching a trailer for the film, and was surprised to see the end credits for the trailer:

and this:

I can’t decide if this kind of social media marketing is genius or dumb.

What is the marketing gain for this movie if I tweet something with the hashtag #MickeyLiddell? Will that influence my social circle to go see this film?

A local Saab dealership is holding a contest where 100 people each week receive a Saab to drive around. Our goal as drivers is to get people to be our “fan” on a contest page and to snap the 2 QR codes on the car, one on each of the back windows and one on the interior (which is worth more points.) Contestants also receive points if someone scans a QR code on the car and then visits one of the contest sponsors where there’s another code that earns the customer a discount or benefit. The people I’ve shown the car to so far have been most excited by the fact they get a free coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts if they scan the car. Finally, I’ll receive points for each time I post a photo of the car. I’ve put up a few so far, and the process has been smooth and easy.

After a semi-final round, finalists will select 1 of 5 boxes, each containing a key. If the key opens the Saab, you win the car. Personally, I don’t really need a new car, but I could use the money to re-do our basement, trashed this year in floods.

Anyways, to play the part of good contestant, I need to ask for your help and tap into my social capital. Here’s how you can help. It’s okay if you’re not in the northeast Ohio area or even in the USA, you can “like” me from anywhere, as well as scan the QR code. You might not get a free coffee, but you’ll be helping me out.

First, visit my contest page. Scroll down to the lower right, where you’ll see this area:

Click on that “become a fan” link, where you’ll be prompted for an email address. I’ve been promised the emails won’t be spammed by the dealership, but to be safe, use that second or third Gmail account you have for stuff like this.

Second, scan this QR code on your phone:

If you don’t want to go through all the trouble, just visit this link, which the QR code takes you to. You’ll be asked for your location, so it can find the closest sponsor location to you.

So, that’s how you can help. Now, let me put on my marketing hat for a bit.

So far, the contest has been managed and handled very well, which is key. They held an orientation session last week for participants where the rules were explained, forms completed and there was food. There have been constant email communications from the dealer to participants with updates and schedules, which has been helpful.

On Sunday, when I picked up my car, there was a good check-in system, where the last of the paperwork was completed and any questions I had were answered. From there, I was off the pick-up area, where my car was brought up from the lot. I was walked through the vehicle and off I went. All in all, a good system was in place and there were plenty of people staffing the various areas so there was no wait. I’ll return the car on Saturday and expect the same setup upon check-in.

From a technology standpoint, the contest site is set up well, works well in mobile browsers and image uploads by contestants are stored and served from Amazon S3. I don’t know if this is being run by a national company that sells this product to local dealerships, but it’s put together very well and the design is nice.

So, I’m two days in so far. The car’s fun to drive (and fast, thank you, Turbo.) I wish it had a hookup for my iPhone, like my Hyundai does, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Thanks for your help. I’ll update later in the week on my progress.

I’m going to be honest here. I haven’t been swept up in the Google+ hype of the last few months. I just haven’t, I don’t know, gotten it. To me, thus far, I haven’t seen the killer app or need that Google+ fills that Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn doesn’t. So, I haven’t spent a lot of time there, and have seen lots of duplicate content across my various networks.

This week, Google allowed brands/companies/schools to start having their own Facebook-Fan-Page-ish Pages inside Google+. I, like many other web and marketing folks, created a page for my University. The setup process was fairly simple, and I had the profile setup in a few minutes.

Now what?

Do I re-post content we’re already posting to over 5,000 fans on Facebook, or should we be creating content just for Google+? These are the types of questions that I guess many teams are now wrestling with.

Having just spent a small amount of time, I have some questions about managing a Google+ page.

1. Am I the only person who can administrate this page? I see that one the circles/streams available on my Page is one called “Team Members,” but its not clear if I add people to that stream/circle if they are given the right to post on the page.

2. My page displays the 2 people I’ve put in the Team Members circle on our home page, and shows that we have 11 followers, which isn’t bad for two hours. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing a way to see who the followers are.

I can now see who is following me, and choose to add them to one of my circles. This is a marked difference from Facebook’s model, which is more one way the two services are different. If you’re a fan of JCU on Facebook, as an administrator I don’t have access to your page and personal info. Not sure what the right model will be here on Google+.

What circles should I put them, since I’m encouraged to do that in the Google+ model. Students? Alumni? Faculty? Friends? Parents? Sounds like a minefield and a timesink having to determine what bucket a person should go in.

3. Where are the analytics? Facebook’s insights are pretty decent, but so far, I’m not seeing anything in terms of analytics for my Google page. How many times are my posts being viewed? What are the demographics, broadly speaking, of my audience on this site? What are the trends. Google has a killer app in Analytics, it should be really tied in here. If there isn’t marketing stats available here, I don’t see us really spending a lot of time focusing on our Google+ page if we can’t determine the ROI or value of having it.

4. I can add video and photos, but wouldn’t it make sense if I could link my institutional YouTube account and have videos I share there automatically get pulled in here? I could manually share them, but that’s an extra step that seems unnecessary. I should be able to hook the two together.

Honestly, at this point, I’m rather unimpressed with Google+’s page offerings. I think Farhad Manjoo said it well in his post at Slate:

I know this sounds unfair: Facebook had years to add all the features it has now, so why should we demand that Google create a perfect substitute at launch time? But that’s just the thing—taking on a behemoth like Facebook is an unfair fight. Google seems to think about its social network in the same way it thinks of any other kind of software—as a “product” that it can design step-by-step, starting with a small number of innovative features and working up from there.

We as web and marketing folks have been spoiled by Facebook and their fan page offerings, so much so that we expect any competing, new product to have all the same, if not better, functionality.

I’ll be keeping an eye on our Google+ page and placing content there, but it won’t be the first place I think to post content, which Facebook is now for us.

So what is the +1 button? I’ll let Google describe it:

+1 is as simple on the rest of the web as it is on Google search. With a single click you can recommend that raincoat, news article or favorite sci-fi movie to friends, contacts and the rest of the world. The next time your connections search, they could see your +1’s directly in their search results, helping them find your recommendations when they’re most useful.

Some major media partners have started to use the button, and Google is adding it to its Blogger service. I noticed a few blogs with it today. Here’s what it looks like in action.

Here’s a +1 button I’ve added to this blog post, if you’d like to try it out.

If you’d like to add the button to your site, Google’s got an easy-to-use wizard here.

At this point, I’m not sure if I’ll be adding it to my University’s pages. We’ve got decent sharing solutions in place, but if this +1 button starts to pick up some buzz, we’ll take another look at it.

Alexandra Wallace, a student at UCLA, posted a video on YouTube making fun of Asian students in the UCLA library. Here is her video:

It didn’t take long for the video set off a firestorm on the Internet. It was picked up by blogs large and small, news outlets, blogs, YouTube and more.

Then something interesting happened.

Gene Block, Chancellor of UCLA, posted a video response and statement online to Ms. Wallace’s video, condemning it and saying that it was not representative of the UCLA community.

I understand why UCLA responded – they were getting comments and pressure from around the world, but I wonder if this sets a dangerous precedent.

Will we, as institutions of higher education, now be expected to respond to every negative blog post, video, Twitter and social media mention that’s in any way negative about our institutions or one of our affinity groups? Granted, this was an extreme case, but it is something that we’re going to have to seriously think about at our institutions and, possibly, start to plan for.

I’ve read blog posts and watched YouTube videos critical of institutions I’ve worked at. One time, David Duke included the college I worked at on a list called “The Best Colleges for Whites.” We responded to none of these in a formal way, though there was sometimes calls for us to do so.

Finally, the UCLA student, Alexandra Wallace, has now withdrawn from UCLA effective immediately. She writes in a letter to the UCLA Daily Bruin:

I made a mistake. My mistake, however, has lead to the harassment of my family, the publishing of my personal information, death threats, and being ostracized from an entire community. Accordingly, for personal safety reasons, I have chosen to no longer attend classes at UCLA.

I was watching it today and was struck by how much of this applies to higher ed marketing and communications.

The key takeaway here, especially in our world, is this:

“What might be just as effective as everything mentioned in this video is to get off your couch, shut off the computer, call some people you know who know about up and coming music, or go to your local venue which features up and coming artists and actually interact with human beings. Meet people in person. Get their instantaneous reaction, live. And one by one, build fans the old fashioned way: direct, human interaction.”

The amount of tools we have today to communicate and connect with each other is mind-boggling.

It’s easy to forget about the importance of the one-to-one conversation in today’s million miles an hour communication cycles. We get very focused on our Facebook fan pages and Foursquare tours but sometimes forget that no one comes to your school because of your great Foursquare badges or your tweets.

I’m not sure what the message here is, other than don’t get stuck wearing blinders and forget about the old-fashioned ways we communicate – you know – the ones that have worked for thousands of years.

He talks about his diminishing use of the tool in the last few months, something I can very much relate to. I think he’s right on when he says:

For one, I have thoughts longer than 140 characters that I want to share. Tweets can quickly get taken out of context at this character limit, so I find myself expressing thoughts and opinions on other platforms instead, where I have more room. I also think that ’sharing’ can be beneficial, but in a large group it hampers innovation.

About this time last month, I was going through something similar when it comes to Twitter. I was getting burned out on the noise and the shouting. Thanks to everyone who commented on that post, it was really beneficial and I took quite a bit away from the conversation.

Everyone, and every institution, has to figure out what type of Twitter use is best for them, but for me, I think the following are starting to actually help.

Pick the right tool for the job

I’ve pared down my list and am using tools like TweetDeck to better organize the people I follow. Over the last year, I find myself using Twitter for mostly professional development and communication.

If you want to see what sort of music I’m listening to or what YouTube videos I think are funny, follow me over at Facebook. Want to see cute pictures of my boys? Facebook. Want to see where I used to work? Go to LinkedIn. So on and so on.

To get the most out of any tool, you have to decide how, when and why you’re going to use it.

This is especially important for institutions to know. Want to promote homecoming events? Twitter’s good for that. Want to promote ways students can connect with alums for internships and mentoring? Maybe LinkedIn is best for that.

Organize and Segment

I’ll admit that I did caught up in the followers game for awhile.

It was important to me to get to 100, then 200, then 500 followers. As I watched people get to 1,000 then 2,000 and on up, I realized that I don’t have the time, energy or knack for self-promotion on mediums like these that others do.

That was a good lesson to learn.

Much like real life, there are hierarchies and groups of people that I want to pay more attention to than others, much like you have your good friends and your acquaintances. Columns, groups and lists make sure that I don’t miss messages and thoughts from people that I’m interested in and want to hear them.

At my current institution, I segment the University’s followers among a few groups – alums (where I can tell), campus community, Cleveland and so on. This helps me quickly scan the info and respond where needed.

Twitter shines in certain situations

One place where Twitter is very useful is at conferences. Sure, there’s the backchannel, but you can also use it in the, um, front channel (?).

In the session Jesse Lavery and I gave last week at HighEdWeb 2010, people were throwing around plugin and theme ideas and I asked people like the extremely smart Rosalyn Metz to tweet them using the hashtag for the session.

That gives people an easy way to find that information, as well as an archive that we can all go back and look at, like this.

I’ve used Twitter a few times during on-campus events and it’s worked really well. You can read more about it here. Using Twitter means that our users who were following us on their phones were getting updates, as were users using the mobile version of the site, an iPhone/Android app, etc.

I’ve compartmentalized my social media as much as I can. I use Twitter for mostly work stuff, and Facebook for more personal stuff (privacy controls and all.) I keep my LinkedIn up to date, but I don’t spend much time there.

I’ve set up a few columns in TweetDeck where I can make sure I don’t miss updates from my friends/family and a bunch of higher ed web people that I’m interested in seeing what they say.

It’s become a big bunch of noise. Foursquare updates. Updates from blogs. Retweets. “What I’m listening to.” “I’m working on something big…”, Hash tags. “I need an email provider – discuss!”, “I’m posting this to win an iPad.” All of it.

As Leo Laporte said, and said very well:

“I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves.”

I miss the early days of Twitter, circa say 2007, when only the really nerdy web folks were on there – and it really was a nice professional development tool. I’d ask a question, Kyle James and Brad Ward and Karine Joly and Karlyn Morissette would share info, and you could get an answer quickly. Now, it feels like everyone’s shouting and it’s less about the community.

I’m not saying everyone shouting is bad, but it’s not working for me.

I’m at a crossroads with this tool.

I find myself thinking about the best way to use Twitter. I’ve un-followed the people who were generating literally hundreds of tweets a day or those that haven’t updated this year. I’ve done some organization.

Do I:

A) Selectively follow the people I’m interested in and manage it with a few tools.

B) Give in to the machine and follow back the over 700 people who follow me. This will dramatically increase the noise, but some creative filtering and grouping would ensure I’m still getting some information that is of value. This will require a bit more effort, but may be worth it in the long run.

C) Chuck it all into the bin.

What method works for you? Which (or some combination of both) is the best way to get value of the tool?

Basically, they are narrowing the width of these tabs from 760 pixels down to 520 pixels. If you have created custom FBML tabs, you’ll need to login in as soon as possible and either resize or redesign your tab content to make sure it fits correctly in the new sizes.

Here’s a visualization of the difference:

Click for a full size image to really see the difference

This is quite a reduction in size – especially if you’ve created custom layouts or other images for those tabs. Facebook is explaining the change this way:

These updates are designed to simplify navigation for users, reduce complexity for developers, and enable us to build the next generation of tools for growing your business with Facebook.

Said another way: we need the room for ads. That’s my take.

The other change: the “Boxes” tab, boxes on profiles and Pages, and application info sections will be going away. I don’t know if many schools were using these features on their fan pages, but be aware those are going away as well.

Additional Information:

InsideFacebook’s post
Mashable
NorthBlog