2.2 What I learned by getting booted off of Facebook 3 times?
“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.”
Groucho Marx
About a year and a half ago, I was chatting with one of my Facebook friends (Alex
Karis) on the phone and was telling how I got booted off of Facebook 3 times. He had
suggested that it would make a compelling book, and here we are. This sub-chapter is
not to teach companies about the social networks, because I believe it is must deeper
than that. This experience of getting booted off Facebook has made me aware of the
importance of creating social media assets. What are social media assets? It is simple.
Anything that you own online that is virtually impossible to be taken away from you.
Okay, let’s talk about Facebook. Facebook, for you, is not a social media asset unless
your name is Mark. Facebook was created by people from the ivy league at Harvard
University. One thing about the Ivy League is they love rules. Harvard is the Mecca of
the status quo, and if you think about it, the status quo wants to create lots of rules and
have us follow all them with little or no change. This is why Facebook can hold so many
diverse beliefs, personalities, causes and concerns with little or no conflict. Think about
it, there are so many conflicting views worldwide, Facebook is able to hold all these
different personalities with little or no conflict. How do they do that? Here is my theory
in the book Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell he talks
about how they cut down large crime in New York City by busting people for the smaller
crimes. What is a law? It is a rule, so Facebook keeps order by creating lots of rules that
we don’t only follow we also censor other people. 5 year ago you would always hear
people talking about censorship and how bad it was. Now these same people are
censoring each other. This is happening on other social networks as well, but it’s easy
to spot on Facebook. This being said, things rarely happen on Facebook, it happens
around it.
Are you working for Facebook or is Facebook working for you?
Really ask yourself this question and think about it and realize that you have the
opportunity to be part of one of two groups:
1) 95% of the people on Facebook are using it as a distraction or are just lost.
2) 5% Are making things happen and/or creating social media assets.
Think about it, this is the Wild Wild West there are 600 million plus people on Facebook,
not to mention countless companies and groups. The media new and old have
embraced social media and are openly promoting Facebook. How do we get in the top
5 percent? Stop trying to learn all this technology because this is impossible and if you
could, it’s constantly changing, and could be greatly different in 6 months to a year from
now.
What are the solutions?
a) Creating ideas and visions and then bringing them to life right now, rather than letting
the status quo help shape your products or service while turning them into customers.
b) Use technology to fight technology. For all the money we are spending to figure
this stuff out we could create Social Media Assets like a Facebook application that will
create more revenue than our current business model would ever dream of.
c) Later in this book we will discover how to go about hiring 20 something’s and telling
them your vision and letting them make it happen.
d) Remember Facebook is a passive database and without outside Social Media Assets
people will rarely respond. Once someone has met you in person, talked on the
phone with you, subscribe to your blog and/or has attendant one of your events your
probability of making something happen has gone up 10,000%.
This is a GREAT opportunity
I believe that because of Facebook, we are 2 degrees of separation that puts us in a
position to have more power in large numbers to do tremendous good without force.
This my friends, is a gift and a curse, as well as a huge opportunity…on one hand, we
are making all the right connections and on the other hand Facebook is stuck in a place
called no action because all of these rules. Let me explain, this is the way that I look at it:
I think of Facebook as a large database with lots and lots of people and companies that
want to make things happen. Because of all the rules that are constantly changing and
all the information that we are taking in we will never be able to make things happen on
Facebook alone.
Now is a good time to take some mental inventory in your own way, What Social Media
Assets do you own? What social media assets would you like to leverage in the near
future?