Do your Facebook friends follow the crowd on quizzes, games and more?

I'm so grateful none of my friends on Facebook suck. Do yours?

After checking out the 8 websites you don't need to do because someone else has already done them, I stumbled across "How to Suck at Facebook" So, of course, I shared it on Facebook, which led to more people sharing and laughing. Some even volunteered to share with me some of their friends who do suck.

Concentrate on brand to avoid 8 website mistakes

Why re-invent what others do?

The Oatmeal, which the creator calls an entertainment site, gives you 8 Websites You Need to Stop Building, which I'm boiling down to say the world does not need a web site that:

1. Tells what my friends are up to
2. Shares things
3. Clones successful websites
4. Requires registration (use what's out there - Facebook Connect, Google, etc.)
5. Opens with mandatory Flash introductions
6. Proves you are a social media wizard

But if you just accept my version you will miss the opportunity to see Matthew Inman's 8 reasons illustrated in comic strip form. It's a quick read so check it out.

For inspiration on what and why Inman creates what he does read his post on Why I quit.

Then, get back to thinking about what you want to do for you, your organization or business. How can you ensure the death of an online site won't eliminate your community?

Setting privacy settings on Facebook requires many clicks

Find the complete graphic on

The New York Times online site.

Wow. Send out a thank you to the New York Times which uncovered the privacy settings for Facebook: 50 settings with 170 options.

An article, The price of Facebook Privacy? Start clicking, and a graphic maps out what you can do with Facebook's general privacy settings, ads and application settings.  

(Find general privacy settings under Account, Privacy Settings - See illustration above - and Facebook ads  under Account, Account Settings - See illustration below. And for more fun, check out Application Settings.)

 Plus the NYT shares information like the growth spurt of the Facebook privacy policy:

• 1,004 words in 2005; 5,830 words in 2010
• Longer then the United Staes Constitution without the amendments.

Facebook also has a guide to privacy, which is where you can find its policy, and details about the most recent update. Facebook suggests the world will be a better place if you allow "Everyone" to see everything. The New York Times had no recommendation.

I tend to recommend Friends or Only Me settings for most people, cautioning that once you put something on the Internet consider that someone somewhere will know at some point in time.

When you hear 'journalist' what do you see? Database collects 75,000 images

Your age might be a predictor of the image that the word journalist pops up in your mind. But if you've got the time,  the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture database can show you about 75,000 different entries.

There are video, photos, and hundreds of articles that feature journalists in a variety of roles.

Perhaps one of my favorite parts is the Sob Sisters parts that shows the conflict of female journalists: "How to incorporate the masculine traits of journalism essential for success – being aggressive, self-reliant, curious, tough, ambitious, cynical, cocky, unsympathetic – while still being the woman society would like her to be – compassionate, caring, loving, maternal, sympathetic."

The opening essay highlights some of the conflicts, including:

"... does anyone really want to be Hildy Johnson chasing after one more story or Lois Lane crying her eyes out because the person she loves is out saving the world and doesn’t have time for domestic tranquility or Mary Richards, widowed and penniless, trying at the age of 60 to make one more comeback in television news, or Murphy Brown raising a child and battling breast cancer while still holding on to her number one position in TV news ..."

Here's what Joe Joe Saltzman, professor of journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. says we'll find among the 75,000 entries on journalists, public relations practitioners and media in the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture database:

• Television (27,000 items); 
• Films (19,500 movies, movies made for TV and miniseries); 
• Fiction (12,300 novels, 1,550 short stories, 500 plays and 200 poems); 
• Radio (2,900 items);
• Cartoons, Comic Books & Comic ... See MoreStrips (5,900 items); 
• Non-Fiction (Documentaries, News, Sports, 3,150 items); 
• Humor (710 items); 
• Commercials (350 items); 
• Games (140 items); 
• Music (Songs-Compositions, 95 items); 
• Internet-Websites (90 items), 
• Art (40 items).

The IJPC Database includes:

• print journalists (from large urban newspapers to small country weeklies, including editors, reporters, photojournalists, correspondents, columnists, publishers, newsboys), 
• broadcast journalists (from networks to local stations including reporters, anchors, correspondents, producers, writers, technical personnel, news directors, station owners, network executives and management), 
• public relations practitioners (from press agents to publicists), and 
• the news media (anonymous reporters who show up in countless films and television movies ranging from press conferences to packs of reporters shouting questions or chasing after the main character to individual reporters asking questions). 

Here are some tips he shared over on Facebook:

• If you want to see all the entries, don’t fill in any of the query categories and simply hit submit
•  If you’re interested in a particular film or novel or any other popular culture title, fill in the TITLE query
• If you’re searching for a particular journalist (a columnist, a critic, an editor), a specific actor or a specific group (African-American or Female or Gay for example) simply fill out the COMMENTS query.
• If you’re only interested in movies or novels or poems or humor, simply click on the TYPE or types you are interested in and only those entries will show up.
• If you want to see if your favorite author is included, go to the AUTHOR column and type in LAST NAME followed by a comma, and then first name.
• If you’re interested in a specific country, type that country’s name in the REFERENCE query.
• Each column can be set up in ascending or descending order by simply clicking on it.
• If you want to read more about any individual title, click on the title itself.
• If you want to borrow some title from the IJPC Collection of more than 12,000 DVDs, then check the FORMAT column to see if it’s available.

All the tips on how to use the database are included in the IJPC Database Introduction.
 
Go. Enjoy.

Imagine if life were like Facebook

Toss a drink! Deliver a poke! Write on a wall!

A group took those things we say and do on Facebook and turned them into a video. Go ahead, click Facebook In Real Life on Facebook or on the Crossroads web site You need a laugh today.

Next up: When Facebook is your life -- now, that's a real laugh.
 By the way, Crossroads, which produce the video, says it is for those who have given up on church, but not God.

Unfinished business stays that way

I'm playing butterfly today. You know, those times when you flit from project to project, place to place, and unfortunately, blog post to blog post.

I'm picking up nuggets of thoughts from here and there. I start pulling it together and suddenly I see a brighter and sweeter flower. How can I resist? I just looked and I.see I once again have more draft posts then published posts :(  for the year.

Maybe I should go work on those Facebook pages that are demanding attention.

Or maybe I'll go study that butterfly quilt once more and nap.

The nap is needed because either we need to sleeping pills for dogs or a way to train them to sleep from midnight to 8 a.m.