Put yourself in the cool "Mad Men" avatar

I don't like it on Facebook when people "recommend I become a fan" of something. I kind of already know if I'm a fan of something. Grrrr...

-- The new avatar creator for AMC's "Mad Men" is cooler than its Simpsonize Me ancestor from the "Simpsons Movie" a few years ago. The "Mad Men" site is all cool early '60s period and less heavily endorsed. (The Burger King loomed over the Simpsonize site.) And you can actually make the thing look like you. Charlotteans -- @pinqueencity, @mamasnark, richcba

rrett, @crystaldempsey (of course) have jumped on it. Here's mine. 

-- It's Follow Friday on Twitter, and if you ever wanted to know what that was all about, the social networking blog Mashable did a very nice job of letting the originator tell how he came up with the idea. 

-- Speaking of #FF, here are my favorite tweeps this week, and why:

@mmcgovern -- elegant boston photographer is a poetic voice.

@smashadv -- Charlotte ad guy thinks well on his tweet.

@alexandrialeigh -- Charlotte author is funny and smart.

@wfae -- Public radio feed is more than a headline blast.

@rthurmond -- Charlotte mag ed has that Davidson mafia cool.

-- I need to start a MySpace page, and never have. Any advice?

-- Apparently I'm heading down to Spartanburg on Sunday for Panthers training camp. Should be fun. My goal is to tweet from the huddle. Wait, do they even have huddles in training camp? Maybe I can get in the ice tub the linemen cool off in.

-- Speaking of which, make sure you check out @insidepanthers, The Observer's inside-the-huddle tweet stream. Real reporters (not like me) who know the team like no one else give you the best inside news now.

-- An old friend inside Twitter tells me the little company that's rocking the worl

d is very proud of the new home page. I think most of us kind of looked at it and went, "Oh, OK." Times like this remind me that, despite all the buzz and pub, this is still a little 50-person company in a loft in SF. Here's a pic inside. The staff eats catered breakfast and lunch on real china every day. Nice. 

What does your Facebook photo say?

You with your kids. You with your dog. You all dressed up. No picture of you at all -- instead the logo of your favorite team.

What does your Facebook profile pic say about you? In a whole new way, we have the opportunity to put ourselves out there, every day. 

But what self do we choose, and why? 

"Yes, we play 'dress-up' with the avatars we choose, profile photos of ourselves we upload, and the way we fill out our Facebook profiles," says Howard Rheingold, a pioneer of social media who helped start the medium in the '80s, and now teaches at Stanford University and The University of California at Berkeley.

Rheingold points out that what you're trying to say with your photo, 

and what you actually say might be different things.

For instance, Rheingold says you might pose in front of something meaningful to you -- he poses in front of a leaflet-splattered wall in his profile pic. This intentionally gives people a message of who you are. But if you're also slouching and wearing sunglasses in the photo, you accidentally reveal that you also

 want to be seen as "cool."

What we reveal mostly is our values, says John McArthur, a Queens University of Charlotte assistant professor of communications, and another expert on social media. 

"The photo represents whatever that person is currently measuring success as," McArthur says. If you pose with your baby, you're sending a clear message about your current priorities. "Someone who is using Facebook as a dating tool will use a very flattering photo." 

So you might be unconsciously sending out romantic signals. (And what

 if your relationship status is "it's complicated"? Different blog topic.)

PR and marketing pro Trey Pennington, of Greenville, S.C., has 4,997 Facebook friends. The cap is 5,000, and he is sometimes "ranked" as No. 5 in the 

world in that category. He says, go professional with your pic -- clients might be watching. "I encourage people to put their best face forward with their profile picture." He quotes a friend as saying, "After all, it is called FACEbook."

The blog All Facebook (not affiliated with the company) recently did a rundown of what it termed the 30 Standard Facebook Profile Photo Styles. Among them: Posing with your kids, pets, or in front of a landmark. (My least favorite: "In A Mirror Shot." Umm, that's not exactly a Spielberg effect.")

I asked your thoughts on Facebook pics, and got swarmed. 

Charlotte author Aleigh Acerni, pictured in olive sweater, believes 

her photo says "No matter what hideous photos my evil friends post to Facebook and tag me with, here is proof that I am not, in fact, hideous. Most days." 

Ace

rni adds a pet peeve: "

I don't like it when people use their kid's (or pet's) picture as their picture. It's ... not them. And when you're trying to figure out if you know someone and want to accept their friend request, a pic of their kid is no help whatsoever."

Jeff Hartlage, an alum of UNC Charlotte, uses a photo of the 49ers football helmet as his profile pic, "to keep 49er Football in front of as many people as 

possible."

Lydia Stern, owner of the Beadlush Shop in Charlotte, uses a cartoon of her as a superhero as her profile pic. Why? "I want to get it all done and save the planet." 

Jocelyn Biggs' photo shows her in a pink T-shirt on a New Orleans' street on a recent vacation. Some experts be

lieve (and I agree) that a casual, face-front portrait like this is open and natural. Maybe the closest to your "real" self. "It shows the true Jocelyn," says Biggs, co-owner of Charlotte

event-planning company Pinkies Up.

Becca Schultz-Burger of Charlotte says of her pic with her dog, "Who doesn't like a black lab kissing them on the lips with the sunset in the background?!"

In the end, there's no right or wrong. There's just us. But which us do we want to be on Facebook today?

Tell me. Or better yet, friend me on

 Facebook, and show me. 

Panthers sandwich: $16 million -- Peppers give it bad taste

“Lunch special: Panthers sub. $16 million, but the Peppers gives it a bad taste.”

That’s funny, and it’s a great example of a Charlotte business using Twitter well. Charlie Ruffalo tweets under the name @subguy and runs Sub Station II across from Winthrop U. in Rock Hill. He sent out that tweet, and he advises business owners to, “keep it light, keep it fun. Don't make it only about discounts and promos.” Good advice. You don’t want to be an ad on a stick.

Ruffalo tweeted the other day, “Try the Sarah Palin sub. But be warned we may quit making it before it's finished. Then we hope you'll come back and buy it again in 3 yrs.”

-- If you’re just wading into Twitter as a business owner, there’s now help directly from Tweet Street in Silicon Valley. Twitter HQ (been there, very cool) recently pulled together Twitter 101 For Business. Read it if you're just getting started. And pay attention to this advice early in the lesson:

"Twitter isn’t just about useful immediacy. The conversational nature of the medium lets you build relationships with customers."

Hello? Conversation is different than bombardment.

-- Summer Plum (yes, her real name) started a personal Twitter account and for months just checked out the social network. Then when she started her business account for Felicitea, her massage therapy and tea business, she was comfortable with the medium.

Great idea. If you go in unprepared, you could alienate customers. Know what you’re doing.

-- Tower to US Airways. Can you read me US Airways? Hello? The @usairways account appears to be completely dead. It’s following no one, and the last post was from January. FAIL. Abandoned Twitter accounts for businesses don't look good. And customers tell me they would use it.

-- I love this: Donna and Chad Bordeaux are Lake Wylie CPAs who tweet while they cipher. (Her: @CharlotteCPA Him: @clt_cpa) He just told her he was having a poker game at their house on Saturday night. “I read about it a week before that on Twitter,” she says. “That was old news.”

Duke Energy's Rogers speaks on rate hikes

Today I attended a Charlotte Rotary luncheon where Duke Energy chief Jim Rogers spoke. He was asked a question about rate hikes in the Carolinas this summer.

On Monday, many news agencies reported on a proposed hike in South Carolina. None that I could find contained a quote from Rogers.

I pushed my way up to Rogers, a well-spoken, outgoing guy (and a former reporter), and asked if I could shoot a quick video of him explaining rate hikes. There was some brief discussion among his assistants, and in a few minutes, he was speaking, not just on the record, but on camera. (On my iPhone 3GS, to be precise.)

Within an hour and a half, people on Facebook and Twitter were commenting on Rogers' remarks.

Here's why this is a big deal: This was not a scheduled press event. Rogers was not prepared to give a statement. I didn't have any equipment that I don't walk around with every day. (The phone in my pocket.) I didn't go anywhere to send the video to watchers. (I uploaded it in the car.)

OK, Rogers didn't say anything earth-shattering. He talked about balancing rates with environmental concerns and the health of the company. And the video quality, particularly the audio, is pretty bad. But the rate hikes affect millions of people. And hearing from the head of the company about them adds to transparency. That this was an impromptu statement makes it even more real.

I give Rogers a lot of credit here. My friend Ken Thompson might have given this statement. I can't imagine Ken Lewis doing so. But this wasn't an easy question.

The new tools of social networking mean that we're all reporters. If the powers that be play ball, (listening BofA?) we can create a much more open society.

Yes, Facebook, Twitter are annoying

NOTE: Enough excellent comments on Twitter, Facebook and here that I am updating this post. New parts are in red.

Yes, Facebook and Twitter are annoying fads. Twitter is a high-maintenance, ephemeral and cliquey forum. Facebook is like an overloaded mall packed with obnoxious signs and loud pitchmen.

Both will fade within a year or two.

But they are pioneering, hugely influential portals into another era. Before our eyes they are leading to new and better forms of social dialogue. And the impact they are having on how we relate to one another is nothing short of revolutionary. Pay attention: This is the biggest change in communications -- in freedom of speech -- since desktop publishing. Don't believe me? Check out the Iranian election.

Some people ask, "Why should I be on Facebook?" They're the same people who asked 15 years ago, "Why do I need a home computer?" And five years ago, "Why do I need a cell phone?"

@daveharkins, a Charlotte entrepreneur, tweeted: “Disagree that Twitter and Facebook are fads. They are likely a stepping stone.”

@welfach,  Chuck W. of Fort Mill, tweeted: “Interesting blog. my opinion is that twitter may last a little longer because there are still people who don't know about it.”

@wwwmarty, Charlote’s Marty McKeever, tweeted simply: “@jeffelder is an annoying fad.” (I plead guilty. But like Facebook and Twitter, perhaps I am leaving an impression and helping in a very small way to blaze a trail.)

David Beckwith of Charlotte commented on Facebook that (I) “guess we are oinly just now realizing that newspapers were an annoying fad and are going away. At least the physical dinosaur. The important part, the information, will and is carrying on. Same with social media.”

My continuing thoughts on this: Twitter and Facebook are where the Sony Walkman was in the early ’80s: A relatively lame, high-maintenance fad -- and the first breakthrough in a personal music revolution. That’s where we are. Twitter and Facebook will be unrecognizable in a year or two. They are changing all the time. Their contribution to a new way of communicating is, at this point, inestimable. But it will be vast. I feel sorry for people who are not getting involved.

-- My favorite local Twitter uses this hour: @tigerworld tweets exotic animal rescue. (I'm officially trademarking the on-Twitter TV show pilot "THE SNAKE TWEETER.") And @livingsexuality, clinical sexologist Becky Knight's feed on topics like "dysfunction of orgasm." She has 2,354 followers.

-- The news that swine flu had been confirmed at the Harris Y flew around the Web on Monday morning. I first learned about it from The Observer's Twitter feed, and other Charlotteans told me they did, too. But can these things fly too fast for us to get the real story? My sources say both kids were from the same family, had the flu before visiting the Y, and now are doing fine. So the Harris Y is remembered for the headline, but unfairly?

-- Monday was a big day for Twitter as a Charlotte headline service, with the N.C. terror case, swine flu story, Okafor trade and BofA branch cuts all hitting the tweepdom. (BofA news early Tuesday.)

-- Looks like this will be Charlotte's Facebook election, with City Council and the mayoral race all over it. I'm Facebook friends with John Lassiter and with Anthony Foxx. But they're not friends with each other -- that seems a little hard-hearted. Besides, they might be the only guys in Charlotte with such boring FB pages.

-- Not sure why, but I always chuckle when Facebook suggests I add Pat McCrory as a friend.

-- I couldn't find Lassiter's GOP challenger Martin Davis on Facebook. His home page says you can become a fan on FB, but when I clicked the Facebook icon link, I was just taken back to his home page.

-- I argued against posting follower and friend numbers next to our faces on Twitter and Facebook. So this note is somewhat hypocritical. But it's about a different number, that of local followers, a number that is, in fact, hidden from view. I think it's a more relevant stat, and one I'm interested in. According to Twitterholic.com, I've tripled my number of Charlotte followers since I came back to town in June. With 1,850 local followers, I trail only one individual -- biz consultant @mvoulgarelic. (By a lot. He has 7,945.) He's #1, and I'm #3. #2 is The Observer account, @theobserver, with 3,769. Follow me @jeffelder

Image at top from Tiger World

Why count friends, Facebook?

How many friends do you have?

A few years ago this would’ve been an odd question. But today online, we are confronted with a number next to our picture, every day. An odometer of popularity: The Facebook friend counter. Twitter has the same thing, a follower counter.  

We should take those numbers down. They have joined weight, age and salary as unhealthy status symbol statistics. 

Ashton Kutcher has 2.9 million Twitter followers, tops in the world. Those numbers are as unreal as the mediocre TV and movie star's salary. TechCrunch reported that three-quarters of all Twitter users have fewer than 50 followers.

Facebook caps friends lists at 5,000. Several have hit that, and others are close. Facebook reports that the average user has just 120 friends.  

In other words, we have rushed to embrace yet another way in which we won't measure up.

A woman recently told me she prizes "quality, not quantity" on Twitter. Yet days earlier she asked my help because an automated service she signed up for to get Twitter followers backfired and was blasting the followers she has with spam. Hey, I've done that. There are as many fake Twitter follower services as there are bogus weight-loss ads. They play to the same vulnerability: We want those pretty numbers. 

So many of us, like the woman above and myself, have tried joining a "follower train," signing up to follow a group of people, knowing they will all follow us back. (I don't recommend it. I unfollowed many of the new people I connected with, and they unfollowed me.) I also held a contest to gain followers, which didn't work, either. Some tweeters follow tens of thousands of people so they will gain just as many followers. I don't want to do that. I am not Ashton Kutcher, in so many ways. 

On Facebook, we might OK people's friend requests not to get to know them better, but because we'd like to have more friends. We're getting friend implants.

I have told myself I need the big numbers because of my new job as a social networking writer. And maybe I do need to follow and friend a lot of people, to get a broader view. But I think a lot of us tell ourselves the same thing in different areas of our lives: I need hair plugs. I need to tan. I need to look better.  

Taking down the number counters wouldn't prevent us from seeing who each other's friends and followers are. But how many would no longer be there in our faces every day. 

The evening I met Twitter CEO Evan Williams, a haughty tech type asked, "How many followers do you have?" Then he scoffed at the total I reported: 200. Williams is a good guy. I don't think he built Twitter to be a popularity counter.

Counting friends is dumb in elementary school. It's really dumb for a whole generation to do.

Facebook and Twitter have raced into our lives, pulling us together in new ways. That's a good thing. But we've just accepted this new way to compare and evaluate ourselves. Maybe we're not meant to have as many friends and followers as possible. Or to keep track of that. 

In retrospect, posting numbers of how many friends we have will seem absurd. Maybe it already does.

“What about celebrating friend-acquisition milestones?” asks Charlotte’s Chip Wallach, a BofA guy, with a note of sarcasm. “What is appropriate when you reach the 100th friend? The 300th? 1000th? Who has this many ‘friends’ anyway?”

Facebook and Twitter, take down the counters. 

Photo at top is from the UK Guardian

Why the wedding video is awesome

"You've got to see this." That's the mating call of the viral video.

The video de jour is of the wedding entrance by Minnesota couple Kevin Heinz and Jill Peterson, dancing their way down the aisle with their wedding party to Chris Brown's thumpin' beat.

More than 2.2 million have clicked on it and chuckled on YouTube, and pirates have ripped it off by reposting with their own marketing.

The happy couple appeared on the "Today" show on Friday.  Peterson said she danced growing up, and that the idea came naturally. The rehearsal time for the entire entrance? About an hour and a half, she said. (Not much more than some wedding rehearsals I've been in.)

Why do some viral videos become a smash? (Remember the N.C. sewer monster?) It seems somewhat random, but all comes down to the "Awesome!" factor. "Awesome!", like "cool!" is an exclamation that comes naturally to many people when we see something we like. But "cool!" was for cars and T-shirts. "Awesome!" is for videos and iPhones. "Awesome!" requires surprises -- like when one of the wedding party flips up and walks on his hands. (Although the two bridesmaids early on who are tightly choreographed really make it.)

I'm not sure one can plan or cultivate a viral video. The awesomeness unfolds on camera, and YouTube is the petrie dish where the virus grows. I like it. Like all social networking, it's a way to share. 

And you know that guy who walked on his hands will never buy another beer in his life back home in Minnesota. All he'll have to do is say, "Remember that wedding video? I'm that guy who..."

BofA afraid to talk. Again.

• Someone has posted a fake Ken Lewis account on Facebook and made the BofA chief a fan of Boone's Farm flavored wine. The BofA social media person won't get back to me. A colleague emailed "Yikes!" about the idea of me writing about their social media. Umm, it's about dialogue, not controlling the message.
  

• My favorite person in Charlotte today: Matt Wadley, the social media guy at Wachovia/Wells, We just sat down at Caribou in Founders Hall and had a great talk for a while. He blogs at at http://blog.wellsfargo.com and is the Twitter voice of Wachovia, @wachovia.

• Starting to get together my talk to the Charlotte Rotary, the big one uptown with hundreds of members, for Aug. 4. But will the old guys who sip wine at one table know what the heck I'm talking about? www.charlotterotary.org
  
• John Hancock wants me to do a regular thing on his show on WBT-1110 AM. I want to go on Bob & Sheri. But they don't like to admit they're based in Charlotte. And I want to do a regular video with Creative Loafing blogger and former TopCat Brittney Cason, right. Because she's smart. http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/brittneyafterdark/

• CLT tweeps, including me, traded notes on the big thunderstorms the past two nights. Reassuring to connect with people around the city during the ka-blammy. Twitter equivalent of Maria singing "My Favorite Things" during the storm in "The Sound Of Music," see bottom image.

• My favorite Charlotte tweeters: @upsideup (Laurie Smithwick, smart graphic designer/businesswoman), @crystaldempsey (former Observerite and Amelie's Bakery manager), @mikemcbride9 (marketer lets it all hang out), @rthames (yes, Rick Thames is my boss as ed. of The Observer, but active and real online), @janaforeman (not afraid to play) and @underoak (Andria Krewson, tech-savvy former Observerite.) Many more mentions to come.
  

• If 80% of your LinkedIn connections are current co-workers, you might not be branching out enough.

• The Chamber's main account @cltchamber has 740+ followers. Not bad considering they launched in February.

• Google Wave scares me. Not because it wouldn't be great to have interactive emails that are changeable, publishable, and media-friendly. Because Google's behind it. And Google is one controlling, intimidating company. I spent some time there last year, and I can tell you: Google is the anti-Twitter. http://wave.google.com/

• The biggest hurdle for the 50 million who just joined Facebook was privacy concerns. So why don't they care now?

• My favorite moment ever on social media was when a high school classmate posted "What kind of boyfriend doesn't even call on Valentine's Day?" Maybe she could've called every girlfriend she ever had and received the same response. But I doubt it.

• Mike Redding, of WCNC "Carolina Traveler" fame, I love you, and many other people love you. Stop blasting on Twitter and start interacting. People are annoyed.

LinkedIn, the Perry Como of social media

Social networking is the rock 'n' roll of this generation, and Facebook is the Beatles: Everyone's darlings. Facebook just topped 250 million global users -- 50 million in the past three months. Twitter is even hipper, the favorite of Ashton Kutcher and Shaq and astronauts -- and truly annoying to many older people. Think of them as the edgy band The White Stripes.

And then there's LinkedIn. Think Perry Como. Staid, predictable, unsexy. Why bother? Because LinkedIn might just get you a job.

"The great thing about Linkedin is that it is a professional network opening business relationships without the clutter of other social media sites like Facebook," says Lou Amico. The Lake Norman search-engine-optimization specialist uses LinkedIn to build connections for his company, L.A. Management.

He's right: Your business might use Facebook quite effectively, but you can also easily get tangled up in the goofy quizzes and virtual gift apps. (When I was at Stanford University studying social networking last year I heard a podcast of a talk by LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman. It's available free on iTunes.)

Ira Bass, a marketing consultant who runs IB Media LLC in the Ballantyne area, teaches free workshops on using LinkedIn effectively for business. His suggestion? Be thorough. He sums up his tips as:

1. Build a comprehensively complete profile. Don't just slap something up there.

2. Join as many local groups and industry-related groups as possible. This builds connections.

3. Understand the advanced search function, which can help people find you via the expertise topics you list for yourself.

Web guru Guy Kawasaki gives other LinkedIn tips, including making your profile more visible on Google, here:

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/ten_ways_to_use.html

Contact Bass, pictured above, along with Perry Como, at (704) 989-3790 or IBMedia@carolina.rr.com

Connect to Jeff on LinkedIn:

http://bit.ly/rd3hD

Your best summer Facebook photos

Used to be, you showed your friends your summer vacation photos weeks later, in an interminable slide show, or by fishing snapshots out of an envelope in your purse. Now, you can post photos from where you are, and show everyone you know at once. Facebook was born as a photo network, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard's student photos so he and buddies could rate girls. But it has flourished as we show each other our lives by posting photos of what we're doing.

Here are some of Charlotte's best Facebook photos from summer 2009. Above, Charlotte's Jana Foreman perches on "The Ledge," one of the glass boxes extending from Chicago's Willis (maiden name Sears) Tower.

Charlotte's Leigh Rose captured these two turtles having fun at the Kiawa Island nature museum. (She also tells me Facebook's lightning-quick targeted ads have already started hitting her with turtle-themed advertising. Presumably not for intimate products.)

Becky Tofaute Johnson snapped this natural wonder and its luminous architect.

Susan Hancock showed that down-home pleasures can make the best, most, mouth-watering vacation photos. Carolyn Peters captured this iconic view of New York from a cruise ship.

John Bland captured this singer of praise to God in Asheville.

What are you doing this summer? The best way to show me is to friend me on Facebook here,

http://www.facebook.com/jeff.elder

and tag me in your favorite photo.

Why have a column about social networking?

I'm back from a year in Silicon Valley, and ready to start a new column for The Charlotte Observer. Here it is.

No, wait. It's on Twitter. No, it's on Facebook. But it's also in the newspaper. It's all of the above.

This is a new kind of column. It's on social networking, and it's in social networking.

Why is social media the topic? Consider: 1. More than 400,000 people in greater Charlotte are on Facebook. 2. Businesses in the Queen City are flocking to Twitter. (BofA has reserved eight spots at an upcoming social media conference here). 3. And in Silicon Valley I studied the biggest movement in media up close.

Here is a photo I took at Twitter HQ in San Francisco, where the staff of 50 eats catered breakfast and lunch on china each day. (It's a recycling thing.) Employees lounge on couches in the lofty office and hold impromptu meetups with their tiny laptops. And another photo I took at Facebook, where the average age of an employee is 26, and the health benefits fair had a pirate theme.

I'll talk more about my experiences studying social networking as a Knight fellow at Stanford University. But mostly, I'm interested in you. How do you use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and the rest? I'd like to talk with you there, on those sites. To me, the dialogue is the great benefit of the social media revolution. The best of that dialogue will move here, for daily analysis and more patient discussion. My column @work will appear Thursdays on the Business page. And @play will appear Fridays on the Local front.

Welcome to my new column. Or should I say our new column. See you online.