As I was on Facebook quite early, I was able to bring a lot of my friends into my space. When I first joined I valued Facebook as a very private area to share information.  However overtime, I opened up to accepting less intimate friends, more business colleagues and light-relationships as well.   This definitely changed my style of  posts to more non-private discussions.

Here is a chart that shows how the privacy setting were from 2005 to April 2010.  For the information that you add to any of these areas,  it may be shared if you are not careful.  In many ways, they have also changed the privacy settings with new releases, that might have not caught your attention to the new access availability.

My 10 rules of thumb for using Facebook

1. when you post something, take the perspective that the entire world could see it anyway, anytime in the future.  i.e like when you recommend a restaurant to a stranger  ( the Definition of a Friend on Facebook may be different then a real life Friend)
2. Thinks that may help you or your business are good to post on Facebook. Leverage the viral nature as a business tool between you and your friends.
3. If somebody pastes something personal about you, you do not like, delete it and then send a private message to explain way!
4. If you do create controversial discussions, please note that these will always be there and may haunt you some day.
5. Becareful with your birthday, and contact information as they are the only two things that they keep between you and your friends
6. As Facebook adds location information, be especially careful.
7. All of your pictures will potentially become public and owned by Facebook, so becareful
8. Your “likes” will be shared, it is now part of the social web as Facebook calls it, so only “like” something if you want it shared
9. Facebook is becoming a very powerful search engine, so use it that way and to get advice on things that you are looking for
10. Throw in about 10~20% of your posts some kind of humor…..so then it makes it unclear if you really meant that or not?

These charts are from Matt Mckeon.  I have not done the research to check if these are accurate, so I am quoting him and you can go directly to his site.  I just thought this was a very interesting thing to share….. and “liked” the visual very much.

OMMA Mobile ( Brand Panel)

I will be moderating a panel at OMMA Mobile tomorrow ( May 12th) about brand marketing and apps.  Since the launch of iPhone, Apps used for branding and engagement purposes has exploded.  I will be exploring with some leading brand managers the overall effectiveness and direction of how they have leveraged and see apps in there marketing mix.  We will have Coca-Cola,  Kraft Foods,  Zippo and Fandango.

Some useful stats…

- iPhone Store has close to 200,000 App, Android marketplace 50,000

- We are quickly approaching 2B App downloads and by 2014 it is estimated users will have downloaded 6B apps

- Nokia see’s 1.7M App downloads a day off of Ovi store

- 40% of Apps used in the Japanese market are from oversea’s

- Verizon/Softbank/Vodafone/China mobile have launched the JIL framework for viral widgets ( Web Apps)

- There are over 85 Stores that deliver applications globally

- Today approx 91% of the US population carries a mobile phone and 25% browse the web

- Tomorrow 2012, 50% of all users will be carrying a smart phone.

- In a study by InsightExpress,  Mobile has been 4.5~5x more effective in brand marketing compared to online

- GenY is very positive with mobile coupons and access them up to 6x more then other consumers

-  43% of smartphone users view product or retailer coupons on their smartphone while away from their computer

-  While in-store 52% of smartphone users view a product description and 36% have checked the price from their handset

-  The mobile app has been know to change the dynamics of retail merchandising as the device is closer to the user personally then viewing the items on the shelves

-  SMS is still growing and a very effective App deliver mechanism and engagement service.  5Billion text messages were exchanged per day in Dec 2009

Comscore just published today the latest statistics on mobile content consumption.  They compared the 3 months preceding Dec 09 vs. the 3 months preceding March 10.

Althought Text Messaging is still on the rise and occupies over 60% penetration from users, the growth was slightly up.  Most of the other services all live between the 10~30% penetration range.  Surprisingly, Social Media. Downloading Applications and Browsing were the three big growth areas of approx 2.6~2.8% increase since last year.

In this recent chart published by Einstein Research, user behavior is show in a variety of ways that links back to a search usage case.  Besides the 42% that are looking to learn about new products and services, users are also creating content that in fact makes the search so relevant with over 40%( 41%) contributing to the overall stream.