With the massive growth of social networking sites like Facebook, more and more people are sharing personal photos of themselves online. Unfortunately, sometimes unflattering or inappropriate photos can make it out to "cyberspace", and they can come back to haunt you if you don't take the time to remove them.
Now, new software known as X-Pire promises to rectify this problem by adding a digital "expiration date" to your photos. After a certain period of time, any posted photos will be automatically deleted from whatever site it is uploaded to. For those of you that are "part-time" Facebook users - or just plain forgetful when it comes to updating or changing your profile - X-Pire could be a real benefit.
A word of caution, however - just because a photo is deleted doesn't mean it's no longer there. Digital imagery - or any data for that matter - is relatively easy to copy. The case of Barbara Streisand can attest to this, and not even a very public lawsuit was successful in stopping it.
Your best bet is to refrain from posting anything that could be construed as inappropriate. If you have any doubt - DON'T POST IT! In the long run, you'll save yourself - and your small business - any potential problems that could arise as a result.
Facebook recently announced that small businesses now have access to analytics which allow them to see per-post impressions and feedback for posted stories. Previously, this capability was restrcited to pages with over 10,000 fans or more.
Clearly, Facebook wants a larger piece of the SMB pie, an area that as of now has been the domain of Google. Chalk this up as another "shot across the bow" in the looming battle between these giants. The best thing is - you benefit as a result, and improving the insight into your business is critical if your goal is to thrive in a highly competitive, fragmented market segment.
There seems to be some debate as to whether Facebook is a viable platform for marketing your company -especially if you are a business-to-business company (B2B). While most "experts" agree there is value, most companies - big and small - have not been able to harness the power and potential Facebook could bring.
Each and every person on Facebook could be a buyer, decision maker, or advocate for your brand. How you engage them over Facebook is another subject - albeit an important subject - for a later post, but with over 500 million users, Facebook ranks as one of the largest communities in the world. As Facebook is so proud to point out, if they were a country, they would rank as the world's 3rd largest! As a small business owner, that's really, really, really, REALLY hard to ignore.
Want some perspective? Facebook created something they call a "social graph" where they plotted the number of friendships between cities around the world. They basically took a blank sheet of paper and plotted the points accordingly (ok, I am simplifying somewhat, but you get the idea).
Look at what they ended up with - a pretty accurate representation of the continents around the world. Now imagine getting your business in front of that crowd.