Social Media in the workplace

According to the Deloitte’s 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey [via eMarketer], 53% of employees felt that their online profiles are none of their employers’ business, and more than one-third never consider what their bosses, clients or colleagues think before posting. However, 61% have made significant adjustments to their social network pages to reflect their public nature – without the prompting of their superiors. While in business perspective, there is that nearly one-third (30%) of executives said social networking is a part of their business and operations strategy, however, 55% of executives admitted that their companies do not have an official policy for social networks.

Keep your Social Media profile right

▲ Facebook Privacy Settings

To avoid potential risk to their public images, it is common for Hongkongers to reject adding their colleagues/business partners in Facebook. Or even they added them, they usually introduce these measures to seperate their work/business with own personal life:

1. Privacy Settings. Take Facebook as an example, you are advised to pick your privacy settings for the access rights and action you allowed to different groups of friends
2. Multiple Social Media Accounts. Simply create 2 or more social media accounts and seperate your groups of family, friends and colleagues.
3. No real name and profile picture. This is the safest way, and in my view, it’s the most anti-social media way.

I believe in social media for good use, and encourage courtesy and against abuse usage of social media. I also recommend you to read about the 10 useful Facebook privacy settings introduced by All Facebook. It may be the time to set your social media profiles right to play safe and enjoy social life online.

Extended Reading

• 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know by All Facebook
• Do You Keep Your Social Media Profiles Separate? by WebProNews
• 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey Examines the Reputational Risk Implications of Social Networks by Deloitte

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• Rest in Peace, Laughing Gor.

Photo is the key component making social media so hot. You may have tried your best to tag all your friends and yourself in photos on Facebook, but you’ll always get a chance to miss some photos of you taken by your friends, colleagues and in those other 10 billion photos in Facebook. Face.com’s ‘Photo Finder’ will help you discover them all automatically.

Auto-Tagged by Photo Finder

Face.com announced its alpha version of Photo Finder on Facebook. It adopts a proprietary facial recognition technology to scans through those photos in your own, your friends’ and other public albums instantly, and it will prompt an Auto-Tag results for user’s confirmation. We will be free from tagging photos in future, how cool it is!

Search Photo of You

Face recognition also enables searches over billions of photos on the internet too. Polar Rose launches its facial search engine Polar Rose beta, and you can search any public figures, celebrities and even yourself. How does it do it? It recognizes the faces and suggests the names to those users’ installed their plug-in to confirm them or add new names. These scalable eye-ball checks are made feasible by the power of crowdsourcing.

Though it sparks privacy concerns, Face recognition will definitely be the major technology on social networking and photo-sharing sites like Facebook & Flickr. If you want to try it first, join Face.com’s Photo Finder alpha and share your experience here.

Extended Reading

• Face.com Brings Facial Recognition To Facebook Photos by TechCrunch
• Facial Recognition Comes to Facebook by ReadWriteWeb

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• Rest in Peace, Laughing Gor.
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Fans of Laughing Gor (Laughing 哥) are all upset about his death in the 22nd episode of TVB’s popular drama “Emergency Unit” (《學警狙擊》). Both the role of Laughing and the fabulous acting by Michael Tse (謝天華) have gained hot attention and massive praise since he was revealed to be an undercover for over 9 years in the recent episodes. Of course, everything didn’t happen intentionally by TVB itself, Laughing Gor just tips in the social media.

Tipping in New Media

Laughing started as a supporting role in “Emergency Unit” as a senior position in a triad (進興社) and got not so much attention in early episodes. But once the surprising rumor of Laughing is an undercover spread in various social network sites like Facebook, forums and blogs, it created massive buzz and raised much more audience attention about “Emergency Unit”. With such respectful and interesting characters of Laughing, social media facilitated the unstoppable viral distribution and hot discussion about his destiny.

Being the hottest search keyword in Yahoo! HK (The most popular search engine in Hong Kong), Laughing Gor simply dominated the local online community this week.

Fans in Facebook

The death of Laughing in 22nd episode is the hottest topic among mainstream and online media before and after it is broadcast. It attracts more than 120,000 Facebook users to join his group and here are some facts:

Mar-18 3PM: ~60,000
Mar-18 11PM: 73,166 (The night of 22nd episode)
Mar-20 1AM: 103,319
Mar-22 4PM: 125,780

The death of Laughing doubles the number of fans and attracts 1.8% of Hong Kong population just in a Facebook group, it is pretty impressive in local social media.

User-Generated Media

The death of Laughing triggered much more user-generated contents. Facebook and Twitter were flooded by the status updates in which netizens expressed their sympathy of losing Laughing. As there are massive desire of expressing their sadness, revenge and wanting Laughing back, there are popular facebook apps. The most interesting one is “In remembrance of Laughing” (“永遠懷念Laughing哥”) developed by Eric, it enables user to mourn him by laying virtual offerings.

People also organized Laughing’s gags, derived numerous funny photos and uploaded his “Death Note” video in Facebook group and forums. The phenomenon of Laughing also gained huge coverage of personal blogs as well, and all these show the power and impact of Web 2.0.

Tipping Point in Web 2.0

Laughing Gor reminds me about a book – “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Galdwell, and he completed side-mission to create a very first successful case how Web 2.0 tips drama and character from mainstream media in Hong Kong. Wish you rest in peace, Laughing Gor! We will either see you in final episode of “Emergency Unit” or Episode I of Laughing Gor (Laughing 哥前傳).

Extended Reading

• Laughing哥 – 從電視到互聯網 by 案內人隨筆
• 12萬人悼念Laughing哥 by 廣告101‧Be Always Convinced!
• 解釋 Laughing 哥 II：電視劇熱潮, 是刻意還是巧合?part 1 by 石先生
• 從領袖的角度看Laughing哥的死亡 by 寫作空間
• Unravelling the Laughing Gor Phenomenon by The Picth HK
  
• 「Laughing哥」紅遍討論區 編劇剖析熱潮 「社會需要英雄」by 明報新聞網

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