Around 3:30pm today I noticed that Facebook’s chat application had been upgraded. I wasn’t aware an upgrade was in the works, but the features they’ve released are extremely useful.
Your friends are now grouped by the list you assigned them to, and you can choose which lists you want to appear in the chat application.
Facebook Chat Groups Interface
You can also appear online selectively to these lists while appearing offline to others via a very iPhone-like toggle switch to the right of each list’s name. Re-order your lists, show Feed stories in the chat window and suppress avatars in the online user list.
Facebook Chat Options
Active chat sessions appear at the top of the online user list, although it seems new chat message notifications do not appear with the proper section. New message notifications are all showing next to the first session listed.
Facebook Chat Bug
The best feature is that the entire chat app can now pop-out of the Facebook webpage, just like Google’s web-based Gtalk. I had just told @MCGSTUDIO and @longbrook this past Friday how nice this feature would be!
I’m not sure if every user has access to the new chat features. What do you think of the new features? Did I miss anything? What would you add to the featureset?
Hi, Joe. Thanks for taking the time to share your opinions on personal branding.
The terms “personal brand” and “personal reputation” are not interchangeable nor do they mean the same thing, and perhaps that is the source of confusion. “Brand” precedes and defines “reputation” in a space where your reputation is not already known.
Prior to the advent of the web, search engines and social media platforms, your personal brand was called “your resume,” at least in professional circles anyway, and it had severely limited distribution. Your resume was, or should have been, crafted to present your reputation in a positive light, in a way that would appeal to your target audience who had no prior experience with your prior accomplishments. Your resume preceded and defined your professional reputation.
Today we can easily reach out much farther than before, and in the case of “reputation management,” we can be reached by many more people much easier than ever before, and it’s only getting easier. That means many more people who have no idea of your accomplishments might be trying to draw conclusions about who you are. Enter the “personal brand.”
I want to control as best as I can my image that people may discover. I want to avoid the possibility that someone may have an idea of who I am that is not to my benefit. So I craft a brand that says what I want people to think about me; I craft a promise of my past and future accomplishments; I craft trustworthiness and reliability; I craft all the same concepts that companies do through their brands for myself. Then I have to deliver on that promise, just like companies do, or the brand will fail; the brand will be untrustworthy creating the wrong reputation.
Brands are not for the existing “customers” of the brand; that’s what reputation is for and where reputation is built. Brands are for future customers; a promise of reputation to be delivered. The brand defines and precedes the reputation.
My name is Lyell E. Petersen, and my personal brand is 93octane. Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts.
Lyell E. Petersen / 93octane
@93octane on Twitter
Originally posted as a comment by 93octane / Lyell E. Petersen on Helping Small Business help themselves – Network Solutions using Disqus.
While working the @CruiseDeals Twitter account looking for new followers I ran across @JanetEngel, Sales Director for Holland America Line. Janet was excited to learn about our depth of involvement in travel social media and invited me to join her new Facebook group, Social Media for Travel Industry Professionals.
Her group is relatively new and I wanted to contribute right away, so I jumped into the discussion forum to answer a question she posed, “How are you using social media currently?” Here’s my answer.
How do I use social media? Yikes…is there enough room here to list it all?
Blogging: I blog professionally, personally and entertainmentally. Yes that’s a word. I just made it up right there. I use both WordPress (http://lyellpetersen.wordpress.com) and Blogger. I blog to create a broad base of content for others to refer to to learn more about me.
Micro-blogging: I have an account at almost every micro-blog out there, but Twitter is the hub. Any place I can cross-post to from Twitter, I will. In fact, Twitter is my central hub for all things social media. (@93octane) I use Tweetdeck for my main account, and Twhirl for the rest. I cannot even begin to overstate the power and value of Twitter to me both personally and professionally, in dollar value and in social capital. Twitter is my pulse.
Sharing: I use Flickr, YouTube, Tumblr and Posterous (http://93octane.posterous.com) to curate a lot of content I find relevant. Posterous is my current obsession as it is so easy to curate with, and it cross-posts to the most places. I cross-post to multiple places because I want to make myself accessible to the broadest audience I can reach. I don’t want to force someone to meet me in MY place if they’re more comfortable in THEIR place. I’ll just go to their place. (There’s a huge lesson in that.)
Professional: LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/lyellpetersen) and Plaxo. I don’t bother with Plaxo much, but I like how Chelle is using it. I am involved in quite a few LinkedIn groups, but I haven’t yet derived tangible value from that. I’m going to put Facebook here too as I use it the same way Chelle does…mashing personal and professional there.
Online Brand Reputation Management, both Personal and Professional: Google never forgets. Use social media to your advantage. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Ask me. 
People: Yes, “people.” There’s no better way to derive real value from social media than actually meeting the people you engage with. I get away from the Interwebs as often as I can to meet people in my networks. I attend or conduct “Tweetups” (meetups of Twitter users) on average once a week.
Next on the horizon: Blog commenting. @tdavidson, an exceptionally brilliant individual, introduced me to Backtype (.com). Backtype collects all the comments I make on most blogs. Disqus does this too. It allows me to find and subscribe to other’s comment streams as well. Reading content someone pushes out via blogging is one way to learn about that person. Reading the comments they push back is another good way to learn, plus uncover new blogs.
And I haven’t even got to all the ancillary services like last.fm, digg, delicious, friendfeed, myspace, url shorteners, other image and video platforms, etc., etc., etc.
Seems like I’m a real social media junkie, doesn’t it? Well, I am, and willfully so. Participation builds experience, knowledge and social capital. But more that that, it builds community. And the power and value of community is missed or misunderstood by so many people and companies who are plunging into the social media waters.
Feel free to connect with me at any of the places I talked about. You can find me by my name, my brand: “93octane” or my email address: lyell [at] 93octane [dot] com. I’m looking forward to meeting you.
