Creative Commons

Creative Commons is something that I talk about at a high level when I deliver social media training. Here is the long version of this story.

• Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd)

This license is the most restrictive, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

• Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.

• Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

• Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd)

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

• Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.

• Attribution (by)

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.

There is a lot more to CC than these six categories. There is an organization called CreativeCommons.org, it’s a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

They provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

They are based in the U.S.A therefore it’s unclear if all their licensing rules apply globally.

There is another category called CCO that applies to your own work that you can waive your rights and make it completely available to the public without restriction to copyright and database law. This category applies to scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright- or database-protected content.

We all need to earn a living, so who would be crazy enough to use these licenses?

The best known example of course is Flickr, they have incorporated these licensing into their offerings.

Wikipedia, Google and Open course ware. The most interesting one is a band called Nine Inch Nails, who released some of their songs for FREE as well as a limited tired step version of other products, services etc…This had an amazing effect whereby they had a sold out tour and sold their other products as well.

If you are thinking of incorporating CC into your business or otherwise, there are great guidelines on how to go about this. Since we are here in Canada, then how do we know if all this is relevant to the laws here. I am happy to say that we do indeed have a CC Canada.

The rules are simple

1. On Friday

2. Suggest interesting Twitter users to follow

3.  @<twitter id> … #FollowFriday

It’s that simple. The idea behind this is to promote users that you find interesting.

Your followers or anyone checking the Everyone updates will see this Tweet.

It all got started with one simple tweet from Micha Baldwin…

With a suggestion from Mykl Roventine…

And it went wild….

Today FollowFriday is still here and yes there is an official website for it, FollowFriday.com. In addition to this there is

@FOLLOWfriday , @FollowFridays, @

Good old twitter search

Top Follow Friday

Tweeple Rank

Follow Friday Stats

Trend details

FolowFriday Tweeps

TwitScoop

Twitter Tag Project

So next time it’s Friday, recommend someone. Check out the above sites to find interesting people to follow.

Ok I am going to cut to the chase, it’s the @mentions or new tagging feature from Facebook. If you are a regular Twitter user you are very familiar with the @username, as a way of replying to the people you are having a conversation with.

This feature is somewhat similar to Twitter however it’s not only user name based but contextual as well. Here’s an example of what I am talking about. Say I want to @ a particular friend who’s name begins with A.

Click on the wall tab and type the @ followed by the word you want to use, in this case it’s @a.

A drop down window will be opened with all the relevant info. related to a.  i.e. Pages, groups, events etc.. that contain a. Keep typing the rest of the word until you find the relevant item.

Click on the item. There you have it. It’s very easy.

So if you have been to an event and want to comment on it use the @mentions feature. If you have a comment for a number of friends then this is a great feature to use as it saves you writing on multiple walls at the same time.

Go ahead it and get @crazy in Facebook.

It’s certainly a work in progress however it’s quite a calming feeling when you use this as most of the applications, updates, requests etc. are not there. All the bells and whistles have been stripped out. So if you like this then use it.

Here’s what it looks like so far.

Top menu bar for Lite has the Profile, Events, Inbox, Settings, Logout and Search.

Compared to the regular Facebook which has Home, Profile, Frneids, Inbox, UserName, Settings, Logoug and Search.

The top bar for Lite has Write, Post Photos, Post Video.

Compared to the regular Facebook which has Wall, Info, Photos, Boxes, Video, Yearbook, + (for additional tabs)

The Lite side bar looks like this.

There is an Ad asking you to invite 2 other friends to try it out.

There are no menu items at the bottom, and all the other side bar stuff is gone.

So why a Facebook and a Facebook Lite? Time will tell as to where they want to go with this. Till then if you find it all too confusing then use Facebook Lite.

So with this in mind I have signed up on Gravatar.

The big question in my mind is not that I have a gravatar how does my avatar appear on other blogs, forums, sites etc. It’s through the use of the gravatar plugins on the site. Some of the plugins are for WordPress, Joomla, Geeklog and more.

I signed up and uploaded a number of pictures to be used as my gravatar. One is the company logo and some pictures of me.

I have heard a lot about this particular project and today is very exciting as FaveQuest has just launched their latest social media application, the Bluesfest View Tube.

“The Bluesfest ViewTube consists of three components

1) music videos for nearly all acts (pulled from youtube)
2) a personal calendar (with reminders)
3) ability to invite friends

There are two versions

1) web extension to Bluesfest website (simple registration using your email)

2) Facebook application”

The idea is to give the smaller acts at the bluesfest more attention, which is awesome for their fans. The cool part is that this View Tube is for the fans so if you have opinions on what features you would like to his application do give FaveQuest your input.

Congratulations Allan.

A few months ago I started following him to learn how celebrities are using Twitter. Since the mainstream media has been writing about this face, his followers have increased and so have other celebrities joining Twitter.

What makes this attractive to their fans is the fact that they get the inside scoop on what’s going on from the celebrities themselves. The paparattzzi might just go out of business. That’s wishful thinking.

A lot of people say that they don’t what to know who had coffee or what they eat for breakfast. Well if you are a celebrity then your fans definitely want to know this kind of stuff. It’s turning out to be a great way to promote yourself and celebrities are capitalizing on this to create their own perception of themselves and one that is different from the tabloids.

For all you celebrity obsessed there is try out Celebwitter, they track all the celebs on Twitter. Apparently Ashton go 1Million followers before CNN did!

It now turns out that Oprah is not only on Facebook but on Twitter. Maybe I will DM her, do you think she will respond?

It is powered by Oodle,  more listings, smarter classifieds.

It’s got the usual UI similarities like box to post whatever is for sale.

There is a Browse section for the existing categories.

Recent Listings or View all listings.

There are a number of other tabs for

• Selling it
• Sell for a cause
• Give it away
• Ask for it

Pretty easy to use and navigate around with the typical social network feel to it.

On the right hand side there are 2 columns, one for the usual facebook ads. The other column caught my attention.

Want to see your cause featured? Contact us today.  Clicking on this resulted in another form.

It looks like a pretty standard facebook email form, right? Looking for the fine print, this is what I found.

If you send Matthew Dearborn a message, you will give him permission to view your list of friends, as well as you Basic, Work and Education info. for one month.

Hmm not sure who Matthew Dearborn is and not sure how my friends feel about giving this individual access to my friends list and other information.

This now brings up the privacy dillema.  If you are one of those people that are very open is a social network this would not bother you.  However what if you are one of those people that value your privacy and have the privacy settings activated as per your preference for various people in your network.  This might be a bit bothersome.

What are your thoughts on this?

So here’s the scoop on the changes.

In the past it looked like this

It now looks like this.

The new UI looks very much like a profile but it’s for a business.

The Facebook Pages is great for leveraging the real connections between friends on Facebook. The Fans become brand advocates. The posts on the Page will now appear in News Feeds of fans thus making it more powerful.

There will be multiple customizable tabs. This looks like it could be a great feature.

Enhanced Wall

The wall now has the same functionality as that of a profile wall. In the past when something was posted on the wall it did not appear in the news feeds of the fan unless you manually activated this capability.

Update and Share

Fans can get updates on statuses

Tabbed Structure

This looks like a great feature as it is easier to keep info categorized and organized.  Core applications are now available like Events, Reviews and Discussions.

Like the profiles, third party appliations can be developed for the pages.

This is a really cool feature. Each tab is it’s own URL which means that for Facebook ads or of-site promotion you can now have your landing page so to speak.

A default tab can be set for users who aren’t yet Fans who navigate to the page from within Facebook.

Measuring Engagement and Interaction

The Insights took will now include new data on Fans’ engagement with posts from the Page. The number of comments made by Fans and how many people view your page in News Feeds.

There are more great features and the setup is very simple.

The key difference is that you can now customize the page to certain landing pages for various users thus customizing the experience. The best part is that there are better measurement tools.

True to his word his team have worked non stop since the election to transition his new media strategy and develop it into that of a New Media President.

Barack Obama.com is still alive and has regular updates.  It’s unclear as to the future of that site.  Post election there was Change.gov that gave regular updates on the road to the White House.  He did promise to open the government up and engage the citizens which has resulted in the  WhiteHouse.gov having a makeover and this  is very exciting.

The White House Blog will serve as one of the communications vehicles so to speak.  Macon Phillips is the Director of New Media for the White House.  The Blog post Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov outlines the future of this site. It reminds people to keep tabs via the RSS feed and sign up for email updates.

They promise transparency by publication of proclamations and executive orders made public via this site.

In keeping with his promise to take the opinion of the people into the decision making process all non-emergency legislation will be available on the website for five days.  This will give everyone enough time to send in their opinions before the President signs off on them.   In the past people have been very disgruntled with politicians in general partly due to their furstration over the lack of their input into the decision making process.  In other words open sourced democracy.