The simplicity of it is amazing, but the impact of it is astounding… In one day, Facebook’s new Organ Donor sign up option had 6,000 people enrolled, through 22 state registries, as opposed to less than 400 on any other normal day.

Ingenious, really…

The Facebook feature allows users to share their decision to be an organ donor on the website. More than 100,000 did sign up on the first day Facebook announced the option. The DMV has offered that option for years, but apparently the numbers had remained dismal, by comparison.

With this feature, Facebook has provided a bolt of hope to the more than 114,000 Americans who currently have their lives on hold while waiting for transplants of kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs. Although I am sure that Facebook never considered this program as falling under anything resembling a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, it surely feels like it.

But not quite, and here’s why…

Most CSR programs are geared to applying a company’s core competencies to advance social change in a way that contributes to business results and gives a company a competitive advantage. Most such programs, offer public good but are, in essence, keyed up to mitigate the impact of a company’s activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Most programs are either philanthropic in nature, as in donations for disaster relief or for the public good in general; support educational awareness campaigns, as in safety or health; or are sponsorships, as in cash or product giveaways, or employee volunteer time.

None of this applies to Facebook. Its Organ Donor program is on another CSR plane.

By providing a link on the site that connects organ donors to online donor registries, it has simply provided a “public good” by doing what it does best – connect – in this case, organ donors who would not have had a chance to come forth in such a public way or who had not thought of registering in the first place, with organizations that can offer hope to the 114,000 waiting…

But as with anything else, it always starts with one person’s mission and goal and in this case it was Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, who teamed up with an old friend Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who alerted her to the dire need for organ donations. Sheryl, made a judgment call and decided to find a way “to fix it.”

Although only an available option in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, still, with its millions of users, Facebook has now turned into a powerful tool to save lives…

Bravo.

Within the political arena negative campaigns are commonplace, even expected and accepted. It seems to be the norm to engage political gurus in stealth tactics to “uncover” opponents’ weaknesses or momentary ethical lapses. But short of the political arena where all is “game,” the days when smear campaigns actually work are over, given this transparent world.

Facebook got a whiff of that today…

What left Facebook red-faced, is the big buzz that ensued over the story that broke about the “clandestine” way it went about to clobber Google about privacy issues. It secretly hired a top notch public relations firm “to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy” according to the Daily Beast.

Apparently two ex-broadcasting “stars”, now working for the PR firm, had been very busy indeed, packaging a negative story, concocting some of it and, even offering to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, promising to get it placed in major mainstream media outlets. And all this, without revealing the identity of its client. And to what purpose, the public good?

When the claims proved largely untrue or at the very least exaggerated, the blogger blew the whistle and the whole incident became an embarrassing PR fiasco resulting in temporary dings to the otherwise “trustworthy” reputation of Facebook and the stellar reputation of the PR firm, Burson Marstellar who, over its 58-year history, has represented blue-chip corporate clients . This whole incident underscored the rivalry between Facebook and Google, as they go confronting each other over Internet users’ time and advertisers’ budgets.

Look, tomorrow this incident will be yesterday’s news. Both Facebook and Burson Marstellar have issued statements that although purposely vague, do have semblances of apologies. This whole matter will have been but a “blip,” or hiccup, but it has left some questions about the crossing of ethical lines according to the Public Relations Society of America’s ethical conduct policies.

PR professionals fiercely guard their reputation with the media as trusted sources and for good reasons. This transparent world of ours will not bear any infringements on that trust. Public relations should not be used as a weapon to destroy competition, rather should be forthright in communicating an organization’s contribution to the well-being of society, whether through products or services the consumer can use or want, or contribute to the public good in terms of laws, regulations, environmental concerns or social interests.

If this sounds altruistic, it’s not, for it is the norm for the code of conduct within the PR industry.

Bad week for both trust and transparency…

Just take a look at last week’s Facebook privacy leaks, when all of the top 10 apps on Facebook were leaking. It turns out that user IDs of six of the most popular apps, were leaked to advertising networks included FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and several card and puzzle games. According to Facebook, it knew nothing about it, and put the blame on the games’ publisher, Zynga who was doing the selling.

It’s not the first time that Facebook’s face has turned red…

It happened last May when the WSJ discovered that Facebook was leaking user IDs through its ad sales on the site. Facebook corrected that problem, albeit too late, of course, for some users. Apparently they never thought to see if its app publishers were leaking or selling the same information, leading us to the Zynga debacle of this week.  What will be the next thing that Facebook discovers?

Each chip dings users’ trust.

And then there was Google that admitted, also last week, that its Street View cars, scooped up emails and passwords from Wi Fi networks as they cruised around. The company is “mortified,” and has implemented changes, but maybe not quite as “mortified” as the people who trusted Google not to snoop in the first place.  According to Google they initially collected only “fragmentary” data, but the true extent of the Wi-Fi snooping was only uncovered recently by regulators outside of Google, in some cases looking into possible criminal charges.

How many dings does it take to lose trust?  Most cheating spouses usually only get one…

As to transparency, one has only to look at the non-transparent Wikileaks, the self-proclaimed whistle-blower’s web site, to know that transparency works both ways.  Under the guise of freedom of information, the site has now released two “troves” of classified military records, an earlier one on the Afghan conflict and the recent one on Iraq, causing vast damage without any attempt at substantiation.  The founder, Julian Assange, now a hunted man, has not found it necessary to reveal who is funding the organization, friend or foe, for what political cause, the source of their information, the process of evaluation as to what to publish, or even to what purpose. So much for transparency…

Transparency needs trust and trust demands transparency. It’s the measure of it that cannot quite be trusted, as in “to what extent is a company transparent?”  Clearly it’s a marketer’s choice as to what information is transparent and what is not, what is made public and what remains within corporate walls. But once parameters are established, transparency is all about consistency and how it is communicated, a formula that will surely elevate trust.

Classified military material, on the other hand, is an antonym to transparency and should remain outside of such a discussion…

We introduce our fifth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Kathleen Kaufman, published author and educator.

Kathleen Kaufman is the author of environmental fiction and an inner city educator. She is well known in the social media community as a Facebook influencer and entertaining blogger. She can be found on her publisher’s website, The Way Things Are Publications, on Facebook and on her website.

Facebook marketing is a dirty word. No one wants to feel like they’re friends with a person who is trying to sell them a product, be it a book or a copyedit.  The most successful Facebookers, the ones who have converted their page into actualized business, are not marketing, rather they are participating.   It’s not as easy as it sounds; for one, you have to mean it.  The simple act of being genuine on Facebook is easier said than done.

I am certainly not an expert on how to juggle professionalism and sincerity in a virtual world, but I have learned a few lessons along the way as to what not to do.

1.  Mass Emails: I currently have approximately seventy-three messages waiting for me on my page.  I have no intention of reading them, for the most part, because they are all invites to ‘The Best Opening Night Of The Best Play Ever!’ or ‘Open Mic Night At The Improv!”   Thus, most of them are for events that are in Boston, Chicago, or New York.  It becomes painfully obvious that the sender has no idea that I live in Los Angeles, and even more painfully obvious that I am just a number, a member of their growing horde, an inadvertent member of a fan club.

We introduce our fourth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Tom Searcy, who helps companies in finding business solutions.

Tom Searcy, co-author of  “Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company”, author of “RFPs Suck!” and founder of Hunt Big Sales, is a sought after business solutions expert for small to mid-sized companies.  Follow Tom’s thought leadership through his blog: www.huntingbigsales.com or access his resources at www.huntbigsales.com.

I remember watching a documentary on nudists when I was of an age that I couldn’t yet buy my own “nudist” magazines at the drugstore…the ones with the brown wrappers…if they even bothered wrapping them. The documentary talked about the “freedom of nudity”, its “natural state” and “the beauty of the human form.” It was confusing as hell to me- because the human form, at least the ones at the colony, were not beautiful. Even at distance and with discreetly placed black-box-blockouts, these were some pretty unattractive people. Their nudity not only put me in a position to look at things I didn’t want too, but it answered questions about people, (surgery scars, stretch marks, the body’s response to gravity over time for example), that I was not asking.

The documentary was about a microscopic sliver of the population who had made a distinct choice. But we are all living naked now. You, me, our companies, our children. We are all naked. And we will be beyond naked very soon- (BTW, I don’t know what “beyond naked” means but I think it involves Flickr™ photos of our last set of x-rays and dental records). Are you ready to live naked?

YouTube™, Flickr™, Digg™, Twitter™, Facebook™, LinkedIn™ and the rest of the usual suspects of the social media revolution are creating a naked world. Every customer experience, every shipped product and online FAQ answer, each touchpoint in the chain of your business is open for scrutiny and discussion. You may be aware of this, which puts you ahead of the huge brands out there being lampooned every day in painful and direct ways. But what is your strategy?

I work with small to mid-sized companies who are trying to grow quickly. One of the things that we work on is their market image. One of the nice things about everyone being naked is that it’s easier to do the necessary research on a prospect company before you see them. But…It works in reverse…(sometimes when I work with companies they forget this part).

Here’s what I tell my small to mid-sized companies:

• Control – You don’t have it any more, so take a deep breath and stand tall, proud and naked. You can control your integrity and your authenticity. Focus on that. Don’t focus on the buttoning-down of over point of entry and exit to your perceived brand machine. That’s like trying to grab the wind with a sack.
• It’s Never Fair – Of course attacks are unfair. No one is trying to provide a ‘fair and balanced’ story, as if there ever is one. Don’t waste time trying to make their attacks ‘fair’ by offering your point-by-point answers. The bell has rung- you are not going to un-ring it. You can just respond.
• Fast and Good – A quick response that is reasonable is much better than a slow response that is perfect. Do you see Toyota out there floundering with the slow and perfect story? That’s because slow in the naked world is by definition imperfect.
• Find Your Voice – As a writer and speaker, I go through a number of exercises to make certain I am writing in my voice. Not what I think to be the “professional and homogenized” voice. In the heralded brands around the world, one of the key elements to the rankings is their consistency and authenticity of their voice. You need to make certain that the voice is an authentic voice.
• Be 3-D – All the movies are going 3-dimensional for the same reason; the audience expects a different experience. You have to be multi-dimensional in your market message. A website with a never-changing brochure of product/service lists doesn’t cut it. Customers want the multi-dimensional experience. Give it to them. Videos, photos, blogs and ever-changing content.
• Thousand Points of Light – Your brand is no longer just the crafted message of your marketing firm. The touchpoints are now your brand- employees, customers, vendors and competitors. You have to be out there knowing what is being said. You can’t survey once a quarter and keep track of the voices. This has to be a daily part of someone’s role. Key word searches and tracking make it easier- but it has to be done constantly.

On this blog-site, you can read past entries to see what it is like to live naked. Noemi’s blogs provide examples of how ugly in can look when big companies try to hide. This is especially true for those companies who have not yet realized that the emperor not only isn’t wearing clothes, but his wardrobe has been shredded. But the question for you should be “What is my strategy for living naked?”

When thinking through your strategy, include these questions:

1. On a simple Google search of my company’s name and my name, what comes up and in what order? Is it what I want to come up? How can I change it?
2. How do we tell our story to the world at the level of customer, employee and supplier? How is the world telling our story to us in the naked world at the level of customer, employee and supplier? What does it mean about us if no one is telling our story?
3. Who are the examples of companies, regardless of industry, that we look up too in the naked world? What can we learn from them?

Fortunately for me, living in a naked world requires neither diet, nor exercise nor surgery. But it does require confidence and a strategy. What’s yours?

We introduce our second guest blogger of our new monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary, who encourages, in the below blog, those who are still hesitating to engage in social media to do so.

Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling and president of Charlotte-based BuyGitomer, gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings and conducts Internet training programs on selling and customer service at www.trainone.com. He can be reached at salesman@gitomer.com.

It started like a small bunch of burning leaves. A little MySpace, here and there  –  a blog or two. And then the wind picked up. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. Growing from a windstorm to a firestorm, social media is a tornado running wild over the Internet plains.

How social are you?

How serious are you about social media?

REALITY: You can’t ignore it. Hundreds of millions of people are involved so far, and it’s just a few years old.

I tried to ignore it for a while, but it soon became apparent that this was the new, new wave – about a year ago I became a player.

I admit I have an edge. I have a lot of readers and followers who are interested in what I have to say and want to know what my immediate thinking is. That’s two of the values in social media – it’s immediate and it’s informative. It’s also fun – that’s why Facebook and YouTube are worth BILLIONS

The major networks in social media are growing by the second…

• For photos, it’s Flickr – worth billions

• For videos, it’s YouTube – worth billions

• Social networking for the younger set starts with MySpace – an original

• Social networking for the growing and grown set, it’s Facebook – worth billions

• To get connected and network with the business set, it’s LinkedIn.

And for that private message, there’s texting – it’s easy for me – I have an iPhone.

And that is just a partial picture. There’s more…

• For individual expressions, there are weblogs, or blogs.

• If you want to say a few words, there’s micro-blogging and interconnecting – also known as Twitter – worth billions.

• For chronologging, it’s Wikipedia – worth billions.

• And, of course, there are your personal website and business website. Priceless.

All of these medias are, or try to be, socially engaging – sticky if you will. All of them are, or try to be, passed on – viral if you will. Or, better stated, if you tweet, are you good enough or bad enough to be re-tweeted?

I have made a serious commitment to “socialize,” in other words, to expose more of my personal self and my business self through social media. I will still maintain my value-based philosophy, but I will personalize it, and humanize it to a point that others are attracted to it, benefit from it, and want to pass it on to others.

I will be social and viral at the same time.

So, what does this mean to you?

What’s the opportunity to you and for you?

Why should you get involved?

Social media is an opportunity, a new frontier, a space in cyberspace that gives you an individual place to play, build awareness of you and for you, brand yourself, and potentially profit.

You have to ask yourself …

Where’s the beef?

Where’s the fun?

What’s the value, both to you and others?

And how – if desired – do you monetize it?

Well, unless you’re one of the few people in an ownership or founding position of these social medias, your monetizing opportunities are at the moment limited – in spite of various claims by “experts.”

Here’s what I recommend to get going and get positioned, so that your value – either in social, business, fun, or money — can be realized:

• Sign on.

• Establish an account on each of the major medias.

• Post something.

• Tweet something.

• Connect with someone.

• Do it yourself.

• Do it every day.

And learn by updating as much as you can on your own.

Social media is fluid – it moves and changes daily. It’s text, audio, photo, and video. It’s every media and it’s every second. It’s current and it’s constant. Ever see a section of a website labeled “latest news” and when you click it, the last update is from 2004? Not good.

The Internet is instant. Social media is instant. And you have to be ready to participate consistently, and in a meaningful way, if you want to win.

Please don’t wait.

© 2009 All Rights Reserved

Do you really think that people who write every little item that is ‘under their finger nails’ on their Facebook page actually WANT privacy?  Certainly not at the time they are writing about it.  Users want their multitude of “friends” to know what they offer up, information given at a certain moment in time in their lives, that matters very much to them indeed. It’s about sharing their lives – in public.

So when Facebook decided to remove the “kill switch” as reported by Fox News, which had allowed for user’s information to be deleted once accounts were terminated, the outcry against this changed policy became a roar from frightened users who were terrified at being found out years later about details of their past, forcing a Facebook reversal.

In reading about the hurried back pedaling that Facebook did, I wondered what people were thinking when they posted their emotional rant or bragged about their newest conquest, or mused about a socially unacceptable cause in the first place. Did they not think that posting on Facebook is tantamount to being published?

There is no question that social networking has opened up the vistas of people worldwide.  I believe that social networking is the great new local café or bar where conversations can blossom, where thoughts can be shared and friends can be made well past just a another posting.

But the reality is, that the new policy, although rapidly overturned, leaves users just a bit more insecure about being found out in years to come — when the very information they are willingly to post today, may come back to bite them tomorrow.

I take great exception to the title of Michael Arrington’s “Facebook Blows A Whopper Of An Opportunity” read on TechCrunch today.  I would have entitled it the reverse “Red-Faced Facebook Belatedly Shuts Down Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice Fiasco. “ OK, so they shut it down, but for the wrong reasons, citing privacy.

C’mon.  Considering that Facebook’s “mantra” is for users to amass friends and create a platform for interactive communication, why was it ever OK, even for one day, one hour, to run any campaign that encourages the dumping of friends, no matter how faceless they are?

Sure, I can understand that any of our consumer product clients would want to grab the attention of 150 million Facebook users, a number that amounts to half the population of the entire United States, and garner brand engagement with just one or two clicks.

But this is not the wild, wild, west anymore, where anything goes. The potential to tap such a mass audience must be accompanied with careful strategy and not go against the very principles upon which Facebook was founded.

And dumping friends is never acceptable, not even for the love of money.

The measure of a friendship is really subjective. There are intimate friends, best friends, acquaintances or the ‘faceless’ friends of the social networking communities. But they all seemingly have value and need different degrees of nurturing.   Even the ‘faceless’ friends have value for someone or other, otherwise why go to the trouble of cultivating them?

Now Burger King is suggesting that Facebook users dump ten Facebook friends in order to get a free Whopper in their recent “Whopper Sacrifice Facebook app.” Really!  So the question begs, is a free Whopper such a big deal that it’s worth dumping ten friends?  Or are they saying that Facebook attracts too many ‘faceless’ friends anyway, and that their value as friends is so minimal that it’s worth it to sacrifice ten, to get a free Whopper?  Is it a question of what really counts – a Whopper or ten friends?

And then, whom do you pick to dump among the faceless many?   And the challenge in dumping is that friends have to agree to be friends, so you can only dump your half of the friendship if your other half dumps you in retaliation.

It all gets very complicated.

Even more so when you take it a step further, as Jason Kottke did, when he attempted to calculate Facebook’s valuation in terms of Whoppers.  That’s right, not $$, but Whoppers.  After some complex math, he deducted that each friend is worth five Whoppers or $12, at $2.40 each Whopper.  Kottke calculated that with 150 million friends on Facebook, that it would add up to a $1.8 billion valuation.  But of course, in Whoppers.

The campaign is making mincemeat (or ground meat) out of a social networking community, underscoring the superficiality of it all.  If tossing friends is so casually done, why bother amassing them in the first place?

With the economy in shambles, a raging war in Gaza, a startling 7.2 % unemployment and rising, exchanging friends for a free Whopper makes about as much crazy sense as anything else.

Still, I would keep my friends – even faceless ones.