Bands have been using “street teams” for some time - unpaid fans that spread the word amongst their mates in return for something exclusive (priority tour bookings, the odd badge, that sort of thing). It’s a clever extension of the Fan Club, where the fans get to feel involved and the band get some marketing out if it too (although real fans would be spreading the word anyway perhaps).

The British Red Cross is trying something similar online; 15-25s can sign up to be a “Red Recruit” and spread the message of the charity across their social networks:

“the initiative will establish a community of online youth ambassadors who are endorsed as official Red Cross representatives. Each ‘Red Recruit’ will be entrusted with driving awareness of campaigns across their social networks and helping to plan the future direction of digital activity and youth initiatives.

The scheme is initially being rolled out across Facebook and Bebo, where a number of consultation mechanisms are already in place, including online polls and quizzes, recruitment for an advisory youth board and online discussions with the organisation’s international experts returning from mission.”

It sounds like a win-win situation, a clever move and one to watch with interest.

I working on a site (which I can’t reveal yet, it might not even see the light of day) that is basically a fake social-network, populated by characters that don’t exist. The main point of it will be the feeling and story generated by the characters and thier interactions, but it’s important to get the look and feel right.

I’m using Wordpress and a theme called “facebooked” by Justin Tadlock, it’s very well done but is only intended to give a blog an appearance of Facebook (which I’ve tweaked to be FB-ish, but not exactly the same). So I’m adding stuff in, by judicious use of plug-ins, page templates and custom fields. I’ve managed to generate workable status updates, friendships, groups and events as well as profile pages — but what else does a social network need?

I threw out the question on twitter and Anthony Herron suggested adverts, which is good. Not only would you normally see them, but it will help to fill gaps.

But I’m open to suggestions — not for what you’d like to see in a social network, but for what you wouldn’t believe one could work without.

Now (I know it’s been doing it a while) that Facebook sends the text of messages to your email, it really needs to do something whereby a read-receipt marks it as read in FB itself. Having to do that manually to messages I’ve read is just one more annoying thing that is meaning I use it less and less.

It’s understandable that companies want to use Facebook to promote stuff - it is after all very big - and with almost a half of BBC staff on there, it’s obvious that they should use it to promote services, programme and events.

What is annoying is when people who don’t understand social networking blunder in. Facebook has worked so far because of its “honesty” (real names, needing verified email addresses to become part of some networks) - it’s ceded to demand for entities other than people by the creation of “fan” pages/profiles, and has for a long time had groups and events.

So it’s annoying to find our national broadcaster (or well-meaning, but ill-informed staff therein - they have to have verifiable BBC email addresses to be in the network they are) creating fake person profiles for services or other stuff. Here are just a few I’ve found by just a quick search (after I stumbled across a few in friends’ profiles):

When the Beeb gets the social web right (Backstage, Flickr stuff, plenty more I’m sure) it’s a great thing. Letting people think it’s okay to create all this “white noise” on the social web isn’t.

I’m sure many other organisations have done this too - I just think the Beeb should set an example.

Discalimer: I used to work for the BBC (although I’d have been just as annoyed about it when I worked there - and would of been able to tell the people more easily).

I’m doing a little bit to help the Black County’s bid for £50 million of lottery funding - encouraging people to vote in The People’s £50 Million Lottery Giveaway. The idea is that there’s an online and telephone vote, and one of four projects gets all the dosh - I’ve mentioned that I don’t much like the system, but if it has to be this way I think the Black Country could really do with the money.

As well as the website programmes will be shown on ITV 3-7 December 2007. Details of telephone voting will be announced during programmes.

I’ve made a very simple facebook app, that places a ‘vote here‘ button on your profile, and a website badge that does likewise.

Unfortunately the voting process isn’t very easy, you have to register, confirm your email address and then vote. There also isn’t a running total, which doesn’t make the vote much fun. So, how to get a bit more interest? Any ideas? Is Lol-blackcountry the way forward?

One of the reasons that Facebook has taken off so much recentley is that, I think at least, it’s a grown up social network. Even if a lot of the activity (throwing sheep, poking) is so childish the real names, real people ethos helps keep down spamming, trolling, and one hopes eventually racism.

So I wasn’t pleased to see that one of my local pubs has created a Facebook profile for itself, not a group, a profile under the name ‘Hare Hounds‘. While it’s good that they feel the web is a way to promote themselves, surely a group would have been much better - what with its discussion features, events and the like. While technology always evolves how it’s used rather than how it’s designed this is rather a blunt tool to use and I don’t really like it.

It’s the work of people that want to treat Facebook the way they treat myspace - and I hope that it won’t drive me off the site in the same way.

Support the Hare and Hounds, if you’re in the area, by visiting their website, myspace profile, or even going down for a pint, but don’t treat a pub as a person - you’ll have to start making excuses as to why you haven’t been recently.

At least two people I’ve spoken to - and a few others I’ve heard from - say that their facebook profiles have disappeared. They are unable to log in and their friends tell them that they’ve disappeared from contact lists and group memberships.

The problem with facebook being a data black hole (data goes in, it doesn’t come out) is that there’s no way to back-up any of the content that you’ve put in there.

FB carefully now.

UPDATE: Some of the original profiles are back, but people can’t login. This suggests a database failure and restore from back-up. I’ve not heard any communication ffrom FB on this.

I developed and promoted a Facebook application in support of the Black County Urban Park bid for the People’s Lottery funding. The application was simple, but showed support in the user’s profile an provided direct voting links. I also produced a myspace or blog badge that did the same for other websites.