Saturday, October 13, 2007

Face It, Facebook Works Well As A People Directory!


As you may know if you go back earlier in this blog, I live in South Florida and used to be an avid sailor until Wicked Hurricane Wilma wrecked my boat... Back at the time I posted a bunch of photos of the storm's damage to my home and boat on Flickr and tagged them "Wicked Wilma."

I recently received the following message through Facebook from someone who I don't know and who is not a Facebook friend:

Jeff, I sent you a message already on Flickr but I am trying to get in touch with you seeking permission to use one of your photos in our 2005 Annual Report to Congress. I am trying to find a photo from hurricane Wilma to include in our pub. Please let me know if you are interested.

I thought it was telling that I noticed the message via Facebook, long before I received the email through Flickr. My Flickr account is tied to a Yahoo Mail address that I hardly check on. Facebook, on the other hand, is always open in a browser tab, and has an extremely efficient mobile alert piece that forwards messages right to my Treo via SMS.

The Real Story

More telling was the fact that the person trying to reach me figured out that, when he received no reply to his message via Flickr, he could potentially find me through Facebook. And he did, successfully. The picture above is the image that prompted the search for Sass.

In business, it is often difficult to find a working email address for someone you don't know, and many of the services that do provide contact info, do so for a fee. Facebook provides an easy and open means of making contact with its members. A powerful feature when properly used and not abused.

Have you been contacted randomly through Facebook? Have you successfully made contact with someone you were trying to reach through Facebook? Do all these questions make this sound like one of Chris Brogan's blog posts???

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Caught By Accident (Mash)

WOW. The Podcast & New Media Expo in Ontario, California was a great show. On the business side, I made some excellent contacts with Podcasters, Musicians and Companies who can leverage the Myxer Platform to create and share mobile content from their own stuff. In addition, as a longstanding Podcast listener (I was the guest, "Jeff The Listener" in show 100 of Podcast411.com), it was great to see good friends like Scott Sigler and meet many of my favorite podcasters including Dan Klass, Brian Ibbott, Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff, P.W. Fenton, Lance Anderson, Adam Curry, Anji Bee, Seth Harwood, Drew Domkus, Michael Butler, Rob Walch, CC Chapman and many, many more.

I also happened to be in the right place at the right time (the BAR at the Marriott at 1am!) to bear witness to one of the highlights of the event, and one of those "special moments" that will be talked about for a long, long time. If you were one of the 30 or so noisy drunks hanging by the pool, then you know we will all share a special "I was there..." bond for life. And if you missed it... well, watch the videos and listen to the show at www.accidenthash.com, and next time... don't be such a wuss and STAY OUT LATER!