Category Archives: social media
From friend lists to ads clicked, find out exactly what data Facebook has on you
Wonder what data Facebook has on you? Follow these steps to download and view everything they know about you. I expect you’re going to be surprised. Here’s how:
1. Log in to https://www.facebook.com
2. Click on the settings icon in the top right of the page, then click on Settings in the pop down menu.
This will display the General Account Settings.
3. Click on the link “Download a copy of your Facebook data” located below the list of settings and step through the process.
Be prepared for this to take a long time. You probably have more data there than you realize. Seriously. (If you have the ability, connect your computer to your router via a network cable rather than wifi and it will go as much as 10x faster.)
4. Once you have downloaded the zip file containing your data, right click on the .zip file and extract the data.
5. Now take a look at the \html\ directory and double-click the files to view them in a browser.
You can see:
- The ads you have clicked in the ads.htm
- Your contacts that Facebook has harvested are listed in file.contact_info.htm
- In the friends.htm (You can even see all the people you have unfriended.)
- Every photo you uploaded
Many people are shocked by what they discover.
I still haven’t figured out how to delete all those contacts they have of mine. But when I do, I’ll let you know.
A critical lesson in customer service, connections and social media
First, if you need help with a printer and you live in the Seattle area, I highly recommend the services of Infinity Communications. Ask for Mark.
But this story isn’t about printers, that’s just where it all starts. I have an old HP Laserjet 4000 printer. The manufactured date is April 15, 1998. A classic. It’s 44 pounds of metal and only 1 pound of plastic. Definitely Old School. I in inherited it along with an extra toner cartridge refill several years ago when our office was getting rid of it to replace it with a fancy new multi-function printer.
It has served me well, but recently the sheet feeder started jamming. The printer only worked if I fed paper one page at a time into the manual tray. I decided to get rid of this old laser printer along with my color inkjet printer and a flatbed scanner and replace them with a modern all-in-one printer from Costco. This new machine is great. It scans, prints color photos, makes copies, send faxes via the Internet, and even allows me to print from anywhere via facebook. Not to mention all the desk space it freed up.
On Monday, less than three months since I bought it, it ran out of black ink. That same day, as if they already knew I would need it, I got an email from Costco advertising their printer cartridge refill service for about $10. (Perhaps the printer has a feature to alert Costco when the toner is low. It is certainly capable of it and if Target can predict you are pregnant by your buying habits, then Costco could certainly be monitoring printer alerts.)
I got it refilled, but I also thought back on that old laser printer sitting by the door, waiting to be disposed of properly. It was such a workhorse. It should be good for a few more years of printing at least, if only the automatic sheet feeder worked.
But like I said, this story isn’t about printers. It’s about people. It’s about customer service, connections and social media.
I decided to call around and see what it would cost to get it repaired. I consulted the great oracle, Google, who guided me to a long list of companies in my area that service printers. The first one I called answered promptly. The woman at the other end was helpful and knowledgeable. When I mentioned what printer I had, she replied “ah yes, that is considered the old workhorse of printers! There are many still in service today.” She went on to explain the cost for repair is $25 for the visit (they come to you) plus $75/hour. It should take under 1 hour. And I may want to get the maintenance kit which is $300 parts and labor. That would be about $400 total. “Hmmm. Let me call you back on that”, I said.
After a few more calls with people reporting similar pricing, I called the listing for a company named Infinity Communications, located just 2 miles from my place. A guy answered the phone and I explained to him my situation. “Oh yeah, that’s a great printer. That’s what I use for all my personal heavy-duty printing. I service several law offices that use that one and they all have over 100,000 pages. You can get over 10,000 prints from one toner cartridge. So here’s the deal: You can bring it in to me and I’ll charge you $95/hr plus parts. If it has over 100,000 prints since its last service, you might need the maintenance kit too. But that’s pretty pricey. You know, it’s probably something as simple as pulling the two rubber rollers out and washing them with a damp wash cloth. If you pull out the paper tray and look inside there…” Over the next 5 minutes he talked me through how to remove the rollers. Incredibly simple. I cleaned them up and ran a test print while he was on the phone. Voila’! I have a working printer again! “So look on that test print page”, he says. “How many prints since last maintenance?” I read it to him “1410”. He asks “And what is the total page count?” I reply “One four one zero.” He asks “You mean one hundred forty thousand?” “No, one thousand four hundred and ten.” “Wow” he says. “That’s like a brand new printer! You’ll be using that for a long, long time.” Yep. he’s right. I will also be coming to him for all my printer service needs in the future and I will tell all my friends about him.
So to all my readers, his name is Mark Ungacta and his company is Infinity Communications here in Woodinville, WA.
We chatted on the phone for a bit more and I promised him a beer for his help. By coincidence he happens to know someone who owns a brewery nearby…
The difference between what those others did and what Mark did meant the difference between getting no business and getting a beer, a loyal customer, and potentially many more customers than just the one calling.
The lessons:
1. Customer service is all about doing more than you have to. In the end, more likely than not, the dividends will more than make up for it.
2. Social media provides individuals with a much stronger influence than in the past. Be keenly aware of that as you make choices. In this instance I’m hoping this blog post drives new business Mark’s way.
3. Take the time to listen to the people you meet. You never know where those connections will lead you.
Do you have a similar success story? Please share it.
Footnote: if you have this printer, you can get the maintenance kit and detailed instructions at http://www.precisionroller.com/instructions/hp-4000-4050-maintenance-kit-instructions/
Going unplugged: Beyond the iPhone and beyond your imagination
Next Post: The Story Begins
(This is the first post regarding this Grand Canyon expedition)
iPhone 4s is about to become irrelevant.
Imagine a world without email or text messages. No spam or viruses or pop-up ads. No steady stream of status updates from Facebook or Twitter. No television with presidential debates and reality TV. No “who-shot-who” on the six o’clock news. Imagine a world without rush hour traffic or smog alerts. No sirens screaming in the night and no alarm clocks screaming in the morning. Imagine if you can, a world without cell phones or cable TV or Internet. A world where the only connections you have are made face-to-face with the people and environment around you.
Your evenings consist of hanging out on a secluded beach and maybe going for a hike to see amazingly beautiful natural formations of rock delicately sculpted by flowing water. Then you return to your beach where several of your friends stayed behind to prepare a gourmet dinner in an outdoor kitchen. After dinner, you sit around the campfire listening to someone play the guitar while others talk about the great things that happened that day. Then they talk with excitement about the amazing things they plan to see tomorrow. The air is mild and dry. As the sun sets you see Billions of stars in the sky. With nothing more than the light of the campfire and of the moon, you discover you really can see at night and in fact, bright lights would only blind you. Everything looks soft, subdued, restful.
Now imagine in this world, that you spent every night sleeping on that exclusive, secluded beach in a remote location with amazing views in every direction and bright, clear skies day after day, night after night.. You go to bed with only a dome of stars overhead for shelter. Yet that sky makes you feel much more safe, free, and secure than you had ever been before; when you slept indoors in a bed that was pushed up against a wall in a room with the door shut and the blinds closed. That cage is gone. Nothing more than the light of the stars in the night sky to capture your attention, focus your thoughts, and put everything into perspective before drifting off to sleep. Perhaps you wake up in the middle of the night and, without moving a muscle save the lifting of your eyelids, watch shooting stars trace lines in the black sky.
In the morning you are awakened by the gentle glow of the pre-dawn sky and are acutely aware of the absence of all noise save the constant flush of the river beside your camp and the musical melodies of songbirds greeting the rising sun. You pack up your bedding and load it into one of the rafts; eat breakfast with your friends as you discuss what exciting rapids are coming up today. The only stress in your world is the thrill as you blast through waves big enough to flip your 18′ raft end-over-end if you don’t run it just right. A few moments of Adrenalin sandwiched between long stretches of lazy, calm flat water carrying you downstream; parading you before colorful canyon walls over a mile high to either side. Those walls shield you, protect you like a citadel from the noise and chaos of the world beyond. Even a satellite phone would only get a few moments of connection while the satellite is high overhead between the canyon walls. As evening approaches, you find another beach, set up camp, and do it all over again. 21 days, 220 miles.
Welcome to the Grand Canyon.
My blog has been unusually quiet lately as I am busy planning and preparing to lead 16 of my friends on just such a trip for the second time . We launch from Lees Ferry October 25th. When we do, I will leave this wilderness behind and step into a far more civil and peaceful world. In fact, the moment I pull out of my driveway and start the drive to Flagstaff, the chaos will begin to fade and let the harmony shine through like the setting sun yields the night sky to the stars. Though it will last a fortnight, the trip will feel as fleeting as the night and returning as inevitable as the Sun will rise the next day.
iPhone 5 is about to become irrelevant for me anyway.
So what are YOU doing for the month of November?
Next Post: The Story Begins
(This is the first post regarding this Grand Canyon expedition)
IBM and ESPN 3: Using social media to tell the world what they mean by “Let’s build a smarter planet.”
You’ve heard me ask “What does IBM sell?” Sure, *I* know what they sell. But my point is: what do they do to make sure the average consumer knows?
Well, on this idle Saturday afternoon, while watching my Gators on ESPN 3 crush UAB, *BAM*, there it was – A smarter planet ad on ESPN 3 with a twist: it ended with a URL: http://www.youtube.com/ibm
What’s the big deal? First, IBM is talking to consumers. That’s right, beer-drinking, college football-watching average America. Second, this is ESPN 3. In other words, the webcast version of ESPN. So anyone watching that ad is already sitting at their computer. I don’t know about smarter planet, but certainly smarter advertising. So I went to check it out. On my other monitor, of course.
What did I find there? The first video was their 30-minute story: “IBM Centennial Film: They Were There – People who changed the way the world works”. On the new youtube, you can have longer videos than the old 10-minute limit. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact the the average attention span is somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes and the average time spent on a web page is 1 minute. That was one of the driving reasons for the 10 minute limit in the first place. The cool thing about youtube is that everyone can see the results. It shows how many viewings each video gets. So we will get to see just how successful the videos are.
The good news: This video includes IBM founder Tom Watson’s answer to my question. Retired IBMer Fred Brooks tells the story of how Thomas Watson Sr. used to go into the lab and ask some young engineer: “What do we sell?”
And the young man would say “punch cards sir.”
“NO, NO!” Watson replied. “We sell a service that satisfies.”
Now the bad news: This answer comes at 28:52 minutes into a 30:41 minute video.
But this video isn’t about what IBM sells anyway. It’s about their past. A good production, but wouldn’t it be more effective to lead with a short ad that builds on the *BAM* that the original ad made on ESPN 3? Something that teases with a bit more details on what IBM has to offer today and how they will take MY company into the future and give ME an advantage over my competition? To make ME a leader in a smarter planet? End it with the viewer wanting to know more. Make it a two minute video to fill those dead zone commercial breaks that don’t show anything for web viewers. Just say:
Visit http://www.youtube.com/ibm the next time you see this:
My compliments to IBM digital marketing. (Maria, is this your doing?) Now take it to the next level.
The video ends with the words of another IBMer: “You’ve got to stay alert and you’ve got to be nimble on your feet. You’ve got to recognize that what was true yesterday will not be true tomorrow in terms of technology.”
The Notes Guy in Seattle 