Social Media Platforms, Narcissists, Borderlines and Histrionics: The Lure of Blogs, Facebook and MySpace

Dr Tara J. Palmatier writes:

Over the last few months, many Shrink4Men readers have posted comments about how much time their spouses, girlfriends and exes spend on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter personal blogs and other social media platforms like mommy and bridal websites. Their behavior goes far beyond the typical sharing of family photos or funny news links. These individuals create their own public-relations-spin-control-propaganda-I-am-the-center-of-the universe profiles, networks and feeds.

One recently divorced reader’s (Still Recovering) ex-wife became obsessed with her profile and “friends” on a popular bridal site, TheKnot, and then a newlywed site, TheNest. His ex maintained her elaborate profile post-divorce—including photos of him and their wedding—and communicated with her followers as if they were still married. After repeatedly requesting that she remove his photos, he publicly outed her regarding the divorce. His ex and her online friends erupted into a flame war in which they portrayed him as the abusive psycho rather than his ex-wife who was masquerading as a perennial bride-newlywed in order to maintain her status and feel special. Still Recovering suspects that his ex-wife may, in fact, be a narcissistic personality.

Other readers report that their wives, girlfriends and exes spend inordinate amounts of time every day fine tuning their profiles and posting updates in which they portray themselves as busy “super moms/super wives/super martyrs” who single-handedly run their households and take care of their children and husbands. One wonders how they do all of this while spending most of the day online.

What’s the connection between narcissism and social media?” Read the rest of the article here: Social Media Platforms, Narcissists, Borderlines and Histrionics: The Lure of Blogs, Facebook and MySpace « A Shrink for Men.

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My first (solo) Guest Post on Mashable
Image by cambodia4kidsorg via Flickr

Anyone who wants to rank socially networked cities is going to be in for a fight. But the brave souls at Men’sHealth aren’t shying away from a tussle, placing the top 100 most socially networked cities in order for all to see.

How did they do it? It appears to be a fair and scientifically valid procedure. First, Men’sHealth figured out each city’s LinkedIn and Facebook users per capita, and then tapped the NetProspex marketing database to figure out each location’s amount of overall Twitter usage.

Not stopping there, the next step was to consult online ad network Chitika to quantify traffic from MySpace, Friendster, Reddit and Digg, and finally, SimplyMap helped determine the percentage of households using chat rooms and blogs.

The list below is as much a study of how to find this information as it is a valid assessment of which city has the bragging rights to calling itself The Capital of Social Networking. Speaking of capital, who knew our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., would be at the top of the list, or that Milwaukee (#45), the location of Mashable’s humble Midwest Test Facility, would rate higher than the mighty New York City (#53), home of Mashable HQ?

See how your city ranks, and feel free to trash-talk those other lesser bergs in the comments.

You can follow the ‘via’ link to see where your city ranks, but if you’re from Northeast Wisconsin, don’t bother! Green Bay and Appleton aren’t on the list. How do you feel about that? Does that mean social media is still a breakout strategy for you or does that make it officially a waste of time in your mind?

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

Sharing is a foundational part of the social media process. Here’s an interesting perspective on the topic of sharing on the internet…

“The parts of the report that caught my eye included the following:

  • People still share via email and instant messenger more than via social networks. An astounding 59% of all shares on the widget were done via email, 25% via instant messenger and just 14% were passed along on networks like Facebook and Twitter.
  • Twitter, which has recently emerged as the share site du jour for those in the social media world, accounts for only one percent of all shares. Facebook is 11%. Yahoo mail is the highest individual share channel at 26%.
  • Yahoo (44%) and MSN (25%) mail are way ahead of Gmail (19%) as the email provider used by Tell-A-Friend users.
  • Facebook accounts for 79% of all shares via social networks. MySpace is second at 15%. Twitter is just 5% of all social network shares via the widget.

While I do think there is a separation between what I would call hyper-tech users (those who owe their soul to Google, defer to other bookmarklets and other methods rather than clicking on the share widgets provided) and the average Joe or Jane, the statistics are significant. They show us how wide of a gap there is between those two crowds. When we as Internet marketers are making recommendations and building functionality for the mainstream, we have to remember that WE are not the mainstream.

Another insight I get out of this data is that one-to-one communications – email and instant messenger – are still enormously powerful. Most people either don’t realize they can share with more folks via social networks or are not comfortable doing so. It might just be that sharing the information with one or two people is the methodology of choice for the rest of the world. That can change how we approach social media strategies for some products and services. Design programs and products that inspire more one-to-one pass alongs rather than “LOOK WHAT I FOUND!” messages on social networks.

To gather some comparative data, I asked Tell-A-Friend competitor ShareThis if they minded sharing some cursory data. For the month of October, their users also shared more via email (46.4%). Twitter was higher than Tell-A-Friend’s results, but also surprisingly low (5.82% of all shares). Facebook accounted for 33.32% of all share paths for ShareThis in October, higher than Tell-A-Friend. If you’re wondering about ShareThis’s IM numbers, they don’t offer instant messenger clients as share options, sans AOL Instant Messenger, which is buried on the third tab of their full icon set option.” New Study Reveals How People Share Online | Social Media Explorer

How do YOU share? For me the most important tool in my toolkit is Shareaholic! I’m pretty sure it’s available for all major browsers at this point…

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How to Setup a Facebook Page for your Business, Organization or Church

I’m doing a training session next week at NWTC on ‘Facebook for Fun and Profit’. Unfortunately, it’s all filled up — for those of you interested in the topic that won’t be able to make it, this may help…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

5 Things Every New Facebook User Should Do Immediately

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

Facebook works.

Don’t have a Facebook account? Last time I checked, there were more than 500 million people in the world, so I know there are a few of you. If you are new to Facebook, there are some tips you should definitely do on your newly created account that take priority over everything else. In this article, I’ll show you what those things are.

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’d like to dig a little deeper…

Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust [?!]

Image representing Posterous as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

Rising social media rockstar Kelly Neuville of Envano sent me an article from ReadWriteWeb [you can follow the ‘via’ link below the graph to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested] that would seem to suggest at first glance that I should abandon my love of the Posterous platform in favor of my first interest in this space, Tumblr. If I apply logic like this at every level in my life, I would learn a lesson from the flies on my farm and favor a steady diet of cow manure — after all, the sheer volume of their vote would indicate that manure is clearly a better food product, right? :-D

Now I’m not saying that Kelly was wrong to send me the article or that Tumblr = cow manure, although it would appear my analogy is heading in that direction. What I am saying is that there will always be a reason why the masses favor one product over another and it may have nothing to do with elegance or technological superiority. I posted the same data from a different perspective yesterday here; the article postulates that ‘The growth in Tumblr’s visitors probably has something to do with its popularity among celebs.’ and says ‘Earlier this week John Mayer made waves this week by shutting down his Twitter account, where he had 3.7 million followers, and switching to Tumblr full time.’ If that’s the case, then Tumblr has an ‘unfair advantage’ — it’s becoming the destination of choice for the MySpace crowd. My response? Meh

Laura Ingraham was right — entertainers should shut up and sing. What I want to know is what are the thought leaders using? I was really impressed with Tumblr until I saw that Guy Kawasaki picked Posterous for his Holy Kaw! blog and then I wondered “what did I miss”?! And what about social media rockstar Steve Rubel? And what about me? Seriously, Posterous rocks at the two most important things I could expect any blogging tool to do; ingest almost any content for creation and curation effortlessly and autopost as part of my homebase and outpost strategy. I use Posterous as the foundation of my ‘e1evation workflow‘ and it made me one of the top thought leaders in my industry on the internet rapidly elevating my site to within the top 40k of all websites in the US in 3 months. I will and I have put my humble Posterous blogs up against the best and they’ve held their ground — believe me when I say I have no fear of Katy Perry on Tumblr…

Moms and smartphones…

They’re not just for CEO’s anymore…

Smartphones may have started as productivity tools for top executives, but they’re quickly finding their way into the hands and purses of “power moms,” a.k.a. the CEO of the household.

As smartphones become easier to use and in many ways more useful, more women, including busy moms, are buying them to leverage all kinds of digital applications to stay organized and to connect with their families, friends, and social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter. They’re also using these Internet-enabled devices to get things done like paying the bills, ordering groceries, downloading coupons, and hunting for ideas for the next family vacation.

And like their corporate counterparts, these women are hooked.” Source: Modern power moms flock to smartphones | Wireless – CNET News

Go to the source to read the rest of the article…

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