If Alexander Graham Bell were alive today, do you suppose he’d call himself a Telephone Guru? Probably not. In fact, no one does. Except maybe this guy.

Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone certainly don’t call themselves Social Media Gurus (though, they probably could without much resistance).

How many years of analyzing different forms of media does it take to become a Media Expert? How long do you need to study people and social situations before you become a Social Expert? So why does it only take a Twitter account and a merging of those two words to earn people’s trust and the ability to steal their money?

I’ve never met a Social Media Expert, though I’ve met several people who claim to be. I’ve certainly met people who are knowledgeable about certain platforms. But only rarely someone who was so knowledgeable on a specific platform that they should be called “an expert”.

Having taught weekly classes on social media tools, I can safely say that I am not an expert, either. What I can say is this: beware the Guru. Challenge their credentials at every turn, because it takes some serious effort to learn enough to even *teach* these tools.

Clear results speak for themselves; truly talented social media practitioners rarely have to (their audience does it for them).

Person A is passionate about Widgets and spends a few years making contacts and friends in the Widget industry.

Person B joins Facebook in College and makes a ton of casual friends over a few years.

Both become Social Media Experts and start selling their services (and their friends’ attention) to the highest bidder. Person A does so with social bookmarking, promoting Widget- or Widget-service-businesses to their contacts/friends in their network. Person B promotes every client Facebook page to their Facebook friends (some who, out of some perverted sense of loyalty may become fans).

Who is the bigger douchebag? Are either really using social media as intended?

My answer: BOTH are equally douchebaggish and BOTH are abusing social media.

You can’t assume your friends (business or otherwise) have opted-in to your marketing jackassery. Do you really want your friendship to be self-selecting and end as easy as an unsubscribe? Is your friends’ attention to your client’s BS marketing techniques all that matters to you? Is that why you’re using social media?

Douchebag marketing tactics are ultimately self-defeating and short-lived.

I’ve been guilty of them, but I think there’s hope. You can recover. I’ve done it by separating out WTF!? Marketing’s client endeavors to WTF!? Marketing’s Facebook page (a work in progress). But you won’t see stuff about clients in my Facebook stream (an error so grievous it occurred only once).

Why would you trust a “social media expert” who is willing to sell out their friends to the highest bidder?

Well, someone thought about that faster than I could – and here’s the result:

I built the slides completely in Keynote – giving PowerPoint the snub.  I’ve been having a lot of issues with all Microsoft products and not being able to handle things that are copied and pasted – Keynote doesn’t seem to have that issue.  It seemed to work out a lot better, but there are some quirks that I don’t know how to remedy yet – like how to turn off bullet points.

The presentation itself was a lot of fun – a lot of great people there, willing to learn and ask lots of questions.  I’m hoping to teach the Twitter class again, but not sure when I’ll do repeat classes.  I was thinking the presentation itself would take up only about 15 minutes and the rest would be for discussion.  I was way wrong – the whole presentation took 45 minutes.  Had some great feedback, too:

“Nick has a unique gift for knowing WAY more than you do, yet teaching you generously without making you feel like a complete idiot. And you leave with some knowledge and some confidence in a very short time.”

“Valuable information for beginners and beyond, at a great price! I learned a lot and left feeling rather inspired, and confident enough to attack some issues I needed to conquer to make Twitter more useful. Thanks!”

I’ll definitely have some adjusting to do get ready for $1 101 on Facebook next week.

All in all, I would call it a victory.  Here’s the slides:

“FACEBOOK has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission.”

After checking on Snopes, I looked toward the official Facebook blog.  Sure enough, they have posted a note debunking this rumor.  Friday I wrote a post on Psychotic Resumes on how to lock down your Facebook profile.  I didn’t cover how Facebook actually uses photos, which, from that blog post has been described:

“How We Use Photos

We’ve run advertisements from our own advertising system for more than a year that let your friends know if you have a direct connection with a product or service, in the same way that your friends learn through your News Feed if you’re connected with another friend or an organization’s Facebook Page. For example, if one of your friends becomes a fan of a Page, you may see an ad, like the one below, with your friend’s profile photo that indicates the action that friend has taken.”

What this means is that if you fan a page or something like that – your picture and name might appear to your other friends showing that you’re a fan.  You can turn this off (if you’re REALLY paranoid) by going to Settings -> Privacy -> News Feed and Wall.  Then click on the “Facebook Ads” tab.  Mine is currently set to “Friends Only”, but you can set it to “No One.”  You might have more options depending on how your security settings are set, but… this is a pretty innocuous use of your info.

Facebook might have screwed up when it came to their last TOS change, but this time – it’s completely made up.

Seth Godin came out with a blog post about what you should do on your birthday.  I like the idea of turning an ordinarily “selfish” day into a day of giving back.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any money to organize anything.  And I don’t have much to share that doesn’t come from my mind.  But – when I think about it, the one thing that I would really want to share with everybody is Star Trek.

I talk a LOT about Star Trek.  I credit a lot of the way I am to Star Trek and the lessons it taught me.  So, if you want to help me celebrate my birthday – go find an episode of Star Trek (I don’t care which series, but The Next Generation is my favorite) and enjoy it!  If you don’t have access to a nerdy family member or a stockpile of Paramount’s ridiculously overpriced DVDs, you can watch random episodes for free on Justin.tv by searching for “Star Trek”.

Or, you know, if Star Trek is not your thing – you could always help me pay rent by signing up for one of my Facebook or Online Reputation Management classes, or the WTF!? Marketing launch party (free).