That???s not the real me: How vanity sabotages Facebook advertising

When the elaborate self-portrait known as a Facebook profile seldom resembles the real thing, can advertisers really reach the right people?

I?m not the real me on Facebook.

?Facebook Louie? records music, cofounded a record label, and is friends with notable musicians, producers, and visual artists. ?Facebook Louie? is kind of cool, and, when he heard from at all, confines his views to the least controversial of topics.

The person writing this column is not ?Facebook Louie,? it?s the Louie that has invested at least 150 hours into Diablo 3 (as nerdy as that might be), and adores?The Real World/Road Rules Challenge?(as embarrassing as that is). This ?Authentic Louie? is less cool, but more real.

None of us are our authentic, honest selves on Facebook. We censor things which are embarrassing and which disagree with the personas we have constructed there. Social science agrees with me (well, two theories do, at least). That could be bad news for Facebook.

You vs. you

The sheer amount of information we pour into social networks like Facebook might make them seem like ideal advertising platforms, but they?re actually at an odd disadvantage in some ways: Facebook?s public nature makes us behave more like characters and less like our authentic selves. In that regard, Facebook has less accurate information about us than competitors like Google. That means that Facebook ads are often less relevant to us, and, therefore, less valuable to advertisers ? a serious problem for a company that rakes in all of its revenue from targeted advertising.

All the world?s a stage

A theatrical metaphor developed by Canadian sociologist?Erving Goffman?is useful for understanding our behavior on Facebook. First put forth in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman offered the following description of his dramaturgical theory of communication in his later work, Frame Analysis.

I am suggesting that often what talkers undertake to do is not to provide information to a recipient, but to present dramas to an audience. Indeed, it seems that we spend most of our time not engaged in giving information, but in giving shows.

According to Goffman?s theory, when communicating we adopt a role suitable to our environment and capable of achieving our goals. We are actors on a stage. Shakespeare, as ever, proves prescient.

This model describes my activities on Facebook with uncanny accuracy. My goal on Facebook is to cultivate new and strengthen existing social connections. Many of those connections are within Portland?s music?scene?(a word particularly apt to the metaphor), so I portray myself in a way that fits that scene and my goals within it. This means leaving some things ? Diablo 3, for example ? out of that portrayal.

Because of Facebook?s interpersonal nature, the version of self I reveal there will never be as complete as my portrayal when using Google search. It is unlikely that my Google search habits will become publicly known, so I don?t give censorship a second thought. Google knows about my love-hate relationship with Diablo 3. Facebook does not, because this trait does not fit the role I portray there.

Absent self-censorship, the information I reveal indirectly via Google search paints a more complete picture of me than what I disclose directly via Facebook. This is one reason that Google Adwords can be a better product than Facebook?s ads. Google knows more about me, and can therefore offer better targeting data to its advertisers.

Sex, drugs, and reality TV

Role-based censorship is just one of the ways that we limit the depictions of ourselves on Facebook. We may censor ourselves just as much or more when it comes to topics we find private or embarrassing.

Drawing on research dating back to the mid-1950?s, Robert J. Fisher writes of this bias in the introduction to?Social Desirability Bias and the Validity of Indirect Questioning.

Unfortunately, the basic human tendency to present oneself in the best possible light can significantly distort the information gained from self-reports. ? The result is data that are systematically biased toward respondents? perceptions of what is ?correct? or socially acceptable.

Questions about sexual behavior or illicit drug use often return skewed results, as research subjects will seek to avoid disparaging or incriminating responses.

Because Facebook is a public medium based largely on self reporting through status updates and other posts, it?s susceptible to the same bias. Therefore, it will see fewer posts relating to subjects traditionally biased against, like sex and drugs. Because we all want to be cool, there will be more posts about subjects not traditionally biased against.

For example, I am a recent devotee of?The Real World/Road Rules Challenge. I?m ashamed to admit it, but Johnny Bananas? epic season 16 performance hooked me.?The Challenge?might actually be my favorite show. However, you will see no mention of it on my Facebook profile. Why? Well, what would people think, if they knew? Suddenly I?m ?reality TV guy.? Who wants to be ?reality TV guy??

There are sites out there that know my secret. Google, because my general research about the show, and Amazon, from whom I can purchase full seasons of the show. Once again, Facebook?s competitors have more information about me due to my tendency to reveal more information indirectly than directly. Google and Amazon can target ads based on those details. Facebook cannot.

Facebook?s problem

Of course, Facebook has problems beyond these, not least of which the astronomical expectations for the service at the time of its IPO. Facebook?s ads must improve if it is to meet those expectations. There are two ways that it can do so. The first is to roll out new products from which it can yield new sources of targeting data. The service?s rumored ?Want? button may be the most significant step in this direction.

The second way Facebook can improve its targeting data is much more difficult, and challenges the two communications theories outlined above. Facebook needs us to share more honestly ? even when we find that sharing out-of-sync with who we pretend to be, or when that sharing reveals embarrassing things.

However, it remains to be seen if the information we give Facebook voluntarily will ever equal the value of the information we give its competitors involuntarily. Facebook certainly has the ambition to change our behavior. The future of the company may depend on whether it is successful.

Source: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/thats-not-the-real-me-how-vanity-sabotages-facebook-advertising/

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Live Concerts in Google+ Hangouts Improve With New Studio Mode

NASA's newly landed Curiosity rover is busy taking pictures, roving, and just being awesome on another planet. A few of Curiosity's pictures revealed, for lack of a more appropriate word, some curiosities of their own, including a mysterious shape on ? Continue??

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/live-concerts-google-hangouts-improve-studio-mode-145821125.html

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Rebels carve out large enclave in north Syria

AZAZ, Syria?? Residents of this north Syrian border town like to snap photos of their children atop the tank parked downtown, one of more than a dozen captured or destroyed by rebels in the battles last month that "liberated" the area from President Bashar Assad's army.

Across the street in air-conditioned offices once occupied by Assad's Baath party, a new political order is emerging. Local rebels have formed committees to fix power lines, fire up bakeries and staff the nearby border crossing with Turkey. They also run security patrols and a prison with some 60 captives. Two men were executed by firing squad recently after a judge and Islamic clerics found them guilty of murder.

"We run a state system here," said Samir Hajj Omar, the silver-haired former teacher who heads the rebel political office for Azaz, a town of 35,000. "We're enforcing the law."

In recent months, Syria's rebels have extended control over a large swath of territory in the northeastern corner of the country after forcing the army from town after town in a string of bloody street battles.

As a result, for the first time in Syria's 17-month conflict, rebels have a cohesive enclave in which they can move and organize with unprecedented freedom, plus a long stretch of the border with Turkey key for moving out refugees and smuggling in weapons. They also have one official, working border crossing.

US, Turkey explore no-fly zones over Syria

The area extends about 30 miles south of the Turkish border and from the edge of Idlib province in the west to the cities of al-Bab and Manbaj some 130 kilometers (80 miles) east. Its southern edges reach the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and for weeks the scene of heavy battles as regime forces try to uproot rebels who have taken control of several neighborhoods.

Not a safe zone
The pocket is not an outright safe zone. The military holds two bases within it -- at Mannagh airport near Azaz and at an infantry academy north of Aleppo. From there, it shells nearby towns daily, wrecking buildings and killing people. It often targets rebel enclaves with helicopters and fighter jets; there remains a continual back-and-forth of residents fleeing homes around the areas.

But the army has largely surrendered the ground, creating a huge vacuum for rebels to fill. Across the scattered farm towns, locals have formed councils to remove rubble, restore utilities and funnel supplies to fighters in Aleppo. They organize security patrols to guard against thieves and government spies. Some are running prisons and rudimentary courts.

Their efforts are hugely decentralized. Each town is on its own. There is no national, or even regional, body for them to report to.

Since the anti-Assad uprising started in March 2011 with protests calling for political change, opposition leaders have failed to offer little more than a vague idea of the kind of state they hope to found should the regime fall. More than 20,000 people have been killed since as the conflict has transformed into a full-scale civil war.

While still new, these early organizational efforts shine a light on the priorities of rising local leaders. When asked, all say they want a civilian state that respects its citizens. More concerning to the West and to Syria's religious minorities, most said that Islam was their guide more than any political ideology. What that means for them remains unformed in many ways, but what is clear is that they seek a role for religion in public life after four decades of secular rule.

Video: Aleppo outskirts: a damaged ghost town (on this page)

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"Religion is the basis of everything for us," said Abdel-Aziz Salameh, head of a "revolutionary council" that coordinates various rebel factions in Aleppo and the nearby countryside. "It is the driving force of the revolution."

Salameh spoke from the basement of the police station in Tal Rifat, some 20 miles north of Aleppo, now the headquarters of one of Syria's largest rebel groupings, the Islamist Brigade of Unification.

Fighter jets screeched overhead, and the dull booms of shelling punctuated the conversation.

"May God curse you," the 46-year-old honey distributor said, looking up as the lights flickered.

The brigade, formed last month, now boasts more than 7,000 fighters, Salameh said, bringing together some of the armed factions in the Aleppo region that cropped up as army recruits defected and locals took up arms. Before a new group can join, it must agree not to target civilians or their property and to bring all prisoners to one of the brigade's two prisons, which now house some 500 captives.

This is to prevent fighters from settling personal scores or kidnapping wealthy people for ransom, Salameh said.

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Like most rebel leaders, Salameh bemoaned the lack of military support he said the rebels had received from abroad. The small amounts trickling in from governments and private groups he declined to name have done little to help his fighters, most of whom carry arms taken as booty or bought from dealers in Turkey or Iraq.

Salameh acknowledged that many rebel groups operate independently and that a small number want to kill Shiite Muslims and Alawites, the Shiite offshoot sect to which Assad and many in his regime belong.

He said such views violate the tenets of Islam that his group follows, but said not all fighters can be vetted.

"When we're at war, I don't have time to ask every fighter what his views are," he said. "I tell him to put his rifle next to mine and fight."

Most of the brigades in the enclave region formed to fight the army in their own towns and moved on only after their streets were "liberated." Many of these battles were Pyrrhic victories, leaving entire areas destroyed and depopulated.

UN chief: 'There will be no winner in Syria'

In the town of Atarib, 30 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of Aleppo, every building downtown is damaged, with windows blown out, doors peppered with shrapnel and awnings shredded to ribbons.

At the center sit the charred shells of the police station and city hall, which troops occupied in February. For months, local rebels attacked their positions and tried to cut their supply lines. By the time the army left in June, the city was destroyed and deserted.

When asked how many of the town's 25,000 residents had returned since its "liberation," the head of Atarib's military council laughed.

"If you put them all in the back of a semi-truck, there'd still be space," said Obeid Ahmed Obeid. Others guessed it was a few hundred.

Nearby, Fatum Obeid, a 50-year-old widow, wandered through the wreckage of her simple home, asking God to destroy Assad and his mother.

Two of her sons had been killed in the uprising. One returned from his mandatory military service in a body bag with no explanation. Another was shot dead by a government sniper before she and other residents fled to nearby villages.

"We'd sit and watch the troops come, then hear the booms and see the smoke," she said.

Town leaders have formed military and civil councils and opened a prison that holds some 15 people.

Video: Syrian troops targeting Sunnis, witnesses say (on this page)

The army still shells the town daily, keeping residents away, and making some wonder how free they are.

"It's not liberated because you can't sit down without worrying that a rocket will fall on you," said a local activist who declined to give his name because he often travels to Aleppo.

The violence has caused a continuous human tide, first pushing rural residents into Aleppo and then out as the battle there rages. As shelling continues around the province, it is common to see large families driving trucks piled high with washing machines, mattresses and bags of clothing. Many seek shelter in schools, farms and unfinished buildings in villages that local leaders have struggled to keep safe.

The refugees have doubled the population of the village of Maaret al-Artiq to 25,000 in recent months, said Omar Zahra, a resident who helps them find shelter.

"They'll live in any building they can find as long as it's better than a tent," he said.

Video: Clinton: Assad's 'brutality seems to know no bounds' (on this page)

Azaz, the border town, has fared better than others. Residents are coming home, a few shops have opened and armed men run checkpoints at the town's entrances. Young boys climb around on the destroyed tanks and armored vehicles half buried in the rubble of the security building rebels brought down with homemade bombs.

Graffiti by government soldiers on one wall boasts, "Assad's beasts were here." After they left, someone crossed out "Assad" and wrote "the donkey."

In his vast, carpeted office, Omar, the silver-haired former teacher, fielded calls on three cell phones and two land lines while chatting with visitors. When asked how he got his job, he said it was "automatic" because of his role in the uprising.

As he spoke, however, the now-familiar sounds of a protest rose from the streets below ? but this time with a twist.

"This protest is mostly against me," Omar acknowledged with a laugh, dismissing the few dozen marchers as upstarts who wanted power without working for it.

"They feel they were left outside," he said. "But should someone who was sitting on the sidelines come and sit here, or someone who was here for the battle?"

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48633503/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

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50Plus : Health : 10 foods that can make you look (and feel) old

You probably already know that eating certain foods (and avoiding others) can make you feel better, but did you know that foods can actually make you look better?

Sugar
The trouble with sugar is that it?s everywhere ? it?s in ketchup, soft drinks (even those labeled ?green tea?), cereals, sweets, and salad dressings. It?s easy to consumer too much sugar and too much sugar can make you look old. Sugar in the blood can combine with proteins, such as found in the skin?s collagen, and make your normally supple skin more fragile and brittle. Too much sugar can make you fat (not your best look) and contributes to inflammation, which makes your joints ache. Overdoing sugar can also give you a headache which makes those nasty lines in your forehead even more prominent.

Processed foods
Processed foods contribute to free radicals in the body. A free radical is basically an unstable rogue oxygen molecule that tries to stabilize itself by glomming onto another stable, healthy molecule. The trouble is, the free radical winds up destroying the once-healthy molecule in the process. Free radicals are a major source of aging. Your body naturally has free radicals and naturally can defend itself ? but if you tip the balance in favor of these little monsters, your face and body will start showing the wear and tear. Processed foods include meats and cheeses and anything with a long list of chemical ingredients.

Salt
A little salt is not bad?in fact, it is necessary for good health. But most of us get so much sodium in our diet that we need not fear salt deprivation; instead, we should cut back. Salt can cause fluid retention (thick ankles, swollen fingers), contributes to kidney disease and high blood pressure, and can interfere with bone metabolism. None of these things help you look fit and vibrant.

Coffee
This is another food with a disclaimer. A little coffee is fine. But if you?re a coffee fiend, you should know that coffee can contribute to an old-before-your-time face. Coffee is dehydrating and a lack of water shows up in your skin. Dehydration not only has health consequences, it shows up in cracked, lined, and wrinkled skin. Drink at most one or two cups of coffee a day and make sure you offset the dehydration factor with an extra eight ounces of water for each cup of coffee you drink.

Trans fats
Processed foods, particularly cakes, breads, crackers, chips, and cereals may contain some fat and manufacturers a long time ago found that if they used a very stabilized form of fat, the food would not spoil and have a long shelf life. Any food with a long shelf life is probably not good for you. If you see the word ?hydrogenated? on a label, think, ?Do I really want to be fat and old and sick before my time?? Hydrogenated oils and trans fats produce lots of free radicals (see #2).

Copyright ? Beliefnet, Inc. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.50plus.com/health/anti-aging-foods/180989/

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Nokia to Reveal Windows Phone 8 Devices Before iPhone Announcement

Nokia is set to debut its initial lineup of Windows Phone 8 devices at the company's Nokia World event in early September, a week before the expected iPhone announcement.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/iBJpTY8vZXY/

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'Looper' International Poster Pits Willis Versus Willis In Dailies

The marketing campaign for "Looper" has reached the point of redundancy. Oh, it's another poster or trailer that makes us really want to see "Looper." Big surprise! Also, Guillermo Del Toro talks "Pacific Rim," and Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis improve "Fifty Shades of Grey" in today's Dailies! » Hero Complex sat down with Guillermo [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2012/08/03/looper-international-poster/

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Steamboat Springs Parade of Homes Tour | Home on the Range

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I love writing posts about businesses giving back to the community; and here is another wonderful way a Steamboat business has found to use its business niche and expertise to help fund a charitable foundation that has given over $75,000 to more than 50 community organizations in the past 4 years.

The upcoming, 6th Annual, ?Steamboat Springs Parade of Homes Tour,? will showcase six residences in the Steamboat Springs area on Saturday August 4, 2012. ?Proceeds from the tour will go to the Colorado Group Realty Charitable Foundation, which was established to support non-profit organizations throughout the Yampa Valley. ?The Colorado Group Realty website states ?our goal is to support a wide range of community based programs related to human Services, the arts, education, our western heritage, the environment and recreation.

Hayden residence

You may remember our post last summer on the Strings in the Mountains Encore concert that was held at the Hayden home. ?The same home, The John and Carrie Hayden residence has now been selected to be on the 2012 Steamboat Springs Parade of Homes Tour. ? The Home on the Range designers, ?worked closely with the Haydens,the architect, Joe Patrick Robbins, AIA,?and the builder, Ken Kruse, to create a home that embodied the Haydens? dream for their mountain get-away. ?Their home is designed for entertaining large groups of family and friends in settings that remain intimate rather than being grandiose. ?Joe Robbins created a flow between the ?entertaining and the ?living spaces in the home that encourages guests to interact, at the same time providing bedroom ?wings? than enable them to get privacy when desired. ?Each wing and each room have their own personality with one wing more influenced by the mountains and wildlife that surround the home and the other wing reflecting the western heritage of Steamboat Springs.

Below are some of the highlights of the Hayden home:

The moss rock fireplace, the custom chandelier and the fir trusses bring a feeling of coziness to the great room. ?We used neutral fabrics on the furniture so the spectacular view catches your eye when you enter the home. ?Touches of red scattered around the room add a feeling of warmth during the winter months when white dominates the view.

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Hayden Great Room

The master bedroom and bathroom are on the same floor as the main living areas of the home.

Hayden Master bedroom

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Hayden master bathroom

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The hearth room, which is off of the kitchen and the dining room, ?has wonderful views and inviting fireplace, ?it is undoubtedly the favorite place to hang out!

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Hayden Hearth Room

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This is just ?a sneak preview of some of the rooms in the Hayden house. ? Hopefully this preview will want to make you go on the tour, support the Colorado Group Realty Charitable Foundation, and see the guest rooms and all of the wonderful details waiting around each corner. ?I am excited about visiting the other homes on the tour; I always love to see different architectural styles and how other architects and designers use spacial planning and finishes. ?What do you look for when you go on home tours?

Mark your calendars for August 4, 2012 and go get tickets now for the Steamboat Springs Parade of Homes Tour!

?

All photos courtesy of Tim Murphy Photography

Source: http://blog.homeontherangeinteriors.com/events-and-happenings/steamboat-springs-parade-of-homestour/

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