Facebook Draws the Line at Breastfeeding

If Facebook's main purpose is to start conversation, then they do a pretty good job by enraging their members who like to bitch about the site to no end. Facebook is endlessly screwing up their relationship with users by betraying their trust through flaps over their privacy agreement, but they first caught flack for implementing Beacon, a marketing tool that posted a user's third-party purchases on his or her information feed.

Then in 2008 they had to go and aggravate a demographic to be feared - Moms. Facebook has a blanket policy against pornography. That being said, they view images of most fully exposed breasts as pornography. Thus, breastfeeding pictures are clearly porn. Moms were definitely not cool with this kind of logic.

While I appreciate that they are trying to keep it clean (and I sure do know a few users that have probably benefited from a little censoring) it seems a little unfair to peg one of the most natural things a human being can do as "obscene content." Apparently the 230,728 members of the group Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene! (Official petition to Facebook) agree that there is nothing wrong with these pictures and they should not be removed. So far they have staged two worlwide nurse-in events for the Mothers International Lactation Campaign (M.I.L.C.), one in December and one in February.

While I know that America can be amazingly puritanical when compared with other countries, public brestfeeding is allowed, though we aren't all comfortable with it. So Facebook is not even holding public lactation to American standards let along the standards of what is acceptable to the international community they serve. Much has been made of the opportunities Facebook's millions of users might provide for marketing and profit. That ain't gonna happen if they keep pissing everyone off.

Buggy Backward Bebo

All of my social networking in one place? Yes please! Having to deal with AOL to do it? No thank you.

From my experience with Real Simple a few posts back, I learned that women sure are into organizing. Even I occasionally get the bug, so when I recently read that AOL had launched their Lifestream information aggregation tool by way of their Bebo social networking site, I was definitely intrigued. In a nutshell, this service takes all your updates, pictures, emails, etc. from sites like Flickr, Facebook, Gmail, AIM, Del.icio.us and Twitter and (in theory) lets you view them all on one handy-dandy dashboard. Cool idea - if it actually works.

I created my Bebo account using my old, clunky, no longer in use AIM handle and found (surprise, surprise) that none of my old AIM contacts were using Bebo. I would have to import contacts from other avenues like my Gmail address book. I wasn't about to drag others into this thing before I knew what I was dealing with.

After an oversimplified sign-in to add my major social networks, I found that the only feed I was seeing within my Lifestream, sad little existence that it was, were my tweets. Aggregator indeed. Facebook was completely MIA. I even tried updating my status there to see if anything showed up, but that didn't work. Now of course, something probably went wrong with my initial sign-up, but an exaustive, time-consuming search of the site left me with no idea how I could fix it.

At any rate, this is what it is supposed to look like:



So I was left with a fairly empty profile page needing to be built from scratch. There were all kinds of tools and apps available to build that page, but why should I be reinventing the wheel when I already have other social networks that fill my needs? I think my biggest reluctance to embrace Bebo is from my perception of AOL. I left AOL years and years ago, never looking back. They would have to do something major to win me over, and sadly for them, this isn't it.

Moms on Facebook

(sung to the tune of Duran Duran's "Girls On Film")

See them uploading albums of their kids all through the night
Making friends with their children's friends might not always be so right
But finding old connections really takes them back
Especially after a maternity leave, it can get their job search on track
And I sense as she keeps poking me that everything is fine

Moms on Facebook
Moms on Facebook
Moms on Facebook
Moms on Facebook

Tons of apps all over her page as she's connecting
As she keeps posting old awkward pictures of me I despise
She's gotta come up for air once she joins six degrees of Jewish separation
And she wonders how she ever signed up for so many random groups

Moms on Facebook (every five minutes)
Moms on Facebook
Moms on Facebook (yes, I got your picture)
Moms on Facebook

Send another smiling baby picture you just made a new friend
Please don't send me another snow globe again!
One more look at your news feed for the last status updates of the night,
I'm tapping my foot, getting annoyed, trying to hold tight
Your AOL finally says "Goodbye" and we're off like a shooting star

Moms on Facebook (she's not an old lady)
Moms on Facebook
Moms on Facebook (back on two minutes later)
Moms on Facebook
Moms on Facebook (she's got more friends than I do)
Moms on Facebook
Moms on Facebook (IM with you later)
Moms on Facebook
Moms on Facebook (please take down that picture)
Moms on Facebook

Anatomy of a Media Meltdown - "Are you not entertained?"

On the February 11 Late Show with David Letterman Joaquin Phoenix appeared to promote his new film Two Lovers. Who knows if it is a good film or not, but it certainly wasn't what had people buzzing the next day.

The mostly quiet and often incoherent Phoenix appeared to either be on something or simply committing career suicide. Others have speculated that was all part of some elaborate hoax. At any rate, feel free to weigh in.



While an entertaining tidbit to break up my day, I was more interested in how the event was spreading virally. I had not seen the clip the night it aired, but the next day I received an email and an IM from two friends sending me the link to the clip on You Tube. Another friend had posted it on Facebook. I checked into my Twitter feed and saw a tweet from Defamer about it. Later in the week as I perused CNN.com I saw Anderson Cooper had weighed in and was showing a remixed version of the segment. I finished my week discussing it with my coworkers and we ended up watching it again. They even parodied it on the February 14 Saturday Night Live.

Though there were certainly bigger, more important news stories last week, it amazed me how many times that one interview kept coming up. Which seriously made me doubt the randomness of the event. I haven't heard much about the film that Phoenix was supposedly plugging. I also hadn't seen the actor's newly disheveled appearance, though I had heard he was retiring from acting to pursue his "music." Whether a calculated move or unplanned meltdown, the generated buzz was astounding. Celebrities have always been under the microscope, but now that everyone is so plugged in the scrutiny is overwhelming. Marketers and celebrity "brands" alike need to be aware that they can harness this kind of attention or have their image carried away by it.

"I am a weapon of massive consumption,

...It's not my fault, it's how I'm programmed to function." So says Lily Allen in her new song "The Fear" which I am listening to as it streams on her MySpace page. The song, an ode to crazed consumerism, seems timely for the mess we're all caught up in at the moment, though it has a cheery pop quality that is kind of disturbing for the subject.

The Fear video


Allen just released her second album "It's Not Me, It's You" yesterday. Since I was keen on her first album a few years back (you may remember the equally cheerful song "Smile" about relishing the pain of a lover who jilted her), I am sampling the new album from her site's player. Allen virtually made her career thanks to MySpace, developing her following, allowing listeners to sample her music and publicizing her tour dates.

The current experience is a little frustrating because there are frequent interruptions as Domino's ads appear and have to be clicked away before a song will continue - major annoyance. Still, I can't help but admire how the singer has harnessed the power of her social network to get her message out. She is even performing 3 free "secret" MySpace sponsored concerts. The first one is tonight at Bowery Ballroom in New York.

Music seems to be the only area where MySpace has been able to continually beat it's eager little sibling, Facebook. I wonder how much longer that will be the case as sites like iLike are building an audience separately and within Facebook - will it trump MySpace? Though I have never been a serious MySpace user, to me iLike is a better version of the artist's "megaphone," broadcasting every little detail about their goings-on to fans. The experience is much more organized and customizable, though graphically inferior. Still artists have been loyally creating elaborate pages on MySpace for years, some even cooler than their own dedicated websites.

Today's fickle music fans are demanding more of their favorite artists, and thanks to technology, can find ways to get their music free. So the musician-consumer relationship has really been turned on its head. Musicians have to be more creative in their marketing, using all the available resources to catch the audience's fleeting attention and harness it into iTunes or Amazon song sales, or even concert tickets. Free underground shows are not only great for publicity (for both Lily Allen and MySpace) but a necessity to show fans that you love and appreciate them as much as they are into you.

The next logical step? Personal emails ala Barack Obama. I can't wait until I get that email from Beck telling me he hopes I liked the new album or asking me to come out for his concert when he is in my hometown. Depending on how it's done, it could be awesome.