I attended the Cultural & Heritage Tourism Alliance conference held in Seattle about a week and a half ago. Seattle is a favorite destination of mine, and visiting during the holiday season did not disappoint. They do wonderful job lighting up the city.

I was there to speak about Philly and how we are using social media to connect with travelers, but I really felt like I was schooled by some other smart session leaders.

In the morning, we heard from Glenn Kelman, President & CEO of Redfin, who was a breath of fresh air. This guy is the CEO of a healthily growing business, but he hasn't lost site of what's important: his site's users. He knows which users are cult-like in their devotion to the site and periodically reaches out to them directly and personally, via email, shares things like new features they are thinking about adding and asks for those loyalists feedback. And he LISTENS to their feedback. That's engagement.

Cari Guittard, Executive Director, Business for Diplomatic Action, talked a tough topic, "The State of America's Reputation and How it Affects Tourism." I applaud her for starting by acknowledging Zakaria's recent Newsweek story titled "America The Unwelcoming." If you haven't read it, I strongly encourage you to do so. It is an alarm bell sounding for all Americans and our economy, which is largely reliant nationwide on tourism dollars. The basis of the story is built around the Commerce Department finding that "the United States is the only major country in the world to which travel has declined in the midst of a global tourism boom." This, as the dollar drops against many foreign currencies.

She showed us Discover America Partnership, which is a site targeting businesses and individuals, seeking to connect with them in a big enough way that inspires them to act as positive WOM ambassadors for the US when they travel. I like the idea, the execution underwhelmed me. I felt like the red-white-and-blue of it all was too establishment to win over someone like me, who travels abroad and doesn't politically align with the Bush Administration. Design-wise, I think the header graphic wastes too much of the page and looks like a McDonald's commercial (an image that I would think we'd want to get away from overseas).

They did much better on their "consumer" site, world citizens guide. I like the design, the animation and the content here. Do click on the "100 People" tab - absolutely brilliant educational application. Simple, easy to comprehend and to me, thought provoking about "my" world vs the global world we all share. I can see why they won a Webby. To win another Webby, I think they should refresh this site with a area for a community. A place for people to converse, speak, listen and learn. Or, if they aren't equipped/ready to build their own community, join a pre-exisiting social networking community that will better connect them with "connected" citizens; be present and participate in a NUMBER of those communities. We're already there, so rather than working relentlessly to convert us, come JOIN us. Get in the conversation. Sure, those traditional media hits are great for some people; but many of us employ the internet as our default news source. We're missing your 60 Minutes hits, unless it's recapped on Gawker or you post it on Viddler.

Revolution isn't just occuring overseas. We are in the midst of a global social revolution. The world has changed, whether we like it or not. So marketers (yes, even you, USA), either get up to speed and join the new world or let it pass you by, but understand, the global social revolution is in full swing and there's no turning back now.

Well, I did it. I finally did it. I deactivated Facebook.

I have been angry with Facebook for a while now. I was angry when they started publishing our feeds; I didn't need all my friends seeing a 2am scribble on another friend's wall. I was angry when they abandoned their core audience and their brand equity by opening the community to everyone and their grandmother.

And then came the widgets. Jesssssuuuuuuuuuuuussssssssss. The first pirate invite was cute. The next 250? Not so much. And the vampire bites? Never cute, never fun. Just. SUPER. Annoying.

And then they decided to split things up: individuals here, bands and brands there. OK. But did you need to delete the pages of Brands that were already in-community WITH NO WARNING, OVERNIGHT, after you made the announcement, Facebook? That's like breaking up with someone you live with and not giving them a chance to pack up - just throwing their shit out the window and on the street!

And then came Beacon. With this, it's almost hard to believe that Facebook started out as an Ivy League community, although I'm Jesuit educated and we believe we're smarter than Ivy anyway, so I guess it shouldn't be that surprising that a bunch of Harvard kids could eff up marketing so hugely in this day and age. Rather than even tiptoe in the stupidity of their "opt-out" answer, I defer to Chris Heuer's excellent post on that topic.

So, I tip my hat to my friend Colin, with whom I've bitched, lamented and threatened to do this for many, many months, but whom beat me to the punch to it earlier today and I bid adieu to my Facebook friends. You can find me on Twitter, here, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo and many other places but you will no longer find me on Facebook.

Good riddance and AMEN.

Facebook tries to save face with Beacon apology

Seems like it finally dawned on Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, that he needed to join the Beacon conversation! He posted an official apology on the Facebook blog today, acknowledging that his company was wrong in the way it handled the Beacon problem. Note that he directly addressed one of the hot-button issues in his post - his choice to make Beacon an opt-out instead of an opt-in program - thereby showing that his company is listening to user concerns.

Zuckerberg's blog post is structured like a textbook example of a crisis PR response:

• Paragraph 1: Apologize for the specific problem


• Paragraph 2 & 3: Explain what happened/what let to the mistake


• End of paragraph 3: Condemn the mistake


• Paragraph 4: Explain what needs to be done to fix the problem. In my opinion he would have been better off addressing Facebook users directly here instead of referring to them as "people" (not very personal)


• Paragraph 5: Explain what has been done to fix the problem and tell users about it


• Paragraph 6: Thank users for sharing their concerns, thereby validating them. The only thing he didn't do at the end was discuss how Facebook plans to "make up" for their mistake (such as Apple offering in-store credit to early iPhone adopters, or JetBlue issuing vouchers after the Valentine's Day disaster). But then again, Facebook is a free service which sets it apart from those examples.

Zuckerberg's apology is similar to Steve Jobs' open letter to iPhone users after Apple upset its fan base by dropping the price of the iPhone after only a few months on the market. The apology is not the only similarity though. Facebook and Apple both managed to anger an otherwise ultra-loyal public - the people who love their service/product. Apple's iPhone faux-pas and Facebook's Beacon dilemma also act as a good reminder to companies not to underestimate the power of their key publics to organize online and pressure for change.