It’s not the numerous legitimate privacy concerns that scare me about Google Buzz. I get nauseous nauseated* thinking about the first time someone–you, me, an elected official or famous person–mistakes a Buzz reply for an email and says something patently offensive, evil and/or downright embarrassing.

And it’s public. But you thought it was private when you hit send because the Buzz reply was IN YOUR INBOX.

Who’s horrible idea was this? I can’t imagine anything WORSE than putting a very public communications vehicle in someone’s PRIVATE email inbox. Read More…

Okay, I know I expressed a bit of concern about whether SXSW would be this big I Heart Twitter! fest or if I would actually learn something new. No worries! I attended three fabulous panels and a keynote address on Day 2. In all honesty, the speakers most certainly did teach/encourage/motivate/challenge me, so if I had to go home today I would feel like I got my money’s worth.

I very much enjoyed hearing from Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, his keynote address was packed out and even spilled into three simulcast rooms. The great news about Tony is that he’s relatively young, extremely successful and absolutely understands that THE BEST way to have productive, customer service-oriented, on-message employees is to create a culture that fosters those things.

If you want your customers to be WOWed, as Hsieh does, then you’ve gotta take great care to hire employees who enjoy WOWing folks. And, “fire quickly” those who do not. Nice the hear that Zappos’s priority is creating and maintaining that culture. “If we hire for the culture fit,” Hsieh said, “the rest just takes care of itself.” He also said that Zappos considers money spent on WOWing customers and training and motivating employees as marketing dollars. It’s billiant, in my opinion.

The panel on Internet privacy was also fabulous. It wasn’t so much that I learned new stuff, you already know how I feel about the importance of knowing your online self. It’s was really just nice to have my obsession validated by really smart folks who are just as freaked out as I am about how little the average person cares about what personal information of theirs is floating around on the Web.

Anyway, there were so many great nuggets of geekdom crowding their way into my head that I thought I might explode a little. You can see my schedule over there…except for that Obama/Dean one. I skipped that to hang with hubby. And that’s okay because the keynote for Day 3 is the same Obama Web-ness, so it’s all good. The topics and converstaions spurred many blog ideas for me, so look for those in the coming days!

In the meantime I’ll leave you with this video of Dave stripping down at the trade show to get a cool t-shirt. We do what we have to do, friends:

This week I mentioned to a friend how I can tell who has been viewing my LinkedIn profile and I thought she was going to pee her pants.

Her: “WHAAAAAAT?” she gasped, slowing realizing that if you can see them, they can see you. ” It’s not all super secret stalking like Facebook?”

Me: “Nope.”

Her: “I don’t believe you.”

Me: “(sigh)”

Attention LinkedIn profile peepers:  if you don’t want folks to know you’re eyeballin their info you’ll have to change your settings.

Look for Accounts & Settings in the upper righthand corner, then click on Privacy Settings, then Profile Views. Here is where you will decide what, if anything, folks see when you peep their profile.

Some folks mark theirs  so that you can see their name and place of employment; for others you can only see their company name and title; still others mark their settings to only show vague references like “public relations professional in the United States.” Mine is set so you’ll see nothing at all.

I imagine that only the most geekly of us actually control our privacy settings for fun on purpose. If you’ve not visited your privacy settings page since joining LinkedIn, make time for it. Accounts and Settings allows you to control what folks see on your profile homepage, what emails you want to receive, and what folks see or don’t see when you look at their profile.

Actively managing your profile is important because, like everything else on the net, it’s all Googleable. And it allows you to be sneaky. Be sure your LinkedIn profile is working for, not against, you. Oh! And if we aren’t LinkedIn, we should be. Shoot me an invite!

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