Social media experiment: BE KNOWN about BEKNOWN

A client recently asked me about a Monster facebook app called beknown, which I’ve had a lot of enquiries on lately.  I had a look at it, and immediately deemed it unworthy and inferior to the JXT social media solution (aka the social media superstar solution aka my solution).

For starters (and trust me, this rant goes on for a while, so strap yourself in), it’s an APPLICATION (not a page) and as such facebook is asking my permission to take the below actions. Personally, I would never agree to any of that because the app can then POST on my facebook wall AS myself. No way! It can also access my Interests, which means pages I like. For instance, I “like” Burnetts Vodka on facebook. Not something to showcase to employers! All around a terrible idea. Apparently, it won an award in the states and has seen great results in talent sourcing, which is fair enough. We came to the conclusion that Americans are just so desperate to find work that they’ll do anything to find a job, even if it means giving potential employers access to their facebook profile! Stupid Americans. Sheesh.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, ranting about applications, not Americans. In addition, apps are generally pre-templated by the developer. It costs heaps of money to develop these facebook apps (I probably could but won’t). And with pre-templates comes the difficulty to control & edit. As a facebook developer and by hardcoding the tabs, I (and ultimately my clients) remain in total control of everything: size, font, exact colour, layout, images, click throughs, etc. Don’t get me started on SEO; side tabs allow for integrations with RSS, youtube, twitter, google maps, etc and as such drive traffic to the designated website - apps do no such thing but rather become part of the person’s facebook experience. Once it serves its purpose (finding that person  a job, or so it claims to do), the app will no doubt be uninstalled immediately.

There are dozens more reasons why pages trump apps, but this is just a start. Initially, I wasn’t planning on installing this app.l Why would I waste my time with such incompetent technology? It’s below me, and I’m better than that, damnit! But alas, curiosity got the best of me, and I wanted to see what all this hoo-ha is about. How could it possibly have won an award?!

As such, I went against my better judgement and “allowed” this application to do the above things (hovering over the box..waiting...turning away....eyes closed....cliiiiick? Ah, my facebook profile is still in tact. Phew!) 

Now that I’m in, its time to get an inside look on the world of facebook applications! Here’s what happened: 

Welp, were not off to a very good start here, though I’m not surprised they want me to spread the word. They want to use MY network of friends to promote THEIR application! Nope, NOT spamming my friends with invites to connect. I get enough Farmville invites as it is and I refuse to be THAT facebook friend. Skip....

Hey, look! The app has imported my career details from the “work experience” portion of my facebook profile! Note that it has also invited me to import details from CareerOne. Er...NOT American (coughanymorecough) so nope, I have no profile there. Where is the import from LinkedIn option!? It allows me to edit this info directly, but now I’m confused...will editing this profile through BeKnown change the “work experience” portion of my facebook profile? I might not want my ENTIRE resume on facebook because to be honest, most of my friends don’t care! I’ll go ahead and change a few things....

LinkedIn to the rescue. I copy and paste the Summary portion of my profile as well as a few bullet points:

OK, summary saved. Now what!? There’s no “next” button so I’m sort of stuck. Normally, I’d give up and go back to whatever I was doing before fiddling with this app, but let’s pretend that I live in America, am jobless, desperate and bored at 2 pm on a Wednesday. I have nothing better to do, so I’m going to figure this out, damnit! (Apologies to anyone reading this who is in America, jobless, desperate and bored at 2 pm on a Wednesday. Chin up! You’ll find something soon!)

I started clicking on the tabs on the left hand side (contact information, beknown photo, summary, experience, etc) and filled in the blanks. When I clicked “beknown photo,” I was expecting to upload a professional photo of my choice to act as my “profile picture.” Instead....

Are you serious!??! NO WAY!! I am now officially scared of this application. Why do you want to access my photos? Why do you need more than one? What are your terms of service and privacy policy, and does the size 8 hard-to-read legal jargon slash nonsense policy allow you to store my photos on your database and publish them somewhere? Curiosity wants me to “allow” to see what happens, but common sense tells me to back off. Hey....what happens in college, stays in college, thank you very much! Skipping this step...

(I had to click the “back” button in my browser to get away from this page, and it kept refreshing the above image instead of going back to the edit section. I had to click and hold the BACK button and go back 2-3 pages. Not cool.)

I tried to fill out the details of my job at JXT, and ummm it’s cut off. I don’t implement social medi. I implement social media strategies. So far, I’m not impressed with this app. Instead, I’m very, very angry with it!

For the skills tab, I have to list each of my skills separately and note how many years of experience I have for each. I initially did this the wrong way, as you can see above. I don’t have time nor energy to list every single skill I have and the years of experience in each and jobs in which I utilised those skills. Nope, not going through with this. Skipping this step...

“Interests”  has pulled the interests from my facebook profile. The interests that I display on my facebook profile are NOT the same interests I’ll display to my potential employer! I’m skipping this step because I don’t want to change my facebook profile. Yes, teaching music to little kids makes me the happiest person in the world. My friends know this and I’ve communicated it in a way that I’m happy for my friends to see: passionate, enthusiastic and with lots of exclamation points. NOT the same way I’d list it on a resume. I’d want to say “music education” or “music theory” or something professional. Skipping this step...

Ah, the good ole Notifications Settings. Normally, this is a favourite place to go as it controls which emails you receive. However, I have no idea what a badge is, I’ll never have a job posting because I’m not an employer, not sure what an endorsement is and am weary that a “connection” may be more connected to me than I’d like, based on my experience thus far. Sooo I’ll go ahead and UNtick the twitter boxes (no , I do NOT want you tweeting on my behalf, and facebook knows my twitter handle and therefore beknown probably does, too...).

Right, now I actually have no idea what to do! I clicked on “Profile” at the top (in the purple section, within the app) and it takes me here:

I click on Network, and it takes me here:

No connections available – awesome! NO, I do NOT want to connect with my facebook friends! They would kill me for spamming them.

Then I click “jobs”...

Ding ding ding! Look at all those jobs! Wait, what? Why would I want to be a tennis coach? The word “tennis” isn’t even in my profile, ANYWHERE, and I’m a terrible player and haven’t touched a racquet since high school. Office All rounder? Nope, no desire to answer phones. I see no social media jobs, digital media jobs, communications jobs....NOTHING, in fact, matches up to ANY of the skills or keywords that I purposely used throughout my profile! The one underneath Tennis Coaches was “Security Engineer,” which is pretty much the last job in the world that would suit me. Apparently, my profile is 85% complete, so I click on “complete profile” (reminds me of LinkedIn). Low and behold, it wants me to make connections by inviting my friends. For the 3^rd time..NO!!

I’d also like to note that none of my 1200 facebook friends use it. Yes, it told me so.

OH EM GEE. I just hopped onto my profile and I am APPALLED and terrified and ANGRY at Beknown. Look what it’s done!!! Arghhhhhh. 

That’s it – I’m done. I officially hate you, BeKnown. FOUR TIMES my friends saw a ridiculously useless update about an app that I’m using on THEIR newsfeed. I’ve now risked getting my updates hidden or being unfriended altogether.

I’ve uninstalled the app and will never get the past 30 minutes of my life back.

Let it be known that BeKNOWN is NO GOOD!!

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Compliments, courtesy call or catastrophic calamity? Are you the BeKnown developer and have a few words for me? Whichever the case, you can email me, tweet me, LinkedIn me (perhaps not really a verb, but it is now) or call me. Thanks for reading all the way through! (unless you scrolled to the bottom just to get my contact details, in which case, please don’t be too mean).