In a recent post on The Huffington Post, blogger Kety Esquivel discusses what she describes as the converging worlds of new media/social media/journalism/communications/marketing. As I read her post I was reminded how in the past week on every check-out line I was on I saw the covers of two high-profile magazines which epitomized convergence. The Atlantic Monthly’s cover had the word “Google” in a large font while Time magazine was sporting the word, “FaceBook”.

The Atlantic Monthly’s story “How to Save the News” by James Fallows, describes the ways in which Google is trying to “bring the news business back to life.” Fallows writes that Google now considers journalism’s survival crucial to its own prospects. Two important developments for Google were Google News, “a kind of air-traffic-control center for the movement of stories across the world’s media, in real time and Google Alerts, a way to stay on top of the topics important to you.

Fallows says, “But all of their [Google’s] plans for reinventing a business model for journalism involve attracting money to the Web-based news sites now available on computers, and to the portable information streams that will flow to whatever devices evolve from today’s smart phones, iPods and iPads, Nooks and Kindles, and mobile devices of any other sort.”

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You probably know more about Facebook than you realize. Perhaps you even know more than you care to know. Seems these days information about Facebook can be found everywhere. The iconic “F” Follow us on Facebook may even feel like they’re following you. And, now with the thumbs-up “like” symbol vying for your attention every place you look—what’s a person to do?

For starters, you can brush up on the Facebook facts you might not have known before this fun infographic.  And here’s another new hot-off-the-internet story about how Time Magazine’s May 31 issue will hit newsstands with a cover and feature story about Facebook and how it’s redefining privacy.

What Facebook facts or trivia can you add to the conversation?

[Source: Online PhD Programs]

50 settings with more than 170 options, Facebook’s Privacy Policy is longer than the United States Constitution!  See the full size.

[Source: Online MBA for MashableMashable.com]

Recently, I had a conversation with a few colleagues about how they search and whether they ever click on a sponsored link. Even though I’ve never once clicked on one of the links on the right hand side of the google search results page, their answers surprised me. It was a unanimous, No! It got me thinking about the whole phenomenon of pay-per-click advertising, who uses it and for what.

I decided to pose the following question to a group of marketers on LinkedIn–to see if I’ve been missing something.

“When you do a Google Search, do you click on the sponsored links on the right-hand side of the page? -Sometimes, never, always Why? Do you click differently personally vs. professionally?”

Here’s some of their comments below:

1. “Have to admit I never even look at the sponsored ads on the right hand side. They don’t catch my attention and I never think to even read them. if what I’m looking for isn’t in the first few search results I’ll tend to try a different search string, but I’ll never glance over to the ads. maybe that’s ad blindness caused by excessive web use!”

2. “Sometimes, if the description seems directly applicable to what I’m looking for.”

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Social media can have an impact on health care organizations, whether the organization has proactive programs or passively chooses to ignore it. By doing nothing, hospitals are at more legal risk because no clear guidelines articulate how staff should participate in social communities, how doctors share medical advice on blogs and where patients get medical information.

Andrew Cohen of Forum One, recently wrote about the session he attended at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference, which identified legal issues as the top concerns of hospital administrators. Second to this is “lack of comfort with social media by administrators as well as staff…”

With patients helping themselves to information on websites that may or may not be good information, hospitals and other healthcare organizations like lifecare facilities have an opportunity to help guide patients and their families to good information and support.

In fact, every department needs to consider how social media effects them including human resources, legal, marketing, IT, patient services, and each and every medical specialty.   In 2009, we met with many of the SVPs  at a major teaching hospital north of Boston, Lahey Clinic, to give them a sense of what they need to think about.

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Seven things to stop doing on Facebook via Consumer Reports, June 2010 issue:

1. Using a weak password
2. Leaving your full birth date in your profile
3. Overlooking useful privacy controls
4. Posting your child’s name in a caption
5. Mentioning you’ll be away from home
6. Letting search engines find you
7. Permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised

What else do you do to protect your privacy?

Also of interest:
Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline
How To: Disable Facebook’s Instant Personalization” [Privacy]