Your Facebook profile photo is more important than you might think
by Volker Weber
Some of my devices pull contacts in from multiple sources and merge them into a single entry for each person. Palm calls this Synergy:
Palm webOS uses the Palm Synergy™ feature to bring together information from multiple sources automatically, so the information you need is all in one place. It gathers contact and calendar information from places like Facebook®, Google™, LinkedIn®, Microsoft® Office Outlook®, and Yahoo!, and puts it in one view.3 It recognizes text and IM chats with the same person and combines them in one conversation. And many apps built for webOS are integrated with other apps on the phone, sharing information with each other and doing more for you in fewer steps.
My Android phones pull Facebook information and join it with my address book. The new Windows Phone does the same. It may start on one phone and end up in my address book. No matter if you send me mail via your personal or your business account, you are likely to look the same. So, whatever you chose to represent you on Facebook, might as well represent you in all of your communications going forward.
On Facebook I commented:
Your Facebook profile photo gets more important with each smartphone that syncs contacts with Facebook. Make it a good one. Not your dog or your kid. And lose those stupid shades.
One answer was: "my LinkedIn profile has a little more serious picture." Sorry to burst your bubble, but I am going to see your Facebook photo a lot more often than your LinkedIn picture. It's going to be in my contacts, my email, my call log, everywhere. It becomes your avatar.
Comments
Now I have to look for a photo that makes me look normal.
This could take some time.
Same for me. I have very few photos of myself that I like and they're all outdated.
Although Volker may be right, it makes me somwhat unhappy. I have a boring formal photo on XING, the platform for boring formal. One thing that makes facebook intersting is that you see people the way they like to see themselves, not the way they're supposed to be seen.
I am not suggesting a photo of how you are supposed to be seen. Just a photo of yourself.
sorry, no facebook here. Neither do I need any secondlife, I am happy with the one I have. I like Bruce Schneiers taxonomy of disclosed data:
* Service data is the data you give to a social networking site in order to use it. Such data might include your legal name, your age, and your credit-card number.
* Disclosed data is what you post on your own pages: blog entries, photographs, messages, comments, and so on.
* Entrusted data is what you post on other people's pages. It's basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you don't have control over the data once you post it -- another user does.
* Incidental data is what other people post about you: a paragraph about you that someone else writes, a picture of you that someone else takes and posts. Again, it's basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you don't have control over it, and you didn't create it in the first place.
* Behavioral data is data the site collects about your habits by recording what you do and who you do it with. It might include games you play, topics you write about, news articles you access (and what that says about your political leanings), and so on.
* Derived data is data about you that is derived from all the other data. For example, if 80 percent of your friends self-identify as gay, you're likely gay yourself.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/a_taxonomy_of_s_1.html
I might be wrong, but I don't think Volker is saying that you should have a photo on Facebook. He's just saying that if you have one it should be a good one.
If you don't have a Facebook account (or no picture on it) at least my Android contact list just shows the default icon. Still better than a picture of a dog or of Micky Mouse.
PS: I just use the same picture on all of them, easiest way to do it for me.
PPS: I also find it quite annoying when people frequently change their avatar. Simple reason that I often use the avatar to find postings or updates from a person (or even the person itself in my contacts list), which is not helped if they change their avatar every 3 days.
Wow! That's an incredibly useful screen! Unless you have more than 5 or 6 contacts, that is....
Good job I STILL don't use Facebook ;-) Or Linkedin... Or Xing.
(But I know you have other sources too)
note to self: put foto of dog as avatar on facebook if ever compelled to open an account there.
Brian, how many entries does the "recently used" view in contacts on a BlackBerry or an iPhone have? Oh wait, it does not even exist. Bummer. How many does Windows Phone have? There is a hint: a partial photo suggest that this might scroll to the right. You are jumping to conclusions too quickly.
John, you may not be using Facebook, LinkedIn or Xing, and it's up to you whether that is a good thing or not, but your entry in my contacts does have a photo that I did not add myself - and it's not a bad one:
It shows a very likable person, which you are.
What I am alluding to is that people have poor judgement about the photos they chose to represent themselves. And illusions about some kind of border between public and private life. Armin gets it. He uses the same photo everywhere.
Armin, I like this one better:
Yes, vowe, I have seen that one of me in your address book ;-)
I must admit I don't where it came from. Might have been Plaxo (I have however deleted my account there several years ago), if you didn't add it manually. There are quite a lot of photos of me in various places on the web - that doesn't bother me. I just haven't yet "got" the need or urge to use the various social networking sites!
I think this is an excellent point. It's about personal branding. I would say that it's not as important to use a picture of yourself as to understand that the image you choose will be representing you in a broader context than you may have realized.
I choose a long time ago to not use a photo, but have tried to use that image consistently across my accounts.
Although, it looks like if your intention is to get on Vowe's site, you should consider something like this.
Craig, if you are not using a photo, you are going to be recognized with this one instead .
This is the one I use.
That other guy is much more famous (and rich) than I am, can't change that. Even if I used a stunning picture of myself.
But you knew that already.
Please note, gentle readers, that Mr. Vowe has elected to edit/neuter my initial link.
As the site owner he's entitled to do this, although I am suprised that he would do it without comment or explanation.
Don't feel singled out. I remove most links to hotties. And I maintain, that your personal branding isn't working.
You meant to say OTHER folks' links to hotties. Yours appear to stay on the site
My personal branding accomplishes what I have set for it to do. The other CW has a marketing company focused on getting him at the top of searches, so he is. My purpses are different, and I don't need or indeed want to be that public.
You are assuming that other's desires/wants mirror your own.
Craig, yes, links from comments, not from posts. I write the posts, I am responsible for them. You write comments, and curiously enough, I am also responsible for those. So please let me be the judge of my own affairs.
And, no, I am not assuming your desires are the same as mine. It's just that you cannot not communicate. You can chose a picture of yourself, a drawing or no picture at all. And all of that means something. The more vague it is, the more you leave it to the reader to interpret. Even if you leave no traces at all in this world, you put yourself in the same spot as somebody who just did time. :-)
@vowe: es gibt einen guten Artikel bei heise zum Thema "Facebook verrät Daten von Nichtnutzern". Mein Foto hast Du hoffentlich nicht auf facebook gefunden, mir reicht es schon, dass email Adressen von mir von irgendwelchen Leuten da hochgeladen wrden und ich konsequenterweise Werbequatsch auf diese bekomme. Oder hat vielleicht jemand in meinem Namen einen Account aufgemacht? Vielleicht muss ich ja einen aufmachen, schon um meinen Namen zu schützen? Ach Gott.
Was, wenn irgendein Penner eine Geheimnummer da hochlädt, weil er es ja ach so bequem findet, das alles so schön automatisch geht.
As Facebook grows up, it is moving from the place-to-have-fun, to being the de-facto yellow pages (white pages in the US, whatever the equivalent is in Germany, etc) for personal identity on the web. Sure, plenty of people will elect to not be on it, whether from privacy concerns or iconoclasm or whatever, but that's the role that Facebook has always wanted and it's the one towards which it is rapidly moving.
That does, though, make it interesting, because what was intended as a picture that might amuse a few friends for a few days, is now becoming a picture that will identify you to many for an unspecified amount of time. Especially as devices are not necessarily particularly prompt at picking up on changes to the Facebook 'avatar', so the embarrassing one you posted for a couple of days 9 months ago, could be the one that your clients/bosses are still seeing on their phones/PCs today.
It's inevitable, but kind of sad too. Facebook is moving towards LinkedIn, much as LinkedIn has been struggling to become more like Facebook. I preferred it when they overlapped less, I think.
