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How To Manage Your Online Reputation

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By Tracey Dowdy

We’ve all heard anecdotal stories like the one about the woman who lost a promotion when her disparaging comments about her employer were seen on Twitter, or the guy who wasn’t hired because photos from Spring Break ’08 showed up in a Google search.

According to CareerBulider.com, 75 percent of employers utilize search engines like Google before hiring someone. The most common reasons for potential hires being rejected ranged from talking about drinking or drug habits to bad-mouthing previous employers.

To paraphrase Warren Buffet, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes (of Google searching) to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

The prospect of going back years or through hundreds of pages of a Google search to clean up your online reputation can be overwhelming. Companies like Outspoken Media and Firefly Digital Marketing have built their businesses on helping individuals and companies curate their online presence not only for optimization but for reputation as well. One start-up – BrandYourself.com – will clean things up for less than $100 a year.

The good news is that unless you have more complex issues, like past legal troubles or a negative review from a reputable source, you can do a lot of the work yourself. Here’s how:

  • All roads lead to Rome and all searches start with Google. Well, all roads may not lead to Rome these days but Google is far and away the most commonly used search engine. Sign up for Google Alerts to be notified any time new content about you is published to make it easier to monitor what’s out there.
  • Be mindful of where that content ranks. An average of 85 percent of people click on links on the first page of a Google search but the number drops exponentially to 10-12 percent for page two and all the way down to 3-5 percent for page three. If what’s posted on page one – regardless of whether it’s true – is negative, it won’t matter that the positive content is on page four or five. Anything past page three is pretty much the online reputation equivalent of the Sea of Tranquility.
  • Create and control your own domain name. In other words, if you can’t remove it, bury it. Pete Kistler, co-founder of BrandYourself.com learned the importance of burying negative content when he discovered there was another Pete Kistler showing up in Goggle searches of his name. The problem? The other Pete Kistler was a convicted drug dealer. So, Kistler seized control of his name by creating positive, original content, as well as multiple websites which ultimately drove the other Pete Kistler further down in search results. You can buy domain names for as little as $12 a year from sites like GoDaddy. That’s money well spent if it’s putting you in the driver’s seat.
  • Make the most of social media. Aggregate your accounts by utilizing a social media manager like HootSuite or TweetDeck. Social Media Management Systems (SMMS) consolidate your accounts into a single dashboard instead of having to log in to individual accounts. From here you can schedule content, monitor mentions, and track keywords.
  • Be proactive and reactive. Seize and maintain control of your social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Consider separate accounts for personal and professional use. No doubt you’ve put effort into developing your professional reputation and you don’t want it damaged because of content that has been posted without your consent. It can happen as simply as being tagged in a Facebook photo by a family member or friend. By keeping separate accounts you lessen the risk of the two world’s colliding. If it does happen, and you want the content removed, act quickly to mitigate the impact. Ask that the content be taken down and if that doesn’t work contact the site manager for assistance in resolving the issue.
  • Blog Blog Blog. Fact: blogging attracts more traffic than static websites and is a great way to curate your brand and your reputation. What better way to demonstrate who you are than by creating the content yourself? Blogging forces you to be mindful of the content and that mindfulness will spill over into your other social media accounts. Seed the blog with keywords and tags to improve your search engine results and drive it to that coveted page one of Google.

Finally, remember this: The best kept secret is that nothing is secret. Don’t assume privacy settings will protect you – any wall can be breached. It’s a cliché but if in doubt, leave it out. The blowback could be as simple as hurt feelings or as complex as a libel suit.

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Toronto, ON. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances and researches on subjects from family and education to pop culture and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.

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The Right To Be Remembered

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By Paul O’Reilly

Facebook is now letting its users nominate someone to be in charge of their accounts after they die. Termed a legacy contact, the nominated individual will be able to write a pinned post for the deceased user’s Timeline (e.g. to share a final message or provide information about a memorial service), respond to new friend requests, and update the profile and cover photos.

The question of what happens to social media accounts after people die has been a vexing one, particularly for Facebook, where some studies have suggested that upwards of 3 million users die each year. Most accounts remain frozen in time, with no changes to the content or privacy settings, but Facebook has quietly been addressing the growing problem, gradually introducing a series of steps that allow for a more dignified end to an individual’s social media existence.

While a legacy contact can be nominated at any time through a user’s privacy settings (US users only for now), the account still has to be memorialized before the legacy contact can take any action. An account is memorialized after Facebook receives a request from a family member or friend, which is usually accompanied by some kind of proof of death like an obituary.

While the legacy contact can accept new friend requests (am I alone in thinking that’s a little weird?) and update profile and cover photos, that’s about the extent of his or her authority. The legacy contact can’t formally log into the account and can’t change or remove any past posts or photos. Also, the legacy contact can’t read any messages that have been sent or remove any of the deceased person’s friends.

As well as a legacy contact, Facebook is still offering users the option of having an account permanently deleted. The problem there is that the user still has to rely on someone telling Facebook that the person has passed away. Without any clear instructions via a will or other formal document, notifying Facebook is hardly going to be at the top of a ‘To Do’ list for surviving friends and relatives.

The whole question of what happens to a social media account after someone dies is an evolving issue, with virtually no legislation or legal precedent to guide the actions of either users or the social media platforms. With tens of millions of people actively engaged on social media every day that is bound to change. It’s not hard to imagine the time when estranged parties fight over a deceased family member’s Facebook account the same way they do now over other legacy items.

If you’re active on social media, then it’s worth giving some thought to how you want your accounts to be treated after you’ve gone. While the Internet has prompted much debate about the right to be forgotten, perhaps we should be more concerned about how we are going to be remembered.

Follow Paul on Twitter.

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The Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Classroom

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By Tracey Dowdy

If you’re looking to start a debate, I suggest bringing up the issue of social media and whether or not it belongs in the classroom. Parents, educators, students – everyone has an opinion, and it’s an interesting mix of individuals on both sides of the issue.

In our technology-saturated society, one could argue social media is already in our schools. Every day teachers battle to keep kids off their phones and focused on what’s happening in the classroom, and see social media as a distraction. On the other side of the debate, educators have embraced social media as a way to engage with students outside conventional teaching methods, recognizing that students raised on smartphones and laptops have developed very different learning styles from past generations.

Those against social media in the classroom say there’s no need to look further than the name: “social media.” In other words, its purpose is socialization and it should be kept that way. Gail Leight, teacher and contributor to pbs.org points out that many of her junior high students already live in a very “it’s all about me” world and the social media they engage in promotes a very narrow world view. For her, the goal of educators should be to open student’s minds, exposing and challenging them to see the world beyond their social media circles. In addition, students may struggle to shift between digital and real-life learning and may not be able to separate the two worlds effectively.

On the other side are educators embracing social media and making it an essential part of their curriculum and teaching methods. Recognizing this generation of students will be among the first to have lived out their entire lives online, the value of this approach is obvious. From moms posting baby photos through their own social media accounts, virtually every aspect of students’ lives will be out there.  As a result, it’s become more and more critical for students to understand the importance of curating their online presence. As these students graduate and move into the workforce, there will be a higher level of accountability for their digital footprints. Many employers already see social media accounts as an unofficial piece of a potential employee’s resume.

Don Goble teaches Broadcast Technology, Film and Multimedia at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis, Missouri. He points out that: “Students communicate, research, collaborate, create and publish online with or without the help of parents or educators. These same students then hop on social media to promote, discuss and share their thoughts with the world. The digital environment is offering us some of the greatest learning opportunities that young learners have ever had.” He further compares excluding social media from the classroom to giving a 13 year old the keys to a Ferrari and telling them to have fun. Not only is it ridiculous – it’s dangerous for the teen and for those with whom they come into contact.

Educators aren’t suggesting adding Facebook or Snapchat 101 to the core curriculum. Instead, they advocate taking what’s already part of the curriculum – basic writing skills for example – and applying it to blogging on closed, education-based sites like Edublogs or Kidblog. Others may use Edmodo, marketed as Facebook for schools, Fakebook, or FakeTweet to teach students what is and isn’t appropriate to put online.

In the words of teacher Vicki Davis, “Social media is here. It’s just another resource and doesn’t have to be a distraction from learning objectives. Social media is another tool that you can use to make your classroom more engaging, relevant and culturally diverse.”

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Toronto, ON. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances and researches on subjects from family and education to pop culture and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.

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Time to Take the Facebook Privacy Checkup

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Over the years, Facebook has taken some well-deserved heat for making its privacy settings overly complicated, but that all changed in December 2012 with the introduction of Privacy Shortcuts. Accessible from the little lock icon at the top right-hand corner of any page, the Privacy Shortcuts allow Facebook users to perform a quick check-up of their privacy settings, and also act as a constant reminder of the privacy issues that are most important. Here’s how they work:

Privacy Shortcuts are divided into three distinct areas: Who can see my stuff? Who can contact me? and How do I stop someone from bothering me?

Who can see my stuff?

This, of course, is the most important question for any Facebook user concerned about his or her privacy. The Shortcut explains how you can control who can see your future posts by adjusting the settings at the time you post, but it also guides you to two of the most powerful – and underutilized – tools on Facebook: the Activity Log and View As.

The Activity Log is basically an archive of everything that you have ever posted on Facebook, or anything others have posted about you. You can review by category – Posts, Photos, Likes, Comments, etc. – or by timeline, all the way back to the time you joined Facebook. You get the chance to delete or hide old posts and photos, and even ask others to delete photos that you’ve been tagged in. (Keep in mind that you can only delete old posts and photos from your own timeline. These posts and photos can still appear elsewhere on Facebook.)

View As allows you to see what your timeline looks like to the public or to a specific friend. (Again, even if you hide something on your timeline, it could still appear in your news feed or elsewhere on Facebook. If you don’t want someone to see a certain post or photo, don’t post it on Facebook!)

Who can contact me?

This Privacy Shortcut allows you to control who can send you friend requests and whose messages you see. The new Message Filters are Facebook’s attempt to make its messaging system more useful by filtering out unwanted messages or spam. Users have a choice of Basic or Strict Filtering, with unwanted messages ending up in an Other folder as opposed to the regular Inbox.

How do I stop someone from bothering me?

Here, Facebook provides a shortcut for blocking someone, as well as a way to view users you have previously blocked. Other Privacy Shortcuts allow you to adjust who can look you up using the email address or phone number you provide to Facebook, and whether various third party search engines can link to your timeline.

Taken together these new tools provide Facebook users with an excellent way to perform a quick privacy check-up, while acting as a reminder of what’s important as we all continue to expand our online presence.

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Take Charge of Your Online Profile

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In today’s world, if people want to find out more about you, they head to the Internet. It may be a prospective employer, a co-op board member, an old friend trying to look you up, or even a future date; anyone who is interested in learning more about you will jump online and open a browser.

So it’s important to ask yourself, “What are they likely to find?” Are they going to be reassured about what a fine upstanding citizen you are? Or are they going to be shocked with what Google uncovers? (Or maybe they will find nothing at all, which can also be a problem!)

I realize that you can’t control everything on the Internet but you can control some things. Every social networking site you participate in – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube – asks you to create a profile, and it’s these profile pages that are likely to come up first when someone conducts a search.

Properly managing your profile is a great way to control the message you want to put out to the world. Here are a few tips on how to present a positive image:

Be consistent. Use the same name and profile across all your social networks, so people know it’s you and you present a consistent personal brand.

Make sure your profile picture is appropriate. While photos of you drinking and partying might go down well with your old college buddies, that’s probably not the image you want to project to future employers and neighbors. Post a recent head shot – and don’t forget to smile!

Provide some background. Facebook, Twitter and all the other popular social networks give you ample opportunity to tell people more about yourself. Take advantage of that opportunity. Use the tools available to project an image and information that you are comfortable with.

Cross link to other web sites and blogs. If you want to highlight a blog or another personal web site, then make sure you cross-link to it from your other social networks. Make your best work easy to find.

Be sparing with the inside jokes. If someone needs to know you well to understand a particular comment, then perhaps it’s not for your public profile. It’s good to be cute or funny but make sure it’s a joke that everyone can share in.

Make the Internet your friend. Build a profile and control the message!

Online Safety, home

How To Protect Your Privacy Online

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Simple Steps Can Thwart the Hackers

By Tracey Dowdy

Unless you’ve just stepped out of a time machine or awakened from a coma, you are aware that several celebrities had their personal photos shared without their consent last week. The hack garnered media attention mainly because celebrities were involved: higher profile hack = higher profile coverage + higher profile attorneys. Unfortunately, this isn’t uncommon in an age of revenge-porn and sites like My Ex where individuals post nude photos in retaliation for break-ups.

While most of us don’t have nudies we’d like to keep out of the public eye, we have plenty of other personal information and photos we’d prefer to keep private. These tips should help:

Be Proactive.

PC Magazine recently posted a list of the best antivirus software solutions for 2014, including both free and paid options. Microsoft includes a basic antivirus system in Windows 8 but keep in mind that Microsoft simply wants everyone to have a baseline. Windows Defender on its own is not enough. Mac’s tend to be much harder to hack than PC’s due to built-in security protections such as XProtect, Gatekeeper and “Malware Removal Tool” (MRT). Also, OS Leopard prevents non Apple based software from being downloaded, which further reduces the risk of picking up a virus.

Once you’ve downloaded an antivirus solution, keep it updated. You aren’t fully protected if you aren’t up-to-date. Remember, just as some viruses in nature develop drug resistant strains, online hackers will continue to work around new security settings.

Be Careful of Links.

Any time you see a link – in an email, a Facebook posting, Twitter feed, etc. – take the time to evaluate whether it’s from a trusted source. Do you know the person? Is the email/tweet/message really from the person it says it’s from? Can you trust the content description or is there a chance that what appears to be a picture of a squirrel waterskiing is actually porn or some type of malware?

Beware of “Phishing”.

Phishing is a fraudulent attempt to steal your personal information. What appears to be a legitimate request to update personal information is in fact a clever ruse to steal that data. These attacks don’t just come via the Internet. At least 3 times in the last 12 months I’ve received a phone call purporting to be from Microsoft warning me of a virus on my computer or offering to help because they’ve noticed my computer is “running slow.” All I have to do is allow them remote access to my computer and they’ll be glad to help. Microsoft is not calling. It’s a call centre in India. Trust me, they aren’t there to help.

Even more devious is “spear phishing,” where the scammer will do his homework by Googling you, perusing your social media or other online profiles so when they call, they can pose as a trustworthy source. Just last year in our area, a group of seniors were targeted by individuals posing as grandchildren who had gotten into trouble and needed money for bail, a bus ticket or groceries. The seniors shared banking information to allow money to be direct deposited in the scammers bank accounts and the seniors lost thousands of dollars.

Use 2-Step or 2-Factor Authentication.

Instead of simply logging in with a password, 2-step authentication links your accounts to another device – usually your phone – so when you attempt to log in, a text is sent with an additional security code. This way, if someone tries to hack into your account without your phone, they’re locked out. Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and many others offer this option.

Don’t Trust Requests for Personal Information.

If you created an online account with a reputable site like PayPal, they already have your information. If you get an email purporting to be from Paypal asking you to follow the link and update your information, beware. Instead, go to Paypal and talk to Customer Support. Ask if they recently tried to contact you.

Lock It Down.

Your smartphone, your laptop, your tablet, any device – just lock it down. Set your screensaver to prompt for a password, enable the lock screen on your phone, and password protect your home network.

Protect Your Financial Information.

Never do your online banking on a public Wi-Fi network. Readily available freeware allows the person sitting next to you at Starbucks to eavesdrop on your email as easily as your conversation. And although I feel like it’s stating the obvious, don’t send money to anyone you don’t know. If the offer seems too good to be true, trust me, it is. Bill Gates donates millions to charity every year but he isn’t doing it by asking you to share his photo on Facebook, nor will he send you $5,000 if you repost his photo. Clicking on those links runs the risk of allowing scammers access to your Facebook profile and other sensitive information.

Password Protection Is Critical.

Internet security professionals recommend using a random combination of upper and lower case letters, symbols, and numbers when you formulate a password. And here’s a tip about those security questions asked as an added level of protection: lie, lie, lie. If your mother’s maiden name is MacDonald, say it’s Abramowitz. If your first pet was Mr. Fluffy, say it was Boomer. In other words, be very careful of providing answers that are easy to find by someone who knows you, could read your blog, browse your Facebook profile, or look up information that’s part of a public record.

Better yet, use a password manager to store and organize your passwords. Many are guilty of using the same password for multiple sites, because it’s just too much work to remember them, or they keep a list of passwords in a desk drawer, in a note on their phone, or in a file labelled “Passwords” on their desktop (shudder). Two of the best are Dashlane 3 ($29.99) and LastPass 3.0 ($12.99 but a free version is also available); both are compatible with Apple, PC and Android devices.

Keeping your personal information isn’t easy but it’s worth the work. Think of it this way: You wouldn’t hand the keys to your house to a random stranger on the street, so why would you leave the front door unlocked to your virtual home?

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Toronto, ON. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances and researches on subjects from family and education to pop culture and trends in technology.

Online Safety, home

Protect Your Privacy: Check Those Facebook Apps

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Although we may feel that we are on top of our Facebook privacy settings, there are a few areas that we rarely bother to review. One of those areas concerns all the third-party games and other apps that we have picked up – sometimes unwittingly – during our time as a Facebook member.

In many cases, we have given these apps permission to access our most personal data, whether or not we are still using the app or even know that it’s there. Depending on our friends’ privacy settings, those apps might also be “scraping” their personal data, resulting in spam, unwanted advertising, and even phishing attacks.

But first, how do we even find out which apps we have on our Facebook account? The best place to start is with our Privacy Settings, where we can also make the necessary adjustments.

  • Click on the arrow in the top right-hand corner of your home page, and then click on Settings.
  • Scroll down the left-hand side of the General Account Settings page and click on Apps.
  • The first item on this page will be a summary of all the Apps you use. These are all the apps that you have allowed to interact with your Facebook account. By clicking on the Edit button to the right of each app, you can see exactly what the app is allowed to do. Many Facebook users will be surprised to see the number of apps that they have acquired over the years, and the amount of personal information that each app is allowed to collect.
  • If you are no longer using the app, or you are unhappy with what the app can access, then you can click on the ‘x’ to the right of the app to remove the app completely. As Facebook will tell you in a new window, removing the app from Facebook      will only prevent the app from collecting additional data in the future. The app will still have the data it has already collected.

apps-others-use

The Apps page also allows you to control how much of your information is accessible through the activities of your friends. If you click the Edit button to the right of Apps others use, you will get a window with a 17 different information categories, including everything from your photos and videos to your relationships and religious and political views. (See panel above.) Again, we recommend that only your basic information is made available to these third-party apps and web sites.

Stacey Ross on The Online Mom, home

What Happens to Your Social Media Accounts After You Die?

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By Stacey Ross

A close friend of the family unexpectedly passed away not too long ago, and it was touching and supportive for his family and friends that we were able to honor his life online. The reality is that since more and more of our lives are going digital these days, it warrants a discussion that many of us have never given much thought to – namely “What happens to our social media accounts when we pass on?”

Here’s a brief look at how three popular social media platforms handle accounts of the deceased:

Twitter

Twitter officials will start deleting accounts after six months of inactivity, while most other social networks won’t touch your profile unless specifically asked to by a family member or an agent of law enforcement.

Twitter will work with a person authorized to act on behalf of an estate or with a verified immediate family member of the deceased (with both requiring a government-issued ID). To deactivate an account, Twitter needs the username of the deceased, a death certificate, a written explanation, a current address and the relationship to the deceased.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn will work to delete an account so that the username and password no longer work and the deceased individual’s profile is removed from the site. If you are taking action in this area, you will need to know the deceased member’s name, the company he or she worked at most recently, and provide a link to his or her profile.

It’s also helpful if you can provide LinkedIn with the member’s email address. You will be required to state your relationship to the deceased, as those without a close relationship might not be able to have the account removed.

There is a way to export the deceased user’s connections in case you have a need to contact them in the future, which can be useful for small businesses if an owner or key partner passes away.

Facebook

If you are an immediate family member, you can go through the various steps to deactivate an account or you can turn a lost loved one’s profile into a memorial page. The memorialized timeline is accessible and searchable only by friends, who will have the opportunity to post and look at pictures. Nobody would be able to tag the deceased in photos or posts, send messages, or ‘friend’ the deceased. Similarly, the account will no longer generate birthday reminders, or show up in “People You May Know” prompts.

Millions of users have died since Facebook has been around. Since Facebook won’t delete profiles on its own, it poses a viable curiosity to some that one day the dead might outnumber the living!

What about privacy?

There is an ongoing debate over the ownership of “digital assets” and the laws are still catching up with the times. Certain areas are still unclear, and different laws in different states only add to the confusion.

What do you think? When a person dies, should their loved ones should be granted access to their information, photos, videos, etc.? Some say yes, yet others have concerns about confidentiality. There are crucial legal but also practical implications which come into play when loved ones are allowed to access previously password-protected accounts.

Making provisions as to who could legally assume responsibility for your accounts could help streamline the process, as well as leaving an instruction letter with your wishes, account names, and updated passwords.

A new plan endorsed by the Uniform Law Commission proposes legislation that would automatically allow loved ones to access social media accounts (though not post from them), with an exception for wills that specifically request restricted access.

Of course, privacy activists argue that confidential information kept online should remain secure. It would be wise for online enthusiasts to create a social media will, particularly if they want their digital assets to be accessed by others.

Be proactive!

There are certainly tools available – actual websites where you can save all your passwords in a digital vault, along with instructions for your loved ones for when you die. You can even leave legacy videos or create “dead social accounts,” which enable you to communicate with people at predetermined times after your death. (Although the idea of curating information to be sent virtually once you are gone can seem a bit creepy, and could expose loved ones to digital identity crimes.)

Once these services receive proof of death, they will email passwords to people nominated by the deceased, along with any other instructions. This is a lot to “byte” off, but is well worth considering!

Meanwhile, while you are growing your digital footprint on a daily basis, give some thought to what happens after you’re gone, and to what degree you wish to maintain an online identity while you are dancing in the clouds of Heaven!

Stacey Ross is an online consultant, social media enthusiast, freelancer and owner of SanDiegoBargainMama.com. A former teacher and middle school counselor, she is now a mom of two who researches and freelances about lifestyle topics involving family and well-being.

Social Networking, home

Facebook Not Feeling the Love (Again)

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When Facebook announced in April of this year that the messaging feature would be removed from the Facebook mobile app and users would be required to download the separate Messenger app, there was the usual outcry from the Facebook faithful. After all, Facebook users are notorious for not liking change, whether it’s a seismic shift like increasing the size of photos or something smaller like tweaking Facebook’s privacy policies.

However, this time the backlash feels a little different. We are almost four months into the migration period and, if anything, the anti-Messenger sentiment is growing. Over 21,000 people have submitted a review of the app on iTunes and over 95 percent of those reviews are resoundingly negative, leaving Messenger with an embarrassing 1-star rating. (1 star is the lowest rating on iTunes; fortunately for Facebook, you can’t give an app zero stars!)

What are the biggest failings of Messenger? Well, there are numerous complaints about the app constantly crashing and messages not going through, but the biggest objection appears to be the lack of convenience: ‘Why do we now have to use two apps when before we just used one?’ It’s a very good question and the answer probably has more to do with Facebook’s long term strategy for growth that it has to do with the convenience of its current customers.

When Facebook paid $19 billion for WhatsApp back in February, many analysts and tech commentators were left scratching their heads. How could a simple messaging app, albeit one with over 400 million users, be worth so much money? While some of the reasons for the acquisition were defensive – anything to stop it falling into the hands of Google – it was also an admission that, in the mobile era, Facebook has some serious limitations.

While Facebook continues to pick up additional users in various parts of the world, it has reached saturation point in many of its largest markets, including the U.S. In fact, younger American users have been abandoning Facebook in droves, preferring less cluttered, more direct social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and even Twitter.

It’s this movement back to straightforward messaging that has Facebook worried. Not only can you get back to a more meaningful one-on-one dialogue (or one-on-many using group chat), but the latest texting and chat apps allow you to add photos and videos, and even engage in one-touch video chat.

With these other options available, who is going to bother to open Facebook to send a simple message? Ironically, the in-app message integration that is so convenient to traditional Facebook users is now a major inconvenience to non-Facebook users, and it’s those non-Facebook users that are so important to the future growth of the company.

As they have demonstrated many times in the past, Mark Zuckerberg and friends are quite willing to take a little criticism now if it means they stay relevant down the road. Meanwhile, Facebook mobile users can either download the Messenger app or switch to one of the many alternatives. Either way, we end up doing what Facebook wants us to do and that’s open another app!