KaKoo

Update: A kind soul at Facebook reversed course and fixed my account for me. That said, my warning and advice still remain — try at your own peril!

Users who want to migrate from a traditional Facebook Profile to a Facebook Page might want to think twice, or even thrice, before making the leap. The new tool is intended to help brands, local business, organizations or public figures create a new Facebook page while still bringing their friends (ie, fans) along with them.

It’s great that Facebook is offering users this tool, but those interested in the migration should proceed with extreme caution. I unintentionally committed Facebook suicide earlier this afternoon when I participated in the process myself. What I had hoped would be a way for me to create a fan page and then re-establish a new personal account has instead turned into a bit of a technical, and social media-induced nightmare.

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Understanding the Target Audience

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Facebook told me that this is a tool meant for businesses, not individuals. The company doesn’t encourage users to convert their profiles to Pages because content doesn’t move over, only connections.

Just looking at the page for the new migration tool, Facebook makes this point clear, but the site isn’t explicit about what this actually means.

Here is what converting a page actually means, in terms of user content:

• Only your profile photo transfers, no other profile photos or intricate profile information carries over.
• Any uploaded photos, wall posts, comments and likes disappear.
• Facebook messages disappear.
• Any applications linked to a Facebook account lose that connection.
• The username you have on your profile may or may not transfer over. In my case, it didn’t, and now http://www.facebook.com/christina.warren serves up a big fat, not found page, rather than my profile. The kicker? The name has been “used” so I can’t claim it again.
• The resulting account is known as a Business Account and can only be used to create and manage pages, not to engage in personal contact. This means that even if you do create a brand new Facebook profile (more on that later), you have to consistently switch between the two accounts for different tasks.

I understood that I would lose photos, wall posts and messages. What I didn’t anticipate was the loss of my username (a name I had to fight to get in the great Facebook Username Race of 2009) and that any applications associated with my account (including games) would now have major issues working.

The real trouble, however, came when I attempted to re-create a personal profile page.

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Personal Profile Hell

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I have been using Facebook since 2005. In that time, I’ve amassed far too many “friends” and had over 800 pending friend requests in my queue. That was the reason I wanted to convert my account to a public page. My thought was, if I can make my main page and point of contact public, I can have a more private regular profile and use Facebook like a normal person again.

This, was not to be. Forgetting the actual concerns with managing a public page in this way, for starters, re-creating my personal profile page required a number of new hoops.

The first problem was that I could not longer associate myself with any networks or e-mail addresses in use by the other account. That meant I couldn’t show that I work at Mashable and I couldn’t add my cell phone to my new profile. Removing those e-mails and networks from the Business Account was that workaround, but it creates more of a problem in maintaining separate pages.

Second, and this is the real issue in my case, I can’t even send friend requests to half of my friend or even some family members because Facebook thinks that I’m spamming people I don’t actually know. I can’t do anything to convince them that I do know said individuals and instead will have to harangue my friends and family to add the new me as a friend.

Third, even though I can switch between acting as the Christina Warren that is my personal profile and the Christina Warren that is a fan, because all of my social accounts are linked to a now defunct personal account, I have to reset every tool I have used that integrates with Facebook. I was under the impression that as a Page, I could still like a share content to that page’s feed without having a problem. Not only can I not do that, if I want to like or share content on my personal account, I need to be logged into a totally different setup.

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Don’t Try This at Home

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As usual, I should have listened to Jeffrey Zeldman. Had I seen the great web standards guru’s blog post from March 5, 2011, I might have avoided this entire mess. Zeldman also underwent the process of converting a personal profile to a public figure page and met with the same set of problems that I am now facing.

Fortunately for Zeldman, a kind anonymous Facebook engineer was able to reverse his account to working order. Facebook makes it clear that once the conversion is done, it’s done. So for me, that means that I will have to try to figure out a way to manage the hell I have created for myself, all in the interest of trying to better separate my personal and professional Facebook presences. (An aside, if anyone at Facebook wants to throw a good gesture my way, holla!)

I can’t say I wasn’t warned, but the reality of the situation differs so dramatically from even my worst-case scenario thoughts that this is a process I can only recommend to users who created regular Facebook accounts specifically for a business or public figure and that never had a real personal connection of any type associated to that account.

The real solution, sadly, for individuals looking to migrate, is to create a Facebook page and then try to convince friends to fan that page and look at it as a source of news.

More About: facebook, facebook migration, facebook pages, facebook profiles, trending

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At Wednesday’s announcement of Google’s +1, the company was coy about comparing its experimental product to the longstanding Facebook Like button. But in the two companies’ ongoing battle for ad dollars, +1 is a clear shot across Facebook’s bow.

Let’s follow the money for a moment. Both companies get most of their revenue from advertising. They pitch their ad services based on their ability to serve highly targeted ads that get good results for brands and businesses. They are able to target ads based on the data they gather about users.

But here’s the main difference: Facebook gathers data based on user-submitted profile information. Google has to rely on roundabout ways to get data for ad targeting. And some of those methods, including cookies that track browsing behavior, are coming under fire from citizens and governments.

As you can see from the chart below, Google has a lot to worry about when it comes to competing with Facebook for ad dollars. Google commands 12.6% of the annual $10.1 billion U.S. online display ad spend; Facebook trumps that figure by nine full percentage points:

Here’s how Google’s +1 may pit the search giant against the social network in four key areas.

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New User Acquisition

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Google’s +1 buttons will soon appear in Google Search, one of the most widely used services on the Internet. And clicking them will require the user to have a Google profile.

As Google’s Manager of Global Communications Jim Prosser told us in an email, “We think it’s important for users to know who they are seeing +1′s from, which is why we have the upgrade or creation of a Google profile as part of the flow of a user’s first +1.”

Facebook profiles are more or less de rigeur for anyone with an Internet connection. Meanwhile, Google Profiles — and most of Google’s other social products, such as Hotpot and Buzz –have mostly remained in the rarefied domain of the digerati.

Making a Google Profile a requirement for those addictive little +1 buttons is a smart move on Google’s part. It may not match Facebook’s 500 million-strong membership when the feature rolls out to all users, but it has a good shot at vastly increasing levels of profile adoption.

Facebook’s critical mass of users has been one of the things that’s allowed it to succeed in capturing more ad spend that Google. Even though it is a closed, unsearchable system, Facebook has the sheer number of users and amount of behavioral and demographic data to sweep up ad dollars no matter what.

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Data gathering for ad targeting

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If Google’s +1 does lead to a larger number of Google Profiles, Google will have even more personal and demographic data than it currently does about web users.

Right now, Facebook has the ability to offer extremely highly targeted ads because of the kinds of data it gathers about its users. It knows whether you’re single or not, it knows your gender and sexual orientation, where you work, where you live and a great deal more. Advertisers are very excited about being able to narrow their campaigns’ scope by such finely tuned variables.

If Google could get more profiles, it could increase the accuracy of its targeting beyond keywords and browsing data, potentially matching Facebook’s level of personal relevance. With the push toward Do Not Track features, including a new privacy bill introduced in the U.S. Congress, who knows how long cookie-based browsing-data gathering will last?

In short, Google needs other ways to gather data to target ads, and it needs huge amounts of this data very quickly. What better way to do this than by introducing a compelling search product with a social prerequisite?

Whether better-targeted ads from Google will positively impact clickthrough rates and inspire further advertiser confidence remains to be seen. Currently, clickthrough rates for Google AdSense and AdWords campaigns vary widely, with around 30% of advertisers in a SearchEngineRoundtable survey reporting rates of 1% or less. Facebook ads might be underperforming the industry standard of 1%, as well.

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Socially Driven Recommendation Engines

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Facebook Likes are already recognized by brands and businesses as a measurable marketing tool, and Facebook itself has been embraced as a legitimate marketing platform. Likes can act as a social recommendation engine between friends, and these recommendations count a lot when it comes to making purchase decisions.

In fact, in a recent survey from Nielsen, 90% of respondents said they had some degree of trust in a recommendation from a friend or family member. Those recommendations count more than consumer reviews or branded websites. In other words, a Facebook Like could count for more than a banner ad when it comes to moving product — and the Like is free media.

Once Google has its +1 wheels in motion, the feature stands to become a social recommendation engine, as well, but a more targeted one. On Facebook, you see Likes for brands, photos, and posts that have nothing to do with you. But on Google, you see personal recommendations for products and places you’re actively seeking out. It’s a powerful concept, and advertisers will surely want to optimize for that situation.

Prosser notes, “While we can’t speak to what other products are doing, we think there’s a great deal of value in surfacing personal recommendations and endorsements where they’re most valuable, in search … We’ve really focused on relevance. When you +1 something, you know your friends will find it in search, but you won’t be pushing a notification to everyone.”

As DeepFocus CEO Ian Schafer told us Wednesday, “When someone is searching for a piece of information about a product, a review, or insightful commentary, it is typically a very insular activity,” says Schafer. “But being able to place a ‘seal of approval’ next to a search result may have the effect of making a typically insular activity more collaborative -– hopefully improving the ‘algorithm’ through the quality of your connections.”

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Search Algorithms

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The other interesting piece of the puzzle is the SEO question. Google came at search in the 1990s with an algorithmic approach that put it head and shoulders above contemporary UGC engines. Now, it’s turning back the clock and allowing user feedback to drive search results once again. Does this mean algorithmic web search has failed? Will user-driven search data be just as gaming-prone as algorithms are?

Google communications manager Jake Hubert wrote to us in an email, “We rely on a fundamentally algorithmic approach to search quality because this is the most scalable way to answer more than a billion search queries each day, many of which we’ve never seen before, in more than a hundred languages. Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and improving. For example, in 2010 alone we experimented with more than 6,000 changes and launched 490.

“Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as another ranking signal. As with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how the signal is related to quality.”

As users begin to see these +1s from friends and others as recommendations in search results, the results will likely become more personalized and hopefully more relevant. And when it comes to search, Facebook Likes — an unindexed piece of data in a closed network — don’t count for a hill of beans.

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Who Will Win the War?

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Which company will end up with the most users, the most data, the best targeting and the most profit? The answer to that question largely depends on whether +1 can successfully change the game, whether this innocuous little button is actually Google’s first killer social product.

But regardless, online ad spend is hardly a zero sum game, and both of these companies are setting themselves up for a long-term, multilateral tug of war to capture as much of that market as possible.

More About: 1, facebook, Google, plus one

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Only a few spots remain for our invite-only conference, Mashable Connect 2011, a unique event at Disney World in May that will bring together thought leaders in a variety of industries such as media, technology and marketing.

The attendee list is filling out nicely with people from companies including 92Y, American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Express, Behance, Buddy Media, Constant Contact, Converseon, CNN, Deep Focus, The Daily, Demand Media, Edelman, Fenton, Fidelity Investments, Ford, Gist, Gowalla, Groupon, Hallmark Cards, Hasbro, Havas, HBO, Hilton Worldwide, Idea, InterContinental Hotels Group, Intridea, iStrategyLabs, Meetup, Microsoft, MTV Networks, NBC, Nestle, Ogilvy, PepsiCo, Rackspace Hosting, Radian6, Rockfish, Saatchi & Saatchi, Scripps Networks, SocialVibe, Sony, Spotify, Syncapse, Taco Bell, Thrillist, Triton Digital, Tumblr, TV Guide, UN Foundation, Unilever, Universal Music Group, Webtrends, Wells Fargo, Xero, Yahoo! and the majority of the Mashable team. The conference promises for great content as well as time to meet others and discuss ways the spaces we work and live in are changing. There’s even an opportunity for attendees to meet each other before the conference begins via a private social network created just for Mashable Connect.

Recent Keynote announcements include Raymie Stata, Yahoo’s CTO, and David Jones, who Adweek named one of the top two executives of the 2000s for his role as global CEO of Euro RSCG Worldwide and CEO of France’s Havas Worldwide.

Mashable executives, editors and writers are very excited to host our speakers and attendees joining us in Florida on May 12-14. We hope to see you there, so apply now if you’re interested:

Registration for Mashable Connect 2011 is all-inclusive and includes content, meals, special events and surprises, hotel rooms and ground transportation.

There will be plenty of opportunities to connect with speakers, including:

• Scott Belsky, Founder & CEO, Behance
• Rohit Bhargava, SVP, Global Strategy & Marketing, Ogilvy
• Sabrina Caluori, Director of Social Media & Marketing, HBO
• Cameron Death, Senior Vice President and General Manager, NBCUniversal Digital Studio
• Craig Engler, SVP & General Manager, Syfy Digital
• KC Estenson, SVP & General Manager, CNN Digital
• Elizabeth Gore, Executive Director Global Partnerships, UN Foundation
• Scott Heiferman, Co-Founder & CEO, Meetup
• Lisa Hsia, Executive Vice President, Bravo Digital Media
• David Jones, CEO of Havas & Global CEO of Euro RSCG Worldwide
• David Karp, Founder, Tumblr
• Rob Key, CEO, Converseon
• Dave Knox, Chief Marketing Officer, Rockfish
• Josh Koppel, Founder, ScrollMotion
• Michael Lazerow, CEO, Buddy Media
• Marcel LeBrun, CEO, Radian6
• Adam Rich, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, Thrillist
• Steve Rubel, SVP/Director of Insights, Edelman Digital
• Ian Schafer, CEO, Deep Focus
• Michael Scissons, President and CEO, Syncapse
• Raymie Stata, SVP, Chief Technology Officer, Yahoo!
• Christy Tanner, Executive Vice President & General Manager, TVGuide.com & TV Guide Mobile
• Josh Williams, CEO, Gowalla

For more details, click here.

Thanks to our sponsors:

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Anyone else getting high school chemistry flashbacks whilst looking at Google’s homepage? Well, that’s because today’s Google Doodle was created in celebration of what would have been Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen’s 200th birthday.

Bunsen was a chemist who discovered the elements caesium and rubidium, and he invented the Bunsen cell battery, according to The Telegraph. He also invented — surprise, surprise — the Bunsen burner.

Head over to Google.com to check out the Doodle, which bubbles and boils like the real deal — sans noxious odors.

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March is said to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb, but in social media at least, it came in like a tiger blood-infused Charlie Sheen and went out like a modestly talented 13-year-old girl.

Sheen’s public meltdown was one of the top trending topics of the month on Twitter, according to our friends at What The Trend. Sheen’s series of social media activities — joining Twitter, breaking the Guinness World Record for reaching 1 million users in the fastest time and then using his Twitter feed as advertising — consumed social media conversations early in the month, but then faded out.

Unlike Sheen, whose public falling out with his Two and a Half Men producer and the network were brewing for some time, the month’s other big curiosity, Rebecca Black, seemed to come out of nowhere. The likely impetus for the 13-year-old’s fame was Tosh.O’s blog, which cited Black’s video “Friday” on March 11 with the headline “Songwriting Isn’t for Everyone.” Black’s video, now at close to 70 million views on YouTube, had just the right so-bad-it’s-good vibe to ensure its viral success.

While Sheen and Black dominated a lot of discussion in social media this month, it’s heartening to see that they didn’t eclipse the unthinkable tragedy in Japan, which continues to be a major topic of discussion.

For the full list, check out our chart below. Because this is a topical list, hashtag memes and games have been omitted from the chart.

You can check past Twitter trends in our Top Twitter Topics section.

Rank	Topic	Intensity	Description
#1	Japan Earthquake/Tsunami	5	A massive 8.9 magnitude quake hit the northeast Japan at approximately 2:46PM local time on Friday, March 11th, causing devastating flooding from 10 metre (32 feet) tsunamis that hit the eastern coastline . The tsunami also affect countries around the Pacific rim. There also has been ongoing concern about variations in radiation levels at several nuclear reactors around the county.
#2	Rebecca Black	4	Rebecca Black is a 13 year old singer from Orange County, California with a music video on YouTube that many people find amusing or annoying. Her video has been viewed more than 65 million times.
#3	Charlie Sheen	4	Actor Charlie Sheen gave interviews on a variety of TV & radio talk shows after the TV series Two & a Half Men ceased production. Users are ReTweeting messages from the real as well as fake CharIie Sheen accounts. They are also talking about Sheen’s Saturday night Ustream webcast.
#4	Soccer/Football	3	There was a lot of excitement over the unveiling of a new site for the the Sao Paulo Football Club. Barcelona’s French international defender Eric Abidal will undergo emergency surgery . Gilson Kleina will take over as interim coach of the Fluminense Football Club. There was also a friendly match between the USA & Argentina.
#5	U.K. Comic Relief	2	Red Nose Day is part of the UK Comic Relief campaign, an annual charity fundraiser held each March by the BBC. Funds are raised by a telethon and also by various “fun” events by celebrities, businesses and members of the public across the UK. It included Chris Moyles’ (of BBC Radio 1) attempt to set the record for the longest ever radio show, by broadcasting for 50 hours.
#6	Justin Bieber	2	March 1st was Justin Bieber’s 17th birthday and fans wished him a happy birthday. Beliebers celebrated the fact that their idol has finally reached 8 million followers.
#7	Harry Potter Movie Series	2	Harry Potter-related trends begin to trend when HP films are shown around the world, especially in Indonesia. There was also a debate between Harry Potter & Twilight fans on which book/movie series was superior.
#8	Carnival	2	Carnival was celebrated in many countries around the world but most trends are originating from Brazil. Carnival was marked by parties and parades sponsored by Samba schools which are broadcast on Brazilian TV.
#9	NCAA March Madness	2	Throughout the month of March 2011, college basketball fans Tweeted about teams they were following in the NCAA Basketball Tournament as they moved to the Final Four: Butler, UConn, UK and VCU..
#10	Lady GaGa	2	Several big events in March for Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters including her 25th birthday, the debut of the music video for “Born This Way”, and her Twitter account obtaining 9 million followers.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, 123render

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Interested in more Twitter resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.

More About: charlie sheen, japan, List, Lists, Rebecca Black, social media, Top Twitter Topics, trends, twitter

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Twitter has gotten rid of the Quick Bar, a relatively new feature that floats at the top of the Twitter timeline in its official apps for the iPhone and iPad.

The widely unpopular addition, more commonly referred to as the “dickbar,” was included in an update to Twitter’s iOS apps in early March. It displays a hovering list of rotating trends, including those paid for by sponsors (see right).

Frustrated by what many saw as invasive advertising, users dubbed it the “Dickbar” in reference to CEO Dick Costolo whom, as you might have guessed, is in charge of making Twitter profitable — and that includes making advertising products like Promoted Trends visible to users. The press has been quick to link its disappearance to the recent return of Twitter inventor and co-founder Jack Dorsey.

In a blog post, Twitter Creative Director Doug Bowman said the team is “going back to the drawing board to explore the best possible experience for in-app notification and discovery” — suggesting that some form of the Quick Bar might return to Twitter’s mobile apps in the future.

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Facebook has released a new tool that lets users convert their personal profile into a Facebook Page. Though the terminology is often muddled, a key difference between the two features is that users can simply “like” a Page while they must “friend” (establish a mutual relationship with) a profile, which makes Pages a much better solution for businesses and public figures.

On a help page explaining the new tool, Facebook describes what happens when you make the switch:

“Be aware that when you convert your profile to a Page, your profile pictures will be transferred, and all of your friends will be automatically added as people who like your Page. No other content will be carried over to your new Page, so be sure to save any important content before beginning your migration.”

Migrating is irreversible at this time, so you may want to download your profile information — including photos, wall posts, messages and friend list — before making the switch.

With the tool, Facebook’s prime target appears to be businesses and public figures that have previously set up a profile instead of a page. Beyond having a somewhat different feature set, profiles also have a 5,000 friend limit that has become a limitation for some popular entities.

Personally, I’ve been waiting for this feature for some time, as it will allow me to move my “friends” (many of which are more like Twitter followers since I’ve never met them) to a Page and set up a new profile to maintain a more personal relationship with people I actually know. While that might be a somewhat limited use case, it should be a welcome addition for people who were previously a bit too loose in terms of who they accepted into their Facebook network.

Do you plan to convert your profile to a page? Let us know in the comments.

[via Insidefacebook]

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Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on four particular stories of interest today.

Google Launches +1 Button

Google is making a big push into social with a new feature called “+1” that is similar to Facebook’s “Like” button.

Windows 7 Lags Behind iOS, Android

One year after the initial debut of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has shared some less than promising stats about its platform.

Blogger Gets a Dynamic New Look

Google has released five new ways to view blog posts on Blogger for more visual browsing.

Twitter Upgrades Embedded Tweets

Twitter has updated its developer tools, making embedded tweets more interactive and functional. Users can now reply, retweet or favorite a tweet directly from embedded versions.

Further News

• Microsoft has joined Apple and Google on the list of OS providers rumored to be taking steps toward enabling mobile payments.
• Kansas City, Kansas, will be the first city to receive Google’s experimental high-speed Internet network
• Flickr now allows users to share photos to Tumblr.
• Popular Science magazine has garnered more than 10,000 subscriptions for its iPad app in less than two months.
• Rachel Anderson, a 26-year-old journalist from North Dakota, is using Kickstarter to fund her reporting in Libya.
• The New York Public Library has announced a new partnership with Foursquare that gives patrons a special “Find the Future Centennial” badge.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

More About: 1, android, blogger, facebook, first to know series, Google, iOS, twitter, Windows 7

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