In The Loop

Bad Fad or Cool Tool

For something that’s supposedly a “fad,” Twitter sure seems to have a lot of staying power. In fact, it’s reported that users of the service are now sending two billion messages per month. That’s astonishing enough, yet it represents essentially double the number of messages sent just six months ago.  At the same time, the number of users has grown only about 5 percent.  I’ve been a twitter skeptic (and user) since day one, but I may to have eat my words on this one, folks. Of course as Tech Crunch points out, “How many of those 65 million [daily] Tweets are automated spam is not clear.”

This is Your Brain on Twitter

Good news on the future of civilization from a psychology professor at Harvard. Seems that spending all day thinking up 140 character-long updates is not causing us to become a race of attention span-challenged non-thinkers. According to Steven Pinker, our brains have a remarkable inherent capacity for thought and reason. Just because we can train ourselves to think in short bursts, it doesn’t mean we have lost our other faculties. Or as he so eloquently put it, “The existence of neural plasticity does not mean the brain is a blob of clay pounded into shape by experience.” I think I’ll keep my subscription to Atlantic after all.

Controlling the Conversation

One of the biggest shifts in the marketing world is the move away from unidirectional communication. In other words, you can’t just use ads and press releases to put words into the mouths of customers, training them what to say and think. Just ask BP. GM literally got the memo on that this week when it came out that they were (internally) asking sales people to use the word Chevrolet, rather than the colloquial “Chevy.” Bloggers and social media users had a field day with that one. The problem is that there are reasons NOT to let customers dictate everything. Most companies operating in a competitive environment need to maintain a sense of value and meaning regarding their brand. Of course, if your negligence contributes to destruction of the planet, you’re screwed no matter what.

It Takes a Global Village

After I moved halfway across the country from California to Wisconsin I worked hard to re-establish a set of friends and a social network. One tremendous resource I found was dailymile.com, a sort of Facebook for the athletic set. It not only allows users to create maps of their running, biking and swimming routes, it also aggregates statistics and gives people a way to see their own progress and compare to others. This week, one of my dailymile acquaintances, a triathlete from Utah, suffered a devastating blow when Delta airlines literally destroyed his very expensive competition bicycle. While Delta stonewalled at first, fortunately, through his extended social networking community, James was able to rally the troops with a YouTube video that he posted on dailymile. Apparently when 20,000 people see what your company did to a customer, it starts to matter. His compensation is on the way.

Do You Give Up?

The resources of the universe might be unbounded but we, as individuals, face mental and physical limits. If you’ve ever picked up a new hobby, started a class, taken to a new food, or begun anything else, you know this. There are only so many hours in the day, dollars in your budget, or thoughts you can hold in your head at a time. So while I marvel at the explosion of information that’s currently underway, I am also constantly seeking to understand the practical implications of all this …stuff…that’s floating around. For example, where do people find the time to play on social networks? Based on what I see, people seem to be online 24/7. A friend of mine recently tweeted about giving birth!  So the question is, what are we giving up? It’s likely that people are narrowing down their choices to just one or two social networks at a time (witness Digg’s tumble). But there’s also evidence that people are talking less on the phone and even watching less TV.

Money Matters on Facebook

The holy grail of marketing in 2010 is the ability to show clients that your efforts affect the bottom line. There’s a whole science to it, but suffice it to say that recession-shy companies are loathe to spend time and money on anything that doesn’t produce an increase in dollar signs. Since most of the case studies I read are loaded with jargon and hype, I was happy to land on a success story this week that was easy to understand. Namely, a Facebook campaign to save public parks in California. By reaching out to people via traditional ads and online networks, the organization grew its Facebook fan base from 517 aficionados to 33,000 in just two weeks. It helps to have a compelling story and a huge audience.

Twitter Flitter

I’m drawn to social network Twitter like a moth to the flame. But I do try not to get burned. In this case, I treat it like I used to treat TV back in the old days: turn it on to see what’s playing, watch for a while, and then walk away. I’m not sure how my peers use the service, but personally I think of it as part news, part info-tainment. At the same time, I limit the number of people I follow and I use a third-party filter (Tweetdeck).  Back to the TV analogy — your set can receive hundreds of signals at once, but it would be pointless to try and integrate them all at once. I just use a few “channels” (Madison, Social Media, Health) and see what’s new and interesting that way. About the only person I follow full time (and often go back and search for old tweets) is my friend @krittabug. Yet as funny and fresh as she is, I’m not sure I’d follow so closely if we weren’t friends in “RL” (real life). Who do you follow, and how?

Suggestion Blocks

My friend Carolyn is going nuts because no one seems to be finding a way to funnel suggestions to the top brass on how to stop the hideous oil disaster in the gulf. She even spoke to her local congressman about it, noting that offering a $100,000 reward for the best idea would be better than some of this cockamamie stuff we’ve been seeing from BP. Golf balls? I did a quick search and haven’t seen anything viable on Facebook or Twitter as far as a contest goes. Man, if social media could help solve this problem, a grateful world would be at its beck and call.

A Small Reality Check

It’s time for some perspective on the business value of social media from a numbers standpoint. According to the Census Bureau, a little more than half of all people in the country work for firms with less than 500 employees.  More than a third of those are companies with less than 100 people. Which means there are something like 5 or 6 MILLION really small companies in the United States. So even though, as a consumer, you’re highly likely be running across the Fortune 500 types on all sorts of social media platforms, how representative is that? Unless you work for the less than one percent of companies at the top of the pyramid, can you really apply the same tactics they’re using? Would you even want to?

The Kids Are Alright. Or Are They?

Okay, I have to admit I’m a fan of any scientifically-rigorous research that has positive things to say about the younger generation. That being said, who wouldn’t be happy to learn that when it comes to online networks, “young adults are more likely to restrict what they share and whom they share it with.”  According to the good folks at Pew Internet Research, youngsters are busy tracking their reputations online and making sure that not everything they say or post can be seen by strangers. In social media circles there’s a lot of debate about whether people should try and reveal only certain information about themselves or whether they should just live a tell-all, show-all kind of life.  Of course, this comes at the same time as new laws are being enacted in Massachusetts, Missouri and Georgia to combat cyber-bullying, the dark side of children’s engagement in online social networks.  

Cash For Your Private Stuff

Although I participate in a lot of different online networks, more people I know are on Facebook than any of the others. That’s why I love the site, and it’s also why I’m trying to stay abreast of changes it makes for the better, and for the worse.  As I’ve often mentioned in this column, the thing I’m most interested in is “what makes money.”  If a piece from Techradar is right, the answer is “not privacy.” After all, they posit, for the site to remain “free” there has to be something companies are willing to pay for.   Supporting that viewpoint, sadly, are the darkly ominous words of Facebook’s CEO, who said last year: The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity”  Be afraid! Be very afraid!

Dive In, But Don’t Get Soaked

There’s a reason why my inbox is inundated with endless offers for webinars on social media, both free and paid.  It’s that no one really knows how it all works and a lot of people are afraid the “next big thing” is going to pass them by if they don’t act now.  At my professional job, in a non-profit health care environment, we see this social media frenzy particularly as it relates to fundraising.  On the same day this week, I got two e-mails; the first touting the better-get-on-board-now view and the second claiming there’s no real monetary value at all in social media.   According to the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the time to “Dive in!” is now, and you need to spend “20 hours a week, as a minimum” to get it right.  By contrast, author Geoff Livingston states that when it comes to the $300 billion raised by non-profits each year, “I’ve heard lots of ballpark numbers, but none higher than 2 percent to 3 percent of the total” comes from social networking. So which is it? Underutilized or overblown? Or something in between?

Acceptance or Denial

How many times have you checked the little box to “accept the terms” on a website without reading anything?  In America we’re drowning in a sea of fine print – whether online or on paper, we’re constantly being warned of the consequences of our actions. Yet who can really understand it all? The New York Times had the best graphic ever last week, demonstrating not only the byzantine complexity of Facebook’s privacy options, but highlighting the fact that the terms and conditions on the site stretch to almost six thousand words.  It’s easy enough to say you won’t agree to these kinds of things, but then you’re shut out. No online purchasing, no online social networking, no online anything.  Have we, as a society, capitulated wholesale to the demands of business?

TV Social

Was television watching ever a truly social activity? Maybe in the 50’s and 60’s when there were few over-the-air stations and relatively few sets, families and friends might gather together and watch. But with the advent of cable systems, the explosion of programming options and the saturation of households with multiple screens, is it still social? This week google announced a new project that they say will blend TV watching with web surfing, taking things even a step further. I’ve no doubt that some sort of “net TV” is the way of the future. But as I watched Google’s ad, I kept thinking, who’s going to control the keyboard?

Anonymous Attack, Attacking Anonymous

Question for constitutional scholars. Does freedom of speech include freedom from disclosing your identity?  Raucous public discourse has always been a factor on the American political scene.  The question arises, however, as to whether individuals can attack each other anonymously online. After all, don’t you have the right to face an accuser in a court of law? Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett is apparently trying to find out – by getting a subpoena for the “real” names of two Twitter users who have accused him of illegal conduct. It remains to be seen whether the privacy rights of users will trump the information request of a grand jury.

Less is More

When I was in the recruiting world, the gold standard for LinkedIn was to have at least 500 connections. The logic was all about building a network. “A network of WHAT, precisely?” I used to ask.  While it might be useful for sourcing job candidates, having a network of strangers never appealed to me as a communicator. In fact, recently I sent an e-mail to 31 people on my LinkedIn contact list, confessing that I couldn’t recall anything about them, and asking them to disconnect from me if they weren’t interested in hearing from me at some point in the future.  Only two people banished me. Fortunately, there are others out there, like Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media, who feel that managing the network “makes me more engaged and aware.” Amen!

Enthusiasm or Experience?

Taming technology is not a job for old folks like me.  Implementing databases and websites and information systems and keeping them up and running is a job for people with a fluency and ease in applications and web technology that you most easily find in Gen Y. Nevertheless, there are times when age and experience still count (airline pilots come to mind). Watching a video this week about a group of young guys (no women, of course) who are trying to build a public, user-controlled social network, I kept looking from face to face for a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates. All I saw was another Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah, But Why Should I Care?

Chatting with some colleagues of mine this week, I was asked “So just what is this LinkedIn thing?” A little non-plussed, I replied that  “It’s a professional networking site where you can keep tabs on people and find out what’s going on with your friends’ careers. Lots of people use it for job searching, too.”  Which elicited yawns and blank stares. It’s always a good reality check when people profess complete indifference to something you care a lot about. I guess that’s why it didn’t surprise me when Fast Company described a poll of their users  as proving that social web users are “anti-social.” Human beings are, after all, wonderfully unpredictable.

Going Down?

When entering a crowded elevator, most conversations come to a dead halt. That’s because we have inherent assumptions about how much personal information we’re willing to share in public. Briefly this week a flaw in Facebook’s programming allowed clever users to uncover certain personal conversations that other users were having that were supposedly  private. This was understandably upsetting. But considering that nature of communications technology, it’s probably better to assume that most of the time if we’re using the public internet, it’s just possible that our conversations are being overheard.

Good Enough For Social Media Work

“Perfection is the enemy of the good” said Gustave Flaubert, over 100 years ago. Or as Guy Kawasaki famously restated it a few years ago, “Don’t Worry, Be Crappy.” Certainly when it comes to online technology, we’re used to the idea that just getting something up and running in beta mode is far better than planning and testing and ensuring complete reliability.  Whereas the wireline phone network was expected to operate flawlessly, mobile and web technologies fail with great frequency. As a corollary to this, the Technology Services Industry Association recently released a report that showed its members held a fairly low quality standard for social media. Or as John Ragsdale from TSIA said, when it comes to social media  “everyone has their toes in the water but no one knows how to swim.”  Fully 92 percent of members reported that they neither included social media tools in customer service programs nor included them in performance measurement programs.

Money Talks

Why should you care about Facebook’s privacy settings? After all, you don’t use the service, or you only use it only occasionally, and just for fun. It can’t impact your life. Right? Right? Well, here’s the problem, anything that becomes enough of an economic phenomenon –from ATM’s to cell phones to e-mail addresses– eventually works its way into daily life, and at some point becomes an unavoidable way of doing business. Although I’m not as optimistic as blogger Jeff Jarvis that the way in which Facebook handles privacy could become a business model for identity protection, I do think he has a point. As technology evolves, we can’t really afford to ignore how our friends, family and colleagues are interacting online.

If the Jeans Fit

Again, what do you care about what your friends are doing online? Well, if Levi’s has anything to say about it, you should care. A lot. This week they launched a sophisticated new online shopping tool that gathers information about your (and your friends’) shopping habits, via (you guessed it) Facebook. Now it may seem that “who’s wearing what this week” may initially be only of concern to teenagers, but once again, if this succeeds, who’s to say it won’t spread? And the more we all shop online the more retailers are likely to try and “help” us decide what we really want.

The Tweet that Roars

 The Twitter world has been abuzz this week about a new report from Edison Research about –what else—Twitter usage.  But, like 93% of folks, you probably haven’t actually read a tweet about it.  Or any tweet. Ever. That’s because 87% of people polled had HEARD of the service, only 7% have actually ever participated in Twitter. What’s even more revealing, over half of people with an account have never even sent a single message.  So basically, 3.5% of the population is making a LOT of noise. Which begs the question, are companies and public institutions bending their policies and building new programs and services for a tiny, but vocal, minority?

Who’s the Mayor of LaGuardia?

It’s risky to write about something with which you have no experience.  But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’ve never felt Foursquare (the “location based social networking service”) was going to amount to anything. For one thing, it doesn’t make sense to me that everyone I know would truly to want to be apprised of my location all of the time. For another, since it’s a big favorite of Twitter users, we’re back to that teeny, tiny group of users, making a big noise over nothing much. Fortunately, you don’t have to rely on my unqualified opinion. Social media expert Peter Kim does a much better job of it when he writes “When Mayors Don’t Matter.”

 UNLIKE!

While a huge fan and a user of Facebook myself, I harbor no illusions about the company as a socially benign entity whose goal is to improve lives. Make no mistake about it, Facebook is a business, and businesses thrive by generating revenue. They may not be out to hurt people in any way, but when it comes to the marketplace, buyer beware! This week Facebook made a seemingly innocuous change that supports my theory. Instead of having users “become a fan” of organizations which have created sites on Facebook, users will simply now click on a “like” button for that group. The idea is that people will assume that “like”-ing will imply less of a commitment and so will do it more often. But if you read the fine print, not only does “like” give companies all the same information as before, it even allows users’ information to be aggregated and sold.

Web Wide Worlds?

As someone who communicates for a living, I live in two worlds. First is the one where marketing do-or-die strategies come at you like assailants in a video game (react, or die). The second is, for lack of a better term, the Real World. I read every article, attend every conference, watch every webinar, network with any group, and reach out to each expert that I can, in order to understand how social media is changing the face of business communications. But in my work as a consultant and an employee, I often see a huge gulf between theory and practice. Mashable had a great piece this week, for example, on how even tech CEO’s aren’t using social media tools. They just don’t have time. And in my experience, the vast majority of people that work for a living don’t have a true-to-life passion for using online networks to communicate about their jobs. Which means that marketing departments matter. I’m just sayin.

Stop the press releases!

Speaking of marketing departments, one tool that has seemingly outlasted the typewriter, the fax machine and the laser-jet printer is the press release. This venerable workhorse has, for generations, served as a means of getting the word out about everything from political scandals to product launches to local news stories. The problem is, there are fewer and fewer printing presses in operation.  So as print media goes through the crucible of reinvention, the press release must too. What really works in the current era are links, downloads, videos, reviews, social network connections and contact lists. Ian Capstick at MediaShift did a great job of summarizing this, as well as describing the social media newsroom.

Controversy of the Week

The topic that seemed to engulf many different spheres of my life this week (marketing, social media, non-profits, and weight management) was that of the cancer-free bucket of fried chicken.  Or to be factual, a cooperative marketing agreement between KFC and the cancer research organization, Susan G. Komen for the Cure. What has everyone up in arms (or at least reaching for their keyboards) is the fact that a company not known for selling health food has teamed up with one of the best know health advocacy organizations in the nation.  So the pink ribbon logo will be found on the KFC menu, even though eating their food could lead to obesity, which is one of the leading risk factors for developing cancer.  Personally, I think it’s a simple matter of what happens when organizations become so large that they begin to lose touch with their roots.  Or perhaps it’s a sign that Susan G. Komen could use a better marketing department. I’m just sayin…

 Profiting from Social Media

All organizations have finite resources. Non-profits, however, generally struggle with less to do more. And charitable firms can only succeed by convincing other people and groups to hand over some of their own (scarce) resources. A new report out this week by Achieve, a “donor engagement strategies” consultant, purports to tell non-profits not to waste their time on social media. According to their list of 7 recommendations charitable organizations need to “realign development staffs to be more focused on face-to-face work and relationship building.” Question: How, exactly, would a non-profit pay for all of these people to do focused, face-to-face relationship building? How would management “realign” to meet this goal? By diverting resources away from services?  Wouldn’t you think social media might help?

The Numbers Game  

By now you’ve probably guessed that I have a pet peeve about the ridiculousness of numbered lists. But it’s clear that my one-man crusade is going nowhere as social media “10 musts” or “top 50 best” lists continue to proliferate.  So it’s with a little chagrin that I have to admit that I did enjoy a post this week called “30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business.” I thought it was a decent compilation of “do’s and don’ts” without being too preachy.  The key insight for me was that small businesses need to limit the tools they use and the amount of time they dedicate to social media so that they get the most bang from the smallest investment. Still, I think there were a few lapses (like giving a link for one acronym, and then not doing so for the next) and there was a little duplication.  With some judicious editing I probably could have gotten it down to a “19 valuable lessons” post, myself.

The Price is…Wrong?

Having moved to Silicon Valley in 2000, just in time to experience the piercing of the dot com bubble, I learned (the hard way) not to be too trusting of business concepts that I couldn’t easily understand.  I recall scratching my head on many an occasion after a client told me that it was a “new paradigm” and they didn’t need to have revenue as long as they had venture backing. Huh? So in the current economic environment, I’m both keenly interested in, and keenly skeptical of, what’s coming next as we work our way out of recession. Leave it to Harvard Business School’s Umair Haque to put the future into brilliant perspective: “Why Are 25 Hedge Fund Managers Worth 658,000 teachers?”  Or rather, what’s wrong with a system that doesn’t have a way to place value on the future of our country? 

Me Me Me

A couple of years ago if you had asked me what a “twitter meme” was I would have guessed it had something to do with an avian health condition. But now I know that it’s essentially a sort of commonly used shorthand for how people can use the communications service.  One of the best known (if, to me, slightly inane) practices is called “Follow Friday.” Essentially, on Fridays, twitter users send messages containing the usernames of people they recommend you follow.  This encourages everyone to get more followers which we all know is a good thing, right? Anyway, the trouble with this is that the 140 character limit means that for “Follow Friday” most people simply list the names of other users, without giving any rationale whatsoever for why you would be interested in following them.  Enter Chris Brogan, the messiah of twitterdom, with a paradoxical solution: “turn Follow Friday into a single tweet with a link to a blog post of the people you think others should follow.” In other words, turn this twitter meme into a twitter-blog-meme.  You’re still following this, right?

Not a Socialist, But Social

Capitalism is a great system, in many ways, particularly when relatively benign companies interact in largely honest ways in a mostly open marketplace. Which is to say, pretty much never. But seriously, there’s a fundamental flaw with the idea being promoted in the social media-sphere that the future of the economy will be built upon relationships between producers and consumers.  The flaw is this: by their nature, companies need to sell.  But as marketer Jason Falls puts it, most people feel that the salesman “is someone interested in the sale, not in the customer.” So pretending that “conversational marketing” is a paradigm for a future of seller-buyer happiness is just misguided. If you don’t believe me, go try and buy a used car.

 Stop the Presses

Speaking of capitalism, as the for-profit print-news industry continues to implode, I’m curious to see whether the marketplace will come up with a way to provide reliable news coverage for those people seeking facts and observation, rather than opinion and titillation. In a thoughtful post last week, blogger Robert Hoekman notes that it’s a fallacy to think that passionate individuals will use new media to take up the journalism standard.  He points out that individuals can certain observe events and draw conclusions, but “vetted facts and complete stories are the stuff of journalists.” Without a methodical approach to sources, facts, and analysis, we’re simply coming to rely upon a cadre of “citizen witnesses.” Which is a far cry from even Citizen Kane.

From News to Reviews

I wonder if it’s still true that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.  If so, then social media are contributing to a decidedly tawdry world. Because it’s easier and easier for people to heap public scorn on those who offend them.  Hated a book? Skewer it on Amazon.  Got treated rudely by a clerk?  Complain about it on Yelp.  Worked with a person you didn’t like? Trash them online. Yep, that’s right. There’s a new move afoot to allow people to  tarnish the brand message of an individual. According to Dan Schwabel (the self-proclaimed ‘leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y’), “people who want to see you fail, who talk behind your back, and who will sabotage you, whether they are your competitors or not” now have an official place to call home — Unvarnished.  It’s a new website which will rate the “brand” value of each of us as individuals. Be afraid!

At Last, Some Good News

While I often write about developments which I find troubling, misleading or unwise in the social media world, I am far from despondent or hopeless about the future of electronic communications. Occasionally, certain gems rise out of the electronic heap that actually turn out to make life better. One of these, Snopes.com was reviewed in the New York times recently. David and Barbara Mikkelson were originally just hobbyists interested in helping discern fact from fiction when it came to some of the most widely circulating urban myths. But over time, their dedication to the topic earned them a following and now they run a full time business based on the proposition that people really want to know what’s true and what’s not. I wonder what they would think of Unvarnished.

Fools Rush In

More communication is always a good thing, right? Considering some of the frightening behaviors of people against the President and members of Congress lately, I’m beginning to wonder.  This week one of my favorite bloggers was rudely ridiculed by a commenter, who then became the target of equal treatment by other commenters in return.  Are blogs, TV programs and social media simply serving to fan the flames of bigotry, hatred and violence? While I’m not a sociologist, I wonder if the real problem is that modern media allow us to largely segregate into pools of people with like minds.  If we socialize and interact only with people we like and who are like us, are we losing the ability to tolerate alternate points of view?

April Fools

Not being much of a jokester, April Fool’s Day doesn’t rank high on my list of fun things.  Which is probably why Google’s prank about renaming themselves “Topeka” simply seemed to me to be about as funny as a joke-designed-by-committee .  Boring.  On the other hand, I fell for the hootsuite announcement (about setting up a 3-D interface), largely because “Now you can live inside your dashboard” sounded like just the kind of thing that companies are hyping these days.  Worse than either of these, however, was an actual scam perpetrated on Facebook  regarding a supposed free gift card at a major U.S. retailer.  Come to think of it, on the social web, every day is April Fools.

Mucha Basura

If you don’t follow Spanish-language media, you might have missed an interesting interview this week in which Brian Solis told “Boletín Mundo Contact” that the concept of social media “conversation” is meaningless. Of course, that’s heresy according to the mainstream marketing pundits of the moment. Declaring that “…there’s a lot of garbage out there,” Solis noted “We’re always hearing about conversation – join in, participate, form relationships, be transparent, be authentic…you could use those words to describe anything, which to me is superficial.” You won’t want to miss this interview (don’t worry, the video is in English) because it’s real, it’s interesting and cuts through what the Boletín would call a lot of “basura.”

Customer Disservice

If you want to understand the “one to many” vs. “many to one” conversational paradigm, first think of a kindergarten teacher giving directions and then imagine every child simultaneously shouting a question in return. That’s what I think of when I hear about companies trying to “converse” with their clients. Not that customers are babies, mind you. Rather, we are attuned from an early age to the idea that organizations (schools, companies, sports teams) have representatives that tell you what they want you to know, occasionally allowing themselves to be asked questions in a predictable, orderly manner. It’s possible that all of this is changing, but even Harvard thinks that the Comcast “customer service success story” is a sham.