Is social networking all it's cracked up to be? If you've ever wondered what Web 2.0 was all about and why, then you're not alone. And in particular, you might wonder just what it can offer your business.
The thought came to me as I wondered -- not for the first time -- where people find the time to report on the minutiae of their lives. And who else might be interested. I'm talking mainly of course about those living relatively uneventful lives, as opposed to those being elected president of the richest country on earth, for example.
Advocates of the likes of MySpace and Twitter argue that if you're not involved in social networking, then you're in decline.
It's a new communications tool and, if you don't make use of it, your employees will anyway, so you'd better get in there. And if your company doesn't, your competitors will, and you'll be left behind, looking like a dinosaur.
It's that old "keep up with the Jones's" routine.
One argument you hear a lot is that we're all connected now, that the world is getting smaller and it's all thanks to the technology. Because you can connect to everyone and anyone, therefore you should.
Yet there are plenty of reasons why, even as an individual, you should be careful about how you approach social networking. You'll have heard many of them before but the central one bears repeating: if a snippet of information isn't something you'd want seen or heard by any future (or present) employer, spouse or children, then you probably shouldn't put it in a public space.
It's also true that any information you put out there is available for those with malicious intent to use. Piece by piece, with all the snippets you put out on the web, others can build up an image of you and your life.
Your pet's name, your mother's maiden name, your place of birth -- none of them are that critical themselves but your bank asks you those questions and the answers shouldn't be easily accessible. Again, that's not to say that you shouldn't put information out there -- just that you need to be aware that the Internet is a very public space.
What's more, just because we call it social networking doesn’t actually mean it's all that social. As one long-term professional Internet user put it, the problem with blogs and comments is that one person sets the agenda. And the problem with Twitter is that it's real-time but it's not conversational and the same is true of Facebook and forums. While the problem with instant messaging is it's one-on-one.
So, what about the business issues? Social networking? It's just communications and you're a business, so you want to communicate, right?
Wrong. A business wants to communicate particular information to particular people at a particular time, a time it chooses -- not everything to everyone. Allowing your employees to go online and broadcast your logo and -- who knows -- confidential company information is a recipe for disaster. Even if that doesn't happen, who's to say where your company name and brand could end up?
If you doubt it, look at the scepticism being displayed by the advertising industry about social networking. As one report put it: "traditional advertisers are especially cautious when it comes to the idea that their brand logo might appear next to an image of a marijuana leaf posted by a 16-year-old. Never mind that Facebook's audience rivals that of some television networks."
The other problem is that you don't know how long many of these companies are going to be in business. Over a year ago, one report found that user engagement -- aka user boredom -- was starting to make manifest itself on social networking sites. As the story put it: "When Friends Reunited enjoyed its "phenomenal" growth period people would join, log in maybe a dozen times, catch up with those class mates they wanted to, then forget about it. On Facebook behaviour seems much the same."
For a business, that's not good enough, if you're going to make serious use of such tools, then you have to persist -- or follow users as they move on to the next slightly more interesting site. And then you have to start all over again. Quite an effort for questionable returns.
Gainsaying the phenomenon completely is like pushing water uphill. And of course it all depends what you want to achieve. Just go into it with your eyes wide open and your bullsh*t detectors on full alert.
14 January 2009
8 January 2009
Recession: time to slow down and think?
For just much longer does the consumer -- do I mean us? I surely do -- have to put up with stuff that just doesn’t work properly? I contend that the Big Slowdown is an opportunity for the whole consumer product machine to rethink its strategy and realise that now is the time to start turning out quality products that work properly.
It’s become a mantra of modern life that electronics will kind of work most of the time but will more often repay several hours spent tweaking and fiddling to get it just so.
How much time do you need to spend getting the TV to display an image in the right aspect ratio? Why do digital radios sound worse than their analogue counterparts and still require extensive tweaking to get them to do what it says on the tin? And how come my mobile phone will output sound from a phone call via the phone speaker, but audio comes from a second speaker on the back of the device when I call using Skype?
This applies four-fold when you’re talking about persuading several items to inter-communicate. Getting stuff to connect is far too difficult.
People spend hours trying to get stuff to work properly and, assuming it’s not broken in some way, then either give up or, if they’re lucky, they contact either a child or a bloke who knows a bit about IT somewhere in their circle of friends and acquaintances who knows exactly which arcane sequence of buttons to press in order for stuff to work properly.
DVD players can now sport up to six different sets of video outputs, TVs have a similar range of sockets round the back -- and which one you use is a mystery to most -- and anecdotal evidence universally produces non-verifiable evidence that most people have no idea how to use much past the most basic features of their whizz-bang super-multi-function mobile phones. Any why do broadband and phone lines go down on a regular basis?
And yet much of the equipment used by our parents in the 1960s or 70s soldiered on for years or even decades. Who changed their TV set more than once every 10 years? Watches were once or twice in a lifetime purchases for most people. And you bought a car, looked after it and kept it till it fell apart.
Which brings me to the automobile which, in contrast to the rest of the stuff most people spend their hard-earned disposable on, has transformed itself. Cars rarely break down any more. They diagnose themselves to let you know when the biennial service is due, and apart from checking the tyres every now and again, that’s the most attention most people give or even need to give their cars. Manufacturers have designed them that way because they know that’s how their products will be treated.
The cost of this has been a serious lag between the level of user-accessible technology in cars and that which most people are used to or which is at least available in the shops. Car makers take a conservative approach to introducing new technology because it has to work, it has to last, and has to inter-operate without user intervention. And this approach works: there’s a lesson to be learnt.
I would argue that technology makers need to rethink and that a global recession is an ideal opportunity to do so. Rather than taking the line that more and more new technology needs to be shoved at people in an increasingly desperate effort to get their attention and cash when they have less and less money to spend -- or are at least much less inclined to spend what they have -- vendors should start working on and promoting stuff that works properly and that makes consumers’ lives easier.
It would be a great USP for the company which decides to opt out of the helter-skelter race of volume before quality. And a great USP is worth its weight in gold right now...
It’s become a mantra of modern life that electronics will kind of work most of the time but will more often repay several hours spent tweaking and fiddling to get it just so.
How much time do you need to spend getting the TV to display an image in the right aspect ratio? Why do digital radios sound worse than their analogue counterparts and still require extensive tweaking to get them to do what it says on the tin? And how come my mobile phone will output sound from a phone call via the phone speaker, but audio comes from a second speaker on the back of the device when I call using Skype?
This applies four-fold when you’re talking about persuading several items to inter-communicate. Getting stuff to connect is far too difficult.
People spend hours trying to get stuff to work properly and, assuming it’s not broken in some way, then either give up or, if they’re lucky, they contact either a child or a bloke who knows a bit about IT somewhere in their circle of friends and acquaintances who knows exactly which arcane sequence of buttons to press in order for stuff to work properly.
DVD players can now sport up to six different sets of video outputs, TVs have a similar range of sockets round the back -- and which one you use is a mystery to most -- and anecdotal evidence universally produces non-verifiable evidence that most people have no idea how to use much past the most basic features of their whizz-bang super-multi-function mobile phones. Any why do broadband and phone lines go down on a regular basis?
And yet much of the equipment used by our parents in the 1960s or 70s soldiered on for years or even decades. Who changed their TV set more than once every 10 years? Watches were once or twice in a lifetime purchases for most people. And you bought a car, looked after it and kept it till it fell apart.
Which brings me to the automobile which, in contrast to the rest of the stuff most people spend their hard-earned disposable on, has transformed itself. Cars rarely break down any more. They diagnose themselves to let you know when the biennial service is due, and apart from checking the tyres every now and again, that’s the most attention most people give or even need to give their cars. Manufacturers have designed them that way because they know that’s how their products will be treated.
The cost of this has been a serious lag between the level of user-accessible technology in cars and that which most people are used to or which is at least available in the shops. Car makers take a conservative approach to introducing new technology because it has to work, it has to last, and has to inter-operate without user intervention. And this approach works: there’s a lesson to be learnt.
I would argue that technology makers need to rethink and that a global recession is an ideal opportunity to do so. Rather than taking the line that more and more new technology needs to be shoved at people in an increasingly desperate effort to get their attention and cash when they have less and less money to spend -- or are at least much less inclined to spend what they have -- vendors should start working on and promoting stuff that works properly and that makes consumers’ lives easier.
It would be a great USP for the company which decides to opt out of the helter-skelter race of volume before quality. And a great USP is worth its weight in gold right now...
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