Paul Wallbank | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Online ethics

how should we conduct ourselves online?

We have an established set of ethical rules for our professional and business conduct, but how applicable are these guidelines in the online world?

Thinking online communications aren’t serious, unlike what we say in written correspondence or at meetings, is a common fallacy. While it’s true most online chatter is often more informal and relaxed, we are still being held to professional standards whichever forum we use.

Many people treat what they put online as something similar to what you’d say over a coffee or after work drink, the problem is that most of what you do online can be endlessly copied and forwarded to others, as we see in the Wikileaks controversy. This makes it a very different medium to the spoken, informal social networks we have outside of the Internet.

We should also remember this isn’t just about social media tools like LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook; it’s about any communication you carry out online such as using email, Internet chat, making comments on blogs or posting on public and private web forums.

In many ways the online rules are similar to the standards we expect in the offline business world, but because of the nature of the web, the emphasis is often different.

Private stays private
A private conversation has to stay private. What someone says to you in a private message or posts to a private forum – such as a locked Facebook page, an email or a direct massage – should never be repeated on the public Internet without the express permission of the person who sent it and those it was addressed to.

Don’t misquote
The remarkable thing about the Internet is how many people misquote others despite the fact most of what happens on the Internet is a written, or recorded, medium. If you’re going to quote someone, make sure you’re accurate.

Never plagiarise
Equally, you shouldn’t be too accurate. If you are going to extensively quote someone else, either link to their website or get permission to use their work. As the Cook’s Source scandal showed, we cannot assume that just because something is on the net we can just copy it.

Give credit where possible
Be generous in crediting other people for their work – linking to other people’s websites is not just a courtesy, it helps the web work better and adds value for all of us. It also improves your credibility.

Be open about affliations
Should you be commenting on issues you have a professional or financial interest in them then disclose them. On the web, people tend to be suspicious of those who may have vested interests so being open will enhance credibility.

Resist anonymity
There are good reasons to post anonymously however you should only do that when it’s necessary. Being open about who you are improves your reputation and credibility. We’ve looked at the risks and benefits of online anonymity previously

Be polite
There is a school of thought that claims manners aren’t necessary online. This isn’t true. You will quickly shred your credibility by being aggressive, attacking people and using foul language.

Don’t go overboard
If you get angry, take a deep breath and relax. Think about what you’re saying and if you have to post something angry, do it the following day when you’ve had time to think about it.

The idea that the online world is somehow separated from the rest of our lives is false. How we behave online has real consequences in the physical world as we can ruin our careers, be sued or even go to jail for things we say online.

Our online ethical behaviour should follow that of the physical world. If we wouldn’t do it on the street, in our meeting rooms or in front of our mothers then we shouldn’t do it online.

Rescuing retail

A Sydney butcher shows how the retail industry answers the challenge of industry change

The retail news is bad – consumer spending is dropping and the remaining customers are going online, eBay is taunting the big retailers who in turn are threatening to set up Chinese based online stores.

Are things really that bad for the bricks and mortar retailer? Are the suburban malls and high street stores doomed?

Maybe not.

In New York on the weekend Vic’s Meats, a butcher in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, won the retail prize at the Interior Design magazine’s Best Of Year awards for their Victor Churchill retail outlet.

Vic’s Meats show how retailers can succeed in a sector going through fundamental changes.

The last forty years have been tough for butchers as many of the traditional operators went to the wall as the sector struggled with supermarkets selling cheaper pre-packaged cuts and changing hygiene standards.

Butchers who moved up the value chain and focused on delivering high quality product survived. That same process is now happening in a similar way in other retail sectors as more efficient, convenient and cheaper providers change their markets.

At the moment we’re seeing two contradictory trends, a move to commoditised, global markets driven mainly on price and niche markets based around convenience, locality and service. The struggle right now is for established players like Myer, Harvey Norman and local retailers to understand where they fit in this system.

Vic’s Meats have figured out where they sit in their market and their lessons are valuable for other business owners figuring where their place is in this new retail world.

You have to be online

Even if you have no intention to sell online or overseas, your customers are still looking for you online.

It’s absolutely essential, regardless of what you do, to have a basic web presence. Even existing customers are looking up your details on the web when they forget your phone number and if you aren’t there, they may find your competitor’s.

We’ve covered previously what the basics of an online presence are. Make sure you have a Google Places account, Facebook page and a basic web site so people can find you.

You have to be telling your story

Whether you have the best meat, the freshest doughnuts or the fastest lawn mowing service in town then you need to be loud and you need to proud – let the world know about it.

Your website needs to say why customers should trust you and why it’s worth spending more with you than with the cheaper guy in the next suburb or continent.

One particular bugbear are bland and anonymous “about us” pages on many business websites which tell nothing about the business or the people behind it.

Your About Us page should tell the journey of why you were driven to become the best butcher, doughnut seller or lawn mower in your district. Leave the robotic mission statements to the big corporations and celebrate your competitive strengths.

You won’t win on price

The online channels don’t have the cost structures of bricks and mortar stores and that’s nothing new as small retailers have had to compete with the big chains’ economies of scale for years.

So don’t bother. Sell your story, your quality, your passion and your knowledge.

Be a resource

Engage with your local market. If there are changes, issues or events that affect your neighbourhood or market, update your site to reflect this and use social media like Twitter updates and Facebook pages to put the message out.

Vic’s Meats does that well with an informative website, recipes, cooking classes and an iPhone application. All of this builds the story that they are the experts and the people you should go to if you want the right cut of meat.

This is where Harvey Norman and Myers are failing. Many have of us have stood for half an hour waiting in Myer store to get service from an overworked assistant or have been given poor advice by a badly trained, commission driven teenager in a Harvey Norman store.

Gerry Harvey and Bernie Brookes have blown the advantages that Harvey Norman and Myer had over the online players and instead cruised on their respective models of offering interest free purchase plans or perpetual discounting.

Those tactics gave them nearly ten years breathing space while the online retail industry learned their lessons from the dot com bust. That both businesses are now reduced to making empty threats in the hope of scaring the government into wasting millions on a pointless change to customs regulations is an instructive lesson in itself.

An irony in all of this is that major chains such as Harvey Norman and Myer were part of earlier waves of change which put established retailers out of business. We should give particular thought about those butchers who fell under the market might of Bernie Brookes’ old employer, Woolworths.

Those businesses died because they couldn’t see, or deal with, the rise of the big category killers like Harvey Norman, Officeworks and Bunnings or with the longer term trends like that of shoppers moving from high streets to suburban shopping malls.

The jury is out on how many local retailers – both big and small– will go to the wall as online shopping gains acceptance, though it’s probably not a good idea to put a bet on those who sit on the sidelines and whinge that the “gummint orta do summint”.

Do you want to be one of the successes? If so, learn from Vic’s Meats and the other Best of Year award winners and sharpen up what you’re doing both online and in your store.

When all publicity isn’t good publicity

A reputation is more than just a high search engine ranking

Last weekend’s New York Times ran a remarkable expose of US based online entrepreneur Tony Russo’s business methods and how he’s built a business on bad online reviews.

Mr Russo’s model is basically to upset customers, they then complain in online forums which creates more links to his website, something we’re careful not to do here, those links in turn give his sites higher Google rankings.

Crazy stuff, particularly when you read the allegations of his behaviour in the NY Times article which claims he stalks unhappy customers, calls their mobile phones and even masquerades as the complaining client to reverse credit card disputes.

This is an interesting side effect of gaming search engine rankings and how consumers use sites like Google and Bing. In recent times being in the first dozen listings on these sites has been the holy grail of online marketing with the reasonable assumption that a first page result will win customers.

Up until recently that assumption has been correct as most consumers have grabbed the first sites they have found when searching for a service or product, but now that’s changing as customers are increasingly checking comments, reviews and social media sites like Facebook before deciding to buy a product.

So this news isn’t as good as it looks for the shonky merchant as the market gets savvier. Today’s customers are finding ways to dig a little deeper than just the superficial initial search, and when the purchase is going to cost a few hundred dollars most cost conscious buyers are going to spend the extra ten minutes checking out the seller’s reputation.

As online markets develop, we’re moving away from the high visibility marketing methods of the mass media era to something similar to the word of mouth driven marketplaces of the 18th Century village or town square.

This is particularly true in the hospitality industries where the review sites like Eatability and location based services like Foursquare and Facebook Places are become venues for happy, and unhappy, customers to share their experiences.

Our names as reputable businesspeople are mattering more than ever and not just with customers, but suppliers, staff and creditors as well. We’re returning to the days were a businesses person is only as good as their word and our words will bite us if we can’t be trusted.

We have to get over the idea that all news is good news and that a thousand online friends or mentions are a measure of success, we and our business are now being judged on our quality and value that we deliver. It’s something we need to keep in mind every time a customer contacts us.

Why competition is great for Google

The SEO industry threatened to devalue search. Now things are changing.

We often talk about competition being good for consumers and, ultimately, businesses. The technology industry is a good case study.

Microsoft shows how competition forces a business to raise their game; when they won the browser wars by dispatching Netscape early in the Internet era, they let Internet Explorer stagnate until the Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple Safari web browsers came along.

Similarly, they allowed their flagship product Microsoft Office drift once they dominated the productivity software market. The arrival of Google Docs and some other new players forced them to refresh and redesign the Office package.

Today Google find themselves in the same position – Facebook, Microsoft’s Bing and various other search engines are reminding the leader that their position is not safe.

The Business Insider website recently took a critical look at Demand Media’s business model, a service that publishes low quality articles that tend to rank high with the aid of clever Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). As a result of Demand’s high rankings on Google searches these articles tend to attract advertisers.

In a search engine market where Google is the only noteworthy game in town, this situation would suit Google and Demand Media as both would have a nice predictable stream of advertising and neither party would have any great incentive to change things and for a while it appeared that might be the case.

With the arrival of real competition to Google such as Microsoft Bing and Facebook, all things change as now search engine results matter – the whole reason Google beat out competitors was because their search results were better than anyone else’s – if Google’s results aren’t as good then users will switch.

So Google’s been changing their algorithm, the formula they use for searches, in order to improve the results of queries on their system. So much so that my fellow Smartcompany blogger, Chris Thomas, accuses them of Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is good news for Google’s users who now get better quality search results and great news for Google’s advertisers who get better quality pages where potential buyers are likely to stay longer and click more.

Google though is the biggest winner as the better results they deliver, the more profitable and long lasting their core advertising business will be.

For Demand Media, things aren’t so good as there’s no shortage of poorly written tripe on the Internet and if they can’t get Google ranking goodness then their business model dies.

Which may show that in the new economy, bad soap doesn’t necessarily replace good soap.

Shopping safely online

how to avoid traps when shopping on the web

The New York Times’ story on Tony Russo and his online sunglasses business is a reminder of how we should be careful when shopping online. Just because a website appears on the first page of Google or offers what appears to be great prices, we shouldn’t be suspending the same rules we’d use when shopping at the local mall.

So here’s some thoughts on buying those big ticket items online;

Know your prices
Before venturing online, check what your local stores are offering so you know what the prices are locally. For some items, you may find the nearest department or speciality store offers the best deal.

What is the list price
If you’re buying a brand name product like shoes, books or sunglasses, visit the manufacturers and distributors’ websites. Know the range available and what the prices are from the source. You should also note what are the current models just in case you encounter any superseded stock online.

Ask your friends
You’ll find many of your friends and relatives have been happily shopping online for a while, ask them where they are buying. They’ll be able to tell you what works for them along with some traps to avoid.

Do your search
Search for the products you are looking for using two or three search engines; say Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Don’t just choose the first result that comes up, have a look at five or six of them across several pages.

Check their stock levels
You don’t want to deal with sites that don’t have any stock as this can indicate a shoestring operation. Also keep in mind if different online retailers are reporting the same stock levels, then they are probably “drop shippers” who don’t hold the stock themselves but deliver straight from the distributor’s warehouse. Drop shippers usually don’t offer much beyond cut throat prices so be aware that after sales service is usually not their strong point.

Do some research
Once you’ve found what appear to be legitimate retailers, check out their reputation by doing a search on the business. For US based retailers you can also check out the Better Business Bureau or Consumerist.com. Make sure you go beyond the first couple of pages.

Watch out for shipping costs
One of the biggest traps for online shoppers is high shipping and insurance costs. Check these before submitting your order as sometimes you’ll find a cheap headline price is padded by extortionate courier charges, this is a common problem on eBay and other online auction sites.

Use a credit card
With a credit card you have some protection in the event of a dispute. Other forms of payment, particularly cheque and money order, give you little if any recourse should there be a problem. Paypal isn’t recommended as the service is know to tie all parties up with paperwork and inconsistent policies when there’s an argument.

Check your statements
After an online shopping binge, watch your credit card statements closely for any irregularities. Keep in mind if you are buying from overseas sites that you may get stung by unfriendly exchange rates so factor those into your costs.

Take care
The old saw, “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is” holds true on the Internet. If someone’s offering an unbeatable bargain at an amazing price, be skeptical and take care.

Online shopping opens a world of deals to the canny customer and offers real value for money for the right products, so taking a little care to avoid the crooks is well worth the effort.

ABC Nightlife: 2 December 2010

Windows celebrates 25 years while the web turns 20, where do we go next?

Microsoft Windows has celebrated its 25th birthday and the web turns 20 this month. Join Tony Delroy and Paul Wallbank to discuss where Windows has been and where computers are going over the next two decades.

If you missed the program, a recording is available on the Nightlife website.

Join us on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

If you’d like to join the conversation with your questions or comments phone 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702 or twitter @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag

Where next for the consumer society?

Have we reached the limits of consumerism?

Anand Giridharadas in his NY Times article on A Yearning for the Soul in Two Nations describes how he believes some in India and China are seeking alternatives to the affluence models of the developed world. He says;

“In this view, there is too much mimicry of Western models, regardless of their fit. There is too much attention to money, and not enough on culture and values. Journalists, Mr. Ji said, don’t ask him what he thinks or how China might be changed; they concentrate on his Forbes rich-list ranking.”

But is this really a Western value, or the result of a half-Century of consumerism?

Up until the Second World War, most Western societies operated just like the “traditional” societies of Asia where extended family and the community looked after their old and sick with it being quite normal for four generations to be living in one small house.

Post World War II, the advent of the nuclear family and increased material wealth allowed us to dispatch Nana to the nursing home, where we’d expect the state to pay for her dotage. This allowed debt laden working age families to get on with working two jobs to bring up two kids in a five bedroom house on the outskirts of town where we could retreat away from the surrounding community into the soft comforts of mass entertainment.

Has that model of the consumer society reached it’s limits?

In the West, the last two decades have been focused on ever elaborate mechanisms to put consumers, government and societies into greater debt in order to sell more plasma televisions, bigger cars and empty bedrooms in oversized McMansions. In turn government borrowed more to sustain the illusion that this material wealth could be enjoyed throughout retirement.

The Global Financial Crisis was the undoing of this as the mechanism to continually fund debt and bankers profits stretched to its limits and finally broke. Today, we have the bankers being bailed out by governments which in turn have to be bailed out by supra-national organisations like the IMF or European Union.

While Anand’s right in pointing out that some Indians and Chinese are questioning the Western style rush for consumer driven growth, it would be wrong to assume that nobody in Europe, North America or Australasia questioned this as well.

In the west, these voices were drowned by the obvious attractions of having a ice cream maker and espresso machine in every kitchen but they were there nevertheless. Today they are being heard.

We in the developed nations have reached the maximum point of the consumer society – we have enough plasma TVs in our households and many of us have reached the limits of how fare we can commute in a day. We were able to sustain this for a while after we passed the point we could afford it as cheap credit became easier to obtain but even that is now exhausted.

So we’re looking at a period where consumer spending is not going to drive the world’s developed economies the way it has for the past few decades.

In some respects this will mean a nominal reduction in our standard of living as we won’t be able to buy that third car, fifth iPad or go on overseas holiday every year and it will mean some industries based on the extremes of consumer spending will shrink.

But overall it may not be a bad thing as it will force us into spending more time with our local communities and families with our incomes and debts being tempered to more sustainable levels. We’ll invest in sustainable and important matters like our health and environment rather than speculate on overleveraged assets.

This will be great challenge to businesses and industries built around servicing every increasing consumer demands and many won’t cope with the change. Are we, and our governments, prepared for this change?

Anniversary reflections

Windows turns 25 and the web turns 20. Where do we go next?

Last weekend Microsoft Windows turned 25 and the World Wide Web turns 20 next month. It’s worthwhile reflecting on how both have changed our industries and where the future is taking us.

When Windows came along, the vast majority of computer users where not connected to networks, in fact Windows’ few networking features were horrible until the arrival of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in late 1993.

Even then it didn’t support the Internet, requiring an additional TCP/IP “stack”, the collection of software to make a Windows computer work with the net. The most popular TCP/IP stack was Trumpet Winsock, developed by Tasmanian Peter Tattam.

Microsoft’s disdain for the Internet lasted five years until shortly after the release of Windows 95 where Bill Gates realised bundling the private Microsoft Network (MSN) along with competitors such as Compuserve and America On Line was a strategic mistake.

That realisation and the rapid change executed by Bill Gates will go down as one of the biggest strategic turnarounds in corporate history. It certainly saved Microsoft’s neck although the integration of Internet Explorer into Windows created the massive malware problem that exploded in 2002 and persists to this day.

In turn the net has changed the way we connect with our staff, suppliers and customers. Email alone probably increased the speed of business by a factor of five and now smartphones, tablet computers and mobile broadband are each doing the same.

Looking back at that situation, we can ask ourselves where these technologies are going in the future. A recent presentation by Wall Street investment analyst Mary Meeker points to some of the direction we’ll see this heading.

Her presentation is excellent reading with her predictions of when smartphones will overtake desktop computers and some scary postscripts of the fiscal corner the US has painted itself into. The points can be summarised thus;

Globality
Mobility
Social ecosystems
Advertising
Commerce
Media
Company leadership
Steve Jobs
The ferocious pace of tech change

The last point is the most pertinent. At the time of the launch of Windows and the web innovation was largely a top down, management driven process. Today consumers and employees drive change, leaving corporate managers to catch up.

While Mary Meeker aimed the presentation at Internet executives, the lessons in it are clear for all businesses – our industries are going to be connected, mobile, global and far more responsive to the needs and ideas of our customers, staff and suppliers.

The change and disruption we’ve seen in our supply chains, markets and recruitment is going to become even faster that it’s been in the last twenty years.

It’s worthwhile reading Mary Meekers’ report while reflecting on how Windows and the Internet have changed our workplaces. It shows we’re only at the beginning of this era of massive change.

the new gatekeepers

Are four powerful online empires developing?

As the net matures, are we seeing a new phalanx of gatekeepers gathering to complement the old ones?

Four companies striving to control great parts of the Internet economy; Google in the search market, Facebook for social media, Amazon in e-commerce and Apple in mobility.

Of the four, Apple seems to be the furthest along this path as the iTunes store coupled with the market take up of iPad, iPhone and iPod combination are beginning to dominate the mobile device segment of the Internet.

This is illustrated by two stories in recent days; the first is News Corporation’s deal to develop a dedicated iPad “newspaper” and the other Robert Scoble’s description of how Application developers are increasingly focused on the Apple platform.

The telling part of Scoble’s story is where he speculates how the tech media could be being rendered irrelevant by Apple’s control of the iTunes store, he goes on to say;

“Do app developers need the press anymore?

They tell me yes, but not for the reason you might think.

What’s the reason? Well, they suspect that Apple’s team is watching the press for which apps get discussed and hyped up.”

Scoble’s article is interesting in how Apple’s dominance of the distribution chain allows them to bypass other media channels; why go to Facebook or Google, let alone your local newpaper to find out what the hottest new apps are?

Even more fascinating is how Apple’s control of its distribution channels ties in with its dominant hardware platform, this is the online equivalent to one company owning the paper mill, the presses, the trucks and the news stands then forcing every magazine and newspaper publisher to work them.

It’s instructive that despite the real risk that Apple could end dictating all terms to those who rely on iTunes as their publishing platform, newspaper publishers are locking themselves onto this world. This is despite the publishers spending the last two decades shoring up profitability by reducing margins to their news sellers and delivery agents.

Despite these risks, News Corporation isn’t holding back after Rupert Murdoch described the iPad as “a fantastic invention”, across the empire various outlets are promoting their iPad applications, including the New York Post, London Sun and the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

It will be very interesting to see how this alliance between an old and a new media empire will turn out.

Meanwhile the new empires are jostling each other where they meet, Google’s latest spat with Facebook over data is just one of many skirmishes and we can expect to see many more as the big four explore the boundaries of their businesses.

The real question for us is how do we see ourselves working with these empires. Will we reject them, or will we accept that doing business with Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon is the easiest way of getting on with our online lives?

If it’s the latter then we’ll have seen the old gatekeepers of the media, retail and communications simply replaced by new, bigger toll collectors.

The polite victory

Even when you’re right, being rude can lose an argument

I’ve discussed before how manners matter online. A bizarre exchange illustrates this and how you can lose an argument by being rude online.

The exchange started with a New York Times article on the Qantas A380 emergency in Singapore. The final paragraph in the piece claimed the airliner’s Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) didn’t work properly;

“Even the cockpit voice recorder did not work right, according to a report by Australian investigators. It failed to halt when the plane landed, and because it operated in a two-hour loop, the critical periods were recorded over.”

That nugget of information lead me to tweet out the following;

A few hours later, the following tweets appear;

On protesting I wasn’t posting “deliberate & malicious misinformation”, I’m then told I’m a liar;

From there conversation doesn’t go far and I end up blocking the guy so I can no longer see his twitter posts.

The funny thing is the gentleman is correct in saying the A380’s CVR worked properly, as the Australian Transport Safety Board states on their website;

“The cockpit voice recorder was transported to the ATSB’s technical facilities in Canberra, Australia for download and analysis. Over 2 hours of cockpit audio was recovered. However, due to the failure of the No 1 engine to shutdown in Singapore, and therefore continuing power supply to the recorder, the audio at the time of the engine failure well over 2 hours before the No 1 engine could be shut down, was overwritten. That said, elements of the available audio are expected to be of assistance to the investigation.”

QF32’s Cockpit Voice Recorder didn’t fail, it’s designed to turn off when the engines shut down and as the crew couldn’t turn one of the engines off the CVR kept going and ultimately overwrote the critical parts of the flight. Which isn’t the fault of the recorder at all.

I was wrong.

Now, had the gentleman suggested something along the lines of “Paul, you’re misinformed. CVR worked fine. Read the ATSB report” I’d have read the correct report, apologised and moved on. However this gentleman chose to be rude and aggressive.

Thankfully the worst that can happen online is a flurry of rude words followed by one or both of the people blocking the other, in the real world behaving like this – say by barrelling up to someone in a bar and calling them liar – probably isn’t going to work out as well.

Which shows how in the online world, just as in the real, offline community, manners do matter.

Choose your words before disagreeing with someone, just as being aggressive at the school hall isn’t going to work out well, it probably won’t online either.

the price on our heads

Are we selling our privacy too cheaply?

Over 500 million people have signed up on Facebook, trading their privacy for the ability to connect with friends and online communities. In turn, Facebook has built that massive group of people into an asset worth an estimated $41 billion dollars. But does it rely on us selling our privacy too cheaply?

A common factor in many of our communication channels in the last fifty years has been how we, as a group, have been prepared to trade something personal in return for a cheap service.

Broadcast media’s model offers us free or – in the case of newspapers, magazines and Pay TV – subsidised news, sport and entertainment in return for shrill or intrusive commercials that usually wastes our time.

Similarly with social media tools, in return for a free and easy way to find friends and relatives, we trade our privacy for targeted online advertising which can be so precise a commercial can be designed just for one individual.

The social media advertising model is on many levels a great idea, it cuts out irrelevant messages to the consumer and for the advertiser it’s more effective than the “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” methods of the broadcast advertising world.

A weakness in social media advertising in that it relies on users being prepared to trade away their privacy. Until now, all of us have been fairly relaxed about this despite the evidence mounting that giving away all our privacy and access to our networks often has costs to our reputations and friendships.

That cost can be great, with the worst case seeing people lose jobs, friendships or even their liberty for something that they, or one of their friends, thought was quite innocent.

Under the old trade off, we could turn off the TV or not buy a magazine if we found the advertising too distracting or offensive. With new media we can’t recover our privacy once it’s been given away.

As we begin to understand the nature of our connected society and the values of our online reputations, we’ll expect a better price for our privacy. The challenge for platforms like Facebook and other social media tools over the next few years will be to convince us that these trade offs and potential risks are worthwhile for the benefits they offer.

focusing on the product

SEO and social media are important, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the main game.

Chris Thomas’ Smartcompany column last week suggested the latest Google search changes will see a lot of wasted Search Engine Optimisation investments, this saga illustrates a couple of peculiarities about the Internet that all business owners should keep in mind.

The most important is that almost all the Internet tools we use are privately owned. When we use Google, Facebook, Twitter or any of the myriad other online applications, free or paid for, we are beholden to their regulations.

Nipplegate was a good example of this, regardless of how silly Facebook’s rules are regarding nudity it is their their sandpit and if we want to play in it we have to agree to their rules.

This is why it’s important we have our own websites, so at least we have some control over our content and a central place for our customers to find us regardless of other sites rules and problems. Although your own web address is still subject to the sometimes arbitrary whims of domain registrars and Internet filters.

We also need to be careful of not getting too obsessed about the net. Often we spend too much time perfecting our SEO strategy, harvesting likes on Facebook or gaining Twitter fans. It’s like the days when we discovered desktop publishing and whittled away hours playing with fonts and the position of clip art.

Getting the fonts, web key words or Facebook page right is important, but we should never forget that it’s our product that matters. The best website in the world means nothing if we aren’t delivering a product our customers believe is value for money.

Big businesses are struggling with this because in the days of mass media it was possible to bury your mistakes under an avalanche of advertising, for smaller business without a corporate marketing budget they had to deliver a consistently better product or they’d be extinct.

Today, the tables have been turned in that small businesses can afford to be distracted by the bling of cheap, easily accessible online marketing and lose touch with the people that really matter – our customers.