social media | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Can you trust your friends?

Does showing social results hurt search?

I remember the first time I heard about Google, it was in the run up to the year 2000 and my radio segments were mainly discussing if computers would blow up, dams collapse or aircraft fall from the sky as computer systems failed to deal with the change into the new millennium.

Despite the risk of impending disaster, I had a play with Google search and found the results to be far better than the established sites like Yahoo! and Altavista. Millions of others agreed.

Quickly Google became the definitive search engine. If you were serious about finding information on the web then Google was the way you found it.

For a while we wondered how Google would make money, it turned out that linking advertising to the search results was immensely profitable and the company quickly became one of the richest in the world.

Today, Google’s decided their searches will be something else. Rather than being a trusted source they’ll tell us what our friend think.

Which is great if our friends are trusted sources on Aristotle, post colonial South American politics, how to book sleepers on the Trans-Siberian or the best pie shop in Bathurst. But it’s kind of tricky if they aren’t.

As much as I love and enjoy the company of my friends both online and offline, not many of them are authorities in anything – except possibly pie shops.

This the flaw at the heart of integrating search and social media, they are two different things and we have different expectations for them.

As Pando Daily’s MG Seigler puts it; “Evil, Greed, And Antitrust Aren’t Google’s Real Problems, Relevancy Is.”

For most of my online searches, my friends views and ideas aren’t relevant. If they are, I already know how to find them.

The prediction is that tinkering with search will not end well for Google, it’s hard to disagree if we lose confidence in their results.

Has Google peaked?

Does altering a business’ core product destroy trust in a business?

This article originally appeared in Technology Spectator as Google’s Wavering Trust Presumption.

Google revolutionised the Internet when the service appeared just over a decade ago, the search engine’s clean and reliable results saw it quickly capture two thirds of the market from then competitors like Altavista and Yahoo!.

One of the keys to that success was trust – Google’s users had a fair degree of confidence that the service’s results would be an accurate representation of whatever they were looking for on the web.

With the continuing integration of social media services, local search, paid advertising and travel services into those search results, it’s time to ask whether we can continue to trust what Google delivers us.

Google’s attempt to become a social media service is seeing results being skewed with by Google Plus profiles. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan yesterday illustrated how Google+ profiles are changing Google’s search results.

One thing that notable in these searches – and Google’s behaviour in enforcing “real names” on its Plus social media service – is the importance of brands and celebrities.

It’s no coincidence in the example Danny Sullivan shows above that typing “Brit” into a Google search comes up with the instant suggestions of Brittany Spears and British Airways.

More troubling is Google’s foray into travel with the purchase of travel software company ITA. The travel industry site Tnooz recently looked at how searches for flights is now returning results from Google’s own service before the airlines or other travel websites.

Another of Google’s search strengths was the clean interface. When advertising was introduced, most users accepted this was the cost of a free service. Today a search result on Google is cluttered with Google+ suggestions, local business locations, travel results along with the ubiquitious advertising.

Suddenly Google’s search results aren’t looking so good and when you do find them, you can’t be sure they haven’t been skewed by the search engine’s determination to kill Google, Facebook or the online travel industry.

If it were only search and online advertising that Google was tinkering with, we could excuse this as being an innovative company experimenting with new business models in a developing industry, but a bigger problem lies outside its core business.

The purchase of Motorola Mobility – which is still subject to US government approval – changes the game for Google. Motorola Mobility employs 19,000 staff, increasing Google’s headcount by 60%.

Even if Google has only bought Motorola for the patents, closing down or divesting the operations and laying off nearly twenty thousand staff would be a big enough management distraction but there is real possibility though that Google want to make phones.

Google as a phone manufacturer, their previous attempt with the Nexus One wasn’t a great success, creates the problem of channel conflict with its partners who sell mobile phones with the Android operating system installed.

Right now those partners are having great success selling phones through mobile telcommunications companies who desperately want an alternative to the iPhone given they perceive, quite correctly, that Apple is taking their customers and the associated profits.

Apart from Apple the incumbents of the mobile phone industry are failing as Motorola have given up and are selling themselves to Google while Nokia are desperately seeking salvation in the arms of Microsoft.

Microsoft’s failure to take advantage of Google’s missteps is also instructive. Microsoft seem to be unable to capitalise on the conflicts in the mobile handset industry with Windows Phone while their competing search engine, Bing, seems to following Google’s cluttered inferface and anti-competitive practices.

With Microsoft largely out of the way with as an innovative competitor, it has fallen on newer business to challenge Google.

In social media we clearly have Facebook and Twitter while in phones Apple is by far the biggest and most profitable opponent, something emphasised by Google giving Android away for free.

The biggest question though is who can replace Google in web search, while there are worthy attempts like DuckDuckGo, Blekko and even Microsoft Bing, it’s difficult to see one of these displacing the dominant player right now.

Which isn’t to say it can’t happen; as we see with the examples of Nokia, Motorola and possibly Microsoft, the speed of change in modern business means empires fall quickly.

For Google, the lack of management focus on their core businesses may well cost them dearly in the next few years if web users stop trusting the company’s search results.

What Rupert did wrong

Listening is the most important thing a new Twitter user can do.

A small step in the evolution of social media happened over the new year when Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter and almost immediately, and predictably, his tweets attracted criticism.

While there’s still a nagging doubt as to whether the @rupertmurdoch account is real, despite the assurances of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, there’s a few lessons other new users can draw from Rupert’s experience.

Shut up and listen

One of the unfortunate things about social media is how everybody assumes their voice has to be heard. It’s a mistake we all make when we first join theses services.

Like social contexts, it’s best to be quiet when you first join until you’ve figured out the protocols, manners and dynamics of the group.

Just stumbling in and blasting your opinions out doesn’t usually work well whether we’re at the pub, mothers’ group, updating Facebook or posting on Twitter. The key is to understand why you are there.

It’s about community

The first word in social media is “social”, these online services are a society and just restricting your circle to a select few isn’t go to give you a great deal of benefit.

Rupert Murdoch’s account is a good example of how many people restrict themselves; at the time of writing he’s following five users. If it really is Rupert Murdoch behind the account, he’s missing some good and relevant stuff.

If the person behind the account is really a new user, then they are probably wondering what all the fuss is about as two of the five accounts they are following haven’t been updated in months.

What’s your objective?

Why are you here is a good question. Have you come to listen to customers, learn from industry leaders, spruik a product, find a job, catch up with the folks or be one of the online hipsters?

All of these and any other zillion objectives are perfectly valid reasons for joining a social media service. So listening and posting in ways that help your objectives makes sense, as does following the right people.

The whole point of using social media services – be it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any of the other hundreds of online networking platforms – is to listen, learn and talk with your peers and the leaders of the areas you’re interested in. Perhaps you’ll even be considered a leader, as Rupert Murdoch certainly is.

Starting by listening and understanding how a social media service works and where it adds value for you will make using the site a far better investment of your time.

The social maze

What are the risks in business social media?

Towards the end of 2011 we saw a surge of stories about companies and employees fighting over the ownership of corporate social media accounts like LinkedIn contacts and Twitter feeds.

For the social media community this is encouraging as it shows that businesses are beginning understand there the value in online networks. It also illustrates the risks for both businesses and employees when these tools aren’t properly understood in the workplace.

The employer’s risks

As social media sites are one of ways businesses communicate with the public, managers have to understand these services are an asset too important to be left to the intern or youngest staff member in the office.

Should that intern move on – possibly at the next college semester – the business may find they are locked out of the account or it is even deleted.

Business pages and accounts should be set up in the name of senior people in the organisation and, where possible, administration should be shared by the relevant unit in the organisation (customer support, marketing or whatever).

The nominal owner and administrators should understand that the account is the property of the business and all posts on it will be work related and not personal.

When one of the administrators or owners leave the organisation, login details should be handed over and passwords need to be changed. Where possible, the ownership should be changed to another employee – this is one of the current problems with Google+ accounts at the moment.

Employers need to understand that the professional contacts individuals make during the course of their work isn’t their property, so trying to claim the personal LinkedIn contacts and Twitter followers of an employee’s private account probably will not be successful.

Similarly social media services like LinkedIn are not Customer Relationship Management programs (CRMs) and using them that way, as a company called Edcomm did, will almost certainly end up with problems and a possible dispute.

Traps for employees

When given a work social media account to maintain, it’s best to consider it as being like your work email – it’s best to use it for business related purposes only and you’ll have to give it up when you leave the organisation.

If you’re being held out as a representative of the business, as we see in the Phonedog_Noah dispute over a business Twitter account, then it’s best to set up a private account for your own use and not use the business account after leaving the organisation, even if they don’t ask for it when you leave.

On sites like LinkedIn and Facebook you should change your employment status as soon as you leave an organisation to make it clear you’re no longer working there. If you’ve left on bad terms, resist the temptation to insult your former employer when you change your details.

Staff using social media have to be aware that can be held accountable in the workplace for things they do on their personal online accounts; sexual harassment, abusing customers and workplace bullying through a Facebook or Twitter account can all result in disciplinary action.

In many ways the disputes we’re seeing on social media services reflect what we’ve seen in many other fields over the years – the ownership of intellectual property, professional contacts and even access to websites have all been thoroughly covered by the courts over the years and there’s little in these disagreements that would surprise a good lawyer.

With all business disputes though, it’s best to resolve them before lawyers and writs start being involved. Clearly defining and understanding what is expected of both employers and staff can save a lot of cost and stress.

How group buying can work for a business

Online vouchers can be good for a business when planned well

Online deal finding site The Dealmix has an excellent blog post analysing how daily deals can work for a business.

As the Dealmix points out, “daily deals can either hurt or help small businesses, depending on how they’re structured.”

In figuring out whether a deal will work, Dealmix breaks a group buying deal into four elements; expiration, quantity, terms and price;

Pricing the deal

Of all the areas, the pricing is the most critical. Get this wrong and you won’t achieve your objectives and it could be very quickly drive you out of business.

The Dealmix recommends two ways of pricing an offer – by making a net profit on the deal or structuring it a way that the customer’s total spend offsets the cost of the offer.

Using Average Customer Spend, or ACS, to estimate how much a customer will spend is problematic with specials and group buying deals as the takers are not going to be your average customers.

It’s likely group buying customers are going to be far less open with their wallets than your regulars. Trying to upsell price conscious is probably what brings cafes and restaurants unstuck with many of these deals.

Both methods rely on knowing the Cost Of Goods Sold and the Average Customer Spend. Notable in the stories of group buying disasters is just how many business owners don’t understand these basics.

If you don’t know what the total cost is to your business in providing the goods or services, you should be talking to an accountant before going near these deals.

Also keep in mind the group buying service is going to take their cut which will be between 15 and 100% depending on the size and nature of the deal. For many businesses the commission is a deal breaker.

Quantity

The biggest complaint from customers about group buying offers is the deals are booked out for months – it’s also how service businesses find themselves overwhelmed by the response to a keenly priced offer.

Again, before launching a group buying offer, understand the spare capacity of your business and ensure there is a maximum limit to the number of deals available – as The Dealmix points out, a sold out deal is a great marketing tool.

Terms

Conditions are probably the trickiest; put in too many gotchas and you’ll scare customers away or find yourself fighting with the 90% of clients who buy the deal without reading the T&Cs.

You can guarantee some of those fights will end up being public and it’s unlikely your business will win the public relations battle. This is not your business objective.

Make sure key terms like what days the deal is available on, maximum limits, types of service are reasonable and clearly defined at the time of the offer.

Expiration

When the deal expires is the key condition, it’s madness offering deals that never expires as they can come back to haunt you for years and it may even affect the resale value of your business.

The Dealmix suggests not restricting it to a month as you’ll be overwhelmed with customers while leaving it too long will dilute the value and any measurements.

Ideally the deal will last three to six months, which is another reason for understanding your business’ capacity at various times of the year.

Timing the expiry is important to, as The Dealmix suggests, the deal shouldn’t finish on a busy day and equally you should consider when your business is the quietest. If things are slow during school holidays, summer or Christmas then that might be the time you want to have the last minute rush of redemptions happening.

Business Planning

Probably the most important aspect of a group buying deal is how does it fit into your business objectives. Are you intending to build a customer base, contact list, pubicise your business, clear stock or give sales a boost? Those objectives are going to determine how you structure the offer.

As The Dealmix’s diagram shows, group buying deals are complex and the merchant has to give some thought on getting the offer right. Those business who do get the mix right can do very well from a well thought out online offer.

Like all business tools, group buying sites can be really useful when done well. The key is understanding what you’re doing with that tool.

We discuss group buying and building your own campaign in e-business, Seven Steps to Online Success. If you need help or advice in building an offer, Netsmarts can help you.

Leaving Facebook

Shutting down an account with the popular social media service isn’t easy but can be done.

In our social media segment for December 2011’s ABC Nightlife a listener asked about closing down their Facebook account.

Leaving Facebook isn’t easy, but it can be done and we’ve covered closing down a Facebook profile on the Netsmarts website.

The December Nightlife spot looked at a lot of social media issues and answered other listener’s questions about some of the challenges online. Some of those questions are listed on the page and the program

December’s spot was the last for 2011 and next scheduled Nightlife spot will be on February 9 however we will probably have some segments over the Christmas period and we’ll let newsletter subscribers know as we find out.

Comparing local review and search sites

How do the local search services compare?

With the Australian launch of local search and recommendation site Yelp, it’s worthwhile comparing the different sites to see how well they worked.

The sites work in different ways, some – like Sensis Yellow Pages and True Local – are online directories that search just the title and description of business.

Yelp, Foursquare and Word Of Mouth Online, are socially based and derive their searches on the content and number of community reviews. Their algorithms, the formulas to figure out what customers are looking for, are more complex than the basic online directories.

Most complex of all are the hybrid searches, notably Google Places and Facebook Places, that build local upon their search and social media data.

Each model has it’s own strengths and weaknesses which shows when we do a search. Due to time restrictions we only did two.

Looking for brunch in Neutral Bay, NSW

The first search was using what somebody might be expected to search for on a casual weekend or holiday morning. Neutral Bay and surrounding suburbs have plenty of cafes catering to the brunch crowd so it should be expected to return plenty of hits.

Yelp

The new contender only found one local result and the rest being on the other side of the Harbour Bridge, including one at Bondi Beach which may as well be in the Upper Amazon to the average Sydney North Shore dweller.

Interestingly, entering neighbouring suburbs changes the first two or three results to that suburb but the subsequent listings are the same remote locations as for the Neutral Bay query. This might indicate popularity with the current Yelp users or may be part of the package merchants get when they pay for a listing.

True Local

News Limited’s True Local disappointed one cafe in the district was identified and the number one result was in the city.

This poor results are probably due to the word “brunch” not appearing in the local cafes’ descriptions or titles, but this is a serious weakness for True Local, particularly in a district where they dominate the local news media.

Google Places

Surprisingly, Google Places returned an extremely poor result with no local businesses found.

Again, this is probably due to the failure of business owners to ensure keywords are entered in their business description and it illustrates how Google is allowing an opportunity to pass them by.

Facebook Places

Nothing. Nyet. Zip. No brunch for you.

Yahoo!7

Another poor result that has just scraped information off the web. It shows the weakness of the Yahoo! and Channel Seven joint venture which, like News Limited, is letting opportunities pass.

Bing/NineMSN

Probably the most disgraceful of the results, NineMSN returned two cafes for the whole of Sydney, a city of four million people.

The second result entailed, according to Bing’s directions, a 38km drive timed at an optimistic 23 minutes involving $9 in tolls and an illegal u-turn.

NineMSN’s performance shows just how irrelevant Microsoft has become in the online space and their Australian joint venture partner is more interested in selling big integrated campaigns to advertising agencies.

Given NineMSN and Bing are the default browser and search engine on nearly two million computers sold in Australia each year, not having a local business strategy is squandering a massive opportunity.

Citysearch/Sensis

Founded by Fairfax, Citysearch could have been a great success combining the assets and readership of Fairfax’s metropolitan and local newspapers coupled with their experienced sales teams selling advertising space and subscriptions. Good management could have done this.

Sadly Fairfax was being run by Professor Fred Hilmer and his army of power suited McKinsey consultants and Citysearch was eventually sold for a pittance to Sensis, who have allowed it to shrivel away as the zero result for our search shows.

Eatability

Eatability was a genuine surprise, returning no brunch establishments in the area. The only thought is that no cafe in the neighbourhood has the word “brunch” in their keywords. Still a very poor result.

Urbanspoon

The web version of Urbanspoon returned the most bizarre result, correctly finding one local cafe but misinterpreting the address as being in Bankstown on the other side of Sydney.

Urbanspoon’s iPhone app returned a far better range of results in surrounding suburbs although it only found one cafe actually in Neutral Bay which wasn’t the one incorrectly found on their web app, which didn’t appear at all.

Word of Mouth Online

Word Of Mouth Online delivered the best result of the web pages with two of the first three results being relevant. Of the other seven, they met the criteria of being within a 5km radius of the location which in Sydney can be a 12km drive.

The results would have been better with more local establishments but it appears the keyword “brunch” hasn’t been used by many of the WOMO reviewers.

Note: After the review I was contacted by the founder of WOMO, Fiona Adler, it appears some of the reviews have have been updated in the meantime. I’ve changed the results below, but the left the one above as it was correct at the time of the review.

Foursquare

Like Yelp, Foursquare relies heavily on users’ contributions and this shows in the flaky, almost useless results for our search terms on a web based search.

Foursquare’s iPhone app was far more efficient, identifying a range of good venues in the area which were ranked according to friends’ recommendations.

Sensis/Yellow Pages

Again, “no brunch for you.” It’s almost scandalous that Yellow Pages has no entries at all for “brunch” for an inner Sydney suburb.

Redoing the search

Clearly the term “brunch” is problematic in all the services, so as a check here’s the relevant first page results for other search terms on each of the services;

Service	Café Neutral Bay	Breakfast Neutral Bay	Lunch Neutral Bay
Yelp	7/10	2/10	7/10
True Local	9/30	0/30	0/30
Google Place	10/10	0/10	10/10
Yahoo!7		not relevant
Bing/MSN	3/10	0/10	0/10
Citysearch	6/10	3/6	4/4
Eatability	40/50	8/8	23/31
Urban spoon	3/3	0/0	0/0
foursquare	3/20	1/20	1/20
WOMO	8/10	2/10	5/10
Sensis	7/10	0/10	0/10

As we found with the earlier search, Yelp was somewhat inconsistent and no doubt the social aspects will see it improve as more users come on board, the results are highly dependent on the terms used by reviewers and this will affect the search results.

True Local’s score was surprisingly bad, the search for “cafe” found 12 places but three are long closed. “Breakfast” listed B&B accomodation and “lunch” found outlets in the city and Eastern Suburbs.

Google Places also disappointed on “breakfast”, picking up some B&B establishments along with some city cafes. This is almost certainly due to keywords missing in descriptions.

Yahoo!7 doesn’t get a rating as all it does is scrape other sites and often refers you to other search services. They are just going through the motions.

Microsoft and NineMSN’s service again failed dismally; the “cafe” result was poor, “breakfast” looked for B&Bs and “lunch” amazingly didn’t find a thing in Neutral Bay.

Citysearch’s results for “cafe” found nine places, three of which are long closed which indicates the lack of maintenance their database receives. Encouragingly, Citysearch was one of the best performers for lunch and dinner, albeit only on four and six places found.

Eatability had by far the most impressive number of results, however a large proportion of the places have closed and are not flagged as such. This probably indicates a lack of maintenance by the owners.

WOMO was good and like Yelp their results are highly dependent on the words used by reviewers, so key words could be missed simply because reviewers didn’t use them.

Sensis performed well on “cafes” except that three of the ten listed were closed. The lack of results on “breakfast” and “lunch” is due to no places having those words in their name.

Conclusions

This comparison is not scientific, being based on a narrow search and small sample size, but there’s a few things we can take away from the experiment.

Search is still young

Right now, search is still a crude tool.

From the results, we can see that the keywords used by reviewers and businesses matter. If the public are looking for “brunch” and that isn’t on your cafe’s website and online listings, then you won’t appear.

Over time that will change as the web and search engines get smarter but right now search is still at a basic stage in its development.

You have to be there

Customers are using these tools to find what they need and if a business isn’t listed, then they can’t be found. Setting up a profile and getting some favourable reviews is important.

The business who are being pro-active are the ones who are succeeding.

There’s a lot of opportunity

It’s no surprise that older organisations like Fairfax, Sensis and Microsoft are failing to understand local search. What is suprising is how poorly the newer players like Google and Facebook are doing.

This opens up a lot of opportunity for services like Yelp and Foursquare in adding value to the data already available through services like Google, Facebook and Sensis.

Yelp’s tie up with Sensis makes a lot of sense from the US company’s point of view; they get to ride on Sensis’ sales team, maybe some licensing fees and – most importantly – they can access the richest, albeit not always accurate, database of Australian businesses.

For small, local business there’s a lot of opportunity as well. By getting online and registered on these services, it’s possible to become more visible and improve your competitive position.

The market’s young and there’s a lot of potential for disruptive players. It will be interesting to see how incumbents deal with the threat.

Tony Delroy’s Nightlife: Our digital reputation

How important is our online footprint?

December’s Tony Delroy’s Nightlife looked at the risks of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Along with being a great way to communicate with family, friends and colleagues using online services can have some unexpected effects.

Program podcast

A recording of the program is available from the ABC’s Tony Delroy’s Nightlife webpage. You can listen to it through the site or download it and listen to it as a podcast.

Topics covered

Tony and Paul covered a range of topics including the following questions;

Are we living in the social media age?
What is social media is?
Why people use social media?
How some folk have come unstuck using social websites?
Can doing the wrong thing hurt your reputation or career?
What the risks are during the christmas party season?
Are there too many social media services?
How businesses can really use them?
Where will these services go next?

Listeners’ questions

We had a great range of questions and comments from listeners and those we promised to get back to included how to shut down your Facebook account and the link to report abuse on the service.

Reporting Facebook abuse

If you’re being harassed on Facebook, you can report misuse at Facebook’s Help Centre. Their page includes instructions on dobbing in underage users, blocking irritating people and how to use their privacy settings.

Deleting a Facebook profile

Leaving Facebook is not easy, so on the Netsmarts website we have the detailed instructions on deleting your Facebook account.

Note with these instructions that you need to disable any applications you may have installed on Facebook before deleting the account. When you go to the Applications page you may be shocked at how many things are connecting to your page.

Do we have too many social media services?

Tony asked if we have too many social media platforms.

This is a topic we’ve covered previously on the website and while there’s no doubt many of the services around today won’t survive, some will become increasingly become important.

Next Nightlife tech program

Our next program will be on February 9 next year. We will probably have some spots over the summer break and we’ll let newsletter subscribers know about them as soon as we do.

Facebook timelines and the long tail

Can the Internet’s long tail work for small business?

The Financial Times’ Tech Hub blog reports how Facebook’s Timeline function is driving views to old newspaper articles to unexpected stories.

On one level, this is a vindication of Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory of the value of older inventory; that older assets and data become more valuable in an age of unlimited choice.

The question remains though just have valuable old news really is, does the digital equivalent of fish and chip wrapping really have any intrinsic value.

It will probably turn out that information consumers will pay for unique, timely content while leaving the lolcats and funny videos to ad supported content farms.

The long tail model is the digital equivalent of the Fast Moving Consumer Goods business model, just as a big supermarket only makes pennies from each can of baked beans or milk they sell, they make big profits due to the volume they move.

As business writer Seth Godin has put it, the long tail is good for organisations that own big warehouses, and newspapers have the news equivalent of that.

For small businesses, the long tail is not where we need to be, our economics mean margin, not volume.

Technology’s magic pills

How a social media or cloud computing ointment won’t solve your business problems

As railways rolled out across the US in the mid 19^th Century, the snake oil merchants selling dubious medicines weren’t far behind.

Communities that had never before seen things that were taken for granted in the big cities were easily fooled by miracle treatments that would fix all their ills. By the time the locals discovered the scam, the snake oil salesman and his shills would be well out of town.

Technological change always brings out hype and over the last few decades we’ve seen a similar thing happen with the tech industries, as products and services were sold on the back of claims that could be described as ambitious, if not outrageous.

The Y2K bug was a good example of this as planes were going to fall from the sky and dams collapse if we didn’t hire an expensive consulting firm or buy a widget that would remind our computers they were now in the 21^st Century.

A similar thing is at work with Internet names, where the current push to sell Top Level Domains – a bargain with their $385,000 application fee – is being touted as the fix to everything that is wrong with web addresses.

With digital snake oil it’s interesting how often big organisations sometimes act like 19^th Century American sharecroppers – all too often we seen ministers and CEOs announce an outsourcing deal that will save taxpayers or shareholders millions only to later find the only winner was the consulting firm that sold the idea.

A similar trend is at work in the PR industry, Sky News presenter John Kerrison has an entertaining look on his personal website on how social media is being sold as an easy fix for a business with far more fundamental problems.

The sad thing is that there are real benefits behind the grandiose claims; Y2K was a real problem, money can be saved through intelligent outsourcing and social media is a great PR tool.

Eventually hype backfires, consumers are rightly dubious about anything that has the slightest hint of PR spin while the IT sector is viewed with well-earned suspicion by business proprietors, executives and managers.

A good example of this was last week’s Digital Readiness report from Optus that found businesses aren’t particularly interested in cloud services. This mirrors similar studies by Sensis, MYOB and MelbourneIT which all find organisations aren’t too fussed about the online world in general.

The danger with this is there is fundamental shift happening in society and technologies like websites, social media and cloud computing – just like the railroads in the 19^th Century – are part of those changes which businesses need to understand.

In an era where snake oil is a commodity there are two challenges for business people; the first is not to be perceived as one of the charlatans and the second is to see the miracle cures for what they are.

Probably the best tool for dealing with the digital snake oil merchants is turn on your own, old-fashioned bullshit detector and treat the shills with the suspicion they deserve.