Category: social media

Trapped in a walled garden

Can social media services like facebook stay relevant as they manage content?

Following up on last week’s criticism of Facebook, US entrepreneur Mark Cuban clarified his position about the social network.

Central to Mark’s criticism are three points about Facebook’s business model; that it is a time waster, it takes control away from users and it doesn’t succeed in connecting people to information and friends.

All of this is true, and these features are key to the walled garden model that all of the internet empires want to build.

Central to this strategy is the “time on site” metric and so far Facebook beats all comers, with a huge 400 minutes per month per user.

Users who spend a long time on a website are more valuable than those who don’t hang around and Facebook’s success has been in capturing the attention of their members and locking them into their platform.

The willingness of other websites, particularly media companies, to lock themselves into Facebook’s platform has puzzled many observers as they are giving their customers away to the social media service.

How willing internet users are in hanging around Facebook’s, or Amazon’s, Google’s and Apple’s, walled gardens remains to be seen; it depends upon how compelling the content and value is.

If Mark Cuban’s right, viewers’ eyeballs and advertising dollars may start moving away from Facebook when people realise they are missing out on relevant information.

The real value in media organisations, whether we talk about old media such as newspapers or new media like social platforms, is in presenting relevant information to visitors and readers. As the many news organisations are learning, when you stop being relevant then people stop paying attention.

Being relevant is the great challenge for Facebook, newspapers and all media organisations.

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Ending the era of the computer password

Has the humble computer password reached the end of the line?

Earlier this year, Wired Magazine writer Mat Honan had his entire digital identity stolen from him when hackers cracked his email password and then systemically took over all of his cloud and social media accounts.

Matt writes of his experience on Wired and proposes it’s time to kill the password.

The problem with Mat’s proposal is that he doesn’t suggest an alternative.

The age of the password has come to an end; we just haven’t realized it yet. And no one has figured out what will take its place.

Every alternative authentication method to passwords has flaws just as serious, if not worse. Many are plainly impractical.

All of them, including passwords, have the common weakness that those holding the information can’t be trusted either – one of the greatest ways for passwords to get into the wild is when incompetents like Sony give them away.

Security is evolving, in the meantime we need to keep in mind some basic rules.

  • Use different passwords for different accounts
  • Only access accounts from trusted and up-to-date computers
  • Create strong passwords for accounts that matter, like online banking and email
  • Strong passwords are multiword phrases
  • Use two-factor authentication if its available
  • Don’t link unnecessary social media and cloud accounts together
  • Be very careful

We should also remember that a skilled, motivated hacker will probably break into your account regardless of your computer security. In this respect it’s no different to the physical world where a determined criminal will get you regardless of the locks and alarms on your house.

It’s also important to remember that security is more than just evil hackers; data can be damaged or given away by a whole range of means and people breaking into systems is only one risk of many.

Computer security is an evolving field and while it might be premature to declare the password dead, we’re going to see big changes as we try to lock down our valuable digital assets.

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Facebook starts driving away brands

Could Facebook be more like old media than we thought?

A few days ago we looked at how giving marketing and communications control to Facebook was a mistake for businesses.

It seems US entrepreneur Mark Cuban agrees and he’s moving his basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, and the 70 businesses he’s invested in away from Facebook onto other social media channels like Tumblr or even MySpace.

The final straw for Cuban was Facebook wanting to charge $3,000 to reach a million of the Maverick’s online fans.

Facebook’s response that the sponsored post program is not just about the service’s revenue, but also to reduce noise and spam has merit

Last week tech uber-blogger Robert Scoble complained about the noise on social media and many users agree as they find their social media services and email inbox clogged with messages.

Reducing irrelevant noise is essential for any online service to succeed. No-one likes to spam or be spammed and many startup social media platforms have failed because they’ve killed their brand by spamming users and their contacts.

In this respect social media is like journalism – it has to be timely, relevant and useful to its users. If it isn’t the readers will leave and the advertisers will soon follow.

The worry for Facebook’s investors is that the service could be caught between making no money from its massive user base and getting a reputation for irrelevant spam.

Could it be that Facebook has more in common with newspapers and other “old media” than we thought?

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Social media’s free ride comes to an end

Facebook’s Sponsored Stories have ended the free ride for businesses on social media services and now companies are looking at alternatives

One of the mystifying things about the ways businesses use social media is the willingness of companies – big and small – to give their customer lists away to social media sites.

The best example of this is Facebook, when your customers like you or comment on a post they are added to the service’s database. Facebook gets to ‘own’ your customers and generally Facebook gets to know your customers better than you do.

With the arrival of Sponsored Stories on Facebook we see the next step which monetizing their business functions. Now when a business puts a post up on Facebook, it only appears in 15% of their followers’ feeds. To get to the rest of them a business has to buy a sponsored story.

Not only has Facebook taken ownership of thousands of businesses’ customers, it now charges those business to talk to their own clients.

Should the business decide not to pay for sponsored stories then they find traffic from Facebook drops off. Some businesses report traffic dropping from 30,000 views a day to 5,000.

To counter this one website stumped up the money for a sponsored story that advises their Facebook fans to follow them on Twitter and Google+ instead.

Facebook’s move on this isn’t surprising as they desperately search for revenue streams to justify their huge stockmarket valuation.

What also isn’t surprising is that the free ride for businesses on social media platforms is over.

All too often we’ve heard marketing gurus tell us Facebook and other social media services were free advertising channels.

That view overlooked the time and patience required for executing an effective social media campaign along with the reality that social media services were only free for as long as the investors underwriting the enterprise were prepared to accept losses.

We understand that advertising on TV, radio or print costs money and now we’re having to accept that social media marketing costs as well.

How well Facebook goes with sponsored stories remains to be seen, but the message for businesses is clear – the social media free lunch is well and truly over.

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Rethinking customer support

As the computer power at our fingertips gets more powerful, the tools to help customers are getting smarter and better.

One of weaknesses in most organisations is getting customer service right, good support takes time which costs money and leads many big and small companies  to scrimp on support to save a few costs.

In a conversation with BMC Software’s Suhas Kelkar about customer support – Remedy, one of the biggest helpdesk software packages is a BMC product – the discussion turned to how the process has changed in recent years.

Not too long ago we reached for manuals, but those vanished as CDs and then downloads became common. Then we’d call the manufacturer’s helpline or our unfortunate store who sold us the item.

Today we Google a problem to see if we can find a quick solution and if that fails we reach out to our social networks by posting the question on Twitter or Facebook. We may even post the problem to a support forum to see if anyone has an answer.

Only if can’t find the solution anywhere else do we call the support line, for most of us it is the last resort.

In some ways this is a success for corporate cost cutting as most of us call a “helpline” only in desperation as we’ve trained to expect long waits, confusing menus and poorly trained operators.

That model developed in the 1980s – in order to pay rockstar salaries to executives it was necessary to cut staff wages and training costs with after sales support often being the first business area to suffer cuts.

Eventually this started to backfire and the Dell Hell saga as one of the leading examples where the computer manufacturer’s lousy support became industry legend. It’s fair to argue that Dell has never quite recovered from the damage the period of poorly outsourced support did to their brand.

To repair the damage to their brand, Dell adopted a crowdsourced support model where company forums were available for customers to ask about problems with the hope other customers could answer before expensive staff became involved. Eventually other companies adopted this system.

Social media has created a doubled-edged sword for businesses, it’s easier for people to ask their friends for help but it also increases the risk of brand damage if online posts aren’t monitored and responded to.

All of this is forcing a rethink of how customer support works. For businesses big and small, social media and crowdsourcing tools are changing the way we talk to customers and how they can talk about us.

The big data push is also changing customer support as businesses now have the computing power available to mine knowledge bases, issue registers and call logs to identify market trends and weaknesses in their products or sales teams.

For business owners and managers stuck in the 1980s ways of customer support, they are in for a wretched time over the next few years.

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Amazon and the Soviet customer service model

We all value our collections of CDs, books and photos, but what happens when we completely lose the digital equivalents?

We all value our collections of CDs, books and photos, but what happens when we completely lose the digital equivalents?

The story of Linn, a Norwegian lady who had her account terminated by Amazon, demonstrates the dangers of being locked into one Internet company’s empire. Get cut off and you lose everything related to them.

A little understood part of the cloud computing and app world is that you, the customer or user – which isn’t necessarily the same thing – don’t really own anything. The money you spend on ebooks, mobile apps or web storage are for licenses to use the services, not the products themselves.

Should the supplier decide they no longer want to provide you with their service, then you lose your account and everything with it.

This is what happened to Linn when Amazon’s algorithm decided her account was in some way breaching their terms and conditions.

We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been cancelled.

Per our Conditions of Use which state in part: Amazon.co.uk and its affiliates reserve the right to refuse service, terminate accounts, remove or edit content, or cancel orders at their sole discretion.

“At their sole discretion” is the key point here. This is a standard term in most online contracts and reflects the legal realities of the physical world where a shopping mall manager or bar owner can ask you to leave their property without having to tell you why.

When you use a virtual service, which includes e-books and cloud computing software, you are on someone’s virtual property and they can ask you to leave any time they feel.

Of course those rights are subject to any contract you might have with that e-book seller, cloud computing service or shopping centre but you have to be in a position to enforce them – not an easy task when you’re in Norway and their lawyers are in Connecticut.

Even if you want to enforce the agreement you believe these services have entered into, the grossly biased contracts attempt to put all obligations on users or customers while freeing the vendor of the distraction of being responsible for anything.

The real problem though is the lack of notice and fairness – this blog’s previously looked at how PayPal, Facebook and Google will shut down business sites without any warning or due process.

It’s one thing to get thrown out of a shopping mall but it’s another matter when your car and week’s groceries are still in there.

Even more worrying in Linn’s case is how ebooks and music purchased with Digital Rights Management (DRM) controls can be erased by companies like Amazon. Which is like walking home from the shopping mall you’ve been banned from to find the manager has called by to confiscate the toaster and TV you bought last week.

What’s particularly notable in all of these stories though is the Soviet customer service model, the Amazon”Executive Customer Relations” representative Linn dealt with refused to tell her what she’d done wrong or what rules she broke.

The only thing “Michael Murphy” would tell her was she was effectively banned for being linked to a blocked account and stated;

“Please know that any attempt to open a new account will meet with the same action.”

No notice, no appeal, no rights. The computer says no and the bureaucrat cannot help you further.

Trust lies at the core of all business and this is even more true when buying services like e-books and cloud computing products. If you can’t trust a vendor to provide a service, or to act openly and honest with you when a problem occurs, then it’s unlikely you’ll use that service.

A lack of trust is what web 2.0 companies like Amazon and eBay risk with hostile, Soviet style customer service. This is the weak point of the entire online business model.

For individuals and businesses it’s important to understand that those e-book, cloud storage or social media services may appear to be a bargain, but there are risks lurking in the fine print.

The new Soviets might be doing well at the moment, but their days are numbered just as the USSR’s were.

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ABC Nightlife: Apps down the farm

For the October ABC Nightlife spot we’ll be looking at how the agriculture sector is using smartphone and tablet computer apps

If you missed this program where we covered a wide range of subjects, you can listen to the ABC Nightlife podcast of the show.

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

This week we’re talking about how the agricultural industry are using smartphone apps and the web. A list of apps for farmers is available from the NSW Department of Primary Industry website.

We’ll also be looking at how machines are talking – in agriculture, the next generation of farm equipment will be sending data straight to the farmers’ tablet or laptop computer using the technologies we’re seeing in jet engines and other high tech equipment.

Connecting everything does come with risks. A US report found that networked medical equipment is rife with malware and the Defense Signals Directorate points out that out-of-date computer systems are one of the main causes of data breaches.

One of the things driving the apps world is cloud computing and Google have given a rare glimpse into the data centres that run their services.

Social media is one of the things that are driving cloud computing, but there’s traps for businesses in posting information about customers and staff. We’ll be looking at those as well.

We’d love to hear your views and comments so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

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

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

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