Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: social media

  • Facebook and your Family: 702 Sydney Weekend computers

    Facebook and your Family: 702 Sydney Weekend computers

    Tune into ABC 702 Sydney this Sunday, February 5 from 10.15am to join Paul Wallbank and Simon Marnie discussing how to use Facebook in your family.

    Some of the topics we’ll be looking at include;

    • What are the minimum ages for using Facebook
    • How should parents monitor usage
    • Setting up privacy settings
    • Being careful about sharing
    • Deciding what applications should you allow
    • How do other social networks affect your family

    We love to hear from listeners so feel free call in with your questions or comments on 1300 222 702 or text on 19922702. If you’re on Twitter you can tweet 702 Sydney on @702sydney and Paul at @paulwallbank.

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  • Can you trust your friends?

    Can you trust your friends?

    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.

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  • Has Google peaked?

    Has Google peaked?

    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.

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  • What Rupert did wrong

    What Rupert did wrong

    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.

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  • The social maze

    The social maze

    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.

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