Tag: social media

Reinventing management communications

Slack is part of the new wave of business communications that is challenging management

This blog has been particularly interested in how social media tools  are changing management.

Last year we had an interview with Yammer’s founder Pisoni on how fast communications are breaking down business silos.

Matt Honan has an interview in Wired magazine with the founder of Slack, Stewart Butterfield.

Slack is a corporate communications tool and Butterfield sees the company as being  the next Microsoft.

While that’s a big call, Butterfield shouldn’t be taken lightly having founded Flickr and following the company into its being absorbed by Yahoo!. Butterfield’s resignation letter after several years is an entertaining read.

Whether Slack becomes the next Microsoft or not, the changes to business communications with services like this are profound.

Dealing with the new ways of communicating within a business is going to be one of the greatest challenges to company managers over the next decade.

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Everyone is a critic on the internet

Business owners need to stop being so defensive about what their customers say on social media

“Everyone’s a critic” is the old saying. Today this is truer than ever as anyone can post a review online.

One of the notable things about business in the internet age is how sensitive people are to criticism.

A good example of this is a story going around the web this week of a Dallas chef, John Tesar, who had a magnificent breakdown over a review of his restaurant in the local newspaper.

This set off a chain of claims and counterclaims including some truly bizarre pieces on various blogs about ‘chefs winning the war against critics.’

Probably the strangest thing with this whole debacle is the review by Leslie Brenner in the Dallas Morning News is actually quite constructive and certainly no AA Gill style demolition of the establishment.

This silly little spat illustrates how business people, not just temperamental chefs, have glass jaws. Another story going around the web this week is of Union Street Guest House in Hudson, New York, that fines guests for bad reviews

Tesar’s response is pretty typical of many business owners – attack the critic instead of addressing the problems. Given Tesar threw the Twenty Rules of Social Media – which apply to businesses as much as social media – out the window, he was lucky not to find his reaction backfiring horribly on him.

What business owners have to understand is that you will get criticism, unfortunately most of it you will never know about as unhappy customers tell their friends and relatives.

If you get the opportunity to hear that criticism, then you have the opportunity to fix the problem.

This is something business owners need to understand about review sites and social media; it’s an opportunity to get some honest feedback about how things are going.

So start listening to what your customers are saying online and stop being so defensive.

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Smartphone safety and online trust – ABC Nightlife technology

The July ABC Nightlife radio segment looks at how elusive the truth can be online along with smartphones and sight impaired tech.

Smartphones for the vision impaired, malware on portable devices and online trust were the topics of the July technology spot on  Tony Delroy’s Nightlife along with why a restaurant claims Google sent it broke and how we can’t always trust what we hear online.

If you missed the show, you can download the program from the website.

For sight impaired smartphone users both Doug and Nick called in to suggest Vision Australia’s services. The organisation has a page dedicated to smartphone and tablet resources.

Nick and Peter asked about malware protection for Android smartphones. Both Intel’s McAfee Mobile Security and Sophos’ Mobile Security for Android are free for home users.

The next spot is scheduled for 4 September, if you have any topics you’d like to discuss contact me or the Nightlife producers.

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Social media’s dark side

Propaganda has become part of social media. How much can we trust online?

I was asked by ABC Radio Newcastle today to talk about the dark uses of social media – spreading propaganda.

This is an topic that’s come to the fore with the troubles in the Gaza Strip and the downing of MH17; all sides are using traditional propaganda techniques with a thick overlay of new media.

A key part of the social media aspects of the modern propaganda methods is those who want to spread their message only need to confirm the prejudices of their loyal followers.

In turn the loyal foot soldiers will then spread the word through their Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr feeds; a modern Goebbels doesn’t have to control the media, they just need enough useful idiots.

It’s also worth noting the new media tools complement the old broadcast and publishing methods with the most effective modern propaganda – and marketing – campaigns cleverly using the strengths of each medium to create an amplifying effect.

Propaganda is nothing new, many of the Ancient Greeks’ stories were written to discredit their enemies, and every technological advance has seen new ways for people to spread misinformation.

In that respect it shouldn’t be surprising that we should take with everything we read on, or off, line.

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Privacy and mutual respect

Privacy and mutual respect – the assumption underlying the Respect Network and online trust

Tonight was the Australian launch of the Respect Network in Sydney which followed similar events in London and San Francisco. I’ll be writing more on this over the next few days.

One of the key questions when considering the Respect Network is how much the average internet user values privacy; the business model of the service relies upon people being prepared to pay to preserve their privacy.

Another question is how many lies people will tell to get free or cheap stuff – respect is a two way thing.

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Facebook’s experiment with the limits of public trust

We may soon find out the limits of trust in social media

The revelation that a Facebook research team lead by Alan Kramer experimented with users’ emotional states is a disturbing story on many levels, the immediate consequence is a further erosion in the public trust of social media services.

Facebook, like many social media services, has received a lot of criticism in recent times as the company tries to make enough money to justify its $160 billion valuation.

Most of that criticism has been around the re-arranging of users’ feeds with Facebook’s algorithm deciding what information should be displayed based upon a user’s history with a liberal sprinkling of advertising thrown in.

The Kramer research though takes Facebook’s manipulation of users’ information to another level, along with raising a range of ethical issues.

One of the most concerning issues is the claim that the experiment’s subjects had given informed consent by agreeing to Facebook’s Terms of Service. This is dangerous ground.

The dangerous ground, apart from the gross overreach of customer terms of service this behaviour risks losing the market’s trust; once Facebook or other social media and cloud computing services are viewed as untrustworthy, they are doomed.

For Facebook it might be that the abuse of user trust is the biggest social experiment of all: How far can the company push the public?

We may soon find out.

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The rise of the business digital native

Today’s new businesses are the true digital natives.

‘Digital natives’ has been the term to describe people born after 1990 who’ve had computers throughout their entire lives.

The theory is these folk have an innate understanding of digital technologies from being immersed in them from an early age.

It’s doubful how true that theory is; the generation born after 1960 were born into the television generation yet the vast majority of GenXers would have little idea on how to produce a sitcom or fix a TV set and the same could be said for the war generation and motor cars.

Digitally native businesses

For businesses, it may be the digital native concept is far more valid. Ventures being founded today are far more likely to be using productivity enhancing tools like social media, collaboration platforms and cloud computing services than their older competitors.

What’s striking about older businesses, particularly in the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) sectors, is just how poorly they have adopted technology. The Australian Bureau of Statistics report into IT use by the nation’s businesses illustrates the sectors’ weak use of tech.

The most telling statistic is the number of businesses with a web presence; the SME sector lags way behind the corporate sector that has almost 100% penetration.

Australian_business_with_a_web_presence

Many of the zero to four business can be disregarded as most of them are sole trader consultants who’ve had to register a businesses for professional reason, although there is an argument even they would benefit from a cheap or free web presence to advertise their skills.

The ABS statistics show small business is lagging behind the corporates in social media and e-commerce adoption as well so the argument that local businesses are ignoring the web and using services like Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Places to advertise their services doesn’t hold water.

Old man’s business

Part of this reluctance to use digital tools is age; many SMEs were born either in the era when faxes were a novelty or when Windows computers were first appearing on small businesses desktops. They are creatures of another era.

In the current era cloud, social media and collaborative services are running business. The idea of buying a workstation for a new employee and waiting for the IT guy to set them up on the network is an antiquated memory; today’s workers have their own laptops, tablets and smartphones to do the work – all they need is a password.

Those services offer a different way of organising a business and this is the most worrying part of the statistics – large organisations are slowly, and not always successfully, adopting modern management practices while many small businesses are locked into a 1970s and 80s way of working.

For businesses being founded today, this isn’t a worry – they are the true digital natives and are reaping the benefits of more efficient ways of working. Something emphasised by Google’s updates to its Drive productivity services announced overnight.

That’s something that should focus the plans of established businesses of all sizes as they adapt to working in a connected society.

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