Tag: social media

Social media’s greatest enemy

Time is working against the social media platforms

Last week Google launched their business Pages function for Google+, which required a business owner to type in almost identical information to the parallel Google Places service.

In the same week Facebook turned off RSS feeds into their status updates, meaning that new pages added to a website now have to be manually entered into Facebook. Tumblr did the same some time ago.

Across the social media industry, the various services are asking users to manually enter updates and details into each platform under the belief that unique user generated content will increase the value of their sites.

That’s all very good for the sites but for those using several services it’s becoming a tiresome chore.

One of the biggest barriers to social media adoption – particularly among time pressed small business owners – is the time involved in maintaining these different services. With the exception of Twitter, most of the services are trying to increase people’s time on their platforms.

For social media services the key measures of how much time users spend on the site is becoming a game of diminishing returns, people have only so much time in the day or so much inclination to spend a large chunk of their free time online.

As the burden of maintaining a digital footprint increases and the value proposition becomes less compelling, particularly as the privacy costs becomes more apparent, more people are finding it all too hard.

Social media services are going to have to show some value for the investment in time and the privacy costs incurred by users, it may well be that many just don’t offer a good enough deal.

What business can learn from Groupon

How can businesses use the web to grow like the group buying companies?

Groupon, pioneer of group buying and one the fastest growing companies in history, will have its launch on the stock markets today with an initial public offering (IPO) that’s values the business at thirteen billion dollars, more double the $6bn that Google offered for the three year old company last year.

A recent Business Insider profile of Groupon had some fascinating insights on this unique company and its growth, there’s a number of lessons that most business owners, entrepreneurs and managers can take from this company’s dramatic growth and market leadership regardless of the sector they operate in.

Apply tech to your business

Many people make the mistake that Groupon is tech startup when it’s actually a sales operation.

Groupon’s business model isn’t really new, what they have done is applied various web technologies to the directory and voucher shopping industries and come up with a 21st Century way of doing things.

Bringing together different modern tools like social media, cloud computing, local search and the mobile web makes businesses more flexible and quick to develop new market opportunities.

Prepare for quick changes

Groupon was born out of another business – The Point. As The Point steadily died, Andrew Mason and his mentor Eric Lefkofsky decided to try something different and Groupon was born.

This ability to change focus quickly – often called “pivoting” – is essential in changing markets. In volatile times like today where today’s business conditions can’t be taken for granted we have to be prepared for rapid changes.

Fortunately the cost and time to changes your business focus has dropped dramatically with digital and online tools, which is another reason to embrace tech.

Get a good business mentor

Eric Lefkofsky bought maturity and a perspective to Groupon’s young leadership, having a different and more experienced view of the business helped it develop and grab the opportunity.

An experienced business mentor can be worth their weight in gold.

Back a good idea

In Nicholas Carson’s Business Insider profile he describes Andrew Mason role at Eric Lefkofski’s business before The Point as “an intern, ‘kind of squatting in their offices'”. Lefkofski was prepared to back the geeky kid camping on his premises.

Putting your prejudices and judgements on the shelf to back good ideas, particularly those that don’t cost much to execute, is one way to find where the opportunities lie.

Tell your business story

Regardless of what you think of Groupon’s claims, they tell a very good story which has lead to their amazing growth and the development of the group buying industry.

Being able to tell your story, in your terms, is one of the great advantages the web, local search and social media deliver. There’s no reason why your business shouldn’t be dominating the local market in whatever field you work in.

Regardless of what your business does, it can benefit from applying the online tools that are available to all of us.

We may not be the next Groupon but the web gives us the opportunity to build our business to take advantage of the 21st Century. It’s worthwhile understanding the new tools at our fingertips.

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 19th 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 21st 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 19th 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 19th 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.

Using free services

What traps are there when using free online services

The lure of free is attractive – free web hosting, free software or the free lunch always grabs our attention.

Deep down though we know there’s really no such thing as a free lunch and the same is true with all the other free deals, there’s always a cost of some sort.

Often the definition of free can be a problem; there’s the social media model of free that harvests your personal data, the Silicon Valley version that hopes a big company will buy the service, the earnest work of volunteers and the freemium marketing model.

Most computer users have used the freemium model, this is where the business gives away a basic free version in the hope of encouraging enough customers to the paid premium version that has support and additional features. Common examples are AVG Free Antivirus, Google Apps and Mailchimp’s Forever Free plan.

All of the freemium services come with a catch, AVG’s free software is only licensed for home use ­– so no using the free version on your office computer – while Google Apps only supports ten unpaid users and if you have more than 2,000 people on your mailing list then Mailchimp is no longer free.

Developing a free product to raise your profile is a common way for entrepreneurs to enter markets and establish a reputation. This is particularly common in the software and web design industries where coders and designers offer free applications or templates to build their portfolios.

These products developed by entrepreneurial designers and programmers are often great, but as there is the risk the developer will lose interest as their business evolves. The WordPress Guy, Tony Constantino, warns “when a free theme stops being supported in 6months you will get left behind”

By far the most lucrative free model to date has been the advertising supported business. This is nothing new as commercial radio and television stations have had this model for nearly a century, but Google have taken this online with their advertising platform that funds their search tools and many other free services.

A variation on the advertising supported model is the data mining carried out by social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. This isn’t as transparent and may be a problem for business users who don’t want to share their client details with an internet service.

Increasingly the free services are based around the Silicon Valley model of a deep pocketed venture capital company funding a business with the aim of building the customer base through offering freebies services with the aim of selling to a trade buyer.

The danger with the Silicon Valley VC model is its instability as most companies shut down without finding a buyer. Even when they do find someone to buy the venture the service often doesn’t last as we saw when the once popular free hosting service Geocities was shut down by Yahoo! in 2009.

Despite the traps free can be good for your business but you should understand the terms, conditions and hidden costs that come with the products. Often you’ll find paying for a product delivers a much more functional and better service that requires less of your time.

One service that might help businesses choose the right free or trial online services is Cheapstart, that compares the various services available for entrepreneurs starting out.

The digital inheritance

Our online possessions are valuable and now matter.

Our digital footprint – what appears about us online in websites and social media services – is becoming more important as we’re judged by what people find out about us on the web.

As what we store on the web becomes more important, the need to plan for what happens to that data when we pass away becomes more important. “Generation Cloud”, a survey in the UK by hosting company Rackspace and the University of London looked at how Britons were dealing with these issues.

Information left online can cause problems as social media sites will send suggestions and reminders which can distress others if the suggested contact has passed away.

Equally, a web site or Facebook page could even serve as a memorial. The final blog post of Derek K. Miller is a particularly touching memorial.

To create a “digital tombstone”, for your loved ones to remove inappropriate posts or just to access your digital personal effects like email or photos stored on a cloud service, they will need your passwords.

In the Generation Cloud survey, 11% of the participants planned to leave their online account details and passwords in their wills and half considered some of their ‘treasured possessions’ are stored online.

Once again we’re finding our online data has real value that’s worth passing down. It’s another reason to guard your data safely and not give it away lightly.

The agents of change

It’s tempting to think social media and other web tools are driving change, but much deeper things are changing.

It’s understandable technologists see technology as driving change. Often it’s true – technologies do build or destroy businesses, alter economies and collapse empires.

Sometimes though there’s more to change than a new technology changing the economy and while it’s tempting to credit innovations like the web, social media and cloud computing with many of the changes we’re seeing in the world, we have to consider some other factors at work.

The end of the 40 year credit boom

In the 1960s, the United States started creating credit to pay for the Vietnam war; they never stopped and after the 2001 recession and terrorist attacks the money supply was kept particularly loose.

The worldwide credit boom allowed all of us –Greek hairdressers, Irish home borrowers, Australian electronics salesmen, US bankers and pretty well everyone else in the Western world – to live beyond our means.

In 2008, the start of the Great Recession saw the end of that period and now the economy is deleveraging. Consumers are reluctant to borrow and businesses struggle to find funds to borrow even if they want to.

Any business plans built on the idea of almost unlimited spending growth are doomed. The era of massive consumer spending growth driven by easy credit is over and the days of expecting a plasma TV in every room are gone.

The aging population

An even bigger challenge is that our societies are getting older, the assumption we have an endless supply of cheap labour is being challenged as a global race for talent develops.

The lazy assumption that economic growth can be driven by building houses and infrastructure to meet increased demands will be found wanting as the Western world’s populations fail to grow at the rates required to power the construction industries.

Our societies are maturing and increased economic growth and wealth is going to have to come from clever use of our resources.

Innovations in computers and the Internet – along with other technologies like biotech, clean energy and materials engineering – will help us meet those challenges but they are tools to cope with our transforming societies, not the agents of change themselves.

Had  tools like social media come along in the 1970s or 80s they probably would have been massive drivers for change, just like the motor car and television were earlier in the 20th Century. In the early 21st Century they have been overtaken by history.

Smart businesses, along with clever governments and communities, will use tools like social media, local search and cloud computing with the demographic and economic changes, but we shouldn’t think for a minute the underlying challenges will be business as usual.

Technology with Carol Duncan on ABC Newcastle

On ABC 1233 Newcastle with Carol Duncan we discuss privacy and security on social media after Facebook’s privacy changes.

In the occasional tech spot with Carol Duncan, we looked at Facebook’s new changes and what they mean to users.

The immediate changes to Facebook are the News Feed at the top of the page where updates and posts will be ranked according to what Facebook thinks are your interests, to the left of the screen is “the ticker” which will give summaries of updates.

Coming in the next few weeks will be the Timeline feature which will give show the history of all your posts.

A great summary of the changes with a hands on review is Jason Kincaid’s article on the Facebook changes in Tech Crunch. The official Facebook blog goes into the detail of all the new features.

The purpose of these changes is to increase Facebook’s value as an advertising platform and it raises the question of the viability of these networks.

One of the interesting features of these changes is that users will start seeing increased advertising, if you’re not happy with this our Netsmarts site goes through the process of shutting down your Facebook account.

Join us on ABC Newcastle with Carol Duncan to discuss these issues and more.

ABC Nightlife Computers: The Internet Name Wars

How the Internet’s name wars can affect you

The online empires want our names and identities, are the real costs of social media now being exposed? Our September ABC Nightlife spot on September 22 from 10pm looked at these issues and more.

Paul and Tony discussed how Google’s “Name Wars” or “nymwars” came about, why social media sites like Facebook and search engines want you to use to use your real names.

The podcast from the program is available from at Nightlife website, more details of Tony’s programs can be found there as well.

Is this a good thing or are there costs we should consider before handing over our intimate details to a social media or free cloud computing service?

Some of the topics we covered included;

  • What are the “name wars’?
  • Why do companies like Google and Facebook want us to use our ‘real’ identities?
  • How can they use the information they gather?
  • What problems does that cause for Internet users?
  • Can these problems spill into real life?
  • Are all web services doing this?
  • What are the risks to businesses using social media?
  • Is this the real cost of social media?

Some of the information we mentioned can be found here;

The cost of lunch: Google and Information Revenue
Google’s real names policy explained
Google’s Eric Schmidt on being an “identity service”, not a social network
Google’s company philosophy (note item two)
Why Twitter doesn’t care what your real name is

We’ll be adding more resources in the next few days, the next ABC Nightlife spot is on 20 October and our events page will have more details. If you have any suggestions for future programs or comments on the last show, please let us know as we love your feedback.

Re-evaluating social media

How are you using social media services in your personal and business life?

We often forget the Internet as we know it is less than thirty years old and many of the social media tools we use have been around for less than five.

In such a new field, we’re all learning and experimenting which means some tools become essential while others are recognised as yesterday’s shiny toys.

As the depth of the name wars and the related privacy issues become apparent, it’s worthwhile re-evaluating how we use these services. Here’s how I’m now using some of the online social media platforms.

Foursquare

I quite like Foursquare, the idea of knowing which friends are nearby when you’re out on the town is great. But as someone who has a dismal social life, it was wasted on me.

The gamification angle is interesting, but the privacy implications of the service make me uneasy. I’ve stopped checking in and will probably close down my account pretty soon.

Empire Avenue

As a sociological experiment on the rampant egos and deep insecurities of the social media community, Empire Avenue is wonderful. Otherwise, it’s just another spammy online application trying to harvest personal information – I came, I saw, I decided life was too short.

Quora

On first glance, Quora looked good, but the changing of posts by moderators concerned me, the cliqueiness of users was the killer and I closed my account. I suspect Google Plus will kill this platform.

Google Plus

Apart from being a Quora killer and having some interesting collaboration feature, there doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to use Google Plus instead of Facebook.

While it’s in its early days, I’m finding it less than compelling while Eric Schmidt’s claim it is an identity service rather than a social media platform deeply unsettles me and makes me less likely to engage in conversations on the service.

Facebook

When Facebook first became available I was intrigued as able to connect with relatives along with past and present friends always struck me as being one of the Internet’s killer apps. As various business features evolved, it was clear Facebook was a serious online tool.

The problem with Facebook has been the way strangers become friends, not to mention how acquaintances and relatives have a habit of posting private things you don’t particularly care to know about, along with the wave of invites to games and applications that come and go.

Overall, I’ve been using Facebook for business purposes rather than sharing private information for nearly two years now. That works, but it isn’t the intended use and I’m probably not getting the maximum benefit although I am preserving some modest degree of privacy.

Linkedin

As a means to establish your professional credibility, LinkedIn is unbeatable. For those with a lot of time, the various professional LinkedIn groups can be a valuable way to show your industry knowledge.

One thing that surprises me is how many people notice your status changes so it is certainly a good way of keeping your business network up to date with what you are doing.

The concern with LinkedIn is similar to Facebook and Google Plus in that there’s a lot of market intelligence being gathered on our professional networks and the recent attempt to ‘enhance’ social advertising around our online personas does not fill me with confidence that LinkedIn is the best platform to be displaying our professional abilities.

Twitter

I’ve had a turbulent relationship with Twitter and it took me three attempts to really see the point. I’m still careful about what I post and who I follow.

However Twitter has become my main news source and I find it keeps me ahead of the major media outlets. For this reason alone, Twitter has become the social media service I use the most.

What occurs to me in writing this is that these social media tools are really about listening, not talking or marketing. Perhaps that is the point we’re missing in the noise generated by these services, that listening is where the real power lies in these online platforms.

The six tools I’ve listed are just a small subset of a massive range of social media services, I’d be interested in hearing which ones you find useful and why.

How Google’s identity obsession hurts

How the search engine giant is damaging business and its own reputation

Imagine giving a presentation at a conference where you fire up a live demonstration of a product you’ve been urging the audience to use and the audience start giggling.

You turn around to find a bright red message at the top of the screen stating your account has been suspended. It wasn’t there the night before and you certainly didn’t receive an email warning you this had happened.

Embarrassing or what?

That happened to me with Google Local earlier this and the many stories like it illustrates a serious management problem within the world’s biggest search engine company.

Local search – where businesses can be found online based on their location – is one of the main web battlefields with Google and Facebook, along with outliers like News Limited and Microsoft, are competing to get business of all sizes to sign up.

Recently though Google seems to be going out of its way to squander the massive opportunity they have in this sector despite the CEO, Larry Page, identifying local services as one of their priorities.

Despite Google’s intention to promote Places – as their, and Facebook’s, local search platforms are called – many businesses are finding the company’s arbitrary and often incorrect application of its own rules and Terms of Service difficult to understand and use.

“I have found that with the ‘moving target’ Google is presenting to businesses” said Bob, a commenter on one of my blogs, “is paralyzing them from doing exactly what Google wants, which is updating and providing fresh content on their listings pages.”

In many ways, this is a small front on the “nymwars” that has broken out since Google introduced their Plus social media service and started enforcing their “rules” on “real names”.

Unfortunately their real names “policy” – and I use inverted commas deliberately – is vague and arbitrary with users finding their accounts suspended despite signing up with “the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you” as required by Google.

Account suspensions are wide and varied; some people, quite legally, have a name without a surname, others have a combination of languages such as Chinese or Arabic, while others have simply fallen foul of the computer and Google’s secretive bureaucratic culture.

This secretive bureaucracy would be funny if it wasn’t so downright hypocritical. Any correspondence with Google about account suspensions either on Places or Plus is signed off by an anonymous functionary from “no-reply” email address. So it appears real identities, and accountability, don’t extend to the company itself.

Last week at the Edinburgh International TV Festival, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt, announced Plus is not a social media platform, but an “identity service”. Good luck with that, Eric as your staff’s arbitrary and often incorrect interpretation of the company’s own rules doesn’t engender confidence in any identity verified by Google.

That announcement by Google’s chairman should worry investors, as this is a company that is first and foremost an advertising company powered by the best web search technology.

Management distractions such as becoming an “identity service” or buying a handset manufacturer distract focus from the core business and result in the mess we’re seeing around business and private accounts.

For the moment, Google Places remains a service that businesses must list on given the visibility the results have when customers search the web for local services and products.

If you aren’t already on Google Places, do sign up but make sure you get your listing right first time as editing your profile once it’s up risks your account being suspended or cast into “pending” purgatory.

Should you have already an account, leave it alone as any change risks coming the attention of Google’s anonymous bureaucrats.

Hopefully, this madness will pass and Google will clarify their policies, ground them in the real world then enforce their terms fairly and consistently. Until then, you can’t afford to rely on your personal and business Google accounts.

Online tools to turbocharge your business

Flying Solo’s Independents Day looked at how the web can help business productivity.

Flying Solo’s 2011 Independents Day conference featured our Online Tools to Turbocharge your Business.

We looked at some of the most popular cloud computing, social media, productivity and collaboration tools that can help a business make more money and grow faster.

Most importantly, it shows how business owners can free up some of their most valuable asset – their time.

Some of the tools we discussed include the popular social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and how they can be used for customer service and market intelligence on top of being marketing services.

We also looked at how collaborative and cloud computing services can help small businesses work together and improve the ways consultants can work with big business clients. In many ways, collaborative tools like Google Apps, Zoho and Dropbox help build team and deliver projects more effectively.

The Online Tools to Turbocharge Your Business presentation itself is available on Slideshare and if you subscribe to our newsletter, you’ll receive a free copy of the accompanying Online Business Essentials e-book.

Online Tools to Turbocharge your Business

The web’s big weakness

How a hands-off customer model may doom many of today’s social media and web services

There’s a fundamental flaw in the way the tech industry does business, that weakness could be what ultimately kills many of today’s new media, web and social media services.

AirBnB, an online home share service, is one of the darlings of the booming Silicon Valley start up sector, having recently being valued at $1.2 billion after a successful capital raising.

Like most Web 2.0 and social media businesses, AirBnB’s advantage is in the low operating costs where customer support is left to the service’s peer review and social media communities while AirBnB pockets a commission for simply making the connection between the landlord and tenant.

The flaws in this “all care, no responsibility” model became apparent last month when a lady posted a description of her house being ransacked by an errant housesitter she found through AirBnB.

AirBnB’s management responded to the article with assurances they were helping and working with their affected customer, claims which were promptly contradicted by the original victim.

To make matters worse, certain prominent members of the Silicon Valley investment and blogging communities alluded she was lying or was “batshit crazy.” Now that other stories of bad AirBnB tenants are appearing, the view this is simply the untrustworthy word of a deranged customer affected by their first such incident is looking hollow.

Failing to deal with customer problems is not unique to AirBnB, hiding behind impenetrable layers of “support” backed up by user hostile terms and conditions is familiar to anyone who has had to deal with an online service gone wrong.

Last month Thomas Monopoly found he was locked out of his Google account and had it not been for the intervention of a senior Google employee, Thomas’ problem would probably still be stuck in an endless feedback loop.

Exactly the same problem has been encountered thousands of times by other users of web mail, social media, online auction and matchmaking sites.

Many of the people running these services retort their products are free so users get the support the support they pay for – an argument conveniently overlooking that most “free” web services are based around selling customer data – but even this does not justify delivering the basic services users have been lead to expect, regardless of what a 5,000 word user agreement states.

Today’s tech startups, and many of their big established cousins in the IT industry, have the idea that customer support is an optional extra and an expense to minimised or outsourced.

In this respect they are not too far removed from dinosaur car manufacturers or some of today’s less dynamic retailers offering little in the way of customer service or after sales support.

That way of working has died as consumers have been able to go online to vent their dissatisfaction, strangely today’s hot tech start ups seem to have missed this aspect of the revolution they have helped start.

Ignoring consumer problems is exactly what’s bringing traditional businesses unstuck in the online world. The funny thing is it might bring many of the online business undone as well.