Category Archives: Social Media

Jarvis: “A” Public Versus “The” Public

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Jeff Jarvis explores the hubbub over Facebook's (anti-) privacy moves and does the best job I've seen of explaining the recent angst of the digerati:

Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg seem to assume that once something is public, it’s public. They confused sharing with publishing. They conflate the public sphere with the making of a public. That is, when I blog something, I am publishing it to the world for anyone and everyone to see: the more the better, is the assumption. But when I put something on Facebook my assumption had been that I was sharing it just with the public I created and control there. That public is private. Therein lies the confusion. Making that public public is what disturbs people. It robs them of their sense of control—and their actual control—of what they were sharing and with whom (no matter how many preferences we can set). On top of that, collecting our actions elsewhere on the net—our browsing and our likes—and making that public, too, through Facebook, disturbed people even more. Where does it end?

The Difference Between Moms and Dads

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Everyone except Esbee will understand this: on Hallmark days people on Facebook will post things in their "status" that someone else has written for the occasion and then arm-twisted everyone else to post in their "status" too.  For Mother's Day we have this one:

Before you were conceived, I wanted you. Before you were born, I loved you. When you were born, I saw your face and knew I was in love. Before you were an hour old, I knew I would die for you. To this day, I will. With Mother's Day approaching, repost this if you have children you love more than life.

Here's what I predict will be written for Father's Day:

Before you were conceived, I had freedom. Before you were born, I could do whatever I wanted. When you were born, I saw you and asked if you were really done and wondered if maybe we should put you back in there for a week or two. Before you were an hour old, I knew that life as I knew it was over.  To this day, I've been proven right. With Father's Day approaching, repost this if you have children who've sucked the marrow out of your being, but what the hell, you have to admit you love them more than life.

For Those Who Still Think All Blogs and Twitter Feeds Are About Cats and BM

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As reported by the Triad Business Journal the Wake Forest MBA program's student run blog and related Twitter feed have been recognized as a "must follow" by TopMBA.com. 

Five years into this whole blog experiment thing and I still feel the need to justify my existence.  I never knew I was so insecure.

Jon’s Social Media Rules (as if the world needs ’em)

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My family and friends know I'm a pseudo-geek.  I'm not a real geek because I may know about things like Facebook before they do, but I couldn't fix a computer if my life depended on it. Anyway, as a pseudo-geek I fill the role that all consultants love: I'm no expert but some people think I am because I know more than they do.  Lately most of the questions I've gotten have been about things that could loosely be defined as social media.

As an example I get asked: "What's this Twitter thing? How does it work? Why in the heck would anyone use it?"  Inevitably the questions evolve into conversation and culminate with the ultimate statement-question: "I'm too busy to pay attention to this crap, but (insert name of someone they respect/fear here) thinks its important so I guess I have to.  How can you tell which one of these things really matter and how do you keep track of it all?"  That's when I lay out my own rules for the road:

  1. Find your sage. To determine which cool new thing to pay attention to I track people whose job it is to know these things and test the products/services they seem to be high on.  My number one resource is Fred Wilson and not too far behind him is Rex Hammock.  They don't know me from Adam, but I read their stuff religiously and pay close attention.
  2. Be patient. Usually the things that techies are high on don't seem too relevant at first.  Facebook and Twitter seemed pretty useless to me for quite a while because no one I knew was using them, but when more friends/colleagues started using them, and the network effect kicked in, they became as valuable as any online tool I have with the exception of that insipid creature known as email.  Still, it took a long time and I essentially just monitored the services until they took off.
  3. Use appropriately. I'm reminded of this by an article in Fortune about LinkedIn.  I've always thought of LinkedIn as useful, but somewhat stodgy in terms of my social media universe and that remains true.  So what?  It functions very well and does what it's supposed to do and I use it for all the tasks I need to accomplish when I'm wearing my "professional Jon" hat.
  4. Don't be afraid to cut the cord or limit your menu.  I've abandoned more of these things than not.  Off the top of my head I can name FriendFeed, Tumblr and MySpace and I'm certain there's ten times that many that I can't remember. I'm not saying that these services don't serve lots of people very well, they just never reached a critical use point for me and there's nothing wrong with that.  Do this relentlessly or you'll soon be overwhelmed.
  5. Try not to be the last one at the party.  Time really is our most precious commodity so don't waste it on something that is bringing you minimal returns.  I actually used MySpace quite a bit a few years ago because there were friends and family members using it and I found it a great way to stay in touch.  But they started leaving and all MySpace seemed to offer were really ugly pages managed by local escorts and so I said "adios." 
  6. Don't be afraid of the rebound.  Sometimes you stop using a product or service because it seems fairly useless and then out of nowhere everyone seems to be talking about it.  Before you dismiss it as simply uninformed n00bs talking out of their nether regions go back and check it out.  You might find that the service has been vastly improved, or has added a component that makes it more useful, and you shouldn't let your ego get in the way of using it.  I know this sounds a lot like 'be patient' but really it's about rediscovering something you actually abandoned (truth be told I did this with LinkedIn).
  7. If your boss (customer, significant other, kids, etc.) uses it then use it too.  You may think it's stupid, but if someone whose opinion truly matters to you is using it then you probably need to at least be up to speed.  You may not give a rats you-know-what about Facebook, but if your kids are using it don't you at least want to know how it works?  Same goes if your boss keeps spouting off about the great research potential provided by LinkedIn.  Nothing says you have to be an uber-user, but it doesn't take too much effort to get enough of an understanding to keep from looking like the kid who still had an 8-track player in his car in 1991. 

Simple, huh?  Feel free to disagree, add or delete.  

Split Google Loyalties

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Today I attended the Linking Winston-Salem luncheon and part of the program was a plea to support the Winston-Salem effort to get Googled. Winston-Salem is a little late getting started with its public push, especially when you compare it to Greensboro's weeks old effort, but I guess it's better late than never, and since I live in the Winston-Salem burbs I'm happy to see them going for it.

On the other hand thanks to my job and my long-time interest in the Greensboro blog community I've also been invited to participate in their various Google-wooing efforts.  Typical of Greensboro they've been working out the kinks in public, but they seem to be making decent headway.

I've been thinking about this and I've come to the conclusion that I can't be the only one who's in this situation.  I'm guessing that since this isn't an election I can vote for as many municipalities as I want, but I'm also guessing that Greensboro and Winston-Salem could be missing an opportunity.  Wouldn't a consolidated, regional effort for the Triad make a lot of sense to Google?  I haven't studied the requirements in depth so I don't know if this is even an option, but if it is I can think of a lot of compelling reasons for a Piedmont Triad effort:

  • The combination of all the higher ed institutions in the Triad is pretty impressive (Wake, UNCG, Winston-Salem State, NC A&T, High Point U, Salem College, Greensboro College, UNCSA, etc.)
  • The combination of all the large, public corporations between the two cities
  • Each of the cities is doing some pretty cool economic development on its own (FedEx and HondaJet in Greensboro, PTRP in Winston-Salem) but when considered together the efforts seem even more impressive

That's just three positives off the top of my head, and I'm sure that there are people who will let me know if I'm all wet, but I still have to ask if a joint effort has even been contemplated?

I do realize that Google's basic info page says "We'll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people" and that even if you combined only Greensboro and Winston-Salem you'd be awful close to the upper limit so the entire Triad would obviously exceed it.  Still, if Google's going to wire multiple mid-sized cities wouldn't it be of interest to them to do a couple in close proximity for purely logistical reasons?  And if that's the case wouldn't it make sense for the various players in the Triad to throw in together to make a really, really compelling case with Google?  Just askin'.

Why Twitter’s Influence is Probably Greater Than Most People Think

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Fred Wilson has a post, Twitter.com vs. The Twitter Ecosystem, that is an essential read for anyone whose job involves Twitter.  Strike that: it's important for anyone in business, period.  I say that because the evolution of Twitter and similar "sharing" services is happening much faster than many people realize and it is reflected in the numbers that Fred shares.  Anyone in business will be directly affected by that trend.

Please read Fred's post for yourself and keep in mind that his audience is a geek-ish, early adopter crowd, but over the five years I've been reading Fred's blog I've found them to be highly predictive of the world of communication and commerce that is about a year down the road. In other words they are behaving now the way the average consumer will be behaving in the next year or two.

Jon Just Planted His Field of Incredulousness on Farmville

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One of my pet peeves about Facebook was getting all those stupid apparently profitable notices about what my friends were doing on Farmville or Mafia Wars.  Thankfully someone showed me how to hide those things, but I'm guessing my lack of participation hasn't hurt the games' parent company, which according to this article may be valued at $1 billion.  You read that right, billion with a "b."  From the article:

That could make San Francisco-based Zynga the third-largest U.S. video-game publisher by market capitalization, bigger than Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., the maker of crime-game franchise “Grand Theft Auto.” New York-based Take-Two had 2008 sales of $1.54 billion and has a market value of $909 million.

Zynga will have revenue of $210 million this year and $355 million next year, according to Justin Smith, founder of the industry-tracking Web site Inside Social Games. The figures are based on estimates of Zynga’s revenue per player across all its games and its number of daily active users, Smith said.

H/T to Ed Cone for the link.

Facebook Fail

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Hmmm.  I tried to log into Facebook this morning and got a nice note saying that, "Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience."  I checked with a couple of other people and they aren't having any problems logging in.  Since we're literally logging in from the same network it doesn't appear to be a location based or across-the-board FB issue, so my knee jerk reaction is to wonder if I've joined the small army of people who have had their Facebook accounts fried for no apparent reason.  If so I guess there are worse things in life, but after investing all that time into building my network of new, old, and recently re-acquainted friends it would truly stink to have to rebuild it all.

On another note, if this happened to my daughter it would be the worst thing in life if you asked her.

*Update:  False alarm. Now fully able to waste half a day.

On Facebook

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I'm finding the Facebook thing more and more interesting.  Not Facebook itself, but the Facebook thing. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that it's the first tech related thing that my kids use regularly and have kept using even after "old people" started using it in droves.  Of course the fact that old people use it in droves also makes it interesting.

Personally I love Facebook because it's allowed me to reconnect with all kinds of people that I actually want to reconnect with and haven't seen in real life in decades.  Literally.  Of course there have been a few who have contacted me who I wish would have stayed un-reconnected but that's a very small minority.  My wife, who is much more cautious than I am, has resisted the Facebook light because she fears it will be a giant time suck.  She's right of course, but in my mind that's no reason to stay away.  Productivity is way over rated.

And of course the reason people leave Facebook is equally fascinating to me as the reasons that people use it.  Being stalked by a wacko from the gym?  By all means kill your Facebook account.  Actually, I think Fec has come up with the single best reason I've seen for killing a Facebook account:

I killed my Facebook account when I found all my old girlfriends had become lesbians, not that there’s anything wrong with that