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Archive for Social Media
Wikipedia Best Practise by Telstra
On the back business page of The Australian today columnist Rebecca Urban leads with the headline:
“Telstra flack flits in to finesse Sol’s Wikipedia entry”
Seems the CEO of Australia’s national telecommunications company doesn’t have the most flattering profile page. What’s recounted next is an example of best practise when dealing with a bad Wikipedia entry.
Corporate communications pro Tarnya Dunning offers to provide information on the talk pages of Wikipedia, and says she will not directly edit any of the material on Telstra. Then if anyone else so chooses they can update the pages to reflect some of Dunning’s comments.
Direct editing of Wikipedia pages by public relations professionals is not suggested. In fact the changes - and the fact they were made by a PR person - usually makes headlines.
Wikipedia is a penultimate example of social media. Dunning shows she understands by offering to provide her point of view to the contributors, with the hope that some will use that to more accurately protray her company.
Well done Tarnya!
For Facebook to Evolve, It Must Die
Remember AOL?
Back in its heyday the company had a bigger valuation than old world media companies. That stratospheric valuation allowed it to acquire Time-Warner. Today the company is consigned to the history books as an important lesson in media evolution.
Same can be said for Facebook or MySpace or ClassMates.com. Why?
These sites provide great services - they allow us to connect with friends ole and new around the globe. We can reunite because of school ties or assemble for the first time due to shared hobbies and causes, be it cribbage or ending the war in Iraq.
Yet Facebook is building the barriers that will ultimately lead to its demise.
To enter you need an account. Your information remains within the “gated community” and cannot be accessed except by other members. It’s not searchable from outside. And even if you participate and build an entire network, you have to start over if you swap to another site. Look at the poor souls who started on MySpace and now find the “cool” crowd are all on FaceBook.
Last week The Economist penned an excellent editorial citing this very trend.
Today open platform communities allow many of the same functions without the onus restrictions. If Facebook doesn’t reinvent itself soon as an open community it will become irrelevant like AOL.
The idea of a gated community on the Internet is, like, so two weeks ago!
Microsoft Windows Vista - Problematic?
Who else is using Windows Vista? I bought a new flash laptop that should be running like an elite athlete. It came loaded ith Winows Vista and instead of lapping my old PC the new one lags behind like an asthmatic. There’s so much processing powr required the Windows circle logo pops up and spins around at nearly every turn.
How bad is Vista?
Where Angels Fear to Tread, You’ll Find Lawyers
Just like any neighbourhood, the social media ‘hood has some bad apples. Predators stalk the room pretending to be youthful teens when in fact they’re middle-age men (rarely women - usually men). It’s unusual to find a parent today who hasn’t installed an Internet monitoring system to guard their children against suspect sites.
Yet children aren’t the only ones being assaulted on social media sites. This week I lost a Facebook friend due to ongoing harassment. Antonio is in his late twenties and lives in Monaco. He found the ongoing litany of insulting messages too much to handle. On the weekend he sent a farewell message and disabled his account. He’d said our conversations (to help me practice my French) were the only sane ones he’d had on Facebook.
Recent media reports suggest up to 50% of all social media users post too many personal details on-line, making them susceptible to identity theft. Yet the growth of indecent messaging makes a walk through Facebook feel like a jaunt through 1980s Times Square. Before Disney cleaned up that neighbourhood it was all Beast and no Beauty.
The prevalence of n’aer-do-wells will be the biggest inhibitor of social media’s rise. And where bad things happen lawyers usually follow. It will be interesting to see how courts one day determine the liability of Facebook and MySpace should a virtual assault turn physical.
Questions in the Wild, Wild West
Curtin University has an active communications department. Katharina Wolf is a lecturer in the marketing department and is conducting a survey on the state of the public relations industry. The focus is on social media, education needs for the industry and - that perennial favourite of all - salary comparisons.
Take the survey TODAY by clicking here.
Katharina and her students should benefit from as many opinions as possible. And I’ll make sure we share highlights of the study when it is completed.
As they say in Louisiana politics - “Vote early and vote often!”
People I’ll Never Met
It’s odd making virtual friends. Usually you have a chance to see someone, speak in-person and size them up before entering into a friendship. Yet on-line you’re suddenly abandoning that dynamic and speaking with people you’ve never met - and are unlikely to meet in-person.
On Tuesday I flew from Adelaide to Melbourne and met with Anna Whitlam at Market U. Anna’s a class act who is also a high-end executive recruiter. It was disorienting to have her so familiar with my thinking and background - all gained by reading this blog.
On Facebook I’ve had in-depth conversations with people in South Africa, London, Dubai, Budapest and LA. I’m unlikely to meet them - ever.
But there’s a psychological closeness we gain from strangers in different lands. We can share intimacies knowing they’re unlikely to come back to us. We can try on different skins, act out fantasies or talk of details so close and painful we’d never entrust them to people in proximity for fear it may boomerang.
It’s a new social order when we retreat to a room alone in order to get close to people we’ll never meet - and leave alone those in our own household.
The Growing Informality of Language
We’re all trying to be young. What else explains the obsession with casual clothing, fitness and cosmetic surgery. As Baby Boomers enter retirement and Gen Y dominate the workforce, most are seeking what Juan Ponce de Leon sought in Florida in 1513 - the Fountain of Youth.
Add to this love of youth (or denial of aging) the growing influence of social media and we’re witness to a growing informality of language.
I like the latest ad from Seek.com.au -
“Why do we need to know what’s in there, what’s up there or what’s out there?”
On a pair of Puma gym shorts I bought yesterday there are four symbols with short instructions below each:
Heart: Love Your NeighbourLeaf: Eat More GreensCar Driving into Water: Cheer Up It May Never HappenWater Drop: Wash This When Dirty
Social media allows us to get to know each-other better - in French we'd abandoning parlez-vous for "tutoyer". There are less barriers and that's starting to be reflected in casual banter.
We're younger. We're more connected. We're more social. So let's abandon the formalities, okay buddy?
Money for Nothing (and your chicks for $1.00)
I’m thick, I admit. It takes me longer sometimes to come to terms with new concepts. Social media gift giving is on area I have yet to fully come to terms with. It is money for nothing. Or is it?
For the rest of the class: Social media sites (MySpace, Facebook) allow users to connect and inter-connect with friends (and strangers) in a number of ways. One application allows you to give a gift to a friend. There’s a gallery of images and - get this - you pay $1.00 to send it to another person. What does the receiver get? An image and your message.
When you care enough to send the very best…
Seems like a killer application to me. If I could get all my loyal readers to spend $1.00 to click through and send me a four leaf clover or a piece of sushi or a traffic cone or a baby chick then in time those would add up.
And hence the incredible promise of social media. People pay to send a picture to a friend. They are that attached to the network and its reality.
Send me a dollar. I’ll email you a picture - what do you want? The slice of pizza? The inflatable shark?
PS: Have any of the global brands realised not one of those gifts is branded???
Gossamer Threads for School Children
Social media is uniting the world in ways the web was developed for - but never imagined at the time. Friendships aren’t neighbourhood or school dependent. I’ve got mates in Kuwait, Taiwan, Sweden, America. And these are folks I’ll never meet in person.
We’re in election mode in Australia with a week to go until elections. Yesterday Labor candidate Kevin Rudd announced an education policy providing free PCs to school children across the country. This generation will tighten the gossamer threads of the web around the globe and further the irrelevance of national boundaries, replacing them with like pools of people linked by hobbies, interests, sport teams and friendships.
At the end of “Charlotte’s Web” the spider babies hatch and float free on gossamer threads that catch the breeze. The species’ continuation is ensured as children spread further and further from home. New links are made. Old links are broken.
Terrific!
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