Came across these on the Twitternet the other day and loved both.
The first is by Intelligence in Social Media and it’s a must watch:
The second is from the always-great AdFreak and, inspired by the recent horrible redo of The Gap’s logo, it’s a look at 30 other graphic failures.
A little insignia that indicates you actually know a person as opposed to just being part of your “network.” Any time I need an intro at LinkedIn I always email the person who I’m connected to and check whether or not they actually are. Allow me to quote one friend’s response:
Good news: Sent an intro.
Bad news: I don’t know who the f- he is.
That is the point at which the utility of LinkedIn et al. starts to break
Damn you, BOROWITZ!!!
As if that wasn’t enough to piss me off, he’s also written:
Oh, hell … stop reading me and go read him. I surrender. This blog will now be devoted to knitting and those few other topics I know even less about than politics, marketing & humor.
Gooruze is a site that wants to be the Facebook/LinkedIn for online marketers. (Gawd, is there anything more tired than the description “is the the MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn for…”?) So it has come up with the requisite weird site name sent out invites to the online marketing types and given us a space where we can post our profiles and our work.
It seems fine, if a bit generic and I have joined. That’s just a professional obligation — I have signed up for a bazillion of these sites but I actually have found little reason to participate in most of them. (BTW, I have to include a piece of code for it to track my blog on the site, so here’s the code: ConvonHoffman.gooruze.com. Hope they’re happy.)
However, it begs the question: Why should I use it? It’s just started up so I’ll give it some time to get up and running but so far I don’t see any real value being added by the people running the site. Right now there’s a news feed from stories suggested by members — but it’s not as comprehensive a feed as I would find at Mashable or TechCrunch or a number of other sites. There’s a lot of posts from members that unfortunately read like basic marketing communications — informative but basic and lacking any attitude or style or anything else that might make me want to read further.
So why go there? Can they build a community simply by saying they are the place for this community to be? Because right now that’s all I’m seeing. As with many social/professional networking sites it feels like they expect me to do all the work and that’s not going to cut it anymore. The site’s name is an ugly play on the word gurus, but as of yet it feels like I’m supposed to provide the swami myself.
Like I said, it’s an interesting test case. We’ll see.
Last week it was everything from Bugs Bunny to death. This week’s discovery in the world of niche social networking sites features:
TravBuddy — TravBuddy is one of a number of different networking sites for travelers, but to me it stands out because of its slogan. Now I’ll admit to having a few gray hairs (in full honesty at this point I only have a few non-gray hairs) so maybe this is a cultural reference that others don’t get. That said, “fellow travelers” used to be a euphemism for communists. So maybe they should have more red in their logo?
This time it’s in the UK & the BBC are doing the PR work for the company with a vested interest who has produced the study:
The only person quoted in the story? Someone from the law firm. Here’s the key quote that’s being picked up by other outlets too lazy to actually do any reporting on the story:
“Why should employers allow their workers to waste two hours a day on Facebook when they are being paid to do a job?” said Mike Huss of Peninsula. “The figures that we have calculated are minimums and it’s a problem that I foresee will escalate.”
If we could link this to Iraq, Global Warming & Brittany it would be the perfect media storm.
USAToday sources the story by saying “the BBC reports.” That’s a stretch of the word reporting. Google comes up with 22 outlets that have either picked up or re-written the story.
I’m still waiting for a reporter to
Is that really too much to ask? Apparently, yes.
My other favorite not-as-yet-questioned-by-press study about time wasting, computers & work:
Among white-collar workers surveyed, nearly a quarter (24 percent) said they play casual videogames “at work.” 35 percent of CEOs, CFOs and other senior executives also said they play at work, according to a PopCap Games survey targeting white-collar workers, reports MarketingCharts.
Well, if the CEO is doing it then it’s got to be OK.
Also, if workers are “wasting” so much time on these sites, how come we keep getting these increases in productivity?
See also:
I believe that general social networking sites (SNS) like LinkedIn, FaceBook and MySpace have run into a bit of a wall. While they are great a connecting people in general, they don’t do as good a job of connecting people in specific — that is people with a shared interest who don’t actually want to connect with those who don’t share that interest.
Now I’m not exactly unique in having this insight. As a matter of fact A LOT of people think there’s money to be made here. Herewith a list of some of the odder social networks I have come across:
Updates as I find them.
Social networking seems to have found religion or visa versa.
A site called CircleBuilder.com wants to be a MySpace and FaceBook “where people of all faiths can come together to nurture their personal relationships and put their faith into practice.”
The idea of an on-line social networking service for religion seems odd to me. Churches, mosques, synagogues are one of, if not THE orginal social network. That person-to-person community and connection is such an essential part of what these places are that having an on-line simulacrum seems … I don’t know exactly … but at least jarring.
It is a deeply non-denominational site – which in a way I also find jarring.
Nothing wrong with any of this, it’s just that I’m a uncomfortable with the euphemisms they use: people of faith & faith-based organization. While it is inclusive it is also so inclusive as to be meaningless: Cubs fans are a people of faith and support a faith-based organization, after all. Isn’t our current administration’s foreign policy faith-based, in the worst possible meaning of the phrase. (And isn’t the CircleBuilder logo just a wee bit Christian looking? Maybe what makes me uncomfortable about these euphemisms is that so far I have only heard them from Christians so they’re like code words to use in situations where that pesky separation of church-and-state issue might come up.)
I come from Rhode Island, a state founded by Roger Williams because he thought people should have the freedom to worship or not worship in whatever way they please without government interference. I have always been very proud of the fact that my little home state was started for this reason. (And it doesn’t hurt that Williams actually purchased the land for his first settlement from the Native Americans who were living in the area!) So I am a big believer in the ecumenical.
That said, I think a person belongs to a church or a synagogue or a mosque or wood grove or temple to Apollo or whatever and not to just some generic “faith.” Heck, my religious beliefs are so idiosyncratic that once you get past prayer and the belief in a deity I’m generally at variance with some tenet or another of pretty much every organized system of worship. But just the same, I’d rather be called someone who believes in God than a “person of faith.”
Wonder what the folks over at my favorite church marketing blog think about all this?
UPDATE: Just found a VentureBeat article from earlier this week on the general theme of churches and social networking … click here … the author doesn’t mention CircleBuilder, but I don’t have a lot of those things he has … what are they called? … oh yeah, facts.
From an organizational standpoint, Alcoholics Anonymous has many admirable qualities. First, it doesn’t accept money from anyone but members of AA. Second it has a long and cherished tradition of anonymity.
These two policies may have something to do with the fact that AA has survived so much longer than other groups which have tried to help alcoholics.
Sadly neither policy is in evidence at the Recovery Media Network’s new social networking site, 12StepSpace.com. There you are free to post a picture & profile of yourself and tell the world of your struggle to recover from alcoholism/gambling/overwork/internet addiction/stuffed animals/men& women who love too much, et al. Once you have added your profile sleep soundly in the knowledge that your effort is putting money in the pockets of the site’s owners & sponsors. The featured sponsor? A drug company hawking its drugs to help you overcome your dependence on drugs. That’s some catch that Catch-22. While it is disgusting, it isn’t novel: Another drug company already started a MySpace page under the guise of helping others.
Mashable pretty much nails everything that’s wrong with this attempt.
While 12stepSpace celebrates things like a user’s Recovery Birthday, and offers a buddy to chat with if you need someone to talk to on an immediate basis, there’s no distinct emphasis on recovery or the 12 step process. Having a dedicated section for online and offline resources, as well as inspirational stories or a physician or clinic finder (that’s not an advertiser) would make the community feel more like a place for sharing stories and finding help, and less like a MySpace clone.
Yeah, but that suggests there’s anything besides cynicism at work here.
(UPDATE: My apologies for attributing cynical motives to the organizers of 12StepSpace. It’s the drug company that’s cynical. Judging by their complaints I’d say the site’s organizers are just amazingly naive.)
I’m not sure if my problem with MySpace is generational or what. I just find it has waaaaay too many ads for me. But I am so totally not it’s key demographic that what I think really doesn’t matter. Still the news that they’re looking at ads on profile pages is very odd.
That said — as the article points out — given that the ads are for things the person themselves is marketing (via ebay or elsewhere) then it actually might sit well with their members.
BTW, here’s my profile. I promise soon to post all the bazillion or so different sites I now have a profile on. It’s a hazard of my new job.
I love it when a really stupid idea starts to gain traction in the opinion-sphere. The current one is that workers who spend time on Facebook are costing the economy X billions per year.
I first encountered it at a blog called TechBlorge which starts off with uses a very suspect (because it is soooo self-serving) fact from a company and then follows that up with anecdotal evidence:
Social networking site Facebook could cost Australian businesses up to AUS$5 billion (US$4 billion) in lost productivity, according to Internet filtering company, SurfControl. “Our analysis shows that Facebook is the new, and costly, time-waster,” said SurfControl’s Dr Richard Cullen. “There are Facebook groups dedicated to slacking off at work, some of them are specific to employees of a single company.”
This is then followed up with a comment about the number of people in Aussie corporations who the author sees on Facebook. To the author’s credit he then points out a discrepancy in the company’s numbers (“The only problem with this calculation is that currently Facebook has just 224,000 Australian members, not 800,000 members.”). I would have lead with the fact that the company’s numbers make no sense — but that wouldn’t have been nearly as sensational.
Now TechBlorge is a blog and not, as we all know, held up to the standards of accuracy that I’d like to think pervades actual journalism. But wait! What’s this? Good lord, now there are 57 stories on this — each dumber than the last says I without reading barely a one of them. Kudos to SurfControl’s PR people for getting people to swallow this one hook, line, sinker, fishing pole and all.
Let’s ask ourselves two questions:
I would love to say that this shows why we need real journalists and shouldn’t just rely on bloggers. Actually that’s true — it’s just that we need real publications to be practicing real journalism and not this crap. The Reuter’s story doesn’t even quote anyone besides SurfControl! Guys next time save yourself some “work” and just run the press release.
Facebook is indeed involved with a time waster, but it’s the press that created it.
(Hooray for TechDirt which got the story right.)
In case you wonder what I’ve been up to at my new job …
The Dangers Of Being Too Social
by Lisa LaMotta @ Forbes.com
… These sites can also be a huge waste of time. According to comScore, people spend an average of 186 minutes on Facebook per session. (To be fair, a lot of those visitors are letting the program run in the background while they perform other tasks–but three hours is still a long time.) Some companies are flat out banning use of these sites at work. And earlier this year, Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Ill., introduced a bill to prohibit public libraries and schools from allowing access to social networking sites on any computers available to the public and students. …
Derek Sorensen, 47, is happy to tell (or alarm) you. Prompted by a friend who lamented how much time she wasted on social networks, Sorensen, owner of a Web site repair company 50 miles outside of London, came up with Notworking, an application you can download to your desktop that will tally all of those wasted hours and dollars.
“I think it’s a fun little tool,” says Constantine von Hoffman, social media manager for Spoke Software, a business social networking site, and clearly a fan of irony. “It is a brilliant piece of commentary on how the huge number of network sites are becoming a problem.”
PS: That’s not a good thumbnail description of Spoke, but that’s my fault not the reporter’s.
The URL for Notworking is http://dereksorensen.com/?p=28 and it's great.
Collateral Damage 