Evolving Web

The Ten Tab Rule – Don’t Overindulge in Social Media

In my post Better Communication is not More Communication, I mentioned that I have 10 tabs in my browser’s tab set.  Several people in the comments and on Twitter asked me what they were.

My tabs fall into functional groups.  Infrastructure, Communications, and Experiments.

Infrastructure are ones that I need for basic operations:

1. GMail

2. Google Calendar

Communciations are the goto applications for me for social networking:

3. Facebook

4. Google Reader

5. Twitter (I still have this come up in a tab, even though I’m using TweetDeck – just to stay honest)

6. Yelp

Experiments are things I’m trying out and kicking the tires on.  These come and go.  They are currently:

7. Whrrl

8. Britekite

9. Quub

10. Twine

Ten tabs and no more ever in my “JimKit”.

There is another tab set called “Utility Belt” that has almost everything else in it that I can draw from when I need to.  They are utilities and I can view them one at a time and shut them off when done.  When I recently added Quub to the experiment list, Identi.ca went into the utility belt.

The utility belt is not a graveyard, it has many things I use rather often including:

• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• delicious
• socialtext
• Google Docs
• etc.

They are honest-to-god utilities that I could not live without.  But, just like I don’t call up every application on my hard drive when I start the computer, I don’t want to bring up every site I have a password to.

Best to stick with 10 and be able to have some coherence to your personal social media world.

Technorati Tags: social media,information overload,cyberspace,flickr,twitter,whrrl,britekite,yelp,quub,twine,linkedin,delicious.com,socialtext

Better Communication is not More Communication

A few weeks ago, my business partner Corey and I were having a conversation about process maturity.  I said, “Better is not More.”  That’s become a mantra for us and it’s showing up everywhere.

Today Mark Evans has a post about this in communication.

He says:

My read is consumers of digital services and content are being swamped, and madly scrambling to keep up. As a result, I think there’s going to be a growing demand for tools that filter and synthesize things to reduce the amount of noise.

Social media has put is in the middle of a cocktail party.  Lots of conversations to track, lots of interesting people.

However, tabbed browsers and multiple applications now mean that we are attending several cocktail parties at the same time.  Or at least we can if we choose to.

I set a cap at 10.  And ten is still pretty insane.  So my standard tab set comes up with 10 social media apps every morning. 

I’ve made a point to make Google Reader one of these and that’s non-negotiable.  Why?  Because immediate communication is enticing.  So Twitter and the like are like crack.  I force myself to go for the slower world of blogs.

I’ve killed off FriendFeed, Plaxo and others like them – apps that go mental on trying to bring you 40 services at once.  With 100s of people in that world, information goes by faster than anyone can process.

So, go for quality and and not quantity.  Join the conversations you can actually participate in.  Slow down and think.

Technorati Tags: mark evans,social media,corey ladas,better is not more

The 64 Top Social Media Principles

I had been using a short list of social media principles with my clients.  When I started writing my book I wanted to codify them.  So research was in order.  Imagine my surprise when I found page after page after page of social media principles.

The initial research turned up sixty four of the little buggers.  I’ll post my own personal list of social media principles that should make all these a little more concise and coherent.

It is interesting that there are lists of social media principles specifically for marketers, public relations, corporations, musicians, and more.  Apparently, the framework of social media is so flexible that we can come up with dozens of basic ways to interact with it.

These are presented in no order of importance, they’re just how they rolled out of my research tools.

Social media principles | Hill & Knowlton

Social Media principles for a communications consultant - guidelines for behavior to let both clients and the public know the boundaries of how they will use social media

• We will not engage with social or consumer-generated media on behalf of a client without their knowledge, or if it contravenes a client's own policies.    
• We will always disclose who we are and who we are working for (both our agency and our client).    
• We will never pretend to be someone or something we are not.    
• We will take time to understand the rules, beliefs and desires that exist within the online communities we use to communicate.    
• We will respect any privacy and contact preferences of each individual.
• We will refuse to undertake work that requires us to compromise these principles.

4 Principles Of Persuasive Social Media Marketing | Insight Buzz

Principles based on the work of Dr. Robert Cialdini on influence.

Social Proof

Authority

Reciprocation

Liking

Corporate Social Media Principles | Blog World Expo Blog

These principles look very usurious when first read.  I’d suggest interpreting them in a value-neutral way.

Architect a proper presence

Gain credibility based on your targets world view

co-create dialogue where your company reaps the benefit of exchange

Four Principles to Follow in Social Media: Build the Love - ClickZ

Building the love by following simple principles of genuine communication

Listen to your market

Open Your Organization

Value all forms of communication

Expand beyond on-line

Znetlady: Modern Media: Social Media Relations: Five Best Principles

This is actually only her first of five, she hasn’t gotten around to the rest, but this is a good read – especially the part defining what principles actually are.

The principle she details here is: Go For Insight

Social Media - first principles for musicians

Solobasssteve  outlines social media principles for musicians.

Time cost outweigh monetary cost

Don't broadcast

"Get it" before you get into it

You're selling your brand, not your product

Principles for public sector social media | NPSC Blog

Social media principles specifically aimed at application in the public sector

Sovereignty

Access

Transparency

Trust

Fairness

Openness

Ethics

Participation

Integrity

Social Object - SlideShare

Alex de Varvalho’s slide deck on social media principles

Keep it social stupid

define the objects of sociality

objects invite play

to play, to stroke

multiply the actions

mind the bacn

set the "dun" bar higher

reputation display

building social capital

Social Media Principles - SlideShare

Chris Heuer’s slidedeck on social media principles

Be Human

Be Aware

Be Honest

Be Respectful

Be a Participant

Be Open

Be Courageous

PR Squared: Top 5 Principles of the Social Media News Release

Bringing the concept of the press release into the 21st century.

Democratize Access

Embrace Context

Build Community

Be Findable

Ensure Accuracy

Now Is Gone » The Seven Principles of Community Building

Let’s go nation building!

Do not try to control the message

Honesty, Ethics and Transparency are Musts

Participation within the community is marketing

Communication to audiences is outmoded

Build value for the community

Inspire your community with real, exciting information, not propaganda

Manage media forms to build community

• RSS
• Frequency of message
• etc

Principles of Engaging People Online

How to win Facebook friends and influence Twitter People.

Understand who you want to engage

Explore what's in it for me

Create a space people feel comfortable in

Be open and honest

Reward Participation

UPDATE:  I have written my own 10 Principles of Social Media which I believe boil these 64 into universally applicable guides.

Technorati Tags: futurelab,nowisgone,pr-squared,steve lawson,solobasssteve,znetlady,clickz,hill and knowlton,chris heuer,alex de carvalho,insightbuzz,social media,social media principles,social media philosophy,public relations,community building,community management,social capital,psychology,public sector

The Cloud is The Community is The Individual is Life

Yesterday was Halloween. Halloween, frankly, bums me out. 

It bums me out because I almost had three daughters, but none of them made it to term.  And at Halloween, we see an awful lot of really really adorable little girls. 

So I was bummed and at home working on my book.  Some nice people on Plurk started a very silly conversation with me that ended up taking all night.  It was silly, but also personal.  And by the end we were friends.

This morning, I was musing about this while planning my day.  And, on Twitter, I sent out this message:

You see, our interaction on Plurk was not confined to Plurk. As we talked, we exchanged artifacts through Flickr, blogs, Facebook and other tools.

The presence of our artifacts, made short work of explaining complex things.  We very quickly understood each other as real, authentic people.  They understood my pain and helped with it, and I helped them.  I went to bed happy.

So, while I was Twittering the above tweet, my friend Giyen in Seattle was home putting the finishing touches on a wonderful blog post about living openly and authentically.  It’s a very personal post.  I find it very moving.

She says at the end:

So I’m here.  At this quiet juncture in life where I have decided to choose ‘life’ over everything else. What good is social and economic stability when you feel all dead inside?  I want life to be extraordinary.  It doesn’t have to be easy, but it does have to be good.

We all have life’s battles and our internal struggles. But in the end, we learn from each other, we live for each other.  That makes life extraordinary.  It isn’t easy.  But, with each other and a bit of imagination, it will be good.

Technorati Tags: giyen kim,bacon is my enemy,social media,authenticity,interaction,live dammit live

Sighcrosoft – Why Can’t I Just Love Live Writer Without Confusion?

Sigh.

Okay, I am writing this using Microsoft Live Writer.  I love Microsoft Live Writer.  It is the best blogging tool around. Totally.

And I hate to Microsoft bash because it’s … boring.

But for the love of god look at this:

It’s hard to see here, so I’ll cut it up.

Basically, it’s the top of the Windows Live writer Blog. 

On it is THREE download opportunities for THREE different Versions.

and

We have downloads for two different betas and a 1.0 release all within the top tier of the page.  And, to add to the mixed-messages, when you go to Channel 10 to download version 1.0 and then run the install, you get an uninformative error message:

Last blog post for them, September 17th.  Six weeks ago.

Sigh.  If their team that’s built an excellent blogging platform can run a blog …

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Live Writer,Windows Live Writer,Blogging,social media

We Discuss What’s Important to Us

What is important to us?  Love, Family, Happiness, Food, Sex, Entertainment.  The order of importance may change from moment to moment, but these things make us human.  They make life worth living.  This is important.  We discuss our successes and failures with them, our elation and our pain.

Today Allen Stern let me know that Comscore released a study from August 2008, showing that 41% of people using the net in the UK actively read blogs.

Number three of popularity were food blogs, with 637,000 unique visitors.  (That’s unique visitors and not total page views). Now, mind you that the top 10 blog categories also include Community – Teens and Community – Women where food is likely also discussed. (As well as all those other things in my list).

Also note, this is just blogs. Review sites, Facebook, Twitter and other online discussion sites / tools aren’t included. This 41%, these 637,000 unique Britons, are the tip of the iceberg.  People are discussing and reading each other’s passions on the net every minute of every day.

What have you done to make people passionate about your business?

Technorati Tags: comscore, center networkds, Allen Stern, blogs, blogging, social media, restaurants, food, love

An event or object of awesome social value.

Social Media is social.

Games, contests and fun are also social.  In the social media world, they are commonplace.  They serve as a means of harmless communication, ways to network, and ways to collect valuable information.

So part of your social capital is how you respond to games, contests and fun.  For example, This week Web Ink Now has an interesting little contest.

They want to know what people’s definition of cool is. 

In order to enter the contest, you need to define “cool” in your blog or web site and link back to The Cool Factor context post.

And give your personal definition.

Mine is:  Cool: An event or object of awesome social value.

What does this do?  Well, several things.

1. Gets people talking about David Scott’s blog
2. Gives a fun little creative puzzle to solve
3. Gets a bunch of Google juice by making people link back to the blog and the page.
4. Raises awareness for the book “The Cool Factor”
5. Sends information out through the social media sphere.

So number 5 is important. I learned about this through a tweet on twitter.

Look at the buzz!  There is no shortage of people posting about it.

Good job on the viral marketing, David.  It is certainly an event or object or event of awesome social value (cool).

Technorati Tags: The Cool Factor,Web Ink Now,David Scott,Social Media,Viral marketing

Naked Conversation Killers

I welcome the era of "conversation is marketing".  I look forward to chat-italism.  But, much like at a party where someone unskilled at conversation is trying to be witty and charming, the new landscape is littered with people inventing new faux pas right and left.

I'm going to list a few here, if you have others, please continue the meme or comment.

Blocked, 800, or Bizarre Numbers

On NPR the other day, a report cited some 20% of American households no longer have a land-line.  This means everyone has caller ID and everyone uses it.  Many people I know will not answer calls they do not recognize.

In this era of aggressive screening, hiding your identity is a quick route to losing customers.  Case-in-point, I was waiting for a call from a Microsoft Business Partner liaison yesterday.  She was to call at 10 am.  She did, promptly.  I almost didn't answer because her caller ID was "23032".  Not even a phone number.

I have not taken calls from my credit card fraud department (an annoying bunch of people if there ever was one - how many false positives do you need to prove that I travel frequently?) because they show up at 888 numbers which are 99% of the time telemarketers.

Since telemarketers don't want you to know who they are, they frequently hide behind blocked, 800, bizarre or otherwise unrecognized numbers.  When your company does this it is a conversation killer.

Legitimate Mail That Looks Like Spam

iKitchen has the worst marketing I have ever seen, so they are an example of the extreme.  They have great deals on kitchenware and I have bought a lot of stuff from them.  I've also sent them several emails telling them to stop having their emails titled things like "DO NOT READ THIS" or "THIS IS NOT A JOKE".

They represent a growing group of legitimate, honest, and good companies that have an incredibly bad sense of what starts a conversation.  I understand that they're trying to catch people's attention.  However, we often filter our rapid-delete key pressing engine on a simple hierarchy.

1. Does it hint of spam?

2. Is it an advertisement?

3. Do I know this person?

Since iKitchen's emails fail test one 100%, it only has to smack on #2 to be deleted before opening.  And it is an ad, so it totally smacks of #2.

Social Media Abuse

Let's just take Twitter abuse.  Lately there's been a massive growing trend of "people" following me on Twitter who are not people, but a spam message in a single tweet.   This someone usually has a few dozen followers and follows thousands.

The second type of Twitter abuse is using Twitter as a broadcast mechanism.  Where you put updates about your company in Twitter and that's all you do.  Is this heinously bad?  No.  People can choose whether to follow you or not.   But it is not conversation.  It's broadcast using a conversational tool.

 

How Can You Get Better

Part of being naked is being honest, but also interactive.  Naked conversations have two elements: Naked and Conversations.  Transparency and interactivity.  Your client base needs to recognize your communication as:

• valid
• honest
• respectful
• a conversation

Don't hide behind weird phone numbers.  Don't do the used car-salesman shock approach of iKitchen.  And don't use social media as a broadcast tool.

Do create an open invitation to have a meaningful dialog with your customers about what's important to them and important to your company.  These people want to buy your stuff.  They want to give you money.  Take some time out to really interact with them.

Technorati Tags: ikitchen, twitter, socialmedia, social media, marketing, blogging

A Chicken's Value Rests Not In Its Flight

FLY, YOU STUPID CHICKEN!!!

On Thursday of this week I spent the day at the NLab Social Networking Conference in Leicester, speaking, listening, learning, and networking.  I'll probably shoot through a few posts from it today.

The conference brought forth a wonderful mix of small business owners, representatives from large business and government, as well as practitioners of various social black arts.

A repeated theme (largely my fault) was the monetization of social networking.  People repeatedly asked "How can we make money from this? You know, not wishy-washy stuff, but real pound notes?"

What was interesting was that the question was entirely based in hard currency and was actually addressing how people could make money from social networks (the infrastructure) and not social networking (the activity). 

My main presentation was on the value of social networking.  That value is based on real needs of small business which extend well beyond the simple acquisition of dollars, sterling or gold.

The value of social networking comes from a net decrease in transaction costs and an increase in opportunities as a direct result of greater exposure to other human beings.

If social networking were merely an object of direct remuneration, it would be a business in and of itself - someone would be in that business, and it likely wouldn't be most people.

But most people do need social networking to build robust businesses in today's economy.  No, it's not necessarily to sell your goods in a village 2,000 miles away.  It's rather to find a group of people who can answer questions like, "I need to trademark a concept, where do I go?  What's the least cost way to do this that won't put my in jeopardy?" 

As a small business owner, I can tell you that good and timely advice is in very short supply.  Social networking has radically changed how I acquire it and the speed at which I receive it.

The value of this cannot be understated.  Opportunity costs and transaction costs are radically reduced - leaving both cash and time as a gain.

It is as if people were saying, Birds fly.  The value of birds are in their flight.  My chickens are worthless because they won't fly.  How can I make my chickens fly?

The value of chickens is not vested in flight, but rather their eggs and meat.  The value of social networks lies not in getting people to pay to join, but in the value you extract from the relationships.

Technorati Tags: nlabnetworks, nlab, demontfort university, leicester, social networking, social media, chickens, jim benson

LiveJournal and Dead Salmon

When you go up into the forests in the fall, you see dead salmon.  They look sort of like this.  To the untrained eye, these dead salmon are a problem. 

Maybe you think they should have been caught in Alaska and made a nice meal of.  Maybe you think they should still be swimming happily. 

What they actually happened is, in the wonderful cycle of life, they swam upstream, deposited a jillion eggs, and died.

Maybe not the way you want to go, but it works for the salmon.

This week LiveJournal, the most active web community no one ever talks about, announced that they were changing their rules of engagement.  Those rules were previously the foundation of an ecosystem where a very few paying people subsidized the actions of a lot of "free" people.

Because LiveJournal is a community, they had a self-organized board to represent the users of LiveJournal with management.  This board includes both Brad and Danah.  Influential voices who understand the way social media works and generally not people you'd care to alienate.

What LiveJournal has done is mess with the spawning grounds for new paid users.  From now on, free users will be subjected to advertisements - which they previously were not.  

Danah especially believes that this will create a less hospitable environment to new users.  She says:

Systems like LJ are an ecology and individual-driven monetization approaches fail miserably. People have different levels of participation, engagement, and tolerance. What they want from the system differs as does the way that they relate to others. It's a networked system and pissing off users affects more than just the user-company relationship - it affects the whole network. I totally understand that it's not possible to provide a service (and engineers and support and ...) for free, as much as we would all like that to be the case. But... I'm not convinced this is the right move to balance the financial scales.

We see a few things in Danah's response. 

(1) The community as a whole was not respected in the decision.

(2) Specific community members with a vested interest in the community were not respected in the decision.

(3) The decision made has philosophical impacts on the community.

It's important to note here that Brad, Danah and most of the people objecting to this decision were paying users.  Theoretically, they shouldn't care about changing new free accounts because they aren't directly impacted.  So their objections are not based in a personal financial hit.

The issues here lie solely in the LiveJournal community's self-concept.  The LJ community, judging by the comments to the announcement, as well as to Danah's post, strongly feel that free users feed the community with needed content. 

Where the LJ staff saw Dead Fish in the free users, the paying users saw healthy spawning salmon.  The paying users, in other words, were willingly subsidizing free users because of the benefit they received from the free user-generated content.

Wow.  Most social networks would kill for such an ecosystem.

There is a second slap in the face.  The disrespect of the community.

Regardless of intent on the part of Six Apart, the community felt slighted by the way this was rolled out.  The LiveJournal Advisory Board was not intimately involved in a change that they felt deeply impacted the community.  Due to their faith and support of the Board, many LiveJournal users feel slighted.

Respect is Key

Trust gets a lot of airtime in the world of social networking and social media.  We don't talk about respect quite enough.  This is a situation, sure, where SixApart violated the trust of their users - but it's the respect issue that we feel from the posts of Brad and Danah.

Their core concerns are: You didn't respect the free users and you're not respecting the Board.  The Board gave preliminary "thumbs down" for the change.  As Danah says:

Needless to say, Brad's pissed. I'm pissed. Not only because we both vehemently disagree with this change, but because they made such a change without consulting us. Or rather, we were both at a lunch a while back where they asked us what we thought and we both told them that this was the worst idea ever, although for different reasons. I had thought it had been tabled until I learned of this. After it had been posted.

Trust is the engine powering social media.  But respect is the fuel. (I know, I'm mixing metaphors again).

Thanks to Andrew B. for bringing this to my attention.

Technorati Tags: livejournal, six apart, community, community indicators, danah boyd, brad fitzpatrick, respect, trust