My own piece of the Internet
 
Tag: <span>Social media</span>

Tag: Social media

The secret lives of customers

Last night I heard a story. The zoologists at the Melbourne Zoo thought they knew their animals pretty well, but wanted to check out what they were doing at night, so they started videoing what went on. What they discovered surprised and amazed them. There was a kind of clash of civilizations between the native fauna – brushtail possums  – and the imported Zoo tenants. When a possum trotted across the elephants quarters, the elephants would stamp on the unsuspecting possum crushing them into a mess of blood and gore. Unsurprisingly Possums don’t know much about elephants and elephants must get …

The roads of the 21st century are different for me and Tony Abbott

During the 2013 election campaign Tony Abbott repeatedly promised to build the roads of the 21st century. Sadly, this wasn’t a nifty metaphoric flourish reflecting a program of investment in Internet infrastructure and education to drive economic growth. When Abbott said roads, he meant roads; coal miners need roads, ports, and cheap labour, not the Internet. You could be forgiven for thinking Abbott was actually saying he would rebuild the roads of 20th century, rather than the digital roads of the 21st century.

Trust and transparency in the social age

One of my first jobs was working for a Dutchman who refused to put prices on any of his products. He would work out the price when someone entered the warehouse or sent him a fax. His principle was that people should pay according to their need – the greater the need, the greater the price. One of his senior managers called it the “rip off factor”. Unfortunately, customers did not warm to a business built on subterfuge and Michel had to learn to adjust his ways. In the social media era, trust and transparency are becoming more and more …

The conversation prism

Brian Solis of the Altimeter Group has released an updated version of The Conversation Prism which shows both how social media is very fragmented, and also points out the inherent weakness of the term social media. This is business today not something that is exclusively social or media focused. Most of the brands featured are less about “media” and more about commerce or business. Using tools that help people connect, share, and learn is the new normal What’s shown in the brightly coloured prism are 26 different categories from business to quantified self. Some of the brands featured – Facebook, …

Does social technology liberate or enslave?

So does social technology liberate us or enslave us? I was sitting at my local weekend cafe having a long macchiato (I know, I know) and the kids were having some babycinos when I spied a young bloke with four women sitting at a communal table across from me. There was an obvious attraction between them, there was hair touching, flicking, and preening. There was much touching and mutual adoration with the eyes. And they all had good hair. I watched with the indifference of a parent with two toddlers, tired and incapable of adult conversation let alone the idea …

The social era

Collaborating with people through shared purpose creates advantage because it allows everyone to work towards a shared goal. When people know the purpose of an organization, they don’t need to check in or get permission to take the next step, they can just do it. When people know the purpose, they are not waiting to be told what to do. With shared purpose, alignment happens without coordination costs. Shared purpose makes customers and team-members more than transactions and payroll recipients. It allows us to “tear down that wall” between who is “in” or “outside” the firm creating a more permeable …

The buzz of social media

Google just released Google Buzz which has demands that we “go beyond status messages”. To me this appears to echo the feeling many people had, including me, when confronted with micro-blogging sites like Twitter – so what. It represents a profound misunderstanding of what a status message actually is. Status messages are really: part of a conversation the start of a conversation a cry for help a complaint a grandiose aphorism about what’s wrong with the world a proclamation of love and of course a comedy. Whilst twitter and Facebook might appear to a Google engineer to be merely a …

Wow, I can get a personalised internet address now

Sometimes something seems really really good but it’s actually really really bad; stupid in fact. So stupid that when you realise that it is so, you feel like bashing your head against a wall and cursing the gods while shaking your fist at the sky. Or something like that. A “personalised internet address”. Wow. Are you excited. And guess what, you can get one from Facebook. Wow again. So what does this “personalised internet address” look like? Well, it looks like a facebook URL as in facebook.com/yourusername. Mine looks like facebook.com/jonstribling and I am proud as punch. Hang on I …