Category: Social Media

  • A social culture?

    Even as I write this, Titan is looming on the horizon – not Saturn’s moon, but Facebook’s purported mail service, which can (potentially) stake claim on another front that Google has made much advances in, though its still only #3. And so the thoughts from last week’s post continue – on whether culture is the key differentiator that sets apart the dominant player in an era and everything else from superior technology to better marketing evolves from it.

    The two posts I had linked to last time remain relevant in a Google vs Facebook  discussion – “Google’s real problem – GTD” at GigaOm and “Facebook and Google” at Piaw’s blog. Meanwhile, Robert Scoble wrote an excellent post last week titled ‘Why Google can’t build Instagram‘, which brought out a whole lot of other perspectives on what prevents Google from innovating at a rapid pace (also probably the reason why Facebook is stealing its thunder regularly) – organisational size (something we keep discussing here), controlling the scope of products/services, an infrastructure that’s not built for a smaller social scale, the necessity to support all platforms (because they’re Google, that’s expected of them, thought this holds true for FB too), the inability to use a competitor’s graph (in this case, Facebook), the need to ship a product/service that’s near perfect (because they’re Google!) and so on. Scoble also throws in a few pointers on how Google could still innovate, and I thought some of Android’s success could be attributed to one of those – sending it out and allowing developers to build on top of it. You can get another interesting perspective on Google and scale here. (via Mahendra)

    The other understanding I developed was that with scale, even the organisation’s vision could change, (though the reverse is what we see regularly) and that would affect everything from competitor landscape to culture. So the challenge is to keep people hooked on – employees and users.

    I’ve come across excellent posts on both these. The organisational aspect is the core theme of Gautam’s blog, and so its not surprising that I’ve seen two posts in the recent past that tackle this subject – Inspiring People, and Making Work Meaningful. The other must read in this context is the 2010 Shift Index, specifically the ‘Passion and Performance’ part. From a consumer perspective, few people can articulate it better (especially since a toon is usually more popular than a 1000 words) than Tom Fishburne, and again, two relevant posts – App  of dreams (as a devout Angry Birds player, I identify completely) and The Antisocial Network.

    Despite approaching it from two different sets of stakeholders, the common thread is easy to spot – that brands/organisations need to figure out a reason for existence that goes beyond their business mission and balance sheets. This would then help them identify the ‘something’ that people – both employees and consumers  can identify with and would want to belong to. Coincidentally, this is the drawing I got on my Gaping Void subscription today. 🙂

    (Hugh credits Mark Earls for first voicing this thought)

    Not very long ago, Google spearheaded a revolution of sorts, by creating an algorithm that connected a web user with the information he sought. The only thing that topped it was the business model they built on it. Many have attempted it before and after them, but there was only one Google. The world changing mojo seems to have been transferred to Facebook these days, and even to Twitter to a certain extent, as, in different ways, they connect us to people we know/want to know in various contexts. Information sharing then becomes one of the applications of this connection. This phenomenon is called (by) many names, including social media. 😀

    Perhaps brands and organisations fail to understand the philosophy of social platforms/interaction and get lost in the applications. A bit like wanting to build a social layer on top of everything you have created so far and meanwhile, firing an employee for telling the world he got a bonus and raise 😉

    until next time, titanic shifts 🙂

    Bonus read: The Heart of Innovation via Dina

  • Place and Time

    After Facebook announced its plans to use its social graph to become the mayor of Location (via Places API, deals) and also become the ubiquitous sign in on the mobile platform, Mahendra, Arjun Ram and I had an interesting discussion on Twitter. It started because Arjun and I were wondering when Facebook Places would come to India, but also moved on to the impact of these announcements on Foursquare and even Google.

    Now in terms of world domination plans, Google is hardly a sitting duck and has been trying to gain a foothold in ‘social’ for a while now, with little success to report so far. But Android has been making huge strides and that should be some consolation. In our twitter discussion, I mentioned that what Facebook had done with this horizontal approach to the mobile platform (OS/hardware independent and just dependent on you being online) is a parallel to what Google did with Android, except this is a way more compelling move.

    Towards the end of our chat, I wondered whether, a couple of years later, we’ll be speaking the same way about Facebook as we are about Google now. Its difficult to imagine how, especially when Facebook’s strategy is about adding a social element to every online activity. Like I said, i have no clue on what the frontier might be, but then again, at one point, I did think, perhaps naively that Google had world domination all sorted out.  That was until Facebook started its march.

    Sometime back I’d written about whether every era has an organisation which best captures the culture that would enable success in the era. The time between eras is fast shrinking – IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook (?) (no, i haven’t forgotten Apple, just ignoring it) and I eagerly await the next breakout star. But I’m also trying to see if there’s something that connects the dominant forces – something that is not unique and not dependent on the time they were the gold standard in.

    Two posts I read recently gave me some understanding of why Facebook seems to be advancing faster. “Google’s real problem – GTD?” (Getting Things Done) at GigaOm and “Facebook and Google” at Piaw’s blog. Both pointed to cultural differences and the way the organisations deal with human resources. And so I wonder, is it inevitable that culture changes with scale, and how much can it change before things go downhill? Is there a way to stem that ‘rot’? I read a post about Amazon recently, that shows how Amazon deals with the various companies it acquires. More on ‘culture’ next week.

    until next time, search..social..surprise 🙂

  • A Contention

    Ever since Facebook released the new groups, I have been wondering whether, in one sweep, they have started on a path to make the communities (vs) social networks dichotomy redundant. Yes, there is a difference. Of course, they would exist separately, but the dichotomy may cease to be a hugely relevant thing. Yes, I could list out an entire set of things that need to be fixed before they get there, but its still a very good start, when you compare it to its own groups, or groups on other networks like Orkut/LinkedIn.

    There’s a reason I thought so. One of the very interesting services that I don’t use (much) is Quora. Quora is a huge knowledge resource. It does this by allowing users to follow their areas of  interest, ask questions, which are answered by the community. Users can also follow specific questions and even follow people who they think will add value. Imagine the best in the field answering your questions, that’s usually what happens there. Its not just technology. I just saw that Ashton Kutcher had answered a question on Hollywood. And I still can’t make Quora a habit, though I’m trying to. But then I thought, what if this ‘interest’ was a (new) group on Facebook. Facebook is anyway one of my default tabs and an established destination site, and there’d be a much better chance of me participating if interesting QnA and people were a given.

    Back then to networks and communities. I was also looking at it through the prism of Gautam’s content-community social model, and wondering if this potential shift in the nature of networks and communities means that content is becoming a titular king, and distribution the real power. Content would obviously matter since conversations happen around it, and I’m not talking about the 140 character/ FB status message here. But in a social perspective, would good content be able to deliver value for its owner (in this case, I am referring to brands and media outlets) only if it exists in a network like Facebook or is able to deliver as much social functionality in its own network as say, a Facebook does, or has a huge distribution network on say, Twitter?

    Yes, yes, the strategists will say that Facebook, Twitter are just tools, and they’re right, but think about it. My hope is that in the next step of the web’s evolution, we’ll be able to see niche networks in perspective.  🙂

    until next time, contentious?

  • Chief Social Media Officer then?

    I remember writing about the ‘technopologist’ about a year back, in the context of businesses only looking at social platforms through a brand/marketing prism and not sparing a thought on the other implications/potential – organisational culture, business policies, to name a few. The technopologist -a hybrid of marketer, technologist and social anthropologist was a hot topic of discussion then, in the wake of P&G’s move in that direction. I realised I was late for that party when I read a WSJ post from 2008. (it still holds true) 🙂

    I didn’t hear much about the technopologist after that, but a related shiny new animal is now the butt of several jokes. Social media experts are now everywhere, and there’s no dearth of brands wanting to ‘do the social media thing’. It is a generic label used without considering the expert’s domain of expertise (strategy/execution/tool specific). But what about the organisations who hire them without sparing a thought on what their core principles are, and how they could re-engineer themselves for new forms of usage. (in this context, do read ‘There is no new media, only new consumption‘) Expertise in a situation when neither the internet nor the brand manager are sure what they will morph into.

    What reminded me of all this? The recent buzz about the Chief Marketing Technologist. Another term that was apparently coined in 2008, thanks to Scott Brinker. The case for it is strong enough, and I did nod in agreement several times while I viewed this deck, and , but I couldn’t help but wonder whether this too will become a buzzignation (buzz+designation – hey, I can try too) that made sense but couldn’t actually fructify.

    From my (limited) experience in dealing with those aspiring to use social platforms in their organisations, I’ve noticed that the actual challenge is not in realising that this direction of technology and marketing is perhaps an inevitable future, (they either know it or the slideshare ppts will convince them), but in evolving a perspective that is not weighed down by someone else’s experiences of social platforms, their own notions of what their brand/organisation is, how their stakeholders view them, and therefore, what they should do on social platforms. A new designation can only help so much in this.

    until next time, cornered offices.

  • Social evolution, at least?

    Judging by the number of responses to his article in ‘The New Yorker’, Malcolm Gladwell seems to have ruffled quite a few feathers, especially in the Twitter loving community. Not surprising, since he has torn apart at least a couple of Twitter’s poster children revolutions – Iran and Moldova. His grouse seems to be that we have forgotten what activism is, and are perhaps doing the word disrespect by using it for activities that happen basis the ‘weak ties’ of social media. The benchmark he sets for activism are indeed high – the Civil Rights Movement, which happened before and without the internet.

    I could give you quite a few links that offer rebuttals to this argument or try to put in context – Evgeny Morozov’s post in NYT, Maria Popova’s vehement retort, Gaurav’s 6 point reasoning of why Gladwell is wrong, Anil Dash’s more nuanced approach, and even cite say, a Pink Chaddi campaign (in a country which has a single digit internet penetration) to attempt a contra view. But there’s no denying that armchair activism/slacktivism exists.

    However, as Maria explains in her post, different generations face different societal challenges. They also have a different set of tools that enable them to achieve changes in the status quo. And that’s probably why I think its unfair to dismiss the influence of social platforms in combating the issues of our time. The issues can be across domains – from water crises (check Mashable’s post on Blog Action Day 2010 – Water) to changing the ‘unhealthy’ business models of several traditional media outlets. It is challenging individuals to create and collaborate and break out of  work/life mindsets. I am able to be part of say, a micro finance venture and spread the word on social channels. Such changes can’t be deemed worthless. In any case we’re perhaps too early to postulate what these tools would achieve. Precisely being in the middle of this would take away our objectivity.

    Despite this hilarious Maslow’s hierarchy of internet needs, I’d like to think that we are moving through a hierarchy as web technologies evolve. From a general source of information, the web has moved on to being able to connect us in context. It has allowed the rapid amplification of signals. We have only started with location as a context of networking. There would be a tremendous difference when we start addressing civic issues, using social tools as a means to aggregate locality based communities.  In essence, tools are just that, and we have to define contexts to make them more useful. And we have to evolve to that level.

    Maybe there will never be massive revolutions, just small uprisings across time and place that subvert what could’ve been a great crisis if it was allowed to grow without checks.

    until next time, rebelution it is 🙂