Answer Guy Central

I haven’t mentioned Scott Adams in a while. Scott, the creator of business-themed cartoon Dilbert, is one smart guy, and last week said something that matters. It matters in business and business change, it matters in social networking, and it matters . . . well, maybe everywhere.

Less Is More.

Mr. Adams’ gives several examples. Booking Travel Online. Buying Movie Tickets. The iPad and pretty much everything else that Apple does. But in Apple’s case the example was that less is more works, whereas booking travel and buying movie tickets have become bogged down. More has become Less.

The business change examples are so numerous I won’t spend much time. Just think about how much easier it is to shop when you have packages to choose from, or pre-built meals at a restaurant instead of a la carte ordering. No comment on value or what’s “better”, or for whom; it’s just easier, and that makes everyone feel better.

In social networking, less is more is looking like the way things will go. Yesterday Apple announced a social network of their own. PING will be a way for iTunes users to share how they feel about the music they listen to with others. I don’t care, but my 21-year-old son thought it was a great idea.

Social networking needs more thinking like this; it needs a real Facelift. Social networks need to actually have something social about them, beyond the mere “come to the marketplace and see if you recognize anyone” approach being practiced by Facebook. Again, I personally think Ping is silly, but it’s going to be immensely popular—not so much because it comes from Apple, but because it makes sense.

Look for the news about the Facelift of Social Networking right here . . . very soon!

I’ve written about privacy a few times, and while my opinions are pretty well formed, the question rages on. What IS Privacy? What privacy do you have a “right” to, or what level of privacy can you “expect”?

With so much information finding its way onto the Internet, I’ve taken a pragmatic approach: nothing is private. Don’t expect privacy. Period. Laws are nearly meaningless. And court rulings mean even less.

Germany is considering a law that I don’t believe can be enforced, but at least sounds good. If passed, the new German law will make it illegal to use “private” data when looking for information about prospective employees.

Start with the “can’t be enforced” part: the distinction between what’s private and what’s public under this proposed law is unclearly  based on a broad understanding of “intent”. So Facebook information would be off limits to prospective employers, while LinkedIn data is fair game.

I agree that the intent of using Linkedin almost always runs toward “hey! look at me, world!” whereas people who use Facelook generally mean to shout only at people they already know. And that’s where the law being considered in Germany becomes most interesting.

In the United States, “intent” is a prime consideration in determining guilt in a criminal proceeding; it’s the reason that “gee officer, I didn’t MEAN to be over the speed limit” can actually work. If the German legal system extends intent to privacy issues, this law is a great idea.

Specifically, if you friend someone on Facebook just to find if there’s any dirt on them, you aren’t really trying to be friends.

I don’t know how this is all going to play out, and certainly a law in Germany doesn’t mean anything elsewhere. But given that privacy and data usage are currently being played out on a completely open field, I love the idea of this law.

And I’d love for you to think about intent the next time you use data to create business change.

Am I done with social networking yet? Almost. Next week I’ll be talking about BASEBALL for the first time ever (don’t worry; there’s a huge business change lesson in there), but for now . . . I have one more social networking point to make.

And it’s positive. And I’ll even say something nice about Facebook!

From Wired Magazine:

A study led by Abilene Christian University followed the Facebook profiles of 375 first-semester freshman students for nine months to examine how Facebook activity can be used as a predictor for a student’s likelihood to stay in school. The research found that students who returned to school after freshman year had significantly more Facebook friends and wall posts than those who didn’t return.

In other words, peer pressure works.

In business, the closest thing to this is peer review. When your work is held up to the scrutiny of the people you work with, you’re going to want their approval. So your work is better, before ever getting completed. For kids, in college, in a social networking environment, the very face that there’s a growing and tightening net of peers boosts the odds of success.

The positive upshot for social networking is obvious. The positive upshot for Facebook is . . . oh darn, I take it back; Facebook doesn’t make you feel connected to your peers, it makes you feel disconnected.

OK, maybe I should back down just a little. This study used Facebook and there was a clear positive outcome. Facebook helped kids stay in school. But the reason that worked was because the kids in the study were linked to each other naturally; Facebook merely facilitated the usefulness of that link.

And that’s where social networking becomes really useful (see yesterday’s piece on GetGlue). If you have a reason to be communicating with other people social networking goes a long way toward making that reason stronger. And that’s when peer pressure can become a good thing.

I threatened more on Social Networking yesterday. Would I lie?

To nobody’s surprise, Facebook has unveiled their newest toy; Facebook Places lets you “check in” from wherever you are. It’s an obvious attempt to eat Foursquare‘s lunch, and the fact that it plays nice with the heretofore leader in geolocation-based social networking doesn’t change anything. (By the way, so far Facebook Places only works if you use an iPhone)

I’d like to place some emphasis on that “doesn’t change anything” clause.

The problem with most social networking sites is that they don’t actually bring people together; instead, there’s a cacophony of voices screaming “look at me!” and it’s hard to know where to look/listen/pay attention.

Aside: The Answer Guy is working on a new social networking platform that addresses this issue. Have I mentioned that already?.

For social networking to work, there has to be a reason to network with the people you find at your favorite site. We’ve done quite a bit of anecdotal research on the subject, and what we hear over and over is that Facebook is too hard and too busy, Foursquare is little more than a way of asking people to rob your house while you’re out (or YOU, for that matter), and that while most people try one or more social networks they really just don’t get the point.

This week I stumbled upon GetGlue. And it’s silly, but it . . . makes sense. At GetGlue, you “check in” just like on Foursquare, but it isn’t location based. GetGlue instead is a place where you tell people what you are doing. “I’m watching Doogie Howser M.D.“, or “I’m listening to Green Day’s American Idiot“.

In many ways, it’s just as silly as Foursquare, but GetGlue makes sense in the same way a book club does, or taking a class on movies. You meet people, and you know ahead of time that you have something in common. And you talk about it. Or at least the ice has been broken for you enough that you might.

Now to be fair, GetGlue is still a little bit too open, and they have no traction just yet. But at least GetGlue makes sense; they have a reason to exist that goes beyond the benefit of the company that sells advertisements to you, the user.

I can’t say it enough: you need to take social networking seriously in your business plans. Now if more social networks would take you seriously in return, something might just come of all this . . .

Social Networking: The topic that just won’t go away.

No, really: social networking really isn’t going away any time soon and you need to figure out your plan for social media, social networking, and how they impact your business change. Yes, I’ve said that before. I’ll be saying it again, too.

A few days ago, one of the writers at TechCrunch wrote a piece that made me think about social networking in a whole new way: all the tweeting, all the Facebook updates, and whatever else you do to scream “look at me!” is a matter of something a bit . . . scary: all we’re doing is trying to eat everyone around us.

I’M more important than YOU are. MY words are worth hearing. GET OVER HERE AND LISTEN TO ME.

And then I’ll eat you. Or at least own you.

What’s strangest about this dance is that social networking is being done in the name of better communication, while what it’s actually creating is communication that’s worse. MORE, but worse. We’re not saying anything worth listening to.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’m part of a team that’s creating a new social networking platform. It’s going to be unveiled very soon, and it’s different. Seriously. It isn’t “more”. It isn’t “special”. It’s respectful and focused. And if you join you’ll be happy you’re there.

Which is what being social is supposed to be about, right? Nobody really likes big parties where there’s so much background chatter you can’t even hear the person you’ve chosen to spend time with and are standing next to speak, right?

That’s how Twitter feels. Facebook, too.

The Guy Sure Looks Like Plant Food To Me. Feed Me Seymour!

When’s the last time you paid for Wi-Fi?

I’m astounded that there are still businesses trying to get you to pay for Wi-Fi. I mean, seriously: that connection costs them only a few dollars a month, and while it’s possible I’d hang out in or in front of my local Subway sandwich shop all day to get that signal, the truth for almost everyone is otherwise.

Guilt issues aside, even if you get a few hangers-on the extra money most people spend while sitting for hours at Starbucks makes giving that Wi-Fi away a great business change.

After trying to make money on the deal, Starbucks first made their Wi-Fi signal nearly free a couple of years back and totally free last month. Even McDonalds has figured this out.

But business change is a matter of always evolving and always finding and moving forward with the next business change. Or better yet, creating it. It’s called business development.

Don’t let anyone tell you that business development is the same as sales.

Getting you to buy more coffee is sales. Finding reasons to keep you in your seat SO THAT you buy more coffee is business development. And Starbucks is doing business development in a big way.

With all respect to the folks at Mashable for that fine article, I pointed this out a couple of months ago. Starbucks has made a deal with the Wall Street Journal for people who access the Internet using their free Wi-Fi to be able to read WSJ for free. Presumable, Starbucks is paying something for the right to have WSJ become free from their locations over the Internet connection they’re giving away. Ditto the other content that you need to pay for when you get to it from your home or office connection, but not from Starbucks.

THAT’S business development. And business change. And if you think about it, it’s also social networking.

Sooner or later, it even strays into the realm of coopetition.

I’ve been clear that you need to be doing social networking, but also being careful about how, and how much. It’s just like business development; you need to always be looking for ways to make more money through your connections, but you also need to keep doing actual sales.

And if you’re serious about any of these things you need to see where they merge, and where they don’t.

Chris Brogan has spoken: the social crash is upon us. And “Ambient Connectivity” is the solution.

I can’t argue the first half of that, and I don’t; I’ve been telling you for quite some time that even as we look for new ways to do social networking and engage our clients and potential clients and enact the business change that this new world calls for we need to scale back on the volume of social networking we do. Quantity simply doesn’t equal quality.

If the story Chris told in his post yesterday wasn’t such a train wreck I wouldn’t be thinking about it or passing it along to you. As smart as Chris is, he hasn’t said anything new in about a year now and has fallen into a pattern where he does little more than scream “rah rah!“. I’m bored with it, and while I’ve commented on Mr. Brogan’s activities a few times I had pretty much decided that until he said something new I wasn’t going to talk about Chris Brogan any more.

Oh man.

Let’s remember that the point of social networking is to engage the people you’re “targeting”. I could use a nicer-sounding word than that, but whether it’s business, personal, or whatever the word target is about as accurate a descriptor as I can come up with.

In describing the in-progress “social crash”, Chris held his own situation up as an example. Fair enough; Chris Brogan is connected in ways the rest of us can only dream of, and I believe that his experiences are about as valid and representative as anybody’s. And the short of it is that Chris Brogan, social networking and business expert, is now suggesting that people who are in his social network shouldn’t expect to be engaged by him. Euphemistically, he referred to the need for “ambient connectivity” in a world where there are more people trying to get his attention then he has the time or inclination to interact with directly.

Here’s the problem: Chris is right. Neither he nor anyone in his position can possibly keep up with it all personally. But because Chris Brogan’s digital peeps BELIEVE they have a “real” relationship with him, he has no choice but to keep them thinking so, unless A) he just don’t care or B) thinks they “get it” when he floated his ambient connectivity idea.

Oh they got it. Brogan spoke the truth, and used that truth to disconnect from the people who thought they were connected.

I hate to use so trite an example as an Eminem song, but what Chris Brogan is suggesting smacks of “of course I want you as a fan, but you shouldn’t expect anything in return”.

And that ain’t “social”. It’s demagoguery. Good luck with that in a social networking world.

The real answer is that when your social networking needs outpace your ability to keep up with them you need either to start employing someone to handle the overrun, or stop acting in a way that is so clearly faux social. Or better yet, both.

By the way: I posted a response to Chris’ story that made many of these same points. While critical it was certainly on-topic, and polite. And it got deleted. Apparently “social” in Chris Brogan’s world includes editing what the world thinks of you. I retract this. My comment has been reinstated, or I missed it earlier.

But what do I know? It’s not like taking care of impossible situations like this is what I do. Ambient Connectivity. REALLY?

Oh wait . . . it is . . .

OK, one more time: software patents are bad.

When Facebook was granted US Patent 7,669,123, I talked about it, and you’ve talked back for months; this thing simply should never have been awarded.

I’ve spoken more broadly about software patents, too. They stifle innovation and generally prove close to nothing. They’re a bad idea.

Last February, I pointed out something that bothers me a little bit less, though: when you own a patent (or patents), you need to defend your property, and the “patent troll” business is thriving.

And now Facebook is in the patent troll business. One $40 million payment to Friendster, eighteen patents in pocket, all of them covering social networking.

Again: software patents are a bad idea. But if they’ve going to exist, having them is a great way to go, especially if you have deep enough pockets to defend and enforce them. And Facebook certainly does.

Business change ought to be about actual change, and the patent troll business isn’t that at all. On the other hand, when you can effect change by making new revenue from the assets you already possess, you’re still looking forward. Much as I prefer to bash Facebook most of the time, this move is a winner. At least for them.

Have you noticed how little actual contact you have with people?

I don’t mean social networking-type contact. In fact, as I’ve told you before, there’s real evidence that social networking causes isolation and depression. The Internet and technology and so-called “advances” have created social problems, and yesterday I came a cross an article that made me think. It was written about IT people in particular, but it applies to just about everyone.

You need to visit your customers.

This isn’t always possible, of course. I have coaching clients across the globe, and while I do see some of them in person every now and again it isn’t practical to make a habit out of in-person visits. PC-VIP, on the other hand, includes client visits as part of our protocol despite being designed as a mostly-remote service, and of course The Computer Answer Guy does traditional break/fix in-person computer support in the New York City area.

So I’ve just described three very different business models. And they all work. And the level of in-person interaction varies.

But people like to see you. They just do.

Let’s use PC-VIP as the template for navigating this issue. And let’s break it down to something simply: humans are . . . human.

People like to feel engaged. As I mentioned above, PC-VIP’s fixed-cost corporate IT services are designed to be delivered remotely—because frankly we couldn’t afford to do things the way we do otherwise. HOWEVER, each client is assigned a team of people who they not only GET to meet, but who always show up on a several-times-per-year schedule.

This means we’ve designed a service that is supposed to reduce visits . . . and then planned for visits anyway as an important part OF the service. No surprise: our clients love it.

So if the goal was to reduce costs (success!) and also stay engaged (success!) we’ve hit the mark. But it took planning to create this kind of customer service.

And maybe that’s why social networking seems so anti-social. There’s no planning.

I remember a story someone once told me about trying to meet up with a friend at an event in Central Park in New York City. Central Park is a huge place, and when there’s an event it can get crowded in a way that the word “park” doesn’t usually conjure up.

The rendezvous happened, but not until one person called the other on their cell phone—from literally three feet away. As a great as being able to recalibrate that way is, the point of the story wasn’t that there had been success; both people felt dumb.

In the days when planning was involved, we all felt a little bit more special. Plan to see your clients. Today, sadly, that’s business change. But sad or not, it works.

It’s a simple idea, really: get peoples’ attention with a free offer, make yourself indispensable, add scarcity if you can, and they’re hooked. Social Media is just like dealing drugs.

Of course on the Internet creating scarcity is incredibly difficult, but hey: that’s why some drug dealers are more successful than others.

Public relations guru Peter Shankman has compared doing social media to selling drugs on the street. And once you get past the silly opening line—and judging by the comments on Shankman’s article it looks like people are having a hard time doing that—his words are pure genius.

Marketing, social media, social networking, or if you insist public relations are ALL about these points. People have to listen to you and want more. You need to convince your targets that you have something they can’t get elsewhere. You have to be easy and accessible, and you need—at least occasionally—to distract your targets from the fact that you’re trying to sell them something.

What are you doing to make the products or services you sell special enough that the folks you sell them to can’t live without them? Or at the very least, what are you doing to make sure that your targets are at thinking of you when they go out consuming?

Welcome back to Chatroulette. We hope you enjoy exposing yourself to strangers across the world one at a time. But we’re going to help police arrest you, because that works for us.

Actually, I like this.

Ever since I mentioned Chatroulette a few months back, my words on how ridiculous Chatroulette is have been a big draw here; we get traffic every day to this post about Chatroulette,  and I suspect the reason is that we were the first to point out the issues with geocoding pictures of naked masturbating people.

Vist Chatroulette.com now and you see this ominous warning:

Welcome to our site. Enjoy your time here.

Warning: Broadcasting inappropriate content to minors is a violation of both US and UN law.
We are actively cooperating with law enforcement agencies.

Yeah, that’s right. It might not have occurred to you when you dropped your pants for all the world to see, but “all the world” includes minors. And exposing yourself to minors is illegal in many places.

Well, as NewTeeVee.com reports, Chatroulette is now cooperating with law enforcement officials who ask for help identifying naked people. And this isn’t a freedom of expression issue, it’s a “what the heck is happening on the Internet?” issue.

Or it’s about business. Chatroulette is a cool enough idea in a “social networking is what the Internet is really about and Chatroulette is a form of social networking” way, but there’s no good way for a small operation to police everything that happens on their site. So let’s let the police do our policing! It’s free, and we look like good guys!

What if your next business change included a way to let others make your change for you?

I Hate Facebook. Oh, I use it,  but I hate it. For me, Facebook is as good an example of how to do absolutely everything the wrong way as you’re ever likely to see.

And now it’s getting worse.

This week, Facebook started experimenting with a new way to present your news feed. Forget the fact that Facebook’s Patent on The News Feed is Ridiculous; the idea itself makes me feel as though I’m missing information, not getting it.

At least I can turn off the news feed and get a chronological information dump of what my friends are up to if that’s what I want . . . right?

Maybe not for much longer. Facebook has started changing your options in this regard. So far it’s just an experiment, but some Facebook users have lost the chronological option. If you’re in the group of people Facebook selects for this little test, your new options become, essentially, Newsfeed One or Newsfeed Two.

Social Networking is supposed to be about YOU AND THE PEOPLE YOU CHOOSE TO BE NETWORKED WITH BEING SOCIAL, isn’t it? Why in the world would you want Facebook to tell you what was important to you and your friends and not have a way to take back control?

And YIKES! Imagine you use a social networking site for business purposes. Just what I want: Facebook dictating the way I manage my business change.

There’s no moral to this story; you have it all, already. And if their history is any prediction of how they’d respond you don’t need to bother telling Facebook how bad an idea this is (although they are claiming they care; weigh in here).

By the way: The Answer Guy is in the process of developing a social networking alternative that . . . I’m not kidding . . . will fix many of the problems at Facebook. I can’t reveal details just yet, but if you drop me a line I’ll make sure you hear about them before anyone else.

What’s huge, takes up too much of your time, and delivers a constant stream of information you don’t want?

Facebook.

“The” Social Networking Site accounts for fully one in every fourteen pages viewed on the Internet, and if you use Facebook you’ve noticed that a lot of what it thinks should be important to you just plain isn’t. Yesterday, Facebook decided that since I follow The President of The United States, I’d be interested in Lady Gaga and Megan Fox:

At least I hope Facebook had drawn a connection between Barack Obama, Megan Fox, and Lady Gaga. Somehow, that bothers me just a little bit less than the two celebrities showing up on my home page randomly, or Facebook having accepted money to shill celebrity accounts.

Yes: social networking has now come to whether it’s worse that the President of The United States is a celebrity like Lady Gaga or Megan Fox, or whether Facebook is selling placement in my supposedly-personalized stream of information.

A great idea is getting worse, and worse, and worse. I thought it was bad when Jessica Biel’s placement as the most dangerous celebrity on The Internet was NEWS, but if mass-targeted news is unimportant at least the Internet makes it so you can move on to only the things that are important to you, right?

Hmm . . . I guess that’s wrong.

It’s more important than ever that you maintain laser focus on what’s important to your business. And more and more, social networking is the most important part of marketing. Sadly, though, the original purpose of social networking (you know . . . social networking ?) is disappearing, as “your” pages are co-opted by marketing interests.

Now go out there and friend somebody. And if you can pull it off, President Barack Obama is still a good place to start.

Do I talk enough about the importance of an effective social networking strategy for your business? Maybe not.

The Onion has posted a video that takes the social networking thing to new levels, while poking fun at Apple, Apple fanboys, and social networking itself. The video has gone viral, which should be all the proof you need of how important understanding social networking and using social media is:

Forget Facebook; you never get to actually meet your peeps, and when you talk at them you can’t control their inclination to walk away.

Here’s what’s funniest about this: The Onion’s video is pure parody and is doing satire about social media in general and both Facebook and Apple in particular. BUT IT WORKS. The video tells a story, gets peoples’ attention, and looks . . . real.

How are you getting peoples’ attention? Does your social media and social networking strategy get the desired results? Are you doing SEO? The Onion does a great job at all that, and you can bet that this video has exposed the generally-fake news source to thousands, if not millions of new users.

The Answer Guy can help you with your SEO efforts. We’ll advise you on Social Networking, too, and get your plan set up and moving.

The rest is up to you. Better get over to an Apple Store early, before all the slots at the Friend Bar are filled up . . .

If you live in New York City you know The Village Voice. In fact, even if you don’t live in The Big Apple you’ve probably heard of what was once an important, influential weekly newspaper.

The Village Voice has become irrelevant. Why?

A few days ago, I responded to a tweet by social media guru Jeff Jarvis. His question: “When Did The Village Voice Become a Prude?”

My answer was that when they stopped being an independent property (The Village Voice is now part of the same big company that owns mainstream newspaper Newsday) they stopped having the freedom to say what they wanted to, when they wanted to, about what they wanted to. Simply put, The Village Voice had lost its voice.

Do YOU have a Voice?

Business changes. The business change at The Village Voice has been to make itself irrelevant by being careful about politically correct wording and homogenization of their message at the hands of someone with a “higher purpose”.

And THEN The Internet came along, and social media and social networking became the way we all started getting our information. Not a good combination of events.

Nobody is listening if you don’t have a message. Your job is to create one, hone it, find the people who want to hear it, and deliver that message, over and over and over again. That’s business change for you, creates business change for them, and is the way business (and marketing) get done today.

Need help? Contact Me Here.