Posts with tag "social media"

Black holes: otherwise know as social media services

black_hole_milkyway I get sent a lot of press releases about social media crap and typically they end up in the trash folder.

Here’s a hint why.

There’s nothing new.

There is nothing paradigm shifting.

The earth won’t be shattering under our feet.

What we get though is yet more services to add the same information that we gave before to the dozen, or hundred, other services. We get to help them fill out databases full of valuable marketing data.

Here’s the thing – 99.9999% of all social media services are nothing but a black hole, a time sink where one of two things happens within 6 to 9 months.

One: they deadpool and sell whatever IP they might have along with all our data.

Two: they get bought up – along with all our data.

Number two of course was the plan all along because this is the secret of social media services.

They want to be bought – that is their business model and we get sucked in every time.

Where is the value in this?

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Louis Gray comes out from under his Social Media Snuggie

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  • Posted 1240 days ago

snuggie

Louis Gray is one of the most indomitable spirits of the early-adopter world. There is no bigger proponent of all things Social Media. He has, through 2009, been a leading voice for on the fringe services that he believed could bring some sanity to all our Social Media identities spread across the Web.

So it was a bit of a shock to read his long and thoughtful post of disappointment in the fact that as we close out 2009 any attempt to create the perfect Social Media aggregator has for the most part been ignored.

Louis I feel for ya bud, truly I do, but you my friend are bumping up against the reality of human nature. Remember this is the whole Web 2.0 generation where we have been conned into believing that ‘just good enough’ is well … good enough.

This means Facebook is just good enough for some. Twitter is just good enough for some. Email is just good enough for some. IM is just good enough for some.

The idea of a social media aggregator will only appeal to a very small minority of tech users and writers. There is no money to be made in this sandbox unless it is a play to be acquired. One just has to look to Friendfeed to see that.

The one thing we can be sure of though is that if there is something new and exciting coming down the pipe Louis will be there to let us know about it. Maybe a little more tempered from experience but still well worth listening to.

<p.s. Louis … I just couldn’t resist the headline :) >

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You just had to know I couldn’t let this go by

guru_list BL I love you and if you’re ever in the market for a fan just give a holler because this little gem of number crunching hit my morning LOL meter as I was recovering from a few hard days of coding.

From May 2009 until now we have gone from 4,487 self-professed social media sycophants to nearly 16,000 of them infesting Twitter.

And people wonder why I get cranky over all the bullshit marketing that Twitter is being used for (and yes all those Foursquare and Gowalla messages are marketing crap so don’t bitch about ads).

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Everyone is a Founder/CEO

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  • Posted 1250 days ago

Baby_High-Chair Want to feel important?

Want to be able to impress everyone you meet?

All it takes is a simple two step program.

1. Start a web service company that sounds all social media and feeds off of some other company’s API.

2. Call yourself a Founder and CEO.

Simple. Done. Everyone is now impressed.

Except for that 9AM meeting for your real job or 10AM class. Still, you are a CEO.

Seeing that acronym of business success tacked on after your name might puff up your ego but being a CEO is more than slapping a bunch of code together and getting a mention on Techcrunch.

It takes much more of your blood and guts than getting a bunch of business cards with it printed on it.

Just ask Jack Welch, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

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APIs are the chink in social media’s armor

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  • Posted 1251 days ago

knight3 APIs are a protocol.

APIs are the lifeblood of the social web.

APIs are the crack handed out to developers by companies looking to be acquired.

APIs are property. Not public property but property of companies wanting to create the illusion of community.

The keys to APIs rest not with us or the developers but rather with the companies who can, and will, change them without a moment’s notice. APIs are the bi-directional firehose of information that companies can, and will turn off as they please.

Developers like all good drug addicts line up at the buy window. They mainline these APIs like there is no tomorrow. They chase the dragon’s tail thinking that it will lead them to Smaug’s treasure. Chances are, the chase will lead them straight down a rabbit hole.

APIs look pretty in the sunshine but they are just another lock on the doors to information. A door is a door and no amount of Open Sesame will make it any different. As long as the keys are held by the company no amount of ‘open’ rhetoric will be more than clown paint on all our faces.

The fact that we continue to believe this is the real weakness – the real chink in the armor.

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Is talk about brands leaving us with nothing but a YAWN?

personal branding

Social Media. Brands. Transparency. Openness.

They are all the newish marketing buzzwords we love to drop into our posts, Twitter messages, and conference keynotes. A day doesn’t go by when you don’t read somewhere about how important having a Brand is. Every professional blogger has it tattooed on their forehead because we are told – by other social media gurus – that this is crucial to our success.

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The power of ink and newsprint in your hands – it still works.

reading-newspaper

To be honest I can’t remember the last time I actually bought a newspaper. As far as I get is to stop by the newsstand every time I am at the corner store and take a look at the headlines and maybe on occasion read the first paragraph of a story that gets my attention. This doesn’t mean though that I think that newspapers are totally without value.

There are times where I think that we are some times placing way too much emphasis on our online fascination with things like Twitter and Facebook and the hurried transformation of news delivery. I was reminded about this when I read an excellent post by Alex Wilhelm over at The Next Web where he talks about the power of physical news – as in actually taking the time to relax and read a newspaper.

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Is the larger part of the social conversation just about creating personal networks?

conversations

We like to carry on about how social media is about have conversations. How it’s about finding and make new friends based of common ideas. How it is built around the idea of opening sharing all kinds of information.

But really though when we look into our heart of hearts just how many people are using things like Twitter and Facebook for generic “hi, how are you?” social conversations?

I ask this not so much as a rhetorical statement but really as a valid question. A question that came about while reading an interesting post by David Spinks where he says not to forget the fact that a lot of people using social media are doing so as a way to increase the size of their social network for business reasons.

My activities and interactions in this “social media community” have the primary goal to succeed as a professional. If my time spent here doesn’t help me to perform my job better, and to benefit my career, then I am wasting my time.

Does that mean I can’t make friends during the process? Of course not.  I have made amazing friendships along the way. I consider people like Lauren Fernandez, Arik Hanson, Keith Burtis, Gloria Bell andStuart Foster to be some of my closest and most trusted friends.  I didn’t engage with them to become friends though.  I engaged with them to benefit my career, and the friendship resulted from the process.

Don’t forget why others are here.  YES, most people are participating in this community for the sake of “conversation and networking”.  But conversation and networking aren’t a result, they’re tactics.  The purpose of building these relationships is to drive more traffic, build more opportunities etc…we’re building relationships for business purposes.

Are we being made to believe that being honest about using social media as a way to further one’s career, one’s profession is a bad thing and as a result we pretend to use social media for mindless entertainment and inane pseudo-conversations?

Just curious……….

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