Category Archives: Social Networking

Old Dogs and New Tricks

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One of the challenges I find as I get older is how I continue to be open to new ways of doing things.

Surveying the landThe world of work is consistently changing and in order to stay valuable we need to change with it. An example of this has recently become evident to me. I used to do a job that was very valuable within the business, I can now see a situation where the business no longer requires people with that role. It’s not just that the role is being diminished – it’s no longer needed at all.

If I’d stayed doing what I was doing I would now be feeling very sensitive about my position going forward.

Here are the things that I do to stay open to change:

  • Experiment – try new things out it’s a great way finding something out.
  • Read and watch widely – I try to get a broad view on as many things as I can.
  • Converse – other people’s points of view influence my point of view and it’s always better to converse with someone who has a different opinion to you.
  • Listen – conversing involves listening but it’s worth highlighting that it’s the listening part that is the most important.
  • Help – in helping others work through things I get to understand a different perspective
  • Be Open – I try to stay open to someone else having a better idea about something than I do
  • Lay down – I try to stop doing things that are no longer important. This is probably the thing I struggle with the most.
  • Respect – people are rarely the stereotype that they might look like so I try not to prejudge what someone might have to offer.

Facebook – Reducing the Noise and Losing the Interest

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As part of my return to online life after my decontamination over the holidays I went through my Facebook wall and marked anything and everyone I wasn’t really interested in and clicked: “Hide all posts by…”

This had the effect of significantly reducing the number of updates on my wall. It also had a more significant impact – it removed much of the interest too.

I’m not talking about real interest.

I’m talking about the interest I give to all of those times I’ve found myself looking at photos of someone I vaguely know with their dog, cat, budgie, etc.

I’m talking about the interest I give to all of those petty conversations between people who should really be excluded from using a keyboard by virtue of the way in which they waste everyone else’s time.

I’m talking about all of the interest I show to status update messages from the applications that people are using because they don’t have anything better to do.

In short – I lost interest because I significantly reduced the “variable interval reinforcement schedule” of Facebook.

Try it someday you might actually enjoy it.

Monopoly: Social Media Edition

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Loving the thought of a Social media Edition of Monopoly, particularly like the idea that Jail has become The Real World.

Monopoly: Social Media Edition
Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

Not sure about Blogger being higher up than WordPress? Surely not.

How different would this have looked 5 years ago?

How different will it look in 5 years time?

Business Networking – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and the Cigarette Shelter

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I was reading  the Michael Sampson: Currents blog the other day when I read this:

Is Twitter / Yammer / Socialcast the "new cigarette?"

Your Minster in the SunshineHis question was based on a posting by Joel Stein in Business Week titled “The Secret Cult of Office Smokers”

Joel observes the power of the meetings that occurring every day in the huddles of individuals sharing in the smoking habit.

One of my first bosses was a smoker and I used to marvel at his ability to know things – it didn’t take me long to work out the source of all of his inside information. If something was going to happen he always knew way before it actually occurred, sometimes he would tip us off, but on many occasions he would leave it as a surprise. He’s always be perfectly positioned to take advantage though.

I’ve worked alongside other smokers and without exception they have been well connected, and normally connected above their station in the organisation. There are times when I’ve joined them for the chat because I’ve seen the potential.

Back to Michael’s question: are the social media tools replacing this kind of interaction?

To a certain extent I have found that my connectedness has increased through the use of social media, twitter has connected me with all sorts of knowledgeable and influential people within the IT industry.

Internal connectedness is a bit different, but similar. We run a system based on Jive internally and my ability to connect across the organisational structure has been great. I’ve written more extensively on some of the topics I write about on this blog, on the internal system, resulting in a number of very valuable connections with highly connected people in the organisation.

I have to say, though, it’s still not the smoking corner. There’s still not the serendipitous moments that you get from a chat over some tobacco in a paper sleeve, and I’m not sure why. I’m sure some of it is because the level of honest and openness on the lies of twitter is nothing like the honest we’d display in a much smaller group. But I think there are other factors too.

Playing a new game

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Some wisdom from Seth Godin today:

Spring Flowers 2010A car is not merely a faster horse.And email is not a faster fax. And online project management is not a bigger whiteboard. And Facebook is not an electronic rolodex.

Play a new game, not the older game but faster.

I work alongside IT organisations who are often so focussed on getting “more for less” they completely miss the game that is changing around them.

So often the question is focussed on upgrading rather than transitioning – “if I upgrade the corporate email system will it be cheaper” rather than “what opportunities do we have for delivering communications in a better way”. People don’t want corporate email they want communication, and while they are all looking at the corporate email system this thing called social networking comes up behind them and changes the game.

The unwanted results of Social Networking

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The other day I was contacted by a friend saying: “Do you know Bob McBill?” (Not his real name)

Light through a filter“I don’t think so” was my reply.

“Well he appears as one of your connections in (insert social networking tool)”

“Oh, really, why?”

“He’s just been sent to prison for (insert serious crime)”

Now it turns out that Bob McBill wasn’t actually one of my direct connections, he was a connection of a connection, but still, it got me thinking.

What does it say to other people that I have a social networking link to a criminal?

Would anyone infer something about me from this connection?

What would it do to my reputation if they did?

In what ways am I handing over control of my reputation to individuals outside my control?

How many other potentially embarrassing connections do I have out there?

Just to be clear, there isn’t anything to infer, this person wasn’t a direct connection anyway, but still…

And yes, I am going to be more careful about my social connections in the future.

Social Networks – Unexpected Results in the Snow

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I continue to be surprised by how deeply engrained in our day to day life social networking has become. I had another example of this last week.

Snow in the TableWe’ve been having some extreme weather in the UK over the last few weeks (just to be clear, this is extreme for the UK, it’s normal for other places in the world).

We had for the third time this year a lot of snow starting last Monday, travelling from Scotland and working its way to the South – or so I thought.

We’d already had our snow on Monday evening and Tuesday morning so continued with my plan to travel north to Edinburgh on Wednesday. Having check the weather forecast and road information I concluded that I’d be fine to travel. No more snow was expected and the roads were clear.

This is where social networking kicked in – on Tuesday I had twittered:

Tomorrow I am supposed to be in Edinburgh – what do you think the chances are?

As it happened I had a lovely drive up the M6 as far as Carlisle, enjoying the view of the snow over the Lake District. Passing Carlisle, it started to snow and by the time I’d got to Lockerbie we were down to a single lane and managing to do little more than 20mph. At that point I again twittered:

Did I get to Edinburgh ? No. I got to Lockerbie before turning back.

That evening I received a phone call from my Mum – who isn’t on any social network. She was wanting to make sure that I was OK and that I was home.

I had deliberately not twittered that I was setting off because I didn’t want some people to worry, but still my Mum had found out even though she has no simple way of seeing my updates.

How did she know? She’d been speaking to my sister, who’d seen my original update in Facebook. That wasn’t something I was expecting.

I’m going to have to be even more careful in the future.


Created with flickr slideshow.

We’re all journalists!

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Yesterday Jonathan was involved in a bit of a news incident. One of the buses at his college exploded into flames as it was sitting waiting to leave the college where he studies.

This happened around 4:30pm. According to the local press the fire services were called at 4:26.

By 17:44 the first comments were being added to a Facebook group.

A bit later than this an article was being written on the local newspaper’s site featuring photos and videos taken by students on their mobile phones. The article was posted to Twitter at 18:17.

By 18:44 one of the students (Sam Pratt) posted:

Within two hours and 10 mins since the Runshaw bus fire, a Facebook group was created, 4 videos and 12 photos were on it and the LEP had already covered it on their website. How’s THAT for social media?

By 20:48 it was in the BBC web site with what looks like a security camera picture.

The BBC site has a single 150 word article with a single picture.

The Lancashire Evening Post site has a 650 word article a single video and 7 photographs. There’s also 8 comments (mostly pointing people to the Facebook group)

This morning there are nearly 1200 members of the Facebook group. There are 30 photographs and 8 videos. There are are over 180 different comment threads as well as comments on lots of the photos and videos. Some videos have also been posted to YouTube.

I’m sure that this scenario is being played out all over the world right now because we’re all reporters of the news now.

The Lancashire Evening Post sites say: “See The Evening Post on Friday for exclusive pictures and comments from eyewitnesses", why should I? I’ve already read the eyewitness reports from hundreds of students and seen more than enough photographic evidence.

I’m sure that there is still a need for journalists, but it needs to be about adding value.

Expressions – inside, outside, sideways

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I spend a good deal of my life expressing my thoughts and feelings on all sorts of online communities. Glen Coe

Some of those communities are inside the organisation that I work for, a good deal of this expression, like this blog, is done outside the organisation.

I wrote the other day about all of the ways in which I could waste my time, I did this as a bit of a joke. Truth is that all of the places of expression take time, but there are lots of other challenges to working this way. Here’s my top 10:

  1. Am I repeating myself? – it’s difficult to know what I have said where, sometimes I have to check, sometimes I’ve got it wrong.
  2. Am I saying the right thing? – there are different audiences so I need to make sure that what I say is relevant and doesn’t reference something I said somewhere else.
  3. Am I breaking confidence? – I can say things inside the organisation that I can’t say outside.
  4. Am I giving people the attention that they deserved? – I’m not writing very often on this blog because I’m spending so much time writing inside the organisation. Am I being disrespectful to my external audience, and does it matter?
  5. Are my comments relevant? – Comments are a particular challenge. If I comment inside the organisation I shouldn’t expect people to know about me outside the organisation and the same is true the other way around.
  6. Where do I aggregate information? – If I send my Twitter updates to Facebook are they relevant in Facebook?
  7. Some people will see more than others – some read only one thing that I write, others read a lot of things.
  8. Does the real me come across in a single stream? – If someone only read my Facebook what impression would it give? If they only read my blog would the impression be different?
  9. Should I consolidate? – It’s always better to do one thing well. Would I be better dropping Twitter, Blog, etc.
  10. How do I prioritise? – Is inside more valuable than outside? Is the number of readers significant?

In summary; I sometime feel like I’m in the middle of a social experiment; an experiment that will radically change the way we work over coming years.