social networks | davefleet.com

Archive for the ‘social networks’ Category

Does Online Customer Service Encourage Dissent?

10.03.16

One of the highlights of South By Southwest for me so far was the Customer Support in a 140 Character World panel with Caroline McCarthy (CNET), Frank Eliason (Comcast), Lois Townsend (HP), Toby Richards (Microsoft) and Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter). With a wide-ranging conversation tackling many different aspects of online customer support, I found it fascinating.

One of the most interesting lines for me came from Owyang, who said (forgive me if I’m a word or two off here):

“Responding to people on Twitter is encouraging them to yell at their friends when they need your support.”

Running scared

This is an issue I’ve run into several times with clients, especially those who want to maintain a divide between their traditional customer service channels and what they sometimes see as promotional online channels.

Companies have a (perhaps justified) fear that if people see them responding to online complaints, they’re going to take their complaints online first – publicly – before calling customer support. That leads to:

More negative online chatter
More work for online reps
More potential for others to jump onboard with the complaint

Online reps are customer service reps

The flip side, though, as Jeremiah also pointed out, is that customers don’t care what department an online rep is in. As far as they’re concerned, the company rep is customer-facing so they expect a response to their concerns about that company.

Instead of trying to funnel everyone through your channels, how about helping them in the place they are already inhabiting? In the process, you can go a long way to addressing their issues before they become a support ticket number.

Frank Eliason mentioned that each day his team of 12 people at Comcast go through:

6,000-10,000 blog posts mentioning Comcast (although most are due to Comcast email addresses)
2,000 tweets
600-1,000 forum posts

All of this, with the aim of improving customer experiences.

What’s the ROI of ignoring the phone?

David Alston of Radian6 has a good way of referring to online customer engagement. He asks conference audiences who ask about the ROI of this kind of engagement, “what’s the ROI of you not picking up the phone?” After speaking to someone tonight who mentioned that her organization shuts down their online communication during big issues because their PR folks are scared of peoples’ reactions, I’d throw that question out to them too:

Have you considered how much you lose every time you ignore someone online?

Many companies know exactly how much revenue they generate from the average user. Those companies therefore know how much revenue they lose every time they drive a customer away by ignoring their pain points. Those same customers often volunteer information about those problems online proactively, yet the organization responds with unhelpful canned lines or doesn’t even respond at all.

Eliason also mentioned an obvious but salient point – sometimes you just need to agree to disagree with people. Transparency doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone – it means that you help those you can and explain honestly why you can’t help the others. That very act of explanation might not make people happy (and, yes, let’s be honest, it may upset some) but with the majority, it’s enough to know that someone is listening and acknowledging their concern.

So, there’s my take. I acknowledge that public-facing customer support is scary, for a variety of reasons. However, the potential repercussions of ignoring people, anywhere, is so large that to do so is irresponsible, both towards them and towards your company.

What do you think?

Posted in: customer service, social media, social networks, uncategorized

Tags: customer service

16Comments

Evolving the Social Media Marketing Ecosystem

10.03.08

In January this year I put forward my thoughts on the social media marketing ecosystem in which we operate in 2010. It looked like this:

While this relatively complex model is great to help shape the thinking of organizations wrestling with a plethora of products, it’s also a little complex for organizations without those massive resources. These organizations, which comprise the majority of the market, just don’t have the staff, resources or time to deal with such a complex set of properties.

So, I went back to the drawing board – not to re-think the model, but to boil it down to one simple enough for the majority of people to digest. The result: a simplified model of the social media marketing ecosystem:

All of the complex dynamics within the original system are still accounted for within this simplified diagram, but the framework as a whole is much easier to digest.

In addition to earned, paid and owned media (summarized as “company website” and properties on other sites), this model has an additional sphere on top of Sean Corcoran’s framework, on top of which the original ecosystem model was developed – social networks. This raises the question – should Corcoran’s model have an additional row? What might it look like? (thanks to Joe Thornley for prompting this line of thinking)

It’s a tough call. For one thing, the “social media” row might look a lot like the other rows in many ways; borrowing aspects from owned and earned media in particular. For another, any definition of the role of social media is surely going to be controversial.

I’m a glutton for punishment though, so I put together a starting point – Corcoran’s model, revised with a new row for social media.:

Does social media deserve its own row here, or does its rapid evolution over the past few years simply mean it is intertwined among the other media types in today’s communications environment?

What do you think?

Posted in: communications, marketing, pr, public relations, social media, social networks, strategy

Tags: communications, ecosystem, marketing, pr, public relations, social media, social networks, strategy

37Comments

Four Lessons From PleaseRobMe.com

10.02.19

The social media scene has been buzzing this week with stories about PleaseRobMe.com, a new site which aggregates publicly shared posts from shiny new location-based service Foursquare. The aim of the site is to draw attention to the risks posed by posting your current location publicly.

While the way the site goes about things is deliberately distasteful (it wouldn’t grab many headlines with “Out And About” as a name, after all), there’s a useful message behind the obnoxiousness. As the site points out, “So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home.”

After chatting with a journalist today who says she’s been seeing more and more reports of people cancelling their Foursquare accounts as they realize the implications of the service, I reflected that it’s a good time to consider a few privacy basics:

Think it through. Would you share your home address with a stranger on the street? No? Then don’t do it online. Also, if you check into your home address on Foursquare, you need your head examined. As the makers of PleaseRobMe.com said for an interview with WebProNews, “We think it’s important to realize that something you post on Twitter isn’t necessarily private. Everybody is able to read it, unless you protect your messages.”
Choose your friends carefully. More so than on some other sites, “friending” people on location-based services gives them real access to your life. I have a couple of hundred of friend requests on Foursquare which I’ll probably never accept because I don’t know the person requesting the connection. Think before you accept everyone.
Find the right service for you. While Foursquare doesn’t have too many privacy settings (though you can turn off the auto-tweet function), only your friends can see your updates. If that’s not enough for you, other services like BrightKite (as RWW points out) offer more rigorous controls.
Don’t blow it out of proportion. If you go to work every day; the regular, predictable period when you’re out is probably much more of a target for burglars than your pint at the local pub (especially if you aren’t actually attached at the hip to your partner and they don’t automatically follow you everywhere you go).

What do you think? Are these kinds of stories changing your opinion of location-based services or are these concerns overblown?

Posted in: location, privacy, social networks

Tags: location, privacy, social networks

29Comments

The 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem

10.01.04

Forrester Research analyst Sean Corcoran recently posted an insightful breakdown of some of the differences between owned media, paid media and earned media. Given the ongoing convergence I’m seeing between different communications disciplines which I’m seeing on a daily basis, this got me thinking.

The thought process ultimately led me to sketch out my take on the social media marketing ecosystem in which corporations operate – shown below.

This is my take on the ecosystem within which the new wave of hybrid marketing agencies like ours need to operate as we enter 2010.

(Update: yes, I know there are no ads on Flickr. It’s illustrative.)

This is pretty complex, so I’ve broken it down into different system elements below. Note though, that the different elements work best when we succeed in breaking out of communications silos and integrating our communications strategies.

A few notes up-front

As complex as this image is, it’s still a drastic over-simplification. There are many more linkages than are displayed; I’ve simplified to the graphic is still readable.
The importance of each social network will vary depending on the organizational context – target markets; objectives, etc.
The ecosystem is constantly changing. A few months down the line, the big four social networks may have changed.
There are many, many other social networks, forums and other sites not directly shown here. They’re grouped into “Other” but may in fact play a significant role in your activities, depending on your company.
This ecosystem is externally-focused. A similar system doubtless exists for corporations’ internal communications.
MSM stands for “mainstream media.”
Each of the different elements can both act as a focal point and/or support other tactics, depending on how they are used within an integrated strategy.
The following sections each filter certain elements from the overall ecosystem above, to provide a simpler view of the owned, paid and earned elements of the system.

Corporate Social Media Ecosystem (Owned Media)

Key elements of the ideal corporate social media ecosystem:

Hub and spoke: Adopts a ‘hub and spoke’ system centred around a corporate social media hub, whose form will depend on the organization.
Tiered hub and spoke: Each social network may have its own hub and spoke system, if necessary. For example, you may have a primary corporate page on Facebook supported by several applications and product-specific pages.
Integrated: The hub is as integrated into the corporate website as possible.
Fewer Microsites: Todd Defren and Maggie Fox both make compelling cases for companies to stop and think before investing in microsites. I agree. They may have their place in this ecosystem, but shifting to a social network or building on top of your flexible social media hub may make more sense.
Mobile is ubiquitous: I considered including mobile as a separate component in the ecosystem, but decided against it. The web is becoming device-agnostic. Companies need to consider mobile content and applications as part of every aspect of their corporate web presence.
Inter-linking: The social media hub links to all external corporate social media properties and profiles.
SEO-powered: Search engine optimization (driven, in part, by social media activities) helps to drive traffic to the corporate website, social media hub and external social media properties and profiles. This goes for both the corporate site and separate properties. SEO could fall into any of these buckets, but for the sake of simplicity I’ve included it in this part of the breakdown.
Two-way flow: The information flow around social media elements is (depending on the organizational context, of course) two way.

Corporate Mainstream Media Ecosystem (Earned Media)

Key elements of the mainstream media portion of the ecosystem:

On and offline: Mainstream media exist both online and offline (many are both). Either way, they can drive significant traffic within the social media marketing ecosystem.
Two-way: Ideally, the information flow with mainstream media is two-way in two ways:
- Earned media drives quality traffic to your properties; your properties can generate stories within the mainstream media (both positive and negative)
- One of your goals should be a constructive dialogue with mainstream media which enables you to achieve your goals while making the journalists’ lives easier.
Multi-destination: Earned media coverage will primarily drive traffic to your corporate site in the short term. However, earned media coverage can raise broader awareness, thus driving traffic to your external properties and social media profiles (especially over time within a sustained media relations program).

Corporate Advertising Ecosystem (Paid Media)

Features of the corporate advertising ecosystem:

Social and non-social: Advertising takes place both within social media sites, but also within other online properties (search engines are a prominent example, as is CPM/CPC advertising on mainstream sites).
Interwoven: While paid online media stands alone within the social media marketing ecosystem (represented here by “SEM,” it is also interwoven throughout many other elements.
Multi-destination: Much of your advertising may drive traffic to your corporate website. However, advertising can also support your social media efforts by raising awareness and driving people to your social media profiles and properties.
Multi-faceted: “Ads” within many social networks can mean many things. Facebook, for example, your advertising activities might extend beyond regular Facebook ads and into “appvertisements.”

Make sense?

Together these different elements combine to form the more complex (yet still simplified) ecosystem displayed at the top of this post.

This is clearly far from complete. I’m curious as to your thoughts – let me know what you think in the comments and let’s refine this together.

Posted in: communications, marketing, pr, public relations, social media, social networks, strategy

Tags: communications, ecosystem, marketing, pr, public relations, social media, social networks, strategy

319Comments

Social Gaming Hitting A New Level

09.11.24

Last week, Microsoft rolled out a new update to its Xbox 360 dashboard. Among other changes, the update added Twitter and Facebook functionality to “Gold” users of its service. CNET tells us that “millions” are already using these new services.

The new add-ons allow users to do the usual things that you would expect to do with Twitter and Facebook – browse profiles, tweet, etc, but they also do one very important and very powerful thing, too:

They allow you to see which of your friends on these services are using Xbox Live.

Why is this a big deal? Because, if you’re anything like me, you’re tired of logging on to spend a few minutes playing your favourite game online and being confronted with a bunch of kids yelling vile insults at you. Thanks to those types, I rarely (read: never) play online with people I don’t know.

The problem with that philosophy, though, is that it can be hard to find which of your friends uses the Xbox Live service, leaving the online experience feeling somewhat empty. With these new features, you can scan your Twitter follower and Facebook friends lists to find your fellow gamers, and quickly and easily connect to them.

It’s another step in the merging of social media and social networking into the things we already do online.

Mass media websites have incorporated social media tools such as RSS and commenting for a while;
Movie producers have used social media features during movie and DVD launches (Fight Club is a great example);
Now, social media is further encroaching on one of the largest entertainment industries around – computer gaming.

My bet: in a couple of years, this kind of feature will be so ingrained that people won’t think of it as a “social media” feature – it’ll just be a given when they turn on their console.

What do you think?

Posted in: facebook, social media, social networks, Twitter

Tags: facebook, social media, social networks, Twitter

10Comments

Youth Vs Adults: Strong Ties/Weak Networks

09.04.27

The kids are all about social media. They’re publishing content, streaming video and Twittering wildly. Right?

Wrong.

Just as social media practitioners use and view these tools differently to the general population, we need to remember that young people use these tools differently to us. They’re informed about the tools but while they’re highly active online, we we can’t just assume that “social media tools” are the way to reach them.

Young people ≠ adults

This weekend I attended the inaugural PodCamp London in southern Ontario where Jonathan Kochis ran a fascinating session on Youth, Social Media and the Web, running through some key research around the ways young people use social media.

A few key points of difference between young people and adults:

88 per cent of teens have participated in online social activity, however their use is driven by friendship and existing connections.
Many adults use social media tools to organize events; to build their networks; to promote themselves or their work. Teens don’t care about any of those uses.
Teens skew towards MySpace and Facebook. Tools like LinkedIn (business networking) and Twitter skew much older.
Young people can see Twitter as Facebook’s news feed with most of the features stripped out. As a result, few teens use it.
Tools like LinkedIn and Twitter require an investment in time to gain gratification (establishing a network, creating value for others, delayed rewards). Meanwhile, teens look for instant gratification.

Talking with Jonathan and others after the session, I reflected that much of the difference in perspective, along with these other factors, comes down to the nature of our networks.

Professional adults (successful ones, anyway) look to build their networks. They’re constantly meeting new people, learning, and sharing knowledge. We develop new connections all the time, but many of these are loose – passing meetings at a conference, conversations at parties, conversations over coffee or dinner. Over time we work to make some become stronger, but most remain loose. We have what I call “thin networks.”

Young people, meanwhile, don’t care about developing a “network.” They care about their friends – what they are doing, where they are, what they’re planning to do at the weekend. They have a small network, built on existing relationships and full of strong ties.

Twitter ≠ Facebook

This may explain why Twitter skews much older than Facebook.

Of course, Facebook started with the university crowd which explains part of the younger skew, but it also allows more in-depth connection with people. You can see everything your friends are doing – the events they’re attending, the photos they’re posting, the videos they’re watching and the people they’re talking to.

Twitter, meanwhile, is much more transitory. Conversations come and go, as do connections (it’s much easier to follow someone on Twitter than to add a friend on Facebook). It’s very top-level and, on the surface, one-dimensional (just short messages; no multimedia aside from links to it). For people with small networks who are already closely connected to their friends, Twitter doesn’t (currently) solve a problem.

This isn’t a bad thing. What’s more, it’s certainly not a universal picture – there are certainly plenty of young people using Twitter. However, in general, I think it’s a useful reminder for us that “we” are not “they” and we can’t generalize our use of social media tools to the broader population.

So what?

Why should public relations pros and marketers care about this?

Because it has a clear and important effect on our communications programs. Twitter may be taking over the world, but only in some demographics. Meanwhile, if you’re trying to reach young people through Twitter or through an approach relying on volume of connections rather than quality of connections, you may be disappointed.

What other differences do you see between young peoples’ and adults’ use of social media?

(Side note: congratulations to Bill, Will, Titus and everyone else involved in PodCamp London. Great job, guys)

Posted in: social networks, strategy

Tags: facebook, pclo09, PodCamp London, social media, social networks, sociographics, Twitter, youth

18Comments

13 Ways Social Media Can Improve Your Career

08.11.19

I write a lot about how social media can help companies to engage better with their customers. Today, though, I’m taking a different tack and thinking about how social media can improve your career.

Here are ~~twelve~~ thirteen ways that I can certainly say social media has helped my career already, and can help yours too:

Job hunting

1. Expand your network - Social networks like LinkedIN, Facebook and even Twitter are a fantastic way to get to ‘know’ people in your industry but it goes beyond that. Search out their blogs. Find relevant forums. Comment on their work and get to know them. Create your own high-quality, regular content and they will come to you, too.

2. Obtain references - More and more companies nowadays look online when recruiting. If your co-workers, clients or partners are on LinkedIN, ask them to write a recommendation for you. It reflects well on you and, if the recommendation matches the person, it reflects well on them too.

3. Own your online brand – Your homepage may be what Google says it is, and so is your personal brand. I went as far as re-locating this site from a different URL in order to reclaim the top spot when you search for “dave fleet.” What does that matter? Well, when a client recently Googled me when we proposed some social media work for them, they came back saying “you know your stuff” rather than “what do you know?”

4. Find jobs - Most jobs aren’t advertised – they’re filled through networking and recommendations. My job certainly wasn’t advertised – I got to know the team here at Thornley Fallis through social media tools and related events. When the time came for me to move, I already had that connection. Without that, I would likely not be in this job now.

5. Build thought leadership – By creating your own content, you can (over time) develop yourself as a thought leader in your space. (This one could fall under ‘job hunting’ or ‘job performance)

Job Performance

6. Stay on top of industry trends - If you haven’t already, get yourself a Google Reader account and search out the places where people are discussing your industry online. Subscribe to them and read voraciously. My number one tip for agency newbies was to “be a sponge” but that really applies to everyone.

7. Stay on top of breaking news – You can do more than just stay on top of your own job or industry through social media. Pretty much all of the major news outlets have RSS feeds; subscribe to them and set aside time to skim through the latest news each day. Read what’s relevant; discard the rest – the ability to filter out the noise is one of social media’s big benefits. On Twitter, subscribe to feeds like @breakingnewson and any media feeds that you like to stay on top of news by the minute

8. Demonstrate you’re on the leading edge – Whether it’s internally with your boss, co-workers and internal clients, or externally with suppliers, clients and stakeholders, knowing what’s going on will go a long way to improving your reputation. Staying plugged-in helps you get there.

9. Improve your productivity - I subscribe to a couple of hundred sites; I read about 40 on a daily basis (although a couple of them are aggregators). To go to each site individually and search for new content would take most of my day, and catching new posts as they come up throughout the day would be impossible. My RSS reader lets me get through it in a few minutes before work, during the day and in the evening. It’s a huge productivity boost for me.

10. Learn from others – One of the best parts of writing this blog, posting on Twitter, listening to podcasts and all of the other tools out there is that I get to benefit from other peoples’ experience and knowledge. If I’m not sure of an idea I’ll throw it out there for input. When I have an opinion, I let other people challenge it. In the end, I’m that much more sure of what I do and think because of the input of the social media community

11. Improve your writing – When it comes to writing, practice makes perfect. I’m told my writing has improved immeasurably since I started this site (although I still have a way to go). You simply can’t beat the benefit you get from editing your thoughts down to 140 characters for Twitter, or constantly structuring and re-structuring your thoughts as you write blog posts.

12. Become a better editor – In order to have good writing you generally require good editing. With social media, you rarely have someone else to do that for you so you’re forced to teach yourself.

13. Clarify your thoughts – Putting my thoughts, opinions and approaches to problems down on ‘paper,’ as it were, forces you to get your head around them. As a result, you’re more effective when confronted by those issues in your work.

These are just a few of the ways that social media can help you along in your career. What would you add to the list?

Posted in: social media, social networks

Tags: blogging, career, Google Reader, job, Linkedin, performance, Twitter, writing

36Comments

FriendFeed Isn’t The Next Google – It’s Just The Next… FriendFeed

08.06.19

Steve Rubel says FriendFeed could be the next Google. I think he might want to step outside his bubble and reconsider.

Wait – what’s FriendFeed?

That question, right there, my friends, is why I think Mr. Rubel is wrong. First, though, a little on FriendFeed in case you don’t know much about it.

FriendFeed is a “lifestreaming” service – a tool that aggregates what you’re doing online. If you write a blog, share photos through Flickr, post updates on Twitter and vote for things you like on digg, FriendFeed lets you pull all of that into one place – into a ‘stream’ of information. FriendFeed also lets you subscribe to other peoples’ lifestreams, letting you you stay up-to-date with what your friends are doing online.

Layered on top of that, FriendFeed allows you to show which posts in other people’s streams you like and to comment on them. It also lets you post messages directly to the service.

So what does Rubel think?

Essentially, Steve Rubel argues that FriendFeed is turning into a personalized, recommendation-based search engine for him. He bases it on three trends:

The rising influence of peers (see my post on Edelman’s Trust Barometer for details on that)
90% of the online population conducts searches online
Young people are happy to post their lives online

I’ve probably over-simplified here, but that’s the gist.

Bursting the bubble

The problem with Rubel’s idea is scale. FriendFeed is small – Rubel acknowledges as much, noting that it has just 300,000 active users right now.

The difference between our opinions is that Rubel thinks that FriendFeed could become as big as Google, whereas I think it’s for those firmly within the social media bubble. It’s neat, but it’s a shiny object and the main people who seem to be getting a lot of value from it seem to be the A-listers with huge lists of contacts. That doesn’t make it a game-changer.

To make a “lifestream” worthwhile, you need to use several other services. It has an additional barrier over other web 2.0 sites – you need to use other services, and heavily, before FriendFeed gains value.I do; Rubel does; most people don’t.

If you’re not in the bubble, or on the leading edge of the “Millennials,” you (a) wouldn’t even see a need to pull this stuff together and (b) wouldn’t get any value out of it anyway.

What’s more, other tools have provided this functionality for a long time.

Google Reader long ago became my number two search engine for new media stuff – it lets me search trusted sources for information. What’s more, you don’t need the people you trust to use Google Reader for it to work. With FriendFeed you do (ok, you can get around that, but only über-geeks would even think of doing that).

Similarly, del.icio.us lets you search through the sites other people have bookmarked. Again, it has fewer barriers than FriendFeed – people just need to use del.icio.us, not a bunch of sites, for it to be useful to them. You don’t even need to sign up for del.icio.us yourself to search it.

Maybe things are moving in this direction. Who knows, maybe Google, Mahalo, etc will move to a more recommendation-based system. I just don’t see FriendFeed as part of that outside the bubble.

FriendFeed is a good service, for its market. However, it’s not the next Google. It’s just the next… FriendFeed.

What do you think?

(Don’t get me wrong here – while I’ve never met Rubel, I have a lot of respect for him. I read his stuff on a bunch of channels (including FriendFeed). I just think he’s off base with this one.)

(Photo credits: cambodia4kidsorg, tarotastic)

Posted in: social media, social networks, trends

Tags: FriendFeed, lifestream

9Comments

Plurk – Ooooooh Another Shiny New Twitter-Like Thing!

08.06.02

Twitter (when it’s up) has been lighting up today with talk of yet another shiny new toy for people to play with – Plurk.

Plurk?

Yes, you read it right – Plurk.

Plurk describes itself as:

A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, and follow the events of the people that matter to you, in deliciously digestible short messages called plurks.

My first impression – Plurk is a bit like Twitter with a little FriendFeed thrown in for good measure.

Messages have the same 140-character maximum as Twitter’s but on Plurk, unlike on Twitter, you can reply directly to other peoples’ messages (I refuse to call them “plurks”). You can also add extra bells and whistles to your messages like smileys, and there’s a Facebook-style “Dave is…” intro to posts which you can modify to things like “Dave loves…,” “Dave shares…” and “Dave likes…” and so on.

The big difference, though, is the “timeline.”

Your timeline is your home screen and where you’ll spend 99% of your time on Plurk. It allows you to easily view and scroll from left to right using your mouse or keyboard as plurks are created by you and your friends throughout the day. It gives you a clear view into what everybody is up to recently and lets you stay caught up on what your friends are doing.

Essentially, the timeline lets you visualize who’s posted what, and when. It’s a neat solution to the problem of messages quickly scrolling off the bottom of peoples’ screens, which I frequently get with my Twitter account.

So why the buzz?

Evidently, a couple of “A-list” people (Plurk’s words, not mine) discovered the service this weekend and wrote about it, bringing with them a bunch of new users… and so the viral marketing goes.

Of course, this is good because, y’know, we can’t just move to any of the existing Twitter competitors like Pownce or Jaiku when Twitter’s down, right? We obviously need another tool to fill the gap left by… oh wait… there isn’t a gap.

I don’t get it. Twitter is popular because of its simplicity and its user base. Plurk has neither, and I just don’t need another social network diluting my time further. This feels a lot like the hype around Pownce when it launched. Now… *crickets*

I feel bad because Plurk is based near Toronto (Mississauga, in fact) so the quasi-Canadian in me wants it to succeed. What’s more, the site gives me a warm, welcoming feeling that Twitter just doesn’t have. It’s fun to use, it’s well thought-out and it could be neat.

Perhaps, if Twitter’s outages continue, Plurk could steal away some of its users. Lord knows our patience has been pushed to the limit recently. Alternatively, it could carve out another niche (Venture Beat suggests it’s targeting high school teenage girls) and co-exist with the elephant in the room.

Unfortunately, though, I just don’t see the need for another tool like this. I’ve been wrong before, though.

What do you think? Twitter-killer, cool new addition or waste of attention?

Posted in: social networks, tools

Tags: Jaiku, Plurk, Pownce, Twitter

7Comments

Four Different Uses For Four Different Networks

08.04.10

How do you use the different social networks you’re part of? Do you use them all in the same way?

I got to thinking today about how I use relatively similar services in very different ways. Take social networks, for example. I’m a member of a bunch of them. I don’t have time to use them all to their full potential so I play to the strengths of each of them.

Twitter – Building Relationships and Knowledge

Twitter has become my number one tool for developing new relationships with people online. The level of interactivity that Twitter offers, the multiple ways to use the service (through a browser, through a third-party service, via instant messenger) and the asynchronicity it allows make it my preferred service for this function.

At the same time, the open nature of most conversations on Twitter also makes it ideal for learning. If I’m unsure about something, I throw out a question and 90% of the time I get several answers within a couple of minutes.

Utterz – An Intermediary

I’ve written about Utterz a few times recently, as I’ve started to use the tool more and more. I worked out how to publish to multiple Utterz accounts from one phone, and just the other day I explored the Utterz’s new site for mobile phones.

I’ve found that I use Utterz primarily as an intermediary. I do very little communicating in the service itself. Instead, I use my two accounts (PR and running-focused) to record audio and video messages and publish those to my blogs and other networks.

LinkedIn – Investing for the Future

LinkedIn is like Utterz in a way, in that I do relatively little communicating on the site itself.

I use LinkedIn primarily to firm-up contacts I have with others. It’s my most formal social network – I maintain a network there that’s focused around business, rather than the more casual relationships I have on other sites. As Colin Carmichael wrote today, it’s part fancy business card and part fancy rolodex. It’s there for a future day, when I need to draw on my professional network.

Facebook – An Aggregator

The way I use Facebook has changed over time.

When I first signed up I used it as a way to re-connect with people, to stay in touch and to post cool stuff. Since then, I’ve started to use it less and less. Nowadays, while I still tune in for the occasional game of Scrabulous, I use Facebook as a funnel for my other services. Blog posts, Utterz posts, del.icio.us bookmarks and Twitter messages all get pumped into that account.

Why? Because it’s become one of the casualties as I spend more time on other services. Plus, I’ve found Facebook’s usefulness has become diluted over the last few months.