A Head of My Time

Business goes social web...

Uh oh...move over Facebook and LinkedIn, the business world has entered the social web. I know quite a few people who work for large companies that have adopted internal social web pages. I've heard about the managers who've been asked by their manager why they were not "connected" or "friended" by their employees.

I've always been an early adopter and was blogging in the late nineties, getting the idea from one of the original well known blogger, Andrew Sullivan. Prior to that I had already been through BBS, ICQ, forums and other internet communication tools. Early on in this past decade I adopted the new social web services and instant messaging platforms that got eaten up by other big internet names. Then along came YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare; by the middle of last year I was done with Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc. and deleted all my accounts. I enjoy the interaction on Google Reader and Buzz but YouTube and Blogger are enough for me right now.

Blogging and YouTube are considered old hat by the early adopters now and they're onto the latest platform. By now the pattern is familiar...early adopters take to a service, it becomes popular and the latest craze, gets bogged down by the noise of the masses and the early adopters move on. Personally I believe that the social web platforms as they exist now are pretty much in place and there will not be much more innovation and new social web services. Rather the ones that exist will morph and continue to grow and develop. The reason I still blog and make videos for YouTube is I like the challenge of continuing something considered outmoded by faddists, that actually is still relevant, keeping it current, alive and well. I now tend to view early adopters as people who think they're cool with short attention spans. They don't stick around to develop and achieve on a lasting platform.

When LinkedIn first started I saw the value in it and when I was invited to join their site I accepted the offer. Little did I realize how the social web would catch on and that later business would adopt the concepts and when that happens, you know that a conception has not just become mainstream, but has been co-opted by "The Establishment.". So now my life has come full circle to this...the company I work for has now introduced a social web site. Having seen the value of LinkedIn, although the mainstream social web services became too time consuming for me, I see the worth of participating as an early adopter of this tool for work. My perspective is that it is another method of networking to be used at work just as the phone, texting, instant messaging and email is a way to build working relationships with others in my company. We'll see how it goes.

Dear Facebook

You Rule...

WARNING: THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS BLOCKED CONTENT
Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users

Freedom of Speech ("Free Speech") is the right to freely express in speech without limitation or censorship. It has a long history in Western civilization and in the United States is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 19 refers to the "right of freedom and expression...regardless of frontiers." As a resolution it is not legally binding on all countries.

The term for free speech on the internet is more correctly freedom of information. There are no clear laws completely protecting freedom of expression on the internet and in the United States we tend to take our free speech and freedom of information for granted and many people make assumptions these rights are somehow "guaranteed" on the World Wide Web.

Since the beginning of the internet in popular culture we have enjoyed most aspects of what we in the United States refer to as free speech but it has largely been by the graces of the companies that operate the backhaul networks of the internet, those who run the sites on the web and in the tradition of the originations of the internet. It is not an inherent right although there are legal precedents and organizations that work to protect it. Generally the Western World has looked kindly and turned the other way, since historically free speech is culturally and legally ingrained and also benefits commercial interests. The clearest example of a country that does censor the internet is China.

Individual websites are a different matter and through User Agreements, Terms of Use Agreements and Policy Statements, which users must agree to in order to use the site, content is controlled, maintained and distributed by the website owners and operators. Your personal information is used as they desire according to the agreement. As commercial enterprises this is their right if you agree. With the advance of the Social Web and people doing their social networking over the World Wide Web with an online identity (commonly referred to as a profile), the issue of free speech has surfaced many times and in many ways. What users should remember is that websites are governed by Terms of Service and it is the right of the operators to decide what is free speech and what is not and it is the users choice to agree to them or not. If you agree, then the terms apply, keeping in mind the website probably also has a disclaimer in the terms, that they may change those terms at any time without additional agreement.

In other words if you don't follow the Terms of Service to the satisfaction of the website, they can restrict your use or discontinue it completely. It is your choice to participate or not and follow their terms, since there is no inherent right to access a website with stated restrictions, agreed to by the user. Sometimes these decisions are arbitrary and unevenly and unfairly enforced. Social networking websites are a private enterprise, presumably with the intention of making money, with legal rights of their own and realistically users have little recourse in decisions.


@TooMuchToTweet from JR Snyder Jr on Vimeo.


The warning message at the beginning of this blog post is what I now receive when I attempt to post a URL from this website blog, on my Facebook profile, to be distributed on the Home Page News Feed. Essentially jrsnyderjr.com has been blocked by Facebook from posting blog post notifications, as has been my habit daily for a while now. It occurred yesterday after I posted "On Illegal Immigration | Unless you have lived in Arizona a long time..." and some unknown user(s) reported it as abusive from the News Feed. You can read the blog post to determine if it is abusive or not and make your own decision.

This is Facebook's right under their Terms of Service. Since my primary use of Facebook has been to remain connected with family and a small group of friends by sharing photos and posting my daily blog URL and not to play games, use applications or spend a lot of time socializing on the site, a primary reason for my being there is gone. My choice is to no longer be on the site, something I've been considering anyway.

To me Facebook is a thinly disguised social engineering site whose operators have become drunk with the power of millions of oblivious users, continuously adjusting the rules, being more free to use your private information for free. They're also fluidly adjusting what is acceptable to them as being allowed on their site and applying the rules unevenly. It is a one way street I don't trust. Their grandiose Facebook Principles of  "Freedom to Share...One World...Common Welfare" coupled with their Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Privacy Policy do not pass my smell test. In the past year a lot of issues have arisen with social websites, Facebook in particular, regarding sharing of our information through ever-changing policy. The arrogance of Mark Zuckerberg's statement in January that "the age of privacy is over" is enough for me. He is wrong.

The truth is the genie is out of the bottle. These sites already have our information and in the future what they do with it may well be out of our control now they have it. Their willingness to share with each other grows every day, Microsoft and Yahoo! being examples. Astoundingly, without blinking an eye, every indication is that more people are willing to divulge even more information about themselves than ever before. Read yesterday's NY Times article "For Web's New Wave, Sharing Details Is the Point." There is little thought about how long this information is stored and kept around and (mis)used in the future.

For those who do, that is their choice.

I've been thinking about this for some time now and my choice is not to participate any more than I already am...actually less. I am no longer on Facebook but I recognize they have my information stored. I do not wish to give up the enjoyment I gain from social networking online completely but sometimes...
it is just too much.

Buzz Is Not A Whisperer

Google Buzz is calling...an opportunity to make a call?

I'm still missing some pieces from the Google Buzz puzzle and I haven't got that much time to devote to it right now, possibly that's one flaw inherent in it's launch. Buzz wasn't exactly welcome in my life but I kept an open mind and clear head and now have a few plugged in thoughts about it.

In a Buzz post, I think Sheryl Breuker (The Gabby Geek) of Stardust Global Ventures, brought up an important point regarding following and that this launch could be an opportunity from the outset. A window in which we can choose who to follow, be followed by and finding new people. In my mind we have the option to make a judgment call, a chance to decide if we want our scope to be narrow or wide and for professional or personal use or both. This new connection could also be a good platform to scale up or down our online social networking if we choose.

To that end I can also see how this could end up appealing more to the business, enterprise and eventually the public sectors and subsequently more appropriate for professional and business use. It may compete just as much with LinkedIn as Facebook and Twitter. If that is the case, as an individual, it might be better to start out slowly and not poison the well. Many people have started using social web sites without thinking of the consequences and paid a price when potential clients, employers and recruiters started using these sites as research tools. The lack of real knowledge about what has happened with our personal privacy is startling to witness when something new like Buzz comes along.

It's my opinion some of the noise about privacy comes from the usual suspects. They tend to be the same people who belch junk and then wonder why they get trolled and/or hacked. Don't do stupid stuff anywhere, online or off, act responsibly and you stand a good chance of remaining intact. On the other hand, that calls for Google and other keepers of our data, to continually improve the protection of our information and privacy by giving us easy access to controls. Users shouldn't have to search and try to figure Buzz out, it must be more intuitive if they want people of this decade to feel comfortable using it. I'm practiced at figuring these things out and that factor of difficulty has made even me a bit cautious, since I don't have the time to fiddle with it right now. Like everyone else, Buzz was thrust upon me with an existing Gmail account and consequently required some immediate attention to decide what to do about it, if only to figure out how to turn it off should I want to. My personal choice was to devote a little time to it and see what the implications are.

I can't help but wonder what the person thinks who has a Gmail account because they were forced into one by YouTube, someone who is skilled at only (and only cares to be) using Gmail as email or a Blogger user that doesn't really use Gmail, about getting Buzz. Whether it was taken into consideration by Google is a toss of the coin, they either took it as a calculated risk or most likely, didn't think of it at all.

It is a good concept, I admit to being surprised at liking it as much on first impression as I do. I hope it gets better and gets a good response from a responsible audience but it needs interface improvement for privacy and controls as well as interaction. It's an opportunity to review what we want or don't want with our personal online social life and make a choice about making connections or not. I think it will gain traction because it's already caused me to re-discover and find out new things about Gmail...that in itself is a "win" for Google and probably worth their risk, intended or otherwise.

Top left photo: Albuquerque (NM) Toll and Assistance Switchboard Tandem Circuits

Bottom right photo: Sunset Point (Arizona) Communications Towers

JR Snyder Jr copyright 2010

 

Online Social Networking: 2010

What I think now...

Two years ago I did a video blog "Online Social Networking Revolution: Thinking Ahead." It was one of my first video blogs and although I cringe at my presentation and editing, it remains a video that continues to get views.

This is my follow up video blog with some of my current thoughts on online social networking. Over the 15 years that I've been interacting online, YouTube and vlogging really changed the game for me four years ago when I first ventured there. The interaction on YouTube, the video sharing site, made it also a social web site. It pushed many of us further online because it allowed the presentation of self in real life (apologies to Erving Goffman)...we could see each other in video and get a better sense of the people we interacted with online.

Much has been made about what happened with online social networking, interaction and the community on YouTube, however there is no doubt that the site advanced online interaction into the mainstream. It remains to be seen what happens with YouTube but my belief has been that Google as a corporation had (and still has) no idea what it had in YouTube in the aspect of online social networking and what direction to go with it. It has never been in the MBA/CPA marketing business school mindset principles the company operates by, no matter how cool their campus was too work at and trendy their logo was. It was only a matter of time before the community on YouTube became a temporary moment in an era now gone by.

In any case what I've learned personally about online social networking is that it intersects in my life and is integrated now with offline "real life" social networking. A large number of the people I've met online since the early nineties I have met in person and maintain contact with. Those that I haven't, the virtual relationships have become as real as those with people I know in person. I no longer distinguish the difference.

One thing has become clear, everyone must now come to terms with how to handle life online and offline, even if for some that means opting out and not engaging online at all. That is still a choice that must be reckoned with, since to engage or not through the internet, means a decision has been made about relationships. It is neither right or wrong and everyone must decide individually what is best for them in their own personal happiness and choose how they want to interact with other people.

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Online Social Networking 2010 (What I Think Now) from JR Snyder Jr on Vimeo.

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January 14, 2008

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A great explanation of the value of Twitter by Dr. Tom Guarriello

I'm exploring Twitter, dipping my toes in, already seeing the value of it for me and intend to do more in-depth blogs (maybe a vlog) on how I am adapting this social media tool to work for me. This 22 minute video by Dr. Tom Guarriello of TrueTalk and VloggerHeads is a very personable explanation of how to use Twitter coupled with why you would want to use Twitter. I also found it useful in understanding what Twitter is.

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"Twitter: Why Bother"


Find more videos like this on VloggerHeads

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You may follow Dr. Tom Guarriello by going to his Twitter profile at www.twitter.com/tomguarriello.

On my way to 2009 the year 2008 happened

When I did the video "Online Social Networking Revolution: Thinking Ahead" a year ago I was certain on my premise but certainly could not realize how prescient I was on the topic. A funny thing happened on the way to doing the things I talked about at the end of the video, real life events that required full attention, therefore until recently a lot of online action was delayed. This website blog is a big piece of my work now with blogging, vlogging and online social networking and the beginning of where I was heading back then.

I do have something more to say in a vlog as a follow up to this video and I'm preparing to do that. Personally I'm seeing a lot of late forties to early sixties boomers completing those online forms to all kinds of social networking sites they never completed years ago. From Facebook to Reunion.com to beliefnet.com to Twitter to CNN, you get the idea...this is worth commenting on.

These folks have the time now after unexpected unemployment, forced retirement, part time and/or underemployment and the damage the economic crisis has caused. There is a wave, a flock if you will, coming onto online social networks of the next adopters. They no longer give me that look about "being on the internet" that they used to since now they're on the internet a lot more. Now they ask questions.

It is why I started using Twitter and still like my YouTube social networking community that I know, with Skype and Stickam as tools to bridge them together among other tools. What will be dropped and what will be added is dependent on the economy, access, ease of use, value, privacy. Pretty tough criteria really that I think all social networking sites are going to have to contend with, along with a business model that at a minimum breaks even on the bottom line. It is interesting contrasting my much more tech savvy online community friends that use more current applications, with some of my lifelong offline friends that I'm still chatting with on good old MSN Messenger and certainly not with a headset or webcam. They're getting there with rapidity though, they just left tech savvy workplaces, Skype is in their lexicon.

To its peril, while searching in vain it's soulless corporate being, YouTube sacrificed it's unintended thriving online social networking community, to blundering Google corporate handlers trying to make a huge profit by all kinds of deals with content providers. Guess what? YouTube still don't make no money. The very thing, online social networking, that was exploding and YouTube by natural consequence had, they squandered while the bubble was expanding. The online social community still exists on YouTube but it is not what it was or what it could have been or possibly might still be. It remains to be seen what happens since I don't believe that story is close to ending.

I learned a lot from the very early days of the internet and even more about online social behavior in the 90s as the web reached the masses. It remains to be seen which technologies, software and sites that I use as the interweb unfolds and online social networking increases to even more of the masses by the ubiquitous connectivity across devices from the pc to smartphones and operates in the "cloud."

tbc...

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of course all bets are off if we have a catastrophic technological breakdown. I mean really...who knows what's next?
at least I weigh 60 lbs less than a year ago!

This is a very useful explanation of the Twitter phenomenon with a pragmatic approach to why people use it and I'm recording it here without comment.

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Friday, February 6, 2009

Working Ideas

Learn to Twitter if you want to stay connected

by Donna J. Tuttle

As a chief inspiration officer for San Antonio’s Sales by 5, Nan Palmero is a technology power user. So when he flipped open his Dell laptop last week and saw vertical lines, he shifted into uber-geek mode. He tracked down a YouTube video that displayed the exact problem and called a Dell support technician. “I wanted to email him the video so he could troubleshoot quickly,” Palmero says.

The specialist couldn’t accept an e-mail and, instead, started to submit Palmero’s request into that black hole, otherwise known as the repair request process. Annoyed, Palmero sent out a Tweet on social networking channel Twitter.com

“Dear Dell, I could show your support team EXACTLY what’s wrong with my XPS M1330 if they had youtube access. Apparently, it is a common prob,” Palmero tweeted.

Immediately, Palmero got a response: “@nanpalmero What’s going on with your Dell XPS? Is there something I can assist with?”

Ten minutes later, a technician fixed Palmero’s issue and one of Dell’s Twitter team followed up to ensure his satisfaction.

Palmero’s experience hardly is an anomaly. Corporations all over the world are responding to customer service issues with staff that monitors channels like Twitter and Facebook. It is another avenue to preserve their company’s image and promote their brands.

Receiving excellent and immediate customer service is only one reason to Twitter. Getting familiar with a medium that is taking the world by storm is another.

Trust me, I understand how uncomfortable this makes you. I already struggle to answer my workday e-mails and exigent text messages from one of my four kids: “R u making dinner??” Now, I’m supposed to track hundreds of alternately witty and mundane Tweets? “I just don’t get it. And, for that matter, who cares?” is the collective response from many first-time Twitter users.

Tim Walker, an Austin-based editor and blogger for Hoover’s, says we should care. In a presentation that hit the audience over the head with a Web 2.0 two-by-four, Walker posed the question: “How new are the social media?” His answer: Not new at all. In fact, Walker argues that one of history’s first Tweeters was the late theologian Martin Luther, who died in 1546, a full four and a half centuries before Twitter became a phenomenon. When Luther nailed a copy of the “95 Theses” to the door of a church and the message was printed, copied and distributed like wildfire, he was using a form of social media, Walker says.

Twitter, today, is no different from the earliest letters, telegraph messages, and e-mails. Historically, people always have pressed for new ways to connect and communicate faster, and especially on channels that fly under the radar of the mainstream. Twitter is to computer users what CB radio has been to truckers and lighthouses have been to ship captains.

“Twitter is an easy way to interact with your community,” says Jennifer Navarrete, one of the founders of Social Media Club San Antonio and a social media consultant. “If you are a business, people are talking about you — good or bad and if you’re not participating in that conversation, you’re not promoting or problem solving. Likewise, if they’re not talking about you at all, then they should be.”

If you’re ready to take the leap, here are some steps you to get you started:

• Look up www.commoncraft.com (at the recommendation of Palmero) to watch How-To Twitter videos, which are simple step-by-step explanations using stick figures.

• Go to www.twitter.com and sign up for an account. It’s free. For your settings, make sure you click “See all @ replies” so you can view responses.

• Download a Twitter application to your iPhone or BlackBerry.

• Jennifer Navarrete (@epodcaster) offers up this starter pack of people to follow in San Antonio: @alanweinkrantz, @kr8ter, @calamityjen, @Pandaran, @doing media.

• On the national scene try: @chrisbrogan, @Twalk, @nanpalmero, @BryanPerson and a few I find interesting: @taxgirl, @incspring, @johnlithgow and @iamneurotic.

• Check out tools like Twittersearch, geotweet, and Twittergrader to find out who is Tweeting locally and what they’re chirping about. Use the Tweetdeck to organize your followers into groups like: work, family and current issues.

Hoover’s Walker likens Twitter to a cocktail party, and, indeed, the awkwardness of walking into the virtual lounge is palpable. It’s noisy in there. In one corner, advertising and marketing gurus are jockeying for position by throwing up posts about new Twitter tools. In another corner firms are announcing new products. In between, artists, parents, and animal lovers are getting chummy over life issues and popular movies. There are online snobs who liken novices to “Twitter Tots” and grimace at Twitter blunders through emoticons. Users need to find their own groove.

Like any human interaction, the beauty lies in the serendipitous connections. A business contact hooks you up with a cheaper, more efficient product. A like-minded parent eases your worries. A company representative is so warm and funny that you reconsider your opinion of that giant firm. Or, you simply make a new friend. Twitter is a human knowledge database standing, ready and waiting on your front lawn 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s an interactive encyclopedia and global support system on steroids.

Marc Warnke, an Idaho-based author and speaker on social media (@marcwarnke), says this: “It’s critical to understand that Twitter can be a business tool, but if you come to the table with only your business in mind, you will never be set a place to eat,” he writes in his blog. “If someone jumped up on a table and yelled his or her pitch (at a cocktail party), it would be very inappropriate... walk lightly around self promotion. Be helpful, funny and that person who people want to hang around with.”

For your professional life, Navarrete says consider Twitter a virtual Chamber of Commerce mixer or industry networking seminar. “You only go to those once a month, and if you miss it, you miss out on a great chance to meet new people and make new connections,” she says. “This is a 24/7 networking opportunity, it’s free, and it allows you to get to know people before you meet in person. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met via Twitter and by the time I meet them in person, we’re hugging like long lost friends.”

Last month, Navarrete and colleagues kicked off the first ever San Antonio Social Media Breakfast (http://sanantonio.socialmediaclub.org). San Antonio is the 15th city in the country to form this type of breakfast group where marketers, educators, business owners get together to learn something new about social media and share information. I’ll be there. Look me up @writeontime, and we’ll plod along on this journey together. Not interested. Don’t worry. That crazy new thing called Internet e-mail? It was just a passing fad.

The Working Ideas column by staff writer Donna J. Tuttle focuses on workplace issues, strategies and trends and will appear occasionally in the Small Business Weekly section.