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Monthly Archives: November 2011
Let’s enjoy Google+ now while we can
Hands up anyone who's fed up of hearing the question about whether Google+ is going to be bigger than Facebook. Who knows and who cares, right? But last weekend I was contacted by a long lost aunt who found me on the web through Google+ (if you're reading this – hi Jennifer!) That was interesting.
And today I was reading about how President Obama's office has joined Google+ (yes, they of the famous here's-how-to-use-social-media-for-a-political-campaign case study fame).
And here, Robert Scoble gives an entertaining and to-the-point argument as to why Google+ beats Facebook and Twitter hands-down.
Social media usage at work: get used to it
My eye was drawn recently to a piece in the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) magazine 'The Voice'. Under the heading 'A Cyber Plan for Businesses' is a report on the 'comprehensive guidance' from ACAS designed to help business 'get to grips with the cyber problem.' In it we are told that 'many staff are abusing access (to social media) when they should be working, by looking at personal websites, posting derogatory messages about managers and colleagues or buying and selling online.'
My heart sinks when I read this, not only because of the language ('cyber problem'??) but because it's this kind of thinking that IS the problem.
Reducing your social web presence to a number
In Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything turned out to be 42, after a computer spent 7.5 million years working it out.*
I can’t help being reminded of that when reading all the hoo-ha lately about Klout messing with its algorithm, to the disgruntlement of Klout-ers worldwide.
The #kloutpout is all about scores being adjusted downwards, cries of bias in favour of iphone users and accusations of social media snobbery (it’s not what you do on the social web that counts, they’re saying, but who you mix with…)
It’s hard not to be sucked into the competitiveness of ‘scoring’, or any kind of system that allows you to compare yourself favourably to others, but let’s not get carried away with the reduction of human behaviour, relationships and interraction to a number.
