Fanboxes - considered evil, please move on.

The time is nigh, the tipping point will occur soon when social media will create more link bait and spam than actual content.  This is starting to be seen on Twitter quite a lot now, pointless retweets from bots, follows from bots and now the hacked account direct message fiasco..... we've given an inch and the others have taken a mile.

The "fanbox" is something else that's a bit of a circle vulture as well.  It's a self serving tool for two sets of users.  Firstly the likes of the issuing site (Facebook for example) who are wanting to drive traffic back to their wares to justify the advertising revenue costs.  Secondly are the "fans" themselves.  What I've noticed though is that these "fans" aren't really fans.  Most of the time these "fans" are desperate to be noticed to so they'll join anything to get noticed.  Fanboxes merely spread the thin veil of nonsense even further.

In our social media quest to be noticed users have wanting put their name to anything to be noticed.  Yes the power of social networking is great, mighty and all that but it's starting to water down to the point it's nearly a homoepathic treatment.  

And how to you truely measure the returns from these fanboxes anyway?  If someone adds you on a networking site it's never mentioned (most of the time) where the referral has come from.  No one I've come across anyone asking to link with me and leaving a note, "Hi, I saw your profile on the fans of solenoid relays, you seem like a cool kinda guy.  I'd like to add you to me network." 

Fanboxes only work if you truely are a fan in the first place.  I personally believe they don't create a lot of traffic to you or your brand.  Perhaps it's now time to take stock, think responsibly and see where all of this is going.  If it carries on this way social networking will be 1% useful and 99% useless.

 

Girls, Rock 'n' Roll & Design......

Unless your head is stuffed in a vat of marmite you may be aware that Build Conference is going on in Belfast today. I'm not at it.... no need for me to be at it, I'm not designery.

Andy McMillan just posted this on Twitter.

"Girls, Rock 'n Roll & Design" — Ryan Sims, describing the typical web designer lifestyle at #buildconf

Which now explains everything in webdesign to me. It's like being in the band, everyone wants to be the lead singer so they can be at the front, pull the chicks and get all the glory :) The real work comes from the rhythm section at the back, the bass player and the drummer (or programmers as I now know them) who just lock in, get on and don't make a fuss.

And for the record, 24 years of bass playing and the only people I got to wanted to talk about effects pedals and the strings I used (long shiny ones).

It all makes perfect sense to me now...... (yes it's all tongue and cheek).

Andy's put on a brilliant conference, well done mate.

The curse of the short url.

Microblogging (Twitter, Friend Feed et al) has lifted the status of link shortening to new heights. They're not new either, I remember friends putting together Make A Shorter Link which then got acquired by tinyurl.

Then it all went quiet for a while as we didn't really need url shorteners as the majority of the time the resulting links were just put in normal webpages.  The reason their popularity wasn't huge was the same problem I have with them now, acting as a gateway to another site without knowing where my destination is, well that's bad.

So, do short urls have a shelf life? Are they time based or a done deal and will remain pointing to that link forever?  There's nothing to stop one url becoming the link to something a little less savoury....

My other real concern is the way that some users going about publishing them, I know that says more about them than me.  If it's from a trusted contact then I'll more than likely have a look.  If there's no strap line to tell me what I'm clicking on then I won't touch it.  And, lastly, if it's from a complete stranger I just move on.

Does Social Networking cost the British economy £1.38bn?

The Telegraph reports that social networking is costing the economy £1.38bn.

I'm always bemused by these sorts of figures but there's so many strangled routes on how to get to the big numbers. How does a survey of just over 1,300 works get to £1.38bn (apart from long multiplication and is this the US or UK version of a billion?).

So a company loses 40 minutes a week per employee to social network, much lower than I expected.

A number of local companies asked my opinion on such matters. My idea was to limit access during the working hours and release the Facebook IP's over the lunchtime period. So you could do your thang before 9am but then it was blocked until 1pm where the flood gates opened until 2pm then it was back to the grind until 5.30pm. I'm not even claiming that to be my idea, it was just sensible.

As for the company content, it's really up to the company to put together a policy of nominating one person to Tweet/Facebook on behalf of the company and make sure it's in the job description.

Giving customer service via Twitter comes with it's own set of challenges. As it's a service in realtime users expect responses in real time. The classic 24 hours to reply (as in the days of email) doesn't wash anymore.

Throwing Sheep - It's not about Farmville!

As much as I don't mind answering questions about social networking....

There's a phrase that's getting chucked into conversation a lot:

"I was at this course and they were talking about social networking and throwing sheep, I assume they are talking about the popularity of Farmville....".

First of all, it's nothing to do with Farmville. It refers to a book called "Throwing Sheep into the Boardroom", which is all about how companies need to wake up to the fact that social networking relationships can improve their bottom line. It's not a bad book all in all.

Throwing Sheep is not to be confused with "to throw a sheep", which is about getting someone's attention in Facebook (a bit like poking for example).

I'm starting to get tired with all the social media training that's out there, most of it's pretty simple easy stuff that you don't actually need to be taught in the first place. Just my opinion....

So you want a mortgage, so how much do you really spend?

Though it's not officially confirmed that this will happen, a number of the newspapers are reporting the fact that the FSA want to push through new checks for mortgage applications. The main one is that applicants will be "forced" to prove their spending habits including such wonderful matters as childcare and drinking (not that the two are linked).

In the good old days anyone with an ounce of sense could cobble up a basic spreadsheet with their income and basic outgoings and that normally kept the bank manager happy.
I was thinking of taking it a little further. Opt in to carry a Tesco Clubcard or Nectar card with you from 3-6 months and prove your spending habits. Then let the bank mine your data prior to getting a decision. Yes it can be mildly fixed that everyone is on their best behaviour for those six months but you'd still get an idea of what the general basket size of the applicant is each week.

It won't be long before a quick mine of Twitter and Facebook data will also show predictive modelling. If you are posting up photos of yourself pee'd up to the nines on Facebook on a Sunday afternoon then there's a good chance you went on a bender Friday/Saturday night. Just check the timestamps of new activity in the photo stream and you can get an idea of the drinking patterns in no time.

Sweeping generalisations, yes. All in the realms of possiblilty? Yes.

Social Media Training: I don't see the need for it.

This might rattle some cages..... (here's hoping anyway).

I was approached a while ago about teaching Twitter to anyone who really wanted it.  The organisation wanted to target beginners and that was fine by me.  No one signed up.  No skin off my nose to be honest.  Then pondering it yesterday evening and today, there was no real need for it in the first place.

What does it really take to introduce someone to Twitter? Not a lot, that's what.

• Go to www.twitter.com
• Click on "Join Up"
• Create an account
• Type something in that big box at the top.

Congratulations, you are now on Twitter....  You'll eventually get the hang of all the retweets, replies and direct messages in very little time.  If you desperate to find your friends and follow them there's even a link called "find people" that will do some searching for you.

Do I need to pay a company to tell me all this? No I don't.  Nor does the rest of the population.

More to the point if you are a business

TWITTER DO THEIR OWN BUSINESS TWITTER GUIDE!

Facebook is just the same....

• Go to www.facebook.com
• Click Join Now
• Go through the process
• Wait for the email and then activate your account.
• Find your friends and start telling them stuff.

Easy.

Even using the for business there's not much to hinder your progress with a few hours will invested work, just see how everyone else is doing it.  If you feel the need to go and either buy a book or sign up for a hugely expensive course to explain the above then that's fine.  Go ahead and have a nice day, you're basically paying for lunch and the venue.  What the course providers often don't tell you is the case for NOT signing the company up to Twitter or Facebook so you become the easy information prey of your competitors.

If you want to ask me questions on Twitter/Facebook then fire away, I don't mind answering for free.  It only takes a few moments of my time, or collar me at an Open Coffee Coleraine meeting or something.  But this coughing up of £200+ quid just to be taught what someone spent an hour looking up on the net.... pull the other one.