Take My Social Network, Please

As we look around at the social landscape at the beginning of 2012, we see that social network participation on popular sites is booming.  For instance, Facebook currently has over 800 million members and Twitter has over 100 million members worldwide.  Both are still growing.  And, if you are like me, you look in on one or both of those sites on a daily basis, and contribute content when the urge strikes you.  Likewise millions of us also use our smart phones multiple times a day to stay connected in other ways: to send messages, check email, and in general stay in touch with family and friends.

What would your reaction be if government turned all those things off off for a while? Just shut them down completely. No Facebook; no Twitter, no texing, and probably no access to the internet.  Would you feel annoyed? Inconvenienced? Disgusted.  Perhaps even outraged?  Would it even matter *why* they were shut off?

Surprisingly enough if you live in Britain, your reaction might be “content,” if a recent poll is to be believed. You will recall that last August there was some civil unrest (i.e., rioting) in some of the larger cities in the UK.  Prime Minister David Cameron suggested at the time that the government might consider shutting off access to social media and messaging services like Blackberry messaging in times of civil unrest.  And how did the good citizens of the UK react to that suggestion?  According to polls taken at the time, nearly 70% of people responding agreed that during periods of civil unrest, social media services (including Blackberry messaging) should be shut down! 70%!!

I don’t find it too difficult to believe that some people would  think this would be a good action to take.  But I find that the level of support for such an action incredible, and I wonder how Americans might respond if asked the same question.  Would there be overwhelming support for the idea (70% is pretty darn overwhelming IMHO)? I would like to think there would be an uproar against such an idea in a “free” society, but I could be wrong.  While often cited as an enabler of civil unrest, social media and Blackberry messaging weren’t responsible for the Arab Spring last year, nor were they responsible for the rioting in the UK.  Actually in the UK, a study suggested that Twitter and Facebook weren’t even particularly factors in fueling the riots (but Blackberry messaging seemed to be). 

Would shutting off access to these services even be effective against a populist uprising?  I suspect not.  After all, civil unrest has been around a lot longer than texting and social networks have, and I have a feeling that shutting off access to those means of communication wouldn’t have much effect.  It might temporarily impair the ability of groups to organize, but I think that people would find ways around the blockade pretty quickly.  They have done it before; there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t do it again.

But governments have a natural tendency to think that by disabling the most convenient ways for groups to communicate, they can solve the problem at hand.  You will recall that in Egypt, access to the internet was almost completely blocked by the government in an attempt to quell the uprisings.  And of course you all remember how well that worked.

Social Networking in 2012

Originally published 12/19/2011

Last week I went over the predictions I made for 2011 to review what I got right and what I got wrong.  In yet another triumph of hope over experience, this week I’ll boldly give you my predictions on what’s to come in social networking in 2012.

Migration to Mobile:  Everyone and their uncle will be offering tablets next year: Apple will update the iPad (and maybe even offer a 7” version to compete with the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet and dozens other similar models).  Google will likely jump into the tablet market (you didn’t think they bought the mobile division of Motorola just to make phones, did you?) and Amazon is likely to expand the Kindle line to include a 10” color tablet to compete more directly with the Apple iPad(s).  Certainly the “killer apps” for these tablets will include social networking: Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, etc.  In 2012, consumer social networks will find that their traffic from mobile devices, both tablets and phones, will surpass their traffic from all other devices.

Facebook: Facebook will go public in 2012, probably in the late-Winter, early-Spring timeframe.  That’s a given considering their investment history.  What isn’t a given is what they’ll be doing with all the money they’ll presumably rake in with their IPO.  My prediction: they’ll use a lot of that money to solidify Facebook as a platform, and likely acquire (or build) functionality to compete with some of their current partners (like Zynga).  Offering games and movies through Facebook is a lucrative prospect, and probably one Facebook would like to own outright.  And the most likely end game for this strategy: a Facebook App Store, coming to your computer in 2012. Perhaps even a Facebook phone and tablet.

Google +:  The fastest growing social network of all time will finally get some traction in 2012 as people defect from Facebook and Twitter.  Not necessarily because Google + will have the superior platform, but because advertisers will be increasingly driving traffic to Google + to integrate with the analytics they already collect.  The ability of Google to sell targeted advertising based on what they know about the consumer from searches and from their social network interactions will be too valuable to knowledgeable marketing organizations to pass up.  By actively driving traffic to Google +, they’ll be making their own marketing efforts that much more effective.

Apple:  In addition to new iPads and new iPhones next year, Apple will jump into the television business.  Not with Apple TV, but with actual television sets. Leveraging Apple’s Siri interface, you’ll be able to speak to your TV and it will learn what you like to watch and serve it up to you when you want to watch it.  And what we’ll likely learn from it is that we’ll have thousands of things we can watch at any given time, but there still won’t be anything interesting on.

The election: There will be a big election in the United States in November. All politicians running for office will have a *huge* presence in social networking, all hoping to capture your attention and get your vote (or more accurately, convince you that the other guy is awful and that you would have to be a complete moron to vote for him/her—and the funny thing is, most of the time they will be right about that).  The cacophony of voices that are fed up with the political system will also take to the social netways in the US as they did last year in the so-called “Arab Spring” (boy, I wish I had predicted *that* in last years’ blog).  Whether that makes any difference or not in the United States remains to be seen.  My prediction: look for a summer of unrest unlike anything you’ve seen since the civil rights movements in the 1960’s…all enabled, fed and amplified by social networks.

The decline and death of “social” as a prefix: I’ll have to change the title of the predictions blog next year to something else, because the hype cycle around all the terms prefixed with the word “social” has run its course.  Terms like “social networking,” “social media,” “social gaming,” “social buying,” and so on are now officially redundant and will be replaced by other terms in 2012.  Organizations will stop thinking about “social” as a special aspect of their business strategy and realize that, just like the internet and telephony, the collaborative elements collectively referred to as “social” are just another aspect of doing business in a connected world.  And they’ll begin to realize that having a Facebook page or a Twitter account (or even an internal or external private-label “social network”) is in and of itself of limited value.  What they’ll come to realize is that they need to leverage their human networks in ways that are unique to their organizations in order to maximize the value created. Just what we’ll eventually come to call this evolution of “social” is anyone’s guess at this point.

And my final prediction: By late next year we’ll all be so sick of hearing about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world in December that we’ll all secretly be hoping that it actually happens sooner just to get people to shut up about it.  And what do I think of the Mayan Calendar end-of-the-world hype?  Y2k was a much more realistic doomsday scenario, and we all know how that turned out.  I guess you’ll have to tune in this time next year to find out if I was right.

Have a safe and happy holidays and I’ll see all of you in a couple of weeks.

2011 Predictions -- Hits and Misses

Originally published 12/12/2011

Last December I made some predictions about what was likely to happen in the social networking scene this year.  There were a few hits and a few misses. This week, I’ll review what I got (sort of) right and what I got (really, really) wrong.

First the hits and missed from last year:

Hit: I wrote “The largest social network on the planet, Facebook, will continue to be the 800-pound gorilla in social networking next year. The biggest challenge they Face (sorry, couldn’t help myself) will be to not shoot themselves in the foot over privacy concerns.”  And lthough there were a few minor kerfuffles with Facebook privacy in 2011, they certainly didn’t make any fatal mistakes.

Miss: I wrote “Facebook is poised to kill location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla. Facebook will take over as the 800-pound gorilla in the “check in for rewards” category of applications.”  Hmm, not so much.  Facebook places didn’t overtake Foursquare; in fact Foursquare integrated their check-ins with Facebook.  Gowalla was actually acquired by Facebook late in the year, apparently for the people working on it and not the application: Facebook promptly killed it.

Hit (Kind of): I wrote “The aspiring gorilla in social media—Google—will release Google Me sometime in the first half of 2011 to much fanfare and pundit praise.  The public, however, will once again scratch their collective heads trying to figure out what it’s good for.” Google did indeed release a social networking platform in 2011: Google+.  It shot out of the gate with millions of people jumping on board in the first few weeks, making it the fastest growing social network on record.  The jury is still out on whether or not it will ever threaten Facebook for dominance in the space.

Hit: I wrote: “Twitter, left to its own devices, will continue to be a rising star in 2011 as more and more people figure out what it’s good for: news and entertainment. Twitter will be the “go to” site whenever there is breaking news anywhere on the planet or whenever they are in the need for a bit of quick humor.”  Twitter obviously continues to thrive, even releasing a new interface late in the year.  Unlike other revamps, the New Twitter doesn’t seem to have offended users in droves.

Hit: I wrote: “Like Google Wave before it, Apple’s musical entry into social networking—Ping—will languish in obscurity until Apple finally gives up on it late next year (seriously, does anyone really care what music Steve likes to listen to?).” I don’t think Ping is in any danger of becoming massively popular anytime soon (and RIP, Steve Jobs).

Swing and a complete miss: I wrote: “The biggest social change (but not really in the area of social networking) will come in June when Apple releases the iPhone 5 with NFC (Near-Field Communication) capabilities.  NFC will let people program their phones to behave as wireless credit cards, enabling people to leave their wallets at home.  Other phone manufactures will follow with similar functions some months later.”  Turns out Apple will be late to the game with NFC, as it did not appear in the iPhone 4S released this year.  My suspicion is that although the technology appears to be ready for prime time, Apple won’t jump in with NFC until it has an entire payment ecosystem (that they control) in place.

Next week: My predictions for 2012.

Social Politics

Originally published 8/4/2011

Unless you’ve been living under a rock over the last few weeks, you’ve been inundated with news out of Washington D. C. about the debt ceiling passage.  To me, it was interesting (and immensely infuriating) to watch our political process unfold. Perhaps the thing that interested me most was how social networking was used by the participants as leverage to influence the outcome. 

It’s obvious that politicians in the United States believe (at some level) that constituents participating in social networks are a force. Many these days have Facebook pages and/or Twitter accounts (although I’m sure that a tiny minority of them ever actually contribute content—just like they have staffers to answer phones and mail, they have staffers who are responsible for the content on social networking accounts). And clearly some of them believe that a “call to action” to social networking participants can generate useful political discourse.  Not only did the President suggest to Twitter followers in a speech last Friday night that they tweet their Congressional representatives, his office followed up by issuing a series of tweets providing followers with the Twitter handles of their recalcitrant (and largely Republican) representatives. 

Two things happened directly as a result of this effort.  First, the President’s account was unfollowed by around 30,000 Twitter members.  Second, Congressional accounts were (predictably) deluged by tweets from concerned constituents.

The question in my mind is: did any of that matter?  When you make a phone call to a politician, someone answers the phone (or you get to leave an actual voicemail); when you write a letter, someone has to open the letter and do something with it (round file); even when you write an email, someone has to do something with it (even if it’s delete it without reading it).  Unlike any of those more traditional forms of communication, social networking isn’t interrupt-driven: With social networking—particularly Twitter—unless someone looks at the social networking site, the message can go completely and utterly unnoticed.  When you tweet something to @SpeakerBoehner, for instance, neither he nor any of his staff has to notice it in any way whatsoever.  They don’t have to read it; they don’t have to process it; they don’t have to respond to it; they don’t even have to delete it from anywhere (unless, of course, you are managing a Facebook page for a politician, in which case you still have to scrub any critical or embarrassing messages left on the wall).  I have to believe that of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of tweets that were sent to Congress last weekend, not very many (if any) were actually noticed by members of Congress.  At most, one of their staffers told them how many messages they got, and if they were mostly positive or mostly negative.

While using social networking is a great political mechanism for getting you’re message out, it seems to be a woefully inadequate means of getting feedback (unless you go looking for it).

Social Media Outrage

Originally published 7/7/2011

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  The verdict reached this week in the latest trial-of-the-century (seriously, haven’t we already had several of those since 2000) generated an incredible amount of online reaction.  Like the O.J. Simpson verdict back in 1995—approximately 100 years ago in internet years—the Casey Anthony verdict handed down this week caused an immense outpouring of public shock and disbelief.  One thing that certainly wasn’t available during the aftermath of the O.J. verdict was online social networking.  OK, there were a few rudimentary elements of online social networking back then: chat rooms, IRC channels and such, along with a few technophile early adopters, but nothing like today.  Did the widespread availability of social networks like Twitter and Facebook add any value to the socialization of the seeming outrage, did it influence people’s perception of the defendants during their trials one way or the other, or was it just another echo chamber for like-minded people to voice their opinions.

From a purely social aspect the two trials were very similar.  Both received extensive coverage across all media channels.  Radio and television news outlets covered both trials virtually gavel-to-gavel, as did the print media and even the internet (although in 1995 it certainly hadn’t yet achieved the ubiquity that it has now).  Though both defendants were widely excoriated in the court of public opinion during their respective trials, both were eventually found not-guilty of the most heinous charges against them.  (As people have repeatedly observed, being found “not guilty” is not the same as being found “innocent.”)  I happened to be eating lunch at a food court mall back when the O. J. verdict was announced: people were standing several deep, intently watching the one or two television monitors for the news.  Similarly, for the Casey Anthony verdict, several (ok, most) of my work colleagues wandered over to the corner of the office to watch the news on a cable news outlet.  In both cases, the silence for the reading of the verdicts and the collective “gasp” afterwards was apparent.

Back in 1995 people expressed their outrage within their circle of friends and acquaintances: the topic dominated water cooler conversations, dinner conversations and conversations at social and business functions for weeks.  Letters to newspaper editors were sent out and published by the thousands.  And through online chat rooms a few people took to the internet to commiserate with others about their outrage at the O. J. verdict.

The only thing that seems different this time was the speed at which the outrage seemed to propagate.  Almost instantly, Twitter was overrun with tweets of opinions on the news.  Likewise, friends and family took to Facebook in droves (seriously, how many people constitute a “drove”?) to express their shock at the verdict.  The water cooler conversations, dinner conversations, and social gathering conversations are ongoing just as in 1995, as are letters to newspaper editors (although now most people either comment on news websites or take to the blogosphere to state their opinions).

Did being a member of online social networks change anything about the social impact of the verdicts? Did the ability to vent via blog make anything different, for good or for bad?  As far as I can tell, it did not: Online social networking made zero difference.  Zero.  Zip.  Nada.  The ability to fire off an opinion (and you know what they say about opinions) via an internet social networking site had no effect on the tone of people’s opinions or the degree to which their outrage was expressed.  It is the same now in 2011 as it was then in 1995: only the communication medium is a bit different.

So while online social networks are useful for many things, influencing the court of public opinion isn’t one of them.

At least that’s my opinion.