The Participation Gap

I’ve been persisting with Facebook, and my initial scepticism is beginning to fade as my network has grown. I’ve also noticed I’m using it differently than I initially set out to do. I started off by trying to connect with all the people I’ve ever known, focussing predominantly on those from the more distant past. And I did connect with them. However, those connections have faded (probably for the same reasons we’re not real life friends anymore) and the day to day value I derive comes from interactions with people I still have a relationship with and who I see on a reasonably regular basis.

A couple of observations though. Firstly, despite living a highly ‘blended’ life, I use Facebook almost exclusively for non-work related things. I think that’s been driven by a couple of factors – the fact that any work-related stuff would be open to my entire network, which would be inappropriate, and secondly that very few of my work colleagues have connected with me on Facebook, possibly because they themselves only use it for personal things. Clearly this is (potentially) a flaw in my blending theory which I need to think about some more. My second observation, is that not all my friends and contacts use Facebook, or any other kind of social networking site for that matter. Which means my Facebook activity only represents part of my life network. Some of those missing are from a different generation, but many are not. They simply have different priorities and a different mindset. Whatever the reason, they are missing. This is the participation gap.

As with many technologies, there’ll always be some ‘never adopters’, or ULAs - ‘ultra late adopters’, or those excluded for other social reasons – and this inevitably means the value I get from the network will not reach full potential. Will this gap eventually close, as it did with TV? Or will the network keep migrating to new platforms before the ULAs have a chance to catch up? Does it even matter? I guess we need to wait and see.

Double Edged Sword

I’ve been a flexible worker for a number of years. I have zero dependency on paper or a physical presence and excellent technology which means I can work from just about anywhere. And it has proved quite liberating. One of the main drivers behind the ‘blending’ I have talked about in previous posts. However, it can be a double edged sword from the enterprise perspective.

When we all worked together in an open plan office, one of the key components of knowledge management – people to people conversations – happened naturally. If you learned something useful you could tell your colleagues. If someone in your team needed help, they could raise their head and ask. Chances are, someone in the same office would know the answer. And you would overhear conversations which might not be relevant at the time but which you could store away for when you needed to ‘know’ something.

With flexible working, you lose much of that. You lose much of the context for a piece of knowledge – “Jane did it this way when she was up against a tight deadline” The latter half of the sentence being the context. Because flexible workers are not usually in the same place at the same time, this can drive an increase in the use of asynchronous tools such as email. In their own way, these tools then spawn a set of behaviours which can dilute decision taking and reduce the agility of a business. Things such as copying everyone to cover your back. Or asking ten other people instead of taking the decision yourself.

So, on the one side there are major benefits from flexible working around increases in productivity and motivation amongst flexible workers, and on the other side the same people can become increasingly isolated, disconnected and out of the knowledge loop.

All this is just one of the reasons social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter should be explored enterprise use. They can re-connect people and begin to restore the context. Because they are open for viewing by everyone in your extended network – not just the people on the email distribution list – they can provide that always on stream of context. What I’m doing. Issues I have. Help I need. It’s all out there again.

Facebook on the slide ?

As suspected, the number of Facebook transactions has started to decline. See the BBC story this week. I guess we all knew that would happen. The quote from Nic Howell is most revealing though. Nic says "Social networking is as much about who isn't on the site as who is - when Tory MPs and major corporations start profiles on Facebook, its brand is devalued, driving its core user base into the arms of newer and more credible alternatives.” This is yet another example of where corporations, representing the status quo, try to move in everyone moves on. I predict this will keep happening as Generation Y people know instinctively when they’re being sold to and when the commercial boys have moved in. And so far , they’ve been able to stay one step ahead.

Facebook Fatigue

I blogged about people tiring of Facebook a few weeks ago. Seems the numbers bear me out. Have a look at this piece on The Register.

I still think it'll have value for niche communities, particularly inside an organisation. But maybe 'friend fever' is over - until we all migrate to something else that is !

PR Week

Last week I spoke at the PR Week Social Networking & Blogging in Practice conference at the Thistle Marble Arch. Unusually, I managed to get to the whole event. Which was quite interesting. Here are some rambling notes to self.

First off, I was surprised at how many people there were attending. It was certainly one of the larger conferences I’ve spoken at in recent years. This seems to have caught the organisers by surprise as the room was very full – not enough tables for everyone – and with low ceilings and no stage it was difficult to both hear and see.

Then there was the audience profile. I seemed to be the only person talking about how this impacts inside an organisation – all the other slots were about the external impact, which seemed to make the event unbalanced. At the start of my session I asked for a show of hands on who was interested or working in employee communications. Only about a quarter of the room put their hands up. I think that in itself is quite interesting as I’ve blogged before about blending and how it’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between inside and outside.

I picked up some nice quotes from some of the speakers…
“Happy customers blog, angry customers blog louder.”
“Blogs are powered by emotion.”
“Bloggers aren’t shy.”
“Conversation is king – content is just the stuff people talk about”
“The conversation is happening without our permission.”

There was quite a lot of discussion about corporate blogs. I’m not convinced there can be such a thing as a corporate blog. By their very nature, blogs are personality driven. Without the personality, it becomes just a publishing channel with Forum type functionality. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is substantially different in nature to a true blog.

The most interesting part of the day was the panel session – interesting because the panel members were all representing ‘old media’ – and had very old media views. For example, newspapers using blogs just as an outlet for content that doesn’t make the daily printed version and so on (that’s a niche channel, not a blog). The panel could have been much more lively if there’d been a blogger who wasn’t a journalist, or an ex-journalist with a stake in the traditional.

Having said that, one of the panelists - Sara Lloyd from Pan MacMillan talked about “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”. I found that a great way of thinking about Generation Y and the rest of it.

And there were a lot of references to ‘mainstream’, when people were actually talking about traditional media. I wonder when the number of people reading and writing blogs becomes such that the blogosphere becomes the mainstream?

The afternoon included a great session by Will McInnes on the practicalities of blogging. It was great fun, and perfectly illustrated the point that many people in our industry talk about the new social media world, but few really understand it. Will does.

All in all, whilst I think we’ve come a long way I the UK, we’ve a very long way to go before we understand that the old notions of control are breaking down and the PR people have to forget about spinning stories, but joining conversations.

Facebook - it's not real!

I came across this post from The Eychild today whilst I was thinking again about why I'm uncomfortable with Facebook. Facebook is superficial. And it serves only to re-kindle relationships with people I hadn't seen or heard from for years. Of course, there's likely a good reason why those relationships fizzled out in the first place. So, even though I've now re-newed contact with all these 'friends' it hasn't resulted in any real relationship with any of them, let alone facilitated a real friend interaction - like a drink down the pub!

Also, MySpace is not dead - it seems to still have traction with the kids.

This illustrates a real risk for those trying to get social networking going inside an organisation. How do we avoid it descending into superficiality and failing to deliver real value? Perhaps one thing we should do is stop talking about "Facebook Inside" but start talking about creating a place where people can share experiences, insight and information on their projects. If we create Facebook inside we'll have failed.

Facebook

My colleague Richard Dennison goes head to head with Tom Hodgkinson over his Guardian article on the politics of Facebook. Richard makes a very interesting observation about the fickle nature of the social networking world, particularly in the UK. I often wonder if - when the next new ‘big thing’ in the social networking world emerges - people will abandon Facebook and migrate – like Wildebeest – to something else.

Or will we just tire of it? I completely acknowledge the value of social networking inside an organisation, and I’ve found it a little useful in my private life just keeping track of friends, but it is increasingly reminding me of Friends Reunited. A great flurry of activity, which slowly but surely went stale. I know it’s not quite the same thing, but it is similar.

Facebook at work

I can see plenty of uses for Facebook inside an organisation. But what I find really interesting is how organisations will react to the further blurring of inside and outside, personal and business, work and leisure. I'm sure some will try and block it, but others will embrace it. Here's what I said on the Intranet Life blog...

"Inside an organisation - terrific potential, for the reasons others have outlined above. Except that, no matter how we as the professionals dictate how these tools should be used, it's the users who will actually decide how they're going to use them and where the value will come from. That's difficult to predict. And we're increasingly blurring inside and outside, so the features that people use 'outside' will need to be there and we'll need to understand better how to manage the resulting content explosion. Just hope I don't get 'poked' too often ;-)" You can see the full thread here.

Facebook versus MySpace

I’ve heard Facebook described as MySpace for adults. If that’s the case, why are the kids flocking to it, and will all the adults leave and go to MySpace? Does this behaviour remind you of a herd of bison? It does me. I wonder whether we’ll all continually move from one social networking site to another? If we do, what does that do for their business models? Or how long will it be before someone connects them all together?

Social Networking for the silver surfer......

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And why not?