DISQUS

i think the fact that they had no idea (a business model) that would generate revenue tells you all you need to know about the future of twitter.

fact, ppl dont like being interrupted with advertising.

many of the connections aren;t "real" and doesn;t mean you'd trust them anymore than a site that has product ratings

@mikeashworth

wise words as always Danny however you shouldn't feel a need to apologise for not responding within nano seconds of being prompted on the internet.

i'll get shot down for this but hey, it's about time we all realised that "it's just the internet!"

it's not "real life", real people, real conversations, body language, tone of voice, real communication (not 140 characters which get taken the wrong way).

social media/networking has a valid place in a well balance outlook on life. If someone immerses themselves too deeply in it at the expense of more valid areas they will drown.

My latest bugbear is that people feel the constant need to post what they are doing 24/7, if yo a re out enjoying time with friends and feel the need to constantly tweet about it or take pics and post to the internet, I believe you are not "truly present" with your friends, it's one step removed from a great night out (as if you are viewing it through a camera yourself).

@mikeashworth

If their are some architecture / scaling issues which require significant investment to resolve perhaps everyone should pay to use the service.... or do we not love it that much?

btw your comment on twitter/facebook is interesting....

"if you’re going to remove something that people use, make sure you let them know in advance. Facebook (Facebook reviews) has learned this and now communicates most big changes far in advance.

For the average users of facebook (and I don't mean all of us tech savvy people) every change goes without prior notification/understanding.

Mike

p.s. Dont Panic!

A post earlier this week over at Andy Sernovitz’s blog advises that there are rules about disclosing whether a blog post was paid for.

http://www.damniwish.com/2009/04/why-its-wrong-...

Interesting that this doesn’t appear to cover tweets, (you’ve highlighted paid ones) or perhaps disclosure is being ignored?

@mikeashworth

Amazon appears to have gone a little crazy......

I can understand if the other firm had been called "Hamazon" or maybe "Amazoning" but Amazee doesn't strike me as something that could be confused at all with Amazon.

One thing Amazon need to be careful of is the law of colliding channels.

They over react to this, they under react in their response to people who were up in arms about the removal of gay and lesbian books from the sales rank.

Perhaps one day they'll go one more reaction too far(either way) and find that people's goodwill towards them starts to diminish and they like and trust them a lot less.....

Then again I stopped buying books from Amazon a while back in the UK because of some awful courier deliveries and now use these tools to find best prices.

http://www.bookkoob.co.uk/
http://www.bookbrain.co.uk/

This was news? you've been able to share links on facebook for ages. so the actual news is that pirate bay have added a "share on fb" button on their website? wooooo.

need to have software installed to download torrents anway, what about the people who share links to mp3's and other such copyrighted stuff on facebook which dont require any additional software, is that more of a "threat"?

Mike

this is interesting. agree that when operating ion "company mode" must be spot-on with what you do then again shouldn't that be the same for "personal mode" too? the way this reads is that the person acts in such a ways when in "personal mode" that they wouldn't dream of acting like that in "work mode".

the thing is, it doesn't matter, if someone posts for their company all cool and pleasant and then like a fool in "personal mode" i'll still think of them as the latter.

i have just one rule "be yourself" trying to be more than one will lead to psychological issues and medication ;-)

p.s. looks like they had a go with a lance armstrong "press release" about a month before the owen wilson one

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idU...

having re-read the post above do you think that Rolex is none too ghappy with the actiosn of Melorse, that's the way it reads to me?

the MSNBC news story has now been taken down

Advertisers on facebook must be gutted. I see zero adverts on the main feed page however they are there still when i look at my profile page, but that's not where I'm going to be "hanging out".....

The feed page looks like it has been "cobbled together" by someone who has never attended a "how to build design and build a usable website" course.

If they want it to be like twitter, the friend limit will be an issue, then again we could all do what scoble does and head on over to Friendfeed. Personally for those that want to connect around shared interests, I'm off to visit Ning :-)

Hiya, i also wrote about this nonsense masquerading as a press release

http://michaelashworth.wordpress.com/2009/01/07...

Don't know if i'll be getting one of these letters too, drop me a line, you have my full support on making the wider world aware of the actions of Melrose and by association Rolex.

The Melrose / Rolex campaign ~I can imagine the headline on the online press release :-)

Mike

You can enter a competition to win a copy of Scratch: the ultimate DJ when it is released over at the website for Hip Hop movie "South Coast"

http://www.southcoastthemovie.co.uk/Win.html

'SOUTH COAST' is a character driven documentary about how a culture as intrinsically American as hip hop has taken root and mutated in a quintessentially British way in the least likely of places.... its seaside towns.

The film is packed full of utterly engaging characters (as well as bigger names such as Norman Cook, Plan B, Killa Kela, JFB, Stig, Beardyman, Dr Syntax, Mr J, Blackgrass and Elemental) who subvert preconceptions of hip hop just being about bling, gangstas and sexism in every frame.

The film covers all aspects of the Hip Hop scene; music, graffiti, MC’s engaging in freestyle battles, DJ’s, turntablism (cutting and scratching etc.) and breakdancing.

The film won 'Best Documentary' in The International Film Makers Festival, and was officially selected for screening at Raindance, Bermuda, Israel, Helsinki, H20 (New York), Black Soil (Rotterdam), De Reel (Australia) and over a dozen others.

Trailers, freebies, soundtracks etc over at
www.southcoastthemovie.co.uk

You can enter a competition to win a copy of Scratch: the ultimate DJ when it is released over at the website for Hip Hop movie "South Coast"

http://www.southcoastthemovie.co.uk/Win.html

'SOUTH COAST' is a character driven documentary about how a culture as intrinsically American as hip hop has taken root and mutated in a quintessentially British way in the least likely of places.... its seaside towns.

The film is packed full of utterly engaging characters (as well as bigger names such as Norman Cook, Plan B, Killa Kela, JFB, Stig, Beardyman, Dr Syntax, Mr J, Blackgrass and Elemental) who subvert preconceptions of hip hop just being about bling, gangstas and sexism in every frame.

The film covers all aspects of the Hip Hop scene; music, graffiti, MC’s engaging in freestyle battles, DJ’s, turntablism (cutting and scratching etc.) and breakdancing.

The film won 'Best Documentary' in The International Film Makers Festival, and was officially selected for screening at Raindance, Bermuda, Israel, Helsinki, H20 (New York), Black Soil (Rotterdam), De Reel (Australia) and over a dozen others.

Trailers, freebies, soundtracks etc over at
www.southcoastthemovie.co.uk

I suggest that with regard to the apology they follow some very simple advice

Say "We are sorry". Actually use those words and not "we apologise" or "we regret". These other terms do not have the same impact.

Say "we screwed up"

Say what they are going to do to make it up to people

[Edited by Andy]

Hi, Some great advice, thankyou. I find that the ratio of 5:1 for my contribution to other people's content versus publishing my own content is also a good one to bear in mind.


Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK
Helping Small and Medium Sized Businesses to boost
Sales by finding, attracting and keeping Customers.

If I might quote part of your article "One other interesting note that Zuckerberg makes is that he believes social networks could cannibalize e-mail. "

Now let me pick myself up off the floor from laughing.

Facebook purports to be a tool that allows people to stay in touch with others around them, "social networking" call it what you will. This is blatantly not the case.

I have recently been administering a successful group on facebook called "bounce your balls for cancer". http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=23456...

It is an organisation which raises funds for mens cancer charities and also raises awareness generally.

To grow the group I have taken an innovative approach (innovative as it has never happened to me) and started to send people a thankyou message when they join the group. This seemed like a very "social" thing to do and in doing so I also ask them to share the group with others if they wish to do so.

I have now received an "official warning" from facebook that they believe I am spamming people and if i'm not careful I'll get banned / account disabled.

How ridiculous!

Sure I could send out a message to the entire group and within it thank those people who've recently joined however that's spam as ppl only need to be told thankyou once. anything that is not relevant is spam, end of story.

Now, if facebook could introduce a function that allowed an auto message to be generate to ppl joining a group or fan page and I could place the thankyou text within that etc. that would work. I can have autoresponders for my email why not facebook? there you go facebook another idea for your Developers, where do i pick up my shares from?

I really don't believe that their messaging system and the awful chat functionality will develop sufficiently to eat into the market share of email and messaging platforms.

I am also finding that more and more facebook is just another broadcast tool for people who want to shout at potential customers rather than engage in dialogue / conversations


Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

Hi Robert,

I've picked up on one of the words you just used "glue". Perhaps ask them how they can build a credible, trusted Brand when they glue bits of applications together to create something for the end-user.

How, as a Brand will they cope when these services fail, how will they manage that Brand Experience. Sure, a lot of these products are free to the end user yet that doesn't mean that they should receive a shoddy or poor or failing service.

If they choose free services in the cloud from places like Amazon and Google with no real uptime guarantees, how can they manage that?

Lots of people love twitter, yet people are having to now change their ways to use it well, de-follow, use Friendfeed, Twitter turned off sms in UK as well. All these are actually people problems and not technical problems. They impact upon the way people go about their lives.

I'd also be interested in how they plan (or if they can at all) for people using the product in ways they never imagine that impact upon their initial scope? That's kinda what happened to Twitter as well.

Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

Even "opt in" processes need to proceed with caution.

I feel that people might well be interested or alarmed that their activity across the net might end up in the facebook news feed. Therefore if something that people may not welcome is to take-off, I cant help thinking that this "opt in" process wont be as obvious to the end user as perhaps receiving an email from the website belonging to the Company I interact with advising of such.

anything less than a completely transparent process to the user will smack of being an underhand way to get an "opt in". I just wonder who is going to lose out at the end of the day? I feel that both Facebook and the company I interact with, will both be losers in this, as the credibility of both is flushed down the pan.

Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

I agree with the comments by JezArnold. It doesnt work properly.

I think the main reason is that the privacy section for your profile mentions wall posts however what you see in the tabbed area marked "wall" is a combination of wall and news feed all merged into one data stream.

You can manage the News Feed and wall elsewhere in the privacy section however that only allows you to manage them by your entire list, not by specific groups of friends or individuals.

Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

Hi Nick, thanks for posting that info I passed over.

In my own particular instance this was of interest (discovered) as an individual was posting libellous comments on a facebook group about a client of mine.

We were managing this on the basis that as it's in Facebook as opposed to whole of the internet we'd take a softer line to start with.

This view may now have to change as a result of these comments now being indexed by Google.

It's going to be interesting to see how various Companies etc. respond to comments, especially as some of the things posted in Facebook can be very negative.

Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, UK

I dont think facebook is as important amongst the general sheep throwing population as your story might suggest.

A lot of people are bored with it, don't get it, or understand how it can be really beneficial. I have observed people joining, then there friends, and then friends of friends however it doesnt reach critical mass in a good way. It peters out once they get bored of throwing sheep at each other (and other such vacuous activities).

Mike Ashworth
Marketing Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

Interesting, perhaps lots more people signed up to use it after your original article.

Following on from my comment on your original story where I posed a couple of questions with regard to Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans. It looks like they have some, but it looks very patchy indeed. When they say its back, and then that maybe its a bit spotty doesn't fill an enterprise, who perhaps have business critical data residing on those servers, with confidence.

To answer your question from yesterday, you wouldn't be allowed access to primary and back-up site as you have no need to know where they are situated and I wouldn't either as I am not conducting a Physical Site review.

I hope that Companies considering placing data on any box consider some of the risks and appraise correctly.

Mike Ashworth
Business Coaching and Consultancy
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

I sincerely hope that any Company hosting it's data at a third party has carried out some research and due diligence activity. Just because it's Amazon does not mean it's infallible.

A well run Company would be interested in their Disaster Recovery Plans, Business Continuity, my previous employer (a Fortune 500) Company would also have wished to carry out a physical site review of Amazon Data Centre to ensure it met our Security requirements. This would include such items as access control, security of building, CCTV, vetting of staff recruited to work at Centre and many more areas.

I do hope people aren't just assuming that "it'll all be OK" because it's Amazon?

Mike Ashworth
Business Coaching and Consultancy
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

I feel this is not aggressive however it makes a good headline. Aggressive would suggest that any time someone dare mentions their name in a negative fashion that they go in guns blazing, cease and desist orders at the ready etc.

However what is actually occurring is that they have woken up (well, employed more people) to handle / join in with the conversations that are taking place online and offline about their product.

Aggressive? No
Sound Business practice? Most definitely

Even before the money came pouring in I have found that unlike many organisation I purchase products from the Facebook Customer Care Team respond quickly via email to questions that arise about the Product. I hope they keep this going as well as investing more money on the PR side. I have a view which is that Customer Service supports the Marketing / PR that takes place.

Mike Ashworth
Business Coaching and Consultancy
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

what a marvellous idea, so much more inspiring that dropping money in a collection tin, active participation, a chance for these individuals to tell their story and then get a loan, and then you get to follow the progress.

I'll be finding someone on there too loan some money too this week, i hope your other blog readers do the same.

Mike Ashworth
Business Coaching and Consultancy
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK