Disqus - Latest Comments for rickmans

Re: Socialize Me: IBM Connect 2013: The Can't Miss Social Business Conference of the Year !

rickmans — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:27:48 -0000

Just booked everything. See you there!

Re: Socialize Me: IBM Connect 2013: The Can't Miss Social Business Conference of the Year !

rickmans — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 12:01:42 -0000

I am still making my travel arrangement, though most likely I will be there this year :).

Re: What makes a community tick (6 tips to make it work)

rickmans — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 07:20:28 -0000

Thanks Patrick :).

Re: The checklist mentality with social media

rickmans — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:13:39 -0000

I think checklists provide a false of security for most people, since you don't master a skill by following a list.

Re: If App.net Raises $500k By Monday, Twitter May Be In For Some Serious Competition

rickmans — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 04:37:16 -0000

Yes Twitter might be in just as serious competition as Facebook was with Diaspora :).

Re: Webcare: are you doing it right? Probably not

rickmans — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 14:25:41 -0000

It depends on the volume of the social media content, though I would say that Radian6 could do the basics for every organization. If you need more in depth analysis it is worth the effort to look at Attensity or even something like Autonomy. In general I would recommend often to combine a traditional social media monitoring tool with a more specialized text analytics tools (tools can differ per vertical since you need specialization).

However sometimes the "old fashioned" BI tools also work quite fine, especially now solutions such as HANA (SAP) and Exalytics (Oracle) are getting traction enabling people to hand large amounts of data near real time.

Re: Webcare: are you doing it right? Probably not

rickmans — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 14:21:53 -0000

It is the hardest one to do, however sometimes companies can be lucky and discover that such a community already exists somewhere and is being managed by their brand advocates.

Re: Your social media strategy: free wifi; why creating a shareable experience matters

rickmans — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 14:20:40 -0000

Does any of the venue owners know you are such an advocate for them? Or is it something that remains unnoticed to them?

Re: Social Design Elements

rickmans — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 15:16:23 -0000

Hi Paula. I hope Google translate did translate your comment well enough for me to respond :).

I think that communication and interaction can be things within a social solution and most often will be part of a social solution, but are not mandatory to be in it. Of course everything that is produced can be seen as a form of communication, though I see communication as something that is deliberately shared between two entities in order for the other entity to respond (with a reply, with an action etc). Though something such as Lyst.com can be really social, without you have to communicate anything with others, or without you having to interact with somebody else.

Interactavity and communication could make things stickier, though not a requirement in making something a social experience. At least not from my point of view :).

Re: A New Epoch: The State of the Social Software Suites

rickmans — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 02:05:19 -0000

I think it is interesting what is happening (since this consolidation was to be expected in such a fragmented high value market). Though what I am most interested in is how the suites will manage to stay best in class, without becoming something that tries to be everything for everybody, and in the end become rather mediocre.

I wonder when the big suites will move towards an approach that allows more integration and extensibility with other suites or best in class software. Something that is already happening with salesforce using their app exchange (though still largely driven by their customers, not by their own efforts so the user experience is not always really great). Having some kind of app store might therefore become a necessity for the near future to combine best in class with a reduced complexity.

An interesting suite to add btw might be Jive, since they combine communities, monitoring, ideation and big data including an app store.

Re: Social Design Elements

rickmans — Mon, 21 May 2012 06:40:15 -0000

Hi Laura thanks for your reply. For me personally resilience is more towards the execution (and rather vital), than a design element upfront. On the other hand, if you don't design for it, will you able to do so?

Some food for thought I would say, since it is importance, though for now I think it should be somewhere in a different set of principles than the design principles.

Re: Sunday Spotlight: @mrsoaroundworld, @NatalieGorohova and @rickmans #SunSpot

rickmans — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 07:16:07 -0000

Good luck with your Book Dream project :). Let's hope a lot of people will support it :).

Re: What happens when you email the wrong job spec to the wrong candidate

rickmans — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:01:12 -0000

At least they spelled your name correctly. I got such a mail from such a company starting with: Dear Mr Andrews....

Re: Matrix: Challenges and Opportunities Abound for Social Media Management Systems

rickmans — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:28:09 -0000

Personally I think this market will disappear, as in: it will be integrated in another one and most likely it will be the CMS market. I would expect that parties such Adobe, Fatwire (Oracle), Tridion and others (Salesforce) will integrate these features in their CMS. They will do it either by buying some of the players (very likely) or building it themselves (wouldn't surprise my, but that would mean it takes more time to catch up).

Is that also a scenario you are looking at?

Re: 5 things Google+ does better than Facebook and Twitter | VentureBeat

rickmans — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:49:28 -0000

While it make some time to configure everything on FB regarding groups, it doesn't mean circles magically appear in Google, it also take time to create those as well. So bit of a non argument. Also you can download all your data from FB for quite a while already.

Sparks is really a poor implementation of Google and FB and Twitter make it easier to discover stuff: Using Top News in FB, you get the important things from your network, Google still struggles with this. And in Twitter Trending topics are a nice way of discovering news. also Sparks is not in main G+ stream, or maybe be better phrased: it is just as in the stream as it is with FB and Twitter. Sharing of content is easy, since nearly every page on the web has not a FB and twitter button, for example I would love to share this article on G+ oh wait, there isn't such a button available, let me then plus it, oh wait, you don't have that button on your site...

G+ is for now a great niche network for the geeks and famous. Maybe it will outgrow it, maybe not. Though it would be good for Google to focus on what they are good at, so they should skip the common-name-debate, since that is one thing they cannot fix that.

Re: Google Plus’s Real Goal is Not to Kill Facebook, but to Force it to Open

rickmans — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 02:46:26 -0000

It could make sense since they are doing similar things with turn by turn navigation, DNS and fiber. However all these products (chrome included) were superior when launched (or when offered in case of fiber). G+ isn't superior and therefore not really forcing any competitors to change. So I am wondering what they will do to create an impact so others will have to change.

Re: Social as a design principle, not a silo - Rick Mans

rickmans — Tue, 31 May 2011 09:58:09 -0000

I would go for the optimist view Stowe ;).

Re: http://blog.uservoice.com/entries/customer-powered-support-doesnt-work

rickmans — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 10:29:38 -0000

Can somebody send this memo to Giffgaff? It should be good for them to know that the way they are doing are wrong.

Customer powered support works if you have a product people can be passionate about and when most questions don't require specialized expertise (or when the expertise isn't a scarce resource). To make enough customers support other customers you need to make sure you have either scale or good incentives. whether or not there is distance between you and your customers and if that is a bad thing depends on your product, if you sell products that have a certain emotional aspect in them, people would mind the distance, however most more utility like products doesn't require a bond with the supplier, most often customers don't even know who the supplier is.

Yes there still should be a private channel as well as a channel with somebody who will always be able to solve your problems. However for quite some cases these aren't requirements.

Customer powered support does work, as long as it meet certain conditions. In real life support (or expert based support) doesn't work all the time for all cases, should we also claim that doesn't work at all?

Re: “None” is Not a Social Media Strategy

rickmans — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:51:41 -0000

Saying no to social media is for some organizations the best thing they can do. This article seems like to be written in the style as: "if the only thing you have is a hammer, everything else looks like a nail".

Social Media is not everything for everybody and I have seen to often organizations start with social media while the prerequisites weren't in place. Either if you roll it out internally or externally, it requires a certain level of maturity and a shift in mindset. Plus it only makes sense if you target audience (employees or customers) can handle social media (face it: not every can) and want the organisation on social media.

So saying no to social media can be the best thing for organisation otherwise it might kill itself while using social media. For example: why would you even want to think about customer interaction via social networking while you have a customer contact centre that is a complete failure or while your internal organization is loaded with politics and cannot even take the most simplest decision in less than two weeks?

Some CIOs know very good what is going on in their organization and why a 'no' to social media might be less harmful than a 'yes', that is not because they are ignorant, but because they can oversee the implications of their decision.

In ten years there will be still organizations that are not using social media. For the very simple reason because their stakeholders don't have the need for it, because it doesn't solve a thing for the organization nor the stakeholder. Therefore: first think if the organization will benefit of the use of social media, don't call it a big mistake if an organization doesn;t start with social media, sometimes it is the best thing they can do.

Re: List of Corporate Social Strategists for 2011 (Buyer/Brand Side)

rickmans — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 15:03:41 -0000

As far as I can recall we haven't met yet, however probably it is just a matter of time before we meet :). By the way could Capgemi into Capgemini, then I am correctly listed ;).

Re: The Demise of Middle Management by Social Media

rickmans — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 05:53:27 -0000

Thanks Russell for your comment.

Sometimes middle management are getting it very well and see that the implementation will result in the removal of their role from the organisation. The incentive for middle management is therefore very important, whether they get it or not ;).

An I agree with you: social business transformation is an opportunity for them, not a threat.

Re: We’re starting a movement “We Quit Mail”

rickmans — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:13:02 -0000

First of all, you underestimate paper. Paper has been a big innovator in the last 2000 years (also lookup the paper Hamlet's Blackberry, why paper is eternal), email is still a big innovator (think of posterous.com :)).

All points mentioned happen as well at Facebook, Twitter, or any other internal or external platform. It is not the medium, it is the way people use it. And if people succeed in abusing such a simple thing as mail, I am sure they will be able to abuse nearly everything that is now available online, since that is by far simpler than email.

The good thing of email is that you have to know an email address before you can spam somebody with your content. On most social media platforms, it doesn't matter if you have such an unique identifier for an individual, just one or two clicks separate the user who is able to work with the tools, with the one who is just blabbering around.

Quiting email alone does not help creating a change (doing something not, is hardly innovative ;)), it is just creating bigger digital divide. Luis is bridging this divide by not only quiting email, he also by invests a lot of time in helping people to discover the world outside email, and help them in how to use certain channels.

Email is one of the best mediums there is, the only thing they should have done during the implementation, was making sure that every email you send will cost 1 cent. Than we wouldn't have any spam, and people would use email more wisely.

Re: We’re starting a movement “We Quit Mail”

rickmans — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:13:02 -0000

Re: Not the solution to everything: heros and champions

rickmans — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 02:58:22 -0000

I wouldn't be surprised if companies were looking for a spiderman to help them in their social media efforts. Especially his spider sense should come in handy ;).

Re: If you are a presenter you MUST watch this company: Prezi (new features just released)

rickmans — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:10:14 -0000

A fool with a tool is still a fool. People messing up presentation in powerpoint will be probably messing up the experience in Prezi as well and people who were already great with powerpoint (and managed to get around the limitations) are probably great with Prezi :).