Is Total Disclosure Really Necessary?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 5 Comments Tags: ,

One of the pillars of the social media revolution over the past few years has been the enthusiastic and insatiable desire among tens of millions of people to talk about what they’re doing – everything from the need to have a coffee and how their cat is sick to views on world politics and the latest and great online services.

In many ways, I totally get the need to tell what you’re doing or thinking.

But what puzzles me is the next stage in the social media total disclosure movement: the need to tell where you’re located. Using services such as FourSquare and Brightkite, people are broadcasting their locations – e.g. I’m now at 432 Main St., Boston, Mass.

While I sort of get why some people might find this service to be interesting or a novelty, it strikes me as so 1984-ish. It’s bad enough we’re publicly disclosing lots of personal details of our lives but when you start telling people where you are as well, the entire concept of privacy evaporates.

Maybe it’s the way we’re living these days but broadcasting my location isn’t something I’m going to do. If anyone wants to know where I’m located, they can call me. Otherwise, I’m wandering around the city in relative anonymity aside from all those CCTV cameras being installed.

It does make you wonder whether the concept of privacy is disappearing little by little, and whether anyone is worried about it. Personally, I’ve taken a pragmatic approach to online disclosure. While I have a relatively high profile on the Web in terms of who I am and what I do professionally, I’ve tried to keep my personal life relatively low-key. So the idea of broadcasting my location is a no-go.

Sooner or later, this total disclosure phenomena is going to bite someone in the ass. If you’re a social media savvy break and enter specialist, you could make a killing by simply monitoring who’s broadcasting the fact they are working away from home or going on vacation.

Sometimes, it’s best to keep your cards close to the vest but many people are more than happy to do the opposite.

More: Here’s a CNN opinion piece by Mashable Pete Cashmore on why privacy dead.

The Emergence of Twitter 2.0?

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Twitter No Comments Tags: ,

CNet’s Caroline McCarthy had a short, but interesting, story yesterday about Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, who was talking at the 140 Conference about Twitter’s recent $100-million financing. (Spark is an investor in Twitter).

Sabet said although Twitter didn’t need the money, it loaded up so it could make some major strategic moves such as hiring new people, launching new products and making strategic partnerships. (The search deals with Microsoft and Google being case in point.)

While the $100-million raise is important, it also signifies the end of Twitter 1.0 – a time when Twitter experienced astounding growth but didn’t do a lot of interesting things other than harden its infrastructure.

Twitter 2.0 could be a much more interesting creature because the company could do more creative, innovative and strategically aggressive things. The deals with Microsoft and Google put the spotlight on the New Twitter, as well as recent the introduction of lists.

Aside from hiring more people, it will be interesting to see if Twitter uses any of its cash to make acquisitions. The company hasn’t been an active buyer but it could make some really bold moves by picking up market leaders players such as Tweetdeck and TwitPics.

More: TechCrunch reports that according to comScore, Twitter had 58.4 million unique visitors in September – 37.5 million from outside the U.S.

Life Beyond “Conversation” and “Engage”

By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments Tags: ,

When I was in university, we used to play a drinking game while watching a movie. Every time a character said a particular word, you had to drink some beer. It made for pretty interesting cinema.

If you played the same game during a social media or blogging conference using the words “conversation” and “engage”, you’d get drunk pretty quickly. They are the two catch-phrases when it comes to explaining not only why companies need to get into social media but what they need to do once they get there.

“You need to have conversations with your customers and engage with them” has become a social media mantra.

While it’s still early in the game, “conversation” and “engage” need to be retired. Plagued by overuse, they have become boring and ineffectual. Sure, having a conversation and engaging are important social media pillars but it’s time to move on.

Maybe we can start using words as “embrace” (as in embrace your customers), “build” (as in build relationships) and “drive” (as in drive new customer growth, sales and profits).

Any suggestions on an expanded social media vocabulary?

Is Facebook Getting Cool Again?

By Mark Evans in Blogs, Social Media, Twitter 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

At BlogWorld Expo earlier this month, I sat in on a panel by Mari Smith, a Facebook evangelist whose enthusiasm is irresistible.

It wasn’t that I had a huge interest in learning more about Facebook because, frankly, I’ve never got the Facebook bug. But someone suggested that Smith did a great presentation so I figured there was little to lose.

Surprisingly, Smith’s tips, particularly about jump-starting Facebook Pages, started to resonate. In fact, I found myself implementing some of her suggestions on my Facebook Page during the presentation.

That got me thinking about whether Facebook deserved another chance. After all, 300 million registered users can’t be wrong, right?

Some more support for Facebook happened last week at the meshmarketing conference in which Facebook Canada’s Elmer Sotto did a workshop focused on 10 ways to get more out of Facebook. It struck me as solid, valuable advice that offered more justification for giving Facebook some more love.

Finally, I saw this Twitter update by social media consultant Jesse Stay:

“I’m beginning to see more and more of the same stuff in Twitter/FriendFeed as I do in Facebook. Thinking of transitioning more to Facebook”.

I found this an interesting comment because Stay is among the digiterai, who have pretty much ignored Facebook while spending a lot of time with Twitter, Friendfeed and their blogs. But if Stay is re-thinking his relationship with Facebook, maybe this is a sign that Facebook is coming back into vogue again.

Not to draw quick conclusions but maybe the pendulum is swinging back towards Facebook. And it could be that Twitter could feel the impact. At a pre-meshmarketing party last week, someone confessed that Twitter had become boring. Her thesis is that because everyone who’s working is working hard, they don’t have the time for Twitter but maybe Facebook is a factor as well.

So, what do you think? Is Facebook winning over the digiterai again?

Google Wave: The Emperor’s New Clothes?

By Mark Evans in Google 1 Comment Tags: ,

When Google unveiled Google Wave a few months ago, the excitement was palpable. The hype has been based on Google Wave’s potential to become a powerful personal portal (aka PPP) that you could configure to meet your specific digital needs and goals.

But it’s difficult not to get the feeling that Wave is not only over-hyped but whether it will live up to a smidgen of what people believe it could be. So far, Wave has been underwhelming. I realize it has just been rolled out to only 100,000 users but the buzz has been, at best, modest. Meanwhile, it has been interesting to hear excuses being made for Google Wave’s lack of sizzle such as “Well, it’s really just a tool for developers right now.”

The uncertainly surrounding Wave is also becoming evident among the digiterati.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams recently said: “I sure as hell don’t know what Google Wave is going to be. I haven’t wrapped my head around it yet”. Robert Scoble recently declared that “Google’s Wave will crash hard onto the beach of overhype”, suggesting that people who use it will fall into the trap of “unproductivity”.

It could be that Wave has yet to reveal its full potential, or it could be that Wave is still in the early stages of its development. But there’s no doubt Wave is currently under-baked, which is a bad place to be in a world in which users barely give a new application the time of day if it quickly fails to perform well.

In many respects, Wave is a different kind of new service for Google because the benefits are not immediately obvious. With GMail, for example, the potential was evident even if the service still needed some shaping and massaging. With Wave, however, it’s impossible to tell if it has any appeal.

Who knows, maybe Wave will become a smash-hit but right now it reminds of the children’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in which the emperor walked around thinking he was wearing beautiful new clothes until a young boy told him that he has been tricked, and that he was wearing nothing at all.

More: Having played with Wave, the biggest problem is the all-important “What’s in it for me?” is far from obvious. Perhaps the biggest issue is figuring out why I would even need Wave.

A Marvelous meshmarketing!

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing No Comments Tags: , , , , ,

There’s an element of risk when you do something new – be it start a business, launch a blog, go back to school, buy a house…or create a new conference.

This is probably why the mesh gang spent a long time thinking about whether we wanted to create a marketing conference. In theory, it made a lot of sense because people attending mesh made it clear they wanted an event that would give them insight into the tactics and tools to do marketing online.

In practice, however, running a conference is a lot of work, especially for people like us who have full-time jobs and family commitments. At the end of the day, we decided a marketing conference was a natural extension of mesh, which we started in 2006 simply because we wanted to have a place to talk about all the exciting things happening on the Web.

With the first meshmarketing conference now in the books, I can honestly say it was well worth the effort. The speakers were terrific, the venue (CiRCA) worked, and the more than 200 attendees were engaged and enthusiastic. Having spent the summer working away on getting everything organized with the amazing help of our event planner, Sheri Moore, it was an exciting and gratifying day.

For me, the highlight of meshmarketing were the eight workshops that happened in the afternoon. In many ways, the workshops were the reason we started meshmarketing. We wanted to have speakers who could give attendees valuable insight and, as important, a tangible list of things to do when they got back to the office.

From what I heard, the biggest challenge facing many people was deciding which workshop to attend, which is a great thing to hear about you’ve creating content for a conference. We filmed some of the workshops, and they will be posted online soon.

We were also very pleased with Hugh MacLeod’s keynote. It was one of the most cerebral and thought provoking keynotes we’ve had at a mesh conference. To me, it was one of those presentations that you think about afterwards, and then start to realize all the great ideas that Hugh offered in his own unique way. The two panels also worked well, and helped set the stage for the workshops later in the day.

In many respects, meshmarketing felt a lot like the first mesh because it was new and no one knew quite what to expect. In the end, the speakers and the mesh-like enthusiasm of the attendees played key roles in making meshmarketing so exciting and personally rewarding.

See you at meshmarketing ’10!


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