Have You Been Poked?

The lecture this week was on social networking and I sound really sad but it was actually very interesting.   

Social networking has evolved into a must have for the majority of the population and there can’t be many people out there that haven’t heard of it.  Websites now allow users to create a profile which is either public (everyone can see it) or private and they can search for users with similar interests, add them as friends or just have a sneak peak at their profile information.  

Social networks are transparent as you can see your friends and their friends depending on the privacy settings and regulations of the site.  They have rules that users must abide by and the content is not just text as you can have photos and videos.

My uncle who’s in his 80’s (it doesn’t matter if you lie about your date of birth, your wrinkles give it away) is on Facebook and what’s more he posts regularly.  Hey I’m after a holiday, maybe I should start replying!  Facebook is arguably the social network that most people know of, even if they’re not a member, and the history of Facebook, for those of you that don’t know, was even made into a film.   

Facebook has roughly 600 million users and one of the reasons it became so popular is because it was something that only students at Harvard University in America could join.  America has lots of societies and frat houses and Facebook became the thing to join because people thought they were missing out on something that their friends were using.  If everyone else is using it no one wants to be left out.  So, as more people spoke about Facebook more people wanted to join and it’s now pretty much essential to have a Facebook page.

 

It's possible that another factor that helped to increase Facebook’s popularity is that you can access it and update it from your mobile phone.  Modern mobile phones are sold with Facebook already installed.  So convenient!  Now there's no reason not to reply to my favourite uncle.  

Social networks in the past such as Myspace, which at one time was popular in the UK, were based on a common interest of the users such as music and nowadays sites are influenced by where in the world the users are.  For instance Facebook is the social network of choice in the UK with about 23 million users  but Douban, which has roughly 500 million users worldwide, is the no 1 choice in China. 

 

So what are all these users doing on their social networks?  They’re connecting to other users through friends, family, location, education, interests like sports, music, animals, playing games (go POGO!), the list is endless!  

It’s all about how you relate to other people but how many of us have social network friends but don’t have conversations with them in real life?  I’ve got friends who talk to me all the time on Facebook but when I see them on the street we barely say 2 words.  Weird ????  

Social networks could be used for keeping up with friends or family that you might not see on a regular basis but now it’s used more and more to talk to the people you see every day.   I’ve got a friend who talks to her boyfriend on Facebook when they're in bed and what’s more he answers her!  You know who you are.....

There are so many ways to communicate within Facebook that does anyone use any other way now?  We all use the chat.  We all use the email instead of our personal email.  We all wink.  We all poke.  We all share pictures and videos.  Some of us play games.  Some of us join or create groups.  Some of us are obsessed with updating our status but all of us post messages.  We post on our wall so everyone can see it or post on someone else’s wall and we all use this way to communicate instead of talking on the phone or, in Claire’s case, in person.  Whoops!  

How many of you log in to Facebook at every opportunity or start to panic about what you’re missing if you have to switch off your phone or there's no internet access on your PC?   

Social networking is becoming a much bigger part of everyday life.  Businesses are using this need for social interaction to increase product/service awareness or get free marketing information and since we all have friends, who have friends, who have friends, there’s no limit to the amount of people businesses can reach.

Businesses are starting to switch on to the fact that it’s the part of the population with a disposable income, the old gits (anyone over 29 to all you young things) that are using social networks.   

The age profile for Facebook users is highest in the 35 to 54 year old bracket which is the people who have more money saved, earn more so spend more and 77% of all Facebook users are over 25 years old so it clearly appeals to the more mature market. 

More businesses are creating their own pages on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Businesses are adding links to social networks on their websites.  They’re using RSS feeds to link to their blogs on social networking sites and getting users to become fans or ‘like’ them in order to advertise their products or services.  For those of you that don't know if you click on the 'like' button it is displayed to all your friends that you've endorsed the product or service and whenever the company posts on their wall it's displayed on your wall.  So if for instance the company posts about a new product, hopefully chocolate based, not only do you get to know about it but all your friends do too.  It's very easy to see why this is useful for businesses. 

Find me on Facebook

Practical soul that I am I decided to create a Facebook page for a local business to learn for myself how easy it is to set up this facility and what the costs involved are.  How easy was it I hear you cry?  And what did it cost?  Well it was very easy to join but you do need some technical ability to set up a business page and the bonus was that it was free!  Advertising would cost me just 68 pence a day which is a bargain, although at the time of going to press I only have  4 ‘likes’ which makes it a bit expensive but companies the size of Marks and Spencers would manage to pay this no problem, unlike me! 

Marks & Spencers have a particularly good social network presence and use this to get feedback from customers and reach new customers.  Marks & Spencers post regularly and when customers comment on these posts, they’ll be seen by the customer’s friends, reaching a much larger audience.  Customers may well use posts to recommend items to friends or identify new offers either in stores or online.   

Businesses are social environments so should be making the most of social networking tools.  To learn more about this I joined LinkedIn which is a social network aimed at the business community and is used for professional networking.  

It's not so much used for advertising your business, although you can at a cost, as much as helping you get in touch with people who can help you take your business further or climb the career ladder.  

LinkedIn has approximately 6 million users in the UK, that's a lot of corporate schmoozing!

The idea is that you list your employment history, capabilities, goods or services and connect with people you know, even if they're not members, and this gives you direct connections (the people you know) and the connections of your direct connections are the 2nd degree connections and their connections are the 3rd degree connections and so on.  Still with me?  The idea is that you get to meet the right people easily through people you know who will benefit you.  Quite calculating isn't it?  But if anyone can get me in touch with Sir Alan Sugar I'm all for it!
 
LinkedIn lets you find employment, new employees or identify business opportunities as employers advertise positions or search for candidates and potential employees can upload their cv or as they call it a resume.  Suits you sir!

Members can follow particular companies and bookmark jobs that appeal to them.   I’ve bookmarked a few but I'm holding out for Sir Alan to come and headhunt me.  Headhunting is common so there’s a good chance he'll find me one day.  COME AND GET ME!!!

People looking for employment can target organisations they want to work for and use their ‘connections’ to introduce themselves.   You can research companies and check their statistics including things like how many people they employ, where they operate from and more importantly who their employees are or have been.   Members have photos and you can view photos to help you see what a potential employer looks like before meeting them in the flesh.  It's a bit like being a cyber stalker.  Or so I've been told. 

A feature I thought was quite innovative was on your profile you can list books you’re reading, although I don’t really want to advertise that I’m reading ‘Midnight Desires’ to prospective employers especially since once they read my blog they'll never employ me!

There's a discussion board which lets members post questions or respond to questions, which only members have access to, and you can see who placed the post and any responders.  With pictures!   

Another feature is Polls although there didn’t seem to be many people answering maybe because since they're all business people they felt that this was too much like market research which could be done on Facebook.    

Members of LinkedIn can join groups by educational backgrounds, industry, profession or other relevant topic.  I'll leave you guessing as to what I went for but if you do decide to join LinkedIn you may want to check out the professional stalkers.

Mash It Up!

Before I start...... Alexis, I'm so sorry but I felt that this part of the lecture was really weak.  

I left the lecture this week with no idea what a mashup was and I couldn't even ask anyone as I appeared to be the only one that was confused!  There were only 3 slides but sad git that I am, I went home read LOADS in an attempt to understand, so brace yourself!

So what is a mashup?  It’s basically a web page or application that combines more than one type of data, presentation or function to make a new product.  

Still lost? 

Ok, so you are all reading this blog and it’s a mashup because it’s a merging of different types of feeds and widgets on a page on the internet. 

This blog lets me type out my words, then I chose what the presentation would look like (colour, layout, font, etc) and then I inserted functions (widgets, badges or gadgets).  The gadgets in this blog are lots of small applications that I use to show you things like how many of you have read my blog or the archive that lists what I’ve posted in the past.  The share button on here is a gadget that lets me (or you) post a link to my wall on Facebook or Twitter and I can create or import an RSS feed.

It’s really quite simple but just seems very complicated.  The mashup works because you’re using applications on the internet not your PC and merging them with other applications out there in the ether to make something that is useful.  Or maybe not!

So what about a wiki?  Well, wikis are another good example of mashups.  They are based on the same principal as they’re both easy to use and easy to integrate.  You can use different gadgets, widgets, badges, etc which are all applications that you then use to make visual information that’s unique to you. 

You don’t have to be an IT expert to use mashups.  The tools you need are explained in simple terms on the mashup maker (webpage).

Still not clear?  Well I tried my best and maybe this video will be more helpful!  

RSS Feeds or Famines?

How many of you use RSS feeds?  

 Do you even know what they are?  

 I’ll lay money you’ve seen this symbol before and knew it meant RSS but didn’t actually know what it did. 

Well I’m going to explain it for you so listen up! 

RSS means Rich Site Summary which is just what it says on the tin, a round-up of the key points of the content of a website.  See, you knew that but did you know that you can set up an RSS feed to go out into the ether and bring you back information that you’re actually interested in?   

No?  It’s very easy and stops you having to check the same websites all the time as it brings you updates on new content so you can spend your time doing something much more interesting.

It’s not just traditional websites that you can get information from as you can get Really Simple Syndication feeds from social software like wikis and blogs too. 

I confused you there didn’t I? 

RSS feeds have 2 names but it’s not important what is vital is that you try it out.  Stop spending forever trawling the internet and let the PC do the work for you.  Go to Google set up an account if you don’t already have one (it’s free) and at the top left there’s a drop down menu that says more.  The Google reader is in there and you’re ready to subscribe to feeds.  Simply choose websites to subscribe to like perhaps the BBC, Job Centre Plus or even You Tube and whenever anything knew is added, you’ll be the 1^st to know.

  

Or will you take it one step further and set up Google Alerts?  With this you can  monitor the WHOLE OF THE INTERNET.  Big brother look out! 

You don't even have to choose specific websites.  Google Alerts will email you results based on your choice so if you want to find out if someone is talking about you anywhere in the world you can.  How useful is that?  

There’s just no hiding from Google.

What will you search for? Don’t tell me I can guess.  

Enjoy

Hey You Jump On To My Cloud

I have to warn you that there will be no ranting this week as I actually found this subject really interesting.  Sad I know but to tell you the truth this subject confused me a bit to start with because when we looked at software as a service I couldn’t help but think of business software like Microsoft Office, but obviously there’s tons of other software that businesses use, excluding spreadsheets/databases etc.   

So, what is software as a service?  It’s when a vendor hosts software applications and makes them available to customers over a network, usually the internet, for a cost.  This video should help to explain it better than I can. 

I don’t suppose there can be many businesses left that don’t use IT and it’s difficult to get software that’s perfect for what you want so clearly there’s a huge market for customised software at low cost.  

It could well be that in the future we won’t buy software and instead we’ll all use “cloud computing”.  
 

Don’t you just love the visual that the phrase cloud computing gives you?  I can imagine lots of people sitting on a cloud with their laptops out typing away furiously!  

Anyway, cloud computing just means that you’re working on the internet instead of the hard drive of your computer.  Software as a service is part of the bigger picture.  This was the interesting part for me because at my work, we do all of our word processing on the PC then save the documents to the server instead of “my documents”.  I hadn’t really considered before that the maintaining of databases, servers and applications could all be done with cloud computing.   

So why would you want to use cloud computing?  

Well just now I can’t access the server from home as it’s not installed in my house (thankfully) but I could access software as a service anywhere and even from my mobile phone!   

Most companies that provide software as a service only charge for what you use and all the maintenance in terms of backups, updates, security is usually included.  The security may not be high enough for some but it depends on what you want to do but it is a reliable way of ensuring that all users have access to the same software.  

As you know, last week we had to create a wiki and we actually prepared a presentation too which we used Google Docs for.  Using the Google Docs software as a service allowed us to collaborate easily.  We could all access the presentation at anytime, from anywhere.  We all had the same software, powerpoint, and it was low cost (it didn’t cost a bean!).  

Come on, be honest, how many times have you had to borrow software from someone else or use a different PC to get access to an application?  

You can use software as a service.  Save yourself the hassle of tracking down what you want and you’ll always have the latest edition.  Give it a try.  You’ll be as surprised as I was.

It’s not just people you’ve never heard of too.  Well known names provide cloud computing such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo and IBM so if they’re involved it suggests to me that it’s the way forward. 

Wiki'd or Whack'd?

The subject this week, as you may have guessed, is wikis.

Now unlike the rest of the world who spend most of their life looking things up, I’m not a huge fan of Wikipedia so I wasn’t really looking forward to this subject and I would love to say I’m a convert..................but I'm not.

It must just be me but I really don’t get it!!!! Someone tell me what is so great about Wikipedia? I get that it’s full of information but so what? Usually it’s so full of information that it’s completely boring and is it even right?

Anyone at all can create a wiki and anyone at all can update Wikipedia. It may not be completely factual information but they can make you believe it.

So, what is a wiki? The easy explanation is that it’s a website that users can collaborate on using software to create and edit web pages and link to other pages. It can be a single page or hundreds and it's designed by the users. You can collaborate with someone on the other side of the world but hey, I struggle with someone in the same room so why would I want to work with someone in another continent!

You don’t need to be an IT expert to be able to use a wiki so why then was it so difficult to actually create one in the first place? But most importantly, tell me why, why, why do they need to be so unattractive?????

THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME!!!!

Don’t tell me that they don’t because they do.

Yes, I know you can change the font. Yes, I know you can change the colour but THEY STILL LOOK THE SAME!!!! Go and look at a wiki, any wiki, and tell me it’s not true.

So, when I sat in my lecture on Thursday and watched a clip about wikis which made them look so cool and interesting and different, I rushed off to make my own only to discover it’s not easy!

Don't let me put you off. Watch the clip, it’ll inspire you Wikis in Plain English for all you geeks out there.

Anyway, the lab task this week was to create either a wiki or a Google Doc all about guess what? Yes you got it. Wikis. I know you won’t believe this but I actually enjoyed this. Don’t fall over........... but being able to make something with 2 other people (or even one) is not usually my idea of fun but, this task was actually quite acceptable.

Was this because we worked so well together?..........Eh, no.

Was this because the subject was so interesting?...............Eh, no.

Was this because I was doing something practical? Possibly, but I honestly think it was because I could see how beneficial this could be to a business. It was easy to see what the actual practical benefits of using a wiki are like once it’s up and running, it is really easy to update. The changes are instant and you don't need to wait for your group to agree. If they don’t like what you’ve done they’ll change it (and I’ll never talk to them again.......kidding..... not)

Did I email or text them to say I’d updated it? No. Hey, that’s a big deal for me! I’m usually totally overkill but, there’s no need, they’d have seen it. Why hassle them?

My only complaint now with wikis, is that I wish I’d known about them last semester when we did a group presentation. It would have made things so much easier!

So, even though it looks like I’ll need to learn how to make animated video clips for myself, I’ll console myself with the fact that if at any point in time my boss wants me to be involved in a wiki, at least I’ll know what it’ll look like.

Corporate Blogging or Business Bleating?

The task last week, as you all know, was to create a blog WHICH YOU’RE READING....... thanks for that!  The task on the discussion board for the class was to find interesting company blogs and talk about them.  Well let me tell you this was easier said than done as companies that you except to have blogs don’t or they’re so well hidden that you can’t be bothered with the hassle of finding them!  

So, once you’ve gone to all that hassle of finding a company’s blog, imagine being completely let down by the fact that most of them are really boring.  Are companies using blogging to promote themselves in innovative ways?  It didn’t look like it to me.  Are companies just prattling on about their latest products or services?  Yes they seem to be and do you know what? People you deserve more!

Blogs are surely supposed to be witty, engaging and most of all interesting.  Clearly I have lots to learn but practice makes perfect!

Is it just me or do people really want to read all about new products in a blog in the same boring old way they’ve always done? Do some companies really think all that’s needed to be innovative is a blog?  The only thing that’s innovative about it is that they’re selling their products in a new environment 

.... woo!  

It’s called the internet

.... double woo!  

Aren’t they moving with the times!  

Statistics show that there are over 130 million blogs worldwide and 1% of them are corporate (Technorati).  So, in theory, companies have a massive opportunity to create their own blogs to gain or retain customers.  

Why would we even look at a company blog?  Because we’re nosey!  Because we know that many company products are very much the same as everyone else and we want a reason to purchase from this particular one.  The social interaction that you get face-to-face in a traditional shop is missing with the move to ecommerce.  Maybe we just want to feel as if we know this person that’s taking our hard earned wonga.  

Say for example that you were looking to buy a new television.  Would you go and read about it in the company blog?  I know I wouldn’t.  I’d go and find a discussion forum and find out what other people who had bought the television said.   

If it’s between 2 different companies for the same television at the same price what really is the difference?   We know that it’ll work, we checked the forums.  We know what the specifications are by reading the description.  We know it looks lovely and shiny and comes in a big box but there are things we don't know.  

We don’t know who designed it? Who built it?  Where was it built?  Who packaged it?  Who will deliver it or any other relevant question that you can think of but possibly most importantly what are the company like to deal with?  What is their culture and values?  We are so nosey that we want to know what's it like to work there?  What do the people inside the organisation really think of their job and their company?  What is their job?  Who are they and what do they do?  It’s all very well them saying that they “have the customer at the core of the business” if in reality they think you are a complete fool who is not worth them spending their time on.  

We are all human beings and we like to feel that we know the people we are dealing with.  Personally I’m much more likely to return to a shop where I liked the person who served me even if I didn’t like the product.  It might not be their fault.   

When I went to a local travel agent, I bought a holiday and it was crap!  It didn’t stop me going back to the same travel agent because I knew and liked the girl who served me.  It wasn’t her fault that it rained the entire week.  That we were stuck in the back end of beyond or that the only language spoken was Italian when I’m only fluent in English!  I blame myself entirely because I could have got the exact same deal over the internet but I preferred to deal with someone I knew so companies have to latch on to that and tailor their blogs to make them more human.  

Blogging could be used as a psychological tool to get customers to like your company over your rivals.   They should be aiming for social interaction with the customer when they can’t reach them face-to-face so they still feel like it’s someone they know.  It’s so easy!  So why then, are so many of them getting it so wrong?