Global Neighbourhoods

5 New Social Media Turn-ons for me.

Ever since Naked Conversations, I've been following social media wherever it takes me. In the SAP Global Survey on Social Media, Culture & Business, it has taken me into conversations with people in 34 countries and in an amazing diversity of situations. Most recently, with GNTV, my focus has centered on enterprise-related social media issues.

While I remain interested in all aspects of social media, the subject has become vast and diverse. One could dedicate a fulltime effort to following it in education, training, politics, tools, religion, government, and so on. There are few institutions in the modern world that are not being transformed today by social media.

I remain interested in the impact on business and culture, with perhaps, a slightly greater focus, in the coming months on business. That's because I feel the enterprise is currently where the front line of social media is being shaped. While business is retinting the picture that Scoble and I pained in our 2005 book, in fact the enterprise that has succeeded most with social media have stayed relatively true to the spirit of Naked Conversations.

In that light, there are five  new avenues that are increasingly interesting to me. There is more going on than I currently know about and I am hoping to learn a good deal more about them. All of them will be the subjects of my writing and video interviews, or at east, I hope they will be:

• Internet-enhanced productivity. A great deal has been written about social media tools. I'm more interested these days in how those tools make people, organizations, customers or partners more productive. Twio examples are how GM and Ford Motors use Virtual Reality to prototype, design and manufacture cars at reduced cost and higher speed.

• Traditional media getting it right. After nearly a decade of denial, dismissal and anger, a smattering of Big Media companies are starting to see social media as a way out of their downward spirals. Instead of competing, I am a proponent of traditional and new media braiding together. Each sides has what the other needs and I'm looking for stories of attempts and successes in this area.

• Social Media behind the firewall. Someone recently speculated to me that last year, the were more entrpise social media projects started behind the firewall than in front of it. I don't know if that's true or even how to investigate that part. What is clear is that a great deal is going on behind the firewll. I want t know more. I have no desire to break and company secrets, but I'd like to understand how social media is being used so that other companies, struggling with similar issues, might consider embarking on a similar course.

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). I attended a major portion of a 15-person, four-hour roundtable on CSR last week at SAPphire08. Co-chaired by Steve Rochlin, head of Accountability, North America and James Farrar, SAP VP of Corporate Citizenship, this meeting got me juiced on the passion and collective knowledge of the participants. I also see a significant role for social media in convertin CSR from a lip-service to a global human service, which can often be profitabe for corporate participants.

• Community ROI. I keep going back to something Peter Reiser said during my GNTV interview with him. As Sun's Community CTO, Peter was instrumental in building a behind-the-firewall community of 9000 engineers. He talked about communities working because  of the value given and the value perceived byparticipants. Then he said the ROI for Sun is "real-time knowledge management." This is not mnetary, but it is measurable. Im not far along on my thinking here, but I want to lear more about what companies get from communities that can be measured.

Got a story for me in any of these areas? Please let me know. Just have a useful or interesting factoid? Please send it my way. Tweet me or send me an old-fashioned email.Got a story for me in any of these areas? Please let me know. Just have a useful or interesting factoid? Please send it my way. Tweet me or send me an old-fashioned email.

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A great communications system. It's called email

This morning is not unlike most mornings. I have received direct messages on Twitter, on 3 kinds of SMS and the phone has rung. SMS pops into my face demanding attention. I love Twitter, but it is often difficult having a real conversation in only 140 characters.

The funny thing, is I've started using GMail more and more lately. GMail, in my experience, has solved a couple of problems that we have all hated about email:

• Spam. Once you tell Google it's spam, the sender is gone and stays gone. I'm not sure but I would guess I receive less than five spams a day--and they are not the most offensive of them.
• Access. There are few places I travel to where I cannot access my GMail. This was not true on previous ISP accounts.

There are a few things GMail sucks at. It makes choice for you, that I would prefer to make for myself. For example, in a message string, if I wish to change the subject line, I have to start a new string. Worse, google has decided it's labels are better than folders, which is true about half the time in my experience.

The point is this. Twitter is not well-suited for complex conversations, where details and options are necessary.  Multiple threads cause confusion and looking back at what was said a while ago is more difficult in Twitter than GMail.

SMS pops up like toast. The SMS message may be you 4th or 5th priority, but it often grabs your attention.

A great many of us walked away from email because of the sheer volume and because of the spam. Well both the volume and the spam have been reduced for many people. GMail has become a clearer channel and very useful in a great many cases.

Blog Herald says Loren Feldman Outsmarted me

Matt Craven at the Blog Herald has posted a review of my recent mud wrestling with 1938 Media's Loren Feldman, saying Loren utsmarted me. Feldman, who seems to be building a career on making fun of prominent people in social media, most recently focused on me with the same determination as a dog with a bone. If you missed it, go to ShelIsrael.com, a site run, not by me, but by Loren.

Matt questions how I call myself a "social media expert," a term I have never used, when I was so careless. But he is right. It was a slap-myself-in-the-forehead oversight. Yep, it's true, I never registered my own name domain. I never considered using that domain and I just forgot about something like this happens. Every now and then most of us do forgetful things. Hell, I flew to Boston last December, without remembering to bring an overcoat. I'm human.

But there are larger issues. Matt wrote this morning that my handling of Loren, particularly on Twitter, has been "ham-handed" and he charged the five videos I've produced to be "unwatchable" because I stink with a video camera and my interviews are unfocused, and boring. Matt says that while he has admired my previous work over the years, that the poor quality of my videos and my hostile behavior,  has turned his view of me to the negative.

Thanks for the slap, Matt. I needed that.

It happens that I have a great deal of respect for Matt and the Blog herald. I think Matt is among the most even-handed and thoughtful of news/analysis bloggers, and I have missed his contributions during his recent hiatus to launch a start up.

Let's start with my Twitter posts. I think "ham-handed" is pretty accurate. Again, I am human, and when Loren created ShelIsrael.com, I went pretty ballistic. Maybe, Matt you would have chuckled, but when a couple of people pointed me to the site, because they thought it was mine and they were confused, I got pretty irritated. When I went to the site and saw my photo, and links to my own content. hen I then discovered that he also had started a couple of Twitter accounts, also making it look like me, I went nuclear ballistic, and this was a mistake on several levels, probably much to Loren's delight.

Lets just address Loren for a bit. Before he began to make an apparent fulltime career of spoofing me, I already didn't like him. I don't like humor that ridicules people, spoofs racial or physical characteristics as the overwhelming body of his work does. He reminds me of the schoolyard bully. If you ignore him, he will make your life miserable. If you react, he will probably bloody your nose.

I took the bait. Matt, I consider your post to have been the bloody nose.

I did investigate the law, and on the surface of it, it appears that Loren is in his legal rights and there is nothing I can do about it, without a major legal effort, which I have neither time nor inclination to pursue. I lose. Loren gets to keep the site.  If Loren were a decent sort,  could call as you suggest, and ask him to take down the content and turn the site over to me at cost. I doubt that action would be successful.

What comes out of this is probably a victory for GoDaddy and other domain registrants. I imagine there's a whole lot of people registering their names these days, because now--like me--they understand what malicious people can do.

I am walking away from Loren, at least for now.  He can have fun at my expense without me. If I did tell people a bit about who this guy is and how he operates, perhaps it will help the next kid in the schoolyard when Loren tires of me.

Now Matt, let's talk about GlobalNeighbourhoods.tv, which you deemed "unwatchable" because of my ineptitude as a videographer and because you think my interviews are unfocused and boring.I think you are being a bit harsh on the interview skills. I have lots of experience over a good number of years interviewing all sorts of people and my work has been historically well received. But what is true is that I suck as a videographer and my worries about that have so far hurt some of the five video clips we have posted.

The fact is that FastCompany.TV is being treated as start up, which is exactly what it is. That means low budget. While FastCompany is talking with several companies, there is no sponsor yet. The top priority for what we will do with a sponsor is to get an AV professional to work with me on a format for the show and to be with me for all my interviews. This will allow me to focus on the interviews themselves, and area where I am pretty confident.

Until all that happens, we will produce about one FCTV per week. While Loren may liken the people I interview to roosters and night watchman, the people the show is intended for--professionals trying to figure out how social media can be used where they work seem to find the content pretty useful and interesting.

BTW Matt, next time, you might consider following your own advice. Before you write about me, contact me at shelisrael1@gmail.com. I'm open to the conversation

KD Paine on Messaging v. Real Stories

I have been arguing with KD Paine in public and private for more than 20 years, so it is with some ambivalence that I realize that she and I have come to agree on most important matters in recent times.

Such was my thought when I read KD's recent post on messaging v. real stories. As is so often the case, The Measurement Queen (TMQ) is just spot on.

You Got me, Darren... Thank God

Apparently I lack a certain awareness of the International Dateline. I also forget how crazy those blokes play Down Under. Darren Rowse's announcement of PayPerTweet is nothing but an April Fool's joke, and it seems that I am that Fool.

I am happy and relieved to feel the whispered "Gotcha" over the Internet. I'd rather get caught in a joke than see what such an awful idea could do to Twitterville. My fear now, is that somebody with greater greed than jest in his/her heart has looked at this and gone "hmmm..."

i owe you one Darren.

My Twitter Follow Policy

I'm a passionate about Twitter. I spend more time in on it than in any other social media venue.  Twitter has been good to me. It is the source of leads for my text and video blogs, not to mention several very nice consulting and speaking offers.

But the real value is in the friendships I've made and maintained with diverse people all over the world. While Twitter is a virtual space, these friendships are very real or so it seems to me.

Like blogging and Facebook before it, Twitter is suddenly and abruptly enjoying massive adooption or so it appears to many Twitter champions who see a new wave of adopters coming in. This should make us all overjoyed at our newfound groundswells of apparent popularity.

I greet this with ambivalence. As a Twitter champion I am happy to see this accelerating success. But I fear the changes this popularity may bring. I remember the speed of which facebook went from being a wonderfully social place to the haven for camp followers and snake oil peddlars.

For me, Twitter is the most up close and personal of social media. People play and joke there. There's a lot of kidding, teasing and even flirting. We behave like denizen of a small neighborhood, one where it's safe to speak out, where strangers are scrutinized by locals this all happens at a certain easygoing pace.

But now newbie influx appears to be accelrating to avalanche. And they are making it much harder to be up close and personal. I see many new Tweeters who reveal no clear name, no place of residency, no personal photos, no web or blog site. I do not know who they are. I do not know why they wish to follow me. Like most Tweeters I like popularity, but it makes me nervoius when I do not know why you want to follow me.

There was a time when I established a Living Room Policy on this blog because of rude intrusions, then later I declared a FaceBook friend policy, which was not enough to let me enjoyably use that service. Now I find a need to declare a Twitter Follow Policy, which I hereby declare.

• If I do not know who you are, or what you look like, or where you are coming from I will not follow you.
• With very few exceptions, I will not follow brands, candidates, causes or company names. I wish to talk with humans, not brand icons, neither surveys nor bots. If you are a real person & you are passionate about your work, then I embrace you. If you are a Direct Marketer using Twitter to push you brand into my forehead, I will block you.
• Even if you are a real person, I may not follow you. I need to see that you are talking either about topics or people I care about.
• If you disagree with me, do it under your own name and I will respect you. If you personally insult me, I will block you. If you are consistently unpleasant or just boring, I will unfollow or block you.
• With extremely rare exception, I will not follow anonymous Tweeters.

Traditional HR & Mzinga's Hiring Experiment

My friend Aaron Strout over at Mzinga, has announced an interesting experiment. Instead of recruiting and hiring a social media marketing manager and a PR director through the traditional Stone Age process of Craig's List and resumes and interviews, he will try to hire a new social media manager and PR director entirely through the social media.

I like what Aaron is doing. Since Mzinga is the leading resource in hosting communities for large companies, it is fitting and proper that they take these innovative steps. But, to me, it's just one small step for hiring when we need a few giant leaps to modernize the recruiting-hiring process. I think Mzinga and other companies can go further-- a lot further, and will have to a few years from now, if they hope to attract the best and brightest of the emerging generation.

It seems to me that technology has transformed almost every business function to a far greater degree than it has recruiting and hiring. All that has universally happened there is that ads have migrated from the "Help wanted" section of the local paper to Craig's List. The actual recruiting-hiring process has remained pretty much the same, at least to the applicants and the people they will be most directly working with.

While that department is called "Human Resources," there seems to be room for a bit more humanity in the operational system. We apply with pieces of paper that use language we don't normally use, that reduces our lives to a few form-compliant paragraphs. We dress differently for an interview than we will if we get the job. The people we use for references are culled by title, not by closeness of relationship.

On the recruiting side of the table, people act as if this were the one company existing in harmonic bliss. There is no discussion of politics layoffs ridiculous customer or management demands. No one warns you that your co-worker has certain hygienic deficiencies The perspective employer is of one mind and voice and everyone working there seems delighted with the choreographed employee dance steps.

Both sides make decisions based on subtitles of what is not said in the recruitment ad or on the resume of what is not shown during the company tour.

Social media can change all this for the better. It can help both sides of the recruitment-hiring equation get a more complete understanding of what to expect.

Much has already happened in lots of places. Several recruiters are using blogs to help prospective applicants get a more complete sense of corporate culture. When Scoble was still at Microsoft, one of his most popular Channel 9 videos showed a typical day in the life of a recruit, including looks at the rooms where people get interviewed, the apparel that employees wear to work and even an interview with the campus bus driver. It added a very human perspective, I was told.

Stanford University is among a small handful of employers, who allow applicants to track the status of their application online, something greatly appreciated by applicants. I am particularly impressed with StandoutJobs, a Montreal-based startup that has created an online space for recruiters to try attracting the best applicants.

Social Media can put a whole lot more humanity into that which we call Human Resources. On both sides, people can use it to show who they are, which, in the end, may be more valuable than just show what they've done and what skills the job entails. Instead of filling slots, recruiters can start having conversations with team members. All sorts of relevent information can be shared. For example, video tours of neighborhoods where employee families live, including local parks, schools, summer arts festivals.

Ultimately, social media can not only restore the humanity to human resources. It can make the entire recruiting-hiring process a more accurate matchup at lower cost. Why would any company not move in this direction?

As for Mzinga, they have a couple of interesting jobs to fill. If you are interested, I suggest you make a cool video of yourself, post on YouTube and send the link to Aaron.

Dennis Howlett & the end of Software

Dennis Howlett over at ZDNet has a well-thought out, and downright brilliant piece about two camps divided over social software in the enterprise, one camp represented by most monster software companies that enter the enterprise at that painful point known as IT. The other, from newer and more agile challengers is slipping in through marketing departments concerned with actually having relationships with customers.

One exception to the big guys, he mentions is SAP (sponsor of my Global Survey of Social Media), who he writes: "

I’m thinking that SAP is realizing that it could get much closer to the millions of people who use its software rather than the IT shops that buy their stuff. The challenge, which Merritt thinks doesn’t get solved for another 2-5 years, is how companies like SAP adapt their software design strategies to accommodate this new reality. Enter the startups."

I'll let Dennis sing the SAP praises. My focus is on that 2-5 years span. What enterprise decision makers need to understand is that when you are big and cumbersome, 2-5 years translates into tomorrow morning. What it means to small and agile challengers like Jive Software, is that the crack in the door where they have inserted a foot is likely to get wider sooner.

What Dennis overlooks is the number of younger people who will be taking over the decision maker seats in the world's enterprises over the next 2-5 years. The guy who was inclined to do it the way it was always done is going to be replaced by someone perhaps more inclined to speak to the more human-oriented Jive Software rep, than the more data-centric Sharepoint.

Perhaps it may be my perpetual Pollyanna view of a social media revolution, but Dennis' post makes me think that we are having the sort of little incidents in the enterprise that will make a big difference. I think the tipping point is coming in those next 2-5 years, for some companies, perhaps sooner.

Josh Bernoff and the purists

A couple of days ago, Josh Bernoff posted on what he describes as a divide between "corporatists" and "purists," saying both groups are wrong and that what is coming is a hybrid version of the two camps. I have have written a good deal on this topic and agree that there are two camps . I do stand in one of them as I defined them. Josh calls me out, pointing to a post I had up in December and seems to think that I am in his "purist camp," a camp that he characterizes as being anti-corporate, and personified by Doc Searls, co-author of Cluetrain and one of the pioneer thinkers of what has evolved into social media. He implies that we purists somehow oppose corporate objectives, which seems to me to reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of what I have been writing about these last several years.

We are at a flex point in social media's advent that will impact how small, medium and global enterprise will relate to markets. It is a point of great disruption. Some companies will get it right  and some will get it wrong. This happens at flex points in history and inevitably, when things settle down there will be survivors of past eras and victims. There will be new names as yet unknown as Google pretty much was at the turn of the new century.

The debate that Josh addresses will determine some of the winners and victims. The issues are unique in some ways but redundant to earlier times in some ways. Every new world-changing technology puts some businesses through wormholes of change and that is what is happening now.

The social media revolution is very much like the early days of radio. Radio allowed people in homes everywhere to hear the same event, sports, symphonies, the president speaking. It faced a moral dilemma between providing culture and entertainment or lighter fare such as Amos 'N Andy. The outcome was determined, not by evil broadcast mogul as is often described, but by a market who bought more Lucky Strike cigarettes because of commercials that advised them to reach for a cigarette instead of a sweet. 

Social Media is now at the type of crossroads that radio faced. What I say or Josh says, or corporation say may influence the outcome in some small way, but the market will decide, not us. Just as viewers decide whether American Idol will enjoy greater support than CSpan. Many of us would rather kick back with a Lost Episode than National Geographic in Kenya. So we get more of the former.


The broadcast debate went on for more than 50 years. Perhaps it continues. The social media debate may extend just as long, but I think not. ill it ultimately be just another channel, a brand extender, another place where corporate messages can be crammed into the foreheads of people who do not want them?

I think not. I hope not. But it is not for me to decide. The best I can do is keep writing pieces like this and maybe influence a few people in the right direction.

I think my viewpoint has a chance of prevailing because of how the Broadcast Media turned out.
People have grown tired of broadcast marketing and they have grown weary and wary of marketers who seem to stalk them wherever there eyeballs land. No one seems to want to be marketed to anymore, not even the marketers themselves, or so they keep telling me. People want to be listened to and now that there are social technology tools available, commercial interests can have conversations with people at very low cost. That means they can make better goods and services, build stronger relationships and loyalty, generate authentic word-of-mouth endorsements and extremely high efficiency .

As nearly all business decision makers will tell you, traditional marketing is not low cost. It is not highly efficient. It is not very credible. It does not give people a sense that a corporation or a brand, a government or a candidate wants to hear what we think and feel.

Josh implies I am a purist. I would not call myself any such thing. Until six weeks ago I made a living, consulting companies on how to profit and prevail.

As Josh implies, I am indeed a revolutionary, but that is because I think business will benefit from the result of the upheaval as well as customers and all other infrastructure players who can adapt to the fundamental change which we are now undergoing.

I believe scalable conversations make markets friendlier, more profitable and much more efficient. I am an advocate of freedom and believe there can be no freedom at all without economic freedom. Corporations are characterized by some as being no more than the pieces of legal paper that form them. I characterize them by the people that comprise them and form their culture. I am for free enterprise because there is no freedom without economic freedom and because that is the best way to improve products, services and profits.

I resent Josh's implications of the "purist" label because it implies a rigidity that is not the case. People will do with social media whatever they wish to do. All I can do is write pieces like this and hope that I will influence someone somewhere.

I also think Josh fails to understand the relevance of Doc and the "Cluetrain Quartet."  Revolutions are rarely started in the centers of power. They usually begin up in the hills, far from the centers of power. What I have done subsequently and what Josh has done subsequently would not have happened if the seeds of revolution had not been planted by Cluetrain. The revolution has moved from the hills and into the centers of power. It's language and culture is evolving rapidly from one dominated by geeks to those concerned with the cost of goods sold and making the margin forecast for the coming quarter.

But we would never have gotten hear without the Cluetrain guys. Just like the moderate John Adams would never have had a presidency to go to without the fiery words of his cousin Sam, who dumped British tea into Boston Harbor.

I have read Josh's post several times now I am still not certain I understand what he means by "Hybrids" in terms of social media. Perhaps it's intended to just e a teaser for his upcoming book with Charlene Li.  If his implication is that corporations can treat social media as another traditional brand extender, as another place to push messages into the foreheads of people who do not want them, I agree that companies are free to try.

But I think it's bad advice. It just will not work. It's not about purism. It's about pragmatism. 

Twitter at SWSX and Power to the People

Jeremiah has yet another excellent post  this morning about attendees taking control away from those allegedly in control at SXSW and in so doing, improving the conference/festival experience. He uses the word "Groundswell" which not coincidentally, is the name of a book coming out imminently by two of his Forrester colleagues, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff  [Twitter link charlene].

I have not yet read Groundswell, but I will. I have the impression that it extends a theme that would have underpinned my book, Global Neighbourhoods had I written it: social media is rightfully moving power from large institutions into the hands of the people they are supposed to serve.

This is revolutionary in the same way that American colonists wrested power from the British; that Ghandi did it with homespun cloth and boycotting British supplied salt and in the same manner that students attempted to do it in America of the 60s.

Sovial media is bringing power to the people.

At SXSW, I came to fully grasp that Twitter may becme the most effective tool in that revolution. for those of you have not yet tried it, is the most social of social media. Twitterville, as I call it, is leaderless. Anyone "tweeter" starts a conversation on any topic and anyone joins. Ocassionally, someone strikes a spark and a single thread of conversation moves from a few to many in a very short time and in very large numbers.

Twitter has made history before. When San Francisco experience a recent minor earthquake accurate news spread worldwide, more than 45 minutes ahead of traditional media. When Susan Reynolds [Twitter link] discovered and shared that she has breast cancer, hundreds, perhaps thousands of Twitterville denizens joined to support her and raise tens of thousands of dollars to combat this most evil predator.

At SXSW, Twitter made less dramatic but perhaps more significant history again. Jeremiah [twitter] pointed to four unique incidents that were much discussed. To me, of equal importance was that Twitter was the communications infrastructure for 6000 attendees, who joined or left panel talks, parties, restaurants and meet up places based not on press releases or official announcements, but on people walking hallways and streets informing each other about what was going on. When the Google Party got too crowded, Laughing Squid's Scott Beale [twitter]announced an "Altavista Party" at a nearby restaurant. All he did was Tweet it and more than 100 people were there in 20 minutes.

The closest incident I know to this was the use of cellphone text messaging in the Phillipines when people overthrough the government. The revolutionaries used cellphones to tell each other where the police were and ow to avoid them as Howard Rheingold [twit] reported in his groundbreaking book "Smart Mobs."   

One phenomenon obsrved repeatedly a SXSW was the meeting of old friends for the first time. People who knew each other only by Twitter were running up to each other and hugging and talking about business and kids and so much more. For first face-to-face encounters there were an amazing amount of hugs and smiles and laughter.

It wasn't all social. There was a good deal of business being conducted by Twitter. People who knew each other essentially through Twitter were meeting and talking sales and deals. It was easier because there was the dynamic of doing business with someone you already knew and trusted.

Where is this all going? I think the answer is everywhere. Twitter is up closer and more personal than blogging. It is faster. The wisdom of Twitterville is proving to be very trustworth in the real world.

I have been previously harsh on the Twitter founders as have other community members. This is because the damn thing has so often stuttered, fluttered and stalled. Last week, when I would guess it's usage was heavier than it has ever been, it's performance was speedy as a cheetah and I can only hope it continues that way.

[By the way this is my twitter page.]