Socialholic

Firstly, thanks to everyone who posted this morning when I tweeted for recommendations for an electrician/gas person.

To those of you who tweeted links to directory services that show ‘recommended’ tradesmen, you miss the point. The flaw in such directories is that the ‘recommendations’ come from people I do not know or trust. Actually, if I’m being honest, I tend to assume that recommendations on such sites are at least 50% from ‘mates’ to improve the chances of their friends.

The joy of social media is that I can ask for recommendations and then judge them by the people giving me the information. A ‘recommendation directory’ has little more value to me than a phone directory (actually, the phone directory is useful to me because Google, my rabbit, likes ripping them apart).

So, next time someone asks for a recommendation, give a real one. Don’t try to promote your directory sites – that’s just not what social media is about.

It’s a trust thing.

It is too long since I was last here. In fact, so engulfed have I been doing things all over the place that I’ve only had time to move servers on this blog.

Mongolian Flag by Nick Farnhill

Social Media around the country and beyond

I seem to have been doing things everywhere – at one point, it felt as if I was living on trains to or from London or around the south east. If I can have one slightly unconventional highlight, it will be seeing the Mongolian flag at the University of Hertfordshire where I was doing a talk on libraries using social media at CILIP’s annual conference, Umbrella. The flag was up because the University has a walkway above which is a flag for each different nationality student they have studying there at any particular time. How nice is that?

Anyway, Mongolia’s a stunning place with wonderful people – you should visit it. Seriously!

My only regret when going to Mongolia was that I was not able to spend more time in Russia during my stopover in Moscow. As it was, the stopover was only a few hours. I would have liked to have been there for days not hours!

Which links nicely to an interview that I did with Vitaly Alexandrov, a Russian journalist, when I was in London doing another talk. It is a long time since I have done an interview like Vitaly’s – which is a worry! Vitaly put me at ease far too easily and we talked for hours about social media and culture – the interview should be out soon – I hope I didn’t say anything too controversial!

Exeter’s where it’s at… and Birmingham

But I’m now back in Topsham ploughing through a mountain of things, working out plans for world domination, putting together proposals, working on websites, working on training courses, running social media campaigns, doing PR and more.

Then I’m speaking at LikeMinds in Exeter on 19-21 October and CILIP’s Marketing Excellence event in Birmingham on 11 November. Oh and there’s a course on Social Media for South West businesses to fit in on 4 November too.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. What about you?

Hasn’t it been an exciting few weeks in the land of tech?  First Quora hits a PR perfect storm despite being nothing more than a dreadfully self important Twitter wiki without the message length constraint (everybody wants to be first with something big because they missed Twitter – folks, Quora isn’t it!!) and now Twitter Lord, Stephen Fry, launches Pushnote (a start-up he has invested in).

Pushnote is the latest in the deluge of disappointment which is engulfing the web.  Pishnote is described as an extra ‘layer’ on the web where you can leave comments.  And other Pishnote users can comment on your comments.  Imagine the possibilities! *yawn*

I could literally go on Twitter, bring up Pishnote and comment on someone’s Tweet and then someone could comment on my comment to the Tweet and then… oh, wait a minute, I could just do that on Twitter!  Ok, how about on Facebook, someone could leave a comment and I could leave a Pishnote comment… no, that doesn’t work, I could just do that on Facebook. How about a blog? Nope – you can do that either directly or with a dozen other tools.

One idea that has been touted about is to use it to comment on news stories – notwithstanding that news pages are often dynamic and, in any case, many have their own comment apps already.

Other ‘great’ things about Pishnote are that the Twitter integration is flakey and the comments do not thread or add themselves in any sort of logical order (unless you have a sufficiently bad case of OCD that you think that comments should be arranged in alphabetical order by the first letter of the commenter’s name – rather than say, in the order they are posted!).

Pishnote is bad. Let’s make no mistake about it.  Stephen Fry has put some money in it and he was due to launch it today (although that hasn’t happened by the looks of it) – so it is is getting a great reaction from people who are trying to ingratiate themselves with the lovely cuddly polymath.  But a few hundred people wittering about how clever Stephen Fry not only does him no favours, it also does not guarantee the success of something that is quite this awful.

Possibly on some level it was a good idea.  Let’s give it that.  But the reality is that it is awful – bad UI, bad browser integration, bad comment organisation, just bad.

…actually, it’s a bad idea too.

Google Buzz looks like the mutt’s nuts next to this.

This morning, I was pointed to an interesting article by John Battelle by the BBC’s equally interesting Rory Cellan-Jones.

The central premise of the article is that the iPad is doomed to failure for the same reason that AOL was doomed to failure – the walled garden approach makes the product weaker than its ‘full fat’ alternative. With the iPad, it’s main weaknesses are, according to Battelle, the lack of inbuilt development environment and the browser.

Interestingly (to me, at any rate), one of the reasons that I do not want an iPad is the lack of inbuilt development environment. Sure, I have a Mac and a PC and I could use one of them to code before uploading but I’d rather tinker with it directly. As for the browser, it would be great to be able to use something else but Safari is beyond competent and, in my opinion, Flash is very much yesterday’s technology. There is no argument that there is a lot of Flash out there on the web right now but there are also a lot of analogue CRT TVs out there now – the technology is there to rid us of the processor-sapping scurge of Flash and the technology is there to rid us of those massive TVs too – and both will happen very soon.

I also think that the iPad has other deficiencies – lack of a camera and a mic being just two of them. I’d also like to see a bundled SD/other memory card reader/writer and myriad other things. Also, I’d be happier if Apple weren’t stiffing the UK on the price – but I could overcome that as I know enough people who spend a lot of time in the States. They are just some of the reasons why I do not want an iPad.

The thing is, though, that neither John Battelle nor I are the target market. Well, we are in a way – we are sentient human beings – but beyond that, we are, if I may be so bold, a bit geeky, a bit techie.

The average target is a person who wants to sit on his or her sofa, with the TV on in the background, browsing the web, playing a game or sending emails. They’re probably not even tweeting – although I wouldn’t be surprised if the Facebook app is getting a bit of a workout.

It needs to offer fast, accurate browsing. It needs to have good battery life. It needs to look coolio.

The average user doesn’t care whether he or she can download a PC program or a Mac program – because if their mind, they have neither a PC nor a Mac in their hands, it’s an iPad. Maybe they understand that better than we do.

As techies, we get excited about things that normal people don’t – predominantly because, if you were to take a step back, you’d realise they’re not that exciting. Sure, it’s great that Windows 2035 has 12,000 new features but (a) do I need any of them and (b) do they work? The small jumps in processor speed that some upgrades announce are greeted with pseudo-orgasmic glee by some techs while most humans can barely raise an educated ‘meh’.

So, will the iPad fail? Not a chance. It’s a fab piece of kit that works out of the box. It looks incredible and it does what is says on the tin. Users have got so used to using substandard Microsoft (and other) software and hardware that holding a piece of hardware that does what it is meant to, despite that being less than a ‘real’ computer would do, is a blessing. It has all the convenience of VHS with the enhanced quality of Betamax (I throw that one in for the older readers – younger readers, remember, Wikipedia is your friend!).

And for us geeks? Why will we get one? Simple! It is a closed environment. Sounds like a challenge to me…

OK.

So I had a crazy idea.

I’d find a sponsor for my 10,000th tweet.

Right now, I’m at Like Minds 2010. As I arrived, I was unable to use my Twitter feed. Annoying.

But I knew that my friend and co-host, Kate Day, was going to be there. So I went down to the green room to find her. She wasn’t there.

Other people were but Kate wasn’t.

And I chatted with them.

The subject of charity and the Socialholic Experiment came up.

And some bloke who I have never met before said, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll give you £100 for your 10,000th tweet’.

He was serious too.

And I write this blog post just after having left him. And I am slightly shaking.

The man who has generously sponsored that tweet is Malcolm Scovil and he is from LeapAnywhere. I have only just met him but I can tell you that the man is lovely. A proper nice bloke. Generous and brilliantly supportive.

And amazing.

I would ask you to follow @leapanywhere on Twitter and go and look at their website at www.leapanywhere.com

I’ve still not seen Kate.

But social media has worked again and it has worked in an amazing way.

People connecting with people for the purpose of good.

THANK YOU, MALCOLM!

(I promise that I will blog more when I’ve calmed down a bit!)

*breathe* *breathe*

But I did tell you so!

The excellent @phillprice over on the Twitter, recently posted:

In a new episode of @jamesmb ‘I told you so’, rumours are starting about home insurance not paying out if you use foursquare or equivalent..

And I did tell you so. What amazes me is that so many people are getting worked up about it.

When you take out home insurance, you answer a lot of questions about the security of your house. The reason for that is so that the insurance company can work out what the risk is of someone getting in and wandering off with your prestine Des O’Connor vinyl collection.

It goes without saying that the insurance company does not need to ask ‘if you go on holiday, do you put an advert in your local paper saying that the property will be vacant and the dates of the vacant period?’. The reason that it goes without saying is that you would have to be barking to do that (although we’ve already established that you have a prestine collection of Des O’Connor records so…).

How about a different question. How about ‘if you go on holiday, do you put an advert on broadcast media telling anybody in the world that your property is vacant?’

Welcome to the world of social media.

Elsewhere on this site, I have shown how the power of social media can be harnessed to get a message around the world in a matter of minutes. The #charitysm experiment showed that it was possible. Equally, the Socialholic Experiment shows how social media can be harnessed for good.

So, it goes without saying that it can also be harnessed for bad.

Across all my networks, a few thousand people ‘follow’ my posts. I have met a large number of them but I have also not met a large number of them. Statistically, it is possible that one of them is a bit light fingered (not you, dear reader. I didn’t mean you. I meant the one that’s ransacking your house as you read this).

Even if they weren’t, a huge amount of my (and your) content is available not just within private networks but also public ones. That ‘Coooooolio! I’ve just landed in Magaloooooof and am ‘avin it laaaaarge’ tweet might as well read ‘you’ve got a few days to empty my house of all my belongings – please leave the Des O’Connor collection’.

This isn’t just a FourSquare problem (although clearly services like FourSquare mean that our theiving bretherin don’t need to wade through a load of tweets and status updates that have nothing to do with our whereabouts). It is a social media problem and, more than that, it is a user problem.

You wouldn’t tweet your PIN number, so why tweet your holiday plans?

Personally, I avoid FourSquare and Brightkite simply because it is far too easy for the content to be used for bad – and I really don’t want to post ‘Brilliant! I’ve just become Mayor of Robbed House’. I also avoid geolocation social media services for the same reason.

The message has to be a simple one, if you are mug enough to tell the world that you have left your home empty for an extended period of time, expect to be robbed and don’t expect the insurance to pay out.

Oh what a comedy nightmare!

As you may know, I set up a social media charity experiment a little while ago. And, so as to raise funds (for Shelterbox) and awareness, I thought it might be an idea to offer up my 10,000th tweet to a business to sponsor. The idea is that for a nominal amount (thinking £100) a business can be part of a year long experiment to show the power of social media.

However, and here’s the big old flaw [thanks for correcting the spelling, Annie! ] in the plan, I came up with the 10,000th tweet sponsorship idea when I was on about 9,980 – so I had only 20 tweets to publicise it.

As it is, I am now on 9,998! So, I have had to stop tweeting temporarily because if I accidentally tweet, that’s 10,000 gone – I have a one tweet buffer.

It’s been a couple of days now and it is the run up to #LikeMinds on Friday. I feel utterly out of the loop and slightly trapped.

So I need your help to rescue me!

Please could you tweet the following:

Want to know why @jamesmb hasn’t tweeted for a while? Go to http://bit.ly/axpqaz and see why he’s trapped! Pls RT!

Oh and if you know anyone who would like to rescue me from this self-inflicted trap, please pass them my way! :/

Hopefully I’ll be back on Twitter soon!

James x

OK, I’ll be honest. When I set this up a couple of days ago, I thought that, if all went well, the message would spread and over the course of a year, we’d get enough for a Shelterbox.

Two days in, and we’re a third of the way there. But who knows what will happen in the next 363 days? We could still not make it – so there is no room for complacency.

What is vital, if the Experiment is to work, is that we keep the message out there. This is about showing what social media can achieve.

So, please, please, please keep the retweets going. And also the Facebook status updates and LinkedIn messages and the rest.

This is your Experiment and what we achieve belongs to you.

Please point people towards the JustGiving site at http://www.justgiving.com/socialholic and also to the original article on here at http://www.socialholic.co.uk/?p=202.

Vote for the Kilt (or not!)

Last year, I was lucky enough to be asked to speak at LikeMinds. I wore a kilt. The rest is history.

If you are going to LikeMinds this year (or if you’re not!) and you want to see the kilt again, go to http://www.justgiving.com/socialholic and donate a pound or two. Say whether I should wear the kilt or not and I will.

Buy My 10,000th Tweet

If you’re a company or individual who wants to support the Experiment, make an offer for my 10,000th Tweet. You’ve not got long – I think I have about 40 left – but if you make an offer that I accept, I will tweet whatever you want for the 10,000th Tweet.

Spread the word

We know that within our social media circles, we have a number of writers, reporters, broadcasters and other media professionals. PLEASE, we need your help to spread this as widely as possible. Contact me via Twitter or this site.

Something else

If you’ve got something that you’d do to help spread the word and raise the money for this Experiment, get in touch and I’ll do what I can to help.

THANK YOU

Thank you to everyone who has done something to help this so far either by spreading the word, giving money or pledging to do those things in the coming days and weeks.

You are amazing!

James x
Socialholic

Help! Am running a seminar & want to show how far a tweet can go. We’re in Devon, UK. Pls RT! Ta! #charitysm

As you may know, I was running a seminar for charities yesterday all about social media. As part of it, I wanted to show the power of social media and so I embarked on a little experiment. I sent a tweet at about 12.20pm. It read:

Help! Am running a seminar & want to show how far a tweet can go. We’re in Devon, UK. Pls RT! Ta! #charitysm

Within a minute, it was in Manchester thanks to my good friend @MoreHavoc but, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t quite prepared for what happened next!

Within 20 minutes, we heard from @kymriskadraken in Stockholm, Sweden! Then we went on a tour of the world taking in France, Florida (lots of Florida), Texas (lots of Texas), NYC, lots of the rest of the US, South Africa, Ethiopia, Romania and a number of other countries before hitting South West Australia. Big thanks go to @cybertext for retweeting us from Australia – you win (if only there was a prize!!).

What I wanted to illustrate was that for little or no financial outlay, charities can use social media techniques to get their message out to audiences that may otherwise never hear from them. As I took the group through the list of places that the tweet had travelled, they were genuinely amazed by what had happened in such a short time. To be honest, so was I.

Personally, I think that social media is an incredible opportunity for charities because they rely on real human interaction more than any other sector. And I think what you did in getting my message out was fabulous.

So, how do I go about thanking everyone that has been part of this little project? Well, social media is all about real human interaction – so I am going to make sure that you all get a thank you tweet and a link to this so that you can see what you did!

The Roll of Honour is the list between 12.21pm GMT on Wednesday 18 November (when it started) and 9am Thursday 19 November (as I am typing this). If you have found this blog post because you RTd the #charitysm tweet and wondered what it was about and for some reason you are not on the list, please accept my apologies and feel free to add your Twitter name through the comments. I hope you will forgive me for not making each of you a clickable link but there are just too many of you!

Can I also say, I would welcome it if any of you would like to follow me at @jamesmb but please don’t assume that my tweets are normally anything like this or in any way ‘high brow’- normally it’s just the standard cheery chat of a socialholic!

Thank you, genuinely, one and all.

Socialholic x

ROLL OF HONOUR!

@benhamilton @pjvanes @sophiaology @mattguthrie @nanarcr @davidwees @southernbelle85 @GLComputing @nadinebonner @savingourselves @dpeter @treypennington @curtwalker @kristensousa @alpenwest @i_legal @jonnymcclane @fleurily @kate_garratt @philhellene @nigelwnw @nailaj @matijs @foamcow @aheartofstars @spongeproject @danifinch @elizkane @ipdave @glenm @pixeldeath @kichigal @iamkreative @marcusbryan @peninsular_judy @russellbishop @lilula @iwibbly @robhwakes @jeweliek @lizzyrobins @skyegiggles @kennysarmy @nwyatt @weimlady @jon_read @newsmediarepub @mattyoungdj @davidgrim @williamsmummy @incapete @wshaffer74 @pauljwarwickvo @ronlevinevo @claire_sloane @volcensderbys @hgholt @futpaul @dgdreamin @candy_l @steffick @YouGenUk @bkenny13 @wellthen24 @scottmliddell @aigwilson @annegentle @cybertext @mikefeimster @viewfromengland @sue_sd @dancingdivala @freshties @sarknight @ecmodshow @mkcol @michlan @usablelearning @seanb_us @stefsvoice @roiben @sarahokeefe @llamakevin @jules_lewis @pablo472 @robertz @dotdotdotdash @walkerdl @hd41117 @more4mums @fabphotogifts @360spin @amylane @camilla_wnw @britt_w @efnetwork @atlanta7 @pjsphotography @mariloutheclerk @barbaranelson @liamdempsey @kate_wooding @eetempleton @theredwitch @lookingred @kateweb @jen_connelly @sixdegreespgh @crossgov @briancroxall @angela_hunter @candace_nast @lenorev @garethhondaeu @cashel @jtheibault @davidcushman @shoshanak @tway_kris @mayman @slagreca @billwolff @headphonaught @mydogateart @stephendl @heathh @saraburson @masenkablast @sabotek @shawndearn @weblearning @martinrothwell @pablovich @farsighted99 @lblanken @mjmclean @budgieuk @seamuswalsh @shanegriffiths @anghelides @claudinho @ktrayb @mnthomas @james_christie @besttourguide @chris_m_ward @rebyaakov @cindyoyo @8helen8 @kevinmacdonell @decastan @carly_whyborn @zombiesheep @louisehector @eblouise @isekhmet @st0ckym4c @finiteattention @teedp @lovisatalk @shonali @amiafad @fishinguk @owenbarder @greywing @anjali28 @Chris_M_Ward @tsdgsports @Amaranta123 @N_A_B @FamousRob @kativettel @markmcguinness @andrewkneale @motorsportprint @i_legal @al_robertson @badhedgehog @f1photos @kymriskadraken @jamesbeston @alpenwest @sophynorris @morehavoc … and me @jamesmb who started the whole thing off!