Can businesses exploit social networks?
February 1, 2009
Of there is the usual Adams' dry humor. But it points out the elephant in the room that isn't often spoken about. What happens if companies choose to start gaming the system when it comes to social networks? Quick definition: gaming the system refers to someone who exploits weaknesses in a set of rules to further their own needs. An example would be someone who creates lots of fake Web sites to point back to their real Web site, just to increase their Google rank. Back to the question. Are companies, and for that matter individuals, gaming the system? For instance, do companies have hired reviewers that create favorable review on Amazon? Early on, given the size of social networks, there was a lot of self-policing. We would talk about meritocracy and how you had to earn your right to have a voice—well, at least a voice that would reach the masses. But now social network sites are much larger and more mainstream. FaceBook alone had 222 million visitors in December. How can that large of a group police itself effectively? Who sets the rules? There have been several notable cases of companies and individuals getting caught faking reviews, creating biased articles on Wikipedia, or voting up their articles on sites like Digg. Despite these challenges, it would seem that there are many factors that help to keep companies in check. Many people take it as a challenge to try to expose someone gaming the system. Consumers can be skeptical by nature; this plays into it as well. Perhaps the largest factor is trust. The strongest social networks are built on trust and if you want people to take your post, review, comment—whatever—seriously, you have to have built up social capital. Social network pioneers like Robert Scoble earn our trust even when they tell us they have been hired by a company as an evangelizer. As such it behooves companies not to lose that trust for quick gains. In addition, the ability for consumers to join in on the conversation and have their voice be heard, not only keeps a company honest, but can also increases trust in the company. As their social capital builds, so does a new level of trust in the company. How can companies make sure they don't appear to game the system? Here are some tips: - Prepare a strategy for how your company should use social networks.
- Appoint a team or lead person to be responsible for you presence on the Web, not just your Web sites.
- Provide guidelines for employees and make sure your employees know the rules. It may be that an employee that means well will falsely promote a product or service because they feel it will help the company. Let them know how this can actually damage the company. Let them know what they can blog, tweet, talk about and how to do it.
- Join the conversation openly and honestly. If someone leaves a negative review or comment, don't respond as a "fake individual", but rather as the company. Be transparent.
- Include social networks as part of your touch points in your brand management strategy
. What are your thoughts? Leave me a comment and let me know. I started a poll on LinkedIn that asks: Do you think corporations should join in social networks, if you have a second, I would appreciate your input. Can businesses exploit social networks?
Great iPhone app
January 27, 2009- Search for objects—including Messier objects and Meteor showers
- Move time forwards or backwards
- Get summary info of objects
- Pan, Zoom in/out
- Link to the Web for more information
Great iPhone app
Fixing Dr. Seuss
December 27, 2007I purchased MacKiev's "Dr. Seuss's ABC", a Mac based educational game for kids. It's a great game to help teach your kids the basics of the alphabet. My three year old loves it and was able to figure it out quite quickly. It comes with the Dr. Seuss book and is sure to be a hit with your kids. Unless you are running you Mac on a drive formatted with case-sensitivity enabled...
If this is the case, the app will not run, but will keep giving you an error message that it can't find the Xtras folder. It turns out there is an easy fix, just execute the following procedure:
- ctrl-click on the Dr. Seuss application
- select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu
- in the finder window that pops up, go into the Contents folder
- next, go into the MacOS folder
- copy the folder called Xtras to your Desktop
- rename the folder to xtras (little x)
- copy the folder back into the MacOS folder
- close the finder window and run the app
- the app will now work
On a related note, the folks from MacKiev have wonderful tech support. I sent a note on Christmas day and received a same-day e-mail from a very nice person who provided me some basic troubleshooting thoughts. They did not give me the procedure above, but did suggest that the app needs to be on a case-insensitive volume. That tip lead me to experiment and to the procedure above.
Fixing Dr. Seuss
My first post from my iPhone
July 1, 2007My first post from my iPhone
New AirPort Extreme base station
January 9, 2007While I certainly can't wait for a new iPhone (is it June yet?), I am really excited about the new Airport Extreme. It features 802.11n, which will help with increase network capacity and range. But what I think is a great feature is the ability to plug in a USB hard drive and share it with the network.
This solves a big issue for me. I hate using a disk drive for backups, it creates clutter and it is also a pain to plug it in every time I want to backup. With the new Airport Extreme I can keep a large hard drive plugged in and back up one or more computers at anytime. For me this means more regular backup--plus I save a USB port.
Most people complain about the cost of the Apple base stations, but I find that the ease of maintenance, setup and the reliability make up for the price. Plus, you can usually find a refurbished on on Apple's site for $30 off.
New AirPort Extreme base station