Posts Tagged ‘social network’

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XING Türkiye Social Media Win

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

I had a small issue with XING recently. I had reported this stupid message sent to an unrelated group. I’ll try to translate a snipplet below:

I have sent XING two messages to cancel my account, I don’t want to be a member.

I would like to take advantage of XING’s unique potential to bring people together, until they cancel my account, to help homeless children and elders.

WTF! This was supposed to be a business related group. If anybody and their aunt will spam all 15k members; thank you, but no, thank you. So I did what any responsible user would do and used the report spam thingy.

Here is what I had hoped to happen; my report is stored somewhere. Other people flags this as well. When a critical number is reached a moderator reviews if the message is really spam and takes the appropriate action.

Here is what happened; an hour later or so I got an e-mail. It said “if you don’t want to receive messages from this person do yak yak yak”. King-size WTF.

  1. First of all I had already done that. He should have checked if I did before writing an e-mail.
  2. More importantly, he should have checked my profile for a second. It says programmer. So, if I’m a programmer I am supposed to know a thing or two about these computer thingies, right? Clicking, double-clicking, expertise on check boxes and stuff. Telling me how to block a user is the same thing as saying “hey muhuk, you’re an idiot”. Even if we suppose there are such morons1, you still don’t have to tell it to their face. If you don’t have anything useful to say, don’t say nothing.

As a result, I got pissed of and sent this tweet:

XING Türkiye Support is clueless. Make sure you know who you’re e-mailing + take a moment to check if your advice has already been applied.

This is not the end of the story though. I received an e-mail from XING Community Manager yesterday. It was a very polite message containing the acknowledgement of both issues2. Nothing out of the ordinary at first sight. But wait, the message mentioned my tweet. In the very beginning. Actually the first word was “Twitter”. And it was concluded with something along the lines of “keep sharing your comments”.

Well, of course my comments and ideas are worthless. Especially since I’m not a very active XING user. But don’t miss the important point here: XING basically, via it’s community representative, says “you tweeted a negative tweet about us, but we are cool with that”. Why is it so important?

  1. They seem to be really cool about that. That means they understand social web. Conventional thinking is “I’d prefer you told this to me directly”, “we could have solved it between you and me”, “why do you shout, you make me look bad”. I have seen supposedly social media aware brands do this. It doesn’t look good. Trying to silence people is a horrible idea.
  2. You can win people easily. Beautiful thing about Internet (and online services in particular) is that no party has too much power over the other. You can’t intimidate someone because she doesn’t like your services and writes about it. On the other hand she can’t do much damage3. So instead of freaking out, try to be nice and convert naysayers to evangelists.

Most of the time complaining customers want to know there is someone who can see things from the right perspective. Someone reasonable, agreeable, fair. Most of the time that’s all that is needed to turn “<your brand> sucks” to “sh*t happens, no big deal”. My perception changed from “clueless” to “hmm, I guess that was a misstep of an individual” to “wow, appereantly XING Türkiye knows social web very well”. And all it took was a simple e-mail4. It’s not that difficult.

Kudos to XING for being a good web2.0 citizen.5

1: I mean programmers who couldn’t figure out how to use a web GUI. People from other professions might not know these and that’s not necessarily their problem.

2: What more could a user/customer hope other than acknowledgement? The message also contained an apology. But, I personally don’t think brands should apologize to their customers. Especially regarding to freemium services.

3: This is true even for big players like TechCrunch.

4: I bet it’s instantiated from a draft, everybody gets more or less the same message. This makes it even cooler though.

5: And special thanks for making me feel like a jerk. Just kidding, feelings are for losers. ;)

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Getting The Most Out Of Your Facebook Account

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Facebook was the social tool with unexpectedly obvious but surprisingly overlooked idea of integrating small third party applications within a social framework. It is, of course, the user base that makes it work. I will not discuss whether the available apps are useful or not, or they are even functional. Most of them were rubbish. And they still are. But my opinion is; Facebook has nothing to do with it. It is a problem created by no-good developers and escalated to gigantic proportions by irresponsible users’ invites. Nevertheless, it was a great idea and successful execution integrating third party apps. Facebook is, by no coincidence, one of the main actors of Internet1.

Today there is almost no way of social interaction that you can’t engage within Facebook. You can write private messages, you can join groups and write to forums there, you can pinch, poke and even sell your friends, you can try flirting with girls/boys in your friends’ friend list, you can share videos, images, links, apps… An average Internet surfer can do anything with a single Facebook account. It is not because of Facebook’s technical infrastructure but because of its user base. Your friends are in.

The design had changed a number of times. Although people complain a lot, I’ve seen only improvement2. The latest change made it effectively a micro-blogging application with 1000 other features that competing micro blogging utilities don’t have. I would expect no less from a smart company like that.

Thanks, But No Thanks

I have de-activated my account a couple of days ago. This is the second time. And I will most probably re-activate it in the future, so it’s not the last de-activation. Now; I am not the type of person checking my Facebook profile every other hour, watching all the funny videos my friends shared and joining I bet I can find 1M people who loves to eat buggers groups. Seriously what’s with these groups? I can understand the users ultimately decide the purpose of an online tool, but don’t you think it is stupid to use groups as surveys? So that some day a jerk can send you his pitch on that miraculous cabbage pill? And don’t get me started with who has visited your profile, guaranteed groups. Anyway, I bet I can find 1M people who joins any handsome looking group without giving it a seconds thought. But that’s not the issue here. I de-activated not because of some kind of addiction, it’s not even the annoyence of all those useless notifications and app invitations. I de-activated because of fear. Fear of social isolation and degradation.

Log in to your Facebook account and read everything on the page… I’m waiting please read it all… Now answer the following questions:

  1. Do you define your experience as one of sharing? What does it tell you about your friends that you don’t already know and yet care about? In other words have they touched you3? Can you really touch them via your profile?
  2. Are you a better person in any way now? Ok, just reading one page can’t possibly make you a better person. But a healthy social relationship should, in time, make you a better individual, right? So, taking your whole social network experience into consideration, did it improve you one bit?
  3. Would you still care about those people if they weren’t in your Facebook profile? I mean, would you be worried if they didn’t update their status for a while? If you said yes to some people in your profile; how many of them have you contacted lately? If they really mean something to you a 140 character public message shouldn’t be enough to know if they are really doing well, right?

This is not a Facebook issue. All general purpose4 social networks have this problem when they reach critical mass. When something is emphasized too much and too often it is usually not there. Social gets a lot of emphasis on these networks. It turns out to be a massive waste of time in the end. And people are OK with it, because it’s better than TV. Well, I agree with them on this one. But I stay away from all kinds of narcotics.

Your Social Network Owns You

Now that I have shared my opinion on how much value social networks create for you5, let’s think about how much value you create for your social network. You tell them about yourself, where you live, what kind of education you have, what you like, what you don’t like and more importantly who do you know and how… yada yada… we all know that. And as long as you have agreed the terms and they play by the rules it is all OK. There is nothing wrong with creating value by sharing your personal information voluntarily.

You change the way you interact with others. You use private messaging instead of e-mail, you share media with built-in sharing feature, you write status messages instead of your blog. You lock yourself in, and this influences your friends as well to accept lock in. Network effect. My fear is; not being able to break this lock in. If Facebook’s growth continues like this more and more people will unknowingly be locked in. That is they will know no Internet outside of a few sites they regularly use. They will for instance see this effort of blogging futile, nobody will read it, if it’s not Facebook. And they will be right. But Facebook doesn’t create a culture for contemplative writing. Facebook wants you to express yourself in 140 or so6 characters as a status message. What are you doing now? Not much. Because much can only happen when you string many nows together.

Don’t get me wrong here I am not critisizing Facebook. I am critisizing the culture that Facebook and others are creating. I mention Facebook because it is the biggest and the most successful of all. I will use it again, it makes getting in touch with old friends possible. I would like to use seperate services for e-mailing, link sharing, chat, etc.. because it minimizes the possibility of a lock in. Remember that you invest your time, no, your life on these free services. It is valuable. Very valuable.

Btw, who wants an isolatr invite?

1: At least in Türkiye.

2: That’s just another feature I guess; you can do your complaining for something you signed up FOR FREE without ever leaving Facebook.

3: Of course you know what I mean, you sick @%#&$?£!

4: A social network built around a specific purpose, if active, would probably create value for its users.

5: Let me be very clear; it’s none. Just in case..

6: I don’t really know how long a status message can be.

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My Little Distractions

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

I am not one of hyper-connected people who uses ten different micro-blogging services and maintains their profile in six different social networks and, just for the old times sake, frequents in certain forums. No, I’d rather just finish my work and then if I have time I can read a blog post or two (play). But most of the time I have my IRC client (#fazlamesai @ irc.freenode.net) and Plurk open. For short distractions. I don’t have a very long attention span, and I need short distractions frequently or else I get a headache.

I think RSS is one of the most helpful tools of web. It is easy, efficient and non-distractive. If you choose who you follow well, you would have an endless flow of useful information. I think everyone should use RSS. If you are not already following any feeds, you can start with Fazlamesai (in Turkish) or Slashdot.

First thing IRC reminds me is thousands of people sitting in front of computers asking each other ASL? or doing some other useless small talk. Let me add almost none of those people in this picture knows for sure whether the others are actually who they say they are. And a significant number of them just fake their identity (such as a thirty nine year old guy impersonating a eighteen year old girl). Not a healthy environment. But if you can turn your head from all the fun these chat rooms offer you can find chat rooms, for example, where open source people gather and help each other. Just find and enter your favourite software’s chat room, #python, #firefox, #debian…

I started using Plurk, first becase I was curious about amix‘s startup. Then I decided to stay a little longer to further analyze how they have integrated game elements in their application. Then I kept on Plurking to get to know the people (early adapters) and to witness the evolution of a social network. I still use Plurk almost everyday, because it gives you the feeling that it is working1.

Plurk is a so-called persistent chat application. You can think of it as a cross-breed between instant messaging and e-mail. It is possible to carry on real-time conversations, but when you come back later you can still find (and participate) older discussions. I think you can do this with other micro-blogging applications (such as Twitter), at least with their desktop clients. With Plurk this is possible in the browser.

It is not just AJAX that makes Plurk an attractive service. It has an elegant and feature rich interface. Posts are laid out (horizontally) on a timeline that you can scroll with your mouse. When you click on one of the posts it expands itself down to show you the comments and other details. No page loads. You can also fully customize the interface, change the appereance, hide some elements, add new ones… If you check out Plurk, you will see it is designed to be fun.

I think introducing this fun element is very important. We don’t do micro-blogging because we need to, it doesn’t solve any of our everyday problems. We do it because we want to socialize and have fun. Fun is normally a product of social interaction. But if you can make the interaction itself fun as well, that is so much better. Plurk has badges and a karma system. Basically you earn karma if you plurk frequently and in quality. The more karma you earn the more you quirks you get, such as adding a profile title or unlocking smileys. Now, this may sound silly to you. Why should we care? Well, you might not care, but in general people do care. Playing is the first complex skill we have learned, so we have a natural tendency to play even in adulthood.

There is one last thing I would like to mention. I think this is important too, for a successfull web service. Plurk changes, (naturally) it changes in place, and it changes to conform your usage. One example for that is when I noticed the “US Elections 2008″ tab. It just appeared next to “All Plurks”, “My Plurks”, “Private” tabs one day. That’s a nice thing. But, wait there’s more. The next day an X appeared on the right of that tab. Not being an U.S.A citizen I clicked it and the tab disappeared. Which is also nice. But, wait there’s even more. The next day the elections tab didn’t show up again. Nothing, fancy. Just as one would have expected. But very important. Does many of your everyday services pay special attention to details like this. Users do, at least in a sub-conscious level. It is like having a new piece of clothing and feeling that you have been happily wearing it for years. It just fits.

So, what was I saying? Little distractions. But you need to manage them. You want a short cool off period, not losing focus all together. Plurk is a nice nice service. IRC still has something to offer. RSS is the king for me. But I still have work to do now. Introducing distractions without proper discipline quickly turn into inefficiency.

1: This deserves a post of its own.

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Happy Birthday Fazlamesai!

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Fazlamesai.net, the geek hub of Turkey, is now 8 years old. Happy anniversary, we love you!

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Social Networking Done Right

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Let me just say that the social media, or more technically loser generated content is inherently flawed. That is of course a polite way of saying it is screwed. But I am not a polite person, so there you have it. I have found a CNET article explaining why. It is a short, good read. So I won’t go into details why social networking sites are crap.

But I would like to take the first argument from the article and elaborate on it a little bit; There’s nothing to do there (in a social network). Social networks like MySpace, Facebook and Orkut are based on creating a profile and associating other profiles with it. Thus you get to show everybody how many friends you have, you get to sell them and poke them and bite them (via Facebook applications), you get to rate them (in Orkut) and finally you get to send them private (and otherwise) messages. You can do all this stuff, so these social networks must be invaluable tools for our social life, right? Let’s take a closer look.

Last time I checked, relationships were more about quality than quantity. Who cares if you have 10 or 1000 friends in your profile? Having a huge friend count doesn’t even make you a popular person as far as I’m concerned. Because I know people who just pop out of nowhere and request to be friends with me. Unsurprisingly they have a high friend count themselves, go figure!

I think relationships are about sharing experiences. Social networks like Facebook give you that opportunity. In a twisted sick way though. For example you can poke your friends. Think about how much you can strenghten your relationships by poking people. And not only that, thanks to the application API you can buy and sell your friends as pets or you can suck their blood till they become vampires. Just the constant stream of invitations makes up a great experience. But I doubt it is the kind of experience Facebook wants you to have.

But hey, you can use social networks to communicate with people too. Isn’t that a good thing? You can publish your status, you can send your friends private messages. You can even join groups to meet like minded people! Isn’t that cool? …well, no. If you think that’s cool you must have missed the news about something called Internet! You can do all these without a social apparatus and almost always more effectively. You can email people for example. I would suppose people check their email more often and with greater attention than their social web2.0 gadgetry Mainstream social networks are not much more than profile association tools. There is nothing to do there. And noone, other than your friends, cares about your profile decoration. Perhaps not even your friends…

This huge mass of loser generated content reminds me of all that wasted bandwidth over once popular and useless e-mail forwards. When I lashed out to the senders they would be offended and surprised at the same time. How could I reject these wonderful delights Internet has to offer us. Do they still forward? That was before we had hyper-super-wall applications and send-poop applications. Actually I am a big fan of user generated content. There are many blogs for example, not only worth reading but their content is so precious that you can’t just possibly buy a book or take a course to get to that information. These people genuinely have something to tell and they have spent the effort to set-up a proper channel for their valuable voice. There are lame blogs as well, but of course if you’re reading this you already know that. But the bad ones are not strongly connected with the good ones, therefore you don’t even have to notice them. In other words they can not publish stories in your news feed.

There are also social networks that are built around another application. So there is a common goal, or at least something solid to talk about. I divide them into three and a half categories; building, sharing, bookmarking and business.

  • Building applications with social networking are in my opinion most sophisticated and most valuable. Common example is Wikipedia. If you find it hard to spot social networking elements in Wikipedia that is probably because you have only seen the frontend. Wikipedia is a big community, and they form a social network with a wide communication bandwidth. Just google it to find out about how they operate and edit. Another good example to this category is open source software development. They also form a social network, and the networking aspect is much bigger this time.
  • Sharing applications with social networking include Youtube, Flickr, 8tracks and the like. I won’t deny most of the content here is loser generated, just go to a random Youtube video and try to read the comments. But that may be, on an end user level, irrelevant. In these applications networking is not pushed too hard and the sharing mission is fully accomplished.
  • Bookmarking is actually a special case of sharing. Bookmarking applications such as Reddit, Digg and Stumbleupon are built on an incredibly powerful idea of sharing bookmarks. Today we are using WWW for many different things, but generally surfing is still the most prevalent. And hyperlinks and search engines fail to serve well enough for general purpose surfing. Social bookmarking does. You can choose a general or specific category and enjoy an almost endless stream of human reviewed websites.
  • Business oriented social networks form half a category. They are not very different than mainstream friend portfolios. They emphasize business networking and I hear they can be useful. People are more open to meet new people in business context and these sites copy real world interaction successfully, so I don’t put them together with the other time wasters.

If you want a web presence the best way in my opinion is blogging. If you don’t have anything to say, no matter how many social profiles you have and how many times you can twit a day doesn’t really matter, nobody cares. You can also incorporate social media if you like, you can import your RSS into your Facebook profile or ping.fm some your posts. There is no need to spend a lot of time tweaking your profile, it is pointless.

On the other hand social networking is an important concept. It adds value when it is built around another, related service. Take Kongregate for example. I mentioned about how it is structured as a game which forms social network with unique dynamics. Check it out, if you also believe profile association is not the highest point for social networks.

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