I recently post on facebook that I think TV is shit and that the Internet is much better. And that I would pay a monthly subscription for access to streaming, on-demand video of my favorite shows.

A number of my friends where shocked by this, unable to believe that I thought that. Not that they think the Internet is devoid of content, just that they don’t see how it’s better than television.

So here is my analysis and an explanation as to why I feel the “New” media of the Internet is better than the “Old” media of TV.

Let me throw a couple of definition at you.

GS = Good stuff, a general term for good content either interesting web sites, or a good film or show, I’m only referring to good stuff for the user, and I’m not making any judgment as to what is good and what isn’t.

BS = Bad stuff, the opposite of Good stuff, stuff that is not of interest to the user.

For a typical user I’m making the assumption that for both Television and for the Internet GS/BS is the same (ie. There is the same percentage of good content on Television as on the Internet).

So if tv[GS/BS] = net[GS/BS] then their appears to be nothing in it, it makes no difference as to if you get your content from the internet or from television.

However this misses an important point about the difference between tv and the net, television is can only be accessed sequentially (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_access) and the internet is direct access (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_access) this means that for tv you are forced to watch shows when the suppler wants you to watch them, and (unless you risk copyright law, since recording a television program is in effect copyright theft (the Sony Vs. TV companys rulling hasn’t changed that fact)) can’t re-watch them unless your suppler allows you to (and again it’s at their direction as too when that is).

Also since TV is Sequential if you decide you wish to consume the media, you are forced to watch the BS until you get to the GS you want.

Yes I you can turn the television off, however I choose to consume the media at the time I have time to do so, and fundamentally that why the Internet is better than Television, because I can select what I want to watch in the limited time I allow my self to consume such media.

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“You need to be in the TwitterFaceSpace to make a success of your business!”

“Social Media will make your business grow!”

“A facebook fan page is a magic bulleted!”

All rubbish! Yes that’s right, rubbish, at least according to a August 2009  study from Citibank.

More than three quarters of the small business surveyed said they didn’t find that social networks generated leads or expanded their business.

That’s a shocking figure, especially as we reported in back in September that you can? So what’s the scoop? Did I lie in September? Has CitiBank made a mess of the numbers? The real answer, as I alluded to back in September, is neither. Social media, just as with anything in business needs to be done correctly and not under the illusion that it’s some type of magic bullet. You need to know your market, are you’re the type that use social media or are they going to be more at home with a print advert? What do you want out of it? How are you going to get that?

Fundamentally social media is a tool, and just as with any tool if you use it incorrectly (or use the wrong tool in the first place) going to have a hard job getting it to do what you want it to do.

And this situation is made worse by two groups of people, one understandably the other unforgivably. The first group is throes small business, and it’s understandable that they make mistakes. The whole social media thing looks so simple stick up a facebook fan page or get a twitter account, and suddenly the whole world and his dog will be knocking at your door. Sadly it takes effort, time and planning before that will happen, effort because you have to publicise your facebook fan page or twitter stream to the right people, which means figuring out who they are and how to do that, and effort because you have to update content all the time, and respond to your fan’s.

Time because unsurprisingly that takes time, time to do and time to reap the rewards of. I advise clients to plug away with their social networking plans for at least six months before they look at if they are working. Because that’s how long it takes for people to trust your twitter stream or facebook page, and start acting on the things you want them to do.

And lastly it takes planning, you wouldn’t rush head long into a product redesign just because this year everyone’s talking about how cool red is (have you ever seen red fries?) yet I’ve seen organisations rush head long into social media projects without even asking themselves what they want out of it. Needless to say throes projects fail (well they success in a way, since they have no goals they meet throes goals…. ). And there are another group of people who must share at least part of the blame. People like me. Consultants, consultants who should know better but who push half baked projects onto organisation in order to make a quick buck, but in doing so they not only damage the image of social media but the companies they work for and their own reputations.

Posted via email from scottherbert’s posterous

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It’s easy to get wrapped up in new technology, and see benefits to your business in investing in one form or another, without any hard facts to back your views up.

Thats what makes the the resent McKinsey Quarterly “Global Survey” so interesting, they asked companies about the benefits gained from using various Web 2.0 tools, both internally and externally. Blogs and video where seen as important tools for both internally and externally however surprisingly microbloging services (read twitter) where seen as much less useful. If that is just down to a currently low take-up of such services by non tech businesses, of if twitter really isn’t the best way to reach an audience, is maybe something that need further research, however anecdotal evidence suggests it’s the forma.

Technologies such as wikis, podcasts, ratings and tags were less useful, but still benefited customer relationships for about one-quarter to one-third of companies worldwide.

More than one-half of respondents (52%) said Web 2.0 tools increased marketing effectiveness, while 43% reported higher customer satisfaction and 38% reduced marketing costs.

Businesses in the high-tech/telecom industry were most likely to report customer-related benefits of Web 2.0, at 65%, followed by business/legal/professional services firms, at 60%.

Companies cannot simply adopt these technologies and expect their customers to use them en masse, however. Among firms reporting measurable benefits from Web 2.0, 74% said it was important to integrate the tools with other forms of customer interaction, and 52% said marketing the Web 2.0 initiatives themselves was a best practice.

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OK so your all set, you have a nice web site, you know the basics of how to use social media to your advantage, and now… How the hell do you find the people who may be interested in your project?

The answer… Google

Google has a whole range of free, easy to use tools that can help you make the most of social media and the Internet.

First off iGoogle, Google’s nice and fancy front end. Based on netvibes iGoogle allows you to add widgets to Google’s search front page (only you see your widgets of course) Google mail, Google notebook, Google Calendar, and RSS reader and Google Doc’s (as well as a phase of the moon widget, but I think you’ll be more interested in the others).

This allows me to use Google’s home page as a one-stop-shop for how the areas of interest my customers have is going, as well as my e-mail and project management tools. It’s really what I link everything else in with.

Next Google Alerts, Google Alerts allows you to set up an RSS feed (that goes into my Google RSS Reader) for any keywords, this allows you to be able to comment on any story that Google picks up that relates to your product.

Google Alerts currently offers 6 variations of alerts – ‘News’, ‘Web’, ‘Blogs’, ‘Comprehensive’, ‘Video’ and ‘Groups’.

• A ‘News’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.

• A ‘Web’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.

• A ‘Blogs’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.

• A ‘Comprehensive’ alert is an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice.

• A ‘Video’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.

• A ‘Groups’ alert is an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.

I recommend you go for A ‘Comprehensive’ alert for the major keywords you found in step 1.

This Twitter, Facebook, MySpace (or whatever your targeted social media sites are) searches should provide you with enough information to start to pick-up on the on-line vibe, and allow you to start making your self known (in the right way) to the community.

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Today the head of the Catholic church in England and Wales claimed Facebook was a Suicide risk, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, said that “I think there’s a worry that an excessive use or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a society we’re losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that’s necessary for living together and building a community.” and that “Among young people often a key factor in them committing suicide is the trauma of transient relationships. They throw themselves into a friendship or network of friendships, then it collapses and they’re desolate.”

But is their any truth to this claim? Does facebook, MySpace etc lead to transient relationships? And does that in turn lead to an increase in risk of Suicide?

Their is at least some anecdotal evidence to suggest that this may be the case, Just last week for example Megan Gillan, a student at Macclesfield High School in Cheshire, committed suicide because she was bullied via Bebo.

However if you look closer at this sad story, you notice something, yes the bulling happened on-line via a social networking site, however the bulling, according to the telegraph, consisted of posting “spiteful messages online about her appearance and clothing“. Unless throses people know her in real life how could they post messages about her? So this sad case is in fact nothing more than an extension of the bulling that happens, sadly, on a daily basis in most of our schools.

I have a friend in Scotland, some 400 miles away from where I live, I get to see him about once or twice a year, however we keep in contact on a daily basis, via e-mail, text messages, and sometimes via facebook. In years gone by, I would have done so via letter. I wonder if either Archbishop Vincent Nichols or the Telegraph would think letter writing as a gateway to suicide? That’s not to negate the very real issue of bulling (Both on and off line), and their need to be an raised awareness of the issues around this, however facebook, myspace, letter writing and speaking are all just tools to aid communication, no better and no worse than each other (but useful in different ways).

The BBC’s article

The Telegraph Article

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As an Internet consultant (I have to think of a better title than this to describe what I do), I’m often asked by clients, especially the ones pushed for time and money, which Social Network they should target in there on-line campaign, Should they have a MySpace, Facebook and Twitter presence or just push all their efforts into one of the big three?

It’s a difficult question to answer, partly it comes down to how they envisage social media playing a role in there corporate strategy, what type of information they aim to push out that way etc. However it’s also useful to know who’s using the different networks, after all you can always tailer your message to the media, but you can’t tailer the demographic.

This is where a new report by Anderson Analytics is very useful. This report presents that all important demographic data for the big four social networks, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Social media use by age group

Unsurprisingly, use by 13 to 14 year old’s of the business SN, LinkedIn is zero, it’s also not surprising that Facebook dominates all ages. Does this mean that Myspace and Twitter are useless? Far from it, The fact twitter is used not primary by one age range suggests that it is a useful platform where age is not a deciding factor in the products success, for example education. While the 13-14 year olds may be a little too young to be thinking about college just yet, you will be ready when they do start looking.

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