Notes from a wireframe world

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.

“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

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.

The Web 2.0 Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, is soon going to get a new color coding for edits that it’s trust tool think are untrustworthy, the example screen

shot (see above) does appear to indicate that edits that highlighted if they don’t have a “Neutral point of view”.

This is not a new idea however, it was first rumored over 2 years ago, however it appears wikipedia have taken the sensible step of not just implementing something because they can, but only rolling it out after getting wikipedias contributers on bored.