Facebook stalker

At university, we had an email system called Hermes. One of the lesser known features is that once logged in you could find out when anyone else last checked their email. This led to a phenomenon of "email stalking", where the more obsessive of my friends would constantly check whether or not their email had been picked up by its intended recipient. This is the Facebook equivalent, it's been doing the rounds a fair bit but it's still funny.

We are smarter than me

Dave Hay sent me a great link about a new book which seems to be along the lines of Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds, Naked Conversations etc. The difference with this one is that it was written by 4,000 people in a collaborative wiki environment. There is an interview where they discuss the difficulties this posed, as well as the site of the actual book.

The 10 minute presentation by the author covers a lot of the concepts that we talk about to our customers, including how crowds are better than experts, and that if you ask your customers what you want you have to be prepared for some surprising answers! The video is below.

It's on order for me from Amazon so will let you know what I think!

Holiday in Italy

Have just got back from some time in Italy, hence lack of recent posts. The photos are in the Florence album on the sidebar link or here.

Facebook privacy

Whilst being a fan of Facebook I do take certain steps to secure myself against identity fraud. I don't allow my profile to show my full birthday. My contact details are only available to friends who would have them anyway. However, I'm often surprised by people who are happy to post information such as their mobile phone numbers for all to see.

Try this as an example, log in to Facebook and search for "lost phone". As of right now, this came up with 459 Groups in my networks. Click on the group tabs, and have a look at the groups. They are mostly people creating a group and posting "I've lost my phone and all my friends numbers, please write your number on the wall". Nice idea, except that the group is open. So not only do I know that Megan Prosser dropped her phone down the toilet whilst looking for eyeliner, but I also have Tessa, Hermione, Tabitha, Isobel, Clare, Helen, Uri, Matt, Alice and Mark's mobile phone number. And that was just the first group I clicked on out of 459!

Maybe Facebook should make groups closed for just your friends when you initially create them rather than open to all?

IdealPeople blog

Have just posted on Rewarding Dialogue about a great example of a blog. I actually used these guys (IdealPeople) to get the job I had before this one, and had no idea at the time that they were embracing this sort of technology. It's certainly worth a look and a refreshing insight into what is an industry usually held in scant regard and high suspicion

Web 2.0 Return on Investment (ROI)

There seems to be a lot of discussion around Web 2.0 Return On Investment (ROI) at the moment. ROI almost seems to be becoming a dirty word in Web 2.0 - and seen very much as 1.0 language and thinking, as argues Louis Suarez.

I actually think this is quite dangerous, and is more .com bubble than Web 2.0. It's the sort of thinking that allows over-inflated evaluations of companies that make losses and have no customers - boo.com all over again. Dennis Howlett argues the case somewhat in his blog - ROI is no Business 1.0 : Not.

A friend of mine at McKinsey is adament that everything in business (actually, he has a rather extreme view where he would argue everything - both in and out of business!) can be reduced to a number. For exmaple, if Web 2.0 is a good idea because it builds more brand loyalty this can be measured. You can then analyse how much time individuals may need to blog in order for this to happen and deduce whether their cost (both in terms of time and opportunity cost of the fact they're not doing what they would usually do) is worth the benefit. You can even take into account employee retention in terms of costs of recruiting replacements.

We should not forget that whilst Web 2.0 may be fun and interesting, this is not why companies do it. They do it in order to make money. As someone who makes their living out of advising companies on Web 2.0 strategy this is always at the forefront of my mind. Unless it can bring value to my customers, they will not be interested.

Facebook fatigue

Caspar posted a great article about the concept of Facebook Fatigue the other day. The main idea is that the initial buzz around Facebook was to see who had recently joined and get back in touch. Once you're back in touch, however, the reason to go back fades.

This is probably why they've opened up their develop platform in order to provide new reasons to return - new applications.

I have always been of the opinion however that sites like these are at their best when they complement face to face relationships rather than replace them. So if people use Facebook a little less but get more real world value out of the time the spend on it, then that is a good thing!