Social networking

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Google+ thoughts so far

18 July 2011 in Social networking | 5 comments

Google+ logo

I’ve to date held off commenting on Google+, which is all of 3 weeks old, because it’s in “field trial” which basically means it’s a Beta with a restricted user base. The reason for this is I think that Goog needs to load test it out amongst modest millions before scaling it up. Consequently the current user base is largely the geeky early adopter crowd. If you want to try out G+ just ask for an invite. I’ll be happy to oblige if I can; the availability of invites comes and goes.

Most commentators talk of Google+ as Google’s new social networking platform, review it in generally favourable terms and compare it to Facebook and Twitter. But I think that misses the point. Google+ is Google’s way of “managing the social space”. Remember “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and it’s already a good way down that road. Google already does “social”; it has hundreds of millions of registered users using and sharing via Gmail, Docs, Reader, Blogger, You Tube, Picasa etc. It did not need to create a new social networking platform; it did not need to tempt hundreds of millions of users away from Facebook, Twitter et al; it just needed to develop an elegant application to join up the dots – and it’s done that.

As Steve Pickering says:

this isn’t just about Google+ (as great a product as that is and will be), it’s about the fact that, with this launch Google has, in effect, reduced or ‘highlighted’ Twitter and Facebook-type functions as mere applications, powerful and important as they are, within a much greater whole, but not platforms. In a sense, they are apps without a platform and Apple is a platform without an App. … let’s not get bogged down by individual features. Let’s look at the big picture. Google is the only company that has all the pieces of the puzzle, and as they bring these pieces together, it will invoke a value proposition that users would be depriving themselves of if they didn’t join.

You may say that Goog is way too big and powerful already, but I still prefer the fact that its platform is the open web, compared to the controlled environments of, say, Zuckernet or the Appleverse:

From All Techie News:

Right now the vast majority of social networking goes on inside Facebook’s walled garden and it’s in Google’s interest to get those users back out onto the open Web. If Google can secure enough consumer uptake, then those hundred million users may well insist that they be allowed to read from and write to any social network their families are on from any interface they choose. Back in the bad old days, you couldn’t call customers of one telephone network if you were a customer of another phone network. That’s where we are on social networking today, but if Google Plus can capture enough users then it could disrupt that whole economy.

For thoughts on how useful G+ may be for lawyers, read Adrian Lurssen at JDSupra.

The hype cycle

8 November 2010 in Social networking, Technology | 2 comments

Image: neweurasia.net

Apropos my social meeja blues I consulted the web. Turns out I can plot my disillusionment on Gartner’s hype cycle representing the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies.

Gartner now reckons microblogging is somewhat past the peak of inflated expectations and heading rapidly towards the trough of disillusionment, whereas “consumer-generated media” (do they mean blogs or are they lumping it all together?) has already troughed. So some way to go before the situation normalises and we reach the idyllic plateau of productivity. Watcha think?

Update: There’s a section of the report specifically on social media.The graph for that puts blogging on the plateau. Actually I think it’s been there for some time.

Social meeja blues

2 November 2010 in Blogging, Social networking | 4 comments

Image: OLPC

Time was when I was a guru of social meeja for lawyers. I was an early adopter with a keen eye for the potential of blogs, feeds and all that followed – and I sang its praises. I had a vibrant blawg with a large(ish) (in the scheme of things) band of followers and a small coterie of keen fellow blawgers. I quickly figured out the joys of Twitter and encouraged others to tweet. I had set up a profile on LinkedIn, made connections there and begun following a few emergent groups. I had also set up on Facebook – not sure why, but all those kids couldn’t be wrong, could they? And then the bell curve went mental!

Now everyone’s into social media. Every Joe Blawgs, every Sue Grabbit and Run and every legal service company has a “Twitter feed” and a “Facebook page”; there are hundreds more “blawgs” (I use those quote marks deliberately and forcefully); and on all platforms there are people desperate to make as many friends/followers/connections as possible. It’s all got out of hand, hasn’t it? Turned into some sort of spamfest. Couldn’t we go back to 2005 please?

Am I just being a Grumpy Old Man? Let’s look at what really sucks with some of the social meeja (and some of the good points too).

The good thing about Twitter is you don’t have to follow anyone if you don’t want to. That’s cool! In fact you don’t have to use Twitter at all; it’s not obligatory. On the other hand it is kinda neat to exchange banter with your contacts, show off what you know, learn something from them, make some new contacts. That’s all good if you have the time to follow the fast-flowing river. Thumbs up. What gets me is the dumb people who use Twitter. There’s way too may “marketing” peeps and egotists who broadcast low value pulp and pump up their follower numbers by mentioning and following everyone in sight. I couldn’t give a FF how many followers you have. That’s no measure of your worth to me or anyone else. In fact if it’s too big a number I’ll likely steer clear of you. (And yes, Stephen Fry, that’s you too!)

What about Facebook? Well, forgive me, but though 600 million plus people (and counting) use Facebook I’ve yet to find one who extols its virtues as a professional networking tool. You have to be there just because 600 million others are there (and, let’s not kid ourselves, most of them are way younger than you). But things could change; it could get better. Anything’s possible, but somehow (don’t quote me on this) I think Facebook’s pudding is over-egged. Sooner or later users will wise up to the fact that they’re just advertising fodder.

And LinkedIn? It’s a must-have, at least for now: a bit boring perhaps, but adding functions here and there and growing nicely as a serious business networking tool. What gets me again (and this is no fault of LinkedIn but the dumb people who use it) is the complete strangers who profess to know me and want to connect. Well sorry mate but unless you can establish at least a tenuous connection to me you go in the trash can. A tenuous connection will leave you to suffer in my Inbox for a while. Real connections are welcome. Believe me, working up 500+ connections (and thence, let’s say 50K+ second degree connections) is not the way to play this game.

Blawgs? I still love ‘em. Most of the early wave of blawgers are gamely still at it, though Twitter in particular has taken a lot of the the wind out of our sails. We’ve been joined by plenty more: some great new sources of analysis and comment, many boring law firm news/update blawgs and many misguided marketing initiatives.

And then there are all these new “businesses” set up by/for lawyers on a blog and a prayer. Those college kids in pyjamas and flip flops surely have made it easy for us all to become squillionaires!

Stop by later for another instalment.

Social meejah – just for kids?

9 April 2010 in Social networking | 2 comments

Head on over to Stem where Jordan Furlong is penning a series of posts on Social Media for Lawyers.

He kicked off with Facebook for law firms.

And has followed that up with Twitter for law firms.

These look at how law firms can use social media effectively to promote the firm. No journalistic hype or platitudes here: Jordan brings a wealth of experience to bear.

Are we (still) in thrall to BigLaw?

13 October 2009 in Blogging, Law publishing, Social networking

Jordan Furlong bemoans (on Slaw and Law21) the fact that the legal media focus on BigLaw, because BigLaw makes a lot of money, so they’re attractive both as subscribers and as advertising targets.

It’s not good for smaller practices, which count the majority of all lawyers among their ranks, that they don’t get to hear their stories told, their concerns addressed, their best practices circulated, and their career choices validated in proportion to their presence in the profession.

If there’s a solution here, it’s going to have to emerge from the ranks of these smaller-firm lawyers themselves – waiting for institutional publishers to change their editorial focus is not a good plan. Smaller practices need to find a way to amplify their voice and multiply their narratives within the profession as a whole. Maybe they need to help create their own media channel, pooling resources and enabling advertisers to find and support them. Maybe they need to harness the power of social media in ways that big firms haven’t figured out yet, to create the first truly online legal periodical through some innovative combination of blogs, RSS, Twitter and LinkedIn, and focus it on their issues. Maybe they need to figure out what the small-firm equivalent of Legal OnRamp would look like, and start recruiting their clients to join.

To which I replied:

I do think you’re not seeing the wood for the trees here. Social media do already provide the means for solos and smaller firms to leave a bigger footprint and “amplify their voice and multiply their narratives within the profession as a whole”. As you well know, they are doing it through public blogging and the public SNEs; and the pooling and focussing is done via public group activity on group blogs and special interest groups on the SNEs.

That does not provide a complete solution and third party collaboration and aggregation channels are evolving, but I don’t really see that they need “their own media channel” – will it not be an agglomeration of media channels?

The first step for solos and small firms is to engage with social media and they have only themselves to blame if they don’t.

You suggest that their footprints need to be left “in the places where journalists search for ideas and leads”. Turn that around: how about journalists need to engage better with social media and source their stories from a wider range of media channels? Surely it’s a very lazy hack who relies on the mainstream legal media for their ideas; surely they need to be reading blogs, following Twitter et al? Now I know you do this, so the next question to ask (of an employed journalist) is – It’s all very well for me to source some of my ideas and stories from solos and small firms, but will that sell the rag/will it attract the advertising bucks, will it please my paymaster? I suspect the answer to those questions is No – and that’s probably part of the reason you left your past post to strike out on your own. Good move!

It’s inevitable that the mainstream and derivative (legal) media will focus on BigLaw, just as they focus on power, influence and celebrity in other fields, but smaller voices can now speak louder and engage with a wider audience; it’s already proven that this works for those perceptive enough to do more than sit on the sidelines and observe.

Social business design

10 September 2009 in Business, Law 2.0, Social networking

“Social business design” is a term you’ve probably not encountered before. I was introduced to it last evening by social computing expert and entrepreneur Lee Bryant at Headshift where I attended an event to explore the themes covered in the report Social Networking for the Legal Profession authored by him with Penny Edwards. I don’t know if Lee coined the phrase, but it does an excellent job encapsulating the paradigm shift we’re now experiencing as corporations get to grips with the “new” internet (aka Web 2.0).

The 20th century was all about the growth of corporations, pushing products and services to customers, developing top-down management and, in the latter quarter, developing computerised processes to do this more efficiently through centralised systems. Some of those systems worked well some of the time for some of the people (guess which!); many have failed dismally; all were costly.

Social business design is about redesigning those structures and processes to deliver solutions that people actually want, not what the corporation thinks they should have. It is about connecting and engaging with – indeed exploiting (but in the nicest possible way) – those who matter to the business: customers and employees. Success is possible today with very modest investment in systems and software – most of it nowadays is free or all-but; all that’s needed is the need and enthusiasm of the end-users who willingly put in most of the grunt work.

So far, so very Silicon Valley. But some of the leading UK Big Law firms are doing just this, as we heard:

  • Mark Gould, Head of Knowledge Management at Addleshaw Goddard and KM blogger explained the relationship between online social networking, knowledge management and social computing initiatives in the firm.
  • Steve Perry, Head of Knowledge and Business Development at Freshfields, illustrated and explained their extensive social intranet – wiki spaces, blogs and external resources all plugged into personalised iFreshfields start pages.
  • Sam Dimond, Director of Knowledge Systems Clifford Chance, told how wiki spaces and blogs had been enthusiastically adopted and cut project-related email by 90 per cent.

Whatever you think about big business or Big Law, these guys are showing that it can be conducted in a way that benefits the business by engaging and empowering the people that matter.

Hats off to Headshift and their enlightened clients.

Update: Penny Edwards has now written up the presentations on the Headshift blog:

Social networks – how they work

5 July 2009 in Articles, Social networking

First Published in the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers, July 2009.

Facebook has over 200 million users; LinkedIn, the network for business and professionals, has over 40 million; Twitter is all the rage; and don’t forget blogs.

Although these services are hugely popular, it’s safe to say that amongst lawyers use is still largely confined to so-called early adopters. Should you be using these (public) social networks? If so, which? for what?

Too often answers to the question “Why should I use social networks?” focus on particular features each service offers and for what tasks they can be used. But it is worth first understanding how they work, their similarities and, more importantly, their differences. Then consider the numbers and the demographics and the benefits of making balanced use of some or all of these services – according to taste – should be clear.

Who you know

Facebook is a free-access, privately-owned social networking web service. It acts as a super-charged social address book – a destination where you can connect and interact with “friends”, see how they are interacting with their friends and also connect to others with whom you have a looser social connection (all those in your workplace, college or region).

Post your profile, add some friends (subject to their confirmation) and you’re away. Say what’s on your mind, see what’s on theirs, add more friends along the way, set up social events and much more via built-in Facebook features or one of the countless third party applications.

Founded initially for use by college students, Facebook is now open to anyone over 13, with the UK proportionately the most enthusiastic adopters.

Although it can be used for professional purposes, it is primarily used for social interaction and its largest constituency remains the 18-25. Indeed, it is so dominant amongst UK students that not to be on Facebook is to be all but invisible to your peers.

Who they know

LinkedIn is again a privately-owned social networking service designed for professional and business networking. It is free to use but with certain extended features available to paying subscribers.

Your profile on LinkedIn acts as your online CV, describing your experience and expertise and enabling others on the network easily to find you and connect with you. All LinkedIn public profiles are also indexed by Google, so your profile becomes another valuable property in your online portfolio. LinkedIn is fast becoming the online directory of business and professional people.

You can invite anyone (whether a LinkedIn user or not) to become a connection or can request to connect with another user via a pre-existing relationship or the intervention of an existing contact. This “gated access” approach is intended to build trust among users.

An important feature of LinkedIn is its emphasis on “degrees of connection”. Your direct connections are your 1st degree connections; their connections are your 2nd degree connections; their connections are your 3rd degree connections. On every screen you are reminded of these degrees of connection and invited explicitly or implicitly to extend your network by connecting directly to current 2nd or 3rd degree connections.

LinkedIn emphasises degrees of connection because, in business, it is often not just who you know that counts; it is who they know.

What you know

Blogging is not a service owned by anyone: your blog is yours and the Net is the network. Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, the emphasis is not on who you know, but on what you know. With blogging you demonstrate your knowledge, expertise and personality through your writing. You connect with other people not explicitly, but by linking to and commenting on their blogs. Likewise, if you have something useful or interesting to say, others will link to and comment on your blog. Blogging is thus a mutually reinforcing ecosystem of authors and commenters of like or overlapping interests.

Blog search and analysis services such as Technorati and Google blog search work by highlighting the connections between blogs and enable you to readily search across them and extend your blog network.

Whatever

And so to Twitter, usually referred to as a social networking and micro-blogging service. It shares some characteristics of both social networking and blogging, but it is the differences that are most revealing.

Twitter is deceptively simple in functionality, yet its essence is fiendishly difficult to explain. Indeed, the most common early tweet by new users is something along the lines of “I don’t get it.” Even those who have become avid users admit that it took some time before it clicked.

All you can do on Twitter is post short messages of 140 characters or less and read those posted by others. You follow those whose messages interest you and these are displayed in a “stream” on your Twitter home page. (Users can protect their updates, requiring their permission for you to follow them, but few do.) Likewise you are followed by those to whom your messages are of interest and your tweets show on their home page.

Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn connections which are reciprocal, Twitter connections are asymmetric: you choose whom to follow; others choose you.

As with blogging, Twitter connections are also made indirectly by linking to others – responding to or “retweeting” their tweets or referencing them in your messages.

Twitter’s prompt “What are you doing?” is somewhat misleading for new users, suggesting that its main purpose is to post status updates. But what you use it for is entirely up to you. The 140-character constraint forces brevity: pithy comment, banter, breaking news headlines, link sharing; these are all meat and drink to Twitter users.

Twitter is very much flavour of the year, but don’t be impressed by headlines that proclaim 20 million Twitter users and growing at 1,382 per cent per annum. Recent research reveals that 60 per cent don’t contribute after a month, so we have 8 million active Twitter users. That’s a sizeable number, but it does not make Twitter mainstream. And 90 per cent of all Twitter activity is by 10 per cent of users, giving us only 2 million users worldwide who fully embrace it. That’s not going to change the world, much as that minority would like it to.

Conclusion

When it comes to socialising, Facebook certainly looks likely to be the winner who will take all (see bit.ly/1A2z5k), but I’ve yet to be convinced that it’s a must have or even a nice to have for business.

For doing business we must look to the more focussed service that delivers business benefits. LinkedIn has always sold itself as the network for business and professionals and it is so. Despite its continuing rapid growth – with over 43 million members in over 200 countries – it has not grabbed the headlines, being too worthy and boring for lazy hacks to comprehend. Because it has focus, the increase in usage has not produced a lot of noise. Though Stephen Fry has heard of it, thankfully he has not yet found a use for it and he lurks in the shadows.

Blogging is good for business. But it takes effort and commitment.

As to Twitter – give it a go. If you make an effort, you never know what might happen.

Twitter – is the party over?

25 June 2009 in Twitter | 4 comments

Has what looked like a great service, populated by eager early adopters with like motivations turned into a service polluted by egotists, marketeers and spam artists? Larry Bodine, questioning the value of Twitter as a marketing tool for lawyers, thinks so:

I’ve learned that it is a shouting post for relentless self-promoters, a dumping ground for press releases and advertising, a competition to amass followers, and a target for computer-automated Tweets.

It was not initially thus, but Twitter is a victim of its own success. Should we be impressed by the headlines that proclaim 20 million Twitter users and growing at 1,382% p.a.? More is not better. It’s no wonder that 60% don’t contribute after a month, for if the signup is so easy, subsequent inactivity is much more likely.

Knock off that 60% and we have 8 million active Twitter users. That’s a sizeable number, but that does not make Twitter mainstream and talk of Twitter replacing RSS is frankly ludicrous. And if 90% of all Twitter activity is by 10% of users, that gives us only 2 million users worldwide who fully embrace it. That’s not going to change the world, much as that minority would like it to.

I’ve a soft spot for Twitter. I’m still in there, though somewhat remotely. I’d like to be able to engage with it more, but it seems to me that if everyone can join and tweet about anything, only the dedicated will find value and that takes time which may be better spent elsewhere.

OK, I don’t have to follow the noise makers, but that’s not the point. Most of us don’t need yet another inbox to filter. We’d like a bit of focus, something that sorts the wheat from the chaff and delivers a more immediately useful service. Various Twitter apps and judicious use of Twitter Search and hashtags will turn up the goodies, but many wonder why Twitter hasn’t itself organised the Twitter stream. Will that only come after a Google takeover?

Recent stats suggest the party may be over but that’s not a bad thing if that explosive growth was fuelled by hype:

Twitter is normalizing. It’s no longer a new frontier, an elite club or a culture-transforming medium. It’s just a service for sending messages. …

Twitter is appealing to people with something to sell, or people who want to network professionally. It’s also a great way to follow a hobby or intellectual interest. In other words, it’s for older people, mainly.

So is Twitter dead? Far from it. But the Twitter hype bubble has surely burst (thanks, Oprah!). Now those of us who actually get value from it can enjoy it with less of the hype, expectation and noise than we’ve been seeing in the past few months.

Rivers of …

12 May 2009 in Feeds, Twitter | 2 comments

Rest in Peace, RSS – flame bait from Steve Gillmor.

It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter. RSS just doesn’t cut it anymore. The River of News has become the East River of news, which means it’s not worth swimming in if you get my drift.

Twitter is a sucker’s game that only serves the needs of a tiny elite – flame bait from Seth Finkelstein.

Twitter is low-level celebrity for the chattering class. And the pathologies of celebrity are all on display, including the exploitative industries that prey on the human desire to be heard and noticed. My answer to Twitter’s slogan of “What are you doing?” is: “Not playing a sucker’s game.”

RSS is dead? My ass… by Dave Winer – he should know.

Mick Jagger didn’t say Muddy Waters or Chuck Berry are dead. He loved those guys. Their work lived on in his music, and he was good to them. It’s time for the tech biz to learn about love, Steve. Open your heart and sing happy birthday to RSS. It’s been very good to you. You should be good to RSS, though god knows most of the icons of tech have been really unappreciative at the gifts RSS brought them. It’s really sad what grumpy pissy jerks these guys are.

Martindale-Hubbell opens the doors – just a crack

3 April 2009 in Social networking | 4 comments

For LexisNexis it’s simple: lawyers want a network developed by legal professionals, for legal professionals, and LexisNexis will provide it.

From their recent press release on the launch of Martindale-Hubbell Connected:

A survey conducted by Leader Networks in 2008 demonstrated the need for a private, online network for lawyers. According to the survey, while 54 percent of attorneys belong to an online network, fewer than 10 percent of lawyers can rely on current networking tools to help them work more efficiently and cost effectively. Lawyers trust other lawyers; 40 percent responded that they want a trusted, private, authenticated network….

At launch, the network is open to any private practice attorneys and corporate counsel. Non-lawyers such as law school faculty and students, law firm marketing directors, paralegals and other qualified legal professionals will be invited to join the network later this year as the network continues to evolve.

“Outsiders” from amongst legal commentators, marketing and social networking experts have not to date been given access and even many “insiders” (attorneys) have had difficulty signing up. Pulling no punches, Kevin O’Keefe thinks this stinks:

The days of launching a web based product without seeking real feedback and ownership from users and early adopters are over. The days of closed communities locking out those who may speak frankly and openly about community experiences are over. The days of a controlled PR campaign without integrity and transparency are over.

In developing MH Connected, LexisNexis seems to have interpreted the findings that less than 10 per cent of lawyers polled said they can rely on their current network to help them work more efficiently and that 40 per cent said they wanted a trusted, private, authenticated network as showing the need for a closed, lawyers-only network. But as Kevin, Doug Cornelius and other commentators have pointed out, non-lawyers should not have been excluded and useful feedback will come mainly from early adopters. Non-lawyer early adopters of legal networking should have been key to beta testing; and amongst lawyers those early adopters are that less than 10 per cent who already get value from public networks, not the 90 per cent who say they don’t. LexisNexis have belatedly discovered this.

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