Tweeting: ‘blogging for morons’?

So, farewell then Social Media World Forum Europe The World The Universe 2010, and roll-on next year’s event. Conference programme presentations in 2011 that we’d like to see include:

• Keynote address 1: “Will someone please capitalise me £500k?”
  Is investing thousands in a ‘vaguely interesting idea for a website that has the potential to be quite successful’ throwing good money after bad? Not at all, argues serial entrepreneur Con O’Course.
• Keynote address 2: Tweeting: is it really just blogging for morons?
  Controversial über analyst Gunther Lünch of market-watcher DataGeist Group shares his view of the ‘bifurcation of the Socmed generation’ into so-called ‘Tweet twats and blog-telectuals’.
• Social Media Trends: the rise of ‘identity sharing’
  Many socmed adherents are finding that an entire personality is surplus to their requirements. University lecturer Professor Grant Guzzler suggests that there is no moral or ethical reason why two (or more) individuals should not share the same single personality in virtual cyber-domains.
• Monetization: the ‘Holy Grail’ of Social Media business models
  Leading commercial consultant Daniel Day-Rate revisits a subject heading that rarely fails to pack ‘em in. His conclusion: we still have some way to go toward achieving this.
• Case study: 10 steps to deriving value from the obvious
  Shirley Knott, managing director of the UK’s largest small-to-medium sized enterprise Mega Industries International, explains how her company did some fairly obvious things to making Internet technology perform some basic business processes, such as setting-up a website, and accepting online payments.

Social media tools helping political efforts: how effective?

“There’s a lot of Tweeting, but there’s not much engagement,” Alex Aitken, director of communications at Westminster City Council told panel debate audiences at Social Media World Forum. Politicians are using social media as an extra communications tool, rather than a means of engagement with the electorate, he adds.
Fellow panelist Craig Elder, the Conservatives’ online communications editor, agrees: “Politicians are having a massive conversation between themselves. It’s just a broadcast exercise I’m happy for the blame for this to be shared across all three parties – it’s old politics on new media. It’s just a broadcast exercise I’m happy for the blame for this to be shared across all three parties – it’s old politics on new media.” It won’t be until 2014 election that politics will open up to social media, Elder avers.
Another problem is the additional workload that staying abreast of the demands social media engagement makes is another issue, argues Kerry McCarthy, Labour MP for Bristol East, serial blogger, and the party’s New Media Communications spokesperson, and she has a point that’s too often ignored in the let’s-all-go-socmed! brouhaha: the most prolific bloggers and Tweeters don’t have anything else to do; or rather, blogging and Tweeting is what they do. For the rest of us it can represent an onerous addition to the workload.
In respect to this the real question – for politicians and anyone else - is ‘What has to stop in order to embrace socmed fully?’ What should be jettisoned from the daily schedule in order to make room for socmed? Your suggestions please…

Supine tigers, gaping maws

Thomas ‘Ecademy’ Power is back, bringing a welcome voice of experience and caution to the gung-ho geekery permeating the Social Media World Forum. As enterprises gush and rush to embrace Twitter to drive core sales, Facebook to build critical customer communities, and LinkedIn to consolidate valued B2B relationships (and find key staff to recruit) how many CIOs consider the fact that all that irreplaceable data that they are basing so much sales and marketing activitiy on does not actually belong to them? It belongs to yer Twitters, Facebooks, YouTubes, LinkedIns, etc.  And as they -the socnet platforms – introduce new ways to monetize their own propositions, how long before the social network providers start to charge for the privilidge of using their services?
“What happen when FaceBook and co start talking directly to your customers, to your clients?” asks Power. “And what happens when FaceBook becomes a bank, a credit card, an online retailer – becomes a predator?” [JH]

It’s official: Web stress messes brain

The scourge of Web stress is nothing new, but IT management company CA has public’d what it claims is the first neurological study of consumer reactions to a ‘poor online experience’.  Working with consultancy Foviance, the study analysed brain wave activity from volunteers tasked with purchasing products and services online over a ‘standard’ 2Mbps broadband link. CA admits that there are many factors inveighing on a website’s ‘responsiveness’, and acknowledges that Web stress is a longtime ‘known problem’ in respect to online user experience. What the new research is supposed to prove is that bad browsing due to crappily-designed websites is now officially bad for your health.

Brain wave analysis from the experiment revealed that participants had to concentrate up to 50 per cent more when using badly performing websites, while facial muscle and behavioural analysis of the subjects also revealed ‘greater agitation and stress in these periods’.   Ian Tee.