Web 2.0
Author Alasdair White
Has it been a ‘game changing’ development in the social media firmament or merely the release of another ‘me too’ social networking program? This is the question that should, I think, be in our minds as we consider the release at the end of June of Google Plus (or Google+).
On the face of it, it is just another ‘me too’ program to join the plethora of similar programs already available and which are discussed in a Wikipedia article. There has been an immediate ‘rush to judgment’ by the technology journalists and so far the reaction has been a case of ‘not bad, some good developments, but is it really different’ – in fact, is it other than a redundant derivative of Facebook and Twitter. In the UK, Dan Grabham of TechRadar posted his take on the msn tech & gadgets blog while Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land provided a US view. In the mean time, Paul Anthony enthused on the Webdistortion blog that “Google have nailed it when they realised that Facebook’s weakness was privacy” – but they might have nailed it as the problem but have they provided a real solution.
Other than a different approach to how and with whom you can share your online posts and an ability to interact with other Google products, what does Google+ bring to Google in terms of competitive advantage? Read the rest of this entry »
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Author Alasdair White
In this final blog on Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0, we look at some of the dangers and realities of using social networking tools (in the broadest sense) as part of a marketing communications strategy.
I started this series by saying that I had been sent a link to a website entitled How to use Twitter for marketing and PR, a hot topic if ever there was one that, from its title, sounded like an interesting read. Frankly, it was both more prescient and a great deal more full of insight than one can imagine – it simply said ‘Don’t’. But is this true? And that is a very good question.
At one level, the users of social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn proclaim that these tools are for ‘social’ networking and not marketing but this begs the question: isn’t networking also a form of marketing? Read the rest of this entry »
Author Alasdair White
In this third post on the subject of Web 2.0 usage in business, we look at the impact of social networking sites and other Enterprise 2.0 applications on performance and try to disentangle the myths of ‘receive wisdom’ from the behavioural reality.
It seems that the management response to social network applications and other collaborative tools falls into two categories: ‘how can we use this to promote the business’, and ‘employees shouldn’t be accessing these sites during working hours’.
Using Enterprise 2.0 to assist in the promotional strategy is the subject of the final post on this subject and I’d like to try and deal with the myths and misconceptions that have grown up about employees having access to social networking sites during working hours. Based on some research down by my students, the vast majority of companies that allow or require their employees to have access to the internet for their work also ban them from accessing certain websites – usually the social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, the video and photo sharing sites (YouTube and Flikr) and the microblogging sites (Twitter). The justification for this Read the rest of this entry »