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Social Media

Of Laughter and Never Forgetting

Time magazine is about to name its “Man of the Year,” the person who has made the greatest impression on the previous 12 months. From A to Z, Julian Assange to Mark Zuckerberg nicely bookend the short list and frame one of the great struggles of our epoch: privacy vs. transparency.

The WikiLeaker from Down Under is likely to get the nod for publicizing information from U.S. classified documents. To his way of thinking, candid assessments written for a limited group of decision makers must be exposed as perfidious. Thus, WikiLeaks has informed the world that State Department functionaries think Hamid Karzai is a crook and Italy’s Berlusconi is “feckless, vain, and ineffective.” Uh, tell us something we don’t know.

At the other end of the alphabet, Zuckerberg schemed to tell Facebook’s corporate partners many things they didn’t know about users of his site. He seemed baffled why anyone would want to hold back their personal profiles from the world at large. What are these people afraid of?

For one thing, people don’t want to be commodities to be bought and sold (although that battle is probably already lost). More than that, people instinctively want to be able to control their reputations, which they can’t when information about them is (a) false or (b) once true, but no longer or out of context.

People cling to the idea that they can have separate lives: one for home, one for work, one for friends, and so forth. They also want to be able to reinvent themselves at will – which requires moving on from the past, forgetting, amongst other things, indiscretions that seemed amusing at the time. Yet how can we drop this baggage when the Internet shackles us to every comment or image associated with us?

“A humane society values privacy because it allows people to cultivate different aspects of their personalities in different contexts,” writes Jeffrey Rosen in his outstanding article in the New York Times Magazine in July. “At the moment, the enforced merging of identities that used to be separate is leaving many casualties in its wake.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html?hp

It’s not a theoretical issue. Three-quarters of U.S. companies conduct online research on job candidates, according to Microsoft, and seven of ten recruiters report that they have rejected candidates because of discovered photos, discussion-board conversations, or membership in controversial groups.

There’s plenty of grist for the investigator’s mill. Facebook has nearly 500 million members, 22 percent of all Internet users, who spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Its users share more than 25 billion pieces of content each month (including news stories, blog posts and photos), and the average user creates 70 pieces of content a month. There are more than 100 million registered Twitter users, and the Library of Congress recently announced that it will be permanently house the entire archive of public Twitter posts since 2006.

Now advancing facial recognition technology promises (or threatens) to locate photos of people you’re looking for on the web, even if not identified (“tagged”) in the photo. Social-network aggregator search engines will be combining data from various sources to rank people’s public and private reputations. Then there’s the new web site Unvarnished, where people can write anonymous reviews about anyone. People are already rated on their creditworthiness. Soon they may be judged and ranked on the reputation as parents, dates, employees, neighbors.

By “erasing external memories our society accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity to learn from past experiences and adjust our behavior,” writes Viktor Mayer-Schönberger in his recent book, “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.” The limits of human memory ensure that people’s sins are eventually forgotten. He says “without some form of forgetting, forgiving becomes a difficult undertaking.”

Here’s the irony: the internet was until recently seen as the great liberator. Hilary Clinton, now on the warpath against WikiLeaks, praised Google for empowering Chinese citizens with information about their government. Remember that New Yorker cartoon from the early 1990s: “On the Internet they don’t know if you’re a dog.” Now the leash is back. We know who and where and what you are, Rover. And we’re never going to let you forget it.

The remedies range from legal maneuvers of dubious value (such as lawsuits to force removal of slanderous information or “Twittergation”) to technological innovations – such as built-in expiration dates for data, controlled by the user. Or just being prudent to the point of paranoia.

Supposedly cavalier about over-sharing, the young are catching up to their elders in matters of privacy. A UC Berkeley study this year found that 88 percent of people between 18 and 22 believe websites should be legally required to delete all stored information about individuals.

Facebook could implement expiration dates. If it wanted to. It doesn’t, apparently.

Bad information, like bad news, has a greater impact, as any behavioral psychologist or journalist or PR rep will tell you. So a new industry has arisen to buried the bad news that can’t be actually eliminated. Companies like ReputationDefender flood the Web with positive or neutral information about their customers to rig Google search rankings, pushing the negative links to the bottom.

Whether Time chooses Julian, Mark (or even Sarah) as its emblem of 2010, the bigger story is that technology is rapidly moving us through numbered versions of the world. We’ve left the user-generated content world of web 2.0, and we’re being shoved into 3.0. Welcome to it.

Games People Play

We’re just trying to get our heads around Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, squinting through the mourning veil we’ve donned for our beloved books (the real ones, not the “e-” variety), which Nicholas Negroponte of MIT’s Media Lab tells us will be gone in five years.

Now we’re being told “decade of social” is over. What? Already?

That’s the argument of Seth Priebasch, who writes in the Harvard Business Review (September 9, 2010) that the “decade of games” is upon us. While the last decade was all about connections and integrating a social fabric to every facet of our digital and analog existence, this next decade is all about influence. Oh, for heaven’s sakes!

When he speaks of games, Priebasch is referring to the underlying behavioral dynamics, not specific game software such as World of Warcraft and Farmville or hardware like Nintendo Wii and Xbox. These dynamics, he predicts, will alter such non-computer environments as customer service, workplace, entertainment, and shopping.

We should probably listen to him. He is 21 after all. And he’s the “Chief Ninja” (something oldsters quaintly refer to as “CEO”) of SCVNGR, a mobile gaming company funded by Google. “I tend to think of life as a giant game,” he writes, “a somewhat poorly designed for sure, but one big game nevertheless. I enjoy watching how game dynamics subtly, often invisibly, influence almost everything that everyone does.”

So that’s the game then: gaining influence, manipulating choices. The social network infrastructure was built so we could track and channel the traffic. Nice.

Games are certainly the rage. President Obama recently announced two video game design competitions, one to encourage students to get more interested in technology (the winners will get $50,000 worth of computer stuff for their schools), the other for pros to conjure up a game to spark young interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

Priebasch says there are seven game dynamics that can be employed to “get anyone to do anything.” His favorites:

  • The Appointment Dynamic — a “player” must return at a predefined time to take a predetermined action. Happy hours would be an example, as would the online game Farmville. He foresees health care companies using this dynamic to improve fidelity to medicinal regimens or the government to reduce traffic overload with financial incentives.
  • The Progression Dynamic – the player’s progress (score) is displayed and improves with task completion. Example: Activision’s World of Warcraft, with 11 million monthly players worldwide or a café that offers a free drink once you’ve purchased nine.
  • Communal Discovery — An entire community works together to solve a problem. can be used to solve immensely difficult problems in record time.

Malcolm Gladwell said later in an interactive discussion at NewYorker.com: “Oy. Save me. This is what drives me crazy about the digerati. They refuse to accept the fact that there is a class of social problems for which there is no technological solution. … Technology does not and cannot change the underlying dynamics of ‘human’ problems: it doesn’t make it easier to love or motivate or dream or convince.”

To which I’d like to add: people playing games to manipulate other people. What’s new about that? All through recorded history, you can read about that. In a book.

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ADDENDUM: Here’s a link to how businesses are using games to boost sales, training, and productivity: http://buswk.co/lQlVTg

You Get the Writing You Deserve

Was there ever a more pernicious statement than “you get what you pay for”? How many times have you sat in a $250 plane seat and find out the guy sitting next you paid $129? How often have you discovered, too late, that you didn’t have to pay that much for that steak? Or to have that website re-vamped?

Or consider “crime doesn’t pay”: did the person who spun that yarn even read history? … Hello? And how about that howler “cheaters never prosper”? Of course they do — even if the cheaters don’t recognize themselves as such because they feel entitled and may even have the power to set or change the rules that legalize their personal advantage.

Oh, that’s so depressing. Just ignore that. What you don’t know won’t hurt you, right? Oops, there we go again.

The problem with truisms such as these is they don’t make it all the way to the truth. Good writing helps brings you to that point.

Good writing is inseparable from the truth. As such, its purpose is less to communicate (anyone can spread lies) than to prompt clear thinking. You can’t do that if you lazily rely on cliche and superstition.

So when you find yourself in need of thoughtful professional writing, rely on PubArts instead.

Finally a Use for the Internet: Complaining With Effect

Social media is attracting more and more older people. Social media is great for complaining. … Coincidence?

I kid. But really, a phenomenon is afoot. A recent survey conducted for the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that social media use among those 50 and older zoomed from 22 percent in 2009 to 42 percent by 2010.

That study found that Internet users aged 50-64 almost doubled their use of social media to 47 percent (with one in five saying they check social networks daily, also up 100 percent). Social network use among those 65+ doubled to 26 percent (with those checking in daily more than tripling to 13 percent). Meanwhile those 18-29 (a.k.a. the youngsters) are slowing down (if only because they’re already such heavy users). Social networking among that group went from 76 percent in April 2009 to 86 percent in May 2010.

A separate Pew study (they’re very inquisitive people) found that Americans ages 70-75 who were online increased from 26 percent in 2005 to 45 percent in 2009.

[Update: The average age of a Facebook user is 38 years old, according to statistics compiled by Flowtown and publicized by Pamorama, http://bit.ly/9FDtvQ. For a company that started exclusively with college students, more than 60 percent of its users are now older than 38. The average Twitter user is 39, with 64 percent being 35 or older.]

Back in the day, with dates designated as b.c. (before computers), people would complain by writing a letter. Then as civilization progressed, they would make a phone call – and talk to a real person. In their own country. Eventually, however, the computer age made it possible to be ignored in a whole new way: email.

Companies might be wistful for those days. Facebook and Twitter in particular have empowered consumers and voters to view their opinions very quickly and often with great effect. Stories abound of people impotently complaining in (increasingly) old fashioned ways – and then getting a corporate response within minutes after using Twitter or YouTube instead. United Airlines mangled Dave Carroll’s guitar and then relegated him in customer service purgatory. So he created a music video that attracted nine million viewers on the Internet. And then he quickly got relief from UA.

[Update: The wax of social networks and wane of email will likely continue, and thus have consequences for marketing and customer service. The same statistics compiled by Flowdown cited above indicate that those age 18-29 use social media as much as email to communicate – and those under 18 prefer social networks over email.]

Customer service, long seen as a “cost center” drag on earnings, is rapidly getting more attention in the social media age. It’s been a long time coming, as complainers’ true numbers and depth of sentiment are perpetually under-represented; only a small percentage of dissatisfied customers actually make the effort to complain formally. Not surprisingly, customer service hasn’t been seen as an easy target of cutbacks in times of austerity (or greed). Furthermore, businesses, ever promiscuous, have favored wooing new customers (sales and marketing) over romancing existing ones (customer service). That imbalance will likely change.

“Until now, most customer service has been in a black hole of obscurity,” Pete Blackshaw of Nielsen Online Strategic Services recently told Time magazine. “Now you just spend a few minutes searching tweets to see who’s mad and then how they were dealt with.” He wrote a book whose title pretty much sums up the new reality: Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.

Conclusion: because all age groups are increasingly using social media to communicate, these networks are also the future of both marketing and customer service.

Talking About Yourself Is Talking to Yourself

Fixating on establishing your “brand” can leave you kind of lonely. You’re at risk of neglecting what’s most important in building relationships with customers, clients, and readers: communicating how you can help them. If you talk about yourself too much you’ll soon just be talking to yourself. No one really cares, and won’t be listening for long. Instead, tell stories about how you can make your readers money … save them time … improve their lives.

Before crafting your narrative you have to know why people buy. Notice number 16 on the list below culled from the book Rapid Response Advertising by Geoff Ayling – “to communicate better.” PubArts understands that in helping you (our customer) communicate better, what we really need to discover is what YOUR customer desires.

We don’t want to prattle on about ourselves in this moment (and choke on the irony), but do point out that we can also help you (and yours) with numbers 1, 2, and 3, among other goals. And while we might be at a loss with number 11, we are quite practiced with rejuvenating communication materials and strategies.

People buy:
1. To make more money
2. To save money
3. To attract praise
4. To increase enjoyment
5. To possess things of beauty
6. To avoid criticism
7. To make work easier
8. To speed up work
9. To keep up with others
10. To feel opulent
11. To look younger
12. To become more efficient
13. To buy friendship
14. To avoid effort
15. To escape or avoid pain
16. To communicate better
17. To be in style
18. To avoid trouble
19. To protect family
20. To express love