The Business Web 2.0
As CEO of business-based social networking site WeCanDo.BIZ, read my take on the role Web 2.0 technologies can play helping businesses to grow.
Thursday 31 July 2008, 4:34 PM
Social media's double edged sword
George Wiley, as the member of some 4 years identifies himself, posted a long tirade on his blog (at http://www.whoisgeorgewiley.com/) after being barred from the networking site within minutes of posting a comment on Penny's blog calling her "smug" (amongst other things -- read his blog for details).
George's blog is not widely read but one such reader was other Ecademy founder Thomas Power (Penny's husband), who then started a forum topic back on Ecademy discussing George's negative view of Ecademy. Within minutes Twitter was alight with tweeps reporting the opposing sides and the hilarious mud-slinging between fans of each (the Ecademy hosted side of the discussion can be found at http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&t=867090).
This is how social media can bite you. Although both sides have their platform for airing their views and are using them, as a consequence George's article "Leaving the circus" is now the TOP talked about item relating to Ecademy over the past 30 days, according to Matthew Brazil of social media monitoring experts 6Consulting (http://www.6consulting.co.uk/). Most of the comments have been through Twitter, with numbers 2 and 3 Thomas's and George's blog posts. This is just 24 hours after George's initial rant.
Many companies pay marketing departments and external PR agents big sums of money to ensure they are portrayed positively to customers. But how many are effectively managing and monitoring what is said about them through social media, where the public write the copy rather than a small band of journalists.
"Communication of thoughts, ideas, likes and dislikes are happening all over the globe in real time. That information is accessible by anyone, it is the very essence of social media," says Matthew Brazil on his website. "Networking used to happen at pre-arranged networking breakfasts, with people wandering around with a label on their jacket. Nowadays it is conducted online. It can be deliberate networking or unintentional. If I have a bad experience with my bank, broadband supplier or supermarket, chances are I will comment about it for others to see. Social media therefore has major plus points and some huge negatives. Negative sentiment can spread far quicker than before and conversely so can the positive."
I don't see many companies attempting to manage this though. Certainly, you would expect Ecademy, veterans of the Web 2.0 world, to be on top of it.
I wonder how many organisations actually are?
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
PreviousComments on this post
Web 2.0 Is Like Pornography
Like so many tech articles posted since Tim O'Reilly coined the term in 2004, this one references "Web 2.0" as if it were something tangible--or at least a concept with clear, concise definition. It is not. In 2006, Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee sagely observed that "nobody knows what it means":
http://tinyurl.com/y6ewzy
And now in 2008, the most honest thing we can say is that "Web 2.0" means whatever the techno-marketeer (ab)using it wants it to mean. Otherwise, why would intelligent people like Isaac O'Bannon still be writing articles asking "What is Web 2.0?":
http://tinyurl.com/5solok
And, why would McKinsey's just-released best-of-breed report entitled "Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise" ...
http://tinyurl.com/6sxls7
... include no attempt at defining the term other than to list the "Web 2.0 Tools" that comprise or enable it? And even there, the chief ingredient is identified only as "Web Services", adding more mystery to the mix as one ethereal term is offered up to explain another.
As originated in an Onstartups.com website design posting that no longer exists...
http://tinyurl.com/57a2u4
... "Web 2.0" is like pornography: Nobody has defined it, but you know it when you see it.
Bruce Arnold, Web Designer, Miami Florida
http://www.PervasivePersuasion.com
Bruce
Your pornography quote is one of my favourites, although a paraphrasing of what Justice Potter Stewart actually said. Great all the same.
You maybe right on "Web 2.0". But what most people see is the social web, that is, the verson where the "readers" contribute to the content, rather than a broadcast from a single publisher or webmaster. Examples of this are forums, blogs, life streaming/micro-blogs, and social networking sites like Ecademy, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and ours at WeCanDo.BIZ. Whether Tim Berners-Lee accepts this definition of Web 2.0 is a moot point, as it has become the de facto term for the collective of such technologies and is in fairly common use.
By the way, O'Reilly can't claim originally for the idea behind the term Web 2.0 either, as the Dot Com boom of the late 90s had already attached version numbers to things that shouldn't have them attached. I remember reading Business 2.0 magazine crowing about Everything 2.0, before it all disappeared because none of the companies detailed had yet mastered Business 1.0! ;-)
What people are quite clear on though is the greyness of "Web 3.0", a term also interchanged with "the symantic web". Bringing us back to those mentioned in my blog above, my very first article on ZDNet was in response to a piece Ecademy founder Penny Power wrote on her blog saying she had been advocating Web 3.0 since 1998. Not only would Berners-Lee not recognise this, I argued that most people don't need whatever it is until we all get to master and work out how to make money from Web 2.0!
Thank you for your contribution.
Ian Hendry
WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
