Archive for the 'social networks' Category

28
Sep

6 Reasons Why I am Over Facebook

Facebook was a bit of fun for a while. I resisted joining for a long time and then joined, primarily to check out what all of the fuss was about and to research the platform. I quickly built a network of friends (some who I see in the real world and some I haven’t seen for ages. 2 months later, I’m REALLY over it. Heres 6 reasons why:

  1. Relationships aren’t so simple

    2. I have a bunch of relationships with people I deal with, am friends with, live with, see rarely etc.. Each of those relationships has its own dynamic and no 2 relationships are the same. Facebook over simplifies the whole relationship dynamic, meaning that everyone who you are connected with is of equal importance. Sure, there are some simple algorithm governing what goes into your news feed, but generally, the people who’s news fills my feed aren’t the people who I would prefer to fill my feed. I have actually adjusted my Newsfeed Preferences to receive less news about some people, but I still receive a heap of news about them.

  2. Too much SPAM

    3. I hate the fact that I have to wade through a sea of crap each time I review my inbox or notifications. Zombie invites, Jedi invites, Pirates invites etc. I couldn’t care less about some stupid game that someone in my network thought might be cool and was peompted by the application to SPAM everyone within coo wee!

    All of a sudden application developers (read new age SPAMmers) are able to abuse people’s networks by virally sending out invitations to people’s friends en masse.

  3. I don’t want to install an application just to read a message

    4. Those emails telling me that someone has written on my X Wall, when I don’t even have the X Wall application installed. Install application, read some message that is crap and not solely written to me. Uninstall application, untill the next time someone else does the same thing.

  4. Sponsored ads in Newsfeed

    5. It’s my news feed. Not an ad feed!

  5. IS

    6. Why does the status update have to start with IS. Why can’t I say Rob hates five things about Facebook instead of Rob is hating 5 things about facebook!

  6. All those people

    7. How many contacts can you say you’ll actually stay in contact with? It’s great to see and hear from people you haven’t seen for ages, but generally, after the initial “Hi, how’s it? what’s been happening for the past 10 years? you married? got kids? oh how cool!” kinda stuff, those people will sit in your friends list, neglected. No way to piff someone without upsetting them. It all becomes too noisy, very quickly.

I’ve started a Facebook group about being over Facebook. Will people join or will they get over it first?

By Rob Scherer 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized, facebook, social networks, user experience and web 2.0
13
Aug

Networks and Their Effect on Marketing

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how technology has changed the way we live. Last night, I called my mum at home. No answer. I then called her mobile. No answer. I sent her an SMS and she called me this morning. It made me think about how we used to contact people. Before answering machines and mobile phones, we used to call back, and call back and call back - until someone answered the phone. Today, we just make sure there is some record of our ping, and the ball is then in the pingees court.

Something else I am thinking about is how marketing must change in order to be effective in this time of social networks and mass connectiveness. People are now connected to their friends en masse, all the time! Need to have a question answered? Post it to Facebook and have a bunch of responses within the hour. Where is a good place to get new tyres for my car? Where should we go for dinner tonight, feel like Indian? Which mobile phone should I buy? These used to be the questions that marketers pondered. Need they bother any more? Is anyone listening to marketing anymore or is it all just spam?

Network vs Advertising

I know that I pay much less attention to advertising or marketing than I used to. What I’m not sure about is whether that is because I am becoming older and more cynical wiser or whether I am more inclined to go to my network when I have a decision to make.

I think marketing/advertising is the one area that will suffer a lot from the change in the way people make decisions, but then again, I suppose the US$550 million that MySpace made from advertising revenue last year may counter that assertion.

What do you think?

By Rob Scherer 0 Comments
Categories: evolution, marketing, myspace, social networks and web 2.0
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