Facebook Fatigue - Part 1

More and more users are reporting that they are switching off from Facebook.

Why?

There are many reasons (I hope that plenty of people will let me know if there any that I have missed), but I think that one of the main reasons is that Facebook has lost sight of where it came from.

I count myself quite lucky that I was able to experience Facebook while at university, before it opened up to anyone and allowed applications to be made and distributed.

As universities often opetrate in a 'bubble' - where there are very few of those outside a university community who are aware of the community tastes and trends -which made Facebook the perfect social media site for these bubbles. Only those from your network (or in this case university) where able to see your profile and what you were up to. Only photos, groups, the wall and events where active, meaning it was simple, easy to manage and very useful - without the daily bombardment of junk mail and applications. Facebook was a clean and simple alternative to Myspace - and that is how it should have kept itself.

As Heather Yaxley pointed out, in September 2006, founder Mark Zuckerberg saidFacebook’s mission statement was “to help people understand their world.” (Source: Green Banana)

Once Facebook was opened up to the public, the issue of random friends added you, and the subsequent spam they sent you, became apparent. How many friends" can you possibly know or keep in contact with?

Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” makes this point:

“The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us. Putting it another way, it’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.”

A person's cirlce of friends that once meant something on Facebook has now become so dilute as to become meaningless.

I think that the new social network sites that will undoubtedly appear in the next year or so will only be successful if they are simple and true to their target audience.

Privacy has also recently become an issue surrounding Facebook.

Indeed, some users have discovered that it is nearly impossible to remove themselves entirely from Facebook, setting off a fresh round of concern over the popular social network’s use of personal data. (Source: The New York Times)

As if there isn't enough to worry about, it turns out attorneys are using social networking sites as evidence and, in some cases, compelling disclosure of what a person has placed on Facebook or MySpace. (Source: Online Public Relations Thoughts)

If you needed any more convincing that Facebook is at its peak, it will comes as some surprise that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has stopped using Facebook. After Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook last year, Gates spent 30 minutes a day on the social networking site, but he signed off after getting more than 8,000 friend requests a day, and spotted weird fan sites about him. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

You may not have weird fan sites being set up about you, but I imagine that nearly everyone has (or at some point has had) some information placed on Facebook that they would rather not and it now appears impossible to remove it.

And that's not even mentioning the problems surrounding Facebook's Beacon programme. (Sources: Techcrunch, Marketing Shift, and Boing Boing)

Financially, Facebook is failing because it has yet to make money, as these figures show:

• 2007 Revenues: $150 million
• 2008 Revenues: $300 to $350 million (projected)
• 2007 Headcount: 450
• 2008 Headcount: 1,000 (projected)
• 2008 Capital Expenditures: $200 million (i.e., servers)
• 2008 EBITDA: $50 million
• 2008 Cash Flow (EBITDA - CapEx): negative 150 million.

(Source: Techcrunch)

This may well be the reason that Facebook as taken the 'innovative' approach of translating its site into various laguages by getting the users to do all the work. While it may be of benefit to users of different languages of the site other than English, fianically speaking it is only of benefit to Facebook and its various stakeholders. (Source: Techcrunch)

As Juan Pablo Sueiro notes, "Obviously, this will help and probably a new wave of members will join, but to get the “mass network effect” they will need to work hard and not only relay to “user workforce” to adapt their strategy for this new market. Also, some other core releases and a long term commitment is needed in order to adapt the site to the idiosyncrasy of latin and spanish speaking users."

Other bloggers have also noted of their fatigue of Facebook. Tom Hodgkinson took up his issues against Facebook in The Guardian and Neil McIntosh documented his Facebook weariness earlier this year.

Because of these issues, users will start to turn away to other social networks that are simpler and cater more for their niche interests.

While I'm not writing Facebook's obituary just yet, I think it needs to change for the better if it is to continue to grow, to become profitable, and ultimately, to keep on connecting its users.

And if you do know of any niche sites that are tipped to be the next big thing, or of any more issues as to why users are growing tired of Facebook, please let me know.

My First Pitch

I went to my first pitch this week - I was nervous, of course, but it seemed to go well.

Walking out from the prospective client's offices, my boss asked me how I felt the pitch went.

I told that I thought it was a good pitch. It was a short notice meeting and I had spent most of the day before putting together the pitch docuement, under guidance, so I knew the brief and our related strengths well. The actual presentation went smoothly and we answered all of their questions well. My boss naturally did most of the talking - he knows how to pitch and can sell the company and its services better than anyone. I played my part, largely relating to online communciation and media coverage, which I probably know more about than my boss, and the prospective clients seemed impressed.

Then I asked how my boss felt it went.

He said that he wasn't sure if he wanted to work with them.

Now, this was a surprise to me. True, the guy who would decide whether to hire us or not was more interested in his blackberry than what we had to say. But as a new employee on the first rung of the ladder, I'm still in the mind set that our consultancy needs to get as many clients as it can, so that money keeps coming through the door and, most importantly for me, that my bum is still behind my desk next week and my pay cheque keeps coming at the end of the month (Ah, capitalism - don't you just love it?).

Our company has a good list of clients and a great working relationship with them all. If a potential client doesn't fit in with this, then our reputation could be damaged, especially if the PR side of things doesn't go well. Todd Deffren raises a similar point over at PR Squared.

My first pitch was important because they should be easier from now on as I get more practical experience. But even though I would like to think that we got a hire from my first pitch, I feel that I've learnt a more valuable lesson this time from not getting the client on our books.

Innovation in the charity sector

On Tuesday, I was lucky enough to be invited to a Charity Networking Reception, organised by Over The Wall, "a national Charity making it possible for the UK's most seriously ill children to experience a week of normalcy."

Taking place at the extravagant Goldmsith's Hall in the City of London, it was billed as a chance to find about the work that Over The Wall does, but more importantly as a chance to meet other charity representavives and other interested parties to swap ideas, discuss problems and challenges of wroking in the charity sector, and to generate new working relationships to benefit of all.

Among the charities and organisations present were (in no particular order): CLIC Sargent, NACCPO, RNIB, Children with leukaemia, Asthma UK, Teens Unite Fighting Cancer, The Make A Wish Foundation, The Youth Cancer Trust, Association of Childrens Hospices, Children with AIDS Charity, Leukaemia Care, Action for Sick Children, and us, Camp Quality UK.

The list could go on...

I met some really great people from NACCPO who generated lots of useful ideas that I hope to share with the rest of the charity, but who also said it was good to meet me as a point of contact for families wishing to find out more about Camp Quality.

I also found, much to my surprise, that I was able to gives suggestions and ideas for other charity's and the challenges they were facing. and likewise, people came up with some great ideas for us to use.

One thing I noticed is that innovation was alive among the people gathered in the room. These were all charities that relied on funding and needed to be innovative to get that funding. Further than that, as the host of the evening reminded us, with all the people in the room and their charitiers there still wasn't enough resources, people or money to help all of those who we were trying to help. While charities are often fighting for the same funding, we are all trying to help the same people and so should work together to the benefit of all.

There were lots of useful, relevant and valuable ideas on fundraising, recruiting volunteers, providing support to young people outside of the camps we put on, ideas of places/resources to be aware of and use - perhaps too many ideas to use and certainlty too many to mention, but many that I hope Camp quality will use to great effect.

And I plan to share with the other people I met that evening which ones were successful, which ones weren't, and what could be improved upon.

The evening was a great success, and a timely reminder of why I'm involved with Camp Quality and why others should be. More than that though, why others should get involved, not just with Camp Quality, but with the charity sector in general - with whoever they feel fits most with their principles and in whatever way they can.

Find out more about Over The Wall here.
Find out more about Camp Quality UK here.
Donate to Camp Quality here, or through my fundraising widget in the sidebar.

Do some readers want a book that makes them feel sad?

According to Canongate, the UK publishers of Kate Grenville's The Secret River, they do.

The book is one suggested by a book group I go to and it is very good (if very much a work of brain-candy), shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006, no less.

But the quote on the cover that comes from Geraldine Bedell, of the Observer, says:

"A sad book, beautifully written and, at times, almost unbearable with the weight of loss."

For me, this seems a very strange choice of quote to put on the front cover of what, as a book shortlisted for a high profile prize, should be riding high at the top of the fiction charts and flying off the shelves of numerous bookshops.

Surely there were more appropriate quotes to put on the front cover? Or am I, unlearned in the arts of bookselling, unaware of the fact that some people sometimes just like a good, sad read?

Are the crazy days of credit over? Libby thinks so...

Had to share a great article by Libby Purves in today's The Times, called 'That hairshirt! I must have it' (Subtitled 'After the spending boom we need the calming influence of Lent to see some sense.')

Some of the best quotes include:

"The 'high risk' that worries the online bank is the risk of itself not making any money out of these spoilsport wise virgins."

"I remember how Access scandalised the cautious with the brilliantly corrupting slogan “takes the waiting out of wanting”, a philosophy now embraced by everyone from Derek Conway's sons to the late-night lad whose knife takes the waiting out of his wanting your iPod."

"Mainly, credit has just helped to confuse the concept of money-I-have with the rival concept of stuff-I-want. It led us straight to the dreadful feature writers' insistence on applying the description “must have” to every luxury item, from flimsy shoes to £6,000 liposuction to reduce blokes' flabby chests (4,000 last year)."

Credit had always confused me, but since working in a credit card department for a high-street bank for a few weeks over the summer I learnt more about it and then finally understood how it works (for me anyway):

Don't get a credit card.

Simple as that.

Read the whole of Libby's excellent article here.

Going through a period of periodic tables

I'm definitely a visual learner.

Show me a smart diagram that demonstrates an idea in a clear, concice and engaging way, and I'll "get" it straight away.

With that in mind, here are several examples of visual aids that have really captured my imagination recently (click on a picture to go through to the appropriate page):

The Periodic Table Printmaking Project is an international collaboration where 96 artists produced 118 prints, each representing one element. They used a variety of techniques: woodcut, linocut, monotype, etching, lithograph, silkscreen, or a combination. The idea is to "promote both science and the arts." Read the Etsy interview here.

A Periodic Table for Branding Elements - Groups include: Advertising, Direct, Branding, Marketing Communications, M&A, Misc. (Java rollover goodness included).

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods - An excellent compilation of visualization methods, which in turn leads to more delightful eye candy.

Web Trend Map 2008 - Information Architects Japan created this 2008 Web Trend Map that positions "300 of the most influential and successful websites" on a Tokyo train map.

And perhaps the best of all...

The Life Cycle of a Blog Post - From the post:

"You have a blog. You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work. Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into a vast and recursive network of software agents, where it is crawled, indexed, mined, scraped, republished, and propagated throughout the Web. Within minutes, if you've written about a timely and noteworthy topic, a small army of bots will get the word out to anyone remotely interested, from fellow bloggers to corporate marketers."

Genius.

(If anyone else knows of any great visual aids, let me know!)

Wilby's "version of the truth" of the PR industry

Continuing the debate on the influence of PR over journalism, Peter Wilby in today's Media Guardian argues that Campbell's media critique is only half the story, the other half being Wilby's own critique of the PR industry:

"Most journalists at least aspire to some version of the truth. Public relations, at best, aspires to a partial truth and, at worst, to outright fabrication. Over the past three decades, it has become infinitely more powerful, and not only in government."

As a PR practitioner, I have to disagree with this statement. While many PR practitioners give the PR industry a bad name through laziness and poor practise (which is wherre Campbell, and the rest of the public, get their negativenperception of the PR industry from), PR's aspirations lie far above "a partial truth". The height of PR is "an organisations ability to strategically listen to, appreciate, respond to, and (ultimately) communciate with those persons whose mutually beneficial relationships with the organisation are necessary if it is to achieve its missions and values." (Robert L. Heath, Encyclopedia of Public Relations). That entails communciating the truth, but in a way that audiences undertstand and thus generate an understanding of the organisation in question.

As to the PR industry's hold over modern journalism, Wilby has this to say:

"The main reason why you read so little decent journalism, he argues, is simple: hacks don't have time to do it. In 20 years, the amount of space they have to fill on national papers has trebled. But staffing levels are, if anything, slightly lower. The position is worse on local papers, where journalists sometimes write 10 stories a day. A swollen public relations industry has filled the gap, issuing press releases, organising conferences and offering briefings that set the agenda. At least half the news in papers is generated not by journalists, but by PRs or spin doctors, and very little is subject to serious critical scrutiny."

I agree with this position, but just as hacks don't have time to write decent journalism, PR practitioners contribute this by sending through bad press releases. Whilst I think that the argument that PR practitioners don't have time to practise decent PR doesn't have a leg to stand on, there are many reasons why they practise poor PR - pressure from clients, pressure to pay the bills, etc. But often it is due to laziness. Journalists with not be criticised like this if PR officers subjected their own press releases to "serious critical scrutiny."

Wilby questions whether there is a solution to this rpoblem:

"Can anything be done about this state of affairs? Alas, both Campbell and Davies are stronger on diagnosis than cure. "I fear the illness is terminal," Davies concludes. "I don't care if this speech gets any media coverage or not," Campbell told his audience.

But let me make one tentative suggestion. The Northern Rock debacle has led to proposals for "narrow banking", whereby some banks would just look after your money for modest rates of interest without doing anything fancy or risky with it. Perhaps somebody could start a paper that carries only "narrow news". Every statement would be rigorously checked and attributed to named sources. Its journalists would never speak to PRs and use press releases only if they could corroborate the contents from other sources. Editors would apply some kind of test to distinguish the important from the trivial."

A new paper shouldn't have to be released for this to happen. PR officers should be checking and attributing named sources themselves so that journalists can be safe in the knowledge that what is sent to them is correct and credible. Good PR officers also should develop relationships with the key journalists in their sectors, meaning that when they speak to a journalist about a PR piece, the journalists knows that what the PR practitioner is sending through is credible. Otherwise, if a PR practitioner sends through a dud story or an incorrect source, the journalist thinks twice before using them, ad so the PR practitioner (and their client) loses out.

The PR industry shouldn't be attacked as a way of deflecting criticism from journalism. PR practitioners should not be journalist's scapegoat, but we have to help ourselves by upholding high industry standards if we don't want to see this kind of critique happen more often.

(Richard Bailey also talks about Wilby's commentary here)