Digital ID Coach » MySpace

Your Network, Your Reputation

coach — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:11:50 +0000

With the rapid growth and use of social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and many others, there’s a growing interest by service providers, marketers, and hosting companies in mapping this fertile ground. Your network (online and in person) is where your reputation resides. What does your network say about you?

What to Measure?

IBM (a company with more than 38,000 patents) published a paper called Social Ties and Their Relevance to Churn in Mobile Telecom Networks in which the authors point out that it’s not the individuals that are important. It’s their relationships. From the abstract, “Exploring the nature and strength of these ties can help understand the structure and dynamics of social networks and explain real-world phenomena, ranging from organizational efficiency to the spread of information and disease.”

The bottom line here is that if enough of your friends don’t like something, there’s a tipping point where people start changing to something else. In the case of mobile phones, for instance, lots of people will get a new phone when their provider becomes a problem, and their friends agree about that problem.

There are two parts to this issue. First: whether you are a leader or a follower. Marketers and advertisers really care about leaders because they will influence their friends to do (or not do) something. Second: the mapping process can get rather personal. The IBM paper above looks at the “aggregate” or group behavior of a network. However, tools can be tuned or created to be very specific about your network: whom you see, how often, and who else they’re connected to.

In the case of politics where transparency is informative, you can see nice, detailed visualizations of networks at work around TARP (the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or “bank bailout” money), federal funding earmarks, or health care. But what about when it gets personal?

Coaching moment: Records of your relationships and your network are everywhere: in your social networks, in your email, on your phone, records of bridge tolls, and more. The mapping technology doesn’t yet work in real-time, but it’ll happen. By itself, this isn’t the major concern for me. The really big problem lies in the fact that we don’t have rules for how this information can or should be used.

Our corporations do not have the same concerns, priorities, or moral compass that people do. Corporations are motivated by what the company can do that is profitable and makes their shareholders happy. There are no laws or other forms of guidance about what proper social behavior is, largely because as a society or a culture, we’ve never talked about it.

I suggest now is a good time to start talking. With your friends. What do you want in an Information Policy Platform?

On Being the Brand

coach — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 19:44:23 +0000

Social Media Today had a recent post called Are you promoting the company’s brand or your personal brand? The post notes that some of us share our identity with the company that we work for:

This is the delicate balance that exists for those of us representing our companies thru social media. Since conversation is king, those who are great at engaging in dialog both online and offline will likely become the voice of their company whether intentionally or by accident.

We become part of “the brand”–the marketing and communications efforts that help distinguish our company from the rest of the marketplace. In a sense, we become our work and our work takes on life through us. This is interesting because people don’t always have good filters to separate their personal “self” from their work persona (or lack the ability to be professional enough to represent their company).

I asked my friend Neenz Feleafine for her thoughts on this. Neenz uses social media tools like Twitter and Facebook for her professional life.

JC: Do you think people ever find this confusing–as if you were being a commercial?

NF: A few years ago when I first began participating in social networking sites it was out of curiosity. Today, it’s purely for business. I use social media tools to build my network, but I engage in relationships through other more intimate forms of communication: emails, VoIP, IM, telephone calls and most importantly real life meetings to maintain my network.

One of the greatest things–although making friends was never a goal for my use of social networks or social media tools–I have discovered very good people, and am developing not only solid business relationships, but lifetime friendships.

JC: Do people ever confuse you and your personal network with the companies that you promote? I mean do people think that Alltop is involved with some of your personal interests?

NF: My role with Alltop is Chief Evangelist which means that I am to spread the good news of Alltop without ceasing. And, it’s my honor to do so. I have been blessed with a much coveted opportunity to work with Guy Kawasaki–learning and growing, loyalty and perseverance, and grinding it out are my personal interests.

I have also recently launched my social media marketing startup, Pono Media–as an entrepreneur there isn’t much else to be interested in except for its success.

I am fortunate to have the unconditional love and support of Lilinoe, Chelsea, and Jayden for me to invest so much of my time in Alltop and Pono Media.

JC: What are your thoughts on managing your digital self in mixed purposes?

NF: More than 95% of my network met me as “Alltop’s Chief Evangelist”. Only in the recent months have my classmates, friends, and family members taken an active interest in Facebook. And, I have exactly 2 friends that I knew since childhood whom have joined Twitter, but very rarely participate.

Coaching moment: Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, and LinkedIn often work to blur the distinction between our personal and professional lives. It’s not enough to compartmentalize yourself with the confines of a specific service. For example, your personal (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) life can–and sometimes does–crash into your professional life (e.g., LinkedIn, or a potential job interviewer Googling you before your interview). Your Twitter stream (sometimes referred to as a form of “life streaming”) likely contains conversations about all parts of your life.

Many social media experts consider this a good thing, as you are your own “brand.” For example, see Chris Brogan’s It’s All About You post, or notes from Roxanne Darling’s Your Personal Brand is an Opportunity for Freedom talk.

Whether you are online to represent your inner personal self and/or companies that you do business with, it’s worth noting that services and people on the Internet are archiving everything, and they have no particular reason to keep everything in context. Until tools are developed to help us manage our conversations, transactions, and relationships, we’ll need to be mindful of who we really are.

Platform vs Relationships

VRM and Pickle Ice Cream

coach — Wed, 13 May 2009 06:36:48 +0000

It turns out that ice cream and VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, have a lot in common. VRM is like the truck that drives into Scoopville in this video.

Here’s a video by Rob Knight that explains VRM pretty well. The whole idea behind social media and VRM is that it empowers people. You and me, our friends, our relatives, people we don’t know, and even people that also represent companies. It’s about people, and it’s about time.

Coaching Moment: Do you use social media like MySpace or Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Flickr? There are many more, but you don’t need to use them all. The current set of sites and tools aren’t for everybody. What’s the worst thing about the current “social media” tools? Each one is proprietary, so you have to find and connect with your friends in each one. What a pain! Think outside the box. What would your ideal network do for you?

Note: There are two conference coming up next week that deal with topics of VRM and Identity. I’ll be blogging both. Stay tuned for updates!

Platform vs Relationships

Social (Media) Memory

coach — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:27:09 +0000

(Holy cats: 10 days since my last post. Where does the time go?)

A little while ago I had the distinct joy of talking with my friend Jean Russell when she was en route to Boston. I always come away from our conversations with a warm glow and lots to write about. Alas, I did not get my thinking into words fast enough to do justice to our conversation about social networks, and how we effectively (creatively) integrate and braid the threads, interests, and work of our lives with our friends, colleagues, and supportive strangers. I do remember that as she was arriving at her destination with time to spare, I was able to call another friend (hey Judy!) in Boston and hook them up. Each of them reported having a fascinating conversation; both reported that the timing was weird and interesting. That’s sometimes how networks work.

This taps into a post that Jean has today about becoming “sticky” in other people’s memory. Jean is a busy gal:

I “follow” abut 700 people on twitter, with about 1000 following me. At scale like this, the question I often am asked is, “How do you remember all those people?”

You know that anyone whose “network [is] made of hundreds of brilliant, interesting, inspiring, compassionate people” is a person to be reckoned with. Additionally, you know that getting a new job or new clients is often (at least partly) about who you know and word-of-mouth. It’s worth noting that your social network can help raise you up in times of need, and all boats rise with you (meaning others benefit too).

Coaching moment: Your reputation is part of who you are. Your social network is where your reputation resides. This doesn’t mean that you need to use all of the social media tools available. Pick one or two and try them out. If they feel right, add a few friends and keep testing. If not, delete that account if you can, and start on a new service. You might wish to find a service where your friends are (like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn) and start there, as your friends will be your early support for exploration and learning.

Platform vs Relationships

Discovering Friends

coach — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 17:51:58 +0000

Several days ago my friend Michael and I were talking about services like LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook, and every new site that pops up. The problem is, as it has been for a long time, that these services are proprietary information silos: once you have an account with them, you (your id and persona: your behavior, data, applications, and connections to your friends) belong to that service, and that service doesn’t interact with other services.

Our conversation was more about wondering what if we could have our OWN site of certain things we want the world to know about us (this is not only possible but wide-spread–blogs are a good example). As part of that site, we have a service in which we identify our friends (public or not) and enable some feature that says, “if my friend Michael turns up on ANY service, connect to him,” and “if my friend Sara is found on a service I’ve identified as professional (say, LinkedIn or work related), connect to her.”

With a service like this, we wouldn’t have to find all of our friends each time we signed on to a new thing, then send the friend an email saying “will you connect with me again?” This gets tiring. Instead we might have a single page on our service that gives us the option of updating and accepting an ongoing conversation of discovery with our friends. Much easier and WAY more empowering!

Yesterday morning on Twitter Gabe Wachob said,

Twould be nice if an app could log into Plaxo or Friendfeed, or whatever (using OAuth natch), and get an XRDS for a person (all their svcs)

I recognized this as geek language from the Internet Identity Workshop, which Gabe attended. I don’t know if this is exactly what Gabe meant, but it’s related. XRDS is short for eXtensible Resource Descriptor Sequence, which is a service discovery process.

I’ll admit that I don’t yet understand how all of the various layers of identity management work. I do understand that the idea of “service discovery” is that it let your tools do the finding and connecting for you. Now it’s just a matter of how and when.

Coaching moment: Tools are being developed that will let us be explicit about our relationships with our family, friends and colleagues.

This can make life tricky. Who would you want to tell they aren’t really part of your tribe right now? It’s a little like disinheriting family members before you’re dead. Or reality checks for your “friends,” and for you! A bit jarring? It should be.

But the alternative is what I described above (information silo). Wouldn’t YOU rather be in control than the many services who don’t talk to each other? I would.

UPDATE: Visionary guy Kevin Kelly touches on this topic about 14 min 30 secs into this video (where it gets interesting). He points out that we will have to be open to sharing this data about ourselves with others. “Total personalization will require total transparency.” (Nov. 24, 2008)