Social networks are passé. Messaging is the new thing.
by Volker Weber
Facebook users are sharing fewer personal updates. That was one of the headlines that caught my eye. And I am not surprised. Kids have moved on to Snapchat, because their parents don't understand Snapchat. Facebook has become a place for old people.
Interestingly enough most projects in the enterprise around social networks are focussed on change management. How can you make employees use the platform? A few years ago vendors told their customers they could no longer attract younger people if they did not have some sort of Facebook internally. Are those same vendors now advising to build an internal version of Snapchat?
Before moving on, I took a brief look at some of the networks I am a member of. Most of them have been ruined by marketing. Who else would buy fake followers?
- Facebook is an endless stream of videos and ads with a few political postings (pro-Bern, anti-Drumpf), that repeat endlessly. Sprinkled in are things people shared five years ago, and no longer do. If you ever searched for something on Amazon, Facebook will remind you.
- Twitter is the place where news breaks and memes live. Not all of it is true. I feel stagnation. You can see the desperation everywhere. Every few tweets, Twitter is suggesting topics and people. All while it's polluting the stream with sponsored content nobody wants to see.
- Tumblr. Not strictly a social network. But lots of interaction. As everywhere, Tumblr is what you make of it. Porn lives here.
- Instagram. Still liking this place a lot, only for the creators. The people who post their own photos. Instagram is increasingly suggesting "curators", people who steal other people's photos and repost them. See Tumblr. Suddenly lots of Korean spam bots are springing up.
- Ello. My favorite place. Please stay away.
Still rolling out your enterprise social network? Social is passé. Messaging is the new thing. And bots of course. Here comes the tough thing for enterprise IT. It's already too late. People have messaging and they have messaging devices. They are going to use them, no matter what you do. Slack and Ryver are interesting places to watch. They are growing from the bottom up. That's far more powerful than any top-down solution.
I even got a message from IBM today. They can send me their press alerts over WhatsApp now. Not that I need that.
Comments
Tim Pritlove nutzt jetzt Slack als Community Tool.
(Metaebene.me)
Sehr interessantes Experiment im Bereich Podcasting. Tim springt nicht unüberlegt auf Trends auf und hat die Social Networks wie FB nicht (aktiv) genutzt.
Wir nutzen Slack nun auch intern und die Möglichkeiten sprengen bei weitem die eines herkömmlichen Msngers oder Chat-Tools.
Slack ist Messaging, plus Bots, plus Integration.
Does anyone ever post rubbish photos on Ello?
None of the people I follow does.
I've had a general look around Ello and not seen a poor photo. Is it just good curating?
It's a special kind of people there.
Ok, Slack is great and has massive potential. However, I cannot yet see how it fits the security and data protection requirements of the majority of European enterprises. Or am I missing something?
Ryver? This is more a social network than a chat app...it has all the features of Yammer, Salesforce Chatter. And the growth is rather small.
Tobias, you probably did your research, because you try to sell in this space. ;-)
@Tobias Stepan: For data protection issues, have a look at hipchat (atlassian) lots of interactions and bots. You also get it on premise. Might not be as cool as slack, as there's a tight integration with your ticket system.
Kai, Tobias is a vendor. He has his own product.
Slack and its webhooks has almost replaced internal e-mail here. Jenkins, Sentry, Bitbucket, Confluence, JIRA and a lot of tiny bots & triggers made mail simply obsolete. Even the canteens menu website gets scraped and yells to a channel.
Feels way better than HipChat, even in our otherwise Atlassian-driven world.
Never had a Facebook account, but pollution on my Twitter timeline seems to show that marketers and social media experts already moved to Pinterest...
Seriously thinking of posting really bad stuff (in sense of low quality) to Ello as it would make the content less boring... :-)
Ich habe in der letzten Zeit kurz hintereinander zwei Workshops in verschiedenen Großunternehmen hinter mir zum Thema New Way To Work. Und in beiden Fällen stand nach endloser Diskussion rund um die Frage, ob man weiter mit Fileshares und e-Mail oder lieber mit Blogs und Activity Streams arbeiten wolle, jemand auf und sagte:
"Die Diskussion ist mir egal - ich habe eh schon die Hoffnung auf moderne Arbeitsmittel aufgegeben und ich sage es ganz offen: Ich koordiniere mich mit meinen Mitarbeitern schon seit langem per WhatsApp Gruppe" Und das waren jeweils Vertreter der oberen Führungsebene. Danach Schweigen.
Build a better mouse trap ...
Ich beneide immer deine luxuriöse Situation auch mal größere Steine in den Teich werfen zu dürfen. Als Business Partner darf man immer nur mit feinem Sand werfen, sonst trifft einem der Bann. Erklärst du mir Snapchat?
Facebook is for old people. I like that. I am old. Most people I like are my age. We are a market, too 😜
Jörg, das geht nicht. Wir sind beide alt. So wie Oliver.
Und ja, das scheint luxuriös. Aber mich trifft auch mal der Bann. Und dann wachen die Leute auf und merken, dass es gerade meine Aufgabe ist, mir mal die Narrenkappe aufzusetzen.
"How can you make employees use the platform?"
By getting your senior management to use it. Which you will probably fail to do, as they in most cases prefer the tools they used while getting into the position they're in now, i.e. email and if you're lucky SameTime or a similar IM solution.
Most employees won't use your platform if they don't see senior management using it, as they don't see the benefit if senior management isn't using it. No visibility to senior management for them when they use it.
