A briefing on social media
May 13, 2010
I was asked by a colleague (in housing, hence the housing references below) for a briefing on social media. I jotted some notes down and I thought I’d share them with you. And gather any comments you may have.
Why should you care about Social Media?
- Everyone is talking about it (and journalists love it)
In particular, journalists love twitter of course because it gives them easy access to stories across the globe. Of course just because journalists like it, that doesn’t mean we should ignore it.
- It is changing the way people communicate and this will have implications for the way people do business
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that social media is going to be as pervasive and ubiquitous as e-mail. It’s not a question of whether we use social media but how and when.
- There are real business risks associated with the technology
- There are real business opportunities associated with the technology
What is Social Media anyway?
- There is no firm definition
but I think most people would probably agree that it describes something like
technology that makes it easy to create and share content amongst communities and makes it easy to build communities around content
Where content means text, images, audio, video, the technology relies on the the Internet, and the communities are formed on-line.
- It includes tools such as facebook, WordPress, twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, or flickr (the list goes on and on) which vary considerably in their structure and approach.
At one end of the social media spectrum are tools geared around a small number of people generating content and a larger group of people commenting on the content.
At the other end are systems designed to facilitate interaction between peers.
There are also tools designed to facilitate collaboration (wikis being the most widespread but there are others such as the Google Wave platform)
Like all tools people use social media for a range of purposes (for example, some people publish information on blogs but don’t allow any comments, some people use flickr as an on-line photo store rather than for networking).
It also, and perhaps more crucially, describes an on-line culture where sharing and critiquing information and content is emphasised. The tools may come and go (Friendster anyone?) but the culture is becoming increasingly embedded.
- It is quite widespread
There are 22 million users of facebook aged 18+ in the UK. Facebook is the most popular social media tool but several others are very well used.
How is Social Media being used?
- It is used as a form of networking, to keep people in touch with each other, to make new friends and to have discussions and arguments. Or to play interminable games involving farms.
- It’s used as a form of protest and to build momentum around protests
- Or just as a form of self expression
- And it is generally accepted that social media is an important part of the marketing and customer relations mix for many, if not most, organisations and companies.
And how do they make money?
Well, it’s possible that many of them don’t make that much money at the moment.
Essentially the primary route to making money for all of these tools is to understand how the networks they facilitate work and then to sell this knowledge, usually to advertsisers (facebook already provides very detailed targeting of adverts) but other organisations are interested: search engines pay Twitter for access to its database for example.
There are supplementary ways to make money, such as the “freemium” model where tools offer some functions for free and charge for others. Flickr is an example of this model.
What are the consequences of all this?
- Social media makes its users much more public than we are used to in society
Consequently there are privacy concerns in general and organisations run increased risks of reputational damage as a result of things that its employees, volunteers and contractors do on-line.
- Social media means that the consequence of poor customer service can more easily become a reputational issue.
Musician Dave Carroll was unhappy with the way United Airlines handled his complaint that they had broken his guitars in transit. He wrote a song “United Breaks Guitars”, made a video and uploaded it to YouTube. As of today it has been viewed 8.5 million times. I think it is fair to say that United Airlines would probably prefer that this video were not quite so popular.
- Social media is becoming pervasive
Many organisations block access to social media tools citing security and bandwidth concerns. This is not sustainable. A local authority of my acquaintance released a viral video in 2009 designed to raise awareness of the Xmas bin collection times. Because the council blocks access to YouTube it had to be distributed on a separate platform internally which prevented the several thousand employees easily sharing the video with their friends and family.
- The culture around making links on social media tools is not well developed.
For example should housing officers be friends with their tenants? should they never be friends with their tenants? under what circumstances should they “un-friend” people they have a professional relationship with.
There are strategic issues around the degree to which an organisation wants to encourage its customers and staff to use social media which need careful consideration. A Housing Association could say “we’ll start to use social media when the tenants ask for it” or they could say “we think that there are real benefits to this technologies so we will support our tenants to get on-line and to use these new social media tools”
- Policies and procedures need to be carefully established
Organisations need to consider whether some roles will be obliged to use social media (perhaps the Chair or Chief Executive should be obliged to use a blog or the customer services team to manage a twitter account).
They also need to consider the training requirements within their organisations, it’s not just about the use of the tools but also about the creation of content, and the rules around commenting and critiquing others.
Hey, let’s try this democracy thing for a change
May 13, 2010
The Digital Economy Bill has been shoved through parliament as part of the “wash-up” as MPs prepare for the impending general election. It is a piece of legislation that serves the interests of large media companies to the detriment of the rights of individuals and the development of the wider economy.
Why do such things happen? Is it because MPs are stupid? I don’t think so, at least not all of them. Is it because Ministers are venal and corrupt? I have less to go on here but let us use Occam’s Razor and see if we can propose an explanation which assumes cock-up rather than conspiracy.
It’s simple really. Large media companies are more important and powerful than you or I. They are more powerful than most businesses. Not only do they employ people and generate tax revenue for the state but they control the means by which you and I find out about the world. It is not as simple as supposing that when they say “jump” the government asks “how high?” but you can’t expect the government to pay as much attention to the rest of us.
Unless we do something to redress the power imbalance.
We could seize control of the means of production, we could try to organise mass protests, we could (as 38 degrees is advocating) lobby for lobbying reform. I’m not against any of that but I do think there is a simple reform that could make a huge difference.
Parliament should pass a law saying that political parties can only be funded from donations made by individuals and no individual may give more than, let’s say, 500 quid in donations in any year. No donations from companies, no massive donations made by rich individuals. Unions would not make donations (though their members could of course).
This would, at a stroke, force political parties to become mass movements again. In order to attract large groups of people to them they would have to listen to them, and talk to them. Individuals would start to become more important.
Some will say that this will force political parties into adopting ever more populist manifestos or becoming even more centrist than they already are. Maybe I’m a rosy-eyed optimist but I suspect it would actually engage more people in a decent political debate and anyway would it be worse to have a Government driven by pandering to Daily Mail readers than pandering to the last vestiges of an outmoded and dying industry?
Yes, but is it journalism? (who cares)
March 7, 2010
Earlier this week I travelled to Hereford, self-styled “Historic city of the Marches”. This was no hardship, it’s my home town and my dad lives there, currently with a putative boat. This time there was more than sailing stories and the world’s most comfortable spare bed to attract me. I went to attend the “Here Comes Everyone” event, a day of films and discussion around citizen journalism (courtesy of Borderlines film festival). No doubt those of you who live within striking distance of #thatlondon are constantly attending workshops in trendy bars where elegant people in turtle-neck shirts debate the cultural and economic impact of the changing media landscape. Out here in the Welsh borders it’s more frequently a couple of pints and “that twitter’s a load of nonsense”.
The keynote address was given by Christian Payne (@documentally) a “freelance mobile media maker”. He was a bit great. If he talks at an event near you go and see him. He really gets this stuff. He doesn’t have the secret to making a fortune with it. On the train back he tweeted
Must have been asked 10 times today “How d’you make money?” I said “Talking, teaching, documenting.” I should’ve said “Slowly.”
Then we had the oddest panel I think you can imagine. It comprised an anarchist, a Tory prospective parliamentary candidate, a journalist from the Financial Times and a manager from BBC local radio. We learned, I think, that journalists have yet to grasp what is happening to them.
It was almost impossible to square the rambling discussion that ensued (about why only trained journalists working for proper papers can fulfill the unique and vital role of seekers after truth necessary for the proper functioning of society) with the subsequent session. The second session featured Climate Camp TV, Undercurrents, Travellers Times and the aforementioned Christian Payne.
Now, for example, I really admire the way the Climate Camp movement uses social media to inspire and co-ordinate its activists. I think we can guess that various police forces are less admiring. But I don’t believe that anyone looks at Climate Camp TV and sees therein a balanced and objective perspective on environmental issues. This does not mean that they aren’t telling the truth. We get to make that judgement for ourselves. I also don’t believe that environmental issues are reported fairly, accurately and objectively in the mainstream media and, frankly, I know quite a lot about a lot of these issues.
The truth is that bloggers and citizen journalists are not going to replace trained journalists working for conventional media organisations. Bloggers and citizen journalists are going to complement conventional journalists and challenge them. No-one really understands how we can make money out of this yet, but that doesn’t seem likely to stop anyone.
The day started with a screening of Burma VJ (a very worthy nominee for the Documentary Feature Oscar). This is based on the footage filmed by astonishingly brave citizen journalists within the country. I think that it is pretty clear that these journalists have an agenda. They want democracy, human rights, and the release of political prisoners in their country. During the saffron revolution in September 2007 every news organisation in the globe seemed to use their footage.
Are they “proper” journalists? It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.
The first rule of social media is… it’s not about social media
February 23, 2010
Here’s a fun game that we can all play. Let’s have a look at some recent comms crises involving social media and see what we can learn. It certainly beats Scrabble.
Paperchase recently apologised after an internet campaign supporting an artist who claimed they had infringed her copyright. Interestingly this is no longer available on the link I had bookmarked. At the height of the storm they set up their first twitter account.
Many of the 1.5 million twitter fans of director Kevin Smith were outraged when he was kicked off a Southwestern Airlines flight for, apparently, being too fat. Southwestern were on the case immediately (they already have a popular twitter account). Their public apology didn’t seem to hamper negative press coverage.
And my personal favourite, Dave Carroll’s measured and amusing response to what he felt was United Airlines unhelpful customer services. United Breaks Guitars. Now viewed over 7.5 million times.
What do all these have in common? It is obvious isn’t it. The original complaint had nothing to do with social media. Social media just made the consequences of upsetting the three individuals involved much more serious.
Paperchase didn’t seem to take the complaint of copyright infringement seriously. United Airlines didn’t resolve Dave Carroll’s complaint to his satisfaction. Southwestern can’t expect to kick passengers off its planes and have high levels of satisfaction.
You should worry about these case studies (and the many, many more spreading across the net like viruses). They present a reputational risk. And as we all know there are two ways to manage risk.
You can manage the impact of the event. And this is where a crisis comms plan would come in handy. However managing the impact is not the desirable option.
It would be much, much better to reduce the likelihood of occurrence. Social media makes customers (and other stakeholders) much more powerful. It means that poor customer service and poor complaint handling can be rapidly reflected on your business on a scale that was unimaginable for most of us until recently.
So put your resources into better customer service. Be flexible, train your staff better, use PR tools (including social media) to find out more about what your customers want. That will be good for your business, good for your customers and good for all of us.
Eurostar Christmas: what it means for you
February 15, 2010
Tunnel Vision
I’m a little bit claustrophobic. Not to the extent that it really affects my life but I’m not thrilled by the idea of being trapped in a small space. So, for example, the idea of being stuck in a dark train under the English Channel feels me with a certain amount of revulsion.
I overcame this distaste long enough to plough through the Eurostar Independent Review which was published on 12th February. It’s a surprisingly good read (if you can keep the mounting horror of what some of the passengers experienced from the front of your mind). And it has lessons for all of us.
What happened
You may recall that a bunch of Eurostar trains were stuck underground just before Christmas 2009. Passengers complained of poor communication, disinterested staff and a lack of organisation. The independent report has looked in detail at what happened and made a series of recommendations to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Here’s an extract from the report summary just to jog your memory.
On the night of 18/19th December 2009, snow fell in the UK, with even heavier snowfall in France. The M20 was closed, as were a number of roads and motorways in the north of France. In these conditions, five Eurostar trains travelling to the UK from Brussels, Paris and Marne-la-Vallée (Disneyland Paris) broke down in the Channel Tunnel.The first train to fail was recovered relatively quickly. The subsequent four trains then broke down in rapid succession and passengers from two of them had to be evacuated onto Eurotunnel passenger shuttles within the Tunnel. This was the first time this had happened in 15 years of operation in the Tunnel.Following the train failures on the Friday night (18th), Eurostar services were suspended for three days, causing severe disruption to thousands of passengers.In addition to organising the rescue of passengers from Eurostar trains, Eurotunnel had to deal with 1,000 cars belonging to its own passengers that were being held in the Folkestone Terminal. Some 300 cars were also held in the Coquelles Terminal along with large quantities of freight.Whilst the rescue operation was carried out safely, passengers on all trains were delayed for a very considerable period before they arrived at their destination.
It seems pretty clear that Eurostar did not have a plan to deal with multiple train failures. Now on one level you might say that, being as this had never happened before, that’s pretty reasonable. I bet it didn’t look reasonable to the people in the control centre. I’ve worked in control centres handling crises. You do not want to be inventing the plan on the fly.
This is always the issue with crisis or emergency planning. You are necessarily planning for unlikely events. How unlikely does an event have to be before you don’t have a plan? It’s a reasonable question. On the strength of Eurostar’s experience I think we have to say “quite unlikely”.
The report makes a lot of recommendations based on the management of the incident and communications issues litter the report like, well… litter. The links between control rooms was by phone. The report says video would be better. Communication with trains and control rooms, between emergency staff and train crew and between train crew and passengers should all be improved. The company’s call centre wasn’t operating 24/7 at any point. A train was stuck between the channel and Paris because French railways wouldn’t let it come back to Paris. Passengers at stations had little information and the same applied to station staff and anyway there weren’t enough of them.
Then there were the training issues. In some cases staff didn’t follow procedures and this made the experience worse for many passengers. Overall I think the authors have quite a lot of respect for a wide range of unnamed staff who used their training experience and judgement to solve as many problems as they could.
What this means for you
OK running high-speed trains underground and between two countries with different rail systems is a complex undertaking. Your solicitors’ firm is probably several orders of magnitude simpler.
Even so you should plan for unlikely but serious incidents (loss of the building, loss of your IT systems, being evacuated without notice, loss of telephones for 2 weeks just for example). You should test these plans. You should make sure that everyone you are expecting to play a role in the plan is properly trained and gets to practice. And you must make sure that you can have a huge amount of resource to put into communication. With your customers, your suppliers, and your staff. Much more resource than you think you will need.
This is a big reputational issue and there are two ways to approach it. You can take the risk that it will never happens. Or you can can plan for the worst.
You know that calm figure, often in uniform, who stands in front of the TV camera and says “we planned for this, we trained for this, we can handle this”. That should be you that should.
We all need to agree about these cuts
February 11, 2010
I spent the weekend in Birmingham at the National Housing Federation board members’ conference. I spent yesterday evening at a meeting about the Cycle Demonstration Town project in Shrewsbury. And at both meetings we talked about the same things. Cuts.
Public sector spending cuts are obsessing the public sector of course. Birmingham City Council is planning to cut lots of jobs. Prudent council finance officers are already beginning to trim their cloth. Councillors are hunkering down for an unpleasant few years. But it’s not enough.
On the face of it you wouldn’t have thought that housing associations (the bodies represented by the aforementioned NHF) would be too bothered by public sector spend. They are independent bodies financed by borrowing against their property and collecting rent. In fact they are fretting about the impact of cuts in a number of ways. These are just the first ones to come to mind.
1) Actually a lot of that rent comes from the public purse as housing benefit. If the axe falls there it will hurt tenants and affect landlords’ plans for management and improvements.
2) Much of the new build undertaken by housing associations is only viable with funding from the public sector (such as cash from the Homes and Communities Agency or land from the council), even more so with property prices depressed.
3) Housing associations foresee councils rolling back from local services (maintaining play areas or parks or providing enhanced support to vulnerable people) and expecting the local social landlords to step into the breach.
All of these issues have implications for real people living in real communities. They are concerns about the outcomes that will actually result from spending decisions. They need managing effectively and at a local level.
Local authorities are already struggling to see how they can do “more with less” or even, as I have suggested, “a bit less with a lot less”. How many of them have properly involved their partners in these decisions?
We have a mechanism for tackling this in Local Strategic Partnerships and Community Strategies. These mechanisms are about to be tested to their limits. You thought it was challenging delivering outcomes in partnership against a backdrop of rising public spending. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
The principles are simple. We need to identify, together as partnerships, what absolutely must be done. What would be nice to have. And what will not be done. We need to focus on the outcomes. We need to be really open and honest about which partner can achieve what with least and then we need to crack on and deliver.
And cycling? Doesn’t look like a must have does it? In fact what we need to know about the Cycle Demonstration Town, and every other local project, is what outcomes it achieves. If we want people to be healthier are we better-off spending money on health promotion or on cycle maps?
I don’t know the answer. If we are to get through the next few years these are the questions we need to be asking and debating together.
Image is a graph showing “Movements in public sector net investment real and planned”. The data come from a slide prepared by Matthew Taylor MP, Chair of the NHF. You can view the presentation here (opens a PDF).
How many words is it worth?
January 26, 2010
A few years ago I had the honour to be summoned to a conference at a rather lovely Yorkshire Hotel. A gang of us had been brought there to give our views on how the region would look in 2050 if we achieved the deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution had said would be necessary (50% based on 1990 levels since you ask). This was, at the time at least, grist to my mill.
Imagine my horror when it turned out that, for the entire two-day session, my views would be captured by painting and drawing on flipcharts. We weren’t allowed to write words at all, not even labels. I tried but I really can’t draw and anyway my mind doesn’t work that way. I had, in short, a bad weekend.
Lots of us in PR and comms have minds that work on words. Most of us started as journalists and all of us believe a Sunday with the papers and a vat of coffee is what evolution has been striving for all these years. Just check this for me. How close to your desk is your dictionary? How close to your desk is your history of art book? Is it still on the shelves at Amazon?
So we employ designers to do the visuals for us. Even then, though, graphic design is largely applied to the service of text. We allow designers to arrange our precious words and in these modern times, we illustrate the words with photos. Sometimes (if we feel a bit outre) we include cartoons or abstract art.
A while ago an old friend and visual artist Rob (follow him @plentymuch) gave a short discourse (over a cup of tea as I remember it) on the subject of the images in contemporary society. It rather struck me at the time. He argued that our access to visual media in popular culture: film, TV, print and, of course, the computer screen has given us a level of sophistication in how we interpret and understand images.
A pop video, for example, will reference movies, pieces of fine art, mass market brands and previous videos. This is transparent to the viewer and is often has a complex relation to the main story of the video. Visual short hand is widespread and well understood. My favourite Christmas card this year featured a snowman rendered as Munch’s the Scream and titled “Forgot the Christmas Turkey”. Tell me that’s not sophisticated.
And it’s a two way process of course. Images fly around social networks like… er… flies. Even if we get that we can transmit information and concepts in the form of pictures how easy do we make it for people to use images to talk to us.
Wordsmiths need to recognise that this is happening. Images aren’t mere baubles to hang on our well-crafted prose. They can replace our prose. We need to spend a lot more time hanging out with designers and artists. We need to stop and think “Would a picture do this better?” We need to imagine a word in which the dictionary has pictures.
Now obviously I shouldn’t have written this post. I should have selected a series of well chosen photographs. But my mind just doesn’t work that way.
Things that a local authority comms leader should be fretting about
January 19, 2010
So I spent some of today chewing the fat with an old local government colleague. (That’s just an expression, they are not old). We were, for reasons that need not detain us here, musing on what a good local government comms leader should be fretting about now. I thought that you might find an edited version of these musings diverting.
Partnerships
An increasingly complex area is the role of corporate comms within partnerships. It should be comparatively easy when things are proceeding well. At the very least we’d expect local authorities to be working on joint campaigns and to understand the risks and opportunities of joint approaches to communications.
But who provides comms leadership within the partnership? Is it the local authority? and if so why? In many areas the police force will have substantial comms resources as well as the various bits of the health service. The partnership might want to develop its own comms resources.
I don’t know of any areas where LSPs are fully sharing comms resources but that seems a logical direction for some areas.
However LSP comms is managed, it’s going to be much harder when things go pear shaped. Haringey provided a case in point. I can see similar issues with CAA on an annual basis.
For most local authorities, internal comms stops at the local authority boundary. But that seems old fashioned now. Police staff, housing landlord staff, health service workers and a whole host of other workers all have a real interest in many of the internal messages within the local authority (though not all of them). The same is true vice versa.
Social Media (-sigh-)
I know, I know I keep going on about it. But I can’t apologise. It really is that important.
My view is that 2010 will be the year of social media. Senior managers have the sense that “we should be doing something with social media” so stuff will happen. What should really be exercising comms leaders is the question of where all this is going. Social media tends to open up organisations. It’s fantastic at developing relationships, it it is quite levelling so organisations have much less control over the message and have to take part as much more equal partners in conversations.
In 10 years time an excellent authority will relate to its publics in a much more complex and dynamic way. Getting from here to there is going to require some changes. I bet your Council blocks staff access to social media sites, just for example.
Some people don’t have access to social media. Many people have imbalanced access (they use it at home but not on their mobile say). Some people choose not to use social media. Do we encourage them to get on-line, leave them behind, develop work-a-rounds so they can carry on being outside the digital economy?
Cuts
Local Govt funding is about to drop off a cliff, there will be cuts, closures, reduction in discretionary spend on a big scale. This single sentence is going to dominate the working lives of local authority comms staff for years to come. I have more to say but I have written about this previously.
The excellent comms leader
Someone once told me that a local authority is an organisation constantly in flux. It’s also an organisation unusually reliant on relationships within its structures and in the delivery of its services. This should be grist to the comms director’s mill. It should be…
Belfast City Council has the most effective facebook page in local government
January 7, 2010
How did you spend your holiday?
Just before Christmas I decided to have a look for Councils who were doing good things on facebook so that I could point you to them. Now actually there are plenty of things that Councils could be doing on facebook but the easiest one to spot is where they have corporate pages. The best list for Councils on facebook is maintained by the eGov register. Finding pages is one thing, how to we identify organisations using the technology well?
In my view effective use of a facebook page would be evidenced by lots of fans, lots of interactions, regular updates and content specifically prepared for facebook. So I measured these figures for each Council page just before Christmas (and looked back for 2 weeks preceding this). Then I combined these scores to give an overall score for effectiveness. The breakdown of the scores for each page I looked at is here.
Who’s top of the pops?
Belfast scored the highest despite the fact that it doesn’t make a lot of use of content prepared specifically for facebook. It has more fans and more interactions than any other page. If you want to improve your local government corporate page, they are definitely the ones to watch.
Barnett and Torbay have plenty of fans but aren’t very interactive. Still bums on seats certainly count.
I also rather liked Maidstone BC’s page which had a rather middling score but seems to be run by someone who “gets” social media.
These are highlights in a landscape of local authorities who are, at best, putting a toe in the facebook water. Plenty of council’s haven’t established a presence, plenty more have very low-key pages.
What’s Belfast doing so right?
Well Belfast has some in-built advantages compared to (let’s say) Carmarthenshire. It’s a university city, it’s the capital of Northern Ireland and one of the two most important cultural, economic and political centres on the island of Ireland. So you might expect plenty of social media appetite there. The page seems intelligently managed, it isn’t just re-publishing the RSS feed from the Council’s news pages. it’s timely and relevant.
In the scale of things though, even this powerhouse of social media effort is a actually pretty small beer. Sitting next to the City Council page is simply the “Belfast” page with over 30x as many fans as the local authority, oodles of interactions (many with swearing) and almost now official status updates.
And the conclusion is?
Simon Wakeman has argued that local government shouldn’t use corporate facebook pages. I wouldn’t go that far. These findings suggest that there is an appetite for a well managed page. I do agree with him that social media requires a different approach. Council’s (and indeed all corporates) need to learn how to use these tools to engage with and converse with people.
Decent PR people are fretting about how we can measure the effectiveness of social media. This is a start. What do you think?
The crystal ball returns
January 4, 2010
Almost exactly one year ago I, perhaps foolishly, made a series of predictions for 2009. Let’s see how I did.
I said: Arguments between local authorities and their local partners will break out across the England as a result of CAA reporting.
Was I right?
Yes but I can’t prove it.
In December, the Government has set up a slightly confusing site which enables you to find out how your local public sector is doing. So far councils seem to be getting the blame for everything. That is not sustainable. Gossip suggests that there are considerable tensions behind closed doors.
I said: There will be a general election in June and Labour will be returned to government with a reduced majority.
Was I right?
No. And no room for obfuscation either.
I said: There will be an amusing range of rubbish and embarrassing forays onto YouTube.
Was I right?
Well I was clearly in a bad mood. There have been a range of experiments with virals and video content. Some have been more successful than others. UK public bodies are still feeling their way with all this stuff. Few of these forays have been ground-breaking but few could fairly be described as I did a year ago.
Well I was clearly in a bad mood. There have been a range of experiments with virals and video content. Some have been more successful than others. UK public bodies are still feeling their way with all this stuff. Few of these forays have been ground-breaking but few could fairly be described as I did a year ago.
I said: Millions of pounds of public investment will be wasted as infrastructure schemes are rushed and poorly planned.
Was I right? Sadly yes.
I said: Facebook will rule the world.
Was I right? Pretty much, even though the media buzz is around twitter, facebook is where the action is. Just by way of example: people spend a lot more time on facebook than on any other site and facebook users share 3 times as many photos as flickr users (which is a dedicated photo sharing site).
I was pretty negative about twitter back then and I’m still ambivalent. I still think the most interesting thing about twitter is where it might lead.
So that’s 3.5 out of 5. Despite this I will be publishing my 5 predictions for 2010 very shortly. Call again soon.
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