Author: jeremyprobert

Of Cabbages and Kings

Posted on by in Social Media.

Extraordinary, really. You write a post about nothing much – as I did recently – and it delivers you a quite breathtaking number of visitors and views. So a big thanks to all the snorkellers, trotters and standards who came, in your droves, to read about me falling asleep on an aeroplane. Who, quite literally, woulda thunk it? Mind you, and I’m not being picky here, not a single one of you left me a comment to remember you by. Not even a simple ‘what kind of a mook are you?’ I’d be offended if my internetual skin were not as thick as Kerry Katona.

So today, o great and influential audience mine (do you sense that you’re being flattered?), I’m going to get back to stuff with a meaning, stuff that adds value, stuff that encourages thought, stuff that moves the argument along.

Firstly, on the nature of the current hard times that we are all – certainly in my parish, anyway – suffering. Austerity is the new flamboyance, sackcloth the new cashmere, ashes the new warpaint and – thankfully – black is back as the new black. Inflation is on the rise, prices are spiralling upwards, interest rates are set to increase, house prices are continuing to fall (interestingly enough, falling to below the price paid for the house, thus plunging homeowners into ‘neggers’, but not falling enough for non-homeowners to stand any chance of purchasing one – this cannot be random, can it?) natural disasters are shaking the world (quite literally, in Scotland) and there’s martial law in Tunis.  If you looked at it in the round, from an holistic point of view, you’d be hard pressed not to come to the conclusion that the end of the world, if not nigh, exactly, is certainly somewhere in the general vicinity.

So it was with raised eyebrow and general bewilderment that I read a piece in the London Evening Standard last week (and forgive me, I am unable to find a link – not that any of my snorkellers ever follow the links I so thoughtfully provide) in which the journalist implied that. amongst other things, the rise in prices that we are seeing is in some part due to a shortage of cauliflower. (Affected by the weather, I presume.) Admittedly, the journo also said it was due to the failure of Russian cereal crops – but I don’t buy it. (Much like I don’t buy cauliflower. Or Russian cereal.) No, the reason we’re suffering higher prices and austerity and our holidays are being cancelled are fourfold:

  • The bankers fucked it up
  • Governments tried to save the situation and fucked it up
  • Businesses are businesses and primed to seize every opportunity for profit – thereby fucking it up
  • The middle classes are now paying for the fucking of it up

Cauliflowers. Do these people think I am stupid?

Which, of course, I may be – but not quite as stupid as the non-US investors who’ve been stuffing money into the garter of Goldman Sachs in the hope of getting some of the sweet Facebook action. And it appears they have it all to themselves, because the Vampire Squid has been told in no uncertain terms that it must not approach its US investor base, for they have been tainted by the ill wind of propaganda about GS’ invesment in the Face, and, ‘sides, it’s either an IPO or it’s not.

What this means, of course, is that when the bottom drops out of social media, and the GS Facebook investment vehicle turns out to be another Abacus 2007-AC1 – only non-US markets will be exposed to it. And who’ll be laughing then?

Facebook – Mogadon For The Soul

Posted on by in Social Media.

So, snorkellers mine, not much of a post I’m afraid. This simply to let you know that, even in cinematographic form, Facebook and the nasty homunculus wot runs it (for all I know, he could be a giant amongst men, but I sense that he’s not) couldn’t keep my attention.

There I was, on a perfectly acceptable flight, enjoying the perfectly acceptable hospitality and discovering that the in-flight entertainment – and, dearest blogcrawlers all, you’ll share my pain when I tell you that it was a Very Long Flight – was FUBAR. You switched it on and you got what it gave you. In my case, it gave me The Social Network.

OK, I thought, lounging back in my seat and acknowledging the cheese board like the wide-eyed, overenthusiastic, inexperienced adolescent that I become EVERY SINGLE TIME I get on an aircraft, I can handle this. After all, it will broaden my knowledge, albeit in an adapted-for-the-screen sort of a way. So I began to watch.

………Wha’? Huh? Who? Where? Ah.

Four hours later I woke up. For the want of anything better to do, I watched Michael Douglas in Greed is Ecologically Unsound, or whatever it’s called. And didn’t fall asleep.

Facebook. It is so mind-numbingly dull that even when they make a movie about it and employ Justin Timberlake to bring some boyishness to it (if not even some bandishness as well), it still sends we righteous to sleep.

(I did tell you it wasn’t much of a post.)

Anyway – the Vampire Squid has been up to stuff again, and a journalist I read recently believes that the financial agonies that we, the middle class, are enduring currently are mainly predicated on cauliflower shortages, so I shall soon be back to my contentual best.

See you then.

God Loves Facebook – Could He Be Fallible?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, Social Media and tagged , , , , .

Following my post of yesterday, in which – in the desultory and louche fashion that is my wont and has become such a firm favourite with discerning blog snorkellers worldwide (hey – forget worldwide – GLOBALLY) – I examined the Busy Bees of the Divine’s decision to invest some $450m in the Book of the Face, I have some across simply acres of opinion that – to a greater or lesser extent – agrees with my conclusions.

Now, to say this is unusual would be a masterpiece of understatement, but that notwithstanding, it should also be genuinely concerning for those who are investing their hard-won marketing budgets in ever-more-complex Facebook campaigns. It should also be concerning for large companies whose digital media function is becoming ever-more powerful and starting to grasp at the reins of the whole shooting match.

You see, when even Goldman Sachs Capital Partners (the company’s private equity fund) turns down the opportunity to invest in Facebook – and does so (in part) due the lingering burning sensation that remains from the serious injury it received when the dotcom bubble burst – you have to question the longevity of Mr Zuckerberg’s monster.

And when Facebook falls – and it may already be on shaky ground, given there have been no membership number updates since July (is it possible, whisper it, that people are beginning to sign off?) – what will be left of the social media phenomenon that was going to change the way we communicate? Whither the social media gurus then? Whither the value? Eh?

Anyway – don’t take my word for it – read all about it here. (Thank you, Fortune magazine.)

God Loves Facebook

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Corporate Religion, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , .

Proof, if any were needed, that the world is no longer a suitable place for right-thinking people like you and me, blog snorkellers mine, in light of the fact that it has gone completely and utterly hatstand.

Here’s some numbers for you. $500m. $50bn. $2m minimum. Can you tell what it is yet? How about $850m and $10m (or less)?

Well, the first set of figures is what the workers of God (the lovely people at Goldman Sachs) have invested in Facebook (in conjunction with some Russian oligarch), the apparent valuation this puts on Facebook’s business and the amount of liquid lolly you would have to ante up to participate in God’s social media investment vehicle. The second set of figures is what the founder of Bebo sold his company for in 2008, and the amount of money that was paid for it by a venture capitalist in June last year.

Now Bebo, according to Google Trends (March 2010), had around 1.5m unique visitors. Facebook, according to the same Google Trends in the same period, had roughly 210m. At which point, if Bebo is to be valued at $10m (or less), then Facebook would have been worth a maximum $1.5bn. And now it’s worth $50bn.

Absolutely amazing growth. If only one could invest in it. But – hold on – now you can! And all thanks to those super and – by common acknowledgement of the very clever people on Wall Street – very clever people at Goldman Sachs. Fact is, of course, through the miracle of trading stuff of which I wot not, that one has been able to trade in social media ‘shares’ for some time – an option that will no longer be available to one if one throws one’s lot in with God. Along with the option of pulling one’s money out if it all goes tits up before 2013.

So, what is wrong with this picture, people? OK, I know you’re all embarrassed to put your hand up in front of so many people, so I’ll tell you. 

  • Facebook is not worth $50bn. It isn’t. End of. ( In the same way that tulip bulbs were never worth 50 gold coins, Skype and Friends Reunited were never worth billions and millions respectively and a one-bedroom flat overlooking Dublin’s M50 was never worth half a million euro)
  • Goldman Sachs are obviously angling for the right to handle the flotation of Facebook and the fees that would accrue from said flotation
  • The Busy Bees of God have shaped an investment vehicle that may well carry a bunch of high net worth individuals to their doom. As it crashes on the rocks of fiscal prudence, they will look to God’s Worker who should be in the driving seat. He (or indeed she) will probably, and conveniently, be somewhere else
  • Fabrice Tourre, Abacus 2007-AC1. ‘Nuff said

I think it is highly likely that Les Travailleurs de Dieu will get this one away. I think it is highly likely that many many investors will put their money into the phenomenon that is social. I think it highly likely that this headlong rush to make money out of the shiny thing will contage (hey, looky here! I made up a new word) and social media that exist on the very boundaries of understanding will become enormously valuable and a new generation of uber-geeks will become – if they sell at the right time – hideously wealthy. I think it highly likely that, despute the recent opportunity to learn from our mistakes, another bubble will expand and burst, leaving far more losers than winners. God – through his Workers – will be, most likely, a winner.

As someone who has some knowledge of these things said to me: “if they float, short them. Short the shit out of them.” Sounds sensible to me.

Anyway – as evidence that you can always find someone to support any argument – here’s a piece that’s probably more rational than my post. Enjoy!

Social Media In The Workplace – Medieval Thinking

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Corporate Religion, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , .

Morning snorkellers.

Yesterday, you may recall, I stuck up a much-viewed and widely-discussed (I am almost certain that it probably was) post – Social Media In The Workplace – The Debate Rageth On – in which I set out my (by now pretty ragged from overuse) stall of arguments as to why allowing employees access to social media during working hours is not, on the whole, a Good Thing.

This was in response to a post on stopblocking.org (do the clickety-doo here) which – unfortunately – I found (and still find) a little too glib and easy for my taste. Anyway, long story short – as I guess was to be expected – the author of the post (one Shel Holtz) has reacted in kind (see, here!) in which he has, quite kindly, actually, put me straight on a number of my points. Again, right-thinking blog snorkellers mine, you may wish to don the mental equivalent of a welding mask before viewing his (lengthy) sounding off, but it does highlight at least one thing. You’re social, or you’re not. The whole debate over its usefulness has become so widespread and heated that there is no choice but to choose sides. Choose wisely, young padawan.

Anyway, Shel also had a bit of a twat about my post. He described it as thinking from the medieval era. Which, in turn, got me thinking. Would it not be fair to say that today’s many-too-many of social media strategists and specialists and gurus and advisers are, in reality, little different from the mendicant monks that would trudge the filthy by-ways and low roads of the 16th century, looking for the gullible and lazy, to whom to sell their fake and worthless relics? ‘Look here, lumpen peasant with your interesting diseases, shiny thing make it all better.’ ‘Be certain of your passage to heaven with this splinter from the one, true media – sorry – cross!’

Wasn’t that time one of mountebanks and charlatans, dissimulation and deceit? Rather than being medieval myself, I rather think I’m trying to prevent those who wish to get all medieval on our asses.

Social Media In The Workplace – The Debate Rageth On

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, corporate reputation, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

It’s been a long time, gentle readers, since I came across something that deserves an award for its icky, sticky, company hippy nature, its inherent stupidity and intellectual laziness and its truly horrible smug and self-satisfied tone. But today is the day – it chills my very soul to introduce this, the Stop Blocking website and it disheartens me even further to link to this, a piece entitled ‘Demolishing Barclays Communications’ Blocking Argument Point-by-Point’.

Now, for this post to make sense to you, you’re going to have to do the clickety-dickety and read the article. You may wish to have a bucket and a towel handy while you do so and also to warn anyone in the immediate vicinity that your anguished howling is nothing to be alarmed about. Unless it goes on for longer than – say – thirty minutes, in which case it may be the onset of PTSD.

In brief, this is a continuation of the battle between two diametrically opposed viewpoints – that employees in the workplace should have no access to social networks during work hours whatsoever (which I do not believe to be a workable solution to the insidious eville of social) and that employees should be free to do what they want, when they want, simply girdled with a loose set of suggestions and guidelines. Which, as a solution to the problem of social media in a corporate context (and it is a problem, mark my words) is also a nasty pile of cattle droppings. In a nutshell, it’s the Corporate Nazi vs Company Hippy debate, which I have posted about before.

Thing is, the Company Hippy arguments for social media, used here, are the same ones that have been trotted out since social media began. And they didn’t make sense then, and they don’t make sense now. On top of that, here they are dusted with the icing of  ‘research’ and ‘example’ – and we all know how easy it is to find support for an argument. Any argument. (Don’t make me give you specifics.)

Here’s just a few idiocies:

  • Apparently, all workers, regardless of status or paygrade, put in extra hours and therefore compensate for any time that they may waste using social networks. Of course they do. In the same way that they all love the company that they work for, its senior management and its brands
  • Productivity suffers if employees can’t connect to social networks at work (thanks, University of Melbourne!). Apparently use of social media ‘resets an employee’s concentration’. How DID we manage to concentrate before?
  • Because the US Department of Defense has opened its networks to social media, does not mean that LargeCorp Industries LLC (in the business of profit, not homeland security) should – it’s not a question of risk from cyber-attack, it’s a question of perceived need and value. (In any case, I would ask whether the ‘private in the field in Afghanistan’ is free to change his status willy-nilly (‘Safe behind a wall’ to ‘In a ditch with blast concussion’) or to share any sort of geographic or temporal information)
  • Company ‘confidentiality can be violated anywhere, even an elevator’. True – but your average elevator holds 12 people and Facebook holds a potentially eavesdropping audience of 450 million. Go figure
  • ‘Many employees carry smartphones – or they can (access social media) from home after work’ – again, true. But what they do on their own time is their own business – unless it contravenes company policy on how they may represent themselves as employees, or the laws of the land – in which case they get fired. In the workplace – well, the clue is in the name – ‘work’place. Not ‘fun’place or ‘do-your-own-thing’place
  • ‘If normal use of bandwidth (this refers to employee use of social media) is slowing (your) network to a crawl, get more bandwidth.’ Just go to your finance guys and ask them to approve an increase in your budget, to purchase bandwidth to allow your employees to update their Facebook statii. That’s bound to work. Job done

All of this is hopelessly Utopian – the ideals of an imaginary world where everyone is nice, contented, loyal and trustworthy. Well, here’s the wake-up call. They’re not, and you need to bear that in mind when thinking about social media use in the workplace.

The solution, however (and it’s the one point on which I vaguely coincide with Stop Blocking) is not to shut down employee access to the internet. You see, it’s the internet that is (or can be) a useful corporate tool, it’s the internet which – as much as I still think this is a sucky argument – ‘resets concentration’ – not social media. Social media is wasteful and vainglorious. The internet is (partly) full of useful information, commentary and viewpoint.  Social media is full of weak-minded individuals who honestly believe that what they do and think is of interest to others (see Twitter).

How can you do it? Some companies have a couple of open-access machines in their public areas, for employees to use when they’re on breaks and time spent on these machines is (obviously) monitored by other employees – much like smokers on smoking breaks, internet users will be kept honest by their peers. Other companies make internet access a privilege, granted to those who’ve achieved – promotion, sales targets, whatever – although this is obviously a little elitist. Others allow internet access, but block social media sites – possibly the best of the options.

What is essential, however, is a good, solid, draconian Use of Social Media Policy and an internal communication plan to make sure that no-one can claim ignorance of it. Needless to say, this Policy should outline clearly how an employee may represent the company or brand online and in social media – what is acceptable and what is not – and, most importantly, make it clear that it applies 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Enforce it rigorously, because there’s nothing like a public hanging to make people understand that you are – and it is – serious.

So Farewell Then, Julian Assange

Posted on by in corporate reputation, Crisis Management, media relations, Social Media.

OK, OK – he’s not actually been terminated with extreme predjudice just yet.

On Tuesday, when Mr Assange was remanded into custody, I joked with a colleague that he (Mr Assange, not my colleague) should beware of being any length of time at the top of staircases while in the care of Her Majesty and Her Majesty’s finest. Seems someone shared my (yes, sick and depraved) sense of humour, for on Wednesday I came acros this piece, courtesy of the twisted minds behind The Daily Mash. Somehow, I can’t seem to post links today – must be the workings of those cuddly hacktivists, Project Payback – so here’s the url. Cut’n’paste, people, cut’n’paste. (Obviously, supposing there still IS an internet by the end of today.)

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/war/aasange-to-escape-from-police-at-the-top-of-some-stairs-201012073327/

Today, however, I’m rapidly coming to the realisation that this probably isn’t a joke at all. I cannot comment on Mr Assange’s state of mind and, arguably, if he hadn’t done the whole Wikileaks thing, then someone else would. Much of the information contained therein is – as London’s Evening Standard rightly pointed out – in same news category as ‘Small Earthquake in Chile, Not Many Dead’. Frankly, I’d be more surprised if diplomats, politicos, SPADs etc etc DIDN’T say and do these things.  And as for Prince Andrew – yes, he’s an inbred arse – tell me something I don’t know.

But, and oh dear for Mr Assange. He has irked the US. More to the point he has irked the Ghengis Khan de nos jours, Sarah Palin and her Teapots. On top of this, whether he wanted to or not, he has unleashed the crusty might of the hacktivists who, as we know, need (and needed) little excuse to show how technologically capable they are. (With their stupid names. Who, in their right mind, styles themselves ‘coldblood’? That’ll be a 34-year old man, called Kevin, living in Milton Keynes with his Mum, then.) Sadly, coldblood (Kevin) and his mates bigaxe (Barry) and deathquake (Alan) can actually do some real damage here. (Which, in the case of them destroying Twitter, would be No Bad Thing. In the case of them preventing the world doing business in a time of economic crisis – not so much.)

Someone’s going to have to do something. And if I was Someone, I’d start at the top. Of the stairs.

Of course, I’m only partly serious. But what odds that Mr Assange is still here by Christmas?

Problem Solving

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, corporate reputation, Corporate Reputation Management, Public Relations and tagged , , .

Hey snorkellers – just something to brighten the day.

Is it just me or is this just soooooooooo resonant?

Blogger, blogger, blogger…..

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Corporate Religion, corporate reputation, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

‘Despite the fact blogs (sic) no longer have a lot of social media sex appeal’ – no, not my words, but the first line of this tremendously fine post about blogging in a corporate context.

Yes, you should be blogging, for all the reasons set out here. No, I am not going to paraphrase it for you, you lazy bunch of blog snorkelling butterflies, do the hot clickety and read it for yourself.

All I would add is that to be truly effective, you’ve got to get the tone of voice right and be consistent. This means that you cannot let anyone in your organisation blog on your behalf without due process, monitoring, control and boiling in oil of transgressors. Sorry, but that’s the way it is if you are to avoid the one-way street to the village of Serious Cock-Up on Thames.

I am sure, as promised in the post, the next blog (post) (which will ‘address some of the key ingredients for a successful company blog’ ) will cover all this obvious stuff.

Cluster Zuck

Posted on by in Social Media and tagged , , , .

Hello in haste, snorkellers mine. No links today, for your lazy little arses to ignore, no – should you wish to read up on this then get your googly eyes on, or your bingly bong or your yahoo moo, whatever takes your fancy and searches your boat, and go get clickety on this story’s topic’s ass. Inna jungle stylee.

Briefly, it’s that nice tweedy Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the gentleman inventor of t’interweb ( and no, I have no idea whether he’s tweedy, or a gentleman, or whether he invented t’interweb in a garden shed in the Yorkshire Dales, but the fact remains that he should be and he should have) who has, in brief, pronounced that Facebook and that horrible little turd Zuckerberg (and no, I don’t know whether Zuckerberg is a turd but he seems so – well – unpolished, so one must draw one’s own conclusions) are, between master and monstrous creation, about to destroy the internet.

The basis of Timbo’s hypothesis is that the internet needs to be free to work (I know, never trust a hippy – but bear with him here) and that the ‘Book and the Zuckerbergster (and, in fairness, all social media of its ilk) are trapping users and information and then refusing to share. I’ve said it before (and if I haven’t, then I meant to) and I’ll say it again (if I haven’t already it said it, then I’ll say it again in the future – but you may have to remind me), once you’re in his Face – you’re never getting out. It’s just a little too Brave New World for me, I’m afraid. With a dash of Terminator and a few sprinkles of I,Robot. Ooooh, ooooh – 2001: A Space Odyssey, don’t get me started.

Where will it all end? In the instantaneous and spontaneous combustion of most of the ‘Book’s apparent 400m users, probably. Which Lord Young might consider an acceptable margin of error.

But that’s not the point. No, the point of today’s diatribe is a little compare and contrast exercise. Compare – Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the internet and then gave it away for free, for the betterment of mankind. Contrast – the odious demon-child Zuckerberg and others of his ilk, who have a taken the gift freely given and done their utmost to fuck it up for everyone in the constant search for their next billion.

This is probably a metaphor. For something.