Institutionalisation or mob rule - how minorities control the majority

[Image by Mick Stevens, courtesy of the Newyorker]

The topic has been on my agenda for very, very long now. I've touched upon it in my Social Business (R)evolution book, and most other "social posts" underlying that.
I've touched upon it in my "enterprise posts", and in my "religion posts". I haven't written any (or maybe I have some?) "political posts", but I have most certainly done so in my "spiritual posts".
Institutionalisation - it ruins everything. It obliterates common sense, magically forces people to hand over any and all kind of responsibility, and transforms reluctance into acquiesence

Mussels in vinegar

A recipe for a Social Media experience

A column not for the fainthearted

Recently I commented on a picture, posted on Facebook. The picture showed somebody’s hand, holding a mussel, over dinner. Its caption said: "Seek the ten differences". For those with a dirty mind like mine, this needs no further explanation.

I commented on this photo. Of course I did, that’s me! One of the differences, I stated, was that funny looking hard shell, which was new to me. A short and hilarious conversation followed in the comments on this post. It needs no elaboration that these comments were mostly equivocal of sort, but at the same time, not a single word or expression was of an explicit "adult" nature.

Much to my surprise, within TEN minutes after the initial post, it was completely removed from Facebook. Facebook takes its censorship of citizens pretty seriously, I gather!

Why API's suck, and what they lack

The Social Media Movement is slowly moving towards monetisation. Social Business, yes even Social Enterprise, is nigh.
Infographics bite the dust in an ever-increasing frenzy to prove that social is here to stay, to rule, to conquer the world!
And as yet another evidence of that, API's are brought forward - by the hundreds, no the thousands - to prove that the Brave New Open World has finally (yeah, really finally this time, right?) come

Well, I don't think so. API's suck - big time

Wanted dead or alive: any Facebook user, $ 125 reward

With the upcoming IPO of Facebook this week, I got a little worried. I told a few people "Mark my words, this IPO is going to blow the Social Media bubble once and for all" and even "Wouldn't be surprised if FB's IPO is going to start the final leg of this crisis and finish everything off".
A bit gloomy, I admit. But I really need to get something off my chest here: you could put a value on people, but not in this context, and certainly not at a price like this

Amounts have been predicted as low (yes, "low") as $ 10 billion, and as high as $ 100 billion for Facebook's IPO. At their claimed amount of 800 million users, who miraculously seem to be logging on every second day at the least, that would mean at least $ 12.5 per user, at maximum $ 125.
A maximum amount of one hundred and twenty five dollars per Facebook user, dead or alive - would you offer such a ridiculous amount of money if it were your own? Of course not

Why I'm using fake identities to sign up

That is, from now on I will. It is not only getting harder to sign up, it is also getting harder to sign in, and out. Let me explain please as this story has a few sides to it.
But first, let me make my point: I'm going to use fake identities to sign up for new services. If I like the new service, I'll abandon the fake identity and sign up with a real one

Will that mean I'll be lying when accepting most ToS?

Google extremely favours G+ in search

I'm not a very vain man, if at all, but every now and then I Google for "martijn linssen" to see what comes up. I only check the first page, and see how the order is for the first five: those should contain this blog (number one), my Twitter account and my LinkedIn account.
Currently LinkedIn is at no. 2 and Twitter at 3 (I have no idea why!) and numbers 6-10 show the other Martijn Linssen, who is on Facebook unlike me, and whatever comes up next

The secret to success for Social Media? It's 1.0

In the Search for Social as I call it, people have been mesmerising, stating and claiming success for the Social Movement in various ways.
Email has been condemned to death as that wouldn't be fit for the Brave New World, Facebook has been proclaimed the best way to interact with your users or customers, Twitter has been famed as the way to get your people to collaborate and even I've tried to explain the reason behind Social in my Social Business (R)evolution

However, I now have found the true reason for Social's Success: it's the fact that its tools are closed and centralised - exactly that what is battled against by most if not all Social Advocates

Finally a great E20 tool - and people play the social card!

(I'm only kidding about "great E20 tool" there of course)
A double post by Dennis Howlett on Tibco's Tibbr and a few others by a few others led me to write this one - not many people get it, it seems

Enterprise 2.0 is raised from its grave on the one side, Social Business is summoned from the other, but, like Dennis says "that misses the more fundamental point"
Jacob Morgan seemed shocked to hear that one panelist bought tibbr without

thinking about the strategic elements and adoption around the platform

Egypt: Cairo, tens of thousands of people protesting

Directly from Twitter, I am trying to follow the current situation in Egypt.

Twitter has been reported to be down in Egypt, but protesters are using proxy sites and other means to get tweets, Facebook updates, pictures and videos out of the country and spread immediately.
Traditional media are very quiet about it, not to say silent. Photos I'm using I have downloaded and uploaded again, rather than referring to by URL

Here's one video that shows the situation best, I think: thousands of people out there, massive use of cameras and mobiles to record the situation, water canons and teargas used to disperse protesters, and police greatly outnumbered. This is a massive amount of people making themselves heard loud and clear

Mark Zuckerberg no longer a social norm

A few days ago Mark Zuckerberg was offered another podium at San Francisco's Crunchie Awards, where he dared to state that privacy was no longer a social norm

"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," he said. "That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."

Be that as it may, it is the people's choice to do so if they wish to do so. And knowing me, you know I'm not taken aside by general suggestimations and consultancy speak. When Mark says "people", I wonder: which people, how many people, where, when, why?

Presentation and content hardly ever go along

[Image by Digital Surgeons, full-size image here]

After the publication of Digital Surgeons' Facebook versus Twitter infographic this week, it got quickly republished everywhere, and ReTweeted. Currently, the words "facebook twitter infographic" still get 4.2 tweets per minute

Pretty huge hey? GigaOm, TheNextWeb and ZDNet are a few of those who republished the nice and shiny graphic- apparently called infographic these days

Facebook Groups: their own Trojan Horse

When Facebook announced their Facebook Groups yesterday, I had a funny feeling. I was following Augie Ray who was doing an absolutely great job at live-tweeting the event, and there were a lot of words used. A lot. An awful lot, really.
What was the big news? Well, you are now allowed to download your own stuff, and there now are Groups on Facebook

Downloading is what you think it would be, and Groups also are what you would think it would be. Still, so much noise around these 2 small and slight improvements

The Social Sh*tpile: Social Everything

Social CRM: pleonasm or tautology?
Every now and then wikipedia fails me, and this is such a moment.
In ancient Greek pleon comes from pleioon, meaning more: you are actually saying more than need be, overstating it. Dark night, green grass, bright light, etcetera. That's what a pleonasm is and does: adding redundancy, exageration
In ancient Greek to autos logos means the same word: you are using words that mean the same. I'm ticked off and angry, happy and delighted, dazed and confused. That's what a tautology does: it repeats the same word, synonyms

Enters Social CRM

How Chatter made Marc humble

Now I know I've had my fair share of daring blog post titles so far, but this one must definitely be the most daring one

Today TechCrunch announced the public release of Chatter, pointing to prnewswire.com who released the intial story. Let me briefly requote its functionality as stated by TC:

Similar to Facebook, employees can create business profiles with professional information like personal contact data, area of expertise, and work history
(...)
With Chatter, all status updates from a customer’s Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or custom Force.com application are posted to the feed

There. Impressive? I don't think so, nor does Salesforce.com itself. Let me take you through 4 stories on TechCrunch to see Marc Benioff's enthusiasm start in exuberant euphoria and end in modest humility

Comparing Facebook influence to Twitter's: #FBRATE

In a previous post I did the math on Facebook Share, Facebook Like and Twitter ReTweets, and their ratio

I then did the math on probable Facebook users (which I found to be at half of what Facebook claims itself), and Twitter users, before calculating their relative ratio.

Update 12th October 2010 12:37 CET: I found out that Compete.com only uses US data, not worldwide. It's in the small print whereas I'd think that should be in big red ink all over their site.
I apologise for this, it means that unique visitor stats below only apply to the US

Going by stats from Computerworld and Mashable there should now be around 20 million active Twitter users

Twitter stats - that just don't add up?

Business Insider posted Twitter stats last Friday that I missed because it was a national holiday. And I can tell you, it was well worth missing them, just as it is well worth pointing them out now. There are 33 graphs each telling their own story. Originally published by Edison research, it's a survey conducted among less than 2,000 Americans only

As you may or may not know, I'm a stats lover, a number cruncher, and I like to cross-examine pretty much everything

Face Off for Facebook?

There's a lot of talk about Facebook. There's a lot of numbers about Facebook too. 132 million unique visitors per month, versus Google 147 - and Yahoo 131.
3.0 billion visits per month, versus Google 2.7 - and Yahoo 2.3
Twitter has 21 million unique visitors per month, and 162 million visits

I'm wondering about those quantities, and the overall quality. I think that the average Facebook user is just digitally gossiping, and doesn't care nor contribute at all