Is the word “social” stigmatising Web 2.0?
By Ian Hendry at 10 September, 2008, 2:10 pm
I’ve thought about it and the social web isn’t social at all.
I have just had an interesting conversation with fellow SociallyMinded blogger Matthew Brazil about some changes we’ve made to the WeCanDo.BIZ website this week. The changes were made necessary by a small number of users on our system incorrectly using (perhaps by choice) a feature we have that allows our members to “tweet” their most urgent business need, which we then send to matched businesses who may be able to help. We’ve now added a filter which means that the Biz Needs do not go out live, but are approved by our staff first before broadcast. Having read some let’s say “inappropriate” Biz Needs coming through recently Matthew understood our motivation for doing it, but asked what people would think of us trying to police social media.
We had a long chat about this and my conclusion was that the use of the term “social” when applied to most Web 2.0 resources is incorrect. Not only is it suggesting the services provided are done so for the greater good, but it’s also implying that many of the services are the stuff of community staple and should be as free as green spaces and fresh air. This is preventing more carefully management of such services that could easily be shown to provide value enough that people would pay.
Now I see Web 2.0 from the business angle, let me be clear. But even if you look at social networks and social media aimed at all and sundry, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, there are commercial organisations behind these who are not providing those services out of altruism, but for a commercial gain (although most are yet to recognise how). With reputations to maintain, terms of use and legal responsibilities, are these places actually ever the place for free expression that everyone thinks?
This becomes truer still when you look at how other commercial organisations use such facilities to help promote their brand. Although they are buying into the community spirit, no one wants their brand ripped to pieces or associated with the sorts of comments you can see attached to YouTube videos or Facebook fan pages. It can only be a matter of time before the providers of such services start to take notice when those providing their revenue ask for the community to get cleaner. I can understand such a request entirely, but also recognise that if you police a gated community, entry to which is governed by acceptance of terms, then in the real world you would struggle to convince anyone of the “social” principles behind such a place.
Social also, I believe, suggests to the users that they almost have a right to what they are using — and this makes it difficult to “monetize”, as our American cousins call it. Social responsibility, social housing and social business are all about providing to a community and not expecting much, if anything, back. Are social networks or social media different? Well, it makes it difficult to ask people to pay to be members for a start. And also, perhaps, to sell to them while they are enjoying your “social services”.
“Social” places the wrong expectation on people as to how they should conduct themselves, because the reality is such services are provided by commercial organisations and are not gifts to enable you to enjoy an unregulated internet. You accept a set of terms when you sign up and if the party whose service you are using isn’t policing you now, then they will be once they’ve built their legal department, that will have things like regulation and reputation to worry about.
“Social” also makes it hard to take what you are doing and truly commercialise it, because the implication through the word is that it shouldn’t have a cost attached.
We refer to WeCanDo.BIZ as a business network, because it better summarise the target market for our “social network”. But also business people are used to paying for services they value. If we took money from our members to enable them to connect with new customers, we stay a network but I can’t argue that we are then not very “social”.
How long will it be before other Web 2.0 companies feel the pinch from investors and are forced to find a label that more accurately reflects their longer term intention too?
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ - make your business network WORK!
There is always a cost attached because developers don’t work for nothing, they need to earn a living like the rest of us, and why would they work for free when they have such great skills?
Maybe some services will be free after they go out of fashion and have little value or interest to users and as well if any maintenance required on them can be done in very little time by the developers or administrators.
Another service with social in the name, which is also free, is the governments “Social Services” and that only costs taxpayers money wherever in the world such a service exists.
In the end Free, costs money for us all, if it remains free to all and is paid for by advertising which, raises the consumer prices we pay. I would rather pay a small premium and do without the adverts.
This is a fantastic post, I’m digging it.
Ian - great post - and a good discussion earlier today.
There is a without question a number of issues with the ‘Social’ in Social Media. As we discussed, to me, ‘Social’ conjures up images of free. Over the years we have been bombarded with all types of Social Media, the vast majority of which has been free. This has led all of us (I am guilty as well) of expecting it to be free but most importantly expecting it to work perfectly all of the time.
It would be interesting to run a poll on Twitter to ascertain how many people would pay £5-£10 to access it.
On a separate but connected thread. Your issue earlier in the week reminds me of an office environment I was consulting in last year. It was a standard office joke that if you left your desk without locking your PC you could expect to have an email sent from your account to the entire company (including CEO and Chairman and all staff globally!) quoting either your undying love of womens underwear or other defamatory remarks!
The moral of the story for anyone reading is “Always protect yourself, log out of profiles, protect passwords, shut down your PC and don’t for one minute think social media will be free forever!”
Ian and Matt, many thanks for your comments.
As a veteran of some years in the information security industry (my last “real” job was European MD of an US infosec company) I am with you in full of both the risks people take on social media, plus the rope Web 2.0 companies give you to hang youself. Whereas I am not that concerned with malware — a walled garden is a million times easier to protect than e-mail; and many are now chossing to commubicate with friend through Facebook ahead of Hotmail — there are risks from identify theft. Also, just not thinking through how you have your social media connections set up. Tweet an RSS feed through Twitterfeed and then push your tweets through Ping.fm and within seconds a throw away or unintentional remark can be round the web to hundreds or thousands of recipients!
Ian Hendry
http://www.wecando.biz
Matt, how often? I think about a third of people would pay about $10 per year (and it would be in dollars) to access Twitter, including me, and us in Europe are already paying to receive tweets by text. A small number of users may willing pay $5 per month but it would reduce the number of users to the point that it would be not be worth using.
There should be a tiered system where the more you pay, the more frequently you can send and receive tweets. That would be especially valuable for businesses and people making money through social media.