Comments on: Why Social Networking is Evil

By: spiritbear

spiritbear — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:31:59 +0000

once bean counters and old people embrace a technology its already lost its coolness factor and ruined by greedy capitalists. 90 percent of email is spam and the web is a festering butthole of ads

Long live gopher

By: Laurel Papworth

Laurel Papworth — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 06:57:16 +0000

Everytime I look at your header, I want a ciggie. And I don’t even smoke. Such is the power of banner ads. Heh.

Talking of advertising, and challenges, the whirlpool.net.au (community) versus 2clix sucks ? (company) challenges in court is going to scare companies even further. What if your clients and staff are on a community performing anti-Marketing on your brand. Oopsie!

By: Gary Barber

Gary Barber — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 15:17:05 +0000

@Des – yes fear is the major player here, fear for a middle level manager can be a major often insurmountable hurdle.

#Stephen – So how does the independent web business educate these managers, seriously I think this needs to be raised, how do we win over these minds from the outside.

By: Stephen Collins

Stephen Collins — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:01:28 +0000

Gary, thanks for the link love. It’s nice to see from the large number of posts about this article that have appeared that there are a good number of people on our collective page. It appears, however, that we aren’t in positions of influence or management… Or are we just too complacent or apathetic to do something about it?

If we’re all so angry about this misinformation getting into our organisations and preventing us from using the tools we need to do out jobs properly, we need to make a noise about it – dump copies of Meet Charlie and Meet Charlotte on our managers’ desks, evangelise Knowledge Worker 2.0, and get people who can speak in an educated way about this stuff (like me, Laurel Papworth, Ross Dawson, etc.) in front of our management.

It’s only if we do something about it that a shift will happen.

By: david fono

david fono — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:22:23 +0000

I think wonderwebby hits the nail on the head — social apps are too fun. Anything that’s fun can’t serve a meaningful purpose in business and productivity, right? Meanwhile, the generation that is growing up on these apps, with their emphasis on actually generating positive feelings (imagine!) are going to demand similar levels of positive engagement in everything they do… including work.

By: Wonderwebby

Wonderwebby — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 03:50:53 +0000

Amazing isn’t it – rather than seeing blogs and wikis as a means to streamline communication and reduce festering email congestion, emerging technologies appear to be too fun to be taken seriously!
Perhaps it is a matter of education, removing some of the mystique etc. A good book I read recently “The Iceberg is Melting” talks about change management and I felt some of these techniques could apply towards adaption of emerging technologies.

All good points tho, good reading thanks.

By: Des Walsh

Des Walsh — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:12:25 +0000

I think you’re right about there being three reasons, but I think the reasons are, in order: 1. Fear 2. Fear 3. Laziness. The various reactions I get about blogging and social media, from many business owners and managers over 40 or so, can probably be summed up as “don’t ask us to get out of our comfort zone and actually do some of this social networking so we can find out what’s happening – just give me a quick summary”. They just don’t see that they are doing very good impersonations of being business dinosaurs.

By: teddlesruss

teddlesruss — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:00:35 +0000

I honestly think it's the nearest thing to a whipping boy that middle and upper management have. They can blame these new technologies, so they do, rather than shoulder the responsibility for not being able to even manage sex in ScoreS with a fistful of fifties...

Have linked to this from my article - we are both talking about the same thing, and in fact I've several other bloggers' views linked as well, looks like we're ALL on the same side.

And - Go Ruddie! With a non-Luddite PM we might finally get some decent incentives happening for IT and innovation...

By: Frances

Frances — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:21:25 +0000

Fear – it is the thing that rules most conversations I have when talking about access to sites in the workplace. Fear we are asking for something they don’t know about and fear that they have to do more work to allow us access.
Having such available access to the internet in my workplace I cannot imagine working in a place that internet access is assessed on a case by case request. Maybe if Social networking is seen to interfere in worker productivity this will become more common, but I hope not.

By: Sue Waters

Sue Waters — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:17:43 +0000

As Marc Prensky said in his speak in Perth, it is ok those won’t embrace the digital age eventually move on. And organisations that do not learn to effectively innovate face being destroyed by those that do. The circle of life

Sue