EuroPoli

Privacy vs. Networking : The Showdown (Part 2)

Now, where did I leave off… oh yes, how important is social networking to you?

I came across an interesting comment on one of the forums I frequent (mbclub), when presented with the thread topic “do you use twitter?” a comment was made on the lines of “I’m not a twit, why would I use twitter?”. While reasonably humorous, the comment does raise a very a very valid point, why do 75 million people have a twitter account (as of 2009!)? Well, the true purpose of twitter (which in case you haven’t seen or heard of it before, it’s essentially a micro-blog, with posts limited to 140 characters) is hard to explain concisely… but it’s there, it’s popular, and surprisingly, it’s incredibly useful.

Think of being able to create an advert, and instead of spamming everyone in a country you can target the audience to only those potentially interested in the product. Even better, instead of hitting everyone interested in the product, it only goes to those that have opted to receive adverts from you. What’s even better, if they like the advert, they can choose to forward that to everyone that follows them (retweet).

Impressive… but there is a catch, that is, you need to create a base of people to target before you can put your messages out there. If no-one follows you, your message will be lost in the ether. There are services out there who offer to literally “give” you a base of thousands followers, for a fee. (Actually, apparently cheaply… the last prices I saw were about £20 for 2000 followers). That said, ask yourself, do I really want 2000 people who will follow anyone, or do I want my adverts to be targeted?

Also, you may be saying “but I’m not a company, I have no product to sell – why would I need any of this?” A good question; and here comes the crux of how important is social networking to you. The product, so to speak, is you. Now, I’m not advising anyone to sell a kidney, but by selling yourself, you are essentially raising your visibility. This may be with recruiters, companies, advertisers, etc.

So, what does it come down to? If you are a consultant, contractor or other self-employed member of the workforce, then your business will thrive off contacts, networks and friends of acquaintances of neighbours. You should already be no stranger to social networks, in flesh or digital. If on the other hand you are employed full-time, and are “comfortable”, you may not see social networks as more than a way to reconnect with friends. The great thing is, should you ever need to look for a job, or need to use the “swarm” of people that you communicate with digitally, you already have them at the click of a button.

So, the conclusion… for now? Social networking is an invaluable tool to business, and a great way to keep in touch with distant friends…

That isn’t too say it’s without risks. I’ll cover risks and the dark-side of social networking in my next post.

Also, this blog is about the readers. Topics I want to cover are:

• Dark side of social networking
• Tips for Business Oriented Social Networking
• Creating a swarm of followers on Twitter… in as few steps as possible
• Leveraging multiple Social Networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
• Separation of duties between sites
• Using social networking to find a new job
• User desensitisation – the efficacy of security popup messages (the topic for my thesis… will be posted once I actually finish my thesis)
• Single-factor, two-factor, three-factor and four-factor authentication. The fourth being something that interests me quite a bit (something you know, something you have, something you are, and something you can do)
• The Uncanny Valley , from Mori and Asimov’s Frankenstein Complex
• And many more…

So if you see something you are particularly interested in, drop me an email, leave a comment or somehow get in touch with me. I’ll move that towards the top of the list!

M.

Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 7:00 pm • General • RSS 2.0 feed • leave a response or trackback