Facebook – Benjamin Crawford

If something is uncool, will it last longer?

Posted on 16th April 201816th April 2018 by benjamincrawford in Communications

Today, the UK pub chain Wetherspoons announced it was quitting social media, much as more and more users are doing the same.

A study conducted in 2009 by Gaël Le Mens and Jonah Berger studied the adoption rate of popular names and compared it to the speed in which each name fell out of popularity. They found the quicker the adoption of a name, the quicker it became unpopular again. Here’s a graph to illustrate the point.

I’m sure you can guess the social science behind it. Names that rise in popularity quickly become seen as a fad, and the willingness to associate your child with it decreases just as quickly. Could the same be said for trends outside of naming conventions? Considering something Zuckerberg himself said about the need to remain cool, people only adapted the platform because it was seen to be trendy. It was the new way to converse, and ultimately to find out if other people were single or not. But with the meteoric rise in usage, will there be a plateau? Here’s a recent-ish graph of Facebook users.

It looks like a pretty stark rise, but importantly there’s no sign of a plateau… yet. That doesn’t mean one isn’t coming though.

There’s now an increasing amount of consideration to the pros and cons to using the platform at all.

Pros

It’s great to keep in touch with people on, it’s an OK way to keep up to speed with people’s lives, organising events is much easier and watching cat videos is seamless.

Cons

However, it’s not cool anymore. People hide away to use it, like addicts do in bathrooms. At social gatherings, anyone seen on it is no longer the social go-getter they may once have been seen as, but instead as a recluse; hiding in digital oblivion while real interaction happens around them. The content you see is carefully curated to your own defined tastes; meaning that you aren’t exposed to things that could sway your opinion, only things that you’re likely to click on. So it’s polarising, it’s heightens your existing views, and doesn’t balance them with others.

And worryingly, it’s being used to influence you. It’s a mechanism for the highest bidder to buy your personality, and to write things specifically tailored to you to make you do something you might not have otherwise done. That seems scary.

So J.D. Wetherspoons say they’re turning off their social media presence, and other companies like Tesla having already done so, has the hay-day been and gone? I liked the frankness of their chairman’s reasoning: “I find most people I know waste their time on it. A lot of them say they know they waste their time on it, but they struggle to get off it.” So while there’s a lot of negative noise around what a dangerous thing it’s becoming, people do seem to be dropping the platform in favour of face to face conversation. That’s pretty cool, even if it plays straight into ‘spoons’s favour.

CEOs and employees. BFFs?

Posted on 27th March 2017 by benjamincrawford in Communications

They might well be soon enough. A new wave of tools, speaking about one in particular – Workplace, rank executive announcements into the same bucket as customer service reps and project managers alike. There’s no discernment into importance of the author, just how popular the post is perceived. So messages that ask no question, or invite no response get pushed down feeds into low readership oblivion instead of shining at the top.

As communicators, it presents us with both challenges and opportunities. And the gravity of either depends a lot on the willingness to change from the management team. Gone are the days of messages ending in ‘Carry on workforce, your leader has spoken’. We now need to nurture conversation and collaboration – “Give us your thoughts” or “How would you do it?” being the most elementary step forwards.

This marks a wider cultural change too. People are far less accepting of hierarchy, and the communications we have at our disposal these days flatten them completely. Angry at your energy provider? Well call them out on Twitter, a forum where you can have a one on one conversation with a multi-billion pound company in a very public space.

You can see this change represented in politics too, with the isolationistic mass revolt against mainstream governance. So teaching our leaders how to speak to their employees as peers is increasingly a required competency. For leaders, nowadays and in the near future, being seen to be able to speak to colleagues business-wide on first name terms is just as important as being able to chair the AGM with the shareholder. Welcome to the new wave of affable business.

Life. As it happens. Unfiltered

Posted on 16th January 2015 by benjamincrawford in Blog, Uncategorized

I once watched a video about cats on Facebook. The damage was done. In one moment of utter boredom, Facebook has lumped me in with every other cat watching, feline brained, “n’aaaaw” repeating, 14 year old girl.

Facebook’s algorithm has decided what I shall see, and that’s that. It reminds me distinctly of my only visit to Egypt.

For years, I’ve enjoyed holidays where we go and do whatever we want. Day at the beach, no problem. A walk along the coast, sure thing – just follow the coastal path signs. But in Egypt when I went for a walk, I was told “no going past here, go back to the pool” by a man with a sub-machine gun. I didn’t argue.

Facebook may not have a sub-machine gun, but it equally restricts what I get to see. It’s for that reason I’ve deleted the app. Human nature, especially mine, means I like new experiences. I like different viewpoints, and I like to immerse myself in diverse literature and opinion. Just because I happened to once look at a cat does not mean that is the only thing I’m interested in.

I am however delighted to report I found last night a very handy link. Click this, and you’ll get to see your own profile unfiltered. Stories as they happen, your friends’ news as it’s hot off the press in real time – just like the Facebook we all signed up for.

Metaphor

Posted on 5th December 2012 by benjamincrawford in Blog, Uncategorized

This is something I wrote a little while ago, but thought it worthwhile to share. Ultimately, shiney social media can get it wrong too.

Facebook. A place to meet people, become reacquainted with old friends, share photographs, stories and news.

A chair. A place for one person to sit.

Now I’m all for clever metaphors that require one to consider how deep the real meaning stretches, but the lack of synergy in Facebook’s first (and hopefully last) brand campaign is overwhelming. If they had used a cafe, or a bar as their metaphor they perhaps would have been described as predictable (probably not far from the truth when you consider the post-floatation flop) but to use an item, that can only be used by a single person at any one time, which doesn’t invoke conversation, which doesn’t encourage social interaction other than somewhere to park your rear is quite a poor show.

There are probably hundreds of metaphors that wouldn’t have been cliched; a pen, a post it, a train station, I could go on… But a chair? I’m willing to bet the ad agency was sat around, smoking dope consulting the first visual references in their line of sight for inspiration – and came up with the very thing they are sat on. And for the privilege of working with such an iconic brand? I’m guessing a few million dollars…

Now Boris Johnson on the Tory cleanup… So David Cameron unsympathetically referred to Boris as a mop – obviously referring to his DIY hair style, but ever the faithful Mayor, Boris didn’t take offence, he merely span it into the most coherent speech of the entire Tory Party Conference. Sack Andy Coulson I say, get Boris on the job, in fact, just put Boris in charge of the damn country. He might not be the serious straight-laced leader we’re used to, but by god he’s charismatic. And passionate for that matter.

He can take an off-the-cuff insult and with it form a rousing speech which paints the Tories in quite a rosy light. And would the leader of Blighty be so astute as to include reference to Gangnam style – not a chance, but when it comes to Bo-Jo, you bet.

After watching his speech in the aftermath of the riots, where he brandished a broom at the crowd and encouraged the people of London to come together and clean up the mess I couldn’t help but feel warmed to the very heart by this genuine, and brilliant orator. That day, he could have been Sir Winston Churchill, giving the “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, and by god I’d have been grabbing my bayonet.

Facebook, the biggest website on the planet, try harder or smarter, or at least try. Boris, I will follow you into war, Sir!