Down With Social | Hacker News Reader

Down With Social

spencerfry.com

96 pointstwampss34 comments

There needs to be a Godwin-esque term for "takes one data point and extrapolates it to the entire world".

So, for his 5-person company the social media role "just isn't" a full-time job. I doubt if marketing or HR are full-time jobs there, either.

But at a 1000-person company, they very much are. Tweeters demand and expect instant responses: look how out of the control the Amazon-hates-gays thing got because they took a day or two (fast by corp standards) to respond. You want an instant response from a big company you need a person or team constantly watching and able to get in touch with the people with the answers very quickly. (This fantasy of "everyone in the company can tweet!" doesn't work any more than "everyone in the company will blog on the world wide web!" did)

Similarly, he begs the question hugely with his shade-of-blue instance on analytics and metrics. Not everything that can't be quantified is valueless. It's hard to put a figure on how well-written an article is, for example, or how interesting a story is.

What you can do is measure them by their effects -- see how many readers a story gets, for instance. But even this is a bad path to take: it leads to celebrity gossip and link whoring.

Social media is similar. You might not provide the analytics Spencer wants, but equally you might not want what analytics you do get.

> There needs to be a Godwin-esque term for "takes one data point and extrapolates it to the entire world".

"Cum hoc ergo propter hoc" is not very Godwin-esque, but I think it'll work here.

I'm not sure you can get away with any term on the internet where Cum is the first word.

> There needs to be a Godwin-esque term for "takes one data point and extrapolates it to the entire world".

"Gladwelled"

I'd be really interested in tales of how social media is working for people in real, measurable ways, particularly for folks who do not sell to the usual suspects.

I'm of the impression that my market is on Facebook these days, or I would not have to spend so much time squashing cow requests from great-aunts, but all my attempts to use this to the benefit of my business have been crashing failures. I'm not sure if that is because my customers just aren't there yet, my implementation(s) of these campaigns has just universally sucked, or there is too much of a mental disconnect between Facebook and my problem domain for my users.

The success stories I read about are generally techy-focused or, ahem, perhaps more enthusiastic than is warranted by measured results.

My impression, after watching my brother who runs a chiropractic office in San Francisco which has had a heavy internet presence for years, spend thousands of dollars hiring kBuzz to create a Facebook site/campaign, is that Facebook users simply aren't in the mood to be marketed to in the traditional sense.

The mindsets that you have when you're checking up on your friends versus when you're searching for a product to buy, are almost mutually exclusive.

That's just my two cents. I also felt that his Facebook campaign relied heavily on give-a-way's which don't jibe with what people are looking for in a doctor, namely authority, trustworthiness, and warmth.

That's a pretty good description of the mindset and the focus on the user's intentions also explains why adwords does so well. You intend to find something when you're searching and are receptive to ads that help you do that, whereas you intend to check up on friends and have fun when you're on a social network. It's why ads that tap into the same intentions do well, like games, shopping, conferences, etc.

It depends very much in what is being marketed to them - there's a big difference between niche alternative health services and entertainment, branded FMCG or fast food. I know of franchises enjoying excellent ROI in the latter sector, which was driven by coupons and spur-of-the-moment peer encouragement long before Facebook...

Thinking of BCC in context of Facebook (and Farmville), maybe a better than usual (pages/sharing) approach would be to create a Facebook game of bingo (eg. one person "creates" the cards, invites friends, and they all play online somehow ..), which you could then tie in with the real BCC ("wanna play with your friends IRL?"). Especially if many of your target users are of the type that's probably using Facebook for casual gaming ala Farmville. OTOH, building this is quite an upfront cost.

Maybe you've already considered approach like this (and decided it wouldn't work for some reason). But in general, I've a feeling that grabbing people's attention on Facebook is via some other interaction (e.g. tie-in games/apps) that just pages/groups/link sharing.

Hopefully that would also be measurable (how many people tried the game/app on FB, vs. how many people actually clicked on the real thing and bought it afterwards). It'd be interesting to find out if someone has already done something similar on Facebook.

Here's a story:

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/buy-a-car-off-the-internet/

I know Aaron from Motorphilia and he's been hustling away at it for a few years now. He makes a killing leveraging social media.

This post is just wrong. He says that their site does not have social features - and he says it in a strangely proud manner. Have you TRIED social features and after comparing the two, discovered that the version without social features was better? The site in question looks like it would benefit from social features - if you are not motivated to add features, then don't retro-explain them as if it were a tested and proven hypothesis. You guys just don't WANT to add social features - done proper, it could male the site better.

Now, regarding the statement that social media is not useful - that's just not true. Used wrongly (follower chasing), it's wrong. If you treat social as a metric, then you are doing it wrong. Social is about people and relationships - an you don't need many followers to have great and profitable relationships using social media. It's really all about using these tools right, and Spencer does not seem to be doing so.

This "social" thing is similar to so many societal changes occuring over time. It's introduced, picked up, overdone, there is an anti-movement and over time, it finds its way into regular life in an amount and a way that fits with people's lifestyle.

In internet speak, let's wait and see how social 2.0 comes about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic

thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis

(In particular, that formulation fits with what most people would call the "Hegelian dialectic.")

Yep. I get the impression from chatting with people more up on philosophy that this model has fallen into disfavor but I seem to bump into real-world examples of it all the time.

It moved over to the other humanities domains. Every philosophical "criticism" (art, literary, feminist, media, cultural, etc) stems from Hegel. The latest trend is Zizek.

People look at successful companies, see that they have a Facebook page and are posting on Twitter, and assume these things will make them successful too. It doesn't quite work that way round.

Cargo cult startups?

He's right in that some sites should be 'social' and some shouldn't...

But for the life of me, I can't think of any sites that shouldn't be and are. That portfolio site that he says shouldn't be, isn't, and that's correct. It's not to talk about the art, it's to display it. The site correctly knows it's niche and it's acting appropriately.

However, if that site had been DeviantArt and tried to avoid having 'social' features, it would be devastatingly wrong.

Contacting a person over social media is obviously of limited value. If you get a Tweet from a random business, you're going to ignore it. You know they're selling you something, and you have no idea who they are. You're not even sure they're not a spammer. At best, you'll "Like" it or Retweet with the message "this looks cool!". Whatever that's worth. But the message will never leave Twitter, and it will be gone within minutes.

This is bad. As Seth Godin points out in "Purple Cow," you want other people to remark about your product. A good blog post might spawn a dozen tweets, but a great Tweet that spawns a dozen blog posts is exceedingly rare. You want to communicate in mediums that encourage others to remark: conferences, tech talks, blog posts, and even aggregators like HN or Reddit. If you see a business mentioned by several of your friends, and on HN, and know company X uses their stuff, you're going to check them out because of your natural curiosity. If you provide good source material, people will go out of their way to mention you elsewhere. After all, there are Karma points at stake! But if you try to form a conversation in a social medium, its as awkward as walking up to the person in real life and announcing, "I'm great! Don't you think so?"

Agreed. It seems to me that a lot of people assume that they can just reach their customers. For example, I deliberately try to make it hard to get in touch with me. I don't click on most ads (since they are almost never what I'm looking for) and I never answer promotional e-mail (unless it is personally addressed to me at which point I reply with a no-thank-you). If a company tried to reach me with their product they'd have to infiltrate places like HN and that is hard to do. So maybe the approach should be the opposite. Companies should focus on building a product they can market to people who will buy it and who they can convince to buy it.

Whenever I hear someone label social as "echo chambers in which nobody is listening", all I can think is that they must be doing it wrong. Seems to be a "tell" for when someone's awkwardly using the medium as a write-only marketing channel, which explains why they aren't getting traction.

You get what you give.

Something of a counterpoint: http://leoville.com/buzz-kill

Leo's also interacting with people on Twitter daily. His engaging with people there on a one-to-one level seems to exactly disprove the idea that it's an echo chamber that no one's paying attention to.

By the same token, it should come as no surprise that something so mechanical that it was automated through a third party wouldn't be missed.

> His engaging with people there on a one-to-one level seems to exactly disprove the idea that it's an echo chamber that no one's paying attention to.

Except, you know, for the part where he calls it an echo chamber that no one is paying attention to: "It makes me feel like everything I’ve posted over the past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google Buzz, has been an immense waste of time. I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves."

Look at a Twitter search for @LeoLaporte to see all the people responding to him and/or trying to engage with him, or look at his Twitter stream to see him interacting with people himself. For that matter, look at all of the people commenting on his Buzz postings directly (e.g. http://www.google.com/buzz/laporte/iGbULnn1UMH/Its-funny-bec...)

None of that squares very well with the echo chamber claim.

Tweeting, Tumblring, Facebooking, blogging, etc., are all routine tasks that can be performed by any person out there with basic English skills and a friendly personality.

Precisely...and this is why so many programmers, developers, executives and any other kind of "specialist" can justify hiring someone for this position.

Still, also on Twitter some people are way more popular than others.

Am I the only one who believes blogging and email are part of social media?

Other than to troll traffic with controversial post why do so many bloggers make the assumption "that my niche situation / experience applies to everyone everywhere and reveals new fundamental laws that I must loudly proclaim in absolutest terms."

I don't think they believe that assumption, I think they believe that proclaiming assumptions, rules and absolutes in a very loud voice gets people to read your blog(and guess what? It works!).

I'm confused by the suggestion that "social media marketing can't be measured" (and equally perplexed by the suggestion that banner ad effectiveness couldn't be monitored).

Social networks are more popular with marketers not because of their novelty (they've been around in different guises since before the web...) but because they are increasingly centralised on platforms with real names and relationship networks, which offer far more quantitative data on reactions to your product whose relationship to actual sales can be analysed.

And even if you're half-hearted it's a more efficient way to spam with the good old-fashioned coupon code as a measure of how many people that saw your messages circulating on social media networks chose to buy

Just because companies sometimes look at the wrong metrics doesn't mean they aren't there to be observed, or that the benefits aren't there just because "likes" turn out to be only loosely correlated with purchases. The only real losers in the social game are people building networks for people that won't come or won't buy.

I'd disagree that having a dedicated person doing the social media for a company doesn't add value, nothing measurable but I would be very surprised. It depends I guess if you are directly trying to shove something down peoples throats or acting as a channel of communication between an entity or product and potential customers.

I guess many of the most effective uses of social media are very hard measure in terms of a dollar value as you aren't getting people to directly go click on something and spend money. An example would a team I support in AFL, over a period of time they have build up a following on facebook from a large group of supporters, facilitating closer contact between the club and fans and an opportunity to give supporters a convenient place to discuss the club. It's pretty much impossible to measure how this increased interest and involvement from supporters assists their main products, memberships and game attendance, but I feel it is worth the investment.

"Social media marketing can't be measured, at least not effectively. Spending money on social media marketing reminds me of the early 2000s, when you couldn't measure the effectiveness of banner ads. Everyone was spending on it without knowing what the outcome was."

This is very true. While tweeting and facebooking might be very cool, how can you tell it's worth the time you spend doing it without a MEASURABLE return? And if it's not resulting in sales is it worth doing?

If he really believes this, why is he blogging about it?

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