Talking Point

What's not to like? Why Facebook will never have a Dislike button

By Craig Regan

Pondering the Federal Budget? Concerned about the prospects for peace in the Middle East or simply pondering the existence of a god? Worry no more. The single most important issue in the world today is Facebook’s lack of a Dislike button.

For anyone cut off from modern society and technology – and I’m thinking people who are Amish, strict Methodists or members of The Australian Greens – you need to know that Facebook users view the world as a blue-themed stream of comments, pictures and videos on a computer screen.

People used to interact with friends by phoning or dropping by their house for a drink or a coffee. Now they do it through acknowledging a post on their Facebook wall by clicking a button called Like.

The lack of a Dislike button sticks in lots of craws - and fair enough. It’s very limiting.

Nobody in the real world walks around “liking” everything unless they’ve been lobotomised, inducted into a hippy commune or live in Nimbin. All of which are more or less the same thing.

It’s oddly uncomfortable to see a Facebook friend mourn the loss of a loved one on their wall and have “liking” what they posted as the only option. Unless, of course, callous Aunt Millie also left you out of her will or Iggy the axolotl was particularly ugly.

Assuming they ever became “friends”, would Tony Abbott ever like anything on Julia Gillard’s Facebook wall? There’s more chance of Bob Katter’s Far North Queensland electorate freezing over – although judging by some of his past statements, Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery might say it’s on the cards.

No, if Abbott’s really Mr Negative he’s going to use that Dislike button more often than a disgraced MP plonks a trade union credit card on the counter at a knock shop and says: “Charge me!”

Every few months someone threatens to bring a Dislike button to Facebook - and it always turns out to be a scam or a lame browser add-on that’s only visible to worshippers of Google Chrome.

Disliking is simply not part of the Facebook World. Social media is about connecting "friends” and encouraging interaction. A Dislike button would mayhem.

If Google Circles was meant to be a place for fights it would be called Google Boxing Rings.

So if you see this blog piece on a Facebook feed, don’t forget to “like” it and pass it on. And if you dislike it – suck eggs.

 

With augmented reality, there's a whole lotta Shakur going on

 

The live rapper is on the left.

 

By Craig Regan

Yo - listen up: Dead American rap stars may soon be coming to a stage near you.

One of the biggest hits/creepiest moments of last weekend at Coachella, the world’s biggest music festival, was an appearance by Tupac Shakur who joined recent Australian visitor Snoop Dogg on "Come With Me”, "Hail Mary" and "Gangsta Party."

This was a surprise to almost everyone at this show in the middle of the Californian desert because Tupac died in a hail of bullets 15 years ago.

The appearance was at night so there’s no blaming sunstroke.

Another Tupac song, “"I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto", went unperformed.

Tupac got the virtual gig on the strength of being a computer generated image. You can watch the video here. It’s a stunning example of augmented reality, where a live view of a physical, real-world environment is supplemented by computer-generated sensory input.

It’s one of the fastest-developing new media frontiers and has the potential to take news and entertainment off our TV flat screens and onto a coffee table or living room floor, in 3D.

There's some technical discussion here (and an explanation why it wasn't a "hologram".)

There’s no word yet if Dead Tupac will take to the road and play venues around the world. This takes Madonna and Milli Vanilli's miming to another level.

Presumably Tupac’s image projection equipment will need a first-class airline seat. At least promoters can rest easy knowing his backstage food, booze and drug requirements will be light on.

 

What's a hipster worth? About $33, it seems

By Craig Regan

The Urban Dictionary defines “hipsters” as “a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter”.

Tight jeans, thick-rimmed glasses, shaggy or androgynous haircuts are a trademark of this mainly white grouping. Hipsters yearn to be “effortlessly cool”. The label has its origins in the jazz scene of the 1940s and in the ‘50s and ‘60s you might have called them “Bohemians” or “beatnicks”.

Why does this matter to a blog that’s about PR and media? It’s about Facebook buying Instagram.

Instagram is a free smartphone app that applies a filter to a user’s photo to make it look vintage, shadowy or a faded pastel colour. Yes, it’s that useful.

Instagram is like an extension of an arm for a hipster, smartphones being a pre-existing part of the same limb.

Many people are wondering why Facebook would pay a billion bucks for a company with no discernible revenue stream and barely more than a dozen employees. A company that still hasn’t worked out how to moneytize its service.

It’s about engagement.

Instagram has 31 million users. They upload an estimated five million photos a day. All of those users have email addresses and have given away snippets of information to use this free service.

In a digital economy information equals money.

You still have to wonder if Instagram users are somehow a premium commodity.

Thirty-one million people is a substantial customer base to build on in anyone’s language, but a back of the envelope calculation puts the value of each of those users at a tad over $33 each.

Even the dialect of Facebook - where they regularly deal in numbers with strings of multiple zeroes - that's a massive chunk of change to reach pretentious tossers in thick-rimmed glasses and ironic slogan T-shirts. 

Why live chat when you can go social and vent? A customer service tale

By Craig Regan

From the UK comes the revelation that 93 percent of businesses aren’t using online live chat to serve their customers. According to a media release, live chat is a tool to “help avoid call centre misunderstandings that arise from unintelligible accents”.

Putting aside (a.) news is what’s happening, not what isn’t and (b.) this nugget comes from a survey by a maker of – you guessed it – live chat software, it throws a light on the role of digital media in customer complaints.

I stumbled out of a peak-hour morning Sydney train late last week with a red paint smear on the back of my shirt after a close encounter with graffiti on a seat.

My first action was to vent on Facebook.  

My next was to click a link sent by a responder to my rant.

This link takes you to the CityRail website. Is it surprising to find a dead page?

Google eventually found turned up a website complaint form and in surprisingly short time a classic “we care about you” holding response landed in the inbox, promising that someone would investigate.

Big bureaucracies operate in ponderous ways and I’m due a further reply on the Tuesday after Easter.

I do know the dry cleaning bill will be in the electronic mail that goes back.

There’s something satisfying about venting and the best service organisations know that most complaints can be defused by listening and showing empathy - even when there’s no concrete remedy in sight.

There are customer-facing organisations using digital media well and others using it appallingly.

Telstra is in the former category. Its use of Twitter to respond to customers is one of the more creative uses of the microblogging tool and it works because it’s direct and almost instantaneous. (Disclosure: Telstra is a Lighthouse client.)

Back to that UK survey and there was one useful kernel in a finding that 71 percent of people who’d emailed an organisation for service were waiting for a reply.

Talk about hanging on the telephone (apologies to Blondie – and the Nerves who were the other New York band that recorded it first.)

Why have an email address if it’s ignored? Answering the rhetorical question in the comments section is entirely voluntary but it seems like having a post office box that you never empty.    

 

Online sole mates in six-inch stilettos

By Craig Regan

Working in PR throws up some interesting facts. One is that Malaysia is officially where retailing, social media and online lonely-hearts meet.

The New York Daily News reports that Kuala Lumpur retailer “Shoes Shoes Shoes” is offering customers a free date with every footwear purchase.

Women who buy a pair of shoes and leave their details are matched with potential partners by an online dating site. These men are selected from the agency’s database after nominating a pair of shoes that they like.

From there, it’s like an episode of Perfect Match, Malaysia-style, as the store’s Facebook site explains:

“Buy a pair of shoes from a gorgeous selection in the store and dating consultants will pair you with an eligible bachelor who likes the same shoe design as you and arrange for the two of you to meet. The end? Of course not. To prove that chivalry is still very much alive, a gift in the form of a shoe discount voucher awaits you on your first date, courtesy of Prince Charming. Sounds like a fairy tale? Well, who says life can't be one for real. So get to it girl! Let the shoes decide your destiny.”

At least there’ll be an icebreaker if both dating parties turn up in Prada pink and purple sling-backs.

Facebook comments have ranged from “brilliant” to “supremely creepy.” The media coverage is going gang-busters with 60-plus online news articles and counting.

Apart from consenting podiatrists engaging in mutual foot massages, does taste in shoes really make for compatibility? If there’s probably a scientific study that says so, you can bet the evidence will be as credible as last week’s horoscope.

Leaving aside puns about these shoe-focussed couples being toey or turning out to be heels, the reality is that shifts in match-making are as seismic as those in media. For example, a 2009 study found that nine percent of married Australian couples met online. 

While the date-and-dine thing looks more a quick grab for publicity than a way to put couples on the path to life-partner bliss, if the boot was on the other foot and you wanted to make a mark in retail, you might wish you’d thought of it first.

Photo credit: http://www.nextnature.net/2008/12/high-heels/

 

The curious case of Slippery Pete's disappearing tweets

Who does newly-installed Speaker in the Australian Parliament, Peter Slipper, follow when he joins Twitter? A select handful of people, as it turns out.

We spied Slippery Pete's @PeterSlipperMP account earlier this afternoon and at the time of posting, he had 139 followers but was only following three.

The Courier Mail's national political correspondent Anna Caldwell and former Liberal colleagues Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull were the elite tweeps. 

No Julia and no Krudd.

Chatter on Twitter is that the account is genuine and Pete's been deleting tweets almost as fast as he's been posting them.

What's left is pretty banal.

What price wall-to-wall coverage in the Daily Telegraph tomorrow (which is where stole the digitally-altered graphic)?

Creative video another way of pushing HR cred

By Craig Regan

At Lighthouse Communications Group, we spend a lot of time helping clients show why they’re a great place to work.

Everyone wants to be an “employer of choice” because it means a company can attract the best talent.

Sometimes even good companies can struggle to cut through the clutter and make their voice heard.

That’s why we love this recruitment video from Twitter. It speaks to the platform which is all about directly communicating, but leans heavily on the fun factor. View it here.  

 

Thanks for the invitation but I have some drying paint I need to watch

Heard of FourSquare, the location-aware social media application that allows you to tell people what shop, restaurant or nightclub you've arrived at?

Many decry it as an online flag to housebreakers who can rob your home blind while you're otherwise occupied, but increasing numbers of businesses are using it to drive traffic to their front-door with the lure of exclusive offers. Speaking for myself, I'm not feeling like I need to advertise which pub's benefitting from my idea of economic stimulus.

A group of New York City progammers are using FourSquare to vett who goes to their New  Years' Eve party in Brooklyn this year. The story's here and don't forget to check the video. Watch it until the end - and make your own judgement about whether it looks like the happening sort of party you'd like to attend.  

Black and white WikiLeaks boosters miss some points

Is it the year’s biggest story or much ado about not much at all? The WikiLeaks brawl is dividing media watchers, PR professionals and just about anyone else with two cents worth of opinion to impart. As the Festive Season is all about giving, here are a few free thoughts from this modest corner of cyberspace:

News is supposed to be something you don’t already know.

By that definition, there hasn’t been a lot of news in the stream of so-called revelations being channelled (in Australia) by WikiLeaks via a deal with the Fairfax press.

Yes, multinationals exert influence in third world countries like Nigeria. Burma wants a nuclear capability. Kevin Rudd has an ego. World War II might even be over.

Notice a pattern? Conventional media channels broke all of the above long before they were raised by WikiLeaks.

Not all the WikiLeaks material can be dismissed but let’s get things into perspective. For the most part the story (cue Marshall McLuhan) is the way the leaks are being broadcast, not the content.

Leaking government information is fine – if the information relates to someone else.

The other definition of news is something you know that you don’t want other people to know. Elected Governments are granted executive powers to use with discretion.

For the most part, they do exercise care – or they pay for it at the ballot box – and some of their dealings are confidential because unintentional (or wilful) misinterpretation hampers their ability to function.

The issue of balancing the public need to know against national interests (by naming, say, Taliban informants and lives at risk) has been well-canvassed.  

But if it’s fine to leak “in confidence” communications between officials and the elected leaders why wouldn’t it be OK for WikiLeaks to broadcast the tax file numbers and personal details of citizens? Or is that sort of leak off limits because it doesn’t undermine a government?

 Is “citizen journalist” a misnomer?

There’s a difference between raw information and the stuff that’s been analysed and interpreted – that’s when it becomes intelligence.

Conventional media is full of intelligence. Its relevance comes from the process of journalists putting pieces information in order of importance and providing analysis, without straying into subjective opinion (unless it’s marked as “commentary”.)

At a risk of being seen as a booster for the declining “old” media, two points should be made about Internet citizen journalism.

Firstly, it’s an extension of word-of-mouth. The conversation around the water cooler every Monday morning is important human interaction but who’s to say the juicy piece of hearsay isn’t baseless gossip that’s just being perpetuated?

Secondly, citizen journalism is only as credible as the person generating the online copy and when you accept the work of a blogger or online columnist you’re putting a lot of trust in someone you don’t know.

Of course a citizen journalist would never be tempted to create mischief or do the bidding of a rival government to destabilise.