Social Media – Page 5

Drink! Feck! Girls! RSS!

January 4, 2011

The world it seems is full of blog posts about RSS – really simple syndication, for the non-dorks. Apparently it’s dead. Or dying. Or very much alive.

RSS is a standard for publishing the latest content on a site with regular updates – such as a news site, or a blog – in a machine readable form which can then be used by other sites or applications to republish it.

Here’s an example of the sort of panicky things people are saying:

If RSS isn’t saved now, if browser vendors don’t realise the potential of RSS to save users a whole bunch of time and make the web better for them, then the alternative is that I will have to have a Facebook account, or a Twitter account, or some such corporate-controlled identity, where I have to “Like” or “Follow” every website’s partner account that I’m interested in, and then have to deal with the privacy violations and problems related with corporate-owned identity owning a list of every website I’m interested in (and wanting to monetise that list), and they, and every website I’m interested in, knowing every other website I’m interested in following, and then I have to log in and check this corporate owned identity every day in order to find out what’s new on other websites, whilst I’m advertised to, because they are only interested in making the biggest and the best walled garden that I can’t leave.

Anyone still awake?

Here’s the thing for me: RSS cannot ‘die’ because it is a standard and not a service. Even if every website on the planet stopped producing an RSS feed, it wouldn’t die. It just wouldn’t be used much. There is no RSS corporation and so talking about its death is, well, exaggerated.

The other point is that this is a discussion about consumer use of RSS, which tends to be in the form of using an aggregator to pull in the latest content from all your favourite sites into one place. I use Google Reader to subscribe to about 750 sites, for instance.

I said ‘tends to’ but if I am honest a tiny number of people actually do this. Most get their links from Twitter or Facebook and by having bookmarks to their real favourites. Indeed, quite a few people who used to use an aggregator are now relying on social networks rather than managing their own list of feeds.

To this I respond, so what? People move on. I’m still in love with Google Reader, but there are plenty of others who are just as connected and up to speed as me (if not more so) who have given up. The world won’t end.

It’s also irrelevant for the future of RSS, which will continue to be an important part of the infastructure of the web. Lots of sites and applications use RSS feeds as the source of their content. This won’t end soon.

At the end of the day, RSS was never going to be a consumer technology, and it didn’t take off in the enterprise either. It just wasn’t good enough at tackling the issue of infobesity, and people have turned instead to using their friends and contacts on social networks as their filters.

Fair enough.

Update: Thanks to @baskers who pointed out I had missed the ‘Drink!’ out of the title originally.

#testittuesday – public service use of twitter par excellence

December 9, 2010

I had a great day yesterday (Wednesday) at the FirePro seminar on social media use in Fire and Rescue Services.

I have a load of notes to type up and share here, but one thing really jumped out at me during the day – the #testittuesday campaign.

Basically, it’s a simple public safety campaign to get people to test their smoke alarms every week, on a Tuesday. The hashtag is used, and folk are encouraged to retweet it to get more coverage.

It was started by Elle from Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service, who gave an entertaining and informative presentation to the group about how it all came about. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a vast amount of planning – it just seemed like a good idea and Elle just got on with it.

Here’s why I think this is a great campaign, and an almost perfect use of Twitter as a public service campaign:

It’s completely within the existing culture of Twitter – all about the hashtag and the social nature of the message – it’s all about people passing it on
It’s simple – just a quick reminder to people to perform one straightforward action
Very low barriers to entry – no need to sign up for anything you aren’t already a member of. If you’re on twitter you see the message, and with one click you forward it on to your friends
It’s uncontroversial – nobody is going to take umbrage at being reminded to do something that’s easy to forget, and yet potentially life saving
It’s not about the fire service’s own twitter account – this isn’t some bid to get more followers. It’s about getting the message out to as many people as possible
It takes advantage of the trust people have in their networks. If a fire service asks me on twitter to check my fire alarm, I might do it – but I’m more likely to if some of my friends do so

I think there’s lots to learn here for all public services wanting to make the most of social media channels. Always consider the medium you are using, and what sort of behaviour works well. Don’t ask too much of people, keep it simple and straightforward. Above all, don’t make it about you or your organisation, but about the message you want to get out.

The book

December 2, 2010

So, the contracts are signed and returned, and it’s all official. I’m writing a book.

Sorry to all of my fans out there who were hoping this would be my first volume of poetry – you’ll all just have to wait a bit longer for that.

No, my book is going to be on my specialist subject: the use of social technology in public services.

The story behind this was that I was approached by Gower Publishing a couple of months ago to see if I would be interested in a writing project. Having met up with them and talked about what would be in the book, it seemed like a wonderful opportunity.

So, by August, I need to get 60,000 words written up and in some semblance of order. To help me in this task, I’ll be using the excellent Scrivener app on the Mac. I’ll also be sharing bits of the book as I draft them here on the blog, to get some feedback and make sure I’m not going off in totally the wrong direction. Everyone who comments will be acknowledged, I promise!

Here’s a brief outline of what the book will include (aside from the usual boring introductions and things):

The social media revolution – the changes taking place in the ways people communicate, socialise, work and play.
Digital engagement – explaining the specific context for public services – why this stuff matters to them
The toolkit – high level discussion of the activities and behaviours online, and some the tools used to express them
Designing and implementing your strategy – what the things are you need to consider and include, and some templates and examples
Governance and risk – pretending there’s no risk using new technology is as bad as deciding it’s too risky to bother with! Governance systems, risk logs, policies and training all will be covered here
Building engagement – how to get people to actually look at and interact with your stuff
Measuring success – what to measure, how to do it and what success might look like

I’m also going to be wanting as many real life stories and examples as possible for inclusion, so if you would like to see your name and work in print please do get in touch!

If you’d like to be kept informed about progress and when the book is likely to be published, please do ping me an email – dave@learningpool.com – and I will put you on a list!

Right, I’d better start typing…

Where next for digital engagement?

July 6, 2010

I’ve been thinking quite a bit since the election about where digital engagement activity fits in during this age of austerity in which we find ourselves.

I’ll be honest and say I’ve had a bit of a crisis of confidence lately – after all, it seems to be a strange time to be encouraging public sector organisations to be spending their time playing with Facebook while people’s jobs are being lost.

But of course, that’s a slightly cynical way of looking at it, and there is certainly an argument that during time of massive budget cuts, the public need to be involved more than ever in helping to refine decisions and policies, to ensure that as few mistakes are made as possible.

What’s certainly true is that public sector use of the internet as an engagement tool has to become more embedded in other workstreams – it can’t afford to be on the fringes.

Here’s some kind of random, half-baked observations which taken together sum up where I’m at in my thinking of how all this hangs together. I’d welcome thoughts to bake it all a little more.

1. Digital engagement needs to be part of something bigger

I don’t like the phrase ‘Government 2.0’ much, so the something bigger hopefully isn’t that. I quite like ‘Open Government’, and digital engagement is part of that, as is open data and general increases in transparency from government.

I’d say the type of social innovation activity as discussed at Local by Social – and so strongly and passionately supported by Dominic Campbell and team – can also be a part of this.

2. Many of the new initiatives are derived from the internet, or are reliant on it in some way

The Big Society idea probably couldn’t exist without the internet. In many ways it is taking net culture and applying it to the way society can work together better.

For this to work, people need to understand the net and its culture – to remind themselves that it is not just the domain of swivel-eyed right wing nutcases, porn fiends and illegal downloaders.

It’s also about getting the proposition right, to ensure government can tap into cognitive surplus, to reach out to people to get involved on terms that suit them, not the terms that suits government.

3. Social media is just part of digital

(This is the weakest part of this post and while I know what I want to say, I’m aware I don’t articulate it at all well.)

Probably an obvious point, but I think we need to stop talking about social media – Simon Wakeman’s post is quite instructive here – and instead treat the web as a whole. Most decent digital engagement projects anyway mix use of pretty traditional websites, use of social media tools and engaging with existing groups, which can use a wide range of technology (see below).

Social media will stick around as a buzz-word, and there is still a significant job of capacity building to be done to encourage people to think how these tools can bring positive benefit to government activity, and equipping people with skills.

4. Open data

I’m no expert on this at all, and other than being aware that it is a good thing, I’m not sure how much I can add, at least on the technical side of things. I see open data as providing some of the building blocks required for the social innovators mentioned above, and as a way of increasing transparency in government.

As Simon Dickson noted,

Data is good at asking questions, but rarely gives clear answers.

I’ve certainly got my concerns about how data is interpreted and who does the context-setting – but I really don’t see this as an argument for not doing it.

5. Tapping into existing networks will be key

I really think the focus moving forward will be to tie Big Society type ideas with cognitive surplus and digital engagement to encourage pre-existing locality or issue based networks to get involved in government processes. I just don’t think the public sector will have the time to build and manage their own communities.

Instead, what little time and money is available should be spent on building robust, constructive arrangements with those people – whether volunteers or those doing it for profit – with the ability to build online networks.

Summing up

So, digital engagement needs to be a part of something bigger, which may or may not be called ‘open government’, and which is made up of social innovation, utilising cognitive surplus, making data available to support activity and tapping into existing networks to get things done.

I just need to figure out where I fit into all of this…

Photo by eurleif.

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