TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

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Conde Nast ‘flip’ social networking

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With so many social networking sites now available, it takes something special to actually make me sit up and take notice.
But new Beta site www.flip.com has managed it for two reasons. Set up for teenage girls, it offers a lot of features over rival sites, with textures, animations, and customisation with stickers etc laid over profiles. Interesting, but not enough to really make it stand out.

The interesting bit is that it’s not the result of a tiny American start-up, funded by venture capitalists. It’s actually from magazine and website publisher Conde Nast. That makes it, as far as I’m aware, the first time a major ‘traditional’ publisher has got in on the ground floor of a social networking site. (I know Fox bought Myspace, but the site was already huge by the time they started negotiating).

I think it’s a very wise move. Not only does the site have a software advantage, but the publisher of the likes of Vogue and Glamour should be able to leverage enough of an audience from existing print brands to give it a head start over most similar start-ups and sites. The only question for me is whether a networking site is truly viable without the promise of interaction with the opposite sex.

(Incidentally, someone recently brought Flirtomatic to my attention, which does the job in the most simplistic and immediate way). Flip tip-off from downloadsquad.com.

IT could lead the revolution…

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In many companies, the IT dept are seen as the geeky blokes who come and fix your PC when it breaks, and maybe, those who monitor your emails and snaffle all your best gossip and naughty links…

But isn’t there a possibility that someone, somewhere, could make the decision to allow them to lead the changes needed in companies that haven’t been web aware?

Consider this… almost all the great internet brand names come, somewhere along the line, from fairly technical, or at least web savvy people being involved. From Microsoft through to Myspace, Picasa or Wikipedia, there was, at some point, a geek in a fairly prominent position in the company to make the technical side happen, and convey the enthusiasm of a new peer-to-peer TV service like Joost, for example.

In most ‘traditional’ companies, tech words are part of business lingo speak, and to be derided. Meanwhile anyone who can actually log into a site is seen as a tech geek.

Part of this is down to the fact that for most people, their PC is a locked down typewriter. Your email is monitored, downloads are blocked, and sites are banned. And this stops anyone with a vague interest in learning more from actually being able to do anything, unless they can afford a PC of their own, and want to devote their spare time to it. Meanwhile the IT people are seen as a barrier to innovation, and spend their time apologising for the fact you can’t download a new patch to save time, effort, and money in your day job…

So why not actually look to change? Why not encourage any appropriate person in the company to download new software, register to new sites, and actually experience the point of having a net connection in the first place? Even if it’s simply using an IM client to chat, it means somewhere is getting more knowledge about the possibilities out there, and might end up selling advertising, or come up with an entirely new variation.?

The only reasons I can see are the fears that everyone would spend all day mucking around (unlikely…in my opinion the novelty soon wears off. And most people probably wouldn’t be fussed, limiting the interest to those most suited for experimentation and learning), and the threat of internet trojans, viruses, and other malware. But surely it’s better to have an IT dept that is completely up-to-date and taking on those threats and beating them, rather than trying to simply avoid encountering problems. After all, every new business idea comes from identifying and tackling challenges and risks, and that’s what stops every man and his dog from having an idea like Google, or Ebay. And then IT will even be seen as a force for good.

And as an example of this irony, I’m lucky enough to have greater access on my PC currently. Yet I need to get an IT engineer to let me run an anti-virus scan… Genius.

The next step…

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You might have read my last post, covering the depression currently affecting some people in media companies. You may not. Either way, I’m going to try and share some of the things that make me come back to my day job, my internet hobbies, and indeed this blog…

Last week, I was making a presentation to our advertising staff. Despite not being one of my best efforts, one of the questions at the end was about how I’d gained my knowledge about the web and what formal training I had.

The answer is no formal training at all. Here’s how I’ve learnt the little I know about the internet.

1. Have a passion for it. Actively be interested in it. Desire to find out how things work, or why something is successful.

2. Read everything you can. Use Live Bookmarks in Firefox, RSS feeds and aggregators to find out as much about the subject as you can.

3. Experiment. Don’t just talk about a social networking site like Myspace. Sign up and use the thing. That way you’ll be able to offer your own insights, and just as important, be able to spot when someone is talking rubbish. Want to learn about blogging? Start one. it doesn’t have to be about your day job, but if you try and make your blog the best it can be you’ll learn loads. This blog has a loooooong way to go, but every step pays me back with knowledge, if not cash.

4. Take an interest in marketing, search engine optimisation and particularly tracking. Finding out the best tracking systems for your blog and RSS feeds will inform you about what works best, and how to improve….

For starters, try www.downloadsquad.com, www.engadget.com, www.theregister.com for some info.

Try Firefox as your browser, or download RSSreader.

Blogger for blogs isn’t a bad place to start. For social networking, begin with Myspace, and start from there.

And for tracking Feedburner seems pretty good, and MyBlogLog offers good tracking and community aspects…

But I’m always hear to keen more suggestions, so make sure you leave a comment with a suggestion of at least one site or application for me to check out

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