Showing posts with label Opinion. Show all posts

My Thoughts on NetSquared

Posted on Thursday, May 12, 2011 by

I've been meaning to write a post about this for a few weeks and I thought I'd better get it out before the next meetup, Talk Social and Science, on Monday (16/5/2011). Basically I just want to get my own thoughts in order.

"Net Tuesday or NetSquared Local groups are monthly events that take place in cities around the world. These events serve as a great opportunity to convene local communities to share ideas, learn from each other, and even collaborate on projects for real world impact. These gatherings provide a chance to connect for all those interested in the intersection of social technologies and social change in your local community. Members of local groups represent nonprofit organizations and foundations, government agencies and service providers, designers and developers, innovators and social entrepreneurs."

Social Media to Gain Donations & Exposure

The first two meetups seem to have focused mainly on helping charities and other non profits to gain exposure, to lead to donations, by using social media. While I agree that social media is an excellent way to get your message out there, in the long run you're still going to have the same problem of many different foundations competing for limited amounts of money. In the short run, the early adopters will likely benefit from the extra exposure and reach that social media can deliver and giving them a greater proportion of available funds, but are they really more deserving of this just because they got there first?

To see a long term benefit we need to be able to get more people to donate than normally would, and/or get each donor to give more.

Social Media Instead of Donations

Many people don't have, or want to donate, money to a cause. If we can find ways for people to use social media to help instead of giving money then we might see some more positive benefits. For example, during the Christchurch earthquake aftermath there was a Google spreadsheet of missing persons being maintained by Twitter users.

Social Media to Improve Efficiency

If we can improve efficiency we can see everyone benefiting. Charities will be able to do more 'social good' for each dollar of donations and Government departments will be able to reach, inform and help more people and give a better service. Devin touched on this with his presentation on crisis management (did the slides go up anywhere?) and this meetup's title 'Talk Social and Science' looks promising for further discussion on how social media can be used to increase efficiency.

Some Questions to Summarise

How can social media be used to...

  1. Get more people to donate money than normally would?
  2. Get donors to donate more often and/or larger amounts?
  3. Help the cause, not associated with getting more donations?
  4. Improve efficiency of processes within charities, non profits, government etc. ?
Comments Welcome!



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My Initial Thoughts on Twitter

Posted on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 by

I've been using twitter now for about a month. You can find me tweeting about internet marketing @WebMarkAdelaide and I recently starting also tweeting for @SuperPlayCafe as well.


My impression of twitter before I started using it was that it was pretty much a tool that was made up of only facebook status updates. I couldn't have been more wrong. It reminds me of being in a chatroom. Twitter is like a world wide chatroom where you can filter the chats you want to receive, ie. the people, searches and lists that you follow.

@TaschaD posted a summary of a conversation she started on twitter about how the Sausages sold at the Clipsal 500 aren't made in SA. This will give you an idea of how a conversation on twitter can grow and change and jump to different networks like its an organism... its very exciting.

Here are some thoughts on twitter based on my experiences so far:

Differences Between Twitter & Facebook:
  • Twitter is faster- you can be posting updates 30 times per day and thats perfectly acceptable. If you're away for a few hours, you can miss hundreds of relevant tweets that you will never see again unless you go back and look for them.
  • Twitter is more organic- the twitter community interacts in a very organic way where trends and new ways of doing things emerge naturally, where as the use of facebook is very structured just the way M. Zuck wants it.
  • Twitter is simpler- the microblogging platform is much simpler than facebook with most additional functionality added by external applications.
  • Its easier to get more followers on twitter than fans/friends on facebook- all you need to do is join in the conversation and if what you offer is useful and interesting then people will start following you.
  • A little more viral than facebook- 'ReTweeting' seems like a much more common practice on twitter than 'sharing' does on facebook.
Twitter for Business
  • Great for networking- I've found it much better than linkedin for networking (more about this in future post).
  • Industry Updates/Articles/info- It takes the place of Google Reader for me in many ways as I can get article recommendations from those I follow instead of getting them based on the blogs and sites I follow.
Twitter for Personal
  • Many of the people I follow mix personal tweets with professional tweets and still keep it interesting (although I have unfollowed people who post a lot of personal tweets which I'm not interested in).
  • Somehow those mundane sounding tweets about what you're eating for lunch don't seem so mundane after all, although I'm sure they would be if that's all you tweeted about.
  • For me Twitter is still primarily a business tool.



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