Has there ever been a water cooler moment about people having a chat by the water cooler? Sorry if that’s a bit meta for this time of day. There’s a point hovering just out of sight, I’m almost sure of it.

(Moreover, do people really stand around the water cooler talking about the latest water cooler moment? Me, I’m not at the water cooler long enough to chat about celebrity cellulite or the latest televisual cliffhanger. Glass in place, press the button, fill her up, off I go. Maybe water cooler moments are just another whimsical invention of marketing people. Like the suggestion that any sane woman would feel genuinely humiliated if her whites where noticeably less white than someone else’s whites. Digression ends.)

Back to my original, head-spinning question. Social media is being touted as the latest must have for creating connections with potential consumers or employees.

But it’s essential to remember that social media is never where these relationships with brands start. If people are going to talk about you, you need to give them something to talk about.

Blazingly obvious when you spell it out. But it’s a fact that many seem to overlook in the rush to generate Twitter followers and Facebook fans.

Social media can’t create relationships where none exist; but, used smartly, it can strengthen those you’ve already developed.

It’s not where the buzz starts. It’s where it continues.

Like a whale, the web refuses to stop growing. Search engines have to wade through more and more flotsam and jetsam to find useful results. This makes it ever more challenging for them to complete searches quickly. Google’s ‘Caffeine’ update aims to redress the balance and get your search results to you faster – in roughly half the time. But that’s by no means the only change in this major update. Google are always very secretive about exactly how they rank websites and pages (i.e. what makes them likely to be returned from a Google search), but here’s a quick taste of some of the changes announced:

• Apart from looking through websites periodically, Google will search live feeds from social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. These ‘blended results’ will allow real-time searches of rapidly changing content  
• New ranking factors for websites and pages. For instance, the length of time a domain name has been registered will now affect the ranking, in favour of sites that have been live for longer
• Sites hosted on faster servers now have an extra advantage as Google will give a better ranking for pages being quickly delivered
• New methods for avoiding spam-like sites that pretend to be something they’re not to achieve a high search engine rank.

As Google is in the process of rolling out Caffeine, some people will be using it already, while others might have a few weeks to wait. If you’re eager to see how searches using Google Caffeine differ from the old Google, you can race them side-by-side at http://www.comparecaffeine.com 

Of course, we’re updating our own Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy to reflect these changes, but first I’m off for some real caffeine.

Just a quick note to provide proof of life.

It’s been a chocka few weeks here at the soaring glass, chrome and testosterone-fuelled testament to man’s hubris we call WMW Towers.  But normal service will be resumed shortly.

In fact, if you average out all our posts, we’re probably still just about meeting the SLA implicit in the title of B.L.O.G. (Learnt that trick from the rail companies).

TTFN. Got stuff to do ‘n’ that.

If you didn’t catch it on The Hub, here are some pithy (ahem) thoughts on using 2.0 for IC purposes. Enjoy.

There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.
Here’s where we are. Web 2.0 has finally filtered through to the corporate consciousness and IC professionals are being told in no uncertain terms that they need to make it an integral part of their future plans. Trouble is, no one knows exactly how to do so. Not only is there a widespread lack of knowledge about how it all actually works but – more significantly – applications that deliver a measurable business benefit are currently all but non existent.

So, you’ve got two choices. Do nothing. Seriously. You could just keep your powder dry and wait two years for other people to be the guinea pigs for you. The other is to embrace the new opportunities social networking presents and accept that there will inevitably be some trial and error along the way.

Why you need to act now
If Web 2.0 was simply a technological advance, then waiting for other people to iron out the bugs would probably be the smart choice. Ask any of the early adopters who invested in one of the spectacularly fault-prone first batch of Xbox 360s. But social networking is not primarily a technological change. The top 2.0 players like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr did not reach pre-eminence through technological superiority – they simply came up with innovative new ways for people to harness the unique attributes of the web.

In reality, Web 2.0 is (or, in the case of most businesses, will be) a cultural change. Its significance lies in the way it’s changing people’s behaviour; they way they connect, collaborate and share their opinions, ideas and experiences. But why is this distinction so important?

Because technological changes are relatively straightforward. You finish work one evening. Overnight the IT fairies replace your clunky old file server with a leaner, meaner machine. Voila. Okay, that’s a slightly trite example. But the fact is that cultural change invariably takes longer and is far less predictable.

Take flexible working. For more than a decade we’ve been promised a revolution in the way we manage our work/life balance. The reality is that even now most organisations are struggling to adjust to the implications of this change, and flexible working is either a matter of swapping an hour here for an hour there or simply not an option.

We’ll look at the nature of the cultural change that Web 2.0 will demand of your organisation in a moment. The important point here is that if you’re going to be equipped to embrace the benefits of social networking when it matures, you need to plant the seeds of that cultural change now. Otherwise, when the time comes you’ll simply be giving people tools they have no interest in or ability to use.

Things are gonna change ‘round here
Even today, communication within an organisation overwhelmingly travels through the y axis: vertically, from top to bottom and – when a mood of egalitarianism takes us – from bottom to top. So, the Board tells the senior managers and the senior managers tell the line managers and the line managers tell the team members. Or the other way around. The IC team’s job is to manage this flow effectively, making sure the flood of information is channelled into neat little streams that (to extend the metaphor) irrigate the right people. It’s manageable. It kind of works. And, best of all, it’s a known quantity.

But here’s the thing. If we had a penny for every time an organisation told us that one of the most insurmountable problems face by their business was a tendency for people/teams to work in ‘silos’, we’d have retired to live the high life many moons ago. We claim to live in the Information Age, yet genuine cross-functional knowledge sharing is a remarkably rare best.

Our contention is that social networking has the power to add an entirely new dimension to the IC model – the much sought-after x axis of horizontal knowledge sharing. While peer-to-peer is not the only application of social networking – a CEO’s blog, for example, is a useful way for people to keep abreast of the latest developments – it is certainly the most credible and appropriate.

Giving Twitter feeds exclusively to the executive team, for example, is a woeful underuse of its potential. The power of micro-blogging lies in sharing a high volume of ‘snippets’ that can be searched, organised, redirected and responded to, revealing insights and trends that may otherwise have remained hidden; not as a forum for a limited number of individuals to espouse the company line.

This, of course, is antithetical to the ubiquitous command-and-control style that (to a greater or lesser extent) almost all organisations are built around. There are understandable anxieties about a lack of control of the messages that go out. But this control has always been an illusion.

Come for a drink with us after a bad day at the office and you’ll soon realise that people have always been able to communicate ideas the ‘Company’ may not approve of. The difference here is that, through social networking, these views – both positive and negative – can be harnessed to make changes for the better or stimulate innovation rather than being frittered away into the ether.

Put simply – and whether you like it or not – the future lies with those individuals and organisations that understand how to use social networking to connect with their colleagues and, indeed, the world outside the business. Influence is born of relationships, and increasingly social networking is where these relationships will be forged.

You better be ready. Because you know your competitors will be.

What not to do
We mentioned earlier that you could always take a step back and wait to see what happens. Who knows, maybe all this Web 2.0 stuff is a fad? You could just hop on the Web 3.0 bus when it turns up. But what you simply can’t afford to do is take the actively Luddite approach. By which we mean:

DO NOT BAN FACEBOOK

Or Twitter, or Bebo, or Flickr or Delicious or any Web 2.0 site. We understand the temptation. Why should your employees spend salaried time essentially chatting with their friends? The same argument was made when email become prevalent. While some still deprive their people of this tool, the overwhelming trend was for company after company to relent and end the email embargo. Let’s learn from history and not repeat our mistakes.

If that doesn’t persuade you, here are three practical reasons why a light touch beats a heavy hand:

1. Unproductive people are unproductive people – if they aren’t on Facebook, they’ll be fashioning increasingly large rubber band balls. On the flip side, productive people are exactly that, and deserve your trust anyway.
2. We’re talking about changing your culture to embrace the benefits of social networking. So, why would you prevent your people from becoming experts in it?
3. Like email, social networking is rapidly becoming seen as a ‘basic right’ as the lines between company time and personal time continue to blur. You might not agree – but are you willing to disillusion your existing staff and alienate potential recruits?

Test the waters
The adoption of Web 2.0 doesn’t have to be a binary decision – ‘you’re either in or you’re out’. Like anything new, you might like to dip a toe before diving in. A simple way to do this is to ‘borrow’ some of the core mechanics of a social networking application and use them for a specific, limited (and therefore controllable) purpose. Here’s an example.

We recently worked with O2 to conduct a company-wide cultural ‘temperature check’ to uncover 11,000 people’s views on everything from their working environment and remuneration to their understanding of (and engagement with) the brand strategy.

One of the research tools we developed was an e-zine where employees could post short comments on a range of questions that were updated throughout the two-week research process. These comments were then dynamically posted to the e-zine so everyone could see what their peers had to say on the key issues.

We ultimately garnered a large volume of bite-sized views on a variety of issues ranging from the day-to-day to the big picture. Does all this sound familiar? Our ‘Twitter Lite’ adopted some of the conventions established by social networking sites to enable us to gain a more textured and human understanding of O2’s culture – enriching and complementing the insights gathered through more traditional research tools.

“Our brand is all about helping people connect, so exploring the benefits of social networking is a logical progression for us,” explained Jenny Burns, Head of Internal Communications at O2. “This project may have been only a small step forward, but it’s provided an invaluable demonstration to the business that these applications can be harnessed for internal communications.”

Another example of incremental adoption is found closer to home. One of our web slingers recently spent his lunchtime embedding our office Spotify playlist in our website (wmwuk.net/musichall). Visitors can see what we’re listening to and even add their own choices to the mix. The day will surely come when an impatient client uses the William Tell Overture to chivvie us along.

All this hints that the immediate future of social networking within organisations may lie in proprietary applications that offer a greater degree of control then their full-blown counterparts. This will limit the impact of Web 2.0 in the short term, but that may be no bad thing at a time when we’re yet to understand the implications of untrammelled peer-to-peer communication.

Don’t panic
If all this seems a little overwhelming, take solace from this:

Your skills as a communications professional are as relevant today as they’ve always been

Remember when everyone said the internet would herald the end of newspapers? Or e-readers would be the death knell of the printed book? In the same way, perhaps it’s best to look at social networking as simply a toolkit of new channels – they are supplementary, not a replacement. Yes, we’ve all got plenty to learn. But all of it will be founded on the skills in empathy, clarity and information management that happily you already have.

In fact, dig a little deeper and you might just find that social networking will empower you like never before. IC has always been just as much about listening as it is about talking. And Web 2.0 comes equipped with a growing set of tools to help you filter, analyse and digest what’s being shared across the social networks in your organisation.

For example, tools like Trendrr will enable you to measure and compare words and phrases being used so you can, say, identify hot issues being discussed by employees. Twitter allows you to search through a seemingly overwhelming volume of tweets to distil a list of contributions on a specific topic of interest. And semantic tools continue to improve enabling you to unearth more textured insights than those that can be achieved by basic word of phrase searches.

So, instead of picturing yourself sat on the sidelines as a hailstorm of uncontrolled messaging rains haphazardly throughout the organisation, imagine yourself sitting at the centre of a web, plucking useful tidbits as they flow past and redirecting them where needed. It’s exciting stuff.

Just one more thing
If you only take one thing away from this little treatise, then let it be this:

We’re all in this together

Whatever anyone might tell you, no one yet knows how to most effectively use social networking tools for internal communications (though it should be noted that plenty of progress is being made on the recruitment side of things – get in touch and we’ll be happy to share it with you).

Perhaps the best first step you can take is to sit down with your agency of choice and simply explore the possibilities of cross-referencing your business and IC challenges with the functionality offered by Web 2.0 tools.

Understandably given that it’s all still in its infancy, people still seem to be getting to grips with the features of social networking. It’s high time we all joined forces to explore the benefits. And those benefits will only emerge from a combination of business-specific insights, communications expertise and functional understanding.

A #dystopian tale of human enslavement and microblogging

Chapter Three
Man, it was hot. I’m talking Northern line in August hot. I stood there with trickles of sweat scuttling down my back like refrigerated Pachinko balls. What was taking them so damn long?

I thought about buzzing again, but that would’ve reeked of desperation. Or at the very least impatience. Or at the very most aggression. “Chillax,” I told myself. I was in Cali-forn-eye-eh, for chrissakes! The home of socially acceptable lassitude. No hurries, no worries. Just hanging out on the doorstep of an industrial unit soaking up a few rays. What could be more natural?

Then again, how long could I realistically stand here with a slightly unnerving ‘Wassup, dude!’ grin fixed on my face before a passing stray took advantage of my growing resemblance to a canine convenience?

What the hell was I doing here anyway? I’m no Marco Polo. Itchy feet are something I treat with a prescription. I hate the heat. Plus every Yank I’d met so far oozed confidence and charisma, whereas I felt like a simpering, weak-chinned arse every time my Home Counties whine leaked from my fish and chip hole. This was NOT cool. I needed to get out of there. Jump in the car and get the hell…

The door clicked.

The rising tide of panic subsided as quickly as it had risen. A let out a long breath, inhaled, grimaced and quickly popped a Lifesaver into my mouth. Shouldering the door aside, I took my first step into Twitter HQ. Man, it was cool. No really. I’m talking Circle line in January cool. These guys had some military-grade air-con.

The office itself was pretty nondescript. And pretty dark. I’m talking…you know, dark. As my eyes adjusted, the scene resolved itself into a large, open space with row upon row of deserted workstations. The single source of light came from the far side of the office – a bank of LCD screens flickering with, I imagined, the steady flow of tweets offered up by devout twitaholics from around the world.

That’s when I saw them. Hunched silhouettes that could only represent my first live sighting of the Twitterati. In a slight daze, I raised a hand in greeting and strode forward, eager to slap some backs and high some fives. I did my best to ignore the fetid aroma that became increasingly potent as I drew closer. I could relate, after all. I’d pulled the odd coffee-fuelled all-nighter in my time, and I hadn’t paused for a shower until I’d slam dunked those revenue figures, baby.

Suddenly one of them noticed me. I knew this because his head snapped up from his screen and he raised an arm in my direction. I began to reciprocate – thinking of maybe dropping in the classic ‘Bang, bang! Aargh, you got me!’ greeting – but froze when he slowly opened his mouth and let out an inhuman (and inhumanly loud) screech.

Now, I’m the kind of guy who gets off on a joke, I really am. Ask anyone at the office who I’ve punked with a post-it. But this was leftfield even for me. And when the others joined the dial tone chorus I started to get a little freaked. The fact that I could now see they were all completely hairless with skin the flabby white of a cod’s belly didn’t particularly reassure me either.

Option a) Twitter seriously needed to address its diversity commitment. Option b) Something distinctly atypical was occuring here.

As I slowly backed away from the advancing pack of enraged Twitterati, I began to suspect a sternly worded missive to hr@twitter.com would probably fail to resolve the situation.

Okay, okay, I’ve chucked in a few off-the-peg Morlocks at the end there. Yeah, I know, a bit lazy. But I’ve been really quite busy and just wanted to get the whole ‘horror’ thing rolling. Look, I’ll be straight with you. Up until now it’s all been a bit rushed and sketchy, but I’ve got this whole dramatic dénouement all planned out, I really have. It resonates. It has power. Remember The Sixth Sense? Well, it’s nothing like that.

A #dystopian tale of human enslavement and microblogging

Chapter Two
Sticking it to the man was easier than I thought (my line manager Keith was very understanding). Just six weeks later I was in Frisco International Airport queuing for a hire car. Suddenly I was the most spontaneous guy I knew – including Pete in MIS, and I know for a fact he goes snowboarding twice a year.

Who’s a ‘tedious, flatulent middle-management drone’ now, Linda? If only my ex-wife could see me now. I could just imagine the look on her face. Not much of a pay-off for ten years’ investment in Botox treatments, but I’d take what I could get.

I booked a room in the nearest Holiday Inn, grabbed a shower and got ready to meet my own personal Jesus. I considered phoning ahead. But what was I thinking? They probably don’t even have phones at Twitter. I still had my head stuck up the legacy paradigm, and I needed to upshift quickly. A man like Biz is gonna recognise a soul mate on sight. He’s spent the last five years in a dark room eating pizza and developing social networking systems. He’s the ultimate people person, for chrissakes!

Minutes later I was on the road, Twitter HQ locked into my TomTom. 164 South Park, San Francisco. South Park. Like that’s a coincidence! Classic. Still chuckling, I wound down the windows, loosened my tie and edged my Nissan Pixo right up to just below the speed limit.

“You have arrived at your destination,” announced TomTom finally. The adrenaline was pumping like the first time I tagged an inaccurate tax rebate. I switched off the engine and glanced round the half-empty car park. It looked pretty normal. In fact, it looked a lot like a business park. A really dull business park. But of course it would! They don’t want people just dropping by unannounced. That would be weird. Freakish. Criminally actionable, even.

I put the Pixo in park, clambered out and waited for a sign. Well, I say waited. I saw one pretty much immediately. A massive great Twitter sign. That was good enough for me.

Steadying myself with a deep breath, I strode confidently towards my goal. Slowed down. Realised I was heading towards the loading bay. Did that thing when you pretend you were just checking out something over there but, with that task now completed, you’re free to proceed in the opposite direction.

Cock-up styled out, I approached my date with destiny. Nice door. All big and glassy. Business up front, but you just know there’s a party going on behind. The kind of door that…No, enough delaying. Here we go. Here we freakin’ go! Let’s do this. I reached out, hesitated, then thrust my trembling digit forward.

Beeeeeeeep…

How will our dashing protagonist be received at Twitter HQ? Will he be offered a soda, coffee or restraining order? Or is there, in fact, a dark secret lurking at the heart of social networking’s current belle du jour – a dark secret strongly hinted at by this blognov’s subtitle and that, were it not to exist, would make aforesaid subtitle highly misleading if not downright erroneous? Give us a break. We’re working on it…

A #dystopian tale of human enslavement and microblogging

Chapter One
Did you read that article in The Guardian. Twitter HQ looks pretty sweet, right? I mean, yeah we’ve all worked in open plan offices. Heck, I’ve even pimped out my own little pod with a mini basketball net for when I need some downtime. But a plasma TV for break-time gaming? A red telephone box in the corner? A freakin’ green plastic deer in the corner for no reason whatsoever?! That’s nuts. That’s out there.

And then there’s him.

Biz Stone. Biz. Stone. The Biz. The Bizzard. The Stoner. Alright, not that. Well, maybe. Probably. But, damn that’s a cool name. The name of a man who’s got one eye on the future, one eye on tomorrow and his iPhone hooked into SETI. The handle of a guy who’s gonna shake things up, scoop up whatever comes loose and build a break-dancing robot that dispenses Red Bull from its groin.

No wonder he came up with something as freakin’ sweet as Twitter. 140 characters a pop. It’s just so perfect. You can say literally nothing and sound zen. Embarrassing misspellings are a thing of the past (tx, leetspeak). And you can follow people you’d never have met before. It’s almost like being their friends, just without the personal relationship bit. #awesome.

Anyway, that article. Read it. Loved it. Wanted more. Then it hit me. This is what I’d been waiting for. The chance to discover something bigger than myself. The chance to make a pilgrimage that would change my life forever. The chance to use up all that time in lieu I’d built up during the Simpkins audit.

I was going to Twitter HQ in San Francisco – and damn the pro rata bonus penalty for taking three weeks’ consecutive leave during the busy Q3 period!

Biz wouldn’t sweat deets like that.

What will our intrepid hero discover upon his arrival at Twitter HQ? Will Biz live up to his wildly hyperbolic expectations? Where does the weak ‘Matrix’ pun fit into the overall plot arc? Does this have a plot arc, or is the author patently making it up as he goes along? Find out in Chapter Two of The Matwits. Coming soon to a blog near you. Provided you’ve bookmarked this blog.