Clark's Spot

Earlier this morning, our cat cornered a mouse beneath a shelf of movies, caught it, and brought it – hanging from its mouth – to my wife and me. I grabbed a dustpan, got the cat to drop the mouse, and tried to smash the mouse. I missed. The mouse ran, and the cat caught the mouse in its mouth again. We repeated this series two more times before the mouse escaped beneath the TV stand.

Our creations sometimes aren't the easiest solutions.

Background: The cat successfully caught and killed a mouse early Friday morning. (This is the first year we’ve had any mice issues… cat only has back claws.) So my wife had me get mouse traps the next day – to set out this weekend to catch any other mice who come inside the house. We have a couple traps – but none set out when this morning’s events happen.

So I make a quick decision. We put the cat in room upstairs with the litter box and food, and my wife and I set the mousetraps downstairs. We run out to shovel snow and run a few errands. We return home. No mouse caught, and the cat seems pretty content in the comfy chair in the upstairs room.

This got me thinking: Can I and all of the gadgets I love do better than the cat? Can I build a better mousetrap? This reminded me of an essay I read in The Cluetrain Manifesto.

How Lego Caught the Cluetrain (links to a video presentation that covers the same topic as his essay) by Jake McKee tells the story of how the Lego Company entered the world of social networking as part of its communication outreach. Lego had been aware of AFOLs (adult fan of Legos) but only marketed to children. The company slowly began to embrace AFOLs who had built websites, message boards, forums, e-mail groups, photo sites, and virtual stores to buy and sell pieces. Lego joined the conversation on the existing websites and developed new programs that made it easier for AFOLs to create their own designs and purchase the needed blocks to build those creations.

One paragraph in particular stood out. It highlights something that Jake says Lego did not do – something Lego did well.

“The mistake many companies make when they first engage a community is to rush in and try to replace unofficial efforts with official efforts. Even if such a move is well intentioned, it’s as if the company is saying, ‘Your efforts are sub par. Let us professionals step in and show you how it’s done.’ Not a very good way to start off the relationship.”

Lego included and built off the work that the fan community had already established. Lego joined the community. Its customers welcomed it, and they didn’t try to replace the work that was already done. The lesson is important for any company that connects with customers online – whether through a simple website or on a series of online communities. Don’t work to create an “official” and “artificial” community; go to where the customers are. You can add a legitimate voice to the conversation, but don’t hijack what’s already been built. Look for ways to complement what your customers, users, and constituents are doing.

Sometimes you can’t build a better network, and you waste resources and annoy everyone involved. That’s what my cat taught me about mousetraps today.

Thanks for picture: Picture is Creative Commons licensed from Joming Lau through Flickr.

Twitter has two advantages over Facebook and other social networking sites. The open set-up makes it easier to follow people who you don’t know. This builds weak ties and grows your network further outside your social circle than you would normally look. Secondly, the hashtag system makes it easier to track updates from events and to connect with individuals through those events.

This focuses on the second point. I’ll follow up on the loose ties in a later post.

Hashtags bring some order to the large number of posts in the Twitterverse. Remember, my simplified view of Twitter is a giant chatroom where you are trying to get your message through the din. Your task is to figure out who you want to get and receive direct messages from. Hashtags help you sort through that noise if you’re interested in a specific topic. It lets you see a sign in the chatroom that your topic is being discussed in a certain corner, and you can go to that corner to hear everyone else espouse their thoughts on your topic.

Say that you’re interested in the annual Comic-Con show. #comiccon lets you track what other folks are saying about the show. You see where other people are spending their time at the show. It makes it easier to meet more people in real life who share your interests – which spreads your network and influence. And your more powerful network is much better than a few new followers.

That means the real world component of hashtags is important. If #you write sentences just to #include #metadata, you help #computers – not #people. Tags should be rare and should be unobtrusive. Take a look at Dave Coustan’s post. I’m not sure that I’d unfollow, but I like his comparisson to the NPR piece. They shouldn’t interfere with your ability to read the post.

Help sort – but don’t go overboard. Take a look at the directory on hashtags.org to see how out-of-control it can get. Hashtags remain an advantage for Twitter only as long as they don’t get in the way of the conversation AND they build loose ties.

In the world of magazines, designers view readers as members of a tribe. Consider your social networking the same way.

It has to do with knowing your audience. There’s a big difference between the audiences of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You wouldn’t write a press release when you want a billboard. And you wouldn’t produce a short video if you want the local newspaper at your press conference.

Share the book that you’re reading on goodreads and the news you’re reading on Digg. It’s the basics: Pick the right medium to send your message to the target audience – so identify your target audience.

That means that your profile – or your profiles on different networks – each talk to a different tribe. You might meet people on Twitter but reconnect with old friends on Facebook while networking on LinkedIn. Build a separate audience on each profile or at least understand what your connections want when they connect with you on different networks. Don’t send direct mail when a phone call will do. And don’t treat each network as a chamber for your same words to echo around in. Find a way to make each profile useful and unique or save your time and just use one spot.

One of my friends posted advice handed out on The Today Show during the weekend: “Build something meaningful and choose friends wisely.” It’s a good thing to keep in mind – focus on your audience. Do it online and offline. That way you’ll encourage your tribe to listen to its chief – you.

What do you do when you build a strategy around something that won’t work?

Twitter is getting a lot of buzz, but there are also recent reports indicating that it isn’t getting return users. That’s led some to suggest that Twitter’s future is limited.

I smile when I see people who believe Twitter will magically generate a community – a real community with meaningful conversation, stave off newspapers dying of attrition, or let a politician to show his or her real side to his or her constituents. Twitter: the magic pill that solves all of your problems.

Here’s the problem: People are looking at Twitter as a tool unto itself. Twitter’s usefulness is being driven by a number of extensions, widgets, websites, and other programs that make the system easier to use. Twitter The Website simply won’t be useful to tens of millions of people. Even augmented by all of these utilities, Twitter will struggle to be useful once its fad phase is over.

It’s simply a chat room without walls. You select who you want to private message. You sort through the noise to hear them back. Following is just how you select who you’re exchanging private messages with. Except that you don’t private message. You write an endless stream of thoughts that are posted to the world to see and hope that people find you interesting enough to subscribe to your brain’s witty thoughts or to the articles that you promote. (If not, you’re talking to yourself.)

Sure, I use Twitter. You can see the recent updates in the Lifestream on the side of the front page. If you peruse my whole history of tweets, you’ll see a lot of junk in there. Some of it is idle chatter and noise simply because I hadn’t posted in a few hours. (How sad is that?) The truth is I’m continuing to play with Twitter the same way I’m playing with accounts on Flickr, Goodreads, and Digg. Each network specializes in something – they each have their own niche. And none will be the single solution. You’ve got to learn to drive each one.

These sites work best when you break down the illusion that you do everything on one network. In my job, I’ve seen our success where we’ve broken down the imaginary walls that divide social networks into individual rooms. Otherwise you’re trapped in a room where there may be nobody to listen.

It’s frustrating to build a room – or a profile – that you spend a lot of time developing, but that can’t a solution. Don’t look for a lasting audience on a site with so many people who don’t come back.