Monthly Archives: May 2010

Francesca Karpel on Bridging Employees and Customers: Fresh Ground #17

Francesca Karpel heads up internal communications at NetApp, a company that has twice been named the #1 Great Place to Work. She connected up with Fresh Ground principal Todd Van Hoosear at the 2010 NewComm Forum to talk about social media and corporate culture.

Some highlights of the conversation:

“Our vision for online community was to … flatten the company if you will, so that it didn’t matter where you were in the world, what function you were in, what level of the organization you were in — that you would have equal access to other people in the company to ask or answer questions, to really transcend so many of the barriers that create silos.”

“As I started to look at [flattening the organization], I discovered that there were a number of pilots going on within the company testing social media, community, blogging, [and how we could help partners and customers. I] asked those folks if they would like to be part of my initiative to find a platform that we could use internally, with a common hope that we could find a platform that would work internally and externally, but no promises.”

“We launched both our internal communities and our external communities at the same time as we launched our [new] brand back in March of 2008…. What this allowed us to do is to offer both our customers and our employees a functionality that they didn’t have before of immediately asking and getting questions answered.”

“Most of our communities are actually public communities, so whether or not you’re a part of, say, our services team, if a conversation, if content in that area interests you, you can search for it…. We really only have private communities when there is a business reason for that community to be private — where there’s a need for confidentiality.”

“We’ve created [an] environment which leans to being very open. Actually, the very first employee who commented in our NetApp Live … internal community was someone from Singapore. And what we found with other initiatives is that people who are from outside the U.S. are some of the early commentors.”

“I completely respect the concept and the practicality of a firewall to protect data that needs to be protected. But not all information needs to be protected.”

“We’re using the Jive Software platform, and their most recent upgrade includes a concept of ‘bridging’ [both external and internal communities while respecting confidentiality]. The bridging would allow an employee to see public content … with the same search that they would use … in the internal community.”

Listen Now:

Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (0)

Our opening music is “D.I.Y.” by A Band Called Quinn from the album “Sun Moon Stars” and is available from Music Alley, the Podsafe Music Network.

Facebook's Death by 400 Million Cuts

I don’t share my information with Facebook and I bet you don’t either.

I share my information with my friends, I just happen to use Facebook to do it. It’s a distinction that I wonder if Facebook really understands. Today in a conference call, Mark Zuckerberg pointed to Facebook’s continued success by noting that people are still members, the mass quitting that so many discussed never truly materialized, though “Quit Day” still lies ahead. “We have seen no meaningful uptick in the number of people who deleted their accounts,” he said.

And I doubt it ever will. But what I’m hearing anecdotally is that with each privacy concern, people share LESS on Facebook. The problem for Facebook is that if people put up less information, then I have less of a reason to go there to see what people are doing, and so do you. Think about how you use Facebook. If you’re like me you log in, check out the newsfeed and see what’s in people’s lives. If that newsfeed doesn’t interest you, and continues to be uninteresting, then you’ll slowly move away. It’ll become a place to grab some basic information (birthdays, locations, jobs, etc.) but its true utility will be gone.

I believe that Facebook is measuring the wrong thing. I believe a better metric would be the number of posts per person over time. You would have to examine their activity and create a standard, then measure how each user stacks up against that.

A drop in this usage would be the biggest threat to Facebook; it would be death by a 400 million cuts to the information we put out. If we stop sharing, Facebook stops existing. Not tomorrow, but slowly, over time, until it’s that site you used to visit but doesn’t have much pull any longer.

Will the privacy controls unveiled today keep people from fleeing? I’m not sure. In conversations with friends, mostly non-techies, their trust in Facebook has been shaken. While a change could help, rebuilding trust will take much longer and include many, many more steps. We all now realize that we’re sharing with Facebook as much as with our friends, and that little change will change our behavior.We’ll see what impact that action has on Facebook itself

Becoming a Social Company Means Caring

Bill Warner gave a wonderful presentation at the Mass Inno Breakfast on Friday, one that I know a lot of people have seen. But if you haven’t, you need to go. Bill begins the talk by pointing out how he founded two companies (Avid Technologies and Wildfire), one from the heart and the other… well… not so much. One (Avid) is still in business. The other (Wildfire) had some financial success for investors, but ultimately shut down without reaching its goal. Both had great technology, but one failed. He then goes on to encourage all of us to work from the heart, not just from the mind.

Often in the social media world you hear people make similar comments, that they should capture their “passion.” The concept isn’t new, for years people have told me to follow your passion and the money will come.

But most importantly, Bill asked the people in the audience to think about who it is that we’re helping and to keep those people in mind as we build our business. It’s not an easy exercise, as you don’t want to define the people you’re helping as a demographic, nor do you want to define them in business terms, but you want to define them as people. You need to tell a story about them.

Let me tell you mine.

I want to help James (identities changed). James works in a retail store and has a passion for what he’s selling. He doesn’t plan to be there forever, but still, working with stereo products and music is something he cares deeply about. It’s why he’s there. Still, the owners of the shop think like marketers in that they only want certain people tweeting, blogging, Facebooking, etc. James works on the shop floor, he’s not in that management area that has been “blessed” by the owners. But when I go into the shop, I work with James, I like him, he gives me great advice, to me, he is the face of the store.

Despite his relatively low level, James wants the store to succeed. He loves working there, he cares about his work, he has a job satisfaction that goes well beyond money. Still, his bosses don’t see it as something that can help them.

My job is to help James and, by default, help his bosses. I believe that people like James are the key to making businesses, all businesses, successful. Helping James is no easy task, of course. A lot of education must go on from the top down and from the bottom up. Companies need to identify the “James” within their employee base. Frankly, they need to look for more James’ when they go to hire. They also need to give James the tools and guidance so he can help them grow by bringing his passion to the public.

One person who understands this is Jules Pieri, founder and CEO of the Daily Grommet. She has a wonderful piece on her blog about pitching VCs with feeling. Originally she’d gone in with a by-the-numbers type of presentation, but then one day she said “I want to change the world….”

The VC told her the presentation gave him chills.

That passion comes through in ways that go well beyond VCs. Check out a post by an anthropologist who notes “As you can see from this post, the story of The Daily Grommet resonated with me. Jules and her team appear to be very passionate about and good at what they do, and it feels to me like Jules is ‘following her bliss’, so to speak.”

But it’s not just Jules, her employees are all out there in the public talking about their passion and lovingly describing the products they’re finding.

That’s why her site is, and will continue to be, successful.

Facebook Blues: Will YOU Quit?

Trying to figure out what all the Facebook fuss is about? Considering signing off of Facebook for the last time yourself? Here’s a video roundup of the Facebook fiasco, courtesy of Greater Boston (and featuring our own Chuck Tanowitz):

Chuck I think makes a very good point: “Facebook is a business and it’s sitting on a treasure trove of valuable information … demographic data that the advertising industry has been asking for for generations.” As the Australian Broadcast Corporation’s Stilgherrian points out:

Facebook’s business model is best served by exposing your personal information as widely as possible. To advertisers, so they can target advertising more accurately and pay more for the privilege. To other users, to encourage them to share more as well. To search engines, to bring more traffic to Facebook. To anyone who wants to pay.

If you want a better understanding of how Facebook makes money, incidentally, Nicholas Carson has a good, short write-up.

PC World’s Brenon Slattery summed it up perfectly:

Facebook has had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month, and it’s only getting worse.

Where to start? E-mails leaked, private IM conversations exposed, apps sneaking into profiles, creepy geolocation additions — the worries mount. It’s hard to distinguish what Facebook is actually doing right.

The privacy concerns at the root of Facebook’s bad month were nicely laid out by The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Vascellaro today, and its corresponding (and evolving) privacy policy has been beautifully visualized by Matt McKeon.

This has supposedly led to what some are characterizing as a mass exodus from Facebook. While it’s true that the 6,000+ committed quitters of May 30th’s quitfacebookday.com have been joined by some technology thought leaders like Engadget co-founder Peter Rojas, podcaster Leo Laporte, comedian and The Onion editor Baratunde Thurston and ZDNet columnist Jason Perlow, as ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick points out, “it’s hardly a torrent of quitters in the face of more than 400 million Facebook users.”

Until there are real live alternatives, users will simply take steps to regain a little more control over their privacy, and wait to see what Facebook (or the government) does.