Tag: social media

Secret recipes

Fabrizio1 Comment

Sometimes I wonder why so many people decide to share their secret sauce online. Why should they give away what made them and their organisations successful, particularly if they are still in business? Why not keeping it all for themselves, compounding edge on competitors and alternatives?

Then I immediately realize, of course they do.

They know that 99.9% of the people that will consume their content will do absolutely nothing about it. Even when you read that to be rich there are three things you totally have to do, or that to get more leads you need to follow a four-step strategy (success guaranteed!), or that the future of work demands you to most definitely have these ten characteristics, getting to implement that requires an effort that the vast majority of people are simply not ready to put in. An Italian saying goes something like “there’s a whole sea between saying and doing”, and that is the case here. Just because you know something, even if it probably would benefit you, does not mean you are capable of applying that and make of it an habit.

The remaining 1% also do not represent a danger for those who share. The power of context, timing, luck have to be factored in the recipe, and that is something nobody can replicate. Looking back at what happened in the past and pinpoint some key success factors is easy. A lot more challenging is to be at point zero and figure out how to proceed from there towards success.

The point, I guess, is that if you have something to share, something that people might find valuable, something that might help somebody somewhere, go ahead and share away. Even your most secret ingredients are safe in plain sight.

And if you are one of the consumers of content, be mindful that things that are shared are usually a sensible starting point, but to make them work for you it’s not enough to put in the work, you’ll also have to figure out how to make them work for you.

A matter of choice

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With 2.41 billion monthly active users and its stock trading at the high-end of its 52 weeks rolling average, Facebook is not going to take responsibility for the damages it does to society and democracy. Businesses tend to change when things go bad (we all do, to be honest), and despite some slaps on the wrist for its malpractices, keep your expectations low on the company making it its priority to modify what made them rich.

Regulators and politicians, on the other hand, are late in taking actions to avoid Facebook and others to keep wreaking avock in our communities. The former are chasing a change in society and business that they clearly struggle to understand, and operating at national level they are more concerned with making sure home companies are competitive than with doing what’s longly overdue. The latter, well on all sides they have embraced the platforms using all of the possible subterfuges and tricks they could learn to make themselves more visible, more likeable, more approchable, and eventually more votable.

There’s still a missing part in this picture, and it’s the 2.41 billion monthly active users. That’s us. The ones that use Facebook, the ones that create content for the platform keeping it alive, the ones that endorse their policies and business model whether we like them or not, the ones that cannot leave because, you know, “I have all my pictures there”, or “there’s that group I want to follow”. It’s once again a matter of what is fair and what is convenient. Until we keep choosing convenient, it’s pointless to storm social media channels every time something terrible happens.

We just don’t care

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Is Faceapp sending your picture and personal data to a shady Russian firm that will use them against your will for illecit purposes?

Two considerations about the question that has dominated the internet in the past weeks.

Number 1, the level of mistrust towards tech companies is continuosly growing. And for good reasons. Faceapp is not alone in telling users that the company owns everything that is uploaded on their servers. After recent scandals, people are sceptical and ask good questions about what is done with the data they share within apps and other online services. It’s absolutely legitimate, and it’s fair.

Number 2, even if the question is asked, we are no longer very good at waiting for an answer, or demanding that the answer is in line with what we would consider a proper use of our pictures and data. If others are sharing how they will look like when they will be old, so should we. The rest is background noise, because the truth is we do not really care. It’s absolutely natural, tech companies know that, and they leverage the power of cheap and convenient.

Until we pick fair on everything else, in every situation, even when it’s expensive and difficult, we can’t expect others to be fair with us.

Don’t make it difficult

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When adding complexity to a customer experience, we should ask if we do so to deliver more value or to put a patch on some insecurity of our organization.

Having customers queueing on the phone just means we are not sure we will be able to handle their questions.

Sneaking an hidden price in the service just means we are not sure people would pay for it.

Asking a question that does not change the transaction in any way when the customer is at the counter and ready to buy just means we are not sure we have enough information.

Pushing ads when the customer is seeking content just means we are not sure the customer would pay for the content alone.

Needs and wants are often fairly simple and straightforward, and it is worth the effort to attempt to meet them on the same field. On the other hand, fears and doubts are often quite layered and complex, and it is delusional to believe we can push them to the customers by keeping their experiences worth living.

Fair is out there

Fabrizio1 Comment

Who gets to decide what is “fair“?

It’s us, and we get to make that decision many times every day. When we buy something, when we read the news on Facebook, when we click for next-day delivery, when we dumb down on YouTube’s timeline, when we put a pre-cooked meal in the microwave, when we buy at a discount rather than at full price.

The problem is, we usually do not go with what is fair, as cheap and convenient are alluring. That’s fine, as long as we know that fair is out there, waiting to be picked.