Wednesday 6 April 2011

Saturated Social Media and The Conversation

It was with a great deal of scepticism that I found out about the CIPR's new social networking venture 'The Conversation'. It is going to be the social network du choix for PRs everywhere as it compiles all the best blog posts from professionals, students, agencies, freelancers and, quite frankly, anyone who wants to join in. They claim also that it won't require the tedious task of 'friending' everyone all over again either, you simply enter your Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/obscure social networking site details and 'The Conversation' does all the hard work in linking you up.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Well...

The reason I cited my scepticism earlier is that every time a new social networking site comes out or gains popularity I find myself wondering how helpful this actually is. Part of the brief for this new site is that it will be 'your one-stop shop' for PR practitioners. But, surely no PR is foolish enough to rely only on one site for all they need? If they did, it would be putting the blinkers on to a business that is all about the bigger picture. Granted, trawling blogs for relevant and interesting articles will now only be one click away, but isn't Google doing a rather good job of putting the world at your finger-tips anyway? If anyone can join 'The Conversation' then how do they intend on filtering the good from the bad any more than Google is able to? The mind boggles.

When I log on to the internet I check all the sites I know it is worth my while checking. Sometimes this will take two minutes, sometimes two hours; it depends entirely on what I find on each site. Surely having one more site to check is going to bring businesses to the stage where you need to employ someone to simply sit there and read post after post on 'The Conversation' and decide whether it is of any use to anybody at all.

It's not to say I don't think the CIPR are doing something worthwhile in bringing everything together into one neat package; but one has to question how useful this will prove to be in a world where everything you read must be taken with a pinch of salt. What I'm getting at is that there needs to be a filter to prevent anyone just posting rubbish which isn't helpful to anyone. The internet is already filled with pseudonyms and invented personas, so how will The Conversation avoid the problem these people can cause?

It is no surprise how many questions I pose in this entry. I find myself treating this great idea like one would treat a yacht with a hundred leaks: great to look at, but not something I would necessarily be investing time or money in.

4 comments:

  1. Hi James,
    Thanks for posing the question on twitter. I think you raise a few fair points in your blog.
    In its very nature social media moves at a phenomenal pace and we have seen and will continue to see many different social platforms come and go. With the advent of the internet people have been given a lot of choice and freedom to pick and choose where, how and when they get their information. This is also true for social media. We have become a community of ‘social grazers’ and as such will continue to pick and choose as we please.

    I think that The Conversation can only be a good thing. Completely agree with you - I don’t think any PR worth their salt would be naive enough to think that it will be the sole channel of choice for the industry and the only source of sector specific information. However, it should be a good starting point which can then be supplemented with further research if need be.

    I can also see your point re: policing content and contributors but creating a gated-community would surely defeat the object of ‘social’. Would like to think that there will be a process in place to ensure content is relevant.
    You state when you log on to the internet you check all the sites that ‘you’ know are worthwhile checking. However what about the sites that you don’t know about that could quite easily be as relevant but not as optimised thus fall by the wayside. I think The Community could potentially help with this. As you say – not everything will be right (as per Google searches) but not everything will be wrong either.

    I’m not sure that ‘one more site’ would induce a business to employ someone to simply read post after post of The Conversation. It remains to be seen how the blogs will be categorised on the site but I would imagine there has been some thought behind this and they will not just be collated willy-nilly. So it could probably help whittle down search time in terms of relevance.

    As to its success and – we will have to just wait and see. You never know unless you try.

    Cheers,

    Lyanna

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  2. I definitely share the scepticism. In many ways it sounds like there is very little difference between 'The Conversation' and an interested PR person setting up their own rss feed.

    When it comes to finding out new and exciting blog posts or articles, this is already covered. Twitter delivers unlimited ways to follow the news you like from any industry. Although the concept of twitter has fallen with people trying to mass followers through tagging their tweets with trending topics, the creation of the Twitter list allows you to create your own 'conversation'.

    The only added value that CIPR will be able to add, as you rightly point out, is it's ability to whittle out the desperate individuals posting things of little interest (something I'm sure Twitter will be looking into regardless).

    I will be interested to see how they promote this to such a niche, especially for someone not working in the PR industry.

    I look forward to reading a follow up review after the release!

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  3. Interesting to read your views. So far I'm reserving judgement but can't yet see the need that is being filled here. There is a risk of a lot of noise and the nuggets only being filtered out by word of mouth through our existing networks. Unclear if CIPR is going to just allow a free for all of posts or any attempt to categorise or otherwise help the reader through. Danger is that there'll be too much self-promotion and not enough insight.

    I wonder also how it intends to execute the aim of bringing together the best etc as it doesn't seem to be aggregating only providing a place where anyone can post.

    We shall see...

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  4. It seems that my opinions about the lack of filtering are shared by others.

    I've visited The Conversation a lot in the last few days and have read a very varied selection of posts about different topics. Although I am not belittling anything posted so far, there does seem to be a disparity in quality where some posts seem better written and more relevant than others. Admittedly this is the very nature of blog posting, but on something like The Conversation one would hope for an all round higher calibre.

    I am all for this venture by the CIPR, and undoubtedly they are still ironing out the creases, but one does feel the risk of too much self-promotion as Heather has rightly pointed out. Nothing wrong with self-promotion, but it doesn't seem appropriate for a website that has specifically stated it is not for recruitment purposes. Who exactly are these self-promoters supposed to promote to?

    We shall see, indeed...

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