The Problem With Google+ Is That It’s Work Facebook

The latest issue of Wired contains an essay arguing that social media isn’t social. Oddly, the piece inadvertently nails why I’m skeptical about Google Plus:

The best evidence that social media isn’t really about personal connection? Marketers love it. It seems like every business from taco trucks to GE is hoping to use social media to put a personal face on its brand.

Sure, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr are marketing havens now. But none of them started off that way. There was, in fact, real skepticism as to what a brand would do on Twitter for its first few years.

Those services took off precisely as places where interactions were personal, and it was only later, after enough people congregated there and began having conversations and interactions, that brands jumped in. It’s the same story of blogging, and the Web itself.

It wasn’t until late 2008 that brands were really began to get on board on Twitter, after it had been around for more than two years. Likewise, Facebook ignored and shunned brands in its early years. First, there were conversations, which caused brands to begin listening.

By contrast, Google+ has been a brand magnet from the beginning, which makes me deeply skeptical of it.

The social media services that work best—Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare— are often non-obvious to marketers (be they corporate or personal brand builders) when they launch. Anything that’s really game-changing (see also: blogs) is typically so unfamiliar that it’s met with corporate and media skepticism if not derision. But in today’s more social-media savvy environment, brands hit the ground running on Google Plus. (Especially the media.) They jumped ahead of the conversation.

Despite Google’s prohibitions, brand after brand has been creating Google+ profiles—often only to see Google pull them. And with Google being slow to allow corporate accounts, brands have sought other ways to fill the vid. This has led to some hilarious results, like poor Michael Dell wasting his time in a Google+ Hangout, trying to connect with customers.

My boss, Joe Brown, calls Google+ “Work Facebook.” (Nevermind that LinkedIn is also Work Facebook.) Google+ feels like work, because everyone is trying so damn hard to work it. It is a deep, dark hole of self-promotion. And that makes it boring.

Successful social media is social. First and foremost. The modern landscape may be littered with marketers, but you can’t ignore how we got here.

Social media must first play host to meaningful conversations if it is to be successful. It must be a forum where friendships can be created, strengthened and preserved. I’d argue that the most successful people and brands using social media are precisely the ones who are the most real, and the most deeply personal. Reveal something about yourself, even if it’s that you are an idiot, and people will follow. For a social network to work, it has to be fascinating and fun.

In short, before you can make it work, you have to make it play. But when brands and self-promotors lead the way, there’s nothing interesting to see.

And for Google+, that’s still the problem.

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Missouri Says “No Friends For You!” To Teachers

As a father I have often wondered about social media students and teachers. I have assurances from my Facebook using child that just the idea of being friends on Facebook with a teacher is weird. A good sign in my opinion but at least one state doesn’t trust their citizens as a whole to come to the same conclusion.

In fact, to safeguard against any social media misdoings between students and teachers, Missouri has enacted a law saying that a social media relationship between teacher and student is illegal.

msnbc reports

Missouri has passed a law making it illegal for state teachers to friend their students on Facebook.

Governor Jay Nixon signed Missouri State Bill 54, which bans students and teachers from communicating and being “friends” on the social networking site. The law was created to prevent inappropriate relationships between children and teachers.

“Teachers cannot establish, maintain or use a work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and the child’s legal custodian, physical custodian or legal guardian,” the law states. “Teachers also cannot have a non work-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student.”

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This kind of restriction is the kind that will draw fire from every side of the freedom of speech argument. Here is the reaction from one teacher in Missouri as reported by the Kansas City Star

Randy Turner, an eighth-grade English teacher and prominent blogger from Joplin, Mo., said teachers communicate with students through internet sites because that’s the venue students are most comfortable using.

“Right now, Facebook is the way they communicate,” Turner said of his students.

Sometimes those communications might be public posts about class work or clubs, he said, but other times students may have specific questions about homework, grades or problems with other students — issues better suited to a private conversation.

“If you have a student who’s having a problem in a particular class, they don’t want to tell the whole world they’re having a problem,” Turner explained.

Turner, who frequently writes about education issues on his blog, accused the legislation of “targeting classroom teachers.”

In practice, he said, the bill probably would confuse teachers about what is and isn’t allowable online conduct and stifle legitimate and valuable conversations with students.

As for me, I am not a big supporter of laws intended to enforce what I see as a common sense issue but, at the same time, we live in very different times than just a mere 10 years ago.

Where do you stand on the idea of having the government legislate matters such as these? How could rulings like this impact the use of social media for marketers? Is there the possibility that marketing itself could be deemed as an inappropriate contact with certain groups?

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