Google plus – tribes won’t follow till chiefs jump in with both feet


Couple of weeks ago – I posted my opinion on G+ in this blog. I have been lurking there since then for a bit to see if anything has changed, or whether anything has improved. And guess what – nothing has changed for me.

 

The people I follow on twitter, and via RSS feeds – they are all on G+. Not surprisingly, they are all conversing there primarily on the same discussions they are having on twitter and on their various blogs. And a lot of it is happy talk about G+ 🙂 . I also know first hand that several of these folks also have extensive back channel conversations between themselves on email threads due to privacy concerns etc.

 

As long as these folks continue to share content via twitter and other media that I am already present in, I find no reason to have yet another channel to hear the same stuff. In fact it is extremely boring and frustrating to see the same content coming at you from multiple places. In case some one says something interesting on G+, I have invariably seen some one else post it on twitter almost real time. Works for me.

 

Till such time as G+ becomes the primary channel for creating and sharing content – most of the “ordinary”, “non-geek”,”non-socmed expert” people (tribes) will stay with the incumbent platforms like facebook and twitter. I don’t think Google invited people with socmed clout (chiefs) just because platform was not ready, or because these early adopters are known for jumping into anything that is new and stay for some time at least – I think they primarily did it hoping that tribes  will follow their chiefs wherever they go. What they probably did not realize was that the chiefs will play it safe and keep a foot on old and new worlds. As long as chiefs don’t jump in with both feet, I don’t see the tribes having any reason to glance at the new shiny world.

 

Last week I read – on twitter – that G+ now has 20 million users. Very cool – impressive start. But that is a very low number if you consider the over all population of potential users (about 190M for twitter, and 750M for facebook I gather).  I have seen the “ROI is the wrong metric for social media” message touted by social media experts. I don’t buy that for a minute. And now I see a very similar argument being put forward on G+ – along the lines of “I don’ t care how it is today, I am in for the pleasure of the ride, lets see where it takes me” .  Not me – I don’t have the time or inclination to jump in for an unknown thrill ride.

 

I stayed out of google wave, SAP streamwork and twitter when they started – and once twitter proved useful, I jumped in wholeheartedly. Wave died (not unexpected), and streamwork has been steadily improving, and I have started to dip my toes a bit.  Facebook was a winner for me from day 1 – it was one place where everything I wanted to know about the latest on my hobby was posted.  I will do exactly the same for Google plus – If  (not yet sure if I can say “when”) I see the chiefs commit fully, and not treat G+ as yet another channel, I will jump in and stay.  The rationale is simple – I am less of a content provider, and more of a content consumer.  If  I become primarily a content provider, my whole perspective on this topic might have been very different.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RD Burman to AR Rahman to Deepak Dev – all in the name of inspiration, eh?


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An immature take on maturity models


If something has been around for more than a day- an analyst firm will claim there is a maturity model they built around it. Then they will score everyone on it. This happens to everything from enterprise software, BI etc to something as new as social media. If you don’t trust me – stop right here, google it, and come back and read on after you have had the pleasure/dismay of knowing there is in fact multiple social media maturity models to pick from.

I think we need to have a more mature view of such maturity models. Here is why, in no particular order.

1. If hasn’t been around long enough – don’t build a maturity model around it.

Good example is the one on social media. The thing is so new – who can say with conviction that the future will look like X or Y?

2. If it cannot be measured in hard metrics, don’t bother building a maturity model till it gets there

One example  that comes to mind is Social CRM. I have seen on twitter, some very famous analysts saying ROI is the wrong question to ask. Not cool – I am yet to see any one spend serious money without clearly seeing an ROI. Companies will experiment in some new way that they hear is cool, but for a hard investment – ROI or similar hard metric is needed. Plus you can’t improve something you can’t measure

3. Maturity model assumes a certain linear progression for an organization. But why?

Say we are talking about BI. And say in some model – at the highest level of maturity, you can do complete service, and everything is based on high speed analytics and all information is available on your mobile device. Let us also say the current level of maturity is “hey Joe, any idea what we sold in Japan last quarter?”. To get from “hey Joe” to clicking a button on mobile screen, usually u have to cover  sequence of maturity levels.

Does it mean business should wait a few years while IT is jumping through hoops, and burning investments for few years before they get all the benefits?  If you look at most maturity models – that is the impression you get. But that need not be the case – nothing prevents you usually from getting a little bit of everything from the beginning and building on footprint every step of the way. The point is – if you try to explain the growth trajectory of a company in 2011 with a concept developed few decades ago, you will look foolish.

4. Mature compared to who?

If you ask a group of people if they are below average or above average individually, how many would say “below average”? This applies to organizations too.  An absolute level of maturity is an absurd concept, since what you are trying to measure typically is evolving all the time.  Getting  a printed report from a computer was probably at highest level of BI maturity some time ago, but not today.

If I could keep my eyes open for another 10 minutes, I can probably make it to a 5th bullet. But allow me to stop here – will pick this up another time.