Forgive me, I am below contempt
June 2010
I count myself very lucky in that I’m probably in the minority of people who can truthfully say they enjoy their work. An average 7 day week for me consists of spending the weekend driving fast around various race tracks across the country, then having a couple of days a week at home writing articles and then a couple of days in a rather fun office where I design and build websites, dream up new ventures and throw paper aeroplanes at Linda our accounts lady. I get to walk along a sandy beach during my lunch break and indulge in far too many cappuccinos at our local café.Now this may sound like a pretty easy life. Well I’ll admit it’s enjoyable but it’s definitely not easy. I do work very hard and have a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. There are literally hundreds of people relying on me and if I screw up, I screw a lot of people – and not in the good way!
All of the areas I work in require me to genuinely know what I’m doing. I’m not like a consultant who are a breed of people who get paid obscene amounts of money for talking complete and utter bollocks and haven’t the first clue about anything.
Something I’ve started doing more of now is writing short articles for the online business world. I like to share my knowledge and experience with others and make people aware of important subjects that can benefit their business. If I get the opportunity to insult politicians, Americans and eco-mentalists in the process then all the better.
Over recent months I have written a number of small articles about social networking and where the medium-term future of the Internet is headed. Now, I admit that it took me a long time to jump on the social networking band-wagon, mainly because I had little to no interest in keeping in touch with people who I didn’t already keep in touch with, coupled with the fact that I’ve had some rather unpleasant experiences with stalkers and I didn’t want to give them any additional means of finding me.
Nevertheless, I could see the benefit from both a social and commercial point of view and also recognised that it fits into our company ethos: It's new, it's different, it's exciting and, above all else, it's fun!
I recently wrote an article where I explained that any business that didn’t have a presence on Facebook or Twitter should really do something about it because it will soon be replacing the old Search Engine Optimisation nonsense as the best way to promote a website. We had some great feedback from lots of people wanting to know more. Most people quite sensibly also see the benefit and are interested in jumping on the band-wagon. Some are even asking us to do it for them. However, we did have one person say – in my best John Cleese impersonation – "I wish to register a complaint!"
Now, admittedly social networking is not for everybody. I still personally don’t get Twitter but I’m still on there because I know that it’s a big market. Anyone who just dismisses it entirely from a business point of view is extremely short-sighted and I guarantee believes in Scientology and is a member of the Flat Earth Society. They probably don't even believe in evolution.
Now, far be it from me to want to antagonise anyone, I felt that the tone of this particular complainer deserved a response. I did a check and the person in question was neither a customer of ours or a supplier. Just someone who voluntarily subscribed to our newsletter. With their assertion that they won't touch social networking with a barge-pole, I felt comfortable to write a response, which inevitably went public. He started his email with the following outburst against what I’d written about Facebook and Twitter:
“These sites that you say are the "place to be" are nothing but a waste of both time, effort and energy. People have much better things to do in life that waste time using such facilities and you should be ashamed at promoting this sort of thing.”
OK a couple of things: Firstly everyone is entitled to their opinion and I agree that these idiots who update their status every 30 seconds telling you that they’re thinking about going to bed really need a good kicking. Still, I would argue that you only have to look at the simple fact that there are over 400 million people using Facebook and well over 70 million using Twitter. This number is growing on a daily basis at an exponential rate. Also, given that the average Facebook user has close to 150 friends coupled with the overall viral nature of the site, that's a huge potential networking reach for a business.
Secondly, I only have to look at the statistics from our own social networking campaigns to tell you that it definitely does work. All sites I’ve signed up for Facebook accounts now get the majority of referrals from it. The short blogs I write have increased the Google PageRank and, along with the real-time search capabilities now available in Google, Twitter updates can generate a lot of search engine referrals. It also broadens the reach of a site because there are now several more gateways on the web to get to it. I believe this is a good reason to take it seriously.
Thirdly, and most importantly, to suggest that social networking sites are a waste of time, effort and energy is fine but I would argue that spending the time writing a complaint about an article that in the grand scheme of things isn't that important is also a waste of time, effort and energy. Also, to suggest that I should be ashamed of myself for promoting such services is also fine. But again I would argue that anyone who has nothing better to do with their lives than complain about something that they’ve voluntarily signed up to for free should also be ashamed of themselves.
He then finished by stating “Any organisation that promotes such organisations is below contempt.”
Ignoring the repetitive use of nouns, I took the liberty of checking out his website and it turns out he's an “I.T. Consultant”.
Enough said!
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