Dears,"I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead" – This is the Quote by Mark Twain. At first it didn't seem to make sense. Then I realized it's an observation that the better you understand something, the more succinctly you can express it. So unless you take the time to think about the contents before you write a letter it's liable to be a long meandering letter. It also implies that the short letter is superior to the long one. Except of course he said it much more concisely than I have.
This applies to software too; I've spent years working on traditional Enterprise CRM packages, huge, immensely powerful software suites with a staggering range of functionality. But their very size and complexity is also their biggest hurdle to adoption in that they're difficult to implement and maintain, and their flexibility makes it hard to realize their potential benefits. This syndrome doesn't only apply to big business software. What’s this got to do with Social CRM? Well I think it offers an interesting perspective when applied to successful social networking sites. The successful ones aren't normally the biggest most feature-rich web sites around, they're more focused on doing a smaller number of things but doing them well. When they do seem to offer wide functionality it's normally though some form of add-in such as the plethora of Facebook apps rather than core functionality (and it's interesting to see how face book’s recent redesign put the core social functions to the fore at the expense of those other apps). The most extreme example must be Twitter which does nothing more than allow users to post 140 character updates to anyone interested, yet seems to be taking over the world.
Social media has done several things to make it easier to communicate:
• Enabled individuals to participate in the conversation, not just the marketing machines of television, print, website owners
• Enabled individuals to subscribe or follow people, groups and topics they are interested in. Contrast this with email where you are deciding what the audience is interested in. With email you can deliver the message to specific people, but there’s a good chance it will be ignored.
• Simplified the means of conversation. The free form nature of blog posts means we don’t need to conform to a preset communication format. The 140 character limit on twitter or other micro-blogging forums may seem like a constraint, but it makes it focus in the message and not the format.
“When you give people easier ways to share information, more good things will happen. This quote is from Evan Williams, CEO and Founder of Twitter. Social media enables a conversation with an engaged audience; this is a good thing for your business.
Socializing is part of our everyday existence. Social networking software needs to make it easier for us to do this if it's to have any value. Complex processes don't help this they hinder it. It's always tempting to add new functionality, and techies always like more options to play with. But with software, and perhaps especially with Web 2.0 software, we always need to keep focused on making the core functionality just right. For me this means not being afraid to stop doing and spend more time thinking.
Have a great weekend
Your Partner and Companion
DC*
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