Zuckerberg was on a roll: The currency of Facebook as a PR tool

Anyone in digital PR not aware of Hugh MacLeod's work could do far worse than to take a few minutes to subscribe to a few of his feeds. Here's his blog and here's his Twitter. I think Hugh's one of those guys who, when he speaks at an event or wherever, he gets the wow factor. He does some cool work with brands on using the social web as a marketing tool (like Microsoft and Stormhoek Wine) and he talks and writes about this stuff on the circuit too. I had the pleasure, courtesy of David Brain, of sharing a fry-up with him recently and he's a switched on chappy.

Reason for me posting about Hugh is that, following people like Simon Willison, Jason Calacanis and Ben Hammersley (can't find the link to his FB post but I remember it, promise) Hugh's one of a growing number of 'influencers' that is publicly deserting Facebook. No apps for his brands, and too much spam.

[Hugh's latest anti-Facebook cartoon]

Is this the tip of the curve? Facebook for me still rocks for friend-finding. But I have to say my photos have gone back to Flickr and ffffound, and status updates to Twitter. I post mostly on blogs, not walls, and use upcoming for event tracking. I'm wondering if social networks that will work best might be better off specialising in doing a small number of things well, instead of polluting peoples' personal web space with things they will look elsewhere to do properly. For the mainstream Facebook does a job. But a new breed of cool web stuff is changing how digital natives network and share. Not in my humple opinion but in theirs.

Comments

[David Brain]

I know what you and Hugh mean about the spam and vampire bites and cocktails and all that stuff, but for now I have too many people I know on it and the photos and video are all there in one place and soa richer "relationship" thing than flickr or twitter. Interesting how things move on though . . .

[Jonny Rosemont]

Probably over a year ago, I predicted that Facebook was going to turn into one of the true destinations of the web, much like Google and Yahoo. Even with all the controversy, I think we've seen this to be the case. As digital PR people we'd be foolish to ignore it as an avenue to reach consumers. It is like saying we should ignore the Financial Times for business folk because it is not the most innovative product out there. We can't ignore it, even if we wanted to. Don't forget it was Facebook that lead the charge for open APIs and I also think that we are likely to see an influx of more useful applications being launched on the site...the year of the zombie has past!

[Stephen Davies]

Facebook's the largest photo sharing app on the web. Bigger than Flickr etc.

As I said in a Tweet (sigh) to David Brain:

Blogs= professional thought pieces.

Facebook= having a laugh with friends.

Twitter= chatter among colleagues

That's my ethos anyway.

Btw do you think Hugh, Calcanis etc are influential over regular Facebook users?

To you and I maybe but not to any of my non geek friends.

[Stuart Bruce]

The key thing about Facebook is that it has critical mass. Lots of people I know (business and friends) are using Facebook, to a greater or lesser extent. Despite encouragement by me they have resolutely refused/been unable to get to grips with LinkedIn, Flickr etc. A good example is Upcoming, which I personally like, but so few people use it that it has become almost redundant to me. Far more things I attend and want to attend are on Facebook. I recently removed Upcoming from my blog, because it had so little content.

[Mihnea]

I don't think that the photos we post on Facebook and on Flickr are really the same, actually. For example: for quite some time now, I've been using FB to post pictures of me and (most of) my FB buddies, while Flickr, for me, is all about the more interesting pictures I manage to take - henceforth, I'm using them both.

Although Twitter is the only thing I use for the microblogging part.

I've also noticed all of that application spam in my notifications list, but I just tend to ignore it most of the time - I just don't bother. Funny thing is, though, that there are some special groups for that, such as "f*** off... I don't want to be a pirate/vampire/werewolf/zombie" (with over 135K members too). :)