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

[Ged Carroll]

I use Facebook more as plumbing like Spokeo or Ziki to pull my content together for friends.

As a site, it has its values beyond having a laugh, so far I've had two business leads from it as it seems to have morphed into a people directory.

You can strip interactive applications out if you want, the only thing that riles me about Facebook is the unintuitive navigation where I am constantly left guessing where find stuff.