Today I received a request to connect on LinkedIn from someone I had never met.
Christy Miller of Desert Flower Does Workable Wardrobes sent me this message because she found me on LinkedIn as part of the Networking Phoenix Group there –
Hi Steven,
I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. I am the owner of Desert Flower Does Workable Wardrobes, which allows me to Enhance your Image Working with your own Wardrobe. Everyday you make a first impression to someone. That impression goes a long way. Everyday you go to your closet to start on that impression. My closet coordination is the wardrobe that works and gets you to a place where you look and feel your best!
Please let me know if I can be of assistance with your business and networking endeavors.
Christy
It got me thinking about the way I respond to people I’ve not met in online social networking situation. I look an offer to connect as something more than just adding to the stats of my social media presence – I like the idea I have or might meet these people in my network offline.
The answer is it varies, depending on the social network it comes from. Here’s the criteria I usually apply when evaluating these invitations -
Twitter – 1) be interesting, 2) have a profile you’ve taken the time to complete, 3) have a link to a page that says something about you, 4) at least one post before you’ve followed 1,000 people. If you’re in Arizona, I usually follow, if you’re involved in social media someway, I usually follow, if you’re from somewhere outside the US, I like to follow because I like the global aspect of social media. You’ll notice that my followed vs. follower ratio shows I do not auto-follow on my personal account.
Facebook – there will usually need to be some common connection between us. More than one common acquaintance is best, but if that common friend is well known to me, I’ll accept. Others are usually accepted, but I often put them on a list with restricted access to my profile.
Second Life – in Second Life, there is a much deeper mandate to have made a person-to-person connection. The dynamics of the environment really require more than a random friend offer. We have to have met at a virtual event of some kind, we have to have had some level of conversation and made a request to be friends in SL before the offer to connect is even offered.
The link above will take you to The Social Media Bible Plaza in Second Life, I often hang out there listening to an indie music channel, otherwise do a people search for Estaban Graves and tell me you read my blog – we’ll connect in text or voice.
LinkedIn – This is an enforced, ‘you-have-to-really-know-the-person’ network. I’ve had people forget how we were connected when I’ve offered a connection often enough that they slapped my hand. Now if I offer a connection, it’s because it’s someone I know and have actually met or talked to enough on another network that I feel like I could make a decent, legitimate comment about them in a social network setting. I’ll also refer to how we met in the connection request, to try and prompt the recollection.
If I get a connection offer, I apply the criteria of “how did we meet?” If I do not remember at the moment, I will ask how people how we met, or why we would connect. Never do I connect without understanding why. I think there are some people in my network that I may have forgotten how / why we’re connected, particularly if we’ve been connected since my early days in LinkedIn, but mostly my LinkedIn network is genuine.
MySpace – my profile there is not very active right now, but they’ve been doing so much new stuff, I will be revamping it soon… if you’re connected to me elsewhere, I’ll likely accept an invite to connect as I get that profile up and going again.
Other SocNets, Review Sites, etc. – I’m pretty open to any connection, except for adult content and people that appear to be establishing their social presence for spamming purposes only.
Back to the invite from Christy though…
I was impressed with her thoughtfulness and they way she asked to connect. I recognized that we were both part of the same group and that is was more about a local connection. I also like that she might be able to help me with a professional wardrobe for an upcoming presentation we’re doing with ASBA and IBM… I accepted her invite to connect, sent her a response and asked if I might refer to her very tactic in a blog post in asking for a LinkedIn connection – she said yes and I look forward to seeing how we might connect further.
(image from eHow)
My work with the TheSocialMediaBible.com takes me into interesting places and gives me lots of new and innovative ways to opportunity to experience various social media technologies. I also look for opportunities to explore the newest stuff I can lay my hands on.
Last week I was a participant in a focus group that was asked to evaluate a product concept that a manufacturer is considering launching into the retail space. They had recruited a global panel of about a dozen of us from all walks of life. In the session, we were asked to take a look at a series of applications for this new concept, play with the controls and experience how the technology they are developing might be perceived.
The remarkable aspect of this experience was the extensive use of social media technology that was applied to the process to accomplish the goal.
The company was Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke is the Dutch word for ‘Royal’), based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The project lead I met was Dolf Wittkamper. It all began when he posted a notice on LinkedIn and asked if anyone would be interested in participating in a concept evaluation using another social media, the 3D social platform called ‘Second Life‘. I have a history and a background in Second Life, so I applied and was accepted.
I cannot speak about the concepts they presented, but I can talk about the process – which is what I found to be relevant to social media. The session followed pretty much the same process I’ve seen in a similar real life situation. Have a panel come into a room, show them a concept or idea, support them and answer questions while they experience the concept ad then usher them into another room and explore their perceptions around a conference table.
Except the panel was logged into the 3D platform from all over the world, mostly from the US. This was a brilliant application of social media technology, albeit somewhat advanced / geeky for the average user because of the 3D platform being employed.
Why This Is Important - Businesses everywhere will have to continue to innovate and promote products to a global audience. Using social media technologies to connect with the audience and a rich-media environment to present concepts in bits and pixels even before they can be built out of glass and steel will allow a much lower cost, iterative process than could otherwise ever be achieved. Products can be built better and quicker at a lower cost. How much lower?
ROI on the Concept Development Process – I’m not an engineering guy, so I’m not sure what it’d would run to physically produce prototype products for concept evaluation (a lot, I’d bet) but from a marketing perspective I did a quick calculation of just the cost to get a global focus group together using 70-80% US participants at a the HQ location for Philips. This is not a precise calculation, but you’ll get the idea here.
Lets look at conventional means to just GET us to the HQ for a focus group, they would have had to pay for airfare, rooms and set aside a portion of their facility to host us. The company is based in the Netherlands, airfare to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is about $1,800USD business class and rooms are $190USD. Train fare from the airport is about 50 Euros, so add $75 per person round trip. Add food, $35USD per diem, and one person to attend from the US for two days = $2,325USD. In my session there were 10 of us from the US and two from overseas, one from the UK and one from Switzerland. The US participation would have been at least $23,250 and they held I think four of these sessions. If there was a similar mix, the costs could easily rise to $100,000 USD / 75,000 Euros.
What did the build cost in SL? Well, you can get a private island to do what ever you want for about $1,000 and a monthly fee of about $150. Philips has a few islands, and we did not use the whole place, but even if we did, it would be around $7.70 USD for the facility. The staff would be additional of course to run the event. It might have taken a few days of staff time to set up the virtual environment – Dolf seems pretty sharp.
In another case study I came across, IBM reported saving $320K on a single conference they opted to hold Second Life instead of a usual real life venue.
Will We See More of 3D Social Platform? I think so. There are more than a few thoughts that have me believing this; 1) it’s an immersing, rich media experience – something consumers enjoy, 2) Linden Labs (the people behind Second Life) are moving to rein in adult content, a rampant factor many companies have had a little heartburn accepting in the past, 3) initiatives like OpenSim, a similar, private platform that people are working on to connect to the public Second Life platform that will give companies even more control over the consumer experience.
There are even more factors at work, but these are the important ones I see that will drive even more 3D experiences for users.
Verdict – Evaluate the 3D social platform for yourself. Initially, it’s a real time vampire, but after you get your bearings, it is a powerful, informative and sometime fun platform to connect with others. I’ve seen Coldwell Banker do a replication in Second Life of a luxury home being sold in real life and brands like IBM, Kraft Foods, Nike, Adidas, American Cancer Society, Nissan and now Philips use the environment to connect to consumers.
Might work for you too.
Updated: I misspelled Dolfs last name, cleaned up some of the writing in the ROI section and a provided a link to the Virtual Worlds blog article on the IBM savings. Apologies to Dolf and thanks for the catch.
In my Google reader today I came across a post by Greg Verdino over at Social Media Today where he proclaims ‘Twitter is This Year’s Second Life‘ and goes on to describe why he thinks that Twitter will likely succumb to become a passing fad.
I also came across a post from my friend Joel Burslem at The Future of Real Estate Marketing that really dazzled me and reminded me just how far we have to go in this area of technology. The video is called ‘World Builder’ by Bruce Branit and it really is amazing. Enjoy it!
World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.
For those who have known me over the last few years also know I am an advocate of the 3D Internet and virtual worlds. I’ve drug a number of my friends into Second Life and taken them on expeditions to upgrade their avatar. I’ve bought & sold land, had avatar relations, established several groups, staged and attended meetings, recorded event on my virtual land and have found an outlet there for volunteerism working with the American Cancer Society in the Relay for Life for Second Life. In short, there is a community there for me to participate in.
In his article Greg makes a few fair assessments of the over-zealous pronouncement made by twitter lovers and a legitimate comparison to the virtual world zealots of 2006. I’ll give him his due and recognize that he may be right, but to make a prediction like this is like making a pie-crust promise, it’s one that is easily made and easily broken.
The only real question we should ask is not if Twitter will reach a saturation, but when. It may cone after several iterations of the technology (likely) or it may come next week (not likely).
Second Life has become a tool in toolbox of firms getting real tired of shipping people from point A to point B for face-to-face meeting where the content is absorbed just as well in the immersing 3D Internet interface of Second Life. IBM recently proclaimed it saved $350K by holding a conference in Second Life, eliminating airfare, ground travel, per diem, hotel and conference facility expense. Universities are using Second Life in powerful and unique ways to deliver content and learning and innovations are still coming out of the user generated content that is Second Life.
Social media people will recognize Second Life as a huge trusted, global network of somewhere there are over 60,000 people online RIGHT NOW where you can make real friendships, create connections and run businesses that can actually help pay the mortgage in your real, or First Life.
Verdict - Greg’s a bit off base here I think. His post seems to be demanding some level of perfection and he declines to recognize that growth new technologies is never is perfect, we as a culture often get it wrong in the beginning. To make an examination of either platform at this stage and demand some level of perfection from a low-cost / free platform that can be used to connect us across ocean is ridiculous – if you need perfection in your technology, check the next planet or universe over – it just does not exist here.
We will grow into our use of social media and the post from Jeremiah Owyang sort of points the way in his post today title ‘Research Status: The Future of the Social Web, Social Media in Recession‘. All I can suggest is that we’re still in our infancy in this technology, let’s explore it together without a recrimination of the people busting their hump to get is there.
Today I received a request to connect on LinkedIn from someone I had never met. 
