Advocate's Studio

I just got a new work smartphone – its Android-powered, but more on that later. With a quick download of a Nitro app, I have sufficient security to access my Outlook mail, contacts, calendar and tasks. I understand my IT department is deploying tools to further integrate the mobile and desktop experience – first, iOS and Blackberry, with Android-friendly tools coming soon. When I come into work these days, a new wireless network pops up on my phone’s screen: iPad Test. Yes, Virginia, businesses are definitely going MOBILE.

Zendesk has published a cool infographic detailing the marriage between the enterprise and their smartphones. It’s tight, and only getting tighter. Check it out below, hat tip to WebWorkerDaily:

Taking classroom courses and learning to you, this great article by Mashable lists a number of different iPhone apps offering mobile eLearning options. App prices range from free to moderately paid, while some are tied to a web site or online library.  The list includes a free iPhone version of an application called Curatr, which I have previously reviewed here in the Studio. Another very cool add is the reference to iTunes U – offering programs from top colleges and universities around the world, including Ohio State University’s Lunch and Learn Series on Wellness, Yale University’s course on Financial Markets, or Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, via iTunes.

What are you waiting for? Get to class!

File this one under “Study Results that State The Obvious.” Nathan Eddy at eWeek reports on a survey of Facebook users showing that people who tend to overuse the site are more likely to be unfriended. More than 1,500 people were polled, albeit a very small percentage of the over 500 million members. The primary reason for unfriending? Frequent, unimportant posts.

Posting about polarizing topics and crude or racists comments were the second and third most cited reasons.

The study comes from University of Colorado PhD student,  Christopher Sibona. Weeks reports that Sibona and others believe the results will have far-reaching implications for businesses on Facebook.

On one hand, I am not so sure. With the separation of business pages from personal pages, one can make an effective marketing use of Facebook without annoying friends and family. I also wonder whether the study examined “unfriending” behavior distinguished from “muting” behavior – Facebook users have the option of muting posts by friends who annoy without having to go to the Draconian level of unfriending.

On the other hand, I myself have unfriended voracious marketers who overstep the bounds of Facebook “friendship” and muted voracious posters who clutter the newsfeed. There is little question in my mind that sites like Facebook and Twitter can be overused and abused. While there is room in these social nets for originality, creativity and connection, the overmarketing employed by some users in this relatively novel stream of commerce will turn off other residents. And while Facebook “unfriending” is certainly easy to do, unfollowing on Twitter is even easier. Your message is lost if there is no one there to hear it.

I believe it pays to remember that the old rules of advertising and marketing do not apply in the social media sphere – people are attracted to those who actually offer, rather than promise to offer, something of value. Part of the value equation is knowing when to speak and knowing when to listen. Think before you post. With every post I make, I try to consider whether it might educate, assist, entertain or support someone else. Leave the intercom on and running your self-serving message at your own peril.

Here is a specialized web tool – how about an app that allows customers to slot your emails on the niceness scale? Nicereply (link here) is a free service (in public beta) that inserts a link into your email along with an invitation to the recipient to click the link and rate the email for professionalism and courtesy. You can create accounts for each employee, so that they can actually see how they rank amongst all employees. Log into the account and get detailed stats on how responsive your business is generally and how helpful each employee is specifically.

Nicereply is working on an API that will permit widget creation so that you can trumpet your stellar grades to the entire Web.

I can’t help it – I am reminded of those bumper stickers you see on commercial vehicles:

Way back, almost a year ago, I posted about a paper presented by Marcus Zillman on deep web research. Deep web research involves getting below the surface layer of web pages to documents stored on-line with extensions such as .pdf, .doc, .xls, ppt, .ps. and other more esoteric extensions. These extensions and this type of searching are particularly applicable to business research, as companies tend to store their information in this manner.

Mr. Zillman has done it again – check out his list of deep web resources for 2010 published on LLRX.com. His comprehensive list includes articles with background information, tools, resources on the semantic web, presentations, pertinent blogs and lots of other great links. You don’t have to “dig deep” to find what you might be looking for with Mr. Zillman’s help!

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