Following yesterday’s post “Social Media and Mobile Growth are Exponentially Symbiotic” I wanted to post 2 quick links that emphasize the relationship between mobile and social.

Rohit has a good post detailing a milestone of sorts in mobile’s maturity.

Influential Marketing Blog: 5 Terms That Signify The Future Of Mobile Marketing

It’s hard to predict, but I can say that this year does represent a unique moment where all the different aspects of mobile marketing that have long been preached by believers as signifying a cultural shift that matters to marketers are coming together.

The Shortcode
LBS (Location Based Services)
APP(lications)
AR (Augmented Reality)
DMPs (Direct MobilePayments)

ReadWriteWeb reports on a recent study showing that mobile social networking is now more popular than desktop social networking.

Social Networking Now More Popular on Mobile than Desktop

During the 2.7 hours per day that people in the U.S. spending on the mobile web, 45% are posting comments on social networking sites, 43% are connecting with friends on social networking sites, 40% are sharing content with others and 38% are sharing photos. While those last two figures represent activities that can take place outside of a dedicated social networking service, like a Facebook app for example, they still are inherently social activities.

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Image via CrunchBase

If you read this blog even somewhat frequently then you know I’m a little odd. I proudly admit it. I experiment with new Web apps and new ways of doing things that don’t make sense to most people. One thing that I’ve been doing lately (and blogged about) is mashing up Google Alerts, Zemanta for Gmail and Posterous.

Why do I do this? Two reasons really:

1. It gives me an interesting way to consume my various Google Alerts
2. For me it’s the blogging equivalent of “warming up”

3 alerts I have set up are for Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook. To me these are the three most interesting social networking services out there (right now at least, that could always change tomorrow).

FriendFeed Get’s No Love

From the very beginning I’ve noticed a trend Twitter and Facebook get all the attention while FriendFeed is relegated to the fringe.

If you look at this post FriendFeed gets 1 news result and 5 blog posts. Total 6

A Facebook post from the same day gets 9 news results and 5 blog posts. Total 14

Finally a recent Twitter post gets 6 news results and 5 blog posts. Total 11

These results are pretty consistent. Some days Twitter gets more results than Facebook but they both consistently crush FriendFeed results. And to add insult to injury only two FriendFeed results don’t mention Twitter or Facebook. Meaning that FriendFeed is usually only mentioned when someone is doing a round up of new social media tools. It rarely gets it’s own coverage.

Now Google Alerts aren’t perfect but they are a good indicator.

Is FriendFeed Only For Geeks?

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Lately I have been fielding the same questions about communities like Twitter, Ning and Second Life. In my last post I wrote about the problems with e-mail: The channel is clogged.

The same problem exists with radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, junk mail, spam, and telephone marketers. The channels are clogged. When users no longer find a particular channel useful will they use less channels? No, they will find or make new channels.

This is what Twitter, Second Life, MySpace, blogs, etc, are: new channels of communication. Ironically, this is what TV, radio and the printed press started off as: channels of communication. Then people started asking what the business application was. Now these channels are so clogged with ‘business applications’ (ie marketing) that we have to find new channels of communication in order to talk to each other.

In a previous post I talked about what New Media could learn from the “demise” of old media. My recommendation to Marketers: Tread lightly, don’t yell, don’t interrupt, engage, add value, participate.

The same is happening in our workplace. We don’t have enough channels for the amount of information we have (and we haven’t seen anything yet). All of our old channels were designed in a different world; a world of limited information. This is why I blogged about the death of e-mail. As we have created more information we have crammed it in the same channels: e-mail, TV, radio, etc.

New Media is a channel, how we use it is what makes it powerful or just another annoyance.

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I had the opportunity to meet Andy and I had to ask him if anything had become of his interest in internal blogging. I was disappointed but not at all surprised to hear that nothing at all had come of it. It seemed apparent from his response that the idea was not even on the table anymore.

WGI like most companies in America are faced with an uncertain future. There is going to be a huge loss in resources and knowledge as Baby Boomers leave the workplace. There just are not as many Gen Xers (about half) to fill the vacancy’s that are coming and Gen Y is mostly too green to take on higher management role.

Andy admitted that social networking tools would be a perfect fit to solve their problems. He also brought up one of the best arguments as to why they dropped the idea: Baby Boomers won’t use the tools. Now my first gut reaction was: there are Baby Boomers who blog, followed by, if you implemented the tools, provided training and instituted a policy…. Then reality set in, yeah they wouldn’t use it. Most Baby Boomers are not going to use any type of social networking tool.

WGI has a good plan in place: As their engineers move into retirement, hire them back part time and team them up with someone they can mentor. A good majority of these Type A engineers would love an opportunity like this.

Then I thought a little more seriously about their problem. How do they pass on all of that valuable information from their aging engineers to the younger, just out of school engineers? One on one is great and invaluable, but how much information can be passed on and retained this way. WGI’s plan won’t work for each new hire. Even if they could get a one to one match up across the company you have personality differences and generational dynamics that won’t work in all cases. Plus how long will Baby Boomers really want to work or be able to?

Gen Y and a certain percentage of Gen X would willingly use new media tools. Combine those tools with the steps that WGI is already implementing and you have a real Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management solution. As the younger engineers learn from their mentors they can record and share that information with their peers. Blogs, podcasts, wikis, tagging, RSS feeds and all things geeky could make information sharing across the entire company infinitely more powerful than any currently available enterprise solution.

Obviously no solution is utopian, and there would still be many more hurdles to implementing a solution like this but it seems better than anything else I’ve heard of. Does anyone know of a company using new media for this type of solution? Can someone think of a better solution?

Additional Resources:
All Kind Food
Andrew McAfee

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