A Grey-beard’s Adventure in On-line Marketing

So is that it? Facebook’s the new designer drug? Outwardly fun, but actually addictive and destructive, a threat to world peace and a danger to national stability?

Or, if you’re an internet marketing junkie, the answer to our prayers - a one-stop shop for gettin’ to the market fast and cheap?

Well - that depends.

Like many people, I suppose, my journey into Web 2-point-Oh pretty much began with Facebook. I’d heard plenty about it in the media, of course - and so many of my friends were saying how bad it was and how it was going to destroy an entire generation (i.e. their children) and turn them into geek-style zombies obsessing over their computer screens in the dead of the night - that I just couldn’t help myself.

I signed up.

I thought it was a bold step although at first I was scared I’d get dissed by a bunch of youngsters who didn’t want this old bullet around, this (cliché! incoming!) mutton dressed up as lamb playing in their private club.

But I haven’t been dissed yet (I guess the kids are so busy playing with themselves - or, perhaps, even ignoring the club - that they’re not even aware I’m there). What has happened, though, is that I’ve made some new friends and some old friends have found me. I’ve been bought and sold as a human pet and I think I’ve become some kind of a pirate. I’ve received hilarious, sad and sometimes pornographic posts on my Super Wall (which particular app I eventually killed - but not because of the porn: it just got irritating, somehow, getting all that dross. I mean, how many times can one person take receiving the same picture of some pwetty likkle puppy?).

And then I got bored (which I suspect is pretty much the trend amongst Facebook users - whose numbers apparently fell from 8.9 million in December last year to 8.5 million in January this year). And now I hardly use the thing, except for regular visits to my profile to check on my favourite group (the ‘Nathan and Milla Fan Club’ - which I created for sharing pictures of my grandson and his cousin. But - nah, nah, na-na nah - I’m not gonna give you the link; if you haven’t signed up on Facebook, why would you want it?).

Facebook though, was useful to me as an introduction to how people are communicating these days and I do recommend it - even to my Luddite friends who won’t allow their children anywhere near a computer “because if they start playing on those things, they won’t go outside and play in the sun and the mud and the rain.” Yeah, right. And if you never let them drink a sickly green coolie they’ll never slink off to buy sweets behind your back, either.

But what I think I’ve also discovered is what Facebook isn’t - and it isn’t a business application. Of course I’ve tried to use it for business myself: I put up a group for my blog - This Tourism Week - and some of my personal friends did sign up as members and I do send them a weekly e-mail (through Facebook) that reminds them to go to my blog and read it. But so far nobody’s drifted onto This Tourism Week from Facebook - not according to either my own blog stats or my Google Analytics account.

And then there’s this, too: ABSA Bank created a Facebook account in an attempt, I suppose, to draw the youngsters in as customers. It’s got a funky “Put Your Best Foot Forward” graphic and if you tell us how to put our best foots forward, you can even win a Macbook - the ultimate in e-cool.

But I think the whole thing’s more of an exercise in putting your corporate foot in your mouth - especially when you see comments like this one (on ABSA’s Facebook Wall) from a young South African named Alistair Fairweather: “Remember ‘My bank is my elbow’ and ‘My bank is my ringworm’ and all that rubbish? Ahhh - they don’t make payoff lines like those beauties any more.

“There’s nothing sadder than a bunch of money grubbing corporate bankers trying to play it cool with the kids.”

And that, I’m afraid, is pretty much the best and most incisive commentary you’re likely to read as far as business on Facebook is concerned.

Sure - it works sometimes. Especially when it comes to people’s social lives. Cafe Havana in Mossel Bay, for instance, couldn’t understand why their regular Friday night crowd doubled one week - until they found out that the DJ they’d brought in from neighbouring George had mailed all his Facebook friends to say that he’d be playing there that night.

But that, I think, is it as far as Facebook as a business tool is concerned.

Which isn’t to say that that Web 2-point-Oh isn’t a business tool, by the way - far from it.

It simply means that there’s a moer of a lot more to Web 2-point-Oh than one over-hyped and over-sexed social networking site.

Talk To Me - Martin Hatchuel - martin@thistourismweek.co.za or leave your comments below for everyone to see.

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