How did you get this number?

The Next Web ran a short piece a few days ago about the results from a survey of mobile and smartphone usage in the UK, commissioned by the UK mobile operator O2, that revealed some interesting data about how people are actually using their smartphones.Mojave phone booth

The hook line from the piece, and what is interesting about the data, (taken from a survey of about 2,000 users), is that making actual phones calls, i.e., talking to other people, (or at least attempting to), rated as only the fifth most popular activity for these smartphone users.

According to the 'All About You' survey data, here's where people spend their time on each day with their phones:

Browsing the internet - 25 minutes

Checking Social Networking sites - 17.5 minutes

Listening to music - 15.5 minutes

Playing games - 14.5 minutes

Making actual phone calls (not including conversations with SIRI), - 12 minutes

If you read the rest of the Next Web piece on the survey data, it talks about how the mobile phone has become an indispensable part of modern life, has replaced for many users the need for other 'single-function' gadgets like alarm clocks and watches, and continues to utterly transform the way that we interact with the world, with information, and certainly, each other. And of course that is the kind of positive spin that O2, a mobile phone provider would want to attach to this kind of data.

But the cynical take on this, and perhaps backed up with we see more and more in our professional and personal lives, is that, increasingly, we don't want to actually talk to each other, at least not as often as we want to check LOL Cats, hang out on Facebook, and drop the latest Adele track.

It's not really new news that people do lots of really cool things on their phones, and I suppose it's not really news anymore that actually talking to people has become a much less common and much bigger intrusion on our time that we ever used to think. Sherry Turkle has already covered that ground better than I ever could.

But I guess I'll leave it to you to consider - the little device you are carrying right now lets you connect with the entire world, almost everyone in it, and more information than was ever dreamed would be accessible even just a few years ago. 

With that power, potential, and promise, why would you want to spend any time dedicated to talking with just one person?

We love, (especially the professional networkers out there), to say that meeting people, talking to them, interacting one-on-one is the ultimate way to connect, and is necessary to forge true and meaningful relationships. But the data keeps showing what we say we believe and what we actually do continue to diverge.

What do you think? How much less do you actually talk to people since you got your iPhone?

And you can call me to let me know what you think if you like, but I probably won't pick up. Maybe.

Are we starting to get sick of each other?

Some random and possibly unrelated items from this week that are submitted for your consideration:

'Time Spent on Facebook Has Gone Flat' - Business Insider

Money line:

Time spent on Facebook on desktop computers in the U.S. has been totally flat for the year, according to data from comScore. For a while now Facebook's engagement had been on the rise, but it appears to have hit a wall.

'Three Myths About What Customers Want' - HBR Blog Network

Money line:

 Myth #1: Most consumers want to have relationships with your brand.

Actually, they don't. Only 23% of the consumers in our study said they have a relationship with a brand. In the typical consumer's view of the world, relationships are reserved for friends, family and colleagues. That's why, when you ask the 77% of consumers who don't have relationships with brands to explain why, you get comments like "It's just a brand, not a member of my family." (What consumers really want when they interact with brands online is to get discounts).

 The Golden Age of Silicon Valley is Over, and We're Dancing on its Grave' - The Atlantic

Money line:

The headline for me here is that Facebook's success has the unintended consequence of leading to the demise of Silicon Valley as a place where investors take big risks on advanced science and tech that helps the world. The golden age of Silicon valley is over and we're dancing on its grave. On the other hand, Facebook is a great company. I feel bittersweet.

The slight, (or maybe not so slight), common thread running through these three pieces? 

That we're not just suffering from an information overload, but perhaps we are starting to feel or sense of a bit of connection overload. That maybe being 'on' and connected to larger and larger networks of people, certainly many of them family and friends, but also, certainly, many of them total strangers, is beginning to raise some unintended and unwanted side effects. That the amount of sheer time, energy needed to sustain these networks and maintain an expected level of interaction is starting to become, well, unsustainable.

I know I am personally guilty of this. I 'auto-post' more content to Twitter and LinkedIn than I ever did in the past. I have become more of a 'drive-by' Facebook user, dropping in once a day or so to click the 'Like' button a few times, as it is the lightest and least obligating form of interaction possible. I'm reading more blogs and online content than ever before, but mainly it seems to find source material for this blog, or for Fistful of Talent, or to share via a scheduled tweet at 10PM when I am probably already asleep.

And I sort of think I am not the only one. It seems that maybe many of us are feeling the effects and strain of the size of our networks, the ever-increasing platforms on which to engage, and the perhaps the engagement traps we've set for ourselves.

I'll ask the question more plainly, are we starting to get just a little sick of each other?

Are you sensing or feeling the need to disengage more often?

I'd love your take on this.

Happy Thursday!

Media and Consumer Tech Trend #3 - Information Acceleration

Recently the analyst firm Gartner issued an interesting press release sharing their '10 consumer macro trends shaping the technology, media and service provider markets over the next 10 years', and I have covered two of these trends Gartner called out here on the blog. The first one, the importance of understanding the customer profile as you create products and services, and perhaps more importantly, as you make decisions on hiring and promotion into leadership roles has definite implications for the design of enterprise technologies and programs. The second, the desire for simultaneously powerful, multi-functional, but simple and easy to use solutions that are prevalent in the consumer world, is increasing in relevance in the workplace as well.

Today I wanted to wrap up this series by taking a look at one more of Gartner's '10 trends', the one titled 'The Impact of Acceleration/Deceleration: The Temporal Digital Divide Widens'. What does this mean, and why is it significant? First, more details from Gartner on this trend:

Acceleration means consumers expect regular and increasingly frequent product upgrades. Over time, there has been a closing of the classic "digital divide" between the haves and have-nots in terms of access to basic technology products and services. However, new digital divides have opened up, especially inequalities in relation to the social graph and consumers' ability to access and manage — or not manage — real-time, nonstop ubiquitous connectivity that is the product of technological acceleration.

Interesting take no doubt, but as technology, particularly mobile technologies and more specifically mobile access to the internet particularly in the developing nations has the effect of levelling the playing field at least in terms of basic access, then the next source of advantage and opportunity shifts from providing basic technology and access, to providing ways to make sense of the flood of information that has become more widely available. On the consumer side think of it this way, most everyone is online, has access to more information than has ever been available at any time in history, and more than likely is building personal social networks that span local areas, states, and nations. The answer to just about any question can be found, the problem often is actually sorting the good from the bad from the ridiculous number of options.

At work, we see similar challenges, (and opportunities). As electronic communication and digital technologies have been introduced over the last two decades, most organizations no longer have a shortage of data and information, in fact, in some cases workplaces are drowning in too much information. The problem of collecting or at least digitizing information is less and less a problem, but making sense of it all, and turning or transforming all this raw information in its many forms, (email, voice, video, documents, IM, activity streams, external social network data, and more), into relevant, meaningful, accessible, and actionable insights is the next frontier for organizations and solution providers to master. More simply put, the next set and group of more interesting future developments in workplace technologies will be the ones that help to effectively address what Gartner aptly notes in their predictions, enabling people to quickly make sense of the massive flood of digital data that better and faster transaction processing systems, cheap data storage, and increasing mobile and virtual access to it all has made available.

What do you think? Where you work is your problem lack of information, or the ability to sort through all the information you have?

When people know they're being watched...

... they behave differently.

This observation, really given as an aside, was probably the most intriguing one that was offered during the presentations at the Social Media Strategies for HR seminar at The Conference Board in New York that I attended and co-presented with Trish McFarlane this week.  

The take, that installing, deploying, and making central more 'social' and open or collaborative systems to support people's day-to-day work processes and workflows certainly might make the organization more collegial and efficient, but it also might come with some risk and downside as well.

I think there is certainly something to say for the notion that for many people participation in social networks and systems is part honest, and genuine information sharing and engagement, but it also is at least (partly) a kind of performance as well. Think if you can for a minute about your Facebook feed - I will bet it is filled with perfect photos of your friends' precocious and impossibly cute children, tales of friends jetting off on some exotic location, or even long-lost relatives that you know are (largely) losers painting a way-too-flattering portrait of their lives.

When people know they're being watched, they behave differently.

They might embellish, they might obfuscate, or, certainly, they might simply act better and more diligently and responsibly. But either way, whether it is the popular social networks that have invaded our lives, or it is an internal or enterprise social workplace type system that at its core is designed to give lots more people a window into what the average worker bee is up to all day, I think perhaps we haven't thought enough about how being watched impacts people's actions and behaviors.

Anyway, I'm off the soapbox.

Let me know what you think - is more openness, transparency, and visibility into our everyday and mundane actions at work going to change how we act and how we try to present our work selves? Do we run the risk of becoming the same kind of annoying broadcasters we have become on Facebook? 

As always, The Conference Board put on a great event, and I want to thank them for inviting me to attend and participate this week.

Could Facebook become 'Facebook for the enterprise?'

Last week and sort of quietly, Facebook announced the introduction of Groups for Schools, a collection of new features aimed at its original user base - colleges and college students. The Groups for Schools feature allows easier creation and joining of Facebook groups for those users with an active .edu email address, the domain most commonly associated with US-based colleges and universities. Updates posted in the Groups for Schools groups section for a given college will only be visible to other students who’ve also authenticated through their .edu email address. The Groups for Schools capability is a bit of a return to the original intent and use of Facebook, a platform for students to connect, share information about classes and other events, all in a more low-key and not-so-public way. Source - Facebook. Click for larger image.

But a more interesting development than the organization and security aspects of Groups for Schools, is that in these groups Facebook will also support uploading and sharing of files up to 25 MB in size with other group members. Groups For Schools users can click an “Upload File” button above the news feed. Notable, Facebook will not permit .EXE files to be uploaded to prevent malicious programs from going viral. Other groups members will be able to download the files directly from the news feed. To avoid legal issues, Facebook plans to monitor for and to disallow the upload of copyrighted files, so college students can't try to use the platform as a source for MP3s and other protected files.

Facebook originally started on its remarkable growth trajectory beyond Harvard by rolling out to other colleges, and then the network eventually opened up to the general public. Similarly, if Groups for Schools is successful, and Facebook sees increased engagement levels as a result of the file sharing capability, then it is not at all unlikely that Facebook Groups For Businesses or Organizations could follow. The ability to create a private, company-based group, (validated by company email addresses), with the added ability to upload and share files to group members, and to engage in an ongoing conversation about the files and the comments about those files, heck that sounds like the use case for about 90% of email-based enterprise collaboration today.

If Facebook were to launch more advanced enterprise-like collaborative features right inside the network, it could mean interesting times ahead for solutions like Yammer and perhaps even Jive. Sure, you can argue with me and claim that these more advanced, enterprise solutions have lots more capability than a simple news feed and the ability to upload files, and while that is true, there is also something they don't have.

They're not called Facebook. And I would bet that there would be some advantage to the potential adoption rates of a new collaborative tool at work if that tool was already used by 95% of the staff before the project even started.

What do you think - do you see Facebook even being interested in more 'internal' enterprise networking?

Would you use Facebook at work to collaborate with your team?