Social Media

I can tell a lot about you just from the fact that you’re reading this. You have a professional interest in purchasing or finance or both – that’s not exactly rocket science to work that out – but I can tell more. You’re conscientious. You enjoy the  evaluation of ideas and the analysis of problems and their solutions. You respond relatively well  to stressful situations and you deal well with minor day to day frustrations. No one would describe you as self-conscious or shy. That’s a lot to deduce from the mere fact that you’re reading Purchasing Insight. But I’m right aren’t I? I’ve just described you.

People still debate whether social media and twitter in particular is a useful business tool for purchasing and finance people. There is still the perception that twitter is all about celebrities and politicians using it as a vehicle for self publicity. Well it is that but it's much more too and as more and more people embrace twitter in their professional lives, it can be difficult to know who is best to follow and why. Now, if you are still skeptical, there's a great paper that will help you out.

The growth in use of social networks and blogs is a remarkable phenomenon. According to recent research by Nielsen, internet users in the US spend more time on facebook than any other web brand and mobile access to on-line social networks and blogs has increased dramatically - for mature internet users, it's more than doubled in 12 months. This isn't just a US phenomenon. Australians spend more time on social networks and blogs than any of the countries that  Nielsen surveyed and Germans spend a whopping 12.7 billion minutes on blogs and social media - more than any other web category.

You can always tell when something new is here to stay when the older generations call for it to be banned. The riots in the UK this week, quite apart from being a huge wake up call for the British government, has been an eye opener for many about the power of social media.

What is often criticised and mocked as management consultancy speak is in fact a succint vocabularly of specialist jargon. The specialists understand it – they need it. They need a language to describe the highly specialist things that they do. To outsiders it can seem deliberately confusing – a launguage designed to exclude all but the initiated. But it’s not deliberate – is it?