It’s a Joke
I worked with a group of managers from a very large construction company last week.
They were a jolly bunch. Full of good humour and social banter.
I asked them what they knew about Social Media.
They cheerfully replied “Nothing”.
“We ban it at work,” they said, “But it’s a joke really.”
“We installed sophisticated software to prevent employees surfing the web on their company desktop computers, but the kids in the company surf all day on their mobile phones.”
“So what’s the point?”
So what is the point?
The point seems to be that large organisations like Pharma are really wedded to the idea of the status quo. Social Media is seen to threaten that status, and the behemoths act swiftly and completely ineffectively to stem the tide of change.
One interesting observation from the construction managers was the ‘kids’ ability to do their work AT THE SAME TIME as surfing the web, twittering and “whatever else it is they do with those things.”
It’s a skill that comes about with practice.
And the ‘kids’ get lots and lots of practice.
Around 27 billion hours a month.
That’s a lot of practice.
Repeat after me.
My teachers knew a thing or two about practice. How many times did I hear them say “Repeat after me….”
Repetition is a powerful learning tool.
So you’d think that Pharma, which keeps repeating their mistakes, might learn from them.
But sadly, the evidence tells a different story.
As Ed Silverman writes, “Imagine the distinction of making a list of the clueless that includes tin-ear auto execs taking corporate jets to testify before Congress and bailout recipient AIG spending nearly half a million dollars to entertain at a swanky retreat. Well, that’s exactly where Merck and Schering-Plough execs find themselves in the annual ranking of Top 10 PR Blunders by Fineman Public Relations.
Keep Up the Practice.
Stuart Johnston explains in internetnews.com that usage continues to climb each year.
A leading Web analytics firm said Friday that Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Web sites were the most popular with users on the Internet last month.
According to a new report released by comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), Microsoft's sites, which include mega sites like Microsoft.com, portal MSN.com, and search engine Bing.com, garnered almost 15 percent of all time users spent online worldwide in September.
That constitutes a jump of 43 percent from September 2008.
One service driving that growth, a synopsis of the report said, was Microsoft's Live Messenger instant messaging service, which accounted for 70 percent of the time "spent on the property during the month,"
Overall, users spent nearly 27 billion hours surfing the Web in September 2009, an increase of 24 percent from the same month last year.
Users spent 3.9 billion hours on Microsoft sites, an increase from 2.7 billion in September 2008,
The user population was comprised of 1.2 billion users over the age of 15.
Keep practicing.
(Tomorrow's Post: Pharma Pipe Dreams)
Comments