Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

March 8, 2013 · 11:39 am

Tips

The end of a snowy, wet week here in the Northeastern US and it makes me glad we can have a little Foodie Friday Fun.  We usually go out to eat on Friday nights and as we did so last week I got to thinking about how servers get paid.  That, in turn, lead to a broader thought about restaurants in general and how their business has changed with the growth of social.  Let me explain.

Servers work primarily for tips.  There’s usually some sort of minimum wage paid but their livelihood depends on the instant feedback a tip provides.  Bad service can mean a couple of hours working for not much money.  Doing a great job can mean extra cash.  Oh sure – in some places  tips are pooled and a good server gets shafted while the lazy ones and the owner take an equal share.  For the most part, however, how much you earn is tied to how well you do your job.  As an aside, that’s why I rarely leave a bad tip – unless there was no service or it was an absolute disaster the server did some work for me and they should be paid.

It’s an interesting dynamic.  The server can be perfectly competent but if the kitchen is badly run the service seems to be a mess as well.  The difference is the cooks are all on salary in most places while the servers can suffer the consequences.  Where the overall operation feels the pain is in the magnifying effect of social media.  A bad experience used to be a secret.  Today they’re aggregated, searched, and considered as people make their dining decisions.  It can kill a business or it can help everyone involved to do very well.  Why do I bring this up?

We should all operate as if we’re servers.  While for some of us compensation can be tied directly to how well or poorly we do our jobs, for most people in corporate life we make what we make – compensation is something we negotiate when we’re hired even if some of it might be tied to a bonus or to stock holdings.  We don’t go home most days with a paycheck that mirrors how well we performed.  Too bad – it might force a lot of people to consider the performance more often.

What would you earn if everyone with whom you came in contact had the option to tip you for the job you did?  What kind of tips would you give out to those with whom you’ve chosen to do business?   Something I’m thinking about as the week comes to an end.  You?

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February 26, 2013 · 10:20 am

Blame The Producers

Every once in a while I get up from my computer screen and take a break.  Sometimes it’s to make phone calls.  Sometimes it’s just to spend a few minutes watching the news.  Anything to step away, clear my head, and refocus.  You should try it!  Lately, however, I find myself not watching the news networks while they have multiple people engaged in conversations.  You know the format – a couple of talking heads representing opposing points of view batting an issue back and forth.  Except lately there’s far less dialog and a lot more overlapping screaming.

I can’t take it.  One person begins to make a point and the other one starts yelling “you’re wrong.”  The “moderator” from the network rarely intervenes – I’m sure they’re thinking this is great TV.  It’s not.  One guest talks over another until it’s time for commercial.  It makes my head hurt.  It demeans everyone involved. It’s wrong in so many ways and it makes a great business point.

I blame the producers.  They could be telling the audio guy to cut off a mike.  If I was in the booth, the reporter would hear “tell so and so that if they won’t let the other guest speak I’m cutting off their mike until it’s their turn to talk.”  You know – kind of how you’d treat a child, which is how they’re behaving.  Former elected officials do it.  Party officials do it.  Rarely, however, do people serving in office do it – they have something to lose – the next election!

It would be a disaster if you ran your business this way yet many people do.  They talk over customers or are so focused on making their point that they ignore what the other people are saying.  One thing digital has done to us all, in my opinion, is curtail our attention spans.  We’re used to responding immediately to things and we’ve all become a lot more self-centered.  Don’t believe me?  Look around the next time you go out to eat – how many people are checking their phones instead of engaging their dining companion?   We can’t do that if we’re to be successful businesspeople.  We need to cut off our own mikes and listen.  We need to moderate the customer feedback portions of our digital efforts.  Not to curtail opinion but to enforce grown-up behavior.  People want to express their opinions and we should welcome that.  We can insist on them doing so respectfully.

One of the points in The Cluetrain Manifesto (surely you’ve read it by NOW!) is that in both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.  Your business needs someone to keep them “speaking” and not shouting over one another.  How are you doing with that?

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February 21, 2013 · 11:13 am

Is Facebook Viable?

There’s been a lot written since Facebook did their IPO a while back questioning their business model.

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Some analysts say that once the company solves monetization of the mobile traffic all will be well. Others speculate that a better, more marketer-friendly platform is needed. Personally, I like to let the companies themselves identify where the problems may lie. Facebook did exactly that in their S-1 filing a year ago as they prepared to go public:

If we fail to retain existing users or add new users, or if our users decrease their level of engagement with Facebook, our revenue, financial results, and business may be significantly harmed.

Fair enough.   After all, without users continuing to add content, what’s there?  Which is why a couple of things I’ve read lately have me wondering if Facebook is a viable business in the long-term.  I know – it’s huge, it takes in a lot of money, and it seems sort of ubiquitous.  At one time, many of those things were said about MySpace or the walled-garden version of AOL, so bear with me.

A decent amount (low double digits at one point) of Facebook’s revenue came from Zynga‘s games.  Is anyone you know still “Villing”?  That goes to the engagement point.  More important than that (since revenue sources are fungible), is the fact that younger people don’t seem to be using the service.  In fact, the real young crowd – those reaching the age when they would normally join Facebook – seem to be focused on other services.  Instagram and Tumblr, by many accounts, are more popular with the young teen set than Facebook is, and that’s been the case for a year.

A Pew study came out the other day that should set off te fire alarms at Facebook HQ.  What it found was:

  • 61% of current Facebook users say that at one time or another in the past they have voluntarily taken a break from using Facebook for a period of several weeks or more.
  • 20% of the online adults who do not currently use Facebook say they once used the site but no longer do so.
  • 8% of online adults who do not currently use Facebook are interested in becoming Facebook users in the future.

They asked the 61% of Facebook users who have taken a break from using the site why they did so, and they mentioned a variety of reasons. The largest group (21%) said that their “Facebook vacation” was a result of being too busy with other demands or not having time to spend on the site. Others pointed toward a general lack of interest in the site itself (10% mentioned this in one way or another), an absence of compelling content (10%), excessive gossip or “drama” from their friends (9%), or concerns that they were spending too much time on the site and needed to take a break (8%).  Many of those reasons are NOT things Facebook can fix since they’re a result of what users are doing and not the platform.  That’s troubling.

So I’ll put it out there:  is Facebook a viable business in the long-term?  If it’s just old folks like me catching up with high school pals we haven’t seen in 40 years or our grandkids, is it going to be long before all we see are supplemental Medicaid insurance ads and sponsored posts for hearing aids?  What do you think?  Have you taken a break from Facebook?  Have your kids?  Is Facebook viable in the long-term?

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