(MSc) Sebinomics

Employee fired because of Facebook

Nationale Suisse, a Swiss insurance company, can be rather narrow-minded when it comes to their employees using social media on their sick-days.

Nationale Suisse fired one of their employees in Basel/Switzerland, because she used Facebook at home while suffering from a migraine attack. Read details here in German and in English. The 30-year old employee said she was not able to work on a PC because it gave her a headache and she had to stay in the dark. Hence, she took a sick-day and went home, where she took care of herself and used her iPhone to access Facebook. According to an article in 20 Minuten, labor law expert Matthias Häuptli sais that employees who are sick do not need to stay in bed at all times. Using the Internet is like reading a newspaper. Therefore, firing an employee because she used Facebook on a sick-day is arguable. 

My take: How did Nationale Suisse know that their employee was surfing Facebook? Apparently, the woman added a stranger to her Facebook friends, which after the incident disappeared. On second thought, she assumes it was someone from Nationale Suisse spying on her. After all the crazy spying that happened in large European corporations last  year, I can well imagine that Nationale Suisse embraced such a tactic.

As we have read and seen all over the news, many companies decided to block social media channels for their workers, to keep them less distracted. I don’t agree with that approach but can live with it. But if it is true that some companies decide to spy on their workforce outside of the office in such a sneaky way, I would never ever want to work for such a company ever again, would not want to buy any products or services from them, and would recommend to my acquaintances not to engage in any way with that company. 

This might sound harsh, but as my friend Garr Reynolds discussed in a blog post, How can I trust you if you don’t trust me?

After years and years of playing bass in bands and performing on stage and on records, I found a new way to express myself with music, through multi-window video-songs on YouTube. Funny how it all started (read it here).

By now, I have to admit that I get much more satisfaction from playing on the digital stage that YouTube offers compared to playing offline. Sure, playing live is a rush no matter what the size of your audience is. I played everything from audiences of 4 listeners to a sea of people. Nonetheless, I have never been closer to an audience than now. In the past 6 months more than 60,000 people viewed my ukulele and bass videos, which in my niche world is a very large number. I have been able to improve my music skills and work on my creative attitude thanks to the love-and-hate comments I have received on YouTube and other social media platforms.

In addition, virtual collaborations with fellow YouTubers, like the You and I cover with Jason in California, Kelsey in New York, and me in Switzerland, can be very rewarding. You get to play with musicians you have never met and you might never ever meet in your life and you create something very innovative, a virtual band. Check out my favorite virtual band, here, Virtually Rush. Playing in a virtual band will give you the possibility to reach a far wider audience than by creating something yourself. Each musician can tap the following of the other members and hopefully find new followers.

I’m not suggesting not to play offline. Club gigs (usually) pay you good money if you attract a large audience. But if you can reach an audience of 100,000 with niche music in just a few months, like some YouTubers do, you might be able to fill clubs and bars with 400 seats easier after playing online. Especially if your followers are all into you.

Here you are my 20th multi-window YouTube video, The Big Bang Theory Theme by the Barenaked Ladies:

Ghostwriting on Twitter is like,..

Michelle Tripp’s blog post Ghost Tweeting is the Milli Vanilli of Web 3.0 gave me a lot of thinking. She unfollowed Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) on Twitter because, in her words,

Guy Kawasaki used to get it. But when he announced last week at #SESNY that he has three ghost tweeters writing under his Twitter account, I realized somewhere along the way, he lost it. If he can’t see the incredible value of a genuine, unfiltered Twitter persona and the abomination that is a ghosted account, then my friends the man no longer gets it. 

This reminded me of an article by Seth Godin that stated,

Marketers like to talk about transparency and authenticity. I think for most people, most of the time, we care a lot more about the effect and use of a product or service and less about who made it and why. We chose Converse because they get us a date, and we don’t change brands just cause Nike owns them now. Except for when we do. When we feel deceived or tricked, the game can change, and rapidly.

Guy Kawasaki exposed himself to the topic of ghostwriting and openly named his ghostwriters and the reason why he hired them, which should actually make it okay. Nonetheless, I feel that ghostwriting on Twitter is like pretending to have played a wonderful guitar solo on a classic song when you have not! My friend Sam (@Magganpice) asked me through Twitter, “Do u think tweeting for customers is bad? Is there more than one way for brands to use Twitter?” My answer in less than 140 characters was, “Ghosttweeting for brands like Coke/Nike is inevitable, but brands with a face, such as @GuyKawasaki, need to be authentic,” which is more or less what Michelle wrote in her blog post.

The Magic of Social Media

I don’t argue that big profit machines such as Coca Cola, Nike, Reckitt Benckiser or P&G have to put a face onto their Twitter accounts and be all human, because that is not who they are. But brands such as Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), Jeff Howe (@Crowdsourcing), Garr Reynolds (@presentationzen), or Julia Roy (@juliaroy) have a genuine human face and I want to read their words written by them, because I imagine them typing those tweets on a keyboard or on an iPhone, and I would be disappointed to find out it isn’t so. If I would have to find out that Coca Cola or Reckitt Benckiser hired one person to tweet with their name for the company, I would want to follow them with more interest, because I would know it’s authentic and there is an actual chance for real interaction.

A blog post on triiibes.com by Mary McKnight discusses the sociology of being cool and popular and how to use it to be an online rockstar and made me realize, once again, that it is essential in today’s social media world to be authentic and simply be yourself. Fans and followers picture the person they are following and take their words for something special. Now imagine how a fan feels when she has to find out that someone else wrote the words she was reading so carefully. A whole picture falls apart and disappointment is immense, and once the trust of a follower is gone, it will be very, very hard to reestablish a strong relationship.

When I went to school in Switzerland in the beginning of the 90s, it was not a bad attribute to be smart, but it didn’t make you sexy either. Today that seems to have changed. The tech boom and the Internet made even geeks become cool and sexy. The Big Bang Theory, a popular American sitcom that premiered in 2007, depicts being geeky and smart as very charming qualities.

Pop star Beyonce Knowles, said in an interview with ABC News, “[President Obama] makes me want to be smarter,” and Paul Holdengräber, The New York Public Library’s public director stated in In the New Dating Scene, the Attraction Is a Beautiful Mind (Washington Post), „Let’s face it, there really is nothing more sensual than caressing someone’s mind.”

As technology gets sexy, bloggers and other techies become sexier with it. But they’re not necessarily smarter than non-techies. It is simply easier for them to spread their knowledge through social media channels for the entire world to see. Think of Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow, Sarah Austin of Pop17, and your friends on Facebook or Linkedin who know how to engage in online conversations on the Word Wide Web. The point here is to just share your knowledge with others.

A great example of a non-techie being smart & sexy is Amy Dumas, known as the former WWE female wrestler Lita and the lead singer of the punk rock band The Luchagors (I wrote about her in Amy ‘Lita’ Dumas: Keeping The Line). Even though she might look scary when fighting in a ring or shouting on stage, she proves to be a very smart and educated woman when giving interviews. Obviously, one thing can go well with the other. According to Wikipedia, Amy “managed to finish high school at Lassiter High School six months before graduation. She majored in education at Georgia State University, but dropped out in 1993 because she felt it was too much like high school.” Amy also shows her intellect through her engagement with ADORE Amy Dumas Operation Rescue & Education. ADORE’s goal is to save millions of domestic animals the agony of homelessness, abuse, and neglect by providing educational resources to teachers, municipal animal shelters, and private rescues, as written on their website.

I claim, sexiness comes from a smart and positive attitude, which can be promoted with a blog or any kind of information channel that finds its way online to reach a larger audience. Smart is sexy and the more we share our knowledge and positive attitude with others the more likely we are to impress them.

What do Steve Jobs, Ted Murphy, and Superman have in common? Answer: They can be recognize them by their outfit, which is part of their personal branding.

Steve's Outfit

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., is widely known for his great keynote presentations, which are also trademarked by his unique outfit: Levi’s 501 jeans and a St. Croix mock turtleneck. In the case of Superman, he is only super with his blue, red and yellow costume, red cape, and the stylized S on his chest. And as Ted Murphy, serial entrepreneur and CEO of IZEA, wrote in his blog post My Social Media Costume, “My hat, Twitter shirt and crazy red running shoes have all become part of my personal brand. I wear this outfit to events because it enables people to easily recognize and remember me.”

The above-mentioned outfits are made to stick and emphasize their personal brand. Not only outfits can emphasize your personal brand, but also the way you move and behave. If you are a presenter of any kind, such as a speaker, musician, entertainer, or coach, be aware of the way you move, since that can be part of your signature as well. Sting stated in a Making-of Guitar Hero, “The way you move is as much a signature as the way you sing or the way you play.” That is also true for the way we move, talk, or get excited about something. Most musicians and dancers practice in front of mirrors to analyze their movements and work on them until they look good, or cool, in the case of rock musicians. 

With the right outfit it becomes natural to behave in a certain way until it becomes a signature of the character you are promoting. Nonetheless, it is very important to stay authentic.