Considered within the narrow definition of high growth social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, it’s easy to see why some wonder why Craigslist hasn’t joined the social revolution, and why the site hasn’t undergone significant changes to its features and user interface to remain “competitive.”

But to look at Craigslist in this context is fundamentally flawed. Craigslist is not a social anything, it’s not an IPO play, and it’s not an entrepreneurial venture with a quick exit strategy. Craigslist is one of a few sites that still reflects its founder’s altruistic to meet a consumer need, not to make money. Craig Newmark is a visionary, a radical, and one of the very few people who truly lives a community vision of the web.

A recent question on Quora, “Why hasn’t another product disrupted and replaced Craigslist?,” gives a clue to the problem of assessing Craigslist purely as a business venture. Craigslist isn’t a product. It is, for the most part, a bona fide community service.

Facebook didn’t enable revolution in Egypt. Twitter didn’t save lives in Japan. These are commercial social networks designed to generate advertising revenue and sell personal data (in one way or another.)  The founders of these and other networks did not set out to make the world a better place (although that can be an outcome.)

If you want to look at a selling site that has been slow to go social, look at eBay. I have no idea why eBay has failed to develop at least 100 communities around its selling categories, each of which is a ready-built, fully engaged but disappointed community. Scrapbookers, cyclists, art collectors, people who restore vintage motorcycles, etc. all come to eBay as a destination site, buy and sell, and then go elsewhere for social networking.

Craigslist is clearly different from eBay and different from sites that seek to disrupt it. Most of the categories are free to buyers and sellers alike. Controls are minimal. Craigslist hasn’t tacked on all kinds of unneeded social features, added location-based check-ins, registration* and avatars. Or contextual ads. Craigslist is an globally relevant, simple, and unencumbered. It should be the model for similar sites in the future and I hope it remains true to its charter and its founder’s ideals.

*Registration is sometimes required on Craigslist, but not for most users under most circumstances.

Tags: craigslist, craigs list, craig newmark

Facebook was recently valued at $85B on SecondMarket. With a current user base of 650 million*, each Facebook user would be worth $130 to the company.

Warren Buffet thinks social networks in general are overvalued, and we might be headed for the Web 2.0 version of the dot-com bubble/bust, but in the meantime, are you truly delivering $130 worth of value to Facebook?

*The Facebook web site says “more than 500 million.” Industry estimates are closer to 650 million.

Tags: social media valuations, Facebook

As Agent Scully once said, “not everything is a labyrinth of dark conspiracy, and not everybody is plotting to deceive, inveigle and obfuscate.” But business jargon is designed to do just that. It should never be used in any setting, but it is obviously here to stay, so all we can do is take up arms against it a phrase at a time.

I’ve done this post before, as have many others, but here are my current most despised phrases. I hope you’ll add your own in the comments section.

1. IDEATION: Ideation is the creation or formation of ideas. In a business setting it implies a group process designed to stimulate ideas (operating under the assumption that most business processes do not.) If you want to confuse your colleagues, use Ideationalist to describe your position.
2. KEY TAKEAWAYS: The idea of the key takeaway is a paradox. Presenters often conclude a talk by giving audience members “the key takeaways.” If a 45-minute talk can be adequately distilled to three points presented in the final minute, this suggests the prior 44 minutes might have been unnecessary.
3. CARE-ABOUTS: Not to be confused with Care Bears, Care-Abouts are those things that a certain group, such as customers, care about. Why not simply use regular English and say, “Here are the things our customers care about.”? (When I was at Hewlett-Packard, Carly used the expression “nice-to-haves.” I would never use it but it seemed to fit her.)
4. CONTENT CREATION: Trivializing all online creative endeavors as if they were some kind of industrial process. It should be spelled KONTENT KREATION(TM). When I think of Kontent Kreation I envision people in jumpsuits mixing 55-gallon drums of noxious chemicals. It’s not a scientific process, it’s writing, graphic design, editing…
5. THE ASK: Often used in question form, “What’s the ask?”. “The Ask” describes an intended outcome in the form of a request such as “Will you help fund our program?” Similarly, when we go to bed, and we want to know how long our partner intends to sleep, we might ask, “What’s the sleep?”.
6. LEARNINGS: An annoying way to say “what we learned.” Any opportunity to turn a verb into a noun or vice-versa is low-hanging fruit for jargonistas. (Note how I used another buzzword in there.) This is how we got the word “parenting.”
7. ENABLER: Some amazing product, service or technology a company offers that will change a customer’s life. Also “a person who by their actions make it easier for an addict to continue their self-destructive behavior by criticizing or rescuing.”
8. REACH OUT: Another phrase for which there is a simpler English equivalent: take the initiative to contact. Also a fine Motown hit by the Four Tops.
9. GOING FORWARD: Starting now. Going Forward is used to describe a change in policy in such a way as to not offend the people in the room who implemented the previous, idiotic, destructive policy.
10. THE NEW NORMAL: This phrase, oddly, was out of date before it was first used by business people. I can’t find a citation, but it appears to have been applied to several financial downturns/recessions. Similar to THE NEW NORMAL is the phrase A PERFECT STORM which is the convergence of several catastrophic events. A PERFECT STORM is therefore not desirable in a business setting, or any other.

It’s a short list, I know, but these are the ones that I find the most reprehensible. Do you love or hate these? (There’s no middle ground). If you’re a detractor, what buzz phrases bother you most?

Tags: business buzz words, buzzwords, jargon

Education, policy and practicality are some of the keys to maintaining corporate reputation on the social web. That was the consensus of a panel I was on last week at the Dow Jones Global Compliance Symposium in Washington, D.C.

The panel generally agreed on most points, including:

1. Training, training, and more training are key to maintaining brand reputation. Companies and their employees must keep current on social media tools and trends
2. The lines between workplace and home, business hours and personal time continue to blur. Corporate social networking policies must factor this and adequately inform employees of their obligations whenever they’re using social media, and not just during traditional “nine-to-five” hours
3. Certain professions, like financial services and the pharmaceutical industry (particularly drug development), should have additional education, and more constraints placed on employees due to the risk posed by inappropriate communications. Mark McKenna mentioned FINRA (PDF), which requires certain financial services professionals to archive and file their blog posts and tweets to ensure compliance with SEC regulations.
4. People now live their lives on social networks. Restrictive policies that attempt to keep employees off social media altogether are not practical.
5. Good social media policies may require time and effort to develop, which will be worthwhile. Policies should require that all employees disclose online that they are affiliated with the company, but emphasize that they do not represent it. (These points were emphasized by Mark Bisard.)

I was privileged to be among some very smart people discussing this topic: Mark Bisard Vice President & Senior Counsel, Cyberlaw Unit, American Express; Andrew Bleeker Global Digital Practice Director, Hill & Knowlton; and Mark McKenna Managing Director and Head of Marketing and Communications, Putnam Investments. David G. Barry Managing Editor, Dow Jones Conferences, moderated ably.

These are my summary impressions. I was on the panel, so I was unable to take notes and don’t pretend to have written this on behalf of the entire panel.

Tags: corporate reputation, social web, Dow Jones Global Compliance Symposium, Mark Bisard, American Express, Andrew Bleeker, Hill and Knowlton, Mark McKenna, Putnam Investments, David G. Barry