Facebook: A Cautionary Tale.

I had an experience today which beautifully encapsulates the dangers and benefits of Facebook and other similar networking tools. As I was checking my mails and messages I received a notification from a friendly business in my area. It went thus:

Shocking. Truly shocking. Every single female model has cancelled for Sunday's charity calendar shoot. So, we are in need of one size 12 and one size 12-14 alternative model (as the designer has delivered clothing specific to the previous model's sizes) for a steam punk shoot this Sunday. I will love you forever if you can fill in last minute x

Now, through various connections I have quite a lot of performers on my friends list, representing a network of models and dancers across the UK. Rei Bennett's a lovely lass and it's a shame to see a hardworking local business in a bind, so I duly forwarded the message to my list of friends.

I didn't think much of it, just a two line reply to the original message and re-posted the plea to my own Facebook wall.

And then for the next ten minutes I watched as the message flew around the world. It was quite astonishing. Several of my connections forwarded the message to their lists, all of them rather well connected in the peripheral performing industries. As I write this, the messaging is continuing apace.

On the surface it's a tiny little networking story but I do believe there are a number of more fundamental networking messages to be gleaned from the situation.

Firstly there are two models out there who were relied upon by a photographer to deliver a service, namely their modelling skills. The photographer is well connected but at the moment not sufficiently so to be able to replace models at short notice. Now she is. A little crisis has opened up lists and propagated a name in a way which no paid-for advertising campaign could ever hope to do.

15 years ago a couple of phone calls would have been made, probably to little effect. The shoot would almost certainly have been cancelled. Nowadays Facebook gives you instant access to networks of hundreds of thousands of people in an instant. If that sounds a bit far-fetched, think on this: I have 7 hundred or more friends on Facebook. The original post hit fifteen hundred connections. Just one of those was me. The first two of my connections who expressed an interest and shared my link had between them over two and a half thousand friends. That's well over three and a half thousand viewers in a few short hops.

So the message to networkers is: If you have a story, no matter how small it may be, and even if it seems like a disaster, get it out there as soon as you can.

The photographer in question may well get models for her shoot on Sunday. She may not. What she will have is an expanded contacts book. She'll also have her name and link mentioned to many thousands of connections she'd never have reached otherwise.

There's another side effect which is the reason for my title. The cautionary tale for service providers: Rei Bennett is a professional. She didn't mention the models names who let her down but then she didn't need to. But those models had a good thing going having the confidence of a professional photographer. Now they've lost that confidence. Again, fifteen years ago she probably would have had to go back to them. Now she's got a whole new list of people to choose from.

As a postscript, I sent the draft of this blog to Rei for approval as I'd mentioned her name (Another tip for bloggers by the way), and received the following in reply:

"A nice end to the story is that I've been completely swamped by offers, so we're now OVER booked for Sunday. We're now having to turn away amazing models, all because of the generous time of those who shared the status."

Honour, it would appear, has been satisfied. So to summarise there are two messages to glean from today's events;

1) Facebook allows you to turn a disaster into triumph, if you have the wit to use it.

2) Flakiness in the Facebook age generates instant competition.

If you'd like to look up Rei's work you can find her here: Rei Bennett on Facebook

What price altruism?

In promoting Mallin Media, I’ve discovered we’re a naturally suspicious lot. I say it as a compliment to the British. We’re not, as a nation, gullible. We despair of gullible people. I’ve known it for years as a journalist but it’s only been brought in to sharp relief since I’ve started trying to sell my own business. You see I started Mallin Media because I saw a need for the service amongst a particular niche market. Those are the small, hard-working organisations doing good things for their communities and local economies. The unsung heroes if you like. I wanted to help them shout, or at least sing to the rooftops about what they do.

The problem I’ve discovered is this: In most people’s minds, business is business and charity is charity and the motivations behind the two are very different. Start telling people you're a business selling to charities and you'd better have running shoes on. Now, that causes a problem for me because I genuinely set out to try and help people. Notice how I felt the need to say “Genuinely”? Making a little cash in the meantime was necessary but not sufficient. Trying to convince anyone that your primary motivation is helping is turning out to be a tricky prospect particularly when it requires asking anyone to pay for anything. Simply saying "I have to pay the rent too" just isn't going to cut it.

This is my problem of course and not the clients'. It's a poor salesman that blames his potential customers for the shortfalls in his pitch, but knowing a problem is yours does not make it any easier to solve.

Last Word: Is "ethical business" a contradiction in most people's terms?