Will Google’s “Me” Succeed?

Posted: June 30th, 2010 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Social Media Opinion | 2 Comments

No. I don’t think so.

Before I explain my educated guess, let’s back up a bit and get everyone caught up.

There have been rumors for a while that Google is working on a new social media site. Those rumors yesterday seemed to be confirmed in an article on Techcrunch. The site is said to be called “Google Me”, and while Google seemed to have Twitter in mind when it created it’s Buzz service, Google Me is said to directly target Facebook.

Assuming all of this is correct, it means Google is trying to create a Facebook killer. Will it succeed? Obviously it’s too early to tell, but I’m going to go out on a limb anyhow. If “success” is making a serious dent in Facebook’s dominance of the social media market, then I believe the answer is “no”. Here’s why:

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Now Public Relations Actually Relates with the Public

Posted: June 8th, 2010 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: PR Opinion, Social Media Opinion | 1 Comment

I was thinking yesterday about some of the calls I used to take when I worked in corporate communications for a national retailer. Most of the time when my phone rang, a reporter was on the other end. Every so often, however, a customer with a complaint would call. Customer complaints weren’t really my department, but I would listen and try to help if I could. Quite often, I would have to transfer them to customer support. At times, this caused the customer to become irritated. I would calmly tell them that I worked in public relations, and I needed to send them to someone who could more effectively handle customer issues. On more than one occasion, this led to the customer to say something along the lines of, “You’re in public relations, and I’m a member of the pubic … why can’t you handle my problem?”

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