4th
Social networks and shipping..
I was amused today to see the following tweet:
@gentedimare Social networks to spur a sea change in work http://bit.ly/c3nMLp
The link is to a Lloyds List article entitled ‘Social networks to spur a sea change in working practice’
My response on twitter was:
Just TOO funny for this LL article to be behind paywall! RT @gentedimare Social networks to spur a sea change in work http://bit.ly/c3nMLp
So, I asked around to see if, using social networks, I could find a copy of the article and within just a couple of minutes, my network obliged and so below is a copy of the article.
On reading the article, I was humbled to realise that Coracle gets a mention!
QUOTE
Social networks to spur a sea change in working practice
Sam Ignarski - Thursday 4 March 2010
THE rise of the Web 2.0, otherwise known as social networking, is well under way. It has claimed the attention of many people, especially those aged under about 35. There are some early adopters in the shipping, transport and insurance industries but the progress in these fields has some way to go.
The rise of working using platforms such as Facebook, Myspace, Linked-in, Plaxo, to name but a few, recalls the early progress of email in the early 1990s, which took its time to become ubiquitous in our world. Back then the concerns of companies were much like they are now in the face of the new online networking tools. They worried about the security of their businesses, the difficulty of controlling the messages in and out of their servers and the dangers of someone in the company acting without authorisation.
But in the end, the attractions of email were impossible to resist. How could anyone do without a medium that was connected to the world, extremely cheap, as reliable as any modern post service and to which it was possible to attach work documents of all shapes and sizes? These powerful attractors are also present in the new generation of online networks, enabling individuals to join and quit groups of likeminded people, friends, colleagues and even peers in other companies elsewhere.
Into this new mix there is also the strangely powerful Twitter. This extension of the use of text messaging has become a new facet of connected life. It allows tweeters to send a short text, no more than 140 characters, to those who have subscribed to their output, called followers.
It is much loved by celebrities and their fans and has been colonised by people who like to send short and sometimes frequent comments on the events in their lives and at its worst manifests nothing so much as daily inconsequential chatter. But actually it is also a very powerful way for news to spread via first hand witnesses and observers of the scene. At 140 characters there is space enough to forward interesting links to items residing on websites and blogs.
I have been using Twitter for only a few months, but it is already apparent that the quality of industry-specific news is different to the feeds I already get via email. It is fast, to the point and very responsive to events. As news of the earthquake in Chile began to emerge, the first messages came in to me via Twitter. Later, as the Pacific riparians began to brace themselves for tsunamis, the time of the landfall as well as the broadcast of the event from Hawaii was tweeted to me by an early adopting retired former partner of mine from Thomas Miller. His was one of a half dozen tweets that came in during the first 24 hours of the disaster.
The strangeness of this new medium poses questions for everyone working in the traditional medium of print. Most, if not all, the publishers of maritime news, both mainstream and fringe, already supply a daily stream of tweets to followers, though not all use the medium whole heartedly or to best effect.
One distinction which holds good is that the publishers of original material and reports, who originate shipping stories on a daily basis, are few in number and are greatly outnumbered by those who circulate and retweet stories. The old internet adage that content is king holds true for this new medium as well
I imagine Twitter, or something like it will in time become a good servant to maritime people who work in the fields of casualty, breaking news and sudden events. A system that can harness the reports of a large global network of knowledgable observers somewhere near the location of the casualty or event will be hard to eschew.
The strengths and weaknesses of the medium have already been proven at large-scale events such as the protests in Tehran and elsewhere and authoritarian governments are hard pressed to take the benefit of the internet and connectivity and yet exclude the torrent of eye witness reports. The medium in effect redefines what we consider as the public domain.
Where to get a glimpse of this new medium hard at work in our industry? You can get a good impression on James Tweed’s Coracle site, where he posts a running feed of shipping tweets and also a top 40 of shipping tweeters.
The lists of users include law firms, the US coastguard, many online publications and mariner societies, safe working specialists, recruiters, and many given over to the cruise industry. The ranks of what may be described as the industry commentariate are already well represented. Crowley Maritime also has a Twitter presence. There is a twitter service based in Southampton Docks showing dock activity by ship departure. These will certainly be joined by others as the medium spreads.
Here we are again: a new medium, very cheap, highly targetable, not really part of any company’s proprietary set-up, difficult to monetise but probably part of any internet strategy for those who live by their output on the internet.
The rise of the new social networks and the sudden appearance of things like Twitter (which at present has no more than 75m subscribers) has convinced me that we will be using the internet in new ways quite soon. Many more people will become alive to the charms and strengths of online networking already known to twenty-somethings the world over.
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