Category: Digital

Why reaching the digitally excluded is more important than ever

Older woman on a computer
CC image courtesy of Simon Vorgrimmler on Flickr
Amid all the bad news, there was a positive story today, as new figures reveal that the UK economy is the most internet-based of all the G20 countries.

The internet now contributes to 8.3% of the UK economy – roughly £2,000 per person – and that figure is set only to rise.

By contrast, today sees the start of Age UK’s annual myfriendsonline week – an event geared around helping older people discover the social side of the internet (Admission: I work for Age UK, so I have a vested interest).

While the two are not inextricably linked, the ever-increasing importance of the internet to our economy – 13.5% of transactions were carried out over the web in 2010 – makes the number of people who don’t have online access even more shocking.

There are currently 8.2 million people in the UK who are digitally excluded (of which 5.7m are people in later life). This number has dropped from 10m in 2009, largely thanks to the efforts of RaceOnline and its associated partners, but there’s still a lot to do.

Of these 8 million people, there will inevitably be some deliberate refuseniks, who want nothing to do with it, but, at Age UK, we know there are consistent common reasons that, specifically, put older people off getting online. They are:

1. Not knowing ‘how it works’

2. Lack of confidence

3. Worry about ‘doing something wrong’

4. Safety and security issues.

There is also a fear that once they learn how to use the internet, it will take over their life and they will ‘waste time’, rather than doing ‘real-life activities’, such as socialising.

The benefits of being online seem obvious to those of us already here and who are tech-savvy, but imagine how you’d cope without it now.

Try to think of a world where you don’t have a smartphone – just one that makes calls and sends texts. You have no laptop at home or no PC at work – no social media, no emails, no ecommerce. Scary isn’t it?

That’s why it’s so important to help those people who aren’t online make the jump.

Why I decided to quit Foursquare

For the past couple of years, location-based content and apps have been trumpeted as the NBT (Next Big Thing).

The initial excitement and success of start-ups, such as 4square and Gowalla, seemed to herald a new era for forward-thinking digital creatives and tech superstars.

I admit I was late to the party. I got an HTC Desire in Feb 2011 and almost immediately started using 4square.

It was fun checking into places, adding friends, racking up points, earning badges and, eventually, gaining mayorships.

It was one of the cool things about a smartphone – being able to show or use your location.

On the occasions, I went to events, it was also useful to see who else was there.

But it didn’t take long to find frustrations. The supposed benefits that came with mayorships were few and far between and were often linked to big chain enterprises, rather than local businesses.

In other words, 4square hadn’t done a good enough marketing job to show off why they should engage with customers.

Another frustration came with the explore category. I went on an errand one lunchtime and needed to find somewhere for lunch. A perfect use for Foursquare, I thought.

I work in Central London, so it shouldn’t have been difficult to get recommendations. But it was.

I didn’t need or want a Pret a Manger, or a Starbucks. I wanted a good old-fashioned sandwich shop, but there were no recommendations. In other words, the big brands dominated, which didn’t feel like the right use of the tool.

Then there was the ease you could become mayor of somewhere. I went to a Travelodge last weekend and picked up the crown within 2 days. Pointless and rather sad.

Also, if you’re a Twitter user, the 4sq updates are mildly annoying.

Finally, there’s the whole points thing. I admit, I did go through a spate of number chasing, but it increasingly felt hollower and hollower.

Foursquare stopped being a useful app and turned into a soulless, endless game.

There will be friends reading this telling me I was one of the worst culprits, and I freely admit that’s the case, but the scales have now dropped from my eyes.

So I’ve stopped using. My account is still alive, but I’ve deleted it from my phone and ipod touch to break my habit.

Why haven’t I deleted the account? Because I firmly believe there’s still a way of integrating location into a wider, mass-appeal application. At the moment, though, Foursquare isn’t it.

It may need to partner up and allow its technology to be used in conjunction with someone else with a better idea.

If I knew, I’d be on my way to being a millionaire.

In the meantime, I’ll continue using Twitter 🙂

Why Nikon’s Facebook ‘epic fail’ wasn’t really that bad

Major fuss today over on the Facebook page of Nikon, after it posted a status update that enraged many of its followers.

The Japanese camera company’s fans took offence at the suggestion that equipment was more important than the photographer.

Nikon received almost 1500 comments, many of which blasted the company for being too concerned about their own equipment and not caring about the craft of the actual photographer. The word ‘fail’ appeared a large number of times.

But was it really the awful ‘integrity suicide’ that many commenters suggested? I’d say no for the following reasons:

1) Nikon is a brand that sells camera equipment – why else would you follow them? Surely, they’re going to use their Facebook page to try and encourage people to lean towards more Nikon kit. OK, so their words were a bit hamfisted, but they were essentially trying to get people to talk about Nikon products. That may not have been the greatest use of social media, but fans complaining about Nikon trying to ‘promote’ Nikon are very misguided.

2) The number of complainants were very small. At time of writing, Nikon has around 841k followers on Facebook. Of that number, only 0.17% left a comment and not all of the roughly 1500 comments were negative.

Admittedly, you never want to get bad press as an organisation, but it wasn’t exactly widespread condemnation.

3) A slightly more semantic point on the original post. Agreed, Nikon shouldn’t have dissed the art of the photographer, but if it’s all about the person, why doesn’t everyone use a disposable camera to take photos? Why do snappers need to shell out on the equipment and lenses that Nikon were trying to promote?

Interestingly, what this does highlight – yet again – is how fraught with difficulty social media can be for commercial organisations. People want to follow their favourite brands, but it seems as if they don’t like them being too important and opinionated.

Nikon did post an apology, but it took them 15 hours to do so – pretty poor. It really shouldn’t have taken them that long to react to a crisis situation. To be honest, that was probably their biggest faux pas.

Ultimately, though, they’re unlikely to lose that many of their followers and in a couple of months, most people will have probably forgotten all about it.