Monetizing Information to Find a Job via Social Media
January 15, 2010
Two unrelated conversations triggered my alarm clock this morning. One conversation concerned the hot trend of social networking. The other conversation pivoted on the value of knowledge.
Value of Social Networking
The social networking conversation surfaced an observation that was completely new to me. The person who made the observation said to the best of my recollection:
I was surprised to learn that some of my friends from my MBA class did not make a connection between their activities on Facebook and their job hunt.
The link seems obvious to me. Anywhere there is a network, the possibility exists that one of the friends may know about an opportunity or may have an idea that the other party to the conversation did not know about. I have been thinking about how to convert this assertion into a fact backed by data. The more I thought about this comment, I wondered if that a “gap” problem exists for avid users of social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The question I considered this morning was, “What is the value of connecting a person looking for work with the method for finding work via social networking?” The use of social networking is widespread. How could this statement that “some of my friends from my MBA class did not make a connection between their activities on Facebook and their job hunt” be true? The “value” of social networking would rest on a more casual use of a powerful and, to my mind, flexible system. I poked around for some information about the use of social networks to find work and turned up lots of hits. Obviously quite a few blog writers and poobahs have written about the use of social networks to make money. Frankly the comment puzzles me.
A perpetual motion machine cannot exist in the real world. Can it exist in a virtual world? Google seems to be close to a subsidizing financial model that may be getting close to permanet. Image source: http://cdrucker.com/files/labsphys/forceworkenergy_files/b2-3.gif
Value of Knowledge-Based Services
The second conversation focused on an upcoming trip I am making to Europe. The deal is in place, and the job is underway. However, one of the coordinators for this project asked, “What is your method for calculating the value of the work you do?” That comment was surprising as well. Assigning value to an intangible like expertise or information triggers in my mind endless hours reading about Austrian economic theories. I asked the person, “Why?” Her reply to the best of my recollection was: “I want to be a consultant, and I don’t understand how to value my time.”
What joins these two comments is the issue of the value of knowing something. A person who can use social networks to find a job interview or maybe sell a consulting engagement has connected the dots in the fuzzy world of online. A person who has not may be unwilling to pay for the information necessary to use online to locate work in today’s economic siroccos. My hunch is that the value is going to tough to define accurately. The person who “doesn’t get it” may not pay anything due to a lack of understanding due to my inability to make something clear. A person who does get it may work like Mozart, who sucked in music data and could then with what looked like little mental strain generate new melodies. The budding Mozart of social media may be unwilling to pay because from that person’s point of view, the insight was a trivial one. Why pay for what’s obvious?
The pricing of services is in some ways faced with a similar problem. The customer who “gets it” may be willing to pay for certain types of knowledge work because its value is obvious. The customer who doesn’t “get it” may not want to pay anything. Thus, the European MBA’s question about charging for a consulting project is a valid one.
Information, not necessarily electronic, is a slippery fish. What struck me is that each domain or “era” in technology imparts a different spin on the notion of “value”.
In our technology-infused world, the domain of experience includes different options (maybe more options as well). The methods of exercising those options would be influenced by the person’s knowledge of methods, tools, and tactics. A person without an Internet connection might know about Amazon, but that person might not have the methods, tools, and tactics to take advantage of an Amazon discount.
A Domain Problem?
My present uncertainty about the value of social networking is a domain problem, not just a knowledge problem. The technology domain requires a different type of knowledge. Where knowledge is lacking, friction will exist between the abstractions and the specific activities required to buy a leather jacket from Amazon or from a local big box store.
The differences are not just in the “how” part of the process. The differences cut across social norms, methods, thought processes, and abstractions like figuring out what is the “right way” versus what is the “wrong way” to accomplish a task.
What about those MBAs who did not see Facebook or LinkedIn as the method for generating employment opportunities? Is that a failure of the instructor? A failure of that group of students? A failure on the part of Facebook and LinkedIn? In fact, how could anyone familiar with online or popular culture for that matter not “know” something about the utility and instrumentalities of Twitter.com?
What about the European who wanted to know how to put a price tag on expertise? What has happened in that person’s education to make fixed price and time and expense based pricing puzzling?
My hunch is that the factors at work are easy to spot and difficult to identify. Online and knowledge are paradoxical, and I think that quite a bit of mental friction takes place when domains collide. A publisher who creates a printed magazine or newspaper knows how to cost estimate, price single copies, and set ad rates. When that publisher moves the information online, the old rules don’t apply because online is a different domain. This means that a publisher trying to embrace a new domain may face the business process risks not “part of the woodwork”.
Google and Free Information
Online vendors in the 1980s charged a customer to run a query in a specific database. The customer paid even if the database did not contain the needed information. Explaining the value of a null set was tricky in my experience. Charging for certain types of information that is free on a government Web site or marketing blog like this on may find a small group of buyers willing to pay. But a lower cost or free service will reduce the for fee company’s options. The genius of Google is that people subsidize certain services. Users get something that looks free. It isn’t. Google has found a way to subsidize a service. The power of Google is its business model and the company’s technical expertise to keep the “perpetual motion machine” running. Advertisers who want sales leads have to advertise on Google. Google has magnetic power because its free services pull users to the service. Once this machine is running, competitors and others disrupted by the business model have to find a way to gum up the works.
Why should a customer pay for information and knowledge if the customer cannot know the value of the information and knowledge? A failure to communicate is easier to correct than a failure to understand. Is this a purloined letter problem or a certain blindness problem? Maybe it is a bit of both? Or, could it be a different class of problems entirely.
More Questions
What if individuals cannot connect the dots in a hyperspace, abstract world of information? Those who “get it” have an advantage in some situations. Those who don’t will find themselves baffled by certain informationized functions. I think an information flow about ways to use social networking for specific purposes like finding a job might be useful. I will have to think about that, of course. I don’t know how to tackle the gap between many dots that must be connected on a broader scale. Traditional education may be able to help some, but what about those who need information about knowledge value and are not in school? Maybe those who “get it” will become a new elite and those who don’t slip to a lower social stratum? If you don’t know what you don’t know, you may be behind the eight ball.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 14, 2010
It pains me to say, “No one paid me to record this ill formed ideas.” I suppose I am under the jurisdictional control of the American Battle Monuments Commission to which I shall report this sad fact.
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