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What is keeping women out of tech? Do you really want to know?

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By Sarah Stokely on November 11, 2009

Yesterday, Boris threw down the gauntlet and asked why so few women are applying their smarts in the tech industry. Why aren’t we rising to the top as web entrepreneurs, leaders and speakers? Is it true that “most women never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?”

So, in the interests of getting all of us – men and women – thinking about why women are often less represented in the tech field, I’m taking Boris up on his offer of a right of reply, via guest post here at The Next Web.

As a longtime tech journalist and editor turned web publishing teacher and communications consultant, I’ve spent the last decade working in Australia’s male dominated tech industry. So I have experienced my share of frustration at the fact that the gender balance is so poor. In the open source tech community in Australia, women make up just 7 % of participants.  I hate the fact that so many Australian girls drop out of maths and sciences at high school, that their enrolments in tech related courses at uni are so low, and that girls are often absent from tech events for students.

I teach web publishing, and I’ve tried hard to instill a ’startup’ culture in my students. It is an uphill battle – university courses are geared towards getting students to complete coursework, not incubating startups. But I’ve tried, nonetheless. Last semester, I invited Australian web entrepreneurs Duncan Rileyand Stephen Mayne to a one night ’startup camp’ in which students had to pitch their website prototype as though they were pitching to a VC. (No, I couldn’t find a female web entrepreneur in Melbourne to join the panel. That sucked too.)

I’m disappointed that despite so many of my promising students developing awesome web prototypes, so far they don’t seem inclined to take the next step into launching them as commercial ventures. I feel this is a touchy thing to say where my female students will read it, but to be honest,  I’ve come to expect that my best female students, who are often the driving creative forces behind the web projects build in my class, are even less likely than their male counterparts, to take the leap into startup land. But I’m going to keep trying, because that’s why I do what I do. I want to help young people make awesome stuff on the web.

In short, I’m not unaware that there is a gender imbalance in tech, and I’ve put in a fair amount of time to organising events aimed at helping even up the gender balance. I have walked the talk.

So I feel qualified to point out two reasons why Boris’ article asking “What is keeping women out of tech” is just, well, unhelpful. It annoys me that so often discussion of the low representation of women in tech is blamed on women. It kind of makes me think of a guy with terrible body odour and bad breath sitting at a party, wondering why people are avoiding him, and then saying they must all be terrible snobs, it couldn’t be HIS fault. My other pet peeve is when people make huge generalisations about ALL WOMEN:

Don’t get me wrong. I love women and think they are smarter, faster and more organized than men. Unfortunately I don’t see too many women taking advantage of their skills and the opportunities presented to them.

Which might also be written as “Some of my best friends are women, but my goodness you’re all lazy good for nothings aren’t you?” Thanks for making my amazing, accomplished female friends in tech INVISIBLE.

Boris also seems to agree with the comedian he quotes who told a bunch of women at a networking event that since they hadn’t brought business cards: “I guess you all thought that if you show your breasts he will remember you.” How is this appropriate language for a business event? The gender of the speaker is irrelevant. I wouldn’t go to a business event and make a joke to a guy about if he wants me to remember him he should take out his penis. It beggars belief that I should even have to explain this.

It is perhaps this last point which is hard to convince people like Boris to understand. It’s partly because so many sexist behaviours happen again and again and again that women sometimes lose patience with demanding better behaviour. it sometimes feels you’d have more success trying to herd a colony of cats than change the elements within any given male dominated tech business or community to bring in more female talent. So, some smart women decide, as Boris suggests, to put their time elsewhere. Either by working outside of tech, or by declining to enter the same tired blogging debate in women in tech. Fran Molloy, a commenter on my blog, put it quite nicely:

No women in tech? Witness the rise and rise of ‘mumpreneurs’ who don’t have formal qualifications, don’t go to industry conferences, don’t self-promote “Look at me, i’m in TECH and I’m a chick, wow!!” but learn on the job, get the work done and get on with their lives.

My problem with Boris’ take on the situation is that he criticises women for never DOING anything, except showing up to complain about “getting sexualized in a business context.” But his argument basically boils down to complaining that no women come to The Next Web conference, without exploring why that might be, and how TNW might change things to get more women involved. It must be OUR FAULT.

If the purpose of Boris’ post was really to try to talk to women about their under representation, and maybe to encourage more women to attend The Next Web, I have to say it’s made me feel discouraged, rather than encouraged.

But the fact is, if we really want to change the under representation of women in tech, and make sure we attract the finest minds we can, someone needs to budge and admit ‘we need to change things around’. Pointing fingers at each other while saying “I don’t need to do anything differently” is going to achieve exactly zip.

So, I’m here to point out how we might tweak our conversation in order to move forward.

One great place to start is the Geek Feminism blog, which is full of tech women (many of whom are successful geek women and entrepreneurs) who take time out of their work and personal lives to try to encourage other women to succeed in tech. That approach is what impresses me, more than hollow complaints.

If you’re actually interested in making your software better by having a more diverse range of people working on it, or making the Web better by ensuring that we attract as many creative, entrepreneurial women to Web startups as we can, then ask some of the successful tech women around who’ve come up with ways to do that, within their own companies and communities .

I look forward to seeing the Web our daughters build. I’m helping teach them how to build it. What are you doing?

Sarah Stokely (About)

@stokely

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What is keeping women out of technology?

Tags: men, technology, women 

Sarah Stokely
Based in Melbourne, Australia, Sarah is a longtime journalist, editor and blogger turned web publishing teacher and communications consultant. She teaches digital writing, editing and publishing at the University of Melbourne. She was the launch editor of Lifehacker Australia in 2007, and helped launch Australia's first politics and current affairs blog network, blogs.crikey.com.au, in 2008. She volunteers for eDemocracy website OpenAustralia.org, broadcasts on community radio station 3RRR in Melbourne, and has a dog named Samwise.

This is so true! Can't believe it still needs to be said!

I started thinking a few days ago about how the digitization and networking of so much of what we hold dear has changed things. I see that in my lifetime I will witness the end of books, or most of them, physical copies of recorded music and probably physical newspapers too. Stuff that’s been around for a thousand years will be gone in my lifetime! Film based photography is pretty much a remnant, an art form, an artisanal craft used by fine artists and high-end fashion photographers. And writing letters to one another? On paper? And dropping them in the mailbox? When was the last time I wrote and mailed a physical letter? All those academic books filled with Auden’s or Jane Austen’s letters — it’s hard to imagine a collection of someone’s text messages, tweets and e-mails. I suspect that television as we know it will be gone soon as well. All right, film and recorded music have only been around a hundred or so years, but books! All of which led me back to wondering — how did this get started?

The Internet, the World Wide Web, as much of a boon as it has been, has left an awful lot of wreckage in its wake, beyond just the elimination of those formats we thought of as eternal and the industries that produced and delivered them. Interconnectivity has facilitated the loss of privacy of many of the world’s citizens. We’ve been liberated and captured at the same time. I sense that the loss of privacy — which to me seems inevitable — is part and parcel of the whole project. You can’t have efficient search algorithms, cloud computing and digitized everything and anything and expect to retain the anonymity of the past.

Security races to keep up, but I wonder if the dream of unlimited access and personal and corporate data security aren’t simply incompatible. Maybe we just can’t have them both. Maybe we need to throw up our hands and give in. Stop resisting and surrender. Live totally and completely in public. The world would truly be the village that McLuhan predicted — a small town where everyone does know your business. Maybe that would keep us honest, and push the realization that as custodians of the planet we really are all in this together.

This “creative destruction” began in the ’60s, as did many things that we now both love and regret, and it was initially a spinoff of a project funded by US military agencies. The military (along with the space agency) gave us Velcro and (I believe) cheap integrated circuits (i.e. gizmolandia), as well as the blowback that helped nurture the current mess in the Middle East, South America and Afghanistan. The Internet’s connection to the military, as much as I would love it to be a big secret conspiracy, seems a lot more benign than that. Mephistopheles came to Faust in the form of a poodle. After all…in some versions of the story, he cannot enter your house unbidden — you have to invite him in, like a vampire.

One man foresaw a global network before any such thing was close to being possible. J. C. R. Licklider (sounds like a character in a Coen bros movie!) envisioned, in a 1960 paper called Man-Computer Symbiosis, "A network of such [computers], connected to one another by wide-band communication lines…[which provided] the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and [other] symbiotic functions." [Source]

In other words, he saw it all coming.

[Source]

Is this man the antichrist? Or merely a prophet?

In a weird coincidence, Licklider began his career studying psychoacoustics (more on that later), and wrote a paper called “Duplex Theory of Pitch Perception” in 1951 that forms the basis of contemporary concepts of how we perceive pitch, even though it sounds like it might be about two-story apartments with uneven floors. That the man who predicted a worldwide information exchange network was initially interested in how we perceive music is slightly uncanny.

More about Licklider from Wikipedia:

“His ideas foretold of graphical computing, point-and-click interfaces, digital libraries, e-commerce, online banking, and software that would exist on a network and migrate wherever it was needed. He has been called ‘computing's Johnny Appleseed’ for having planted the seeds of computing in the digital age.”

Now, it’s been pointed out that he didn’t actually invent any of this stuff — he merely “planted the seed.” But often it seems that putting out the idea that something might be possible encourages others to actually make it possible. In a way, to imagine is to create.

In the ’50s, Licklider “worked on a Cold War project known as Semi Automatic Ground Environment (better known by its [weirdly appropriate] acronym ‘SAGE’) which was designed to create a computer-aided air defense system. The SAGE system included computers that collected and presented data to a human operator, who then chose the appropriate response. In 1957 he…conducted the first public demonstration of time-sharing,” [Source] which is when multiple parties can share the use of a single large computer. And in 1958, he became president of the Acoustical Society of America.

“He played a similar role in conceiving of and funding early networking research, most notably the ARPANET [acknowledged to be the predecessor to the Internet]. His 1968 paper on The Computer as a Communication Device predicts the use of computer networks to support communities of common interest and collaboration without regard to location.” [Source]

“Without regard to location”— the phrase resonates for me. It implies disincorporation — an out-of-body experience. In this case, it’s data that has no fixed place, no physical manifestation. But I sense it’s happening to us, too.

I had thought that the Internet began with the linking of some military computers in the Pentagon (ARPANET) in 1969, and that this network was an experimental project to create a system which was specifically designed so that its data could survive a nuclear attack. It turns out my hunch was wrong, although the military were indeed involved in funding the research. ARPANET (which Licklider was involved with) did give birth to internet protocols — how computers “talk” to one another — sometime later in the 1970s, but it was not, it seems, all about securing secret data from the electromagnetic pulses associated with nuclear weapons.

Bob Taylor, the Pentagon official who was in charge of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (or ARPANET) program, insists that its purpose was not military, but scientific. Though we might take whatever the Pentagon says with a big grain of salt, he could be telling the truth. Larry Roberts, who was employed by Taylor to build the Network, states that ARPANET was never intended to link people or act as a communications and information facility. So, the evolution into the Internet was completely unintentional, though Licklider foresaw it. ARPANET was primarily about finding a more efficient way of time-sharing.

Those were the days when computers looked like this:

They were extremely expensive, and there weren’t a lot of them, so many people, like my friend C’s brother, made a good living managing access to them. Time-sharing was a big issue. If however, access could be accomplished remotely, through a network, then the efficiency of the time-sharing would be increased. Time-sharing via these networks was focused on making it possible for research organizations (and the military) to use the processing power of other institutions’ computers when they had laborious calculations to do, or when someone else's facility might do the job better.

Because this research (used to develop ARPANET) was government-funded, its use was restricted to the military and university research facilities — C’s brother couldn’t use it to create or enhance the commercial enterprise he had established to manage computer access, for example.

“During the 1980s, the connections expanded to more educational institutions, and even to a growing number of companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation and Hewlett-Packard, which were participating in research projects or providing services to those who were.” [Source]

We can see by the involvement of these companies that the line between non-commercial use and commercial and public access was already getting fuzzy.

“Several other branches of the U.S. government, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy (DOE) became heavily involved in Internet research and started development of a successor to ARPANET. In the mid 1980s, all three of these branches developed the first Wide Area Networks based on TCP/IP.

“In 1984 the NSF…supported departments without such sophisticated network connections, using automated dial-up mail exchange. [For those who don’t remember or are too young, one used to access the Internet and send e-mail by modems that would “dial-up” using regular phone lines…a web page in this era would take many minutes to load; these were NOT the good old days in that sense.] This grew into the NSFNet backbone, established in 1986, and was intended to connect and provide access to a number of supercomputing centers established by the NSF.

“In 1992, Congress allowed commercial activity on NSFNet with the Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act, permitting NSFNet to interconnect with commercial networks. University users were outraged at the idea of noneducational use of their networks. Eventually, it was the commercial Internet service providers who brought prices low enough that junior colleges and other schools could afford to participate in the new arenas of education and research […and soon the rest of us].

“By 1990, ARPANET had been overtaken and replaced by newer networking technologies and the project came to a close.” [Source]

The mother, seed or egg that gave birth to the Internet was gone, and the floodgates had opened.

By the mid-’90s, access became easy enough that the commercialization of the Internet proceeded rapidly. I wondered to myself if the military kept a parallel World Wide Web, inaccessible to civilians, since they were so involved in the early stages of its development. They do, or did — it was called MILNET.

[Source]

A quarter of the earth’s people now use the Internet and the World Wide Web. We don’t know how many use MILNET. Finland and France are about to make Internet access a right, like a legal right to a trial, free speech or health services (well, these rights exist in some countries). The Finns want everyone in their entire country to have broadband (5mb) in a few years. (FYI, 5mb allows streaming video like most of us can see now, 10mb would allow HD streaming video and 100mb, which the Finnish government proposes offering by 2015, would, well, increase not only ease of access to information, but interactivity on a level and with repercussions we can hardly imagine.)

In the Meantime

While these networks were evolving, there were simultaneously a number of innovations and technological breakthroughs that allowed for the digitization of all sorts of media — the stuff that would soon be flying around those same networks.

The technology that allowed sound information (and soon all other information) to be digitized was largely developed by the phone companies. Bell Labs, a research division of AT&T, wanted to find more efficient and reliable ways of transmitting phone conversations. Phone lines up until that time were all analog, and with that technology the only way to squeeze more calls through a line was by rolling off the high and low frequencies, and turning the resulting lo-fi sound into waves that could run in parallel without interfering with one another — like terrestrial radio transmissions. TV and radio communications had the same problems.

Bell Labs was huge, and they had branches in many states, most of which are closed now. They invented the transistor and the semiconductors that made the integrated circuits in our tiny devices possible, they developed the laser — the list goes on and on. Their scientists won a lot of Nobel prizes.

When Bell Labs figured out how to digitize sound — to, in effect, sample a sound wave and slice it into tiny bits in a way that was not prohibitively expensive and that still left the human voice recognizable — they applied it to long distance calls, switchers and all manner of phone technology, allowing more calls to be made simultaneously, especially considering the limitations imposed by underwater cables. Much of the research regarding what makes a sound understandable (like a voice, in AT&T’s case) involves applying lessons from the science of psychoacoustics — how the brain perceives sound in all its aspects. We’re back to Licklider!

Out of this combination of psychoacoustic and technical research emerged digital equipment that was used in, among other places, recording studios — where I saw this technology. In the ’70s, the Harmonizers and digital delays that appeared little by little were in effect primitive samplers — the samples were usually less than a second long. These were quickly followed by machines that could hold longer samples of greater resolution, and manipulate those “sounds” more freely (clumps of data more than sounds, technically). All sorts of weirdness resulted. Bell Labs was involved in manufacturing a sound processor called a vocoder that would preserve certain aspects of talking (or singing), like speech formants — the shape of the sound apart from its pitch. Using this machine one could transmit these aspects of the voice separate from the rest of the vocalization in ways that rendered them unintelligible. One use for this was a sort of cryptology for the voice — a garbling that could be “decoded” at the other end. These machines were also adapted for music production. Here is Kraftwerk’s vocoder, made especially for them:

[Source]

I once used a vocoder borrowed from Bernie Krause when Eno and I did the Bush of Ghosts record. It was beautifully made, but rather complicated and very expensive.

A Harmonizer cost thousands of dollars, a digital reverb set a studio back maybe 10K, and a full-fledged sampling device like a Fairlight or later the Synclavier cost much, much more. But soon the price of memory and processing dropped, and the technology became more affordable. Inexpensive Akai samplers became the backbone of music like hip hop and DJ mixes, and sampled or digitally derived drum sounds took the place of live drummers in many recordings. And we were off to the races, for better or worse. With the digitization of sound, digital recording and eventually the CD became possible — and not too long after that, the capacity and speed of home computers was sufficient to record, archive, and process music.

Some years ago I visited Bell Labs and was shown the famous anechoic (perfect, sound absorbent) chamber. This was where John Cage claimed that he could hear both his heart pounding and the high-pitched whine of his nervous system. His insight was that true silence doesn’t exist — even if we can block out everything else, we can’t stop hearing ourselves.

Here is one such chamber:

[Source]

They also showed me a processor that could squeeze what seemed to the ear to be CD-quality sound into a miniscule bandwidth. I’m not sure, but I believe encoding music as MP3s had at that date already been invented in Germany, so this compressing/encoding was not a big surprise — but like most people, I worried that something in the quality of the music might have been sacrificed in this rezzing down process. I was right, but MP3s have improved quite a bit since then, and now I listen to most of the music I own in that format. I believe what Bell Labs was working on is used for satellite radio — getting more hi-fi sound into smaller transmissions.

In 1988 I went with designer Tibor Kalman to visit a printing studio on Long Island. It had a machine that could digitize and then subtly manipulate images (we wanted to “improve” the image on a Talking Heads record cover). This machine was, like those early computers, incredibly expensive and rare — we had to go to it (it couldn’t be brought to the design studio), and we had to book time in advance. Sytex I think it was called. This was exciting, but its cost and rarity meant we didn’t think much about incorporating its talents into more projects at that time.

After a while, though, the price of scanning dropped, and manipulating scanned images using something called Photoshop became common. Who would buy a film camera these days? Who buys film for their old camera? There are some holdouts, and I have no doubt that there is a richness or at least some special qualities that have been lost, but, well, for most of us, the trade-off seems fair — and inevitable. Needless to say, as these images became digitized they could enter the river of networked data.

Photojournalism went digital a number of years ago. In the beginning, the photographers, realizing that their images would be reproduced in newspapers no larger than 8x10 (if that), didn’t need to shoot at the highest available resolution on their new digital cameras, allowing them to squeeze more images onto their data chips — and giving them fewer problems with storage and developing in the field. To compare these low-res images to video, it’d be like if movies past a certain date were all captured at the quality of YouTube files. While researching archival news footage at some point, I discovered that when it migrated to videotape from 16mm film, the quality went way down.

The confluence of digitized media and the capability of digital information to be shared, transmitted and stored anywhere in the world — this volatile, disembodied mixture that Licklider predicted and whose seed he planted — has, duh, had a huge effect on countless institutions. Many that deal with physical objects — newsstands, record stores, bookstores — will all go away, along with their support structures: trucks, warehouses and all the people that worked in those places. For many of us this is not all bad. The record stores like Sam Goody or Coconuts were never great experiences.

Maybe the first institution to disappear almost completely as a result of this process was the letter. Conventional mail still exists — I get bills, junk mail and announcements — but communication related to my work and between my friends and me is almost all by e-mail or text, as has been for a while.

Television, not a big part of my life for quite a number of years anyway, is bound to migrate online and become something very different.

It’s not so surprising to witness the end of many of the delivery systems for recorded music — vinyl, cassettes and CDs. Somehow those changed from one form to another so rapidly over the decades that to see them all go away isn’t that much of a shock. I don’t really miss them all that much, to be honest. But to imagine that I might live to see the end of print — books, newspapers and many magazines — is mind-boggling. Publishers and news organizations might argue that they are not like the music business, but the patterns are too similar to ignore, except by those who don’t want to see them. Print and books have remained more or less unchanged since Gutenberg, but all that seems about to become history.

I’m not advocating trying to stop this — it all seems inevitable, and the access to information and convenience will be unprecedented — although without newspapers as a Fourth Estate, a check and balance, democracy as we were taught it, will not be, um, the same. We can’t rely on bloggers to police the entire government. Danielle comments, however, that the death of physical newspapers isn’t the same as the death of journalism — if the NY Times can find a way to make money as with digital distribution, it will continue to provide a similar function in society. Whether that will be possible is still an open question — but digitization doesn’t necessarily equal death, at least not yet.

The End of Privacy

Now that the Internet and the World Wide Web have enabled data, content and information to be shuttled anywhere in the world — even around China, sometimes — it seems inevitable that the flow goes both ways, or actually in many ways. The ability to access the Internet is incredibly useful to us and we can’t imagine life without it, so we don’t seem too bothered that as a result of this interconnectedness, the National Security Administration, for one, has access to our web lives and loves — and we don’t seem all that nervous that cloud computing will eliminate any real sense of privacy (despite assurances), or about the massive amounts of information Google and other commercial enterprises have about us.

Danielle points out that many people are in fact very nervous about this — that privacy & the Internet is a huge topic of concern. Google data mining, the ownership and confidentiality of social networking data, security of financial data, etc. — these are all topics that are regularly reported on in the press and about which people have very strong feelings. However, the sense I get on the street is that most ordinary folks are happy (so far) to give up some personal security for all the convenience they’re getting.

Google’s batteries of server farms allow us to search, so, naturally the NSA can also search, dredge and process. I typed in someone’s name yesterday and found that for a small fee, I could see how much they paid for their house, who their neighbors are and what their credit rating is! I was flabbergasted. That’s me, a private citizen, who can know stuff I’d sort of rather not know, not some corporation or governmental agency.

Here’s an NSA data mining facility in Yakima, Washington. (A massive one is being built in Utah.)

[Source]

So far I’m not aware of malicious use of all that information, not on a large scale anyway — though identity thieves and guys sucking up US credit card numbers by the truckload in Ukraine are a start.

I recently read an article regarding the security of so-called “scrubbed” data. Netflix or some other company wanted to employ a third party to analyze some of their customers’ patterns of purchase — but as a precaution they removed (scrubbed) the customers’ names off the data. So theoretically, the people being analyzed were now abstract entities. However, out of curiosity they hired another company, to see if any of those unidentified customers could possibly be re-identified. It turned out they could. Not due to a fault of the scrubbing, or some security or software malfunction, but because other data and patterns of customer and citizen behavior were available online, and correlating these with the patterns of the anonymous customers led to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, the re-identification of many.

To me this means that, yes, information already flows both, or rather all, ways. Privacy and security, as much as we might strive for them, are phantoms that we chase but can never truly catch. As much as we love getting information, data, media and connections, so we ourselves become available as data. Social websites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter seem to use these conflicting urges — the urge to reveal oneself to the world, in all one’s intimate details, and yet simultaneously maintain some kind of privacy. Good luck with that.

The end of privacy in parts of the world is near. It will be traumatic for some, and a comfort for others — for to relinquish one’s privacy is to become a part of the hive and the herd, and there is a certain reassurance there. How our corporate culture and its twin, the government, make use of this process and this massive change in society leads one to imagine something closer to a paranoid Phillip K. Dick scenario than a return to the nurturing tribe (or the Global Village) that it will be for some. I suspect it will be both — liberating and restrictive. Conflicting and opposite tendencies, operating simultaneously.

So, there it is. The free flow of information, and the ability to digitize all media as it enters the river, has a lot more repercussions than the end of books, newspapers and CDs — it portends a massive social and political shift. Licklider may have seen this coming as well, but he didn’t let on about it.

Even if you’ve seen the footage before, you should watch it again. But this time bear in mind the following: the cameraman was not a professional reporter, but rather an ordinary person, just like the victim. And what did he do when he saw a young girl bleeding to death? Did he run for help, or try to assist in stemming the bleeding? No he didn’t.

Ten Things Social Media Can't Do

A Healthy Reminder for Setting Expectations

Posted by B.L. Ochman on 11.02.09 @ 10:23 AM

 

B.L. Ochman

Amid the endless pronouncements about social media -- often shortened to "social" these days by consultants trying to sound like they know what they are talking about -- is the reality that social media is not a solution, or a sure bet.

Social media can't:

1. Substitute for marketing strategy.
   A Twitter campaign or a Facebook page that announces your weekly specials is not a marketing strategy.

Succeed without top management buy-in.
Social media requires a way of thinking that includes willingness to listen to customers, make changes based on feedback and trust employees to talk to customers.

The culture of fear (of job loss, of losing message control, of change) is ingrained in corporate cultures. Top management has to want to change.

Be viewed as a short-term project.
Social media is not a one-shot deal. It's a long-term commitment to openness, experimentation and change that requires time to bear fruit.

Produce meaningful, measurable results quickly.
One of the complaints about social media is that it can't be measured. But there are many things that can be measured, including engagement, sentiment and whether increased traffic leads to sales.

Those results can't be produced or measured in the short term. Like PR, social media marketing often produces its best results in the second and third year.

Be done in-house by the vast majority of companies.
A successful social-media campaign integrates social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, digital and PR. Opinion and theory are no match for experience and the best social media marketers now have more than 10 years of experience incorporating interactivity, blogs, forums, user-generated content and contests into online marketing.

You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience -- a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.

 

Provide a quick fix to the bottom line or a tarnished reputation.
Social media can sometimes provide quick results for a company that's already a star. When a well-loved company like Zappos or Google employs social media, its loyal fans and followers pay attention.

However, there's a lot of desperation in a lot of corporate suites these days, and many companies seem been convinced that a social-media campaign can provide a quick fix to sagging sales or reputation issues. Sorry, nuh, uh.

Be done without a realistic budget.
Building a site that incorporates interactivity, allows user-generated content and perhaps also includes e-commerce doesn't come cheap from anyone who knows what they are doing.

Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, incorporating e-commerce and creating style sheets that integrate with the company's branding, takes more than time. That takes skill, experience, and money.

Guarantee sales or influence.
Unless your effort can pass the "who cares" test -- and most simply can't -- your social media efforts will fall flat.

And unless you know how to drive traffic to your contest, video, blog, event, etc., you'll have little more than an expensive field of dreams.

Be done by "kids" who "understand social innately"
You can climb Mount Kilaminjaro without a sherpa guide, but why would you? Experience and perspective can make the trip easier, or even save your life.

Companies trying to run social media without experienced consultants waste time, money and reputation on their efforts. And then, sadly, many decide that this new-fangled approach doesn't work.

Replace PR.
No matter how great your website, video contest, blog, Twitter strategy, etc., you still need publicity. Or you may end up with a tree falling in the forest and nobody hearing it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B.L. Ochman is a marketing strategist and blogger and can be found Twittering, at WhatsNextOnline.com or with her newest venture, Pawfun.com.

53 Comments

 

  By jzuccaro | Washington, DC November 2, 2009 11:06:28 am:

Social media is simply another set of tools that will fit into a marketer's toolbox. Soon it will be just "marketing" once everyone realizes that.

Most tools need to be used in a coordinated way. You don't build a house with a hammer; you use a saw, a level, a screwdriver, etc. So social media will be most effective when used with other existing tools at a marketer's disposal.

Nevertheless, the newness and "fun" of these new tools have led to what are now innovations by marketers.

That's why we created the B2B Twitterer of the Year Awards - to recognize B2B organizations for outstanding contributions in practicing, promoting, and/or enhancing business via the micro-blogging sensation Twitter.

This year's Program is gaining momentum - With a growing list of impressive B2B professionals on the judging panel, the awards will warrant much attention and produce great accounts of Twitter successes.

Unlike social media "popularity contests," the B2B Twitterer of the Year awards are awarded to qualified, nominated entities, are run by B2B veterans and focus on B2B only.

Check it out at http://www.b2btoty.com

Thanks!

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  By thetylerhayes | Plymouth, MN November 2, 2009 11:33:47 am:

Spot on B.L.

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  By unc08clay | Carrboro, NC November 2, 2009 12:13:12 pm:

Wow, great post! I think you nailed it. Companies need to realize this AND social media agencies need to start relaying this info to their clients upfront. Set expectations correctly.

Point #1 gets exactly at a recent post I did called Social Media is Not a Strategy: http://newmediacampaigns.com/page/social-media-is-not-a-strategy

Thanks for putting this out there, a good one to share w/ clients.

Clay
http://twitter.com/newmediaclay

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  By sparklesthesky | Mesa, AZ November 2, 2009 12:31:44 pm:

Great write-up. I agree with jzuccaro and would go a step further to say social media is ONLY a set of tools and new channels to add to the marketer's color palette in order to paint the entire picture of the brand.

Alycia de Mesa
http://www.demesabrands.com

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 2, 2009 12:41:49 pm:

jzuccaro: Please read Top 13 Guidelines for commenting on blog posts http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archives/2009/10/how_to_comment_on_a_blog.asp
thanks

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  By Mark | New York, NY November 2, 2009 02:16:13 pm:

You nailed it, B.L.

One additional point:

SOCIAL MEDIA CAN'T:

• GUARANTEE ONLY A POSITIVE DIALOGUE. There is often a burst of negativity at the start of the conversation. Negative people tend to be the loudest. (Think talk radio.) Usually this fades as more positive comments start coming in. The point is, the brand must be prepared in advance for the negative as well as the positive. Some experience with crisis management could come in handy. A little patience wouldn't hurt, either.

Mark Drossman
http://extrovertic.com

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  By tonyp1222 | JAMAICA, NY November 2, 2009 02:59:38 pm:

While I agree with the majority of the article, I very much disagree with point number 1. Sure, blasting promotions on your Twitter and Facebook doesn't replace "marketing strategy," but only because that isn't a strategic leveraging of those social platforms.

You have to tap into the core elements which make Facebook and Twitter tick. Facebook is great for leveraging friendships and conversations are better organized. Twitter is a little more wild, built around associations people have around common interests (almost like make-shift groups), and easier to follow in terms of brand mentions since most tweets are public.

You have to deeply understand the brand and how to add the brand's voice into those cultures before you can leverage them properly. Once you do, you can then build a more comprehensive strategy that boosts your brand's presence on those networks.

And just like with more traditional ad campaigns, those strategies are unique to any individual brand and you can't shoehorn in surefire "tactics."

- Anthony Perez
http://www.brandthony.com
Conversation LLC (http://www.heyconvo.com)

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 2, 2009 03:01:24 pm:

Mark - what a great point. It is true that the community tends to cull out the people who are negative for the sake of negativity.

Yet, I've seen brands do MORE than they need to do to compensate when negatives come up.

the key is to acknowledge negative feedback and respond appropriately. That varies from situation to situation.

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  By tonyp1222 | JAMAICA, NY November 2, 2009 03:16:26 pm:

@BL

That's another important thing about using social media. It, whether you want it to be or not, will be an extension of your customer service department. You will have people complain about things such as the online shopping on your site not working, and you'll have to respond.

Otherwise, you might be seen as a brand who doesn't care when people have a legitimate problem and ask for a solution on your page. The person who gets ignored by Facebook will become annoyed at the brand and those who see that person ignored will figure the brand doesn't care on a platform that is all about response and relationships.

- Anthony Perez
http://www.brandthony.com
Conversation LLC (http://www.heyconvo.com)

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  By E.B. | NEW YORK, NY November 2, 2009 03:25:35 pm:

BL sums it up wonderfully, once again.

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  By pattersonbrands | Vancouver, B. November 2, 2009 03:53:38 pm:

Great post. And yes it would be odd to climb Kiliminjaro with/without Sherpa guides since Kili is in Africa and most Sherpa guides work in the Himalayas.

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  By 1day1brand | Toronto, ON November 2, 2009 04:07:17 pm:

Sorry B.L.,

While each of your points is perfectly cogent, together they are disempowering. Perfectionism is boring. I'm not a "social" expert but I'll bet that some of the most successful "social" campaigns have broken at least a few of your rules.

Axle Davids
http://www.distility.com

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 2, 2009 05:02:19 pm:

Axle - sorry to bore you. My post has had more than 4000 Re-Tweets, so i guess some people aren't finding it boring.

Patterson - thanks to you and several other peeps for telling me about the sherpas. as you can tell, i don't do a lot of mountain climbing. :>)

Anthony - i absolutely agree. I wrote a post not long ago with the headline Dear Corporations: Nothing Else Matters If Your Customer Service sucks.

Unfortunately, customer service is looked upon as a low-level job in most companies. i think customer service ought to be handled at the C-level.

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  By kholloway | Columbus, OH November 2, 2009 05:11:52 pm:

Great article. Thanks for the thoughts and insight. I went on a client meeting today and got a lot of questions that can be answered by those things that social media "is not".

In many ways, social media is just a vehicle that marketing execs should be using to create another touchpoint with key audiences.

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 2, 2009 05:39:16 pm:

kholloway - social media is nothing but a set of tools. they only gain meaning and traction when they are integrated into an overall communications strategy.

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  By ahawkinson | Reston, VA November 2, 2009 11:53:16 pm:

Solid post. When some analysis surfaced a couple of weeks ago showing that Facebook now accounts for an incredible 1 in 4 pageviews in the U.S., I was compelled to give equal measure to what it does NOT mean for businesses - http://bit.ly/28iVda. The points outlined here resonate with me for the same reasons - social media is a very important tool for businesses, but it must fit into a broader strategy and also have long-term support in order to produce positive and sustainable results.

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  By socialmediawave | toronto, ON November 3, 2009 08:34:17 am:

Great post- managing expectations with the opportunity at hand. What not to do is as important as what 100's of overnight SMM experts put forth as gospel..

A strategy would be beneficial-start with customer engagement points and work in the conversations into CRM- real data, weighted, actionable responses- then use to drive inbound sales.

tangible- it works - new tools are amazing! Upcoming webinars might be useful to many SME's..

Craig Stark

Partner

www.salesforcestrategies.com

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  By DeniseSalvaggio | Maitland, FL November 3, 2009 09:27:49 am:

All are excellent points. Mistake Number 7 dovetails with the popular old misconception of PR being "free" publicity.

Technetium Creative
www.technetium.com

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  By carlphelps | Rochester, NY November 3, 2009 10:11:40 am:

Hi,

I really enjoyed reading this post and I think you are right on target with a lot of the points.

I do disagree with the idea that you need someone with 10 years experience in "social media." I think that social media marketing as a discipline has evolved so much in the last 10 years, that there is no such thing as a "10 year expert" in the field. In fact, someone who has been studying "social media" for 10+ years could be out of touch with what works best right now.

What you really need is someone who understands (and has experience in) core marketing concepts that will always be true, no matter what tools you are using.

Thanks for all the great insight!

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  By john120 | Marlborough, MA November 3, 2009 10:23:06 am:

This is one of the best, simplest descriptions of what social networking is and isn't. I'm going to send it to all of our clients. There have been times, especially when I was freelancing, that people said to me "we want to build a social networking buzz," but had no goals other than that, no realistic budget, and no interest in helping to create content. But they expected it to take their business to the next level.

I would also add that social networking can't be done without active participation from everyone.

Social networking is a tactic, not a strategy.

Thanks for the post!

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  By tschreier | New York, NY November 3, 2009 10:43:40 am:

Social Media is not new. It is as old as the web itself. Consider Agents Inc of MIT Media Labs and their Firefly project. It gathered like minded people in accordance to their likes and dislikes of music, literature, movies, plays, etc. The program would group people accordingly and make suggestions based on others' preferences. I would suggest that Patty Maes invented social media model back almost twenty years ago.

Also, Amazon had done some very interesting things prior to Facebook, Napster, Friendster and My Space. Yahoo groups and AOL groups were quite active in the space as well.

Tim Schreier
NY

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  By cypherzeros | Chicago, IL November 3, 2009 10:47:58 am:

I think that Social Media's true strength is giving visibility to new leadership. Marketing is simply an ancillary opportunity and only serves to deform Social Media's true power. Similar to the way e-commerce distorts the real benefits of the Internet.

Most marketers are simply trying to capture, control and claim a movement whose true potential is still unrealized, but obviously has serious consequences for the industry. Social media is more than just one tool in the box.

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 3, 2009 10:52:14 am:

john120 - "social networking can't be done without active participation from everyone." yesss!

that requires breaking through the corporate silos - something that's not happening any time soon in most big companies.

carlphelps - "What you really need is someone who understands (and has experience in) core marketing concepts that will always be true, no matter what tools you are using." If you re-read the post, you'll see that is what it is about.

As for someone who has 10 years experience being out of touch with what works right now: that simply makes no sense.

Tim Schreier - remember the messy threads in chat rooms? remember the comment spam, obscenity, etc. in forums? You're right that the purpose of the worldwide web is to bring people together and give everyone a voice. But the tools of today offer a much better way for people to connect and converse than did earlier incarnations.

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  By Towens149 | woodland hills, CA November 3, 2009 11:00:23 am:

Great analysis. I'm afraid that 90% of the people who should read this will never see it.

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  By acherwenka | New York, NY November 3, 2009 11:05:56 am:

Nailed it.

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  By Joe | Wilton, CT November 3, 2009 11:09:48 am:

Your comments confirm that social media marketing can work like any other marketing effort if done right, is integrated with the rest of the activities and based on a corporate culture that truly believes in the value of doing all this with authenticity and common sense. If not done right, we have what Seth Godin has termed a "meatball sundae" and that is an ugly thing!

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  By JackTheDonkeyDotCom | Toronto, ON November 3, 2009 11:27:07 am:

Bang on. By understanding what can realistically be accomplished, some organizations are effectively playing the game. While Dell has been able to use Twitter as an effective tool to move older merch, I don't think they see tweeting as a means of developing the brand...just short term (tactical) objectives that are measurable. Brilliant. That being said, I think there's huge potential to develop brands further in social media, particularly when the personalities representing the companies are able to effectively engage with the community. If you think you can merely blast the same message that you use in traditional media through the social media channels...you're going to struggle to develop THE fans you need in this space.

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  By SocialMediaSolutions | Richmond, VA November 3, 2009 11:31:49 am:

I definitely agree with your top 10. More emphasis on 1: You're right. Utilizing solely facebook and twitter cannot commensurate a "total package" marketing strategy. These channels are just components of your Social Media Strategy, but not marketing. You do have to stick old school traits in your marketing strategy.

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  By john120 | Marlborough, MA November 3, 2009 12:10:21 pm:

BL,

It really is unfortunate that it's not happening at the big companies. There are so many passionate people working at some of these companies who just love their brand. If they were given an outlet, they could become powerful evangelists for the brand. By not "getting it," companies are missing a golden opportunity from inside their own organizations.

Thanks again!

Jean Levasseur
www.captainsofindustry.com

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  By kstabs88 | prairie village, KS November 3, 2009 12:58:07 pm:

From a college journalism student's perspective, this article was very helpful in explaining and drawing the lines between what social media is and is not. I continue to learn about the importance and value of integrating your company online through social media and social networking. Being familiar with the various online social media websites, I view it as an opportunity for a company to promote their strategic message. I agree with most of your points, at this time social media is not fully a marketing strategy or a short term commitment. But, I do think it is a strong part of the marketing strategy that should be focused on. Listening to consumers, making adjustments from feedback, can give ones company the upper hand in targeting their market. The main thing businesses need to realize is that social media is a set of tools that facilitate social networking. It just one part of the big picture. But it's a big part, that should not be left alone.

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  By alanm | London November 3, 2009 02:04:09 pm:

PR people are the dark witches from Oz. The ugly portrayers of spin and lies. They need not be a part of a marketing plan.

Social Media is the reason this is true. As true can and will be told by the public which brands have no control over.

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  By Tom | Evanston, IL November 3, 2009 03:44:50 pm:

I read this post a few days ago and was wondering last night why it was so popular. (4,000 retweet).

I think it is because it actually outlines successful SM initiatives according to the hard work being done. SM is not some magical pixie dust - but just a tool. (A really important tool in the 21st century.)

Success requires $$, planning, creativity, relevance, leadership and execution.

BL's post confirms this, and so validates the hard (mostly anon) work being done by companies, agencies and consultants all over the country.

More here on "Why We Loved 10 Things SM Can't Do"

http://tinyurl.com/ydnwyom

TO'B
MotiveQuest LLC

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  By thdpr | Broomfield, CO November 3, 2009 06:01:43 pm:

I really took me a minute to decide if I was going to post a comment here. After BL's response to Axle, I didn't get the impression that the author cared about anyone's opinion... unless they agree with him.

I agree with Axle (and for the record he didn't call you boring, he called perfectionism boring). You make really good points, mostly, but it's almost like trying to find some rules in an unknown universe. Sometimes those rules work but sometimes they don't.

I am a "social" professional and frankly, I can run circles around those so called "consultants." I haven't found a workshop or book that can tell me how to incorporate social better that I have or how to find a measurable statistic to show the higher ups to prove it works (and I am self-taught... no high priced consultant help). I am sick of people representing themselves as social media experts. None of us are... yet. Zappos hit on a good formula but that doesn't translate to every industry. Dirk Shaw has some good insights that I find helpful on his blog but he can't fill in all the holes.

And I somewhat disagree about #9. Yes, you can't just pull some 18 year old into your company and have them make Facebook work for you but the people I know that are successful in this industry are (like myself) in their mid to late 20's. We may be kids who understand and use social media in our day to day lives but we also have Masters degrees and a good number of years making Myspace and Facebook work for companies. What I do know, is for the most part, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. The "older folk" I have worked with (who don't have a FB account and are unsure how the technology works) and tried to educate in new media have come back to me confused and desperate. I set them up with a "kid" who understand how to make a FB page and what a status update is and they work together.

Overall, good article, quit dumping on your commenters or your "4000 retweets" are unlikely to repeat RT, and thank you for laying this out in a simple manner that is helpful to show to clients or C-level execs.

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 3, 2009 08:48:20 pm:

thdpr - I have to question your powers of observation as i am female. that's me on the left in the photo with the caption B.L. Ochman :>)

Tom, thank you so much for your insightful post. Happy to have inspired you. And OMG what an adorable Lab.

Jean: I agree that companies often miss the opportunity to let their internal brand evangelists have a voice. I tell me clients that if they don't trust their employees to deal with customers and the public, they need to look at their hiring policies.

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  By thdpr | Broomfield, CO November 3, 2009 09:24:42 pm:

Hi BL, I apologize for the mistake. To be honest, I didn't notice the picture until after I read the post and responded. Read the meat, skipped the label. Sorry for that.

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  By love2helpu | Troy, MI November 3, 2009 09:25:52 pm:

Of course one can't rely on social media for all of their advertising needs. That said I've found some really great contests on Facebook. They are generally easy to enter and are really interesting. The latest one to capture my attention - the possibility of winning a new netgear RangeMax WNDR3700 router. My kids would LOVE it for gaming and my hubby would love it for 1000 other reasons!! Entry details can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/Netgear?v=app_7146470109&ref=ts. Good luck. . . even though I am hoping to win!!

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  By tcotta | Palm Springs, CA November 3, 2009 11:32:28 pm:

Good advice for big business, but not small. I am a past Presdient of the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce. My experience with small businesses is customers love to hear from the owners and managers in the social media especailly in the travel tourism fields.

I completely disagree with #5 if you are a small business. Do it in house.

And social media GETS you PR. I do it in house and a tweet got me a write up in People Magazine and they even tweeted the article back in August.

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  By TyTellis | Karachi November 4, 2009 12:39:00 am:

Hi,

I agree social media is hyped up a lot as if its a panacea for all ills plaguing marketers or as a quick fix for how to get in touch with consumers. However in my neck of the woods, social media is usually viewed as a tag on to the original marketing campaign. In our market the general view is that cohesion is achieved by having the same visual/audio elements in all parts of the campaign. For instance a radio ad would just be the audio of the TVC and print would be similar to a still shot of the TVC. This false belief that continuity can only be achieved by reproducing the basic elements in all parts of a campaign leads to media executions that fail to remember the power of the media.

Similarly with social media if you don't respect the media and do not have a knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses you will end up using it inefficiently and more important ineffectively. The problem is people have a little knowledge and they try to join things up like how BL joined up Mt Kilimanjaro and sherpas! Both are related to mountains but both are totally separate.

In the same way social media and mainstream marketing are often mismatched. They both relate to communication but how much of an overlap there is and whether they can be meshed together or not requires more than a perfunctory knowledge.

Tyrone Tellis,
Media Planner
Karachi,Pakitan.
http://www.linkedin.com/myprofile?trk=hb_side_pro

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  By ahawkinson | Reston, VA November 4, 2009 01:03:15 am:

Wish I could reply in line, but BL's comment "Unfortunately, customer service is looked upon as a low-level job in most companies. i think customer service ought to be handled at the C-level." is absolutely dead on. Some really good data came out last week around this topic - http://bit.ly/nf0or. With 90% of people trusting peer recommendations vs. 14% for advertisements, it makes engaging with your customers and delivering awesome customer service a do or die priority. Simply put, customer service is the new marketing.

tcotta - also think you make a good point on the differences for small businesses. We have about 400k small businesses running on our platform and by far the ones that are most successful are the ones that embrace the DIY portion of our tools at the proprietor/owner level. http://fourfirkins.cloudprofile.com and thousands of other examples have taught us that.

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  By millytant | London November 4, 2009 05:16:16 am:

40,000 retwats - incredible - looks like the pr agencies are plopping themselves and keen to reinforce the message that they are NEEDED.

Good old reader comments still work - http://tr.im/questionable

Also cut the short url nonsense - give folk a clue to what the blasted urls are actually about - rofl

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  By millytant | London November 4, 2009 05:16:47 am:

Also cut the short url nonsense - give folk a clue to what the blasted urls are actually about - rofl - http://tr.im/houstonseo

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  By drossoscarpets | thessaloniki, GR November 4, 2009 07:40:08 am:

Very good article indeed greetings from Greece drossos cheap hand made carpets from Greece www.drossos-carpets.gr φτηνα χειροποιητα χαλια

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  By iraszl | Budapest November 4, 2009 08:45:52 am:

I would also add, social media isn't the right tool to introduce a new product. It's more suitable to strengthen a relationship with you customer.

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  By MaryLou | Eastham, MA November 4, 2009 10:41:08 am:

I really couldn't say it better, but I can always add something! I thought about strategy and re-reviewed Skittles http://diy-marketing.blogspot.com/2009/11/these-really-are-10-things-social-media.html

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  By daveconrey | Somewhere, CA November 4, 2009 01:17:23 pm:

Sounds like the Death Knell of an industry grasping to remain relevant.

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 4, 2009 04:55:49 pm:

daveconrey - hardly a death knell. just a reality check. social media is not an industry. it's a set of tools which can be effectively integrated into a company's overall marketing to build reputation, engagement, and sales.

However, to quote the great blues singer, Sippie Wallace: "But you got to know how."

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  By maroonblazer | Atlanta, GA November 4, 2009 11:43:34 pm:

One useful thing about social media is that you can vet articles like these, and the asserted authority of their authors, by how they actually use the tools. In this article's case, the comments section is enlightening.

The author either doesn't truly understand how social media facilitates transparency or she simply possesses a blind spot when it comes to basic social interaction. e.g denigrating your audience when they put forth an opposing point of view is a quick way to turn off potential customers. Likewise, ignoring the substance of a comment questioning an assumption of the article and instead replying with how many RTs the article has received comes off seeming petty and defensive.

The article left me wondering why I'd trust my clients' brands with someone who has so little regard for her own.

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 5, 2009 01:07:23 am:

maroonblazer - the reason for pointing out that a post is re-tweeted thousands of times is to note that it strikes a chord with a lot of people. of the hundreds of comments that have been made about this post here, on my blog, on twitter, and on the other blogs where it has been written about, the consensus is that it offers a reality check for both businesses and consultants.

if it doesn't resonate with you, that's cool. rock on.

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  By TyTellis | Karachi November 5, 2009 02:15:47 am:

Hi,

There was an error in the link to linkedin.

http://pk.linkedin.com/in/tyronetellis

I am not a social media expert but from the dialogue here it looks like a lot of people consider themselves as such!

The power of SM is just that there are no 100% certified experts like MCSE etc. There is no one shoe fits all solution.

Tyrone

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  By AdrianCojocaru | Bucharest November 5, 2009 08:19:25 am:

I don't agree with point 9. Social Media is a new domain, and the so called "kids" can be just as effective as an overpaid "consultant".

Adrian Cojocaru
New Media Marketing JE

www.aquasoft.ro
http://twitter.com/AQUASoft

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 5, 2009 04:40:13 pm:

Adrian - feel free to hire kids who work for cheap if that works for your company. To paraphrase Hugh Macleod "call us after the little guys screw it up royally."

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  By AdrianCojocaru | Bucharest November 6, 2009 05:21:30 am:

Considering the fact that social media is a new domain, the experience is less important than in other fields. The enthusiasm however is a different issue, and the kids have plenty of that.

It is our policy to support young professionals at the start of their careers and, in time, we built one of strongest teams in our field of expertise. We just apply the same principles in the new media domain, and so far the results were quite good.

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  By BL | NEW YORK, NY November 6, 2009 12:52:12 pm:

Ardian - Social media is NOT a new domain. Interactive marketing has been around for a dozen years. There are always new tools. I love young people, and, with good supervision, they can gain perspective, contacts, and expertise.

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THE FACTS Chronic sleep deprivation is a given for most Americans. But paying off a sleep debt is not as simple as sleeping late on a Saturday.

Skip to next paragraph

Christoph Neimann

Related

Times Topics: Sleep

More Really? Columns

In studies over the years, scientists have found that it can take a week or more for the cognitive and physiological consequences of poor sleep to wear off — even after increasing sleep.

In a study at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 2003, for example, scientists examined the cognitive effects of a week of poor sleep, followed by three days of sleeping at least eight hours a night. The scientists found that the “recovery” sleep did not fully reverse declines in performance on a test of reaction times and other psychomotor tasks, especially for subjects who had been forced to sleep only three or five hours a night.

In a similar study in 2008, scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found that when subjects slept four hours a night over five days, and then “recovered” with eight hours a night over the following week, they still showed slight residual cognitive impairments a week later, even though they reported no sleepiness.

But in another study, also at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, scientists found that people recovered much more quickly from a week of poor sleep when it was preceded by a “banking” week that included nights with 10 hours of shuteye. In other words, if you know you have a week of little sleep ahead of you, try loading up on sleep beforehand, not simply afterward.

THE BOTTOM LINE It takes more than a night of extra sleep to pay off a sleep debt.

ANAHAD O’CONNOR scitimes@nytimes.com

scitimes@nytimes.com

Recommend Next Article in Health (37 of 46) » A version of this article appeared in print on November 3, 2009, on page D5 of the New York edition.

the recipe sounds good - am definitely going to try it as soon as I can get some pearl barley