Beco
I'm Not Your Guru
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Michigan's Million-Dollar Facebook Mistake Why the state does not need its own social networkBy Mark Malseed Mar 01 2010, 06:27 PM
It's projects like this one that give government social media efforts --- and government in general --- a bad name.
The state of Michigan is currently building a custom social network called the Michigan College Access Portal, at a cost of $1.5 million, to help students looking to transition from high school to college and beyond.
One point five million dollars of public funds. To build a Facebook knock-off.
Why bother? The project is not creating jobs for the state of Michigan. A Boston-based company, ConnectEDU, has the contract to develop the social network site, meaning no local web firms will get a boon from the infusion of government cash. "Students from a Michigan school could have built such a Web site to ease the government’s needs," wrote TheStateNews.com in a critical editorial.
But even if the money was flowing to Michigan firms or students, it still would not be a wise expenditure by the Michigan Department of Treasury. The reasons are simple.
First, the audience that the project is trying to reach --- high school and college aged kids --- already are heavily invested in using one or more much-larger social networks. Building a competing network does not mean the audience will come. Even a brilliantly designed website could end up being a virtual Bridge to Nowhere, given the dominance of big players like Facebook.
Second, existing social networks already offer plenty of opportunities to achieve the same results. It's not as if the government must build this from-scratch social network to disseminate career and college advice; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and numerous other heavily-trafficked social sites offer ways aplenty to spread the good word.
Third, the cost of using existing social media is zero, or nearly zero. Setting up and promoting a Facebook fan page, a Twitter feed, a WordPress blog, a LinkedIn group are F-R-E-E in terms of the technology costs, and minimal in the human capital needed to get them going. A budget of $1.5 million could fund full-scale outreach efforts using all these platforms, plus many more, with advertising, human support, and plenty of money left over too.
One of the challenges of adapting to the era of social media and new media is knowing when to leverage existing platforms vs. when to construct your own. For businesses the decision can be a life-or-death one. Governments should treat the decision the same way. Some situations call for custom development --- the U.S. intelligence community, for instance, has special needs that an off-the-shelf social network cannot provide. But a run-of-the-mill project like this one, while laudable in purpose, is just setting itself up for failure by trying to reinvent the wheel.
The well-meaning federal, state and local agencies, nonprofits and foundations who fund youth-oriented outreach efforts like MCAP would do well to consider what kinds of projects might be not the flashiest use of taxpayer and donor money, but the most efficient. Standalone social networks will rarely fit that bill, as long as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are posting the visitor numbers they are.
Deploying a few smart staffers to make use of existing social media platforms is a better bet. You'll be amazed at what you can do with all the leftover cash.
The recent move by the Department of Defense to embrace social media says all your agency needs to hear about whether using Facebook, Twitter and the rest are workable in a government setting. They are. So forget about building your own private social media island. Go where the people are.
http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_ne...chigan-s-million-dollar-facebook-mistake.aspx
It's projects like this one that give government social media efforts --- and government in general --- a bad name.
The state of Michigan is currently building a custom social network called the Michigan College Access Portal, at a cost of $1.5 million, to help students looking to transition from high school to college and beyond.
One point five million dollars of public funds. To build a Facebook knock-off.
Why bother? The project is not creating jobs for the state of Michigan. A Boston-based company, ConnectEDU, has the contract to develop the social network site, meaning no local web firms will get a boon from the infusion of government cash. "Students from a Michigan school could have built such a Web site to ease the government’s needs," wrote TheStateNews.com in a critical editorial.
But even if the money was flowing to Michigan firms or students, it still would not be a wise expenditure by the Michigan Department of Treasury. The reasons are simple.
First, the audience that the project is trying to reach --- high school and college aged kids --- already are heavily invested in using one or more much-larger social networks. Building a competing network does not mean the audience will come. Even a brilliantly designed website could end up being a virtual Bridge to Nowhere, given the dominance of big players like Facebook.
Second, existing social networks already offer plenty of opportunities to achieve the same results. It's not as if the government must build this from-scratch social network to disseminate career and college advice; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and numerous other heavily-trafficked social sites offer ways aplenty to spread the good word.
Third, the cost of using existing social media is zero, or nearly zero. Setting up and promoting a Facebook fan page, a Twitter feed, a WordPress blog, a LinkedIn group are F-R-E-E in terms of the technology costs, and minimal in the human capital needed to get them going. A budget of $1.5 million could fund full-scale outreach efforts using all these platforms, plus many more, with advertising, human support, and plenty of money left over too.
One of the challenges of adapting to the era of social media and new media is knowing when to leverage existing platforms vs. when to construct your own. For businesses the decision can be a life-or-death one. Governments should treat the decision the same way. Some situations call for custom development --- the U.S. intelligence community, for instance, has special needs that an off-the-shelf social network cannot provide. But a run-of-the-mill project like this one, while laudable in purpose, is just setting itself up for failure by trying to reinvent the wheel.
The well-meaning federal, state and local agencies, nonprofits and foundations who fund youth-oriented outreach efforts like MCAP would do well to consider what kinds of projects might be not the flashiest use of taxpayer and donor money, but the most efficient. Standalone social networks will rarely fit that bill, as long as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are posting the visitor numbers they are.
Deploying a few smart staffers to make use of existing social media platforms is a better bet. You'll be amazed at what you can do with all the leftover cash.
The recent move by the Department of Defense to embrace social media says all your agency needs to hear about whether using Facebook, Twitter and the rest are workable in a government setting. They are. So forget about building your own private social media island. Go where the people are.
http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_ne...chigan-s-million-dollar-facebook-mistake.aspx
