Mass media is recently blaming social networks in general, and Blackberry Messenger in particular, for the London riots. Now the British Government is talking about shutting down social networks when necessary. And I can’t believe how naive all of this is.
It seems very plausible that BBM, Twitter or Facebook were some of the tools used by rioters to spread their message, but it seems unrealistic to believe that shutting down these services is going to stop criminal activity. Not to mention the consequences this would have on its everyday legitimate use. Today there are hundreds of tools that allow us to communicate with huge groups of people at almost zero cost, so if BBM –or any other service– isn’t available, people will switch to another one. The root of the problem is the people, not the tools used by the people.
I understand, however, that all of these new ways of communicating present a big challenge for police forces around the globe. But they’ll have to adapt. A couple of decades ago their only concern was tapping phones: it required a small number of companies because all the information of a given suspect would go through a single path. Nowadays trying to get into all the networks of a user’s daily interaction is almost impossible. I’m not an engineer and maybe different tools can be tapped at the same time, but I think about all the tools I use and feel sorry for the officer in charge if I’m ever under surveillance: fixed and mobile phones, VOIP, email, IMs, social networks…
The good news for law enforcement agencies is that most of these new tools can be traced afterwards. Most require written communication, and that leaves a trace. It will probably be time consuming, but with the right tools I guess everything can be recovered. In fact I’ve read that Blackberry is already working with the police to track suspects.
This may be controversial, but a few days ago news were all about iPhone and maybe Android. Today Blackberry is back in the market! I’d kill to get info on the sales data per day to see if all this had any impact. Many people say their image has been damaged. I’m not so sure about it.
I’m planning to move to NYC or SF and I’m looking for a job. I’ll be in the US around August 20th, available to meet anyone.
I’m a marketer with sales experience and some technical knowledge who’s started and managed his own business
Last thing I’ve done is bootstrapping a small health care services business that I’m now selling. I started my career in sales at a hardware vendor. After that I held several marketing and sales management positions in media and telecom companies. More professional details in my Linkedin profile.
I understand small business and their advertising needs
I’ve been one. I’ve sold to many. I worked at a yellow pages company. You can criticize the product as much as you want. I will agree, it’s obsolete. But yellow pages companies still sell billions of dollars in advertising every year. They do it because they understand small business and they are great at marketing and selling that. I learned all the metrics and tactics used long ago.
I’m great at making things happen
I’ve had my own business, so I couldn’t afford not to execute ideas. This skill is the result of three characteristics I have:
-I understand people. Great at managing and organizing teams, even when they are not under my direct command or in the same continent.
-I live by the data. I believe in crunching data to make decisions and understand problems. If data doesn’t say, it doesn’t exist. Except when it does, but I’ll leave the role of intuition for another moment.
-I love tools and processes. That may sound boring and grey, but I do know that growth can only be achieved with some order. And I really think that a CRM can be fun.
I want to work in an internet company which gets or may get revenue helping small businesses to sell more
I’ve loved the internet since the moment I discovered it. It’s transforming every sector constantly and the way we do everything. I want to be part of a game changing company in which roles are redefined every day. I want to be challenged and live out of my comfort zone. I want to share an objective with the best and brightest.
I know that with my background I can be very useful to any internet company whose revenue source, present or future, is advertising in any form. Marketplaces, advertising platforms or services, review sites… in the end most services need to take into account small businesses.
Thanks to having started my own company I know what it is like to work with limited resources in survival mode. And thanks to having worked in big successful ones I know how things are done there and what can be done to compete with them.
Please contact me at gutierrezf@gmail.com if you want any more info.
I had not heard about this guy before. I found this video in Seth Godin’s blog. But I agree so much with him that I have to share this video.
He talks about media and how it’s changing a lot, but the keypoint for me is when he addresses how much time we spend watching TV and all the things we could do with that time. One example: with the time spent on watching TV in the US in a year you could produce two thousand Wikipedias.
