Tag: Social Media

Despite Meta’s $17.1 Billion Lawsuit Settlement, Questions Linger About Reducing Negative Social Media Effects for Children

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in IT Leader
A professional headshot of a woman with blonde hair, wearing a black jacket and a light-colored turtleneck sweater, smiling towards the camera.
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• In August, Meta admitted liability regarding social media’s addictive qualities on children, reaching a $17.1 billion settlement with US states and the District of Columbia.

• While seen as a victory by critics, the settlement is insufficient to introduce the sweeping changes needed to have a measurable effect.

Just weeks after Meta, the parent company of social media giants Instagram and Facebook, promised to restrict access to some of the more controversial features of its platform to settle a multi-billion dollar lawsuit, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill tightening social media controls for children. The California law, which goes into effect in 2028, mandates social media accounts for users under age 16 be private, limits algorithmic feeds for minors, masks children’s location data, and turns off overnight notifications for underage users. Unlike similar legislation passed by other states like Illinois, the California law allows parents to amend social media restrictions. Newsom also signed a bill that requires AI companies to reveal to minors whether they are communicating with a non-human entity. The legislation also prevents children from accessing risky content on subjects like self-harm.

Continue reading “Despite Meta’s $17.1 Billion Lawsuit Settlement, Questions Linger About Reducing Negative Social Media Effects for Children” →

UK Plans Teen Social Media Ban, but the Action Raises Questions About Enforceability – and Privacy

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Communicate
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets

• Following the lead of other nations including Australia, the UK is getting set to restrict access to social media sites for minors 16 years and younger, starting in 2027.

• Comparable rules in other countries have proven to be difficult to execute, with teenagers finding workarounds. However, UK government officials say their efforts will leverage highly effective technology to enforce the ban, including biometric facial age estimation.

When UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans to introduce legislation later this year that will bar teenagers and children from social media access, critics offered immediate comparisons to a similar action by Australia in 2025, which has largely been deemed a failure. Though initially Australia touted the fact that 4.7 million accounts held by children under 16 had lost access to social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat, research shows that just months later, the ban had very little effect. A University of New Castle study of 408 12 to 17 year olds found that due to “limited implementation, incomplete compliance, and substantial circumvention of social media restrictions, the ban has been largely unsuccessful.”

Continue reading “UK Plans Teen Social Media Ban, but the Action Raises Questions About Enforceability – and Privacy” →

Contact Centre Services Give the Chance to Be Even More Agile for Enterprises Large and Small

by Gary Barton, posted in Communicate

Gary Barton
Gary Barton

Summary Bullets:

  • The world of contact centres is changing quickly, with traditional on-premises solutions beginning to look inflexible and unwieldy.
  • A combination of multi-channel functionality and analytics tools can make contact centres powerful business solutions beyond customer service.

In previous blogs, I have written of the critical importance of customer service.  In particular, this has focused on the opportunities provided by viewing social media as an integral part of a company’s customer contact strategy – both for direct communication and picking up early signs of service interruptions.  If it isn’t working properly, somebody will have tweeted about it. Continue reading “Contact Centre Services Give the Chance to Be Even More Agile for Enterprises Large and Small” →

Social Media Can Play an Important Role in Companies’ Collaborative Working Practices

by Gary Barton, posted in Communicate

Gary Barton
Gary Barton

Summary Bullets:

  • In an increasingly global world and amidst a growing demand/need for flexible working patterns, collaboration tools become more important.
  • Companies deploying unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solutions should consider including social media as part of the ‘collaboration’ element.

Yahoo! chief Marissa Mayer has recently announced that the company is to end the practice of ‘remote’ working (i.e., home working) amongst its employees.  However, the Yahoo! chief was quoted as saying, “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side.  That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.”  This brings in a slightly separate element to the efficiency debate.  This is not suggesting that home workers cannot produce as much ‘work’ as office workers, but that the collaborative creative process is harmed by not having employees grouped together in one location.  However, as flexible working becomes not only more in demand from employees, but also a reality for organisations with multiple offices or those seeking to reduce their office space due to economic pressures, collaboration tools become more important.  The nature of certain jobs (e.g., sales or field operatives) also means that some employees will always be remote workers. Continue reading “Social Media Can Play an Important Role in Companies’ Collaborative Working Practices” →

Contact Center Investments Make Good Cents

by Jeremiah Caron, posted in IT Leader

Jerry Caron
Jerry Caron

Summary Bullets:                

  • Customer service in general and contact centers in particular play a crucial role in the health and image of virtually any business
  • The contact center market is stepping up with innovations to meet growing demands, and IT departments and business leaders should carefully examine their level of investment given the importance

The annual global spend on advertising, or customer acquisition, is roughly $500 billion. The customer relationship management (CRM), or cross-selling, market stands at approximately $50 billion. The contact center slice of the pie is $9 billion. These figures were trotted out at last week’s Genesys G-Force conference in Barcelona by the company’s top sales executive in an effort to make the case that perhaps enterprises need to adjust their priorities a bit. That Genesys—one of the contact center market leaders—would make that argument is hardly surprising, but given the irrefutable influence that customer service in general and contact center activities in particular have on brands, the fundamental point sits on a solid foundation despite the self-serving platform upon which is was delivered. Continue reading “Contact Center Investments Make Good Cents” →

BYO Devices and the Bottomless, Bandwidth-Slurping Pit That Is Social Media

by , posted in Network

J. Stradling
J. Stradling

Summary Bullets:

  • Fifty to one hundred applications is the norm, rather than the five to ten apps of yesteryear.
  • Devices are also changing, with laptops now accompanied by smartphones and tablets.

On a recent business trip to Paris, guests of the hotel had to pay upwards of EUR 12 to access the in-room Internet service.  However, WiFi was free in the hotel lobby, and as a result, a dozen Web users were in the lobby at any one time half accessing this ‘free’ Internet experience via a whole variety of handhelds.  Surely, this puts unsurpassed demand on the WLAN link in the lobby and results in lower revenues for the hotel from in-room access.  It can be argued that today’s work places face similar network and IT challenges, with workers entering the work space with all kinds of handhelds for conducting business and accessing the Internet and applications from any location.  Some companies ban certain social media Web sites, whilst others allow and encourage these, understanding that the new generation of Twitters, Facebooks, Salesforce.coms, etc., are entering the business realm as professional tools and for collaboration.  IT managers could throw bandwidth at the issue, but the result may well be simply an improved viewing experience on YouTube, rather than the desired effect of having certain business applications perform better. Continue reading “BYO Devices and the Bottomless, Bandwidth-Slurping Pit That Is Social Media” →

Is Your Contact Center Ready to Jump on the Social Media Bandwagon?

by , posted in Communicate

K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Social media as a potential source of strategic information in the contact center has been a serious consideration for the past two years as social media Web sites have become a channel for individuals venting and/or boasting regarding their customer service and business interactions.
  • Many businesses have jumped to quick conclusions regarding the value of social media and what should be done with its information relative to other data currently available to agents. It is becoming apparent that more thought, time and effort is required before the marketplace settles on strategies that will optimize this potentially valuable flow of information.

Over the last decade many call centers have made the transition from a single channel, voice-only solution to multichannel contact centers. In addition to customer self-service channel access, which includes Web browser and interactive voice response (IVR) interfaces, end users now expect to have additional agent-assisted channels such as e-mail, fax and chat accessible to handle their corporate interactions available at their discretion. Over the past two years yet another very tempting channel of access has become available to customers seeking to get their customer service issues resolved – social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others. Some contact center managers have been investigating social media data as the nirvana of customer care solutions. And many contact center vendors, including Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Interactive Intelligence and Siemens now incorporate interfaces to popular social media sites into their contact center application functionality. This enables corporations to monitor social media site feeds for both negative and positive mentions of their company by customers and prospects and actually put relevant social media interactions into to contact center queues along with voice calls, chats and e-mails for agent consideration, handling and resolution. Continue reading “Is Your Contact Center Ready to Jump on the Social Media Bandwagon?” →

Unusual Suspects Set to Move the Collaboration Space in 2012

by , posted in Communicate

B. Shimmin
B. Shimmin

Summary Bullets

  • The human-centricity of collaboration software invites innovation driven from many disparate industries and technologies.
  • Natural interface design, information foraging techniques and game theory are set to change the collaboration landscape in 2012.

There are few certainties in this world. And yet, as if bound by a cosmological force greater than the pull of gravity itself, at this time every year, those of us in the technology industry feel an unshakable pull, an unrelenting need to prognosticate. I am in no way immune to such innate stipulations, so it is with great pleasure that I bring to you my own forecast for 2012’s enterprise collaboration platform marketplace. But, just to keep things interesting, what follows are the three most unusual yet profoundly influential trends I think we are likely to see play out this coming year. Continue reading “Unusual Suspects Set to Move the Collaboration Space in 2012” →