Blab et al

I ran across something called Blab.im yesterday afternoon in an online exchange among legal professionals.

Seeing that it was some sort of video conferencing app similar to Google Hangouts, I asked on Facebook if anyone had heard of Blab, had used it and how it compared to Hangouts.

Samantha Collier, a social media consultant to law firms from Vancouver, mentioned she would be attending a “blab” being held today by an education provider in Australia. The “blab” was to be a discussion about online copyright/IP issues.

I stopped by for a few minutes and though the sound and video quality (displayed up to three people at a time), was good, the things being discussed were awful shallow. In addition, the people listening in may be considered marginal from a lawyer networking perspective. You could see their Twitter profiles when you moused over their pics.

Earlier in the week I ran across a piece that Foxwordy had become a top social network for lawyers.

Not hearing much about it and seeing that the piece was written by Foxwordy’s founder, I asked on Twitter if anyone knew of lawyers using Foxwordy. Nothing.

Bob Ambrogi, who had reviewed Foxwordy a year ago, then reported that Foxwordy was banning bloggers from accessing the social network. Kind of nuts for a social network to ban the most socially active lawyers don’t you think?

Also earler in the week I came across a report that recently launched Casetext had surpassed WordPress based blogs, Medium and other platforms like Blogger to become, in Casetext’s words, “the best place on the web to write about the law.” Mind you, this is a site where lawyers receive no branding, no independent/authoritative sites of their own and where commentators can go wild about your content without you knowing it.

Anyone of these networks and solutions may turn out to be wonderful for lawyers. God knows their investors think so.

But for the time being lawyers and legal professionals ought not feel compelled to use every site, platform and network that’s coming down the pike. Not everything is going stack up to what’s being claimed today nor even last for the long haul. In some cases the crowd may not be appropriate. In others the time spent may produce little or no return.

Look at something as big as Google+. Hundreds of millions of dollars and incredibly smart people behind that effort. Lawyers who spent their time in Google+ would be hard pressed today to say they received a return on their time.