Although Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research, posted his 5 Phases Of Social Experience article a month ago, it’s worth considering those 5 phases again. Having read them when he first posted them and now having had time to distill my thoughts, the first thing to strike me is how linear Owyang’s phases are and how he seems so sure that the unfolding of these phases will follow this trajectory; the greatest minds on earth still do not understand our own universe so it’s hard to see how one person can unravel the ever-changing world of the Social Web, although I will admit that he has exceptional skills at divining social media. I like his optimism but as we have been through phases 1 – 3 and are slowly entering phase 4, his phase 5. Era Of Social Commerce feels like a stretch – without phase 5 he would have only had to write about phase 4 if you get my drift. [Owyang's report 'The Future Of The Social Web can be found here].

My current interest is in Owyang’s third phase where OpenID and Facebook Connect come in to play, giving Social Web users the ability to share easily with their friends all of their web experiences. As Owyang says, it’s like taking your social connections along for the ride. Phase 4, Social Context, is unfolding right now. One company using Facebook to qualify visitors’ preferences, behaviors, and friends to help you get answers to questions from your peer group, is Aardvark who I wrote about just yesterday. I think Owyang is very optimistic though when he says “Consumers will opt in to share this information—about friends, preferences, demographics, and history—with online communities and other sites in exchange for a more-relevant Web experience.” That sounds like the wishful thinking of social media marketers – the wild card has always been social web users and what information they are willing to share. Facebook is almost a second internet with its millions of members yet Facebook doesn’t currently share that user data.

Phase 5 is problematic; I agree with Owyang’s premise but only time will tell if this theory pans out.
____________________________________________________________________________
Jeremiah Owyang’s 5 Phases Of Social Experience

1. Era of Social Relationships: We’ve already reached maturity with this stage. It took off in the 1990s with people connected to each other using simple profiles and “friending” features to share information, discussions, and media. It is the foundation of the changes to come.

2. Era of Social Functionality: Although not yet mature, we entered this phase in 2007. Today’s social networks have evolved into platforms that support social interactive applications and provide new meaning and utility to communities. Most of these applications appear to be disposable, and we’ve yet to tap into the true business functionality of applications such as e-commerce and workplace productivity. Even when maturity arises with this era, consumers will share their experiences but won’t connect them across networks. Among U.S. consumers who visit MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn at least monthly, 42 percent juggle at least two social network IDs. And 63 percent are also in discussion forums with yet another ID. This creates friction for consumers who must manage multiplying personal information and username/password combinations. It’s hard to keep track of connections when your contacts may be in Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, Twitter, or a hundred other places.

3. Era of Social Colonization: Technologies like OpenID will let individuals traverse the Internet with their social connections along for the ride. The boundaries of social networks and traditional sites will blur, making every site a social experience—even if they don’t choose to participate. New browsers and identity technologies will let consumers choose to surf the Web and see what sites their friends have visited—and what they thought of the information there. Because they trust friends more than they trust companies, they’ll lean on their network to make decisions about what they’re reading and buying. To add value, social networks will aggregate members’ activities and those of their network, collected on the members’ profile pages, merging these into messaging systems and newsfeeds. Users will not only control their communications with other sites, but also see what their friends are doing on the open Web.

4. Era of Social Context: As sites begin to recognize people’s personal identities and their social relationships, they will customize experiences based on visitors’ preferences, behaviors, and friends. This stage will enable more-intense social applications, allowing social networks to absorb features of email and to become a base of operations for everyone’s online experiences. Consumers will opt in to share this information—about friends, preferences, demographics, and history—with online communities and other sites in exchange for a more-relevant Web experience. This will build bridges between social networks, sites, and any other medium that can connect with these identification tools.

5. Era of Social Commerce: As social networks become the repository for identities and relationships, they’ll become more powerful than corporate Web sites and CRM systems. Communities will be the driving force for innovation. Because of this, brands will cater to communities, resulting in a power shift toward the connected customer. Versatile IDs will blend social sites and the Web into a single common experience. Users will control their identities and what they choose to expose. They’ll use collaboration tools to define how they want brands to serve them, and a suite of community tools to manage companies.

Aardvark Founders. Pic: Jim Wilson/The New York Times

I have written here often of how technology only shortens the distance between people on the social web. In other words, using social web tools to communicate with friends and family is an extension of our social activities offline. As I write this on July 5th, I recall yesterday seeing tens of thousands gathered on bridges in downtown Portland, alongside the lake in Lake Oswego and milling around in Tigard, Or, to watch the firework displays commemorating Independence Day. Families with kids, couples and teens all very comfortable with each other for a few hours; it is very natural for us to gather with strangers and witness a familiar event.

Opening a browser on a computer or a mobile device today means participation in the social web. Not just because of one’s involvement in social networks but also by letting your friends or family know of your geo-location by allowing a mobile device app to broadcast your whereabouts for instance. Emailing and texting friends, tweeting and updating your Facebook status all let those following you know of your involvement on the social web every day.

This is of course very familiar to us, we surf the web in our own familiar ways using social networking tools, yet companies that wish to harness the power to advertise to this web of millions of people have been stymied for some time, stuck in social media channels wondering how to budge these masses even a quarter of an inch closer to their products. The web and those using it don’t ever stop moving but you can’t simply plant a billboard alongside this viral highway – the billboard’s message will remain right there where it was positioned, as we all go about our daily electronic sojourns.

Rob Glazer of Real. Pic: Kevin P. Casey for the The New York Times

I recently discovered two articles in the Business section of the June 28th 09 edition of the New York Times. The articles cover two companies and their products – one is RealNetworks, a familiar face in technology, the other a new company called Aardvark. Real is featured for launching new technology for hardware devices and Aardvark for creating a social web service that helps you reach hundreds of your online friends and peer group for answers to any of your questions. Real brings us technology based on the premise that the company thinks we need their product and Aardvark brings us technology that embraces the social web by connecting us easily with people we trust to answer our questions. [I used Aardvark yesterday to ask a question of my followers - "who uses online music subscriptions, which one is better and why?" and I received 6 great responses, even one from a friend in Sweden who urged me to use a service called Spotify.] It works.

Aardvark doesn’t bother all of my 1700+ Facebook friends either. As the NYT article points out –

“Those friends-of-friends may turn out to be a great fountain of hitherto untapped information. For example, none of your 200 Facebook “friends” may have recently stayed in Napa and be able to recommend a bed-and-breakfast. But if each of their friends can be tapped, the pool of prospective wine-country authorities jumps from 200 into the tens of thousands.

You wouldn’t want to bother those thousands, however, with your question about Napa B.& B.’s. Aardvark has devised ways to drastically narrow the search, asking only those who are most likely to have an answer, and asking only a few of them at a time, protecting your network of volunteers from being asked too often.”

There’s more – “Having humans, not software, supply the advice is important. Max Ventilla, who formerly was at Google and is now Aardvark’s chief executive, said, “Often the most useful answers don’t answer the original question. Example: ‘You don’t want to go to the Caribbean now — it’s the rainy season — you want to go to Hawaii.’ ”

Aardvark has embraced the idea of the social web and crowdsourcing.

At the other end of the web [not that I'm saying the web exists on a plane with two actual 'ends'] RealNetworks delivered a new version of its Real Player software called Real Player SP. Real was once a pioneer in the online world of video and music delivery but as the NYT says – “.. the company has been largely eclipsed by rivals like Microsoft, Apple and YouTube from Google.”

In his NYT article, Brad Stone argues that Real has stuck to some of its technologies for too long. The new software for instance, allows user to move video onto smartphones like the iPhone and the Blackberry line, but with any mobile device able to stream video directly from the web, why would they want to? When it comes to music I’ve argued that mobile ubiquity and access from the cloud means never having to own music again if you choose to. Real is presuming that people want to ‘own’ or store video on their devices – that seems like an unlikely proposition.

In the same article, “Mike McGuire, an analyst at Gartner, … wonders whether Real is actually meeting new consumer needs, particularly since devices like smartphones are increasingly able to directly display Web video. “Sticking to your guns is one thing, but it’s another to say, let’s add features because we can, and because consumers should want this. Do we really know they do? Is anyone really asking for that?” Mr. McGuire said.”

Meanwhile Rob Glazer, Real’s chief says – “the human nervous system is wired to focus on new things,” like Twitter, and to dismiss the profitable stalwarts that have been around the block. With the new version of RealPlayer, he said, “we have made ourselves relevant again, or even more relevant in a new world.”

I hope that Mr. Glazer doesn’t really believe that notion..

Related Posts:

Authenticity and Authority on the Social Web

On Social Media, Blogs And Advertising

Let’s keep this simple – the scenario that is unfolding in the battle between the big three internet companies that matter, Google, Twitter and Facebook, is about access to personal data; what you care to share with Facebook and Twitter is important and Google wants in on it. With Twitter and Facebook it lies in the data surrounding experiential awareness and reputation management; the who, the what, the where. In Google’s case it is, in the words of Fred Vogelstein, about how “for the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google’s algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world.”

Dispassionate atlas versus he says, she says.

That’s not a pithy statement; what you and I say about a brand online is becoming more important than indexing – Vogelstein again – “Internet users behave[d] differently on Facebook than anywhere else online: They use[d] their real names, connect[ed] with their real friends, link[ed] to their real email addresses, and share[d] their real thoughts, tastes, and news. Google, on the other hand, knows [knew] relatively little about most of its users other than their search histories and some browsing activity.” Characters in [ ] my edits.

He goes on – “In [Facebook CEO] Zuckerberg’s vision, users will query this “social graph” to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.” Google can currently search and index your tweets but Facebook is a walled garden and unless Facebook grants access to that data within, then Google is out of luck. The battle for dominance in the “promised land of online brand advertising” has been engaged.

In the past Facebook users have spoken out angrily about any perceived misuse of their personal data and Facebook has always backed down. Last April Google announced the ability to create detailed profiles so that anyone searching for a persons name could find that profile – it remains to be seen if there was a heavy take up of that service offering.

What does this intercine warfare between Facebook and Google mean for you and I? I’d say that now, more than ever, we have to pay attention to our personal brand reputation and brands must monitor all instances of conversations, both positive and negative, online.

Related posts:

John Battelle – Google Vs Facebook? What we Learn from Twitter

SEO and SEM will be Dead As You Know It in 6 Months

Tony “Frosty” Welch – Who Killed Social Media?

Update June 24th 09 – Facebook Messages to Become Public by Default

Admit it, your mom is on Facebook.

Not surprisingly, Nielsen has just released a report claiming that two-thirds of the world’s population visit social networking or blogging sites.

The data was collected from December 2007 to December 2008 and even more rapid growth is expected since time spent on both social networking and blogging sites is increasing at three times the rate of overall internet growth.

In the beginning, social networking was primarily geared towards a younger audience but Facebook has played a prominent role with drawing in a much older audience. People ranging from 35 to 49 years old have given Facebook its biggest growth with 24.1 million new visitors while 50 to 64 year olds now number over 13.6 million. Rejoice, your parents are now probably on Facebook.

Image from Blog of Mr Tweet.

Recently on the blog known as MrTweet a question was posed – “How are you using Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter differently?”

If I had been asked I would have responded as follows: Those three networking platforms can be grouped into a historical context – Facebook past, Linkedin future/present, and Twitter future.

Facebook is the past. I have been a member of Facebook for what seems like an eternity but in fact it has been a little under two years. I have 1,472 “friends” as of writing and it’s fair to say that I only know about 15% of these “friends” very well. As a minor music celebrity I have attracted a lot of musicians, bands and labels. As Director, Insights & Digital Media at Nemo and as someone who speaks regularly at conferences on social media as well as online music issues, I have attracted those cohorts too. Just this past week my sister and brother who still reside in the UK joined Facebook and brought along with them various nephews, nieces, cousins, aunts and uncles. I now have no excuse for not being in touch with my family more regularly – technology shortens the distance between us. On Facebook that is not necessarily a good thing.

The author centre, tagged in a picture from the early 80’s

Facebook is historical white noise to me. I am constantly tagged in pictures and videos and more often than not in an unflattering light. There I am at a wedding in 1987 clearly drunk, and there I am in some unnamed establishment sitting next to some old girlfriend who is probably mortified to see that photo in such a public forum after all these years. [Insert landscape and memory essay here.] I have spent many hours un-tagging myself in photos and videos just to have someone tag them right back after I’ve moved along. One day soon I fully expect to find a video of myself dancing naked on a table at a party. And that’s what is wrong with Facebook for me; the complete lack of control of message, my message.

Facebook really is for college students who want to catalogue images and videos of their crazy drunken selves for all the world to see; images they will live to regret when applying for a job. Closing your account is the only means of control on FB.

For the more mature types on Facebook [apparently there has been a surge of new members in the 40+ demographic] there is the shock of discovering that all those folks in high school or college -the ones that you had left behind and wiped from memory – are now waiting in your email inbox as “friend” requests. There was of course a reason for leaving all that behind. I could go on. Clearly Facebook is best left to the young who actually seem to enjoy being stalked across social networks.

Linkedin is Future/Present. Linkedin I term as future/present because I use it to store current details about my career activities [present]. I have built a decent network of like-minded business people with whom I can share job opportunities and details of event activities and/or my role within Nemo [future client work.] There are useful forums where I can post a topical question and via the crowdsourcing effect of Linkedin I often receive a lot of very intelligent answers [I wouldn't try this on Facebook for e.g.]

Linkedin is a dry world whereas Facebook is a week at the beach in Mexico during Spring Break. Linkedin is quiet time in the study where you get things done. It really is all business.

This brings me to Twitter. Although millions of users are on the Twitter platform its audience is in the low millions compared to FB and LI. Many of my peers who open a Twitter account leave me a message soon after joining that invariably includes the phrase “I don’t get it…” Fair enough, but hey everyone what is it you want to get? If you want to have a tool that is the perfect blend of Facebook [without Spring Break] and Linkedin [without retiring to the study] then Twitter is for you.

Twitter put simply is micro-blogging. Used wisely Twitter gives your followers a real-time window into your social, business and working world down to the minute. Use it unwisely you will find yourself in a lonely corner of Twitter twittering to yourself with a dunces hat on. I put Twitter in the future column even though other social media types put it in the present because I believe that when it is used purposefully it has a transcendental power and therefore we will see it being used much more widely in future.

And by purposefully I mean by intent which then leads to a question – what are your goals when using social media? Remember, we have to put technology to one side, this is not about technology it is about doing something that comes very naturally to all human beings [sociopaths excepted,] – it’s called socializing. Technology has shortened the distance between us but it hasn’t changed why we socialize. It is worth noting that Twitter is arguably more successful than any other social network platform for helping to get offline groups organized around conferences and such – they are known as Tweetups. And for e.g., I know of someone tweeting upon arrival at PDX airport asking for a ride downtown who within minutes was picked up and given a ride from a fellow tweeter – Twitter can be that hyper-local.

On a grander global and political scale, Wikipedia notes: Twitter has been used as a “social justice tool” to connect groups of people in critical situations. On April 10 2008, James Buck, a graduate journalism student at UC Berkeley, and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested in Egypt for photographing an anti-government protest. On his way to the police station Buck used his mobile phone to send the message “Arrested” to his 48 “followers” on Twitter. Those followers contacted UC Berkeley, the US Embassy in Cairo, and a number of press organizations on his behalf. Buck was able to send updates about his condition to his “followers” while being detained. He was released the next day from the Mahalla jail after the college hired a lawyer for him.

Should you be arrested or simply lost just remember Twitter is always at your fingertips – text 40404.

So what’s different about Twitter vs Facebook?

Here’s an answer to that question based on my own use – I see Facebook as a vessel that contains your past – landscape and memory again. FB informs you of your friends’ activities via your email inbox when they change their status. One then links back to FB [unless you happen to always be on your FB account constantly refreshing your browser window,] logs in and reads the status or message. In other words many actions are required to keep in touch with your friends. On the other hand Twitter is a constant feed of information from those that you have chosen to follow. There is an important distinction here – on FB I choose to accept a “friend request” and your request is at the mercy of my keystroke, yes or no? If I key yes then we are “friends” and in my case that decision is made on a whim – I may or may not know you but we’ll see how it goes [sounds like a one night stand in college, right?]

The author tweets

With Twitter “friending” permission is not required – you can follow me if you like, I can follow you if I like. The decision to be or remain followed or un-followed is out of my hands or your hands. The content of our messages or tweets is all that makes us worthy [Think dunce Twittering in the corner..] and Twitter restricts those Tweets to 140 characters. And best of all, if I don’t check in for a day or two I miss the conversation and that’s fine – I am not obliged to be responding to some request ala FB. Nor do I get poked or bitten by a vampire and no one sends me Valentine bear requests. I mean, c’mon!

Twitter profiles are simple too. They consist of 160 character bios and links to the person’s web site. Twitter protocol suggests that having an avatar is more pro than not having one and being anonymous on Twitter creates suspicion.

Twitter has some user practices that are carefully followed unlike other social networking platforms. There is an etiquette in place that may have provided an atmosphere of decorum in what looks at first blush like a frenzied space. Here are some Twitter basics:

If you tweet using a company name, i.e @NemoHQ, don’t tweet only about Nemo – you have an obligation to tweet informative posts that have nothing to do with your company. You should share the sharing. You will gain more respect from your followers that way. Also your tweets will not be considered spam.

To reply to a Tweet that you like just reply to the persons address e.g. @pampelmoose This can keep the conversation moving as other people can look up that users profile to find the thread.

Re-Tweeting – Add the letters RT to the front of the original tweeter’s address and include the original message. For e.g. if it was a message from me that you are RT’ing you would put RT: @pampelmoose Again this keeps a conversation moving. By Re-Tweeting you are getting the conversation in front of your followers and they in turn can RT to their followers creating an exponential audience.

If you want to contact someone directly through Twitter you can Direct Message them as long as they are following you. At Twitter.com you add D in front of the username to message people directly – D @pampelmoose

When someone follows you on Twitter it is good practice to DM them and say thanks for the follow.

It’s ok to ask your followers to spread the word for you by re-tweeting. If they like your tweet content they will, if they don’t they won’t.

By using the # sign you can create search terms that other users can access. For example if I were to write about Nemo I would type #NemoHQ then users can click through to all of the conversations on Twitter that include #NemoHQ You can also monitor what the most popular conversations are by using the Twitter search link.

I recommend reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog as he has great insights into using social network platforms wisely including Twitter.

As this post was inspired by Mr Tweet’s questions we can now come full circle back to his blog and two comments on this subject that he highlighted:

Featured Comment by Heather Rasley

They’re vastly different platforms with vastly different goals. Here’s how I use each:

Facebook: Have been on it since undergrad, and have a large network. It was once more important to me, but now I don’t check in too often and don’t take it seriously.

Sometimes I’ll have wall exchanges with friends, which are almost exclusively based on inside jokes. Status updates are rarely related to anything I’m actually doing. I’ll add someone new when I meet them, if only to feel more “connected.”

Sometimes I’ll send messages to folks I don’t have other contact info for. It’s great for rekindling old/lost connections. I don’t share anything there (or anywhere) that I would be ashamed of.

LinkedIn: Purely professional, and not used often. Very rarely send messages or take part in other social activity, aside from adding new coworkers / associates / friends to my network and replying to any requests sent to me. Any actions I take there are explicitly toward the end of building my professional persona / furthering my career. To me, it feels cold. Interactions there typically aren’t very rich.

Twitter: Used for a blend of personal/social and professional use. I’m highly aware of the public and repostable nature of my tweets.

Content posted varies from where I am at the moment, to work-related links, to tweets about personal projects, to quotes and other links that I personally enjoy. I like it because it’s malleable.

I think people tend to understand that what they’re seeing is a glimpse of me as an entire person. @s and DMs are effective for quick, asynchronous communication between acquaintances.

I’ve met lots of new people in the real world through Twitter (”Oh, you like that, too? Let’s meet.” “Oh, you’re there, too? Let’s meet.”)

Featured Comment By Dean Kakridas

Here is how I currently utlize the ‘Big 3′:

Facebook: ‘rekindling and repurposing the past’.

Primarily used with close friends, family and colleagues I interface or have interfaced with in the physical world.

Twitter: ‘present day by day social stimulus for personal and professional betterment.’

Here, I am actively looking for key inputs to drive my lifestyle design while reciprocating the same with friends and followers.

LinkedIn: ‘all about future interactions with people and parts unknown‘.

This is the shiny and professional looking profile that stays consistent and concrete–hopefully a buoy and beacon for perpetual professional good standing and hope for financial prosperity.

So past, present and future aspects of my life are well served by these three bastions of digital social connectedness.

Although Twitter has been around since March 2006 it has recently erupted in popularity and is covered in the media almost daily. In other words Twitter has become the buzz word du jour and with that comes scorn and derision as well as support. Those that don’t get it dismiss it is a gimmick, and those that do, use it as a very useful business tool.

The social media arena is fast-moving and ever-evolving but the one constant is people. Without people there is no such thing as social media. As the Philippines-based web site Mindanao Examiner points out: …social media today is a pure mess: it has become a collection of countless features, tools, and applications fighting for a piece of the pie. and goes on to say We’re moving away from “users,” “customers,” and “shoppers”: social media is bringing back the human element to all digital interaction. People now deliberately seek meaningful connection, self-expression, and a relevant and receptive community.

That sounds a lot like Twitter to me.

Here’s a few stories I found on Twitter about Twitter in the media on February 21 2009:

Politico – Conversion of a Twitter Skeptic
The Oregonian – Portland Twitter’s the Oscars
Forbes – Travel Portland Creates Nation’s first Twisitor Center
COED Magazine – 406 Bands Who Twitter
Guy Kawasaki – How To Get ReTweeted
San Francisco Examiner – Twitter Helps You Make Friends With Shaq
Idaho Statesman – Visit Idaho Now on Twitter
The Orlando Sentinel – Twitter and NASCAR Go Together Like Kyle Busch and Auto Club Speedway
San Francisco Chronicle – Mayor Gavin Newsom has a Twitter Account

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More essays from Dave Allen – Thoughts On Social Media

No, really? Just a quickie:

You can ‘friend’ Tide on Facebook

As for P.& G, the company permits Facebook to talk about the results of only a single P.& G. promotion, presumably its most successful to date: for Crest Whitestrips. The promotion began in fall 2006, when P.& G. invited Facebook members in 20 college campus networks to become Crest Whitestrips “fans” on the product’s Facebook Page. Facebook said it was a great success, attracting 14,000 fans.

One could argue, however, that with the additional enticements that Crest provided — thousands of free movie screenings, as well as sponsored Def Jam concerts — a brand of hemorrhoid cream could have attracted a similar number of nominal “fans.”

Read the article here, unless you feel it’s ok to ‘friend’ a detergent, or Spraychel..

The Head of Digital at P&G doesn’t think it works either..

Wired Magazine’s Paul Boutin recently penned an article claiming that blogs are so 2004 and therefore, totally irrelevant. His argument hinges on the assumption that cut-rate journalists, underground marketing teams and stale corporate blogs have flooded out the authentic and fresh voices that once ruled the blogosphere. There’s no denying that it takes a huge amount of dedication and time to craft amazing content. But, he argues that your time is better spent networking on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

Boutin notes that a quick scroll through Technorati’s Top 100 finds a list of mostly professional blogs resembling magazines that employ a staff of writers. A single blogger just can’t keep up with these massive sites that sometimes produce dozens of posts in a single day.

The web’s 2008 answer to blogging is supposedly Twitter, the new darling of bloggers everywhere. It operates faster than blogs and can be searched immediately for content (there’s no wait for indexing by Google).

I would argue that while Twitter is a powerful micro-blogging device, it works even better when paired up with a traditional blog. Services like Twitterfeed feed direct links from your new blog posts to legions of Twitter followers every hour and can have a serious impact on traffic. Twitter has a purpose, but a limit of 140 characters per tweet can never replace the content or value of full-length articles.

While Boutin has some fantastic points, I would argue that some bloggers genuinely love what they’re doing and enjoy the sense of community their blogs garner. It’s not all about the fame, getting into the Technorati Top 100 list, or even earning a healthy living from ad dollars. If you’re truly passionate about blogging, you’ll stick it out through the rough patches, inconsistent traffic and hecklers. Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, while great for sharing content and networking, just can’t fully replicate the blogging experience.

Pic: Adweek

Over at Adweek, Brian Morrissey makes a very strong argument that Facebook advertiser applications are finding very few takers. His overview entitled Apps: The Newest Brand Graveyard, lists four brands with Facebook Apps that are struggling to find users – Fed Ex [1,500 users,] Ford [106 users,] Nike [3,400 users,] and Microsoft [8,500 users.]

For anyone who believes that marketing through social media will work for the brand and/or provide a revenue stream for Facebook this article is worth reading. Here’s an extract -

‘Brands, in general, have found Facebook unforgiving terrain for marketing. It’s well known, for instance, that banner ads perform poorly on the site. (A recent IDC report called advertising on social networks “stillborn.”) But the Facebook Platform, launched 18 months ago — which lets developers create social applications for users — was thought to offer the perfect opportunity to move beyond banners to provide “branded utility.” So far, however, Facebook apps from brands like Coca-Cola, Champion, Ford and Microsoft are as popular as desolate Second Life islands.’

Just last month I posted how P&G’s Head of Digital, Ted McConnell isn’t a believer.

Finally, an advertiser being honest about social media advertising. Ted McConnell general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co spoke recently at a forum on Digital Media where he came across as rather negative about social network platforms and advertising. He singled out the Facebook platform, saying “I really don’t want to buy any more banner ads on Facebook.”

Other key phrases of his that stand out –
Social networks may never find the ad dollars they’re hunting for because they don’t really have a right to them.
What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?
I don’t think everything every consumer says to someone else and writes down is somehow monetizable by the media industry.
Fragmentation thwarts artificial scarcity.
Performance-based advertising will gain share over CPM

Ted McConnell. [Pic Ad Age]

McConnell’s premise is that social network platforms won’t be able to collect ad dollars because they don’t really have a right to them, which I believe is entirely accurate. And his negativity about the platforms appears to hinge on the wrong-headed idea or a misunderstanding of the meaning of the term “social media” – he asked – “Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

McConnell’s ideas strike a chord with me as I have found myself on the contrarian side of the social media argument recently. I have argued on panels and in essays that technology did not transform the way we socialize –

When we wrongly consider technology as a ‘new’ medium that simply and efficiently transformed culture, business and society, we forget our own human ancestry. We leave out Nature. In our hearts we want to belong, to share; we fear dying alone and as we age we become thanatophobic – we fear dying. Individuality is an illusion. [By that I don't mean an individual's style, taste, fashion etc, things that set us apart aesthetically from others, I mean we are forever bound to being social animals.] Read the rest of these thoughts here.

We need to rethink the term “Social Media.”

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch posted an interesting and in-depth article last Friday about the state of Facebook’s finances. Facebook currently has 160 million unique visitors a month and as one of those visitors I have often contemplated just how long Facebook can hang in there if the ad model doesn’t pan out. Presumably, 99.9999% of Facebook’s visitors don’t even think about it nor do they care as long as they can have a Vampire bite their friends.

The article is titled ‘Facebook May Be Growing Too Fast. And Hitting The Capital Markets Again.’ It seems that Facebook’s success could be its downfall.

Before we get to Arrington’s numbers here’s a question – If Facebook’s growth and future potential growth is mainly abroad, with the USA shrinking fast to only 20% of the total global user base, what happens to the idea of Social Media and advertising here in the USA? It seems like a Catch-22 situation for Facebook – its revenues are dependent on advertising income but its advertisers will be faced with pitching their products to either a shrinking USA market or to a larger global user base. Geo-targeting might help as long as there is a heavy use of localization in foreign markets. It doesn’t sound promising given how Facebook users are not especially fond of those push ads on their profiles anyway.

And let’s not forget how MTV Europe stumbled at first as it entered the TV/Cable markets in Europe. One language does not fit all they found really quickly – regional accents and dialects were all important and soon there were many versions of MTV Europe in different countries. Meanwhile Facebook members have jumped in to the fray with their own user-created translated versions of the site.

And companies are still playing with fire by jumping into social networks with their brands. Oliver Marks at ZDNet reports on how Virgin Atlantic Airlines had to fire 13 flight attendants who used the Virgin Atlantic Facebook group to malign their customers in unsavory terms. As Marks points out – “Virgin Atlantic (one of my favorite airlines) seem to have fallen into the classic trap of forgetting that FaceBook is a public forum – looking at their online presence there I see a cocktail of different marketing communication focuses, some slightly irritating, and not much in the way of building a relationship with me.”

Here’s some excerpts from Arrington’s article –

Facebook Is Growing, But So Are Costs
There’s no doubt that Facebook is growing at a breathtaking pace. A year ago, according to Comscore, they had just 74 million unique monthly visitors and 35 billion page views. Today those numbers have grown by 118% and 74%, respectively, to 161 million unique visitors and 61 billion page views per month.

It costs a couple of hundred million dollars a year just to keep the lights on at Facebook. But the real problem is keeping up with growth, particularly storage needs. Add another $100 million or more per year for capital expenditures, and you’ve got a company that’s doing exactly the opposite of printing money.

So How ‘Bout Those Revenues?

eMarketer estimates $265 million in revenue for Facebook in 2008. That’s great, right? Well, not really. The company is still losing money – lots of it – at current revenues. And it’s not clear that revenue will grow as robustly as costs.

As we wrote last summer, most of these international users can’t be monetized today. And to make things worse, bandwidth costs in those countries is generally much higher than the U.S. So the users cost more, and they don’t bring in any revenue.

That international growth might be ok if U.S. growth remained strong. But the U.S. market just seems to be tapped at this point, and gaining market share from MySpace is a battle. As we wrote in August, at current growth rates it will take Facebook 18 years to overtake MySpace in the U.S.

[Update 11/11/08]

“I haven’t heard of anyone purchasing something off an ad on Facebook,” says Angie Tulgetske, vice president of RE/MAX Preferred Choice Properties, which resells timeshares and spends thousands of dollars a month on search ads but avoids social-networking sites. “I wouldn’t think any of my marketing dollars would be spent advantageously there.” From Facebook Tries To Woo Marketers

It seems that the powers that be at Facebook and their archenemies over at the record labels need to hurry up and reach agreement on what is Fair Use when it comes to posting videos online. I received yet another lovely notice from Facebook today about “possible infringement” not “actual” but “possible.” Read on -

Notification of Alleged Copyright Infringement
We have removed your video entitled “Cut Copy, party at Dave’s, Nemo puts up the posters” uploaded at 2:23pm April 29th, 2008. We did this because we learned that your video might include copyrighted material owned by a third party, such as a video clip or background audio. If you are the copyright owner, or have permission from the rights holder to upload and distribute this material on Facebook, you may file a counter notice of alleged infringement by following the link below.

The Facebook Team
copyright@facebook.com

So lets refer to the video from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that spells out our rights under the DMCA rules.

Here’s the story behind the video that was taken down. The Australian band, Cut Copy, and their manager Neil are friends of mine. I invited the band to dinner at my house in Portland prior to their show in town. We had a good time, we shot video, I edited it and posted it. Seemed harmless enough but clearly not. I have filed a counter claim with Facebook so we’ll see how that goes. And someone should let Universal Music know that I fed Cut Copy dinner that night too….I’ll send Universal a bill… Watch another video from the same night here.

Related Post: How YouTube Could Make Some Money with Viacom

This is serious news when it comes to business networking and social media, I see a serious win-win here for both parties. There has been some debate recently about Facebook and how seriously it can be taken when it comes to businesses using the Facebook network to extend their social media ambitions as well as advertise across it. I would argue that the LinkedIn/NYT partnership steps up the ante for both Facebook and MySpace; the NYT, one of the world’s great media institutions that has seriously embraced the internet to further its business, may be on a path to shaking off its “Grey Lady” image and LinkedIn, which, although having only 25 million registered users making it small by social network standards, is by far the doyen of social sites for serious business users. We’ll see how this one unfolds.

Kudos, once again to Marshall Kirkpatrick for breaking the story.

The view from the cabin

It’s been a while since I’ve been completely cut off from all means of electronic communication. Two and half hours from Portland and you hit the western edge of Central Oregon, the mobile phone drops off the grid, the AT&T wireless card hunts aimlessly for a signal – nothing but digital silence.

Five adults, two teenagers and two younger ones walked and biked the river trails and cooked, conversed and read books and magazines. We socialized. My iPod wired to an old boombox and my Canon G9 were the only reminders of my digital life.

The Metolius River

I read an article in Newsweek about Facebook being responsible for the drop off in college reunions [an aside: being English I never quite grasped the concept of reconnecting every 10 years with ex-college mates, I must admit.] The premise, as recounted by one youthful member of the digerati, is that Facebook now fulfills this need; everything one needs to know about your former college friends is laid out for all to see online. I’d argue that this is not true. The premise requires that everyone’s Facebook profile be a true and honest reflection of their true “selves.” Unfortunately that defies reason; people’s Facebook personas are not true reflections of their “selves,” in fact they are another “self” altogether. Photos are cropped and edited to provide satisfaction to the poster not the viewer, and details of marriages, relationships and whether the person has children or not are often left vague.

There’s a reason for this. Originally Facebook was a solution for college kids to remain firmly in touch, but as that audience has broadened far and wide demographically, it has become a safe haven for people to explore their “second lives.” The only way to discover if your ex-sweetheart, dorm mate or college team buddy has actually remained a perfect, toned 150 lbs of lean muscle with no obvious receding hairline is to go to that 10 year college reunion. This is also why marketers will have a hard time reaching social network users.

Social Media is no longer viewed as just a hobby or a passing fad. According to Adweek, a handful of advertising and PR agencies are seeing the potential of web-based client promotion and have recently launched Social Media divisions in addition to their more traditional offerings.

As more advertising dollars continue to make their way to the internet, Brain Sells notes that “more than just ad dollars following a trend or digital hype, the growth is being driven due to real changes in behavior: (the) rising number of people online, the introduction of cheap laptops and the growing popularity of TV shows on the Internet.”

Furthermore, ChasNote shows us the migration of U.S. ad dollars in which the amount of money spent online in 2007 swelled to $21 billion, an increase of almost 26% from the previous year:

The social media teams at various agencies are becoming savvy enough to realize that buying up ad space on large networking sites like Myspace and Facebook is not necessarily the answer. Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company states that “the jury’s still out on MySpace’s ability to monetize” and “we don’t have much conviction in the long-term ability to grow this business based on what we’ve seen lately.”

Instead, the future is pointing towards more focused ad campaigns targeted at niche blogs that have highly faithful followings. As Dave Allen, Director of Insights & Digital Media at Nemo Design says, “Companies should be advertising directly to those niche groups and networks that include people who would like to hear from their brand. (On other social media sites) the brands need to wait until they are invited in. A mass, scatter-shot approach to the large social networks will only fail.”

The bottom line: there is no quick way to propel a company to the top through social networking; it takes time and the earning of users’ trust. The competition is constantly growing and social media users are becoming increasingly savvy. Patrick Garrett, Outrider’s U.S. managing director is right when he proclaims that “social media is a long-term investment.”

A shadowy social network group.

Facebook is getting an assist from Visa Inc.’s marketing machine in its struggle to lure more advertisers. To date, Facebook has not had as much success as was expected in garnering revenues from advertising. The plan with Visa appears to be aimed at small businesses who are using Facebook to look for new customers.

Michael Liedtke reports:
Visa’s service is designed to provide small-business owners with tools and tips on attracting new customers, trimming costs and other ways to make more money. Businesses that belong to the Visa network on Facebook also will be able to communicate with each other to share ideas or even negotiate deals. Internet search leader Google Inc. is providing some of the features on Visa’s business network, including maps, calendars, word processing and a new template for creating expense sheets and business cards. And The Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur magazine will contribute articles addressing questions posed by businesses that belong to Visa’s Facebook network.

Facebook’s struggle to produce revenue from its site sounds similar to the problems that MySpace has been having. Facebook has 80 million users who play games, share photos, rate music and track their friends’ activities – the idea that they can be bothered to click through on an advertisement that is not relevant to them, and one that just randomly appears on their home page or profile, is a marketing stretch.

As Michael Liedtke writes:
…while the array of applications have helped make Facebook even more popular, few programs are producing revenue for the site, and Facebook still hasn’t proven that its social playground is an effective advertising forum. Finding the right advertising approach also has been a challenge for other social hangouts like News Corp.’s MySpace. Even Google, which runs the Internet’s most lucrative ad system, has had trouble marketing on social networks.

Advertisers and marketers are labouring under the assumption that the information that Facebook has gathered about its users makes it easy to target different groups of them. This is a dubious notion at best. They are a moving target.

As Liedtke points out: …..some advertisers fret that Facebook’s audience will resent commercials amid all the site’s frivolity. Others are leery about their brands showing up on Web pages featuring racy or unsavory content.

Stay tuned.

I use my Facebook page to stay in touch with hundreds of people every day and during the course of those days I post a lot of interesting content that is not available for search by all the usual suspects – Yahoo! Google etc. Not to mention that our Nemo Design Facebook Group can’t be searched either. All because Facebook is a hold out in endorsing the OpenSocial initiative.
Google, Yahoo, and News Corp.’s MySpace.com announced in March that they have formed the OpenSocial Foundation, a nonprofit group to support the OpenSocial initiative that Google kick-started last year to promote a universal standard for developer applications on social-networking sites. Google has focused efforts on creating code, such as the open source OpenSocial APIs and the Social Graph API, to make social data more portable and accessible to applications. Just in case you were worried that all those heavy hitters might have too much control OpenSocial is now managed by an independent organization.
OpenSocial is basically a set of common APIs that application developers can use to create applications that work on any social networks (called “hosts”) that choose to participate.

“As the largest contributor to the memecached system, Facebook has long been a leader and supporter of open source initiatives but will not join the foundation,” a statement from the company read. “The company will continue to evaluate partnership opportunities that will benefit the 300,000 Facebook Platform developers while improving the Facebook user experience.”

So Yahoo! and Google’s search engines are shut out which is a drag.

As Facebook continues to become more and more ubiquitous as the social networking tool of the chattering classes it has become obvious to heavy users of FB [me included] that the site needs to give us all not some of the tools to make the experience a one-stop-shop for communicating with both friends, co-workers and business clients. Today Six Apart launched a Facebook application that brings us one step closer to that goal.

Blog It by Typepad for Facebook – Blog It is a free Facebook application which focuses on making it easier for you to create content no matter the blogging platform you use. Blog It brings some of the best social aspects of Facebook to blogging, making it easy for you to let your friends and colleagues around the web know what you’re up to and what you’re writing.

Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web for the news.