Social Cache.
A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

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.
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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.

Here at Nemo, we were lucky to be graced by the VP of Business Development at Ning, Rachel Masters on Friday (read Dave Allen’s account here). What’s notable about Ning’s web-based platform is that it that allows you to create your own social network for anything and is fully customizable in almost every way imaginable.

One of the most beneficial elements of Ning I discovered is the option to use your own domain name. In essence, Ning can be built to function as your main website and many corporations and bands have leveraged this option with fantastic results. The band Good Charlotte uses Ning as their main site while Saturn has created an official gathering place for fans and employees of their line of cars.

Speaking of Saturn, they are a sponsor of the Bravo hit show, Project Runway. Now on its fifth cycle, this season features Portland alum Leanne Marshall of the chic Leanimal label. Though she first auditioned for the show in 2007, waiting out a year turned out to be to her advantage. She took the downtime to further develop her point of view and refine her designs and it shows in the crisp yet voluminous designs.

It’s true that Portland is a hotbed of creative talent. And, as the success of Ning and other social networking platforms have shown, connecting with like minded individuals needn’t be a chance encounter any longer. Whether you’re a fan of Saturn cars, Project Runway (or anything else for that matter), the odds are that a social network is only a click away.

At Nemo we have recently been spending much of our time in “thought leader” mode, to coin a phrase. Like any modern integrated marketing and branding company we are charged with advising our clients on how to approach the convoluted and ever-shifting world of social networks and social media advertising.

On this blog I have outlined many thoughts about why companies shouldn’t necessarily dive headfirst into the world of blogs and social media – here’s a post that includes a useful ‘how-to top ten’ list.’ It’s entitled “Why Does Corporate Social Networking Fail? It’s not cynical, and hopefully it’s useful to anyone pondering the issues of how their company should be represented online.

If we look at social networking before the advent of the internet, pre-Facebook etc, it literally meant that we gathered in tribes; ‘birds of a feather flock together’ goes the old saying. It’s as true today as the day the phrase was coined. Many people who have like-minded pursuits happily gather socially at predetermined venues or destinations to share their love of something. During my different life-stages in England growing up, that meant for me – soccer, pubs, punk rock.

Today we see the ability to share common interests multiplied as never before and of course I do mean “see” it; it’s called the Web and it lives up to its name.

At Nemo we don’t pretend to have the answers. We are still asking the questions. So I decided that it might be a good idea to invite Rachel Masters, Ning Inc’s VP of Strategic Development, to talk to us about the Ning social networking platform and the tools they are providing for anyone to build a social network.

Rachel walked our audience through a few examples of companies using the Ning platform to connect with their core consumers, but none was as compelling as the Saturn Cars site. It’s a great example of a company understanding and embracing America’s love affair with the automobile. If you love your Saturn this is the go-to site. If you are a marketing executive at a company that is thinking of embracing social media then have your team take a look at Saturn’s Ning network. It might just make you look like you understand social media….

Here’s a transcript of the talk on OakHazelnut from @caseorganic who was in the audience. And here’s a video of part of Rachel’s presentation.