25 things to hate about FaceBook

Groundswell

There have been a few books written about "social computing", but few that go much further than simply providing observations or commentary. This book is different. If you are trying to make some sense of what you see happening on blogs and social networking sites and are trying to work out what you and your company should do, then this book is for you.

It is written by a couple authors from Forrester, so it will be little surprise that it is really strong on the strategy front. It successfully manages to link what we are seeing happening today on the Internet to strategies for succeeding in this space. The first part of the book provides us with an understanding of how to match solutions to an organisation's specific customer base. Users are categorised according to whether they are: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, or inactives. This categorisation comes from Forrester's Social Technographics tool and you can find more information on the book's website (http://www.forrester.com/groundswell) and even generate your own profile. The blog on the website is very good, by the way.

The authors then match technical solutions to an organisation's objectives: namely, listening, talking energizing, supporting and embracing their customers. Part 2 of the book is dedicated to stepping through each of these objectives providing worked through examples of how organisations have succeeded in each of these domains. As you might imagine, adopting the appropriate technique for your particular audience is absolutely key.

If you are interested in Innovation, chapters 8 and 9 have some useful insights on the role customers can play in the innovation process.

In a area that is frequently over-hyped, this book provides significant insight and examples that reinforce what following a successful strategy can do for you and your company. If you are about to embark on your first venture into this space, I would strongly suggest that you read this book first. Highly recommended.

Monetizing Social Networking

Monetizing social networking sites is still proving problematic. This article in The New York Times summarises some of the issues that Procter & Gamble have been encountering using Facebook.

It is interesting that just 3 percent of Internet users in the United States would willingly let publishers use their friends for advertising. Yet there is research that users are KEEN to publicise their views and experiences with products. According to research from DEI Worldwide 63 percent of consumers would like to share their opinions about a brand or product with a representative, and 67 percent are likely to pass along information from a brand representative to other people. Bit of a difference between 3% and 63%!

Personally, I suspect the major problem for advertisers is that social networking sites are about social interaction and not product placement - when conversing with friends and family, banner ads just seem a little inappropriate. If we aren't careful, banner ads are just going to make users feel like shills.

Interestingly, many organisations seem committed to monetizing social networking sites (asides from the social networking sites themselves that is), but only time will tell if this will work. Either way, I suspect that it is going to take longer that anyone thinks. In the meantime, users will continue to wield new found consumer powers.

Social networking and advertising (again)

I have commented before that advertising revenues on social networking sites seems to be challenging. I came across a couple of new articles that reinforce the same message. This is starting to sound like old news!

Here's an article covering some research from ExactTarget and Ball State University's Center for Media Design. If you follow the links at the bottom of the article, you can download the complete research report. The bottom line is that email marketing seems to be more effective than placing advertisements on social networking sites.

While there has been a rise in the number of people using review websites before major purchases, the value in these reviews is that they are independent - most of the time, from complete strangers. This doesn't seem to be the place for advertisements - it is more about personal communication. If this carries on, it is going to be difficult to provide ROI for Social Networking sites. In the current trading conditions, this could cause some difficulty for site owners, advertisers and their investors.

The second article provides some interesting insights into the usage of Internet TV sites, particularly by men. I love statistics and this article provides some interesting insights.

And while we are on the subject of interesting articles, this article provides some thought provoking material on where folks have gone "slightly less than optimally" with social networking deployments.

YouTube and Credit Crunch Songs

It is interesting fact of life these days that YouTube videos can be used as a social indicator. By providing everyone with a platform to broadcast their views on recent events, it unleashes a new set of views (not to mention talent) on every day life.

Have a look at these videos posted on YouTube recently as a response to the Credit Crunch:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=s_iMS31mqmU
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2JwdIWjVHaU
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HAaxeqikUlE
Or search for your own using "Credit crunch song". It makes you wonder whatever happened to such material before YouTube!

While amusing, they also provide a social commentary that just hasn't been available previously. And certainly, not within the timeframes we are seeing here. While the message has been dressed up, delivering it as piece of entertainment is no less powerful.

British Airway's Metro Twin

Well, it looks like social networking could be coming of age in the commercial space. British Airways announced this site last week to connect Londoners and New Yorkers together. The aim being to produce a community that discusses and reviews restaurants, bars, shops and places to stay.

See this commentary on Brand Republic: http://www.brandrepublic.com/BrandRepublicNews/News/848300/British-Airways-launches-social-media-network/?DCMP=EMC-DailyNewsBulletin

It is a pretty cool idea. Only time will tell if this will draw the crowds.

When did we start trusting strangers?

Came across this research report recently from Universal McCann, a communications agency. It provides some interesting data on something that I have seen repeatedly over the last 12-18 months. It is great to see this being reflected in empirical research.

School of Everything

This week saw the launch of "The School of Everything" - a sort of ebay for knowledge. If you have something to teach, you can post up the details and find yourself some students. What a great idea! Why didn't I think of that!

Well, the School of Everything seems like an interesting approach to selling consultancy services. Mind you, we would all need to ensure that we have a skill to sell. What would your entry on The School of Everything be?

You will find more information on the background to The School of Everything here on BoingBoing.

Scrabulous on FaceBook

Well, I have been reading about this in the press (I was never a user) and recently came across this well balanced and sensible article from Rory Cellan-Jones on the BBC website. You will find his (amusing and well written) item here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/08/scrabulous_users_stunned_bemus.html

Make your own adverts! The Chevy way!

Recently came across this which, although now rather dated, still made me smile. http://digital-lifestyles.info/2006/04/07/when-corporate-mashups-go-wrong-chevy-tahoe/

It just goes to show what happens when the admen put the general public in charge of producing their own adverts. In short, it wasn't quite what they intended and although the pages have been removed from the Chevy site, there are many examples to be found on YouTube. You will find an example here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SiE4FXO8nDs, but a quick search on YouTube will reveal many more.

For me, this links to a previous post on the perils of advertising on Social Networking sites. You will find the post here.

Social Computing in top 500 US companies

OK, so this is a US based study, but interesting nonetheless. It shows that of the top 500 companies (as listed by the US magazine "500 Inc"), 39% of them are using Social Computing today compared to 19% a year earlier. You can find more information here: http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/blogstudy5.cfm

I guess the thing that I find intriguing is what these companies are using Social Computing for! The term covers such a wide range of topics, it is difficult to imagine that they are all doing the same thing. In my experience, many of these companies know they should be doing something - they just don't know exactly what!

What is really needed here is a framework that allows us to position all the different offerings in the marketplace and then enables us to make some intelligent decisions about our choices. I haven't seen one yet.

Social networking and innovation

Came across this article today which covers the use of social networking in enterprises. This (together with "How do you successfully advertise on social networking sites?") seems to be a common thread amongst much of the social networking research.

Interestingly, one of the benefits that organisations seem to be getting out of social networking tools relates to innovation (see the references to Starbuck's "My Starbuck's Idea" and Dell's IdeaStorm. Since innovation is largely a social activity I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it is interesting to see these two threads being linked together.

Advertising on Social Networking Sites

I blogged on this previously. Purely because I was intrigued.

Today, I came across this quote from Martin Sorrell that goes part way to explaining what is going on here:

“Social networking is really recommendation between people about the things that they are interested in and they like… this has stimulated people’s attention in terms of the importance of PR. The people who are going on these sites didn’t want to be monetised, they didn’t want to be advertised to, so again editorial communication is so powerful, they would rather be communities that can exchange views that are untarnished.”

So what is being said here is that Social Networking sites are a mechanism for end users to provide each other with recommendations. We shouldn't underestimate this. There was a presentation at NRF (National Retail Federation) that reinforced this point. According to WSL Strategic Research, 74% of shoppers trusted the recommendations of friends or relatives. Furthermore, 40% of shoppers trusted reviews written by people who had used the product. This compares to 22% of shoppers who trusted the sales person in the store. But thank your lucky stars you are not a celebrity, only 10% of shoppers trusted their recommendations!

In similar research, Immediate Future found that 62% of shoppers trusted and used online reviews from fellow shoppers.

So, why does all this matter? Well, as social networking sites are increasing dramatically, it would appear that traditional online advertising does NOT work. If you don't believe me, take a look at these estimates from Technology Review.

Yet, ironically, 34% of bloggers admit to writing about products and brands in their blogs (according to the same report). And we know that shoppers behaviour is influenced by these views. Interesting.

The Immediate Future report on top brands in social media makes interesting reading.

Retail innovation

Here’s a business that it is intriguing. It sells T-shirts. Ok, so what’s so new about that I hear you ask! What makes it unique is that the T-shirts are designed by customers. The T-shirt designs are then voted on by customers and the winning designs are printed up. Customers then buy the T-shirts. They can even photograph themselves wearing the T-shirt and send it into the website for inclusion on their pages.

If you are really interested, you can even browse the designs by designer. The designer page contains a profile of the designer as well as links to his other designs. Thus, promoting browsing across the site and building an added dimension to the interaction. I think this appeals to the “story” aspect of the product.

And when you get your T-shirt, the label is printed onto the shirt itself with it’s title and the name of the designer. Again, promoting a depth to the product that would otherwise be missing. Does this count as user generated content? MMmmm

Here’s another cool idea that I liked. Little Miss Matched sells 3 single mismatched socks in a box. Yep, that’s right, 3 socks in a box. In fact, they have branched out and sell all sorts of mismatched stuff. Nothing for blokes though. They have franchises in the UK and have just won a big deal with Macy’s in the US as well as raising $17M in funding. I thought the mismatched tights were funny – although you could make up your own mismatched socks (just take one from two separate pairs), this was going to be hard to do with tights (unless they were made that way!).

And here’s another example... Nike has launched a service to enable consumers to design their own trainers based on pictures taken using a camera phone. The PhotoiD service encourages consumers to take a picture of any subject using their camera phone, which is then sent via MMS to a short code. A personalised picture of a trainer is sent back which features the predominant colours of the photo. The message comes with a unique code which can be entered into the Nike website to buy a...you guessed it – a pair of trainers.