Is Facebook a Pot Calling the Kettle Black?

The largest social networking site, Facebook, maybe facing a lawsuit from another social network called Multiply. Multiply has accused Facebook of copying some of the design elements as well as features. Representatives from Multiply sent an e-mail to ReadWriteWeb, that was posted in this article, offering up their reasons for the accusations

"Multiply launched its proprietary newsfeed in August of 2004, when the site launched. Two years later, Facebook introduced a similar, yet more basic, news feed for its users. Blogging, one of Multiply's core features since launch, was introduced to Facebook more than 20 months later, and video sharing, a Multiply feature since June 2005, was introduced on Facebook nearly 16 months later. In September 2004, Multiply introduced photo printing services for its users, something that Facebook implemented two years later. In its most recent enhancement, "New Facebook" features several changes - both aesthetically and functionally - that make Facebook look and feel even more like Multiply."

Another interesting point is that currently Facebook is involved in a law suit against a German social networking site called StudiVZ over the same issues that Multiply has mentioned.

ReadWriteWeb has questioned whether or not Multiply is just using this as a publicity stunt to gain more users, or is just simply upset that they don’t have as many users and feel that they have a better site. What is your opinion, and do you think that Multiply has a valid argument?

Privacy Still Remains an Issue in Online Ad Targeting

Businesses are continuously facing the problem that comes along with online ad targeting and privacy. This article on eMarketer discusses how a recent Harris Poll indicates that 55% of 2,513 respondents are comfortable with websites that have privacy policies which allows targeted advertising content. Respondents aged 18-31 were more comfortable than others, 62% approved of such privacy policies.

Marketers still can not ignore the fact that more than 45% of respondents are not comfortable with policies that allow ad targeting. In the future, marketers looking to advertise in communities and networks will have to address privacy concerns, as it will not be going away anytime soon.

What’s the difference between social media and a community?

At The Social Organization, Rachel Happe takes a look at the difference between building a social media site and a social media community. Social media, such as allowing comments to limited conversation around the content, creates communication, but rarely leads to a community of people with the same interests.

Happe cites these as the characteristics for social community: they’re continuous, members gather around a common goal, communities take on various conversations lead by different leaders, and different leaders emerge over time.

Would you add any characteristics to this list?

Predictions for Social Media

I was combing through the Internet in search of future trends for online communities when I came across this article. According to the author, Jim Tobin, social media is still in the early stages of development. While some may disagree with him, here are his views on where the evolution of social media could lead.

1. Ratings will become an expectation
2. Content aggregation will boom
3. New tools will replace some of the first movers
4. Social Networks become portable
5. Virtual worlds gain traction

What are your opinions on which growth stage social media is in? Do you still believe that it is in its fledgling stage? Also what do you think are trends that will catch on for the future of this industry?

Using Online Tools to Communicate With Customers

The age of bloggers venting online and getting nothing in return has ended. I came across this article in the NY Times in which blogger Brandon Dilbeck received an email message in response to a blog post he wrote complaining about ads Comcast posted on its programming guide. What’s interesting here is that Comcast has switched its focus from being reactive and are now proactively attempting to communicate with consumers through social media.

In an attempt to revamp its online outreach, Comcast has even created a new position, Digital Care Manager, headed by Frank Eliason alongside a team of 10 other staff members who regularly monitors public comments on blogs, message boards and social networks for any mention of Comcast. Comcast though, is not the only company who has begun to utilize social communities to reach out to its customers. Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods Markets, Zappos, and Chipotle are among some of the businesses who have started to reinvent traditional online community communication.

Even though having someone always “watching” is considered creepy by some, the benefits seem to make up for it. Frank Eliason mentions how he can only remember seven instances in which a customer had called him creepy.

What’s your company doing in terms of searching through blogs, forums, discussion groups, social networks, and twitter for customer conversations regarding your business? It’s important that organizations begin to look at social media as a means of communication to consumers since the trend is moving away from call centers and becoming more online social media centric.

Deloitte takes a look at mistakes when companies build communities

WSJ Business Technology recently took a look at Deloitte’s recent study published on why online communities fail. According to the Deloitte study, many businesses are focusing on what online communities can do for them and the technology to support it, not the members the online space is built for. Of the communities studied, 35% have less than 100 members. Less than 25% of the communities studied have 1,000 members. An astounding 6% of the companies studied spent over $1 million on their projects.

So why is it that so many of the online communities are failing?

1) Many of the companies are getting to involved on the technological perks spending their budget there instead of reaching out to potential community members and finding out what they want from a community2

2) Lack of experience with online communities’ leads to misguided decisions. Of the companies studied, 30% had one person who was working part time with the communities.

3) It’s very hard to measure the success of an online community. The primarily objectives of the business with communities was to create word of mouth and establish loyalty from their customers. This is very hard to judge when normal online measurements are judged by the click-tos.

Have you fallen into one of the pitfalls listed above? How would you work with your online community to resolve the issue?

LinkedIn and NY Times Become Partners

In what could be a move copied by other social networking sites, LinkedIn and NY Times have become partners in order to provide users with constantly updated news for their respective industries. It is not yet clear whether or not any money has exchanged hands. This review from ReadWriteWeb is supportive of the new team. As summarized by the article:

We're big on LinkedIn here at RWW and though a wide open developers platform has yet to emerge, moves like this are inspiring. The deal is an important step beyond the previous integration of sharing hooks on NYTimes.com from other services.

LinkedIn has over 25 million registered users, while NY Times has over 17 million unique visitors a month, making this partnership seem very promising. What are your thoughts on this new alliance? Do you think other sites such as Facebook will start to pursue similar avenues? Click on this page to update your LinkedIn profile to include the NY Times.

Blog Advertising: Is it Really Worth It?

Many companies choose to advertise on their blogs once the community reaches a considerable size, and when it has a decent amount of pageviews a month. I came across this post from the Inquisitr which highlights how most ads are paying less than the benchmark $1 CPM, let alone the spammy ads which deliver 20-30c CPM.

There is a lot to choose from when searching for an online advertising broker, but not a lot pay well. Searching through comments and recommendations from peers, we’ve come across at least one company which seems to be a winner, Project Wonderful. Project Wonderful uses an auction system to figure out what ads go up on your page, and of course, ultimately the user has final word on what goes up. What are some other examples of ad companies that you have used in the past? What’s your take on advertising on blogs?

Getting through with social media

Social media is still a relatively new concept, and most people have no idea what it actually does and what the benefits can be when using these tools for your business. Beth Dunn at Small Dots wrote recently about adopting social media for a non-profit business. Read the article here. She brought up four very important points about jumping into social media.

-Tackle something with social media that old methods can’t seem to touch
Ask yourself who you want to come to your page, and then find out what they’re already doing on the web.

-Put your policies on paper first
Things change on the web, so be prepared. A company should plan out your procedures before you jump head first into social media.

-Remember you’re on the same team
Many people working in companies don’t understand the concepts of social media. Work with them and don’t be discouraged when they aren’t jumping for social media ideas.

Sears reaches youth market with social media

In a recent post at Social Media Today, Jennifer A. Jones discusses Sears’ new social media campaign to appeal to the youth market. They introduce their brand to the teens in quite a few ways, making a great marketing campaign that focuses on the youth from several angles.

In an effort to reach 8 to 14 year olds, Sears is spreading their name throughout the Internet on sites that teens use. They’ve gotten sponsorships with Facebook, MySpace, Seventeen, CosmoGirl, Nickelodeon and Disney. Sears has also posted games on different sites including Addicting Games, Fun Brain, and NeoPets. They’ve also introduced virtual Sears’ boutiques, fashion shows and other games at places like Zwinky, Meez, The N. In total, Sears has partnered with thirteen websites according to DMNews.

In further efforts, they’ve connected with High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens with their digital campaign. At the Arrive Lounge, teens are encouraged by the star to go back to school in style wearing Sears’ clothing. There, they can also find behind the scenes video with Hudgens, sweepstakes to enter and a variety of things to download. Sears also sets the stage in MTV’s new movie The American Mall, as the movie was filmed in a Sears location and the actors wore Sears brand clothing.

Too Many Facebook Apps

There was a huge buzz around the Facebook platform when it was initially launched last year. Companies were now able to integrate their own personal applications on the Facebook platform. It has been over a year since it’s initial launch, and since then several fundamental issues have come up. This post on ReadWriteWeb lists the following:

1. Technical: Should the app be just a teaser that leads users to their site or should it be a duplicate and have full functionality?
2. Business: If e.g. New York Times builds a Facebook app, will it be economic for them (since there's little revenue in Facebook)?
3. Provider costs: Does it pay for Facebook to maintain the platform? As a business with a huge valuation, Facebook needs to maximise profit.

On the Technical End, creating Teaser apps confuses the general public. It also creates a bad experience for them since they are jumping between Facebook and different sites. On the other hand, native apps are a marketing and engineering nightmare since maintaining these duplicate base codes are very costly.

On the Business End, Facebook does not have an infrastructure for paid applications. So, if companies want to include ads on their apps, readers will be seeing two types of ads on their page, and that might prove to be unbearable.

With the abundance of applications made available on Facebook, Provider Costs have risen to new heights. Facebook must change the user experience by minimizing the amount of applications allowed within their interface.

The future of the Facebook platform is still a mystery. Mark Zuckerberg has a lot of work ahead of him if he wants the platform to advance.

What is social media?

The (e)Grommet blog pointed me in the direction of this slide show. It does a great job of what social media is today, who is/will be using social media, and why companies should care about how they invest in social media.

| View | Upload your own

Allvoices: Collaborative News Reporting

Say goodbye to traditional journalism and news reporting. This post on The Inquisitr discusses the latest launch of Allvoices, a news service that aggregates content from visitor submissions and ranks them, sort of like Digg and Technorati.

The idea behind this newly built community it that the CEO, Amra Tareen, wanted to enrich traditional news with alternative viewpoints. News reporting is too often censored by global media organizations, and so its users can submit its own coverage. The ranking system and its filters ensure correct placement of valid submissions. Tareen mentions her ideal model:

“Our model of merging user-generated content and professional news sources into one community will create the first true people’s media”

It’ll be surely interesting to see how the community reports on controversial topics like political issues and global conflicts.

Blogging: Understand Where Other People are Coming From

So your company has decided to launch a blog to communicate with its customers, so the rest should be a piece of cake right? It’s not as easy as it sounds. Blogging on controversial topics can very often stir up emotions and comments. Looking through my reader this afternoon I came across this post from Marshall Kirkpatrick in which he explains how simply understanding where people are coming from can help make you a more effective communicator.

This idea doesn’t just stop with blogging though. Communities, social networks, forums, discussion boards, and any other forms of social media that render conversations should be treated the same way. Let’s face it. Different viewpoints exist in the world, and so companies must learn to treat responses fairly in order to communicate more effectively online.

Google Labs Latest Offering

Google has entered into a new domain, virtual reality, despite what some would say is heavy competition already in place. Lively is the latest offering in Google Labs. It is a product of Niniane Wang’s, an engineering manager, 20% time project. Her reason for this latest creation, as citied in this article from eWeek.com, is:

"A while ago, I looked around the social Web and wished that it could be less static. Sure, you can leave a comment on a blog or write a text blurb on your social networking profile. But what if you want to express yourself in a more fun way, with 3D graphics and real-time avatar interactions?"

Features of the new app are that it runs solely through a browser using a Google account. Similar to other apps of its type, users create their own avatars, and the rooms can be customized to feature TV’s displaying YouTube clips, and photos on the wall. Another article, from ReadWriteWeb, noted that that a difference between Lively and Second Life is that:

Google's idea seems to be less to create one large virtual world, but to give publishers an opportunity to create their own small virtual world for their readers and visitors.

While Google does have an impressive track record with their product launches from Google Labs, as Brad Stone from the New York Times pointed out in his review of Lively,

Google’s success is not assured, of course. Other test products it has introduced have languished, like Product Search, originally known as Froogle.

Despite heavy competition already in place from heavyweights such as Second Life, do you think that Google and the strength of the brand will prevail?

John Mayer using Web 2.0 to connect to his fans

John Mayer’s touring this summer, and you can keep up with him through the interactive community on his website. After reading about this on David Allen’s Social Media Today post, I took a chance to check it out. The summer tour is being promoted by Blackberry, who is already deep into interactivity with their phones. Mayer has a blog he regularly updates. In addition, after each show has taken place, a webpage is updated with the set list, comments on the show, and photos, for example, the Milwaukee show.

Web 2.0 and communities are all about interaction. Mayer’s given fans a reason to keep coming back to his site, one being that fans are able to vote on a song in the encore for each concert.

Pros and Cons of Social News Sites

I came across this blog post today discussing the differences between the business styles of Reddit, Digg, and Stumble Upon. The author’s viewpoint is that Reddit has the best take on how to appeal to consumers while still earning revenue. Here is a summary on the pros and cons of each of the ‘social news’ websites.

Digg:

The main benefit is that there are no editors, and the importance of content is voted on by masses. This helps viewers sift through the enormous amount of information that is available on the web, while being able to skip over news items that are more obscure and not relevant.

The main complaint is that since the Digg community has grown so large, more and more content is being fed in and voted on by a larger audience. This leads to a problem with the front page content as stated by the author if it is not “viewed by someone within the first 75 minutes, 2 in 3 readers wont see it, and if no one sees the story in the first 3 hours, almost no one will see the story.”

StumbleUpon:

The benefit is that it is non-invasive. After signing up on their main web-page, there is no need to go back there. You simply download a toolbar and search for information that you are interested in.

The main complaint is not on the users behalf but instead, because it is so user friendly that individuals don’t have to return to the site, as the author of the blog post states “it is very hard to monetize the system based on current (ad based) business models”.

Reddit:

For Reddit the positive is that it is a mix of both StumbleUpon and Digg. Like StumbleUpon, they have a toolbar so you don’t have to constantly be on the site. Also the have a new feature that in the words of the author is a “module at the top that rotates between some of the stories from the upcoming section, allowing you to vote on them directly from the front page”

The con is that some find the new features hard to read and confusing. Also some feel that this is still putting the focus on how to generate revenue instead of placing utmost importance on user benefits.

Which business model do you feel provides the most value to consumers while still remaining profitable? Also what is your take on the evolution of Social News sites?

Community Marketing

I came across this post on the Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog where Yann Gourvennec details the transition from old world marketing techniques to today’s use of a social media marketing campaign. In this post, Yann also sums up 3 conclusions Forrester research VP and Principal Analyst Laura Ramos has in a relevant article: “B2B marketers fail the community marketing test” Here are his points:

1. marketing needs to change in the light of evolving behaviour and rising power of clients (is not only consumers guys, we are talking b2b here!)
2. top-down and patronising, self-centred, at marketing messages and must be adapted to reflect these changes. A new tone of voice must be adopted.
3. current marketers are doing a pretty bad job at tying the knot with their clients and — to put it in the words of the blue train manifesto — engaging in conversations with them.

Have we reinvented marketing with the use of web 2.0 applications? I’ll be posting a follow-up to this when Yann discusses how the web can support community marketing in part two of this 2 part article. Stay tuned!

American Express adopts social media: OPEN Forum

In a recent blog post by Chris Brogan, he shares information on the American Express Open Forum. At the Open Forum, American Express aggregates blog feeds through Federated. The area is full of interesting content, and American Express gives readers a sponsored area to discuss and talk about the information posted on the website. In this sense, Brogan points out, American Express is spreading its brand over blog content, and spreading the awareness of their name.

GNIP Offers Service to Increase Efficiency

This blog post discusses a new company, GNIP, which is helping to solve the problem of delay in viewing content that many consumers have with sites such as MyBlogLog. While the goal is to make life more efficient for the end consumer, GNIP, is selling to companies that could utilize their product, so there is no need for the individual to sign up. This article in TechCrunch describes the service best:

Gnip isn’t a consumer service. Rather, it’s designed to sit in between social networks and other web services that produce a lot of user content and data (like Digg, Delicious, Flickr, etc.) and data consumers (like Plaxo, SocialThing, MyBlogLog, etc.) with the express goal of reducing API load and making the services more efficient.

Other new services that GNIP is planning to launch, as mentioned in this article from ReadWriteWeb, include: Protocol switching to translate XMPP/Jabber into RSS feeds, standardized metadata which creates the opportunity for interoperability, and identity discovery to allow users to see where else their usernames and emails are being used.

Potential New Marketing Tool For Targeting Facebook Audience

A blog post from Read Write Web announces a new application for Facebook users called “Blog Networks” This new tool allows individuals who are not technical savvy to keep current with blogs they are interested in without having to understand RSS feeds. From a marketing viewpoint, this will allow businesses to expand their blog reader base to consumers who in the past did not have the technical expertise to keep track of several blogs a day. Additionally, as the post states:

Blog Networks may have the power to reach an entirely different demographic than MyBlogLog, whose community made up of a lot of blog owners and serious blog readers. The Facebook app, on the other hand, will appeal to casual readers by providing them with an easy-to-use blog directory and a simplified feed reader.