Of all the companies looking for a fearless leader to head their social media operations, I have to say this company is an unlikely choice. Not only do they dominate their primary industry, but they’ve branched out into several new frontiers on what seems like a weekly basis. Who is this hyper successful innovator?
None other than web giant Google. No, you didn’t misread that. Google, the number one search engine (sorry Bing, no matter how many products placements you do on Gossip Girl or the Rachel Zoe Project we still can’t be swayed), the creator of the increasingly popular Gmail, the blogging site Blogger and the photo sharing site Picasa is seeking to ramp up their social media presence in two major ways with the help of a new hire.
First, Google wants to build a social media offering uniquely their own. The launch of Google Buzz was met with extreme consumer discontent, and Google doesn’t want to continue playing second fiddle to Facebook and Twitter in the social media space.
Secondly, Google wants to improve the way it incorporates social media into its existing services. Seth Waintraub of Fortune’s BrainstormTech blog wrote, “Google has tried to play ball. They penned a deal with Twitter to embed a feed of related Tweets in its search results, among other moves.” While Google has this one collaboration with Twitter underway, there are a multitude of other options for strengthening their social media capabilities even within their existing services.
Sounds like a serious undertaking for Google’s newest employee. In her piece for GigaOm, Liz Gannes shares the job description being used by Google’s recruiter to find this diamond in the rough:
“This is a new and very strategic position, as Google knows it is late on this front and is appropriately humble about it. In Google’s view, conceptually, there are two ways to tackle social, each impacting who may be successful in this senior post: 1) building an innovative offering specifically in this area; or 2) developing the capability and integrating social into Google’s existing portfolio.”
While Google is on the hunt for this head of social media, there is also the possibility that Google could acquire an influential company in the social space and have that former CEO or president morph into this new set of responsibilities.
What do you think? Can Google find the right candidate to steer them towards social media domination?
Tom Webster of Edison Research released the findings of a three year study into the usage of Twitter in America last week.
Some interesting findings from the study, which are covered in the above Webinar, include:
Awareness of Twitter has exploded from 5% of Americans 12+ in 2008 to 87% in 2010 (by comparison, Facebook’s awareness is 88%)
Despite equal awareness, Twitter trails Facebook significantly in usage: 7% of Americans (17 million persons) actively use Twitter, while 41% maintain a profile page on Facebook.
Nearly two-thirds of active Twitter users access social networking sites using a mobile phone
51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks
Ning’s new pricing system, in moving away from free community building
In his bookFree: The Future of a Radical PriceChris Anderson proposed that the rapidly falling cost of digital technology enabled companies to create digital content and spaces for essentially nothing. In addition, he added that the word free is so popular that the mere use of it will increase demand and instant engagement with consumers. Therefore, his hypothesis was that the future of digital business is free.
While this approach may assist companies in gaining traction for a new digital technology, it doesn’t always work in trying to establish a sustainable business strategy. Especially, it seems, within the social media space. One of the big misperceptions of social media use has been that it is free. The truth is for companies interested in using social media tools – it has always cost money in hours and resource allocation. However, in addition to those resources – it will cost money going forward as social media service providers realize the demand is there for premium, paid services.
Yesterday, Jason Rosenthal, the CEO of Ning, sent an email to Ning users that officially noted the company’s plans for phasing out all free uses of the Ning network by July – as part of its new pricing and business strategy. According to Rosenthal, “We (Ning) want(s) to provide a new level of innovation to Network Creators — including all the valuable features Network Creators have asked us to build. To get there, we need to focus 100% on paid Ning Networks.”
Why now? Ning’s problem seems to be the same as the issues faced by YouTube in endorsing “free.” Although, their model was able to entice millions of people to share videos, their revenue model suffered because brands didn’t want to advertise against videos made in people’s basements. Now Google and YouTube are pushing for premium video content that advertisers want. In the same vein, Ning drew lots of users (including marketers interested in an easy and free way to build a community), but the advertisements it leveraged on its free communities for revenue were hardly targeted and drew little interest from big name brands (it was mostly Google display ads). They also found that a large portion of their traffic was willing to pay for premium features. Hence, they’re now focusing on different levels of paid services. Even an enterprise or professional level for $49.95 a month. With that move, according to some reports, Ning sizes their market around $4 billion.
Yammer, which has taken a similar track towards the premium market of microblogging, may be a good case study for Ning. Unlike Twitter, they’ve cornered a market on enterprise collaboration over bits of information and now have 70,000 customers (many of those happily paying). In fact, according to Yammer , “A number of Fortune and Global 500 companies such as Cisco, Nationwide, AstraZeneca, Alcatel-Lucent, SunGard, and Molson Coors have upgraded to Yammer’s paid product. ” This news has some investors calling them the next billion dollar company. Meanwhile, Radian6, the popular social media monitoring service used by the likes of AMD, Comcast, Microsoft and Dell (to name a few) starts its pricing at $500 per month and can reach several additional figures.
Of course, there are other examples of “free” social media tools thriving with no plans to make their services pay-per-play. The aforementioned Twitter has been adamant in stating that they have no plans to charge corporate accounts. Even, Co-Tweet, which assists brands in engaging and monitoring Twitter (and was acquired earlier this year), offers its service for free. Facebook doesn’t seem to have any plans to make users pay, although they could make a nice amount for a $1 a day and would certainly find brands willing to pay for fanpages.
Others are adding paid-for, premium features, in addition to free features. PitchEngine, which has become a very popular free (and paid-for) tool (platform) for PR practitioners and social media mangers to share news and information, recently announced a new pricing system for agencies and brands interested in additional features. However, according to their CEO Jason Kintzler they have no plans to abandon free use of the service’s entry-level features. “We will still be ‘freemium’ and people will be able to publish for free. We’re just adding more premium features,” he told RaceTalk in an email.
However, any way you look at it, there is a current set of market happenings that makes pay-for services a new attractive option for social media tool or platform providers.
Online advertising cannot support most businesses (including social media services) in its current form as the only revenue stream (low CPM’s, etc.) and investors are shying away from companies that are only looking at ad revenue to support their business.
Measurement of social media campaigns is improving and any tool’s use that can be measured against (or that do the measuring!) previous strategies , mediums (traditional or otherwise), can now be budgeted for. In short, folks are willing to pay for social media tools that work.
Investments are now following in the footsteps of the demand for these tools and platforms. Look no further than investor interest in the social media measurement space. New social media service providers will now have the money and runway to move away from launching as “free.” Something that can be painful to shut the door on down the road.
More often than not, a piece of the entry I’m working on for RaceTalk revolves around a tweet, or at the very least includes a quote from a tweet. The one problem with illustrating that has been there is no easy way to get that tweet into a blog entry. Sure, you can take a screen capture or simply link to the tweet. However, that doesn’t offer you the same customization that you get with embedding content (YouTube videos, uStreams, etc.). Not any longer, according to a post on the Twitter Media site. Twitter will be enabling embeddable tweets starting tomorrow.
Now WordPress blogs like this one to outlets such as the New York Times can simply embed tweets for reference or citation within a story. Twitter highlights the way Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb covered the HP and Palm deal leveraging the best tweets on the topic within his post. Now, unlike those sometimes grainy photos, bloggers will be able to embed visually pleasing tweets with the click of the button. In short, they’ll look like the one above, only it will be click-able and much better looking.
Since unveiling its play into mobile advertising on April 8 with its iAd platform, questions have circled around how Apple will implement advertising on certain applications and how much ads or campaigns will cost for brands and media buyers. However, MocoNews.net is reporting today that “CPMs (on the iAd platform) could wind up being triple what marketers are used to paying for banners, and double the price of a current video ad on mobile devices.
The cost and appeal of reaching consumers through the iPhone, iPad and thousands of apps on Apple’s App Store could finally drive mobile marketing into a “big” business. Analysts have already been bullish on mobile coupons driving the fledgling mobile ad market this year. In fact, a new study from Borrell Associates sees mobile marketing growing into a $57 billion market by 2014. Coupons and the iAd platform alone, could make for a watershed year in 2010.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple will “charge close to $1 million for ads on its mobile devices this year and perhaps even more to be among the first brands featured (on the platform).” While some would think this limit would deter most advertisers, big name brands like Nike (who Apple is using in demoing with other media buyers) seem excited about the opportunity to reach consumers within application engagement on Apple’s line of mobile devices (video above).
