We’ve been talking a lot about Facebook this week. The site hit 500 million users on Wednesday and has become a sheer force in our digitally obsessed society. Earlier this spring Facebook made the “Like” button universally available across the world wide web, not just on their own site. Brands and businesses have incorporated the “Like” functionality into their own websites to visually demonstrate customer support. While there was a great deal of buzz about the expanded reach of the “Like” button, there has also been a storm brewing around the concept of a “Dislike” button.
I for one would like to see Facebook add a “Dislike” button. If I can express my support for something so easily, why can’t I express my opposition or distaste? There are nearly 3.2 million people that agree with me who belong to a Facebook group called “Dislike Button.”
There are a few obvious reasons why Facebook has held off: first, there is potential for bullying and hurtful use of the proposed “dislike” button. While I would like to think Facebook users are capable of using the “dislike” button wisely, I am sure there are users that would be abusive.
A second reason is highlighted in a new column by Mashable founder and CEO Pete Cashmore for CNN. In his most recent column, Cashmore explains that the “dislike” button opens door for users to negatively impact the brands and businesses that use Facebook for marketing and promotions. He writes:
“Facebook will never add a Dislike button because it would damage the company’s relationships with brands, businesses and web publishers — these groups are essential for building both web traffic and ad revenue.”
While Cashmore makes a strong point that Facebook does not want to alienate the primary source of its revenue, Facebook has also been known to respond to strong user feedback.
Who do you think will win this debate? Are you on team Like or Dislike?
In a recent blog post, Socialnomics author Erik Qualman shared updated figures on Twitter’s presence in the online search game. Twitter has officially edged out Yahoo! and Bing in number of monthly searches. See graphic below:
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Twitter founder Biz Stone shared that Twitter now has over 800 million search queries per day, which is a 33% increase from the last time he shared search figures in April (2010).
On his blog, Qualman writes, “We have indicated all along that Twitter & Facebook would be bigger search competition for Google than Yahoo and Bing. The fact that this is coming to fruition so soon is astounding. Social search and social commerce are becoming reality and it’s a great thing to see. Keep in mind we haven’t even mention YouTube and its social search activity.”
To the people who say social media is a fad, or that these sites are unimportant for business I say, think again. Consumers are searching for your products and services on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and if you are not there, they will find another provider.
Last night Racepoint Group hosted an event about social media and its return on investment (ROI). As social media continues to become a larger focal point in public relations and marketing campaigns, it’s critical to understand how to articulate it’s value to clients.
Last night’s event centered around a panel discussion with three social media experts: Larry Weber, Chairman of Racepoint Group, Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics and Mike Volpe, VP of Inbound Marketing for HubSpot.
After Larry Weber’s opening remarks, Qualman shared how he first dipped his toe into the digital space by sending a company-wide email instead of the standard hard copy memo. View his story here:
Volpe was up next and shared with the group the origins of his marketing career and the way tracking and reporting on ROI is evolving. Watch him provide tips here:
The evening was full of tremendous ideas and recommendations. The five big takeaways from the panel were:
1) Social media is not about technology. It’s about human interaction. It’s about sharing information and making connections. People who are intimidated by the technology aspect of engaging in social media should not view the applications as a hurdle. It’s simply the current mechanism to maintain relationships and reach out to new people.
2) When it comes to tracking social media, its important to focus not only on the quantitative (number of followers, number of re-postings) but also the qualitative. We need to take into account engagement and tone. Qualman said, “If social media is so trackable, we should just have robots running things. The human element is necessary here.”
3) Everyone and anyone can be a content creator, a publisher, a media property. As we shift away from traditional print and broadcast media, both we and our clients have the opportunity to get innovative and create and distribute our own content. Additionally, content creation should not be isolated to the PR and marketing staff. Volpe shared that, “50% of HubSpot employees have written posts for the HubSpot blog.”
4) Although much of PR and marketing is based in the written word, we need to start thinking more visually. We need to tell stories through pictures and videos. We need to make our content more authentic and dynamic.
5) On a personal level, Volpe stated, “The new resume is what comes up in Google when I type in your name.” As digital and social media continue to play an increasingly vital role in our PR and marketing efforts, we too have a digital and social persona, and that is now what employers are most interested in.
Thank you to Erik Qualman and Mike Volpe for joining us at Racepoint Group last night and providing such pragmatic, realistic, useful and inspiring guidance on the social media ROI frontier. Be sure to follow @equalman and @mvolpe on Twitter for real time updates on their social media adventures. You can also view all the live commentary during the event with the #smroi hashtag here.
Following in the footsteps of Google and perhaps Hugo Chavez, New York City is looking to hire a “mayor” for social media to activate digital initiatives that push the city’s policies into the digital sphere. The position, Chief Digital Officer, is being offered by the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.
The job pay will pay between $57,000-$125,000, and according to the opening listing it will entail:
“Managing and presenting a consistent and comprehensive new media face for the City of New York; coordinating with City agencies in the promotion of initiatives via new media tools; working with the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) to improve the design and content of NYC.gov to increase usability and make relevant information more accessible.”
It is believed to be the first city or city administration to seek a CDO and should be a sign of things to come. As community and consumer relations evolve in the digital age, the need for CDO’s (a position now popular in the private sector) becomes as important as having a press secretary.
Got any good candidates for Mr. Bloomberg? Maybe someone at Bloomberg?
While it’s hard not to take pleasure in anyone telling Michael Arrington the way it is, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz’s run-in and f-bomb dropping with Arrington earlier this week at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference undoubtedly made PR folks squeamish.
But it got me thinking. A few year’s ago, you could wrap this one into a case study for how not to fall for a reporter’s baiting. You don’t see on camera that Arrington asked Bartz if her marketing pitch about Yahoo’s strengths relative to rival Google was “BS.” After-all this is what Arrington wanted to get from Bartz. A public, unsavory reaction that could draw more attention to his interview and the conference.
He got it and more, but was it a PR #fail for Yahoo!? While there were those who quickly berated Bartz for her comments as too publicly defensive, rough, knee-jerk and unbuttoned, others were quick to back her comments as “refreshing.”
At the very least her passion for defending Yahoo! bears resemblance to the passionate way Steve Jobs defends Apple. Yes, he’s not dropping f-bombs on camera in public settings, but it is refreshing to see CEO’s so passionate about their company’s position that they respond to questions, without vetting their words through their team and consultants. And the media, traditional or otherwise, love it.
I’m not saying executives should go off their rocker like this more often (not everyone has Jobs or Bartz make-up or power), but sometimes being yourself in the right moment can come across as a positive thing in the social media age. Every company wants and needs to be reputable, believable and trustworthy in the digital age – should executives be any different??
Image courtesy of PEW Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism
Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released a year’s worth of data yesterday on the top news stories discussed and linked to on blogs and social media pages, and seven months’ worth on Twitter. The study, New Media, Old Media, returned some very interesting findings on the differences between what the most popular story is for mainstream news outlets versus what the top news story is on social mediums. In addition it turned out some interesting data on the difference between what headlines draw crowds on these new social mediums.
The study examined the blogosphere and social media by tracking the news linked to on millions of blogs and social media pages tracked by Icerocket and Technorati from January 19, 2009, through January 15, 2010. It also tracked the videos on YouTube’s news channel for the same period. It measured Twitter by tracking news stories linked to within tweets as monitored by Tweetmeme from June 15, 2009, through January 15, 2010.
Of the 29 weeks that PEW tracked all three social platforms, blogs, Twitter and YouTube, the different mediums only shared the same top story just once. That was the week of June 15-19, when the protests that followed the Iranian elections. When you dive deeper into the differences between the social mediums you can also see that each has a certain personality associated with its user-base.
The clearest example of that was illustrated by the popularity of technology news on Twitter. More than 40 percent of stories linked to on Twitter were technology related. Meanwhile only eight percent of stories on on blogs were technology related and only one percent of stories in the mainstream press and on YouTube were technology related. These findings may have been expected in 2008, with early adopters driving Twitter’s use, but it is surprising that technology stories are so popular and prevalent today, as Twitter stretches its mainstream appeal. Comparatively only six percent of the stories linked to on Twitter were focused on politics.
Meanwhile political news and foreign events dominates the other mediums, with 29 percent of stories on blogs, 47 percent of stories on YouTube and 24 percent of the newshole at mainstream news outlets being political or foreign event focused. Stories linked to on Twitter also have much shorter shelf life’s. On Twitter, 72% of lead stories are no longer on the top linked to list after three days, and more than half (52%) are on the list for just 24 hours.
There are also numbers within the research that offer a contrarian view to the idea of news items bubbling up from Twitter, to the blogs, to the mainstream press. Across the entire year studied, just one particular story or event – the controversy over emails relating to global research that came to be known as “Climate-gate” – became a major item in the blogosphere and then, a week later, gained more traction in traditional media. Twitter is even less tied to the mainstream press in terms of drawing attention to stories and distributing information from mainstream outlets. Nearly 40 percent of the links on Twitter went to web-only news sources such as Mashable and CNET.
What all this means is hard to say. It will be certainly be interesting to see how it changes over time. However, in terms of those seeking to gain attention in the Twittersphere and with technology influencers, they should takeaway:
Twitter drives the technology news-cycle. If stories linked to on Twitter were cross-referenced with Techmeme, the technology Website of record, they’d likely be very similar. Therefore if you want your news to drive the technology agenda, it better make the trending topics on Twitter.
Like the platform itself, Twitter news and attention moves in real-time, on the 1,440-minute news-cycle. You may capture attention, but it won’t be for very long.
Don’t count on the news bubbling up. While you may reach technology influencers on Twitter, this data “echoes” the thought that Twitter can be an echo-chamber of technology advocates.
Last night’s episode of Criminal Minds was about a killer that found his victims through social networking sites. The episode specifically calls out Facebook and Twitter, but also references geo-location social networks like FourSquare. While the details of the episode are fiction, the episode brings up valid points about the information that we share online, and feels real enough to make you check your privacy settings following the show.
For the purpose of analyzing three types of social networks, I’m going to focus on Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare.
Facebook: Facebook is unique because it allows you to have a lot of flexibility with your privacy setting. While Mark Zuckerberg would urge you to keep an open profile with low privacy setting, that is not the smart move. First, make sure you’re only “friends’ with people that you know and can trust. You don’t have to accept friend requests from everyone, especially if you don’t know them or don’t like them. Then, you can limit the amount of information that is available to people. Don’t post where you are at all times, don’t give out your home address or phone number, and don’t put up pictures that share too much about yourself.
Twitter: Twitter has two privacy settings – share everything or create a protected account, meaning that you need to approve everyone that has access to your Twitter feed. If you have a standard account it means that anyone can see what you write, regardless of if they are following you or even have a Twitter account. Think about this again, ANYONE can see what you post. If you’re giving out details about your current location, announcing when you’re home alone or on vacation, anyone can see that. Twitter is much safer as a communication tool that does not offer an excess of information on your whereabouts or personal life.
FourSquare: FourSquare might be the most dangerous social network of them all since its primary goal is to broadcast where you go, and how often. Users check in to locations that they visit, ranging from the office, movies, restaurants, parks, and even their homes. While this builds an online network of people that you can get tips from, it’s really risky. Anyone can see where you are and learn about your daily and weekly patterns. It’s a lot of personal information to provide strangers with, and is a social network that I won’t go near for personal use, no matter how many discounted Frappucinos Starbucks will try and bribe me with.
Social media site Mashable recently posted an infographic with some odd Facebook statistics. While normally one might gloss over this, the graphic actually contained some pretty useful information for marketers looking to leverage Facebook to reach their target audience.
Noteworthy stats include:
• Of the 400 million people that log into their Facebook account each month, 50% of them log in daily
• 70% of Facebook users live outside the United States
• Women aged 55 and up are the fastest growing Facebook demographic in America
Lesson learned? Facebook is a daily part of the lives of people around the globe, specifically our moms. Kidding. Sort of.
In all seriousness, this data offers shining, golden opportunities for marketers to reach demographics via Facebook they may not have realized were present.
Check out the infographic below. Any other stats you find surprising?
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.
Yesterday in San Francisco Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rolled out some big plans for his baby at the company’s 8th developer conference, f8. After combing through all the tech round ups, here are the major take aways:
Facebook global domination, one thumbs up at a time: The most notable announcement at f8 was that Facebook’s “Like” feature will now be available on any website that wishes to add the cheery sign of approval to its site. You can indicate your favor for anything on the web – a song, a recipe, a celebrity gossip post – all with one click.
While many support this web-wide expansion, others have strong concerns. John Sutter of CNN writes, “A consequence of these “like” buttons will be that your friends’ Facebook profile photos will start showing up all over the web. If you see your friends’ smiling faces online, it’s an indication that they have clicked a “like” button on the website you’re visiting. In a way, they’re recommending it to you.”
While those concerned with privacy issues are shrieking and scrambling in horror, marketers are smiling and planning ways utilize this public display of brand loyalty to move the sales needle.
Log in, plug in: In addition to the “Like” feature on websites outside of Facebook itself, the company is also going to allow sites to show Facebook user preferences without needing to log into that specific site. For example, if you frequent the music site Pandora, you will be able to see your friends’ music preferences based on their Facebook music preferences. Miguel Helft at the New York Times dives deeper with Pandora CTO Tom Conrad:
“It makes it really, really easy to ring your friends into Pandora and discover the music they’re experiencing,” Mr. Conrad said. Mr. Conrad started listening to a band and a picture of one of his Facebook friends who likes the same band showed up. With a click on that picture, we were able to see all the other bands that his friend also liked.
The features also allow Pandora to know which bands users have included in their Facebook profiles and begin playing music from those bands. That makes it easy for Pandora to begin playing music for new users without requiring them to type in their music preferences.
“Pandora is finally social,” Mr. Conrad said. And he said that Mr. Zuckerberg deserved all the credit for the changes. “You get a personalization with no clicks, and that was Mark’s idea.”
My friends and I already share Pandora station and Grooveshark playlist recommendations and this takes out the need for a third party mode of sharing. Tech and social media guru Robert Scoble tweeted this morning to his 121, 500 plus followers:
@scobleizer: OK, I’m sold on the new Facebook stuff. The new Pandora is FREAKING AWESOME.
So what does it all mean? In his keynote address at f8 Mark Zuckerberg explained, “The Web is at a really important turning point now. Most things aren’t social, and they don’t use your real identity. This is really starting to change.” This new expansion of Facebook preferences into the broader web begins that transition from stagnant to social on the broadest of scales.
These moves are not altruistic, of course. Facebook is opening the door to a whole new set of tactics from marketers and promoters, as well as increasing new opportunities for their own revenue stream.
Jon Swartz of USA Today wrote, “If successful, these functions could help Facebook gain valuable insights about millions of consumers and help it sell more advertising in its escalating rivalry with online ad leader Google.”
You hear that Google? Mark’s coming for you.
Former Fortune writer and author of the soon to be released book The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick, summed it up best in a tweet today:
@DavidKirkpatric: Facebook’s f8 yesterday represents a sea change for the company–now the world clearly sees the scope of its ambition.
