Social Media and a Fractured Narrative

Post-purchase care won’t save you because once it is online, spidered and shareable, it is too late. Customers broadcast the entire purchase process from research onwards through social media in real time, online, to all their friends, and the search engines, it is inevitable that they will post the good and the bad. When every frustration and problem encountered in dealing with a brand is put online for all to see as it happens, giving them a refund doesn’t help as much as it used to. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, even if the original problem has been dealt with, their frustration is still going to be there, out in public and sometimes even in Google’s index.

Customer Care Online isn't Retroactive

Both Google and Bing take travel seriously. Google has released products like Hotel Finder and a flight search feature and Bing Travel is continually featured in the search engine’s official blog. Even as both major search engines show more and more portal-like tendencies, there is a large number of other sites providing reviews and information and hosting communities of travellers or travel blogs. Travel is a big business, and one where the market has an insatiable desire for information, especially for the longer, more expensive trips.

Read the full Post-purchase care won’t save you post on Marketing Magazine online.

Whenever a brand throws out the old in favour of something topical it gets attention. It is bold, and both the professional and amateur media love it. In the end the numbers will either vindicate or invalidate the experiment, assuming they measure the ROI in a way that reflects reality. Everything else is speculation, informed or otherwise.

Facebook has got to be better than email...

As interesting as the lively debate between the social media exponents and eDM professionals was at the time, it just begged the question: ‘Why not just do both?’ After all, I am sure you won’t get tarred and feathered at your favourite morning coffee do if you dabble in the black arts of using stuff that works.

Social Media and Email: With, not Instead Of

How you can use a social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, et al, is different from the tools available with email, from users’ expectations regarding content and frequency to how the user can interact with the material, and the platform’s restrictions on what can be delivered in what form to whom.

To borrow from Mitch Joel, it is ‘With’ not ‘Instead Of’. Using both social media and email gives you more options, and increases the size of your potential audience. Connecting with customers across multiple platforms facilitates different interactions, and gives the customer the choice of how they want to connect with the brand. Maybe a Facebook fan that finds no value in your updates would actually love the email newsletter, or perhaps the Twitter account amuses them during their work day while they find eDM invasive. Giving the customer the choice can mean that when they opt out of one channel, they might still connect through another.

Building Audiences on Other People’s Platforms

Building eDM and Social Media Audiences

Facebook fans are not really yours; neither are Twitter followers. Without the accounts they are connected to, these audiences don’t exist. Unlike email. There is also little point in building different engagement strategies for multiple channels without cross-promoting them.

Competitions, surveys and other data collection or content driven special events can accomplish both of these goals:

• Making the brand’s audience aware of other touch points and
• Collecting contact details and other information through either a microsite or the brand’s main web presence.

The nature of eDM as a one way communication channel without the ability to demonstrate social proof makes it better suited to direct customers to a range of appropriate social media touch points, where most of the content would be published during the campaign. Cross promotion of the brand’s social media touch points and a call to action that would lead to further entries in the brand’s email database and CRM will generate better connection with and a better picture of the audience.

Promoting campaigns such as these should not be restricted to just eDM and social media. Getting the most out of it requires that other media is added to the mix, be it print, broadcast, SMS, MMS, PR, online display and promotional activity on the brand’s site. However it is executed, there should be two returns to the business:

• More information on the brand’s customers
• More points of contact with the brand’s customers.

Do Everything You Can Do Well

Limited access to resources and avoiding uneconomic channels are the only reasons that should affect what tools are and are not used online. There is no reason to abandon one kind of promotional activity online in favour of another. With so many ways to go online and consume information, arbitrarily limiting a brand’s options in how it can reach and be reached by its customers is not a winning strategy.

Diaspora's Kickstarter t-shirt

Diaspora’s privacy management is based on Aspects. The user groups their connections by a set of personal criteria, and can choose who gets to see which updates, and which stream of content they consume. Grouping people in this way isn’t really new; Google’s other social network, Orkut, employs a similar system, as does their new social project, Google+, with its Circles. Diaspora’s big point of difference is as a federated network. Anyone can take the software, install it on a server, and connect it to other installations, called pods. Now after almost a year and with Google+ live to a limited audience, how has Diaspora gone?

The View from Diaspora

The view from Diaspora

Since launch the development of Diaspora has not stopped. The interface has been improved, Diaspora supports mentions and hashtags in status updates and searches on public posts. Users can post from Diaspora to Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, and anyone’s public stream is available as an RSS feed.

Diaspora has a few more tools than it had at launch that make it easier to share sites and images while not on the site. A bookmarklet and an awesome photo sharing tool called cubbi.es (It saves an image on shift+left click, posts it to your cubbi.es account, into your stream on Diaspora, and can back it up to your Dropbox account as well). But there is one part of Diaspora’s user experience that has been stagnant for a while, and that’s mobile.

Personally Diaspora never really took off within my own social circles. No-one I know in real life, or through other social networks, is currently active within Diaspora. All the people with whom I currently interact on Diaspora, I met there, and they all sit in a ‘People from Diaspora’ Aspect.

Adding Google to the mix

A Google+ Perspective

And now there is Google+. The project has had an awesome take-up rate and already has over 10 million users. A lot of my acquaintances who were on Diaspora but never really used it are now very active on Google+. Whether this is the result of a solid product on Google’s part, or simply of the initial hype, remains to be seen.

Google+ does a lot of things differently to Diaspora (and Orkut) even if there is some overlap of the core mechanics of Circles vs Aspects. Notifications for activity on Google+ are visible while on other Google products, like Gmail and Google Reader, and can be acted upon without returning to Google+.

Eric Schmitt’s “Put your best people on mobile” is obvious on Google+. The project’s mobile experience is awesome on both mobile web and the Android app (which I love). Google+ has a number of other features, the most talked about being their desktop video feature called Hangouts, and mobile group messaging feature called Huddle.

Google+ probably won’t ‘kill’ Facebook. The size of the networks most users have built on Facebook represents a massive switching cost should they wish to migrate to another platform. Google+ will, at least for now, be a second social network, similar to how many people have active LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and other social media profiles as well as their Facebook accounts.

Where Google+ can clearly replace Facebook is on mobile. For ages the Facebook mobile experience has been bad, bordering on malicious. The only reason that Google+ isn’t actually replacing Facebook on mobile for me is because I stopped using Facebook on my phone ages ago. Facebook’s app and mobile website are horribly slow and unstable, and do not offer me enough as a user to make it worth the aggravation to use. Google+’s Android app is the opposite. It is fast, easy to navigate and use, and lets me see public posts by people near me and tag posts with my location.

Why Google+ will expand and Diaspora will remain niche

Diaspora is a solid, open platform that gives the user as much control as they want to take on, and judging from the work the team has put into it so far, will continue to improve. Google+ has a lot of awesome features on launch and has the benefit of the Google brand and integration with their other products. Both platforms have good reasons to use them and both cover areas that Facebook does not. Diaspora is more sensitive regarding user privacy and Google+ offers features that Facebook either doesn’t have, or does badly.

The biggest difference between Google+ and Diaspora is that while both do things that Facebook does not, most people don’t care about the needs that Diaspora meets, whereas those Google+ cover are obvious from the start. There are a few small differences, like how Diaspora sorts posts either by the date of the post, or the latest comment, which Google+ does not do. There are also other similarities, in that both let the user export their data easily and fully, unlike Facebook.

Diaspora does have a future, but it won’t be as large as Google+. Facebook will probably start to fill the gaps that Google+ seems aimed at, and this can already been seen in the rumours surrounding Project Spartan. For now though, Google+ will continue to gain users at a greater rate than Diaspora, and for all its flaws, Facebook isn’t going anywhere.

Living in a Fishbowl

When certain Queensland Association for Healthy Communities (QAHC) ads were pulled from bus stops around Brisbane this week, my Facebook and Twitter feeds filled with protests, jokes, demands that the ads be put back and a…

Read the full post on MarketingMag.com.au

In this case Microsoft means more than just Messenger, and will also allow the user to access Facebook chat through the same system. I imagine Skype will be added as well at some point. The phone will also select the service based on the activity:

For example, if we’re both online in Messenger, it will use Messenger IM so that we can share rich photos and more, but if we’re Facebook friends or just have each other’s phone numbers, it will automatically select the right service for our conversation.

Adding SMS and IM to the same conversation thread makes a lot of sense for Microsoft, especially considering how they are building their social networks, including their recent, widely publicised acquisition of Skype (I do not think they will restrict Skype to Windows, that would just be silly). Messenger is also able to connect with Yahoo! and Facebook, and in November last year, their Messenger app was the second most popular on Facebook, after Farmville.

The High Cost of Microsoft's Evil Skype Plan

Networks of Social Networks

When the Windows Live blog published their Preview of the new Windows Live Messenger in April 2010, they made a number of interesting points in line with some of their most recent published studies on user behaviour:

• People use multiple devices
• People use multiple platforms
• Publishing the same message to all platforms is not good User Experience
• People want to see more from some more than others in their own networks

Through building a network with partners and acquisitions, Microsoft is expanding Messenger’s reach beyond their install base. Both Facebook and Google seem to be trying to achieve the same with their social graph, and suite of content and social tools respectively.

In addition to access to a larger network of individuals, Messenger’s network of partners, and the integration of SMS through the Windows Phone 7 update, creates a unified communication experience. The user can follow a conversation they are having with another across multiple platforms in a single coherent thread. Other platforms appear to be implementing the same ideas, for example, Facebook Connect’s new Comment Box plugin is another example of effectively expanding the activity of a social network site beyond its own domain, creating a more unified social experience for its users.

With huge growth expected for mobile, providing better tools that offer a seamless experience across computers, tablets and phones is more important than ever. The growth for smartphones and numbers of users using multiple devices for 2010 show how big this can be:

Global Internet Use by Device Type for 2010

• 2 billion Internet users in 2010
• 400 million Internet users only use a personal computer
• 975 million Internet users use both a personal computer and a mobile phone
• 625 million Internet users only use a mobile phone

• 1.38 billion new mobile phone handsets sold 2010 (almost all with a browser and a colour screen)
  • 22% of all new phones sold 2010 (298 million) were smartphones
  • 1.2 billion personal computers in use globally 2010

(Source: All the Numbers, All the Facts on Mobile the Trillion-Dollar Industry. Why is Google saying: Put your Best People on Mobile?, Communities Dominate Brands, Ahonen, T)

What Are They Doing, not What Are They Using

Integrating SMS and IM on mobile makes sense: both are predominantly text based (posting images, video and MMS aside), both tend to use short messages, and both use similar interfaces. Their differences are more a result of the associated technology than user behaviour. SMS, voice calls, IM and voice over IP (VoIP) were separate because they had to be. As devices become more powerful and able to perform a greater range of tasks and support more functions, the differences between them and other computers diminished.

The popularity of applications like Tweetdeck, and others that support conversations held across multiple platforms, indicate that there is a desire for this kind of integration. Ultimately, the user cares about what they want to achieve, such as following the news, catching up with friends or organising to meet for coffee. The platform doesn’t matter, only the interaction.

Queensland State Government

Over the last few weeks, Queensland has been hit with a number of serious floods. These floods have affected locations in Queensland from Rockhampton down to the New South Wales border and even across it. The flood waters are only just now starting to go down in my city, Brisbane, and there are still more places at risk.

The value of the work of the government, emergency services and all of the volunteers who took it upon themselves to pitch in and help out any way that they could is obvious, and deserves recognition. I am not the best person to talk about their work; that has been done far better elsewhere. But I did notice a few ways in which the local internet community and social media platforms have helped a lot of people, especially those not immersed in the social media and internet marketing echo chamber.

1. The Queensland Police Media Service’s Facebook page
   • Managed brilliantly with regular updates, a great series of mythbusting posts dealing with the more common rumours going around Brisbane and live streaming of the government’s press conferences. All of this was available through their Facebook page. They also have a twitter account: @QPSmedia
2. Facebook
   • Quite simply, the size of Facebook’s audience made it the go-to platform for many people wanting to reach their friends quickly. The social media platform was used for communication and sharing information, such as photos and status updates for those in the affected areas. I have seen a few Facebook events started to help out those who lost their houses and more within my circle of friends, and I expect that this is far from uncommon.
3. Greg Lexiphanic hosting flood maps
   • A Brisbane-based Community Manager took it upon himself to host Brisbane flood maps as the official sites started to go down under the weight of traffic they received. Thanks to massive retweets, phrase matched copy and a few links from media websites, the page quickly reached the third spot in Google (fourth if you count the news insert) for ‘Brisbane flood maps’ and reached a large audience of people who have never posted a tweet through direct links and search traffic.

I think these are the sites and platforms that helped the most people during the last few days, aside from sites hosted by a government or a media organisation. Twitter deserves a mention as an information source, and it along with other sites and applications like Twitpic, yfrog, Flickr, instagr.am, YouTube and so on all provided a richer picture of the situation than what would have been possible a decade ago. However, most of these are not as accessible, and don’t provide the kind of information or have the audience in Australia just yet to have as broad an impact as the ones listed above.

Queensland Flood Search Engine Result Page

It is also worth mentioning this page that Google put together, as well as their recent alteration of the result pages for flood related queries with important phone numbers and links listed at the top.

If you are from a flood-affected area, what did you see used by those around you? From overseas, where did you get the best information?

Want to help? Donate here: http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html

Facebook /Like Slashtag

There are easier ways to keep an eye on what your Facebook friends like. Social data in search has attracted a lot of interest in the last few years, with both Bing and Google rolling out a number of different products and services. Bing’s deal with Facebook is one of the more obvious ones, as well as adding Facebook shares and likes (not yet available in Australia) to their SERPs, along with Google’s Social Search using blogs, profiles and other content linked to from connected Google profiles, Google Reader subscriptions and other social content from within their properties in their results pages.

Curated Social Search

Blekko has joined in too with a /like slashtag for users who have linked their Facebook accounts to their Blekko accounts. This slashtag is populated with sites liked by you and your friends on Facebook. Unlike other slashtags, any one /like tag cannot be used by another user, neither can you create an RSS feed from the query. But you can see who in your network has liked each result.

This feature fits Blekko very well. Using your extended network to generate curated lists of sites to search through matches what they are already doing with user created slashtags. In a way, the biggest limitation of this tool is how Facebook structures the social graph. Not everyone you friend on Facebook is interested in the same stuff, has the same level of information literacy or expertise. The lists appearing in the /like slashtag will reflect this.

Ideally you would be able to search sites liked by specific groups of friends. For example, if you wanted information on WordPress themes, limiting a /like search to people you know that work in web development would be very useful. The same would go for any number of other subject areas. Diaspora’s aspects would actually be a better way to organise contacts for this kind of tool.

Microsoft has been involved with and developing social tools for a while and the number of accounts on Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail and Xbox Live has always been impressive.

According to the Windows Live blog post:

We’re still early in the release, but to date, over 10 million people have connected their Facebook accounts with Windows Live.

The engagement figures are impressive as well:

…there have already been over 250 million chat conversations between Messenger and Facebook customers, and these conversations have lasted more than 1.5 billion minutes.

The most interesting trend is cross-device software and platforms, including TV, via Xbox Live, mobile, computer and almost certainly tablets. The Microsoft Advertising blog hinted at where this may go with their post, Multi-Screen Consumer Research and Your Media Multiplier Effect. Creating a cohesive experience from desktop to mobile and to loungeroom is going to create changes in media consumption and user behaviour. Already behaviours are less restricted by software, platforms and devices. Microsoft Live Messenger and Facebook are connected and even console systems such as the Xbox360 are used as de facto social network devices:

…4 million personal messages are sent between Xbox LIVE members every day.

From online social interactions on both mobile and console systems, to product search initiated on mobile, and ending with a purchase via PC, integrating multiple media formats into the one chimeric experience will be disruptive. Especially as the media they consume becomes less dependent on the device and its location, and expectations for data portability change.

Ultimately it is the task a user seeks to complete that matters. Their objectives are more important than the device, platform or software used. What has begun to happen with the Windows Phone 7, Xbox 360 and the Windows OS is a hint on where technology is going. Making social, search and basic everyday computing functionality available no matter where the user is or what they have in front of them is the killer app. The device and platform do not matter: the user only cares if they can complete their task.

The real question is how much and for what. Friends and acquaintances need personal information to maintain relationships; Facebook requires it for access to their platform. An email address is standard currency for admittance into most social websites and Google uses location, search history and much more to provide a more meaningful search tool and more relevant ads.

Google’s newest product, Google Instant, also relies on this user data. The live blog of the launch event posted on Readwriteweb.com hinted at past user searches being used to generate SERPs as the user enters their query for very real performance benefits.

How does Google scale this? Optimizations: prioritizes searches that are the most likely. Checks if users is doing searches on another server. Results cached.

Where this deal breaks down is if the information is used in a way the user was not expecting. Entering an email address to post a comment is no big deal, but if it is then used to distribute spam, there is a problem. This surprise and betrayal of expectations is a large part of why Facebook’s users reacted badly to most of the site’s changes, and the same again with Google Buzz. The other issue is a lack of universal agreed value.

One degree from evil

It is the fluid nature of these transactions that has created campaigns and conversations like these. One of the more interesting exchanges was between this defense of Google and this subsequent rebuttal.

Users will always exchange their private information for benefits. How much they are willing to give up will vary from person to person. One thing is consistent though: expectations for how the information will be used need to be set, managed and met, or they might find that what you have is just not worth the price.

Since MMORPGs and virtual worlds arrived, there have always been people willing to spend money for virtual goods. Most of the time this is against the terms of the world, with a few notable exceptions. There are a growing number of games that have embraced microtransactions, including Guild Wars and Farmville. In fact the Free2Play MMORPG market is based on this.

Facebook closed their gift shop a while ago. It was making money, and it certainly proved that Facebook users were prepared to buy pixels long before Zynga was around. The closure of the gift shop was not a step backwards. Facebook is doing more now than ever to make it easy for people to get Facebook Credits to spend, they can even be bought as a gift card in real life.

People are willing to spend real money on virtual goods, and Facebook will profit from expanding the market for Facebook Credits. As a platform accessible through multiple devices Facebook is well placed to facilitate a virtual economy based on games, virtual and real goods purchased online with their currency.