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Social Media Sandwich

July 25, 2010 in Online, Social by Anthony | 1 comment

Salami and salad are an aggregate of different ingredients. Both salami and salad are diverse, mixing a range of different yet similar stuff into the one package, a lot like Twitter and Facebook. Combining so much into one easily consumed package is almost revolutionary in a world where meat offcuts and lettuce had until that time stood alone, solitary and distinct – somewhat similar to what was seen with Web 2.0, where user generated content was spread across sites like Geocities and other free hosts to be replaced with Myspace and Blogger, sites and tools that connected and generated content like never before.

Social Media Sandwich

Social Media Sandwich

Why not go further? Why not move from a boring world of plates, knives and forks, to a place where salami and salad can be enjoyed at the same time between two pieces of bread? The sandwich is a truly revolutionary construct. Taking the best of both foods and making them available in the one easy to consume package through the medium of baked goods.

How do you eat it? Must you use a plate, can you carry it with you, maybe it is only available in a specific restaurant and you can’t take it away? Or is it the übermensch of sandwiches and able to be eaten in whatever way you see fit, and if so, is this the revolutionary development? There are a lot of content aggregation tools available now, from Friendfeed through to Google Buzz, Windows Live Messenger Beta and device specifc tools like MOTOBLUR, Flipboard and Google’s Social Search. They vary greatly in capabilities, sources of media they can access and curation tools, but they perform the same task for the user.

A lot of these services and tools take a few social media activity streams and create a single feed, but a few index or include the content linked to and present it to the user directly. Flipboard delivers this content in the app, and Google Social Search presents the links in a results page of a relevant search query.

Questions of fair use and legality aside, providing socially sourced content from multiple sources in the one place with tools to make this information manageable is a significant development in how the Internet is used. From Google’s personalisation of search to the increasing importance of social networks for filtering content and the shift away from static portals, each user’s experience of the Internet is becoming more unique.

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Your Company’s Fragmented Web Presence

July 21, 2010 in Online, Search, Social by Anthony | No comments

Brands do not just have one touchpoint anymore. There are a lot of sites with different tools, an established audience, and people creating content about about many things, including companies and brands. From a company Facebook page or group to augmented reality brand hacking or conversations on Twitter, content created by Internet users about brands is more visible and varied than ever.

Why the website

Why the Site

Devoting all content creation and administration resources to single site or community is no longer the best strategy. Internet users seek out different content in different formats for different platforms. What meets their needs on their mobile phones will be different to what they want on their desktop computer, or their netbook, web-enabled TV, or tablet device. After all, social media is just people being people online, and what they use and how is a result of this.

The kind of platform and task they want to complete changes how they search for, evaluate and use content. From asking their social network for advice, to searching for product demonstrations on YouTube or store locations on Google Maps.

There is a need for the ‘Big Website’ and campaign or product specific microsites. While there is a need for control over a hub to facilitate list building, acquire links and generate direct navigation traffic, sites and microsites will be a part of the mix. While Facebook is not likely to suffer the same fate as Blogetery, developing content on external platforms also comes with a certain level of risk.

Being visible across multiple, relevant platforms, sites and communities gives brands the chance to manage the user’s experience of the brand. Providing compelling content and engaging with customers, the brand can develop on its campaigns further, ensure that customer service queries can be responded to and clarify information about their products.

Creating brand touchpoints like fan pages is an “as well as”, not an “instead of” developing microsites and promoting the the brand’s main web presence. They are an opportunity to put content in front of the customer in the place that they already are, and in a format tailored for the situation. A YouTube channel, Second Life store and a Facebook page are not a substitute for the spaces online that the brand controls.

Comic from Why the Site

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Anticipating Social Gone Wrong

June 22, 2010 in Online, Social by Anthony | No comments

For open, transparent companies with an amazing product and service experience, social media engagement can create huge benefits, but like most things in business there are risks.

Social media is just people being people online, but with better tools. Nothing has changed in their behaviour; it is their ability to be found and heard, and find others who think the same that is new and significant. Social media and the internet amplify the voices of those who publish content online, whether they love you or hate you.

Sometimes people will say things that businesses would prefer them not to. The internet has made it easier than ever to publish and spread this material. Sites like Facebook and WordPress make it easy to tap into an existing audience, or get indexed by Google and appear in brand searches. When a product or service has a branded social media presence or community, it can give them access to a highly relevant audience for their dissatisfaction, ire and angst, which can disrupt the business’ promotional activity and damage the brand.

It is hard to completely avoid this risk without losing the benefits from fostering conversation and building online communities. Here are a few ways a business can prepare to address these problems if or when they arise:

  • Anticipate the negative responses and plan on how and how not to respond
  • Make internal stakeholders aware of what can go wrong
  • Communicate response plans and processes internally with key stakeholders
  • Ensure that those with the authority to respond in negative situations are easily reached
  • Make staff aware of relevant policies

If no thought is given to what might go wrong, there is a greater risk of the company responding badly, and inflaming the situation further. Planning for problems that may arise before the fact ensures that the business’ response will most likely be timely, articulate and appropriate.

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Social TV & the Back channel

May 30, 2010 in Online, Social by Anthony | No comments

People have always connected over common experiences; it creates communities. Sporting events, product launches and TV shows are all important Social Artefacts, and are a part of many communities’ shared experience. State of Origin, Lost, the iPad launch are all examples of public events that form a focus for interaction for many different groups. A lot of this activity is now happening online, through fan pages, hashtags, forums and general conversation.

A lot of people watch TV and discuss it with others watching the same things. Online Back channel conversations around TV shows, live events, launches and sport are more visible than before, thanks to platforms like Twitter and Facebook, adding an interactive social dimension to an otherwise passive experience. This behaviour is not new, but it used to be confined to narrow interest groups in their own online communities, with little visibility to those who are not already directly engaged.

TV’s place as a standalone source of entertainment and information has diminished over the last decade. The proliferation of mobile Internet-capable devices such as laptops, netbooks and smartphones have made it easy to consume content and interact with others while watching TV. This behaviour will probably become even more prominent in future, especially with products like Google TV.

There is a very interesting section in the Google TV Developers area:

  • Remember that TV is social.
    • Consider how groups might use your website or application.
    • Offer ways for individuals to use your site or apps in social settings.

Integrating the Back channel conversations around the content, and making it more visible than even Twitter’s hashtags will enhance the experience for the average user. With most social networks supporting cross-posting, posting out to the user’s Twitter and Facebook feeds from the TV based app, even a message as simple as “/me is watching Show” would be an effective form of social proof for the show exposed to the user’s friends. Similar tools are already being used by games.

Once a best practice has been established for TV as a platform, in terms of interface and hardware useability, this may be the killer app that keeps TV in the living room, and not just for consoles, media boxes, or Blu-Ray players.

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I/O, a Future Social TV and Browser Aps

May 21, 2010 in Online by Anthony | 2 comments

A new version of Android, new APIs and “Google TV” were some of the things announced at this year’s Google I/O conference. The Chrome App Store and Google’s acquisition of SimplifyMedia were also announced at this event. They are all interesting developments with the potential to have a huge impact on how we consume content online.

Google TV

The idea of viewing the Internet on a TV is not new, but Google’s implementation based on Google Chrome will be a long way ahead of those old thin clients. There is only a small niche market for media boxes and computers connecting TVs to their home networks, and Google TV promises to drive this trend into the mainstream.

In the blog post announcing Google TV, the line “With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web” really stood out. Combining Internet and TV in one device will create a far richer experience by simplifying access to a wider variety of content. Simplifying access and integrating streams of social media content around existing audio/visual content could be very interesting.

There is already a highly active Backchannel about certain TV shows, reality TV, interviews and news. Twitter, with its transparency, effective search tools and the use of hashtags is a great example of this. Currently this turns watching TV into a far more social experience and offers social proof to others watching the feed that supports program promotional activity.

Chrome’s Browser Application Shop

The Chrome Web Store is a browser based application marketplace. The applications are “…regular web applications that are built with standard web tools and technologies” that will run in any current or future generation browser. As discussed in Mozilla Ponders an “Open” Web App Store on ReadWriteWeb.com, developers can make their applications ‘installable’ for Chrome through building the applications into a .crx file.

Aside from the open source discussion, the Chrome Web Store will simplify making money from applications for developers. With the credibility of the Google brand and a centralised store with billing support for an otherwise niche product, the application market for browsers will improve. Creating a software market not tied to a device or operating system, but rather to a browser, will also help to create a device-agnostic computing environment.

Google’s approach is different to the operating system based route that Microsoft is taking. Google Chrome OS, Chrome Web Store and Google’s current range of services and tools available online are all a part of a trend towards cloud computing aimed at the average user. The application store for Chrome might also increase the number of users for the browser, similar to the way that applications have shaped the Smartphone market.

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A whole lot of tubes

May 19, 2010 in Online, Search, Social by Anthony | 2 comments

Most apparent behaviour on the Internet is a result of people attempting to complete a task using a distributed network of connections and tools. Not all of this takes place on the World Wide Web. There are a lot of different tools that use the Internet to locate, collate and move information, such as Kindle, iTunes, Steam and BitTorrent clients.

Even through the web, the methods used to locate and consume information are diverse. From search to portals to socially generated recommendations, there is a huge range of navigational nodes online that shape the user’s experience. Focusing on what information is consumed and where, rather than on what the user is trying to do, can be very myopic.

Find music with only the Internet

Find music with only the Internet, Click for full size.

For example, what if the user wants to listen to music? With access to a computer and a browser they may go to YouTube, or the site of a band recommended in an email from a friend. With P2P software like a BitTorrent client they may use inbuilt search tools and download it via a peer network. They could also use iTunes to find, choose and purchase a song without touching a browser. Ultimately all these methods use the Internet, but only one is dependent on the World Wide Web.  This does not even start to consider devices other than a traditional computer.

Nodes and Friction

Each mode of content location and acquisition uses a different set of nodes and they can range from invisible to obstructive. Each one is another opportunity for the gatekeeper of the node to create friction and shape experience. Search and social sites have contextual advertising, Internet Explorer treats incorrect URLs as search queries, DNS services can redirect mistyped or incorrect URLs and the iPad does not support Flash.

Nodes such as portal sites, search engines, social networks and applications such as Steam control and direct attention in different ways. Each gives the user different tools to discover content, with different levels of friction placed between the user and what they wish to do.

Some sites use a disruptive model and place ads in front of the user, using available data to tailor their ads. Applications like iTunes and Steam operate as shopfronts and work to minimalise frictions between the user and the buy button. They help the user find, acquire and consume the media with the least effort, and generate sales in the process.

Why attention matters more

The internet is an environment where there is almost limitless content and space to display it in. The scarcity is with attention. The limits on the size of the audience and the amount of time they spend online are far more immediate than potential advertising inventory. Unlike traditional media, the Internet does not have a page limit, nor is it restricted by spectrum or the number of hours in a day. The low cost of storing and moving data, the asynchronous nature of most content and the ability to generate more content automatically or through user activity changes its value. There is no value in just existing; there is no ‘only two papers in town’ or ‘only three TV networks’ online. Online, the value of a node is in how much attention it affects. Each one is an opportunity to distribute attention among the next group of nodes in the chain.

Why the Task Model

How most people use and access the Internet has changed over the last few years. The ubiquity of Internet capable devices is as significant a factor as the prevalence of fast and wireless home connections. While the Internet on a phone in some form is not new, large numbers of people with fast and easy access is. A proliferation of applications designed to give access to content independent of the World Wide Web is significant too.

Social networks, both formalised like forums and Facebook, and ad hoc such as email, will remain a factor, as well as portal sites like Yahoo! and search engines. These tools for content distribution and discovery are not being replaced, they are just being supplemented.

The user’s aims and knowledge determine their actions online. The channels they use do have an impact on the kinds of information they access, how they access it and how they locate new material. As the Internet becomes richer in content and tools, it will also continue to fragment and change. We have gone a long way from the Internet being tied to a desktop computer through just a browser or email client, but the user will always have a want or desire that they wish to meet, and they will use whatever tools are available to do it.

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What is the value of your privacy?

May 13, 2010 in Advertising, Online, Social by Anthony | No comments

For value for money it is hard to top Facebook. It costs nothing and in return you can host photos and videos, communicate with people all over the world, consume vast amounts of content, create groups and participate in various communities. To create and host something similar yourself would cost a lot of time and money.

Free sites and services like Facebook, YouTube, and Google Search still have to pay their developers, provide hosting, repay investors and generate revenue to keep it all going. Traffic, registered users and great PR do not pay the bills by themselves; at some point cash needs to be involved. This is where the interests of those providing the services and those using them diverge.

Free at a price

There will always be a cost to the end user, and if it is not cash it will be something else. Lack of technical support, poor documentation, slow bug fixes, compromised privacy and exposure to advertising are a few ways operating costs are managed and paid for. Some paid services suffer some of these issues as well, but they are not the norm.

When the user pays, there is a clear cost in losing them and therefore higher expectations of service. When the service is free and the costs are paid for by advertisers and investors, creating value for them is important for the business. The advertising model is often the first choice for generating revenue and targeted traffic or impressions, and richer forms of display advertising become more important. When the user pays, creating value for them becomes important to the business.

Facebook appears to be going through this process now. A lot of the recent changes seem to create more value for advertisers than for some segments of their community. With Facebook being such a dominating presence, this is generating a lot of discussion. With all this focus on user control over data and experience, Diaspora could not have begun development at a better time.

Will you pay?

Diaspora as a social media platform will be interesting, and potentially very disruptive to this space. It looks easily accessible for many users, either through Turnkey or individually installed and operated servers. As a distributed network of easily installed and managed ‘Seeds’ across a variety of servers, Diaspora can be compared to WordPress. Based on the offers on Kickstart for funding, it seems that while the software will be free, access to Turnkey servers and technical support will cost money.

Diaspora at the very least will place a dollar value on privacy and control over your social media profiles, and it will ask one other question: Will you pay for access to a social media platform, either through hosting or a Turnkey server?

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The Network Effect as a Bell Curve

May 11, 2010 in Online, Social by Anthony | 7 comments

Social media sites depend on the Network Effect, or Network Externality. Obviously Twitter, Facebook and so on would be useless if you were the only person to ever login or publish information. I would argue that the usefulness of a transparent social network as a place to share personal information with friends or others declines as the population increases.

Network Effect as a Bell Curve

Network Effect as a Bell Curve

  1. Populated by purported ‘social media gurus’ or bored IT staff. That’s it.
  2. Early adopters can find their immediate circle of friends.
  3. That guy who made primary school miserable for you wants to become your friend.
  4. Ignoring your coworkers’ friend requests becomes harder to sustain.
  5. Boomers are commenting on their kids’ party photos, thanks to friends tagging them.
  6. Traditional media is reporting on all of those off-colour pages your profile links to, as funny as they were at the time.

The graph charts a hypothetical relationship between the population size and the level of engagement in a transparent social network. The points on the curve are more illustrative than literal.

As the number of people in a social network increases, the amount of control an individual has over their profile erodes. The causes can range from a lack of understanding of privacy controls, progressive loss of privacy due to changes in the site’s settings or even incidental information posted about you by others in your network.

In this environment people learn to hold more of themselves back. They share less and start to use social networks to project a controlled image of themselves for social and professional purposes. Sometimes they move their more open interactions to a different, more controllable platform, like Diaspora promises to be.

Leaving a densely populated social site is not the answer; changes in behaviour are far more likely than abandonment of established networks. Do you think this is the case? Are your habits changing as more people become a part of your extended networks? Or do you continue to share?

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Microsoft, Bing and Spindex being Social

May 9, 2010 in Online, Social by Anthony | No comments

Shop and Share with Bing was announced earlier this week. Integrating sharing links within product searches is not exactly groundbreaking. The idea that social proof works to drive purchasing behaviour online is not new. A number of different sites such as mypicklist.com (now gone), ThisNext.com and Amazon through their ratings and owned product lists support this. What is interesting is that this is another way in which Search Engines are beginning to act like portals.

The team behind Bing has shown a willingness to be as creative as Google in their approach to search. From launch, Bing has been referred to as a decision engine, and they seem focused on this goal. The Microsoft Fuse Labs Spindex project using Bing certainly matches this aim. It is an inclusive integration of the user’s social network into their search experience. The Search Engine Result Page (SERP) is influenced by the behaviour of members of the user’s social networks. This looks like an extension of what Google is doing with Social Search and in a way is a good demonstration of just how pervasive a social Internet can be.

The Preview of the new Windows Live Messenger also shows real intent to move into this area. Bringing social content together through a stand alone application, one which millions of people will certainly already have installed on their computers at some point, will be interesting.

Between a fragmenting web and social content being used across multiple platforms and tools including search and general content discovery, the online experience of any two people attempting to complete the same task will very rarely match. There are a number of ways to move around this, such as building a branded query space, becoming the portal or controlling the platform or device they use. Of course not adapting is always an option as well.

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A Million Different Internets

April 25, 2010 in Advertising, Online by Anthony | No comments

Almost no-one accesses the Internet. What most users access is a selection information determined to varying degrees by their own behaviour, and the nature of the gatekeepers, such as ISP, browsers, applications, DNS, platforms, language, social networks and online nodes such as search engines and portal sites. The Internet has always been a media especially prone to creating silos of information and homogeneous communities, however increasingly behavioural and real world factors are having a greater impact than before.

Organic factors such as user interest and active social behaviour has always influenced what a person might see and experience online. Someone with no interest or no friends who are interested in esoteric information like Babylon 5 are not likely to hear much about it if they do not actively seek it. There is less chance of being exposed to information they have no interest in on the Internet than in most mass media. Of course the larger the social network of the individual and the greater their direct involvement, the more information outside of their immediate sphere of interest they will be exposed to.

None of these factors are unique to the Internet. The tools available online make it possible to interact with more people in some way then was even possible before. The speed and diversity of content that can be shared online has no parallel in history, but ultimately, it’s just people being people online. What has become increasingly important is the influence of location, device, software and sites or platforms that actively use user generated data to shape your online experience.

The technology to change what is shown by IP, cookies, logged in accounts, OS and browsers are not a new innovation. Their implementation online is becoming more apparent with more obvious use and a proliferation of Internet capable devices in the population. This trend covers commercial sites, social media, news and search engines. It affects content from advertising, articles through to search listings.

Personalised Search

Currently, one of the most interesting things about Personalised Search is the averages users complete ignorance of it. Personalisation of content thought to be consistent for all who access it will have interesting social ramifications. Most users are not actually aware that their own behaviour, and at some point the behaviour of people they are connected to through their Google products, will have an effect on what appears where in their search results.

Google has for a lot of people become a portal, with users retrieving information through the search box with keywords they have learnt, or told to use. This change in user experience of information retrieval for sites other than brand and generic terms may discourage users from being so totally dependant on Google Search acting as a replacement for sharing and directing accessing URLs.

Cross Platform Content Consumption

Not all content works on all platforms. Mobile browsers are far more sophisticated than they were when WAP was the standard, and most web content is now easily accessible on mobile devices, with a few notable exceptions such as flash. Due to differences in screen size and interface some sites will serve a different site to different devices.

Location Aware

With IP addresses, the ability to serve different content to users from different locations has been available for ages. No where is this more apparent then in search. What is new is how location aware applications are now using device APIs to access information from the GPS chip. This location data makes it possible to serve information based on a far more granular level than is possible through IP addresses.

User Experience and Advertising

Delivering the right message to the right person in the right place at the right time is as important for advertising as it can be for sharing information. Delivering relevant information from trusted sources in the right place and time to a user who has demonstrated an interest does go a long way towards managing the huge volume of information available. There is a cost associated with this, including privacy and an increasingly myopic view on the Internet, especially with content that is currently assumed by the average user to be consistent for all.

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