Posts tagged as:

Facebook

Is the web becoming a funnel?

by nick on November 6, 2011

The modern business model from Silicon Valley is build. Don’t just make a computer, make digital products (as Steve Jobs said by launching a music player, then a music store, then a phone). Build and build again is what the dominant players are showing us to be the winning formula.

Google was just a search engine, Apple was just about consumer electronics, Amazon was just a bookstore and Facebook was just a social network. No more.

These four colossal companies all appear to want to channel us down their particular funnels and have you ride their own track as you consume all things digital. To paraphrase the eloquent John Battelle, Google used to equal search, now they equal Chrome, YouTube, Android, Docs, Gmail, Maps, Places, Voices, self-driving cars, energy research, Adwords, Google+ and Motorola. And let’s not forget possibly their biggest opportunity for a true golden goose: Google TV.

This Fab Four will make the scale of Murdoch’s empire look about as impressive as a Lego village. Their dominance of technology, media and data over our lives will be insurmountable. Google is expected to bring in more than $30 billion this year. Analysts expect Amazon to reach $100 billion in revenue by 2015, faster than any other company. You need to stand up when you hear Apple’s annual growth numbers: net profit up 85% to $25.9 billion (£16.5 billion). In just Q3 of this year (obviously not their largest without Christmas sales), Apple turned over $28,571,000,000*. Read that number again – it’s genuinely staggering. They sold over 17 million iPhones in their financial Q4!

Such is the significance of the Fab Four, that we barely even think of Microsoft in the same vein. Arguably the largest of them all and the business choice of the world, Microsoft simply isn’t in the running for our hearts and minds like these guys are. They’re in their own cold war with each other, leveraging the juxtaposition of the web in that the low barrier of entry shouldn’t allow such monopolistic companies to exist. Yet again, what shouldn’t be possible, actually proves true online.

Each of the Fab Four want to build an ecosystem. Think about smartphones, tablets, apps, cloud storage, social networking, gaming, music, TV, or movies and all fit into their strategic map of web’s future – their own corner of the web.

I can’t help but think this is taking the open web and making silos for the user. Amazons new tablet, the Fire, doesn’t like you to browse around the web too easily, but if you want to download a movie from Amazon or buy shoes from their marketplace, then that’ll be a piece of cake.

There’s an element of lock in. I don’t necessarily mind that it’ll be a bit stifling, but the decision you make with your hardware may well dictate how easily you can consume software and content in the future.

It’s a bit like choosing to buy a car having the knowledge of exactly where and how you’ll drive it in the future. Suddenly what you buy becomes far more than we’ve traditionally dealt with when buying a laptop or a PC i.e. size, speed and storage.

It’s like buying a new BMW. Not happy just with selling you the metal, plastic and rubber, BMW build a bunch of roads and would very much prefer it if you drove only on them. And they’d like you to use their fuel stations as they’ll hook up with your car far easier than any other (perhaps auto payments through number plate recognition). And BMW have plans afoot to offer you destinations too that will stop you going to the beach or Center Parcs or the shopping centre – the BMW equivalent will be better, more secure and more ‘holistic’ to your vehicle.

It’s hugely exciting to see these guys slug it out on the global scale and change our lives through innovation. It’s a shame none of them are British. Who are you backing to be the winner or can they coexist?

*The numbers and much of the facts came from an excellent post by Farhad Manjoo.

{ 0 comments }

Ping vs Facebook vs The World

by nick on October 6, 2010

Social networking is all the rage with web and mobile usage catching business’s eye with the Web 3.0.

Sony launched their cloud-based content service, Qriocity, recently. With their product range and reach, they should get some traction for their downloads.

IBM is set to, according to Jeffrey Schick, IBM’s VP of Social Software, “better connect people with people and people with information.” They’ve had their own internal global networking for 15 years and they plan on giving the business world access to this type of software in the cloud.

And, of course the world has gone wild with Apple’s Ping. Again that’ll get traction, but the blogosphere is arguing over whether they’ll rival Facebook or not. They wont. Nothing will. Facebook is like coffee: it appeals to pretty much everybody.

No one will surpass Facebook’s numbers for take up. There are plenty of other social networks, and there’ll be loads more to come but none will hold a candle to FB. It’s been the Ford [motors] of the web, a revolution and game changer that might fade over time but whose originality and scale can’t be emulated.

What they will do is be ‘more’ social. More specific, more like-minded, less scattergun. A contact will be more of a contact rather than a random insignificant ‘friend.’

And the killer difference with the less is more approach of Apple is that they’ve got consumers, not users (credit cards linked to iTunes!). Jobs isn’t interested in getting everyone’s granny onboard for free, he’ll leave that to Facebook.

I know it’s living within iTunes but it’s just a shame Ping’s URL has gone on that pesky social networking updating site (ping.fm) and the golf firm (ping.com).

{ 0 comments }

Ubiquitous Facebook

by nick on June 12, 2010

Go out with a group of friends and notice how many times Facebook crops up. Did you see it on Facebook… don’t put that on Facebook… I read about your holiday on Facebook… are you on Facebook (instead of the hassle of swapping mobile numbers). It really is becoming ubiquitous with socialising.

Where there are customers, companies will follow suit (like lions to the zebra). Every vertical from retail to radio; from celebrity to cinema are clambering to get aboard the good ship Zuckerberg.

Simple example: the Radio 1 Xtra blog is now their Facebook page. The BBC has scores of blogs and other social media eye candy but Facebook makes it easier for people to comment (and spam), to ‘like’, to interact with. This equals an increase in engagement – isn’t that the Holy Grail that marketers crave so badly?

What’s the problem then? Well, after flipping their privacy policy three times, Facebook has the same level of trust as your average politician. A-list tech folks have deleted their accounts in protest. Well, they tried. It’s a lot harder than you’d think.

So, crucially, whose data is it? Facebook would say it’s yours, but this difficulty in exporting/copying your data and then deleting what Facebook and its partner sites are holding for you says otherwise.

It also looks awful and if every site ends up migrating there my brain will melt from the bland sameness that threatens my screen. The explosion of the web is more than partly to do with the fact that individuals have become the creators – the publishers. Instead of doing this individually through their own HTML skills, or via blogs or micro sites, we’re facing the Borg. Star Trek fan or not, do you really want to join the Borg?

Regardless of shelving your existing content and only publishing on Facebook, there’s a real possibility that Facebook becomes the portal to the web. You can vote by liking items all over the web but there will be a covert element to this because data and consumer habits, along with profiling, is pure fertiliser to the advertiser.

You’ll also stay logged in and even though you go off and surf elsewhere, because you’re logged in, all your habits and actions are registered. Google are extremely clever with their AdSense but Facebook threatens to become so clued in as to make AdSense look like an abacus versus a scientific calculator.

Virtual currency, micro money, Facebook Connect, store fronts, adverts, gaming and the ever growing social graph (The Open Graph as Facebook call it) etc, etc mean Facebook is THE force to be reckoned with online.

A crucial argument from the protesters is that the pure web is open. Facebook are closed and – arguably – they stand to gain more by remaining closed. Come behind our walled garden, fertilise our product by increasing your interaction, and growing the whole ecosystem, and we’ll cash in from your data. Incidentally it’s the same data that we keep changing our privacy policy on.

Some would say it’s giving the web over to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO. My problem isn’t necessarily with Zuckerberg’s leadership; the moneymen will be sure to right that ship. My problem is the possibility of it becoming the de facto site on the Internet.

Facebook has an amazing product. It’s staggering in size and hugely successful. If you’d built something 1,000th the size then you could pat yourself on the back for a monumental achievement. But if the populous web migrates there, I for one will be calling on Captain Kirk to save the day and defeat the Borg.

{ 0 comments }

Defending social media attacks

by nick on April 28, 2010

Nestle are used to their fair share of bad press; students the world over have seen to that. But March 2010 is when they will go into social media case study history.

For anyone who’s not read the full saga, here’s the short version: a video was staged which drew a play on eating Kit-Kat and orangutans’ fingers. Nestle had the video taken down but, of course, it reappeared. They chased it around the ‘net like a drunk trying to bath a cat and made life pretty miserable for themselves by fumbling over logo violations when Greenpeace were organised.

I’m struggling here between ethics and communication tactics. If you make a bad product – deem that as you will – then, with or without a great web interaction, you deserve to be called on it. But, lets assume you aren’t evil personified and you deserve your place in the world of commerce, what do you do when attacked online?

Despite what some experts portray, social media isn’t always a simple mirror, signal, manoeuvre affair. On top of the immense variables, there is the fear of inflaming situations, adding sugar to the fermenting jar that forums and blog comments can become. I don’t believe there is a definitive three, five or ten-point plan. Social media has only one absolute for all organisations: listening. If it’s nothing else for you, it’s an opportunity to listen.

That said, Seth Godin believes he’s got an answer: brands in public. He launched this aggregator back in September last year.

Strangely for a Godin fanboy I wasn’t convinced at launch. And after six months or so I can’t say I’m overly impressed with their client list – no Coke, no Cisco, no Microsoft, all of whom are being critiqued hugely online. If anything, is this not a $400/month garden where a bad ‘vibe’ can grow? From a brand manager’s standpoint, doesn’t she prefer any negatives to be disparate across the web, rather than collate neatly in one screenshot? Of course, the positives mentioned online will also look more powerful together.

Which brings us right back to our variables problem: join in and risk inflaming the situation or enter and solve problems with a swath of your service sword? The trouble is unless the Nestles of the world truly engage (as in adopt some of their philosophies, ecological or otherwise) with the likes of Greenpeace, they’re likely to find hugging a tree has morphed into overtaking a Facebook wall as the militant tool of choice.

But don’t be frozen by fear. The wonderful John Battelle at Federated Media recently wrote, “…all of our customers are already operating in social media. You can’t pretend otherwise. And it’s better to engage, make mistakes, admit those mistakes, and move on, than to not engage at all. I call this “conversational judo,” and suggest we all practice it, daily. Twice on Sunday, perhaps….”

Touché.

{ 0 comments }

Credit checks merge with social media

by nick on December 19, 2009

NewYorkerSketchAs we increase our personal openness and honesty via social media, so too are we appraised more as data-mining never had the chance to go so deep.

Californian data-mining company Rapleaf are at the bleeding edge of social media monitoring (SMM). Short version: they track everything about you online – every comment, every review, every status update, every tweet, every contact, every friend and they appraise you via some massive algorithms.

This pretty much promises to offer the Holy Grail for advertising online where uber-relevant adverts are delivered to you and your peer group. But Rapleaf are taking that peer group and going further than ads – they’re suggesting credit ratings! A ‘prospect’ might fail a credit score rating but their closest online friends are quite affluent, so perhaps some extra leeway should be given (they wouldn’t see you on the street would they?).

Given that we know all this, how long before people start spamming the system? In a view to becoming more credible, will the scumbag hook up with the solicitor, doctor and police officer? If an online friend will upset your credit score, would you oust them? Will this lead to appraising people who ‘poke’ you to see if they lift or drop your ‘perceived value’ to the market (think mortgage providers for a start)?

If you thought social media was free, you’re wrong. Facebook is inching toward its big payday and Rapleaf and others are offering tools that help social media grease the skids nicely.

Cartoon: the infamous “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” by Peter Steiner originally published by The New Yorker in 1993.

{ 0 comments }

Tweeting frustration

by nick on August 16, 2009

tomasackerJust read Tom Asacker’s post on frustration and I needed to rebroadcast:

Marketers, we need you now, more than ever, to be the voice of value creation for the benefit of your organizations and other brand constituents (customers, suppliers, communities, et al). So please don’t let the frustration, and persistence, of the Social Web ecosystem cause you to aimlessly invest those scarce resources in “following,” “friending” or “tweeting.”

Some are proving there is a benefit to social media but don’t forget Twitter, Facebook, etc are all tools. Merely tools, not the whole ball game itself. If your business is using them successfully then kudos to you. If you’re employing them but not gaining value, then you must realise they’re no longer tools, they’ve become toys.

Does anyone rave on about email, fax or telephone use in business anymore? When did you last hear someone brag about their team’s wonderful clearing of their inboxes? All very useful, but tools nonetheless.

{ 0 comments }

Facebook faux pas

by nick on July 8, 2009

The Times is reporting on a modern classic. The Facebook faux pas is a recent phenomenon witnessed too closely by the head of MI6 as he was outed by his wife on her Facebook wall.

spooks2From the piece: …entries by his [Sir John Sawers'] wife Shelley on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, their friends’ identities and where they spend their holidays. On the day her husband was appointed she congratulated him on the site using his codename “C”.

As Yoda said, “Be mindful of your thoughts Obi Wan, they betray you.”

{ 0 comments }

Google buys Twitter

by nick on March 5, 2009

twitter_logoWell, that’s my prediction. They’ll stop burning dollars acquiring paper mills and fork out $750+ million for Twitter.

Twitter is the most popular and certainly the most talked about social media tool of the moment, yet there’s no clear indication on how they’ll monetise the whole shebang. They raised another $35 million in venture capital last month but to what end?

If you concede that Google want to know far more about you and your digital habits along with the world at large, this source would make an obvious acquisition. The speed at which trends and news appear on Twitter is unmatched elsewhere on the web. Google could leverage this into their algorithm and gain much more real-time searching (certainly opposed to Google News).

Of course, we’re not privy to the magic that’s being created right now in Mountain View where Google’s rocket scientists wave their wands over the web with reckless talent. Have they got a Twitter-killer waiting in the wings? Personally I doubt it. And if they have, will it be another Google Video which was always the poor cousin to YouTube – remember Google later bought YouTube purely to get that online video foothold?

They’re into harvesting strategies and don’t need to monetise everything immediately. Again, YouTube teaches us that. So the lack of income at Twitter won’t be such a problem; the data is the treasure worth the capital outlay. Although, Twitter wont keep its monopoly forever – when you show the market what’s it’s capable of, it rarely stands and applauds for long. Immitation is immenant.

Then again, others might get to the buy-out first. Facebook is reported to have offered $500 million and Carol Bartz could do with creating some buzz about Yahoo other than dismal reports of staff exoduses. Either of these firms would be salivating at the thought of gaining those 6 million Twitterers and all that live data.

What do you reckon? Do you think Google will crush Twitter, buy Twitter or just look at it like a play-thing in the corner?

{ 0 comments }

Are you a Facebook narcissist?

by nick on October 13, 2008

Does social networking demand you be an extrovert?

Maybe, maybe not. But a Facebook account makes you a narcissist. I read it on the Beeb so it must be true. Unless your name is Elmo Keep – she’s not allowed to be.

{ 0 comments }