Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Facebook just had their annual developers' conference and announced a few interesting changes to their empire.  The New York Times reported on a few of these that are especially interesting - Facebook Connect and the Great Apps program.

Facebook Connect makes Facebook users' credentials and their friends portable.  This is pretty powerful in that it allows small companies and opportunity to develop services external to the Facebook domain that take advantage of the fairly significant existing user base (and their networks).  So it's advantageous to independent developers and as such should spur more innovation, and probably more meaningless clutter as well.  It's advantageous to Facebook as they can start to open up the walled garden in a very controlled way. 

As for the user themselves? Well, in some ways it's a step in the right direction. On the other hand it doesn't go the complete distance that adopting OpenID would in giving users ownership of their social graph.  At the end of the day it's all about balancing user needs against business needs and this will continue to be a work in progress for anyone trying to drive profit from social networking.

On the other side of the coin, Facebook also announced the "Great Apps" program - essentially a certification program designed to elevate 'meaningful' applications up out of the vast sea of mediocrity that makes up the Facebook application collection. Obviously not their words. 

Anyway, there's obviously a ton of completely useless Facebook apps out there and as a result a continually increasing likliehood of application burn-out and backlash.  There are ways to filter, but some sort of "seal of approval" isn't a bad idea, provided the results resonate with the user base.

The nice thing is that, in theory, the "Great Apps" won't be limited to the big players.  Applications will be considered when they exemplify all ten of Facebook's guiding principles for a social application.  These principles are actually a pretty good representation of best practices for creating a successful social networking marketing program.  At the end of the day, how well something exemplifies the ten principles is probably quite subjective.  But gaining "Great Apps" status seems like a worthwhile bonus metric.  At the very least, making an honest effort to exceed the criteria for each principle can only benefit the program.

The principle I think many marketing-born apps miss out on is "useful" - although Facebook includes "entertainment" in that category, kind of a big loophole and likely to be one many gravitate towards.  And I'd add something that seems missing from Facebook's ten principles - creating a "find".  iLike, one of the first Great App selections, does meet Facebook's ten principles as well as providing an engine for one of the classic "finds"- new music. Users can share music they've discovered and ideally garner appreciation.  Maybe that's covered by Facebook's "useful" principle, but worth explicitly keeping in mind IMHO. 

David Lewis

I'm a big fan of wine and would love to say that I spend my free time jetting off to the various regions of Italy, Spain and France to taste the latest offerings from the wine producers there. In fact, I would love to say that I spend my free time just making it to a tasting somewhere here in NYC. Unfortunately, my schedule mostly doesn't permit it. If you find yourself in a similar situation at times, you can thank Twitter for helping to change all that for you.

Twitter has been used by a new wine company, Bin Ends, located in Braintree, Massachusetts, to facilitate online wine tastings. Dozens of people, armed with their Twitter accounts, participated recently in the now-monthly tastings that will be held on the third Thursday of every month.

To do this, Bin Ends first sent out the list of wines that were going to be tasted weeks in advance to allow the oenophiles the chance to go out and buy them - preferably through Bin Ends' online or brick-and-mortar store. Then, tweets were sent by Bin Ends from their Twitter account to the other Twitter users that were "following" them to spread the time and date of the tasting. Finally, when the day arrived, additional tweets were sent out from Bin Ends telling the tasters which wine to taste next as well as thoughts from the distributors about the wine.

As each wine was tasted, the comments started pouring in. Overall the response from the tasters was positive. Craig Drollett of Bin Ends said that "there wasn't a single negative comment that came across." To ensure that people were not isolated in their tastings, Drollett says, "[w]e encouraged people to get a group of friends together and pop the laptop up on the table with the bottles of wine."

For more information, or to sign up, check out http://www.binendswine.com/tastings.

Chris Patten

It's Digg meets Yahoo! Answers. It's IdeaStorm meets Wii's Everybody Votes. Sure, Edopter is taking from a lot of things that already exist, but that is part of what makes it so easy to use.

Placing themselves in a new bucket called social trendcasting, Edopter claims to "combine your insight and worldwide buzz to tap into the next big thing. Create and follow trends, share and discuss them - then watch as they spread across the world." It's an innovative concept that combines user generated content, social voting, influencer data, and internet buzz measurement to track the popularity of trends over time.

There is a lot to like about Edopter. The interface is intuitive and there are many useful graphs to help you track your trends. I also like the idea of users gaining not just points, but a portfolio of predicted trends and an opportunity to acquire recognition and "exclusive stuff". However, just like many other start-up web applications, the site is attracting early adopters and thus skewing the accuracy of the trend measurement. In what other world could Semantic Web be on the top 10 most popular trends across all categories?

Marta Strickland

(image credit: FCW Insider blog)

Web 3.0 has been a fairly exciting subject in the industry for many of us. Over the past few years, we've been watching what Web 2.0 has done to our daily lives, the way we talk with our friends, the way we find information, the way we shop, the way we navigate the web, and even the way we navigate the world we live in. It's empowering, and it seems only natural to ask... well, what's next?

Still, there is one fairly large area that influences our lives that has been left off of the list in the Web 2.0 Awards. While there are many remarkable examples in the categories of education, health, and real estate, there hasn't been an award given for a best US Government 2.0 website. The revolution just hasn't happened yet, and considering the philosophy of Web 2.0, it is easy to understand why. Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb describes the philosophy as "letting go of control, sharing ideas and code, building on what others have built, and freeing your data." While that doesn't sound like something the government would ever embrace, there are some major signs that the revolution is approaching.

The Signs...

I cannot claim to have come up with the catchy phrase or this great simple, engaging, and to the point presentation on social media. But nevertheless, I have to do my part to support Marta's in Social Media, and thus I am putting my seal of approval on this great presentation from Marta Kagan.

Is it revolutionary? No. Is there anything we haven't heard before? Probably not. The important thing it's fun and that it's right. It's all the stuff that we have been blogging, preaching, reading, and tweeting for the past few years, only to the point with fun graphics and those great top-level gut-punching numbers.

Marta Strickland

By now most of you probably have heard about Google's latest assault on the social network front: Google Friend Connect. It promises every Webmaster and site designer the addition of social features to his or her website with minimal effort. No server software to install, zero configuration, and no programming required, all one has to do is to embed snippets of code provided by Google on the target webpages. Once the Google Friend Connect becomes part of your site, users of Facebook, Orkut, Google Talk and other compatible social networks can start interacting on your site engaging in various social activities.
 
This is indeed a great boost to small/independent site developers. It is also an exciting time to many social network observers: No one is too surprised that Google, being an uncharacteristic underdog in this realm, attempts to disrupt the marketplace with an open strategy. But considering that MySpace also announced its Data Availability, followed by the Facebook Connect revelation, the data portability movement seems finally gaining steam and heading toward realization. So what would be the implications of meta social networking?
 
The "Long Tail" phenomenon may become even more pronounced
Chris Anderson's The Long Tail article on Wired Magazine illustrated the power of niche communications tailored to personal tastes and interests. Ubiquitous social networking features have the potential to penetrate each and every imaginable niche markets. The "tail" would only get longer and fatter.
 
Social networks may gradually turn into a commodity
The long decline of the PC industry is well-documented. Over the years, the PC market has transformed from one filled with unique products to a low-margin business selling undifferentiated generics. Should the personal data on social networks become fully (or close to) fully interchangeable, it'd be very difficult to prevent the eventual commoditization.
 
Valuations of social network companies may start to deflate
While no one took it seriously when the MySpace's ousted founder Brad Greenspan declared the valuation of his creation to be $20 billion, YouTube was indeed sold for $1.65 billion and Rupert Murdoch also said MySpace might be worth $6 billion. The climax came when Microsoft paid $240 million for only 1.6% share of Facebook, effectively giving it a jaw-dropping $15 billion valuation. If the aforementioned commoditization of social networks starts to take place... watch out.
 
Fang-Yu Lin

Since its entrance into popular culture, the internet has always worked to empower consumers, just by the innate nature of the medium. The wealth of data and improved tools to access that data gave consumers access to information more efficiently than they ever had before. Web 2.0 introduced a new culture of passionate empowered consumers. Their desire was to not only extract value from the internet, but to contribute to an ongoing dialogue with other like-minded consumers. More recently, those conversations have extended beyond user to user, and consumers are able to collaborate directly with the brands they are passionate about.

Consumer collaboration is one of the booming social sectors of the year with numerous branded collaboration tools launching daily. Dell's IdeaStorm and My Starbucks Idea are commonly used examples of how consumers can help influence product or service improvements. But, the more comprehensive list of brands involved in crowdsourcing and "white label" social networks is immense. In fact, the list is probably far shorter for brands not currently involved or planning to become involved in some form of consumer collaboration.

Brands are not just collaborating with consumers to gain insights for product improvements. Forrester has broken common objectives into 5 specific categories. Brands are using online communities to listen, to talk, to energize advocates, to support customers, and to embrace consumer ideas. Recent brands to "energize advocates" include SeaWorld and Nike. SeaWorld nurtured rollercoaster enthusiasts with rich video content and Nike featured a top community member in a commercial.

With such a huge growth in consumer collaboration tools, it was just a matter of time before the free, "create your own My Starbucks Idea" tool came forward. Enter UserVoice:

"UserVoice is a way to harness the innovation and ideas of customers and potential customers. It's a way to improve the signal-to-noise of user opinion, and to moderate the ideas of one against the opinions of the many. It's Satisfaction meets Digg. It's focus groups for companies that can't afford focus groups."

Although UserVoice hasn't been put to the enterprise level traffic challenge, it does offer much in the way of simplicity and integration into other useful tools, such as Google Analytics. The clean design is reminiscent of a 37Signals product, which makes the learning curve pretty manageable. This makes it an attractive solution for many companies with or without a product, who might not have otherwise got into consumer collaboration. One example is Jeremiah Owyang, who is using UserVoice to take suggestions on how to improve his blog.

This is just further proof that it is a great time to be a consumer. Whether it is big brands using robust collaboration tools with large communities or micro-niche brands engaging smaller groups in a more intimate conversation, there seems to be a movement on all fronts to truly give every consumer a voice.

Marta Strickland

Burma has been on everyone's mind in the last few days as a result of the catastrophic cyclone that struck on Friday, killing as many as 10,000 people.  It's a tragic way to bring the appalling human rights situation in Burma back to the forefront of the collective consciousness after the monk-led anti-government protests of September 2007 failed to bring about any changes.

My mother is Burmese and I have plenty of family living in Rangoon/Yangon.  One of my cousins was arrested and beaten by the Burmese government for his association with opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.  For me and for anyone concerned about the Burmese political situation, it's hard not to feel powerless in the face of an immovable military regime.

The U.S. Campaign for Burma is taking an interesting and provocative approach to making Burma relevant, refusing apathy and sending the message that collectively, we can do something about the situation.  In conjunction with the Human Rights Action Center and social shopping site Fanista, they have created a 30-day campaign that uses short celebrity videos to raise awareness of the plight of the worlds only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient and the atrocities occurring in Burma.  Some of the spots are serious (Julie Benz), many are humorous or irreverent (Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston).  Each is unique and worthy of pass-along.

The goal is gather a million signatures of support for Burma in 30 days.  Welcome to social action, new media style!  As Human Rights Action Center founder Jack Healey writes:

"I've thought long and hard about how to create a new paradigm, a new thrust, a new energy, a new force. I am bored by public service announcements and feel that they have lost their effectiveness. I set out to create a new genre...A big or small non-profit can now define themselves without raising tons of cash through direct mail, cutting down trees for the paper, and can go up online and get the world to respond in a new way."