Social Software Explored

I have been wanting to right this article for a few weeks (er months) now.  It has to do with the changing face of marketing especially around advertising.  Particularly with how things get sold. The article which sparked my interest was actually written late last year and posted on Business Week.  It is entitled: “A Modest Blogging Proposal” The article talks about a growing trend in the blogging world: “pay per post”.  The idea being that a company can pay an important or well followed blogger to essentially influence readers by writing good things about a product or its company.  In the early days of Social Media an idea like this was outlandish and preposterous.  No good blogger would ever write anything that was either untrue or tainted simply to satisfy a sponsor.

In “The Tipping Point”, Malcolm Gladwell speaks of the power of influential people and challenges, that perhaps it is only a few influential people who “tip” the scales of modern day consumerism.  He tells a a tale about Mavens, Connectors and Salesman and how they can control the most innocuous fads such as the growth of Hush Puppies as the trendiest of trends.  His story and others like it have forced me to think about why we buy and how that has changed over the years.

Influences

We all have influences - the TV, the World wide web, magazines, radio, newspapers. They all play some sort of role in how we make decisions.    Without marketing and advertising many of the products you buy (even consistent products) wouldn’t exist because you wouldn’t know about them.  Those 10-15 pages in the front of almost every magazine with full page ads are there to influence our choices and display branded images that we can relate to.  Without this form of advertising you would have to see a product in use or more likely you would have to hear about it from someone you knew.

A lot of how we buy however is influenced by other people: friends, families, co-workers. What if we erased marketing and advertising and didn’t have sites like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Twitter and every other social network around (eek sounds like the dark ages to me).  Without any marketing, advertising or social networking we would essentially be back to the way it was at the turn of the century, at least in the minds of a product owner.  Consumers had little knowledge of anything outside their local network which if they were lucky stretched a few towns separated by a few miles at most.

What if we really did erase marketing and advertising? How would you even know that a product existed? Really, in a nut shell marketing and advertising is a few people (or companies) that decide which products and brands will sell.  What if marketing and advertising wasn’t the only way you could find out about a product?   What if we had a network of people (at our fingertips) that could help us make these decisions?  At the turn of the century you could picture a few people riding from town to town with carts or wagons selling products that solved this problem or a new product you have never seen that could be used to clean dirt off a pan or your clothes (yikes another scary vision).  But is that essentially where we are?  Full circle?  A few influencers using this new medium to distribute their ideas and thoughts?

Enter Social Media

The ultimate result of the debate spawned by the article “A Modest Blogging Proposal” was this:

…we came to the realization that few bloggers see any conflict in being paid to write a post, even if payment comes from the same company being reviewed.

Hmmm… bloggers who don’t make money on their blog turn to sponsorship by companies who can’t use traditional means like television and magazine advertising to sell products because nobody is listening.  Hmmm…scary.

This is where I feel Wayne had us all beat - back in 1992:

Benjamin: Wayne! Listen, we need to have a talk about Vanderhoff. The fact is he’s the sponsor and you signed a contract guaranteeing him certain concessions, one of them being a spot on the show.
Wayne Campbell: [holding a Pizza Hut box] Well that’s where I see things just a little differently. Contract or no, I will not bow to any sponsor.
Benjamin: I’m sorry you feel that way, but basically it’s the nature of the beast.
Wayne Campbell: [holding a bag of Doritos] Maybe I’m wrong on this one, but for me, the beast doesn’t include selling out. Garth, you know what I’m talking about, right?
Garth Algar: [wearing Reebok wardrobe] It’s like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that’s just really sad.
Wayne Campbell: I can’t talk about it anymore; it’s giving me a headache.
Garth Algar: Here, take two of these!
[Dumps two Nuprin pills into Wayne's hand]
Wayne Campbell: Ah, Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different.
Benjamin: Look, you can stay here in the big leagues and play by the rules, or you can go back to the farm club in Aurora. It’s your choice.
Wayne Campbell: [holding a can of Pepsi] Yes, and it’s the choice of a new generation.

In short, when you have 20K+ people listening to almost every word you say (like @davewiner, @scobleizer, @techcrunch, @guykawasaki and many others - http://www.twittown.com/friends/topfollowers_1 ) its hard to not imagine the above scenario.

Fortunately, I don’t see it quite like that.  Sure you will see some of the people in that top list influence decisions (knowingly and unknowingly) and you may also see some of those people in that list take money for services rendered.  But what you won’t see is the change in the fundamentals here: we are all connecting at an alarming rate using common platforms like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc…. and by connecting on these common platforms we are removing the need to rely on traditional means for purchasing decisions.  Some will be swayed but the smarter ones will realize that there’s a choice.  And that choice will come from trusted individuals in a wide circle of friends that have no geographic boundaries.

Marketing, social media, targeted advertising

When I think about what Twitter has done (and continues to do) I can’t help but think about XML and what being "Standards Based" means to the evolution of our human (and non-human) communication.  What XML has done for the Web I am in no doubt convinced Twitter (or something similar) will do for communication.

Another way to look at it is to think about SMTP.  It is just a protocol.  When I was in college we could plug-in to our VAX system and send e-mail to other people in the world.  That quickly evolved to desktop clients like Netscape 2 and Eudora (I know that there were many others).  Eventually, we saw a growth in servers that could handle millions of E-mails a day and what we are left with now is essentially Free E-mail for everyone (thanks Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the like).  All on top of an agreed upon framework - SMTP.

Twitter is a framework.  Twitter is not: IMing, Texting, Friending, Linking, Time wasting.. its a framework. And frameworks let us build bigger and better things easier.

The beauty of Twitters the framework is quite simple:

1.) All messages are routed through a single server, or in this case a cloud of servers.

2.) Discovering, connecting and communicating with individual people is stone simple.

Conversations are open

Since everything goes through a single point of entry and there are ample API’s you get an amazing effect.  Take a look at Monitter.  Type in any three words and you get a glimpse of every conversation in the recent past and present where those words exist.  What is amazing here is that you don’t have to know any of them.  You hear conversations going on around the world.  The US government paid millions (maybe billions) for a similar service - it was called Carnivore.  Twitter enabled this for far less and in far less time.

Framework is key to growth

Twitter started out as a simple website where you could go and communicate.  It really wouldn’t have grown to where it is now without a strong API.  In a short time (about a year and a half) hundreds of desktop and mobile applications sprung up.  Allowing you to post, read and connect on Twitter.  You can equate this growth with the same growth of e-mail after Netscape 2 launched.  Not surprisingly, most people didn’t do to well interfacing with green screens and the desktop interface that Netscape 2 provided allowed more people to send e-mail easily.

We see the same thing happening now with applications like Digsby, TweetDeck, Twirl, iTweet (and many, many more).  Without these applications - Twitters proliferation into the mainstream would not be possible.  Look at it this way.  If Twitter were to try and develop a single interface into Twitter that satisfied every user - they would go broke.  They would need 100’s of developers and it would take forever to release new versions.  Undoubtedly, they would never provide just the right interface.

With a published API Twitter does what they do best - manage Twitter and provide framework enhancements (in the form of API’s and services).  With those API’s developers can develop many different applications that allow people to communicate on the Twitter network.  Each application slightly different then next.  Each providing a unique experience which is capable of capturing many different users’ desires.  So in effect what Twitter gets is an army of developers guaranteeing that Twitter stays alive.  Without Twitter and its framework - TweetDeck dies.

Where is this going?

What we are seeing now is that intelligent entrepreneurs are beginning to extend the framework of Twitter to offer services on top that were not part of the initial Twitter framework.  Take TwitPic for example.  Twitter is only a text based system - there was no thought in the design (or at least in the first iteration of the service) for external document support.  However, since Twitter has published an API websites like TwitPic can piggy back on top of the service and provide easy integration between Twitter and a Photo hosting solution.

No one really knows what is going to happen with Twitter but if you think about some of its quintessential qualitie s it is nothing more than a protocol. An open conversation protocol which will be stretched beyond its limit someday - just like e-mail is today.  The defining moment in Twitters place in history will be when applications available to the mainstream public offer services on top of the framework and the users of consumers of the services are ignorant to the fact that Twitter is the underlying architecture.  Much like most mainstream people today couldn’t even tell you what SMTP is or what it stands for or that they should curse it.

And I doubt anyone made any money from the development of SMTP.

Digsby, social media, Social Networking, TwitPic, Twitter, Web2.0

A recent article was published by a very famous (and well liked) blogging network yesterday that really irked me in a way that is requiring more of my effort.  I guess it is a good thing and ultimately I am quite happy that they posted this article because it has fueled a thought I have had for sometime:

I am sick and tired of “non-targeted” advertising

I don’t really care if all of the product and marketing directors know everything about what I buy and read on the Internet.  Truly I do not.  I have nothing to hide and I would release my data under full disclosure if the following qualifications were met:

1.) No one comes up to me on the street and says to me “Hey wanna buy a new mic stand for RockBand” (I like playing RockBand)

2.) I don’t get a flood of e-mails from marketing departments asking me if I would like to test drive the new VW CC (I own a VW Passat)

3.) My information about me is not connected to me in any meaningful way (e.g. I don’t want marketing people to know that I am really Ron West and that I live at 57 Gro…. - ooops)

See in my mind I am just a number - a thing - a buyer/seller in this consumer driven market and the data for what I buy, sell and talk about is really just data.  It may describe my habits and what I am interested in but it is not me.  I want to remain FaceBook profile #66004104.

Your Data is For Sale (sort of)

You can read the post that irks me here but let me point out a few of the important details: (Well first let me start off by giving you the all important title)

Facebook Plans to Make Money by Selling Your Data

C’mon - really do you have to put it that way.  I agree it got my attention - prompted me to read and comment - and I am now writing about it but - ok that title is genius.  But the problem lies in the text:

Starting this spring, companies will be able to selectively target Facebook’s members in order to research the appeal of new products through a polling system called Engagement Ads as demonstrated at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

…

If the Telegraph report is correct, Engagement Ads have had a massive tweak; companies will be able to pose questions to and receive feedback from selected members in real time based on user information that Facebook provides.

Ok that statement “selected members” please - that is misleading.  If we were in the court of law I would simply say “I object your honor” and he/she would say “Sustained”. Then I would ask for the statement “selectively target Facebook’s members” stricken from the record - and the judge would agree again.

Facebook is not going to give companies the ability to target Ron West or any of my friends.  Facebook is not even going to allow companies to target profile #66004104 or #40034994 or any other profile because if you log out of Facebook and you type in the following URL: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=660041048&ref=name you know what you get? Nothing.  A login box.  Would Facebook be stupid enough to allow Pepsi or Coca Cola or any other company in to see that data? No.  That would be just plain stupid.

What Information is For Sale?

Ok - so now for the “shocking” news (at least for some of you):

YOUR DATA IS ALREADY FOR SALE

Well at least your likes/dislikes are already being used to drive advertisements.  Take a trip around Facebook.  Look at the ads in the right hand side of the page.  Notice anything peculiar?  I do.  They are all targeted to information about me.  Especially about where I live.  “Foreclosures in Massachussets”.  One of the commenter’s on the ReadWriteWeb blog post even commented about he is targeted by his sexual preference.

Take a look at the following public information about advertising with Facebook found here:

Target your exact audience with demographic and psychographic filters about real people. The targeting page defaults to people age 18 and older in the United States, but you are encouraged to modify this to reach the most appropriate people for your ad. Be sure to reference the top of the page for an estimate of the number of people who match your criteria. For more information, check out our FAQ for definitions of each target filter.

And if you actually read your EULA agreement (you do know what the EULA agreement is right?) you will see that the data you enter is not only yours but it also belongs to Facebook.  Check out some inserts from the Privacy Policy found here:

Facebook may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network like a band or movie and personalizing advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you Facebook. We believe this benefits you. You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they’re more likely to be interesting to you. For example, if you put a favorite movie in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a screening of a similar one in your town. But we don’t tell the movie company who you are.

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile (e.g., removing photo tag links).

…..

We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you.

So - why am I so fired up? One reason and one reason only - misinformation. I believe that the post by ReadWriteWeb was designed to get people fired up (it worked) and by not providing some of the facts actually misguided lesser informed people.  Isn’t this the reason we are migrating from the Media best now which is governing the mainstream?

advertising, Blogging, Data Security, facebook, Marketing, ReadWriteWeb, social media, Social Networking

I was working late tonight when I received a Facebook Chat request from a friend of mine that I have not spoken to in some time. The request came shortly after this person’s Facebook Status was updated to “NEEDS HELP URGENTLY” - so it wasn’t a total surprise.  When the chat started, I was expecting a request to help with a coding issue or web site problem.  Since we had worked on several projects together I had assumed that this was the nature of the issue.  Here is how the Chat began to transpire:

My friend comes from overseas so this is not a completely far fetched idea but it was very strange that he reached out to me since I am not in his first or second tier of friends.  It all sounded too weird.  I then responded with:

He never really answered my question about helping me guarantee that it was him so I became suspicious at this point and went back to Facebook.  By now a few people had commented on his status and so I questioned them about my friend’s whereabouts - wondering if there was any chance that he was overseas.  I then asked again about confirmation that he was who he said he was:

“worked at the consulting gig for a year” - I almost hired this person for a job at my company and he didn’t even say the magic word “CommonSpot”.  That is all I really need to hear from him and I would have probably sent him whatever he needed.  The conversation finally ended up here:

So there are a few morals to this:

1.) Don’t ask me for money on Facebook when you know my phone number and you worked with me on a CommonSpot project

2.) Be careful if someone asks you for money anywhere on any site

3.) Join a site like Dopplr and if you are a hacker - make sure that you hack that site too and post a trip.

UPDATE: Looks like there were more reports of this exact same thing happening elsewhere that night:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/05/facebook.impostors/index.html

facebook, hack, phishing, Status Updates

There is a bit of buzz this morning over a rather suspicious twitter post that was posted by @foxnews:

Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay

It has since been removed.  If you missed it here it is:

Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, Hacked, Twitter

One of the largest complaints a majority of citizens here in the United States have today is that for whatever reason they don’t really have the opportunity to make a difference.  Especially when it comes to the political actions of the very government which is designed to serve us.

During Abe Lincoln’s great Gettysburg Address - he stated that our government system is a one that is

… of the people, by the people, for the people …

Today the “by the people” really can only occur during election years (theoretically).  I know that I can write a letter to my congressman or go door to door to get signatures on a petition - I am fully aware of the chain of command.  The problem is - that not only does this type of message take long to deliver (unless you are personal friends with a congressman) the message is a one way message.  No one but my congressman (and probably not even the congressman but rather a deputy director or associate) will see this message.

If that congressman is supposed to make decisions based on his/her constituents then this current system needs a boost.  Especially with over 300 million people equally guaranteed a voice.

In comes Social Media!

With Twitter, Blogging, FriendFeed, SocialMedian or any of the other Socially aware sites out their today (and coming in the near future) we are hopefully seeing a radical change to this paradigm of communication.

I have been turned on by a rather amazing phenomon which was started in late September/Early October by the makers of Twitter.  They created a special site called Election 2008 (http://election.twitter.com) which gave site visitors the ability to view real-time Twitter “conversations” happening all over the world.  It was truly remarkable and has lead to some more open sites like Monitter and TweetGrid which allow you to monitor the conversations on any topic.

So while I sat there yesterday listening to the 3 CEO’s of our great auto industry grovel for cash to withstand this economic downturn - I couldn’t help but notice Senator Dodd flipping back and forth between ‘auto industry’ and ‘auto bailout’ on www.monitter.com with his iPhone - tilted oh so slightly as to “pause” the stream when an interesting question arose from the community.

We truly do live in an amazing time.  Truly historic.

Auto Industry, Bailout, Blogging, Monitter, social media, Twitter

Ok, I think this subject has been beaten to death in the past whatever months but I want to throw another idea out there that I am not sure has been thought of.

What if there was a way to Monetize clicking on links from within a Tweet?

One of the hardest thing to do is to get someone’s attention - especially on Twitter.  I only follow 50-60 active users on Twitter and get more than 20 pages of tweets everyday.  I don’t read all of them - can’t.  It would take forever.  On Twitter you are forced to be clever or in a sense “market” their tweets in order to get someone to even read it.  And this is coming from someone with 50-60 active users - what about those people with hundreds if not thousands…

Here are 3 links that appeared in my stream today which exemplify what I am talking about:

@blakespot: Change. That’s what’s up. http://tinyurl.com/59resq about 22 hours ago from TweetDeck

@georgedearing: http://ping.fm/p/PrFjH - This is the crappy part of the trip about 4 hours ago from Ping.fm

@sfsmaus: Bugger all… http://snipr.com/4tqwo about 4 hours ago from digsby

Each of these Tweets was a promotion.  More so than posting it to their Del.icio.us accounts or to FriendFeed etc…. they posted to Twitter because it was something that they wanted to share.

In most cases (these three tweets as examples) I would have never stumbled upon (hee hee) these links and  would have never been subjected to their sites advertising.  Never.  Twitter is a crucial network for sharing information like this and if there was some way to monetize this I think it would help.

At some level most of the early adopters on Twitter - the one’s that are active - are all mavens.  Maybe not like a Blogger is but in a different way.  We are all promoting something - us and how we think and see the world.  In most cases that includes products.

I don’t know how many people I have turned on to Digsby.  I found out about Digsby on Twitter from @tonyk - else I might still be using that other crappy program - Trillian.  Goodness gracious.  So glad.

Maybe if we could track our influence similar to those silly pyramid schemes like Amway and Herbal Life - we could put a dollar sign to it.

Just a thought.

Blogging, Social Networking, Twitter

If Angel Batista is correct and we are all truly connected and somehow the energy of thought helps make things happen (must have watched ‘What the #$*! Do We Know’) then I am telling the Universe what I want.

I want us to not drill for more oil.  I want the project that Honda is working on and this lady from California to be viable solutions for consumers - soon (a.k.a. today).  I completely understand that Oil is the foundation of our economy - but if we are going to rebuild the economy - lets take this opportunity to do it right.

I like the fact that we are producing “eco-friendly” packaging (except for children’s toys which have gotten ridiculous).  And I love the fact that Windex is marketing a bottle that can be reused - and the fact that with less diluted detergents we can produce less plastic waste.  I am perfectly ok that I have to spend a nickel to ensure that that the beer bottles I drink out of get properly disposed of.  All of these things are fine.

What I am not fine with however is thinking that drilling for more oil is the answer.  Please watch this rant by Archie Bunker (a.k.a. Carol O’Connor - who was unfortunately a proud democrat during his time on the planet). This was over 30 years ago - for goodness sakes lets do something here.

And while I don’t take sides in this great political debate - I have to say that he was correct - we need to change.  And I am not talking about Obama “change” which is fictitious political change - I am talking about real change. Mr. Goodwin style change.

And then after you have thought about it for a minute.  Get out there and join something.  Say something.  Let the Universe hear what you have to say.

Change, Environment, FCX Clarity, Green, Oil

Work has already begun to do this (see the Microformats site for more) and infact if you view the source of my Wordpress blog (for those posts with comments) you will see that it has already in place.

If you were to think about the Internet like a Librarian thinks about the Library you would go nuts. Not only would the amount of information out there scare you into submission, but you also have to consider the types of information.  If you went into the local library and grabbed an index card from the Microfiche catalog and placed it into the Microfilm catalog the librarian would quickly and quietly escort you to the door and ask you to not return again.

The organization of information by type is just as important as indexing content by topic.

The Conversation
We are now having conversations everywhere.  Some popular places that I have conversations are:

• Blogs
• Forums
• Twitter
• FriendFeed
• Facebook
• SocialMedian

And if you go onto FriendFeed you will see that there are millions of places to have conversations.  Yes, Millions.

Today a friend of mine posted a link on Facebook.  The article outlined how people are being misinformed by mainstream media.  The content of the link prompted a conversation between myself, the user who posted the link and one of his friends.  The new Facebook design allowed us to have this discussion inside each of our News Feed Home pages.  This was great but in about 2 days this conversation will be all but lost and no one outside of our small group will ever be able to offer their opinion or reference the conversation.

A little later on I read a post by Jeremiah Owyang on Twitter asking users to answer the following question

Debate: should the debates continue this Friday? #debatedebate

Being newer to FriendFeed than Jeremiah’s closer friends, I decided that I would reply via Twitter.  After a visit to FriendFeed (which automatically aggregates information from many Social Networking sites like Twitter, Google, Flickr, Blogs etc…) I saw that everyone responded to Jeremiah’s post there.  FriendFeed also provides an easy “comments” section for almost any type of aggregated content.

As conversations move from the traditional Blog Post, Forms and even Twitter - how can we capture that content in a useful way?

Microformats

Are Images Any Different?

If you told the 10 year ago me that I would be able to type text like “American Flag” into a search engine and find all of the images that have something to do with an American Flag, I would have told you were crazy.  In fact, I might have even asked you to quietly leave.

When you think about what an image is - at some level it is a perfect Microformat and provides all the information needed to be fully indexed by most intelligent search engines today.

I think that if we implemented a common Microformat for comments (or conversations) we could begin to track conversations on any platform and treat them like a type of content (or information).  We could then aggregate this content in special search engines.

The result would be a glimpse into the conversations going on at any given time.

FriendFeed, microformats, Social Networking, Twitter

In 2004 here was the status of some the now more prominent Social Media sites:

• Digg - didn’t exist (launched late 2004 December)
• Reddit - didn’t exist (started in 2005)
• Propeller.com - didn’t exist (started in 2006 by Netscape now owned by AOL)
• Slashdot - started in 1997 (this site mostly focused on technology)
• Treumers - didn’t exist
• StumbleUpon - didn’t exist
• SocialMedian - didn’t exist

(thanks for the list)

A New Information Channel

Now with the advent of Social Networking sites like Ning, a whole new era of information distribution has emerged.  A lot of the discussions that I have gotten into lately is about misinformation of the public.  Not the ignorance of the public but the flat out misinformation. In most cases some of these people that are misinformed are downright intelligent.

Take into consideration that although most of the mainstream media floats to the left, there are specific news stations (fox for example) which can also lean to the right. Other than sites like FactCheck.org, most sites are “interpretations” of the information.

The definition of a Social Media on Wikipedia (while it may differ from site to site) is

… the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

It is the method of interaction which offers the most interesting change here.  Although there is no guarantee that the use of Social Media will be free of biased information, it presents a single channel comprised of information from both sides of the line.  In addition, the information is presented with collaboration tools (such as comments and forums). Good community action has proven to elevate the conversation beyond one persons opinion or view.  In most cases, the post or article simply introduces an idea or a viewpoint, the conversation which occurs after allows for mediation and fact checking.

SoMe Election 08

It is sites like SoMe (Social Media) Election 08 which drive this point home.  Built on the Social Networking framework of Ning it allows users to post content about the upcoming election.  Any content.  As a member of this site (it’s free by the way) you can post:

• Photos
• Videos
• Blogs
• Discussions
• Links
• Events

You can even chat with other users who happen to visiting the site at the same time.

This particular site focuses heavily on the presence, power and effectiveness of media on the Presidential Election and accepts all viewpoints.  No one person has the power and while it is slow going right now it represents the type of change Social Media can bring.

What a site visitors gains out of this type of interaction is a more well rounded view of the issues (or information).  Not that they aren’t subjected to bias views, but since all views are expressed at once, it is easier to see both sides of the debate - which is required when making a decision.

blog, election, media bias, social media, Social Networking, SoMeElection08