Social Software Explored

Recently my mom not only asked me to join her on Facebook (or maybe more likely she asked to join me on Facebook) she also created a Twitter account and posted “@notronwest I lost your number can you call me?” (as her first post ever) She recently took down her Twitter account when I told her not to follow me there cause she wouldn’t understand a word I said but, I think she is pretty serious about Facebook.

Facebook and Mom - matched made in ??

Not unfamiliar territory for most of us but I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the expectations a mother should have should one of her offspring decide to connect on social media sites (like Facebook)

1.) Don’t expect to understand everything that your offspring says. We are in a different world now and for some of us the language is different. I am not talking about words like “wicked” or “phat” or other social slang - I am talking about Doppelganger, Pandora, Hipster … words that have real connotation but are best described to those that don’t understand with a role of the eyes.

2.) Don’t pretend to understand everything that your offspring says. Nothing worse than a “hip” mother sharing their favorite 60’s Pandora radio station link on your Facebook wall.

3.) Don’t take anything that your offspring says or does personally. What you get on Facebook is sometimes easily taken out of context. This is a relatively new medium for most of us and we ourselves are trying to figure out the right way to use it. We may (and often do) say something that isn’t quite politically correct or goes against the morals you taught us. Remember that sometimes we drink before we update Facebook and therefore can’t be held completely responsible for our actions. Unconditional love - right?

4.) Keep your distance. Let it come to you (and it will). Eventually, over time, you will understand that less is more. Again you are gaining a unique view into your offspring’s life. One that you were never afforded before. Imagine what you would have thought should you have bugged the bedroom when I was 10 and had my friends over for a sleepover or gasp when I was 16 and my girlfriend and I … well you get the picture.

5.) Get involved but don’t offer advice (not online anyways). We are past that stage in our lives (most of us anyways) where we don’t want your advice. We get it - your smart - you’ve been there and done that. Most of us don’t want our friends to see that we are still attached at the hip - I mean were in our 30’s for goodness sake - if we can’t demonstrate that we have figured it out by now we will never make it.

6.) Don’t be surprised if we call less and post more. We are creatures of the net. Our jobs and home life have equal parts human contact and digital contact. If we feel we can get our point across or have our questions answered online - that’s where it will happen. It doesn’t mean we won’t call - ever - just not as much.

7.) This is a huge opportunity - don’t blow it.

Oh - and by the way - we love you!

Uncategorized facebook, Mom, social media, Twitter

I am very fortunate in many ways but, one of the fortunate things I get to do is to meet cool people. All of the people that I meet add a lot to my life and the combination of their knowledge feeds my own thoughts on a daily basis. I share with you today a conversation that I had on Twitter with a very intelligent marketing person at Seton Hall (Rob Brosnan - @brosnaro).

He posted the following:

Facebook Showing Worth?

Being that I don’t know a ton about marketing I replied (ignore the “tweet so rarely” dig - just trying to get more frequent posts out of him :)

What is 18 30d?

And the answer is:

First Click from Facebook is more valuable than same source Google view

Essentially, what Rob is saying is that you can’t always count on “same session” information to tell you the story about a conversion and that what he concludes is that Facebook as a lead in or introductory source, is becoming more successful.

Do you count “30d first click” information on your conversion rates? What are you seeing?

Uncategorized Conversion, facebook, Marketing, Twitter

What Facebook chooses to do with your content in the coming months/years will unequivocally determine its fate. Period.  I really could stop the post here and we could all move on but for some of you that have been reading and I suggest the following:

1.) Facebook Change of Policy: Why You Should Care

2.) How do You Feel About Facebook Owning Your Content?

3.) Zuckerburg On Who Owns User Data On Facebook: It’s Complicated

lets spend a minute to talk about the possibilities.

What if Facebook did sell your photo to and advertiser and they made a commercial which sold a product which made millions and Facebook got half.

What if Facebook took your idea that you posted in your note and sold it to a VC company who turned your idea into a multi-million dollar product which in turn made millions for Facebook

What if….

The list goes on and if you read Mona’s examples you may be left with an uneasy feeling that you should be protecting your information.  You might even go so far as to stop posting pictures, and notes and comments for fear that your information will be sold to the highest bidder.  You might even become an ultra  radical and remove your profile from the site and start an "I Hate Facebook" Bebo site.  Go ahead, its a free country.

I am going to tell you why you shouldn’t though

Content is King

First of all everyone at Facebook knows that as long as there is fresh new content by new users each day - people will continue to show up.  The content (which some people are losing site of) is the only thing that Facebook has going for it.  From pictures, to status updates and comments.  From videos and links to (yes even) those stupid Bumper Sticker requests.  Its all good.  Facebook has more content then it knows what to do with and that’s why they are wrestling with how they handle it.

The recent updates to the TOS is really just a sneaky way for Facebook to value its site.  Advertising sucks and will continue to suck as users become more savvy towards old school marketing tactics.  Although there is still some value in the number of people that visit a site its the information that is placed into this site which ultimately holds this thing together.

Erich Schonfield sums it up like this:

When you share your data with someone else, whether it be an email or a photo, it becomes their data as well. You cannot normally rescind data you share with other people in an e-mail. So why should a social network be any different?

And I for one agree. Facebook is a digital history book of all your interactions (good or bad) with all of the people that participate in your network.  If that digital history starts to get holes in it the site loses its luster.  The changes are an insurance policy to investors and suitors which Facebook will use to improve its valuation.

What If?

So back to the what if.  Well what if one day Facebook started to use your content for profit with or without your knowledge.  What would you do?  You would do the same thing that everyone else would do.  You would leave.  But before you left, you would leave your mark.  You would tell your friend, your friends friend and anyone else who would listen.  You would start a group.  You would reach out to advocates and you would tell them your story.  You would inform them that Facebook has used your content and is now profiting and that you got nothing.

It will become easier and easier for ordinary people to be heard.  The walls of communication have been knocked down.  Facebook knows this.  They understand this very well.  They don’t want you leave and if they are going to put this at risk then they will fail.  Miserably.

Up to know Facebook and I have an agreement in writing and one in principal. Until either of these agreements are broken I think we are safe.  And if any of you think that its hard to re-build something like Facebook - think again.

Update (2.18.2009): Facebook posts this message at the top of the home page today:

Terms of Use Update

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.
If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

Hmmm… thank you for validating my point. No need to worry.

Uncategorized Content, facebook, social media, TechCrunch, TOS

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?

Uncategorized 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

Uncategorized facebook, hack, phishing, Status Updates

As a part-time product manager (and a true fan of products, marketing and advertising in general) - I have to mention the phenomenon that is the “New” Facebook.  Quite frankly, I could give a crap.  Like almost any UI or system - we will adapt and the new users that come after us will not know the difference.  I have gone from Mosaic to Netscape to IE to Firefox - it’s all about change.  So who cares. 

If you are product manager - you should.

There are two main factors which make this switch for Facebook so interesting:

1.) Facebook’s delivery model is similar to that of a SaaS

2.) Facebook presents an interesting collaboration model which allows customer’s voices to be heard (sort of)

Product Management in a SaaS model

Lets take the fist portion of this - SaaS (or Software as a Service).  The “Service” that Facebook provides here is simple - communication.  We can use this platform to communicate easily with people we know and to a certain extent - don’t know.  Applications are making it easy and fun to do things like track our movie and music tastes to posting photos and videos of our latest adventures - all on the same server. 

Which means that when Facebook wants to make a change it is instantaneous - they just post the change.  In traditional software - or non SaaS models (like ours) the change is more gradual and does not effect the entire customer base.  You post a patch or a hot fix - those people affected (or brave enough to try it) download it and the change is made.  Rarely, do you hit more than 20% of your users at a time.

The “New” Facebook was available to anyone by simply adding “new” into their URL like: http://www.NEW.facebook.com.  Although, most people didn’t know this - the changes were visible immediately.  All your friends, their updates, your updates, your applications - instantaneous.  Sweet.

As a product manager of a more traditional software environment I envy the SaaS model.  Deployment on a single platform has these added benefits:

• Simple delivery model with a known platform
• Coordinated testing with pre-defined groups (e.g. these users get the new Facebook while these other users get the old)
• Instant feedback
• Soft launch
• Controlled roll-out

There are some other advantages to this type of model but I want to focus on a more important benefit that Facebook has when it comes to Product Management.  User feedback.

Like or not - you CAN NOT please everyone.  I can not repeat that enough.  However, without upgrades designed specifically to address user feedback your product can and will alienate your customer base.

If you search for the term “New Facebook” using the Facebook Search and you click on Groups you will find over 500 groups with that term in its name or description.  Dig through those results and you will find groups like these:

• People against the New Facebook System (47,294 members)
• The New Facebook Layout SUCKS! (9,188 members)
• I HATE the New Facebook (3,683 members)
• The New Facebook Sucks (2,113 members)
• I hate the new facebook - change it back! (2,588 members)
• i HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK (obviously group names are case sensitive) - (2,320 members)
• The NEW Facebook SUCKKKKSS - Change it BACKKKK (2,233 members)

Managing Customer Feedback

When your customer base becomes contributors - the results are amazing.  These groups don’t mean that new Facebook sucks especially if you compare the size of these groups against the number of facebook users as a whole - more than 60 million active users as of the beginning of 2008 (source).

[As I write this - Facebook is down - hee hee]

However, what you do have is the best collection of user feedback that a Product Manager could ever ask for - without having to lift a finger.  They didn’t have to do anything. Nothing. Nada.

Just build the new software - put it out there so people could see/use it and wait.  Surely digging through the feedback is tough.  The “People against the New Facebook System” has over 1,700 wall posts and 55 Threaded discussions.  Mixed in this garbage of useless responses and posts like “Facebook sucks” and “Bring back the old Facebook” are some truly genuine criticisms like:

Jonathan M. Cajigas wroteon Aug 12, 2008 at 10:57 PM

Since I have no idea how to program anything but an alarm clock, I’m curious if anyone in this group with programming knowledge could comment on the feasibility of writing a Gresemonkey script or Firefox Add-On that would let Firefox users keep using the old Facebook, even after the eventual switch.

Robert Heller (Springfield, MA) replied to Jo’s post on Aug 6, 2008 at 11:16 AM

9) It seems to want a wider browser window. The old facebook fit on my 800 pixel wide browser window (yes, I have a 1024×768 pixel screen and no, I *DON’T* (and won’t) maximize my windows).
10) Seems to want flash player. I don’t have flash player installed and no I *DON’T* want to install flash player — I avoid sites that depend on flash player for navigation. Flash is seriously bad news as fas as I am concerned. If flash player becomes *required* for facebook, I am likely to quit facebook.

Jennifer Hale (Uni. Southampton) wrote on Aug 11, 2008 at 12:43 AM

Since the left hand navigation bar has gone, to get anywhere you have to go back to the home page and start again. I liked the fact that I could just jump from one page to another.
I will have to go back into the new Facebook (sighs and pulls face) just to find and list all the things that are now more awkward to use.
I liked the fact that the page was narrower before. It means you never had a problem viewing the page whatever resolution screen you had. The old Facebook just seemed cleaner and tidier to use. Yes some people’s profiles were so application filled that you couldn’t find the wall to send them a message, but that is their choice. I do have a few applications, but I always ensured that most of them were closed (minimised) or below my wall so people could access it easily.

My only criticism that I can see is that Facebook hasn’t made it public that it is listening to its customers.  I am sure that they have reasons but with all of this feedback (and some of it good) it would be interesting to see some interaction with Facebook Product Managers and/or developers.

Conclusion

The new application framework models (like SaaS) present some interesting benefits for Product Management and customer relations.  Additionally, the social media aspect of Product Management today is an improvement on old style customer relations.

Uncategorized Community, facebook, product management, Social Networking

No doubt things are changing - the question is really has it changed?  Did you spend the last 4 (or more) years of your life studying a field that just did a complete flip?  What types of companies are looking for marketing “geniuses” whose college pedigree reads “Graduated 1995″?

I posted this on Twitter a few hours ago and I could not get it out of my head:

“If you are in marketing and you don’t use FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace and/or you don’t blog - get out. The field  will be passing you by soon”

There is still time (I think). When I see companies like the Undercurrent popping up it makes you wonder what value traditional marketing brings now a days.  Undercurrent is hiring “mavens” to spread messages with a virtual interview through a blog post asking you questions like “How would you spread a viral video”.

When I think about this I get scared.  Not because I don’t think that these types of things are cool (because I do) - but because there are a millions of marketing professionals out there who are going to lose their  jobs.

Remember door to door Encyclopedia Salesman (great book about that by Herman Miller - Death of a Salesman). Yeah - if your dad was one of those back in the early 80’s you know what I am about to ask - “Where is he now?”.  Replaced that’s where.

Tree falls in the woods…

How about the “Million Dollar Homepage” - do you remember that?  Here is the significance of that “experiment”- if you did not hear about this before it was posted on CNN, Time Magazine or any other mainstream media - it probably meant that you were already out of the picture.  This is the funny thing about where we are right now - there really will be an “in” and “out” crowd.  The reason this will happen is because there are information flows on the Internet that travel virally and if you aren’t near anyone that catches it (understands it)- you won’t even know it happened. In this case - a tree will fall in the woods and those near it will hear it and unless you talk to them you won’t know.

So when you think about the people that heard about the Million Dollar Homepage through non-traditional networks you begin to see where things are.  Those people have been entrenched in networks where information like this travels and they are essentially 2 years (plus) ahead of you - seriously.  This is how people like Michael Arrington has made his recognition - he is in the know - in an unfathomable way - point in case.

There was a great post today by Jeremiah Owyang which addressed where most corporations are on Social Media.  If you have not come to terms with what Social Media means and you have not come up with a plan to work that into your marketing plans than you better get a move on.  That 20 year old 1st year marketing college grad is suddenly looking a bit more attractive than you.

So for those that don’t have your bearings - here are some terms that your competition are going to be very familiar with shortly:

• Viral Loop
• Viral Networks
• Double Viral Loops

There is still some time - if you hurry.  Good thing this is all documented and you understand the basics.  Good luck.

Uncategorized Blogging, facebook, Marketing, social media, Twitter

I was inspired by this great article in the only “paper” magazine that I subscribe to (Fast Company). The article is about the fall of AOL and how their tumble into obscurity was marred by general business mistakes which compounded with the eventual loss of the company’s largest revenue generator (dial-up).

I got a call about a month ago from my first tech employer (small ISP in Rhode Island called NetSense). The president of the company and I still remain in contact - he informed me that he was selling off his last PRI line (used to handle large amounts of dial-up customers). Lucky for him dial-up wasn’t his largest revenue generator (his hosting revenue is king).

I then started thinking about some of the other services that we use whose days may be numbered. I came up with one rather interesting service: cell phones.

As I have talked about before (here and here) communication is changing. Not only are the ways in which we communicate (Web, IM, E-mail, etc…) changing the channels in which we communicate are also changing (Blogs, Wiki’s, Facebook, Twitter etc…). I think about the ways in which I communicate with people. More and more of that communication is done digitally. I use IM and Twitter exclusively when I want to ask brief questions or touch more than one person at time.

Additionally, VOIP and software programs like Skype are making strong cases against traditional cell phones. Remember the tustle between Apple and Cisco - it was essentially over “who owned the connection”. Once cell phones started adding Wifi and services like Skype became more and more reliable - a traditional “phone number” and the services that companies like AT&T, Sprint and Verizon offer are becoming less valuable.

What I see happening is you will no longer need to “call” someone or send someone an “e-mail” you will simply say to your device (which will be tethered to the Internet) I want to communicate with Ron. Wherever I am and whatever services I have available (Skype, Twitter, IM etc…) we will be connected. I don’t see anyone needing a single number (except for the people that only have cell phones). Our children will be connected in ways we can only imagine and it won’t be with a phone number.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my cell phone and right now I use it for a lot of my communication. What the article made me think about was this:

If you are a cell phone company today (or an investor in a cell phone company) what you should be doing is learning from AOL’s mistakes and should begin planning for the day when they begin to lose subscribers. Are they going to use their channels to deliver new services so they can keep their subscribers or are people going to be sick of paying $45 for a phone and $50 for connectivity services when they would only really need the $50 service fee to have connectivity for their communication applications.

Uncategorized AOL, Cell Phones, facebook, GTalk, Social Networking, Twitter

I know it is scary to think about this but I believe that the potential for an application like Facebook is larger than advertising.  Think of it this way:

1.) 34+ million users (in best Dr. Evil impression) - yeah the statistics will tell you that the site growth is capping off and that only a percentage of those users actually log in - but they still “touch” a ton of people.

2.) Communication is changing on the web (talked about this before).  Thing about it is, no one really knows where it is all going.  Clearly E-Mail is not going to be the main channel for all communications 10 years from now.

3.) People are getting tired of all the applications out there - there has to be a shakedown.  Companies that are in endless beta will eventually give up.  Since all they want is Facebook fame not truly affecting the flow of information.

4.) Facebook has something that no one else has - the API.  Call it silly - call it dumb - say it will never support business to business - but don’t deny the fact that there is something tangible here.  Slide - the company behind a few of the most popular Facebook applications (which coincidently did not exist before Facebook) just secured 50 million dollars in funding (yes - in my best Dr. Evil impression).  Even with a horrible burn rate of 5 million dollars a year, you are still looking at 10 years of comfortable opportunity.

5.) The web is changing and so is communication.  Teens and college age users are done with E-mail.  They use IM, Twitter, SMS etc… to keep up with everyone and they are huge on ‘networking’.  Go find a teenager that doesn’t have 100+ contacts in their list.  In the past those types of contact lists were reserved for Stock Brokers and Insurance Salesman.  There is a real network growing here and kids are learning how to connect quicker then ever.

So where does that leave us:

Doing nearly everything on Facebook.  Think of this as your “portal” to the rest of the world and anyone that you give two hoots about.  I am not a kool-aid drinker here but there are some astounding opportunities for this site which not a lot of people are aware of.

Take some common tasks:

- Buying music - with iLike I can not only keep tabs on all my favorite artists, with my network of people I can see what else is out there.  If trust you to be in my network, I probably trust you to recommend some music.  With everything from concert updates to record releases (and links to shopping) you can do it all - without having to leave Facebook.

- Renting movies - my Blockbuster online account is now integrated with Facebook.  I can actually add movies to my queue from Facebook without ever leaving the site.  On top of that, I get recommendations from my friends…

Ok, let’s stop there!

Take Blockbuster for example.  Let’s look at what they have done.  Instead of building their own social networking architecture (Friends, Comments, Ratings, Recommendations etc…) they just tie into Facebooks framework.  Cut development time in half.  Cut maintenance time in half, and to top it all off, they don’t have to go and find a marketing channel.  When I logged into Blockbuster they popped up a window “Hey, do you have an account with Facebook - we integrate …”.  On top of that - they can send broad messages to Facebook informing people that the service is there.  Why would Blockbuster want to compete??  Search for Netflix - they have done the same thing.  Why not?

I could go on with all of the general actions you take on a daily basis which require recommendation - buying a car, getting a loan, renting a house etc… Why not connect with other people.  Thinking about moving, look in your friends networks, anyone live in an area that you are interested in - connect with them.  Find out what the housing market is like, the places to look and the places to stay away from.  Six degrees of separation times 10 (or like 100).

Want proof: “Facebook Taps Blood Donor”

That same story has certainly come out of Forums and other web based communication channels but that was in the past.  This is the now.  You might be asking me to tip my cup back down and stop or I will get a head rush.  You may be right.  But I don’t think you can deny the potential.

Is it really that bad that you would log into Facebook every day - at least once?  I haven’t even mentioned things like dating, sharing photos, having fun…

Uncategorized communications, facebook, Social Networking, web

I have been anxiously awaiting this day. My Space has begun a “targeted ad” campaign which if successful, I think will revolutionize the advertising world. The benefits of targeted advertisements is simple:

Deliver more meaningful advertisements

It is a fact of life that quality content must either be paid for (Cable channels) or supplemented through advertisements (Network). We have been living with advertisements on television since it’s inception. Although TV/Cable content providers have become more intelligent about their ad placements (My wife does not understand half of the humor displayed in the advertisements during a Football game on Sunday), there was no real way to determine who was watching television.

Enter “Cookies” - no not your mom’s chocolate chip cookie. Imagine the Nielsen Ratings group - only in EVERY household. Essentially every visitor to a web site can be tracked. And with sites like Facebook and MySpace your content retrieval habits can also be tracked. Imagine watching television and getting an advertisement that said: “Goes great with the new pair of brown pants you just bought last week from the store”. Freaky yes, but I would rather have this ad then a bunch of ads completely unrelated to what I am looking for.

Targeted advertisements hold the key to increased click-through rates and even higher completion rates (someone actually purchases). I know this topic represents a mixed bag - but I think that this is the best thing to happen to the Internet. Among its benefits:

• Potential for less advertisements - key concept here is that the websites sprinkle a ton of advertisements in hopes that one of them is clicked
• Advertisements are more successful - no more campaigns with unknown return value
• Freak the hell out of your Mom - ha- no seriously, though, remember the Minority Report? Imagine an ad directed towards your mom? I know mine would freak out. “How’d they know that I just remodeled my kitchen”?

There are certainly some challenges and I think that the general privacy community will certainly have problems with statements like this:

“If someone’s been identified as someone who’s interested in fashion, we target ads to them that have nothing to do with fashion, and then ads that would direct them to say, the MySpace fashion channel.”

How do they determine someone is “interested in fashion”. Do they look at my MySpace messages? At my “Blog” posts? Surely someone will want a public deceleration of the data collection policies used to determine the targeted advertisements.

At any rate - we are on our way, so we shall see!

Google, Marketing, Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Web 2.0, What I am reading, Wired Magazine, advertising, society advertising, facebook, Marketing, MySpace, targeted advertising