socialmedia

, , , ,

Facebook will know the future before you can Tweet it

, , , ,

What were you doing last night?  Mark Zuckerberg had a hackathon.  Oh yeah, and today his company went public.

I have been thinking about valuation of Facebook all week, and i think whatever the offering price is, it's wrong, and the GM announcement just made things worse by focusing on revenue in the Millions.  The valuation should not be  based on revenue.

Instead we are looking at the premiere testing ground for defining social expereiences and ad products across multiple channels based on the behavior and reactions of real users.  The future is clearly coming, where recommendations and votes of confidence from friends will be louder than advertising.  With the end of broadcast, and even the end of web portals,  attention is a strategic asset.  And Facebook has a boatload of attention, because we are addicted to news about other people.  

This need to gossip, and the need to share, is a basic human need- It's Brain Candy, according to Harvard researchers.

To be cute about my hypothesis:  Facebook will know the future, ship an awesome product and move on,  before you can Tweet it. 

Facebook is in a dominant market position to be able to take the attention people spend on the platform, across devices and all over the social web, to find out what works before any of their competitors, and with enough scale to stay ahead.  As long as they do not piss off users (the product being sold to advertisers) then the business is incredibly valuable.  I don't really know how to value it, but you must imagine some of these platforms competing with each other, and almost no one can compete with Facebook in this regard. 
It comparatively easy to build a behavior network to scale, but people are growing tired of joining new identity networks - they already have Facebook, or Linkedin, or Google,  and it is so easy to get traction by just riding over the top of that; consumers will begin to expect it.  Such a strategic advantage is incredibly valuable, and suggests that Facebook might even have a business when many of these other platforms just get boring.  Facebook will be the social layer people use - and that could echo for a decade or more.

Facebook keeps saying they are not trying to be a great company, they are trying to make a great product, and while the effects are similar the emphasis contained therein produces really remarkable results.  So don't worry about getting the valuation right, because they are going to ship a lot of code before anyone figures out the generational shift in behavior and advertising we're in, but I think Facebook might be the company that gets there first.
Facebook stock closed barely above the offer price - find me someone at Facebook who really cares about that, instead of shipping  a great product.  Their strategy? Culture as strategy.  Facebook tries to get people to enjoy but not flaunt their wealth and these norms suggest that inside Facebook is brewing...the next Facebook.

 

,

Does Using HootSuite Kill Your EdgeRank?

,

There are so many myths about what fans like, but we're strarting to understand that what one person sees on Facebook or Twitter reallys isn't predictable- their graph will determine what they see, and Facebook now gives brands more headachess than ever for getting into the newsfeed.  

A possible answer to this is the rising numebr of studies which use the facebook API, and largwe scale data collection, to break news about what may be happening to page content (with the implicit point that most of thye a brand's fans will engage via tyhe newsfeed rather than coming to the page).

Solid analytcis, have been published on this topic, such as Facebook Engagement analysis from Visibli or L2's Facebook IQ.  A new study by EdgeRank Checker -suggests that using Third-party applicationsto post to facebook results in the creation of content that gets lowerr engangent than native Facebooks posts.

There are a variety of reasons for pages to want a managed publishing solution, including regulatory, workflow, manpower, and moderation, in additon to those you'll also hear in the sales pitches from Buddy Media, Vitrue, Involver, and the others named below.  

So what is the enterprise digital social strategist to do?   Never, ever, take the top line conclusion from the vendor and appluy it to your bsuiness.  Ask for data about your client specifically.  Dig into which pages were used.  

For example, there are so many tiny fan pages doing a terrible job with mediocre nontent, I bet the amouint of objects created by those pages dwarfs the major brand pages.  We've all seen those pages.  I'll be digging in, let's see what else EdgeRank can tell us.

 

 

,

Gifts I Want, from Staples

,

No, no, it's ok, I have everything I want.  You don't need to get me anything.  Really?  What's this?  Socks?  (Actually, I just bought new athletic socks for running, no joke from Amazon (Affiliate Link).

But what I'm really exited about, gift wise, is this page used by Staples email marketing to promote thier Twitter comtest.  Let's face it, brands usually need to give prospective followers something exciting to do - classic what's in it for me.

Things I like about this page:

  1. I arrived via email- always try to support social with email
  2. Choose your prize (one of 5 gifts pictured, showing rage of the Brand as well)
  3. Emphasizes following @staplestweets
  4. Holiday Tweet generator (though I wish it had some more suggestion and was less “mad libs”

What are your favorites this holiday season? 

, , ,

Who cares if the cool kids leave Facebook?

, , ,

The cool kids are leaving Facebook, says Pace Lattin based on data from InsideFacebook: the 18-35 demographic is now having negative growth in this "early adopter" demographic.   I can't yet find the raw data, but let's assume the trend is true.  Let's assume that the explosive growth of Facebook for mobile doesn't have anything to do with it. 

Any platform that requires the "cool kids" to be there for it to be successful will ultimately suffer the same fate.  We can't all be East Village hipsters enjoying our own exclusive online party, with VCs chomping at the bit to try to invest in the things we think are cool.  Even if all the cool kids leave, Facebook will still have a huge business with the uncool kids.

However.  Viewing Facebook itself as the cornerstone of social is just false. They beat out all the other social networks, more or less.  Round 1: Facebook.  Bigger, longer term, the interoperability of social graphs will make the choice of any one web site unimportant.  

Any platform that requires the "cool kids" to be there for it to be successful will ultimately suffer the same fate.  We can't all be East Village hipsters enjoying our own exclusive online party, and there will continue to be plenty of business opportunities for Facebook even if those users leave.

However.  Viewing Facebook itself as the cornerstone of social is just false. They beat out all the other social networks, more or less.  Round 1: Facebook.  Bigger, longer term, the interoperability of social graphs will make the choice of any one web site unimportant.  

The fact is, hipsters still have parents, and teachers, and friends they want to connect to, and some they want to be able to ignore.  Technologies built on opening the social graph and intelligent selectively sharing the content we ourselves consume is the direction we're heading.  

 

Round 2: unknown.

we haven't really seen the companies that are thinking about this.  Check out where Diaspora is going these days, and see the interoperable social  future.