Boxed In By Google+ Circles

Google+ is like a book that everyone tells you me is awesome, but I can't get seem to get passed page 5 no matter how hard I try. People keep asking me why and I've been thinking about it and I think it comes down to one simple yet fundamental matter:

The circle sort.

They make me SORT my social network. They want me to LABEL people. I have to think about the relationships I have with people, determine a hierarchy of sorts and decide what i'd like to share within that.

I tried. I swear i did. But I couldn't do it. More importantly, I didn't AND DON"T want to!

Why?

Think of someone new who followed you on Twitter and you follow back. What is your relationship? Well, nothing really. See and that's the problem I have.

ln healthy ecosystems, relationships aren't prescribed they emerge. If i put people into circles, how is that suppose to happen? All of a sudden I will be filtering my content, editing what i say to whom and conversations and relationships won't emerge over time.

I hate that idea. It's counter to every reason and every thing I love about my weak tie networks.

So I haven't done it. I'm open to changing my mind. Feel free to explain the whole circle thing to me. I'm open to the conversation but or now those damn circles just make me feel boxed in.

F-Commerce & The Implications Of Arbitrary For Brands

There has been more than one large Fortune 500 company who has casually mentioned to me in passing that their commerce team is considering how to utilize Facebook for a future sign-in method for their Corporate site.

The marketing power of getting earned media messages from your owned property to influence others inside the gated walls of Facebook is something large brands can't afford to not consider.

However, when i read posts like Mathew's here and Jillian York's of the Electric Freedom Foundation here it gives me pause.

Facebook may have a "right" to take down whatever pages it wants for whatever reason it wants (and I'm sure there are a lot of people who believe that), but what are the implications of that on your business? What is the cost of a disconnected Facebook sign-in for an hour or two while they figure out if they've made a "mistake" or not?

F-commerce and Facebook Connect may seem like the best marketing idea but until Facebook comes clean as to how these "mishaps" keep happening, if i were you Corporate IT and e-Commerce departements looking towards the social commerce future, I would seriously consider the ever changing Terms of Service at Facebook and the Implications of what arbitrary could mean for your brand.

All "LIKES" Are NOT Created Equal

I was speaking to a friend who has recently resigned from a well known PR firm here in Toronto. They feel that their industry is being transformed by Social Media but not necessarily in the best way. It's become a tactical world of promo driven conversations that are selling snake oil to clients who are only too willing to buy it. Ultimately, we were talking about the marketing crisis of "LIKE".

What does that mean?

You know what I'm talking about.

Build my Social Media [fill in the blank] presence.
We need conversation generation about [really anything].
We need more .... dare we say it -- "LIKES"!

I get it.

-Lots of companies are not using their own URLs anymore and instead have Facebook URLs.
-Traditional advertising is loosing its affect with some key demographics.
-Marketers are being judged by their peers as to their KLOUT score or Facebook Fans.
-The few successful Social Campaigns are consistently paraded out by everyone at the strategy meetings as what we "must do" to be successful in the coming calendar year

The list of reasons are plenty.

But see here's the problem. Let's take Faceobok as the example.

Facebook is not traditional media.

It's actually a social network.
It's my network.
In fact, it's my media.

So what does that mean for marketers?
I think it means many "important ignore at your own peril" things.

You have to understand the underlying dynamics of networks.
You have to consider why people are spending their time there in the first place.
You have to understand the difference between PAID media and EARNED media.
You have to consider that those who feel that this is their media don't want YOU to co-opt it for marketing purposes.

Buying LIKES through contests, coupons, promos is not the same as building community.

It's not the same as having passionate advocates.
It's not building engagement with your brand.
It doesn't create a shared belief system between you and your customers.

There is no smart marketer in the world who i know who would put an entire marketing plan around how to get people to join a contest or use their coupons. So people, if that's what your Facebook plan looks like, I say it's time to get a new approach.

The dynamics of this new era of social enabled networks presents a world of opportunity to become meaningful to the culture, the people and the world around you. Don't waste it on buying yourself some Facebook LIKES.

You will find very shortly that all LIKES are simply not created equal.

I heart/hate You Online

It was a good week for users as they took their love and their hate to the streets.

Firstly, there was the entire GAP Brand fiasco where we saw the cynical marketing types (such as myself) mock the laughable new logo by GAP. And while some might be cynical about the twitterati, those of us who work in design take it pretty personally when we see a large Brand pay a lot of money for something that looked like it was designed as part of a student project. (I would say the only logo that comes even close to as bad was the Toronto Unlimited Logo which still sadly hasn't gone away).

But the news isn't all bad. Users (myself included) of the service Xmarks not only took the Web but took to their pocket books rather than letting the link synch service die a painful death.

It's an important lesson to remember. There is no greater motivation than our passions. If we love you or we hate you, we will shout that out to everyone we know. Tapping into that, is like tapping into either a pile of crap or a pot of gold.

And for fun, I'll leave you with the singing and ukulele playing sensation of Rocky and Balls - I heart you online.

The Fatal Flaw Of Facebook

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. - MacBeth

I don't understand why Facebook continues to use the old "ask for forgiveness and not for permission" approach to their privacy policies.

Mathew points to an article by Bruce Nussman that asks the question if Facebook has a cultural problem? Mathew says yes but that if they move quickly enough those mistakes don't have to be "fatal".

I'm not so sure. The issue is definitely cultural and it's one of core DNA. Zuckerberg has always been about closed and exclusive - it's been at the core of what made Facebook so successful in the first place. He has the attitude (that some call arrogant) that assumes Facebook is the boss and can do whatever it is they want without major repercussions. Can't you just hear 'em? I bet you pounds to peanuts that Mark said something like this:

"Oh come on guys. No one's going to leave FB because of this stuff except for a few zealots....besides if there is a big backlash, I'll just apologize like i did for Beacon. No harm to foul!"

But I think Mark (and Mathew) are wrong. There is harm, and as any good Shakespearean professor will tell you, that's the problem with fatal flaws - they are generally fatal. It's not one decision, but the accumulated path of a thousand smaller decisions. Just ask Rupurt Murdoch who believed that Myspace was his space. I think we can all agree now, he was wrong.

I've said it before in my "Zuckerberg Shrugged: Man vs. Ecosystem" post the network will go around obstructions. When the network IS your business model, not proactively soliciting feedback on major changes to your service, will eventually be your kiss of death.

Calling All Slacktivists

Am i an environmentalist because I toss my plastic cup into a blue bin?

Do i care about the homeless issue because I give a loonie to someone begging in downtown Toronto?

And if i click on a join button to support a cause does this actual mean anything?

Apparently, if i think it does, than i just might be a slacktivist. What's that you ask? According to our friends at Wikipedia:

"Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism) is a portmanteau formed out of the words slacker and activism. The word is considered a pejorative term that describes "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts also tend to require little personal effort from the slacktivist."

My first experience of using technology for social campaigning, was my friend Jay's efforts with Greenpeace to 'fax the feds'. And one of the reason I've always loved the Web is its accelerated ability to ignite social causes.

This slacktivism thing has gotten me worried. I'm wondering if rather than having the effect of furthering social change, it's actually doing the opposite. It's allowing people to feel like they are doing something when really, they aren't at all. I'm glad everyone is feeling good, but I'm less glad that they aren't thinking more about doing good.

So that's my thought today, think more about DOING good.

Calling all slacktivists to join me....

ps. should i start a Facebook group???


photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/85853333@N00/2414018946/

The Community Is The Service

I used to love friendfeed. Essentially friendfeed is what I thought of one of the first 'lifestreaming' services. In their words they call their service one that

"enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends."

For a while there, friendfeed was a daily habit. Really it was becoming more of an obsession than anything else. I had discovered lots of interesting new people. My own network was starting to use it. And, the discussions there seemed to be more thoughtful and provoking than ones i had seen other places.

Until...

Something weird changed. I don't know if it was the type of community that landed there. But, firstly, people went from really interesting to the banal. And I"m not talking Twitter banal. I'm talking whole conversations on people saying, good morning. Hello. Hi. How are you. On and on it went.

The other thing was that I found, no one on friendfeed was ever commenting on my links or blogposts. Maybe i'm just boring. I can accept that. However, in my other communities, like Twitter and Facebook, I consistently get feedback, comments and have interactions that enrich the experience.

Friendfeed just seemed to get really cliquey. There actually seemed to me to be a cool crowd and the rest of us just weren't invited. There was very little reaching out. Very little interaction outside of a core group. And over time, I just got plain bored. I checked in with a few friends and they all seemed to have a similar experience as i did.

I still go from time to time. Check out to see if anythings changed. But it hasn't.

Mike Arrington over at Techcrunch thinks the service might be too complicated and that's what's limiting its growth.

I don't think that's what the problem is. To me it's the community that makes the service not the other way around. And it's the community that's the problem with friendfeed. And no feature set is going to be able to fix that. Coolest app or not.

Social Influence & The Future Of Marketing

Image via Wikipedia

In my post, "My Network Is My Search Engine" I focused on the important of social networks in terms of content filtering. But the truth is, that with the fast paced proliferation of social networks, it's only a matter of time before our networks are completely ubiquitous.

What happens if social networks become "like air?". What changes will happen to our world if they are integrated into every service...search, e-commerce, blogs etc. etc. While it's still in it's early phase, semantic services are leading the way to create this social level on top of everything...and services like Facebook or Google friend connect are attempting to link our networks to the very fabric of the way we utilize and experience the commercial Web.

What will this mean for marketers? We know that clients recognize that word of mouth is important but they often still view the world in terms of mass viral vs. influence. At SXSW Charlene Li showed mock-ups that had 'Amazon in the future' where you could filter recommendations based on your personal network vs. the general public. And many people have been looking at spheres of influence (individuals, close ties, weak ties, friends of friends) and how they might change the way we use the Web for a while now.

But maybe it's time we stopped just imagining that this is some far off future. I mean how far off do we really think this is? 1 year? 2? 3 at the very most and that means companies that want to leverage this as a competitive opportunity need to consider how they are approaching social ecosystem strategies today.

If social networks become part of everything tomorrow, how would what you do every day change? I've already have a whole bunch of ideas and frameworks in my head including of extensions of my Green Man Marketing presentation. Now the hard job. Applying and refining them.

We may not know for sure what the future will look like, but one thing I'm sure of, social influence will be a cornerstone for the future of marketing.

Socially Connected Search

Mark Ury put a link on Twitter that poses an interesting theory about email as the social network. Om Malik also referred to this in his post a year back asking the question, is email the ultimate social network?

Leaving aside the fact that the younger generation is using email less as a means of communication, I have to wonder as we become more ingrained in network culture, if the notion of email as the platform is completely missing the mark?

While our address books are certainly reflective of who we know, email is for the most part a means of communication with our strong ties. One of the advantages of social networks are its ability to leverage the connections of our weak ties as we all acknowledge that in real life, managing 250 'friends' would be a pretty difficult task.

So I'm not buying what Om says in his post:

"The only way for Yahoo or Google to challenge the social networking incumbents like Facebook [is] to leverage their email infrastructure ..."

Why? Because to me, Google in particular has another infrastructure that seems much more relevant - their search infrastructure. While everyone focuses on serving more relevant and 'personalized' ads, I have to wonder why they aren't also putting equal focusing on connecting people who search for like minded information? After all, if they did that, then as I developed those connections over time, I could then start to search like those individuals I'm connected to or see what content they thought was most relevant based on their searches - and even discover new searches that might be of interest to me?

I've touched on this type of search before. So in my mind it won't be email as a socially connected platform, it will be search.

(This blog post was written with a baby in my arms so excuse any mistakes or fumbled grammar :)

The Blurring Of Fictional & Real

Image via Wikipedia I was followed today on Twitter by Betty Draper. For those of you who don't know, Betty is the wife of Don Draper, a fictional Advertising Creative Director on the show MadMen.

Now, I do not follow any of the MadMen characters on Twitter so I was a little surprised she found me. I went to see her Twitter stream and found this interchange between Betty and a friend of mine Dondy...


What I find so interesting about this is the on-going blurring of the lines between fictional and real that digital is facilitating. Some say content is king, others community, but IMO it is connection that will be reigning supreme.

A while back, I met someone from the social network Bebo who was in town from London for their NA launch, and she told me that one of the most successful parts of their site (and what they consider a key point of differentiation) is their exclusive webisodic videos. The video viewing numbers she gave me were impressive but more importantly than that were the top 15% of fans who were not only joining in on blogs and other UGC but choosing to interact with the characters of the shows as well.

How this will impact content creation going forward and what it could mean for brands ongoing remains to be seen although it will certainly be an interesting trend to watch.

Supply/Demand Vs. The Power Of The Network

So Rogers finally changed their outrageous data plans for the iphone after Robert Sheinbein received over 58,000 signatures on his petition. And he isn't backing down now. They say thanks but it isn't enough as they now focus their efforts in a new direction. According to the site, they now say:

"Thank-You Rogers for helping out. We still need more help. We need your offer to be:

1. Unlimited Data Plan
2. Not a limited time offer
3. Competitive rates on your voice plans"

So what could have been a huge brand halo for Rogers has now become their biggest nightmare since negative billing. And why?

You can just see the business heads over at Wireless. With ongoing shareholder pressures, they focus on the short term. Screw those silly bastards over in the Marcom group who try to build brand and engagement with customers. Here is our opportunity, however short it may be, to make some serious cash off those iPhone fanatics. Let's face it. Most of them are rich anyhow. It's just an issue of supply and demand. We've got the supply - they've go the demand.

Oh wait. Or is it? Everyone goes to the conferences where they hear that the marketing world has changed. But are they LISTENING. The power of the network to mobilize citizens around issues in a short period of time has no bounds. A commentator on the CBC this morning said, it best, if it were a few years ago, this would have been a couple of angry people petitioning outside Rogers who could be ignored.

Networks are much harder to ignore. Ruinediphone.com plans to hold a Webcasted rally on Friday. Check out the deets below. This will be an interesting one to watch.

Date: Friday July 11, 2008 10:00am EDT
Description: Join our Free Online Webcast Rally
Agenda: Get fair cellular voice and data plans
How to Join: Click Here or goto the below link on Friday July 11, 2008 at 10:00am EDT

http://webcast.streamlogics.com/audience/index.asp?eventid=81099

Agenda:

1. We will provide a live statement from ruinediphone.com

2. Then we will have a message from David McGuinty, MP

3. Provide Rogers a chance to say a message

The Ebb & Flow Of Your Personal Brand

Changing a logo before the Web used to be hard. But changing a logo in the networked world is a b*tch of untold proportions. When I was at McCann and we changed the identity of Rogers Cable, one of the tasks we were given as the Interactive group was "find" Rogers old logo on the Internet and make sure it was changed. I actually had someone work for 2 weeks straight surfing the Web looking for random logos that were all over hell and gone, printing the pages out, noting the URL all in an attempt to get what they "owned", their brand identity changed.

Well, now we are all media. And just like big media found out, we are being disintermediated as our personal brands get exported amongst all these different social networks and services. Friendfeed, our blogs, twitter...with the distribution of our identities, we also lose centralized control. People save a link to my blog and converse about it where I can't hear (and maybe don't even know) and I now, like big media, have to deal with a growing lack of control over all those things I once thought I owned.

But this is the new reality. This is what flow is all about. Ecosystems don't have borders and boundaries but the good news is that as the system changes, we as members do as well. While it frustrates some, IMO it's the new networked order that we may not like, but are going to have to get used to.

How Facebook Forced Linkedin Not To Suck

I nodded my head when I saw this report yesterday, talking about the decline in social networking traffic in general with the exception of Linkedin which is soaring.

From my own personal experience, Linkedin was on the verge of stupidity right before Facebook exploded. Every time I wanted to do something useful like, link to someone I knew but didn't have the most recent email for, they asked me for money. Strangely similar to Club Penguin, who asked my daughter for money every time she wanted to do something useful too.

And then along came Facebook. With soaring usage, they actually let you link to people, the basic premise of the value to the user, barrier free. While it took Linkedin a while, they too eventually took their sad excuse for a Web monetization strategy, tossed it where the sun didn't shine (as they should have), and let me easily actually link to people. Ultimately, those links are where I see the value for ME. Not for them. Now if they want to monetize THAT....make money off job postings, head hunters, conferences, incremental services (as they do today) then I'm all for it. But to monetize the basic thing that would actually make their service useful and grow? I don't think so. And apparently, neither did the network.

So I just wanted to thank Facebook for helping Linkedin not suck. Now how we can help Facebook not to bore me to death? Different question for a different day.

Taking The Twitter Plunge

It was Doug that pushed me over the edge and I finally did it. It can be avoided no longer. I joined Twitter. I know I know, once I use it, I'll get it. I'll care about it. I'll love it.

Anyhew.....if anyone cares you can follow me...

https://twitter.com/leighh

*sigh*

How Much Market Research Could 500 Million Dollars Buy?

Get it together people. According to an update to Mathew's blog:

"Holy crap. Numerous sources — including the Bits blog at the NYT, as well as Mashable and Business Week — are reporting that Slide [facebook widget] has raised $50-million, giving the company a valuation of $500-million."

A VC named Lee Lorenze says in the comments

"Both Slide and RockYou have over 100 million facebook installs for their apps and over 30 million unique facebook users that interact with those apps and with whom these app aggregators can communicate via Facebook's messaging system. That means that each of these companies can sample detailed user profile data from about 50% of Facebook's entire population...."

Yeah, so. I don't get it. So freakin' what? I have said so many times, that people are over valuing customer data because no one does anything really with the data they already have....

And..final note - if it's worth 500 million dollars my question is, is that a better value than just spending that 500 million on actual market research? I could put a pretty killer research plan together with that kinda cash.

Wanted: A Social Network Tagging System To Reinvent Search

This idea started for me a while back. At oponia, we had the idea of creating a new way of organizing and searching a document system through tags (that we never got funding for *sigh*). I wrote about it in my post tag and flow: connecting the end points.

And then Fraser and I started a conversation about hierarchies and friendships that has continued over at the Adaptive Blue blog.

The concept is relatively simple. I have this ever growing network of social connections, both implicit and explicit. But as with everything in life, people have different meaning to me and if I get really utilitarian about it, they also have different value.

My friend David Chant as an example, owner of the Electric Company. You might go to Dave's site and think, Dave is a motion graphics expert based on his company. But because I personally know Dave, I know him as the gadget guy. You want to buy a new tech toy? David is the guy to talk to. And if I was going to "search" through a search engine about a new gadget, I wouldn't want to search like Leigh (because I wouldn't know the first thing about new tech gadgets, bc I just go ask Dave), I would want to search like Dave.

...What if I could somehow connect my search to Dave? What if I could tag to explicitly define our relationship - Dave as 'friend' and also tag what I think he's an expert in - in this case, 'technology' 'gadget'? It would allow me to potentially then use Dave's search intelligence for my own.

Well, that's great. But what if it could then get even more interesting and we could connect Dave to all the other people who have been tagged as experts in 'technology' and 'gadgets'? Wouldn't I theoretically be able to have a socially created vertically brilliant search engine?

Ok, I don't have time now to do this start up (other than continued oponia activities, I have a doll company i want to start which will never get or require VC money), but I think someone else should get to it because I need a new and better search engine.

Scrabbled Marketing Brains If You Ask Me

The makers of scrabble want facebook to take down the Scrabulous app.

Mathew calls it dumb, and I call it bad marketing. In an age where customers are creating brands, the makers of scrabble have the ability to leverage rather than rip down. Sure as Mathew suggests, they could just buy it, but even if they don't, I can think of a myriad of very cool ways they could build community around it.

And just to add on another anecdote to Mathew's of my own - my family has been having a bunch of battles online - we are convinced my brother David is cheating. We have now challenged him to a live game of scrabble that's not during the xmas holidays. When was the last time that happened?

Talk about the old school mentality of marketing. Get networked Hasbro and unscrabble your marketing brains.

Public Displays Of Experimentation & The Digital Self

"Identity construction becomes a continual daily task"

- Jamal + Chapman 2008


I've got to think that the continual "status casting" and lifestreaming that is going on with the youth of today has to have an impact on identity construction in a more fundamental way than people are realizing.

Part of growing up is about taking chances. The Web to some extent has sped up that innovation and yet, on the other hand I wonder at what point the "public displays of experimentation" will have an adverse affect. Kids generally are experiential and telling them something is one thing - but something impacting them in the real world is another. Now, connected 24/7 they not only have their successes streamed live and in digital colour, but their failures as well. Their memories both good and bad are being digitally imprinted without the ability to hide them quietly as the time and distance of the event passes.

"Identities are not fixed by some core, singular, essential, universal properties. Rather they are contested, multiple and shifting and are embedded in cultural and historical practices"

- Bhatia, 2002

Except that the culture is being created at a lightening pace and the concept of history, before it is even understood, is already in the making.

The IChing Of Facebooks Network

This IChing reblog from here is in light of the news that some Facebook users are selling their own ads against Facebook policy. Like I always say, it's in the network's DNA to go around obstructions.

"When faced with difficulties and obstacles to the achievement of its intentions, a network of superior values searches for errors in the assumptions underlying its initiative, thus creating the opportunity for its own further development.

Sub-conditions:

1. The network, when faced with obstacles, should retreat temporarily in anticipation of a more appropriate occasion for action. (Resulting in: Accomplishment).

2. When its obligations so dictate, the network should attack the obstacle directly rather than seeking ways to circumvent it. (Resulting in: Basic need).

3. If the network has others dependent upon it, whose existence would be endangered by its failure, it is preferable for it to avoid tackling the obstacle. (Resulting in: Solidarity).

4. It is preferable for the network to avoid hasty action against an obstacle in order to gather support and make adequate preparations. (Resulting in: Influence).

5. Despite the importance of the obstruction, if the network is totally committed to the task it will attract collaborators with whom success may be achieved. (Resulting in: Unpretentiousness).

6. If a network no longer concerned with mundane affairs is faced with obstructions, it can through its experience and insight bring about a solution of special significance, rather than vainly attempting to avoid the issue. (Resulting in: Development).

Transformation sequence Obstructions cannot persist indefinitely, thus eventually liberation is achieved. (Resulting in: Liberation)."

Zuckerberg Shrugged: Man Vs. Ecosystem

It's in the Webs DNA to go around obstructions. We've seen it in the past with things like P2P, online music downloading.

There's something to DNA and Umair's posting on the subject got me thinking. So let's talk about what's wrong with the DNA of Facebook and how they let this whole Beacon issue get completely out of control.

Firstly, we could blame Harvard of course. Old school business models that have at their core a specific type of elitism (a friend of mine who did his degree there called "The H Bomb"). But it appears that the arrogance of Facebook has begun to mirror Zuckerberg himself as he stands of the PR stages of the world commanding his people from high upon the hills. With the ever expanding belief that his opinions and contributions should supersede those of the Facebook members themselves.

He built the company so there must be something to this. He's the one who refused to sell at a billion dollars and as it turns out, he was right. But the real question becomes, is his type of thinking 'sustainable' in the digitally connected ecosystem of the Web?

Missing The Forest For The Trees

Zuckerberg seems to take a classic command and control approach to his ecosystem management. Why do I say this? Command and control models have these characteristics:

- Model of master and servant
- Knowledge as a tool for domination
- Top down system of management and control
- Belief that ecosystems are static
- Belief that what happens outside the ecosystem does not impact what goes on inside it

Hum...sound familiar? Think of it this way, if Zuckerberg were in charge of a forest, he would end up cutting down the entire thing, leaving a barren landscape at the end of it. So much for the forest ecosystem.

And, in the end, will that be good for business? Well, one might suggest in the short term it probably brings in a lot of revenue and might appear to be successful. But similar to what has happened in the logging industry, in the end, you just end up with a wasteland and a lot of really pissed off community members on both sides of the fence.

And Zuckerberg? I think he should consider forgetting about business for a while and consider taking an ecology and environmental planning course or two (or three). Otherwise as Zuckerberg shrugs, he'll end up missing the forest for the trees.