Category: Strategy

  • Change is here, hard cash?

    The question I posed on the Digital Marketing India group in LinkedIn, on whether advertisers would consider Facebook a better place to spend than Twitter, post the FB redesign, yielded a good discussion. Inevitably, the discussion entered the territory of whether the redesign would alter the status of the differentiated audience that each provides, and therefore the monetisation opportunities that both could develop.

    My post last week dealt more with my usage patterns on both services. I think that usage patterns would drive the kind of conversations and the context, and therefore be a major factor in deciding revenue streams. While on Facebook, we start with known friends, and then add layers to the relationship, the opposite happens on Twitter – you discover people with common interests and then the conversations evolve. It makes me wonder what really is the magic of Twitter – real time interactions, the discovery of people, or the ability to have conversations without revealing a lot of one’s profile. While most of the Facebook redesign conversation is happening around real time, and upgraded fan pages, the upgraded privacy settings which allow ‘follow’ without friending could be the feature that  gives FB the most commonality with Twitter.

    Mark Zuck had this to say about real time  – “the pace of updates accelerates. This creates a continuous stream of information that delivers a deeper understanding for everyone participating in it. As this happens, people will no longer come to Facebook to consume a particular piece or type of content, but to consume and participate in the stream itself.” Facebook might be trying to equalise Twitter’s advantages, and as per Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch. “Facebook doesn’t want Twitter to become the way large companies and public figures connect to fans.”. (via Adage)

    But I have a few concerns on this. Will the crowd be able to handle the deluge of items on their newsfeed, even with the filters being provided? In Twitter, the stream is everyone’s base (it differs based on the people one is following, but there is a public stream too) When conversations happen simultaneously in various ‘crowds’, they are connected by devices such as hashtags and RTs. In Facebook, the individual’s profile/home page is the base, so how does the connection of conversations happen? On the fan page, but there seem to be a few issues there? Groups could help in providing this base for a lot of conversations, but there are no updates as far as groups go. Lastly, as a user of both networks, I wonder if I can have the impromptu conversations that I have on Twitter, on Facebook. The third party clients that have been developed for Twitter have made sure that users have a wide array of options for their interface. Is that a major factor in boosting these conversations. Perhaps. (via Sampad)

    During the discussion, Sanjay pointed out that Facebook provides multiple engagement spots , and with the redesign, it could integrate the large user profile it already has with the real time stream to offer more accurate brands/ads placement. I’d like to add one more data component in this mix- Facebook Connect. According  to TechCrunch, work is already happening on the “Facebook ads + Facebook Connect = Social Ad Network” concept.

    Facebook has, as part of the new design also brought in location and language based targeting capabilities for advertisers. RWW also notes that, thanks to the Facebook Connect integration with Brightkite (a mobile social networking service), there are possibilities of hyperlocal targeting in the near future. The other market that would open up in the future could be based on the language versions. (Facebook is working on five Indian languages, for example) While Facebook has been making changes, basis features from Twitter and Friendfeed, it might also be to their benefit to look at an old adversary – MySpace. Though, at 236 million users, Facebook is rapidly leaving MySpace behind, the latter seems to have pipped Facebook as far as time spent on the site goes. It needs to be seen whether the new design will change that statistic too. Mashable has a post on the challenges and opportunities that the Facebook redesign throws up for brands. A consolidation, like streamlining the search function to aid easy tracking of conversations, might have to be done soon, to enable brands to utilise the service’s redesign better.

    In the discussion at LinkedIn, I had also brought up Stuart’s very interesting post on Twitter emerging as a personal advertising medium, which led me to wonder if large brands would gravitate towards Facebook, since they give a more structured way of interaction and small brands/individuals would use Twitter for promotions/advertising. But as Sanjay pointed out, Twitter would then, still have a revenue problem. 🙂

    Twitter is growing..and fast. Going forward, Twitter would need to watch Facebook carefully and choose a course that uses a different set of parameters for clustering users, and so deliver a differentiated audience, by usage or some other criterion, to create revenue streams. This could mean buying out a few services that complement the simple proposition that Twitter offers or helps measure brands’ activity on the service. Though I had mentioned that the big brands might want to look at Facebook because of the more structured approach,there are several brands already active on twitter. Like I said earlier, different user behaviour and contexts might mean that brands have different uses for Facebook and Twitter. While on the subject, check out Mashable’s cool sociable ads concept, and the debate about paying to be in the list of  suggested accounts to follow. (a list of 100 provided by Twitter to new users to start them off on the service)  It opens up a new line of thought. What if Twitter could find a way to serve real time contextual tweets on blogs, websites etc, perhaps as a (Twitter combination version of Google Search + Sponsored ads- if a brand wishes to be seen in a particular keyword context, for starters) widget. Let me think a bit more on that.

    Meanwhile, what brands should think about, is that in all this real time information overload on various services, they should not lose focus of what they are, and what their objectives are. Like I’ve said earlier, tools cannot replace strategy.

    until next time, some real time comments? 🙂

    PS. Must Read: A great Twitter FAQ list from Jeremiah

  • Paper Money

    There was a wonderful post in the Edelman Digital blog titled ‘The Last Newspaper‘. An insightful, well balanced and objective take on stories and content which perhaps captures the newspaper and web relationship best. From the post

    Stories are personal and transformational. Stories have definition and character. Stories are history personified.

    But content is cold, distant. Content is a commodity – a finite consumable of fleeting value. Content is artificial intelligence.

    Quite a paradox for brands that handle stories, when we consider that brands that tell the most interesting stories are loved by consumers. Taking it to a not-so-appealing premise was this question that was asked on Friendfeed recently, by Adam Lasnik.

    “I’m becoming increasingly concerned about the growing sensationalism in online “journalism.” Will the pursuit of pageviews ultimately trump integrity and thoughtfulness? I’m seriously worried.”

    When news becomes a commodity, publishers have to find a way to make theirs look more appealing than someone else’s. This is an unfortunate but inevitable by product.

    Publishers. On one side, we have Kindle 2, and its competitors (via @chupchap) work on an alternate platform for news delivery, and on the other, we have The Printed Blog rolling out a printed newspaper. Meanwhile, we  have Japanese newspapers collaborating for an iphone app. We also have an entity like NYT, which carries an op-ed article stating that perhaps non-profit, endowment based system is the way forward for newspapers, but is still the world’s best newspaper website,  taking radical steps to figure out ways to evolve, basis the understanding that newspapers are perhaps not the preferred means of delivery anymore – an API which offers developers access to 2.8 million articles from NYT, and another that gives developers data on the sharing and reading habits of Times People’s registered users. In essence, from a newspaper or even a news website, it transforms itself into a platform on which users and developers can use this mound of information for various purposes, and the possibility of linking it all together semantically. In context, an article from over 2 years back, still relevant.

    Closer to home, the top Indian newspapers are still grappling with the issue of how to handle themselves on the web. That’s not to say that some publications aren’t trying. HT, for example, has started blogs recently. Now you could turn around and say that’s basic, but that’s the state of Indian print media for you. Future revenue models are not even being thought of in most places. From their three main sources of revenue – subscription, stand sales and advertising, the first two are at best on plateaus and the last is suffering, largely due to recession. Recently, there was even a delegation of publication owners that approached the government for help!! Maybe they should be doing this instead – collaborative link journalism by Publish2. Vernacular papers are in better shape. But for English newspapers, i really don’t know what’s a better time to start thinking about future revenue.

    In that context, this post correctly states that micropayments for news (here’s a rebuttal too)  is not an option. Some revenue could be possible by making some parts of the content paid for, as the NYT is planning, but that still cannot be the main source of revenue. I am wondering how well a subscription model based on a different platform (mobile) could work. The news alerts on SMS are only the tip. While GPRS penetration is not exactly astounding, it is bound to grow especially in the segment that the English newspapers operate in, so perhaps it is a path to be explored. Locality based, contextual advertising could be fun.

    Newspapers, especially in India, would do well to heed a great piece of advice that I got from this post on brands, and the need for evolution. (via Gabriel Rossi)

    “Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” William Pollard

    Its not merely a change in delivery platform or an API that makes the move by NYT so radical. Its the mindset change, and until Indian newspapers realise that, no efforts will make long term sense. For now, they are smug in treating only other newspapers as competition, not even considering the possibility of an entire army of vertical-specialised content providers who now have digital media which gives them advantages like never before, to generate and distribute content.

    until next time, paper tigers…

    PS. This – Google buying a paper mill and converting it into a data centre, I thought, was very symbolic.

  • LinkedIn…a bit more

    A few weeks back, RWW had an interesting piece on why LinkedIn shouldn’t have Facebook envy, and should not attempt to make itself a destination site like the social networking service.

    We thought the Valley intelligentsia long ago proclaimed the end of destination sites. The desire to “get people to spend more time on LinkedIn” is linked to a failed business model around advertising.

    I agree that just because people spend time at a site doesnt necessarily mean that advertising makes a great business model there. In the early days of Facebook, apps like Scrabulous made me spend a lot of time there. I’ve noticed that (at least among my friends) the usage of apps has lessened, and there’s much more sharing – notes, photos, comments on status messages etc. If advertising is the revenue model, brands and FB would have to do a lot more than just contextual banner advertising.

    I’m not quite sure whether the same would apply for LinkedIn. Not in terms of the advertising bit, but in terms of the time spent. Again, while I agree with RWW on the accessibility via API tools, I’m a bit ambivalent on the need for spending time on the site first. Perhaps it might make sense to offer services that are first utilised on the site, and then made convenient. Once the users are more familiar with the tools and services, they’d be more comfortable with connecting to it via mail or say, a browser plugin etc. Ambivalent, because my usage of Twitter via twitterfox screams an opposing view (but not every service is as simple as Twitter)

    While I use at least one LinkedIn app, and utilise the status message quite frequently, I believe that a lot more can be done with the ‘News’ and ‘Groups’. Yes, it does have features like ‘share articles’, ‘start discussion’ etc, but I think there’s definitely more potential. The best reference I could find is Social Median (recently acquired by Xing). Now, I admit that my usage of that site was pretty limited, but I still think it was only a matter of time before i utilised it much more. Somehow it appealed more than say a Friendfeed room.

    I also think that the limited usage was because I was connected with a similar set of people on twitter who used to share links on the topics I was interested in. This, and the paucity of time, made a visit to Social Median a postponed task. Now considering that LinkedIn is best placed to offer tangible benefits (business networking, as opposed to social networking), what if the Social Median kind of tools (like the browser add on to share sites) and services (like adding feeds to groups) were introduced on LinkedIn.

    Now, you might say that we do roughly the same on say, Friendfeed. The difference is that in the case of LinkedIn, the adoption would be much more, because professionals interested in say, Social Media would find it easier to join a group, and have discussions on LinkedIn than joining a relatively geekier service like Friendfeed. Also, the different kind of groups that could happen on LinkedIn is much more since it already has professionals from a variety of streams, and each of them could create their own networks. The tangible gains from such a network even in daily office work is easy to imagine. This would also be immensely useful for those who’d like to gather information about career streams different from their own. In fact, this wonderful post also shows how brands can utilise content aggregation to their benefit. The thing to note here is that LinkedIn would need to provide enough tools so that the groups don’t become stagnant like that on Facebook. But I’m guessing it won’t, since most people would like to offer insightful comments, and share the best links, because its a business network, one that’d help their careers.

    until next time, a link book 🙂

  • Web 2.0 and transience

    As I am wont to do at infrequent intervals, I came up with one of  those  quirky connections – this one, for Tata Sky. I mentioned on Twitter that “aamir’s ghajini character could find Tata Sky Plus’ features quite useful-pause, rewind, record 😉 wonder if they’ll make a TVC with that”. In the days that followed, Asin has been extensively used in the Tata Sky campaign, so now I’m hoping thay actually make that TVC, complete with the Tata Sky helpline number tattooed on Aamir. 😉

    It led me to a tangential thought on social media. (the FB, Twitter variety, not business networking like LinkedIn) In what might amount to blasphemy, I wondered whether brands should make desperate efforts to be ‘engaging’ in social media. They need to be there definitely, but perhaps its only to know what’s being talked about them, and why. They perhaps need to be there more for reactions than actions. This also saves them the challenge of generating interesting ‘engagement ideas’ at all times.

    Why did I think all this? Because I realised that the engagement is being created by users themselves, for each other. For non web 2.0 brands, the engagement is most likely a result of something that’s been done offline. A TVC, a billboard, a radio jingle and so on. Must say, this perspective on how to use twitter for Marketing and PR made me think too.

    At one point, web 1.0 used eyeballs as measurement, that’s an idea thats not going anywhere great? Web 1.o gave us many great websites and lessons, but in a few years time, we jumped into web 2.0. The attention span and shelf lives for most things are becoming smaller. Is web 2.o just a transient phase that is needed to get us to another version? The optimist in me (which is usually bullied into submission) says that when a certain version is reached, the engagement and revenue models will manifest itself in an uncomplicated manner. (now you know why it needs to be bullied). Maybe the baby steps of getting connected are meant for simple things. Maybe it is only meant to let businesses know  that a connected world can shake up existing models. Maybe there’s some growing up to do, some discovery to be made, before revenue models and engagement by brands can happen as a regular occurrence.

    Or perhaps I’m going out of whack and being impatient. Center Networks has a good comparison of Web 1.0/ 2.0 revenue models and profitability. As this good post sums up in a different context

    New business models for media require entirely new exchanges of value — it’s not about finding new ways to balance the old equation.

    Perhaps the more meaningful discussions lie in figuring out how the basic pillars of web 2.o – connecting, sharing, collaborating-  can be used to build brands. The ‘How to use Twitter/Facebook for Marketing/PR’ are based on tools, and that would mean that we’ve been confusing tactics for strategy.

    until next time, discover 🙂

    PS: A few things that I thought were good to share

    Discovery Is The New Cocaine – Going Beyond Engagement

    View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: discovery ux)

    Social Media PR vs Social Media Marketing, and in context,a tool – CoTweet, that’d be a help to teams handling a brand on Twitter.

  • Talking Shop

    My post last week– on the topic of communities that individuals will initiate or will be part of, also made me think of organisations and brands, and what communities they would start/be part of. To begin with, perhaps there would have to be forks in the road, which hopefully would merge again at some point of time. Paths to accommodate employees, potential employees, consumers, suppliers and so on.

    If word of mouth is the primary marketing tool, it is important to get the organisation in order, and employees to believe in themselves and the place they work in, before transparency can be taken to the outside world. According to this RWW article, based on an Accenture report,  a large number of millenials (those born between 1977-97) expect their companies to accommodate their IT preferences, and if they don’t, they turn rogue and use technology that is unsupported and unsanctioned by their corporate IT departments. Social networks are great examples, according to the study, 59% use them inspite of their IT!!

    I’d written on this subject earlier, highlighting a few tools, that could help bring transparency to the employee and potential employee facing part. Recently, I came across a few more things that would help in these efforts. SocialCast (via Startup Meme), which provides ‘simple, smart messaging for team communication’. Meetsee, “Your personal virtual office ..filled with rich ways to communicate, share content, collaborate on documents, and build rapport between remote co-workers”. I also read that LinkedIn has made portions of company profiles public. As of now, they have 160000 profiles. I quite liked the career path feature under ‘Related Companies’. (eg.Take a look at Amazon’s profile.) What I’d like to see is companies taking this as an opportunity to converse more than a one way communication. LinkedIn can actually make a premium service out of this. Companies could also start off with using some existing apps on LinkedIn like Company Buzz, presentation apps, Huddle and Polls, each of which could add dimensions to their LinkedIn presence.

    On another front, brands are still grappling on how to utilise social media to reach out to their consumers. The question of where to have these conversations also still hangs. Both would obviously depend on the intent. Unfortunately, a lot of brands are seeing social media as just another broadcasting platform – a mentality of  ‘ah, the herd is on twitter, lets push the communication there’. Judging from the way the crowd responds to say (the most recent example) Ibibo, #FAIL.

    Like I said, it boils down to intent – making better products, addressing customer issues, using customers for R&D and so on. Chris Brogan has a wonderful post on what he calls ‘cafe shaped conversations‘. It made me consider the perspective that its perhaps not meant for every brand/organisation. That while there are advantages, for these advantages to achieve a scale that makes it worthwhile, might take quite some time for some organisations, because they aren’t built that way (?)

    But its also true that consumers don’t wait for the brand/company to start the conversation. And they like to band together. The communities at Facebook and Ning are great examples. I also came across a new site – Brand Adda, a community that revolves around brands, products and services. I first thought a 2.0 version of something like MouthShut but there new features added, which also allows for interaction initiated by the brand. Explained well in their FAQ. Perhaps they’re closer to GetSatisfaction. From a brand perspective, the conversation tools might be easier to handle than say, a SocialToo, which allows polls on Twitter. I’d like to see how this develops, since there’s definitely potential.

    The tools, irrespective of which stakeholder they address, are becoming increasingly significant. According to a recent study by Forrester, the % of people who trust the company blog as a new source is at a low 16%, right at the bottom of the table. This, I agree, is not a reflection on the concept of blogging, but more on the intent of companies which in turn, is translated into the content they post on the blog. And the path – blogs, twitter, LinkedIn etc are quite inconsequential if the intent is not sorted out first.

    until next time, connecting people…and companies..

    PS. A good resource on social media. Go on, there are free e-books.