Tag: Facebook

  • A different social circle

    The ‘inefficiencies of scale’ in a social business scenario is something I keep writing about – wrote about it recently in the context of Google vs Facebook too. So I found this article, which was about the demise of Facebook in 5 years, very interesting. Though predictions are dime a dozen and are many a time used as traffic boosters, this one comes from a person who predicted the decline of MySpace four years back. What interested me even more was that he said the single social networking platform concept will give way to smaller networks.

    Meanwhile, after all the hype Google Me generated, and expectations of launch in Fall 2010, our knowledge remains at a ‘social layer’ level and its internal project name – Emerald Sea. So, when i saw Google’s foray into fashion – boutiques.com, and its working, I wondered for a moment whether this could be another rendition of Google Me. After all, a common interest is a great context for social interaction too. And over a period of time, search would be honed better and be social too, with a curation (like shown in Boutiques’ case) that goes beyond algorithm and crowd.  This interest could be a place (say hello to Google Hotpot), or an interest that aggregates people, like books. (yes, Google’s store is coming soon) That would be changing the social landscape quite a a bit. Add to it shopping and say, a GroupOn integration by context/location and Google will have fun, not to mention local advertising revenues. It would also have a better grip on aspects like privacy, influence, and would be smaller networks rather than an all encompassing one. Its a bit of wild and far fetched thought specially when we know that Google Me is now slated for Spring 2011, but interesting, you think?

    until next time, off for a fortnight 🙂

  • A social culture?

    Even as I write this, Titan is looming on the horizon – not Saturn’s moon, but Facebook’s purported mail service, which can (potentially) stake claim on another front that Google has made much advances in, though its still only #3. And so the thoughts from last week’s post continue – on whether culture is the key differentiator that sets apart the dominant player in an era and everything else from superior technology to better marketing evolves from it.

    The two posts I had linked to last time remain relevant in a Google vs Facebook  discussion – “Google’s real problem – GTD” at GigaOm and “Facebook and Google” at Piaw’s blog. Meanwhile, Robert Scoble wrote an excellent post last week titled ‘Why Google can’t build Instagram‘, which brought out a whole lot of other perspectives on what prevents Google from innovating at a rapid pace (also probably the reason why Facebook is stealing its thunder regularly) – organisational size (something we keep discussing here), controlling the scope of products/services, an infrastructure that’s not built for a smaller social scale, the necessity to support all platforms (because they’re Google, that’s expected of them, thought this holds true for FB too), the inability to use a competitor’s graph (in this case, Facebook), the need to ship a product/service that’s near perfect (because they’re Google!) and so on. Scoble also throws in a few pointers on how Google could still innovate, and I thought some of Android’s success could be attributed to one of those – sending it out and allowing developers to build on top of it. You can get another interesting perspective on Google and scale here. (via Mahendra)

    The other understanding I developed was that with scale, even the organisation’s vision could change, (though the reverse is what we see regularly) and that would affect everything from competitor landscape to culture. So the challenge is to keep people hooked on – employees and users.

    I’ve come across excellent posts on both these. The organisational aspect is the core theme of Gautam’s blog, and so its not surprising that I’ve seen two posts in the recent past that tackle this subject – Inspiring People, and Making Work Meaningful. The other must read in this context is the 2010 Shift Index, specifically the ‘Passion and Performance’ part. From a consumer perspective, few people can articulate it better (especially since a toon is usually more popular than a 1000 words) than Tom Fishburne, and again, two relevant posts – App  of dreams (as a devout Angry Birds player, I identify completely) and The Antisocial Network.

    Despite approaching it from two different sets of stakeholders, the common thread is easy to spot – that brands/organisations need to figure out a reason for existence that goes beyond their business mission and balance sheets. This would then help them identify the ‘something’ that people – both employees and consumers  can identify with and would want to belong to. Coincidentally, this is the drawing I got on my Gaping Void subscription today. 🙂

    (Hugh credits Mark Earls for first voicing this thought)

    Not very long ago, Google spearheaded a revolution of sorts, by creating an algorithm that connected a web user with the information he sought. The only thing that topped it was the business model they built on it. Many have attempted it before and after them, but there was only one Google. The world changing mojo seems to have been transferred to Facebook these days, and even to Twitter to a certain extent, as, in different ways, they connect us to people we know/want to know in various contexts. Information sharing then becomes one of the applications of this connection. This phenomenon is called (by) many names, including social media. 😀

    Perhaps brands and organisations fail to understand the philosophy of social platforms/interaction and get lost in the applications. A bit like wanting to build a social layer on top of everything you have created so far and meanwhile, firing an employee for telling the world he got a bonus and raise 😉

    until next time, titanic shifts 🙂

    Bonus read: The Heart of Innovation via Dina

  • Place and Time

    After Facebook announced its plans to use its social graph to become the mayor of Location (via Places API, deals) and also become the ubiquitous sign in on the mobile platform, Mahendra, Arjun Ram and I had an interesting discussion on Twitter. It started because Arjun and I were wondering when Facebook Places would come to India, but also moved on to the impact of these announcements on Foursquare and even Google.

    Now in terms of world domination plans, Google is hardly a sitting duck and has been trying to gain a foothold in ‘social’ for a while now, with little success to report so far. But Android has been making huge strides and that should be some consolation. In our twitter discussion, I mentioned that what Facebook had done with this horizontal approach to the mobile platform (OS/hardware independent and just dependent on you being online) is a parallel to what Google did with Android, except this is a way more compelling move.

    Towards the end of our chat, I wondered whether, a couple of years later, we’ll be speaking the same way about Facebook as we are about Google now. Its difficult to imagine how, especially when Facebook’s strategy is about adding a social element to every online activity. Like I said, i have no clue on what the frontier might be, but then again, at one point, I did think, perhaps naively that Google had world domination all sorted out.  That was until Facebook started its march.

    Sometime back I’d written about whether every era has an organisation which best captures the culture that would enable success in the era. The time between eras is fast shrinking – IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook (?) (no, i haven’t forgotten Apple, just ignoring it) and I eagerly await the next breakout star. But I’m also trying to see if there’s something that connects the dominant forces – something that is not unique and not dependent on the time they were the gold standard in.

    Two posts I read recently gave me some understanding of why Facebook seems to be advancing faster. “Google’s real problem – GTD?” (Getting Things Done) at GigaOm and “Facebook and Google” at Piaw’s blog. Both pointed to cultural differences and the way the organisations deal with human resources. And so I wonder, is it inevitable that culture changes with scale, and how much can it change before things go downhill? Is there a way to stem that ‘rot’? I read a post about Amazon recently, that shows how Amazon deals with the various companies it acquires. More on ‘culture’ next week.

    until next time, search..social..surprise 🙂

  • A Contention

    Ever since Facebook released the new groups, I have been wondering whether, in one sweep, they have started on a path to make the communities (vs) social networks dichotomy redundant. Yes, there is a difference. Of course, they would exist separately, but the dichotomy may cease to be a hugely relevant thing. Yes, I could list out an entire set of things that need to be fixed before they get there, but its still a very good start, when you compare it to its own groups, or groups on other networks like Orkut/LinkedIn.

    There’s a reason I thought so. One of the very interesting services that I don’t use (much) is Quora. Quora is a huge knowledge resource. It does this by allowing users to follow their areas of  interest, ask questions, which are answered by the community. Users can also follow specific questions and even follow people who they think will add value. Imagine the best in the field answering your questions, that’s usually what happens there. Its not just technology. I just saw that Ashton Kutcher had answered a question on Hollywood. And I still can’t make Quora a habit, though I’m trying to. But then I thought, what if this ‘interest’ was a (new) group on Facebook. Facebook is anyway one of my default tabs and an established destination site, and there’d be a much better chance of me participating if interesting QnA and people were a given.

    Back then to networks and communities. I was also looking at it through the prism of Gautam’s content-community social model, and wondering if this potential shift in the nature of networks and communities means that content is becoming a titular king, and distribution the real power. Content would obviously matter since conversations happen around it, and I’m not talking about the 140 character/ FB status message here. But in a social perspective, would good content be able to deliver value for its owner (in this case, I am referring to brands and media outlets) only if it exists in a network like Facebook or is able to deliver as much social functionality in its own network as say, a Facebook does, or has a huge distribution network on say, Twitter?

    Yes, yes, the strategists will say that Facebook, Twitter are just tools, and they’re right, but think about it. My hope is that in the next step of the web’s evolution, we’ll be able to see niche networks in perspective.  🙂

    until next time, contentious?

  • Facebook Groupie

    What kind of a blog would this be if we didn’t discuss Facebook’s new announcements. At a simplistic level, it would seem that Facebook learned a lot from that Google study. (via a conversation with Mahendra)

    Though i can’t access it yet, I’m very happy with the backup option, and hope that its a step towards portability. The new chat availability ‘visualisation’ seems slightly better than the old one. I can’t see the app dashboard yet.  But the other big announcement was the revamping of groups. I’d been categorising friends using lists for a while, but didn’t actually utilise them for anything specific. Though its easy to see this as a wall within a wall, from initial usage, I think the new Groups allow that one layer that needed to be added to generic ‘friendships’ – context, not to mention better control over who sees what. And from what I see, I don’t even have to be friends with a person to share things and have a great conversation on a topic both of us like. There are other advantages too. Of course, there are a a few issues, and as always, Facebook kept everything as public as possible (as default) but changes in this version is as inevitable as the waves of outrage that follows all Facebook announcements.

    I’m still debating whether I’d like the Groups to be integrated better in the newsfeed (with ways to filter as per importance) or whether its current location (sidebar) is a better approach. From a signal-noise perspective, perhaps it should stay the way it is. I’m not very convinced about looking at Groups as ‘Friendfeed going mainstream‘ or even Wave. But that does make me wonder whether the next version will also have a feed aggregator, directly, or indirectly – allowing apps like Networked Blogs. That might actually get RSS to go mainstream. 🙂 If that happens, I am also wondering about the implications on Google Reader, and actually any other network which serves as a content distribution/consumption channel.

    Groups can be made ‘Secret’, and I’m still not sure how ‘Open’ and ‘Closed’ groups will show up in Facebook Search. Also, since I still don’t have access to Places, I can only wonder whether ‘Location’ can also be made a group feature. I’m seeing both the above from a brand perspective. Would a brand, for example, be able to highlight a location specific group on their Page, as part of a local promo? Even if the brands do not get information about the groups, Facebook would still have it, and that would definitely help target ads better.

    Groups are not really a silver bullet, but I don’t think Facebook is aiming for that now either. Its just that they’ve not missed the starting gun, to slice and dice my social graph – that’s useful for me, as well as advertisers.

    until next time, group on 😉