Tag: Like

  • New media indeed

    When I wrote this in last week’s post – “‘social’ as it relates to friends and followers’ overrules ‘social’ as a relationship between brand and consumer”, in the context of how brands use social media, I also became  more conscious that despite me relating to Facebook and Twitter as a means to connect with friends, the platforms themselves were clearly seen as a media by the world at large. Even LinkedIn now apparently has a news aggregator.

    It is true that I consume large amounts of content via (or on) Facebook and Twitter, but I have always seen it as content shared by friends, not as media like a newspapers or TV channels. It is probably because I have always associated media with information and entertainment and never social. But that’s only a personalised view, I realise. The larger picture shows a content delivery platform – media. I guess when social scaled it didn’t know what else to do but become media. Interesting how the new media platforms worked from social connection towards utility and the old media are trying to make the journey from info and entertainment to social.

    And thus when I saw a few recent Facebook developments, I viewed it through the prism of FB as media. Facebook launched Sponsored Stories a while back, using friends’ actions as an ‘advertisement’. It updated Pages giving functionalities that helped brands interact more. Now it has completely knocked off the ‘Share’ button and replaced it with an omnipotent ‘Like’ button that will transmit a story blurb complete with thumbnail instead of the earlier single line in ‘Recent Activity’. (details) Publishers won’t complain since content will be more visible now. Facebook’s comment box plugin also got revamped with better moderation, social algorithms to surface the comments that will be most interesting to you (indicated by social signals from friends) and better distribution – now, when a user utilises the “Post to Facebook” button on a site with FB comments enabled, it can be replied to on FB and will automatically be reflected on the original website as well. If the publisher has a Page on FB, it can respond to the comment and include the people who have ‘Liked’ the page into the conversation. (details) That’s a first from FB – allowing conversations to go out. Wonder what they’re after – interest graph, a perpetually signed-in user, sole web identity provider, all of the above? But in essence, a new media platform that connects publishers with users. And in this age, brands are after all content creators too, eh?

    I would think the progression is obvious – first build a user base with awesome features, then focus on publishers  (including brands) who will make it a distribution channel, and the next step would be to make the advertisers spend more.

    While Google is busy dealing with content farms in search results, I realise that we have very little means to stay away from the Facebook way of throwing content at us. Watch your newsfeed as Facebook uses you and the content publisher to make itself more indispensable as a platform. Like I tweeted, the hope is that in trying to be everything – mailbox, location, photo storage, for everyone, Facebook might lose itself. The effect all this will have on ‘trust’ in networks, I’ll leave for another post.

    Media has always been aggregating audiences by providing information..+entertainment..+social connections… and then leasing it to brands. (advertisers) With advances in technology, it’s perhaps time for brands to create their own direct lines to consumers, outside of the new media barons. Otherwise, in their immediate comfort state of using yet another platform as media, the way they’re accustomed to, it is possible that they will continue to be at the mercy of a third party and have to play by their rules, sometimes at the risk of antagonising the end user.

    until next time, mediators = media + dictators? 😉

  • ‘Like’ Minded People

    I read an interesting post by Dare Obasanjo titled “There will be many social graphs“. It took me back to the context of my post on Google’s social plans, where I’d mentioned the possibility of creating networks around different contexts – with not all connections being ‘friends’- a Twitter kind of asymmetric relationship, and how Facebook and Google both have an opportunity at that level. The form and kinds of data that we share – blog posts and thoughts, status updates, photos, videos, answers, people and the contexts we share them in, are many, and sometimes I wonder if one service can actually aggregate all this, while still providing user friendly privacy options.

    When i read (and saw) that Facebook is replacing ‘boxes’ with tabs, and also saw that my ‘Like’s (Interests and Likes seem to be undifferentiated now!) were now displayed prominently on my profile, I wondered if Facebook could really aggregate everything. Imagine, if those Likes+ interests were differentiated – i.e. Interest was ‘Music’ and ‘Greenday’ was a Like. Now, the way I’d like it is, if I had Interests displayed on my Profile page (or a tab, if you prefer) – there could be options of ‘how many’, ‘most active’, ‘most recent’ etc, with the existing ‘who can see’ privacy option, but more finely grained for each interest. For each interest, I should be able to build a page – with third party content included – subscription to blogs on the subject (either through FB Notes or say, Networked Blogs), Facebook Questions  and Quora, it could be Facebook groups, Pages that I have liked (so the interest ‘Music’ could have every artist/band/music media brand/ label I’ve liked), Friends who share the interest, people I ‘follow’ in that interest category (will explain in a minute) and when FB plays location, include that too, and sync Events. Goes without saying that I should have micro-level privacy setting options for sharing with others. I should be able to ‘Like+follow’ an interest of a person even if I’m not his friend (assuming he’s kept his interest public),  and even recommend to my friends.  A sort of ‘Twitter list’ for each interest. Yes, of course I need to be able to import Twitter lists too. There would also be a universal ‘Interest’ page that collates data from all the Interest Pages created by individual users, and also gives suggestions on ‘Whom to Follow’ for that interest – an algorithm based not just on mass ‘Like’s, but also basis contexts like Location, sub-genres, and my previous activity. To scale even further, use (mass and personal) data from services where I’ve used some form of Facebook Connect. Of course, Facebook would then have ginormous data on me, but they have it anyway, so I’ll be optimistic and hope that they use it to ‘personalise the internet – like Hunch, than for anything evil. Of course I’m assuming I get data portability too. Then maybe the different Facebook Search options can also really have fun. The entities who want to ‘engage’ users would also find this useful. I realise that I might be being simplistic about this, but what about the direction?

    And though most people are skeptical about Google’s social efforts, perhaps justifiably so (read this at GigaOm and Stowe Boyd’s “Can Google go Social“), and the Wave crash doesn’t really help perception, I don’t want to rule out  the possibility  (like I said in the earlier post) of Google getting over their privacy agony, and surprising us – imagine the ‘Interests’ as a separate service/ something around or integrated with iGoogle/Profiles/Buzz (brrr)/Chrome (browser or OS)/ Search itself.

    While on interests, suggestions and discovery, Twitter’s ‘Who To Follow’ hasn’t excited me much in terms of the people it has suggested. It says that the algorithm is based on people you follow and those they follow, but for now everyone’s busy trashing it, using its own acronym – WTF. So, how about using interests (Why To Follow – work harder on the existing Interests structure?) – either ask me when when i register, you can ask me now too, the lists that include me, keywords from tweets and bio, hashtags and hopefully ‘learn’ my preferences over a period of time. Popularity by itself is really not that great a parameter – if they’re popular, chances are I already know, and there’s a reason I don’t follow, even if its ego 😉

    Its not as though these are the only guys who can build a more nuanced social platforms – perhaps its possible for someone like Quora to start with questions and build more – eg. relevant posts from say Networked Blogs, and more people from Twitter Lists? Foursquare, or any of the LBS could scale too – from places to activities and consumption that happen at those places.

    Meanwhile, interests, context, relevance, building authority and influence, all of these are established on identities,  but there’s a debate on whether an old friend merits a return – anonymity. 🙂 More on that later. 🙂

    until next time, interesting?