Tag: LinkedIn

  • Brand Personalities

    The discussions on anonymity are back in full force on the web, mostly courtesy Google’s stance against pseudonymity on Google+. Google has its reasons and is supposedly working on it.Considering that I represent myself as ‘manuscrypts’ and an icon/logo on most social networks, identity on the web is an issue that I can definitely relate to.

    But when I consider this from a brands’ perspective, I sense an equally grey area. The brand is usually represented on social networks as a logo and a ‘voice’ that cannot be tied down to a person. Most studies indicate that consumers/users would rather talk to a person than a brand. But that also sets the stage for a BBC-Twitter like incident to happen, a scenario I had written about a couple of years back. I have seen only a few interesting alternatives. (eg. Chicago Tribune’s Twitter directory or adopting a persona like Hippo)  There is a different side to it too – how many brand managers would like to associate themselves with the product they manage? (for various reasons) When agencies manage social platforms on behalf of clients, what is the best way to present that? A person has many identities, some he/she wants to share, and some others he/she does not, a brand is rarely given this leeway.

    I feel that in all the time that has elapsed since my earlier post, the networks have not yet built systems that allow brands to fully explore the ‘people-conversations’ aspect that makes social work. Twitter and Facebook, the premium players, both lack a way to surface the identities of the people tied to the brand, in context. There is only so much a Twitter bio can hold, and no one looks at the Info tab on Facebook. (LinkedIn is best placed, but very few brand centric discussions happen there.) The focus, whether it’s Facebook’s Ads API or Twitter’s promoted tweets, seems to be on broadcast, albeit more targeted. Foursquare is still early in the game, but the self-serve brand pages are a decent step. I hope Google considers all this when they do allow brands to play on Google+.

    If a platform does manage to work it out, it would be helpful for all concerned. Brands could apportion responsibilities. Monitoring systems and reaction mechanisms could build in roles, ‘filters’ and ‘rights’ accordingly, and users would know exactly who to speak to for what issue? The other way, of course, is for brands to build that network themselves, feeding in data, personas and conversations from existing networks. That way, they can even assign responsibility to early adopters within the organisation to test out new platforms on their behalf, and communicate that. With the rise of SoLoMo (social, location, mobile), the need for a distributed social architecture is now of much importance.

    until next time, a brand’s personal identity

  • Weekly Top 5

    This week's top news include LinkedIn's growth, integration with Slideshare, Zynga's 'Empires and Allies', Cityville's mobile release, their lawsuit against Vostu, Angry Birds updates, Windows' new SDK, move to HTML5, the new

    Nokia Windows Phone, Yahoo's new search tools, potential Hulu acquisition, Google's online reputation management tools, search updates, and adding communication abilities to Chrome.

    [scribd id=58606157 key=key-2iqoa67djclx467gba3l mode=list]

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  • Brands & Niche Networks

    For a while now, I have believed that one of the inevitable consequences of the sprawling social networks we see around today, would be niche networks. This is not something we don't see around already – in fact, most of the networks or users address it in their own ways – groups/pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, lists and cliques on Twitter.

    But I see niche networks as an evolutionary phase because currently, the popular networks seem to have been designed for mass, with features evolving when there was a demand – from the users or clients for more segregation. Users, because, sometimes even for the infovores, (apparently the term was the title of a book by Tyler Cowen – HT @uglybutbearable) the deluge of information without efficient filters meant that they were losing out on information they'd have liked to have, and businesses, because without more customisation options, social would just be another media/distribution platform. But social and mass seem to go intuitively together, so the usual way is to aggregate and then segregate.

    (Bonus: Great read on filtering by JP Rangaswami on his blog)

    However, there are many manifestations of niche networks that I can already see emerging. Ashton Kutcher, whom I'd consider a personality brand, has built his own custom Twitter app with the help of Ubermedia

    . A new service called MyCube, still in private beta, is offering users the ability to monetise their information. (via) Raptr, a social networking service for gamers is customising users' news streams extremely well using the information it has on its users. (via)

    The only commonality here is that all these seem to be moving away from a mass design to one that's meant for smaller/more specific user sets. Of course, the existing large networks can always figure a way for users themselves to be filters and recommend appropriate things to their own network, (eg. Facebook's new feature) but that's a rewiring.

    But I believe that the rise of the niche networks provides an excellent opportunity for brands to get into the thick of things and 'own' the domains they operate in. Nike+ has always been a favourite. I also think Toyota's approach to social networking, built with help from Salesforce is a good first step. The challenge, as always, will be to find ways of how a user need can be satisfied with a new offering that is synced enough with his familiar territory (existing networks) for his experience to be as frictionless as possible. If brands can do that well, they will have built something that's not utterly dependent on the vagaries of current and emerging media platforms.

    until next time, admoniche 🙂

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  • Weekly Top 5

    This week’s stories include LinkedIn’s Android app and its developer platform, Bing’s increasing market share and Bing Business Portal, Facebook’s ownership and Open Commute Project, a few apps on the iPad, Larry Page’s reorganisation in Google, acquisitions by Google and YouTube Live.
    [scribd id=53092158 key=key-22pklg2rd5su5v2ybspz mode=list]

  • 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? 😉