Simply put, social media is exposure, a way to extend your web presence to a larger audience with the scaling help of automation (electrons) and the virtues of the communications' revolution itself (photons).Translation: A little bit of intent and pushing a few buttons equals a ton of leverage and distribution. You pay for this exposure, not with money, but with content. You and the rest of the network of members are providing the social media site its content, and in return it is providing you with exposure and extending your reach, along with a platform for making new connections. On Google's algorithmic, non-human network your website or business is passive, and the prospective customer, if you will, is active. Actively searching for something that you or some other site or business may have. On the human, social network, you the business, website, or promoter, if you will, is the one being active. And the prospective consumer is in a passive mode, using the network as a river to dip in and out of, as entertainment, news, communication, emotional outlet, or just plain fun. I think there is not only room, but a need for both types of networks, and that the rise of Facebook and Twitter doesn't mean at all the demise of Google. There are times when we want our network to be flowing, serendipitous, and fun, and there are other times when we are in a more deliberative, utilitarian mode. We need (or want) answers, and we need them now. Except with Social Media you are not selling your wares directly. You are indirectly selling your self as a real person, a genuine person with real interests. It's a way to scale your 'legitimacy.' Trust is one of the biggest factors in making a sale. And social media is a way to scale the communication of your trust. From a business standpoint or even just a human friendship standpoint, one's activity in Social Media is comparable to the "Opening of the Sale" where the goal is to talk about anything except business. In sales this is what is known as the "Schmoozing" process. But before you start thinking how creepy it is to think in these terms, "Schmoozing" only really works if you are truly interested from a sincere standpoint in the subject you are "schmoozing" about. Any insincerity in this process, either in real life or in the venue of Social Media, and one would have been better not signing up for Twitter or any other such service. So one way to look at Social Media, is as an advertising medium, a free way to extend your reach and your message. But in social media the message is your personality, your real point of view, and what you are selling is your integrity, your trust. Let's take one example that I remember coming up recently. Lisa Bettany (@MostlyLisa) is a professional photographer. She posts much of her work on Flickr, the most popular Photography Social Media site. She doesn't post her work there with each caption screaming "Buy This Now Because I'm Great and I Need Money!" along with a Paypal link. She posts there because she loves photography and loves sharing her work and the tips behind her work with others. Such actions build trust and integrity. She feeds the site with its content. The popularity of the site feeds her with exposure. She recently told the story of how this photo, which she posted on flickr over a year ago for no money, was recently purchased unexpectedly by Penguin, the book publisher, for use as the artwork for a book cover. Penguin only found the photo because it was on Flickr. They knew flickr to be the most popular photography sharing site. So they went there to search for the right potential content for their project. If the photo was only posted on her private website, it would not have been found. No transaction would have been made. So, the Social Network, in the virtual world, is like the Commons or Marketplace of a University or City in the 'real' World. It extended her personal work's reach into the public sphere for consumption, enjoyment, and productivity. That's one example of the Social Network's virtuous cycle. The users provide the content for free. And the network provides the user with free exposure. This is just one thing that a Social Network is from the decided point of view of the business/website/blog owner, or anyone using the internet itself to scale a message. Ads that you pay real money for are the ones for direct selling, talking about your product, its Features, Advantages, and Benefits. Social Media is like hob nobbing at the Country Club or local Charity Fundraiser but without having to get into your monkey suit and drive down to the venue. Still, you need to be truthfully interested in that person you are chatting with, and really care about that charity you are raising 'funds' for, and not be in it just for you or the 'sale.' I think most would agree that's a more fun way to live anyway.
Tag: Social Media
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Fail Whale: The Shadow Side of the Social Media Experience
Update Thursday Aug. 26th 2010 – As you can see I wrote this Sunday the 22nd the day after Leo’s blog post. I was a bit too negative and ranting. So I sat on it a few days. Read the always non- controversial Louis Gray’s piece that was also in response to Leo’s original piece Soaked it in. All in all, I’d rather have had Twitter and Facebook over the last few years than not. They are exciting in many ways. Facebook’s like rediscovering old friends. Twitter is new friends. There have been a lot of positive experiences. Still I’ll publish the original rant I felt and wrote Sunday pretty much unchanged, because going forward these negative issues are important and need to be addressed and kept in mind.
Original Post from Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
Leo Laporte’s post yesterday “Buzz Kill” about how Google Buzz had failed him recently, and more importantly how Social Media had failed him in general, really got me thinking.
A) I totally agree with him. He nailed it. You should read the piece. We put all this energy into “Social Media” and what do we have to show for it? That information and energy goes into a vacuum, a black hole, if you will, and never comes back out again.
It’s our energy that’s creating the value in these networks, the content, and not only are we not compensated for our energy, we’re practically slapped in the face for it. “Who the heck are you, you pion with your 50 followers? You worthless piece of nothing loser! Why can’t you be more like Aplusk or John Mayer with their millions of followers or at least a porn star with their thousands? Yeah, you heard me, you’re not even worth what a porn star is worth in our eyes!”
Dial it down, Stephen. Dial it down! OK, I’ll meditate on it a few days before posting this, but isn’t that what Twitter, if not literally, seems figuratively to be screaming at us all day long?
If they hadn’t had the followers number highlighted would the service have taken off? I don’t think so. So Twitter had to appeal to a lowest common denominator “High School Popularity Contest” mentality to, not only make it work, but for it to keep working.
When I first joined Twitter in early 2007 thanks to following early adopters like Leo and Scoble, I thought, “How cool is this? Even though no one in my small town knows about this, I can do all kinds of cools things.” I had always noticed how inspirational or ‘insightful” thoughts would come to me when I least expected them, usually when I was out somewhere in my car, at dinner with friends, etc. and now I could simply text such thoughts to my Twitter account and retrieve them later for expanding. Or if I simply wanted to remember something cool that I saw or heard while out. Just tweet and retrieve. A repository of my daily life, my existence, my continuum, my stream of consciousness.
But where are these insights, these things I wanted to remember, this digital outline of my life that I so dutifully recorded the last 3 years? Gone. I can’t retrieve them. I can’t search them. I can’t find them. And even though one hears that Twitter has been working on such a feature that will be released ‘sometime’ in the future, its like “Gee thanks Twitter, it’s my information, for God’s sakes. I don’t need it some time in the future. I need it now, and every day since I’ve been using your service, feeding your service, so that you could sell me out down the river to Microsoft and Google with your ‘firehose.’
If instead all of this info had flowed into my blog, it would still be there, searchable, mine, the true archive and repository that it was meant to be. Some will say, “Well that is the price you pay for ‘free'”
Oh yeah really? You know, I’m not the biggest fan of Ma.tt in the world, but look at WordPress.com. Totally free. Holds at least a thousand if not a million times more information than Twitter or Facebook, and it yours, you control it. You can put it in and you know you can always get it out. He’s not selling your information to third parties for his gain. He’s upselling (the freemium model) on additional features and using the popularity of the WordPress site and name to make a cut on Web Hosting purchases for those who choose to self host their wordpress blog. He’s Smith Barney. He’s making his money the ‘Old Fashioned’ way.
But look, this is not an attack on Twitter, per se. Facebook is 10x as bad. At least Twitter is semi part of the ‘Open Web.’ Facebook hides behind its wall, not because it wants to protect the privacy of its users, but because it wants to protect its monopoly at the expense of its users. You post a picture into Facebook, it ain’t comin out again. You post a video into a Facebook, not only is it not coming out again, you can’t even SHARE the damn thing with the internet. I mean, how evil is that? That is crazy evil. All the comments and exchanges and time you put into writing messages on the Twitter or Facebook platform? They’re not yours. They belong to these companies. And they can and do disappear at the drop of a hat.
Not to single out Twitter and Facebook. Tumblr, Posterous, Foursquare, Flickr, (just go to Scoble’s Google Profile to see a list of every Web 2.0/Social Media company that’s every existed) just to name a few are all the same. ‘Evil’ gets thrown around a lot. That’s too strong. ‘Evil’ is Hitler. How about ‘Unethical’? More interested in building a brand, a critical mass or ‘network’ effect as they call it, ala the Zeitgeist of the ‘Start Up’ crowd, so they can have a profitable ‘exit’ and IPO rather than being ‘into’ it and wanting to build something cool to benefit the user him or herself.
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Facebook’s Privacy Solution is So Simple
Instead of screwing with the granularity of your main page or account, confusing and aggravating the users, all that Facebook has to do is have two separate pages for each user: one completely private (except for those one chooses to be friends with), and the other completely open and connected to the open web. They already have this feature in “Pages.” All they have to do is tell people that this is your private page, and this other is your public page. To encourage users to create a public page, make the public page the only place that is searchable in Google or the open web. If only 10% of users choose to have a public page, you’ve got an automatic Twitter in one day. But to encourage even further adoption, innovate and iterate the public pages like crazy, and also tell the users, they must have a public page in order to search the public database. If the only way people can search and more importantly gain value from the Facebook public database, and the network effect that goes with it, is to have a public facing page, I can guarantee you 90% of users will adopt it.
What does this approach do?
- It restores user trust. If you’re main account is completely locked down, not even searchable, you will also gain more users. My sister doesn’t belong to Facebook. She doesn’t trust it. Maybe it’s too late, but if trust were restored, she and millions of others, who don’t even consider Facebook and option, may join. But even if they don’t, you’ve restored trust in your main user base.
- When users have a clear choice, they are going to contribute more value to the eco system. I recently heard Deepak Chopra quote, “A person convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.” This manipulation of users to “trick” them into sharing things in public, only makes them more reticent, if not in fact close their account, to share anything useful.
- You’ve simplified things. Not all those “sliders” to give everyone a headache over their account settings. The main account is completely private except for friends. The public page is completely open. No frustration or headaches. The simplicity will make the value of the network effect and the eco-system, and possibly even the number of users, explode.
When Facebook aquired FriendFeed last year, I thought this was the approach they were going to take. Dead simple. Everyone would have their private account and then a separate public page that would essentially be FriendFeed, with all its value of search algorithms that I had thought simply nailed Social search, and would not only prove fruitful to a business model, but also provide even more value to the user. The perfect recipe for “win, win”, the exact recipe for applying Google’s search model to Social Search.
Instead, they seemed, and even more so now after F8, to move in the opposite direction. Screwing with everyone’s main account, violating that sacred trust that enabled them to get such a large user base in the first place, and what is more, doing nothing with “Pages.” And now it seems after F8, “Pages” are almost being discouraged in favor of the “Likes” implementation. I guess they figure that anyone with a public page already has a website, and instead, why not just encourage them to virtually turn that open page into a Facebook page with the “Likes” implementation? Sounds good. But what are the implications? What happens when I the individual user clicks the “Likes” button? Is all my information being shared with third parties? What happens when that gets out, and every headline across the country screams, “Don’t click the ‘Like’ button!” Turns what might have been a useful thing for not only the user, but also the Facebook brand, into a liability, not to mention simply just bad Karma.
I don’t know Marc Zuckerburg, or know what his values are. If they are indeed, “evil,” a term the industry labels a company that tries to make their money through manipulation, then I guess this post is like talking to a tree. For even if they do “Correct Course,” as Dana Boyd, Tim O’Reilly, John Battelle, and many other smart prognosticators predict they will do, does it matter? This is indeed one of the salutary effects of a free market: Consumer push back and the realization that the big money is in making the “right” choices, forces a company to change or be in danger of losing its business. In a true free market, what’s right for the company is aligned with what is right for the consumer. But still, if Facebook is the “it” company of the next decade, and only the market is forcing them to make the right choices, the internet won’t hold in its hands a very transcendent leader. “He who is forced against his will, is of the same opinion still.”
The internet and the communications revolution is truly a place of infinite possibilities, almost a metaphor itself for the “Quantum Effect,” which states that, even in a complete vacuum, even in complete nothingness, (which is not to be imagined as a patch of empty space, because in nothingness, even space doesn’t exist), the idea of symmetry must exist, and the slightest break in it, which must occur, leads to an explosion of infinite proportions.
I would argue that Facebook would be of greater value and in turn be capable of making even more money than they ever imagined, by doing it the old fashioned way: providing value, innovating, and being completely transparant. Good will translates into cash in all sectors of a truly free market, but even exponentially so in the freest of free markets, one where “choice” and “free will” is the highest value: the internet. The Communications Revolution.
What do you think?
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MyLikes.com: The Holy Grail of Social Media Monetization
MyLikes.com: The Holy Grail of Social Media Monetization – www.mylikes.com- Yes it is advertising, which is a chance to leverage your social media presences into real money, but it encourages authenticity, because if you are not authentic you know that the value of your influence, your legitimacy, will go down, thus your earning potential, not to mention the value of your reputation, which on social media networks is the most valuable thing you can have, will go down too.
- It’s FUN. Even if there were no money involved, I would love this site. It’s fun to play with. Much in the same vein as GDGT.com, where geeks enjoy being social about their “gadgets,” this site encourages you to be social with EVERYTHING in your life that you “like” or maybe even love. It’s fun to play around with this site. They have contests, in which you can leverage your likes of things that you may not be able to sponsor. The whole site just feels like one big party. And its “non-guilty” fun, because it seems to be sprinkled, or maybe I should say “doused,” which ethical juice. There’s a special, ethical, Googley, feel to it, that one only seems to feel from engineer types, which I believe the founders of this company are. I know that they are ex-Googlers, and ex-Googlers just seem to have this ethical ambience driven in their DNA. It’s the same kind of ethical, transparency I feel from Leo Laporte and the guys who founded FriendFeed, who were also ex-Googlers.
- It’s inclusive. Ad.ly, for instance only seems to be interested in the stars. I signed up with them months ago and haven’t even heard a peep from them. In contrast, one of the founders of Mylikes.com, Bindu Reddy, personally invited me to the service, thanked me for joining, answered all my questions personally, and this was after we had established an internet “relationship” pinging or having many “real” conversations about subjects we were both interested in. She’s real. Mylikes encourages the “little” guy to get involved. Sure they may only earn a buck here or there, but its fun even without the money. The money, though, as little as it may be at first, encourages the enthusiast to be even more socially active, if they are so inclined, and to even increase their social media reputation by enabling them to follow and add to the conversation of things they are really interested in.
- In short Mylikes, enables people to leverage their own interests, which energizes their social media presence, encouraging them to be more active. And active in a way that provides more value to the network. In other words, it enables folks to monetize their integrity and reputation and the interest and energy they put into their social networks. To me this is nothing less than a perfect formula to increase of value of the network itself, and the individual who is participating in it, who, in essence, is the real value of the network.
- I just wrote to someone on Twitter about Mylikes, “I think they have hit the sweet spot of monetizing one’s social media presence without sacrificing integrity.” But when I think about it, it’s really a way of monetizing one’s social media presence and increasing one’s integrity and reputation. To me that’s the ultimate synergy in the Social Media world.
- It makes Advertising social. The ad unit has my own personal commentary about why I am endorsing and recommending the service or product. People who visit my site and see the ad can also “like” the ad, in a Digg sort of way, and they can also comment on the ad themselves, which brings the ad to life and makes it more warm and personal. Compare that to Adsense, where you don’t choose the ad, which itself might be distasteful to you, and which you’ve probably never even heard of, much less actually used and enjoyed the product.
- You know what may be the most fascinating feature of Mylikes to me? Unlike Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and all the hundreds of other Social Media sites, their monetization model is interested in you, the user’s monetization model. All last year people fascinated how would Twitter monetize, how would Facebook? Thousands of people spent countless hours trying to solve this puzzle for a company that they had no equity in! Fascinating. I did it too. I thought about it at nights, and when I thought I had a brilliant answer I would @ reply @ev my brilliant idea! Can you believe that? All these minds at work worried about how @ev, already a millionaire many times over would make money! Twitter and Facebook don’t give a hoot about you making money, but they do give a hoot about you creating content for their site. Sure you get the value of their network, but after time, that starts getting a little old. Mylikes is a Social Network that is interested in You benefiting monetarily from the efforts you put into, not only theirs, but the other social networks you are contributing to. That is the killer app to me. Energize the user base with something more than just “features.” Energize them with an actual monetary gain from the sincere efforts they put into it. Money is “life energy” as @DeepakChopra calls it. To actually “earn” it through providing value is not greed. It’s freedom. And that quest for freedom doesn’t cause people to do bad things. It encourages them to do good things and to add more value. Mylikes is building a platform that marries user activity on their Social Network with monetary reward along with fun. This is a huge paradigm shift in the world of advertising and the world of individuals and the particular talents they bring to the table. The paradigm of the internet is the empowering the voice of the individual. The other social networks are focused on the “masses” and how many “uniques” they can grow each month. They think little of the uniqueness of the particular individual. Mylikes is highlighting the individual, with the particular tool it is providing, and thus leveraging the strength and the core paradigm of the communications revolution itself, which is in the accentuating the value of the individual’s unique experience.
Here is a video interview Robert Scoble did with Bindu Reddy, Co-Founder of Mylikes, back in November of 2009, where they discuss many fascinating ideas about Social Media advertising, and ads in Tweets in particular:
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Advice to Myspace: Open Up Immediately
#1 When I take a photo with my phone and beam it to Flickr it needs to push it to my Myspace Library, my Facebook library and every other of my social media places (It already pushes it to my blog and tweets it via FriendFeed.) And this needs to work in reverse also. If I post a picture to Myspace it needs to push it out to Facebook, tweet it, to my Flickr library, my blog, everywhere I have a Social media presence.
#2 If I write a blog post, it needs to automatically post it to my Myspace Blog. If I write a Blog Post inside of Myspace it needs to push it to my regular blog, tweet it and send it to the Facebook stream.
#3 When someone messages me, sends a friend request, makes a comment it needs to notify all my other places, including an SMS to my cell phone. Of course this has to be granular so you don’t get SMS’s all the time, but that’s a no brainer. Likewise I need to be able to return messages, comments, make friend requests, approve them etc. from my phone and every other place on the web or network. Let’s say I meet someone at a party and they have a myspace page too. I should be able to add them right there on the spot from my phone. Lets say I’m a musician playing a club. Everyone in the audience should be able to add me from their phones and I can auto add them back right there from my guitar. If I’m broadcasting that show on Kyte or Qik people should be able to tune into my Myspace page to see it. For that matter all these video services need to talk to each other. If I make a video of that show on Qik or Kyte it needs to automatically progagate to Youtube, Myspace, My blog, tweet it out and notify my Myspace friends.
All these services must communicate and work together to survive, even eventually Facebook. The Social Web demands it. Web 2.0 vendors are not competing with the other vendors in their “space.” They are competing with themselves to enhance their particular strengths and shed themselves of their weaknesses. Starve the living daylights out of your weaknesses. Feed your opportunities. Peter Drucker says, “Don’t solve problems, seek opportunity.” The opportunity for social web companies is to earn people’s trust by being completely open in every possible way to the other companies that do certain things better. These companies will return the favor by opening up to the particular strengths Myspace and others can offer its users.
You are not competing for users. You are competing with yourself for trust from society. They are not “users” they are your partners.
Myspace has a particular advantage over Facebook in powncing on this opportunity and opening up completely and immediately. Their users don’t have the privacy expectations that Facebook’s users have. As a matter of fact their users don’t have any expectations of Myspace because, in actuality, they have no users. There are a bunch of accounts, but no one’s using them. But they could turn that on a dime by making these changes and become very relevant and vivacious again.
The goal is not to conquer the World. The goal is to interact with the World in a useful way, to be a part of the World’s community, offering the World your particular creative strengths, point of view, and services. In that way you add spice to the World’s personality and more importantly value, so that every facet of society benefits from the Communications Revolution, growing and contributing to a higher standard of living for all. From such noble efforts Golden Ages are born.
Right now our Society, which is now the World, is in a Wasteland mentality. “The center cannot hold” as Yeats said. This was exactly the situation the World was in, in the 11th century, the Dark Ages. It’s time for a new Renaissance. The only catalysts for this are the Microelectronics Revolution which began in the late 60’s and the Communications Revolution which began in the 90’s. They are the unstoppable bullet. Inertia is the impenetrable wall. What will happen when they meet? The battle is not over a platform. The platform is the infinite bandwidth of the fiber optic network. Each hair’s width glass fiber is capable of carrying an infinite number of colors of light, each color of light an infinite amount of information at light speed.
There is no battle anymore. In its place there is an opportunity to be a trusted steward, a trusted guide for the social graph to the unlimited Cornucopia that the Universe has always had and that technology is opening the door to, at en ever increasing rate. “Listen to the Technology,” the great Carver Mead says. “What is it telling you?”
Open.
(thanks to @techcrunch for digging and for writing a better headline as professional journalists, successful ones like them, can probably do in their sleep. My original headline was("Myspace's Solution is So Simple")
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