Optimizing Brands for Social Search http://bit.ly/aamLjJ
Faceboook recently overtook Yahoo as the second most visited site in the United States. And in doing so, Facebook along with other social networks set the stage for a confluence of social and search that fundamentally changes who we, as a society, discover and share information, and in turn, where our attention is directed and driven.
Source: Mashable
Make no mistake, attention is shifting away from traditional destination sites and instead, it is fixated on personalized attention dashboards that funnel social feeds, the activity and focus of social graphs into one clickable view. It is, for all intents and purposes, changing how we discover and share information. In fact, Nielsen observed that 20% of social consumers today, use social networks as their primary navigation hubs, relying on contacts and trending themes to point them in the right direction.
For media properties and brands, optimization combined with targeted and enterprising social networking now plays an instrumental role in capturing the attention and essentially defining the action of our customers, peers, and the trust agents and authorities who influence them.
Referral traffic is quickly migrating away from traditional search to social networks, and in some cases, at alarming rates.
In November 2009, Compete observed that some of the top media properties were already realizing a dominant effect in traffic from social networks. For example, USAToday receives upwards of 35% of its referral traffic from social networks and just over 6% from Google. People Magazine receives 23% of its referrals from social networks and 11% from Google. And, CNN earns 11% of its referral traffic from social versus 9% from Google.
Referrals from social networks will only continue to soar over time as we’re introduced to new information where our attention is focused and when our attention aperture is open to clicking through to new, socially-influenced content.
If the socialization of search and commerce is driven by any one behavior, it is that of sharing. If it wasn’t worthy of conventional appreciation and recognition before, the share economy is now certainly worthy of contemplation and analysis. In the share economy, currency is defined by likes, retweets, updates, comments and shares on Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, MySpace, et al. And, its impact only grows as Social Media becomes pervasive. This is why providing the necessary means for individuals to not only discover your content, but also readily share it across the social web is paramount to the survival of brands in the era of social search and also social media.
In a recent article, TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld reviewed the state of social sharing based on data provided by Gigya, which powers sharing widgets on more than 5,000 content sites, including ABC.com, NBA.com, PGA.com, Answers.com and Reuters. In the study, it was revealed that almost one million items were shared over the Gigya network within 30 days. Facebook ranked at the top of social sharing, but Twitter wasn’t far behind.
Distribution of shared items
Facebook: 44%
Twitter: 29%
Yahoo: 18%
MySpace: 9%
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook alone counts over 5 billion pieces of content shared within its network each and every week.
According to AddThis, a sharing network installed on more than 600,000 Websites, Facebook also ranked on top, but email ranked second, with print, yes print, and Twitter placing in third and fourth respectively.
Top 10 Services, Overall
Facebook: 33%
Email: 13%
Print: 9%
Twitter: 9%
Favorites: 8%
Google: 6%
MySpace: 6%
Digg: 3%
Live: 3%
Delicious: 3%
At 400 million global users strong, and rapidly growing, Facebook is a mandatory content and engagement play for any brand and media property.
In February 2010, Nielsen reported that Facebook users are averaging seven hours per month, up 10%, sharing and connecting within their social graph. If we used Compete’s numbers, Facebook would rank #2, just behind Google.
Gigya recently published a white paper that documents the shift to and the resulting importance of social search and its dependence on crowd participation.
As a result of its research Gigya recognized that online businesses must optimize in order to earn referral traffic from social networks.
With the advent of social feeds—a live stream of friends’ activity shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter— consumers can more easily rely on trusted personal relationships to determine what’s worthwhile to read, watch, play and buy online.
Information is already socializing.
The difference between our present and our future is defined by the roads and bridges we build between relevance and prevalence.
Publishing content is no longer enough. Wiring search systems to deliver consumers who hunt for information in social networking to our existing static Web sites is outmoded. And, earning friends and followers is only as effective as our ability to return value to their feeds and online and ultimately, real world experiences. We are confusing our elementary steps towards digital and social significance with the illusion of progress.
It is now our responsibility to create and connect meaningful content directly within the places where our audiences communicate with each other and also interact with the social objects that compel them to share and react. In parallel, we must optimize that content to improve findability and also integrate the tools and services that simplify the process for sharing within the networks where people engage today and tomorrow. By creating a connected social experience, we activate our content and community and empower a new genre of branded information catalysts.
Everything begins with enhancing and optimizing connections and experiences for the social web. The key is to incite participation and sharing…on our site as well as across the most active social networks that are material to our business strategy.
10 Steps for Optimizing the Brand for Social Search
1. Modernize and socialize your site to complement the experience visitors expect in 2010
2. Optimize the site and all social objects for traditional, social, and real-time search
3. Create meaningful and personable social profiles where consumers are active today (pay attention to where they will be tomorrow as well)
4. Establish an editorial calendar to produce and distribute relevant content for each and every network with cadence
5. Add social connectivity to the home site to facilitate maximum engagement (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Google, Yahoo) – eradicate proprietary login systems
6. Integrate social sharing functionality at the source of engagement – keep them on the page
7. Enable the social syndication of that content within one step
8. Manually introduce content and social objects to stakeholders and social beacons
9. Create paths that define and engender the experience you desire with destinations and calls to action integrated to close the loop
10. Monitor the activity and find ways to improve the experience and also sharing
Bonus: Give them a voice to make sharing more personal and contextual
Indeed, the future of search is social. Better said, the future of information discovery and dissemination is social, now powered by the very people who were once fed information as dictated by mainstream media and brands.
The rapid evolution of search fuses traditional search algorithms and destinations with new formulas and services defining social graphs, social networks, semantic and real-time. As social becomes the axis for which all search is predicated, advanced SEO/SMO and a maturing human algorithm reinforced by the stature of one’s social capital will ultimately contribute to the hierarchy, placement, and findability of the content and social objects we share online.
Google and Bing are already implementing sweeping changes in their algorithms and reported results to include activity from the social and real-time Web. It’s also the reason why Google rushed Google Buzz into the spotlight. Information and activity are now influenced by the greater collective of social contacts with whom we forge relationships and relations in each and every network where we engage.
How does this information change your Web strategy for the year?
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Launching in beta today, Go Tribal tackles the other side of the equation from formal event services like Meetup or Plancast by helping members organize informal group plans. By identifying when users are free and available to hang out, Go Tribal hopes to eliminate some of the hassle involved in coordinating friends for spontaneous group activities.
Targeted primarily towards women, Go Tribal’s goal is to facilitate meaningful offline interaction via simple technology that lets users see which of their friends is “down to hang out” at any given time. Members can set status indicators for upcoming dates, allowing peer groups to identify the best times to arrange informal get-togethers. Once a group has agreed upon a physical meetup, members can coordinate on the specifics of time and place, plus use existing social networks like Facebook and Twitter to further socialize the event and send out more invites.
We spoke with Founder and CEO Shruti Challa about the service, which will be open to the first 10,000 signups in the U.S. for now. She said the inspiration for Go Tribal arose naturally out of the young founding team (which also includes Chris Baclig, Eric Ma and Amara Humphry), who upon recent graduation from Stanford discovered a lack of tools for maintaining existing friendships in the physical world.
“Technology seemed to be getting further away from creating and sustaining relationships in real life. Facebook and Twitter seemed distant, and we wanted to use technology to help create a physical connection,” Challa said of the new startup.
Future plans for Go Tribal include integrating more contextual local search and information tools to help members decide where to spend their group time once they settle on a date and time to get together. The startup also plans to eventually work more closely with businesses to help groups influence decisions when they’re actually being made — imagine a coalesced social group with some bargaining power to “shop around” for potential deals and experiences that clubs or venues might be willing to offer in exchange for securing business from a large group.
With an interesting twist on local and informal group event organization and a smart road map ahead, Go Tribal is a social service to watch. If you have a chance to check out the service, let us know what you think. What features would you want to see in a service facilitating informal meetups?
Tags: Events, facebook, go tribal, informal plans, meetup, social media, startups, twitter
When PlumWillow Inc. launches its Web site later this year it may create online chatter like, “OMG, your avatar’s skirt is soooooo cute.”
The start-up, which just raised seed funding, wants to bring the mall to the MacBook, encouraging teens to participate in an online social shopping experience. That, in turn, may give marketers an inside look at teens’ shopping preferences.
“Shopping is very social for girls,” Chief Executive Scott Stone said. “It’s an experience. It’s fun. They want to go into one store and find something to match with at another store. And their friends are an important part of this.”
PlumWillow will enable members to shop together virtually with friends, help make wardrobe decisions and share their choices through their social networks. The site, expected to launch in the second quarter of this year, features multiple brands that appeal to teens and allows users to design their own outfits and avatars. A user’s purchases are stored in a virtual closet, which could provide valuable marketing information to brands.
“For the 5,000 girls with that purple sweater, we can provide rich promotions,” Stone said.
Online social shopping is nothing new, as start-ups like Polyvore Inc., a user-generated fashion magazine, are finding success in the segment. But unlike many of those companies, PlumWillow is focused on the teen market exclusively.
The site will share revenue with its e-commerce partners. Stone said there are 13 million girls in the company’s target demographic that spend an average of about $1,100 per year on clothes, making it a nearly $15 billion market.
New York-based PlumWillow’s seed funding was led by Crossbar Capital, whose Managing Partner Charlie Federman is PlumWillow’s chairman. Stone declined to provide the actual amount of the funding, saying it is less than $1 million, but “enough to fund the company for a good year.”
Crossbar Capital invests in software, Internet and technology-enabled services. The firm is the investment vehicle of Federman.
Crossbar’s portfolio companies include advice Web site operator Bitwine Inc.; Cloudsmith Inc., which offers an online service for software developers; prepaid debit card maker Payoneer Inc.; and Reimage Ltd., which makes remote diagnostics technology for computer technicians.
CheapTweet Wades Through the Sea of Tweet Deals http://bit.ly/9k13zV
Whether a website sells off your email address or forces you to install some pop-up plagued toolbar just to get 10% off your next online purchase, searching for online coupons can involve treading in dangerous waters. Enter CheapTweet, which uses both algorithms and crowdsourcing to verify its content, and suddenly looking for the best deals online isn't quite so scary.
The self-described "Twitter-based social deals search engine site" does precisely that - it finds tweets about deals and coupons through a custom search algorithm and then allows its users to upvote or downvote the deals on its site.
Sponsor
Tweeting deals, if your wondering, can be big business. In 2009, Dell made more than $6.5 million through Twitter deals and CheapTweet probably sent a few of those customers their direction. The ad aggregator is actually celebrating its 5 millionth indexed deal with a roll-out of a refurbished website, which includes upgrades to its search engine, the voting mechanism, a redesign and and new feature, the "DealStream".
CheapTweet allows its users to search for deals by category and keyword and will customize the stream of tweets according to their votes and Twitter conversations. They can also up and down vote tweets, like they've become accustomed to on sites like Reddit, Digg or Google Moderator. The "DealStream", which contains a user's customized results, can also be read as an RSS feed.
As CEO Hayes Davis points out in a press release, CheapTweet is poised to help distinguish the good from the bad as more and more companies prepare to monetize through Twitter.
"Online channels will only become more cluttered, as social networks start to monetize with ads," said Davis. "CheapTweet's service makes it easier for shoppers to sort through the clutter online and shop more effectively."
We've not only heard a number of rumors and anonymous tips on what the Twitter ad platform will look like, but other companies like 140 Proof have begun to enter the market, bringing tweet-like ads to third party clients. This doesn't even account for the vast number of small businesses taking advantage of the service to pass out Web-only deals and coupons.
With all of these ads, CheapTweet will help weed out the bad apples. Its users down vote nefarious tweets, the algorithm cuts out spam using a form of natural language processing and the multiple tweets about the same deal are combined to cut down on the noise.
We think that a service like CheapTweet has found a perfect niche and its the ideal service to recommend to your less technically-savvy relatives, as well as those just looking for a deal. Like we said, searching for online deals can put you in some dangerous waters and this service helps clear out some of the flotsam and jetsam.
Discuss
We’ve written about Twitter client Sobees, which is working to create the best social media client on the market, competing with both TweetDeck and Seesmic. Today Sobees is releasing a new version of its Windows native desktop app built in .NET, complete with realtime search, a redesign and more.
The new client includes support for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed and LinkedIn (which was added late last year). The most significant addition is the availability of realtime search on the client, with the ability to search Twitter, Friendfeed, OneRiot and FacteryLabs from within the application. Sobees integrated elements of its newly launched realtime web dashboard to power search in the client.
Sobees has also added drag and drop technology for columns in order to change the place of a column within the client. Other technical updated include the ability to preview Tweets and maps, translate messages, and see pictures posted on TwitPic from within the Tweet. And Sobees will break out threaded conversations you have with friends.
Sobees is competing in a crowded space where each client continues to innovate and offer users more options for managing their social media accounts and the reealtime web. For example, Seesmic has incorporated Ping.fm, to allows users to update more than 50 different social networks at the same time. And TweetDeck now incorporates YouTube and Flickr within its client. For now, Sobees doesn’t have any mobile clients but we are told that iPhone and Android apps are coming soon.
[UK] Now this is getting a little silly. Snippa, another UK-based Groupon clone launches today, this time from two experienced entrepreneurs: Tim O’Shea, founder of Blurtit, and David Hobart, founder of PureContent. The company is self funded by O’Shea and Hobart from their existing businesses, operating with a six person team headquartered in North Walsham, Norfolk.
Snippa, which is focusing on London initially, pretty much follows the usual group buying model: Each day various deals are on offer for things to do in the city, with a minimum number of buyers required for the deal to go through. If not enough people sign-up within the allotted time period then the offer is withdrawn and no money changes hands. The idea is that those interested will spread the word via email and social networks so as to increase their own chances of getting a bargain.
Although it’s here where I’m beginning to question the Groupon model as a whole, whereby the perception may be far more important than reality with the tipping point required, arguably, nothing more than a marketing gimmick designed to make the offers go viral – see below.
Snippa says its main differentiator from the plethora of competitors, including the extremely well funded US-based Groupon, along with others such as Berlin-based MyCityDeal or the just launched UK-based Groupola, is that it runs deals for more than one day, and has more than one deal live at any time. It also claims to have invested more heavily in securing the best deals for its users.
On launch day, the deals on offer include an £80 Super Car experience worth £160 plus a free 4X4 Fun Experience at Vision Motorsport, with a tipping point of 96 buyers. Or a Champagne Afternoon Tea for two for £35 (RRP £60) at Eric Lanlard’s Famous Cake Boy patisserie, with a tipping point of 30 buyers.
So what about the accusation that the Groupon-model is nothing but a marketing gimmick. I’m basing this possibility on the fact that many of the offers being advertised on group buying sites require as little as 25 people to sign up to make the offer stand. That’s not a huge number to back up claims of economies of scale to provide room for a 50% discount. So what exactly is going on?
Naturally, Snippa’s COO Hobart refutes these claims, although he says he can “understand people drawing this conclusion with the current influx of startups into the group buying space, most of whom seem to be operating deals with low tipping points, but in turn the offerings are not deals we would choose to publish.”
In other words, competitors might be using group buying purely as a marketing gimmick but not Snippa – although he would say that: “Tim and I truly believe the tipping point is inextricably linked with the best deal that we can offer to our customers. In our experience the minimum buy-in is in place to protect the merchant more than anything.”
Perhaps more noteworthy to the growing number of UK-based and other European Groupon clones is Hobart’s different experience in dealing with American merchants compared to British ones.
“From my experience with Purecontent.com, American companies are more comfortable to experiment with new marketing channels and are happy to operate break even or loss leaders for ‘customer acquisition’. This in turn offers companies like Groupon the ability to get great deals whilst achieving high commission rates. We have found the UK market place is not as open in this respect. In this difficult business climate merchants are reluctant to offer large discounts without the promise of a significant uplift in footfall and a guaranteed minimum return.”
Hobart isn’t saying that the viral aspect is unimportant to the group buying model’s success but argues that from a web user’s point of view, they are just as likely to send an offer on to their friends if they think it’s a great deal regardless of whether the tipping point is set low or high. Additionally, he says, in the UK Twitter seems to be much less significant at this stage.
“… a Twitter search for a Groupon deal vs any of the UK clones reveals a large difference in tweet volume, the UK deals are not getting as many Retweets. I think time will tell if the reason for this is the UK isn’t so addicted to Twitter yet or that the current UK deals just aren’t that attractive.”
Reliance Communications has launched a mobile VAS application called Socially, which gives access to to social networks including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn through a single client. What’s interesting about it is that when you receive a call, the callers recent status updates are shown. Socially is downloadable from RWorld and users can subscribe to the service at Rs. 10 for 30 days without having to pay any additional browsing charges.
Socially has been developed by Mumbai and Singapore based Antarix Networks, founded by former ITFinity exec Nagesh Rao. ITFinity was acquired by OnMobile in 2007. Socially is 3G ready, and ready to be extended to 3G networks in India. We expect 3G to be launched in India before the next millennium.
Features
An interesting feature non-social-networking feature of the app is that it allows you to get context when receiving a call from someone: information on you last spoke or SMSed the caller, as well as an aggregation of the persons statup updates from Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. The 889kb application can also be downloaded from Nokia’s Ovi Store (here), GetJar (here), or directly from http://m.sociallyapp.com
How Much Info Do You Want To Disclose?
But would you like everyone to see your tweets when you’re calling them? Geodesic Chief Products Officer Atul Chitnis raised the issue of linking Twitter accounts with LinkedIn: I wouldn’t want all my personal updates to be available on a professional profile, or to every caller. The mobile phonebook is contains a mix of your professional and personal networks, so one should be careful how you approach this applications. Socially’s privacy settings need to be rather detailed and flexible, in our opinion.
Please note that while Antarix’s terms and conditions (when you install the application) mention that its privacy policy is disclosed at http://www.antarix.com/privacy , the link did not work for us.
This is not the first instance of telecom operators giving unlimited access to the social networks: Tata Docomo had done that recently for its BuddyNet users at a price point of Rs. 10 for 30 days: no additional browsing charges apply.
As South By South West 
Interactive approaches, social media applications across the web are revving up their development and marketing. This is the event that only a few years ago helped to propel Twitter into mass adoption. Leading up to this year's conference, location-based social networks seem to be generating the most buzz. Applications like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz, Yelp and Gowalla all have the goal of connecting people who are online to offline locations where they can meet old and buid new friendships. While these types of services may be the next big sector of social media growth, they will likely also have a significant impact on inbound marketing.
Location-based social networks offer a new set of data for inbound marketers that will impact search engine optimization, customer relationship management and lead nurturing.
Today let's focus on ways that location-based data may impact SEO.
3 Ways Location-Based Applications Will Change SEO
1. Add Relevancy To Real-Time Search -- It has been reported that Google is working on taking its search technology real-time. User generated content from blogs and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are acting as catalysts for these changes. The problem is that Google's search engine has been built on showing you the most relevant result, NOT showing you the most relevant result at the exact second you search. Google is working to make real-time search more relevant and will likely use data from the social web as well as data from location-based applications to do this. If you are a Gmail user, you may be also using Google Buzz. Some of you may even be using Google Buzz on your iPhone and letting Google know where you are having your conversations. It is this type of location data that Google can pull from Buzz that will help Google make real-time search more relevant. These changes will impact how prospective customers find your business.
2. Provides an Added Context for Social Search -- Late last year, Google introduced a new experiment called social search, which is the start of helping people discover information from others they are connected to online. Location provides valuable context for social search. Imagine you are planning a trip and researching hotels and restaurants and a search engine was able to give you results of places that your friends have been to and even rated. This information can change the way many people make decisions because social search with location provides information and reviews from trusted sources instead of anonymous user reviews.
3. Makes Mobile Screen More Important -- When people use location-based applications and social networks, they are likely using them mainly from mobile devices such as iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smart phones. As location-based technologies grow in popularity, they will continue to drive adoption and use of mobile devices. As more people use smart phones, mobile searches will increase, which will impact not only how search results are served but it also means potential customers will be looking at business web sites on mobile devices, some of which don't support flash.
Marketing Takeaways for Location's Impact on SEO
Do you use any location-based applications? If you use Foursquare, you may want to check out FourSquare Grader.
Photo by: Chris Owens
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Starting this week, we’ll be bringing you a step closer to the Yahoos who make stuff happen behind the scenes as well as guests from outside of the company to share their views on various hot topics.
Joey Alarilla, a prominent (some say famous) Filipino blogger and journalist who recently joined Yahoo! as our social media editor for Southeast Asia is our first guest. Read on to find out more about his new role and how social media is playing a critical part in the Yahoo! Southeast Asia newsroom as well as the upcoming Philippine Presidential election campaigns.
Welcome to Yahoo! Can you give us a brief introduction to yourself, for example, what were you doing before joining the company?
Prior to joining Yahoo!, I was the head of the Multimedia Department of the leading online game publisher in the Philippines, Level Up! My projects there included launching our live blogging and live video streaming services and producing/hosting a weekly online show for our community.
I was a tech journalist for over a decade. In 2000, I was one of the pioneer editors who spun off the leading Philippine online news site INQUIRER.net (then called INQ7.net) from the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper. As the multimedia editor, I launched the site’s blog network and online video service, while also hosting and producing several podcasts and editing the hackenslash gaming news site. I was also the founding president of the Asian Gaming Journalists Association and a tech blogger for CNET Asia.
Could you tell us what a social media editor at Yahoo! in the Philippines does?
As the social media editor, I listen and interact with the community, not just on Yahoo! properties, but also on other social networks. My job includes understanding and monitoring what’s trending on different social networks; engaging the communities on these networks to exchange ideas and get feedback; and sharing these insights with the editorial team and our content partners.
We are also looking for more user generated content and offering platforms for our users to have their stories covered by Yahoo! and their views heard and read by more audience.
Sounds exciting! Tell us more about the social media scene in the Philippines / Southeast Asia
The social media scene is quite vibrant not just in the Philippines but across the region. It’s becoming more and more mainstream, with celebrities, journalists, politicians, and other personalities becoming more active on social networks.
One of the factors contributing to the growth of social media is the increasing popularity of the mobile Internet. You could say that social media is starting to become the new SMS. When you see people typing on their phones here, they might not be texting, but actually posting status updates on their social networks, or chatting with other online users.
While Twitter and Facebook are gaining popularity in this region, Meme from Yahoo! has a huge fan base and growing very quickly. We have introduced themed Memes for comic book lovers and cosplay and anime fans – two popular topics in the Philippines.
Can you elaborate more on why you think social media has started to become a vital part for news gathering?
News organizations have to evolve to keep pace with the changing habits of their audience. Many Internet users, especially the younger ones, have embraced social media.
Their primary source of news is no longer newspapers, television or even online news. It’s trusted users on their social networks. That explains why you have a personal newspaper service like The Twitter Tim.es, which displays news and blog links from the people you trust on Twitter – you can even check out my personal newspaper.
Increasingly, social media users are “out-scooping” the breaking news teams from mainstream media. Social media is one of the key channels for delivering news and other information. In the Philippines, in the wake of the massive flooding caused by tropical storm Ondoy (international codename: Ketsana), Filipinos relied on social networks to keep themselves informed and coordinate relief and rescue operations. Through social media, different rescue groups were able to harness the spirit of volunteerism and encourage more people to help out the flood victims.
The fact is that news organizations that fail to adapt are in danger of becoming irrelevant. They can no longer assume that users will come to them, but must instead make sure their content is available wherever their users may be.
Due to different factors, some news organizations have been slow to integrate social media into the newsroom. I’m happy to say, however, that the situation is changing. Many news organizations in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia are embracing social media. This is a new and exciting frontier for many journalists, and Yahoo! will be here to help our media partners with our own insights based on our experiences and best practices.
During the recent social media forum in the Philippines, you discussed how social media is shaping the political landscape in the Philippines; do you think the candidates really understand the benefits/ use of social media?
Social media is generating a lot of hype in the upcoming Philippine presidential elections this May. Pundits are saying this will be the first Philippine elections in which social media will potentially be a game changer.
It’s good to see that many candidates recognize the importance of social media in their campaigns – no doubt inspired by the example of US President Barack Obama. What they have to keep in mind, however, is that social media is just one aspect of the campaign, and that their success will depend on how well they integrate it with their overall strategy.
The Obama team was able to reach out via social media but the crucial step was in translating this into actual grassroots support i.e, volunteers going door to door, and voters trooping out on Election Day. Social media is not a silver bullet. It’s not the be-all and end-all of a campaign, and if candidates become shortsighted, they might end up fighting an online popularity contest instead of inspiring action among their constituents.
Moreover, I would like to see candidates focus less on bombarding followers with their messages, and instead concentrate on interacting with voters online and listening to what they have to say. Social media is a conversation, and it’s a chance for voters to truly make their voices heard.
Empowering the voters through social media is the main goal of Yahoo!’s Purple Thumb site for the Philippine elections. We also held a social media forum, to examine the impact of social media on the upcoming elections. It’s all about the community – about putting the spotlight on what ordinary people have to say about the election issues that concern them most.
Social media is your chance to be heard. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.
Microsoft is readying a new ad campaign for its “decision engine”, Bing, in the UK, set to begin soon and run through June, according to NewMediaAge:
The TV campaign will run regularly for a month and then in two-week bursts until mid-June. It will be backed by a digital campaign across Microsoft’s network and on media including social networks.
The campaign, run by JWT, will be similar to the ads run in the US, with confused searchers overcome by “information overload” told to “Bing and decide”.
Bing has been making modest gains in the US, after a similar campaign started things off last June, but Google holds an even more commanding lead in the UK, with over 90% search market share, with Bing holding only about 3%. According to an article in The Guardian UK, Bing is ready to “take on Goliath”:
"This is a big moment – we are taking out our slingshots and taking on Goliath," said the managing director and vice-president of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, Ashley Highfield, adding that he believed Bing met a real desire from both consumers and advertisers.
Some pundits have already noted, after a mention in the Guardian article that one woman appears overwhelmed by information when asking for “directions to Euston Station”, that Bing has some work left to do there, too (although a search for “Euston Station” yields better results).
We’d love to see how these new ads differ from the ones that ran here in the US, so if you’re in the UK and spot one, let us know in the comments (bonus points for links to where we can watch it, too!)
SocialMash:> Google vs. Yahoo: Who Has the Right Social Strategy? http://ow.ly/16KI4y
The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.
Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; YouTube; Wordpress: these companies, built from the ground-up, are mainstays in social media. None of them were created by a large tech company, and all but one remains independent.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, when you think about it. Large tech companies have had limited to no success creating their own social media home runs. In an era where communication is increasingly taking place on these channels, the inability of these digital giants to build social networks is rather striking.
Two titans in particular are making social media headlines for different reasons: Yahoo has decided not to create it own social network, but is instead striking partnership deals with Facebook and Twitter. Google on the other hand, not only bought YouTube, but it is attempting to carve out its own piece of the social media pie with Google Buzz.
Partnership vs. in-house development; content vs. technology; Yahoo vs. Google: which company has the right social media strategy? What are the goals of both companies in the social realm? Do either have a chance against new and nimble startups like Facebook and Twitter?
Let’s take a look, shall we?
In 2006, Yahoo made a $1+ billion bid for Facebook. As we all know, Yahoo failed to close that deal and the story ever since has been the rise of Facebook and the slow decline of Yahoo, who was nearly acquired by Microsoft for over $40 billion in 2008.
Now with new leadership (led by CEO Carol Bartz), Yahoo is trying to make a turnaround and bring back some of the authority it once commanded. The Internet portal is turning to social media as a cornerstone of its growth strategy, but it isn’t focused on acquiring a Twitter or building its own social network, but on creating partnerships that integrate every facet of Yahoo into social networks, primarily Facebook and Twitter.
In September 2009, Yahoo announced that it would integrate Facebook Connect in its most popular web properties. The goal was to truly make Yahoo your portal to the web by not only delivering news, email, and finances, but also your social graph and the status updates of your friends. On the flip side, Yahoo would also benefit from the traffic bump that comes with sharing articles and content on Facebook’s news feed.
Yahoo has continued to push this partnership strategy in recent months. Two weeks ago, Yahoo partnered with Twitter to give users access to their Twitter feed from within Yahoo, update their status, and integrate Twitter content into the company’s search and media properties. A few days ago, Yahoo Mail hooked up with Facebook, the first integration between Facebook Connect and Yahoo.
Yahoo seems content in partnering with the major social services, rather than compete with them. Social media efforts like Yahoo Buzz, the tech giant’s answer to Digg, which hasn’t made a dent in the social voting powerhouse, have likely left a bitter taste in the mouths of its executives. Yahoo is now focused on using social media to generate traffic, eyeballs, and engagement times.
Google’s strategy goes in a completely different direction to Yahoo’s approach; its strategy is also all over the map.
Like Yahoo, Google doesn’t have a good record in social media. Google Friend Connect isn’t even close to Facebook Connect in terms of adoption, Orkut never made inroads in the U.S., Blogger has nowhere near the traction of WordPress, and other acquisitions such as Jaiku and Dodgeball haven’t panned out.
You’d have a very good argument if you said that Google’s only social media hit has been YouTube, and that “only” cost the company $1.65 billion. Google has a lot more social properties than many people realize, but it’s a hodgepodge of acquisitions (Blogger, YouTube, Picasa) and internally-created services (Orkut, Google Knol, Friend Connect). The company’s batting average, though, has been pretty poor, especially by Google’s standards.
That was before Google Buzz, though. With the launch of its most advanced social product yet, Google’s strategy has finally begun to emerge, and it is a good one. If Google can stir up adoption for Buzz (which it has via Gmail), keep that engagement (this remains to be seen), and launch a standalone version of its social media tool, it can carve out a piece of the (very large) social media pie. Linking or integrating it to YouTube, Picasa, Orkut, Friend Connect, and its other social tools could provide a boost to those services as well.
There’s no reason to believe Google will succeed with Buzz, given Google’s social media track record. However, Buzz is the most complete product Google has put out yet and has some strong engagement numbers. It’s riskier than Yahoo’s strategy, but the payoff could be be titanic.
Yahoo’s strategy is focused around integrations with already-popular social services, while Google is focused around building and acquiring its own social media powerhouses. While Yahoo does acquire social media companies (e.g. Flickr) and Google has some strong partnerships (e.g. Twitter in Google Real-time search), that’s not the focus of their respective social strategies.
The reason their approaches to social media are so different has little to do with their leadership teams or the quality of their decision-making. No, it boils down to one simple truth: Google and Yahoo are very different companies.
I argue that Yahoo is, for the most part, a content company, while Google is focused on technology. There was a point where Yahoo was known for its tech innovations, but that mantle has long since passed to Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others.
I explored this phenomenon in my first Social Analyst column, Content vs. Technology: What MySpace and AOL Have in Common. MySpace and AOL were also tech giants, but at some point lost their technology edge (MySpace lost to Facebook, AOL lost to DSL and Cable Internet) and thus began to focus on ramping up content creation and driving traffic to their web properties. Yahoo falls into the same camp.
Because of this key difference between Yahoo and Google, it’s no surprise that they are implementing different approaches. Google’s is focused on building technology that will drive adoption, revenue, and information through its doors. Yahoo’s focus is on bringing more eyeballs to this content and keeping them on Yahoo for longer periods of time.
Now for the big question: is Google or Yahoo doing better at social media? Which one has the right social media strategy?
If you’ve read this column carefully, you can probably guess that I’m not going to outright declare that one company is “right” or that one is “wrong.” What I want you to take away from this week’s column is simple: your long-term plan and company composition should determine your social strategy.
Yahoo is simply better at content than Google. Yahoo Finance is, in my opinion, simply a better product than Google’s version. Its array of hosted news content is bigger, and it owns properties such as OMG, which is doing well as a celebrity news hub.
Google doesn’t write its own news or acquire a newspaper for a simple reason: it’s just not their focus, and they wouldn’t be very good at it. Would it make any sense for Google to focus on using social media to drive traffic to its content? The answer is no.
On the flip side, Google’s technology prowess trumps Yahoo by large margins. Google can build better technical products (e.g., Search, Gmail, Buzz, Android, Chrome) in a shorter amount of time than Yahoo can, and it can iterate faster than almost any large-scale public Internet company (its rapid privacy changes to Buzz is one good example).
These things are no longer Yahoo’s strength. So does it make sense for Yahoo to try to build a social network to rival Buzz, Facebook, or Twitter? Could it really keep up with any of them over the long haul? I severely doubt it.
So here is my conclusion: neither company’s direction is “wrong” because each one requires a different social strategy to succeed. Based on their strengths, Yahoo and Google are implementing the right strategies.
Now it’s just about executing them.
Tags: facebook, Google, google buzz, social media, The Social Analyst, twitter, Yahoo
SocialMash:> Google vs. Yahoo: Who Has the Right Social Strategy? http://ow.ly/16KI4x
- Jim WilkersonGoogle vs. Yahoo: Who Has the Right Social Strategy?
- Jim Wilkerson
Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.
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Cardpool – Gift cards are frequently better to give than to receive. But the receiver is stuck with cash only usable in a single retail outlet. If you’ve got a gift card to a store you’re not really interested in shopping at, CardPool.com gives recipients of unwanted gift cards an opportunity to sell unwanted cards for cash. Read more: CardPool: Sell Unwanted Gift Cards, Buy Gift Cards On The Cheap. |
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Pack Late – If you’re embarking on a last-minute vacation or business trip, but still want to get the best deal possible on a hotel room, PackLate.com was built for you. This site specializes in finding cheap last minute accommodation available now and in the not-so-distant future. Read more: PackLate: Find Cheap Last Minute Accommodation (US Only). | |
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Buzzzy – Google recently released a social media platform for Gmail called Google Buzz and with its massive Gmail userbase, it is aiming to be the next big thing in social networking. Now we have Buzzzy, a real-time search engine for Google Buzz and other social networks. Read more: Buzzzy: A Search Engine For Google Buzz. | |
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BarTab – Opening multiple tabs in Firefox can eat up a lot of memory, and may sometimes cause your browser to crash. In addition, restoring multiple tabs simultaneously from a browser restart will also hog your system resources which results in slow startups. To manage this, you can install BarTab. Read more: BarTab: Makes Firefox Faster With Better Tab Management. | |
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StudyBass – If you’re learning to play the electric bass, you might notice the resources online for the instrument are scarce when compared to the girth of content available for guitarists. Fear not however, because of StudyBass.com. Read more: StudyBass: Free Electric Bass Guitar Lessons Online. | |
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If you’re looking for an iPhone application to share photos across your social networks, you may want to give TweetPhoto a roll.
The site just got an overhaul – which prominently features photos of the Full House cast – and this new iPhone app makes it pretty simple to share pictures across Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, or Foursquare accounts. I downloaded the free app TweetPhoto Pro and it looks pretty good: it has a clean interface that makes it quick to scan your friends’ photo streams, as well as public or popular photos. Signing up is easy, and TechCrunch says we can expect versions for Android and BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) soon enough.
While it’s not quite good enough for me to switch from TwitPic, you could do a lot worse than TweetPhoto. Give it a try at the link below and let us know what you think.
Get TweetPhoto Pro (Free) [iTunes App Store link]
[Via TechCrunch]
Related News from IntoMobile:
For all the buzz surrounding the location-based social network Foursquare recently, you think they’d make the application easy to access. Unfortunately, for the past few days Foursquare has been nowhere to be found on the iTunes application directory. It was because the company accidentally pushed out the latest version too early, and was subsquently removed from the app store. Fortunately, the new version will go live tomorrow.
Over the weekend I decided to give location-based social networks a second try but I had no luck at downloading Foursquare, a site I already have a number of friends on. When you visit the iPhone link on the Foursquare website, it ends up at a page that includes links to a number of applications, including Whrrl, a less popular competitor.
Unfortunately I had missed out on all the buzz surrounding the application being yanked, but according to Dennis Crowley, the co-founder of the service, the new version of the app should be live tomorrow. Crowley told us, “Slight hiccup w/ app submission process – we should be back up and running tomorrow.” For all of you that want to get in on the location-based services buzz, Foursquare is a must have.
While I’m personally a fan of the design of Gowalla currently, Foursquare (ironically) has around four times as many users. We will be covering the location-based services space over the coming months, but if you aren’t on Foursquare yet and have an iPhone, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get it on your phone. In the meantime you can register via the Foursquare website.
Mochi Media, a Flash game monetization provider, is launching the Mochi Social platform today, which helps Flash game developers monetize, develop, socialize and distribute their games. One of the key features of Mochi Social is the distribution platform: with little to no extra work, developers will be able to publish their games across many social networks and websites, and still have access to social and viral features. Those social features include twitter integration, RSS feeds and news posts.
Mochi Social claims that you can “tap into all the key social networks with a single implementation” and that “players can pick friends from across all their network”. This is certainly similar to the products that were released earlier by companies like J2Play and HeyZap, and is somewhat surprising coming from Mochi Media, who has traditionally focused plainly on monetization. There is no doubt that their timing is excellent, as the recent removal of Facebook notifications makes it harder for games to garner viral spread.
A key concern is the stability of the platform. When working with any cross-network platform, the game that implements the platform is at the whim of any breakages in the platform. For instance, if my game, “Dungeon Cake War”, is integrated with Mochi Social, and Mochi Social goes down, it will affect my game’s ability to write news feeds or access friends lists, which is a huge problem. Furthermore, because Mochi Social adds a layer between the game and the social network, any changes to the Facebook API will cause the Mochi Social layer to break momentarily, unless they get notice from Facebook beforehand.
Mochi Media was acquired for $80 million by China’s Shanda Games last year. View more details about Mochi Social here.
Some think of "The New Dork" as the "ultimate geek/dork/tech-junkie's anthem." I think of it as one of the more amusing parodies of Jay-Z & Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" and love the geeky shout outs crammed into it.
Not only does it have references to TechCrunch, Mashable, Valleywag, Geekologie—and yes, Gizmodo—but this video also appears to have scenes that were filmed in the Wired building. Yeah, that's pretty dorky.
If you want to sing or rap along, here are the lyrics:
Now I'm in the blogosphere,
Now I'm in the twitterverse
Fans get so immersed, But I'm a nerd forever
I'm the new Zuckerberg, And since my website
I been cookin dough like a chef servin killa-bytes
Used to be the basement, Back at my mom's place
Buildin web traffic so that we could sell an ad space
Make way for the, One man businesses
Bail outs finished with, White collar criminals
New sega genesis, Entrepreneur time
Makin big plans, To dominate the online
Yeah, I'm on YouTube, this is one man
Sharin' google revenue, With songs on my webcam
Science is the new art, Databases day to day
Geeks spreadin' sheet smarts, Hustle, make the data pay
I could be in Valleywag plus Geekologie
Tell from my avatar, That I'm most definitelyThe New Dork,
Social networks - what dreams are made of,
There's nothing you can't do
Now you're the New Dork
This V.C. money is brand new, The geek is now damn cool
Let's hear it for new dorks, new dorks, new dorksCatch me up in Techcrunch, Right on the homepage
Hell, I'm on Gizmodo, In a photo bout a phone craze
And Im up in Mashable, weekend trip to New York
Bar pitty, 1oak, parties full of New Dorks
Now I'm pitchin business plans, From the backs of napkans
Micro-lend to Africans, Monetize Kazakastan
Catch me up on linked-in, Dog, C.E.O.
You can see where I be, With the I.P.O.
Now I'm up in skinny jeans, Now a hipster's lurkin'
Used to be a reject, But now I'm steady jerkin'
Now my glasses mainstream, Now the girlies eyein me
Popular kids copy me, The new swag is irony
Comin' from the small time, Girls couldn't find me
Now I scale models, Like I climb on top of Heidi
Start big trends, with tweets that I pass on
You should follow me, cuz I'm friends with AshtonCHORUS
Oh, and if you like this video, then you might want to keep in mind that the folks behind it are who brought us the somewhat awkward "I'm on a Mac" parody and the somewhat awesome Mac or PC rap. Have a listen.
The privacy furor stirred up over the past couple of weeks by the launch of Google’s social tool, Buzz, caused the search giant to make some fairly radical changes to the service. It also threw the issue of privacy in social networking into sharp relief. However, Google’s stumble in this space is just the latest in a long line of privacy flubs from nearly all of the vendors in the market. In my latest Long View over on GigaOM Pro (sub. req.), “Can Enterprise Privacy Survive Social Networking?,” I ponder whether social networking and privacy are fundamentally incompatible, and what individuals and businesses should be doing to limit the damage that can be caused by privacy leaks on social networks.
Privacy and social networking is something that we’ve discussed at length here on WWD; I particularly liked Dawn’s comments in “Private or Personal in Social Media?” Unlike Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg I don’t believe that the “age of privacy” is over, but there’s no doubting that the more of your “stuff” that you share online, the less control you have over your privacy. Perhaps social networks will evolve to give us reliable, granular, context-sensitive privacy controls, such as those that ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick argues for. But until they do, we all need to be careful about who we share our stuff with, and where we share it.
Do you think that privacy and social networking are fundamentally incompatible?
Photo by Flickr user rpongsaj, licensed under CC BY 2.0
RT @keithepetri: 5 arguments for allowing your employees access to social networks: http://bit.ly/cShgpl by @whatsnext
- Tac Anderson
Mochi Media, which helps indie game creators monetize Flash games, is launching a platform today that makes it easy for Flash game developers to create, monetize and distribute social games.
Mochi Social will enable developers to build games with social features, such as the ability to invite friends, send gifts, or post to a news stream. The company, which was acquired by China’s Shanda Games in January for $80 million, is announcing Mochi Social at the Flash Gaming Summit that it is sponsoring today in San Francisco. The idea is to let Flash game developers enjoy the benefits of social networking without being locked into a single social network.
“We are making social games distributable across many sites,” Jameson said. “They have been locked social networks. Now we are letting them out.”
San Francisco-based Mochi Media has been a key player in the democratization of game development. Flash game developers use Mochi to insert ads into their Flash games. Mochi collects game play data and charges advertisers for the number of times their ads are viewed. Mochi then shares most of that money with the developers. On its network, Mochi says it can reach 150 million monthly active gamers who play 15,000 games across 40,000 different web sites. That’s a pretty big empire.
But social games on Facebook have been so successful that advertisers and developers have moved in that direction. To save Flash gaming and adapt to the new world of social games, Mochi has added new ways to monetize beyond ads. Last July, the company launched its Mochi Coins virtual currency to enable Flash game developers to make money from free-to-play games, where users play for free but pay real money for virtual goods. Mochi is moving to build an Xbox Live style service around Flash games.
In doing so, it has been in a kind of leapfrog race with rivals such as Heyzap and Hooked Media. Now Mochi Social is an attempt to duplicate a lot of the functions on Facebook. As Facebook puts more restrictions on what game developers can do, Mochi is trying to court indie developers to move back in its direction for the sake of more independence and better monetization, said Mochi founder Jameson Hsu.
The good thing about Mochi Social is that the social features can be tapped by a user regardless of what Mochi Social-enabled site they play on. Mochi Social gamers can post updates on their game achievements to Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. All of the Mochi Social components are embedded in a game file, so they follow the game wherever it is distributed. A gamer playing a game embedded with Mochi Social can send a notification inside the game to friends, regardless of what platform they are using.
Mochi Social is in private beta. The first Mochi Social-enabled game is Kingdoms at War, a social game from developer Thinking Ape that has been a success on the iPhone and now debuts on the web. Wilkins Chung, co-founder of Thinking Ape, estimates his company will be able to use the social features to reach millions of new gamers with no advertising cost.
I've recently spent some time using VodBurner, a new software package which automatically records your Skype calls - including video. The software package installs simply and then just activates when the call begins. It subsequently produces video files which are customizable via the company's post-production console.
A video interview (not done by TMC) using VodBurner of company founder Jeremy Hague
The quality of the console and what it can do is adequate for most consumer and social networking use and it will likely work for most training environments as well. Using the software you can add numerous captions and allow either participant or both to be visible when you "produce" your final file.
At this point you can easily upload to social networks using the software or play it locally.
Once post-production is complete you can export in a range of sizes. I tried exporting files in 854x480 format a few times had problems doing so each time. What worked for me repeatedly though was the 640x480 size.
All in all VodBurner is a good solution for Skype recording and with some tweaking it can become even better. I suggest the company continue improving the post-production console allowing more professional transitions and work out some glitches which caused me to reboot once during my testing in order to get the product to export properly.
But the program is relatively new so these problems are forgivable. And in the end, the ability to record your video meetings and conversations with the kids more than makes up for a few minor problems I experienced in my review.
The company calls their payment model freeish -- which means you get 30 days to use the software and then you pay $9.95/month to eliminate the watermark the company will then put into your videos. If you don't mind the watermark, you can continue to use it for free.
Tags: jeremy hague, skype, video, vodburner
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In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who’s ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious.
Goodness spurs goodness, they found: A single act can influence dozens more.
In a game where selfishness made more sense than cooperation, acts of giving were “tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more,” wrote political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University.
Their findings, published March 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the latest in a series of studies the pair have conducted on the spread of behaviors through social networks.
In other papers, they’ve described the spread of obesity, loneliness, happiness and smoking. But there was no way to know whether those apparent behavioral contagions were actually just correlations. People who are overweight, for example, might simply tend to befriend other overweight people, or live in an area where high-fat, low-nutrient diets are the norm.
The latest research was designed to identify cause-and-effect links. In it, Fowler and Christakis analyze the results of a so-called public-goods game, in which people were divided into groups of four, given 20 credits each, and asked to secretly decide what to keep for themselves and what to contribute to a common fund. That fund would be multiplied by two-fifths, then divided equally among the group. The best payoff would come if everyone gave all their money — but without knowing what others were doing, it always made sense to keep one’s money and skim from the generosity of others.
Only at the end of each game did players find out what the rest of their group had done. The game was run again and again, each time mixing group members and keeping their identities anonymous, so that decisions were never personal.
And when one person gave, others in their group tended to be generous during the next two rounds of play. Recipients of their largess became more generous in turn, and so on down the chain. When a punishment round was added — players could spend their own money to reduce the rewards of selfish players — generosity lasted even longer.
“It is often supposed that individuals in experiments like the one described here selfishly seek to maximize their own payoffs,” wrote Fowler and Christakis. “The equilibrium prediction is to contribute nothing and to pay nothing to punish noncontributors, but the subjects did not follow this pattern.”
According to the the researchers, the explanation lies not in calculations of odds and rewards, but in simple behavioral mimicry: Monkey see, monkey do, human style. When people are irrationally generous, others follow suit.
The network described by Fowler and Christakis doesn’t necessarily replicate natural group dynamics, but suggests a general model for how behaviors spread. They suggest that researchers of altruism and cultural evolution study how different group configurations promote or limit the spread of behaviors.
However, the findings aren’t just a feel-good story. Selfish behavior spreads easily, too.
Images: 1) Heath Brandon/Flickr.
2) James Fowler.
See Also:
Citation: “Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks.” By James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 10, March 9, 2010.
Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.
