Implication of Facebook F8 Conference for marketing

Last week Facebook announced several important changes to their user experience and  Open Graph at their annual f8 developer conference. Those changes have important implications for how users consume and share content, how brands need to approach content development and seeding, and how 3rd-party sites and applications should integrate Facebook sharing via the Open Graph API.

Here is a link about the keynote of Facebook changes: http://www.livestream.com/f8live/video?clipId=pla_0b68074c-8f61-47bd-9348-f41bafc59c25

Kevin Briody concluded the notable changes:

For users:

Timeline: The most visible change for Facebook users will be the introduction of the Timeline, a completely redesigned user profile experience that creates a personal blog or lifestream-type experience. Timeline surfaces historical updates sortable by year and content type (e.g. all photo updates), and allows users to curate their content to highlight important events or stories, while featuring visual content such as photos and video much more prominently, including a custom header image set by the user.

Ticker and News Feed: Just prior to f8 Facebook updated the News Feed for most users, highlighting Top Stories and creating the Ticker, a sidebar of realtime updates of friend activity such as Likes, comments, app activity, and so on. The Ticker is central to Facebook’s concept of realtime serendipity – the ability to discover new content and interests shared by your friends on a continuous basis.

For developers:

Frictionless Sharing with Apps: In addition to new layouts and Timeline/News Feed options, Facebook announced a goal of creating a frictionless experience for users when it comes to sharing via apps. From a user perspective, this means instead of your app experience being constantly interrupted with prompts to Share or Like content, you’ll just have to opt-in once, after which the app automatically shares your activity to Facebook.

Contextually Relevant Like Buttons: The Like button is getting some friends, apparently. Also as part of the push into the lifestyle and media spaces, Facebook is updating the Open Graph to enable the creation on 3^rd-party websites with more contextually relevant feedback buttons for media such as Listened, Watched, and Read. These buttons will behave similarly to the Like button and push updates to user Tickers along with News Feed and Timeline (if deemed “meaningful” by GraphRank). They are designed to more intelligently display what a user is doing with content, as Like isn’t always an appropriate description. For e-commerce sites, a Want button is also potentially coming, per Facebook.


What it means for marketers

1. The quality bar for brand content is higher than ever
Taken as a whole, the various changes Facebook announced will likely result in a massive increase in the volume of user sharing activity, and a higher bar for content that  makes it into a user’s Timeline or Newsfeed. Navigating EdgeRank – Facebook’s algorithm for determining what makes it into a user’s News Feed – has always been a focus for anyone driving Wall content, and with the increased noise and filtering, crafting that content to stand out will be an even greater challenge.

2. Apps are more relevant than ever for driving sharing and social spread
Though frictionless sharing may mean more noise generated by 3^rd-party apps, it also means more opportunities for well-designed apps drive sharing activity across Facebook friend networks. Apps will no longer need to focus on incenting multiple sharing actions during use, but instead on being interesting enough to start using (and allow sharing the first time) and on generating compelling updates to the user Tickers.

3. Opportunities for advertisers are changing and deepening
Thanks to the new, contextually-relevant feedback buttons (Read, Listened, Watched) that will be taking their place alongside the now ubiquitous Like button, advertisers should have a range of new targeting options available based on user media consumption history. If the Want button becomes a reality, the targeting opportunities for brands increases dramatically.

Josh Constine provides a list of potential business opportunites:

• A concert venue could target all users who said they listened to band to sell tickets for that band’s upcoming concert.
• A band could target all users who listened to one of the songs off their soon to be released album about that album going on sale on iTunes
• A big box retailer could target all users who shared or said they watched any movie starring Johnny Depp to sell a new DVD box set of the actor’s films
• A film studio could target any user who said they watched a trailer of a new film that a friend shared after watching it on IMDB.
• A tech conference could target any user who said they read an article on any of the major technology blogs
• A baby clothing retailer could target any user who said they read on article about how to buy clothes for infants on a blog for mothers.

 It will be a great start of Facebook. What do you guys think?

STUDY: Most Companies Are Utterly Unprepared For A Social Media Crisis

I read an interesting report by the Altimeter Group and find more than half of the 144 companies surveyed say they don't have a response plan if a real-time technology crisis strikes.

"Equally as shocking, the study -- which also researched 50 mainstream social media crises since 2001, and interviewed social media strategists at Intel, Coca-Cola, and Toyota, among other companies -- found that 76% of crises could have been averted, either with more preparation or a better response to the problem."

"The average corporate social business program is three years old, and there's a huge difference between companies that have crisis-response systems in place and those who don't. According to the study: Of companies with a formalized crisis response plan in place, 96% feel prepared for a social media crisis; of those without a plan, only 22% indicate preparedness."

Here are graphs demonstrating how careless some companies are in such cases:

So, how do companies avoid a social media crisis? Based on its interviews with advanced social businesses, Altimeter Group developed a “Social Business Hierarchy of Needs” (pictured below) to help businesses achieve social business readiness. Here’s a look at the pyramid and each set of requirements:

Each segment of the pyramid is accompanied by thorough, step-by-step instructions on how to achieve excellence in each section of the pyramid. Here’s a quick overview:

• Foundation: Define business objectives. Develop four sets of policies: social media, disclosure/ethics, community and privacy. Train and empower employees.
• Safety: Appoint a team that actively monitors social media channels during office hours and beyond. Develop a triage system. Practice with “fire drills” that simulate real-life crises.
• Formation: Take inventory of all social assets and reform your teams accordingly, focusing on increased communication. Form a social media “Center of Excellence” that serves the entire company.
• Enablement: Enable business units to deploy and run social media programs on their own. Set up an internal community where employees can learn from each other, and aggregate measurement data to prove successes.
• Enlightenment: In an ideal state, businesses are able to make decisions based on real-time intelligence and use social data to inform product development and partner relations. Furthermore, “enlightened” social businesses are able to achieve real-time customer engagement by empowering all employees to use social media on behalf of the company.

Amazing Cooperation by Coca-Cola and Facebook: Create your own drink!

In August, Coca-Cola  rolled out a Facebook app that lets people mix their own Coke drink. The app is not just online-only experiment, because Coca-Cola plan to manufacture real Coke vending machines that have such function across the country.

"The Coca-Cola Freestyle app, created by digital marketing agency 360i, lets you mix a drink using 125 Coke beverages, including Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta and Powerade. After choosing each, you hold down a “push” button to fill a cup of your choosing. When you fill your cup, you can name it. There’s also a game designed for the iPhone [iTunes link] and Android formats."

"The Facebook Page also directs you to Freestyle vending machines in your area and lets you ask for one in your town. There are now about 1,500 such machines in restaurants like Wendy’s, Burger King and Five Guys, but Coke plans to make more noise about Freestyle next year. The company is working with ad agency Ogilvy & Mather on a 2012 ad campaign for Freestyle, according to Advertising Age. Coke would like the apps to eventually generate a 2-D barcode, which could be scanned at one of the machines to create a blend, according to Ad Age."

I think it is a great start of business between Facebook and Coca-Cola. The unique service will be a good selling point to attract customers. Both facebook and Coca-Cola have millions of loyal followers, thus marketers needn't worry about whether this idea can draw the audience's attention.

The business can be expanded like packaging, logo and other designing services for customers own. New drinks can be put into the beverage list to increase sales. Further, Coca-Cola can organize competiton show to let Facebook users vote who creates the best new drink.

Do you guys like to mix your own drink? I would like to have a try.

Why facebook deal fails?

In order to expand its business, Facebook launched Facebook deal to compete with Groupon and Google offers. Many people think it will become a killer of Groupon and even affect online retailing industry. The reason is obvious: Facebook has a galaxy of users as potential customers; it has powerful local network to
provide service and technology support to achieve consumption convience.

However, Facebook turned out to be a big failure. It didn't affect the online retailing industry and even Groupon. Acutually, Groupon did not perform very well as its competitor. Data shows Groupon's first quarter of 2011 transformed from $81.6 million in operating income to a net loss of $117.1 million with nothing more than a simple change in accounting practices.

Then, why Facebook has millions of users, wide local network and good operation system, failed in the end? I think there are three reasons:

1.  Customer Acquisition Cost > Revenue Per Customer

For example, Facebook is spending $100 for every new customer, while the average revenue per customer is $80, or $20 less than the cost of acquisition. The more people they bring in, the more money they lose.

2.  Difficult to gain loyal Customers

The above stat might be defensible if most customers ended up making multiple purchases, but that's not what actually happens. The median Facebook Deal customer makes only one purchase, and they don't care about the brand, they only care about saving money on something they already wanted. In other words, it is difficult to maintan customer loyalty. Because customers can easily shift to other online retailing websites to seek bargains, while Facebook has to expand its scale to attract more customers by endless price wars.

3.  Lack of human resource

Facebook is not a retailing company, thus it has to call many local companies for business. Since there are many groupon websites, local companies always feel messed when different groupon websites call for the same product. There should be some people to keep good communication with the companies. Further, these companies need to be informed about landscape and bright future of groupon business by sales people. How many staffs is Facebook using for this business? I guess the number is far smaller that it really needs.

Hence, Facebook should concern its next step to develop its business. At least, Groupon is not as easy as they expect.

social network + video: some practises

Have you ever thought of watching videos with your friends and chatting at the same time? Do you think it will be a revolution of social media? Here are some actions from the explorers.

ClipSync  states their action as "leading the social TVrevolution". People can enter any chatting room at any time to watch TV with other users. Their comments will become bubbles which occur on the screen once the comment is added. Everyone can share their ideas and let others see immediately. Imagine you are watching AFL or World Cup with your friends, don't you feel excited to chat with others while the game is on? ClipSync make this way as their advertising path as well. This idea bring them $500 million dollar as sponsorship by the company Real.

YouTubeSocial makes full use of the rich video resources from their mother youtube. All the videos in youtube can be used for chatting. For example, if the address is www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXX , then you just need to change it as www.youtubesocial.com/watch?v=XXX, then you have successfully created a room for us to watch and chat together. You can login in your facebook account and share the video to all your friends to let them join you.

Google also has such idea. Goole + Hangouts allows people to add youtube videos while using Hangouts and many people can watch and chat through text or voice.

Do you guys think it will be a great start of new social network revolution? 

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Quirky: a new way of online retailing

Quirky was founded in 2009. It is a online retailing store specializing social product. It seems normal, but it has a unique selling point.

The most special point is all the products Quirky sells are designed and produced by Quirky social community. Every member can provide designing ideas and product description. They can also vote to decide the most popular product they wish to produce and give suggestions. Each week Quirky selects the most popular product plan and makes it come true. The person who provides designing ideas will be the inventor and have the authority to design logo, packages and other details.

While most online retailing companies are competing price, quantity and promotion of the product, Quirky chooses a totally different way to gain market share and loyal customer. Do you think this DIY style online retailing plus social network will benefit the marketing outcome?

The role of social network in London riots

When discussing the role of social network in London riots, many people may firstly point out the negative effects. It is disturbing to find reports of the role of social media in orchestrating criminality have been accumulating – with particular insight being offered in Jonathan Akwue's note about Blackberry Messenger.

However, I personally think that social network is playing more positive role in the recovery of this riot. In the article "Social media can help riot-hit communities recover", we can find traffic to the local social network Harringay Online increased significantly on Sunday, along with related activity captured on HOL's Twitter stream.

"What is striking about HOL's role is that while media coverage was dominated by spectacle and emotion, the site was quietly fulfilling the kind of role the politicians call for: sharing information, challenging misinformation, urging calmness and offering reassurance."

Here are some examples:

"There are simmering tensions and we need to be especially careful not to jump to conclusions about who was behind last night's events. A sad, sad day for our neighbours."

"I've just deleted a post that was calling for the most severe retribution. I understand the sadness, but I don't want this site to be used for intemperate calls for reaction."

"Does anyone know what is being done for these poor people, or if a fund has been set up to help them?"

Moreover, a site named riot clean-up has been established. There are already more than 58,000 following its twitter and thousands of tweets are sent organising activity across London and bringing people together to clean-up.

Facebook also has actions. The biggest group so far is the Post riot clean-up: let’s help London, which already had around 5,000 members at 10 am and 7,000 by mid-day.

The conclusion is: social network is just a tool. It can be used for destroying, but it can be used for constructing as well. Here I wana say Chinese government REALLY SUCKS. When the high-speed rail tragedy happened, the announcement of the spokesperson, the attempt to hide the truth, and the action to remove tweets doubting the government make every Chinese angry. If you always ban our right to know the truth, how can you offer us to support what you have done?

Would you like a free coffee?

Jonathan Stark is the author of "Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript". These days he made an interesting experiment: if you go to this page and do as the follows:  

1. Save this picture on your smartphone:
2. Go to a Starbucks
3. Order a coffee.
4. Hold the picture in front of the barcode scanner.
5. If there is enough money on my card, the POS will beep and your coffee will be paid for.

It is true. Jonathan Stark uploaded his card information and pay 30 dollar to offer someone a free cup of coffee. If you follow his twitter, you will see how the balance of the card changes. He welcomes everyone to tweet the picture of coffee, the Starbucks location, and receipt. He also shows how to give others a coffee. You may wonder is there any fool would like to pay for other's coffee? Well, after one day, Jonathan found the money in his card increased. Does that mean this game can last longer than we think?

In my opinion, if any drink or fast food company would like to open a account to allow all the consumers to charge and use, this would be a good advertising way. FREE is attractive for many people, and the company may develop relative promotion activities like coupons, membership credits or gifts to encourage charge the account and purchasing the product, brand awareness, interest and even loyalty will be achieved.

If Starbucks get successful because of Jonathan's game, who would like to be the next one to buy you a coffee or something else?                                    

twitter new advertsing approach: Timely Tweets

From Twitter Blog, we got a new advertising model: Timely Tweets.

"we're introducing a way to ensure that the most important Tweets from the organizations you follow reach you directly, by placing them at or near the top of your timeline. These Promoted Tweets will scroll through the timeline like any other Tweet, and like regular Tweets, they will appear in your timeline just once. Promoted Tweets can also be easily dismissed from your timeline with a single click."

"We’ll be rolling out and testing this new offering over the next several weeks with a select group of partners, including Best Western, Dell, Gatorade, Groupon, HBO, JetBlue, LivingSocial, Microsoft Xbox, Red Bull, Sephora, Starbucks, Summit Entertainment’s “50/50”, TNT and Virgin America among others — with more to come soon. During this phase, you may also see Promoted Tweets in your timeline from non-profit organizations you follow, including charity: water, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Room to Read, The American Red Cross and Water.org."

This strategy is really smart. There are several reasons:

1. Most people hate ads they are not interested in. But now users choose to follow the promoted tweets themselves, which will definitely reduce their dissatisfaction.

2. The tweets have few infulence to the timeline because they only appear once and people can remove easily.

3. Both ads from business and NGO will be combined together, thus people will smell less "commercial atmosphere".

Twitter used to promote ads by placing ads on the top of timeline. Many people regarded it as unuseful, unmeaningful, and invaluable things. This strategy got low achievements. I think the new strategy will have a better future. Well rounded free service plus commmercial ads can still generate customers' attention and interest. Google's success is a good example.

PS: sorry for the inconvenience that you have to read Chinese part, guys. I try several times, but still can not resolve the language problem. My language setting in dashboard is already English, but i don't know what to do.

PS2: I 've got a very ridiculous problem: each time i wana comment on your blogs, or even mine, i have to log in my account, and then type the letters, and then login again , type again, login again...it's an endless circle. I just can not comment on any post. Quite weird. I should have communicated with you guys more.

Can Google+ really succeed?

After several failure of social networking exploration, lots of people begin to believe that Google can not compete with Facebook in social network construction. The reason is quite simple: once a big company has plenty of loyal customers, it will be impossible for the new comers to succeed in the same market.

The author read two articles which shows two opinions about whether Google+ has bright future. The first one comes from Marco Arment, who designs instapaper. He did not use Google+ before.

"The network effect is extremely high in social networks. It’s absolutely a boil-the-ocean problem. For Google+ to be useful to you, most of your “friends” (in some context) need to be using it on a regular basis. And most people won’t use more than one social network regularly."

"To get widespread adoption, therefore, this needs to take a lot of users away from Facebook, and quickly. Google+’s specific features are far less relevant until after (and if) it gets widespread use and competes strongly with Facebook."

Macro's idea has a significant point: a social network must have a constant target group.

Google has millions of loyal customers and Google+ has powerful expansibility, thus there should be a galaxy of loyal customers. The only question is, how large this group is. Although Google announced that Google+ is not a substitute product of Facebook, almost every one knows there are too many functions that both of them are using. In other words, there will be a conflict in competing target customers.

Nowadays Facebook has over 7 billion users, that's vey big. Moreover, their "circles" have been there. If these people do not leave facebook, will they be interested in creating another circle?

"I don’t know the answer. I’m terrible at predicting what will and won’t be successful, especially socially. Navigating the demo site was frustrating and confusing for me, and it seems like more effort was spent making Google’s staff happy than considering its clarity and usefulness to users — a common complaint I have with Google’s products."

Google+ was firstly tested by Google staffs. This "internal" test may not be regarded so friendly if it is tested by general users. But Google+ opens feedback system to acquire more information to develop and improve in a fast way.It is clear to find their willingness to make a change.

To sum up, although  Macro has some dissatisfactions about Google+, he never says  that Google+ can not be succeeded. Acutally, Google+ are receiving warm welcome by so many users that even exceeds their expectation. The result is amazing.

Here is another article, wriiten by Jon Bell, who works in the team of windows phone. In his opinion, he disagrees with people who think Google+ will fail soon.

"Even as everyone explains all the reasons it won't work, and ticks off why it's just a me-too effort, and I know that I'm seeing things through the lens of a designer, and not necessarily a business man, and I think of all the reasons it can still fail even if I'm getting the feeling ... the feeling is there. And I've felt it before, through the anti-hype:

Facebook will never succeed because everyone's already on MySpace.

Wii can never succeed because gamers go for graphics.

Apple should just liquidate and give the money back to the shareholders.

iPod? Less space than a Nomad, no wireless, lame.

The iPhone can't possibly gain any real market share.

iPod nano makes no sense, all they did is make it smaller. It'll never work.

People have been predicting a market correction for years. I'll believe it when I see it.

Land never loses value.

iPad is just a big iPod.

Windows Phone? The world is moving to Android. Why bother?

I used to try and respect pundits, but then I compared my track record against theirs.

I've spent all night on Google+, and I'm excited. I'm not saying it's perfect, and I'm not predicting mainstream success. But I'm impressed.

And I've learned to trust this feeling."

No matter how popular a product is, it can not be perfect everywhere, and there should be something it need to improve. However, the reason it becomes popular, is that it leaves unique impression to people. Once people get the feeling to use it more, they begin to become loyal users. Foor Google+, it is similar. Although it has outstanding competitors, it has lots of things to be developed, once people try it, then they will get the feeling to continue using it, and then Google+ will be more and more successful.