Google Buzz gets it’s tentacles in to Facebook Page Status Updates

Posted: February 25th, 2010

Previously, I’ve written about the implications of Facebook’s closed networks for Google.  Google’s web crawler can’t access Facebook Profile’s that are private (which is most of them).  That means that tools like Google Search and Buzz can’t index these pages and can’t display their content in results.  This wouldn’t matter too much if Facebook were small but it now has 400 million users and is still growing quickly.  That’s hundreds of millions of profile pages that Google can’t access and many more status updates each year that Buzz can’t display.

Facebook realize that they must become more open.  In the latest series of changes to Facebook, you’ll notice that the ‘Logout’ function is no longer prominent in the top right hand corner of the page.  It’s now hidden within the account menu.  My guess is that this change was made in the hope that users stay logged in to Facebook.  The result being that when you browse the web, your Facebook account comes with you.  When you’re browsing a third party site that makes use of Facebook Connect (and soon Open Graph), the site administrator knows who you are.  You’re also able to share content back to Facebook streams very easily.

Facebook must carefully balance their transition to openness for two reasons.  Firstly, there’s an uproar among users every time Facebook meddles with their privacy settings so they have to be careful to protect users.  Secondly, and more importantly, as Facebook becomes more open, they let go of a little more of their competitive advantage over Google.  Openness allows Google to crawl the site and display contents in the search results.  Facebook Fan Pages (maintained by organizations rather than individuals) are inherently open to the public rather than protected behind secure networks.  Google can display these pages in search results and they typically rank quite highly due to Facebook’s heavy vollume of traffic.  Google Buzz can display status updates from these pages.  Mashable wrote an article explaining this well.

This fine dance between openness and privacy is going to be fascinating to witness.

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A Google Search application on Facebook?

Posted: February 7th, 2010

Hello, I'm social and I'm an advertiser.

Don’t underestimate the fundamental human need for acceptance by our peers.  This desire to connect and communicate is the reason that Facebook exists.

Google realizes the importance of the social graph. That’s why they tried launching their own social network called Orkut.  It was only ever popular in Brazil and India and it’s now losing out to Facebook there too.  The need to connect was also the rationale behind Google’s Open Social but that hasn’t taken off either.  Add Google Social Search into the mix and it’s starting to look like they’re flinging mud at a wall to see if anything sticks.

Google’s Social Search is a great concept.  The idea is that it gives me more relevant public content from my social circle rather than simply displaying search results from the most trafficked websites.  However, there’s a problem with Social Search.  The problem is that Facebook revolves around networks that a user can control.  Not everyone can see what I post on Facebook, only 700 of my friends who i have authorized.  Facebook’s privacy controls are becoming more and more customizable. Google’s search engine can’t crawl closed Facebook pages.  This is a problem for Google because Google Reader only accounts for .01% of upstream visits to news and media websites while Facebook sends 3.52%.

From a business’ perspective, why would you design and code a website from scratch?  Why would you want to pay a programmer to make changes for you?  Content Management Systems like WordPress almost remove the need for programming knowledge.  These platforms have proven immensely popular, but they only scratch the surface of social integration with a few plug-ins that connect to social networks.  You have to go where the people are and the meteoric rise in Facebook Pages is just the very beginning.  Facebook’s Open Graph API will be the end.

Looking one step further, why do I need to log in to every different website with a different user names and password?  I’m not very good at remembering them all anyway.  What if I could maintain just use one user name and password for every site?  There’s a solution for this and it’s already available, it’s called Facebook Connect.  Many websites already allow login through Connect to tap into Facebook’s social features.  Facebook Connect would really take off if a big player like a bank or an airline became comfortable with the login security and began using the platform.

Don’t overlook the changes that Facebook have made to email reminders either.  You can now post to your wall or reply to a comment from your email inbox.  It’s obviously the first of many new email-related developments.  The logical next step is to allow direct responses to messages.  Or better yet, why not just build an email platform?  Maybe that’s why Paul Buchheit works at Facebook.  Paul is the guy that created Gmail and FriendFeed.

Its clear that Facebook is fast becoming a central platform for the internet.  In your own business, start to think of Facebook like an operating system that sits on top of the web and makes everything easier and more accessible to everyday internet users.  It’s analogous to Windows or Mac OS on our own computers removing the need for us to understand binary code.

The network would have to make a huge error in policy direction for them to lose now.  I have over 700 friends and 1000 photos in one place.  Most of those photos I can only see because other people put them there.  I’m not going anywhere.  Ironic as it is, I’d probably join a Facebook group to protest changes or update my status if I don’t like something they implement.  Maybe one day Google will have to build a search application on the Facebook API.  That probably won’t get uptake though because Facebook’s own search function is good enough.

I might talk to my broker about shorting Google stocks to buy more Facebook shares when they float their IPO…

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Posted in Facebook | 1 Comment »

Facebook has the gravity

Posted: February 2nd, 2010

Facebook have added 23 million new users in the last month to bring their audience to almost 375 million users. This grand total isn’t comprised of people who merely sign up for an account and never come back. This number represents the amount of people who visit Facebook at least once per month. It appears that Facebook has reached critical mass and is finally getting traction in regions where competing social networks got to market first. Brazil and Europe both have solid competitors due to language barriers and the sheer size of their populations. It seems that Facebook’s translations application has served them well as they continue to go from strength to strength.

Here’s a good analysis in a post from Inside Facebook.

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Would you like cheese with that?

Posted: January 12th, 2010

Would you go to Facebook if you saw this on your table?

This card was on the table of quite a nice restaurant I ate at recently.  It became a talking point and the crowd I was with decided it was quite invasive, out of place and more than a little tacky.  From a marketing standpoint, it’s almost futile.  You’re sitting at a table, having a great time with friends and what’s this, is it a cocktail menu…. no but check out our Facebook Page?

Another restaurant I went to on the same street gave out a simple business card with the bill.  That’s classy.  The card could have included a URL to their Facebook Page or Twitter handle (don’t overwhelm – choose one). That way I would have remembered it when I got home and their marketing efforts wouldn’t have intruded on our dining experience.

They would also reach their target clients, the person paying the bill  who likely also chose the restaurant and invited everyone.  I could offer them 10% off their next bill in return for becoming a fan.  I could invite them to tell me how their dining experience was

If I ran a restaurant, I’d begin to Tweet what our specials were.  I’d Tweet about happy hour on the day or afternoon that it happens.  I’d post pictures of our restaurant and fine dishes on my Facebook page.  I’d have my head chef blog about his dishes and style.  I’d also empower my employees to take ownership over the business that they are part of.  This works well when they’re working for tips.

One of my friends works in a pub.   Here’s one of his recent Facebook posts:

If he can get some of his friend network to come to the bar, they’ll bring friends. His tips will go up.  Smart business owners will leverage the personalities and networks that their staff have. Attract the right staff and empower them with guidelines.  They’re on social media all the time anyway, have them use it to your advantage.

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Posted in Digital Innovations and Marketing | No Comments »

Facebook Ad Success

Posted: January 9th, 2010

Although it’s far from statistically significant, the only Facebook ads that I’ve ever clicked on were for cartooning my picture and they turned out to be email spammers.

Many people have written about Facebook ad click thru rates being quite low. Here’s a good (although somewhat old) article from Forbes explaining why. People go to Facebook to share information and communicate with their friends. Facebook users are not necessarily looking for anything like you would be when you search on Google.

If traditional online ads don’t work for Facebook, how can an advertiser engage this massive audience?

Have you clicked on any Facebook ads and followed through to buy anything?

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Posted in Facebook | 8 Comments »

Facebook Ads

Posted: January 7th, 2010

Although it’s far from statistically significant, the only Facebook ads that I’ve ever clicked on were for cartooning my picture and they turned out to be email spammers.

Many people have written about Facebook ad click thru rates being quite low. Here’s a good (although somewhat old) article from Forbes explaining why. People go to Facebook to share information and communicate with their friends. Facebook users are not necessarily looking for anything like you would be when you search on Google.

If traditional online ads don’t work for Facebook, how can an advertiser engage this massive audience?

Have you clicked on any Facebook ads and followed through to buy anything?

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Everyone hates getting forwarded emails!

Posted: December 30th, 2009

Once you’ve made the decision to embrace social media, the next step is to use it effectively.

Everything has a place. Facebook is for sharing with your existing contacts. Twitter is great for regularly broadcasting to anyone who wants to listen. Blogs like this are ideal for more extensive information. LinkedIn is ideal for connecting and networking on a professional level.

Most importantly, all of these tools can be used to listen to your market and engage in 2-way communication. There’s a glaring difference between brands who are still trying to broadcast and those who share information. Think about your own social networks. You have people you trust, people you look to for information and people who you disregard. Think carefully about the tools you are using and how you are using them. Use social media to develop a relationship with your clients and build trust.

Users won’t necessarily visit your site just because you’ve branded it. Offer them something more. Make the content of each relevant to the product you are trying to sell, or at least relevant to your clients and industry. Help people to understand things. Let them talk to each other.

On each social platform, you need to build your brand. Be careful to maintain it or risk losing followers. Beware of saturation. Don’t post just for the sake of it. Keep them wanting more.

Remember that over-exposure generates immunity. I subscribe to blogs from Seth Godin and Chris Brogan. To do justice to my clients, I have to read all of their posts but it’s hard not to become immune when you receive an email every day. If you try to post too frequently, you’ll eventually run out of interesting things to say. No one is that interesting.

We all have (or had) contacts who’s forwarded emails we trash immediately. They’ve overwhelmed us with things we aren’t interested in. On the other hand, the thoughtful person who only sends things occasionally wins our attention. It’s the same concept when using blogs, Facebook and Twitter, except the stakes are higher. Overwhelm a user and you’ll lose them forever.

It’s the same with Facebook and Twitter. Don’t say something unless you have something interesting to say. Interesting means interesting to the audience you are trying to attract and maintain. If you don’t have something to tell them, something that’s relevant to the reason they’re following you, don’t waste their time. Don’t say something just because you think you have to. Twitter and Facebook are just like any other relationship, play hard to get, keep them wanting more.

Gary McCaffrey recommends that you post to twitter between 9am and 3pm for maximum effectiveness

Here’s a good how-to blog from Elance on the basics.

Here’s an example from one of our clients at Think! Social Media. If you run a kite boarding school like Exotikite, Tweet about Today’s wind forecast or the wind at the beach right now. Put photos of your students learning and the location of the school on Facebook. Tag your students in the photos for their friends to see on News Feeds. Maintain a blog on how to do the latest trick. Build a forum to allow people to review equipment.

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The most attractive market in the world?

Posted: December 2nd, 2009

Today, Facebook annouced that they now have 350,000,000 users.  That’s more people than the population of the USA. Here’s a list of the countries by population:

1. China: 1,334,450,000

2. India: 1,173,310,000

3. Facebook: 350,000,000

4. USA: 308,064,000

5. Indonesia: 231,369,500

That should give your marketing strategy some perspective if you want to market your products or services to people tech-savvy people in higher income brackets.  Ad campaigns through Facebook provide the ability to target your message by location and demographics.

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Posted in Digital Innovations and Marketing | No Comments »

Ikea can be engaging.

Posted: November 30th, 2009

There is no disputing that Facebook has a massive audience. One challenge that advertisers are facing is how to truly engage Facebook users’ attention when they primarily visit the site to interact and share with friends?  Word-of-mouth is often the most effective form of advertising and channels like Facebook can help it’s viral spread, but how do you cause people to act as champions for your brand and products? You have to somehow involve your products in their social interactions.  IKEA’s advertising agency found a clever way:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE2LSp-hjbQ&feature=player_embedded]

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Posted in Digital Innovations and Marketing | 1 Comment »