Ours, yours or mine - Facebook and the ownership of social communities and the social web

 

Who owns the social web isn’t really a big question. In the many communities the ownership or even the behaviors in that social community are often dictated by the community itself. The community owns the community , the community polices  itself and protects itself, and everybody in the community shares a democratic principle of ownership and inclusion. My observation of inter-communications on many fan and strong communities  is that there can be a point of self  regulation , where the community members dictate what sorts of behaviour are acceptable , what tone  of discussion is acceptable and will pull other members in the community into line or reject them if they feel they are being antisocial or unfair in the context of that community’s voice.  In the community or social media world its the community that has the power  or the onwership by virtue of being involved and sharing their voice and ideas. What it does  is  really raise the question “who owns the community’s brand”?  In the Social media world its definatly the consumer who owns the brand. Even real world  (non virtual brands) are often owned  in the mind of the  consumer, despite what their manufacturers, FMCG brand managers might mistakenly believe, and the consumers non acceptance of product changes or variations often causes dramatic failures for brands. A brand is more than just a product. Coca Cola’s release of New Coke  in 1985 floundered as a failure as Coca Cola forgot what its core brand stood for and thought that taste was the was only factor consumers cared about. Its research failed to highlight that Coke consumers had a deep and abiding  emotional bond to the “Real Thing” and launched a new formulated Coke. The public basically boycotted the new product and the company had ceased production of the old product causing a huge and costly problem for the company. The company had to revert back to the old formula.

 

Facebook has become the greatest facilitators of human conversations, its building itself as a  brand  based on emotional bonds and trust  in a shell of social , web 2.0 services. Friday’s announcement that Facebook users have voted to back changes which give them control over data and content they post on the site  dosen’t surprise me.   The community has spoken , the company had actually listened or risked failure.  Following Facebook’s meteoric rise  to its recent press announcements that it has reached a point of 200 million users I stopped to think about that number and a pending crisis on the ownership of personal data that had emerged in recent months. I for one and many of my friends expressed great concern and a potential swap of services at Facebook’s  assertion that they owned the rights to any and everything published in their services, from photos, to widgets , videos , comments and conversations. It even went to  the point where they could exploit any IP or copyright of anything posted on the site.  Where it almost went wrong was to not listen to the true voice of its consumer base  and continue to pursue a path of proprietary ownership of all and everybody’s personal content, thoughts and conversations when many complained or threatened to leave the service. In this case Facebook the brand, not the service,  is wholly owned by the consumer base it serves. 

What is interesting, and if not co incidental ,  is that it was  the same day  that Yahoo announced that Geo Cities was being closed down. Yahoo paid $3.5 bn for the free hosting service  back in the early days of the dotcom boom.  Where it failed to compete with the likes of Facebook and MySpace is that while they offered a  similar concept of hosting free personal pages on the web  there was no evolution in providing services  that allowed a community to grow or for people to communicate or commune with one another or share it with other friends ubiquitously. Yahoo failed to wrap all it social and communication technologies that it had at its disposal  in different business units( IM , email , even content ) into one set of social communications  services and make the transition to a more Open Web. The brand never really made a leap to having an real emotional attachment to the consumer by failing to provide the emotional conduits or  communications channels. Was this because Yahoo saw Geo Cities only as a media advertising opportunity? Another missed opportunity. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8016532.stm

Tags: community, Facebook, myspace, open web, services, social communication, social media, web2.0

Tags: community, Facebook, myspace, open web, services, social communication, social media, web2.0

Digital Engagement and its metrics- AKA How Stickiness became Engagement

How  Stickiness became Engagement

The  concept of  digital or online engagement has always been an integral part of  the interactive vernacular from its very nascent days . In the early days at the run of the last century the people in the interactive business coined the phrase “stickiness” as a way describing a site or service where a consumer ( or the sites audience)  would spend more time , continually revisit a site,  play with more things , discover new features  or actively converse with their friends. The social communications technologies were all well alive in the early adopter phase , bulletin boards, chat room , and IM.    In the heady dotcom days the concept of developing media properties was all about stickiness. How else could you realistically place  a value on your property  and it potential for media placement if its audience didn’t  return to site , stay longer , use its features , play games, watch or listen to media and go deeper than the 1st page ? 

The real opener for Engagement or the liberator,  so too speak, has been the uptake in the broadband connection at home , rather than having it relegated to the work place . The “always on” connection at home changed the descriptive concept of Stickiness to Engagement.   The simple fact that there was a  general mass market adoption of high speed internet  predicated a  change in the vernacular as the  real marketing potential of the medium opened up.  The availability of more connected , richer  experience  from the consumption of media ( video, audio , and animations ) and a greater depth in connectivity to services( e-commerce, search)  and information opened up the medium and metaphoric description of  Stickiness had to evolve to more active verb of  Engagement.  

The Age of the True Consumer’s Voice and Consumer Generated Content  

Engagement never remains static( not that stickiness did either). The recent mass market adoption of social communication technologies, as in the last 3- 4 years, has  led to today when we talk about the social media revolution, and Engagement  has taken on a new face . Todays social media technologies are facilitators of conversations and dialogues not just confined to one site or group but open to any and everybody, almost anywhere, instantly. Everybody has a voice, a digital persona, a digital footprint and a devise for communicating digitally.  It  is the age of the “True Consumer’s Voice” . Digital Engagement is now the social communications evolution , encompassing social media, digital media and interactive services. Its  not surprising that the UK government recently advertised to appoint a Director of Digital Engagement  to help direct its efforts in “overseeing a move to engage more with citizens through social media and other digital technology.”

The Metrics

So how do we measure Engagement ? The debate is relatively new . In Eric T Peterson’s , web analytics demystified , he describes  Engagement  as  ”an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction on the site against a clearly defined set of goals.”  I think there’s room to expand upon this. Webanalytics is one sided and there are two sides to the equation.

To me a website is essentially a closed environment , although blogs and RSS has opened up content distribution.  The measurement of the closed environment is Quantitative  and measurable, which is the web analytics view point; the end to which  we can determine the quality of a website visit . The engagement metric  comes down to , the depth to which a consumer will go into your site and propensity to interact with or view “critical content” , their ” length of visit”, whether or not they come back e.g.  ” frequency of return visit”.

 If we were to add the consumer’s perspective and become more subjective in the classical marketer’s view,  using the analogy of the “path to purchase”,  we could add the  propensity to which a consumer would recommend or talk about the site,  its content or  its services to a friend using something like the net promoters score. ( you can’t find that in the web analytics) . This, when coupled with the web analytics , gives a good view of a loyalty or advocacy co-efficient for the site. 

In the Open Web or social media context  its about all about Consumer Generated Media ( CGM ) and there’s another dimension which is purely Qualitative. Its the understanding of the voice and tonality of Engagement or behaviourial responses a consumer has .  You can measure  and analyse  Buzz, Tonality and Sentiment, with the real  appreciation of the true consumer’s voice.  When you add your closed systems reporting , e.g.  the  web analytics  to your Open or social  measurement of consumer’s voice then you really see the whole picture.

Tags: analytics, buzz, CGM, consumer generated media, consumer's voice, digital engagement, digital persona, engagement, engagement metrics, metrics, qualitative, quantitative, research, sentiment, social communication, social media, stickiness, webanalytics

Tags: analytics, buzz, CGM, consumer generated media, consumer's voice, digital engagement, digital persona, engagement, engagement metrics, metrics, qualitative, quantitative, research, sentiment, social communication, social media, stickiness, webanalytics