There is this great campaign being launched as I’m writing, and I thought you’d want to know about it.

But knowing is not enough. They need your support to be able to get governments involved. Read, sign the petition, share (on Facebook, Twitter), and ask your friends to share too. Please.

Born HIV Free

We need millions of people to make their voices heard. To reach them we will ask you to spread the message. How many online friends, fans and followers do you have? 100? 500? 10,000? Use ’suggest to friends’ on the left of this page and invite your friends to join. Let them all know about the campaign. Who wouldn’t want to do their part to ensure a AIDS-free generation?

Campaign resources:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/bornhivfree
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bornhivfree
YouTube: www.youtube.com/bornhivfree
Causes Petition: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/petitions/466

Supporting campaign resources from RED
The Lazarus Effect – Red & HBO
http://www.youtube.com/joinred#p/a/u/0/QqacszjHocM

The Lazarus Effect
Bono and Alek Wek on the RED carpet at the launch of the Lazarus Effect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0t2vj_SJpc

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And now, the official press release for those who want more. (Contact details at the end)

What is it?

The BORN HIV FREE campaign has been created to mobilize public support for the work of The Global Fund and for a world where no child is born with HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) by 2015. Originated and supported by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Global Fund Ambassador, this is the largest ever digital media campaign of its kind. At the core of the campaign is a series of entertaining films and events intended to inspire people to sign up online in support of The Global Fund’s mission.

Transmission of HIV from mothers to their children has nearly been eliminated in Europe, North America and other industrialized parts of the world. In contrast, in developing countries, 430,000 children are born with HIV every year - that is well over 1,000 every day. The campaign’s main message is that “We can put a stop to this in the next five years. A world where all children are BORN HIV FREE is now possible”.

Launched on 19 May 2010, in five languages: English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. the campaign uses a set of innovative and imaginative animated films across digital and traditional media platforms to spread awareness about the opportunity the world has to ensure a virtually HIV-free generation by 2015 and to generate support for this goal – and the Global Fund’s wider mission of fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The campaign appeals to all viewers to show their support by signing their name on the campaign’s “virtual wall of support”.

The campaign will run until October 2010.

Why is The Global Fund promoting this?

This year the Global Fund is requesting its donors to pledge contributions for the next three years. It has estimated a financial demand for up to US$20 billion for these three years. The Global Fund currently channels nearly a quarter of all international resources to fight AIDS, but more than half of the resources to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to children, as well as more than half of the people receiving AIDS treatment around the world. In addition, the institution channels around two thirds of the resources invested against tuberculosis and malaria.

By focusing on a world where virtually all children can be BORN HIV FREE, the campaign is drawing attention to one of the many ambitious goals the world can achieve if it continues to increase investments in global health. By signing up on the “virtual wall of support”, people can signal to their country’s government that they approve of the use of public resources to fight these global pandemics and to achieve ambitious global goals, such as a virtually HIV-free generation.

Given that The Global Fund relies predominantly on public funding for its resource needs, the campaign is not a direct fund-raising campaign and does not ask individuals to contribute money. It simply asks people - by the simple act of clicking a button - to register their support for BORN HIV FREE and for the work of The Global Fund.

The Global Fund will publicize the levels of interest, awareness and support as the campaign progresses.

How has the campaign come about?

The campaign was conceived by Julien Civange at the request of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and co-produced with The Global Fund. The campaign films were produced by Oscar-winning production company H5, as well as by Passion Paris, TWA/MAP and NEXUS Productions, focusing on the promise of life fulfilled for children who are protected from HIV. The animations will be distributed through various social and mass media platforms and be supplemented with a film by the award-winning Swedish animator Jonas Odell showcasing the tremendous advances made in the fight against the three diseases since the inception of The Global Fund in 2002. The campaign web site was designed and developed by red design, and the YouTube channel was developed by type3.

A number of official partners have joined together to support this cause: Google, YouTube, MSN, Orange and JC Decaux.

Why launch the campaign now?

On 5 October 2010, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will chair a meeting of donor countries in New York where they will pledge financial support to The Global Fund for the next three years (2011-2013) to fight the three diseases. Given the Global Fund’s large share of global financing for the fight against the three pandemics, the level of financing secured will largely determine whether the battle to virtually eliminate mother to child transmission of the virus by 2015 – as well as other targets, such as a end to deaths from malaria and dramatic reductions in the burden of tuberculosis – will be won or lost.

A majority of The Global Fund’s financial resources come from public sources. The United States is the single largest donor and of the top 16 government donors, twelve are from Europe. Japan, Canada and Australia are the other major donors.

Strong support from the public is needed to enable donor countries’ leaders to continue increased investments in The Global Fund so that a HIV-free generation can become a reality.

For more details on The Global Fund’s resource needs click: http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/resources/?lang=en

What is The Global Fund?

The Global Fund is a unique global public/private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing resources to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Since its creation in 2002, The Global Fund has become the main source of finance for programs to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, with approved funding of US$ 19.3 billion for more than 572 programs in 144 countries. It provides a quarter of all international financing for AIDS globally, two-thirds for tuberculosis and three quarters for malaria. For more on the Global Fund see www.theglobalfund.org

What is the link between Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and the Global Fund?

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy became a Global Ambassador for the Global Fund for the Protection of Women and Children Against AIDS in December 2008. At the announcement of her ambassadorship, she declared that one of the ways she wanted to act as an ambassador was to engage the world of art, culture, fashion and entertainment for the cause of ensuring that virtually all children are BORN HIV FREE. The campaign grew out of this commitment.

For more information contact:

Andrew Hurst – Media Relations Manager
Office: +41 58 791 16 72
Mobile: +41 79 561 68 07
Email: andrew.hurst@theglobalfund.org

For more information visit: www.bornhivfree.org
Videos can be downloaded from: www.youtube.com/bornhivfree

“One of the points Mr Zuckerberg was making was that the web has become a lot less anonymous and Facebook is definitely positioning itself as wanting to be the owner of that information,” said Maya Baratz of the Huffington Post. (Given Facebook’s growing and highly influential size the Huffington Post online publication has dedicated a whole section of its site to news surrounding Facebook which you can read by clicking here.)

Zuckerberg told developers at the f8 conference that the experience will mean a more personalized, social, smarter Web. As quoted from an another article on Huffington Post “Facebook is spreading its wings to the broader Web with new tools that will allow users to see personalized versions of websites they visit elsewhere.

The move could change the way people experience the online world, though it could come with deeper privacy implications. By accessing Facebook’s tools, websites will be able to customize the experience based on the list of friends, favorite bands and other things users have shared on their Facebook profiles.

“The Web is at a really important turning point now,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the F8 conference for Web and software developers in San Francisco. “Most things aren’t social and they don’t use your real identity. This is really starting to change.”

In its first steps Facebook has changed the semantics surrounding fans “people who like this” – has replaced the former term of “fans.” Facebook has added these new features to its site,

If you haven’t noticed these changes in the past few days take look.

In conjunction with this step it also launched the concept of what it calls Community pages. The concept of Community pages is to revamp users’ profiles to emphasize the pages for bands, books and businesses that users have become fans of. Facebook has started prompting users to essentially combine the two ( a users “Faned” page , and their profile page ) So if you listed The Clash in the “favorite music” section of your profile, Facebook will now ask you to join his page, if you haven’t become a fan of it already.

Facebook has also announced its working to eliminate the FB Connect ‘brand and replacing it with OAUTH - OAuth (Open Authorization) is an open standard that allows users to share their private resources (e.g. photos, videos, contact lists) stored on one site with another site without having to hand out their username and password.

Its also working on projects such as social plugins whch they call GDP (granular data permissions) and continuing to work on user privacy settings.
Zuckerberg said Facebook made sure that its new tools don’t intrude on their privacy. Users’ preferences won’t be logged unless they choose to press the “like” button on websites. If anything, Zuckerberg expects the “like” tools to give people more control over what they want to share with their online entourages.

If users embrace it, Facebook could gain valuable insights that could help it sell more advertising, potentially rivaling online ad leader Google Inc., which typically tailors ads based on keywords in search terms and Web content.

“If I were Google I would be really scared because Facebook might end up with a lot more intelligence than them,” said Alain Chuard, Founder of social marketing firm Wildfire. “Google is just an algorithm, but Facebook could rule the Web.”

So there’s obviously and lot more planned for the near future as the battle for social dominance increases. I wonder what Google will do now since its Buzz launch looks like a knee jerk re action to Facebook’s growing importance and it incremental loses in market share of audience time and visitation online?

Reposted from http://blog.label.ch LABEL Communications

In terms of SEO Facebook has become one of, if not, the largest influencer in organic search today. This is something not to ignore for any SEO oriented marketer or communicator. Its very easy to work out what is driving this .. the sheer size of its user numbers pages and content links have driven it to prominence.

• 400 M registered users with 200 M logging in each day
• More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3.5 million events created each month

# source Facebook statistics

Here is a simple list of tactical steps on how to benefit from using Facebook’s SEO advantage (adapted from All About Facebook)

1. Start with a good URL
URLs are critical in search engine optimization. Google (and other search engines) use as much information as possible to determine the relevance of a particular page for a given search. Currently Facebook enables those pages with over 100 fans to get a vanity URL. A vanity URL is the short Facebook URL that helps people easily access your page.

2. Configure Your Default Tab or “Landing Page”
Ensure your landing page contains relevant text. You can set the default tab by clicking the “Settings” link on your Facebook Page and then selecting the tab you’d like to have displayed by default. You can create this page using Facebook’s endemic markup FBML

3. Generate Links To Your Page
If you are looking to drive traffic to your website for organic search the most important variable is incoming links. The number of links, the influence or ranking of the referer and the relevance in content. An easy way to boost your Facebook page rankings is by linking to your page from your existing website. Additionally, any way you can get links from other sites will help increase your rankings. On their own, Facebook Pages rank highly, a little additional work will improve this significantly.

4. Link To Other Relevant Pages
Linking to relevant content helps boost your ranking. Google takes into account the relevance of pages you are linking to when calculating the relevance of any given page. Try linking to a few relevant sites like your blog or website content . You’ll not only help out your readers but increase your overall Google rank.

5. Use Facebook For Inbound Links To Your Company Website
One of the most important components of search engine optimization is generating inbound links. Generating a link from your Facebook page is extremely valuable. Take advantage of landing pages and the information tab to link back to your company’s , or brand’s website.

6. Select A Good Name For Your Facebook Page
The name of your Facebook Page is extremely important. Name the title after your company or whatever phrase will be most effective for fans that are searching for you.
7. Post Keyword Rich Content in the “Info” tab in the page
The Info tab in the navigation bar on your Facebook Page is one of the few areas on your page which is accessible to search engines. It’s also relatively high up in the page HTML which means that search engines will give the text priority over text that’s further down the page. Take the opportunity to ensure that in the Information editing box for yoru fan page you use both links and relevant keyword, rich content. The detailed information can be just that, very detailed.

Monkeys with Typewriters - Myths and realities of social media at work.

There seems to be a lot of books that are be published about social media, the new digital marketing paradigm, and they are propagating as fast that the exponential growth of social media and networking. Most are, unfortunately, the non-descript how to do, or dummies guide to social media or how to use particular tool or a book rushed to print on hype. For the most part these serve their purpose but will be outdated by the time they publish or contain nothing more that are dry set of repetitive studies presented as a mind numbing, blunt string of wide eyed testimonies that say the “times are a changing”. I must say, save the print and spare me the drudgery please. Then I also must concede, I am not the target audience or buyer of such books.

Jemima Gibbons recently published book, Monkeys with Typewriters is quite different to those aforementioned book types. Its a new and refreshing read, a sparkling gem in a field of proliferating drudgery of “read this now and it will change your life” books. It also poignantly marks the period we are experiencing.

I must admit I do have a few books about digital convergence, digital economies and communications on my bookshelf . These are time markers that articulate what they see as present behaviours and guide future directions,: Being Digital, The Cluetrain Manifesto, Convergence Culture, Groundswell, and Secrets Of Social Media Marketing to name them. Monkeys with Typewriters is potentially another time marker, intelligently drawing upon history, the present and piecing together a jigsaw picture of trends. At it’s centre lies numerous informative and insightful conversations and stories. What’s profoundly different about his book is that is a narrative woven out of these conversations with about 50 thought leaders and practitioners the world of social computing ( and I must confess that I am one of the interviewees), written around their personal situations and personalities , their thoughts and experiences almost like investigative reportage. The actors in the narrative are drawn from a cast of influencers; startup CEO’s, corporate executives, academics, specialists, and noted pioneers in web 2.0. The narrative is structured into a framework of six defining trends or behaviors that mark the change in communications, information and the psychologies that are driving the flow of change. What it presents is a rich tapestry of current thinking and practices that harness the power of open information flow in the realtime web.

There’s no doubt, we do live in a time of somewhat profound and chaotic change in communications, knowledge and information flows. Borders are increasingly only geographical, businesses and countries are transforming and we are more connected than we ever have been before. Making sense of chaos and change is often quite hard as there are many factors at play. Monkeys with Typewriters is a must read if you want to make sense of the inter connectedness and how to behave in this new brave world.

As Jemima concludes in her wrapup about Wise Monkeys “Social media is not about technology. It’s about people, relationships, and conversations. The web is the enabler. If you can engage with and value this network and incorporate its collaborative properties.. then you are one step closer to business zen : an intuitive, harmonious and enlightened working environment.” I couldn’t phrase it better myself.

Here are some links to buy the book and Jemima’s Monkeys with Typewriters blog

reposted from http://blog.label.ch

The most important reason for the meteoric growth of Social Networks is something called “The Network Effect”. This equates to a tipping point when the value of a communications network to its users rises exponentially with the number of people connected to it. In the past year, we have witnessed one such rising star, Facebook ( but it begs the question is it the only one? ). It took 5 years for Facebook to reach 150 million users and then a further 8 months to double that number. Today, according to Facebook Statistics, it has 400 million users. In 2009 we saw Facebook become almost ubiquitous in every conversation swirling around Social Media and social networks. It was the year in which Facebook exploded into a global phenomena, dominating the Social Networking market worldwide as it became an international social network giant. While its dominated the english speaking press and displaced MySpace its not the only Social Network in the world.

To believe that Facebook or english speaking social networks are the only “players in Social networks” worldwide would be nothing short of one sided owed to very narrow perspective of the hyper connected world we live in. According to Wikipedia, there are some 1.5 billion members worldwide. Across the world there a number of culturally, language, local and regionally driven social networks , that both singularly and accumulatively pose the question whether Facebook can dominate the world in Social Networking. As startling as it is, the ” Facebook Network Effect” is not only a Facebook phenomena and its also occurring across other Social Networks in the world , albeit with different speeds.

So lets look at some of the Facebook statistics and the insights they bring.

Facebook Top growth by country - Dec 31st 2009

Facebook usage by % population of country - Dec 31st 2009

Demark and Norway while not in the top 25 countries reveal even high % population penetration

Norway Facebook users = 2,256,080 % population = 48.5%

Denmark Facebook users = 2,262,260 % population = 42 %

Some of the insights coming out of Facebook’s 2009 growth are :

• The 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base
• The 55+ audience grew enormously at 922.7% in 2009
• Facebook’s largest user base, US, grew from 42 m to 103 m in 2009, a 144.9% growth rate
• SE Asia reprsents and huge growth potential - Indonesia grew to 14.1 m a 1536.7% growth rate , Philippines grew to 8.4 m a 2046.8% growth rate in 2009
• Taiwan’s user base grew to 5,490,300 a 4763% growth rate in 2009
• Facebook accounts for 7% of all time spent online in the U.S, 111.9 million US visitors in December 2009 double that of December 2008
• In Orkut’s biggest markets (Brazil, India ) Facebook saw growth ( number of users and number of users relative to population, however, is still very low )
• Facebook has almost colonized Europe and it is extending its domination with more than 80 millions users at the start of 2010
• Facebook is growing well in Africa amongst the internet connected population

A review of State of Social Media World from the international perspective shows some other great observations of the growth and importance of Social Networks across the globe.

Italian Vincenzo Cosenza’s blog , Vinco, publishes a visual map of the worlds social networks upon which can see the changing geographical spread of social networks. Facebook in the past nine months has seemingly homogenised the map somewhat. However, our research indicates that in some countries the map may not be correct and it hard to get an accurate number of the exact numbers. In India , Orkut still ranks as the number one social network , and while Facebook enjoyed good growth and made inroads into the Philippines and Indonesia, Friendster still dominates the SE Asia region. So the light green spread of Facebook indicated on Vincenzo’s map remains relevant in the Americas, Europe, Australia and Africa. It is worthwhile noting that in the South East African countries there are new social networks being created that we predict will compete significantly against Facebook in countries outside of South Africa.

“South Africa has shown for years that social networks in Africa will be run over mobile phones in the future. Mxit in South Africa, a mobile social network application with more than 5 million members, lets one engage in a community independently from location and time.

According to Appfrica, South Africa has 1.1 million Facebook members, Morocco 369,000, Tunisia 279,000, Nigeria 220,000, Kenya 150,000,and Mauritius 60,000. It is also Appfrica who presents an interesting little project, where Ugandans can interact Facebook through their mobile phones: Status.ug is a completely mobile gateway for Ugandans to also interact on Facebook. Appfrica estimates around 60,000 Facebook registered members in the Kampala area. Erik Hersman wrote on his blog about Sembuse, East Africa’s first mobile social network “Sembuse is a mobile social network. It’s a way for East Africans to connect with each other via short messaging, cheaper than normal SMS messages (much like it’s counterpart Mxit in South Africa).” # extract taken from The Next Billion - The Rise of Social Network Sites in Developing countries by Christian Kreutz

In other parts of Africa Facebook continues to grow the following table showing user numbers in Africa was complied by Possicon from the Webtrends Nigeria blog

Around Africa

” Egypt has overtaken South Africa as the largest country with Facebook users in Africa, though Facebook penetration in Egypt is much lower than south Africa, it show that there is room for more growth. For now, South Africa’s Facebook users seem to have reach climax as the growth rate is almost flattened. With the table above, Tunisia has the highest penetration up 11% from last November of 45%, given the number of internet users in Tunisia, the growth might not last for too long before it stops. Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria are the top countries in terms of Internet users and as such, we should expect growth from these countries. Morocco has just 12.4% of its internet population on Facebook while Nigeria with 9.4%. Ghana also shows a good Facebook penetration but insignificant as its internet users are still hinging below 1 million mark.” # extract taken from Web Trends Nigeria

Using this map and a number of other sources LABEL .THE Brand.intelligence company came up with a conclusive picture of what the regional and local competition is for Facebook around the world.

Facebook’s Regional and Cultural Competition as of 31st Dec 2009

• Qzone - 200 m users as of 31.01.09 , reportedly 300m as Dec 2009 , Main land China- more that 150 m monthly active users
• Myspace - 130 m users - 115 m monthly active users, 15 languages has some 5 million artists and bands on MySpace Music and has plans to increase the development as a entertainment content network
• Friendster - 115 m users - 61m unique users per month and 19 billion pages views per month predominantly SE Asia Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India
• Orkut - *100 m users - 48 languages - 51.09 m user Brazil , 20.02m users in India , 17.28m user in US.
• hi5 - 80m users - 50 languages, main demographics 18 - 34 ( 67% of users ) *15m Mexico, *10.5m Thailand, *7m Peru, *7m Portugal, India, Latam , big interest in developing social games and entertainment content
• Vkontakte - 61 m users- Russian (cyrillic ) speaking world inc. Eastern Europe , is a Facebook clone.
• Cyworld - *16.2 m users - 33% of total population of Sth Korea , 90% of Sth Koreans in their 20’s are members of Cyworld.
• Bebo - 40 m users - languages English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Polish
• Maktoob- 36 m users, Middle East, bought by Yahoo , Aug 2009 combining 16m Maktoob users with 20m Yahoo users, originally an email service that has extended into social network and news content
• Hyves - 9m users , The Netherlands only , 53% of total population of The Netherlands are registered users
• iWiW - 4m users, Hunagry only, 40% of total population of Hungary are registered user through invite only

Sources : Alexa, Google,Kohl, Orkut, hi5, NYtimes, Techcrunch, iwiw blog vkontakte.ru, Maktoob
* Estimated user numbers

The numbers are significant and tell us that language, culture, location are strong determinants in the Social Network world. What is obvious is that while MySpace lost its dominance in the english speaking world it has a very special offering in music and youth culture that means its still a powerful force in social networks.

• QQ, leader in China, is possibly the largest social network of the world (300 millions active accounts)
• MySpace has lost its leadership everywhere (except in Guam)
• VKontakte is the most popular in Russian (Cyrillic language) territories
• Friendster still dominates SE Asia , while Facebook has seen high growth in this region in 2009
• Orkut ( owned by Google) remains dominant in India and Brazil with Facebook making small and growing progress
• Hi5 is still leading in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other scattered countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania
• Maktoob ( bought by Yahoo in 2009) is the most important Arab community/portal and growing very fast , 6 million unique visitors in June 2008 to 21.8 million a year later
• Cyworld, Hyves, iWiW, One, and other language or country specific social networks have user numbers that are very high % of population and maybe hard to compete with

The following chart is a ranking provided by Vinco on what social networks dominate in , what are arguably, the top ten Social media markets worldwide. The interesting note we have here is on the emergence of Twitter. It still has a long way to go for worldwide acceptance , however, it is important to note Twitter has spawned over 50,000 apps that tie into the service.

Reposted from http://blog.label.ch

When in logged into my Gmail a few nights ago I got a screen that introduced me to Google’s Buzz. At a first glance I skipped over it not wanting to go to deep into a distracting setup that stopped me from doing what I had originally set out to do : check my email . In hindsight I am left questioning whether Google’s BUZZ has any buzz? Buzz will probably have impact on the digital marketing world overtime but its not that apparent at the moment. However, we should take notice of this change. Buzz is a service that aims to compete in the social networking space not unlike the services of Bebo, Orkut ( owned by Google) Facebook, Twitter to take on the likes of Facebook and Twitter, across devices like the PC and mobile phone.

What Buzz is attempting to do is add the social networking features in the burgeoning number of Google’s services, over the top of the existing number of contacts a person has in their Gmail accounts. It has 97million users at its disposal to do this but it does pale in consideration of Facebook’s 400 million users, Myspace’s 130 million user and Friendster’s 115 million users. Google’s published rationale for Buzz is to work a more centralised and sorted approach to social services, sorting out the noise and organising information into a a relevant experience for users. On its blog it says ” With more and more communication happening online, the social web has exploded as the primary way to share interesting stuff, tell the world what you’re up to in real-time and stay more connected to more people. In today’s world of status messages, tweets and update streams, it’s increasingly tough to sort through it all, much less engage in meaningful conversations. ”

At the moment all the sentiment on the airwaves of the net, is that people have invested alot of time in developing their Facebook profiles and friends and their Twitter profiles to want to pull out of these platforms. Here is one observation I had of myself and one that I think is also being spoken about by Buzz critics. I am used to using Gmail for email, behaviourially I go there just to do that : email. I go to Facebook for other reasons , I rarely actually go to Twitter, but access it via another platform . I think changing these behaviours will be hard for Google to do unless it provides a real efficiency. It has said that Buzz is built on all the open API’s so there’s nothing to stop it creating Twitter and FB connections and adding them as services overtime too. The question is will it work? Can Buzz change people’s behaviours ?

The other side to this is its business case. It obvious that Google is trying to hedge into social search to monetize social networking in terms of semantic and geo targeted advertising . It has long been locked out of Facebook and not privvy to the masses of consumer behavioural data that Facebook has been accumulating and only recently coming to terms with and being able to create some intelligence out of it. This is potentially a huge market. Google can calculate and index underlying semantics and intelligence surrounding peoples conversations, interests, geo location using this information for a more targeted and semantically driven array of advertising services.

Google is also well aware of the mobile advertising potential surrounding both mobile use and geo location. There are critical statistics surrounding mobile use and social networks ( lets look specifically at Facebook )

• There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

• There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

The Buzz service is only open to or limited to Gmail users or through Google’s mobile phone , but knowing Google this will not stop just at Gmail. Remember Google got into the consumer electronic space via moblies , why ? Not to build devices but to protect it revenues into the future. People are moving away or adding a smart phone in addition to their PC, and in the developing world the PC isn’t the connection to a digital world, the smart phone is. So mobile advertising is critical for Google’s growth or maintenance of its business revenues in the mid to long term.

We have seen social media destinations like Facebook or Qzone , Hi 5, Twitter grow at exponential rates in the past few years and take of the form of the new giants and the “Colossus”, Google, is now stepping in with a bid to compete for the consumer attention in social media. Google is no small player and has in recently shown it will flex it muscle and take on the giants or Microsoft and Apple. Buzz possibly has the potential to be a ” Game Changer” if they get the adoption equation right. The game change will not only be for the established Social networks but for many small startup companies. Take for instance Foursquare or Brightkite who are rapidly gaining popularity these maybe shadowed and pushed into the margins very quickly or get bought as Android and if Google’s phone gains greater market traction. As Google says on the Google phone , “Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question “where were you when you shared this?” can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place” with a Buzz overlay on Google maps.

Sadly Google Buzz on the iPhone is a clunky experience.
My thoughts. Buzz will take a long time to take off. Its hard for people to change old habits if there is no significant increase in efficiency or simplicity.Its a play for social search for targeted advertising tat will become increasingly important, and Buzz mobile may be the real mid to long term winner.

To view the Buzz offer you should take a look at the Google Blog.

Last week Gartner released five predictions for social software for 2010 and beyond. What is interesting for me is that the fast moving, consumer driven, internet always finds itself leading the technology shifts that are ultimately or stubbornly embraced by IT departments for the remodeling of enterprise communications, information exchange, information publishing and distribution. Enterprise 2.0 while in its nascent days has had a steady stream of adoption inside a large number of companies. They have adopted certain collaborative and social technologies into or in addition to their existing intranets, team rooms etc. The emulation of the consumer web inside companies allows the speed and ease of information distribution and social communication and work collaboration inside enterprises to increase significantly . These can be enterprise to employee or employee to employee communications or working groups spread across many locations.

Gartner predicts that :

1. By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

“Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications. During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.”

As in the social network space direct emailing between people has dropped as people prefer to message each other as static email type messages or as IM working directly within the social network interface. The broadcast of messages appears as news feeds either to all persons in a network or as news specifically based upon an individuals interests, affinitities, or information needs has eaten into email’s dominance of electronic messaging and communication in the consumer world and will continue to do so. Interestingly, one enterprise social networking system we recommend from Telligent has a email client bridge at the moment that allows a “cross function” between an email client and the an enterprise community/or social platform. It integrates to the MS exchange email client allowing it to act as social publishing interface when the enterprise user prefers not to enter the social network but still have its postings and interactions visible.

“Gartner recommends that organizations develop a long-term strategy for provisioning and consuming a rich set of collaboration and social software services, and develop policies governing the use of consumer services for business purposes. Companies should also solicit input from the business community on what collaboration tools would be most helpful.”

2. By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.

The huge popularity of the consumer-microblogging service Twitter, has led many organizations to look for an “enterprise Twitter,” that provides microblogging functionality with more control and security features to support internal use between employees. Enterprise users want to use microblogging for many of the same reasons that consumers do to share quick insights, to keep up with what colleagues are doing, to get quick answers to questions and so on.

One such enterprise Twitter like microblogging stream is Yammer, which at LABEL, we use as insight, research, and broadcast channel that doesn’t spam through our email system and allows for quick response and interaction between interested parties.

“However, it will be very difficult for microblogging as a stand-alone function to achieve widespread adoption within the enterprise. Twitter’s scale is one of the reasons for its popularity,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice president for Gartner. “When limited to a single enterprise, that same scale is unachievable, reducing the number of users who will find it valuable. Mainstream enterprises are unlikely to adopt standalone, single-purpose microblogging products.”

We do differ to Gartner in our thinking. Where we see their use is in smaller defined interest groups inside of large enterprises. The enterprise microblogging services will be picked up as quick information exchange platforms between collaborating and social groups within an enterprise. This is clearly illustrated by the growth of groups within communities and networks as centres of specific interests or needs.

3. Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.

I think this supports the adage we often adopt in recommending social media activities with clients be they consumer facing or in the enterprise. It not about the technology , but about how people use the technology. Start with the people equation first, not the technology equation and the adoption of these tools will ultimately succeed. We advise our clients to stop, listen and learn, create an engagement strategy that supports the business and communication objectives of before concentrating on the what and how of the technology. The answer is clearly underscored by the observation we have of IT companies making consumer facing websites or working out consumer engagement strategies in terms of digital marketing they just don’t do it very well, they deliver a platform not a communications solution and a strategy.

“When it comes to collaboration, IT organizations are accustomed to providing a technology platform (such as, e-mail, IM, Web conferencing) rather than delivering a social solution that targets specific business value. Through 2013, IT organizations will struggle with shifting from providing a platform to delivering a solution. This will result in over a 70 percent failure rate in IT-driven social media initiatives. Fifty percent of business-led social media initiatives will succeed, versus 20 percent of IT-driven initiatives.”

“Enterprises will need to develop entirely new skill sets around designing and delivering social media solutions. Until this happens, failure rates will remain high. A dearth of methods, technologies and tools will impede the design and delivery of social media solutions in the near term. But long term, enterprises will realize that social media is not a “hit or miss” activity naturally prone to high failure rates, and that a calculated approach to social media solution delivery must be an IT competency.”

4. Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.

” As we move toward three billion phones in the world serving the main purpose of providing communications and collaboration anytime anywhere, Gartner expects more end users to spend significant time experiencing the collaborative tools on these devices. For some of the world, these will be the first or the only applications they use. The experience with these tools for all who use them will enable the user to handle far more conversations within a given amount of time than their PCs simply because they are easier to use. Just as the iPhone impacted user interface design on the desktop, the lessons in the mobile phone collaboration space will dramatically affect PC applications, many of which are derivatives of decades-old platforms based on the PBX or other older collaboration paradigm.”

5. Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

The practices of Social Media analysis and the growing number of tools that are examining dialogue, sentiment, and the semantics surrounding consumer expression in participatory media can be applied as useful methodology for examining the interaction patterns and information flows that occur among the people and groups in an organisation or company. Gartner says “However, when surveys are used for data collection, users may be reluctant to provide accurate responses. When automated tools perform the analysis, users may resent knowing that software is analyzing their behavior. For these reasons, social network analysis will remain an untapped source of insight in most organizations.”

“Before undertaking a social network analysis, Gartner recommends that the organization ensure that it has the trust and buy-in of the people it hopes to include in the analysis in advance. Issues of privacy and confidentiality must be addressed and a determination needs to be made regarding how the information will be used and communicated. Establishing the ground rules upfront will encourage more open and honest participation and reduce the resistance to ongoing relationship monitoring.”

Coca-Cola has launched it first viral video , and in getting a rare success in this type of media play. There is no proven method that ensures a success in viral video marketing other than it has to be entertaining. Funny always seem to work well as a formula, shocking as well, bad taste ( but that could seen as bad for a brand) , unreal or just unbelievable also works. Coke’s Happiness Machine, while only no more than a week old , has close to 800,000 views.

In what seems to be too incredible to be true a Coke machine setup in a university or college campus delivers more than just bottles of Coke. Flowers, balloon animals, a huge sandwich, and an endless supply Coke bring delight and happiness to the students.
As reported by iMedia Connection this is Coke’s first official experiment in viral video following on from another teen connection campaign the “Happiness Factory”.

View a full review of Facebook’s internal statistics

Last November “The Big Money” part of Slate Magazine, ranked 50 brands that they see as making the best use of Facebook. The ranking is based on factors like number of fans, page growth, frequency of updates, creativity and fan engagement, not just numbers of fans. According to “The Big Money” Coca-Cola is ranked as the brand that makes best use of the social network thanks to its “organic fan-centric page without a corporate feel” and some extremely good apps the currently coin the phrase “Share Happiness” in a campaign to boost the diffusion , awareness and contact with the brand in social media.

On Facebook currently there appears to be no common thread to a brand campaigns or successes in appealing to users. Brands such as Starbuck’s , Papa John’s Pizzas, TGI Fridays all have gained large numbers through a tactical “promotional friending” or free food and drinks in exchange for friendship amongst other tactics. Others with very popular ratings either use the channel for fast paced entertainment updates, customer interactions and feedback, user polls, and contests. “Flavour tournaments” have driven large fans bases for food brands and beverage brands where consumers have been asked to create or give opinions on developing new flavours. The winners in this type of engagement are Pop Tarts, Mountain Dew, and Vitaminwater.

Here are the Top 10 as presented by The Big Money with the current fan numbers as of today:

reposted from http://blog.label.ch

Richard Watson of NowandNext has released this year’s version of the Trends and Technology timeline . The evolution of trends and mapping them to a visualization is a continuing project first started in 2007 involving a collaboration with Ross Dawson of Advanced Human Technologies.

This years map sees a greater expansion of continuing trends and a longer outlook than its previous versions. Whilst open to speculation and and unforeseen events the Trends map includes 5 concentric time zones extrapolating out to 2050 with the closest concentration on the next 5 years till 2015.

The map has 16 main influence lines representing the key drivers upon which the trends occur including; society & culture, geopolitics, energy and raw materials, science and technology, healthcare and medicine, the economy, news & media, retail and leisure. There is a lot more detail on this map than in previous years and its reversion back to the intersecting subway map that shows the dense hubs (megatrends) of converging lines is an interesting metaphor for mapping linked relationships.

It is important to note that the key mega trends on the map are:

- Ageing

- Power shift Eastwards

- Globalisation

- Localisation

- Digitalisation

- Personalisation

- Volatility

- Individualism

- Environmental change

- Sustainability

- Debt

- Urbanisation

Download the PDF version of the trends map @ http://nowandnext.com/PDF/trends_and_technology_timeline_2010.pdf

When it comes to using Facebook as the primary point or integrated into the marketing channels, some brand are beginning to find there feet by working with the endemic functions of the service. Lots of brands have also begun an integrated approach to engaging with their consumers to build buzz, distribution and awareness of their campaigns either through or surrounding Facebook. The reality is that Facebook has become the perfect supplement to any website and online marketing efforts and in some cases become a pivotal or primary focus. While not all efforts are excellent here are some that we think are working extremely well.

IKEA’s Facebook Propagation Planning Campaign has used the concept of tagging in an online competition to support the opening of a new store. Some call it a genius use of one of Facebook’s inherent functions. While some of the best campaign strategies in Facebook are simple, and nothing should be simpler than using the default “tagging” tool on Facebook to help create a bit of buzz for an online competition. Users were drawn to the new Facebook profile page of the store manager, who’d uploaded pictures of his new showrooms in a store Ikea was due to open.

“People were told that the first to tag their name on any item, would win it. With the way tagging works on Facebook, the moment you tagged anything, everyone in your network instantly knew what was up for grabs! Subsequently, thousands and thousands of people were flooding the Facebook page in search of freebies!”

Nespresso makes excellent use of Facebook Connect, Facebook Share and Facebook Fans for its latest commercials featuring George Clooney and John Malkowitz. This is an very well executed integrated campaign that combines traditional TV with the choice of an episodic conclusion online ( that’s not necessarily new ), and then adds the full Facebook services into the online site to ensure and viral distribution via Facebook Friends and Fans. The campaign, while not visible on the online site in the US due to the protection of George’s image, is in full swing across other parts of the world and Nespresso is working its Facebook fan base in a totally engaging way surrounding both its product, coffee machines and its iconic George Clooney commercials.

The full video with one of the episodic ending choices

Dude where’s my Butterfinger Bar When I think of this campaign I am in awe of how well the all the social media marketing channels are integrated. This campaign is outstanding in its consumer engagement and integration across audience points. From Facebook to Youtube / Yahoo video, online games, character blogs, user generated content competitions , Facebook apps, Facebook fan pages, Myspace there seems to be nothing left unanswered in the participatory media types. While Butterfinger has a main website , most of its engagement activity is driven to and by Facebook. When it come to the debate on whether social media brings a return on investment to marketing this campaign closes the debate. Unofficially it has raised Butterfinger share of sales significantly with a healthy double digit growth.

See Butterfinger on Facebook

See Butterfinger’s Youtube channel

Nobody’s Gonna Lay a Finger On My Butterfinger Video Contest

Mountain Dew - DewMocracy is another quite amazing use of Facebook as a key engagement pillar for integrated marketing channels. Based only on the democratic notion of participation Mountain Dew has opened up everything about its brand and product to user generated content for a complete makeover. It uses Facebook ( as well as Youtube) as both a destination and engagement platform with a brilliant use Facebooks apps that act as fully functional flash websites to show off the user creations. The Mountain Dew fan base to engaged into creating new choices for drink flavours, new can designs, new names, new advertising campaigns in nothing short of a complete product overhaul generated by consumers. The results of which have been a stunning experience for the brand as it has been reported that the newly fan created drink flavours, “Voltage”, “Revolution” and “SuperNova” literally flew of supermarket shelves.

Amongst the daily exchange, promotion, and web of connections woven into the fabric of the online movement of social media specialists, yesterday I read a post by Jason Falls, on his blog the Social Media Explorer. It extolled that the social media pragmatist would prevail over the social media purist.

It is one of the most sensible commentaries I have seen in this space cluttered by the usual virtuous publishings - listen first, stop shouting, transparency, need for spontaneity and speed of action , or the big question on how to measure Social Media ROI. Why does it standout as a poignant comment when all we hear is the importance of engaging in conversations and building relationships ( they still are of pivotal importance ) ? For me it’s the action associated to doing and making an impact on the bottom line that Jason is highlighting. You have take notice of the old direct to consumer or relationship adage – “Call to Action “ - what do you want your consumers to do now? ( it is an interactive environment after all ) Buy, learn more, fulfill a service or need, or be entertained?

The pragmatist will “just do it” , working the social components and developing the strong coverage of multiple points of contact, using a variety of media as channels, creating the search positions and getting the consumer to do something, driving quickly to an end goal: consumer action. These are intrinsic activities that bolster success. It is about getting your hands dirty in amongst the fray with your consumers. This is what makes all the difference, creates the learning for optimization, as well as the results.

Its simple action oriented things that work and the list could extend beyond the few points Jason raises.
- Make your blog drive search results to the keywords you want to win.
- Present calls to action that lead your Facebook fans to buy your product or engage further with the brand
- Entice Twitter followers to subscribe to your e-mail newsletter where you can present similar calls to action for purchase or other value offers.

As Jason puts it
“ And if you think doing that turns consumers off, ( or destroys the conversation) look at the millions of dollars Marriott racks up from Bill Marriott’s blog. Look at the sales Southwest Airlines attributes to it’s social media activity. Look at the $3 million Dell reported earning from its @delloutlet Twitter account. Look at Wiggly Wigglers, which has 90,000 worldwide customers, largely because when they talk about a product on their blog they put an “order here” link along with it.

“They don’t do this because they hug and kiss everyone. They do this because they make a compelling argument and persuade you to buy things, then they give you the opportunity to buy them. It doesn’t mean they aren’t social. Just that they’re smart.”

On the far side of the spectrum from these action-oriented successes that go beyond the warm and fuzzy purist conversation there are the laggards as well. Recently I was in a client meeting with a pharma company and was stunned into silence when I was presenting the pragmatic concept of listening and monitoring as a very low risk activity to leads to actions points through understanding consumer needs, complaints and attitudes. The people in the meeting rebutted me saying it was a high risk activity because “if they found something negative or something wrong they would have to do something about it” and then proceeded to mention the Maclaren pram / stroller product recall story as proof as to why they saw it as a high risk activity as Maclaren were having to respond to the wave of consumer criticism. I was shocked to say the least. What they were saying was the very existence of the participatory web was dangerous to them and their business because consumers had a voice and concept of “getting closer to your consumer “ due to the regulatory environment was a relationship they would rather not have. In further discussion they revealed that using social media as a broadcast environment was okay. Pragmatically it wasn’t even in the spectrum of social media practices. Sticking your head in the sand and hoping a storm will pass due to your inactivity isn’t going cut it in today’s world nor will thinking that social media is about broadcasting messages.

So while the social media purists who lack that sense of “what do I do with my consumer next before they drift away onto something else” won’t last, the ostrich approach of burying your head in the sand seems to drive in the direction of extinction. Jason is right. It will be the social media pragmatists that will succeed and hold the middle ground.

Reposted for http://blog.label.ch

As the digital shift continues to move marketing communications to more direct and dialogue driven channels companies should adopt a simple methodology in identifying what will work for them and their consumers. The dialogue idea is as unifying concept that aligns relationship or socially driven programs with other communications as a part of an integrated marketing approach. As more participatory channels for consumers are developed the need to establish consistent, non-campaign driven dialogue points becomes critical in the marketing mix. These are not just limited to the direct channels, as we know them; (CRM, DM, email, websites), but really extend across any personal contact that can be associated to the “ brand experience”; customer and consumer services, in store demonstrations, events etc.

A real world experience with a brand is only mirrored in the participatory platforms online and this mirroring reflects the sentiments it arouses in real world conversations.

What ever the relationship or dialogue you want to create with consumers you must have a compelling offer or value exchange. Just as in the real world relationships, digital relationships require dialogue to sustain them. A good dialogue idea serves as the over arching concept for that exchange. In helping create a consumer relationship the dialogue idea should answer two simple questions. Why would a consumer want interact with you? And what value are you adding to their life, their interests, or their passions?

The reasons for the consumer / brand relationship need to be unpinned by consumer rational and emotional needs. Dialogue can be driven by what really matters or makes a difference to a consumer’s life or facilitate their passions. Whatever the offer, it has to be tangible, real and add value.

Consumers are pre-disposed to dialoguing about a number of things.

They might want ;
To be a part of the future development of their brands they are passionate about.
To share their experiences.
To give and receive advice and learn from others.
To be the first to know or receive exclusive offers or privileges
To seek more information beyond the brand (how to use it etc.)
To meet and belong to a community of people with similar interests

Relationships are long term. The success points you should consider in developing a dialogue driven program start with being able to sustain a dialogue across a community or programs for along time rather than running a campaign and possibly include time driven campaign communications. You should also define the motivational points for a consumer to start a dialogue with your brand and your ideas should differentiate from other brand or companies in a unque way , there’s no point in replicating someone else’s idea or offer. And, lastly you should aim at supporting the dialogue across a number of consumer contact points.

Reposted from http://blog.label.ch

One of the more interesting pieces of news I read in the last week was that the Paris-based holding company Publicis Groupe said it has acquired Pour Tout Vous Dire, the French customer relationship management program of a key client, Unilever. While the exact figures have not been disclosed Publicis has obviously seen this as buying a solid media entity that you can build upon. In its original form the CRM program was a direct to consumer magazine that has since morphed into a lifestyle portal online with over 5 million subscribers. This evolution in CRM programs is not an uncommon move in FMGC industry ( but the sale of them to an agency is ) . For instance in France FMCG CRM programs from Unilever’s direct competitors like Club Nestle a loyalty club and brand driven magazine, is now an online community and lifestyle portal Croquons la vie, and Danone et Vous a former magazine is also a lifestyle and product publishing site.

Publicis obviously values the quality of Pour Tout Vous Dire’s consumer database who are attracted to a wealth of content and services on the site. Companies like Nestle, P&G , Danone and Unilever are all building and expanding these lifestyle content driven CRM sites. As they boost their direct to consumer communications digitally they behaving like publishers creating specialist lifestyle content with the added benefit of adding product offers and services to consumers. As magazine patronage sinks the value of these specialty content driven sites as credible media entities becomes more real. The value of the audience in these CRM sites is tremendous. Think of P&G’s Being Girl sites for the Tampax brand first started in the US is now rolled out in 29 countries worldwide with a reported 400% more effective reach than traditional media. The consumers on all these sites are demographically qualified and if the CRM databases have stored more behavioral information such as interests, content profiles , propensity to use coupons, etc then you have a predictive goldmine for highly targeted communications as well as good content.

Publicis’ move also underscores the agencies are potentially becoming competitors to the companies they work with. As the media companies are increasing their foothold in digital they are buying up digital properties where there’s good content aggregation and known audiences. The agencies are morphing. Media buyers are becoming the media, investing in online Ad networks and now even as we have seen in this move buying their clients sites. It may not be a big deal for Publicis, however, it sets a new precedent.

Unilever sold its CRM site with a free run advertising and communications deal for five years and may be allowing Publicis to build a bigger media entity then could have built themselves. I have no predictions on whether this will or won’t work. What is clear is that Unilever sold its consumer database as a credible asset. No doubt it had invested hard to build it and its consumer’s loyalty, however, its hard for me to reconcile that sale. I believe that when a consumer gives their personal information to company it is done in a relationship of trust with that company. Yes the company is building an asset and returning a value and service in return, however, I don’t think the consumer information or even their trust and loyalty should bought, sold, and treated as such.

The most interesting thing I read all week in the myriad of information I digest was the posting for eMarketer titled Marketers embrace Twitter over Facebook with and insightful tag line “Follow me” replacing “friend me”? eMarketer reported that “Facebook may have recently passed MySpace as the most-visited social networking site in the US, but it’s facing stiff competition for the attention of social media marketers.” So why is it so interesting for me and why should it interest you?

Marketing and advertising in Facebook is problematic. In fact its inherent culture is anti advertising and its user base have in the past voiced disappointment and disapproval of the introduction of targeted advertising. There is an high emotional attachment to the service as it relates to sharing amongst friends, family, and having fun in a protected environment. They don’t want the intrusion or interruption by advertisers. They will choose whether or not they want to be associated to you. Marketers need to learn a new approach in social networks like Facebook. (In MySpace its a different commercial proposition, brands can advertise and “own” or design their own space. )

I do believe that in the classic brand ownership argument, Facebook - the brand, is owned by it consumers , not the other way round. Facebook does not own it users it provides a service to them . Its how the consumers adopt and use the platform and what the platform provides to them that makes it so successful. Facebook has to be very careful not to upset or dis-enfranchise its consumers or it will suffer dramatically. Selling out its user base to advertisers would lead to its demise. Brands and companies operating in this environment must also be mindful of “adding value” to their fan bases and inspiring some open and fun dialogue that piques their interest. Do not assume that its a broadcast channel for self interest. You have to ask why would you, or someone else for that matter, want to befriend a brand ? What is interesting for me is that Facebook fan pages represent an emotional not a rational connection and affiliation to brands. e.g. I love / like you therefore I want to be associated to you! If you offend this sensibility you will loose your most valuable asset, your loyal and emotionally attached consumer.

Companies that have a adopted a dialogue based publishing or open based communication practices like blogs are more likely to be actively involved in Twitter. They are using it for several purposes: company news, customer service, marketing promotions and even employee recruitment.

I used to think of Twitter as broadcasting or push publishing platform while trying to find a term of reference to describe it, but now that reference has changed. Twitter actually isn’t broadcast or pushcast its a “directcast” or “targetedcast” conversational tool which only reaches those who want that information, as they have opted to follow and receive these conversational or useful snippets of information. The relationship of association is the key. What is clear to me is that if you don’t have anything worthwhile to say, don’t say it. There was an interesting set of statistics released this week by Pear Analytics , based on a sample of Twits and they conclude that for the present:

• 40 % of Twits were in fact “Pointless babble” or dribble
• 37.5% were conversational
  
• 8.7% were of Pass Along Value.

The underlying warning I see in these figures is that those companies or individuals who use is it solely as an avenue for broadcast with content that has no value or conversational worth risk that their message will fall upon on deaf ears or closed eyes. Their followers will ultimately tune out and detract over time . This is not unlike the woes confronting conventional advertising today. Its not all about broadcast anymore, stop shouting, stop interrupting !!

The brand benefits of CRM and Social Marketing Programs are obvious.  Value exchange creates loyalty and potentially advocacy – By providing a benefit you will be most successful if you also consider the value expectations of your audience. Providing value will ensure your customers continue engaging with your brand in the social landscape. In the sense of making brand advocates of your consumers your exchange might even inspire them to share the value you provide with others.<!–more–>

In terms of marketing communications, many of your online ‘friends’ or fans will only remain a ‘friend’ as long as you keep providing a value exchange in your services, content, newsletters, tweets or updates. The same value exchange already exists in other services that include loyalty programs, memberships and clubs where there are high levels of consumer interaction and the value of being involved has tangible rewards. Its also good to remember that these activities sometimes have a high cost.  Even if you are on smaller programs of involvement the exchange still needs to be in place, small tokens of appreciation always work well.

The ubiquitous social term ‘friend’ should not be mistaken as being similar to friends in the real world. The value of exchange needs to be balanced and considered for the long-term relationship. Short term goals or sales in favour of a brand might not sustain a relationship with its  circle of friends. Brands cannot assume that they have a bond of friendship strong enough to get away with delivering content that benefits the brand alone or doesn’t maintain the relationship. This one way relationship will not work online anymore. So if someone becomes your online ‘friend’ it is the brand that needs to earn the friendship and nurture the relationship, not them. Make sure you continue to deliver value of service, content etc in your exchange with your online ‘friends’ or they will move onto other ‘friends’ ready to give them attention.

So what benefits and value are you providing for your consumers beyond your product?

Reposted from http://blog.label.ch

The behavioral advertising tracking platform Phorm hit the news again last week as the UK ISP Talk Talk followed a move by BT (British Telecom) when they canceled their trials with the company.

It comes as no surprise to me. Phorm has developed technology which collects information on web use in order to serve Internet users with highly targeted adverts and serves ads to people based on their web-browsing behavior. Relying on deep packet inspection, in which every data packet is opened and examined, Phorm builds a profile of consumer’s web-surfing habits. The service surreptitiously tracks and interpolates their behavior without disclosing itself or without asking permission.

BT (British Telecom) had conducted two trials of the Phorm technology, without obtaining the consent of the broadband customers involved, leading to allegations of illegal activity from its customers, peers and privacy campaigners. This led to a lawsuit initiated by the European Commission against the UK government for failing to comply with European data protection laws.  Apparently BT completed a further trial in December 2008 and following further and obvious consumer backlash, it deleted its forums discussing the technology.

Phorm is not a consumer-based service, or entertainment or publishing network that provides an obvious value to the consumer by servicing a need.  Its an online advertising network that centers around gathering intelligence and contextual serving of advertising, Phorm’s mistake is that it doesn’t use the good manners approach of asking the consumers permission (the 1st step in any relationship based marketing is to ask permission) so it is in breach of any trust a consumer might have in the platform.  Here in lies its problem, collecting intelligence on a consumer’s browsing habits or behaviors, without them knowing is an invasion of privacy.  Google, also cited over privacy concerns in recent years, currently collects and stores information from each search query, holding information about the search query itself, the unique IP address and details about how a user makes their searches.  Google is different to Phorm in that it doesn’t intercept and spy on content a person is browsing, but its not benign either. It stores the search behavior and attaches it to an identifiable IP address.

The controversy surrounding Phorm’s technology is probably going to continue but I don’t think that this will stop the adoption of behavior based advertising; Quite the contrary.  What is apparent in Phorms case there is a clear breach of trust with the consumer and technology is viewed as “snooping” or spying technology. The only question that remains, is Phorm considered as a spyware? Uncannily spyware is  where the company has it roots and effected larger commercialization of the technology under going a name change to Phorm. They are not the only company doing this type of tracking. Consider Google’s Adsense, it calls its behavior based tracking  “interest based targeting” or DoubleClick’s DART cookies.  DART cookies are used to serve ads specific to a consumer and their interests (”interest based targeting”).  The ads served to a consumer are targeted based on their previous browsing history. In closed and permission based systems companies are able to apply simple or even complex business intelligence to apply predictive models on consumer behaviors.  This is not new nor is it “snooping”, its consensual. In CRM systems these behaviors are tracked as type of consumption, frequency of consumption, volume of consumption, and the demographics of the persons consuming, whether it’s a product or a service.  Highly targeted advertising will fast become the norm and its already is in deployment in many forms. It will become more intelligent as the web approaches the emergence of the semantic web. The mantra of right message, right time, right place will not only be online but across all digital channels. Consider these notes made in the past two weeks by  UK based Sky TV.  They are continuing to promote high-definition (HD) television—partly because even non-HD television viewing appears to rise in HD households—and because they will develop “addressable ads” for launch within two years.

The reason is purely driven by data points it knows and controls. The consumer accounts, their location, viewing times and programs are all at their finger tips.  Sky can profile the viewing interests and habits of its subscriber households, and will be able to sell ads matching those interests and charge advertisers a premium for more personalized and targeted advertising.
Marketers need to tread very carefully when it comes to personalized or more specifically behavior based advertising—and for good reason. People currently perceive it as an invasion of their privacy in online media. As the world become more connected these concerns may change, but there will be many more privacy battles and barriers to overcome similar to Phorm’s case in the near future.  In the HD TV world it will most likely not be viewed as such. TV is still a passive medium and advertising is still interruption based. In mobile it will be a serious issue, the phone is very personal , users need to control what, who has access to engage with them. In Online people don’t feel comfortable about being tracked its too much like “big brother” behavior, but are okay in disclosing small pieces of information about themselves if there a value proposition attached.

Studies  are showing that a majority of consumer are willing to provide information in exchange for personalized ads. The key will be only if marketers give them something in return. Better offers, value added services that entice a consumer to part with a little bit of information to participate in direct, relationship driven, and possibly socially driven marketing. What’s clear today is that there is a  huge distrusts , consumer and government backlash against companies that use spyware technologies to track behaviors.

Marketers beware! Ask Permission first!

The music industry is clearly  under attack these days as it failed to change and adopt to the new distribution paradigms and the consumers preferences as the old models of music promotion , sales and distribution have been dismantled over the past 9 years . In this new connected world SoundCloud provides a efficient and simple way for music professionals to exchange music they are involved with in private settings allowing for easy collaboration and communication prior to a public release. I think its  service that has a bright future and over the past year since its launch  its user adoption grow 600 % to close at close to 60,000 users.  What is very clear is that SoundCloud has an audience that spans the globe , not just an audience that is largely US based .

Can Twitter & Social Media channels replace Mainstream Media ?

AKA.  The day Michael Jackson killed Twitter -

The past two weeks has been a defining period for Twitter. #Iranelection and Micheal Jackson’s death are the most recent defining moments that have allowed the microblogging service and Social Media to show their impact on mainstream mass media and government affairs. Early morning Friday (Europe) Twitter’s servers collapsed under a tsunami of tweets in the public out pouring surrounding the king of pop’s death. Not only was Twitter buckling under the deluge of Tweets but Google also served an error page and News websites around the world slowed considerably. As the news of the king of pops death broke, Google feared it was under a denial of service attack and served its error page. As it calmed down the Michael Jackson search trend was substantiated and it was rated as “volcanic”.

Follow the trend on Nielsen’s Blog Pulse According to the BBC, initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts containing “Michael Jackson” totaled more than 100,000 per hour. That put the momentary news of Jackson’s death equal to the peak surrounding the Iran protests ten days before.

Twitter posts on #iranelection reached 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour. In response to the Iranian governments shutdown of both local and international from reporting on the events unfolding in Iran, it’s connected populace turned to social media channels, to break the news using mobile phones, through proxy servers setup by freedom of speech advocates in the US and their own blogs and social media outlets. The Twitter channel #iranelection gained so much importance and notoriety in a matter of a few days that the State Department of the US asked Twitter to postpone network maintenance so it could continue monitoring the service. The opening of social media channels spread the defiance against the Iranian government, caused an intense cyberwar (Crisis in Iran Sparks Global Guerrilla Cyberwar) and caught the traditional media outlets by surprise. The effects of the immediacy of news and the spontaneity of world’s citizens to rebroadcast and support that news was so profound that even CNN’s Christina Amanpour was quoted in the New York Times saying “You can’t keep news down anymore & that’s a huge change…getting the word out is totally democratized.” Twitter had matured in an instant and its reported plateau on user adoption from the month before was suddenly just another small bump in Twitter’s rocky road to mainstream user adoption. Twitter’s growing impact on journalism is punctuated by what is happening in Iran. News services like CNN and BBC renowned for on the spot reporting were caught out, the world was watching the news , but not on their channels. Mainstream media commentators posted a pieces on rules of engagement for journalists following the 1st spike in activity when the true power of the world’s citizens voice was amplified through Twitter. Coincidentally at the same time as history was being created in Iran, Clay Shirky of TED was delivering the this message on how Social media helps define history through instant reporting. Notably on these two defining events the buzz surrounding the Twitter service peaked as a new wave of adopters hit the platform. Here’s a look at a what these two events effects on Twitter have been. User Adoption How to Use Twitter - The question on what to do ? With all this buzz surrounding the Twitter platform and its continued massive adoption, the service has to really work on capturing these waves of people and turning them to loyal users. Its failure to scale an infrastructure quick enough for unexpected demand reminds me of my days at Activision. The combination of deep social media based fan communities and highly precision driven digital campaigns together would on occasion overwhelm our servers. The technical infrastructure guys would cringe saying it wasn’t good, but the marketing teams pointed to it as a success point the “digital marketing efforts” were working extremely well. Needless to say it was seen a good problem to have, it spurned an investment in an web serving environment that could handle the onslaught of big and hugely successful campaigns and opened peoples eyes to the strength and importance of the digital and social media. What is clear from my experience is you have got to have a brand people love then users will forgive a few hiccups in service or shortcomings. What is obvious is that the people have spoken, Twitter is gaining love. It has peoples attention and will be forgiven for a few outages. Now it has to capitalize on these peaks and show that its a platform worthy of true love and loyalty.

Fox News article Crisis in Iran Sparks Global Guerrilla Cyberwar

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http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23IranElection

This was originally posted at http://reinikainen.co.uk/2009/06/iranelection-cyberwar-guide-for-beginners/ and then the account was suspended within a couple hours. I’ve reposted it in its entirety here from Brookes Baine

The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through twitter.

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.

2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.

3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweetimpetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.

4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them.

5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind.

6. Denial of Service attacks. If you don’t know what you are doing, stay out of this game. Only target those sites the legitimate Iranian bloggers are designating. Be aware that these attacks can have detrimental effects to the network the protesters are relying on. Keep monitoring their traffic to note when you should turn the taps on or off.

7. Do spread the (legitimate) word, it works! When the bloggers asked for twitter maintenance to be postponed using the #nomaintenance tag, it had the desired effect. As long as we spread good information, provide moral support to the protesters, and take our lead from the legitimate bloggers, we can make a constructive contribution.

Please remember that this is about the future of the Iranian people, while it might be exciting to get caught up in the flow of participating in a new meme, do not lose sight of what this is really about.

Tags: iranelection cyberwar