Next Results for articles with tag 'socialnetworks' (10 total)
04/01/2009 05:04:08 PM 
(1) 
(1) Time Magazine seems to believe that Facebook can never make money.
"The reason that social networks will never do well financially is that they break from the successful model that has brought so many marketers to the internet. Display advertising can be targeted by subject. Financial advertisers run messages on AOL Finance (TWX) and TheStreet.com (TSCM). They avoid sites for children's video games. Search sites like Google refined the model by allowing advertisers to buy search engine results pages. The Google results' pages for the search "heart doctors in New York City" is probably the best place in the world for heart doctors in New York City to market themselves."
Sadly, Time is missing the point. Facebook has a giant opportunity to leverage the relationships inside social networks for the benefit of brands.
The multi-billion dollar question is how?
Facebook could do worse than ask the best minds in the agency and media worlds for some creative consultancy help in coming up with ideas to make this work. Ideas that go beyond the banner and weak branded applications. Charging brands for "fan pages" is one way to go, but there are lots of others.
Many pundits suggest that social networks will revolt when ads appear, this hasn't happened to date, and according to research from Razorfish, seems unlikely to.
Facebook is a media monster that will find a way to crack the code as recent events have shown, it just needs some patience to get there.
Posted by Ed Cotton
09/06/2008 09:16:24 AM
One quote struck me as especially interesting and concerning for those of us in the branding/marketing business.
"Fritton joked to me that she no longer buys anything worth more than $50 without quickly checking it with her Twitter network.
“I outsource my entire life,” she said. “I can solve any problem on Twitter in six minutes.” (She also keeps a secondary Twitter account that is private and only for a much smaller circle of close friends and family — “My little secret,” she said. It is a strategy many people told me they used: one account for their weak ties, one for their deeper relationships.)"
Obviously, Twitter is not yet a mass market media, but it's getting there.In his piece Thompson suggests that the power in the social networks lies in the weak ties and those loose affiliations. They have the volume and because of their diversity they can be useful to people; helping them find jobs, get tax advice, etc.
Where does marketing fit in this world?
It's tough to interrupt these "ties", but clearly marketing folks need to take these networks a little more seriously because they are the "canaries in the coal mine" of a very possible future.
Like any issue with masses of complexity, brands prefer to shy away because they are afraid, but in this case they need to experiment, learn, fail and explore.
Posted by Ed Cotton
04/24/2008 06:51:20 AM (1)
(1) This trend means the people behind the company get to show themselves and interact with other human beings in the real world.
The idea of one-on-one interaction can happen. If you trust your employees you can let them out of their cages and cubicles and empower them to represent your brand in the real world.
They can solve problems, answer questions, entertain and inform.
They can become friends with customers and in short, they can be your pure brand ambassadors or the best ads you ever had.
Of course, this all depends on how brave you are.
It also depends on how much you value and believe in your employees.
If they are merely dispensable drones who you believe are stealing from you, you know only by their employee number and zip code, you may have some work to do.
Welcome to the death of the faceless corporation.
There is no nowhere to hide and if your people aren't out there interacting, you are missing a massive opportunity.
It appears that Zappos gets this idea big time.
Who else is brave enough to follow its lead?
Posted by Ed Cotton
12/18/2007 10:42:04 PM
With close to 60 million members and an audience that's doubling every 6 months, Facebook is the brand phenom of the year.
Consider that over 50% of its audience use the site daily and that over 20% of Canadians have an account.
The brand faces significant challenges in 08, with the core question being how it makes money?
The Beacon debacle hasn't helped and there's got to be more to it than banner ad inventory. The brand is going to need to work closely with agencies and its community to ensure useful media tools are created for brands.
The problem with the Social Graph is that it's still not clear if users want conversation and friendship with brands or if they want brands getting in the way of their conversation. Apple Students, Nike and Victoria's Secret are currently the only three mass brands who can talk of any real success on Facebook.
Clealry, there's going to need to be a considerable level of creative thought applied to the development of relevant brand communication platforms.
Facebook would be wise to call upon the best minds in the creative industries to help them. An all expenses paid three-day creative summit in Cannes or Necker Island could be in order.
If Facebook follows the wishes of its investors looking for a quick return, in 12 months time we might soon be talking about it as if it were Friendster, get it right and we could well be looking at the next Google.
Today, its power and hold over its users is unquestionable, so strong, it's even spawned a thriving t-shirt business.
Sadly, there are only 5,000 of these suckers available.
Posted by Ed Cotton
12/01/2007 07:47:13 AM
There are numerous studies that show "Word of Mouth" as the leading source of influence on a person's purchase decision. However, WOM has become something of a general term to describe general conversations that people pick up from a wide variety of sources. Social networks like My Space and Facebook are hoping to make money based on the recommendations of "friends" to "friends".
Interestingly, a paper published in 2006 by Andrew Gershoff and Gita Johar at Columbia, suggests that we tend to over-estimate the knowledge and understanding our close friends have about us, when in reality, their recommedations are no better than others who aren't as close.
However, the sharing of ideas and recommendations, even if their recommendations aren't great, the process plays a crucial role in strengthening the bond between friends. We still want to recommend and be recommended things, because that's one of the ways we become closer to others.
Here's the opening paragraph of conclusions from Gershoff and Johar's paper.
However, Facebook, Amazon and MySpace know far more about us than our friends ever will.
Perhaps the "secret sauce" and the "tricky territory" will be for these players to help our friends to know us better and therefore increase the likelehood of succesfull recommendation, leading to a win-win situation.
Toolsets and applications that help friends better understand the taste of their friends could play a significant role in helping to monetize these social networks.
Although this is the role of many of the current applications on Facebook that determine taste and interest, there are too many of them and there's no way to aggregate the information and build interesting friend profiles, perhaps that will come.
Posted by Ed Cotton
09/05/2007 09:54:56 PM (3)
(3) The problem is that it's perhaps a little too easy. We get attracted by the blinkling lights and add new applications and join groups on a whim. It's wonderful to see those groups grow and cool when new fun applications arrive, it's a little like living in an amusement arcade.
However, while all this stuff is happening we seem to be missing the powerful potential of this social network to make a difference and to do something really interesting for all of us.
Today, Time Incorporated announced it was closing its magazine Business 2.0. It was a sad day for subscribers and those of us who were fortunate enough to get free copies of the magazine.
However, for the 2,500+ members of the Facebook group that had formed to try and save the mag, myself included, it was another day on the social network, with all the usual distractions.
Many had probably forgotten they had joined the group in the first place, others had lost interest after a few days.
The problem is that it's easy to click and join and very hard to do something constructive.
It's the big weakness in the Facebook system.
For groups, it's hard to leverage, galvanize, manage and do something great with Facebook.
Facebook is attracting a ton of people and it's doing a great job with the basics, but the real "win" is leveraging the collective wisdom and power of crowds to do something interesting; to buy goods at a discount, to give loans, change the political system, raise environmental standards, reduce poverty and yes, even keep interesting business magazines afloat.
If Facebook can do this, fantastic.However, I have a hunch that a couple of kids in Mumbai are working on something that can do everything Facebook can do but will trump it because it can harness the collective power of the crowd.
Facebook, the clock is a ticking.
Posted by Ed Cotton
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Articles for tag socialnetworks (10 total).