Research, Thunking•
on January 11th, 2010•
Seriously. How? Let’s go back to the 1970’s and a maveric by the name of Stewart Brand in San Francisco. He was a counter-culture type, disillusioned like many other hippies with the “establishment” and the growth of broadcast television. He also understood the principles of “cybernetics” or what came to be known as “network theory” developed by American Norbert Weiner in WWII who was looking for a solution for better anti-aircraft defence systems. Stewart started “The Whole Earth Catalog“, which featured items that hippies (for example) could use in their communes. A key feature of this catalog was the creation of a feedback loop (feedback loops are a critical element to today’s Social Media) in which readers could send in anything they wanted to be printed and he included these items in the “catalog”.
It was so successful that Brand eventually shut it down for the most part. It had become too “mainstream” by 1972. fast forward to the early 80’s and the hippies had abandoned their “communes” concept and pretty much all moved back to San Francisco. This is when they started to get into computers. Hippies like Stewart Brand saw computers very differently from the likes of IBM, who saw them purely for business purposes. Hippies saw them as a way to connect people in a feedback loop to go around the broadcast mediums of the establishment. This lead Brand with others to create the WELL, or the the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link - arguably the first citizen driven social technology that lead to forums (and survives today.) Modern Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan also saw the intrinsic value to these technologies; for him, as a devout Catholic, he saw this technology as a way to gain a new level of “enlightenment.” The medium after all, is the message. As McLuhan meant by this, the impact a medium would have on shaping the views and actions of those who consumed it. It wasn’t the message he was concerned with, but the “container” the message was delivered in.
From the WELL, sprang ever increasing “networks” of computers tied together. As the Internet gained popularity and computing became easier for people, so did the advancement of Weiners original cybernetics capabilities. Today, social media technologies like Twitter, Facebook and blogs, all pull their technical underpinnings from Weiners original concepts from the 1940’s.
It was the Hippie movement and their belief in enabling people to connect and communicate outside the media channels controlled by industrial media that drove them to evolve these technologies. Today that seems a bit odd, since big media portrays hippies as highly-socialist drug smoking free-love types, not as technologically thinking folk who would be so eager to drive new technologies. But it’s how they saw the technology being used that is key.
After all, a key philosophy of Social Media is “sharing” as in “share the link love” and being open about what we see. As one thinks about that, perhaps the hippies really were onto something. Even Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder, gave credit to the Whole Earth Catalog as a precursor to today’s World Wide Web.
Interesting isn’t it?
Peace out.
(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)
Reputation, Research, Thunking•
on January 6th, 2010•
As a “consumer” of a brand, is there a point where your engagement with that brand actually dilutes its value to you? Can you “know” too much about that brand? Can Social Media engagement by a brand be too much?
As consumers we engage with various brands in different ways. Some are brands we are loyal to, but only in the sense of continuous purchase. We don’t want to engage anymore than simply buying and using that product or service. Others, perhaps due to the nature of the brand (i.e. a computer or Smart Phone brand) we have to engage more deeply with – like needing customer service.
But I’m thinking separate from customer service issues. Do we want to continuously engage with a brand, like Walkers crisps or Skittles? At some point, do consumers find less connection with that brand as a result of engaging with them on Twitter or via Facebook?
Now, with so many brands dipping their toes into Social Media and some going full-bore into these social channels, are they diluting that sense of attachment we have to a product or brand?
Put on your “consumer” hat and ask yourself; do you feel a stronger engagement with that brand because they’re also in those social media channels your using? Do you want to be engaged that much? Perhaps it depends on the product?
Personally, when I find out more information on some brands, that brand loses some of its mystique. What about you?
(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)
We’ve conducted research on Social Media usage for over 80 companies now, from health care to engineering to non-profits. No, I’m not tooting our horn here; bear with me a moment. We’ve covered Europe, Canada, the USA and snippets of Asia and southern Africa in our wanderings. One thing we’ve learned out of examining over 780 Million (or so) bits of data? People like where they hang online and they don’t really like to change – with a few caveats. Of course.
When it comes to Social Networks (i.e. Facebook, MySpace or Bebo) citizens (I hate the term “user”) become rather attached to those brands and services. Once entrenched and engaged there, they tend to stay there. In monitoring brand and product mentions and discussions over a 6 month period for several brands – people mentioned the brand in a channel where they initially hung out. Less than 1% of over 240,000 people left their initial Social Network to engage in conversations or make comments elsewhere.
In usage patterns, we found that out of the 240,000 sample group monitored, 78% also used a separate photo service and would have an account on YouTube or another video service. Less than 5% of the sample group (Canadians, American and Brits) had more than 3 actively used accounts. Okay, a caveat here, we sampled these 240,000 people where we found the same “user name” being used – but we do estimate a less than 4% margin of error here.
To Seth Godin’s new project with Squidoo “Brands in Public” we are very interested to see what happens. Brands in Public offers brands the chance to engage with people when they mention their brand by creating a portal that sucks in any mention of their brand across Twitter on blogs etc.
The upside is that the brand can then “go” to the channel(s) where the issue is being discussed and engage with people. For the most part. I like it for microblogging services like Twitter or Plurk, but suspect it will fail when it comes to newsgroups, usergroups, the BB and Usenet etc., all areas some (like ours) services can monitor, but Google does not. Nor would this tool. It’s a great concept, and it will have a positive impact. But.
At the end of the day, citizens like the online home they make. They’ll rarely venture out and away from the services they start with, since that’s where they’re comfortable. Seth has changed the game here for many monitoring services like Radian6, RTGI or Trackur and for Microsofts proposed solution. The good side of this project is the ability for the brands to reach at least most of the services where the conversation may happen that affects them, if not all.
Key is that Seth et al have recognized a key fact; a brand in Social Media has to go to the audience, don’t expect them to come to you.
Did we miss something? What do you think?
(Author: Giles Crouch a.k.a Webconomist)
I’ve had 2 calls in the last week from businesses looking to build their own Social Network and over the past several months, similar inquiries. When I ask them if they have about $40 Million to invest in getting it going I either get dead silence or a nervous chuckle. My advice is “forget it and invest elsewhere.”
The space is well established now. The leaders are Facebook and NetLog followed by MySpace and MyYearbook among others. Perception-wise Facebook is leading internationally. The others vary by country (these come from a simple but good site for this data.)
One might and I emphasize “might” succeed with a micro-Social Networking site that caters to a specific ethnic, cultural or special interest group. But often those are well supported by services like Ning. Of course it’s one thing to build it, then you need to attract people. Even in ethnic/cultural group terms, they’ve tended to have found their piece of turf inside Facebook or other services. For clubs and organizations there’s services like Qlubb – well, there’s over 60 of them out there. In the business world it’s a fight now between LinkedIn and FastPitch.
Only about 5% of people spend more than a few hours a week inside a Social Network and less than 3% belong to more than one Social Network (our research, March 2009). Once they have established a presence and entered their personal data and made connections, it’s very hard to move them. Porting the data over is hard enough to do, but porting their connections? Almost impossible.
Venture Capital companies are not financing Social Networks. Raising debt to finance them is personal financial suicide. And quite frankly, you’ll need at least $40 Million to build a presence. If you can figure out a very compelling reason to switch for a person (porting over data and friends included) then you might have something. Over time, opportunities might present themselves. The one sector we see some opportunity through our research is better ethnic/cultural focused Social Networks in countries like America, Canada, England and Europe. Possibly. But there are services for those markets (BlackPlanet and Migente are two) and the revenue opportunities may be limited based on demographics and adoption.
Our advice then is, work within a Social Network to build community if that’s your goal (here’s an example). For big brands, I’ve yet to see a sustainable model – the reality is, once the brand has accomplished it’s marketing objective, are they really going to want to spend the money required to maintain that presence? Not likely.
In the pre-Social Web days, a brand and it’s components and assets could be fairly well managed. The company determined the design elements, packaging, promotion, channels of communication and shaped the message. In large part a company could also control the message. Feedback to assess effectiveness of the marketing was via focus groups, various forms of surveys and sales.
Ultimately however, the consumer shaped the brand. But there were controls in place for the brand owner to shape the perceptions and expectations of the brand. Not anymore. Once a brand decides to engage actively in Social Media, a conversation begins. This means a two-way, far less controllable medium. This situation also means more work to manage the brand. As social media usage increases brands big and small, will have no choice but to engage. The days of didactic one-way advertising only are fading. Some claim brands are dying altogether.
This puts some inherent new issues for brand values and management on the brand owner. I see this as two key areas;
1. Expectation: By engaging in a conversation (whether I’m conversing or just reading/viewing) as a consumer of a brand, the brand is now setting a certain set of expectations.
2. Anticipation: Now the brand ha engaged with the consumer, a certain anticipation about what will happen with the brand in the future is set.
These are two huge considerations for a brand looking to engage in Social Media. But they have little choice as social media usage grows and consumers want to engage the brand.
(Author: Giles Crouch, Principal)