Facebook is Not The Only Social Network

A lot of brands are focusing on Facebook as the primary social media channel to expend their marketing efforts and budgets on. While this is good, unfortunately it may not be offering the golden hope of social media marketing results they were hoping for. For brands that cross multiple market segments (consumer products like Adidas, MacDonald’s or Apple) this investment in a single channel may be good. But even for Adidas, they may find it more valuable to engage in social networks where their true audience is.

Some marketers may groan at this further fracturing of the budget and resource allocation and the need for a whole new set of metrics, specific content and creative that will be needed. But it could be crucial and Facebook efforts may be a good “catch-all” to re-direct consumers to more focused social networks. In our research over the past year we’ve found that in 2011 there has been a CAGR 37% increase in the rise and use of specialized social networks over the last two years – combined. This is significant.

If you’re a golfer, mom of teen kids, cruise ship enthusiast, eco-tourist, sailing aficionado, hunter or any other form of hobby passion, then you are likely spending less and less time in Facebook and more time in a social network aimed at your passion/interest. And we expect this trend to continue. If you’re thinking that Facebook Pages, Groups etc., is the answer to this dilemma, sorry, that’s not the case. Our findings also showed that when we compared a social network for golfers, hunters, sailors, knitting, running, cycling and mom issues, the comparable Facebook Group (that with the most “likes” and followers) had less than 3% of the members in a specific closed social network targeting those communities. The most popular platform for these communities outside of Facebook is Ning – not exactly an easy channel for marketers to engage in.

If you’re product or service is focused on a specific niche or segment, our recommendation would be to expend your budget and efforts there. Setting up a Facebook page is a good move, to capture eyeballs and direct them to the channel where the real conversations are taking place. Another part of our findings showed people in niche social networks are 43% more active than on a Facebook group page.

If you’re a small manufacturer or service, find where your market is really hanging out, you’ll become more engaged, improve customer feedback and loyalty and likely get a better return.

(Image Courtesy: Lori Grieg via Flickr)

Why Facebook Is Not a Revolutionaries Tool

Many a pundit has put forward that Facebook  played a vital role in the Arab Spring and in 2009 in the failed Iranian revolution, that it will increasingly play an important role in organizing revolutions in repressed regimes and developing nations. We beg to differ on that point and here’s why.

Facebook is Not the Hub of the Online Protest
Contrary to popular perception by pundits et al, Facebook plays a lesser role than other social networks and social technologies from our research. When we looked at the Arab Spring and the tools used in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain…it was Ning networks, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and blogs that drove more traffic and were used for reporting and organizing over 78% more than Facebook.

Why Other Channels?
One of the conclusions we’ve drawn from why so many other tools take the majority of traffic and engagement is that there are always a number of different groups involved for different reasons. Coordinated groups in any uprising is rare. There may be a lead interest group and eventually one does come out on top, but in the early phases and during the depths of an uprising, there are multiple parties involved with different priorities. Hence a number of different tools and channels are used.

The Visibility Factor of Facebook = Liability
As easy as it is for a group to organize and protest on Facebook, so it is for the group in power to search and view that information and who is involved. Today, as Iranian students studying abroad go home to visit family in Iran, the security forces check their Facebook profiles for who they are connected to. A hostile government can quickly determine key players through Facebook. With blogs, Twitter accounts and private Ning groups, this becomes harder.

Online Information Warfare Tactics
Expanding on the visibility factor of Facebook issue, at the start of a drive for societal change, the fomenting groups can push an agenda and ideas into the social web while gaining some degree of anonymity or at least protecting their families and themselves. Using a tool like Ning affords some level of security by enabling the group administrator(s) to vet any requesting members. As an issue progresses, the government under attack my also deploy tactics to create counter-messages on the social web. This is quite easy with Facebook, a little harder with blogging and Twitter and how these engagements can be countered by the protestors or antagonists. Egypt chose to shut down the Web, as did al-Assad in Syria, but then Syria started engaging online and countering the claims made by protestors – information warfare in social media then escalates.

Conclusion
While Facebook is a valuable tool in planning a revolution and communicating, it actually becomes a liability as a protest action escalates. Anti-government organizers understand this. In the case of Egypt, Syria and Bahrain, Facebook became less and less popular for the revolutionaries. We found use of Facebook by organizers in a country in question dropped over 90% once the protest spilled into the real-world through actions. For observers and westerners, they used Facebook to share information, views and opinions and content pushed out onto YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, but the revolutionaries were rarely there. So Facebook is a liability for the revolutionaries and a news and opinion channel for the non-participants.

Google Vs. Facebook And My Address Book

Google’s deploying their now well-known tactic for dealing with threats; assemble a gaggle of doctorates into a room while simultaneously cutting cheques left right and centre. Meanwhile Facebook just rolls out another game…weddingville anyone?

But here’s the issue I see, backed up by three years of research: It’s about the address book. Not games. Not features. It’s my address book with all my connections…added to that is all that really valuable stuff of social networks – videos, messages, photo’s. The stuff that makes up human experiences of social groups. Our “social history” if you will.

Sure, Google’s got lots of people with Gmail accounts. But Google Buzz has failed. Mostly because it completely misses our “social history”…it’s just not easy to share what is easy to share in Facebook – photo’s, videos and the comments added to photo’s that we may go back and look at. Buzz just bombs there. It’s essentially just a hyped up version of Gmail.

In our view, if Google really wants to take on Facebook, they have to figure out how to compellingly make it easy to port over not only ones address book connections, but all those photo’s and the history attached to them.

But perhaps they aren’t bothering with that at all? Perhaps they’re just going to offer a bunch of games to play. That’ll be about as successful as Wave and Buzz.

Google isn’t batting a good average right now. I’m curious to see what they come up with in this latest venture. Somehow I suspect it may not be a social networking app. It’s too bad, since I like what Google does much better than Facebook.

Has Facebook Misunderstood The True Value of It’s Information?

Facebook’s continual attempt to “open” up people’s information is, I think, I gross miscalculation on the meaning of a persons “social network.” It’s not really about privacy of the individual it’s about privacy of our network of friends and family.

I am on Facebook and I like it. I will not however, connect as a “friend” with someone I have never and likely never will, actually meet. I ignore these requests, for business I use LinkedIn or I may connect via my Twitter. To get to know you better first. The mayor of my city made a “friend request” and while I’m sure he’s a very nice guy, I just don’t know him. I’m not a friend. Maybe someday I will be. Then I’ll include him.

The point is, Facebook is about a persons “network”, or who they work with, family and well, actual friends with whom there is a social or emotional connection.  That connection may have started 25 years ago in high school or a year ago at a function and well, you just connected.

We already know that we can not possibly be friends with everyone. Nor do people want to be. This is where Facebook has entirely missed the point of social networks in the sense of “social networks” and in fact, I will submit, that by trying to expand, falsely, a persons “social network” beyond people they really want to connect with, they are significantly diluting the value of their data to marketers. Since there is no longer a “true” representation of a persons network. It ruins the “data set” and dilutes it.

Facebook adds significantly more value by looking at “network effects” of people and will be able to draw much better conclusions and provide much better resale information (in aggregate) to buyers and advertisers than opening things up too much.

Keeping privacy rights at the forefront is actually in Facebook’s better financial interest. The more they try to open things, the worse they actually make their offering.

Manging privacy better is in fact, in Facebooks broader financial interest in my opinion.

What do you think?

(Author: G. Crouch, CEO)

Will Facebook Fail Over Privacy Issues?

No, I doubt it. That’s the short answer. Yes, nearly a million people have “quit” Facenook recently with the new privacy rules and the advent of the “I like it” button being added to the service. But they have over 400 million active users worldwide. Losing a few million, and likely they will, is just not enough to worry about at that size. A few hundred thousand is a blip on the “churn rate” for a month. That’s it. If that even.

One group of aspiring entrepreneurs has raised over $100K to build a more “private” alternative to Facebook and will likely see some business if they can execute. Diaspora says they’ll launch in late summer or early fall. This is the democracy of the Web at work – if you don’t like something, there’s a way to build the alternative.

If reports start to come out that 10, then 20, then 50 million are leaving, I suspect they’ll start to be concerned. But the fact is, we’ve heard these privacy and usage fear stories before. As the Internet began to see popularity in the mid-90′s and the .com bubble started to expand bigger than a Hubba Bubba bubble gum bubble, news stories ran constantly about all kinds of dangers; fraud, luring, lurking. We warned against so many different societal threats. Today, we’ve all learned to delete those emails from some poor sod in Upper Rubber Boot Africa who needs to get to their dead uncle’s millions and only you can help…well, hopefully you’ve figured that out.

Here we are, 15 or so years later. The Web keeps growing and more people keep signing on. This I think, says at a broader social level – people want to connect, create and communicate. Despite the dangers.

Chat rooms, IM services, newsgroups, forums…those early “Web 2.0″ tools, still exist and are as popular as ever. Privacy commissioners may write letters of concern to Facebook…but people still log on. Daily. By the many millions.

If governments step in in a larger way, Facebook may be forced to make changes. But at the end of the day, Facebook has also enabled people to clamp down their profiles. It’s not easy, but it’s doable. Like many things in life, we sometimes have to take responsibility for our own actions and work at things.

Just like the Web is not going away, quite the opposite, so Facebook isn’t going away. Services like Diaspora will come into being, people will learn to better manage their privacy. These are new social rules we’re writing as a society. In the meantime, Facebook is not about to collapse.

Here’s a great 2 min video by Huffington Post on managing your privacy settings.

(Author: G. Crouch, MD)