Look out. Twitter is way cool again.
Jan 12th
Happy to welcome my daughter Lauren Schaefer back as a guest blogger on {grow} …
Hello readers! It has been too long and I’ve missed you! I’ve been a bit busy graduating from college, moving to New York City, starting my job as a professional event planner and writing my own blog that has nothing to do with social media. But now I’ve had some time to breathe, so time to write!
As I have immersed myself in this new “young-professional” role, I’ve been noticing some social media trends among my twenty-something peers that you might find surprising. What’s hot? What’s useful? What do we not give a crap about?
Here are some intelligent and good-looking opinions on the platforms that we loathe and love:
Twitter: Among young professionals, Twitter is becoming the holiest of holy. The exclusive and elite. The smart and creative. You can be witty, you can be hip, #YouCanComeUpWithHashtagsThatAreSoBrilliant. And best of all, grandma — who is all over Facebook — doesn’t know about it. Twitter is the world without the politics and drama of Facebook and it is the coolest of the cool right now.
LinkedIn: Every day I receive new notifications from my classmates. FINALLY. Hop on board friends. It’s been a realization for my group that not only is this a tool we need while looking for our jobs, it’s also necessary to keep movin’ on up.
Facebook: No, we’re not leaving Facebook. My generation will never really let go of Facebook. We’ve gone through too much together. Too many photos, too many exes to stalk, too much history together. But we have also trudged through all of the constant change Facebook has put us through and frankly, it’s exhausting.
Among my peers, there are two classes of people on Facebook — those on Twitter and those who aren’t. Those who are “Twitter-less” continue to post their lives, their trials, their tribulations on FB. But those of us on the 140 character machine, bitch openly on Twitter and “family-friendly filter” on Facebook. Twitter is the conversation. Facebook is just a place to archive photos post lame jokes. We can have Facebook open at work because we’ll never post anything incriminating there. Twitter is where the juicy stuff lives.
Google+ In a word, FAIL. Seriously. We don’t give a crap about our impact on SEO. I joined and built my “circles” and there have only been two updates ever … and one is from my mother saying, “great , something else I need to update. ”
Everything that is cool about Google+ can be found somewhere else and we’re already happy and comfortable with those other platforms.
Now, let’s talk about a hot social media site for the young professional crowd and you probably have never heard of it: OK Cupid.
Yep. A dating site.
But there is something very interesting going on here. Once I got past the initial “creepy” factor of realizing that I’m old enough to be on a dating site, I discovered an exciting new social networking model emerging here. It’s kind of like a combination of Facebook and Twitter for people you don’t know — people who are not currently your friends but who might become your friends, or in Cupid-terms, an “adventure buddy.”
Many of my friends are now spending more time on OK Cupid than Facebook. They are finding it fun to socialize, share restaurant recommendations, chat about music and books, etc. with new people who have similar interests.
Of course there are other social sites but I’m over my word limit and Dad is ringing the bell.
What do you think about these observations? Any surprises?
Lauren Schaefer is a recent college grad, new NYC resident, and nonprofit event planner with an interest in all things social media. She documents her new journey as a young professional at her blog From the Fifth Floor. Twitter: @leschaef
The anti-prediction of 2012 social media predictions
Dec 28th
This is the time of year for predictions and it’s all starting to sound like yada-yada to me. Probably you too?
But how many bloggers go back and actually let you know how they did with last year’s predictions? Let’s start there, and then I will add four surprising 2012 predictions of my own at the end.
Here are social media predictions I made throughout 2011 and my grade for my guess!
Google+ will not be the Facebook killer. People went crazy when I predicted this, especially since at that point I had not even tried it! Doesn’t matter. The switching costs are too high among Facebook’s core audience. I think Google+ is important and it will survive but it will not upend Facebook. Am I right? Too early to tell, but I think I am trending correct on this one. I’ll have to give myself an incomplete.
Quora is not the next big thing. In early 2011 I was the lone voice it seemed not piling on the Robert Scoble bandwagon. Scoble had declared that Quora would replace blogging and was more useful and elegant than Facebook and Twitter. I said no, there was not going to be a Quorgasm — it was too easily gamed, too noisy and too difficult to navigate. Yes, I was right. Grade = A +
QR Codes will soon be obsolete — Many people predicted that QR codes would rock the world in 2011 simply because they were so popular in Japan. That’s the first mistake. Never assume what takes in Japan will take someplace else. I said that QR codes are the eight-track tapes of our generation because will be a mis-applied, over-used gimmick and people will end up not trusting them. I saw an article last week declaring QR Codes dead so it is too early to tell but I think I am trending positive on this. I’ll give myself at least a B.
Augmented reality gets big. I was a little ahead of my time on this. I thought AR would take off in a bigger way in 2011 but it is still in the silent movie stages. I still think I’m right but it didn’t happen as fast as I thought. Grade = C
Social Media “re-set” – I thought that during the 2012 budget planning process, marketing executives who were caught in the early social media hype would look over their budgets and figure out they’re not getting the traction they expected. Too early to tell if there will be a budget re-set, but I think the anecdotal evidence I hear is that I’m wrong. Small businesses are still catching up of course and the big brands I’m talking to are moving ahead with some pretty advanced stuff. Would like to know what you think. Grade = D
Social scoring takes center stage – A year ago when I made this prediction, nobody had heard of Klout. Yeah, I got this one right. Way right. Grade = A+
Social for the enterprise – I wrote that internal uses of social media was the next big frontier for social media. Since that time, Yammer, a leading enterprise provider, had a nearly 200 percent growth rate according to various reports and now has some type of installation in 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. And it’s just getting started. Yes, yes, yes. Grade = A
Micro payments – finally? Facebook started dipping its toe into micro payments in 2010 by giving out free credits to help condition customers use the new credit system. Yes, this is taking off for virtual goods you can buy on Farmville but it is not the general monetization system for art, music and even blogging that I envisioned. Could still happen but not there yet, Grade = D.
OK … Here are four offbeat predictions for 2012:
1) 2012 will be The Year of the Bird. On a percentage basis, Twitter will be the fastest-growing social media platform. It’s not new, it’s not sexy, but right now it is getting hot in high schools and that is where the cool stuff starts. It is also exploding overseas. Watch out for Twitter.
2) Facebook will create alternate universes. Facebook is too freaking complicated and changes too much. And while it grew on the back of teens, Grandma represents the fastest-growing demographic. The platform will have to design user interfaces tailored for different market segments … more analytics for geeks, cool new skins for the kids, a larger typeface for the senior crowd.
3) Crowdsourcing goes enterprise. Crowdsourcing has so much potential but also carries a stigma of unfair labor practices. Based on growth rates calculated by DailyCrowdsourcing.com, it look like this has the potential to finally take off on an enterprise level if companies can be assured of politically-correct and fairly-paid sources of labor.
4) Social Scoring — You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. Klout stumbled and fumbled in 2011 but they also made breathtaking progress that was rewarded by brands. But the real breakthrough is going to happen in 2012 — Connecting online conversations to offline behavior. It’s already happening in small ways but the real rocket will be the Facebook Timeline. Will work like this: Joey just posted and tweeted about a new record. Facebook Timeline shows Joey’s friends bought the record. Record companies send Joey free stuff.
Along these same lines, I think Klout will continue to dominate this niche in 2012. Although the entry barriers to this niche are really low (come up with an algorithm, attach it to the Twitter API and go), distilling wisdom from that big data takes some fire-power. Klout is far ahead in this respect. However, I do think there is room for social scores based on different influence niches like teens, fashionistas, foodies, politics, and local measures of influence. I also predict Klout Klubs will emerge so topical experts can find each other and interact based on this social proof.
What did I hit? What did I miss? Would love to hear your opinions in the comment section!
The Corporate Battle of the Facebook Likes
Oct 23rd
One of the best things about my job is that I get to meet executives from many different companies, both big and small. I was having a discussion the other day with a digital marketing executive from a seriously huge brand (can’t politely name it) and he told me this story, which he said was OK to share with you …
His company, a famous consumer products company, became obsessed with assuring that their brands had more Facebook “Likes” than equivalent competitor products. It actually became a marketing strategic goal and part of the annual performance objectives for brand managers.
The brand equity is roughly equivalent to something like “Mr. Clean” — successful, well-known, historic, but not exactly the center of daily conversation. A household given.
The company has two success metrics for this social media initiative: 1) Did the brand have more Likes than the leading competitor and 2) What was the “cost per Like?” So internally, brand managers competed fiercely to have the lowest “Like acquisition cost.”
At first, I was amazed that a major brand would have such a seemingly strange view of marketing success but these are smart people so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and tried to figure out what the possible benefits of this approach might be. Here’s what I dreamed up:
- Perhaps they have research that shows there is important value in the appearance — “the social proof” — of having lots of Facebook Likes versus competitors.
- Maybe they are planning to create exceptional content that will reward those people who like the brand and turn them into fans. I don’t think this is the case, but it could be possible.
- Some studies have come out equating Facebook fans with a dollar value. I am skeptical about these generalizations but maybe they have some new market insight about this potential.
- By creating this internal competition, perhaps they are exploring best practices to garner fans.
- Maybe with this experiment, they are figuring out the most cost-effective way to link paid advertising and interaction on Facebook
On the surface, this battle of Facebook Likes seems arbitrary, but what do you think? What is the possible value? Are people getting caught up in this at your company? Are you linking “Likes” to brand loyalty or sales?
Is it time for an anonymity movement to challenge Facebook?
Oct 12th
I‘m delighted to feature today a guest post from Gregory Pouy, one of France’s top marketing bloggers. This is his first post on an English-speaking blog and I’m pleased to bring his views to the {grow} community:
I’m a social media guy. I’ve been blogging for six years and have been on Facebook since its beginning in France. I’m very familiar with how Facebook has evolved. So, I guess you could say I “get it,” but to be honest, even to somebody like me, Facebook has become too complicated, and even frightening.
I’ve found myself thinking that even the most die-hard users must also find Facebook’s changes — while esthetically appealing — incredibly confusing.
Following your Facebook feed can become a part-time job! You can spend a whole night plowing through your recent timeline updates, hiding what you don’t want to see, configuring all of your privacy settings, reconfiguring who has access to each and every photos album … it is starting to feel like you are becoming your own website administrator.
When you realize that Facebook can remove all of the filters that you had previously defined and dig up old photos albums that you had deleted from your profile, you quickly realize how much trust you’ve put into this machine — and there is nothing you can do about it but stop using it.
For me, the changes with Facebook have made make me shudder, especially when I start thinking through some of the implications of the new direction they are taking.
Facebook ubiquity
Facebook’s announcements last week imply that EVERYTHING we do, say, listen to, eat, work on, play on … every detail of our lives .. will be shared, stored, and then dissected at the discretion of the Facebook algorithms. You might be thinking : “Wake up! There is nothing new, you’ve got to accept that anything online can be made public at any moment — even an e-mail.”
But having the ambition to display the whole life of their users is just insane. Take Spotify, for example! Sharing the music you’re listening to seems great, right? Just put yourself in the shoes of a shy 16-year-old guy; what is he going to do to impress others and fit in? He’s going to listen to the same music that everyone else is listening to, so as not to seem “weird” at all via his very public Facebook profile.
Imagine that he may stop listening to what he really likes because he will be ashamed to share his real taste in music, unless he is one of the rare users that figures out how to stop the feed from Spotify to Facebook.
Now take this concept and duplicate it for tastes in TV, movies, places to eat … maybe with just about everything.
There’s a significant difference in saying “I’m fan of” something to look cool versus having a machine checking everything that you actually do in real time. Big Brother? We’ve been talking about him for years and it seems like he truly is here.
Facebook is on track to homogenize society, which conversely, and ironically, may “weaken” the database that Facebook is building and the advertising targeting that they are offering!
We are boiling ourselves
Did you ever hear the story about the frog? If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out right away; the frog doesn’t want to die. If you put a frog in a pot of colder water, though, and slowly heat the water, the frog will stay until it dies (There are actual examples of this on YouTube if you really want to see that this is true).
We are frogs being boiled by Facebook. If Facebook had had the same privacy settings when it first started, people wouldn’t have joined or wouldn’t have joined for the same reasons. Now that they have, they stay and just let Facebook keep doing as it will.
We all have heard so many people say: “I’m going to delete my profile”, “Facebook is evil”, but yet they still seem to be on Facebook…
With the arrival of Timeline though, maybe this is a tipping point. My friend Loic recently explained on his blog how his 16-year-old son decided to delete everything from his profile because he was afraid of sharing his life details, especially when people can go back to the very first things he did or put on Facebook.
Loic’s son is not alone; I’ve already heard the same story from multiple other people and friends that are deleting everything or something, clearly a sign of intrusiveness gone too far…
Perhaps the answer to this dilemma is in China.
Facebook is prominent most places in the world EXCEPT for China (and Russia). Part of this is because of China’s censorship and national protectionism, but it is also because Chinese social networks are very different. When I was in China to understand how and which social media networks work there, I quickly discovered that their huge success is mainly due to one thing : anonymity!
When thinking about the future of social networks, it is impossible not to think about China and the way its social networks could change how we interact …
If Facebook could move to other countries, could Chinese social media platforms, with their elegant emphasis on anonymity, come into the Western World?
I think that we could see a backlash and a strong return to anonymity on the web because people love sharing their real lives, real stories, real fun, real everything without wondering about personal branding, or — wondering who is watching.
Any way, I can’t help but admire how much simpler and liberating our online experience would be — especially for youth — if we had a simple social networking platform that allowed anonymity.
What do you think? Is the trade-offs worth it? Or, will you happily continue to feed information into the machine?
Gregory Pouy is a marketing professional who blogs at Greg from Paris. He also has created a very useful eBook on The Future of Commerce. Follow him on Twitter at @gregfromparis.
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