Social Web Futures

The internet and social media have been abuzz for some time now after Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester Research and all around social media darling, released his analysis of where he believes social media will be going in the next five years. While predictions of the future are generally hard to pin down (something Owyang makes crystal clear), the good folks at Destination CRM encapsulate his five overlapping stages as such:

The era of social relationships: [M]id-1990s, people signed up for online profiles and connected with their friends to share information.

The era of social functionality: As it exists today, social networking ... can support a broader array of what Owyang calls "social interactive applications." However, identities are essentially disconnected silos within individual sites.

The era of social colonization: By late 2009 ... OpenID and Facebook Connect will ... allow individuals to integrate their social connections ... blurring the lines between networks and traditional sites.

The era of social context: In 2010, sites will begin to recognize personal identities and social relationships to deliver customized online experiences. Social networks will become the "base of operation for everyone's online experiences."

The era of social commerce: Brands will serve community interests and grow based on community advocacy as users continue to drive innovation in this direction.

A handy chart has also been making the rounds:


Let us consider some of this for a while.

And while we do, let me share with you an anecdote. At my house, we don't watch a lot of television. Busy lives, a very entertaining child, a preference for reading books and magazines and a healthy dose of online media consumption all equal a thin diet of TV programming. For this reason, we don't have cable. Instead, for years we got by with rabbit ear antennas. The switch to digital meant we needed an analog to digital converter box (yes, our TV is that old), but it also meant we needed an upgrade on our antenna.

To Best Buy I went. First, I purchased the smallest antenna I could find, reasoning that digital signals would be stronger than analog. Not so very much. Our eight strong analog signals covering the networks, PBS, some locals and Univision (best fútbol coverage, bar none) were reduced to four stations. Back to the store, a return, a stronger, pricier antenna. Home again, we're up to six stations, but still not NBC or the local PBS.

At this point, I changed tactics. Hopping online, I went to Best Buy's website and began searching antennas. Finding them, I began reading customer reviews. Gleaning tips from these, I Googled the antenna most users seemed to rate highly and I read more reviews.

Armed with information, I returned to the store, bought a roof mounted antenna plus everything I needed to secure it and run a coax line down to the house. In a little over an hour, I installed the much pricier, best antenna the store sold.

Twenty five channels.

What's important, though, is the process. See how many steps I could have cut from this process, how many trips to the store and experiments with the merchandise?

The solution was found through a very rudimentary kind of social web activity. Burned by claims on the antenna's boxes, I trusted perfect strangers' advice over the manufacturer and marketer promises. Now imagine that instead of going online and Googling or going to Best Buy's website, imagine a fully integrated social media experience.

Let's pretend Facebook is still the dominant player five years down the road. You want to buy a new antenna, a lawnmower, a car -- anything. You log in to your account that is a hybridized browser (think Flock at this early stage) and social media portal. Instead of typing what you're doing now, you type, I plan on buying a new television. Anyone have any advice?

The social media platform you're on scours not only the standard destinations like Best Buy for specs and purchasing options, it also scrolls through your online friends' internet accounts searching for what they've ever said about televisions. Have they rated a TV at bestbuy.com? This futurized Facebook will pull that up. Expand that search out a little. LinkedIn can show you the friends of friends through a web of connections. In the future, your frame of reference can expand outward through friends of friends for anything. Have any of your friends' friends ever rated televisions?

With users opting for one consistent online ID or user persona, all of this data can be collated and delivered. Now instead of relying on dubious advertising claims or the words of strangers, how about the advice of friends, acquaintances and relatives? Who are you more likely to listen to?

Things like this are already taking shape. The iPhone app SnapTell lets you take a picture of the cover of books, CDs, DVDs and tons of other products from anywhere, then searches the web and brings back reviews from Amazon, Goodreads, Wikipedia, Google shopping and so on. Find a book in the store, but thirty bucks seems too steep a price? Pull out your phone, and what do you know? Barnes & Noble has it for $19.95 with five dollar shipping and handling.

In the future, you'll take a picture of something and your contacts will chime in as well. Anyone you know a fan of the author of that thick historical novel? Facebook friends who belong to the fan group will let you know. Does this Xbox game live up to the hype? Your brother-in-law on Twitter doesn't think so. Should I apply for this position? A friend of a friend works there and loves it. Where should you go to dinner? Your niece in chef school has been tearing up the reviews on Yelp.com and she knows the real best sushi place in town.

Again, of course, you have to remember that social media is nothing more than a cataloged, accessible document of word of mouth. You could ask around to find out which game you should buy, which diner you should patronize, which author seems to have lost the knack for solid story telling. But in the future, social media will do the asking around for you. When you want to learn about something, it'll be your friends and followers who will advise you first.

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Future's Going Mobile

It took me quite some time to make the plunge, but I finally bought an iPhone.

There was the price tag that kept me from doing so, there was the current phone service I already had, there were my worries about becoming addicted to such a device and then losing it, breaking it, or having it stolen.

On the other side of the ledger was the coolness factor, the portable computer factor, and the increasingly interconnectedness of business and general life. Finally, after my own phone broke and an online purchase turned out to be less than stellar goods (my suspicion leans toward counterfeit), my wife's phone broke in exactly the same fashion. A teacher in the process of getting an Educational Technology master's degree, she too had begun seeing the utility of an iPhone (or at least hyping the utility because she'd been bitten by the coolness bug too.)

Other friends had been sporting their Blackberries for some time, Google Android operating system based phones were making the news, but there is no tech love quite like those of dedicated Apple fans.

And so we took the plunge, justifying it to ourselves that we were just going to end up with smartphones of some kind down the road anyway, why waste money on phones that didn't have this capability and ones we'd be replacing soon anyway.

News stories about the iPhone lately swirl around rumors of a third generation of hardware coming out around the same time as the third generation of software (actually firmware) and the smashing success of the App Store. Tiny programs that are designed specifically for your mobile phone, Apps automate any number of procedures, allow you to play games or find information quickly at the touch of a button, allow you to chat in real time with others and provide direct connection to communication portals like Facebook and Twitter.

This last place is where smarthphones begin to make sense for a business branching out into social media. The development of both quick apps that allow you to interact with these services is one thing. Your social networking sites should be as responsive as any customer service offering and most likely even more so. Apps like Tweetie or Twitterfon let you update your Twitter feed quickly and easily. The recent intersection of government response and the swine flu can be best learned about through @CDCemergency, the Center for Disease Control's ongoing response to the pandemic.

While your businesses concerns and reactions might not fall into the same category of national urgency, the responsiveness of their online programs have been a calming source of information amidst a frenzied chorus of media hyperventilation. Likewise, @fdarecalls, where updates on salmonella infected peanuts and pistachios kept pace with the story's unpleasant spread and demonstrated that where Twitter excels is in its rapidity of response. Mobile media will fuel that growth and in turn, social media will fuel mobile media.

This, by definition will lead to the development of mobile versions of websites. If you're considering a website redesign now would be the time to consider including a mobile subdomain. A pared down version of your main site, a mobile page has the benefit of loading quicker on the slower wireless and cellular networks while at the same time delivering essential functionality. Consider Google Classic and Google Mobile. A small amount of coding and a relatively simple redesign of your site, hosted alongside your regular page, can lead candidates to your job opportunities the moment the notion strikes them. Meanwhile, a slow loading page bogs down mobile browsing and can put off tech savvy candidates.

As greater and greater numbers of people move various business elements of their recruitment, marketing and advertising strategies online, forward-thinking organizations are already considering the next big platform development. It doesn't take a significant investment to get yourself ready, all it takes is foresight.

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If You Don't Someone Else Will

The examples are everywhere you look. Almost every day an example appears of one of a few things.

1.) A corporation suffers some snafu or gaffe and instead of addressing it head-on or proactively, they either ignore it, attack the critics or ham-handedly attempt to address it. In almost all three instances, they make the matter worse.

2.) A company slow to get involved with online media and social networking finds themselves playing catch up, and while everyone else has gotten sophisticated in how they approach the new online mindset, these companies arrive on the scene like complete n00bs, failing and failing hard.

3.) Letting their customers and users take complete reins of the online process, they fail to foresee that vandals will trash the joint.

In the last two weeks, we've seen Amazon.com and Domino's Pizza hit the number one example. When thousands of gay and lesbian titles disappeared from their rankings, Amazon hunkered down and Twitter was afire with speculation. And when YouTube videos appeared of workers spitting into pizzas (and worse), Domino's tried to play it cool and only reply in a few small ways. Neither reaction went over well and both brands suffered.

Skittles, when they launched their new online portal that allowed people to update their posting Twitter search wall, apparently didn't have anything in place to keep people from bashing the brand, leading to a not altogether too terrible but easily foreseen fail. Rude comments proliferated, but luckily the brand avoided a swarm that could have tanked the experiment.

Number two is where things will really start to get sticky. I won't go so far as to call out brands by name for this particular embarrassment any more than I'd not laugh at someone telling a bad old joke. The public shame is too much. Think of how you cringe now when someone new to the online world forwards you the ancient "Bill Gates and Intel will pay you to forward emails" chain letter.

The longer companies and organizations stay on the sideline, the more uncomfortable their transitions are going to be. Caught behind the times, their learning curve will have to be much steeper than those who jumped in on things while there was still time. New apps, new third party software, the general etiquette of online behavior, how to speak with your customers/audience instead of at them, all of this will not only be a foreign language by the time these late starters get on board, but their late-to-the-party game of catch-up might just be a case of too little, too late.

Worse still, in an organization's absence in the online sphere, others will filled the gap, and not necessarily with the kind of thing HQ would like to see. The ability to influence this online reputation will start from a weak posture and take additional time to counterbalance.

All in all, with a modest investment in time, research, and in delegating responsibility, brands, organizations, companies and others can mark out their territory online, can become participants in the word of mouth world we call social networking. It's a small price to pay for being ready when a storm arrives.

Just ask Dominos.

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Googling Twitter, or, Twittering Google

In yet another in an ongoing series of pet peeves of mine is the constant discussion about Google and Twitter. Which is the better search engine? Who will businesses pay more attention to to find out just what the customers are saying? Can Google compete with the awesomeness of Twitter's real-time search results?

These questions, quite frankly, are ridiculous. They almost read as though they were written by someone who didn't understand what Google or Twitter is/does. Try Googling any particular phrase from your Twitter feed. What's the result? You get your main profile page, if that. My second Twitter message ever doesn't turn up in the search.

The sheer volume of people out there using Twitter, the constant updating and flow of information across Twitter will overwhelm any search engine not dedicated solely to Twitter itself and nothing else. Perhaps you may have noticed an increase in Twitter down time. Perhaps you may feel that you are on more intimate terms with the Fail Whale than some of your coworkers. That's a result of extreme growth coupled with Twitter's slowness in getting additional servers up and running and their tinkering under the hood to provide additional services.

The point is, however, that Twitter is an awesome and amazing data stream, but it will never, ever, ever replace Google as a search engine, for very obvious reasons.

First off, there is no real upside for Google to begin collating every single blip, bleep, and squeak of every single Twitter user. None at all. Are there really that many users out there who want to know what someone's tweeting about fig newtons? I doubt it. The volume of Twitter data would overwhelm even Google, especially as they've tasked themselves with documenting every other corner of the web they can reach, not to mention all the books, blogs, maps, medical records, patents and every other nook and digital cranny they have their fingers into.

Twitter has their own search engine, thank you very much, and it does what it was designed to do very well. Do you really want to find out what people are saying about fig newtons? Here you go. If marketers and businesses and organizations and data junkies want to know what's going on through Twitter they can check the search, they can check hashtags, they can check Nearby Tweets or Yahoo! Sideline or Tweefind or any one of a hundred thousand million new sites that seem to pop up every single day.

But the number one single reason that Twitter will never replace Google for getting at what people are saying is so obvious that I'm astonished I have to say it at all.

Twitter searches only find out what people are saying on Twitter. It doesn't matter if Twitter has just over one million active users or 12 million current accounts. It doesn't matter if Twitter has over 25 million users. In the United States alone there are over 306 million people, almost three quarter of which are adults. If you shoot for 12 million users of Twitter, your demographic sampling is about half a percent. Plug those figures into worldwide population and you can see why Google's going to dwarf Twitter every time. Everyone is online somewhere. Google can find them. Twitter, not so much.

With smart use of filtering and various boolean operators, data junkies can get a much broader picture of what's being said about their brand by sticking to Google. If they want to know what Twitter users are saying about their brand, that's a whole different proposition. But the idea that somehow Twitter's going to take over from Google as the search gold standard is so ludicrous I can't understand why otherwise intelligent people write about it as though it were a going proposition.

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School for Scandal

There has been a lot of digital ink spilled over Birmingham City University's new degree program in Social Media, some of it positive, some of it negative.

Why is such a program necessary? some complain. In the course of an entire year, you won't learn as much as a teenager who just jumps in with both feet.

Bandwagoning, others say. The university is merely capitalizing on the latest trend to charge people a full year's tuition for sitting around talking about the new pet rock.

Worthless, yet still others have decided. A junk class like programs that look for semiotic messages in music videos or trashy novels.

Finally, some say, the web changes so fast that by the time you've learned the ins and outs of Twitter, social media will have moved on to something else, some other shiny bauble.

Let's unpack some of the thinking about this program to see if any of these criticisms have any merit.

Firstly, BCU describes the program thusly:

This MA programme will explore the techniques of social media, consider the development and direction of social media as a creative industry, and will contribute new research and knowledge to the field.

So the idea behind the degree isn't that you're going to sit a bunch of forty-to-fifty-somethings in front of a computer and sign them up for Twitter and Facebook accounts, but rather that you're going to dissect the various ways that social media is being used, look at the history and trajectory of social media platforms from a creative perspective, and you're going to be possibly adding new knowledge to the field.

This last aspect is potentially the most interesting, as designers could sign up for these classes to tap expertise and to find the appropriate tools to improve app developments. Adobe AIR works within a Flash environment to create the tools that are used for social media. Would anyone denigrate software development, no matter what its use, as unnecessary and worthless?

Likewise, as businesses shift to an increasing digital presence as a result (and partial cause?) of the cratering of dead-tree print venues, the intersection of social media and other interactive communication formats will begin to heat up. In other words, you haven't seen anything yet.

While Reuters closed their Second Life bureau after about a year, that online social space experiment failed in part because SL required an enormous amount of time to master even the basics and most users weren't equipped with hardware that could effectively operate at the levels necessary.

Twitter, on the other hand, only requires mastery of typing. You needn't even link to anything, though the service allows far more value once you add link shortening, picture hosting services, etc.

Whether or not you find the classes worthwhile depends mostly on your attitude toward social media to begin with. If you don't Twitter, if you're not on Facebook or MySpace or any of the myriad other online locales, then such an offering will seem as pointless as social media itself.

If you're a power user of any of the above, you may find the idea that some people need training in its use ridiculous. You may even believe that the rapidity of online advancements mean that the moment they hand you your diploma, everything you've learned is obsolete.

To those who find it pointless, time will tell. To those power users, I would merely suggest you reread the course description again. It's not about learning all the great features available through TweetDeck today, March 30th, 2009. While that may be something you learn, that almost assuredly will be part of the general learning process. What's far more interesting will be how students learn the general principles. They'll learn how to put together an eye-pleasing social media offering, they'll learn underlying strategies, they'll learn the philosophical underpinnings of social media.

The old methods of top-down business communication don't work nearly so well in the online social sphere as the give-and-take model, the conversation as opposed to the lecture model. People often create and participate for the fun of it, not for immediate and tangible rewards. People engage because the content is engaging them: talking with them instead of to them. The basics of your standard communication degrees will be part and parcel of this curriculum, except retooled for the internet world.

The bandwagoning charge I've saved for last because I don't really have any good argument against it. Yes, social media and social networking are hot topics right now. Yes, the timing of BCU's master's program does seem ideally suited to take a bite of that media dollar. But why should the university be held to some higher standard in this regard than any other entity? Apple gets into Facebook, there's nary a peep. Sears is even getting involved with bustedmoms.com.Where is the outrage?

When looked at in this way, the question then becomes not why is this necessary or will this succeed. The question then becomes, is this the future?

And for a follow up question, will this degree give social media practitioners a leg up on selling themselves to prospective employers?

Think about it before you dismiss it so quickly.

And if you wish, listen to one of the university's spokespersons discuss the program.


Jon Hickman: MA in Social Media from Kasper Sorensen on Vimeo.

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Yes, You Totally Should

No, not sink.

Yes, you should totally be getting into social media.

It's hard for me to believe this sometimes, but there are still businesses and organizations that don't want to get involved in social media and social networking. There are still people who think, oh, that's just fooling around and it's not real work.

Yesterday, a number of us here at David went to a presentation luncheon. There we met a guy who did some work for Company X. He said the owner/head honcho didn't see the value in Twitter. I didn't press him on the specifics of the dismissal nor whether said big boss also disparaged Facebook Pages or other social media engagement, but I would assume so since their only Facebook presence was a Fan Page.

The worst thing about this to me was that Company X is completely the kind of business that predominantly appeals to younger markets and is a totally social experience. It wasn't about buying a product or a widget or a B2B offering. It's 100% consumer driven, a fun place to go and have a good time. (No more hints.)

So I have to wonder about this mindset. When Microsoft, Yahoo!, Dell Computers, Zappos.com and so many other big name corporations can see the value in such services, why don't small and mid-size businesses? The initial costs are low and, while the work flow demands a near constant monitoring and presence, the returns can be far greater than traditional advertising outlays.

A perfect example is Dell. During a recession economy, when even retail stalwarts like Wal-Mart put up disappointing holiday sales numbers, Dell managed to turn a tidy $1 million profit. And they did it through "exclusive" deals announced only on Twitter.

Here's the set up. Dell hooks themselves up with a Twitter page. They post special deals there, sometimes limited time only coupon codes, once in a while print coupons on short-lived pages. You sign up for Twitter and begin following Dell (or just go to their profile page when you're in the market for a computer), and you can order online with 15% or 30% discounts. That simple. This doesn't really involve Dell creating a new business model. It's the same exact same message they have all the time anyway; they've just swapped megaphones.

This is something any organization could do, and for a smaller business with a lower price purchase item, like tickets, it could drive sales through the roof.

Or you set yourself up a Facebook page, and every so often you put up a coupon link on your wall, or you send out a message exclusively to those who've become fans of your business page. The feeling of getting special treatment -- even if anyone else can sign up and get it too -- is a big motivator for people and that motivator can drive conversions and conversions drive sales.

This is Business 101 and the fact that those in the corner offices don't get it says a lot about the digital disconnect.

Yes, tons of time wasting and inane chatter take place on Facebook and on Twitter, but the way word of mouth can be harnessed there, can be driven there, can be tracked there, is going to be an increasingly potent weapon in many an organization's online toolkit. That some executives still believe they don't need to engage or that it isn't for their organization is the mark of someone resistant to change.

Here's the short message these execs need to hear: Change is coming. If you don't get out in front or at least try to catch the wave as it's cresting, you won't be surfing for very long.

You'll be sinking.

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My Dad's Newspaper

Everyone’s been buzzing here in C-town about the Yahoo News article last week predicting the impending death of our local paper. According to the article, the Plain Dealer will be shut or go digital by the end of next year. When I think about the newspaper, my mind automatically wanders to thoughts about my father-in-law. I think about what the newspaper, the printing press and the printed word have meant to him throughout his lifetime.

My father-in-law, Dad to me, worked for many years as a stripper. My husband tells me that he used to get a kick out of telling the other kids at school that his Dad was a stripper. For those of you not familiar with the non-explicit meaning of that word, a stripper was part of the prepress process. In the most simple terms, a stripper’s job was to piece together and position negative or positive film on layout sheets to fit in designated areas of film flat. Stripping – at least by this definition – is nearly extinct. The world has gone digital and today, an entire newspaper page, complete with artwork and graphics, can be created using a computer – exactly as it will appear in print – no stripping required.

Dad’s still in the printing business, but in a completely different role. However, he and the paper have always been connected. Every morning, he gets up, goes to get the paper, has a cup of tea and reads it cover to cover. He spends his morning pulling out the sports section to share with his sons, rifling through the sale fliers, just in case there is something to share with his wife, cutting out interesting tidbits about current events or anything culinary-related for me. Every day, 365 days a year, this is an integral part of his morning routine.

He recently saved the front page of his beloved newspaper for my 10-year old daughter. It was the day President Obama was inaugurated. Dad made her promise to keep it in a safe place and told her he still had the front page from when President Kennedy was assassinated. He told her to treasure it because it would be a little piece of history someday. I don’t think he realized that statement would have a double meaning quite so soon.

I wonder what will happen to his morning routine without that paper. The paper and Dad have a history – a connection of sorts. It has been a part of his livelihood and a part of his every-day life for over 40 years. He’s recently taken to text messaging. I wonder if he’ll read his newspaper online. . .

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