You think „Fans“ on facebook, i.e. people liking your brand’s facebook page, are a useful currency for measuring success on the social web? Well, think again.
(First: the social web is more than just facebook.)
The number of fans is not a very relevant social web KPI, if they’re not active at least some of the time. Inactive fans might have shown some interest when „liking“ the facebook page. However, a large amount of inactive fans shows, that after an initial „liking“, engagement by the brand wasn’t very successful.
Hence, there is list of „top engaged facebook pages“ on facebook compiled by FanGager.
The idea: forget about the ranking of brand pages on facebook by „fans“, instead rank them by „active fans“. Nice approach, but when comparing success on facebook, I think the percentage of active fans is a much more valuable figure to measure engagement.
Popular brands will always have a larger fanbase and hence are more likely to have a larger base of active fans, too. But brands with fewer fans but a higher percentage of active fans seem to doing a much better job on facebook. (Alternatively: they are much more engaging brands to start with.)
The full list can be viewed here. Here is a screenshot of the top listed pages:
The theme for the conference is „data love“. How all the data available for analysis and remixing shapes the way we live, which services we will enjoy in the future, etc. In the case of Tim Ferris: apparently he will talk about how he used all the data he measured from his body to test the various ways to get fit.
Here is a video of Matthias Schrader and Martin Recke about the event:
A simple idea that stirs up tweet volume for Mercedes Benz:
There is a page on facebook showing the current status quo of the contestants, as well as a google map for showing where the contestants are at the moment, including their supporting tweetvolume:
Steve Rubel and David Armano of Edelman just released 11 trends to watch in 2011. Most are to be expected, when reading the tech / social media blogosphere. But still a good curation, as they call it themselves:
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The trends overview:
Attentionomics – Marketers begin to realize the value of attention and not just reach in driving conversion
Digital Curation – The plethora of content will give rise to digital curators who can separate art from junk
Developer Engagement – Marketers typically don’t try to court developers, but that’s all about to change
Transmedia Storytelling – If there’s one constant it’s that humans crave stories. Technology creates new expectations
Thought Leadership – Companies recognize they must activate credible individual expert voices who can create content
The Integration Economy – Social media efforts can no longer exist in fragmented, non-formal initiatives. They begin to integrate
Ubiquitous Social Computing – As competition heats up mobile devices, consumers closer to being socially connected anywhere
Location, Location, Facebook – If 2010 belonged to solely Foursquare, it’s likely that Facebook will rain on their parade in 2011
Social Media Schizophrenia – Social overload is no longer a problem for tech mavens, but a broader population
Google Strikes Back – Google proves that the best way to beat Facebook & Twitter is to do what they do best: index them to pieces
Viva La Social Web Site – Businesses realize that integrating social functionality into their existing web sites is what users now expect
With respect to the German landscape, here are some of my takes on it:
I really hope that the discussion moves away from „reach“ towards „attention“, and that we will find adequate KPI. But somehow I doubt that either will happen in 2011 already.
I am sure we’ll see a lot more transmedia storytelling (which I like),
as well as more integrate approaches, at least within the bigger and more advanced companies, after having done their baby steps on the social web in the last years.
Facebook will increasingly dominate the social web in Germany, with nearly 14 Million Germans having joined the network. It will also dominate marketing efforts and agency briefings. One should hope that users won’t get fed up by too many lame marketing approaches.
Location, Location: this will get bigger every year. However, whether or not Facebook will make the run really depends on their next updates to „places“. In it’s current state (in Germany), Places is simply boring.
Social Websites: this has already started well in 2011 in Germany, it will just be a strong continuation.
Mashable features the top 10 apps to watch for 2011. While some don’t seem to be too interesting for me and some to be just „me too“ apps that need to proove that they offer never seen additional value, one looked rather interesting to me: GetGlue
It let’s you checkin into Movies, Books, Shows, etc.
Somehow people got used to „checking in“ to things. And they also got used to sharing experiences. Weird concept though, that you check into a book. But the social aspect is great, because (as with foursquare) you can leave tips, comments, see who also checked in to that particular medium, etc. Does this need to be a „mobile“ app? Think not, as there does not seem to be any location aspect to it.
It also seems to be a cool recommendation engine. I wonder what else people will get the chance to check into? Meals, drinks? And who has the time to constantly update their checkin status for every single detail of life? I already keep forgetting to check in with foursquare all the time.
There is an interesting series of three parts over at Techcrunch about Social Networks – past, present and future.
The article about the past of social networks mainly summarises how „social networking“ has always been present starting with chat sites like „the well“ and later compuserve, etc.
The article about the present gives an overview of the last 8 to 10 years, from Plaxo and Friendster to Facebook. Here are some snippets:
Enter Facebook. It had grown stratospherically from 2004-2007 to 100 million users, which actually was slightly smaller in December 2007 then MySpace was. Facebook was everything that MySpace wasn’t. It was: up-market, exclusive, urban, elite, aesthetically pleasing, ad-free and users were verified. MySpace was: scantily dressed, teenaged, middle-America, design chaos and on ad steroids.
What was the major difference between MySpace and Facebook?
But the critical distinction in the direction of both companies was that while MySpace was putting up moats to keep outside companies from innovating and making money off their backs, Facebook took the opposite approach. It launched open API’s and created a platform whereby third-party developers could come build any app they wanted and Facebook didn’t even want (yet) to take any money from them to do so.
He also writes about Twitter:
But what is magic about Twitter is that it is real time. In most instances news is now breaking on Twitter and then being picked up by news organizations.
At the end of this part, he mentions mobile social networking becoming the next big thing.
I know that in 2010 it seems ridiculous to say anything other than “Facebook has won—the war is over” and I know that it feels that way right now. Facebook is so dominant it is astounding. In a complete return to where we all began with AOL—the world is “closed” again as Facebook has become this generation’s walled garden. When you’re on Facebook you’re not on the Internet
Here are the 8 trends as an overview:
1. The Social Graph Will Become Portable
2. We Will Form Around “True” Social Networks
3. Privacy Issues Will Continue to Cause Problems
4. Social Networking Will Become Pervasive
5. Third-Party Tools Will Embed Social Features in Websites
6. Social Networking (like the web) Will Split Into Layers
7. Social Chaos Will Create New Business Opportunities
8. Facebook Will Not be the Only Dominant Player
Wo ich sonst so bin...