So here is one more thought about the new year. Undoubtedly we’ll see even more Social Media activity in the new year. Especially in Germany, where I am located, there is a lot of activity to be expected, since we’re always playing catch up to what is happening in the US.
deft lab offers a list of Social Media Predictions for 2008, looking at the various big players that are out there, grouped by networks, technologies and blogs / microblogs.
As every year around this time, all sorts of sites start to publish trends. Along the many lists that get published (and some of which I will subsequently link to), there is one selfproclaimed „Uber“-List, an aggregation of links of the main sites with trends. These trends do not only concern marketing and advertising, but also technology and internet trends.
It does sound a little like a link bait, but that’s fine for me as long as that lists gets updated frequently.
At the Church of the customer Blog, there is an approach of how to categorize communities, which I found quite interesting. The build a square, one axis being size, the other being devotion. Most communities can be aligned along these axes:
So what does that tell us? Size and devotion are the two main things affecting any community. Question is, whether it is possible to increase both at the same time, or if it is better to focus on one at a time?
There is an interesting short post at one of the NY Times blogs about the evolution of beacon, Facebooks new project to include behaviour on third party sites within the news feed and profile. They show different types of popups of how Facebook alerted their users in a more or less obvious fashion about including third party information on their feed.
It started with a popup merely stating the fact, that the information will be passed on. Not reacting to it was assumed as approval. It disappeared after a short while and if you missed it, you „approved“ of the information transfer. Later versions included opt-outs, opt-ins, etc.
Facebook executives tell reporters that users who ignore the alert boxes will no longer be considered to have said “yes,†even after two days. If users ignore the alert box, Facebook says it will not post the news of their purchases to their friends. This is a big change, if implemented correctly. Users will still be hassled by the alert boxes from Facebook on its partner sites, but ideally they can ignore them now and not worry about their purchases being shared.
Facebook executives say they do not want to add a universal opt-out button because then users would not be able to try out Beacon on different sites to see what it can offer. One Facebook executive predicts that consumers may “fall in love†with Beacon once they understand it. Only time will tell.
A very broad prediction, which I don’t believe. But we’ll see.
It’s amazing that facebook started with such an opt-out clause – including the fact that you only had a few seconds to opt-out until the popup would disappear. Now I know that in the US, opt-out is legally viable, which it isn’t in Germany. Here in Germany, nobody would have even considered opt-out in the first place.
But that doesn’t make it an „American approach“ per se. I think, it rather looks like an amateurish approach to treat users in that way and I am not surprised that they changed it to the later versions. I would have assumed that they start with the opt-in approach right away, thinking user-centric instead of brand-centric. But hey.
I have already mentioned the TED Talks a couple of times – very inspiring 20 minute presentations you can watch on the web. Now there is a good one by Larry Lessig, who talks about 3 stories in support of one central argument concerning paradigms shifts necessary in todays copyrights setup:
The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the „ASCAP cartel“ to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you’ve ever seen.
Sofar, advertising on joost has only been in the form of short ads at the beginning or end of clips. Sort of like the traditional ad model.
Now we have the first attempt at actually providing added value through a marketing tactic. In this case, a widet:
On Thursday, Joost announced that Coca-Cola’s European division has created the first „commercial widget“ for the software. Called „Coke Bubbles,“ the downloadable advertising widget lets you choose a clip on Joost and then send it to fellow Joost users, appended with a note in the form of a „bubble.“
You can download it at „Coke Bubbles„. While I am unsure about whether this is a really clever idea, I do support the fact that Coke does not just run ads in the clips, but does try to provide added value. It’s a first step in the right direction.
A lot of marketing efforts will have to provide a clear added value in the future. Either through real product information at the points where consumers are seeking information. Or, alternatively, if consumers are not seeking product information, brands can help to provide plattforms, contents or tools for entertainment or networking – two of the other main things people seek out in digital media these days.
Wo ich sonst so bin...