Yahoos Facebooking: What's 1.5% of your life worth? (Reprise)

With Facebook's announcement today that they passed the 500-million user mark, I thought it might be worth revisiting a post on the value of time spent with social media outlets. 
-JSH




Forget segmentation + stereotypes for a moment. Forget our differences. Where we are all absolutely the same is in the number of hours in our day. 24 of them at last count. Each of us granted about 44,000 minutes a month to do with what we can or must.

And while that is certainly where we are all equal, where we are different is how we choose to invest our time.

Which brings us to the question? What’s everyone doing with that time?

If you believe some of the headlines on Nielsen’s June (2009) report (here), then apparently, we are all Yahooing and Facebooking our lives away…and Googling and Microsofting too. Or not.

Using Neilsen’s numbers, I ran a quick calculation and found that the online user universe spent a mere 1.5% of their total hours of life visiting, viewing or otherwise engaged with the Top 10 online properties in June (*see math below). That’s good, right?

So What?

Even at only 1.5%, the top 10 online brands, as defined by Neilsen, capture an extraordinary amount of the total time available in a life…some claim time online is a waste of time, but that’s usually a statement about someone else’s time. Even allowing for the generalizations that come with averages and big numbers, a few questions stand out for marketers:

• How important is an online brand in one’s life? The top online brands are insufficient descriptions of what people are actually doing with their time: information seeking, instant messaging, commerce, socializing and games are just a few of the long tail activities that marketers must manage when opting for online engagement…and as big as Google is, it still only captures 0.002 of it’s typical user’s life each month.

• Is timeshare market share? Increasingly, the top online brand look to me like information utilities: aggregating ever greater numbers of services and properties, but maxing out the upper limit to the eyeballs they can captivate. Google gets 75% of the universe as an example. Monetizing time spent--rather than impressions or clicks--might encourage incumbents to carve up the online universe as part of a regulator-approved truce, not unlike energy and telecommunications. Still, if the biggest brands online together account for only 1.5% of our time, it’s no wonder some of them are struggling to monetize what they offer.

Figure: Timeshare by online brand (with apologies to E Tufte)

• Is there an online-only marketing strategy? As in any endeavour, the 98.5% of time not currently captured by the top 10 online brands will be the source of highly fragmented interests…including those that have no apparent online component (for instance, eating dinner with your family). Marketing that misses the mark will include marketing that forgets there is a lot of life beyond the network AND the top 10.

• What should we actually take from the numbers? Numbers on aggregated online usage should probably be viewed with healthy skepticism: it remains incumbent upon marketers (as humans) to question numbers that purport to describe how or why ‘people’ behave a certain way. Looking at Neilsen’s numbers for top 10 and eMarketer’s numbers for time spent online, the average active user is apparently spending 17.5% of their online time with the top 10 brands. The top 10 may be an easy media buy, but it isn't a majority understanding of what people do about anything.

In the end, it's incumbent upon all of us as marketers to remember that one's life is not merely a marketing void to be filled.

*The Math (All errors are mine)

• Total active online universe: 195,974,309 (per Nielsen)
• Total Monthly Hours Available: (30.41dx24hx195,974,309) = 14.3billion hours
• Total Monthly Hours of time spent on Top 10 Online properties = SUM (Nielsen unique visitors per property x Nielsen hours per month per property) = 208.6million hours
• Percent of life consumed by Top 10 brands: (14.3billion / 208.6million) = 1.5%
• Percent of online life consumed by the Top 10 brands: (top 10 brands total time)/(2h per day x active online universe).

Calculating combinatorial explosion: a tool for word of mouth marketing

I am not a big fan of the term 'viral marketing':  the swine flu pandemic (or H1N1 for those who think pigs are being unfairly singled out) has certainly reminded us that 'viral' things haven't historically been perceived positively...especially by those who are infected.  And yet, some in marketing and PR circles continue to let the term fly when discussing why social media should matter.

Word of mouth, on the other hand, seems to focus more explicitly on all that is wunderbar with social media. Influencers tell influencers who tell influencers...and so on and so on...and when it's digital, it's free!

Of course, when everyone is an influencer at some level, marketers might wonder just how many influencers it takes to get a critical mass of pass-alongers. One tool to help in the planning stages uses simple factorial math to calculate the reach that a viral word of mouth approach might achieve.

I've posted a simple spreadsheet version of the tool you can download on the Dialogue Marketing website, here. (MS Excel file)

The idea is relatively straightforward: capture a few assumptions and see how many people you might actually reach.

The assumptions in the tool include:

1. Number of initial influencers (or seeds) the campaign will contact
2. Expected pass along (i.e., retweet, email, linkback) percentage
3. Number of  people these influencers will reach
4. The number of pass along cycles (the 'and so on' part)

By structuring the capture of assumptions, enabling easy development of goal scenarios, and keeping the math in the background, the tool provides campaign planners with an easy to use expectation setter.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

Lies, Damn Lies and...social advertising?

If one thing was clear in the South by Southwest Interactive sessions on Social Media and Social Networking, it's that advertisers and marketers best tread lightly. Why is that?

As Tara Hunt explained in her talk (see prior post here) "You can't control the message [in social networks] because the people fight back by creating their own messages." And what is it that those messages say about advertising?

That it's false.

In the chart below from Neilsen's report on Social Networking's New Global Footprint, 'False' is the term most closely associated with the term 'advertising' in social media conversations.

So what?

The implications are many of those that Doc Searles and collaborators forecast in The Cluetrain Manifesto nearly a decade ago...because people talk with one another in human voices. In a social network, the point is to talk with one another--call it dialogue or conversation-- but the fact remains that this conversation is about and among people...real ones, with names and personalities and real sensibilities about trust...it is not about advertising or disembodied company brand personalities...  

Advertising looks like the cartoonish caricatures of real people in this context: out of place...inhuman...superificial and childishly manipulative...and as indicated by the nature of the conversations in Neilsen's report...untrustworthy. 

Ultimately, shilling in social spaces is easily identifiable as an outsider's approach. In social spaces, advertisers (which is to say 'companies') are left with a choice: embrace the uncertainty and risk of enabling the very real people in your organization to speak in their own voices to build trust in your brand, or embrace the certainty that you will be left out of the trust conversation all together. 

Sustainability and Social Media: Accelerating change

Sustainability and social media are two hot topics in the world. And while many of the challenges facing human society require highly technical communications, the rise of social media enables peer-to-peer communications around oftentimes technical knowledge domains.

The panel discusses the application of knowledge and community-thru social media-to faciliate human sustainability.

Let the panel begin...

Some Definitions:

What is sustainability? being able to maintain a process or state. For humans, using no more resources than we can replenish.

It's also about using resources in a way that doesn't diminish a resources' ability to replenish.

For much of human work, this means applying knowledge rather than labor.

Social media is publishing...PLUS participation and interactivity. 

Types of Social Media and Sustainability (Lebkowsky)

Types of social media applications to sustainability:

• Knowledge Production + Sharing . 
  
• Robust advocacy
  
• Crowdsourced knowledge
  
• Communities of efficiency
  
• Guerilla R+D

Examples include 350.org around awareness building, BrightGreenLiving wiki, and MyHerefordshire.com.

Who is Max Gladwell?

MaxGladwell.com He beleives that there is a heroic, green living component that is consistent with  entrepreneurship...which is where much of the social media domain resides. 

The idea that where social media and green living overlap is the opportunity for creating change in our agricultural, energy and transportation systems. Social media represents a change in the information systems...sustainability and social media share much of the same DNA. 

Green OR sustainability (McElhenney)

Reduced costs, increased productivity use less energy and water.

Reduced environmental impact.

Improved health.

These are the reasons for green living and it's corrollary--sustainability

Social media is just PR with new tools [except that you are your own gatekeeper!].  

Greenwashing: Companies disingenuously spinning thier product and policies as environmentally friendly.

How do greenies connect? Communities, Twitter, In person, By Affinities and Passions [just like the rest of the world].

What can we do? Connect, speak out, discover and share solutions, and join forces. When joining forces, we can demand accountability, ask questions, and reduce, recycle, reuse and retweet.

[And now the twitterers are revolting...'Terrible panel'; 'What about the electricity that social media uses?'...there is a certain assertive quality of the panel that the twitterers are asserting their right to challenge].

Change.org (Emily Gertz)

Not everyone has the means, opportunity and desire to transform the energy system...and yet 'what I can do at home' may be too small.

For example, it's not how much energy is used, its how the energy is generated. Some sites like 'The great sunflower project' allows citizen science to monitor bee pollination patterns. These and other crowdsourcing sites represent social media in action on a small scale, where the additive effect is large.

Tweetawatt integrating a device  with Twitter to enable your house to send tweets on how much power is being used in a house...the idea of competition among Twitter followers to use less is an idea enabled by social media.

Questions + Discussion:

[A rather contentious discussion about the imperfection of the sustainable solutions].

It's not that green is too expensive, it's  that dirty is too cheap.

[One thing that is clear from this panel is that there is a great deal of diversity on the definitions and approaches required. Imperfect solutions to imperfectly framed problems may, in the end, reflect the imperfect people we are. Social media can't fix that]

The Future of Social Networks: Like air

First, the title of Charlene Li's talk seems right. Social media misses the point...it's really about social networking. People use media for a purpose...networking for instance.

But I'd expect Charlene Li to understand that. Formerly of Forrester, her title now is Thought Leader at Altimeter Group, her very own company.

So where is Social Networking headed? Well, ladies and gentlemen, Charlene Li's take [with my comments in [brackets]:

Overview

Tim Berners Lee designed the web as a social tool, not a technical one. (From his book Weaving the Web).

What's a social site? Bebo, Orkut, LinkedIn? Habbo? Twitter? Here's a prediction [wait for it...]:

Social networks will be like air [so, she's selling the network's importance, not the tools (i.e, the sites)...true, but not an investment tip!].

[What about media like TV? How does that get 'social'? ]

It's all about seeing your friends...or people in your neighbohood. A company called Integra5 inserts chats via set top boxes around tv programs 

[any shared activity can be a social media acitvity though, yes? A multiplayer game online, thru the TV using XBox Live for instance?]

Three things that matter in a social network:

1. Identity-who are you? [you get to manage the definition of you...not marketers]
   
2. Contacts-who do you know? [but what is the depth of friendship? Is friending a brand on Facebook really about intimacy?]
   
3. Activities-What do you do? [marketers  have access to much of thie behavioral data online]
   

Two sets of standards emerging in social networking toolset:

Facebook + Open Stack.

Open stack, consortium of companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Plaxo and others. Includes: 

• OpenID
  
• XRDS Simple
  
• Oauth
  
• Portable Contacts
  
• Open Social
  

Not a war between these standards. 

Some key components of any social networking system include:

• Identity Management:Identities, likewise, reflect the myriad identities of the individual. OpenID enables your vairous identities to be managed, but which do you select?
• Friend Management: expanding level of intimacy is embedded in how much access you give...and which tools you use to manage the relationship. [Not everyone gets your mobile number, but you might allow thousands of followers on Twitter.]
• Privacy + Permission Management: Easier to manage: always a tradeoff though. An example of automated tools that determine who you email most often to autofill the "to' field...is that a violation of privacy for the email system to do this for you without your permission?
  

Why social ads don't work

Leveraging realtionships to target ads and offers: Most social ads require an explicit action...whether its gifting or vibing, you're asking a user to spend time doing something. That's a challenge [we all have a limited amoung of time each day...its the same 24 hours no matter who you are].

A better way? Using network neighbor concept. A company called Media6 maps who is closest to you...using non-personally identifiable information in a cookie. [The you get remarketed based on the idea that wherever you neighbor goes, you're likely to go...isn;t this just birds of a feather? How to account for the human to desire to be different in some circumstances vs fitting in?]

The rise of the Personal CPM: 

Augmenting the CPM with social influence, behavior [I think this would be the CPP...cost per person, not thousands of persons...and isn't this Google's entire premise in search, without all the assumptions about influence and friends?]

Success factors for business:

1. Where does Social [The noun!] make sense?
   
2. Get your backend in order [backend data, that is.
   
3. Integrate social networks into your organization...an org chart with the customer at the top [it would be even 'cooler' if the cusotmer was at the center of the organization].

Why so hard for organizations to embrace? Because it changes the power dynamic in the organizational relationships to the customer...customer contact is the most important role int he organization.

Twitter: @charleneli

Slides at slideshare.net/chaleneli

sxsw

Twitter for Business: Why free isn't always good

Over the last year, we've posted on and about Twitter, Tweetathons and various approaches to always-on information-sharing with Twitter. Even staid agri-businesses, like Monsanto, now have Twitter accounts (here).

Twitter, though, still isn't quite ready for primetime business success. Again this morning... 

 

Social media may not be about marketing (here), but Twitter seems continually to remind us why it's still a free service.

And, yes, the Skittle campaign may be to blame (here). 

ROI: Return on Insight

Viva La Evolution: A panel discussion with Deborah Shultz (stratgic Advisor on Social Media to P&G) and David Armano (VP of Experience Design for Critical Mass)

Risks of Social Media

• Social Media and the legal department haven;t evolved at the same rate [rights management/privacy for instance]
• Grandiose plans...start small [this is risk mitigation strategy...if you can fail without risk, though, you aren't creating revolution. Most companies are not configured to be revolutionaries of course]
• [The biggest risk is that you challenge the existing way things are done...and that can be as  much a personal risk as an organizational risk]

Best practices for big companies

• Brands are broadcasters...this model is dead. 
• Marketers as customer advocates are the important role...marketers as broadcasters are assembly line workers.
• The call center associate is closest to the customer and yet viewed as lowliest n the organizational totem pole [is the receptionist one of the most important voices in the organization?]
• Facilitation versus Managers: you don;t manage your suctomer's conversations, but you can have people who faciliate and seed conversations among cusotmers.
• Comcast and Twitter example: when people are talking about your brand, the best response is 'How can I help?'
• Ask forgiveness...not permission

Conventional Marketing

• Big ideas-->big launch-->big budgets
  

Unconventional Marketing

• Plan/Design/Launch/Measure-->insights->little strategy->adjust-->Plan/Design/Launch/Measure [same process as software development...beta, release 1, etc.]

Online communities provide an excellent source of research into the customer mindsight. Verus traditiona research, you are not limited by size, controlled discussion and context-free assessment.

Marketers are not in the business of selling advertising, they sell products [Mad Men reference!]...selling products in the future will require more engagement in directly talking wtih customers. 

Return on Insght:

• Rather than calculating a hard economic return on investement, recognize that much of social media and customer interaction is learning. In that regard, the appropriate metric is return on insight.

CHM777: Web XdotY

Feeling confused? Just when you think you have the Web 2.0 figured out, the jargoneers tell you that's the old version? SocialWikiGroundswells got you in a Land of Confusion?

Here's a simple taxonomy of WebPointWhatever evolution:

Web 1.0: Static content: you can read it (e.g., an online brochure someone else has created)
Web 2.0: Dynamic content: you can read it and write it (e.g., posting a video, photo or text you created to a site)
Web 3.0: We'll know it when we see it...but it will include read it, write it, execute it. (as in combining data and software to do something...like mapping your personal genome and genetic history)

Wait you say...where's the social? Social, as a Verizon ad might say, is the network. I'm certainly open to other interpretation lenses, but I think this simpler read-write-execute criteria helps one distinguish a difference among the marketing noise.

I suspect the good stuff is in what's after the decimal...Web X.1, 2, etc., as these incremental incarnations reflect the myriad of uses to which people put the web in diverse contexts...in an agnostic take on the Mies van der Rohe saying, 'Good is in the details'.

Obligatory explanations and support for obscure references:

CHM777 = Change Mode read, write, execute

Disturbing Land of Confusion remake/mashup:

Moving Pictures (on Flickr)

The photo sharing site Flickr (owned by Yahoo) now allows it's Pro users to add video next to their photos (which poses the problem of how to henceforth describe what Flickr is!). See here for how Flickr describes the whole thing.

But wait, doesn't YouTube have the lock on video sharing? Well, yes. Flickr does not appear to be competing with YouTube for the following reasons:

1. Only paying 'Pro' members have access to upload video (everyone can see them)
2. Videos are limited in length to 90 seconds and 150MB

So what's the dealio then?

Mostly, I it's the idea that 'slice of life' video as often taken from a camera phone or cheap camcorder is now indistinguishable from the 'slice of life' photos that Flickr has always enabled.
In other words, it's simply taking the core function of the site (photo sharing) and expanding it to include short segments of moving photos.

Maybe your slice of life is event photos and videos? Maybe you are a sales rep diagnosing a problem on location with a brief video of the issue. You upload it, and someone in support has diagnostic context? Flickr users will determine how it serves their needs best.

Here's one example: A narcoleptic cat


All the usual features of Flickr are applied to video, including tagging, thumbnails, creative commons licensing and uploads directly from camera phones. In addition, the videos are able to be embedded elsewhere on the 'net using a player provided by Flickr (though as a free user I am unable to make it work easily).

Gratuitous headline musical reference