Some thoughts on the Pew Internet Report, Teens and Social Media (Dec '07)

The Pew Internet report, published in December '07, was a detailed study into the online behavioural characteristics of teenagers aged 12-17, focused on their social media activity, for example in blogs, chatrooms and social networks. It's an interesting report and well worth reading if you're in this field. 

A few key findings:

64% of all online teens are involved in content creation in some way, up from 57% in their 2004 survey. This includes 39% sharing art, photos, stories or videos, up from 33%, and 28% with their own blog, up from 19%.

A figure often touted about is that 10% of people create content, and 90% consume it. This study shows clearly that with the new generation of teens growing up, these numbers could actually be reversed. The ability of internet users to create and share content, and to find willing consumers, is a testament to the long tail and shows a real shift in behaviour. As this increases, the importance of content aggregators and ways of finding relevant content will become more and more important - expect social search to be very big. 

The social networks really need to work on this, as my personal experience on using the search engines on both Facebook and Myspace to find groups and people are very poor (Facebook don't seem to realise that active groups with thousands of users could be more relevant than inactive groups with no users, as anyone searching for a popular group name will have found out - let alone groups with your friends in!). 

The report singles out older girls (15-17) as the biggest content creators in their study, as well as being the most active group in social networks and other online activity. However, this is not the case for online video - 14% of all teens have posted videos, compared to 21% of older boys (15-17), and 19% of all boys. This trend towards video creation could be a good sign for tools like Seesmic, offering video micro-media. 

55% of teens are users of social networks. 

The most striking aspect of this number is how low it is - it just shows how much more capacity there is for social networks. Expect to see continuing fast growth of social network uptake, which is good news for social networks, app developers, and companies wanting to move to interactive, opt-in marketing rather than interruption marketing.

Multi-channel teens are super communicators - and spend more time with friends face to face

28% of their study were multi-channel teens, using internet, cell phones, IM, SMS and social networks to communicate with their friends. What's interesting is that these multi-channel teens actually spend more time talking over the phone and meeting face to face with their friends than do the average teen. This is even more striking when comparing social network using teens to non social network users - with 38% spending time with friends in person every day compared to 25%. Much of this will be because social networks attract more sociable people - but they also make it easier to forge new connections and find interest groups. 

This is a great blow to detractors who claim that social networks are taking children away from face to face contact and making them less sociable - the study shows them to be proved wrong. It even found that teens who are more active online and more active offline than other teens, participating in more extra-curricular school activities. 

Aside from being great stats to wave in front of anti-social networkers, the study also shows that there is still lots of growth to be had in mobile calls, instant messages, text messages and social network communication as the rest of the teen population gets active online. It will be interesting to watch the development of companies like Mig33 who combine all of these. 

A big drop in chat room popularity

The study found a drop of chatroom use to just 18%, from 55% in 2000. As social networks are allowing people to reach others, including interest groups, and form weak ties with them by becoming friends or joining similar groups, with instant messaging allowing these users to have direct chat, and even to form their own private chat groups via the IM clients, I expect that these conversations are still going on, just in a different format. Watch this area - instant chat in Facebook groups, possibly?

82% of social network teens use them to keep in touch with friends they rarely see in person

This study is not a surprise, and it backs up the weak-tie value of social networks for marketers, as well as showing the social value of these platforms.

Facebook: Adds remove all tool for requests

In their continuing mission to fight spam and allow users to operate in a clutter free environment if they so wish, and probably in response to some unofficial request-clearing tools, Facebook have announced today (in my news feed) that they've added a 'clear all' option that becomes available whenever you have more than 25 requests.

This is a good move for users, bogged down with mounting requests. It makes it more important however for developers to move away from forced invites and the such, as for requests to continue to be valid they must be relevant, which is far less likely if users are forced to send hundreds out to everyone they're friends with. 

In the long run, the only way that applications will succeed will be by providing real, long lasting benefit. The more that applications spam, the more likely it will be that all of the requests will be ignored - helping no-one. 

As much as possible developers should utilise the social graph of users to ensure that invites are relevant - see my post, Using the Social Graph to Maximise Invites on this topic.

Facebook Developer Garage - Translations App, Last.FM and porting apps to Bebo.

I had a great time last night at the monthly Facebook Developers Garage in London. Sun Microsystems hosted the event, and donated about 40 pizzas and two fridges full of beer - very cool.

I arrived early, made use of the free wifi, and drew a pretty badge to show everyone that I was from an agency (red):

The other colours were blue for developer, green for corporate and black for the mysterious anonymous delegates.

It kicked off with an introduction from Toby Beresford, who is chief organiser for the garage, and a run down of the current top ten apps, and adonomics top 10 hottest apps. 

The first main speaker was Javier Olivian, who is charge of internationalisation at Facebook. He showed us the translations app, using it live on screen, which was very interesting. It allows users to help translate the site in a number of ways. The primary way is inside the app pages, where the app feeds up untranslated phrases, and users can suggest translations. Once there's been a translation for a phrase, users can submit alternatives and vote other translations up or down - the final translated phrase is then the one used in the site. 

It is also possible for users to translate whilst they're browsing the site, which Javier showed to us. Everything translatable in the site whilst he was browsing had coloured underlines which could be clicked on to translate that phrase.

To keep things simple, they've rolled out the translation app to beta users based in Spain, France and Germany, as they decided that these would be the simplest to start with (and would probably reach the largest number of worldwide users to start with). Javier said that they are planning to roll out to other languages, and eventually any language you want - even "Klingon", if you really want to. 

We discussed the difficulty of adapting the layout for other alphabets, for example Arabic, Chinese etc. Javier said that although they're still working on the best ways to do this, they are open to changing the interface if necessary. 

A big thing for us in the garage was the ability to use the translations app for user applications, and Javier confirmed that they are working on ways for developers to feed code into the translations app so that 3rd party apps can be translated by users. This could be pretty amazing for developers who don't have the resources to translate applications themselves, and could open up apps for a huge range of users at virtually no cost. It will definitely be worth keeping an eye on this space. 

We had a couple of talks from sponsors, and then Toby came back on to have a quick run through of what's new this month in Facebook, which looked at the changes to the news feed, extended profiles, friend lists etc, and some more technical changes in FBML. 

The next talk was by Claire Levy, the Head of Business Development at Last.fm, who talked about three new applications they've launched in Bebo. They discussed how they thought hard about how to ensure that these applications were optimised for the Bebo platform - not just in the markup language, which is identical to FBML (just substitute SNML for FBML in the code), but in the look and feel of the apps, and in their names - for example, 'mates' rather than 'friends'. 

The apps are designed to increase brand awareness of Last.fm and to drive new users of the main app. The three apps were (not official names): 1. What I'm listening to, 2. Compare Music Tastes and 3. Music I like (with the ability to listen to similar music, one of Last.fm's key USPs). They didn't give any user numbers, if I get hold of any (public) info on their success I'll post it here. 

We took a quick look at Facebook Mobile, and how to integrate it into apps - including how to get around mobile browsers which try to pretend to be normal browsers. The ability to interact with users via SMS (two way) from apps could be really promising, although at the moment users have to go through quite a lot of hassle to allow this and connect with their phone, so it's unlikely to have huge take-up. 

There was also some debate on the relevancy of mobile sites, as more and more phones are going online with full browsers and 3G. There was some disagreement, with one of the main arguments in favour of the mobile sites being the much lower download sizes - relevant for both browsing speed and the cost of data packages. I think that mobile sites will continue to be relevant for the next 2-3 years, however after that I expect that unlimited high speed data packages will be the usual for mobiles - I have an unlimited data package on my blackberry for £8 a month, think that's pretty cheap (I'm a heavy user so get good deals). I expect this price will decrease even more in the future as more users go in for data packages and more firms start to compete on price for the mainstream. 

The last speech was from the Ebay guys behind their app StyleSlam. They explained that they tried a few apps working on pure functionality, e.g. letting users display what they're selling, what they want to buy etc, but had really low take-up. So, they decided to change tack and just work more on branding, and came up with StyleSlam - a very cool app that allows users to create a very detailed avatar, and buy and sell items of clothing and accessories to dress their avatar. They then added the ability to vote friends outfits up and down, giving 'kudos' scores - which made their user numbers rocket. It's worth taking a look at the app, it's a really great design, developed in Ruby, and has a great profile box - and is growing user numbers fast.

They're working on new functionality, and are planning to link in items inside the app with real items on Ebay that users can buy - a great way to link up the virtual with the real, drive branding and monetisation.

Were you there? If you have any more thoughts/questions on the night, let me know. What kind of things would you like to see at future garages? 

The Five Major Attributes of Widgets & Applications

In Learnings from the Widget Roundtable, Jeremiah talked to Ro Choy from RockYou who differentiated clearly between widgets and applications. He defined widgets as limited in functionality, often combined with creating user action outside the widget, e.g. getting them to go to another website. Applications, on the other hand, have full interaction, often with multiple pages and interactivity, and the goal is to get the user engaging with the application rather than going somewhere else. 

They found that because of the range of attributes that are found in widgets and applications, they are impossible to clearly define. Instead, they defined them in terms of how much data interaction they had: 

"Levels of Data Interaction

Highest | Application uses data from your social network | iLike

High | Application uses data from your preferences | Pandora

Low | Application pulls data from source | Audio stream (like a radio station)

None | Static widget, display badge | Widget links to other website"

When we're talking with clients about the types of applications to build, we discuss five major attributes. Most successful applications combine at least 2 of these. 

1. Games (e.g. Scrabulous)

2. Competitions (usually limited in time, with registering or doing things within the widget in order to win a prize)

3. User interaction (an application that allows users to interact with each other in a new way e.g. Funwall, Bob Dylan, Super Poke, and Scrabulous again)

4. Tools (e.g news feeders, football supporter applications, iPlayer, WorldCat (a tool for Academics to find books in libraries))

5. Badges (allowing you to show affiliations or support, e.g. football supporter applications, Causes application, political supporter apps etc).

If we look at the top 15 applications currently listed, based on most active users, we can see how these interact:

1. Photos - tool, user interaction (tags and comments)

2. Fun Wall - user interaction

3. Top Friends - badge, tool (find top friends quickly)

4. Super Wall - user interaction

5. Movies - tool (find good movies), user interaction (share reviews)

6. Bumper Sticker - badge

7. Are YOU Interested? - user interaction, tool (find new friends)

8. Scrabulous - game, user interaction

9. Compare People - user interaction, tool

10. Super Poke - user interaction

11. Texas HoldEm Poker - game, user interaction

12. iLike - badge, tool, plus user interaction and game through music challenge

13. Friends for Sale - game, user interaction

14. Mobile - tool

15. Flirtable - tool, user interaction

One of the primary traits in all of these is user interaction. This is key for virality, and is the key to the success of Facebook generally - if an application allows users to interact in new ways, but you need the application to do that interaction, then it can spread quickly from a small group of initial users. 

Do you agree with my definitions? What would you add/change?

User-to-User Paypal Integration in Facebook

Although I can't find any official release from Facebook yet, my PayPal newsletter arrived in my inbox this morning proudly proclaiming that you can now use PayPal on Facebook. They've suggested it can be used for sharing money between friends who owe each other, and also for raising sponsorship money for charitable races etc. Click here to go to the application page, and here to see the press release from PayPal.

I wonder if Facebook are getting a cut in from transfers through this app? It surely means that the heralded integration of PayPal and Facebook for application developers is getting closer.  

Will it work on mobile?

As more and more people are using web-capable phones with Facebook Mobile, it will be interesting to watch if this takes off as a personal payment process between friends when out and about. Not something which will happen overnight, but PayPal have tried to get into the mobile market before, but it was quite a complicated system (involving security phone calls etc to make simple payments), so this would be a hell of a lot easier. 

Something to look out for. If any of you are using this app, let me know what you think.

Facebook's Extended Profile: GOOD for Marketers and App Developers

Ever since Facebook first announced that they would be introducing the extended profile feature, allowing people to 'hide' application profile boxes in an additional section to their profile, the social media blogs have been frothing at the mouth on how this is going to ruin the viral spreading of applications. 

I completely disagree.

Facebook initiated the change because users were starting to get annoyed with the clutter of their profiles when they had loads of application boxes, with users apparently claiming that there was too many to just go and delete the boxes individually. 

So, we had a situation where users were either:

1. Not authorising profile boxes in the first place

2. Authorising profile boxes, but regularly deleting some boxes to prevent clutter

3. Authorising profile boxes and not deleting them, causing clutter.

4. Not installing apps at all

How's this change going to effect these four segments of user?

(1) - these users now have more incentive to add profile boxes, as they know that they can keep them in their extended profile if necessary and keep their main profile nice, clean and tidy.

(2) - instead of deleting profile boxes altogether (which I used to do), this segment will now be able to simply move them (or leave them) into their extended profiles, in the knowledge that they can keep adding apps without increasing the clutter of their main profiles.

(3) - this group is now happier, as the clutter's been removed, meanwhile their top apps are on show and all the other apps they love adding are still in their extended profile. 

(4) - there may be a portion of these users who were put off from installing applications at all because of the clutter they saw on other people's profiles. Once they see this clutter cleaned up, more of them may be willing to install applications themselves.

So, according to my hypothesised behaviour changes, this will in fact make users more likely to install applications. Moreover, users' top applications will still be shown in the main profile section, and if the profile box is relevant enough it will be placed in a good position by the user themselves. 

Even better, those favourite and useful applications will now be even easier to see as they won't be surrounded by loads of clutter!

Plus, if people are interested it's very easy to click to see the rest of the applications on the page (it doesn't take you away from the profile, just displays the apps at the bottom of the page). 

This is definitely a good move for users, and in the end a good move for application developers who are providing real value to users.

BigThink.com: Niche Social Network, Intellectual Audience

This morning I came across bigthink.com, which is kind of a mix between YouTube and Facebook, but geared around 'big ideas'; questions and statements on a range of meta and physical issues, such as faith, arts, business etc, with 'expert' opinion as well as user generated media either in response or as new ideas/questions. 

Although anyone can go, watch, read and comment, you must register to 'respond' (i.e. answer a question with your own text or media) or to put forward new ideas. Also, users can rate all content on how interesting it is, with the most interesting rising to the top. 

They've got some good angel backers, and enough funding and contacts through these to have some big names in arts, business and culture already on there with videos. The site has a nice layout, clearly defined categories, and was easy to sign up and get going. 

The profiles are currently very simple (photo, about me and interests), however the main interaction will be the videos, questions and responses - i.e. users define their personality by their actions and thoughts, rather than what they simply put on their profile. 

It's an interesting concept, and one that I think will be successful. Expect to see lots of niche groups form, of people who care deeply about a particular subject and wish to be able to debate and share thoughts and ideas between themselves, as well as heated debate on political and current affairs issues, with a lot less spam that on YouTube.

Marketing Possibilities

A couple of the guys from BigThink.com talked about the website on Fox News - watch the video on the BigThink site here. In it they talked about three tiers of marketing possibilities: 1. standard adverts 2. Category sponsorship 3. Official reporting and comments from company grandees released as media on the site.

It will be interesting to see how (3) works out, as if the videos aren't interesting they'll simply be voted down and will disappear. (2) could possibly be very powerful for niche areas, possibly combined with (3) (e.g. Starbucks sponsoring a category on coffee, with talks from it's head coffee baristas on blends and techniques, or book companies sponsoring book discussion channels, and releasing interviews with authors etc). 

(1) could also prove valuable, because of the high quality audience, who are likely to be of an older demographic even than Facebook. 

It's still to early to really see how it will work out, but this is definitely one to watch. There's a lot of buzz about niche social networks for 2008, and the success of these will help push the drive for user control of their social graph. Take a look, let me know your thoughts.

The Value of Social Networks to Marketers: Weak-Ties

Although not many people are familiar with the term, 'weak-ties' are one of the main reasons why social networks are so powerful for marketers, and it is important to have an understanding of what they are in order to make the most of any applications or campaigns on social networks. 

Strong-ties are those that belong to close workmates, friends and family, the people we interact with often on a daily basis over a long period of time. Although you may interact with these people online, most of the interaction will be offline. Now, even though the ability to influence your strong-ties may be very high, as you are a trusted source, the probability of changing their behaviour is very low. Why? Because you know each other well enough to have already been faced with differences in opinions, consumer interests etc, and would have already decided to either follow suit, or not.

As an example, if you read a particular newspaper, or listen to a particular band, then it is likely that your strong-ties would have been with you at some point when you've been reading or carrying the paper, listening to the music etc. 

Weak-ties, then, are those people who were are connected to in some way - people who work for the same company, who we see around but don't socialise with regularly; friends of friends; people in community or interest groups. These people trust each other's opinions far more than if they were just strangers (Forrester, in "Leveraging User Generated Content", Jan 2007 reported that over 80% of online users trust the opinion of a friend or acquaintance more than any other possible web source), and this allows them to have both a high ability and high probability of influencing each other. You are far more likely to hear about new interests or companies from this more diverse group of people, and more likely to take them up because you trust them more than advertising, reviewers or even other consumers.

Social Networks are a hive of weak-ties. They make it very easy to connect with friends or friends, work colleagues, school buddies, and interest groups, and promote sharing between these weak-ties with group media sharing and discussion forums, profiles to advertise your personality and interests (and applications), and news feeds so that you can see visually how your friends are interacting with each other and with apps, groups and brands. This makes them extremely powerful for fast, high trust viral spreading (of course, this works both ways, which is why having a strategy is so important before entering social networks, to avoid blunders). 

Weak-ties are important to keep in mind both when explaining social media to executives, and also when designing and building a campaign to run on social media, so that it maximises interaction between weak-ties. An example of this is persuading users to invite friends with similar interests - see my post Using the Social Graph to Maximise Invites.

Clinton wants an official blog team - shows she doesn't understand social media

Wired recently reported that Hilary Clinton wants to create an official government blog team if she gets in power. 

This just shows how much she doesn't understand social media - she's essentially saying she wants a full time team of people to blog the official government line on what's happening. That's not transparency, it's just spin and PR. 

If she really wanted transparency, then she'd allow government staffers to write about their work, and possibly ask heads of departments to write their own blogs. 

I'm not an expert on US politics, and the general drive towards transparency is a good one, but there's no point going down this road unless it's done properly, as people see through spin online in an instant.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but this was certainly the impression I got from the article.

Application Strategy: What's your Objective?

Before you build any application, it's very important that you understand what your objectives are. Simply hoping for high usage is meaningless unless you understand what you are looking for in terms of ROI. 

As Facebook allows monetisation through advertising (unlike MySpace), or through direct purchases, it may be that you want as much interaction in your canvas pages as possible to maximise your advertising possibilities. However, many companies still have page view targets for their main website, which means that any application must be designed in a way that drives traffic. This is a difficult thing to do correctly, as the application must still be interesting enough to use in its own right before it can start driving any hits. 

This can be an issue even where the widget is purely for branding and marketing, as some companies will still demand that their online marketing budget produces website hits.

I believe that as social media spend and widgets become more mainstream, companies will not differentiate between website hits and widget hits. For content and media companies who rely on advertising for their business model, however, driving hits to a website will become more relevant as platforms which don't allow monetisation, for example MySpace, open up to widgets. 

The type of application you build to fit an objective depends on the company, budget, and user demographics and needs. This is one of the services that iNetworkMarketing performs when working with clients, however it is very important that once a company or marketing manager understands their objectives, they work with an agency or consultancy that has a good understanding of the social media world, and particularly the platform they are looking to enter, to help them to work out what type of application would fit their objective. 

Facebook: Sponsored Groups No Longer Available

After my previous post comparing the benefits for brand engagement of the different options on Facebook - Groups, Sponsored Groups, Pages and Widgets, I decided to email Facebook to get some verification on the costs of the Sponsored Groups. This was the reply I got:

Hi Joshua,

Unfortunately at this time we longer provide sponsored groups as an advertising opportunity on Facebook.

We do, however, offer Facebook Pages and Social Ads.

* Facebook Pages

Facebook Pages give brands and businesses an opportunity to create a presence on Facebook. Brands and businesses can customize their Facebook Page to maximize user interaction and interest. A Facebook Page will allow brands and businesses to deepen connections with users and give the ability to maximize viral promotion through Social Ads. To create a Page, please visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php or simply click on the 'Create a page for your business' link at the bottom of any Page.

* Social Ads

Social Ads leverage the power and viral nature of Facebook News Feed by serving relevant stories when users' friends take actions with a Facebook Page or Application. In addition to providing a more relevant advertising experience for users, Social Ads help brands and businesses maximize reach to a greater percentage of the Facebook audience. To learn more about Social Ads and start creating your campaign, please visit http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/index.php?.

Let us know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

[name removed]

User Operations

Facebook

So, if you want to create a Page with the benefits of a Sponsored Group, some tweaking is required. As Jeremiah pointed out in a comment to my article on Facebook Pages, Pages have discussion forums, and it is possible to install application boxes into the profile. 

Therefore to add the group media upload functionality, it would be necessary to build applications that essentially mimic group photo/video galleries, so that they can be used by Fans of pages, instead of just the creators. 

I'm not aware of any applications that allow this at the moment, but they should be relatively simple to create. If you know of any, or have any other ideas on this, let me know. 

IPTV: is the Future Bitesized?

Ever since a friend leant me series 1 of the OC on DVD four years ago, my audio-visual consumption has moved almost entirely to watching high quality TV series on my computer, either from DVD or online/downloaded. I've also noticed this trend among friends and family, and there is other anecdotal evidence of this trend - take a look at A VC's "What my kids tell me about the future of media". 

Why? Well, for me, it's convenience and control. I get to watch what I want, when I want, for how long I want. Series based dramas are very different from films, as they allow for much richer, in-depth stories than can be fitted into most films, and these days have the same quality in actors and effects. 

At the same time, there has been the well-documented rise of YouTube, and the vast success of amateur, 3-4min video clips. 

Put these together, and what do you get?

After the huge success of LonelyGirl15, a professionally produced videoblog/drama, KateModern was commissioned to run on Bebo, a social networking site with a younger demographic trend, popular in the UK. KateModern is a drama, released in short 2-4 min scenes, backed up with profiles for each of the characters, which people can friend and interact with. Although there is a long term storyline, the characters are influenced by their online interaction with fans of the show. The KateModern profile containing the video clips has had over 3.7m views.

These can work because the characters are recording themselves on web cams (in the show), so are part of the interactivity. However, what they prove is that people are very happy to consume quality content in short clips released on a regular basis - a culmination of the DVD and YouTube trends.

I believe that this could well be the future of quality online media content, as was hypothesised by Chris Anderson in The Long Tail (Chapter 12, The Infinite Screen). We're seeing a lot of media clients who have taken up IPTV in a big way, and are a producing a lot of high quality short videos, monetising either through adverts on the page, or adverts within the video. It is uncertain as yet which model will prove to be most successful - undoubtedly adverts will receive more interest when they are in the video itself, although consumers may move towards distribution channels without these. 

I'd suggest that where consumers are watching media clips, possibly moving around a site or widget to find the videos they want to watch next, and probably watching them in a small box within the site, then page adverts will be most successful. Where the content is a story or drama, either long (15mins plus), or a large number of short videos, then in-video adverts would be more successful, as attention is unlikely to leave the video box, and the video is more likely to be watched full-screen.

What are your views?

Also check out:

Jeremiah Owyang, As the TV moves to the Web, control moves to the users where Jeremiah talks about watching Heroes online, with adverts.

Brand Interaction: Facebook Fan Pages, Groups, Sponsored Groups or Widgets?

In response to my post, Facebook Pages: Are they or Aren't they?, Jeremiah Owyang asked:

So for brand interaction what's better than Facebook Fan pages? Groups? Sponsored Groups?

My reply was pretty lengthy, so I've decided to publish it as a post of it's own:

Hi Jeremiah,

Thanks for your question. In most cases, I believe that widgets are the best way forward, as they allow for full interaction in any way you want, with as many pages as you want - so ideal if you have a lot of quality content you want users to be able to interact with.

Although standard groups allow for great interaction between users, there is simply not enough control over their interface and design to make them worth any significant spend by a company. However, they can be of use in specific circumstances, for example to use them for time specific competitions. 

Because of the ease in which groups can be virally spread (no daily limit on invites, unlike apps), if you have a good enough concept for the group then it could be a very cheap and effective marketing vehicle - the group "Six Degrees Of Separation - The Experiment" being a huge case in point. The author Steve Jackson started this group with the concept that everyone in the world is connected by a maximum of 6 people. Using the group as an experiment to see how many people he could find simply by inviting his friends, and inviting them to invite theirs, the group now has over 3.6m members. Moreover, he has kept the group relevant with a daily 'celebrity nomination' and other regularly updated features.

Obviously this has worked brilliantly for Steve, but it would be a very hard trick to pull off again. 

Sponsored groups are great for specific marketing campaigns, as they combine the best elements of groups, pages and widgets - although you only have the one branded page, you have a lot of freedom on how that looks, and it is possible to build applications directly into the page, as if it were a page within a widget. 

Sponsored groups are also ideal if the main reason for a brand's presence within Facebook is to create a sponsored discussion forum. The Apple Students sponsored group is a good example of this.

However, from what I know of the price for these groups, a company would have to be very confident in their rate of return, considering how much cheaper it is to develop and even promote a widget.

So, for companies not willing to go to that expense, widgets, or pages with widgets built into the page are the best way forward to achieve high branding and interaction in a cost effective manner.

It should also be remembered that of all the choices, widgets have the possibility of being transferable between platforms - both through the licensing of the Facebook API, and by tweaking them to fit Open Social. Of course, this has to be balanced against the differing demographics of different platforms, but as most widgets will be demographically targeted, this shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Using the Social Graph to Maximise Invites

On my regular trawl of applications, I recently came across the 'Addicted to ....' series of apps, focused around TV series. I added the Scrubs version, a) because it's a great show and b) because I wanted to take a look at the app. 

I was very interested to see their invite page:

They've used the social graph of new users to find friends who have Scrubs listed as a favourite TV show. This was the first time I'd seen this used in an app, and it could conceivably be transferred to a wide range of applications. Not only is it useful, especially if the application is a 'fan' application, and so your friends could have a valid interest in using the application, but it also catches the eye and made me much less likely to simply click on 'Skip'. 

As friend lists grow, this is a very interesting way of making invites relevant, increasing the take up rate and lowering irrelevant application invites which a lot of people find annoying.

Click here to go to the app page.

If you've seen any other interesting ways of using the social graph to maximise invites, or have any relevant articles, post a link and let me know.

Facebook Pages: Are they or Aren't they?

At the beginning of November last year, Facebook unveiled their 'Pages' system, allowing companies, brands, organisations and individuals to create 'official' profile-like pages in order to interact with people on Facebook. This is similar to what brands could already do on MySpace, however in their own space rather than with a normal profile. However, they have some severe limitations compared to what can be done with applications and even groups. In this article I'll direct you to some relevant articles, and discuss the pros and cons of pages, and when I think they are suitable, and when they're not. Fill me in with your own experiences and what you think.

The Upsides to Pages

1. They are quick to produce, and easier than creating a full blown application

2. Anyone can see the page and interact with it without having to 'install it'

3. They are 'official' i.e. if someone makes a fake one for your company you can have it removed

The Downsides

1. You cannot search for people to add as a fan, unlike normal profiles, MySpace profiles, or groups

2. Fans of pages cannot invite their friend's to join, like in groups and even applications

3. Limited branding and personalisation, especially compared to apps (although much greater than standard groups, especially considering the ability to add HTML and app boxes).

4. Very limited user interaction - fans can't upload content like videos or pictures as in groups, although they can write on the wall and discussion forums.

5. No personalisation - unlike apps, in which pages can be unique to each user, every fan of a Page sees the same thing.

So, a few upsides and some more downsides. If you're looking to really engage in the long term with users on Facebook, then Pages aren't the way to go about this. Engagement requires interaction, and Pages by themselves simply do not have this ability.

However, if you want to give out general info about your brand or organisation on a regular basis, and are confident of your 'fan' base, then Pages are an effective way of doing this, as they are easy to set up and updates can easily be sent from within Facebook to all the fans. Likewise, if you're a band, and the main 'interaction' with fans will be them listening to your music, which you can easily add to a page, and you letting them know about gig dates etc, then they are also effective.

They can also be very useful for specific events or competitions, where a central information node is required for a limited period of time that will see a lot of traffic and conversation for the length of the competition. Last year, one of the most successful interactive marketing events on Facebook was the 02's "The battle for the UK's favourite university", using a (very expensive) sponsored group. A sponsored group is a bit like a mix between a group and a page, with added personalisation, but they do cost a lot of money.

We had a client who was interested in running a similar event, and we worked out a way to to do this using a central page with a simple application box, connected to normal Facebook groups. Once this goes public I'll share it with you, to see what you think of our strategy and any comments or ideas you might have.

Some links to take a look at:

Sebastian Mary on how NOT to do it (Coca Cola's page)

02's "The battle for the UK's favourite university" Sponsored Group on Facebook

Jeremiah on "Why You Need to have Strategy before you make a Facebook Fan Page NOW!"

Jeremiah Owyang, and the Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008

For those of you who don't know about him, Jeremiah Owyang is one of the most important bloggers in the web strategy sphere. If you work in this area, make sure you take a look at his blog (and regularly - he updates a lot).

Click here to read his Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008

If you're involved in web strategy in any way, then make sure you take a look at his round up of the various marketing options. It's a great, comprehensive list of all of the forms of 'push' online marketing.

The Purpose of This Blog

Hi. Welcome to my blog - one which I probably should have started a while ago, unfortunately I was too preoccupied with reading other peoples.

I've always had a big interest in social networks, and communication - I was an avid user of Faceparty, and was constantly on MSN messenger when I was younger. I was also a big player of Ultimate Online through some of my teenage years (before they ruined it, in my opinion, by trying to make it easier for new players). Unfortunately I don't have time for game playing anymore, although I did have a mess around on World of Warcraft for a few weeks, and I keep a close watch on other Virtual Worlds, like Second Life.

Whist at Durham University, I was involved with an attempt to create a whole new social network. Facebook had spread fast through the University and had become part of our daily life, and MySpace was well known, but none of the networks about had even started to have a viable business model. We were looking to change that by working out a way to allow local businesses to connect and provide information to users easily, with geo-targeting. 

The project never quite came to fruition, but as social networks began to open up to companies more in an effort to create a viable revenue stream, I saw a huge opportunity to start helping big brands to do this in an effective, engaging way - engagement marketing, rather than interruption marketing (thank you to Marcia Kadanoff for this term). With the opening up of the social web to interactive applications, there is a bright new future of engagement marketing, one which is still at the earliest of stages. We're now working with brands to interact with users through these applications.

I've started this blog so that we can have a discussion about this future, and to catalogue it as it unfolds. We're all still at an experimental stage, and it's very hard to predict what will work and what won't. By sharing and discussing, however, we can all benefit from each other's successes and mistakes. I'll be using this blog to post general comments and thoughts on social marketing strategy, reviewing what other companies and people are doing in this space, and adding thought and comments on other posts, comments and blogs. 

If you're in this space, let me know, link back to your own blogs or websites, add me on Facebook and let the discussion begin!