Google looks to measure ‘influence’ and the ‘influencers’

Dirk van Graver at “Record | Preserve | Share” has commented on a business week article that asks us to imagine one number that sums up how influential we are.  It is a subject I discussed some time ago, when I was craving a golden ratio in relation to social networking.

Back then I said;

It is pretty obvious Trust would be a great dimension for social networks to embrace. So would Influence or Buzz (or both). And when elements like this are developed I believe Social Networks will be onto something very significant indeed.

If you didn’t follow the link, according to the Business Week piece, Google has a patent pending “for ranking the most influential people on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.”

It is a great idea.  Clearly if this works, it would finally make adverts on social networks relevant and potentially profitable.

It would seem (if the report is to be believed) that Google is applying the same approach to social networks that it has used to dominate the online search business (it would be like a page rank).  Apparently the Google approach would take into account all manner of aspects of influence, from ‘how many’ people you know, to ‘how frequently’ you talk with them, to ‘how strongly’ they value your opinion.  So your ’score’ could be compared with that of pretty much anyone in the world.  A personal Google ‘influence score’ if you like.

Hear are my hopes and fears:

FEAR #1: I worry that if an influence score is used to justify, or generate a monitization strategy for social networking sites, the emphasis on what constitutes ‘influence’ must start on a sound footing.  This is an area that I really don’t want to see messed up – as I’m not sure many social networking sites can withstand high profile failures at monitization.

FEAR # 2:  If influence is measured by Google, (or anyone else) surely everyone will be able to find their (or their companies, or their competitors) biggest advocates or doomsayers?  Yes?  Well I cannot see that happening accurately.  I would be very surprised if your biggest influencers are known by you (i.e connected to you) and so how do Google propose to measure or track that?  And in fact, surely influencers by definition are 3rd parties (i.e. are unconnected to you) in the first place?

Hey, maybe I missed something and that is the whole reason why Google is exploring this.

Which brings me on to my great hope.

Hope #1: I hope how ‘many’ people you know (‘follow’, ‘connect’ with, ‘add’ as a friend) is not closely related to your degree of influence.  Those fools who have adopted a strategy of following ‘en-masse’ in Twitter (in the hope that a high percentage will return the favour) must not be seen by advertising buyers and sellers as ‘influencial’.  They are not.  Bob with 1000 friends is not necessarily more influential than Susan with just 85.

Equally seniority isn’t the be-all either.  John the 46 year old bachelor & CEO is not necessarily more influential than Raphael the 28 year old IT Manager, who is a father of two.  And postcode xyz, doesn’t bear higher influencers than postcode 123, in the same way that an OxBridge student shouldn’t be seen as more influencial that a 2:2 student from a ‘lesser’ ranked university.  My hope is that an influence algorithm doesn’t arbitrarily look at volumes and a set of pre-determined values and rules.

Influence is, I believe, far more multi dimensional and complex than that.

If this becomes a reality what are your hopes and fears for ‘Influencer’ tracking?  I’d love to here your views.

Filed under: Business, Buzz, Facebook, Google, Ideas and Riffs, Influence, Measurement, Online, Social Graphs, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Web2.0, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0 , Branding, Business Week, Google, Influence, Personal Brand, ranking, Social Networking, Twitter

the little things that matter

Adam Kmiec is an Interactive Marketer at Colle+McVoy.  His presentation on Slideshare about micro interactions is well worth looking at.

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Branding, Business, Conversational marketing, Customer service, Design, Facebook, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, Twitter, User Generated Content, WOM, Web, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0, word of mouth , 2.0, interactions, interactive, marketing, Media, micro, new, social, Twitter, Web

Facebook in reality

Filed under: Facebook, Fun, Online Video, Social Media, Social Networking, Viral, Web2.0, marketing, web 2.0 , Facebook, reality, YouTube

Please help

Sport Relief

(I should apologise for bringing you here by illicit categorisation and tagging, but I won’t. You might have wasted just 10 seconds. Hopefully you will make the choice to change someone’s world in less than a minute).

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Social Networks and a Golden Ratio

It’s bugged me for a while, and low and behold Seth Godin sums it up again. First. And that’s two posts in a row from me, with a Godin influence! Damn it that guy is good.

Anyway, Seth says “One of the mantras of networking (and the many social networking sites that people are flocking to) is that it matters who you know. The goal of having a thousand or more friends online is that you’re well known. Connected. A click away. I wonder if there’s a more useful measure: who trusts you?”

I really think that Godin is spot on. The plethora of social network sites will each raise the bar in 2008, particularly those supporting business professionals. Those that do a remarkable job will win and those that don’t will be bought – ironically for their members.

You see the way I see it, is that all the social networking sites want today is users, more users, more eyeballs, and more traffic. Their offerings are geared around this fact…….it’s an ethos based around getting users to create as many new users as possible.

That is why they create stuff like this:

And as a result, members of these sites are caught up in a fake narrative, “the larger the quantity of friends or contacts or watch lists you have – the more influence or connected you are.” Offcourse this can be right. But it’s not a rule. And it’s not the whole truth. I think continuous improvement of Social Networks will bear fruit.

It is pretty obvious Trust would be a great dimension for social networks to embrace. So would Influence or Buzz (or both). And when elements like this are developed I believe Social Networks will be onto something very significant indeed.

I hope when this concept is implemented however, it is more scientific (for example) than LinkedIn’s current ‘recommendations’, which is just a partial attempt to add intrinsic value; and is actually pretty valueless.

No, I am thinking Social Networks need some kind of ‘Golden Ratio’ that is both complex (like the actual Golden Ratio) that can be translated into something very simple and easily understood for network or community members. For instance if you park the equation elements of the Golden Ratio to one side for a moment, some very simple manifestations occur: like the distance from outstretched fingertip to fingertip equalling your height, or the length of your forearm equalling your foot size.

Suddenly it would be much easier to understand the value of connections, visualise them, interpret them and apply them appropriately. I’d really love some kind of ’sphere of Influence’ or Trust ‘rating’ to be applied to Social Networks.

Suddenly Digg, Technorati, Open Social and LinkedIn and Facebook bring on whole new dimensions – particularly for business users.

How would you like Social Networking sites to unfold or mature?

Filed under: 2.0, Business, Computing, Facebook, Influence, Media, Open Social, Social Graphs, Social Media, Social Networking, Web2.0, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0 , Digg, Facebook, Godin, Golden Ratio, Influence, LinkedIn, Social Newtorking, Technorati, trust

Why next year will be make or break for traditional media

I’ve never copied anything into my blog verbatim so I really want to reference the source on this one……so for the absence of doubt what follows is taken entirely from The Business, and was authored by David Crow (Not me). It is a great piece, and I think you should read it.

———————————————————————————

It is hard to overstate the changes that took place in the media in 2007. In Europe, this was the first ever year that 16-24 year olds – the consumers behind today’s technological revolution – accessed the internet more frequently than they watched TV. Now, nearly eight years into the millennium, even the heretics who dismissed the internet as a flash in the pan are realising just how wrong they were.

While 2008 will be a year of flux, some things are unlikely to change. Circulation figures for daily paid-for newspapers will continue to dip, with the odd exception; the best editors will be the ones who adopt a two pronged approach of managing the decline in print sales – instead of trying to avert it – while investing more and more resources in their digital operations.

The Daily Mail – one of the few papers to post a year-on-year increase in November’s ABC figures – will continue to be the envy of all on Fleet Street. Last month’s assurance by editor Paul Dacre, 60 next year, that he has no plans to step down came as a relief to shareholders; it is hard to imagine the paper reading the mood of modern Britain so expertly without him. In 2008, the title will build on its newfound digital success after it hit the ground running earlier this year.

Sunday titles will continue to fare better than their daily counterparts in 2008. The Observer – which reported a 1.41% year-on-year increase in November’s ABCs – is testament to the fact that the peculiar British relationship with Sunday newspapers will remain strong. All eyes will be on how its integration with The Guardian goes, however.

Daily freesheets will be one of the few print products to see increasing revenues in 2008. Metro, owned by Associated Newspapers, is likely to be the star of the sector; its combined regional distribution – currently at around 1.4m – will continue to rise and, at some point in 2008, overtake the Daily Mirror’s circulation.

The latter, along with nearly every other daily and Sunday red top – with the inexplicable exception of the Daily Star titles – will watch The Sun continue to demonstrate that it is possible to build a successful red top brand online and in print. Hopes that the Mirror will be able to follow suit are fading.

Across the pond, staff at the Wall Street Journal will realise that Rupert Murdoch’s plans to turn the title into a global power brand can only benefit the newspaper. Media coverage of the presidential election – like Australia’s recent vote – will be increasingly defined by web giant Google, which will come into direct competition with newspapers and broadcasters by reporting the contest first hand.

DAB digital radio will continue its march to become Britain’s preferred radio platform. By the end of 2008, 30% of households will own a DAB radio, with sales rising by 26% to 2.6m units worth £200m. 4 Digital – the consortium behind the 10 new digital radio stations that will launch next year – is hoping to open up digital radio in the way Channel 4 boosted the fortunes of digital Freeview TV.

The new stations will provide some much needed competition to the BBC. E4 radio, which will focus on the youth market, will go head to head with Radio 1 while Channel 4 Radio – a contemporary speech station with what the consortium call “public service values” will provide an alternative to BBC Radio 4. Earlier this month 4Digital poached the controller of BBC Radio 5 Live, suggesting it is serious about taking on the Beeb. BBC radio stations account for 54% of all radio listening and a massive 86% of speech-based listening; 2008 will be the year that this starts to change.

For established broadcasters, next year will be one of unlikely alliances, formed in an attempt to see off the growing threat from new competitors. The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 will launch a joint on-demand service, enabling customers to download content from all three broadcasters on one platform. The trio hope that the on-demand service – codenamed Kangaroo – will provide an alternative to Sky+ and Virgin On Demand.

In America, Murdoch’s NewsCorp and NBC Universal will officially launch their joint internet TV effort, Hulu, a website hosting popular shows such as Saturday Night Live and Journeyman alongside user-generated clips. Google’s YouTube will continue to be the product to beat.

In 2007, social networking sites finally reached the tipping point, becoming truly mainstream for the first time. In 2008, they will be increasingly counted alongside TV, newspapers, magazines and radio as the fifth staple of the consumer’s media diet.

Facebook will continue to be the social network to beat, although top-dog status will bring new woes. Mark Zuckerberg, its founder and chief executive – once the poster-boy for the Facebook generation – is fast becoming a scapegoat for the increasing panic over social networking and privacy. Having bungled its attempts to reassure customers over their concerns, Facebook will have to get better at managing its success.

The firms that succeed in 2008 will be those that focus on the needs, desires and interests of their consumer in the contemporary marketplace – and discard their archaic, elitist prejudices born of a different era. For those still referred to as the “traditional” media, 2008 will be the make or break year.

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Business, Facebook, Google, Influence, Media, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, User Generated Content, Web2.0, YouTube, ideas, marketing, web 2.0 , Advertising, Business, contemporary, David Crow, Facebook, Google, Media, On Demand, Social Networking, Strategy, The Business, traditional, Traditional Media, YouTube

Facebook’s crime (and PR nightmare)

Facebook is having a public relations nightmare, and it is great spectator sport for the neutral! But just how is this going to pan out?

Just a few weeks ago Zuckerberg said, “Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online.“ He also said that historically (advertising) media has been “pushed out to people” but marketers would now “become part of the conversation.“Great words. Awesome sentiment. Very savvy. And correct too. So how the hell did Facebook get lost along the way?Whilst Social Ads are great conceptually, Facebook is having to backtrack fast. Is this due to the fact that they didn’t listen to their customers very much? Probably. What a crime.

It just goes to show you can be on the edge of greatness – have an idea that can change an industry – and still get it very wrong.I’m really looking forward to the next instalment though.There is sure to be a lot of lessons I can learn from this.And I can’t help but think that Open Social will be in the mix somewhere.

Edit: 03/01/08 And it goes on.

Filed under: Customer service, Facebook, Open Social, PR, ideas, marketing , Facebook, Google, Open Social, PR, Public Relations

Taking the shine off Viral

There was an interesting post earlier this week on Tech Crunch concerning The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos – as defined by a real expert in the industry.

I have to say I am a tad disappointed with the approach that the author outlines in relation to getting onto the “Most Viewed” page.

Here is an excerpt of his comments:

• Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.
• Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.
• MySpace: Plenty of users allow you to embed YouTube videos right in the comments section of their MySpace pages. We take advantage of this.
• Facebook: Share, share, share. We’ve taken Dave McClure’s advice and built a sizeable presence on Facebook, so sharing a video with our entire friends list can have a real impact. Other ideas include creating an event that announces the video launch and inviting friends, writing a note and tagging friends, or posting the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.
• Email lists: Send the video to an email list. Depending on the size of the list (and the recipients’ willingness to receive links to YouTube videos), this can be a very effective strategy.
• Friends: Make sure everyone we know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

I am not keen on this approach at all.

Starting new threads and embedding videos, only to kickstart a ‘conversation’ by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users is underhand, unauthentic, and feels like cheating to me.

That coupled with the stance of embedding YouTube videos right in the comments section of MySpace pages, ‘just because you can’ is an odd approach.

And finally growing a Facebook presence and ’sharing’ a video with your entire friends might have a ‘real impact’ but it sounds a whole lot like spamming to me.

I wouldn’t pretend to be a viral expert, in any way shape or form. But I can’t help but feel really dissapointed. Whilst I can hear the TV advertising industry collapsing all around me – I always felt that Viral was one of a number of upstart replacements with a good honest vibe.

How naive of me.

Filed under: 2.0, Facebook, Ideas and Riffs, Online Video, Viral, YouTube, ideas, marketing, trust , blogs, Facebook, forums, Myspace, Spam, tech crunch, video, Viral, YouTube

CMR – Customer Managed Relationships

I wrote about Customer Managed Relationships (CMR) here back in July.

The debate still goes on here and here. I find it interesting that web 2.0 technologies are very aligned to this ethos, and that in the context of B2B, web 2.0 may help organisations better understand their customers – and at least partially ‘deal with’ or ‘embrace’ the fact that customers (or consumers) are in control.

There has been much debate about the relevance of web 2.0 in the commercial sector. The news concerning Youtube, Google’s Open Social, Facebook & Microsoft has further fanned the flames as B2B marketing managers crave to identify the real value that web 2.0 will bring to the B2B space; over and above standard user generated content and viral video to name just two spheres of influence web 2.o has garnered.

And so I wonder if establishing a real monetary link between web 2.0 and CRM is what will really create the breakthrough in mindset that seems to be needed to tip the balance?

To me there are too many advertising agencies that are still looking to apply new technology against an old paradigm – where advertising and publishing rules.

That is clearly not the case. Customers manage relationships whether advertisers and brand managers like it or not. But perhaps it is time to prove it?

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, B2B, Business, CRM, Customer service, Facebook, Ideas and Riffs, Open Social, Social Media, Strategy, User Generated Content, Viral, ideas, marketing , B2B, Customer managed relationships, Facebook, Open Social, web 2.0

Social Graphs 101

Loads of people will be talking about Social Graphs in the not too distant future. Especially marketers. And especially marketers at high technology firms.

Got a Linkedin profile, but can’t be bothered ’starting again’ or ‘replicating’ your personal network on Facebook, or Myspace or Hi5 – or visa versa? Worried about inaccuracy about data about you on Flickr that you haven’t updated recently, or that beta site that you can’t remember the name of? Or how about the theft / poor reuse of identity data concerning you? Want more control and the ability to manage your ‘relationship’ data? Offcourse you do.

Jeremiah Owyang recently penned a really good synopsis of what a Social Graph actually is – and what it means to you or your business.

To be honest I anticipate a real shift in the way that marketers have to re-design, or extend their community based marketing platforms or strategies to reflect this innovation. It is simply too logical, and I can’t see anything stopping this transition.

And when this innovation reaches a tipping point, won’t it be great logging into a website or web-service that leverages a central sign-on or Open-Social .api – and as a result ‘automatically’ promoting content with my permission that the ’service’ knows is relevant to me…..like train timetables or advertisements or where to pick up my prescription medicine or a hire car.

Filed under: 2.0, Business, Facebook, Open Social, Social Graphs, Social Media, User Generated Content, Web2.0, marketing, web 2.0 , Facebook, Hi5, Identity theft, LinkedIn, Myspace, Open Social, social graph

Advertising’s evolution….

IBM Global Business Services in its new report, The End of Advertising as We Know It (report PDF, summary PDF) forecasts greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than has occurred over the previous 50.

Whilst I find this type of sweeping statement a tad nauseating (agreed: it is not as bad as Facebook’s boy-coder turned big-thinker Mark Zuckerberg who said last week; “Once every hundred years media changes.”). But nonetheless the report is worth a read.

It states:

• broadcasters will have to change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments.
• Distributors will need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices.
• Advertising agencies must become brokers of consumer insights and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices.
• All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels

Not really ‘new’ news. But good all the same.

Filed under: Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Business, Facebook, IBM, Ideas and Riffs, Strategy, ideas, marketing , Advertising, change, consumers, distributors, Facebook, IBM, IBM Global Services

Advertisers drop Facebook like a lead balloon

***UPDATE 05/08/07***
In total six major firms withdrew advertisements from the networking website Facebook, after they appeared against the British National Party page.

First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, the AA, Halifax and the Prudential all pulled their ads. Virgin said it had to “protect its brand”.

UK advertisers were dropping off Facebook like flies today. Vodafone have pulled their adverts, as have First Direct; but I heard on the radio in the last hour a list of about ten well known (some global) brands jumping ship.

Surprise, surprise adverts for big brands including Vodafone and First Direct were appearing alongside profiles which brand managers considered innapropriate – in this instance the official British National Party (BNP) group. (The controversial far-right party has registered its group under the social network’s Political Organisations category)

More can be read here and here. I expect this to be big news over the weekend and Monday.

What I find fascinating is that surely Vodafone must have known this was a potential issue with Facebook? This happens all the time right?

And surely the advertisers must have known where the ad agencies were placing their adverts?

It appears not.

“Vodafone wants to carry on working with the social networking site while “staying true” to its policies”, a spokesman said.

She said the mobile phone firm bought bundles of advertising space across a number of websites.

“As a result we were not aware that a Vodafone advertisement would appear next to a British National Party group on Facebook.”

“Our public policy principles state that we do not make political donations or support particular party political interests and therefore to avoid misunderstandings we immediately withdrew our advertising as soon as this was brought to our attention.”

“Vodafone is working with its media buyer to ensure more “robust controls” are in place before it re-invests”, the Vodafone spokeperson added.

Read why does Facebook’s advertising suck, how the friends definitions and ties be improved and finally why Facebook, why now

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Branding, Facebook, Public Relations, Social Media, User Generated Content, Web2.0, marketing, web 2.0