It’s the utility, stupid

Article first published as It's the Utility Stupid on Technorati.

Google+ is not a ‘product’ apparently.  It’s still a ‘project’.  And it’s out in what looks to be a limited beta release as ‘Field Trial’ – but which feels more like a ‘throttled release’ as new users can then start to pass invites on.  

Google clearly feels that this is all a work in progress. 

However, it doesn’t feel like work in progress. It has hit 10m users in a few short weeks making it one of the fastest growing network launches ever, according to Mashable. The interface is clean and slick – and Circles makes the concept of ‘groups’ easy to implement and manage.  Even the animation when you add a friend or contact to a group is a great little piece of interactive design.

And there are other features not found elsewhere.  ‘Sparks’ looks like it could build into a powerful content recommendation engine, especially once Google+ gains scale.  It also provides a good benefit for users to actually ‘Google +1’ content they find or that their friends may like.  It could also be strong opportunity to monetise the platform as brands looks to promote their own content.

‘Hangout’s are fundamentally video chat (though trying to get that to actually work is a little tricky) – and Facebook’s video chat via Skype looks like it could trump that feature right off the bat.

And I suppose that’s the problem with Google+ so far.  There’s no killer feature.  There’s no compelling reason why this should be my new social network of choice – no reason to give up Facebook.  And I don’t need yet another network in my life.

Even Google’s own FAQs include the question “Why don’t you have killer feature X?”.

So far, I wager that a large proportion of Google+’s growth has been driven by its limited access and exclusivity.  

It’s the power of scarcity. 

Everyone in the digerati wanted an invite and the power to send invites.  How many of Facebook’s News Feed updates were posted from Google+ - just to demonstrate one’s own personal sense of digital status?

But where’s Google+’s utility? Where does it add value to my life that no other platform does? Facebook created that social utility by connecting people with their friends - and it became the dominant social network by doing that better than anyone else.  And it continuously evolved functionality that was useful: from pokes, picture tagging, status updates to Like’s, Fan pages and Facebook plug-ins.

However, Facebook needs to continue being useful.  As Mark Choueke says in Marketing Week, unless it continues to evolve its utility, people will start to drift away from the constant wall of trivial personal updates and stilted brand updates.  (I’m really not sure I can take another brand asking what I am up to for the weekend, each Friday afternoon).

There is some interesting data that shows that although Facebook is growing globally, in some more mature markets Facebook is seeing a decline.  For example in the US (according to Inside Facebook) it lost 6 million users during May this year and in Canada it lost 8% of users (1.52million out of its 16.6m base).  

And this trend is mirrored in the UK. According to Hitwise, Facebook has also seen a declining market share losing ground to both Twitter and YouTube.   

Now, of course, this doesn’t for a second mean that this is even the beginning of the end for Facebook. 

But it does demonstrate the need to keep things fresh and, most importantly, useful.  It will be interesting to see how Facebook’s Skype partnership adds to its utility and how Google+ intends to create some significant space between it and Facebook.

Facebook's privacy issues will be its downfall

Sparked most by some of the changes announced at the Facebook F8 conference the last couple of weeks have seen another flurry of comment and debate on Faceboook's privacy changes. 

Search Engine Land recently  stumbled across the fact that that typing "how do I" into Google now brings up "how do I delete my Facebook account" as one of the top searches.

They also illustrate the increased search volumes for people wishing to delete their Facebook account.

Andrew Brown's blog on the Guardian website makes the excellent point that if people think that they are Facebook's customers they are very much mistaken.  People are Facebook's product and it is the advertisers who constitute Facebook's customers.  Now Facebook is a commercial organisation and, in order to maintain a free service for members, there really is only an advertising model at their disposal to generate revenue.  I don't think many people would argue with that.  The key issue is the way in which member's data and privacy has been eroded over time through numerous privacy changes that been have less-than-transparent to members.  What most angers Facebook users is that with each new update the default Facebook privacy settings work in the favour of the advertiser and against the privacy of the user.

Andrew Brown  points to a great graphic on The New York Times' website that illustrates the complexity of privacy options that Facebook users now need to navigate through together with the every-lengthening privacy policy itself. Some of these automatic opt-ins appear to contravene UK data protection legislation.

As a result there is a growing interest in alternative social networking models whereby the network's members have greater control of their data. One site receiving some attention is Diaspora.  Diaspora defines itself as a privacy aware, personally controlled, distributed open source social network. The development team behind Diaspora are four New York University students.  They claim that because social networking has only been around for the latter half of the decade we are yet to fully understand the privacy implications of providing personal information to a central 'hub' (such as Facebook) that then facilitates communications and content between people.  Diaspora is different because as a peer-to-peer network each user runs their own 'node' (called a 'Seed') within the Diaspora network. As a result, the user retains ownership and control of their data.  
However the fundamental question remains: how will Diaspora make money? Without a subscription or licence fee for users the only realistic option is an advertiser-funded model  The temptation for the Diaspora team will surely be the same as currently facing Facebook: how to serve the needs of the advertiser to maximize revenues.

Concerns over privacy issues may well start people rethinking their need for a Facebook account - but whether an alternative model exists remains to be seen. 
 
Diaspora launches this September.

Facebook mishandles privacy update

Last week Facebook rolled-out a new set of privacy settings. If you're a Facebook user you can't really have missed it. You were forced to at least review the settings when you logged-in.

It was billed as putting the user in greater control of their data and the information that they share with others, with advertisers and with 3rd party applications.

However, after many months of critical speculation and reassurance that Facebook was taking privacy seriously, it appeared that some of the new default settings automatically made personal information available to more, rather than fewer, people (irrespective of one's previous settings). For example the default setting for member photos and birthdays used to be limited to 'friends' however, the new default setting extends this to 'friends of friends'.

It's not all bad news, however. Where a user wants to review and adjust their privacy settings the new Facebook controls allow customisation of almost every element including what information is shared by applications.

We all understand that Facebook has to evolve its business model. Its core asset is the data it holds on its members. However, the fear now is that to drive advertising growth it will start to push members into sharing more than they want (or more than they thought they had shared) simply because most users simply won't want to spend the time adjusting complicated settings, or they simply don't understand the implications.

However, as both behavioural targetting and social search become the new battlegrounds for both social networking sites and the major search engines - understanding what personal information is accessible by whom will become increasingly important.

Commvergence - the future of digital communications

No 'commvergence' is not a typo.

I've been struggling for some time to keep track of my various email addresses (I have 4), social networks (Linked-In, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter), communication tools (Skype, Messenger), RSS feeds & mobile (SMS, email and so on). And that's not to mention the volume of emails, feeds, Tweets, pokes and messages that each channel produces.

Now I know that because I work in the industry I am bound to sign-up and try-out more channels/routes than most consumers. However managing digital communications is a growing problem for consumers. A recent survey from Emailvision has found that women are half as likely as men to read the email newsletters they receive and are more prone to cancel their subscriptions citing 'cluttered inboxes'.

So how will consumers start to manage? That's where I think that 'commvergence' will play a part: tools and service that bring together and unite different digital communications.

iGoogle goes someway in starting this. Flock and Swimwire are amongst a group of tools that allow users to aggregate their social networking sites. But other tools such as Fuser and Orgoo aim to provide access to all your email and social network accounts in one place. Orgoo is not yet in public beta, but Fuser is up an running and provides the familiarity of a web-based email interface to manage messages and contacts. It's not perfect, but it's a start.

What's clear is that it won't be long before Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! get involved. Because a one-stop-shop for online communications is a huge consumer need and will become a key traffic driver (and hence revenue) for those properties.

Skittles: a great idea in need of a strategy?

The new Skittles' global .com site (skittles.com) has garnered a huge amount of coverage over the last week. For those that haven't seen it yet the site has little content of it's own (simply product & content information) and instead uses iframes to publish content from Wikipedia (for the Skittles brand and company information), Facebook (the Skittles Fan page), Twitter (showing all live tweets containing the word 'skittle') and YouTube (a Skittles's channel showing advertising and user videos).

It's not unique - Modernista was playing with this a couple of years ago (modernista.com) but it is the first time that a brand has put it's global site in the hands of its consumers.

And yes, that's brave. It really shows a brand team understanding the fact that, in the world of Web 2.0, not every aspect of the brand can be controlled and managed.

Sure, there have been hiccups this week. Initially Twitter was set as Skittles' home page. However, the unfiltered feed started to contain significant amounts of bad language. Most recently the majority of feeds appeared to be marketing and sociological comments (with links to numerous blogs) on the brand strategy - rather than consumers actually discussing the product. So the home page has changed to the Wikipedia entry for Skittles.

But nevertheless the site has received an enormous amount of PR and publicity from the strategy. As Mashable says "Skittles is basically saying: "We get it. Whatever we can do cannot be as awesome as what you guys and girls can do, so we'll just link to it and let you do your thing".

So as an idea it's generated a large share of voice online. But is there really a longer term brand strategy here?

For starters to view the site the consumer needs to state their date of birth (presumably there is a minimum age restriction - but that's not made clear) - so for a youth brand a large proportion of its consumers are potentially disenfranchised from entering - unless they lie about their age - simply because bad language/adult content could be contained in the UGC.

And there are technical issues with the site. It's not accessible (it requires the Flash plug-in and there is no HTML alternative). From a usability perspective the floating menu system obscures the screen and readability of the content behind.

But the biggest issue is simply this - what exactly is the longer term strategy? Ok, consumers may come today based on the hype. But what's going to bring them back? And when they are on the site - are they having a brand experience that builds brand equity or are they participating in a social media experiment?

Time will tell.

Should brands pay to Twitter?

There's been a lot of discussion this week on rumours that Twitter is considering charging brands to get involved with the platform.

Twitter is an innovative way to communicate with customers, but, as a paid-for communications vehicle, the returns are untested. There are many other proven digital channels that would take priority in a brand’s marketing budget.

Twitter’s dilemma is creating a business model and beginning to repay its initial $20m venture capital investment. To start by charging brands a subscription seems counter intuitive. Firstly, there’s the whole area of enforcement - how would brand involvement be policed? And, secondly, will enough brands get involved to create a sustainable business model?

Twittering takes a larger investment than the subscription cost - there’s the continual demand for content creation, and reaction to ‘Tweets’ that have a direct cost for brands.

A better approach would be for Twitter to monetise its site traffic through online advertising, or search, in a similar way to Facebook. Then it could allow brands that want to Tweet to continue their involvement, and prove the effectiveness of Twitter as its user base grows.

Introducing a paid-for-subscription service once the brand case has been made seems a wiser option.

Should brands develop applications for mobile handsets?

There has been a resurgence in "app stores" driven by the success of Apple App store. Android, Apple, Samsung, RIM, O2 and Nokia (rumours) have all announced plans to move into the space.

So should brands look to develop mobile applications?

There is always a danger that brands ‘pile-in’ to a new way of getting in front of consumers. The beauty, and Holy Grail, here is that if a brand can create a compelling/useful application it will received regular on-going usage and potentially become a viral phenomenon. This was clearly demonstrated within the area of social network applications – eg Facebook apps where there was a rush to develop branded applications

In the majority of cases however these Facebook applications weren’t useful and got the minimum of on-going usage – with client picking up the (often) quite large development costs. Of course there are huge successes - Trip Advisor’s ‘Cities I have Visited’ being one. It’s a good example of the fact that the most successful applications will always provide a service for consumers

So brands need to learn the lessons from the world of social media before rushing headlong into the mobile application world. Building for the iPhone is one thing (it’s largely one handset and operating system) – but building for the myriad of manufacturers (eg Samsung, Nokia etc), handset variations and network providers (eg Vodafone, O2 etc) means that an added ‘watch-out’ for brands is that applications for mobile phones are more complex (and therefore expensive) to build

So what are the golden rules for brands in considering the development of a mobile application? Brand teams need to ask themselves:

• “Would I/my customer really use this?”/ “would I/they want to send this to friends?” – many ideas fail to ever meet this most basic of usefulness/viral requirements
• “Is credible brand territory” – Carling’s iPint is a great brand fit, but Aston Martin’s brand Nokia phone felt too mass market for the brand

If the answer to these is ‘yes’ then brands should minimise complexity of their mobile developments; focus on the most popular handsets rather than all possible configurations – and maximise the PR around it (that will put the brand in front of more consumers than the application itself will)

Obama, brands and disco dad

An interesting question raised today was whether UK politicians will try and replicate President-Elect Obama's online strategy - engaging the young and politically disenfranchised to get involved or donate through social media.

The strange thing is that it's hard to see how that could/would happen with the current leaders of the 3 main UK parties. And that got me thinking about brands.

Obama succeeded in exploiting social media successfully because, as a 'product' he could naturally exploit digital media: he's young (well for a presidential candidate, anyway), he's different (his African-American background) and he's the challenger-brand (not rooted in the current establishment but an advocate of change).

In essence he had the brand credibility to be able to use digital media as a natural channel to communicate his message to his audience.

And it's much the same with brands. Not all brands will automatically be able to exploit social media in the way that say Apple, Radiohead, Innocent etc have. These brands have the intrinsic credibility built into their values that mean, like Obama, social media is a natural extension of how they communicate with an audience who are social-media-natives.

Other brands need to work hard to establish how and why they can get involved. Social media can't simply be a "me too" approach grafted on to a brand's communication strategy.

Consumers are far too savvy to accept that and those brands that try to muscle their way in end up looking like a dad at the disco (as one of my colleagues called it the other day): just like Mssrs Brown, Cameron or Clegg on Facebook, Twitter or Myspace.

The changing face of networking

One of the biggest developments over the past 18 months in the consumer space has been the rise of the social networks. This rapid consumer adoption of sites like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook has been quickly picked up by the business community with B2B social networking sites such as LinkedIn which, after seeing a slow start to member numbers 3-4 years ago, has doubled in size over the last 2 years on the back of the social networking boom.

The prediction is that consumer focused social networking sites will evolve away from their current generalist nature towards more specialist communities; whether that’s related to shopping (Yub.com), pets (fuzzster.com) or student travel (statravellers.com). This will become increasingly relevant for the B2B world where communities can be easily built on industry sectors. It’s always been true within the interactive and software world, where developer forums have been a key means of product development and solutioning, but these more specialist social networks are popping against wider industry sectors:

• MedicalMingle.com for Healthcare professionals
• Sermo, where doctors can seek advice and get access to relevant content
• INmobile.org - a network for senior mobile telecoms executives
• Adgabber - for the advertising community
• E-Factor – a European-based network for entrepreneurs to share knowledge and advice
• Damsels in Success – a women-only professional networking site, focusing on career and business issues.

B2B brands will need to understand how to ensure that they can leverage these new networks to drive awareness, seed content (as with the B2C world) and build customer advocacy.

Online PR is important here – the ability to get news out quickly, targeted to your specialist audience and often through trade bodies, can enhance influence in the marketplace and so improve the ability to get new customers considering you as an authority in your space.

And outside of the social networks themselves, the personal Blog has also been adopted by the B2B community. One of the most famous examples of B2B blogs is Darren Strange’s “Officerocker” that he created in the run up to the launch of Office 2007. Darren is the UK product manager for the 2007 Microsoft Office system and is credited with changing Microsoft Office into a personality rather than a faceless product through blogging. Since setting up the blog two years ago, “Officerocker” has allowed him to build a dialogue with customers, partners and press attracting around 250,000 hits each month.

Potentially one of the biggest (but currently most under-utilised) communication areas is RSS. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows users to subscribe to an information feed from a website and view it within their own browser. What’s important about RSS feeds is that (a) the user has actively subscribed to that information, and (b) unlike email, there are no ISP issues to be navigated, so RSS means 100% deliverability of information to the user.

Some 80% of internet professionals are already using industry or sector-specific RSS feeds, and more than half of them (54%) have personalised homepages. [Source: E-consultancy / Convera, Nov 2007]