google Me. Or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love Privacy.

Juli 12th, 2010 • View Comments Business, Social, Strategy
Tags: Business, Facebook, google, google me, Prediction, Presentation, privacy, Reports, Social Networks, Strategy, World

Most of you may have heard about the so called Facebook killer ‘Google Me‘ that supposedly binds half of google’s resources currently. And as most of you know, google has not exactly been successful with social networking by now. Especially after google Buzz also failed as a platform that is able to compete with Facebook. google knows they need to get their hands on social. Why? Steve Rubel explains it quite well…

google will ‘continue to dominate “pull.” But Facebook will aggregate content, make it social and rule “push.” Using our social circle it will surface content that we care about just when we want it – and allow us to comment on it all. As more people use Facebook to connect, share and create, a network effect takes over – and the system get even smarter.’ And that is exactly what google needs to do to stay alive in the long term.

No matter how successful Facebook is with its social strategy – they need to conquer Planet Push asap or become Facebook’s junior partner. In the middle of all the buzz about google Me we have to read the deck embedded below as a first rationale for google’s new platform – not as the ‘designing social networks’ deck that it wants to be. It was created by one of google’s lead User Experience architects Paul Adams and it criticizes Facebook existing social networks and the way they make people interact with a clear focus on privacy. What a surprise!

Even beyond the google Me hype – definitely a deck worth to take a look at (even though it is looooong).

Big question: Do you think google might make it this time? Do you believe privacy will be an USP strong enough to differentiate google Me from Facebook? Leave a reply.

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Bad News. Nobody is interested in your Social Platforms.

Juni 23rd, 2010 • View Comments Social, Strategy, Tools
Tags: Brands, Prediction, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Truth, World

Actually I hate documents about social media. Honestly. I hate these decks almost as much as infographics about social media.

But I have to admit, I started smiling while I read this deck by Bart De Waele. It is not an analysis, it does not stage new insights or come up with a new conclusion to what marketing is all about – it just says what needs to be said. “Nobody is interested in your social stuff, as long as you do not interact constantly, honestly and wholeheartedly. Marketing in the social sphere should not revolve around rollout plans but around conversations.” Period.

Thanks to ‘We are social‘ for sharing it.

Update. The ‘Social Media Revolution’ Strikes Back.

Mai 9th, 2010 • View Comments Social, Social Business, Trends
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Diagram, diagrams, Figures, Funny, Future, Media, Prediction, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Trends, visual, World

I love good info visualizations. But I hate social media info graphics. There are just too many of it. Nevertheless I like this little movie. It is called “Social Media Revolution 2″ and it is an update to its very successful predecessor which flooded twitter half a year ago. Now with updated statistics and images. Created by author Erik Qualman and based on the #1 Best Selling book Socialnomics. Enjoy.

Hey Mashable. I think you can drop the google Buzz button now.

April 27th, 2010 • View Comments Social, Tech, Tools
Tags: google, google Buzz, mashable, Prediction, Social Networks, Tech, Tools, Twitter

I don’ t want to say, I told you so. But I told you so. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about google’s twitter killer social network thing that is not as cool as the other things with massive privacy flaws. Chitika has the figures:

February 9th, 2010 – the day Buzz was launched – the search engines lit up with queries.  The Chitika network saw about 1,500 searches that day for the term “Google Buzz,” approximately 15 times the number of searches for “Twitter.”

By the 15th, searches for the service had dwindled to less than ten a day, and since February 26th there has been a constant stream of one search per day.

Finally I want to add an artwork which I have created from share buttons on mashable’s homepage. I think we can drop the google buzz button now, can we?

World Domination. We like.

April 24th, 2010 • View Comments Business, Social, Tech, Tools, Trends
Tags: Business, Facebook, Future, I like, Open Graph, Philosophy, Social Graph, Social Networks, Strategy, Tech, Tools, Trends, World

With about 420 million active users (more than 50% of them logging in every day) Facebook really is a James Bond villain’s dream come true. And no, it is not just successful. Facebook is killing it’s competitors. It has simply buried Myspace, Orkut and others and won’t stop growing. I don’t know what is going to be the No 1 social network 2020. But currently I bet it still might be Facebook.

What was once google, is – in parts – about to become our favourite Evil Empire. google may still rule everything Pull but Zuckerberg works hard to turn its business into a Push Superpower. If you search for the Large Hadron Collider you choose google. But Facebook is your choice for the restaurant around the corner and your fave sneaker brand. And since wednesday things are on the move again…

One Graph to Rule them all

In case you haven’t heard the term Social Graph before – it will either become important or obsolete in the future – simply because Facebook wants to own or dominate it. In his 2007 article ‘Thoughts on the Social Graph‘ Brad Fitzpatrick talked about the Social Graph as ‘the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related‘. Basically it is the people you know, the stuff you listen to, read, tweet, and tag, and what you put on maps – and the question how you access and distribute the information to your friends. By now there wasn’t one but many disperse social graphs. But the more we are intertwined on Facebook as the one connector, the better the platform’s chances to become the knot of earth’s social graph. Now, after some technical adjustments last week Facebook is de facto trying to nothing less than that.

Well, world domination looks a little bit different, I have to admit. Mark Zuckerberg’s tools for world domination are so unobrusive that nobody understand them who is not part of the industry. What Facebook delivered on its F8 conference looked…well…small…but may have more than significant outcomes.

• Cornerstone of Facebook’s conquest is the Open Graph Protocol -  basically a techn0logical extension of the social network that treats the free web (the artist formerly known as Not Facebook) as Facebook entities.
• This can be studied through Facebook’s well known ‘I like’ button (plus many more new social plugins) which is now available for every web page (look up). Facebook will treat blog posts (which are part of the system) just like Facebook posts – and of course draws data from them.
• Facebook Fanpages and ‘Fans’ do not exist anymore, get replaced by ‘I like’
• Facebook Connect as a quasi-brand will be dumped
• And a couple of other revisions. Facebook did not go too much into details but it will soon finish off all other competitors in the economy by offering its own currency and geo-location solutions.

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Facebook. Killing them not so softly.

April 9th, 2010 • View Comments Social
Tags: Business, Diagram, Facebook, Future, Prediction, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends, World

Just a quick one. It’s absolutely no secret that Facebook is turning into the No 1 platform for interaction worldwide. But it is more than that. Facebook literally kills its competitors. This is Businessinsider’s Chart of the Day based on fresh comscore figures. And it is pretty obvious what is happening here…

Absolut. NY-Z.

März 26th, 2010 • View Comments Underway
Tags: Absolut, Brands, Cool, Event, Facebook, Jay-Z, Lifestyle, Live, Madison Square Garden, Music, NYC, Social Networks, Underway, Viral, We like

There are only few brands in this world to consistently communicate and cooperate on such a high level as Absolut. Actually stuck in a low interest market with a completely generic product But it manages to bring the Arrr back into Marketing. Its success formula is simple: Intertwine local places and artists and stage the brand as enabler in the background. For its current sponsorship of Absolut’s Concert Series (in tandem with TBWA\Chiat\Day), the brand is cooperating with the notorious Jay-Z.

This week ABSOLUT Concert launched “NY-Z”, a 17-minute online film and lovechild of director Danny Clinch. Through a partnership with Madison Square Garden and Jay-Z, the brand follows the hiphop star in the days leading up to his 9/11 benefit concert. He reflects on his life in a candid, Sinatra-esque way that kind of reminds us of “Fade to Black,” the documentary film Jay-Z did in 2004 during his “The Black Album” tour. (via Culture-Buzz)

The mentioned video is the highlight feature of Absolut’s Facebook page. And yes, it is exclusive, cool and stages the brand more than well. Plus I really like the video personally since I had the pleasure to see Jay-Z at Madison Square Garden NYC last week as surprise guest for Alicia Key’s concert. A convincing presentation and well tuned interaction of story and platforms. Cool, Absolut NY-Z.

Social Networks. Age is definitely more than just a number.

Februar 28th, 2010 • View Comments Reports, Social
Tags: age, Cool, Diagram, pingdom, Presentation, Reports, Social, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends, visual, World

First of all follow Pingdom on twitter. Seriously.

Secondly, it is not common for me to quote the research results of one thinktank for the second time in two days. Here I will make an exception. Simply because Pingdom respects the golden rule of being quoted on the social webs in perfect harmony with the four key elements of social nerd buzz:

• do the research/poll/well argumented guess about Planet Earth
• follow up with number crunching (if there are numbers)
• draw a great looking diagram
• tweet the hell out of it

Today we talk about age distribution and social networks. It’s neither a secret nor surprising that there is an age gap between LinkedIn and Twitter. But as long as you don’t nail down this fact into a diagram you don’t make a point on the intertubes. Right? Right.

Here we go…

Fact: Age distribution in social networks varies among social networks

High five! We are number one. If you are a 36 year old tech savvy, male, digital nerd the following diagram enlightens you with one key information – you will meet the ones you like (and who are like you) over and over again. Your mom probably isn’t yet a registered member of Facebook and your teenage cousin probably isn’t as well. But be prepared for the next generation to be 150% part of the game. Unfortunately they are not really relevant yet marketing wise (but they will follow….muahahahahahahahahahahahaha).

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Bring the Noise. Why google Buzz will Fail.

Februar 11th, 2010 • View Comments Social, Social Business
Tags: Brands, Business, Facebook, google, google Buzz, google wave, Social Networks, Strategy, Tech, Trends, Twitter, World

Two days ago google announced google Buzz, a new socialnetworky add-on to its well known and beloved gmail service. As expected, google is trying once more to advance into enemy territory – social networking. Since its foundation the company is great in search and media but it sucks big time when it comes to content and real, human interactions.

So, yesterday morning I found this google Buzz Button in my gmail account. And what I saw next was nice but two years too late.

One day with google Buzz

google Buzz tries to do anything at once and doesn’t do anything really good. Basically it’s a mixture of twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and Foursquare. That does not sound too bad, unfortunately I have no idea where google is in this concept.

Apart from the lack in own, new ideas the first finding is – the UX is horrible. Years ago google was on the forefront of UX design. But google Buzz almost looks like google Wave light. Do you remember google Wave? Sure you do (I have 1 gazillion invites left if you like). In short, google Buzz combines at least four specialized interoperable social services in one shitty interface, spices it up with even worse than ususal privacy flaws, integrates it into gmail an calls it Buzz.
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Technographics. Forrester’s Ladder just got a new Rung.

Januar 19th, 2010 • View Comments Reports, Social, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Conversationalist, Diagram, Forrester, Groundswell, Model, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Technographics, Tool, Tools, Twitter

In 2007 Forrester’s Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff introduced the world to the Groundswell model. It has become something like a standard (if there is one) in Social strategies, summarizing data-based strategies for companies that want to harness the power of social technologies. One key aspect of it was the Social Technographics Ladder that profiled users from all over the world according to their level of tech-savvyness in the social realm (plus, they offer a handy online tool too).

No doubt, the Technographics Ladder was a great first model to profile overlapping customer groups and their ability to move in the social space. And – what I liked most about it – Forrester fed it with up-to-date data to turn it into a valuable model for marketers. Nevertheless there were too few rungs on the ladder. We understood that there are Inactives, Spectators, Joiners, Critics and Creators…but something was missing.

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