Facebook – Data and Haters

When it arrived in 2005, Facebook was a near instant hit. I heard of it through word of mouth and, because everyone else was using it – I signed up. Previous to that I had signed up to Myspace and previous to that the graveyard that is Friends Reunited. Since Facebook launched I also use Twitter, Friendfeed (now owned by Facebook), Last.fm, Foursquare, Chatroulette (purely for research mind)… and i’ll probably join a fair few others in the coming months and years.

Now this is a somewhat bipolar post. I don’t believe Facebook is a force for evil, but I am uncertain about one huge organisation owning hundreds of millions of peoples data. Consider it more of an exploration than a citation.

So why did I join Facebook? Well initially, like I have said, because everyone else was signing up and we all want to be included don’t we? Since then Facebook as a platform has evolved significantly. Not autonomously though. It has been hugely affected by the rise of Twitter and has attempted to keep up through matched functionality. But it seems to have lost it’s way. In trying to be like everything else it has lost it’s sense of brand identity.

What is Facebook now? What is its USP over say, Twitter?

Basically, a lot more people use it. I always use my wife as a benchmark to a products commercial or mainstream success. She doesn’t use Twitter but uses Facebook every day. A LOT! Because all of her friends do. The thing is 99% of Facebook users *probably* don’t give two hoots about all of the recent privacy issues. They log on to Facebook they have a nose at what other people are doing through reading statuses and looking at photos. They post their own statuses / photos and then log out. Then log in again to check responses. Then log out. Then login in again etc etc ad infinitum.

I work in the digital industry and so I of course take an interest in Facebook’s data issues along with all other news and trends. The winds of change seem to be turning against Facebook mainly due to these privacy issues. People are starting to (quite rightly) question where their data is going and how it is being stored. Who has access to this data and how is it being used?

How long can Facebook HQ claim ownership of your likes / dislikes, personal details or relationships? Well if you’re thinking of quitting Facebook based on them owning your data think again. Their privacy policy clearly states that even if you leave them, they will still own and use your data:

“Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users.”

Plus:

“Additionally, we may retain certain information to prevent identity theft and other misconduct even if deletion has been requested”

So deleting your Facebook account may well be a proud gesture but they still have your data. Wouldn’t you rather remain a member of Facebook to receive their updates. You know the saying, “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

I don’t really agree with the current Facebook bashing that seems to be en vogue. I find it useful and use it daily, as do every single one of my friends. I use it in a completely different way to Twitter (work based), Foursquare (location based), Myspace (music based). I have friends in diferent areas of the country, Italy, America, Australia and can contact them with relative ease on Facebook. If I want something more then yes, i’ll probably arrange a Skype call or its equivalent.

However, all of the above said, i’ll leave you with this scary disclosure from Facebooks privacy policy:

“If the ownership of all or substantially all of our business changes, we may transfer your information to the new owner so that the service can continue to operate.”

eek.

Thanks to Kristian Carter for inspiring this blog post.

Twitter Bans 3rd Party Ad Platforms

Today on their blog Twitter have announced that they will be restricting the use of the Twitter API technology and so exclude platforms whose business models are centred around Twitter monetisation.

So does this mean that Twitter is clearing the way for it’s own monetisation model? They also hint at an upcoming Twitter analytics provision…

Here is what they say in their post:

There has never been more opportunity for innovation on the Twitter platform than there is now. In order to continue to provide clarity, our guiding principles include:

“1. We don’t seek to control what users tweet. And users own their own tweets.

2. We believe there are opportunities to sell ads, build vertical applications, provide breakthrough analytics, and more. Companies are selling real-time display ads or other kinds of mobile ads around the timelines on many Twitter clients, and we derive no explicit value from those ads. That’s fine. We imagine there will be all sorts of other third-party monetization engines that crop up in the vicinity of the timeline.

3. We don’t believe we always need to participate in the myriad ways in which other companies monetize the network. “

They then go on to say:

“We understand that for a few of these companies, the new Terms of Service prohibit activities in which they’ve invested time and money”

So to paraphrase, “You’ve made money out of us for long enough…if we can’t make money out of our own service, then you’re not going to either. So there!”

100,000+ Facebook Ad Impressions For… £4.04

ROI is a dangerous word when used in the context of social media. Community and relationship building, engagement are all difficult to measure by definition. Defining engagement is difficult enough…

What we are able to do however is define specific objectives on the base assumption that these lead in some way towards meeting the final aim.

So with a budget of £10, YES £10 I conducted a little experiment in the value of Facebook adverts. Using my band as the product, the overall goal of the experiment was to get more people to listen to our music. To do this it is necessary for them to go to the URL www.myspace.com/listentorapids and listen to the music there. I created an advert as follows (I know it’s not great copy but it was an experiment ok!):

Targeting

I then targeted the advert at the following Facebook user demographic:

Those:

• who live in the United Kingdom
• who live in Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bristol, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Oxford, Poole or Southampton
• age 18 and older
• who like bloc party, foals, futureheads, joy division or placebo
• who are not already connected to Rapids!

Reasoning

So I wanted to target only those in large conurbations within the UK as these areas are where we are more likely to go and play. The age group was left as open as possible. Crucially users were targeted not only that already had an interest in music but specifically in the genre of music that my band makes. It’s no good getting people to listen to music on the Myspace if they like Metal, Classical or Jazz music for example. It was also possible to target the advert at people who weren’t already ‘fans’s of Rapids! on Facebook as what would be the point of them seeing the advert? They have already listened to our music.

Please Don’t Click!

The main point is that I actually didn’t want users to click on the ad as this would end up being costly. Facebook offers two payment structures; per click and per impression. I could have used copy that led people to click on the advert and be taken to the destination/landing page (Myspace) but then I would have been paying per click. So instead, within the main copy I included a call to action to visit the Myspace page and gave readers of the ad the URL to enter.

This resulted in 400 extra listens to our music in two days from 101,077 Facebook ad impressions of which 14 people clicked on the ad at a cost of £4.04.

Cost per listen – £4.40 / 400 = 0.0101

1 Pence!

So hopefully my little experiment shows you that it is possible to get huge exposure on Facebook, at a targeted demographic for very little budget but still have measurable returns.

Myspace Aims to Be More Of A Music Player

Myspace has just released the beta version of its brand new way to listen to the music of Myspace artists – My Music

The My Music area aggregates all of the artists you are ‘friends’ with in to one musical hub allowing for quicker selection of music. Where-as before users had to navigate between different artist pages to listen to music, My Music allows for a more streamlined experience.

Is Myspace trying to compete with the likes of Spotify? Well duh! Obviously. Spotify was a revolution in the provision of ‘free at the point of consumption’ music and changed has the playing field. This development brings Myspace a step closer to being a free music player. BUT…only a step. It still has the sense of been a re-skin of an ageing giant. The awful search results bring up relevant artists and it would be good if you could add of delete artists to the My Music area. After all who actually likes the music of ALL of the bands you’re ‘friends’ with on Myspace?

It is a positive step by Myspace, adding useful functionality to a dated social network. You do however get the impression that Myspace is becoming the ‘major label’ of social networking. Always playing catchup to the likes of Last.fm and Spotify and trying to paper over the cracks of an ageing business model. Rather than these constant extensions and re-skins, at some point soon they are going to have to wake up and smell the musical and social networking coffee. When this happens I predict a major change in the whole structure of Myspace OR the demise of the News Corporation owned social network.

Oh and Myspace if you are reading this… please create an application allowing me to listen to Myspace artist music on the iphone/itouch/smartphones. Last.fm do, Spotify do…if you did I’d use it every day!

What do you think?

4 People To Follow – Social Media At The BBC

I know it’s not Friday (#ff) but here are four people at the BBC who are ‘doing’ social media at the BBC and who I think are definitely worth a follow, if not for what they do now then for the potential that they have working in social media for the worlds largest broadcaster:

1. @huey – Hugh Garry, Senior Interactive Producer at Radio 1

2. @Laura_milkteeth – The latest addition. Laura May Coope is the new Social Media & Content Producer for Radio 1 & 1xtra

3. @alexgubbay – Social Media Editor for BBC News

4. Roo Reynolds – Portfolio Executive, Social Media, BBC Vision

NMA Live – Defining ‘engagement’. Clue: (You can’t)

Having attended the NMA Live event last Friday entitled ‘Demystifying Engagement’ it struck me that not one person in the room could answer the question ‘What Is Engagement?’ without answering like a politician (this isn’t intended to offend it merely proves the difficulty involved in answering the question…).

Well all definitions start in the dictionary so we’ll start with a quote (courtesy of Wikipedia):

“Engagement measures the extent to which a consumer has a meaningful brand experience when exposed to commercial advertising, sponsorship”

The esteemed educational establishment of Princeton, USA defines it as:

“the act of sharing in the activities of a group”

But engagement can also be an offensive term when used in the context of war and fighting!:

“a hostile meeting of opposing military forces in the course of a war”

So when we’re talking about how engaged someone is in a brand, what on earth do we classify as ‘engaged’. Some people may offer that engagement can easily be measured in terms of clicks or dwell time for a piece of content.  They would argue that if people are choosing to click on the ad or the play button on a video and then watch a large percentage of it (dwell time), then they have been engaged.

Maybe, maybe not. What I would say is that there are far too many factors (and factors within those factors) that affect engagement that it is nigh on impossible to measure, control or predict.

Factors Affecting Engagement

Personal Experience

Engagement is impossible to measure on anything more than a personal level. What engages Mr White may not engage Mr Black. Mr Black and Mr Grey may both find a video about someone slipping on a banana skin funny, but this may have actually happened to Mr Grey so he finds it a bit less funny. So personal experience affects Mr Grey’s level of engagement. Mr Green might have heard from Mr Grey about how funny this video clip is and so clicks on it on Youtube and watches the whole thing. He doesn’t get it and is not engaged at all but when Mr Grey asks him about it he agrees how funny it was. So he acted like he was engaged…but he wasn’t. Still with me?!

Propensity to return (loyalty)

I’d go out on a limb and say that ALL brands like their customers to stay loyal. Loyalty is the product of engagement and engagement can increase loyalty. Chicken or egg anyone?

Propensity to share with others

This factor depends on three things; How shareable your content is, how easy you make it for users to share and whether individual users are ‘sharers’ (see Forrester’s Technographic Ladder for certain users that are more likely to share)

Intended Reaction

If you meant to make them laugh, did they? How much? Was it just a wry smile, a chortle or a hearty bellow.

Heart On Their Sleeves Index (HOTSI)

How much do they wear their heart on their sleeve? People who are easily excited, angered, amused are surely more likely to be engaged in a short piece of glanceable content? People who are guarded or who control their emotions may not be affected too much by your 20 second banner game and so although they click on your banner to play the game/watch the video etc they do so out of interest not excitement.

Brand/Subject Affinity

Previous exposure to a brand or having an affinity to something related to a brand will affect current levels of engagement. For example, Mrs Poodle who loves dogs is far more likely to be engaged in content or a story for the RSPCA than Jimmy the Postman who nearly gets his hand bitten off every morning by the dog at number 26!

Summary

So, in conclusion there is no conclusion. To qualify someone’s engagement by using metrics is like trying to define what makes a piece of music good or a painting a work of art. It is so subjective and personal that measurement can only really be done on a one to one basis through detailed questionnaires with open and closed question, Likert scales, interviews and other forms of qualitative data capture that you just can’t do on a large scale, only on a representative one.

Read the official NMA write up of the event here

Read presenter and panellist James Whatley’s round up including slides of his great presentation here

Now Bands Are Releasing iPhone Apps? Review – Delphic App

That’s right the latest band of the moment (BBC Sound Of 2010/MTV 10 for 10), Delphic have released an iPhone app called…well it’s called Delphic.

“To celebrate the release of their new single ‘Doubt’, Delphic have released a sound toy for the iPod and iPhone. It’s very simple to use, just start the drum loop and then touch the pads to hear their vocal samples in whatever way you want!”

Built by Retrofuzz, this is another addition to that already marketing heavy biz that is show.

Although it looks quite nice, this app doesn’t actually DO much. You download it and are given a option to start the beat. Then you can play 8 short vocal samples by tapping your phone. It would be alot better if there were samples of the instruments or if users could save and share their creations.

It is innovative though. A band (well their label) creating an iphone app is something i’ve not seen before.

Where once blogging was condensed to tweeting, apps seeming to be reducing to ‘microapps’? Small, downloadable apps that generate awareness and hope to provide enough of a call to action to make us move to the next stage of the purchase cycle.

Delphic’s app will hold your attention for 20 seconds max but by then you’ll have already downloaded it and are likely to have seen the name of their next single (Acolyte) and may even have clicked on the ‘download’ button. So their plan worked.

Download from iTunes here

Agency Christmas ‘Cards’ 2009

This year seems to be the year for going out on a limb with agency  Christmas Cards. A few years ago you’d maybe get an amusing email or a flashing html page. NOW. WOW!

Here are some of the best to catch my eye so far this Christmas. Leave a comment if you know of or see any others.

So…in no particular order…

Soup – This is great, you get to create your own song using Christmas bells. You can rehearse your recital and then record a 20 second tune!

http://www.soupxmas.co.uk/

Damashek Consuting – These guys are based in New York (you can tell cos it’s called ‘Happy Holidays’ not ‘Happy Christmas’) and this is one of the best i’ve ever seen. Enter the toy shop and play around with the toys. If you do a certain something correctly then you unlock…something (I won’t give it away!)

http://www.damashekconsulting.com/happyholidays/#

Redweb – The spirit Of Christmas.

Well I couldn’t do this without featuring our very own Christmas page! A festive page measuring and displaying the sentiment surrounding Christmas on Twitter.

http://christmas.redweb.com/

I won’t bog you down with the details as i’m a little hazy myself. Something to do with Arduino/Twitter/PHP but it’s good and pretty goddam  innovative. If you want to know more on how it was done read this excellent write up by the man himself Rob Hawkes

Ogilvy created quite a good iPhone app this year called Ogilvy White Christmas. It integrates with the phone’s camera to create a snow-scene where ever the camera is pointed. Download from iTunes

The not-so-anonymous-now Adlandsuit’s very own DLKW have created a shakeable snow globe. This hosts a live (7 second time lapse?!) webcam feed direct from the DLKW office presented in a snow globe. Which you can shake. Follow it on Twitter

http://www.dlkw.co.uk/merrychristmas/

Publicreative

These guys have realised that the real spirit of Christmas lies in…xfactor of course. The Xmas Factor aggregates all xmas related tweets and allows for users to vote on whether metions are ‘jingle bells’ good or ‘humbug’ bad. This is then presented in a leader board of the happiest chappies!

http://www.thexmasfactor.com/

Collective

This one’s good. It takes pride of place on the agency’s homepage and looks really nice. Enter your Twitter name and it scans tweets for naughty and nice words to see if you’ve been good! It’s also nice that they’ve not assumed EVERYONE is on Twitter and given an option to just use the Collective Twitter. Also, is that the theme tune to Bugsy Malone playing in the background?!

I did it and got, “Santa says: you’re naughty and you deserve…a carbolic soap mouthwash!

http://www.collectivelondon.com/

Albion London

Good pal Neil Potter and the guys over at Albion are helping their frinds who own a turkey farm. they’ve grown attached to the turkeys and can’t bring themselves to decide which to add cranberry sauce to…So Albion have set up two teams; Team Brad and Team Beyonce. You can join the teams on Facebook, Digg, Linkdin or Twitter. Beyonce is winning…Save Brad!

http://www.turkeyoff.com/

Lean Mean Fighting Machine

LMFM do loads of funny stuff throughout the year but their house band ‘Pipette of Sweat’ have just released a charity single called ‘Do They Know It’s Web 2.0 (Tweet The World)’

They are also doing a fake shopping trip. They’ve substituted shops for pubs and will be heading out on Dec 17th for the ‘shopping trip’. http://www.leanmeanfightingmachine.co.uk/everything%20else/xmas%20shopping

Skive (sister agency of Soup) have created ‘The Tweeting Twankey’

Every day for a week a male memebr of the Skive crew will be walking the streets whilst dressed up as the pantomime dame. He/she’ll be texting/tweeting/tweeting/twitpiccing/foursquaring as they go. Anyone who manages to locate the old dame between 1-2pm from the 14th-18th Dec will win £100 to spend in the shop they found him/her!

http://www.tweetingtwankey.com

Fuse 8 have devised a  clever little game whereby each sprout you get in a hole you power Father Christmas the the finish line by the power of parps.

http://poweredbysprouts.com/

Glue have gone for the charity aspect this year with Tweetawish for the Make a Wish Foundation. Christmas keywords mentioned in Twitter are fed in to the site and can be viewed through the visual representations. And the best bit…every time you tweet the hashtag #tweetawish, Glue will donate money to charity.

http://www.tweetawish.co.uk/

Or you can donate directly by going to http://justgiving.com/Glue-London (wow two people already donated £500 and £250 – nice one Glue!)

AKQA – I loved their hamster wheel lighting up a neon sign a couple of years ago and the Microwaves from last year. This year it’s less about Christmas and more about New Year with ‘Resotweetion’. This shows all tweets with the hashtag #newyearsresolution and the site lets visitors add their own through a What’s Your #newyearsresolution? bar.

Check it out here http://www.akqa.com/resotweetion/

Proximity, like Glue have gone down the charity route with their ‘Big Kids Calendar’ in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. This is them “doing childish things for serious reasons” taking the form of an advent calendar. Each day Proximity staff/teams do something silly and visitors are encouraged to donate in return. For example, tomorrow (Dec 18th) the data team are going to dress up as fish and go to the fish and chip shop…look forward to seeing that!

http://www.bigkidscalendar.com/

BD have done an interesting one. They have adopted a reindeer (called Bernard) and have pledged to adopt an extra reindeer with every 50 ‘clicks’ they get on http://reindeer.thisisbd.com/

Get clicking!

Others

There’s the Publicis one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpSTIKbrBOw

After the Publicis one gained a lot of (bad) attention there was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsdnucavA7g

And Finally… Christmas Light Hero!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXjbMIZzAgs

Myspace Pulls The Rug From Under Spotify’s Feet – Summary of Todays Big Myspace Update

Today has seen the launch of the latest incarnation of Myspace Music. Unlike previous updates, these are not simply a few design changes but a complete shift in the News Corporation owned company’s offering.

Where Spotify has led the way in streamed music, Myspace appears to have built on this with a much larger music library and, this is the hook, for free. Music streaming from Myspace will continue to be ad funded but crucially, unlike Spotify, adverts will not interrupt listeners between songs. Courtney Holt, President of Myspace Music told BBC 6 Music:

“We provide streaming audio, video, a comprehensive suite of artist tools, original content and programming all wrapped up together in one nice package”

Also now available on the new improved site will be DRM free MP3 downloads in conjunction with Apple iTunes.

Possibly though, this move has come too late with Last.fm seeing around 40 million monthly users of its music streaming service and Spotify gaining a great deal of press and publicity. Spotify has also made music more social by allowing playlist sharing. Myspace has taken note of this and now also offers users the option of sharing their Myspace playlists (although for some reason they are currently featuring a playlist by that epitome of d-list narcissistic vanity, Jordan).

I’m sure it’s in the pipeline but I look forward to the iphone app (as they have just partnered with Apple for the DRM free downloads, or desktop player. What Spotify and Last.fm have done really well is allow users to listen to their music as easily as posibble, Last.fm with it’s ‘scrobbling‘ and Spotify with its desktop application and both with their respective iphone apps. I envisage a whole lot more partnering if they are to gain back market share. Last.fm did this well when it partnered with X-box Live and saw 1 million additional users sign up in just a few days (300 new users per minute). We are in the age of collaboration for mutual gain.

Fiat are the first to be involved with the new playlist function with following their successful ’500c’ Spotify playlist. Their Myspace page allows users to select a playlist of song from any of the last 16 years, to mark the 16th birthday of the Fiat Punto. They only have three friends though so far…

Social Media – Digital vs non Digital Perspectives

Sometimes being in digital we can loose perspective of things. All i’m saying is, it’s important to remember that the users of different social media often don’t view the various platforms as we do (these are made up examples by the way, I haven’t been out doing focus groups or anything)

Facebook: Digital perspective – “Facebook allows brands to connect to people on their territory. By creating Facebook pages, applications and targeted ads, we can really interact and carry out a meaningful conversation.”

Facebook: Non digital perspective – “It’s a site I go on to talk to my friends look at photos of other people and add pictures of myself. I don’t even really notice the adverts and sometimes play games like Scrabulous or Poker.”

Twitter: Digital perspective - “With 20 million users per month globally, Twitter’s growth has made it THE social network of 2009. Celebrities and brands can converse directly with their audience without the Chinese whisper effect of offline comms. ” The open API has allowed for a whole host of third party applications to embrace Twitter, helping to increase its reach and functionality.

Twitter: non digital perspective – “Twitter? Why would I want to use Twitter, when I already have Facebook. I joined to follow ‘insert celebrity here‘ but he/she never replied to me so I never went on it again.”

Youtube: digital perspective – “The sharing of ‘glance-able content’ on platforms such as Youtube is perfect for providing engaging content to users/customers. With branded Youtube channels we can ensure maximum ROI and brand awareness. Click through overlays on videos can augment the ROI potential and a carefully moderated comment thread promotes interaction.

Youtube: non digital perspective – Er…I watch funny videos on it. Sometimes on my phone to show friends. If I really like it, I comment but I usually like to just read other people’s comments.

Linked In: digital perspective – Linked In has gained in popularity in 2009 and this is likely due, in part to recession related job losses/worries. It is a wonderful platform for companies to connect to individuals, particularly with respect to recruitment. Linked In allows offline business relationships to be taken further by connecting online with new and existing contacts.

Linked In: non digital perspective – Er…I never heard of Linked in. Why would I use that when I have Facebook.

Myspace: digital perspective – Since Myspace’s rise to prominence in 2005 this social network has waned in popularity. It does allow for some marketing opportunities though through page takeovers, banner ads and applications. The user profile is that of a younger audience and centred around a shared love of music. The Myspace platform provides blogging functionality as well as music uploads and artist pages, with profile pages being fully customisable enabling maximum brand focus.

Myspace: non digital perspective – “Yeah I started a Myspace a few years ago but when Facebook came out I started using that instead. Now I mainly use it to listen to new bands but not really for talking to friends.”