Jeremiah Owyang

Executive Video Interview: Why Dell Continues To Use Social Media

Bob Pearson (Twitter at bobpdell) Vice President, Communities & Conversations at Dell invited me out to Microsoft’s Architect Forum to co-lead a session on social computing.

I let my twitter community come up with questions, and I took three from the dozens to pose to Bob, select questions from: Cece Salomon-Lee, Ravit Lichtenberg, and oemporor (can’t find his tweet)

Here’s the questions I posed to Bob, if I could only spit the words out as well as I could write them:

Is IdeaStorm increasing revenues?

Is social media impacting the bottom and top line of Dell?

How Dell has made $1mm in revenue from Twitter.

Is social media superficial branding, or does it truly change the company?

How does an economic downturn impact Dell’s social media efforts?

Is it better for customers to self-support each other rather than calling Dell Support?

What’s the URL of your corporate webpage?

It’s great to learn first hand from Dell how they’ve used these tools to increase revenues and reduce costs –it’s time we focus on the business aspect of things rather than the feel good branding only. You can see one of Bob’s recent video interviews on the Direct 2 Dell site.

Or, see this visualization of the same interview by VizEdu

People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: Nov 24, 2008

Despite there being many layoffs in the startup space. I’ve started this post series (see archives) to recognize and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:

Geoff Merrick joins Ripple6 in the new position of VP of Professional Services coming from Buzzhub. Ripple6 is growing & seeking others in the NYC learn more from their careers page.

Kris Hoet switches jobs within Microsoft and is now the Digital Media Communications Manager for all Windows Consumer brands – PC, mobile and online – as well as MSN and Live Search in EMEA.

MySpace Music to name Courtney Holt, a former MTV executive chief next week, this spells out a greater focus on media for MySpace rather than pure networking.

Dave Giusti joins Freepath in September as the myFreepath Community Manager. myFreepath is a network of people who exchange content (videos, audio, documents…you name it) through playlists created in Freepath.

David Gillespie is now a digital strategist currently in Melbourne, Australia but relocating early January to Toronto, Ontario! He writes Creative Is Not A Department which has been named one of the top 50 marketing blogs in Australia and also one of the top 15 business blogs. I’m already building up my net work on the ground there through Twitter but every little bit helps!

Marc Smith, formerly Senior Sociologist Researcher on Microsoft’s R&D team, has joined Telligent as Chief Social Scientist. I can’t wait to meet you and talk shop, congrats Marc and team.

Submit an announcement
If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, leave a comment below, or if you’re feeling shy (it’s cool to self-nominate) send me an email. Please include a link to your announcement, and ensure you’re really living and breathing in the social media world –this is not a small aspect of your role.

Seeking Social Media Professionals?
If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

List of Enterprise Social Media Professionals
This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals.

See Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, fees pay for my hosting)

Read Write Web also has job announcements in Jobwire, although at a broader scope than my announcements

Connect with others in the community manager group in Facebook

Check out Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs

See Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs

SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed

ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community

Teresa has a few jobs, some around community

New Media hire has an extensive job database

Social Media Headhunter

Social media jobs

Jobs in social media

Hiring? Leave a comment
If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, or I’ll delete it)

I’m seeking folks that are related to full time hands on social media strategy and community managers, to be on this list, so let me know if you see these folks, and please submit them –try to include links to announcements on blogs or on the wire. Also, I probably will not include executive management changes on this list at social media companies, as the list would go on and on, but you can feel free to express yourself in the comments!

Retweet: The Infectious Power Of Word Of Mouth

Word of Mouth, the Holy Grail of Marketing
Word of mouth marketing is one of the most desirable activities to brands, why? Because research on trust shows that consumers (folks like you and me) trust the opinions of people we know more than anyone else. It makes sense of course, think about the next time you’re going to buy a car, who’s opinion are you going to trust, those of your friends or the opinion of the sales guy representing the product?

Twitter, Although Small, Continues to Demonstrate Influence
Twitter, which I’m seeing informal stats of around 5 million users, has continued to show it’s viral capabilities, with last week’s Motrin mom’s brand punking of an advertisement to news being spread about natural disasters faster than traditional news, this toolset allows content to spread faster and farther than we’ve ever seen. Watching how Al Gore’s Current TV integrated tweets live on their TV broadcast and how CNN and CSPAN mentioned this microblogging service during the election months is a nod to it’s power. In some ways, long form blog posts like this seem so much slower and plodding compared to how quickly information can come and go in Twitter.

The “Retweet” How Information Quickly Spreads
As a result, the most powerful activity within Twitter is to watch the “Retweet” phenomeneon. A retweet is when one individual copies a tweet from someone in their network and shares it with their network. It’s perhaps the highest degree of content approval, it means that the content was so valuable and important that they were willing to share it with their network –causing it to spread from one community to the next –retweets are the core essence of the viral aspect of content spreading. Early research from Peter Kim indicates that twitter users are brand sensitive, and spread information. Since content can be shared, consumed on mobile devices, this information can rapidly spread faster than any other infectious technology we’ve ever seen.

How to Measure and Monitor the Coveted Retweets
Expect to see social media measurement tools appear that measure the spread of retweets, URLs, and other commonly repeated content to look for how information is passed from a source to a node, to an entire community. In fact, in a very primitive way, you can see those that are repeating the content of others, for example Tim O’Reilly’s content. See this search query showing “Retweet @timorielly“, or “RT @timoreilly” (an abbreviated version).

You should do the same query for your brand, products, and those of your competitors, start with this query “retweet yourbrand“, and change out yourbrand. At some point we can expect a service to appear that will track a tweet from a single source, then track how it is retweeted, then by who (and their number of followers) then to create a numerical value of the velocity of that single original tweet as it cascades through a community.

Impacts to Users, Brands and Vendors

Twitter Users: If someone retweets your content, be and feel honored, it means that your content was so important or interesting to them they are willing to share it with their own trusted network. If you need some guidelines on how to retweet, read this handy guide.

Brands: Companies should pay close attention to how information spreads and should do searches on their product and brand to learn what type of information is being spread by who.

Vendors: Social media measurement companies like Cymfony, Buzzmetrics, Radian 6, Buzzlogic, and others should start tracking the retweet stream around a brand and product to monitor and map out community and content hotspots. It’s possible to create some type of “Digg” or “Delicious” tool that maps the social voting and bookmarking based off the data gleaned from Retweets and TinyURLs.

I’ll echo Shel Israel who posted similar thoughts that retweeting is the most powerful single aspect of Twitter.

Update: some stats are starting to appear about retweeting, see the Retweetist.

Why Magpie’s Advertising System Is Self-Diminishing

Testing a Twitter Advertising System
I tested out Magpie, an advertising system that creates tweets in my tweet stream, from third party advertisers then pays me.

Some have already blogged about their opposing thoughts on it, and some are publicaly open that they are now Magpies. For me, it was just a test that I’ve now ceased.

Part of my job as an analyst covering social media is to use the very tools in which I cover. I use this knowledge to write reports, help clients, and make suggestions to the vendors themselves. You can expect brands to ask me “how should we engage in Twitter” and I’ll point them to this very post.

There was quite the vitriolic reaction from some, others didn’t seem to mind, a few were acceptable of it. If there was anyone to test it, it makes sense for me, it’s part of my job, and I have a large enough follower base to average reactions.

I’m also going to measure the amount of folks that may have unsubscribed with TweepleTwak, hopefully they’ll realize it’s not permanent and return.

The Test
I setup the system a few days ago, and set it for every 10th tweet there would be an ad, the system is supposed to line up ads with content related to what I talk about. Either there was no brands related to what I talk about, or the system felt I talked about magpie enough, it tweeted this:

“#magpie startups give magpie a try! they’ve got a total reach of 500,000 followers. campaigns starting at EUR 10. http://rubyurl.com/k98e”

Immediately after, I let my followers know it was a test, and tweeted the following:

“That last tweet was my first test of Magpie, It was auto generated by them. I’m testing this as a social media analyst. What do you think? “

Successful or Accepted: 7 Responses

findchris: @jowyang Not so bad as long as the #magpie tag is used.

gahlord: Also, fwiw, I don’t care that much if @jowyang uses Magpie (I put up with a lot of noise for Guy, why not for Owyang?)

nateritter: @jowyang at least it was relevant. Probably first thing I’ve clicked on in your stream in a while actually. It interests me.

mediamanx: @jowyang the magpie ad seems relevant – though self promoting to magpie. will be interesteing to see what follows & how frequent they run

davidkspencer: @jowyang I wouldn’t mind it if the #magpie tag somehow stood out. It blends in, easy to miss. That’s an issue with app, not business model.

DavidBrim: @jowyang #magpie sounds cool, but I don’t think a CPM model will be as effective as a CPC or CPA model. http://tinyurl.com/6cvgzo

KevinUrie: @jowyang it will work for you, and you will not loose many followers. But for most it will be a death sentence. Saying test, ruins the test

Unsure, Neutral or Conditional: 14 Responses

ewantoo: @jowyang I think it will all depend on the adverts carried, an ad to buy herbal viagra is going to get you or anyone else blocked

jasonlog: @jowyang should think of twit copywriting

gahlord: @jowyang Will you have to give a disclaimer about potential profit motives when writing about Magpie?

john_mcgann: @ jowyang If early adopters are important to the advertiser then advertwitting could actually *damage* a brand… IMHO

jusx: @jowyang i wouldn’t mind magpie if it labels it’s tweets with “SPONSOR” or “ADVERTISEMENT”. Yes in caps. It’s a bit deceiving IMHO.

fritzpw: @jowyang I got a message advertising magpie. Was that the intent?

sawinkler: @jakemarsh @jowyang just had the same exact tweets. did I just see magpie in action?

JoeSeale: @jowyang IMHO magpie gives a certain opaqueness to the term transparency. Where’s the disclaimer that you didn’t *actually* post that info?

A_F: @jowyang they need to disclose in the tweet that it is a “sponsored” tweet, else = FAIL

JoeSeale: @jowyang I suppose I missed the #magpie. Does that count as a disclaimer?

techpr: @jowyang auto-generated by magpie (not clear) and they refer to themselves in third person. lame. twitter is about transparency, no?

NoOneYouKnow: @jowyang Magpie site http://be-a-magpie.com/ is a little confusing – is it pay for tweet? ad network?

fbpda: @jowyang I don’t think that #magpie is going to annoy me but if it bothers one of my followers then it’s a no-go for me.

jasona: @jowyang It was a big, blatant billboard on the side of a nice, quite, untouched country road.

Negative Reaction: 20 Responses

GrantGriffiths: @jowyang What do I think. I think #Mappie is a bunch of BS that twitter doesn’t need.

WBkilburn: @jowyang To me, it diminishes your credibility. Advert is in your voice – on blog ads, there’s a distinction between autor and advertiser.

bloodandmilk: @jowyang It made me wonder why you were running an ad, and I doubted your judgement a little.

laser: @jowyang I wish that the magpie tweets came across as ads rather than personal announcements. Seems kind of misleading.

t_de_baillon: @jowyang Magpie means more noise for less signal. I never thought diluting a message was a good marketing strategy

WellTold: @jowyang re magpie, I’d rather eat my foot than use that. Ads on twitter – leave me alione!!!!!

kerry_anne: @jowyang I blogged my reasons for disliking #magpie a few weeks ago: http://is.gd/6hD8 (expand)

durjoy: @jowyang I think it’s noise pollution

jonesabi: @jowyang The trust I feel when I think of you plummeted.

gilliatt: @jowyang I think be-a-magpie.com is making http://magpie.net glad they rebranded earlier. Twitter spam will not make friends.

thehartworker: @jowyang as much as I know I cannot influence at all what magpie twitters in my name – therefore: no way I will use it

kellytirman: @jowyang I am not feeling it. There must be a better solution to monetize Twitter, if at all.

PatrickCourtney: @jowyang there’s no real barrier between ad and content. To me it weakens credibility – like pay per post for blogs.

dtd: @jowyang I think no. The Magpie “message” seems to be coming directly from you.

seanodotcom: @jowyang spammy.

zolierdos: @jowyang Jeremiah, you gotta be kidding, this is spam

theregoesdave: @jowyang i think magpie is paying for your credibility, but you don’t get it back when they’re done #magpie

brentnau: @jowyang I really believe that if the tweets do not pass the sniff test followers wiil revolt. Escpecially if used too often.

AndySwan: @jowyang please don’t. #magpie is NO DIFFERENT than accepting $$ to send your friends spam emails or intterupt their real convos with pitch

Benderelly: @jowyang I think you’re cashing in – I ain’t clicking on it.

Unfollow: The worst reaction: 7 Responses

quietrevolution: @jowyang I like folks promoting themselves/their biz etc. I would delete you from my followers & anyone else that uses it. No value to me.

ericagee: @jowyang Yeah, I hatethe idea of Magpie and agree with Joe – I’d unfollow anyone who started using it regularly.

ninjarunner: @jowyang i have told myself that i will unfollow people who use #magpie. Love your tweets, at a cross-roads if you use it…

adarowski: @jowyang I can’t really think of any cases where magpie ≠ unfollow.

JoeCascio: @jowyang Dude, you have to be kidding. Anybody that spams me thru Magpie gets an automatic un-follow. 4reelz.

wnourse: @jowyang Don’t like it – I may stop following if people start using it

mark2100: @jowyang @JessicaKnows I’m unfollowing you because of Magpie, it’s nothing personal but tweeter users need to take a stand against spam.

Findings
Positive Reactions 7, or 14%
Unsure Reactions 14, or 29%
Negative Reactions: 20, or 41%
Unfollow (very negative) 7, or 14%

As you can see, the majority of responses were negative (20), some downright annoyed or angry and ready to leave (7), that means that 56% of respondents had negative reactions. Many were confused (14), or had conditions on why it could be successful, and finally a few were actually ok with it (7) a mere 14%. Given the weight of the majority of negative responses, this system is not ready.

Brands often don’t know how to engage in conversational marketing, we’ve seen quite a few brands create Twitter accounts, but are unsure what to do, some spit out press releases and links to blog posts alone, and others create personas like Popeye’s chicken that some are unsure how to react to.

Yet advertising in social media is already well accepted
One thing is for sure, just as we saw with the once “pure” blogs, marketers follow crowds, in fact, I remember in 2005 many bloggers would revolt against blogs having ads, my recent count showed that there are 4 on scobleizer, 12 on RWW, 14 on Techcrunch, and 21 ads on Mashable. (note, sometimes its hard to tell what’s an ad and what’s not). In fact, there are 1.5 million subscribers to Techcrunch’s RSS feed, which contains ads instream at the bottom of each post –ads are an acceptable part of opt-in content.

There’s also Glam Media, Federated Media, Google Ad sense and others, in fact, one of my favorite podcasts, For Immediate Release is sponsored by Ragan communications and other vendors, and I have no problem with this as the signal is high, and the ads are related to my interests.

Risks, Money, and Experiments
Yes, I took a risk losing some followers by doing this test, yet I’ve since stop the magpie service. Now that the test is over, and will be meeting with the Magpie team for a phone briefing if we can coordinate since the team is in Germany.

What about the money? It calculates the number of followers I have, (plus some other factors I believe) and Magpie let me know I earned a few euros, €32.87 which equates $41.39. I won’t be collecting the money, since they only cash out for 50 euros, and if they mail me a check, I’ll donate it to the Red Cross, my favorite charity.

Love to hear your reactions to this experiment.

Update: Just like Tivo, Ad blocking software and email spam filters appeared as a response to ads, a Magpie Blocking script has appeared which auto filters all messages that contain those messages in them.

Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008

Seeking stats for 2009? They are being compiled on this updated post.

Stats on social networks are important, but I’m going to need your help in creating a community archive, can you submit stats as you find them?

I’m often asked, “What are the usage numbers for X social network” and I’ve received considerable traffic on my very old post (way back in Jan) of MySpace and Facebook stats, even months later. Decision makers, press, media, and users are hungry for numbers, so I’ll start to aggregate them as I see them

An industry analysts’ perspective on web measurement:
To be clear, my employer Forrester doesn’t provide specific numbers about social networks like Compete, Comscore, Nielsen or others, we conduct our own surveys on user/brand behavior, opinions, and technographics, so I’m often asked for these numbers by press. I’ll use this page as a library, and point clients, press, and media to it, so they’re armed.

Numbers don’t tell us much without insight and intrepreation, in fact, you’re going to see conflicting numbers of usage from many of the agencies and social networks themselves. The key is to look at trend movements, don’t focus on the specific numbers but the changes to them over time.

I put more weight on active unique users in the last 30 days vs overall registered, in fact, the actual active conversion rate will often range from 10-40% of actual users sticking around and using the social network, so don’t be fooled by puffed numbers.

No single metric is a good indicator, you have to evaluate the usage from multiple dimensions, so you also have to factor in what are users doing, time on site, interaction, and of course, did they end up buying, recommending products, or improving their lives.

All Social Networks

Overall growth, Unique Audience of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, LInkedIn, MySpace and beyond, Oct 23, 2008, Nielsen Wire

Social Media Stats: This comprehensive wiki has additional data, Helen Lawrenece

Membership in social sites: Facebook, MySpace… and Classmates.com, Oct 2008, Rubicon Consulting

Extensive list of social networks by traffic, and google insights mentions, and demographics (but doesn’t state source), it’s best to use this comparatively, Dec 2008, Ignite Social Media

UK Social networking stats show growth, Hitwise Dec 2008

Social Technographics
Understand how people use different social technologies –the first step before you determine which tools to use.

Social Technographics Profile Tool, Forrester Research

New 2008 Social Technographics data reveals rapid growth in adoption, Forrester Research

AdultFriendFinder

59 million unique worldwide visitors per month according to comScore, For the nine months ended September 30, 2008, we averaged more than four million new member registrations on our websites each month, averaged over one million paying subscribers each month from whom we derived 77.2% of our internet revenues. Dec, 2008 IPO statements

Bebo

40 million registered users, Nov 2008, from Bebo directly to me

Beth Kanter has an archive of stats she’s taken screenshots of, as well as this handy index list.

BlogHer

Nielsen Site Census on all of the 2,500 blogs in our Publishing Network, and December, 2008 ended up with: 14.2MM uniques, 62MM page views. Comscore, a panel-based solution, a panel based survey indicated November, 2008 with 6MM uniques. Comscore typically runs at about 50% of our audit trails from Nielsen Site Census. Source: Told to me direct by Blogher, on Jan 2009

A treasure trove of stats are available in this PDF report, read the last slides about not even giving up chocolate!, Blogher, 2008

Digg

“Although the company claims it has 35 million unique users per month, independent researcher comScore (SCOR) says that Digg had 16.3 million users worldwide in October 2008, up 31% from last October’s user base of 12.4 million”, also “But according to Quantcast’s Web site, Digg.com claimed 21.7 million global users as of Nov. 30″, Dec 2008, Business Week

Facebook

Facebook usage skyrockets from election activity: Includes specific usage numbers, fans and supporters, Nov 5th, Source: Zdnet

Facebook 18 Million Unique Visitors in UK, top 5th overall web property, Sep-Aug 08, Source: Comscore

More than 120 million active users (does not indicate measure of active), Facebook is the 4th most-trafficked website in the world, More than 400,000 developers and entrepreneurs from over 160 countries, Over 52,000 applications are currently available on Facebook Platform, Nov 2008, from Facebook Stats Page

I was told by Mark Zuckerberg (face to face) that the total number of registered users is now 140mm, Dec, 2008

If the numbers are right, Facebook’s online users have grown by 30 million in the last four months, up from 90 million users in early July 2008. That means that Facebook is growing much faster than the 250,000 new users per day that the company had previously estimated, Nov 3, 2008, Epoch Times

Gather

Demographies: ages 25-54, median age is 42, 55% women, 1.2 milliion unique vistiors, 9 million pages views per month, 500k are registered, Dec 2008, as told to me by CEO Tom Gerace

Hi5

World’s fastest growing among the top-10 global social networks. Based on the June comScore Media Metrix worldwide figures, hi5 grew 79% in the first half of 2008 – more than twice the growth rate of any of the top 10 social networks. According to comScore, the popular site’s monthly unique visitors increased from 31.4 million in December 2007 to 56.4 million in June 2008 – an increase of 25 million monthly visitors. hi5′s October 2008 Worldwide daily average is: 505 million, July 2008 stats, as told to me by Adriana of Corp Comm of Hi5 team.

LinkedIn

Nearly 60% of LinkedIn users have high personal incomes and hold executive-level or consultant positions, Nov 10th, 2008, LinkedIn, Anderson Analytics.

LinkedIn demographics presentation from Aug, 2008, Erick of Techcrunch

Stats from CEO: 8 million to more than 30 million, while the staff has expanded from 60 to 370 employees, CEO alludes (but doesnt confirm nor deny) that revenues are $75 (million) to $100 million, The average age is 41 years old. The average household income is $109,000; 76 percent of them have a college degree or a graduate degree. It’s pretty evenly split between men and women, slightly more men. Forty-eight percent are outside the United States, from 07 to 2008. Nov, SFGate.

LiveJournal

LiveJournal is almost 10 years old and has 1.9 million active users (PDF), Dec, 2009

MySpace

MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users around the globe, Jan 2008, emailed to me from press

Reunion

32 Million Registered Members, and Growing. Jan, 2008, Reunion to me direct

Update, Nov 20, 2008: 50 million total registered members, Adding 1.6 million+ members monthly (mostly adults), Nearly 1 million active paying subscribers. Numbers direct from Kate Zentall of Reunion to me.

Second LIfe

Second Life provides real time stats: Residents Logged-In During Last 30 Days: 985,92 (out of 16 million total registered). Nov 18, 2008, Linden Site

Twitter

Global visitors to Twitter rose almost fivefold to 5.57 million in September from a year earlier. Nov 12, 2008, Comscore via BBC.

Locations (Cities) with the most tweets, Tokyo is the most popular city, Real TimeTwitter Local

Twitter stats by usage during week, as well as comparing heavy vs light users, May 15th, Compete (submitted by Nick)

HP Labs has conducted research on twitter, I’ve highlighted the average number of followers, friends, tweets, and active user base.

Twitter is dominated by newer users – 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008, An estimated 5-10 thousand new accounts are opened per day, 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers, 9% of Twitter users follow no one at all, Dec 08, State of the Twittersphere

WeeWorld

This virtual world/social network aimed at teens who also use IM has reported 25mm registered users, and 1million unique active visitors in last 30 days, as told to me in Nov 2008 on briefing call

2009 Stats

Need more stats See this ongoing list of social networking stats for 2009.

Caveat: As I mentioned before, do not quote these numbers are from me, I’m simply collecting them in one spot, as you’ll see the accuracy will be debated depending on source to source.

I need your help, as you find references to usage, visitors, or registered members numbers in articles or reports, please leave a comment with the URL.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Nov 19, 2008

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
Deployment of social networking technology in verticals such as military, vets, and the Philipines continues to occur. Soon to e president Obama to publish weekly YouTube videos. Expect to see an increase in social networks adoption around politics and government. Jerry Yang removed from CEO role.

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Military: Vets and US Military get their own social networks
After banning YouTube, soldiers need an outlet to communicate with their families, introducing TroopTube. On a similar note, veterans get their own social network.

Politics: Obama to have weekly YouTube address to nation
Forget Saturday morning cartoons, Obama will be on YouTube each weekend discussing the state of the nation, go to his channel at Change.gov.

Leadership: Jerry Yang resigns CEO role
CEO of Yahoo steps down from his position, here’s why Forrester’s analyst Shar Van Boskirk thinks this is a good move for Yahoo.

Viewpoint: P&G asks Should brands be in Facebook?
One of Proctor and Gambles top digital marketers questions should brands be in Facebook, or is it too invasive? There are thousands of brands already in Facebook, and most are doing it wrong.

Funding: Social Network Multiply Raises $5 Million
Florida-based Multiply, which boasts 10 million users (not sure how many are active), has raised funding through equity investment, and seeks to take on the Filipino market.

Applications: Facebook to enforce quality applications
Although announced a few months ago, Facebook’s program to anoint applications that pass the user experience and security test has started. Interesting to read how developers must pay to be in the program –resulting in incremental revenue for Facebook.

OpenSocial: Social Networks vie for Developers
Platforms continue to seek developers to build on their containers and platforms (aka social networks that can have apps built on it), from Bebo, Hi5, MySpace, and Facebook. Google inserts themselves right in the middle by trying to be the open protocol. Also, continued adoption occurs for the OpenSocial protocol after 1 year of launch.

Partnership: Facebook and SalesForce team up
It’s key to watch how businesses will be impacted by social networks, and this announcement, to enable games and productivity to work together. Expect to see a new category of applications to be built that meet both these needs.

Growth: Twitter’s rapid growth
Comscore tracks an increase of 25% more tweets in twitter due to political debates, as well as as ‘hockey stick’ curve of growth.
Facebook bans racists

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE4AD3KZ20081114

Launch: Liveworld launches light edition
Reaching the mass markets, LiveWorld launches a lighter version of their product, although the price is indicated in their press release, I’ll find out from Bryan and team.

Deployment: Passenger wins Mercedes Deal
Passenger, an ‘insight community’ vendor wins deal to run Mercedes community for private label community. Passenger offers brands unique ability to glean customer insight –a real time focus group within a community.

Future: Social Networks to predict your buying behavior
Perhaps the holy grail for retailers, the ability to predict consumer buying behavior based on demographics, psychographics, technographics and social network behavior.

Culture: Teachers critiszed for use of Social Networks
Are teachers sanctioned to give their honest opinion in social networks, what if the content is intended to be private? This North Carolina school district is getting some heat.

If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.

I slowly work on this digest through the week in draft format, collecting information that I see is interesting, and it only takes me a few minutes on wed morning to publish.

Using Blogs to create Industry Lists

I received a tweet from Monika pointing to this animation that was created by VizEdu, they created an animation showing how I used my blog to create a vendor product catalog for the white label/community platform space (its still a top viewed page). I started this list before I joined Forrester, as I saw a trend, and now I’m covering this space as an analyst.

I find blogs more effective in creating my many lists, as I can filter the comments and look for quality –sometimes wikis get jumbled with vendor pitches and not everyone treats quality the same way. Do note that I only use social media for some aspects of research, the majority of it leans on the proven methodologies put in place before me.

For those wondering where the Wave report is on this space, I’ve submitted my draft to my editor, it’s a long process, and we’re still plugging away, thanks for your patience.

Categorization of Brand Backlash Storms

While brand backlash (one example of a Groundswell) from social media tools are certainly an impact to the reputation of companies and how their consumers react, there are many different levels of severity from each.

First, see this list of brands that were punk’d from social media, I’ll add some categorization to each of them as I can best gauge in coming days.

To help gauge the differences, I’ve constructed these categories of brand backlash storms (leaning on the Hurricane categorization)

Category 1: Consumer revolt and use social media tools (Twitter, Blogs, YouTube) to tell their story, the brand doesn’t flinch, and there is no mainstream media coverage. Examples: A weekly, if not a daily occurance.

Category 2: The backlash extends beyond just social media tools (Twitter, blogs, YouTube), the brand makes changes based on consumer feedback, and coverage extends to mainstream media and press. Examples: Louis Vuitton brandjacked, Exxon Mobile’s Twitter experience.

Category 3: Consumers use social media tools to spread backlash and there is considerable mentions from mainstream press. the backlash is more severe resulting in significant changes from the brand (hiring, firing, processes, policies or new teams put in place). This becomes a case study for social media books and is often discussed in social media culture. Examples: Dell Hell, Comcast Cares, Kryptonite Locks, Wholefoods CEO.

Category 4: Number three plus short term financial impacts to the brand resulting in reduction of sales, revenue, increased costs, or impact to stock price less than 30 days. Examples: Apple Stock temporarily sinks from blog rumors.

Category 5: Number three plus brand backlash from social media tools resulting in long term financial impacts to the brand including reduction in sales, revenue, increased costs, and most importantly, stock price lasting over 30 days. In the most extreme cases, it causes closure of the business or bankruptcy. Examples: None.

I hope this puts things into context when we see brand backlash incidents occur.

The Motrin Moms Backlash by the Numbers

If you weren’t following what was happening online this weekend (yes, yes, ok you’ve got a life) there was a Groundswell against Motrin’s latest viral advertisement that was rejected by mothers in Twitter, spread to blogs, and YouTube. I’m not a mom, so at first glance I didn’t understand the offense, but apparently, it was condescending to moms who perceived wearing babies in a sling as ‘fashionable’ accessory, and who didn’t wanted to be labeled as an ‘official mom’. The original video, which was trying to lean on the light side, took to many generalizations with mothers and resulted in a revolt capped by this backlash video.

To learn more about the story, read Laura Fitton’s summary, Dave Knox of P&G is taking note, has made it to the NY Times Parenting Blog, and the VP of Marketing representing Motrin has apparently responded (I can’t confirm this). Update: Motrin has now apologized on their site (see screenshot below) and there’s MSM pickup by Scientific American and Computerworld (of all places)

As much as I’m interested in what folks are saying, allow me to provide an aspect that most others aren’t: short term numerical numbers. (it’s the analyst in me)

Above Screentshot: Twitter stats indicate bump in mentions of “motrin” and “motrinmoms”

Above Screentshot: Twitscoop’s Twitter Analytics shows peak for “motrin” notice there’s no mention before the ad.

Above Screentshot: Twitscoop’s Twitter Analytics shows peak for “motrinmoms”

Above Screentshot: 6,000 views on Youtube Video: Motrin Ad Makes Moms Mad

Above Screentshot: As a result, 3rd result for “Motrin” in Youtube is to the mother video

Above Screentshot: Although there are only a few tags for “motrin” on delicious, most point to brand backlash

Above Screentshot: The Motrin.com website is down, likely they are removing the ad and reverting to a previous website

Above Screentshot: Google search results for “Motrin Mother” (I found an adjacent term to measure the impacts) are mainly to brand backlash

Above Screentshot: Brand backlash has not impacted Google search results for “motrin”

Update: Nov 20th, It’s finally hit the search results pages of google for “Motrin”, the 9th link down is to the NYT times blog.

Above Screenshot: The Motrin.com site is back up on Monday 11am PST, after being down for a few hours, with the public apology –which I think is handled well

Overtime, these search results may fade away, depending on how Motrin reacts, and how mothers decide to press the situation.

Although brand backlash certainly wasn’t intention, I’m sure that some at advertising firm who created the campaign will chalk this up as a success (it got influencers talking about the brand –who previously weren’t), although the PR group certainly has been dealing with this firestorm all weekend.

Lessons Learned

Always test your campaign with a small segment first

Always have staff on hand to be prepared to respond during the weekend

Don’t launch a campaign right before the weekend unless you’re prepared to respond

The participants have the power, so participate

For better or for worse, more influencers are talking about Motrin than ever before

I’d love to hear your comments on the fiasco, what short term and long term impacts does this have to the brand? Update: more stats from Freshtakes