Web Strategy Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter (Feb 2010)

Lack Of Signal In A Sea of Noise
There’s an incredible amount of media and blogger noise about social networks, yet most focus on “killer app” hype without an objective point of view.   My career mission?  To cut out the hype and help companies make sense of what to do. For those fraught with information overload, this definitive matrix distills what matters.

Situation:  New Contender Shakes Up Industry
Google has entered the social networking play with “Buzz”, and by the look of it, this time it’s for real.  There’s a lot of market confusion on how they could stack up, so here’s my take.  Let’s cut the noise and get to the heart of it with a comparison matrix based upon my insights talking to these companies in formal briefings, observations, as a user, my former research and dealing with the brands trying to reach them.

Executive Summary:  Brands Must Stay Focused On Where Customers Already Are
Google’s entrance causes media havoc but web strategists should stay focused.  Find out where customers already are through developing data around consumer behavior called socialgraphics.  Facebook continues to demonstrate a sophisticated marketplace for consumers and brands to mix about, however don’t discount MySpace’s active consumer base –but only if your customers are already there.  Continue to monitor Twitter and respond if customers are tweeting –but they’ve yet to indicate sophistication to help marketers, instead rely on third party tools and agencies to respond.  The feature set of newly spawned Google Buzz isn’t important, what matters is their ability to aggregate social content which will impact search strategy for businesses trying to reach consumers, read my first take analysis.

This scorecard has a limited shelf life, so I’ll likely create a new scorecard after future announcements from these players.

Web Strategy Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter (Feb 2010)

Everyone has a morning ritual, for me, I invest up to two hours reading, thinking, and blogging each morning. I hope this helps you cut through the noise –if it was helpful, please pass it on, email to colleagues, tweet it, and blog about it.

Social Search: Customers Influence Search Results Over Brands

This post was collaboratively written on a wiki by Charlene Li, (cross posted) who maintains a focus on Leadership Strategy and Jeremiah Owyang, who maintains a focus on Customer Strategy. Together, we’re covering the convergence of emerging technologies at the Altimeter Group.

Twitter brokers a deal that offers search engines Microsoft Bing and Google Search access to their real time data streams.  Also, Facebook, offers up public status updates to be searched and served up to Microsoft’s Bing.  This trend towards micro media requires companies to pay attention to the real time and social web for marketing, support, and competitive strategies.  There are several impacts to the ecosystem, here’s what you should know:

• Deal Fills In Technology and Relationship Gaps for Twitter. Twitter lacks the computing power of a premiere search engine, as their current Twitter search results are littered with spam, duplicate tweets, and are only sorted by time.   Leveraging the sophisticated engineers at Microsoft and Google affords Twitter an opportunity to focus on their platform –not search.  From a business aspect, this deal makes sense is that Microsoft and Google both have relationships with advertisers and brands, with trained sales forces to cut deals. Although the terms of the deal aren’t public, it’s suspect there was an exchange of material goods, it’s likely that Twitter will benefit from revenue share in the near future.
• Social Search to Serve Results Based On Time, Authority. Expect real time data to merge with existing search engines, as a result we should see Google Search and Bing to serve up search results based on: 1) Real time information based on what Twitter users are saying, including memes from trending topics, 2) Preference given to links and URLs that are tweeted by users with more followers or authority, 3) Geo location of tweets to influence search results.  As users seek “Thai Restaurants in San Mateo” location based tweets could provide additional context.  4) Eventually results will be served up by your friends.  Google has given a nod to serve up information based on your social graph (your friends) using Google Profile.
• To Compete, Facebook Must Make More Content Public. For closed social networks like Facebook, this means they need to continue to offer up more data that can be searched in public by search engines.  With default settings in Facebook set to ‘friends only’ this will continue to be a challenge as Facebook’s community prefers the filters and privacy settings that this closed social network provides.
• Twitter’s Future: Seamless Integration with the Web. Success for Twitter isn’t about becoming a destination site, but instead about becoming a data protocol that’s embedded everywhere.    Like “Air“, microblogging features are already present in multiple applications, desktop and mobile clients, and the bite-sized information is becoming available in context wherever it’s needed.
• Customers Influence Search Results An even more amazing impact of these announcements is that for the first time, consumers will be able to directly impact web search results. Although companies spend thousands of marketing dollars controlling their search results by using Google’s advertising services, customers and competitors can quickly and cheaply impact search results using simple tools like Twitter.  Consumers, empowered using mobile devices as a publishing platform can link to content and influence search results. Now, a simple tweet with a picture of a plane landing on the Hudson from a mobile phone will show up at the top of search results.

Key Takeaways: Customers Impact Brand Search Results Using Twitter
Even if your company is not active on Twitter, your customers can influence the search results related to your company –you must pay attention to this trend.  Just as your company likely already has a search strategy through search optimization or paid search terms, you’ll need to extend micromedia to your strategy.  In order to be prepared for this change, companies must:

1. Develop a Listening Strategy That Starts With Roles and Process.  Every business and market is now moving faster and faster as information spreads around the globe in minutes –if not seconds.  Companies must be ready to quickly identify flare ups, be ready to respond, and correct incorrect information.  Develop a listening strategy that has internal roles set in place, a process to respond and the right tools like Radian 6, Visible Technologies, BuzzMetrics, or Cymfony.
2. Change The Marketing Mindset –Legacy Methods Ineffective. Search marketers must understand that blasting marketing information through Facebook or Twitter won’t be effective, as search engines will filter out irrelevant messages that nobody listens to. Instead, marketers should allow content on all web properties and email marketing to be easily added to Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites by offering icons that encourage people to share. Providers like ShareThis and AddThis make this simple to do.
3. Develop Influence Marketing Programs. Since these search engines have all noted that they will rank real time information on a person’s authority and not just traditional page ranking, marketers must double down on building these relationships.  More than ever, brands will need to foster discussions within Twitter as retweet, replies, and linking behavior will influence what is served up on results pages.  It takes time to build real relationships that develop into public conversations so get started now.

Related Links:
For a list of social networking stats (including Twitter) we’ve a 2009 collection we keep up to date.

Revealing Google’s Stealth Social Network Play

This post was collaboratively written on a wiki by Charlene Li, (who’s cross-posted) who maintains a focus on Leadership Strategy and Jeremiah Owyang, who maintains a focus on Customer Strategy. Together, we’re covering the convergence of emerging technologies at the Altimeter Group.

Google has quietly been launching a social network right under our own chins. No, it’s not about Google extending Orkut, a social networking platform they developed a few years ago, or growing Google groups, or even launching their own version of a Twitter. Instead they’ve been releasing small bits of social networking features, little by little. Previously, we’ve made the case that email is already the largest social network, however Google’s plans go beyond Gmail. First, let’s define what to look for, in order to identify what Google is concocting.

Defining Social Networks
To start with, we define a social network as having three baseline components: 1) A profile that contains a person’s information; 2) The ability for people to connect to each other via those profiles, often called a social graph; and 3) the ability to do something useful or valuable they couldn’t have done otherwise. Features such as discoverability or public access are often cited as social network features, but we believe that the common denominators across most social networks are the three characteristics we listed.

Now that we agree on the definition, we can see that Google is launching each of these features with little fanfare. Let’s break down what’s happening. Google allows people to:

Maintain a Rich Profile. Google recently launched new features called Google profiles which allows users to upload profile pics, include personal information and preferences, and allow it to be discoverable on the web. These are coupled with a Google account such as gmail, and is at the core of these efforts.

Connect and Communicate With Others. Individuals using the Google profiles can connect to each other and share information using a variety of tools, not all of them necessarily social. For example, Gmail and Google Talk contain not just your contacts, but also understand with whom you communicate the most. Google doesn’t explicitly ask if you’re a ‘friend’ or ‘fan’ of someone, but rather, allows people to connect to each other in a variety of communication tools. And most recently, Google launched Google Sidewiki, which allows anyone to add comments to any page on the Web with just a Firefox plug-in.

Centralize Information In A Useful Way. Allowing people to build profiles and communicate with each other isn’t of much value unless it can provide a more useful experience not previously available. Google provides a number of tools like Google Wave, a collaboration tool we’ve started to experiment with, Gtalk instant messanger, and Gmail which rivals Facebook’s newsfeed, chat, and inbox respectively.

Google’s Stealth Threat
The difference between Google and destination social networks like MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook is that Google doesn’t have a specific URL. Instead, it is creating elements that envelope the web, by enabling every online (and mobile) activity to possibly be social one –then running it all on their own centralized platform. Google isn’t going after a frontal, brute force assault on Facebook and the other social networks — it simply can’t win at that game on a global basis. Instead Google is pursuing a softer approach, a zen-like attach much like water flowing around a rock. It is using its strengths — ubiquity and open platforms — to put “social” into every corner of the Web.

This is the stealth threat — that today’s social networks won’t really be losing share to the “Google network”, but rather, that they will become slowly less relevant as EVERYTHING gets social thanks to advances by Google. Their end goal? Google’s social network is designed to exist everywhere –not be centralized in any one location. By the way, two can play at this game and we see Microsoft making similar moves in the future. (Edit: It was pointed out to Charlene that Yahoo! is also making similar moves with its social APIs).

Key Takeaways

1. Enveloping The Social Web Is Core To Google’s Strategy. This is inline with Google’s traditional strategy of organizing the world’s information –then serving up monetization options around it. Although a few years late to the game, Google’s move is crucial as they already have large amounts of information about what you look for, who you know, and the activities you do. It’s a natural step for them to also organize and make sense of the social and behavioral information that people create. In addition, Google — who already has long term relationships with agencies, brands, and marketers — will be a natural place for companies to look to for advertising and marketing opportunities around social data, rather than new players and start-ups.
2. Google’s Recent Moves Threaten Incumbent Social Networks. Facebook and other competitors will need to quickly spread it’s Facebook Connect platform and evolve it to something that doesn’t even require APIs or registrations. The challenge with Facebook Connect is it requires the website owner (publisher) and the user to opt-in and allow for content to become social. With Google’s SideWiki, only the users need to opt-in, which will cause adoption to spread must faster. Facebook will need to extend it’s inline browser (surfing the web within the context of facebook.com) or developing their own browser to counter Google’s moves. Facebook’s core conundrum is balancing personal and often private information of its community with the need to expose information in public in order to be relevant in search and eventually advertising.
3. Despite Privacy Concerns, Users Will Continue To Use Google. Although privacy concerns will continue to be the mainstay of objections, the benefits to the common user will outweigh any critics. We know that people will verbally object to their privacy being an opportunity for another company, yet they continue to behave in a way opposite to their objections. Why? For most, they’ve grown to trust players like Google. Or they are willing to give up control of some information in exchange for convenience, such as having social data conveniently show up on Google Maps on your phone. And for others, the price of privacy can be measured by what information they will give up to get ‘free shipping’. The root concern isn’t broadly about privacy, but specifically about privacy in the context of when you’re not in control of it. Google is highly motivated to maintain the trust of users and will do everything possible to continue earning and deserving that trust.

We’re not the only ones to notice this trend, Search Engine Watch also characterizes Google as a social media company. We hope our viewpoint sheds light to where Google is heading, and hope to hear your viewpoints too.

Interlaced: Email and Social Networks

Despite Having 300 Million Members, Facebook is Not The Largest Social Network
In my opinion, online social networks have three distinguishing features:  1) They have profiles that enable people to express their identity 2) Ability for people to connect to these profiles 3) To be successful, there’s a greater value created by a group of people sharing than as individuals who do not.

This week, Facebook announced it has ballooned to 300 million users, far more than MySpace and certainly Twitter.  Yet, I want to assert that Facebook isn’t the largest social network, email is (we’ve talked about this before).  Recent numbers from Microsoft showed that the number of active users (although the definition of ‘active’ isn’t explained) exceeds 375 million users for Hotmail.

When you combine all of the email networks from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo, and the millions in Outlook at corporations all over the world –it dominates over Facebook.

Not Everyone Agrees Email and Social Networks Are The Same
I took the conversation to my own community in Twitter, and while the majority seemed to agree others respectfully suggested that “email is not a social network because:”  1) It’s private, not public, 2) Lack of profiles, and  3) Lack of discoverability of people. I’d like to quickly address why I stand by that email is the largest social network:

Social networks can be private.  Just like in real life, some communities are not for the public.  In fact, Facebook is a closed social network, very little of your personal information can be seen by the public.  Secondly, some of the most successful social networks are deployed inside of companies, just ask folks like Telligent, Mzinga, Awareness, and Jive.

Email does indeed have profiles. Many argued that email doesn’t have a profile, yet, consumer email clients all offer profiles.  For example, see Yahoo’s, Microsoft Live, (which can spur from a hotmail account) and the Google profile.  We’re encouraged to put our handle, name, location, and other demographic information.  The second place to look is within the signature of each email you receive, people put their name, company, title, contact information and whatever else they want to self-express.  In both cases people opt-in to put that information in, and make their profile information accessible to those they want to share it with.

Email profiles are discoverable and social. Some who don’t believe email is a social network will argue that the profiles are not easy to find.  A social networks will help like-minded users find each other, and some social networks even recommend others to follow. Take another look corporations that have deployed exchange server have a large directory with individual names, profiles, and groups that they belong to.  You can search for titles, locations, and groups to find who in a company may have similar needs to you.  What about in the consumer space? Yahoo encourages it’s mail users to ask and answer questions from each other –even if you don’t know them directly.  In fact, in my Yahoo profile, there’s an area that suggests people I should connect with, one which is Shel Israel, who is certainly a friend, and Microsoft Live recommends people “like you” to connect with.

Agree or Disagree, Email and Social Networks Intertwine
A few more indicators that email and social networks are starting to merge: For public social networks like Facebook, Glassdoor, Yelp, and Twitter, email is a pre-requistite to register.  Messages that you receive in Facebook or Twitter, often end up in your email stream.  Email portals are already developing social features around them, have you seen the Yahoo homepage?  It’s starting to look like a social network.

Recommendations: Approach Email and Social Tech in an Integrated Strategy
It’s too easy to focus on the shiny microblogging tools and cast incumbent technologies by the side.  Savvy communicators should factor in how email and social networks fuel each other, they should:

• Interlace email and social efforts. In your marketing efforts, make it easy for people to share content both on social sites and through email.  Use the sharethis feature on your websites encouraging people to post content on social networks –or email to each other.  In your email marketing, make it easy for people to also share the information on their social networking profiles.
• Prepare for applications to be build on email platforms. Recognize that email portals are becoming social platforms, and brands will soon build or sponsor applications that interact with Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Live, and whatever comes next.
• Focus on the relationships between individuals –less on the medium.  The medium isn’t as important as the relationships between the people.  When Twitter goes down, some shift to Friendfeed, or Facebook to communicate, people have a way to find each other regardless of the medium or channel.

I hope this triggers an interesting discussion, even if you don’t agree. Would love to hear a global perspective on mobile usage, how does that factor in?

Update: On a related note,this study indicates that email usage is being eroded away by social networking sites and instant messaging. This is the type of data that will send email providers scurrying to the product roadmap to quickly integrate into the social web as quickly as possible.

Help! My Boss Wants To Be My Friend On Facebook

“Help! My boss wants to be my my friend on Facebook” was exactly the text message I received from someone close to me early last week.

Career Limiting Move or A Platform To Build A Great Relationship?
This young member of the Gen Y generation recently joined the workforce –and was experiencing the pain as personal and professional lives collide.  While some may laugh at the notion, first understand that Generation Y may share their most intimate of details on Facebook, from what they love and hate, who they love and hate, photos from last Saturday night to where they’re going tonight –it’s more of an online diary.

Don’t scoff at this situation, on this Web Strategy Blog we discuss how corporations can benefit from new technologies (like social) and know that employees will use them –often in the context of the workplace, this is just one instance of a particularly real issue.  What’s at stake?  Building a long term relationship with your boss –or sending the right or wrong message about your ability to be a worker (update: like this one link via William).   We were successfully able to wade through the situation, but first, let’s list out all the options available to you when this situation happens:

Contingency Planning: So Your Boss Wants To Friend You On Facebook

1) Do nothing.  Simply ignore the request and hope it goes away, it sends a message: one of inability to communicate or not follow through.

2) Deny them.  Suggest this isn’t how you want to communicate with them, with a message like “Sorry but Facebook is just for my family and friends” and risk alienating a relationship you could grow.

3) Add them and expose them to your entire life.  Adding one’s boss may be easy as a single click, but exposing them to their steamy private life could be detrimental to one’s career.

4) Redirect to LinkedIn. Suggesting that you want to keep professional relationships professional and they go in LinkedIn is a fine idea.  But snubbing them could be a career limiting move saying you don’t want to be in an engaging relationship –or worse yet: you’ve something to hide.

5) Use Facebook permission features and filter.  Although clunky and hard to figure out for most, users of Facebook can create groups (like one for colleagues) and allow them to only see certain types of information.

What Did We Do? Our Solution: The best course of action was number 5.  I had this individual create a separate group for work, and tag it the name of their company.  They then filtered what information that could be seen, of course, only professional related content void of those party pics from last week.   For the test they added me to this group and I confirmed it was only a limited view.  This individual then granted admission to their curious boss to Facebook –preserving the relationship.   In addition, I encouraged the individual to send a LinkedIn request –nothing like granting one’s request –and offering to grow it in yet another area.

What You Should Do: While it’s going to take time to setup, invest your time wisely and use Facebook’s group features from the start.  Everyone you add should be segmented into the right bucket so you can easily control who sees what of your life.  Also, set some guidelines of comfort where the line is for you, for some, putting colleagues into LinkedIn is the only place that it’s appropriate as Facebook could be for work alone.  See how to create and manage groups, manage privacy, and other advanced privacy features.

You A Boss?  First, Think It Through. A manager should first be sensitive to the relationship they have with their subordinates, you’re in a position of power.  Really gauge if your relationship is that of a friend, mentor, or just work related.   You may want to leave the offer open to your subordinates –and let them add as their prerogative, rather than forcing them into a potentially awkward situation.  If you do feel your relationship is on strong ground, send them a LinkedIn request first, and see if they reciprocate into Facebook.  Lastly, be sure to see if your content doesn’t embarrass you in front of your own team –use the filtering features yourself.

Social and Professional Lives Continue To Collide. Social networks technologies are pervasive, they’re creeping into our personal and professional lives.  The challenge is finding the separation –and defining the overlap between both.  Love to hear your stories of where social tools cross the employee and friend relationships.

Requested Recommendations on Social Networks: Why I Won’t Do It

“Looking at LinkedIn Recommendations, They are Puffery”
I’m currently doing research on what skills marketers are looking for in their social media team, and interviewed one hiring manager yesterday. She told me she didn’t value the references on LinkedIn and told me that “Looking at LinkedIn recommendations, they are puffery”. Instead she was looking for examples of work experience, eagerness to do the job, and of course ability. I agree with her, when I see recommendations on LinkedIn, my alarm goes off, I know most are not objective.

Why These Reccomendations May Not Be Trusted
From time to time, former colleagues ask me to be their reference –or even do recommendations (online references or testimonials) for them on social sites, like LinkedIn. Yet having gone through this process, they aren’t that trustworthy, here’s why:

• Filter One: I question how honest and authentic recommendations are when the system primarily has features that vet out unwanted reviews. In nearly every experience I’ve been in, a former colleague or someone I’ve worked with requests a recommendation, this means they are expecting a positive review. Since the content is in public, saying something bad about someone else (even if it’s true) isn’t going to help your network, so the the contributor is biased.
• Filter Two: Then, they can review my submitted review, and then accept or reject. I’ve had someone reject my reference, and ask me to rewrite it once before (I think it may have been because I had a typo). Because these three filters are setup, it’s unlikely that you’ll see reviews that are have objective content, or negative information.

Now it’s not just recommendation systems in business social networks, it’s also case studies from vendors, and customer testimonials. All of this content is cleaned, scrubbed, and presentable in favor the seller.

Potential Solutions
RSomers suggested that LinkedIn reduce the number of recommendations people can give.  Like UserVoice or Deal Ideastorm they give a certain amount of points anyone can use, forcing people to be choosey and selective in where they put their vote.   Also, Get Glue has interesting technology to do this for the media side –maybe they can apply this to job candidates too.

References Will Always Have Their Place
I triggered a discussion on twitter, and had a variety of responses, many who see the positives. At least two people told me they received their jobs from recommendations they’d received on LinkedIn, but not because the content was objective, but because it triggered a notification in the references stream –causing word of mouth to happen.   Luke said he got his job from a LinkedIn recommendation, and says ‘who’ reccomends him is more important.

Recommendations in any form still matter, but become more relevant if they come from someone who are at the top of their game, or have a relationship to the buyer.  This isn’t to say that none of these are helpful, they have their time and place in the marketing process. While a plethora of glowing references on a company or professional profile on LinkedIn may seem like typical marketing –in the end, smart buyers and employers will dig deeper to find where sellers and candidates shine –and need some polishing.

I Won’t be Giving LinkedIn Recommendations
Although I’ve only given honest recommendations in LinkedIn, I won’t be giving anymore recommendations on that platform (at least for the foreseeable future), instead, I’ll use my blog and Twitter to provide them in a more organic area where there aren’t obvious filters –making the recommendations count even more.  The challenge of course is finding them will not be easy.

Takeaways

• Recommendations that are vetted by the requestor will  never be fully viewed as objective –savvy buyers know that, and can figure out how to get the information through private conversations or other reviews.
• Reccomendations still matter, but who they come from, and in what context matters ever more, indicating you liked working with someone is still valuable –even if they are filtered.
• Buyers should look for references (positive and negative) from more organic locations like blogs and Twitter, where the candidate/seller has less control over filtering and scrubbing the content.
• Canidates and sellers need to prepare for the open reviews of good –and bad–reviews about their company and resume.
• LinkedIn very valuable, and has many other features of note. This isn’t a knock on them, but instead on the marketing and pitching process in general.

Related:  Impacts of Social Media on Customer Reference Pages

Update: Russ Somers has extended the converation on his blog: Evaluating LinkedIn Reccomendations

LinkedIn’s communications savvy Kay Luo, contacted me and gave some best practices around how recommendations should work, as such, she gave a recommendation to my own account, which I accepted.  If they have any best practices around recommendations, I’ll be happy to link to them from this post –furthering the conversation.

Update: July 24th, LinkedIn has responded from their blog, discussing the benefits of recommendations and the social economy.  They suggest that you give recommendations to five people unsolicited, although I’d suggest don’t feel obligated to meet a number, just do it when you believe in it.  I really appreciate them being part of the conversation –so we can make these systems better.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: May 11, 2009

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
Been a light week as far as significant news goes. Facebook and Digg start to connect their social identities. Ning launches an application gallery, and MySpace trims staff.

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Social Colonization: Digg adopts Facebook Connect
In an ongoing effort to spread its network, Facebook allowed third party sites to connect to it’s user and member base, now Digg users can use this to access their account info and social graph. The challenge is you can’t register FB with Digg if you’re using the same email address in Digg –the social profiles don’t yet merge.

Apps: Ning provides application gallery
Previously, Ning applications had to be installed by individuals, but now they can be replicated across networks, with what appears to be a widget gallery type feature.

Downsizing: MySpace trims workforce
While other social networks have also had layoffs (Hi5 in particular) MySpace trims 45 members of it’s staff, and is undergoing a major executive change out.

Findings: Wrapup from Inbound Marketing Summit
What was learned at the Inbound Marketing Summit? This excellent wrap up summarizes the key findings.

Ads: blogs come into their own
A few months ago, GigaOm’s network left Federated Media, and now Techcrunch sprouts it’s own advertising capabilities. Blogs are maturing now where they can reduce third party dependency on advertising revenue, demonstrating they’re their own media outlets.

Interview: Thor, of Get Satisfaction
Interesting audio interview from the founder of Get Satisfaction, a third party support site, that’s quite disruptive to corporate websites. Thor, the former CEO is now the CTO, having recently hired Wendy Lea. The chatter is casual at first, but gets focused as it progresses.

To watch: Cisco Eos puts stake in ground for media
Cisco’s Dan Scheinman is a general manager at the Eos, a community platform aimed at reaching media industry. While still early to market, I’m carefully watching this vendor as they have large backing from Cisco, that has a large enterprise footprint. Dan’s post suggests that Eos is intended to help Hollywood make money online, leveraging the disruption that new technologies have brought them.

Google: Analysis on Ad Behavior to improve TV ads
Google is doing some interesting and hopefully interesting analysis that will improve the context of ads, see their lengthy explanation and charts.

Accolades: Neighborhood America gets second award
Neighborhood America announces today that it has won its second consecutive CODiE Award for ‘Best Social Networking Solution’ for enterprises. See the many other categories and finalists.

Personal: Happy Mother’s Day Mom
Thanks for all you’ve done for me, supporting me when I was a young snot, and still supporting me as I’m an older snot. Love you mom. Now, I’m off to Amsterdam to help clients and speak at conferences, then going to Paris the week after.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: May 2, 2009

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
Busy week, yet again. Vignette starts to come forth with it’s community features, which are a direct challenge to the community platform vendors. Facebook extends further into the era of social colonization by allowing activity streams to be displayed on third party sites. The impacts of the swing flu echo throughout social networks.

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Launch: Vignette CMS rolls out social features
Community platform vendors need to be prepared to be squeezed from above as more CMS vendors prepare to enter this market. Vignette, who has a stable footprint in the enterprise space, launches first generation social features. They’re also demonstrating thought leadership by publishing best practices documents. Watch this change –the incumbents are waking up. I spent an hour with this team last week reviewing their live product, they just rolled this out, and hope to have customer adoption soon.

Colonization: Facebook exposes activity stream
Social colonization is when every web experience will be social. With FB opening it’s activity stream for third party developers (like Seesmic) it’s the start of the experience extending beyond the Facebook walls.

Government: Obama addresses nation on Flu
Using his weekly Youtube platform, Obama gives a clear assessment – Google Search of the situation, gives recommendations to schools, businesses, and people, then discloses the solution that have in place for vaccines, all without doublespeak. These simple social tools are empowering –but the content is most important.

Feature: Silverlight and Facebook create shiny UI
This is shiny, meaning it’s pretty, but doesn’t neccesarily offer multiplicative collaboration (useful), either way, see how silverlight flexes it’s UI muscles by displaying FB pictures.

Culture: US Military uses Social Networks to recruit soldiers
Now, you can befriend a recruiter. The pentagon is making considerable shifts towards using social networks to recruit young Gen Y folks for the military. Facebook is the leading social technology where they will deploy.

Context: Early examples of social context via scraping
Social networks are the first place where we’ve seen people voluntarily give up so much information about themselves unprompted. As a result, we’ll see an increase of services that scrape demographics to increase marketing and advertising effectiveness. While not a mature example of social context, it’s getting closer.

Risks: Social networking sites have downsides
This is an important article by Computerworld, in which it shows the potential risks that social networking sites bring to professional relationships and the office as many users are not aware of how privacy works. Beyond this, potential IP and corporate knowledge could be spread in social networking sites, learn about these risks.

Twitter Hype: People come –but don’t come back
The overhyped Twitter shows that some come but never come back, yet Nielsen responds vis this video suggesting that the small community is indeed very influential.

Oddparts: Facebook trivia
Culture, anonymity and a strong virtual gift economy make Facebook a misfit in China. Facebook is able to map mentions of the Swine Flu within it’s network from state to state.

Personal: IBM’s Impact and Calgary’s Web Strategy Summit
Last week, I started to give personal updates, and some suggested I continue. I launched the future of the social web report this week, and it received positive feedback. I’m headed to IBM’s IMPACT conference in vegas to speak, then to the Web Strategy Summit in Calgary to present my findings on the future of the social web. I’ve mentioned several times on Twitter that I’m forgoing shaking hands to protect the community, I’m a germ magnet, since I travel so much and meet many.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: April 26, 2009

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
For once, this week has some actual strategic news: Google’s intent to bypass closed social networks by creating public profiles are aligned with it’s strategy. MySpace is undergoing some leadership changes, in order to win back the media’s attention, they’ll need to quickly innovate. Following the executive turnover we’re seeing all over the industry, Hi5 follows suit.

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Strategy: Google to circumvent social networks
This is an important gesture in the world of social networks. Google has launched a profile feature that allows people to create profiles in exchange for influence on search results page. As you know, social networks are comprised of profiles and people connecting to each other. This strategy enables Google to build a ‘non-social network’ that rather than focus on a destination, instead lives on the open web. This is aligned with Google’s open strategy towards the web. Given their large user base, this will likely be successful, my question however is simple: what took so long?

Leadership: MySpace names Owen Vean Natta as CEO
News Corp’s MySpace has been doing the executive cleanse, having removed a handful of leadership now including Chris DeWolfe. This move, likely in response to the daunting growth and buzz of Facebook, and the potential fall out from the Google deal. While MySpace has been innovating with media, music, and catering to small businesses, they’ve not caught the eye of the market as the innovative player. Brands shouldn’t walk away from MySpace, they’ve still a thriving community, and this new leadership could offer innovation –although expect it to takes months to emerge. I’ve requested numbers from MySpace, to evaluate their current capabilities.

Leadership: Hi5 appoints new CEO of axe swings
Hi5, a very quickly growing social network with 60mm users missed it’s opportunity to monetize that growth resulting in layoffs that cut deep in this social network. They’ve now appointed Bill Gossman as the CEO, who has connections with their investors. Former CEO Ramu Yalamanchi, will step to a Chief Product role with a focus on operations.

Culture: Silicon Valley Social Media Deployed in Iraq
Cultures are often defined on how the common people are allowed to communicate and share their voices. Silicon Valley leaders or founders from Twitter, Meetup, Hocast, and YouTube assemble in Iraq to share expertise and discuss how social tools can improve the local situation.

Security: Cybergangs crowdsource thugs
Not uncommon, but social networking tools can be used to steal people’s identity, financial info, or release harmful code. Cybergangs are employing crowd created mobs to break captcha codes, a brute force tactic to get into people’s personal info.

Verticals: Social network for the beautiful…only
Modelfeed is a social network for the beautiful, and is in line with social networks being created for every possible vertical. What’s next? How about a social network for the fugly.

Deals: Mzinga lands Playboy
This large media company will try it’s hand to let the community of 6 million users to it’s website to engage by participating in voting, sharing, and discussions. Mzinga scored well in my recent Wave for moderation –which could come in handy for a large, and ‘passionate’ community.

Features: Facebook continues to emulate Twitter
Facebook made motions to buy Twitter, but the deal didn’t go through, Facebook can easily replicate the features, and has done so with text based updates that you can now receive on your mobile phone. This is an example of social colonization.

Research: Social Networks used by Marketers
This research, (I can’t vouch for the methodolgy) suggests that many marketers are using social networking tools, with a focus on Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs. Overall, these numbers look high, but it depends on how the questions were posed, and over what time period.

Hype: Twitter growth numbers misleading
Twitter is overhyped, and although they’ve received mainstream attention, it doesn’t account for true recurring users on a monthly or weekly basis. Visitors to the site don’t account for registrations –nor can it truly count for global and client based activity such as tweetdeck. The true Twitter usage numbers are allusive –although it’s clear, it has media attention.

App: When did you join Twitter?
For kicks: this little application tells you when you joined Twitter. It says I joined in Dec 2006, and at the time, I felt I was behind the early adopter curve.

Personal: On the road
This is the first time I’ve done a weekly update on me, let me know if you think I should continue this. I’ve been on the road for the last 5 out of 6 weeks, I got back at midnight last night from Forrester’s marketing forum in Orlando. While I find my work enjoyable, at the same time it’s exhausting. I do look forward to these quiet moments on the weekend where I can really think about where the industry is headed. It’s moving so incredibly fast, I find that aggregation, and a quiet hour every weekend is very important to do. On Monday, my report “future of the social web” launches. Stay tuned. Next week I go to IBM’s Impact event, then to Calgary to speak at the Web Strategy conference.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.