For every Like that is made, Facebook is able to correspond a product affiliation to demographic information such as sex, age, geography, and education, as well as social graph data about relationships and influence within a group. With Places, Facebook can even correlate product activity to mobile location data. If mobile payments ever take off, they could get actual sales data as well.

Ad Age recently asked the very poignant question: What Happens When Facebook Trumps Your Brand Site? (alternate title for the article is: How Facebook Became the Biggest CRM Provider). The online article was accompanied by the following graphic showing the top ten brands on Facebook (in terms of total Likes):

Top brands are garnering millions of Likes, yet only driving a couple hundred thousand visitors per year to their branded sites. What this all means is that Facebook has better data about customers than most consumer products companies do. As Ad Age notes:

For many marketers, their Facebook fan bases have become their largest web presence, outstripping brand sites or e-mail programs either because a brand’s traditional web-based “owned media” is atrophying or because more consumers are migrating to social media.

While fan pages may work a lot like a marketer’s traditional “owned media,” they’re not actually owned by the marketers. Facebook hosts the pages and provides analytics for free, but growing marketer dependency on the network for CRM programs, combined with simultaneous declines in traffic for many of their own brand websites, could give Facebook a valuable revenue opportunity.

Of course, it would be difficult to sell granular individual data about users (people would object); however, Facebook could sell aggregate data (trend analysis and market research) and act as a “black box” CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution whereby companies offer targeted promotions and messaging to individuals with select profile characteristics, mediated through Facebook. Already some companies are using basic Like data to hone their retail strategies. In one example, Urban Outfitters is arranging clothing in its online store based on Like activity and offering select promotions to all those who have liked products. Additionally, Facebook is making information about the Like activity on ads (i.e. “social context” data) available to advertisers on its site. Armed with this data, advertisers can decide to further optimize campaigns by targeting people who have expressed a Like for the ad.

With the Like button, Facebook is benefiting from the power of weak tie relationships (Facebook calls it “lightweight sharing”). Many markets point to the fact that people that Like a product aren’t real fans or brand advocates in the traditional sense. This is s feature, not a bug. By lowering the bar for Liking something, Facebook has opened a channel to—and is gathering data about—ordinary consumers of the brand who otherwise would have no formal connection to the company or its products other than isolated, anonymous purchases. This connection can be potentially valuable in terms of loyalty programs and promotions, market research, and customer support.

A number of factors suggest that the number of Likes will probably continue to grow, including: the continuing growth of the Facebook user base (see chart above, which shows no indication of plateau), expansion in global markets (70% of Facebook users are outside the U.S.), the recent proliferation of the Like button on a range of products and services (the Like button is now on over 350,000 sites), and the growing use of mobile technologies that allow users to Like physical products and experiences. With this in mind, it’s by no means hyperbolic to think that Facebook could be the largest single CRM provider in the world.

1. OpenStreetMap and Ushahidi as tools for change
   

   Erica Hagen and Mikel Maron presented their project, Map Kibera, with which they mapped the neighborhood of Kibera, a slum in the City of Nairobi, Kenya. By engaging the community, the grey space on every map was turned into a dense, detailed and public available OpenStreetMap map. Alongside empowering the citizens of Kibera, this map makes it easier for NGOs to do their work: in the second phase of the project, the team used Ushahidi to create the site voiceofkibera.org, where citizens can submit geolocated issues and problems to be addressed. For instance, this was useful for reporting problems in the referendum process. Many citizens access voiceofkibera.org via phone, as the rate of web-enabled phones in Kibera is fairly high. The project was realized with less than $100k and probably had more impact than several top-down development aid initiatives would have.

2. Where is my trash? TrashTracker
   

   How to create consciousness for the environment and sustainability? Prof. Carlo Ratti, director of MITs Sensable City Lab, thought of following answer: let’s track our trash by using “small, smart, location aware tags” to find out where it ends up. The “Trash Tracker” will increase the knowledge of the “removal chain” and can lead to improvements in waste management.

   

3. The nice facebook: Diaspora

   In the battle David against Goliath, Diaspora would be David. Diaspora is aiming to create a “privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network.” After presenting the project, I asked Maxwell Salzberg from Diaspora about the high switching costs for an user to move from one social network to the next. I used the analogy of a city: when you move into a new city, you lose most of your friends; switching social networks will be the same. Salzberg agreed that social network mobility should be a core feature. My perspective is that governments need to think about regulations for social networks in that sense to create more competition between social network providers, and allow for user mobility between sites.

4. Investigate environmental crime: Infodoalamar.info
   

   Infondoalmar.info enables grassroots monitoring of environmental crimes in the Mediterranean Sea. The site locates ships with hazardous waste that have been illegally sunk. It makes the invisible visible and creates pressure on public authorities. This project is based on empowering the citizens and declares that we need everyone to take actively care about the environment. David Eaves put forward the concept of the long tail in public service. The long tail knowledge of the citizens will lead to a long-term success of this platform: Government might know lot, but without reports from citizens it is impossible to track all the environmental crime. In fact, analysis of the traffic showed that Italian officials from ministries and agencies are already one of the biggest users of the site.

My first issue is with the word now. From my perspective, the customer has always been in control – the fate of companies providing products and services in a capitalist economy is ultimately determined by what customers choose to buy. In turn, the analysis shifts towards social media somehow giving customers slightly more control than they had before – a small, but important, distinction.

The typical argument is that as customers have connected with each other through platforms like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, the opinions they share amongst themselves have increased in importance, while the typical “broadcast marketing” approaches have decreased in effectiveness. While I do believe there is some truth to this, there is another way to look at what’s happening.

For starters, if customers only wanted to hear each other’s opinions, they could do so without engaging companies at all – either in somewhat self-organizing fashion through Facebook and Twitter, or “neutral” services like Yelp. But many, many customers are also opting to directly connect with companies – liking, following, lurking in communities, etc. – through these very same platforms. In doing so, many are effectively asking companies to engage with them.

Second, being “in control” takes time and effort. I would argue that many customers may want to “take control” in relation to certain product and service decisions, for many others they are happy to be passive recipients of messages (and offers) from their preferred brands. For example, the #2 reason given for becoming a Facebook fan (based on a survey earlier this year) was to receive coupons. And while I don’t have time to go into it here, one of the consistent findings from my research is that customers like being “broadcast” to on social media more than many people think.

On a related point, I believe that many customers are being overwhelmed by all the brand-related conversations taking place. For example, many brands on Twitter now commonly send 30+ messages a day, responding to specific people. Many consider this to be engaging. But if you follow (say) 30 such brands, that’s over 900 messages a day – most of which will be of absolutely no interest to you. Perhaps the method will persist for many more years, but perhaps not.

Finally (at least for today), as “word of mouth” marketing has moved online, and more and more data is generated, it’s becoming ever easier for brands to monitor exactly what people are saying, thinking and feeling about various things. I personally believe that all this information points towards a world where many brands can be far more “in control” than they’ve ever been before.

Tying it all together, I’ve taken to asking what someone like Don Draper – the lead character on Mad Men – would think about the rise of social media if he was ported into 2010. Would he look at all the new tools and behaviors and say “wow, I can’t control anything here!” Or would he say “wow, I can influence, monitor and control things more than ever before!”

My sense is that it would be the latter – and many companies would be well served by taking a similar line of thinking. After all, to be in control implies having power; it is commonly said that knowledge is power; and all this information is giving companies more knowledge than ever before.

The rationale for both services – protection of the organization – is logical. People can and do make mistakes, and can and do engage in deliberate attempts to damage the reputations of their employers (I consider colleges and universities employers of athletes, but that’s another discussion).

I understand that what employees are doing on their own time and on their own pages, where transgressions often occur, can be problematic, but, aside from some seriously awful anecdotes about employees’ misbehavior or mistakes, I’ve not seen data on just how much employee transgressions have actually cost employers.

Personally, I would not feel comfortable knowing that I was being watched away from work. I do not surrender my personal views or friendships or history or social life to my employer when I accept a position.

I wonder whether work at some employers is going to become too much of a risk for some people – those who value their privacy, individuality, and freedom of expression (most people, I imagine). People need and want to work, which can put employers in control when it comes to privacy. If you love your work, you may forgo some freedom at the edges of your life to continue doing it but you also get paid in return for doing something you love. That is still (and I hate this phrase now that just about everyone uses it) a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line on your privacy? Do you stop posting political views? Religious views? Opinions about sports figures? Any and all photos? Do you simply start setting up private groups on social networking sites, vetting the invited friends by asking them to “sign” your own privacy agreement?

When it comes to personal social networking activities, I believe employees should be free from spying activities, regardless of how concerned an organization says it is about loss of IP or any proprietary info on processes, new products, etc. And, while I’m at it, I would view with suspicion any company argument that it’s those Gen Ys with little fear about privacy they are afraid of; I think most Gen Ys know the difference between telling everyone what they did last weekend (which, again, is another issue entirely) and posting information on Facebook about a forthcoming product or breaching confidentiality agreements.

In my opinion, spying on employees’ social networking activities and communications reveals weaknesses in the employer, specifically in its hiring and engagement skills and processes. If an employer does not trust its employees – and this, for me, is all about trust, nothing more and nothing less, regardless of the coating an employer may put on it – it will reap the deserved rewards: lower loyalty and lower engagement, both of which affect productivity and, some research suggests, are directly correlated with lower organizational performance and even lower stock price. With the job market loosening up, monitoring personal social networking activity might even something else: losing an employee or two.

 What are the signs of addiction? According to Mayo Clinic, “As your drug use increases, you may find that it becomes increasingly difficult to go without the drug. Stopping may cause intense cravings and make you feel physically ill (withdrawal symptoms).” I’m guessing that includes ‘taking’ fist thing in the morning, or even in the middle of the night.

In fact, nGenera’s Net Generation study from a couple of years ago backs up what the Retrevo study is implying. We asked teenagers to depict visually how they would feel if technology was taken away from them for a month. The results are what you might expect. If not addicted, young people (and I imagine people of all ages) are certainly dependent on technology for entertainment, inclusion, belonging, and sense-making:

In a related study on parenting and social media, Retrevo finds that the vast majority of parents—over 70%—allow their kids to text during family meals. Personally, this is a problem for me, but then again I came from a generation of kids that was told to ignore the phone (the corded one attached to the wall) during mealtime and ask to be excused from the table after dinner. Still, if you think social media addiction is bad now, this type of behaviour means it’s probably just going to get worse from here on in.

For more stats and info-graphics, check out Retrevo Gadgetology and Retrevo Pulse.

The bigger fear, I fear, is a much larger can of worms. This is why I was delighted to see Tim O’Reilly’s weekend post, Putting Online Privacy in Perspective. While O’Reilly’s post itself is largely quotes from search engine expert Danny Sullivan commenting on a WSJ article, it hits on a core issue that is often left below the surface when we’re openly discussing privacy: facebook is only one company that’s collecting data on our activities, there are many others, collecting and crunching data on many other (often ‘private’) activities. One example, as Sullivan explored:

My credit card company knows everything I’ve purchased, which is a pretty personal trail. That doesn’t get “anonymized” after 9 months or 18 months. I have no idea at all what happens to it. I can’t, like at Google, push a button and make it go poof, either. I don’t think I have any rights over it at all.

Credit card companies aren’t the only organizations with access to tons and tons of data about us. Our cellphone service providers know where we are and who we’re calling and texting, and our IM providers keep our conversations for a few weeks. Even in-game behaviors in videogames can be tracked. While a lot of this data collection is justifiable to improve the customer experience, it can all just as easily be used for any number of other purposes.

I think that this is where we need to focus our public dialog about privacy and control. Facebook’s data collection is just one symptom of the direction where society as a whole is moving: to the mass collection, aggregation, and cross referencing of consumer data so that organizations can better understand, target, and market to each and every one of us. From the perspective of the the enterprises, this is where we want to go, and more technology and instrumentation means more, better data. Speaking for myself, as a consumer and citizen, it’s not where I want things to end up. This is a discussion that we need to have.

The uproar (if you want to call it that since it only seems to be happening among a relatively small cadre of people and organizations, NOT among the vast, vast majority of the 400+ million Facebook users) over privacy changes is dumb. The changes themselves are entirely Facebook self-centered and entirely beneficial only to Facebook, but let’s not forget: Facebook members do not own Facebook, Zuckerberg et al. do.

What, you say? You must have forgotten because it’s become such an integral if not important part of your life but you Facebook members are members, not owners; you are users, customers, etc. Are you important? Sure. Who touts Facebook’s growth more than Facebook? In the spirit of the collaborative web, Facebook should consult with you before doing drastic changes to default settings that let anyone from China to Russia to Trinidad & Tobago know you had a bad date last night or need a new laptop – and then make you fix them. But they did not and now they are going to feel your wrath as you leave en masse – to do what? Set up another, more private, more narrow network on a new site that ensures only those six people you really want to read your life get to do that?

My bet – no hedging either – is that this is another tempest in a laptop hard drive. I will be surprised if more than 100,000 people leave Facebook on May 31, Quit Facebook Day. Today, May 18, 2010, 5,335 people have committed to quitting Facebook on May 31. Folks, the people who use Facebook have gotten past this kind of mess before and will again.

Now, to get serious for a graph: Privacy is not a trivial matter. Most people do not yet begin to comprehend the risks and dangers in losing control of their personal digital identities; most probably have not even thought about having a personal digital identity. What’s more, stuff you put online is virtually permanent (barring an alien invasion that wipes out all stuff on the Net or something similar) and, with the Internet as we know it now having been around for awhile, I bet there is stuff out there I forgot I ever posted, searched for, or wrote.

If you don’t want to share stuff, don’t join Facebook. If you do, protect your privacy. Member caveo (that’s what the English-to-Latin online translator produced when I asked for “member beware”).

The much bigger questions are: What is your digital identity? Who has it? Who controls it?

(Click for the full/interactive chart, it should make far more sense than the clip above)

I conducted a highly informal and unscientific poll of the nGenera Insight staff here in the Toronto office. Fully 3/4 of our facebook-using colleagues have stripped their profile of information because of these privacy policy changes and tech blunders, and in some cases have chosen to walk away from the site entirely.

With each iterative change it seems like facebook inches closer to a user pain-point that drives users away from the site for good. What do you expect it would take you to walk away from the site?

Here is a how the site describes itself:

“What is Unvarnished?

“Unvarnished is an online resource for building, managing, and researching professional reputation, using community-contributed, professional reviews.

“Unvarnished reviews help you get the inside scoop on other business professionals, providing candid assessments of coworkers, potential hires, business partners, and more.

“By contributing Unvarnished reviews, you can share your knowledge of other professionals, giving credit where credit is due, and valuable feedback where needed.

“Lastly, your own Unvarnished profile, which you may create yourself or claim one that has been created for you, helps you take control of and build your own professional reputation. Get recognition for your accomplishments and actively manage your career growth.”

Here are a couple of phrases that jumped off the “About” page for me (emphasis added):

• “To help reviewers be honest and candid in their reviews, Unvarnished obscures the identity of review authors. This lets reviewers share their true, nuanced opinions without fear of repercussions.” (I have to wonder how nuanced anonymous reviews will be.)
• “An Unvarnished profile can be created either by an individual for themselves or, alternatively, by an individual for another professional, in order to review them.” (The ability for an anonymous person to set up a profile of a colleague or former colleague to contribute a review seems disingenuous. If I have something positive to say about a colleague, I’d want to put it on LinkedIn or another public site with my name attached so the other person would benefit.)

Unvarnished presents itself as a way “professionals can take control of and build their professional reputation. Profile owners can manage and build their reputation, by receiving notifications of new reviews, requesting reviews from trusted colleagues, adding resume details, and responding to reviews.”

IMO: It sounds a bit like LinkedIn, with a dark side: the potential for bullying and retaliation. I cannot see a reason why I’d want to set up a new profile for myself for anyone to “review” me anonymously. I cannot see a why a reputable potential employer would trust anonymous reviews, good or bad or in-between, more than reviews by people willing to give their names. Other reviews of the site can be found here, here, here, and here, but there seem to be dozens.

Unvarnished does have a Reviewer Authority scoring mechanism: “the quality of an individual revewer’s (sic) submissions, as rated by other Unvarnished users, contributes to a Reviewer Authority score, a badge for which is attached to each review by a given reviewer.” Personally, I don’t see why anonymous reviewers’ ratings of one another can create an “authority” score. How can one establish credibility as an anonymous reviewer?

Unvarnished, to me, is an inevitability of social media. It seems only logical that someone would formalize the process of anonymous “reviewing” of colleagues, present and former, for business. And my guess is, like morals, this kind of entrepreneurial approach to making a business out of bad manners cannot be legislated away. I can’t say how it will turn out, who will use it – I am not a likely user regardless of whether I might get trashed or praised there – and whether employers will tap into the unsubstantiated and anonymous reviews to make employment decisions. Most bad ideas for online sites die from lack of attention or nourishment – i.e., no traffic. But gossip (that’s what I think this will turn into) tends to have a strong pull.

My first take: People may feel forced to check up on themselves. Employers may feel tempted to see whether what they saw and heard from candidates with their own eyes and ears is accurate, but then that says more about their own skill at hiring than about the candidate.

I wonder whether writing this will prompt someone to open a profile for me. Guess that tells you more about me than Unvarnished, huh?

Three social media giants, three giant media announcements: Ning, Twitter, Facebook. In only seven days, these three companies have announced major changes to their products and/or business models. Is it a sign of things to come? How will each of these companies answer the question of how to turn its growth into revenue?

A quick synopsis of each situation:

Twitter. According to comScore, Twitter.com had 22.3 million unique visitors in March, up from 524,000 a year ago (excluding those who use third party apps), but it has been criticized for its inability to monetize those users, until now. Twitter is finally launching an ad system called “Promoted Tweets” that will show up when Twitter users search for keywords that the advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Later, Twitter plans to show promoted posts in the stream of Twitter posts (a controversial move), based on how relevant they might be to a particular user. You can watch a video about it here.

Fred Wilson, a Twitter board member, dropped a bomb on Twitter’s third-party developers, telling them to stop “filling holes in the Twitter product,” and start creating “something entirely new on top of Twitter.” Twitter has since purchased Atebits, the company responsible for the Tweetie iPhone app, and is renaming it Twitter for iPhone. They will also releasing an official app for the Android Phone OS. It looks like Twitter is prepared to compete with, and potentially replace the companies who have built applications around its ecosystem. So much for playing nice.

Facebook. On the surface, Facebook’s move doesn’t seem like much, but the Facebookipedia concept of creating ‘community pages’ could be an incredibly stealthy move to target advertising to users without them even realizing it.  Community pages take the concept of a Facebook “fan page” and apply them to concepts, places, and ideas, rather than brands. When prompted by a dialog box that pops up on their profiles, to “like” community pages that tie into what’s already entered into their profiles, users can connect to the community pages for their hometowns and schools, and convert the “interests” entered in their profiles to link to pages. This increases the amount of metadata for each user and makes search much easier for everyone. It seems like a win/win proposition though. Users of Facebook can contribute to, and potentially benefit from the increased access to shared knowledge via wiki-like pages, and Facebook can gain from the amount of data on each of its users in order to have better targeted ads. Note the implementation of this change also coincides with Facebook’s decision to step up its privacy policy/settings.

Ning. Ning (“peace” in Chinese) is a platform that allows anyone to set up their own social network. After over five years as CEO, Gina Bianchini resigns, and is replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal. One month later, the company decides to phase out its free product, and lays off 40% of its workforce (from 167 to 98).  In an interview, Bianchini mentions that about 13% of Ning’s revenue stream is from paid, premium services, an amount that contributes to what some are estimating to be roughly $10 million in total annual revenue. This appears, however, to be an optimistic ball park figure, and is likely to be lower since not all users are necessarily be paying the maximum of $55/month for pro services.  As stated by Rosenthal in his staff memo, “we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity” – the big opportunity being the premium service, not the model supported by advertising.

Ning’s approach sounds completely different from Bianchini’s interview, which occurred not too long before her departure, and the model diverges from both Facebook and Twitter.

Although I do love the Ning platform, the recent changes to Facebook that enables users to be more ‘community minded’ will cause the orphaned communities of the once ‘free’ Ning to jump ship to Facebook, where they will continue to ‘deal’ with the ads, and Facebook will benefit from Ning’s lost revenue. Other providers, such as Posterous and Tumblr, are welcoming new users with open arms. Posterous is committing to building a Ning blog importer, and BuddyPress has politely offered helpful resources to those looking to make the transition, including a user importer as well. Even with a 40% cut in staff, a revenue stream that accounts for 13% of Ning’s overall income doesn’t appear to be enough to support the company. It’s a risky move. Here’s hoping the next generation of their product will be astounding. As for Twitter and Facebook, the focus on metadata and data mining for advertising purposes could provide them with a large number of earnings. The only difference is that Twitter is being much more direct in its approach.

We’re at a crux for social networks. These platforms have enabled communication in new ways, increased transparency and knowledge sharing, facilitated new business and educational models, and have shifted the landscape of marketing and advertising. However, without the necessary revenues to support themselves, these platforms could disappear. Do we want another bubble? What do you think about the decisions made by these three companies? Do you agree with Rosenthal’s decision in changing Ning’s business model, and is this the reason for Bianchini’s departure from the company?

To provide some context, one of the big research projects we’re working on in our Marketing program is called The incredibly shrinking marcom expense line. The basic idea is that by enabling, among other things, ambient intimacy, social media is pointing towards a future where marketers can shrink their marcom costs, while at least maintaining current levels of impact. Facebook fan pages, twitter, online communities, and newer services like Yelp all play a hand in this.

In the Nokia presentation, slide 28 starts out by outlining three different ways to optimize your presence in the ecosystem – SEO, SEM, and SMO (search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and social media optimization). It then quickly points out that less than 30% of this is “bought media” – the SEM part. 70% of engagement comes from the other two – 40% SEO, 30% SMO. The first is what they call “own media”; the second is “earned media”.

I really like this idea of “earned media” – and how it’s distinguished from the paid part of ecosystem presence strategies in particular. As referenced earlier, I disagree with the blanket statement that “earned media” is all about conversations – in my mind, it’s all about earning the right to be within an individual person’s ambient network, which is based on offering them what they want (which may or may not be conversations). But the visual presented on slide 39 – where “bought media” shrinks, and “earned media” dramatically increases in the future – is the right message.

Once people start thinking this way, I believe my explanation of why “nothing is holding social network advertising back” becomes clearer. The conversation about approaches to marketing has long been dominated by a spend-centric point of view (i.e. if you don’t spend much on social media, it must not matter). In this world of “earned media”, marcom spend can indeed be low – and many things have no direct costs associated with them. But, the impact can be great – if you earn the right to make the proper connections.

Noted: danah boyd, in her address to open SXSW this month, related the following story: “I met a teen whose abusive father was recently released from jail. Recognizing that a restraining order would not be enough protection, the teen and her mother moved thousands of miles away. As the teen began making friends in her new school, she begged for a Facebook account. Her mother caved and both the daughter and mother worked to make the account as private as possible; neither of them wanted to face the consequences of being found. In December, when Facebook changed its [default] privacy settings [to Everyone], this teen and her mother didn’t realize what the change in privacy settings meant until someone else pointed them out after the fact. Is putting her at-risk an acceptable bi-product of Facebook’s changes?” Facebook has 400 million-plus apparently satisfied users; it would be devastating to two of them if, unintentionally, the impact of the change in privacy policy had not been communicated to them.

Noted: Although this is, I imagine, precisely what Facebook is intended to do, I recently heard from someone in one of my classes when I was a middle school teacher some 39 years ago. (Gasps are acceptable.) We connected by phone and during a two-hour conversation, we caught each other up on our lives since then and on families and I heard a bit about some other people in the class. This example probably does not really belong under the title On Unintended Consequences, but I include it because it certainly was unintended from my perspective – but thoroughly enjoyable.

I only bring these unrelated examples up for one reason, and that’s to remind myself and perhaps you that for all the intentionally positive consequences of technology such as social networking, online banking, and blogging, etc., there are also unforeseen, unpredictable impacts. Online banking, for example, means I never have to enter the bank for anything, which also means I am a virtual customer as far as the bank is concerned. I live in a very small town so I do know the current bank official, but I see her no more than once a year and most often to replace a lost ATM card. If I wanted to borrow money, I might have a much harder time because, frankly, they do not know me. My wife knows all the people in her bank because she is a regular, physically present customer.

We recently refinanced our house, and, until closing, I never met or saw anyone I dealt with. Nearly everything was handled by email or cell phone or landline. But I really enjoyed the closing because a very nice, personable, and knowledgeable woman came to our home and walked us through it. She put a face on the transaction.

I think the one thing people really want in an online relationship, whether they are friends, friends of friends, one-time customers, or long-term customers is trust, and that is very hard to build virtually and very easily and quickly lost. One mistake – such as a misspelled name or inaccurate transaction – can diminish or terminate the relationship. For all the convenience, choice, and selection that online buying and selling create, the magic is that trust occurs at all. That it does – far more often than not – says something about people’s openness and about companies’ diligence and cleverness at establishing virtual relationships that matter.

Some time ago internet memes were confined mostly to the periphery of the Internet, but some made it into the mainstream–think LOLCats and RickRolling. These two and their fore-bearers originally spread on message boards, forums, and irc channels; parts of the internet that weren’t especially welcoming to casual users. But the face of the internet has changed: it’s now easier to use and more people are on it. And it’s more social. Lots has been written about how it’s easier for messages to go viral on social networking sites like facebook because people have a built-in friends list, and their peers are likely to be more receptive to a message that comes from a friend.

Lately on facebook these mainstream internet memes really seem to be taking off. A few weeks ago women everywhere were posting status updates that were only one word long: a color that corresponded to that of their bra. This was allegedly to raise awareness about breast cancer, though it’s equally plausible that the idea was simply to “confuse boys.” Shortly thereafter, “doppelganger week” began, and people started changing their facebook pictures to photos of celebrities that they vaguely (or wishfully) resembled. Next was the “post the urbandictionary definition of your name. Finally, and most recently, has been a political meme going around seeing if an onion ring can amass more facebook fans than Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper (and boy can it ever).

These four memes have taken over my facebook newsfeed, and likely those of just about everyone else who shares more than a few friends with me. Viral marketers would love to get this kind of reach, but doing so largely remains a dream. So why not change the rules of the game a bit?

Urbandictionary is clearly benefiting a great deal from being the center of attention in this way, but what’s to stop other companies from joining-in on the trend and showing that they “get it”? Various breast cancer societies could have easily hopped on the bra-color bandwagon. New York Fries or Pizza Pizza (the only places I can think of off the top of my head that serve onion rings) could roll out a “Prime Minister Onion Meal,” and any number of celebrity gossip magazines could use the doppelganger meme to great effect.

After all, if these trends simply “happen,” then there’s no intellectual property concerns to worry about, the message already exists and is popular (making it a proven commodity), and it shows people who already feel like they’re a part of something that the marketer/company is also in the know. Macy’s tried this by hiring Rick Astley to sing “Never gonna give you up” in 2008′s Macy’s day parade, but I think the best has yet to come in terms of marketers latching on to, and reflecting back, the spontaneous culture of the internet.

A little place on the Internet celebrating creativity and the everyday moments of inspiration that LEGO® enthusiasts call “CL!CK.” Come to inspire and be inspired.

The community is tightly tied to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, providing tags (#legoclick and legoclick) so that users can take ownership of their new ideas and post those ideas out to the world. The Cl!ck community highlights individual’s random posts on its site, so as I went back and forth to the site I actually saw updated Tweets and posts about what people were thinking about and doing with Cl!ck. Marketers at Lego also did a fantastic job putting together a video to introduce the concept. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s well done and very engaging.

We should not be surprised at Lego’s recent step into more collaboration with customers, especially since they’ve been working on it since the early days of their Mindstorms project. Lego Mindstorms, originally released in 1998, developed programmable bricks, electric sensors, and motors so that Lego enthusiasts and other inventors could create robots or whatever they wanted. At the time Lego was still targeting only kids with Mindstorms, but this initiative revealed how much of an adult following they had. In 2005,  Don Tapscott commented in an Optimize Magazine article(now Information Week):

Within three weeks of their release, user groups had sprung up, and tinkerers had reverse-engineered and reprogrammed the sensors, motors, and controller devices at the heart of the Mindstorms robotic system—and sent their suggestions to Lego. The company, at first uncertain about how to respond, threatened to launch lawsuits. When users rebelled, however, Lego finally came around and eventually created a Web site where customers can co-create products. Now each time a customer develops and posts an application for Mindstorms, the toys become more valuable.

Even years ago Lego recognized how important collaborative customer relationships were to the growth of the brand and the company. Lego’s CL!CK community is clearly an extension of its ongoing collaboration with its customers.

In conjunction with the CL!CK  announcement, Lego also release a free iPhone app that allows users to take any image and convert it to a mosaic Lego image. It’s easy to use and downloadable at legoclick.com or  iTunes.

While the iPhone app seems fun and is an interesting way to keep your brand in front of consumers, the CL!CK community could actually produce new innovations, benefiting both Lego and those inventors who generate new ideas. The launch and campaign around the site has been impressive so far. I look forward to seeing CL!CK success stories and possibly new social product development processes emerge from this as well.

Christopher White, a University of Alberta graduate student, responded to the prorogation by forming a facebook group, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament (CAPP). People joined in droves. To date, the group is almost 220,000 users strong, and there was hardly a single time I logged into facebook for a period of 2-3 weeks when I didn’t see that at least 4-5 more of my friends had joined the group. I thought then, as I did before, that this was just armchair democracy, and no one really cared about the issue with more energy than it would take to click a link, and people on both sides of the issue agreed that that was a very likely assessment. When facebook invites started going out asking Canadians to rally in their prospective cities on January 23rd to protest, I was skeptical that turnout would exceed more than a few hundred in any one place.

Boy was I wrong.

On Saturday I went downtown to take a look at the protest, and snuck onto a nearby patio to get a view of the turnout.

(Click for full)

By my estimate, there were some 3200 people in Toronto’s Dundas square, not all of them were there to learn about the Gumwich. Whether or not the protests will make a difference in the long run remains to be seen, as we’re still pretty far from an election, and it’s entirely possible that only a few of the attendees voted for our current ruling party. But this clearly puts to rest the idea that civic engagement online begins and ends with clicking a button to join a link.

I’m glad I was wrong, and I’m glad that I was around to witness this social media-organized peaceful assembly for political action.

Twitter and Facebook specifically are proving to be valuable tools for organizations soliciting donations. One of the more popular options ties together the huge adoption of social networking tools with everyone’s favorite communication device, your cell phone. The Red Cross developed a text option, so when the word “Haiti” is sent to a specific number, $10 is donated to the Haitian relief effort. The $10 charge shows up on your cell phone bill, so no need to worry about exchanging credit card information, or even visiting a web site. As one of my colleague’s posted “it’s easy peasy!” Within my relatively small network I’ve already seen the message about this option posted on no less than 100 status updates or Twitter posts. Last night The American Red Cross posted this on its Facebook page:

American Red Cross is confirming that you have donated $5 million by texting “Haiti” to 90999. You are amazing.

Pretty impressive for less than 2 full days work!

Of course, as with most outreach efforts there are always losers out there looking to make a quick buck with donation scams. On Wednesday the FBI actually released a fraud alert about donation scams.  Unfortunately social media tools become an attractive option for these criminals given the speed at which communications can reach critical mass. Thankfully the channel also allows for the revealing of frauds relatively quickly as well. I’ve seen a few posts pointing people to places where they can find lists of legitimate charities. This includes sites like –  the washingtonpost.com, NBC’s Boston affiliate WHDH, and most other local television news sites.

I could go on about the lessons that other organizations could learn from The Red Cross and other’s use of social media channels. However, today I think it’s more appropriate for us all to pause for just a minute, count our blessings and send thoughts and prayers to all of the families affected by the Haiti earthquake.

I had a beer with my 25-year-old daughter Jen and Laura, her friend from high school, before seeing a performance of The Nutcracker in mid-December. I mentioned something about Facebook, and was surprised by their animosity toward the site. They both agree that they did not like what it is (too serious, a soapbox for self-promotion, populated by arrogant and self-absorbed Gen Ys) and missed what it was (fun and a safe way to meet people in college, a closed community). They both also did not like that it was now a place for parents – yes, me – to go. (Note: My daughter has friended me but 21-year-old son says he won’t.)

Their perspective is, of course, is easily dismissed as useless information because it is entirely anecdotal. I personally know other people in their 20s and 30s who do use it and share enormous amounts of information and photos.

And Facebook Statistics clearly don’t support the notion that it is fading in importance, even among younger people: 350 million members, each with an average of 130 friends, 8 friend requests per month, and 3 event invitations per month. Facebook crossed the 200 million member mark in April 2009, so membership has increased by 75% in some nine months or by more than 16 million members per month. Facebook has more than 101 million members in the US as of December 31, 2009, and according to CheckFacebook.com, of the 95 million US members it had as of November 3, 2009, slightly more than 50% are between the ages of 18 and 34. Facebook is growing overseas as well but numbers in any country are dwarfed by US membership, with the UK coming in a distant second with some 22.6 million members. The largest growth rates over the last 12 months are in the Philippines (2046.8% growth), Indonesia (1536.7% growth), and Thailand (1063.8% growth).

Nevertheless, there seems to be some increasing disillusionment with Facebook, though I know of no definitive trend in any age group that has been reported, other than among members 55 and older, whose ranks diminished by some 600,000 in April and May 2009. Type “Facebook sucks” into the Google rectangle and “about 19,600,000″ results show up. (This is so unscientific I won’t even make a claim about validity.) But there are also some thoughtful, reasoned articles about quitting Facebook that intrigued me:

• Carmen Joy King at Adbusters: “The amount of time I spent on Facebook had pushed me into an existential crisis. It wasn’t the time-wasting, per se, that bothered me. It was the nature of the obsession – namely self-obsession. Enough was enough. I left Facebook.”
• Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times writes about friends quitting: “If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.”
• Singer Lily Allen, quoted by Anita Singh at showbusiness.com: “I just had this revelation that Facebook, blogging, all those things were becoming a total addiction. I’d be with my boyfriend or my mum and they’d have just got half of me. So I put my BlackBerry, my laptop, my iPod in a box and that’s the end . . . We’ve ended up in this world of unreal communications and I don’t want that. I want real life back.”
• Hannah VanderPoel at North by Northwestern, a Northwestern University online publication: “Ultimately, my own self-prescribed hiatus from Facebook was fueled by three factors. One was to rid my life of unnecessary distraction, mostly in an attempt to finish my homework. The second was the hope of re-learning how to socialize in ways that don’t involve typing public messages to profile avatars that serve as pixeled representations of real people. Thirdly, it was the desire to regain the sense of personal privacy that I surrendered three years ago when I first created my account –- a move that I am retrospectively thankful for, given the controversy surrounding the site’s privacy policies (or lack thereof).”
• Boston University sophomore Brendan Gauthier: “I couldn’t justify the amount of time I was spending — no, wasting — on it. Why was I looking through my friend’s roommate’s girlfriend’s sorority sister’s photo albums? I didn’t even know this person, yet I could tell you what she did last weekend. . . . At what point are we willing to sacrifice real friendships for convenience? Since giving up Facebook, I’ve called my high school friends, and our conversations are much more gratifying than three words on our wall-to-wall.”

So, my questions are: Do you know people who have quit Facebook? Are you thinking about quitting yourself?

The first job of the new board is to help overhaul the safety elements of Facebook’s help center. They also intend to jointly create a library of online materials information for teachers, parents and youth. There remains a lot of work to do. In mid-November, Facebook was the victim of an attack in which a group called Control Your Info took administrative control of numerous Facebook pages and repeated at each a message suggesting that they could have posted malicious messages and done more damage. It’s important to note that Control Your Info didn’t use technology such as viruses or worms to take over Facebook networks. This suggests that better management controls and policies could have precluded the attack — which is precisely the message the group was trying to convey.

Per a post by Richard Allen, Facebook’s Director European Public Policy, there may be more organizations added to the board. Allen added that The Safety Advisory Board is just one step Facebook has taken to promote a safer environment online. Other steps Facebook recently announced include -

• A partnership with MTV on the A Thin Line campaign to educate people about digital abuse.
• New York Attorney General’s office citing Facebook’s help in identifying and disabling the accounts of registered sex offenders.
• Work with the BBC in November on their Bullyproof campaign in the UK.
• Work with organizations like the National Crime Prevention Council to share safety tips with users, and provide updates on new safety approaches they’re taking on the site to make reporting abuse easier.

I applaud Facebook for developing these relationships and taking proactive measures to keep children safe online. However, the critical link still has to be at home. As I mentioned in a previous post, it doesn’t matter how many policies are in place, if parents are not aware of what their kids are doing online.

This raises a few other questions – What age is appropriate for kids to have a profile on a social network like Facebook? What steps should parents be taking to keep their kids safe online? How do you reach parents that have no access or interest in online activities?

What do you think? How is social networking and overall Internet use handled with your children? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Farmville exists with a very different business model than most video games: you don’t pay by the month to play it, you don’t even shell out a one-time payment to play: you play for free, and then the game tries to sell you in-game perks and a chance to skip the grind to unlock all of the game’s content by spending money rather than time.

Farmville locks you out of some content unless you have enough friends playing Farmville with you, and having friends in your network playing Farmville is a reliable source of coins, experience, and gifts, the main resources of the game.

The game is also more than happy to bribe players for participating in its viral spread: cute lonely animals will show up on your farm periodically and as a player you face a dilemma in sentencing them to virtual abandonment and death unless you post on your Facebook wall that you need one of your friends to start playing Farmville and “adopt” the adorable little self-promoter.

The genius in how Farmville has succeed in getting so many people addicted comes down to how it handles commitments on a player’s time: every time you play Farmville and plant a crop, you’re making a commitment to come back during a 12 hour window or so to harvest your crop, or else you forfeit your investment.

There’s some more surprising and clever stuff that has been baked into the social design of the game, but even the points above would seem to make for an addictive (and viral) experience.

nGenera just hosted a conference in Memphis (kudos to FedEx for graciously hosting it at their World Technology Center) where I gave a presentation on gamers as employees and customers. I argue that gamers are more than a bit self-interested, and are focused on generating smart, efficient solutions to problems that let them sail through the rest of the game with relative ease and speed. Gamers also want to feel engaged with their virtual worlds, and in certain cases have emotional connections with in-game characters and the game itself.

Farmville seems to have taken these constructs to a new level, allowing gamers to pay (real money) for tools that speed them towards completion and give them competitive advantage, and putting gamers in situations where their emotional involvement with the game is leveraged to encourage friends to start playing (and spending their own money for in-game advantages).

While writing this post I’ve had the facebook connect installation screen sitting in a background tab in my browser, I think I have to go try the game out for the sake of research. Are there any Wikinomics readers who play the game? What do you think of it? What should I expect?

Hopefully I won’t get completely swallowed up, and will post again soon!

Twitter Guru Denis Hancock is thankful for: “the seamless integration between the camera on the iPhone, and SMS messaging. My wife is out and about with my daughter all day, and it’s SO easy for her to snap a picture of her and SMS it to me that I tend to get several each day. Getting those visual updates throughout the day makes my life a better place.”

Naumi Haque, our expert in sentiment analysis adds: “Personally, I am thankful for my Cisco IP phone and wireless Internet. It’s pretty basic, but it means I can seamlessly work from home when I want to/need to which has made me more efficient, saved me commuting every day, and let me spend more time with my family.”

Naumi also considered enterprise level innovations and added that “the combination of sentiment analysis and CRM will be huge. It will allow companies to merge 2.0 customer experience activities (like Twitter, participating in blogs and forums, Facebook fan pages, etc.) with their contact center operations, get a single view of the customer, and develop an official support structure around Web 2.0 channels so they can measure ROI of engagement activities. This technology will also lower market research costs as companies gather insights from customers simply by “mining opinions” online.”

Author and prolific blogger Steve Guengerich is thankful for the iPhone 3Gs. It is “much faster, contains more storage for media, files, and apps., and allows me a big step closer to a future without a desk or office, where I can just carry my compute power with me in my pocket. It is indispensable.”

Jeff DeChambeau, technology whiz and online gaming authority “can’t say enough good things about Dropbox – you install the service on your mac, pc, or iphone, and it adds a folder to my documents, then anything you save there is synced across all devices linked to your account. You can also share specific subfolders with friends and peers, and any change (all tracked and version controlled) they make to shared files is updated for everyone immediately, effectively turning every file into a wiki.” See Jeff’s post last year for more details and a cool video of the service.

Jeff is also a big fan of “Yelp!, especially their mobile app. It’s great and often settles many “well where should we eat?” debates quickly with reliable suggestions, especially when visiting unfamiliar parts of the city. Simple but tremendously helpful.”

And from our Product Development and Web 2.0 expert Steve Elmore, he is most excited about Google Wave. It “ has the potential to be a game changer, combining email, instant messaging, wikis, file sharing, and social networking. But more importantly, this is not proprietary Google IP or infrastructure, but rather an open protocol available to anyone who wants to build a Wave server – this alone will promote rapid development.”

From a technology perspective I am most thankful for the adoption of social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. I can effectively connect with colleagues, friends, family and follow interesting people and brands, keeping up to date with numerous stories all at the same time. In less than a couple minutes I can see that the Call for Papers date at a conference was moved, a new product was launched at a company I follow, my sister is back from vacation, CNN is interviewing Sarah Palin at 3 o’clock, so-and-so had her baby, my co-worker needs help with a project, my son is acting up at daycare and my Manager will be traveling until tomorrow. I know it can seem like information overload, but I get more value out of the little interactions both professionally and personally than was ever possible even 1 year ago. I believe it makes me a more productive professional, a more informed individual and a better friend. So as we get ready to carve our turkey tomorrow, what technology innovations are you most thankful for?

Each category around the “wheel” represents a different type of conversation. By implication, each type of conversation serves a distinctive business purpose. Solis and JESS3 did the hard work. For each type of conversation they mapped the appropriate collections of social media tools. According to the “Prism”, Facebook and Linked-in serve different types of conversations. Facebook, MySpace and Friendster are Social Networks. Linked-In, Plaxo, Ning and others are Interest and Curated Networks. Most of us lump all of them into the same category.

As one moves around the wheel, other helpful distinctions become apparent. Forums, Reviews and Ratings (e.g. yelp, Epinions, Amazon), SMS/Voice, Lifestreams, Twitter Ecosystems, Micromedia (e.g. Twitter, Yammer), Blog Communities, Blog Platforms, Blogs/Conversations, Crowdsourced Content, etc serve different objectives and different types of conversations. Each conversation has a different collection of social media tools. One readily gets the idea. It immediately makes sense. Each of the twenty-four different types of conversation requires a different type of social media.

The taxonomy also marks a key milestone in the evolution of social media. A key indicator of the maturity of a discipline is the ability to create a meaningful typology. While the creators developed the Conversation Prism from a marketing perspective, the taxonomy applies to many other disciplines and contexts.

Here are some thoughts on how to use The Conversation Prism:

Marketing. Everyone is interested in getting more customer mindshare, establishing meaningful conversations and developing hot communities around products. But how? Distinguishing among the different types of conversations and tools helps to focus effort. Sean Moffitt, one of the key thought leaders in nGenera’s Marketing 2.0 program notes that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flikr are key conversation forums, but one has to also match the conversation to the marketing objectives and the product or service. The Conversation Prism provides a way to rethink which types of conversation reach the best audience and achieve the right message and customer experience.

Enterprise Strategy. I’ve lost count of the many conversation with executives who simply dismiss social media as an irrelevant pastime or an “Extra-curricular” activity. Many think Facebook and MySpace are the sum total of social media when they are not. And often, social media is dismissed out of hand, to the detriment of an organization’s strategy, because everything is lumped together. The Conversation Prism cuts through the clutter and buzz and assigns the role and place of various types of social media. Use this taxonomy liberally for internal business strategy discussions, social media strategy, and most importantly, our soapbox – collaborative enterprise management.

Finance. Yes, finance. What does social media have to do with finance? Take a look at the wheel again. Armed with the taxonomy, the CFO or the controller for that matter can begin to think about where various tools might add value in conveying and explaining financial concepts, policies and performance. For example, quick relay of confidential financial information to small group would use a different set of social media than information disseminated to institutional investors, or retail investors. What type of conversation provides the best result for each constituency?

Information Technology. Increasingly, various groups expect the IT organization to recommend the right social media tool for the right problem. On what basis should these decisions be made? The Conversation Prism enables IT professional to understand the landscape and make recommendations based on desired business outcomes, not simply technical features. Bandwidth, storage, API’s, architectures, apps, widgets, gadgets and price vary by social media type. Some tools require internal infrastructure, other operate as SaaS in the Cloud.

Human Resources. Conversations and social media involve people. Duh. However, employees should understand appropriate use. Often, social media gets a bad name, or experiments fail, because the wrong tool is applied to the wrong circumstance. Ever consider using a text message for a performance review. Some have. Use “the wheel” to teach appropriate use.

The Conversation Prism provides a welcome tool as social media moves into its second stage of development. It surveys and maps the social media landscape. Perhaps other destinations will be added. However, in the mean time, The Conversation Prism, a simple framework, provides self-evident guidance to those who wish to profit from the social media revolution.

• Web 2.0 & Social computing behavior In many companies this is new ground for employee and technology policy. These policies outline expectations for employees’ communication and behavior when using Web 2.0 technology, not only on the job, but anytime they can be identified as employees of the corporation. Today, everyone with an online presence is in a sense (or may be perceived to be) a spokesperson for the company. Every day brings news stories of people and organizations learning the new rules of the road the hard way, ranging from silly (bad-mouthing the boss on Facebook after you’ve “friended” him) to the serious (discussing product plans or arguing product quality with competitors on online forums). Remember, employees have always had the ability to pick up a phone or send out an email with unacceptable company content. The difference in the 2.0 world is the breadth and speed of the channel. News, true or untrue, spreads very fast. A few years ago Yahoo announced a reduction in the workforce but did not publicly disclose what parts of the organization were affected. However, upset employees posted notes online and it became clear quite quickly what groups were involved. A Web 2.0 policy and diligent use agreement may not have changed the Yahoo situation but it could have substantially decreased the amount of traffic initially posted. Far better to establish some basic rules of the road than to keep learning the hard way, or try to close the road altogether.

• Self-service rights and responsibilities As employees are permitted more control over their computing set-ups, they need to understand the limits of what they can do on their own and the responsibilities they are assuming, especially if self-service extends to hardware purchase, configuration, or service; software selection and maintenance; vendor contracts (e.g., for telecom services); and any facets of systems administration (e.g., backup and recovery). Define what employees must or can do on their own. Also define the flip-side – what they can not do or must seek help with.

• Laptop and PDA configurations This is a more technical policy companion to self-service rights. The approach may vary by employee segment. For technologically adept employees, those who are self-sufficient and really want to manage their computing environments, define the basic standards and protocols that must be met in order to operate with the corporate infrastructure. For those who are technologically capable but not gung-ho, define a limited number of packages (hardware, software, communications) from which to choose. The packages may be attuned to roles (e.g., sales) or work patterns (e.g., road warriors). For those who don’t want the responsibility, a standard company configuration should still be an option.

• Vendor and license management This is another set of adjustments driven by the two points above, self-service and variable configurations. Does the company want to purchase hardware and license software in bulk for the sake of volume discounts, then resell or reissue to employees? Or really get out of the provisioning business and let employees serve themselves, but set up standing arrangements with key vendors (e.g., for discounts in return for guaranteed volume, or for group service plans)?

Of course, most of these policies are not brand new. Many companies are building on existing policies and adding information about new technologies, primarily email and the internet in general. Now is a good time to review your policy set and expand it to include Web 2.0 tools. Chances are you will also need to revisit your guidelines around information, IP, and privacy as well. As the market continues to add new ways of sharing information and collaborating with each other, enterprises need to keep up by recognizing trends early, learning about the implications on their businesses and ensuring that policies morph as quickly as employees’ computing environments do. Click the link to read more about the Redefining Employee Computing study.

Having identified these potential sources of evil, the NFL announced a formal policy in early August cracking down on the use of Twitter, basically trying to ban the use of the tool by anyone in its ecosystem (players, coaches, staff, etc). So I guess formal communication channels were supposed to remain the norm and the opportunity to informally connect with fans, or communicate with a broader audience, the fundamental concepts behind social media and the reason it is becoming so popular, would not be taken advantage of?  Some teams like the New Orleans Saints have taken a less harsh approach. Shortly after the NFL policy was released, Saints Head Coach Sean Payton stated that he is in favor of the medium as long as players use it wisely. This is the stance that we often recommend to enterprises as they update policies to include appropriate use of social media channels. The below chart from our redefining employee computing study, shows the difference between the old school style of thinking and the new. Note how much of the NFL mandate falls into the old school column. Specifically look at the objective row: The old school is to maintain control vs the new school attitude of building an environment built on understanding, capability and trust.

One area that makes NFL  players different is that they are celebrities; they want to build their personal brands and experiment with this stuff. A company can’t stop an employee from participating online; it can only provide guidelines and trust that the right thing is going to be done. When the right thing is not done, consequences should be clear. Case in point – Antonio Cromartie @crimetime31 was fined $2500 for posting a complaint on Twitter about the food at the San Diego Chargers training camp. I’m not sure it’s really a fineable offense, but it does send a message. BTW: Antonio has protected his tweets so he needs to approve you before you can follow him. I wonder if that happened before or after this incident? The fine is actually ironic given that the Chargers tend to have a more progressive attitude towards social media. They broadcasted their first-round pick on Twitter before the NFL announced it, Charger linebacker Shawne Merriman (@shawnemerriman) answered questions about his use of social media at a San Diego Tweetup, and The Chargers even have a staffer dedicated to heading up social media efforts including Twitter: @Chargers.

Interestingly, less than 30 days after the initial NFL social media regulations were announced, the policy was amended. The NFL graciously announced that it would “allow players to use social media networks this season.” Anyone else think it’s fascinating that the NFL thinks it needs to give permission for this stuff? The league also announced that players, coaches and football operations staff would be allowed to use social media up to 90 minutes prior to kickoff and after the game once traditional media interviews are complete. So, if I’m Patriots tackle Matt Light and I’m showered and on my way home, I have to listen to when QB Tom Brady’s press conference ends to figure out when it’s OK to update my Facebook or Twitter status? BTW: Matt does tweet however the one page I found is set up for his charity vs. a personal Twitter handle. What fine will the NFL dish out the first time something is posted 89 minutes before kickoff?

More pieces of the updated policy:

• Of course, no status updates are allowed during the game, which would be tough to do since cell phones, PDAs and laptops are not allowed on the sidelines.
• The use of social media by all officials and officiating department personnel is prohibited at all times.
• This next one is my favorite: The league has also banned play-by-play descriptions of games in progress, extending that ban to social media platforms. Does that ban apply to fans? If it does and I’m at a Pats game (1 of 68,000+ fans) and I post that Brady just hit Randy Moss (@r81m) for a 70 yard TD to win the game should I expect a fine? Unlike most professional athletes, I can’t afford that type of hit!

Some individual teams also placed restrictions on spectators at training camps and practice fields, including @MiamiDolphins,  @Denver_Broncos, @realpatriots, @buffalobillscom, @DetroitLionsNFL, The Colts and The Saints (if you find their official Twitter sites let me know).

I am not arguing that restrictions are by themselves a bad idea; I do think that all companies need them to ensure security, stakeholder value and maintain a competitive advantage in their market. The NFL has already seen examples where social media has supplied an unneeded distraction (something that makes football coaches everywhere cringe.) When Minnesota QB Tarvaris Jackson sprained a knee ligament, his teammate Bernard Berrian (@bernardberrian)  tweeted that Jackson was out for the season. He quickly posted that it was a joke but this underscored how much “appropriate use” education may be needed.

Interestingly, the NFL  (@NFL)does use Twitter and other social media tools, primarily for marketing and promotions. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (@nflcommish) even tweeted from the college draft. What I’d like to know is – how far will the  restrictions/policies go? How many more changes are on the horizon? I applaud the NFL  for being the first professional sports league to publically recognize the importance of social media and attempting to develop reasonable guidelines around its use.  However, I am not convinced that the scope of the current policy is actually realistic. My hope is that the guidelines remain flexible or at least amendable; to adjust as the market adjusts, while still providing the players freedom to connect with their fans without becoming too paranoid.

1. Over a year ago I was scheduled to speak with 2 executive clients at a large manufacturing company. The purpose of the call was to interview them for a research study our team was conducting on how collaboration tools are forcing companies to redefine their employee computing environments. The problem was that I only had first and last names of the contacts; I had no titles, departments or backgrounds. In this case the set of interview questions were specifically tied to individual’s roles, so I had no idea what question set to use. As is often the case, I was preparing for the next day at 9pm the night before, so I did not have a lot of options. I crossed my fingers and conducted a search on LinkedIn, hoping that at least one of the executives had a public profile. Thankfully they both did! Not only was I able to see their current job titles, I could also see their backgrounds. Based on this more detailed information we were able to adjust our questions, leading to a much more fruitful discussion. This relatively short preparation and interaction not only helped us to gather some great data points; it also helped my company develop a stronger client relationship. BTW: Yes, after the call I did “Link” to both executives on LinkedIn, along with my usual “thank you for speaking with us” message. This is quickly becoming a best practice for follow-up and maintenance of client relations.

2. Just this Friday I was brainstorming with my Manager about ideas for my research on the ROI of collaboration. While I have the bulk of the study completed, I will spend this week pulling together a few more useful examples. My Manager suggested I reach out to a company; we’ll call XYZ Corp., who he had met with a while ago. The problem was that he could not recall the name or contact details of the individual he had spoken with. Fortunately he did know one of our co-workers who might have a contact. While still on the phone I jumped on Twitter and sent her a DM (Direct Message) to see if she had a current contact at XYZ Corp. Within minutes I had a DM back with name, title, email and phone details. The value here was not just in the quick response but in knowing that the quickest way to reach the person I needed was via Twitter, not Gmail, Skype or IM. If she was only a casual Twitter user it may have taken a few days to hear back so the efficiency would have been lost.

3. One last example occurred after “business hours” (does that still apply anymore?). It was late and I was preparing for an early morning client discussion. I had two quick questions that could only be answered by one of our head engineers. I knew that an email would most likely sit until the morning. I also knew that this individual was often on Facebook so I logged in and spent 5 minutes chatting with him. This short interaction provided the information I needed to have a successful interaction with our client the next day.

Have I measured or monetized the time savings, productivity gains or added value of these activities? No, and I have found very few companies that have. However, I don’t think anyone would argue the value derived from these interactions, especially given the quick turnaround required and achieved. The important take away is not how many people you’re connected to, or how many networks you participate in, it’s all about knowing how to navigate each channel to get what you need in the most efficient way possible. It’s also important to note that in some cases the best option is to forgo 2.0 tools altogether and simply pick up a telephone.

A lot of people run into these etiquette errors as they are getting used to a new social network. I have a presentation that I’ve delivered several times (often for fifty bucks and bus fare) where I describe LinkedIn as a Grey Flannel Suit and Facebook as a Hawaiian Shirt. It’s good to have both in your wardrobe, but if you show up at a board meeting in a Hawaiian Shirt you look like a goof and if you show up on a boathouse roof in a Grey Flannel Suit you look like an ass.

How one uses the status update is important here. Since LinkedIn should be your grey suit, unless for some reason you want a nutty online professional persona, it should only refer to a new accomplishment, position, or company or a request for work-related information or a decision. A lot of young people, consider status updates on Facebook to be lame, but those old people that showed up late on the scene to ruin it (like me and many of my friends) use it as an opportunity to be provocative or to try and show off their (Editor’s Note: should we qualify this?) sense of humour. The whole point of Twitter is frequent updates, but as Mark suggests, if you are reviewing your cat’s moods too often, most people will quickly vote with their feet (and unfollow button). Like most people, I ignore Plaxo’s plaintive and earnest pleas for an update. And Bebo? To paraphrase favorite philosophers, “what the fruck is Bebo.”

There are a lot of services that enable immediate updates across multiple platforms. I wouldn’t recommend any of them though since they can’t automatically determine whether a message is appropriate for a medium. In fact, it probably can’t even use contractions. What annoys you the most about status updates?