Why do I need Twitter AND Facebook?

One of the main reasons I use Facebook is to interact with friends. I like to keep people whom I know personally or have met at certain point. I also like to maintain my photo album & videos on Facebook. Mainly I don’t bring my professional life or politics or religious beliefs on Facebook.

Why do I use twitter? Primarily for “professional” discussions. Mostly I do on Twitter is do Internet Marketing discussions with people I don’t know personally but have come across them through a blog or social medium. Most of these people are from Internet Marketing background, as well as things related to my area of interests. These include discussions on specific areas, providing opinions on technologies, and at times heated religion and political discussions. I bond with lots of people on Twitter. Some of them I like & some I hate. I try to keep my personal relationships out of my twitter account.

Google introduces circles

Google+ is based on the concept of Circles. In your social life have circles of friends where you behave differently. The first task you go on Google Plus is to organize/place your Professional relationships, Followers, Family & acquaintances in different circles. You can block certain people & also create your own specific circles. You can add people to multiple circles. What this means for me is that Google+ gives me the ability to interact with both groups, i.e. those I talk to on twitter & those I communicate with on Facebook.

There are some other benefits of using Circles which I will discuss later.

Facebook has lists but hardly anyone knows about them & there is a method & design to it which has a reason at its core. The reason for lists not being in your face in Facebook is because Facebook wants you to share as much as you can, publicly. They don’t care about your ease of using it and privacy. Remember you are not the consumer for Facebook, your content & details are the product which they sell to advertisers. Giving you privacy options doesn’t help them. If it’s about making a simple user interface, explain to me why they make it so extremely hard to change privacy settings?

If people can post hash tags on Twitter, upload images on twitpic & add people to conversation on Facebook, create multilevel login screen which includes a call on your cellphone; I do believe they can organize their contact lists by creating circles. There’s a difference between creating systems that are easy to use and treating users with an attitude or feeling of patronizing superiority.

In Google+, the circles are there from day one. Circles gives you the option to choose who you want to post the status update to, a person, a circle, multiple circles without making it complex to understand or use.

Google Plus lacks the Charm of Twitter

What Twitter lacks in features it makes up in a certain way it is setup. Twitter mainly works as an ego massaging unit by telling me how many people people listen to me in terms of followers. The concept of having thousands of followers and hundreds of re-tweets attracts seems to attract many. With Facebook, if you want to be loved, you either set up a Fan Page (which very rarely people do), or accept everyone has a friend, which becomes a bit too busy.

Google+ takes tackles this in a little different style which has a mix of both worlds. When someone ads you to their circle, you don’t have add them back. You can also follow people without being acquainted to them, by placing them in the Follower circle. This allows you to drive up your ego, while keeping the noise to the desired level.

Sorry 140 chars is really hard to express myself
If I want to express myself in 140 characters I don’t need a software system to tell me so. Everyone is intelligent enough to restrict self to characters if and when he/she wants to or ave we become so completely and utterly mindless that we actually need that enforced by a software system?

Google+ wont workd as it is filled with Scoble & Geeks

The status-quo of Google+ being closed currently to those with an invite is temporary. It is true many of current social networks were initially limited to nerds and geeks & the online crazy joiners who jump on every new product no matter how sketchy. And, of course, they’re led by their ersatz leader, the ubiquitous Scoble, the blogger, Scoble. This will change as more people pour in and invites are shared. It actually even works to Google’s favor, just like it has with many other services. Everyone wants to be part of an “exclusive” club. Gmail itself for quite sometime was a closed group. As G+ grows, it will open up.

Will G+ beat Facebook by crossing the userbase on 7000 Million? Probably not. But I think it will grow faster than many expect it to.

Google Plus is of little interest to App Developers

Google+ has received criticism for lack of API for APP developers. While Facebook loves developers & Twitter is known to screw them bad, Google+ has not revealed its API story. This might change as it is still early days & the platform might see many changes. Google is loved by its developers for their openness & clear policies which don’t change overnight.

Some more of Google Plus Benefits

Conversations
Its next to impossible to track conversations on Twitter. With Google Plus, tracking & participating in conversation is a charm. I can read an entire thread & read content by my friends as well as discover new contacts. Twitter has made some improvements in this area but its not there as yet.

Instant Notifications
Another step Google has taken is to integrate Google+ with its other services. Google has Billion plus users using its service at one point of day or another. You can navigate from one Google Service to another. If you use Gmail, Google as a search engine, maps, reader or Picassa you instantly get a notification icon in the top bar indicating status updates.

These notifications can further be fine tuned by simple options in settings tab.

The user retains the copyrights over photos and videos you post
I hate Facebook & some image hosting services as they don’t let me retain the copyrights over my personal information. facebook privacy page is simple, it is set to let Facebook to use things posted by us as it pleases.

What it means Facebook can take your favorite beach photo and use it in their tv promotion, ad campaign, printed reference material, any given day even after you have deleted it or made it private. Remember Facebook was setup in a way people can find out which girl in their circle is sleeping with which dude.

Compare this to Google+ makes it easier to share and manage contents and yet retain full rights over your content.

Simple and to the point.

Security
Here is again where circles are effective. How often have you heard a story that someone posted a tweet or an update on facebook about going on vacation or going to a dinner for the night, only to come home to find their house being burgled. Circle helps you by giving you the ability to share the information with whom you trust and not the world.

Hangouts
Not much to add on this cool feature of multiple video chats which is one of the show-stopper of Google+ and beats the so called recent awesome launch of Facebook Video chat feature.

You can’t Ignore Google Search
It’s Google. The undisputed leader of search. If you want to promote your content or you run a small business, you can never parley/ignore the importance of search. Google recently ended its partnership with Twitter to show real time search results from the latter. No doubt what was the reason for this move. It’s Google+. Google controls the searches. It will be able to provide real-time info if the case arises. In addition it can also provide other G+ features like + & not to mention “sponsored” updates from Google+ (which might come in one form of another at a later date).

Conclusions

As mentioned previously, most of the criticism of G+ talk about how complicated it is for average Joe. In-fact G+ is as complicated as one wants to make it, which is sometimes influenced by conflicting interests. By so-far the only so called complicated feature of Google Plus right now is the “CIRCLES”. What I would say is when it comes to settings, both concerning the privacy as well as general ones, G+ is far simpler and less obscure than Facebook.

The use of electronic tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with others…

Why Social Media

• 93% say a company should have presence in social media
• 85% say a company should use it to interact with them
• Almost 60% of Americans interact with a brand on a social media site
• 56% feel a stronger connection to brands when use social media
• It’s About Relationships, Not Pitches
• Monitor your brand and reputation online
• Social Media Exposure: Better Than Traditional Ads and Cheaper
• Monitor others brands/reputations
• Interact with your consumers
• Track ROI better
• Men/Women 18-34 yrs
• &nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp; – 33% want companies to market to them via social media

Fashion Industry & Social Media

• The hottest trend in fashion right now is Social Media. Social media has become the hottest trend since skinny jeans and stiletto heels
• Journalists, fashion incubators, retail gurus and people who were just plain interested in the industry are weighing in on a topic via social media that has notoriously shut its doors to anyone deemed an outsider.
• In the past six months, the amount of fashion insiders embracing social media has skyrocketed. The Fashion Industry has adopted social media as a marketing platform to reach their customers online & reignite brand passion and customer loyalty.
• By letting the public behind the fashion influencer curtain, stalwarts and luminaries have created and connected to an entirely new audience, and capitalized on the 400 million Facebook users and more than 22 million Twitter users.
• Von Furstenberg is one of the most beloved and popular designers on Twitter having over 22,000 followers. The viral marketing capabilities of re-tweeting by this targeted group is something an advertising budget cannot buy. Within the last year of having a major online and social media presence, von Furstenberg’s online traffic has increased by 13% and sales “have been great” according to a source in the corporate offices of DvF.
• Victoria’s Secret, has 2.63 million fans on Facebook and 1.7 million for Pink – thorough which the brand is able to connect with their customers and monetize on it through awareness, loyalty and engagement.

Fashion Industry Uses Location-Based Marketing

Marc Jacobs partnership with Foursquare

• Fashion giant Marc Jacobs used location-based services Foursquare to deliver its brand messages to its customers.
• For Fashion Week 2010, the brand decided to go beyond just digitally streaming their runway shows. It took the online interactions offline through Foursquare.
• Marc Jacobs and Foursquare created the “Fashion Victim” badge, which allowed Fashion Week attendees (and others) to “check-in” at any Marc by Marc Jacobs stores in New York and around the country to unlock the badge. Four people who unlocked the badge in New York were randomly chosen to receive tickets to the Marc Jacobs show. The partnership provided both Marc Jacobs and Foursquare with word of mouth marketing.
• Foursquare and other location-based services like Loopt and Gowalla offer retailers the opportunity to increase in-store visits and foot traffic. If executed well, these location-enhanced shopping experiences can translate into improved customer loyalty, referrals, and sales, both online and offline.
• Tasti D-Lite the frozen dessert chain popular in New York ,rolledout TastiRewards a rewards program that incentivizes customers to associate their Twitter and Foursquare accounts with their Tasti D-Lite membership cards. By syncing their loyalty programs with Foursquare, they’re enabling frequent shoppers to share their recent purchases with their communities. When a user posts shopping tips or deals at a particular location, that post is essentially an advertising impression on Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook.

Getting Cozy in Communities – Social Media Strategies

The majority of the industry thought this would tarnish brand image if they engaged in social media. Now almost every brand or retailer, from American Apparel, Sears and JCPenney, to Oscar De La Renta and Louis Vuitton, have created a presence in several social communities.

Creating Niche Communities – Social Media Strategies

• Fashion Brands are experimenting with development of their own social networks or even invitation-only communities. Luxury brands Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana, Chanel and Burberry have launched their own social networks or added social components to their existing web sites
• niche communities such as Weardrobe (recently purchased by Like.com), Modepass, and Lookbook.Nu,have yielded impressive ROI, as their audiences are more likely to become loyal customers

Embracing Mobile Applications – Social Media Strategies

• Fashion Brands have taken to developing apps via iPhone in a big way.
• Chanel shows its runway collections via iPhone app, and the Gilt Groupe app allows users to shop sample sales and receive alerts as to when sales are starting.
• StyleCaster’s app lets users access style tips, individually customize news feeds and fashion trends, and houses a large online retail catalog of brand-name clothing.
• JustLuxe is a digital global concierge company whose extremely interactive app comes with over 1,000 member benefits. Utilizing GPS, the app will recommend participating restaurants and hotels in the user’s area. It’s the first style-oriented app that leverages location-based mobile marketing

The Rise of Style Bloggers – Social Media Strategies

In 2009, bloggers had an enormous impact on fashion, affecting everything from print publishing to how brands market themselves online. There are thousands of style-related blogs on the web these days, and those dedicated to their craft have earned industry recognition.

The Impact of User-Generated Content – Social Media Strategies

• User-generated content is key to social media and fashion. From blogs to Facebook photo contributions to product reviews – user-generated content is where it’s at.
• More brands are realizing the collective power of their customers’ networks by encouraging fan contributions.
• One of the most notable and consistent campaigns built around user-generated content and social engagement has been from the brand Charlotte Russe. The brand’s weekly trivia contest on Twitter drives followers to the web site or YouTube channel with the hope of snagging some excellent prizes (the brand recently gave away a jacket worn on Gossip Girl).
• Charlotte Russe is running “Be The Next Charlotte Russe Design Star” a t-shirt design contest where the winner will have his or her shirt produced and sold online. A fashion-filled trip to NYC is also included
• Another great example of user-generated content used in conjunction with a niche network is Burberry’s Art of the Trench site.

The Impact of Bloggers on New York Fashion Week

New York Fashion Week Feb10 Social Conversations

• In past 30 days leading to the NY fashion week , there have been 15,996 online articles, blog posts, tweets and discussions on New York Fashion Week 2010.
• Fashion Week Trends In Real-Time: 45% of NYFW participants used Twitter to discuss events. From models to designers, PR gurus to celebrities, people tweeted and twitpic’d their experiences.
• Fashion Week Is Written In-Real Time : 53% of the coverage came from online articles and blog posts occurring between 2/13/2010 to 2/20/2010. As magazines posted photos and commentary of shows, bloggers were hot on the heels, reblogging, writing and linking to photos and trend information as they were released.
• Established news outlets led real-time coverage: Bloggers used the CUT blog, New York magazine and Coutorture as their main fashion week news sources. NY Mag and Coutorture are established, mainstream fashion resources.

In the quarterly rankings, conducted since 2000, all the major search engines/portals have improved their scores over time, with only Ask.com and AOL now below their highest historic rankings.

Overall, Google leads the pack, with an 86 percent satisfaction rating, the same as last year. Ranked number 2 is “all others” with 78 percent, up 2.6 percent from a year ago. AOL improved by 1.4 percent to a 70 percent satisfaction rating. (See chart for details).

The survey was conducted before the announcement of Microsoft’s Bing search engine as well as the deal that replaces Yahoo search with Bing.

Among the industries surveyed, Internet Portals & Search Engines did quite well, with an overall 83 percent satisfaction rate, up 3.8 percent from last year, based on the strong showing by “all others” and the 1.4 percent improvement by AOL.

I recently spoke at a regional event organized to decipher social media marketing. The address dealth with variety of topics and touched various aspects of going social, ranging from how to get started, tracking tools, history, pros and cons and how to measure the impact.

I discussed some tactics to get your company better engaged with social media. To start with I have assembled this list of more than 35 companies who are experimenting with social media in a host of different ways.

If you have other examples of corporate social media engagement, please share them in the comments.

Blendtec is famous for its bevy of inexpensive “Will It Blend” videos posted on YouTube and shared by millions.

Adobe maintains a list of interesting company related websites and conversations on the social bookmarking site Delicious.

Best Western sponsors a blog,”On the Go with Amy,” where the author travels the country writing about her experiences.

Cadence recently relaunched its website that now prominently promotes the company’s community.

Cisco hosts 12 blogs addressing a variety of audiences for their global business.

Coca-Cola Conversations is a blog written by company historian Phil Mooney that focuses on Coke collectibles.

Dell leverages a variety of social media platforms for customer engagement, including an island in the virtual world of Second Life.

Ford publishes news releases with lots of multimedia content and employs a social media news release format to display them in their newsroom.

Fujifilm recently launched a social network to build a community of photo enthusiasts around its newest camera.

GM uses blogs to communicate directly with its customers around topics ranging from design to green tech.

H&R Block created a Facebook fan site to aggregate its social media activities, engage customers and offer tax advice/resources.

HP used Twitter to power a scavenger hunt at a recent conference.

HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums.

IBM was the first large enterprise to embrace employee blogging and now boasts thousands of blogs related to every facet of its business.

Intel has also developed many social media touch points with its software communities, which includes blogs, Twitter and virtual worlds.

Intuit sponsors the Tax Almanac wiki, where anyone can find and contribute to this resource for tax information.

Jeep connects with customers via a community page with links to photos on Flickr, the company’s MySpace and Facebook pages and a list enthusiast groups.

JetBlue employs social media as part of its training for JetBlue University, as this video explains.

Johnson & Johnson uses this blog to show another side of the company, with frequent video posts and interviews.

Lenovo launched “Voices of the Olympics Games” to aggregate posts from the athletes competing in Beijing.

Marriott CEO Bill Marriott posts regular updates and stories from his travels to Marriott properties around the world to fuel the content for this entertaining blog.

McDonalds maintains a blog to highlight the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts.

National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.

New York Times is beta testing a Firefox add-on that allows users to share and comment on stories through a decentralized social network.

Nike started a social community on Loopd to connect athletes interested in surfing, BMX bike racing and similar activities with the brand.

SAP sponsored a global survey of social media professionals to learn more about social media worldwide.

Sears partnered with MTV to create a social network around Back to School shopping.

Southwest Airlines employees share their stories and communicate directly with customers through the “Nuts About Southwest” blog.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog is the example most often cited for what the CEO blog can be.

Starbucks started MyStarbucksIdea so that customers can submit ideas for the company which are then voted on by other users, the best of which will be implemented by the company.

Toyota started its own virtual world to promote its products in Japan (site is in Japanese).

Visa launched The Visa Business Network application on Facebook to connect small business users and to help them promote their businesses to a larger community.

Wells-Fargo blogs target two audiences; one examines the company’s history and the other is for students interested in getting their finances in order.

WWE has a Facebook application, among other social networking tools and widgets, to bring fans closer to the action.

Xerox blogs address several of the company’s core B2B constituencies.

Zappos uses Twitter for employees to communicate with Zappos customers about their shared love of footwear.

“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions,” says a joint post from engineers Matt Cutts and Sitaram Iyer. “Web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

While the biggest visible changes in Microsoft’s re-launched search engine, Bing, are user-interface; Google is working towards retaining the user-interface and overhauling the mechanism of indexing pages.

In blog-sphere, opinions differ on how the new algorithm effects the Google’s Caffeine update affects the algorithm. For the sample searches I did there are some notable differences in the way results appear.

For instance a search for “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” on the current engine and the developer preview [http://www2.sandbox.google.com/] of Caffeine provided by Google and came back with mixed views.

Current Engine shows News Results on the Top, Videos towards the mid and Images towards the mid.

Caffeine Engine shows us News Results on the Top, Videos towards the Bottom and Images ignored.

We don’t find many User Interface or cosmetic changes.

What apparently changes is:

• Number of results
• Time taken to pull them out
• The position/ranks of results is apparently different, more so on second and consequent pages

We shall find more disambiguates as people dig deeper. One thing is for sure, this news is going to create quiet an anxiety in the webmaster communities.

Marketing is growing by leap and bounds. Looking into marketplace I see 50,000 Internet Marketing Freelancers and Companies trying to create a listening that they are the messiah of Online Marketing. Seemingly we have all but figured out Internet Marketing. But I don’t find a single dot.com, Ad Agency, Ad Network, or Freelancer who can guarantee me ROI [Return on Investment] forehand. Human mind and emotions is too complex for greatest of the scientists of our times to be captured in a magical equation.

SEO, zillions of Experts have their theory on Optimizing content on Google. Adwords experts claim to have figured of innovative ways to figure our Google Adwords Gaps and Quality Score. We know Rich Media Banners get better click through rates. Facebook application Marketing which came up in late 2008 is already a figured out technology. And when I talk to Social Media listening I am not talking about Facebook and Orkut, Youtube, MySpace Advertising. 

Social Media Listening via Collecting Data, Connecting Sources, Converging them into Information.

Let me linger on hindsight behind the background of ROI. ROI depends a lot on how Human Beings react to a messaging and information flow. We are still figuring out innovative ways to capture what Human Behavior and Perception would be to a particular messaging. In my experience of working on campaigns for most of my clients, I always grapple with the infinitesimal know-how of what messaging people need in the market. Marketing has been mostly a PUSH activity for online marketing rather than Listen to the Market and then create a messaging for Online Audience. Yes I do get analysis from the PR Agencies and Research Papers, but unfortunately its overtly influenced by the traditional media [newspapers and magazines], the specialists and critiques that the end result after spending 50 million odd Dollars we get to hear is we were not able to connect to the masses. The masses and population unfortunately don’t speak in the same tone as critiques and specialists.

The normal online user lives on Social Media. There is where I feel the listening should be. If somehow a tool could capture an actual listening for the voices on Social media, brand perceptions we have a game changer and +20% on ROI on day zero, before even conceptualizing the campaigns.

Yes there are syndication networks and online tools which capture conversations through RSS and API’s. But, the million conversations don’t make much information and perception. I have come across tools who tend to make some information out of Social Conversations by generating Heat Maps and Graphs and NLP [Natural Language Processing], but Artifial Intelligence demonstrated by most of these tools is unfortunately less than 50% accurate. Let me explain how this is being handled.

Its a 3C’s [Collect, Connect, Converge] process,

1. Collect massive amount of data via RSS feeds, API’s from gargantuan resources like twitter, forums, board trackers, blogs, pings, news, del.ic.our, diggs etc and place it into funnels and categories. Also, tracking how many times the conversation has occurred over a period on how active the topic is.
2. Connect i.e. rate the source of conversation and how much buzz it can create on social sphere. If user then rating him via the number of connects he has on twitter, del.ic.ous bookmarks, DIGG profile. If the source is website then basing the rating on the Google Page Rank, Traffic from Alexa and Quantcast, presence in DMoz, Google News, regular visitors etc. New technologies like FOAF Projects and Google Social API’s have slowly crept in showcasing how well a user is connected in online social sphere and providing another dimension to this technology.
3. Converging the data into information is the most critical element. Based on the weight-age of connects each tweet, or story has, the conversation is given a particular weight-age. Couple the same with the number of conversations collected in particular period give a bubble or heat map of a conversation. The once above the threshold are given a particular score and are filtered for being passed on to client. This process is fairly automated with minuscule human interference. And here is the gap.

Most of the filtering sources there are rely on automated rules and filters. Human Emotions are hard to quantify and 50% of results from this kinda Convergence are way off the mark. Currently working on developing a Social Media Listening Project. The idea is to capture listening in social media with 3C’s but add very active manual moderation layer to at-least the last two phases, i.e. Connects and Convergence. Manual interface to me sounds indispensable for Convergence. Converging and selecting the pieces of Listening from crap to in-valuable is critical for businesses. Once this Listening can be filtered out, marketing can be easily be created around what people want  to listen to giving boost to ROI.