John Horniblow speaking at The Human Voice of Freedom- The Internet and Human Rights at the United Nations Office at Geneva, June 9.

In June 2011, I had an invitation to work with the US Mission to the UN and Institute for Media and Global Governance for the honour of organising and running the inaugral Internet Freedom Fellows Program. As you would expect I am not a new comer the understanding of connected world but have seen the internet and digital communications shift from the hands of the technically savvy and early innovators and empower rest of world digitally. With that change I believe that we have been witness to the emergence of what I would call “The Human Voice of Freedom”, a universal expression of humanity, through hyper connectivity. This is topic runs through my recent work stemming from Connections Across a Human Planet, a photographic book of documentary photography that draws upon geographical parallels to the human condition we all share globally.

The desire or need to communicate and the need to be understood has always been the pre-occupation of the human race. Communication shapes the way societies are built and progress and every person should have the right to express their ideas, their feelings and emotions as well as their hopes for the future. Providing forums, platforms and technologies for individuals to express themselves is an integral part of our free and democratic societies where freedom of expression and freedom of the press go hand in hand with human rights. In the beginning of 21st century the new challenge facing our free societies is Internet Freedom. Internet Access, as detailed by UN Special Rapporteur Report June 2011, is a basic human right. Access to an open and free internet is one of the looming  human rights challenges of our times. More importantly, in these critical times as some governments react in ways to control every aspect of digital connection and communication under the guise of security and intelligence, we need to look to Universal Declaration of Human Rights and t uphold what is  the human “Freedom to Connect”.

In the passing of the Arab Spring earlier this year the use of connection technologies or social media as tools to communicate, organise and distribute news to wider audience became well cemented in the minds of the global public as an alternate media power. While many governments, companies and even media outlets see this as new phenomena, in reality its not something new but something that has been emerging online over a period of the last five – seven years. The use of social media as an alternate source media power in the hands of skilled communicators and connectors has been exercised in many forms for a number of years, even at times involving crucially large numbers of people, either loosely organised or not, for sharing likeminded interests or precipitating political or social change.

During the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests or the Green Revolution, there was somewhat of a online media cyberwar struggling over the containment news reporting of the Iran government violent and sometimes lethal suppression the protests, not unlike what we see inside of Syria today . There was a pivotal emotionally galvanising moment that became the symbol of that failed revolution. A young Iran female student, Neda Soltani, shot by sniper fire,  dying on the streets of Tehran, was captured by mobile phone video and quickly distributed out of Iran via social media. It like may other disturbingly violent news type images and footage, circulated and were picked on on mainstream in a matter of hours. While the Iranian government was busily employing a cyber based secret service media operation to curtail the spread of its citizen’s news and to stop the world from looking and hearing what was going on, it citizen’s sort new avenues in getting their message to a global audience. While it was dubbed the “Twitter Revolution” because of the protesters’ reliance on Twitter and other social-networking Internet sites to communicate with each other many things became apparent. Secret Service cyber agents of Iran’s revolutionary guards waged an information war to mis inform (by diluting and contradicting the news), track and block the citizen journalism that was taking place, anonymous groups of cyber activists rallied against both the Iranian government running DOS attacks as well deploying proxies to aid the dissemination of media being generated on the streets of Tehran, and the persistence of a population to try and get their story heard by what ever digitally connected means they could find prevailed.The likeness to what we saw in Eygpt in February 2011 was uncannily like history repeating itself. For a time the Iranian government shut down internet access and mobile networks across the country to contain the story and to stop the world from looking in. They stopped the news, by enforcing mass arrests and detentions. However, in the case of Egypt the moment they stopped their citizens from communicating and shut down internet access and mobile networks was the moment the Mubarak regime lost its legitimacy and control of the country. At this point the Egyptian people organised further resorting to older technologies and word of mouth and took to the streets en masse, desperate to ensure their voices could be heard and not shut up or shut down.

As a follow up on Secretary Clinton’s February 15, 2011 speech on internet freedom the US Mission to UN sponsored a high profile event at the 17th Session of the Human Rights Council at the UN in Geneva and an Open Forum event for diplomats, NGO’s and International companies on the broad global issues related to Internet Freedom. Highlighting not only the importance of Internet Freedom to the promotion of Human Rights but also the social, cultural, and economic importance of maintaining a free and open internet. On 9th June 2011 seven Internet Freedom Fellows, nominated and selected for their commitment to human rights and freedom of expression online, presented at the Human Rights Council, broadly representing “The Human Voice of Freedom” from around the world.

The selected voices included Wael Abbas, Egyptian blogger and activist; Aung San Thar, video journalist in exile from Burma; Rosebell Kagumire, online and print journalist from Uganda; Andreas Harsono, Indonesian journalist and rights activist; Henda Chennaoui, journalist and blogger from Tunisia; Wen Yunchao, Chinese blogger popular under the pen name “Bei Fung”; and Kwon Eun Kyoung, editor for the online Daily North Korea. Accompanying them on the panel were leading specialists; Ben Scott – Policy Advisor for Innovation, U.S. Department of State; John Horniblow  (authorof this blog)-Digital Communication specialist and Founder of Photojournale; Rebecca MacKinnon- 
Co-Founder, Global Voices
, Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Global Network Initiative; and Marcia Stepanek
-Managing Director, New Media at US and Partners.

While all the individual human voices in the world could not be invited into the Human Rights Council a virtual two-way exchange brought in outside participants and broadcast them back online. In the history of the Human Rights Council it was first. Live video feeds brought together outside participants and commentators into the audience at the UN. The subsequent impact of the connecting the conversation in the session to a global audience was significant. Inside the UN the Internet Freedom Fellows and others connected to their networks and the pivotal points raised in the session were agglomerated under the #Freedomfellows hash tag on Twitter. #Freedomfellows spread in real time quickly trending as a topic of digital conversation globally. The Human Voice of Freedom became very loud, momentarily dominating the digital conversation space of the world.

Before heading to Washington DC to participate in Blogging for Social & Political Change, the Internet Freedom Fellows, were also joined (in person and via Skype) for an Open Forum day of discussion with leading academics, media producers and practitioners of the topic of Internet Freedom; Clay Shirky, Andy Carvin, Ahmed Zaky producer of Revolution Uplo@ded, Xio Qiang and organizations including Rachel Silver of Movements.org and the Jon Vidar of The Tiziano Project, Yasmin Elayat of Groupstream.

Clay Shirky talks with Wael Abbas via skype- photo by Rachel Silver

During the day many topics were presented and discussed pivoting around the concept of Internet Freedom and exploration of how human rights are promoted in that environment . Both Rebecca MacKinnon and Clay Shirky (via Skype) spoke about, organizing the issue around the differentiation between Freedom “of the Internet” and Freedom “on the Internet”. It is important that we acknowledge that distinction.

Shirky described freedom “OF” the Internet as freedom to the actual pipes and infrastructure of the Internet, and he explained that when there is an attack either by an organization or the government on that infrastructure, and the Internet is shut down, this violates people’s right to freedom OF the internet. The 2nd class, he explained, is freedom “ON” the internet- the right to speech.

Rebecca MacKinnon elaborated on the issue of Internet Freedom by reminding us that both government and the private sector have a role to play in keeping the Internet open and free. She pointed to the example of repressive governments in the East using monitoring software being created by technology companies in the West. She went on to argue that the Nation State is actually not a good unit of governance for the digital world. She posed the question to the room of NGOs and diplomats, “How do we more forward in a way that preserves rights?”.

In a Westphalian world that defines our sovereign states the world of the internet blurs our notion Westphalian boundaries. The concept of the the internet or connection technologies being a global village or marketplace, touching many aspects of our daily life and crossing those geographical and geo political boundaries is one of the conundrums of the free and open internet. In a world where the Human Voice of Freedom exists Henda Hendoud from Tunisia summed it up:
“The world is in the midst of a revolution, it’s not just Egypt and Tunisia. … There is a whole group of youth who only know this new world and it is a world without borders. And that is the revolution.”

Photo Gallery

About 18 months ago I read an article about the new types of jobs the world of digital communications and transactional services had created. What stood out to me was something it named as possibly the newest, and quote, “sexiest” job in the near future and that was the role of a digital communications data analyst.  I made mention of this in a presentation I was doing to a group of fledgling digital agency people on the importance, understanding and application of analytics. Not just the platform or tools, but the action of analysis and turning raw data into decisional data for planning and execution of digital marketing and communications activities. The audience seemed surprised that I insisted that job could be called “sexy”.

So how “sexy” can data be? As a digital marketer working before and through the advent of social media I had learnt that web analytics dashboards were my decisional instruments in triangulating metrics data and measuring the effects of digital media and CRM campaigns, search optimizations, tweaking website performance. I was adjusting and actioning responses to the communications and pushing for maximum campaign successes. The dashboards were also my tools for reporting the successes, holding my agencies to account and justifying increases in digital spends and re allocation of media budgets to activities of deeper audience engagement. I was, in fact, an iterative and precision driven campaign driver, watching and measuring the actions and responses of our digital communication activities day by day and adjusting them to get the best results. If I had an end goal in mind it was not only to maximize the efficiency of our spend in digital channels or prove the ROI of digital activities but more overtly to track and digitally prove a sales conversion in the “Path to Purchase” through digital channels.

I wouldn’t call myself a “digital communications data analyst” and I don’t necessarily believe the role of the data analyst is all that “sexy “ unless it’s clearly defined as, or, contributes as a decisional role. Frankly the “platform jockeys” get boring with their “ it does this, how cool is that”; the excited bells and whistles talk. Let’s face it, collating data for the sake of collating data, is boring and makes no sense at all unless it can be turned in actionable insights. Mapping it and graphing it only collates it into readable forms. While we are also beginning to see more creative interpretations of data, like information flight paths, and geo mapping the real foundation to the role is that intelligence is “sexy”. Intelligence gained through interpretation and, sometimes, the extrapolation of data points can be very “sexy”.

The opening up of the internet through the enabling tools of web 2.0 or the social web means consumers talk about, associate with, and can experience your brands and their communications across a whole range of touch points that have you as a brand have limited or no control over  (and be careful they can interact with you). Through a shifting of digital behaviours the consumer in this environment seems to be in an ever moving target of new social media communities and technologies. The sphere of analytics in recent years has widened to accommodate the shifts and began to include  “Listening” platforms or aggregators of the conversational consumer generated content and news sources. What interesting to me is that while the technographic behaviours change, the language the consumer uses and the way they converse remains consistent. If I was just doing Listening I would have to look hard into the mirror as ask myself is the action of just Listening enough to remain “sexy”?

Social Intelligence is superseding the thinking behind the practice of Listening. Today it’s the new realm of text analysis, semantic understanding and sentiment analysis of the actual data itself. I believe in the next step, which is to really harness the intelligence in this data not only for brands but also for companies, as a whole, and taking the “Voice of the Consumer” to the next level. It will be not only informing marketing and brand business decisions with insights but applying it to innovation, business investment decisions and strategy, PR and company image in crisis and reputation management and even market management by undertaking competitive intelligence reviews. As we know in today’s world digital communication is not only effecting marketing and communication but also touching many aspects of a company’s operations. Social Intelligence and its insights might cross the entire enterprise. Now that’s what I call “sexy”.

What I find very interesting is the commentary surrounding the film and few salient points mentioned in the film. Lets start with some of the commentary. Film maker Ryan Fitzgerald poignantly writes “A very interesting film. If you read the fine print “by R+I Creative” you may realize that this is a clever advertisement for the creative agency itself. As a filmmaker I understand that media is the ultimate manipulation tool, and by making a film about what an “Influencer” is you are essentially creating yourself as the authority on how to influence people. According to this film, things that are “cool” are eventually things that spread to the mainstream. Which is how creative agencies make money; by bringing “cool” to the masses.”

The other and more pertinent fact is that is that the film about our times and how trends, trendsetters are tapped into but what’s also clever is the buzz and the very special social elements which are part and parcel of the film convergence media model. Its shareable, its available across multiple access points and on other devices ( ipad, smart phones, facebook, twitter, blogs ) people can comment on it. Over and above the veneer of New York hip and cool at the 12 and quarter minute mark as the film comes to its riveting conclusion Rob Cohen of Cornerstone starts to talk about social media effect of influence and the many touchpoints social technologies have opened and will continue to open. This leads to the one very final and relevant piece of interview with fashion editor Josh Peskowitz, where he underscores that the importance of the consumer is paramount and that they are influencing the establishment .. “who knows where that will lead, no of us do…. we got to wait and see”.

I can’t wait for the next episode!

INFLUENCERS TRAILER from R+I creative on Vimeo.

So while the film is the latest or newest thing on the social block, back in 2009 the concept or the use of the word “Influencers” began to the rear its head as a trend in the social media vernacular. In May 2009 I wrote another blog post titled Understanding the Influence Landscape and 2009 the Year of Influence based on the commentary by Ross Dawson (Trends in Living Networks). Its was no accident that this time old marketing concept had come back to the fore. This time it was not dressed up as the media attractive celebrity and brand ambassador and the concept or relational or relationship marketing, it was based on the social influence, a confluence of aggregators, networks , and mechanisms which, was best summed up as:

* The democratization of media, which gives everyone a channel to propagate theirs or others’ opinions.

* Peer trust, which places far greater faith in individuals than corporate advertising and marketing.

* The ongoing fragmentation of mass media, which takes away the power of traditional marketing channels.

* The aggregation of social media, which gives a far stronger voice to the many individual conversations.

I think these still prevail today as elements of convergence culture and Ross’ work cleverly put together the following diagram on the Influence Landscape which while only a beta v 1 still stands the test of hyperspeed in today’s networked world. Its 18 months old and was released almost at the same time as Twitter’s rise to accepted popularity and verging acceptance as mainstream media.

Reposted from http://blog.label.ch

as posted on 16th February 2010

A very interesting view from Pete Blackshaw, The Nielsen Company, on what to do and how to prepare for the future of online marketing. Responsiveness is key to success, but also being aware of what you need to respond to and planning for what the consumer might do next. Pete suggests “that there is a new accountability standard that has been put on the table by consumers and that may lead to better advertising” . He also cites the Nielsen research that suggests that “consumers trust each other more than they trust advertisers” , ” if advertisers can figure out a way of co creating with consumers, everybody might win”. Brands should be both reactive and proactive in planning for what consumers might do through better websites and better feedback loops.

The World I See | The Tiziano Project from The Tiziano Project on Vimeo.

The Tiziano Project | 360° Kurdistan presents the journalistic efforts and personal accounts of 12 Iraqi citizens living in the Kurdish north alongside the stories of their professional multimedia journalism mentors. This is a documentary effort by The Tiziano Project, which provides new media tools and training to community members in conflict, post-conflict and developing regions.

The purpose of The Tiziano Project | 360° Kurdistan is to provide you with a robust and complete understanding of life, culture and news in present-day Iraqi Kurdistan.

The 360.tizianoproject.org is a winner in the 2010 New Media Award’s Web Site Awards Competition. http://www.newmediaawards.org/websiteawards/2010/360tizianoproject.html

The Tiziano Project | 360°- http://360.tizianoproject.org

To find out more about the Tiziano organization click here: http://www.tizianoproject.org

This blog is published and maintained by John Horniblow AKA BladeDigital ™ : On the Cutting Edge

craig duncan UNISDR

The afternoon was deeply imprinted by the humanitarian touch with a talk about the use of social media for humanitarian purposes with the intervention of UNISDR (United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction) Craig Duncan and UNHCR Alexandra Eurdolian, and the introduction to two humanitarian projects, one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan. With one foot in Iraq, the Tiziano Project aims at providing “community members in conflict, post-conflict and underreported regions with the equipement, training and affiliations necessary to report their stories and improve their lives. The World I See | The Tiziano Project from Grant Slater on Vimeo. Jon Vidar, executive director of the Tiziano Project, made a live intervention from Chicago to introduce the Tiziano Project | 360° Kurdistan, which promotes « the journalistic efforts and personal accounts of Iraqi citizens living in the Kurdish north alongside the stories of their professional multimedia journalism mentors. The goal of this initiative is to enable the rest of the world to better understand and apprehend more completely the life, culture and news in present-day’s Iraki Kurdistan. This Is Iraq | The Tiziano Project from Grant Slater on Vimeo. SM@RT’s participants were deeply interested and impressed by the quality of the reports and the originality of the project. Some were then overwhelmed by the presentation of Skateistan by Oliver Percovich, the exsecutive director of this Afghanistan-based organization. Skateistan is a non-governmental organization, which aims at bringing young Afghans, boys and girls, from all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, new opportunities in cross-cultural interaction, education and personal empowerment through skateboard. Skateistan connects students with instructors who will help them develop their skills not only in skateboarding but also in languages, arts, information technology, civic responsibility, etc. Students choose for themselves what they wish to learn.

The project attracted a lot of sympathy and a dozen schools and skateboard associations around the world (Australia, Germany, United States, UAE, Peru, UK and Switzerland) became partners. Finally SM@RT concluded with an animated discussion between the participants and Chris Hoofnagle, from the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology at UC Berkeley, on privacy in a networked world.

This blog is published and maintained by John Horniblow AKA BladeDigital ™ : On the Cutting Edge

There is this great campaign being launched as I’m writing, and I thought you’d want to know about it.

But knowing is not enough. They need your support to be able to get governments involved. Read, sign the petition, share (on Facebook, Twitter), and ask your friends to share too. Please.

Born HIV Free

We need millions of people to make their voices heard. To reach them we will ask you to spread the message. How many online friends, fans and followers do you have? 100? 500? 10,000? Use ‘suggest to friends’ on the left of this page and invite your friends to join. Let them all know about the campaign. Who wouldn’t want to do their part to ensure a AIDS-free generation?

Campaign resources:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/bornhivfree
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bornhivfree
YouTube: www.youtube.com/bornhivfree
Causes Petition: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/petitions/466

Supporting campaign resources from RED
The Lazarus Effect – Red & HBO
http://www.youtube.com/joinred#p/a/u/0/QqacszjHocM

The Lazarus Effect
Bono and Alek Wek on the RED carpet at the launch of the Lazarus Effect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0t2vj_SJpc

—

And now, the official press release for those who want more. (Contact details at the end)

What is it?

The BORN HIV FREE campaign has been created to mobilize public support for the work of The Global Fund and for a world where no child is born with HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) by 2015. Originated and supported by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Global Fund Ambassador, this is the largest ever digital media campaign of its kind. At the core of the campaign is a series of entertaining films and events intended to inspire people to sign up online in support of The Global Fund’s mission.

Transmission of HIV from mothers to their children has nearly been eliminated in Europe, North America and other industrialized parts of the world. In contrast, in developing countries, 430,000 children are born with HIV every year – that is well over 1,000 every day. The campaign’s main message is that “We can put a stop to this in the next five years. A world where all children are BORN HIV FREE is now possible”.

Launched on 19 May 2010, in five languages: English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. the campaign uses a set of innovative and imaginative animated films across digital and traditional media platforms to spread awareness about the opportunity the world has to ensure a virtually HIV-free generation by 2015 and to generate support for this goal – and the Global Fund’s wider mission of fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The campaign appeals to all viewers to show their support by signing their name on the campaign’s “virtual wall of support”.

The campaign will run until October 2010.

Why is The Global Fund promoting this?

This year the Global Fund is requesting its donors to pledge contributions for the next three years. It has estimated a financial demand for up to US$20 billion for these three years. The Global Fund currently channels nearly a quarter of all international resources to fight AIDS, but more than half of the resources to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to children, as well as more than half of the people receiving AIDS treatment around the world. In addition, the institution channels around two thirds of the resources invested against tuberculosis and malaria.

By focusing on a world where virtually all children can be BORN HIV FREE, the campaign is drawing attention to one of the many ambitious goals the world can achieve if it continues to increase investments in global health. By signing up on the “virtual wall of support”, people can signal to their country’s government that they approve of the use of public resources to fight these global pandemics and to achieve ambitious global goals, such as a virtually HIV-free generation.

Given that The Global Fund relies predominantly on public funding for its resource needs, the campaign is not a direct fund-raising campaign and does not ask individuals to contribute money. It simply asks people – by the simple act of clicking a button – to register their support for BORN HIV FREE and for the work of The Global Fund.

The Global Fund will publicize the levels of interest, awareness and support as the campaign progresses.

How has the campaign come about?

The campaign was conceived by Julien Civange at the request of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and co-produced with The Global Fund. The campaign films were produced by Oscar-winning production company H5, as well as by Passion Paris, TWA/MAP and NEXUS Productions, focusing on the promise of life fulfilled for children who are protected from HIV. The animations will be distributed through various social and mass media platforms and be supplemented with a film by the award-winning Swedish animator Jonas Odell showcasing the tremendous advances made in the fight against the three diseases since the inception of The Global Fund in 2002. The campaign web site was designed and developed by red design, and the YouTube channel was developed by type3.

A number of official partners have joined together to support this cause: Google, YouTube, MSN, Orange and JC Decaux.

Why launch the campaign now?

On 5 October 2010, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will chair a meeting of donor countries in New York where they will pledge financial support to The Global Fund for the next three years (2011-2013) to fight the three diseases. Given the Global Fund’s large share of global financing for the fight against the three pandemics, the level of financing secured will largely determine whether the battle to virtually eliminate mother to child transmission of the virus by 2015 – as well as other targets, such as a end to deaths from malaria and dramatic reductions in the burden of tuberculosis – will be won or lost.

A majority of The Global Fund’s financial resources come from public sources. The United States is the single largest donor and of the top 16 government donors, twelve are from Europe. Japan, Canada and Australia are the other major donors.

Strong support from the public is needed to enable donor countries’ leaders to continue increased investments in The Global Fund so that a HIV-free generation can become a reality.

For more details on The Global Fund’s resource needs click: http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/resources/?lang=en

What is The Global Fund?

The Global Fund is a unique global public/private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing resources to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Since its creation in 2002, The Global Fund has become the main source of finance for programs to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, with approved funding of US$ 19.3 billion for more than 572 programs in 144 countries. It provides a quarter of all international financing for AIDS globally, two-thirds for tuberculosis and three quarters for malaria. For more on the Global Fund see www.theglobalfund.org

What is the link between Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and the Global Fund?

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy became a Global Ambassador for the Global Fund for the Protection of Women and Children Against AIDS in December 2008. At the announcement of her ambassadorship, she declared that one of the ways she wanted to act as an ambassador was to engage the world of art, culture, fashion and entertainment for the cause of ensuring that virtually all children are BORN HIV FREE. The campaign grew out of this commitment.

For more information contact:

Andrew Hurst – Media Relations Manager
Office: +41 58 791 16 72
Mobile: +41 79 561 68 07
Email: andrew.hurst@theglobalfund.org

For more information visit: www.bornhivfree.org
Videos can be downloaded from: www.youtube.com/bornhivfree

“One of the points Mr Zuckerberg was making was that the web has become a lot less anonymous and Facebook is definitely positioning itself as wanting to be the owner of that information,” said Maya Baratz of the Huffington Post. (Given Facebook’s growing and highly influential size the Huffington Post online publication has dedicated a whole section of its site to news surrounding Facebook which you can read by clicking here.)

Zuckerberg told developers at the f8 conference that the experience will mean a more personalized, social, smarter Web. As quoted from an another article on Huffington Post “Facebook is spreading its wings to the broader Web with new tools that will allow users to see personalized versions of websites they visit elsewhere.

The move could change the way people experience the online world, though it could come with deeper privacy implications. By accessing Facebook’s tools, websites will be able to customize the experience based on the list of friends, favorite bands and other things users have shared on their Facebook profiles.

“The Web is at a really important turning point now,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the F8 conference for Web and software developers in San Francisco. “Most things aren’t social and they don’t use your real identity. This is really starting to change.”

In its first steps Facebook has changed the semantics surrounding fans “people who like this” – has replaced the former term of “fans.” Facebook has added these new features to its site,

If you haven’t noticed these changes in the past few days take look.

In conjunction with this step it also launched the concept of what it calls Community pages. The concept of Community pages is to revamp users’ profiles to emphasize the pages for bands, books and businesses that users have become fans of. Facebook has started prompting users to essentially combine the two ( a users “Faned” page , and their profile page ) So if you listed The Clash in the “favorite music” section of your profile, Facebook will now ask you to join his page, if you haven’t become a fan of it already.

Facebook has also announced its working to eliminate the FB Connect ‘brand and replacing it with OAUTH – OAuth (Open Authorization) is an open standard that allows users to share their private resources (e.g. photos, videos, contact lists) stored on one site with another site without having to hand out their username and password.

Its also working on projects such as social plugins whch they call GDP (granular data permissions) and continuing to work on user privacy settings.
Zuckerberg said Facebook made sure that its new tools don’t intrude on their privacy. Users’ preferences won’t be logged unless they choose to press the “like” button on websites. If anything, Zuckerberg expects the “like” tools to give people more control over what they want to share with their online entourages.

If users embrace it, Facebook could gain valuable insights that could help it sell more advertising, potentially rivaling online ad leader Google Inc., which typically tailors ads based on keywords in search terms and Web content.

“If I were Google I would be really scared because Facebook might end up with a lot more intelligence than them,” said Alain Chuard, Founder of social marketing firm Wildfire. “Google is just an algorithm, but Facebook could rule the Web.”

So there’s obviously and lot more planned for the near future as the battle for social dominance increases. I wonder what Google will do now since its Buzz launch looks like a knee jerk re action to Facebook’s growing importance and it incremental loses in market share of audience time and visitation online?

Reposted from http://blog.label.ch LABEL Communications

In terms of SEO Facebook has become one of, if not, the largest influencer in organic search today. This is something not to ignore for any SEO oriented marketer or communicator. Its very easy to work out what is driving this .. the sheer size of its user numbers pages and content links have driven it to prominence.

• 400 M registered users with 200 M logging in each day
• More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3.5 million events created each month

# source Facebook statistics

Here is a simple list of tactical steps on how to benefit from using Facebook’s SEO advantage (adapted from All About Facebook)

1. Start with a good URL
URLs are critical in search engine optimization. Google (and other search engines) use as much information as possible to determine the relevance of a particular page for a given search. Currently Facebook enables those pages with over 100 fans to get a vanity URL. A vanity URL is the short Facebook URL that helps people easily access your page.

2. Configure Your Default Tab or “Landing Page”
Ensure your landing page contains relevant text. You can set the default tab by clicking the “Settings” link on your Facebook Page and then selecting the tab you’d like to have displayed by default. You can create this page using Facebook’s endemic markup FBML

3. Generate Links To Your Page
If you are looking to drive traffic to your website for organic search the most important variable is incoming links. The number of links, the influence or ranking of the referer and the relevance in content. An easy way to boost your Facebook page rankings is by linking to your page from your existing website. Additionally, any way you can get links from other sites will help increase your rankings. On their own, Facebook Pages rank highly, a little additional work will improve this significantly.

4. Link To Other Relevant Pages
Linking to relevant content helps boost your ranking. Google takes into account the relevance of pages you are linking to when calculating the relevance of any given page. Try linking to a few relevant sites like your blog or website content . You’ll not only help out your readers but increase your overall Google rank.

5. Use Facebook For Inbound Links To Your Company Website
One of the most important components of search engine optimization is generating inbound links. Generating a link from your Facebook page is extremely valuable. Take advantage of landing pages and the information tab to link back to your company’s , or brand’s website.

6. Select A Good Name For Your Facebook Page
The name of your Facebook Page is extremely important. Name the title after your company or whatever phrase will be most effective for fans that are searching for you.
7. Post Keyword Rich Content in the “Info” tab in the page
The Info tab in the navigation bar on your Facebook Page is one of the few areas on your page which is accessible to search engines. It’s also relatively high up in the page HTML which means that search engines will give the text priority over text that’s further down the page. Take the opportunity to ensure that in the Information editing box for yoru fan page you use both links and relevant keyword, rich content. The detailed information can be just that, very detailed.

This blog is published and maintained by John Horniblow AKA BladeDigital ™ : On the Cutting Edge

Monkeys with Typewriters – Myths and realities of social media at work.

There seems to be a lot of books that are be published about social media, the new digital marketing paradigm, and they are propagating as fast that the exponential growth of social media and networking. Most are, unfortunately, the non-descript how to do, or dummies guide to social media or how to use particular tool or a book rushed to print on hype. For the most part these serve their purpose but will be outdated by the time they publish or contain nothing more that are dry set of repetitive studies presented as a mind numbing, blunt string of wide eyed testimonies that say the “times are a changing”. I must say, save the print and spare me the drudgery please. Then I also must concede, I am not the target audience or buyer of such books.

Jemima Gibbons recently published book, Monkeys with Typewriters is quite different to those aforementioned book types. Its a new and refreshing read, a sparkling gem in a field of proliferating drudgery of “read this now and it will change your life” books. It also poignantly marks the period we are experiencing.

I must admit I do have a few books about digital convergence, digital economies and communications on my bookshelf . These are time markers that articulate what they see as present behaviours and guide future directions,: Being Digital, The Cluetrain Manifesto, Convergence Culture, Groundswell, and Secrets Of Social Media Marketing to name them. Monkeys with Typewriters is potentially another time marker, intelligently drawing upon history, the present and piecing together a jigsaw picture of trends. At it’s centre lies numerous informative and insightful conversations and stories. What’s profoundly different about his book is that is a narrative woven out of these conversations with about 50 thought leaders and practitioners the world of social computing ( and I must confess that I am one of the interviewees), written around their personal situations and personalities , their thoughts and experiences almost like investigative reportage. The actors in the narrative are drawn from a cast of influencers; startup CEO’s, corporate executives, academics, specialists, and noted pioneers in web 2.0. The narrative is structured into a framework of six defining trends or behaviors that mark the change in communications, information and the psychologies that are driving the flow of change. What it presents is a rich tapestry of current thinking and practices that harness the power of open information flow in the realtime web.

There’s no doubt, we do live in a time of somewhat profound and chaotic change in communications, knowledge and information flows. Borders are increasingly only geographical, businesses and countries are transforming and we are more connected than we ever have been before. Making sense of chaos and change is often quite hard as there are many factors at play. Monkeys with Typewriters is a must read if you want to make sense of the inter connectedness and how to behave in this new brave world.

As Jemima concludes in her wrapup about Wise Monkeys “Social media is not about technology. It’s about people, relationships, and conversations. The web is the enabler. If you can engage with and value this network and incorporate its collaborative properties.. then you are one step closer to business zen : an intuitive, harmonious and enlightened working environment.” I couldn’t phrase it better myself.

Here are some links to buy the book and Jemima’s Monkeys with Typewriters blog

This blog is published and maintained by John Horniblow AKA BladeDigital ™ : On the Cutting Edge

written for  http://blog.label.ch

The most important reason for the meteoric growth of Social Networks is something called “The Network Effect”. This equates to a tipping point when the value of a communications network to its users rises exponentially with the number of people connected to it. In the past year, we have witnessed one such rising star, Facebook ( but it begs the question is it the only one? ). It took 5 years for Facebook to reach 150 million users and then a further 8 months to double that number. Today, according to Facebook Statistics, it has 400 million users. In 2009 we saw Facebook become almost ubiquitous in every conversation swirling around Social Media and social networks. It was the year in which Facebook exploded into a global phenomena, dominating the Social Networking market worldwide as it became an international social network giant. While its dominated the english speaking press and displaced MySpace its not the only Social Network in the world.

To believe that Facebook or english speaking social networks are the only “players in Social networks” worldwide would be nothing short of one sided owed to very narrow perspective of the hyper connected world we live in. According to Wikipedia, there are some 1.5 billion members worldwide. Across the world there a number of culturally, language, local and regionally driven social networks , that both singularly and accumulatively pose the question whether Facebook can dominate the world in Social Networking. As startling as it is, the ” Facebook Network Effect” is not only a Facebook phenomena and its also occurring across other Social Networks in the world , albeit with different speeds.

So lets look at some of the Facebook statistics and the insights they bring.

Facebook Top growth by country – Dec 31st 2009

Facebook usage by % population of country – Dec 31st 2009

Demark and Norway while not in the top 25 countries reveal even high % population penetration

Norway Facebook users = 2,256,080 % population = 48.5%

Denmark Facebook users = 2,262,260 % population = 42 %

Some of the insights coming out of Facebook’s 2009 growth are :

• The 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base
• The 55+ audience grew enormously at 922.7% in 2009
• Facebook’s largest user base, US, grew from 42 m to 103 m in 2009, a 144.9% growth rate
• SE Asia reprsents and huge growth potential – Indonesia grew to 14.1 m a 1536.7% growth rate , Philippines grew to 8.4 m a 2046.8% growth rate in 2009
• Taiwan’s user base grew to 5,490,300 a 4763% growth rate in 2009
• Facebook accounts for 7% of all time spent online in the U.S, 111.9 million US visitors in December 2009 double that of December 2008
• In Orkut’s biggest markets (Brazil, India ) Facebook saw growth ( number of users and number of users relative to population, however, is still very low )
• Facebook has almost colonized Europe and it is extending its domination with more than 80 millions users at the start of 2010
• Facebook is growing well in Africa amongst the internet connected population

A review of State of Social Media World from the international perspective shows some other great observations of the growth and importance of Social Networks across the globe.

Italian Vincenzo Cosenza’s blog , Vinco, publishes a visual map of the worlds social networks upon which can see the changing geographical spread of social networks. Facebook in the past nine months has seemingly homogenised the map somewhat. However, our research indicates that in some countries the map may not be correct and it hard to get an accurate number of the exact numbers. In India , Orkut still ranks as the number one social network , and while Facebook enjoyed good growth and made inroads into the Philippines and Indonesia, Friendster still dominates the SE Asia region. So the light green spread of Facebook indicated on Vincenzo’s map remains relevant in the Americas, Europe, Australia and Africa. It is worthwhile noting that in the South East African countries there are new social networks being created that we predict will compete significantly against Facebook in countries outside of South Africa.

“South Africa has shown for years that social networks in Africa will be run over mobile phones in the future. Mxit in South Africa, a mobile social network application with more than 5 million members, lets one engage in a community independently from location and time.

According to Appfrica, South Africa has 1.1 million Facebook members, Morocco 369,000, Tunisia 279,000, Nigeria 220,000, Kenya 150,000,and Mauritius 60,000. It is also Appfrica who presents an interesting little project, where Ugandans can interact Facebook through their mobile phones: Status.ug is a completely mobile gateway for Ugandans to also interact on Facebook. Appfrica estimates around 60,000 Facebook registered members in the Kampala area. Erik Hersman wrote on his blog about Sembuse, East Africa’s first mobile social network “Sembuse is a mobile social network. It’s a way for East Africans to connect with each other via short messaging, cheaper than normal SMS messages (much like it’s counterpart Mxit in South Africa).” # extract taken from The Next Billion – The Rise of Social Network Sites in Developing countries by Christian Kreutz

In other parts of Africa Facebook continues to grow the following table showing user numbers in Africa was complied by Possicon from the Webtrends Nigeria blog

Around Africa

” Egypt has overtaken South Africa as the largest country with Facebook users in Africa, though Facebook penetration in Egypt is much lower than south Africa, it show that there is room for more growth. For now, South Africa’s Facebook users seem to have reach climax as the growth rate is almost flattened. With the table above, Tunisia has the highest penetration up 11% from last November of 45%, given the number of internet users in Tunisia, the growth might not last for too long before it stops. Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria are the top countries in terms of Internet users and as such, we should expect growth from these countries. Morocco has just 12.4% of its internet population on Facebook while Nigeria with 9.4%. Ghana also shows a good Facebook penetration but insignificant as its internet users are still hinging below 1 million mark.” # extract taken from Web Trends Nigeria

Using this map and a number of other sources I came up with a conclusive picture of what the regional and local competition is for Facebook around the world.

Facebook’s Regional and Cultural Competition as of 31st Dec 2009

• Qzone – 200 m users as of 31.01.09 , reportedly 300m as Dec 2009 , Main land China- more that 150 m monthly active users
• Myspace – 130 m users – 115 m monthly active users, 15 languages has some 5 million artists and bands on MySpace Music and has plans to increase the development as a entertainment content network
• Friendster - 115 m users – 61m unique users per month and 19 billion pages views per month predominantly SE Asia Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India
• Orkut - *100 m users – 48 languages – 51.09 m user Brazil , 20.02m users in India , 17.28m user in US.
• hi5 - 80m users – 50 languages, main demographics 18 – 34 ( 67% of users ) *15m Mexico, *10.5m Thailand, *7m Peru, *7m Portugal, India, Latam , big interest in developing social games and entertainment content
• Vkontakte - 61 m users- Russian (cyrillic ) speaking world inc. Eastern Europe , is a Facebook clone.
• Cyworld – *16.2 m users – 33% of total population of Sth Korea , 90% of Sth Koreans in their 20′s are members of Cyworld.
• Bebo - 40 m users – languages English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Polish
• Maktoob- 36 m users, Middle East, bought by Yahoo , Aug 2009 combining 16m Maktoob users with 20m Yahoo users, originally an email service that has extended into social network and news content
• Hyves – 9m users , The Netherlands only , 53% of total population of The Netherlands are registered users
• iWiW – 4m users, Hunagry only, 40% of total population of Hungary are registered user through invite only

Sources : Alexa, Google,Kohl, Orkut, hi5, NYtimes, Techcrunch, iwiw blog vkontakte.ru, Maktoob
* Estimated user numbers

The numbers are significant and tell us that language, culture, location are strong determinants in the Social Network world. What is obvious is that while MySpace lost its dominance in the english speaking world it has a very special offering in music and youth culture that means its still a powerful force in social networks.

• QQ, leader in China, is possibly the largest social network of the world (300 millions active accounts)
• MySpace has lost its leadership everywhere (except in Guam)
• VKontakte is the most popular in Russian (Cyrillic language) territories
• Friendster still dominates SE Asia , while Facebook has seen high growth in this region in 2009
• Orkut ( owned by Google) remains dominant in India and Brazil with Facebook making small and growing progress
• Hi5 is still leading in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other scattered countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania
• Maktoob ( bought by Yahoo in 2009) is the most important Arab community/portal and growing very fast , 6 million unique visitors in June 2008 to 21.8 million a year later
• Cyworld, Hyves, iWiW, One, and other language or country specific social networks have user numbers that are very high % of population and maybe hard to compete with

The following chart is a ranking provided by Vinco on what social networks dominate in , what are arguably, the top ten Social media markets worldwide. The interesting note we have here is on the emergence of Twitter. It still has a long way to go for worldwide acceptance , however, it is important to note Twitter has spawned over 50,000 apps that tie into the service.

social networking platforms rankings

This blog is published and maintained by John Horniblow AKA BladeDigital ™ : On the Cutting Edge

Reposted from http://blog.label.ch

When in logged into my Gmail a few nights ago I got a screen that introduced me to Google’s Buzz. At a first glance I skipped over it not wanting to go to deep into a distracting setup that stopped me from doing what I had originally set out to do : check my email . In hindsight I am left questioning whether Google’s BUZZ has any buzz? Buzz will probably have impact on the digital marketing world overtime but its not that apparent at the moment. However, we should take notice of this change. Buzz is a service that aims to compete in the social networking space not unlike the services of Bebo, Orkut ( owned by Google) Facebook, Twitter to take on the likes of Facebook and Twitter, across devices like the PC and mobile phone.

What Buzz is attempting to do is add the social networking features in the burgeoning number of Google’s services, over the top of the existing number of contacts a person has in their Gmail accounts. It has 97million users at its disposal to do this but it does pale in consideration of Facebook’s 400 million users, Myspace’s 130 million user and Friendster’s 115 million users. Google’s published rationale for Buzz is to work a more centralised and sorted approach to social services, sorting out the noise and organising information into a a relevant experience for users. On its blog it says ” With more and more communication happening online, the social web has exploded as the primary way to share interesting stuff, tell the world what you’re up to in real-time and stay more connected to more people. In today’s world of status messages, tweets and update streams, it’s increasingly tough to sort through it all, much less engage in meaningful conversations. “

At the moment all the sentiment on the airwaves of the net, is that people have invested alot of time in developing their Facebook profiles and friends and their Twitter profiles to want to pull out of these platforms. Here is one observation I had of myself and one that I think is also being spoken about by Buzz critics. I am used to using Gmail for email, behaviourially I go there just to do that : email. I go to Facebook for other reasons , I rarely actually go to Twitter, but access it via another platform . I think changing these behaviours will be hard for Google to do unless it provides a real efficiency. It has said that Buzz is built on all the open API’s so there’s nothing to stop it creating Twitter and FB connections and adding them as services overtime too. The question is will it work? Can Buzz change people’s behaviours ?

The other side to this is its business case. It obvious that Google is trying to hedge into social search to monetize social networking in terms of semantic and geo targeted advertising . It has long been locked out of Facebook and not privvy to the masses of consumer behavioural data that Facebook has been accumulating and only recently coming to terms with and being able to create some intelligence out of it. This is potentially a huge market. Google can calculate and index underlying semantics and intelligence surrounding peoples conversations, interests, geo location using this information for a more targeted and semantically driven array of advertising services.

Google is also well aware of the mobile advertising potential surrounding both mobile use and geo location. There are critical statistics surrounding mobile use and social networks ( lets look specifically at Facebook )

• There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

• There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

The Buzz service is only open to or limited to Gmail users or through Google’s mobile phone , but knowing Google this will not stop just at Gmail. Remember Google got into the consumer electronic space via moblies , why ? Not to build devices but to protect it revenues into the future. People are moving away or adding a smart phone in addition to their PC, and in the developing world the PC isn’t the connection to a digital world, the smart phone is. So mobile advertising is critical for Google’s growth or maintenance of its business revenues in the mid to long term.

We have seen social media destinations like Facebook or Qzone , Hi 5, Twitter grow at exponential rates in the past few years and take of the form of the new giants and the “Colossus”, Google, is now stepping in with a bid to compete for the consumer attention in social media. Google is no small player and has in recently shown it will flex it muscle and take on the giants or Microsoft and Apple. Buzz possibly has the potential to be a ” Game Changer” if they get the adoption equation right. The game change will not only be for the established Social networks but for many small startup companies. Take for instance Foursquare or Brightkite who are rapidly gaining popularity these maybe shadowed and pushed into the margins very quickly or get bought as Android and if Google’s phone gains greater market traction. As Google says on the Google phone , “Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question “where were you when you shared this?” can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place” with a Buzz overlay on Google maps.

Sadly Google Buzz on the iPhone is a clunky experience.
My thoughts. Buzz will take a long time to take off. Its hard for people to change old habits if there is no significant increase in efficiency or simplicity.Its a play for social search for targeted advertising tat will become increasingly important, and Buzz mobile may be the real mid to long term winner.

To view the Buzz offer you should take a look at the Google Blog.

The Blog is maintained and updated by John Horniblow AKA Bladedigital – On the cutting Edge

Last week Gartner released five predictions for social software for 2010 and beyond. What is interesting for me is that the fast moving, consumer driven, internet always finds itself leading the technology shifts that are ultimately or stubbornly embraced by IT departments for the remodeling of enterprise communications, information exchange, information publishing and distribution. Enterprise 2.0 while in its nascent days has had a steady stream of adoption inside a large number of companies. They have adopted certain collaborative and social technologies into or in addition to their existing intranets, team rooms etc. The emulation of the consumer web inside companies allows the speed and ease of information distribution and social communication and work collaboration inside enterprises to increase significantly . These can be enterprise to employee or employee to employee communications or working groups spread across many locations.

Gartner predicts that :

1. By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

“Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications. During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.”

As in the social network space direct emailing between people has dropped as people prefer to message each other as static email type messages or as IM working directly within the social network interface. The broadcast of messages appears as news feeds either to all persons in a network or as news specifically based upon an individuals interests, affinitities, or information needs has eaten into email’s dominance of electronic messaging and communication in the consumer world and will continue to do so. Interestingly, one enterprise social networking system we recommend from Telligent has a email client bridge at the moment that allows a “cross function” between an email client and the an enterprise community/or social platform. It integrates to the MS exchange email client allowing it to act as social publishing interface when the enterprise user prefers not to enter the social network but still have its postings and interactions visible.

“Gartner recommends that organizations develop a long-term strategy for provisioning and consuming a rich set of collaboration and social software services, and develop policies governing the use of consumer services for business purposes. Companies should also solicit input from the business community on what collaboration tools would be most helpful.”

2. By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.

The huge popularity of the consumer-microblogging service Twitter, has led many organizations to look for an “enterprise Twitter,” that provides microblogging functionality with more control and security features to support internal use between employees. Enterprise users want to use microblogging for many of the same reasons that consumers do to share quick insights, to keep up with what colleagues are doing, to get quick answers to questions and so on.

One such enterprise Twitter like microblogging stream is Yammer, which at LABEL, we use as insight, research, and broadcast channel that doesn’t spam through our email system and allows for quick response and interaction between interested parties.

“However, it will be very difficult for microblogging as a stand-alone function to achieve widespread adoption within the enterprise. Twitter’s scale is one of the reasons for its popularity,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice president for Gartner. “When limited to a single enterprise, that same scale is unachievable, reducing the number of users who will find it valuable. Mainstream enterprises are unlikely to adopt standalone, single-purpose microblogging products.”

We do differ to Gartner in our thinking. Where we see their use is in smaller defined interest groups inside of large enterprises. The enterprise microblogging services will be picked up as quick information exchange platforms between collaborating and social groups within an enterprise. This is clearly illustrated by the growth of groups within communities and networks as centres of specific interests or needs.

3. Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.

I think this supports the adage we often adopt in recommending social media activities with clients be they consumer facing or in the enterprise. It not about the technology , but about how people use the technology. Start with the people equation first, not the technology equation and the adoption of these tools will ultimately succeed. We advise our clients to stop, listen and learn, create an engagement strategy that supports the business and communication objectives of before concentrating on the what and how of the technology. The answer is clearly underscored by the observation we have of IT companies making consumer facing websites or working out consumer engagement strategies in terms of digital marketing they just don’t do it very well, they deliver a platform not a communications solution and a strategy.

“When it comes to collaboration, IT organizations are accustomed to providing a technology platform (such as, e-mail, IM, Web conferencing) rather than delivering a social solution that targets specific business value. Through 2013, IT organizations will struggle with shifting from providing a platform to delivering a solution. This will result in over a 70 percent failure rate in IT-driven social media initiatives. Fifty percent of business-led social media initiatives will succeed, versus 20 percent of IT-driven initiatives.”

“Enterprises will need to develop entirely new skill sets around designing and delivering social media solutions. Until this happens, failure rates will remain high. A dearth of methods, technologies and tools will impede the design and delivery of social media solutions in the near term. But long term, enterprises will realize that social media is not a “hit or miss” activity naturally prone to high failure rates, and that a calculated approach to social media solution delivery must be an IT competency.”

4. Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.

” As we move toward three billion phones in the world serving the main purpose of providing communications and collaboration anytime anywhere, Gartner expects more end users to spend significant time experiencing the collaborative tools on these devices. For some of the world, these will be the first or the only applications they use. The experience with these tools for all who use them will enable the user to handle far more conversations within a given amount of time than their PCs simply because they are easier to use. Just as the iPhone impacted user interface design on the desktop, the lessons in the mobile phone collaboration space will dramatically affect PC applications, many of which are derivatives of decades-old platforms based on the PBX or other older collaboration paradigm.”

5. Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

The practices of Social Media analysis and the growing number of tools that are examining dialogue, sentiment, and the semantics surrounding consumer expression in participatory media can be applied as useful methodology for examining the interaction patterns and information flows that occur among the people and groups in an organisation or company. Gartner says “However, when surveys are used for data collection, users may be reluctant to provide accurate responses. When automated tools perform the analysis, users may resent knowing that software is analyzing their behavior. For these reasons, social network analysis will remain an untapped source of insight in most organizations.”

“Before undertaking a social network analysis, Gartner recommends that the organization ensure that it has the trust and buy-in of the people it hopes to include in the analysis in advance. Issues of privacy and confidentiality must be addressed and a determination needs to be made regarding how the information will be used and communicated. Establishing the ground rules upfront will encourage more open and honest participation and reduce the resistance to ongoing relationship monitoring.”

Coca-Cola has launched it first viral video , and in getting a rare success in this type of media play. There is no proven method that ensures a success in viral video marketing other than it has to be entertaining. Funny always seem to work well as a formula, shocking as well, bad taste ( but that could seen as bad for a brand) , unreal or just unbelievable also works. Coke’s Happiness Machine, while only no more than a week old , has close to 800,000 views.

In what seems to be too incredible to be true a Coke machine setup in a university or college campus delivers more than just bottles of Coke. Flowers, balloon animals, a huge sandwich, and an endless supply Coke bring delight and happiness to the students.
As reported by iMedia Connection this is Coke’s first official experiment in viral video following on from another teen connection campaign the “Happiness Factory”.

View a full review of Facebook’s internal statistics

Last November “The Big Money” part of Slate Magazine, ranked 50 brands that they see as making the best use of Facebook. The ranking is based on factors like number of fans, page growth, frequency of updates, creativity and fan engagement, not just numbers of fans. According to “The Big Money” Coca-Cola is ranked as the brand that makes best use of the social network thanks to its “organic fan-centric page without a corporate feel” and some extremely good apps the currently coin the phrase “Share Happiness” in a campaign to boost the diffusion , awareness and contact with the brand in social media.

On Facebook currently there appears to be no common thread to a brand campaigns or successes in appealing to users. Brands such as Starbuck’s , Papa John’s Pizzas, TGI Fridays all have gained large numbers through a tactical “promotional friending” or free food and drinks in exchange for friendship amongst other tactics. Others with very popular ratings either use the channel for fast paced entertainment updates, customer interactions and feedback, user polls, and contests. “Flavour tournaments” have driven large fans bases for food brands and beverage brands where consumers have been asked to create or give opinions on developing new flavours. The winners in this type of engagement are Pop Tarts, Mountain Dew, and Vitaminwater.

Here are the Top 10 as presented by The Big Money with the current fan numbers as of today:

This Blog is updated and maintained by John Horniblow AKA Bladedigital – On the cutting edge.

Written http://blog.label.ch

Richard Watson of NowandNext has released this year’s version of the Trends and Technology timeline . The evolution of trends and mapping them to a visualization is a continuing project first started in 2007 involving a collaboration with Ross Dawson of Advanced Human Technologies.

This years map sees a greater expansion of continuing trends and a longer outlook than its previous versions. Whilst open to speculation and and unforeseen events the Trends map includes 5 concentric time zones extrapolating out to 2050 with the closest concentration on the next 5 years till 2015.

The map has 16 main influence lines representing the key drivers upon which the trends occur including; society & culture, geopolitics, energy and raw materials, science and technology, healthcare and medicine, the economy, news & media, retail and leisure. There is a lot more detail on this map than in previous years and its reversion back to the intersecting subway map that shows the dense hubs (megatrends) of converging lines is an interesting metaphor for mapping linked relationships.

It is important to note that the key mega trends on the map are:

- Ageing

- Power shift Eastwards

- Globalisation

- Localisation

- Digitalisation

- Personalisation

- Volatility

- Individualism

- Environmental change

- Sustainability

- Debt

- Urbanisation

Download the PDF version of the trends map @ http://nowandnext.com/PDF/trends_and_technology_timeline_2010.pdf

The blog is maintained and updated by John Horniblow AKA Bladedigital – On the cutting edge.

When it comes to using Facebook as the primary point or integrated into the marketing channels, some brand are beginning to find there feet by working with the endemic functions of the service. Lots of brands have also begun an integrated approach to engaging with their consumers to build buzz, distribution and awareness of their campaigns either through or surrounding Facebook. The reality is that Facebook has become the perfect supplement to any website and online marketing efforts and in some cases become a pivotal or primary focus. While not all efforts are excellent here are some that we think are working extremely well.

IKEA’s Facebook Propagation Planning Campaign has used the concept of tagging in an online competition to support the opening of a new store. Some call it a genius use of one of Facebook’s inherent functions. While some of the best campaign strategies in Facebook are simple, and nothing should be simpler than using the default “tagging” tool on Facebook to help create a bit of buzz for an online competition. Users were drawn to the new Facebook profile page of the store manager, who’d uploaded pictures of his new showrooms in a store Ikea was due to open.

“People were told that the first to tag their name on any item, would win it. With the way tagging works on Facebook, the moment you tagged anything, everyone in your network instantly knew what was up for grabs! Subsequently, thousands and thousands of people were flooding the Facebook page in search of freebies!”

Nespresso makes excellent use of Facebook Connect, Facebook Share and Facebook Fans for its latest commercials featuring George Clooney and John Malkowitz. This is an very well executed integrated campaign that combines traditional TV with the choice of an episodic conclusion online ( that’s not necessarily new ), and then adds the full Facebook services into the online site to ensure and viral distribution via Facebook Friends and Fans. The campaign, while not visible on the online site in the US due to the protection of George’s image, is in full swing across other parts of the world and Nespresso is working its Facebook fan base in a totally engaging way surrounding both its product, coffee machines and its iconic George Clooney commercials.

The full video with one of the episodic ending choices

Dude where’s my Butterfinger Bar When I think of this campaign I am in awe of how well the all the social media marketing channels are integrated. This campaign is outstanding in its consumer engagement and integration across audience points. From Facebook to Youtube / Yahoo video, online games, character blogs, user generated content competitions , Facebook apps, Facebook fan pages, Myspace there seems to be nothing left unanswered in the participatory media types. While Butterfinger has a main website , most of its engagement activity is driven to and by Facebook. When it come to the debate on whether social media brings a return on investment to marketing this campaign closes the debate. Unofficially it has raised Butterfinger share of sales significantly with a healthy double digit growth.

See Butterfinger on Facebook

See Butterfinger’s Youtube channel

Nobody’s Gonna Lay a Finger On My Butterfinger Video Contest

Mountain Dew – DewMocracy is another quite amazing use of Facebook as a key engagement pillar for integrated marketing channels. Based only on the democratic notion of participation Mountain Dew has opened up everything about its brand and product to user generated content for a complete makeover. It uses Facebook ( as well as Youtube) as both a destination and engagement platform with a brilliant use Facebooks apps that act as fully functional flash websites to show off the user creations. The Mountain Dew fan base to engaged into creating new choices for drink flavours, new can designs, new names, new advertising campaigns in nothing short of a complete product overhaul generated by consumers. The results of which have been a stunning experience for the brand as it has been reported that the newly fan created drink flavours, “Voltage”, “Revolution” and “SuperNova” literally flew of supermarket shelves.

Amongst the daily exchange, promotion, and web of connections woven into the fabric of the online movement of social media specialists, yesterday I read a post by Jason Falls, on his blog the Social Media Explorer. It extolled that the social media pragmatist would prevail over the social media purist.

It is one of the most sensible commentaries I have seen in this space cluttered by the usual virtuous publishings – listen first, stop shouting, transparency, need for spontaneity and speed of action , or the big question on how to measure Social Media ROI. Why does it standout as a poignant comment when all we hear is the importance of engaging in conversations and building relationships ( they still are of pivotal importance ) ? For me it’s the action associated to doing and making an impact on the bottom line that Jason is highlighting. You have take notice of the old direct to consumer or relationship adage – “Call to Action “ – what do you want your consumers to do now? ( it is an interactive environment after all ) Buy, learn more, fulfill a service or need, or be entertained?

The pragmatist will “just do it” , working the social components and developing the strong coverage of multiple points of contact, using a variety of media as channels, creating the search positions and getting the consumer to do something, driving quickly to an end goal: consumer action. These are intrinsic activities that bolster success. It is about getting your hands dirty in amongst the fray with your consumers. This is what makes all the difference, creates the learning for optimization, as well as the results.

Its simple action oriented things that work and the list could extend beyond the few points Jason raises.
- Make your blog drive search results to the keywords you want to win.
- Present calls to action that lead your Facebook fans to buy your product or engage further with the brand
- Entice Twitter followers to subscribe to your e-mail newsletter where you can present similar calls to action for purchase or other value offers.

As Jason puts it
“ And if you think doing that turns consumers off, ( or destroys the conversation) look at the millions of dollars Marriott racks up from Bill Marriott’s blog. Look at the sales Southwest Airlines attributes to it’s social media activity. Look at the $3 million Dell reported earning from its @delloutlet Twitter account. Look at Wiggly Wigglers, which has 90,000 worldwide customers, largely because when they talk about a product on their blog they put an “order here” link along with it.

“They don’t do this because they hug and kiss everyone. They do this because they make a compelling argument and persuade you to buy things, then they give you the opportunity to buy them. It doesn’t mean they aren’t social. Just that they’re smart.”

On the far side of the spectrum from these action-oriented successes that go beyond the warm and fuzzy purist conversation there are the laggards as well. Recently I was in a client meeting with a pharma company and was stunned into silence when I was presenting the pragmatic concept of listening and monitoring as a very low risk activity to leads to actions points through understanding consumer needs, complaints and attitudes. The people in the meeting rebutted me saying it was a high risk activity because “if they found something negative or something wrong they would have to do something about it” and then proceeded to mention the Maclaren pram / stroller product recall story as proof as to why they saw it as a high risk activity as Maclaren were having to respond to the wave of consumer criticism. I was shocked to say the least. What they were saying was the very existence of the participatory web was dangerous to them and their business because consumers had a voice and concept of “getting closer to your consumer “ due to the regulatory environment was a relationship they would rather not have. In further discussion they revealed that using social media as a broadcast environment was okay. Pragmatically it wasn’t even in the spectrum of social media practices. Sticking your head in the sand and hoping a storm will pass due to your inactivity isn’t going cut it in today’s world nor will thinking that social media is about broadcasting messages.

So while the social media purists who lack that sense of “what do I do with my consumer next before they drift away onto something else” won’t last, the ostrich approach of burying your head in the sand seems to drive in the direction of extinction. Jason is right. It will be the social media pragmatists that will succeed and hold the middle ground.

The blog is updated and maintained by John Horniblow AKA Bladedigital – On the cutting edge

Reposted from http://blog.label.ch

As the digital shift continues to move marketing communications to more direct and dialogue driven channels companies should adopt a simple methodology in identifying what will work for them and their consumers. The dialogue idea is as unifying concept that aligns relationship or socially driven programs with other communications as a part of an integrated marketing approach. As more participatory channels for consumers are developed the need to establish consistent, non-campaign driven dialogue points becomes critical in the marketing mix. These are not just limited to the direct channels, as we know them; (CRM, DM, email, websites), but really extend across any personal contact that can be associated to the “ brand experience”; customer and consumer services, in store demonstrations, events etc.

A real world experience with a brand is only mirrored in the participatory platforms online and this mirroring reflects the sentiments it arouses in real world conversations.

What ever the relationship or dialogue you want to create with consumers you must have a compelling offer or value exchange. Just as in the real world relationships, digital relationships require dialogue to sustain them. A good dialogue idea serves as the over arching concept for that exchange. In helping create a consumer relationship the dialogue idea should answer two simple questions. Why would a consumer want interact with you? And what value are you adding to their life, their interests, or their passions?

The reasons for the consumer / brand relationship need to be unpinned by consumer rational and emotional needs. Dialogue can be driven by what really matters or makes a difference to a consumer’s life or facilitate their passions. Whatever the offer, it has to be tangible, real and add value.

Consumers are pre-disposed to dialoguing about a number of things.

They might want ;
To be a part of the future development of their brands they are passionate about.
To share their experiences.
To give and receive advice and learn from others.
To be the first to know or receive exclusive offers or privileges
To seek more information beyond the brand (how to use it etc.)
To meet and belong to a community of people with similar interests

Relationships are long term. The success points you should consider in developing a dialogue driven program start with being able to sustain a dialogue across a community or programs for along time rather than running a campaign and possibly include time driven campaign communications. You should also define the motivational points for a consumer to start a dialogue with your brand and your ideas should differentiate from other brand or companies in a unque way , there’s no point in replicating someone else’s idea or offer. And, lastly you should aim at supporting the dialogue across a number of consumer contact points.

This blog is updated and maintained by John Horniblow AKA Bladedigital- On the cutting edge

Written for and reposted from http://blog.label.ch

One of the more interesting pieces of news I read in the last week was that the Paris-based holding company Publicis Groupe said it has acquired Pour Tout Vous Dire, the French customer relationship management program of a key client, Unilever. While the exact figures have not been disclosed Publicis has obviously seen this as buying a solid media entity that you can build upon. In its original form the CRM program was a direct to consumer magazine that has since morphed into a lifestyle portal online with over 5 million subscribers. This evolution in CRM programs is not an uncommon move in FMGC industry ( but the sale of them to an agency is ) . For instance in France FMCG CRM programs from Unilever’s direct competitors like Club Nestle a loyalty club and brand driven magazine, is now an online community and lifestyle portal Croquons la vie, and Danone et Vous a former magazine is also a lifestyle and product publishing site.

Publicis obviously values the quality of Pour Tout Vous Dire’s consumer database who are attracted to a wealth of content and services on the site. Companies like Nestle, P&G , Danone and Unilever are all building and expanding these lifestyle content driven CRM sites. As they boost their direct to consumer communications digitally they behaving like publishers creating specialist lifestyle content with the added benefit of adding product offers and services to consumers. As magazine patronage sinks the value of these specialty content driven sites as credible media entities becomes more real. The value of the audience in these CRM sites is tremendous. Think of P&G’s Being Girl sites for the Tampax brand first started in the US is now rolled out in 29 countries worldwide with a reported 400% more effective reach than traditional media. The consumers on all these sites are demographically qualified and if the CRM databases have stored more behavioral information such as interests, content profiles , propensity to use coupons, etc then you have a predictive goldmine for highly targeted communications as well as good content.

Publicis’ move also underscores the agencies are potentially becoming competitors to the companies they work with. As the media companies are increasing their foothold in digital they are buying up digital properties where there’s good content aggregation and known audiences. The agencies are morphing. Media buyers are becoming the media, investing in online Ad networks and now even as we have seen in this move buying their clients sites. It may not be a big deal for Publicis, however, it sets a new precedent.

Unilever sold its CRM site with a free run advertising and communications deal for five years and may be allowing Publicis to build a bigger media entity then could have built themselves. I have no predictions on whether this will or won’t work. What is clear is that Unilever sold its consumer database as a credible asset. No doubt it had invested hard to build it and its consumer’s loyalty, however, its hard for me to reconcile that sale. I believe that when a consumer gives their personal information to company it is done in a relationship of trust with that company. Yes the company is building an asset and returning a value and service in return, however, I don’t think the consumer information or even their trust and loyalty should bought, sold, and treated as such.

This blog is published and maintained by John Horniblow AKA BladeDigital ™ : On the Cutting Edge