Tag Archives: Social Media

Why a “Favorite” on Twitter is better than a “Like” on Facebook

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It’s not news to anyone that there are a lot of behavioral concepts at work when users explore networks like Twitter and Facebook.  While companies keep digging to solve for the value of a “Like” on a Facebook page or a “Follow” on a Twitter account, have you ever stepped back and thought what some of these “actions” mean to you personally.  I had a moment today when Twitter made me smile.  @arifuchs someone I respect, “favorited” one of my tweets, specifically a blog post I did a few days ago.  I’m going to be honest, when similar folks  ”liked” the post on my Facebook wall I don’t get the same joy.  So here’s my attempt at explaining why…

Twitter is a very Public platform assuming you don’t have a locked account and Facebook is a very private platform assuming you don’t share everything on a public setting.  In contrast the actions you take on

the platforms directly oppose their overall feeling of public or private.  They both have “ReTweet” and “Share” buttons that basically create a “Hey everybody! Look at this cool thing I found!”  They also have reaction options such as “Reply” and  ”Comment” which allow for somewhat private reactions to content.  Finally, there are the passive action buttons of “Like”

and “Favorite” – these I see as having very different functions.  On

the surface both allow you to throw some “Kudos” to the user, but the way the “Kudos” is delivered makes all the difference. ..

Personal vs. Public

When someone “Likes” your content on Facebook they are saying to everyone else who see’s that content, I like this.  While at the same time triggering a heads up to you that they “Like” your content.  The experience is more a public display than private.  When someone “Favorites” a tweet it doesn’t become a focal point of the tweet like on Facebook, rather it is subtly added to the full info of the tweet if a user clicks into it.  All this while again triggering a heads up to you that they like what you tweeted.  The experience is much more personal, given the only incentive behind the action of a “Favorite” is to support the content creator.

Direct vs. Indirect

Going one step further, I see a “Like” as an indirect form of support.  Since there is an incentive to publicly associate one’s self with good content, the psychology that drives someone to “Like” content creates an indirect sort of “Kudos”.  Again with the “Favorite”, since there isn’t a “to be seen” quality to the action, it feels like a much more direct and real action of support.

twitter-bird-white-on-blueRelationships with Many vs. Few

In my private Facebook network it makes perfect sense for those who support my content to be pretty obvious.  (The listed “Likes”)  In a public network (Twitter) however, it makes a lot of sense to really focus on the content first then as sub-content (hidden) offer up who is involved. (“ReTweets” and “Favorites”)  This brings me to something I think is at the core as to the difference between Facebook and Twitter form a high level:  Facebook for most part is a fundamentally private network that creates (because it’s a closed system) one large shared relationship with many, while Twitter for the most part is a public network that creates (because it’s an open system) many relationships with few.  On Twitter short-lived social relationships sprout, grow, and die every day making the platform new (to a point) to the user every time they invest time on Twitter, whereas Facebook is one very large long-term relationship reflected in an ever-growing experience where the user gains their value over a long period of time.  There is a reason your profile (“Timeline”) on Facebook is so important to you as it is built from your content, while most people only focus on the content they post on Twitter in the now (real-time) - their long-term profile really isn’t a big part of the experience.

So if you can’t tell, I like Twitter a lot.  But that’s mostly because over the time I’ve built out my Facebook “Timeline” I had a major change in who I am… and who my network is.  I graduated college and moved on to a working world miles away both physically and mentally, making a large portion of the “Timeline” I had built into only a memory rather than an active long-term relationship.  For me both platforms are great, but only in their purpose, which brings me back to the title.  At the end of the day I’ll always value private displays of support over public ones.  Maybe its just me.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

If You Know What You’re Doing, It’s Probably Time to Quit Your Job

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Recently I found a podcast series called “Foundation” hosted by Kevin Rose the former founder of Digg.  As many of my friends know, I usually spend about an hour a day on the train on my way back and forth to the office.  When I’m on the train I’m usually listening to business books and lectures.  (I’m a nerd.)  In college I used to go running for an hour or so every day and listened to Stanford’s free Entrepreneurial Thought Leadership lectures on iTunes U.  (I’m a long time nerd.)  My senior year I even conducted my own version of founder interviews, asking my peers in student leadership to share their stories with me for a book I never exactly got around to writing.  In all this time I’ve learned a lot from all these people and their experiences, but today I had a eureka moment listening to an interview between Brian Wong and Kevin Rose in the “Foundation” podcast series.

foundation podcastIn listening to 6-7 years worth of entrepreneurs and leaders I’d never noticed that they all had something in common… they didn’t know what they were doing.  Brian in referencing his own success mentioned the concept of a table of skilled poker players having an unskilled player joining the table.  The skilled poker players all know what to do, how to respond, when to take risk… they’re moves are pre-determined.  Add a player who doesn’t know what to do, and all of a sudden all the assumptions that determine the skilled players choices are gone.  The unskilled player becomes the table leader, becomes the person everyone else has to react to.  Sometimes that unpredictability creates new opportunity and the unskilled player ends up winning.

So I’m not sure labeling many successful folks as “unskilled” is the right comparison, but it does a pretty good job of identifying what differentiates many of the success stories in innovation.  When you don’t know what the right thing to do is, you create variations in the process… that’s how discovery happens.  When you don’t know the right way to be introduced to people, you’re tactics for meeting people ends up being different… and memorable… and more effective.  Not knowing what they’re doing isn’t the only key to success – pretty sure if it was we’d all be doing a bit better – but it is something you don’t want to forget.  Knowledge is power, but perspective is reality, and if you let what you think you know fully inform your perspective you’re no longer learning.

Now for the title of this blog post – If you know what you’re doing, it’s probably time to quit your job.  Not sure that concept applies to most, but for me I have a real problem with the idea of knowing what I’m doing.  It messes with the idea of free will for me – if I know what to do next, then my future is predetermined.  I really have trouble staying motivated when I know rest of the story.  (I’m that guy who never buys movies because it’s really hard for me to watch the same movie twice.)  I came into this blog post trying to write an explanation of “motivation”… as it turns out I found one of my own motivations.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

Social Media Isn’t the Answer to Everything, But It Answers a Lot

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Below is a recent chapter I wrote with one of my co-workers Eric Gottloeb (@Gottloeb) also a Social Media Manager @Walgreens – thought it was worth sharing.  You can get the whole book (free PDF) here: http://spr.ly/ZachDWest (they even gave me a fancy personalized URL)

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Rather than attempting to write eloquent paragraphs, we figured you (the reader) probably just want bullets. So here’s a snapshot of Walgreens’ Best Practices:

• Treat your customers with the respect they deserve. Social isn’t an ad platform—it’s a conversation. Don’t interrupt people trying to have a conversation without something relevant to talk about.

• Don’t let “Social” the buzz word drive “Social” the strategy. Social media isn’t the answer for everything. Before coming up with a “social media plan” for something, what you’re actually trying to do needs to be weighed against all the other channels that your digital and traditional marketing teams have at their disposal.

• “If you build it, they will come,” doesn’t work. It’s true for microsites, it’s true for Facebook pages, and it’s true for Twitter handles. Build long-term products that customers can keep coming back to. Social is a long term game not a short-term ad buy.

• How You Keep Innovating: Separate then Integrate. Separate the team from the bigger organization so they can be forward thinking, unhindered and frankly, weird. But never let the whole group fully detach from the bigger team. Then once they’ve done lots of small independent things to prove what the core concepts of the strategy will be, scale. Integrate the winning concepts where they belong, and evolve just like every start-up.  The team has to grow up into the organization, something that both the team and the organization need to have in the cards from Day 1.

Organizational Structure: Each time you integrate something new, you start isolated in a vertical team, then you drive the team into a horizontal structure and integrate it into the larger company. Take for example, customer service. You start with the social team, understand the nuances of how social can play a role in customer service, build up the process and then scale it into the customer service organization. There are many examples like this one, where social media as a utility does not belong to a Social Media center of expertise, but that center of expertise can incubate the utility until it has matured enough to live in the right part of your organization.  We realize there aren’t any trade secrets here, but let’s be honest: The secret sauce isn’t going to be the same for everyone. However, the core concepts behind innovation pretty much apply everywhere. Start with your company’s business model, solve for where opportunities to drive on those models exist, and then scale it.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

#Sandy is quite a Social Storm, and Why That’s Great

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The ability of social media and technology to drive awareness is amazing.  From youTube sensation “Gangnam Style” – 592 Million views at the time of this post – to real world problems like a major hurricane heading to the Northeast.  I’m not going to do much in this article other than marvel at the impact social media has had already on #Sandy, and what it might have done on #Katrina.

In the past 7 days – October 22 – October 29 approx 12 CT vs. the 7 days leading up to Katrina.

Twitter:

~184,000 Tweets have been shared containing either the words “#Sandy”, “Sandy”, or “Hurricane”.

~0 Tweets were shared, as twitter wasn’t a public tool until 2006

Facebook:

Currently ~66% of the US population is on FB, with ~33% of those checking it daily

Versus in 2005, when in August the only people with Facebook were on college campuses.

Real time Photos:

Not only do we have all kinds of ways to reach people, but we also have a very powerful way to show what’s coming.  66%+ of Cell Phone owners have “smart phones” giving them the ability to report what they see to their social circles, literally.  (Every smart phone has a camera and an internet connection.)

Phones with both cameras and internet connections were not heavily adopted in 2005, there was no instant archive of what was happening.

What this all means:

I’ve said a number of times that “Perspective is Reality”.  For most of us hurricanes and other major events aren’t real, I personally have never been through one so how could I ever know how much it impacts a group of people.  And more importantly how could I be able to understand the urgency of the situation without a real-time perspective?  That’s why Social Media is a great thing, it offers the world instant perspective.  It offers a great conversation in which everyone can take part, where we can debate, show, and understand with the perspective of others.  For many people the awareness of what’s going on in the Northeast this week will be much higher than what they had during Katrina.  (Both the general population, and the folks that are directly in the path of the storm.)

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

Apple Needs to Change – Facebook is About to Ruin Them

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Think about your phone… is it an iPhone?  What apps do you have, or more importantly what apps do you use?

Notice Q2-Q3 2011, that is what’s really happening over time in the market place. Then notice the adjustment that happens after the expansion to Sprint and Verizon. Great gains but not sustainable position. Also notice how the market is characterized as being only a few competitors.

The Situation:

Apple the world’s most “successful” company is at a decision point, one they’ve seen before.  Apple’s winning edge in their categories has been based on being clearly the best product available.  The iPhone in particular is by far the best phone you can buy.  (Or at least it was)  About a year ago the iPhone’s market share begin to fall back.  Apple was able to cover that up by expanding to Verizon and Sprint which has given them a short-term bump in market share.  In time though they will return to the issue of declining market share.  This is pretty normal as more and more people buy smart phones and more and more competition shows up in the market.  Android has done a very good job at grabbing share as the platform of the “everyphone”.  The trick is that no two Android devices are quite the same, creating a market not made up of two major user experiences as almost every graph would suggest, but rather a market place of one major user experience (iPhone) and hundreds of niche experiences.

Effectively the key to this is that the smart phone market has evolved into a marketplace with lots of different devices, creative lots of choice and niche offerings.  Some phones are better of taking pictures, others are all about the web, other basically just high-end GPS units, but all of them are unique in one way or another.  This is causing the smart phone buyer/user to place a lot of weight on what the main features of value

Notice here the snap shot of all the different device manufacturers in the category. This is important to understand, that while Apple competes in both, Android only is OS focused. (For the sake of the argument we’ll pretend Google doesn’t own Motorola.)

proposition of each phone is.  Buying a phone is like buying a car, there become a lot of things to consider and often that consideration leads a customer to want the iPhone for its quality.

Enter the problem – It’s hard to stay different with app stores and cloud based solutions.

Almost every smart phone has some version of an app store, a place where users can go to download additional features for their device.  These app stores usually have a number of different phone upgrades available in them.  Instagram to upgrade your photos/camera, Evernote to upgrade your note taking capabilities, even Foursquare to improve on the initial maps tool that comes with your phone.  This is where Apple starts running into some problems -

1.  Over time Apple can’t sustain an advantage in the hardware it produces.  While Apple may continue to stay ahead of the curve, the major hardware features most consumers crave will be available on both iPhones and its competitors.  This creates an issue where customers will no longer be able see the iPhone as differentiated from its competitors in the physical device’s features.

2.  If all smart phones have app stores than an app builder, say

The iPhone has a lot of different Android based competitors, not just one.  This makes it very hard to won in the long term as each of these “small-share” devices can beat the iPhone in the various niche’s they target.

Facebook, could build there apps pretty uniformly across all of the smart phone providers.  This creates a problem for Apple when trying the differentiate the iPhone when it comes to Apps.  In the early days, app developers were mostly private individuals, so iOS being the biggest market to build apps for Apple enjoyed having apps like Instagram be iPhone Exclusive.  But over the next few years, this isn’t going to continue.  The most popular apps  are going to be owned and managed by big companies such as Facebook.  The big companies may not build them, but they’ll buy them and give them the resources to develop the app on all platforms, not just the iPhone.  (The App developer world is going to evolve in a very similar way to how the video game industry and PC software industry have.)

3.  When working on an internet enabled device one has the ability to send/save their data anywhere, this simple technology overcomes the biggest switching cost when buying a new phone.  The user never wants to risk losing their photos, contacts, recent conversations, and so on.  This also undermines the need for me and all of my friends to have the iPhone, because not only are all my favorite apps on every device, my friends can have them too, no matter the smart phone type.  The cloud combined with app developers like a Facebook create problems from Apple’s differentiation argument.

What remains of Apple’s Power Base, and How Facebook and others will destroy it.

Some things that got me thinking this way:

This is the traditional home screen… how many of these “out of the box features” are unique to the iPhone?  How many of them are vastly improved on by other apps?

1.  The Nintendo64 over came its old technology, the cartridge, because it was able to differentiate itself by have more/better games to play.  Apple used to share the advantage of better apps, but that won’t be the case in the long-term.  Nintendo eventually lost the more/better games point of differentiation because games became uniformly available across platforms.

2.  Microsoft is entering the market and has played this game before… Twice… and Won.  In the video game industry Microsoft showed up in a later wave of video game consoles as the technology began to be a lot more like the computer industry.  The XBOX wasn’t a huge success initially, but as video games became for uniformly available the system took over share by differentiating itself with online play.  This gap was widened as the company was able to continued growth in the industry with the XBOX 360.  Before the video game industry though, they played this game with Apple, betting that software would be the long-term champion of the computer market.  By creating a world where software could work uniformly across all types of computers Microsoft made it very hard for the customer to differentiate between HP or Dell or even Gateway (Microsoft’s own brand of computer).  Microsoft has put a lot behind the most recent Windows Phone launches and looks to be learning from its previous victories.  The windows phone embraces the cloud not so much as a Microsoft thing, but rather an app world thing.  (The heavy integration of Facebook is a bigger then most might think.)

3.  Evernote and Dropbox have created storage solutions that work across the internet

Here’s my second screen of apps, the apps I use often.  (Honestly almost every day)

connected world making Android’s, Windows’, and Apple’s solutions somewhat irrelevant.  By making the use of the apps free up front Evernote and Dropbox make it easy for users to adopt the apps, and the ease of transition from one device to another basically make the Notes irrelevant.

4.  Beyond Evernote and Dropbox, look at all the apps out there that basically make the basic software features of the iPhone irrelevant.  iMessage can basically be replaced with Facebook Messenger, Twitter and old fashion email.  Notes as mentioned can be replaced with Evernote.  Google+ Hangout or Skype replace the value of Facetime.  Instagram and Facebook Camera can cover all the value offered by Photos and Camera, basically all the Photos tool is needed for is short-term storage until you can upload your photo to Facebook.  This pattern continues with a number of other features.

5.  And then there is Facebook.  Facebook is the company best positioned to take advantage of the changing landscape.  When Zuckerburg says Facebook is in the business of changing the way people communicate… he wasn’t just saying something nice for the IPO.  Facebook is about to make that change to how people communicate, and this weeks release of Facebook Camera…

How Facebook is going to ruin Apple:

Focus on the feature based apps from Facebook. (Their ratings are much higher.)  Facebook’s new strategy of feature focused apps seems to be getting positive results thus far.

Things to understand about Facebook,

-Massive user base already, at the end of 2011 more people were on Facebook than had smart phones.

-Massive amounts of data and storage- messaging, conversation history, photos, contact info, event planning and so on, all in the form of data stored on Facebook.

-Presence on most phones.  There app is widely adopted as a pre-loaded feature on almost every phone.  (except the iPhone)

Facebook’s positioning over the next few years will be what changes the smart phone marketplace.  As we’ve seen over the past few months Facebook has changed its approach to the mobile solution, adapting and learning from the most successful apps that connect to it.  They’ve changed from trying to have one app that does it all (which they’re not deleting any time soon) to feature apps focused on one specific thing.  Basically their bringing the most popular apps on their platform to mobile.  (eg. Photos is an app on Facebook that know is on your phone as “Facebook Camera”)  If they were to do that, think about all the features they could replace.  (Contact Info, Maps, Messaging, Camera, Photo Storage)  Then step back and think about all the features apps tightly aligned with Facebook could replace. (Video Chat (Skype), Music (Spotify),  even the News (Washington Post)) Facebook’s app suite is actually really well set up to add value to any mobile user.  The key there was “any”, all of the apps Facebook is creating can be fitted across all devices.  Facebook unlike most app developers has the resources to make the phone you own not matter when it comes to connecting with them.  With all the data being saved back Facebook itself, the phone again doesn’t have to have any specific amount of storage capabilities.

This is a major issue for Apple, as Facebook could make a run at positioning itself as the means of communication for the average smart phone user.  If that becomes the case, then almost all the differentiating points that make the iPhone such a leader now won’t matter.

The solution:

Honestly, Apple should buy Facebook.  Not because Facebook is some kind of great revenue producer, it’s actually a very flawed one, but because Facebook poses such a threat to the future of Apple as the industry leader.

Thanks for listening,

Zach West

“Yes, and…” Great Ideas Don’t Start with the Word “No”

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For the past year or so I’ve taken classes in improvisation at both The Second City and the IO theater.  (Think improv comedy, ask for a suggestion and create a 20 minute scene from the suggestion.)  In the time I’ve spent at both institutions of improv there has been one very clear rule behind being successful… “Yes, and…”

Now I doubt you’re reading this to learn how to perform improved scenes, but stay with me through this example.  When you’re exploring a thought, say in a scene someone says “Hey Mom, I’m so sorry about forgetting your birthday.”  You can’t really respond with… “I’m not your mother.”  (I mean you can, but it would crush the momentum established in just one line of dialog.)  From that one line you were given a  bunch of resources to work with. (in improv we call them gifts) You are now this person’s mother, it was just your birthday, and you’re emotional response to this person is based on being forgotten.  That is why you say “yes” to the resources/gifts you are given.  Of course you can’t just say “yes”, because then your partner on stage would have to supply the scene with all its resources/gifts.  You have to add “and…”.  The “and…” is where you take your resources and heighten the scene with more information.  (Information about your emotions, your wants, your partners status etc.)  So now that we’ve walked through “Yes, and…” lets show how it works to make “better” ideas.

Brainstorms

People always talk about wanting to do some “brainstorming”.  “Thinking outside the box” is often the line of corporate jargon used.  Here is the problem, lots of people don’t realize that a brainstorm is just like the improv situation above.  First someone has to establish a list of resources to get the ball rolling in some direction.  Then as a group you have to take turns saying “yes” to the basic ideas people through out there and then exploring the basic idea further by adding to it.  Here’s an example: “I like the idea of Facebook voting on which charity gets X, and we could have the amount of X that is given to the charity determined by the number of check-ins on foursquare.”  (Here”s where that campaign came from-  Check Ins That Make A Difference )

Dealing with Restrictions

So brainstorming is great… except I don’t know about you, but when in the history of the world has everything been in the scope of possibilities?  So for the rest of us, who have a list of goals to achieve or red tap to deal with, here is how I use “Yes, and…”  Restrictions are resources.  Restrictions are gifts.  Restrictions allow you to focus, but they don’t mean you can’t imagine.  Think for your budget as a gift, think of your goal as a gift, if you accept them all you are responsible for is the “and…”  It’s like a math equation (sorry to bring Math into it) -

a(b-c)+3d=Awesome Idea

In a brainstorm, you have to define a, b, c, and d.  (That is 4 different chances to get it wrong.)  If you have a list of restrictions maybe now the equations looks like this -

Budget(Length of Program-c)+3(Social Media Platform)=Awesome Idea

You know your budget is $X, you know your program has to run the week after Christmas because that’s when your sale is, and you know that your company is big on Twitter so that’s the Social Media Platform you need to use.  So now all you have to do is come up with what puts them all together.  (And guess what?  There are a lot of things that do.)  Now with your new equation you go back to the brainstorm to figure out what “c” is.

While there is no true formula for a Great Idea… every great idea is the product of an equation that balances a number of inputs with one great output.  An output and group of inputs that require you to say “Yes, and…” to develop.  No great idea started with “No”.  (And for those playing the advanced version of this game, if someone only says “Yes” but never seems to heighten… that’s just another way to say “No”.)  Great ideas come from real collaboration… Yes, and…

Thanks for listening,

Zach West

Fantasy Football – The very best in Social Gamification (Maybe a blueprint for Facebook)

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So for the last few months I’ve been hearing all these so-called “Social Media Experts” (Not something I believe exists) talking about how “gamification” in the future of Social Media.  While that’s a fairly true statement, it is often overlooked that social gaming has been around for a while.  Both in smaller communities like World or Warcraft (not that it is that small) and in large-scale communities like Fantasy Football, social gaming has been around for a while.  So let’s focus on the Fantasy Football, I figure it will probably consume the next 16 weeks of my life any way…

Fantasy Football is an extension of NFL football on to the web, where users generate all of the content, including re-distributing the NFL roster.  Think about the features of a typical Fantasy Football League…

User Generated Experience-

League Name (Name your own community)

Team Name (You control what your profile in the community)

Members of the Community (This can often be either random people or an invite only situation)

Rules for Gamification (how about that, the user controls the game rules)

Trophies/Rewards (All the incentives to Fantasy Football other than the simple win are designed by the users in the community)

So to recap, the user basically creates everything with only the use of the NFL season and roster as their information.  Hmmm, I don’t think it takes a genius to see that Fantasy Football is the premier social gaming model today.  It takes a fairly common experience, following the NFL, and creates an unbelievably social upgrade to the experience using the web.  Sound familiar?  It should.  Zynga the social gaming company repeats this same formula with “Words with Friends”.  (Most people understand how scrabble works)  Then there is the bigger Social Media concept that all started based on the same concept as Fantasy Football.

FACEBOOK is based on the same principles as Fantasy Football.

1.  The entire concept can be broken down as a utility to better experience the real world.  (FF focuses on on single sport, Facebook originally focused on college social life)

2.  The user creates and crafts their identity.  (The user chooses who they are, and how their profile is built)

3.  The user chooses who to share their experience with.  (FF has invite only leagues, and Facebook is driven by friend invites)

4.  The user controls the rules of the game.  (FF has rules set by the group, while Facebook has a group understood rules concept that develops over time)

5.  They are both games in which the Trophies and Rewards (and value of said rewards) are determined by those you’ve chosen to invite into your community. (This is where it gets the most interesting.)

Digging deeper into #5 we come to a question: Is Facebook a Game?  (Not to go back to economics again) Absolutely it is a game!  Think of it this way- you create a profile with unique attributes, then in order to play you must participate in a conversation, while in the mean time building up “klout” (Klout.com check it out, you might find it interesting after this article.) in your network of friends through such rewards as likes and comments.  The game I just described above goes further.  Because while building up a friends list and earning likes is important, this is nothing compared to the trophies that are out there.  Trophies like “relationships”, tags in photos, and of course larger friend lists.

Facebook is the gamification of the college experience.  Taking in only real life information of your college experience and then putting the right “motivations” in place to play the game.  I still think it has the same intention and result of Fantasy Football in that it offer an improved experience on top of the already good NFL (college) experience.  So next time you’re on Facebook… look around… see if you start to notice the game you’re playing.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

It is all about “Privacy”. How Google+ is doing to Facebook what Facebook did to MySpace.

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So people like me (Social Media Nerds) think that when a network comes up with new ways to share content and interact with “friends” they’re going to be the next big thing.  Turns out, that is just what we want in a kick ass Social Network.  The rest of 499 million people of Facebook aren’t as interested in that when choosing a primary social network.

In the days since Google+ has launched and my non-social media nerd friends have been joining I’ve notice a trend.  They are in love with the concept of Google+ Circles, the feature that allows you to tag your friends so when you post content you can easily decide who to send what to.  A feature that somewhat exists on Facebook but has never been a focus of the site.  Circles looks to be the privacy Facebook users were craving.  Google found an unmet need and nailed it.  Of course this makes sense, this is exactly how Facebook exploded in the first place.  It was all about privacy.

Back in the day,  (I was young, I’m not a kid any more.) the big social network was MySpace.  A site that allowed you to build a killer profile, share content, and become friends with people.  Then came along “the facebook”, which was a solution to the biggest complaint about MySpace.  On MySpace there were all kinds of people, and any of them could read your profile for the most part, and worse talk to you.  (Basically it was getting a rep for having too many pervs on the site.)  Facebook exploded because it was private, you controlled your community.  Someone had to accept you as a friend to get access to their profile, and you couldn’t even get on the site without an .edu email address in the beginning.  Now obviously Facebook has evolved a lot since then… but at the end of the day, the strength of the site was in its original user controlled privacy.

So that brings us to Google+.  What the Circles feature offers is all the basic functionality of Facebook’s content sharing but with a layer of privacy, because now a days people have all kinds of people in their networks.  And honestly sometimes you want to post pictures from the party last night… but odds are good you want to pick and choose who you show those to.  This is where Google+ has a mass appeal.

Plus, keep in mind Google+ isn’t really a social network, but rather a Relationship Management tool.  It is a layer over your email, search, and much more.  Just like MySpace wasn’t a blog but rather a blogging network, and Facebook wasn’t a blogging network but rather a Social Network.  I like to think of Google+ as my personal Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.  Its purpose isn’t to make my world more social, but rather to help me better manage my world.  There is too much data in our lives, why shouldn’t each person get a tool to manage/simplify all that data?

Thanks for listening,

Zach West

Feel free to join me on Google+ +Zach West

The Secret to Success in Social Media (The one far too many people over look)

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Normally my posts are longer than the one below, but the topic doesn’t require a mile of words.

The Secret to Social Media Success:

1.  Social Media isn’t new, it is an extension of the relationships you’ve already created with you customers, friends, and so on.  Success is bases on the same thing that creates success in day-to-day relationships.  Treat the people you interact with like they are important to you…. act like tomorrow you’re planning on talking to them again…. don’t be mean…. don’t be an ass…. and don’t be full of yourself…. these people are just like those who came all the way from their home to your store, treat them with respect when they walk into your community (store front) and they’ll treat you with the same.  They’ll tell you when they don’t like what you are offering, and they’ll tell their friends when you do something that good that it is worth sharing.  Don’t focus on the numbers, focus on actual relationships, don’t forget who you are, but more importantly make who they are your priority.

I realize there is some rambling in there, but I think the point still stands.  Social is an extension of your relationship.

Thanks for listening,

Zach West

Google+ won’t kill Facebook, but it will give them problems (Google+ will have 50 million active users before 2012)

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A more effiecient social experience.On June 29th, I received an invite to join Google+.  The day prior they had announced the site and I’ll be the first to say I thought it looked cool and then just wrote it off as another soon to be #fail by Google.  But I have to say I was rather impressed.

Enough so to predict that Google+ will have 50 million active users before 2012.  Here’s why:

There is a user base on Facebook that doesn’t really like it any more.  These are the people who have had Facebook long enough to have gone through a life change.  (Think of this as getting married, moving to a new town, graduating college and so on.)  In my case since becoming a user on Facebook in 2005 I’m not exactly the same guy any more.  Today I am a professional, no longer a college student.  And I feel there are a lot more out there like me, who don’t see Facebook as an exciting representation of my world anymore.  (I use the word exciting because in the virtual world you get to be who you want to be. Also in my case I created my profile on Facebook when I was just becoming a freshman in college, a great time to be who you want to be.)  Also now that I’ve graduated the word “friend” need no longer apply to almost 80% of the 650+ “friends” I have on Facebook.  I haven’t seen most of them in a few years.  Not to mention our parents are joining Facebook.  (Not cool)  So all of those things have made me less engaged with Facebook.  (I feel I spend more time thinking about who is going to see what I post than thinking about what to post.)

So with that said, I think Google+ may have figured it out.  Their “News Feed” can be everyone, or you can segment it by circles of contacts.  Meaning you can see the content from just your close friends, your family, and coworkers instead of having to scroll down a mile to see them.  Even more importantly Google+ does a much better job of letting you control your privacy, every time you publish content you choose which circles get to see the content.  This is the very feature that is going to get me to actually use my Google+ account.  (Assuming I can get enough of the people I like to interact with to also use there’s.)

There are two other solutions that Google+ has that Facebook lacks.  Google+’s sparks takes value of iPad apps like Flipbook and Pulse and brings them right into your social network.  Instead of having to go find pages on Facebook to Like, so you can get good content from them.  Google+ just has you put in the keyword you want to see content about and then populates it with relevant articles and blog posts.

So will I switch?  No.  I’ll add this to my social network presences.  I can’t leave Facebook, the contacts and world I’ve built there still has value.  That said, the new Google+ might be where I go first when checking on what’s happening out in my world.

(And I have a feeling a lot of people will do the same.  Between the Tech nerds who are all about Google everything, to the people who’s Facebook worlds aren’t the same as they used to be.)