How to Choose a Social Media Management Tool

Thank Heaven that there are lots of companies trying to make the process of managing and analyzing social media presences better. As more and more brands recognize the importance of social, most have also concluded that they cannot effectively deliver positive social experiences manually. They need automated tools to make the process easier, more dynamic, and easier to track.

The need for powerful and efficient management tools is there whether you have one presence or hundreds, whether you’re only on Facebook or have outposts on 50 different platforms. Since we’ve helped a number of companies with social media program management, I thought it might be useful to share some of what we have learned with a larger audience. So here’s a summary of some of the most important features to look for as you choose a social media management platform to deploy across your clients or company.

1) Content Management System Features

We often think of a “CMS” in the context of a major corporate site, but it’s just as important in a social media management platform. Perhaps even more important. Because the need for constant updating is so acute in social. Here are some features to look for as you weigh alternatives.

• Ability to deliver content to lots of social platforms. As with anything else, you are going to want to work with a versatile platform. Because social is so dominated by FaceBook/Twitter, it may be OK to work with a Facebook/Twitter only tool now, but make sure they are planning to cover more platforms in the future. Because if there is one certainty in social network history, it’s that market hegemony isn’t forever. Ask Compuserve, AOL, Napster, Friendster, and MySpace. Further, you should be able to choose social media destinations for each piece of content. Because what you send to Digg should be very different than what you send to FaceBook. The easier it is to decide where a particular piece of content goes, the happier you’ll be in the end.

• Ease of Content Creation: Some platforms allow you to create content right in the platform. Is the process easy, or is it complex? Intuitive, or convoluted? Easy is going to be important to any social manager, but for people managing multiple brands, or multiple presences for a single brand, it’s going to be critical. The number of steps required for content creation is important because social managers are going to spend only a small portion of their time creating content. Most of their time should be spent on listening and responding.

• Page Aesthetics Tools or Helpers: Some social media presences open themselves to more custom tailoring of page appearance. Having ways to quickly and easily alter the aesthetics of a page can help brands reinforce messaging with their proprietary look and feel. Some services offer very easy to use tools, others don’t. If you don’t have designers on staff, easy to use tools can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that you won’t have to involve a designer every time you make a small change. A curse because most nondesigners have a knack for shocking colors and turning on the wet floor, shadow, outline, and ripple effect simultaneously. Ask our team what it’s like to deal with two color blind partners. LOL.

• Post Aesthetics and Content Helpers: There’s probably a cooler name for this. But what I am talking about is the ability to post content and ensure that a screen shot or key image are posted, not just a link. And the ability to change the text of a post is also useful. Similarly, an automatic URL shortening tool helps immeasurably. Instead of making trip after trip to Bit.ly, you can just have the platform do it. Some solutions also let you customize the shortened urls to give you an additional level of brand impact.

• Collaboration: Two things to look for here. The first is the ability to create, edit and manage content across people within an organization. Ideally, a platform lets content developers input their work, and then manages the flow of edits, updates, and approvals across an organization. Permissions capabilities are going to be important here for many companies, especially those to the left of the “risk-o-meter”. Obviously, the need for failsafe procedures and processes varies somewhat depending on the size and type of organization. For example, a large company in a highly regulated category like pharma would probably want features that prevented posting of content without prior approval from legal, etc.

• Multimedia capabilities: You’ll want to be able to post a variety of file types. Text is so cheestastik. Actually that’s not true. But brands cannot build by text alone.

• Prefab applications: Every social program I have worked on benefitted from interactivities that tackled the challenge of making passive likers into brand participants. A platform can make that much easier by offering built in applications that work on at least some social media sites. A drag and drop poll. Virtual gifts. Ecards. People are far more likely to respond to “apptivities” than to make freehand comments or take it upon themselves to spread your message virally. Most of the current social service offerings provide these features primarily for Facebook.

• Provisions for scheduling of posts: I’ve seen a lot of data on the relative effectiveness of pre-scheduled posts. By which I mean the use of a platform that allows you to specify the date and time of future posts. From the anecdotal info I have seen, it appears that for many brands advanced scheduling can be just as effective as managing everything in real time. Of course there are exceptions. If you are BP trying to message during the worst ecological disaster in North America, you aren’t going to want to “set it and forget it.” But if you are in a fairly sleepy category and realistically don’t have a plethora of posts to make every day, scheduling tools can reduce the time commitment necessary to operate an effective social media program.

2) Listening, Response, and Analytics Tools

Listening to fans, followers, and likers – really really listening – should be the primary task brands assign to social manager. We all talk about the 20/80 rule – the principle that a small number of users purchase the lion’s share of your product is well known. So, if you accept that your social media “fans” are in the 20%, then shouldn’t you take loads of time to listen and understand what folks are saying in the aggregate? In my view, there are two kinds of listening that are critical.

Identification and escalation of “acute” response needs: For this challenge, you are going to want a service that makes it easy and fast to review site posts and comments. From policing profanity and personal attacks, to responding to questions and requests for information, to quickly identifying and escalating complaints or other acute problem posts.

Aggregated insights into all of the commentary: Simply responding to issues and problems only scratches the surface of the value you can glean from social media fans. By pairing the richness of being able to see real commentary with the ability to use quantitative analysis to assess the overall tenor of discussion and topics, brands can get ideas and feedback that can fuel a host of marketing initiatives.

As you evaluate platforms, consider whether or not the alternatives offer the following:

• Automatic escalation of posts and comments containing profanity, or posts and commentary that have been flagged for review. Keeping a “clean” group generally helps grow brand connection and group participation.

• Console showing all recent commentary from users so the social manager can scan posts for items needing immediate follow up. Obviously a service that includes these follow up needs within its CMS would make things easier for all parties.

• Platforms that flag competitor names and keywords to make it easier for the social manager to spot and address the comments, or escalate them to appropriate team members.

• Ways to respond to the comments from the CMS rather than having to manually find the comments within the social media presences.

• Tools that provide insights into ALL of the commentary on a group. Measures like sentiment, KW analysis, themes, etc. can help a brand gain insight into what consumers are really saying and needing.

Many of you may find this last point a bit of overkill, especially if you are already monitoring social through a listening or analytics platform. But remember that some of the most popular social platforms, including FaceBook, are very challenging for social listening tools to monitor.

3) Metrics Considerations

While most brands still find it difficult to track social media activity back to sales, we can do better at using surrogate indicators and other admittedly “softer” metrics to assess impact. Many of the platforms available today are quite effective at providing this sort of information. I suggest you look to insure that the platform you select be able to track the following:

• Clicks on Posts
• “Likes”
• Clicks on Links
• Plays of Multimedia Content
• Responses to Interactivities
• Shares/Retweets
• Time Spent

Further, the ability to get reporting on these measures in real time or near real time will help you make timely decisions on how to alter or augment your social activity with regard to a piece of content. For example, you may post a video to one Facebook presence, and see that it gathers significant views and shares quickly. This could help you decide whether to expand the reach of that content across more sites/presences.

4) Price/Value Concerns

Social media management tools can have wildly different pricing, from free to quite dear. Cost of services broadly relates to the extent to which they make tasks, easier and more intuitive, as well as the availability of “drag n drop” apps. In working with clients on this challenge, I have found it helpful to do some simple calculations to identify money versus time tradeoffs. Social media management has both direct and opportunity costs, and it’s relatively simple to compare the cost per year of one service versus another if you have taken both for a test drive.

Final Thoughts

The number of social media management tools out there is mushrooming. One rule of thumb I suggest people use is a simple annoyance test. Take the platforms you are considering for a test drive. If you find some aspect of it unintuitive, talk to the seller about how you can address it. But do talk to them. Because something that is annoying to do once is rage-inducing when performed 192 times a day.

There are certainly very good platforms that don’t do every single thing I have mentioned above. I suggest you work closely with your marketing and social media teams to identify the features that are going to be most important to your business. This is definitely NOT a decision to make in an afternoon because the effectiveness and efficiency of what may well become your most frequent consumer connection is at stake. What’s also at stake is the sanity of your social media manager. Choose wisely.

Special thanks to iMediaConnection for publishing this first.

Digital Marketing Factoid Of The Day: Age Demographics of Facebook Users

This ain't a playground!

Bebo Traffic Trend Line Cannot Be Making AOL Happy

They paid $850MM for this? Yeouch!

I gotta believe it has something to do with Facebook's trend line.

Blogosphere Abuzz WIth Sentinel's Revelation of Thousands of Sex Offenders On FaceBook

Yep, you[ve probably read about it in a few places already. Actually more than a few as Google blog search indicates that there are 1785 posts about the issue from the past 24 hours at the time I am writing this.

A security company run by a former NYC police officer says that it has found 8,000 sex offenders on Facebook without much effort. The company, which is used by MySpace to police its membership, made the revelations this week in an announcement that Facebook has since responded to.

Here are a couple of quotes I culled from Tech Crunch:

Of the 8,000 matches, Facebook spokesman Barry Schmidt responds:

Obviously, we are going to investigate. We hope to define them and remove them as soon as possible.

He also cautions that these should be viewed as potential matches:

Facebook does not allow the same investigations by an outsider as by insiders. Saying there is a positive match of 8,000 sex offenders is difficult to for an outsider to do. You would need would need more than a name and a photo the size of your thumb. The correct way would be to characterize them as potential matches.

And he says this of Sentinal [sic]:

For a company that has a mission to keep kids safe, we find it irresponsible that they wouldn’t share this with us. Or, if not with us, how about with law enforcement? This could have been an announcement that Sentinel and Facebook removed 8,000 potential sex offenders. We still don’t have the information on who they are. If you are willing to share that with us, we will investigate immediately.

Later, Facebook issued a release saying that they are turning off the accounts associated with IDs of the alleged offenders as a precautionary measure.

Facebook detailed in a press release that they have a number of initiatives designed to protect people from sexual predators.

Whether Sentinel offers a solution that is better than Facebook's homegrown stuff is something I dunno. But this is clearly an issue that is going to get a lot of attention this week.

Power.com: The Connector of Social Networks

You have have seen a press piece or three about Power.com lately. If you haven't lemme tell you about it. Basically, it is a service that interconnects presences across multiple social networks. SO you can monitor and update your presences and personal contacts from a single location. So what networks are Powerable at this point?

MySpace
Orkut
Hi5

And, according to Tech Crunch, Facebook soon. Wrote Erick Shonfeld:

Power.com lets you sign into multiple social networks and manage them from one place, but it did not use Facebook’s API or Facebook Connect. As part of the settlement, Power will access this data via Facebook Connect. Power was scraping the data from Facebook and caching it, which it won’t be allowed to do with Facebook Connect.

Facebook is very particular about how it wants other Websites to access its user data. Facebook had similar problems with Google’s Friend Connect, although it simply banned Google from using its API rather than bring a lawsuit.

For Websites and services that want to tap into Facebook’s rich trove of user data (it now has 150 million active users worldwide), it has to do so by Facebook’s rules. But one of those rules, in particular, many partners are finding restrictive. They are not allowed to cache any data, so they cannot build their own user profiles or make their services smarter over time. There are good privacy reasons for not allowing other (possibly unscrupulous) sites to cache the data, but it also serves to limit innovation.

Here's part of what Claire Cain Miller's Bits blog at the NYT has to say about Power:

Venture capitalists have turned a cold shoulder to new social networks. Many of those still interested in Web 2.0 investments are seeking ways to streamline the social Web.

“We’ve been looking at this overarching question of where does social networking go in the longer term,” said Andreas Stavropoulos, the Draper managing director who led the investment in Power.com. “A lot of properties, like Facebook, MySpace and others, become these islands unto themselves. What we saw in Power was a way of opening up these islands and connecting them.”

Once a user enters his or her log-in information for a social network, Power.com accesses the site as if it was the user. Power.com does not have permission from the social networks to use their sites in this way. Mr. Vachani compared it with the way social networks import users’ e-mail address books to connect them with their friends, or the way Meebo, also backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, accesses users’ instant message accounts.

Most of the time Power.com displays the user’s social networking pages without changing them, keeping the original advertisements. But in some instances users can read and respond to a message received at one of those sites without actually visiting the site. That could potentially irritate sites that do not want to sacrifice page views.

Power is based in Brazil and has great backing from VCs. As they have already attracted more then 5 million members, it's clear that there is a tremendous consumer need to simplify this world of closed gardens into a cohesive whole. We need ways to bring us closer to all our contacts, not separate us with arbitrary walls. Power.com is doing just that, and by all acocunts doing it very well, indeed.

White Paper Wednesdays: Facebook Marketing 101

Vidar Brekke, formerly of Linkstorm and now CEO of Social Intent, put together a short 'n sweet preso on Facebook Marketing 101 that is definitely worth a read.

Facebook Pages 101

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialnetwork viralmarketing)

Their company is interesting in that it is focused on integrating brands into the social media environment organically.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Personal Informatics Post Seven: Facebook Feeds

I'm probably putting this in a bit out of order, but your feed and your friendfeed on Facebook are close kin to the specialty informatics offerings, albeit an extremely public one. But being public is not counter to this phenomenon -- almost the opposite.

While most people don't populate their feeds with EVERY ASPECT of their lives, like they would with a service like Daytum (see post six), the principle of placing such a high level of personal information out there for large number of people to see is, through Facebook, an extremely popular activity.

Again, the feed feature is a rather polarizing offering. I admit that I am in the camp of having total indifference to what you ate today ("Paul is EATING BACON...), but others tell me that this is their favorite part of using the site. It enables those of us who have difficulty keeping up with people a way to have a sense of what they are doing on a daily or even hourly basis.

Was this tendency in all of us before Facebook? Did they really launch the concept? The ability to add updates through mobile, particularly through iPhone apps, is only going to expand the audience of fact exhibitionists.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Facebook Stats: More Than 140 MM Members!

The blog InsideFacebook is reporting that the site has now reached 140 million members. Who knew there were that many vampires on the planet? Anyway, forget my lame joke and sheck out these other factoids about the World's favorite soc net:

13 million users update their statuses at least once each day
2.5 million users become fans of Pages each day
700 million photos are uploaded to the site each month
4 million videos are uploaded each month
15 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each month
2 million events created each month
19 million active groups exist on the site

A plethora of treasured facts await you when you click the link in the first line of the post.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

‘Sup Over At Linked In?

Linked In is a site you either love or hate. I am in the love column. I find it a great alternative to a rolodex, and have gotten connected to some great people and opps through it. It’s also a sure fire way of knowing if someone is contemplating a job change – just check to see if they have friended 137 people in the last week.

Quantcast reports 5.5 million monthly uniques for Linked In. The company has not made other Quantcast data public, as is their right.

The Linked In model was never designed to make it the biggest soc net around; rather it was to be focused on a highly desirable professional audience – one with which the company could garner strong CPMs.

It was a pretty staid environment for a while, but more recently they’ve begun to offer groups, a sort of B2B Yahoo answers, and even the opportunity to do research studies against specific job titles and categories. Of that last opp I can attest to how difficult it can be to find sufficient samples of highly specialized job functions – so this giant database will prove very helpful to me in the not too distant future.

One of the really positive things, in my opinion, has been Linked In’s expansion to having a strong beachhead in many job functions and industries, versus the usual online suspects of IT, DBA, and the like. This not only enriches the community; it also helps make them immune to temporary business fluctuations that may adversely affect certain advertising sectors.

Linked In has also become very active on the modular content/widget front, offering units that detail user profiles, contacts to companies described on a page, job listings, and the like. Their 1 month traffic figures show a strong uptick – no doubt due both to these innovations and the soft job market.

Yes yes, yes, there are lots of people using FaceBook for professional networking. But Linked In does offer one critical advantage over FBs: it is 100% zombie and vampire free.

So lots going on over there, as there needs to be to compete with FB and others. But it is nice to see them energized and innovating after a couple of quiet years.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

Check Dis Awt: Project Planetir Visualizes Facebook Activity

What wonderful eye candy. A video that shows every action on FB as a colored dot. I don't know that it is super actionable, but look! Pretty! Cool! Awesome! Imagine when we can get this for brands!

Must be a FB member to see. Oh please! Like anyone who reads this blog doesn't have a profile!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Get Them In FaceBook App: Cool, But Please Don't Send ME a Drink

I learned about this interesting new app that extends the real world into FaceBook. Yes, you read that right. The GetThemIn app lets you buy friends and acquaintances of legal drinking age booze and snacks that they can pick up at participating retailers.

Here's how it works, from their site:

STEP1: CHOOSE A GIFT...
We have many gifts to choose from including several beers, wines, spirits and champagnes. Simply choose the brand and product you'd like to send.

STEP2: CHOOSE YOUR FRIEND...
We make it easy for you to select a friend from your current Facebook friend list.

STEP3: PAY...
By using Google checkout, one of the world's largest and most reputable payment systems, we can take secure payments from almost every major credit and debit card.

STEP4: WRITE YOUR MESSAGE...
Simply write the content of your Facebook message to your friend and off it goes...

STEP5: THEY RECEIVE GIFT MESSAGE...
Your friend then receives an instant notification and SMS message (if you entered their mobile number - which is free) informing them that you have bought them a drink.

STEP6: THEY COLLECT THE PHYSICAL GIFT...
When they add the GTI application, their gift becomes instantly available in their account as an egift. They can redeem this at any time by selecting the 'redeem gift option' which sends out a secure product voucher in the post. The voucher can be taken to their local GetThemIn participating store and used to collect the physical product.

The service launched in the UK, and booze and nibbles can be redeemed at over 1500 locations across the nation:



According to the app page, service in the US is "just weeks away."

DOing anything with alcohol nationally in the US is a nightmare, as we have states from practically anything goes California to the state sells it Pennsylvania. Wanna hear war stories? Talk to the people at Wine.com who have spent a huge amount of time putting together a national distribution system amid an environment of more than 50 state and local regulators.

I like the ida of this service -- both as a business and a social outlet. Given that soc nets are essentially becoming subinternets, having easy buying opps in these environments seems a good idea.

But before you send me any booze, don't, as I am in recovery. ;-)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

And Whom Do You Suppose Might Be Interested in Buying iMeem?

It'd be irresponsible for me to even hazard a guess...



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

The Nine Things That Made Me Think Twice this Week

iMedia has given me the opportunity to blog on their site and I am more than a little grateful for that. The blog is here. I'm going to do a repost of my Wednesday entries here.

9. Google Growth So Slow It May Begin Advertising

From Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider: Google “has recently held discussions with several Madison Avenue agencies, including Wieden + Kennedy and the boutique firm Taxi New York, about new efforts to promote some products, according to people familiar with the matter.In August, Google launched an advertising effort in Japan that included outdoor and online ads created by Wieden + Kennedy, which is best known for its Nike "Just do it" campaign...” MORE

Yes, the word is that the company that has built one of the largest brands on earth without advertising itself may be pondering a significant ad effort. I wonder…is it slowing growth or the declining luster of the brand that promised to “do no evil.”

8. Lots of Bloggers Are ACTUALLY Making Money

Michael Estrin reports “Half of all bloggers run ads, and of that group, 70 percent use self-service contextual ad platforms such as Google's AdSense, according to Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" report. The report, which Technorati has compiled since 2004, also found that 23 percent of bloggers use three or more ad platform MORE

We’ve all seen blog ads for years, but frankly I always thought that people were tilting at windmills with all those ads. But the recent Technorati report shows that both lots of bloggers are making SOME money, and a lot more people than you think are making a living at it. Democratizing content has led to democratized profit!

7. Microsoft’s Ads Go Viral, And Prove That Any Publicity Is Good Publicity

Mario Sgambelluri reports, “Microsoft’s bizarre Gates/Seinfeld ads racked up 3.2 million online views during the 10 days following their launch, while the latest Mac “I’m a PC” ads netted less than half that, reports online video measurement company Visible Measures.” MORE

I hated this new MSFT campaign and blogged about it in a rather negative way. But maybe the joke's on me. When you’re trying to restage a brand in a world where talk is more important than GRPs, maybe producing an ad campaign explicitly designed to drive digital discussion is the best way to dig a brand image out of a hole. One thing for sure, a LOT of people are talking about Redmond!

6. Online Video Penetration Doubled in 12 Months

Michael Estrin reported that There are twice as many Americans watching video on their computers than there were this time last year, according to a recent study from ABI Research, which surveyed nearly 1,000 users. In 2007, ABI found that 32 percent of users were watching video online, but that figure has spiked to 63 percent of those surveyed in 2008. MORE

I would imagine that no one is surprised at massive growth in video. But penetration doubling in a year? Fantastic! I guess I should have known something was up when my Mom sent me a link to an embedded video a couple of weeks ago. If you’re a brand that uses TV and isn’t using online video, what ON EARTH are you waiting for?

5. Doritos Stakes $1 Million On the Power of Consumers to Out Do DDB

Michael Estrin writes “The marketing team at Anheuser-Busch may not know it, but there's a $1 million bounty on their heads courtesy of PepsiCo's Doritos brand. Doritos, which has garnered a fair amount of attention with its user generated Super Bowl ads, is taking the format to a new level this year, promising $1 million dollars to the winner if the ad ranks No. 1 on the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter. Anheuser-Busch has placed No. 1 for the past 10 years running. MORE

Bud has been on top of the Super Bowl ad stakes for years upon years. And Doritos is sick of it. So their new contest asks Doritos eaters to come up with an ad that can beat some of the greatest creative minds in the biz. Do I hear a tremble in Mad Ave’s voice? I’m betting the public can do it!

4. The Politics, They Have a Changed

I got reminded of this video, which shows us all how much the digital revolution has changed the world, including politics. Now, if you're in your early 20s this may seem like politics as usual to you. But lemme tell you, we’re a long way from the campaigns of yesteryear!



3. Time to Tighten The Belts?

Steve McClellan of AdWeek reports: “But privately, some industry executives now believe this year's ad spend might actually end up in negative territory, and might not improve at all in 2009. They point to figures just released by Nielsen Monitor-Plus that show a first-half U.S. ad spend decline of 1.4 percent, compared with the same period in 2007, to $67.6 billion, with significant drops in spending in major ad categories including automotive (down 8 percent to $5.3 billion), pharmaceutical (down 5 percent to $2.6 billion) and movie studios (down 5 percent to $1.7 billion).” MORE

No surprise that the recession will be affecting the biz, but two years of declines is a pretty sobering prediction. Those on the digital side should find it less painful, but it appears that times are going to get kind of tough.

2. Twitter Continues To Grow By Leaps And Bounds

Michael Estrin reports: “Apparently micro-blogging your way through American politics has an enormous appeal. Twitter reported a 23 percent jump in signups from the previous week, and the company cited last week's presidential debates as the primary source for the increase.” MORE

I never really liked Twitter, well, that’s not true. I hated it. I keep thinking the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards when people wake up to the maddening annoyance of 140 characters. But apparently I am the one who doesn’t get it. More than 20% growth in a week? On an already large base? Good Lord. Resolved, I will hold my nose and try it again.

1. Widgets Most Assuredly NOT Dead

Michael Estrin reports “Coming soon to a Facebook page within your network: video content from your favorite big media companies. At least, that's the plan under the terms of a new deal that Slide has inked with CBS Interactive, Comcast's E! Entertainment channel and Time Warner's Warner Brothers, as well as News Corp. and NBC Universal's jointly owned video site Hulu, among other companies. MORE

Last fall the CW was that widgets were hotter than lava. Last spring they were virtually DOA. But the pendulum seems to have swung into the black again, with companies that actually have reasons to have widgets and content in widgets offering widgets. Imagine that.

Well, that’s The Nine this week. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

White Paper WEDNESDAYS: Social Platform Wars!

Yep, I've moved the day to Wednesdays. And to get it started, I am flagging a preso especially for the ADD-afflicted. A ONE SLIDE explanation of the three major social platforms and their arsenal in the platform wars. Enjoy!

Social Graph Platform Wars

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmedia flixster)

100 Million People Bitten By Vampires!

Facebook hit the 100MM member mark today. Great days ahead for the sales of wooden stakes and garlic cloves.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Music: MySpace's Killer App

Tech Crunch offered an interesting piece last week about how, while Facebook is larger than MySpace globally, MySpace still dominates the US. Why? Well, they postulate that is MySpace's stranglehold on music.



Here's an excerpt from this excellent thought piece:

Facebook, by contrast, has no real internal music strategy. Artists can set up Pages to promote themselves, but the pages are no different to any other fan pages (for example, no streaming music) - there is nothing music or artist specific on the site.

Next month MySpace is rolling out a new music joint venture with the major labels that will have music streaming, playlists, downloads, merchandise sales, ring tones and other features. It’s not only likely to be a major destination site for music but also a significant revenue driver for MySpace and the labels (a little may trickle down to the artists as well).

Music is a huge part of what drove historical MySpace growth, and I believe it is a major factor in perpetuating their lead over Facebook in the U.S. market.

Kablam! 25% Worldwide Growth in Social Network Users

Comscore released a recent press release that demonstrated 25% growth in worldwide users of soc nets, versus just 9% in the US. As the business has begun to mature here, the nets, most especially FB and Hi5 have been driving massive growth via localization and cultural relevance. Check out da stats!







Facebook's localization efforts have been faster, according to reports, because they are leveraging team members for translations, etc., while MySpace has taken a more top down country team approach.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Lane et al v. Facebook, Inc. et al

I NEED TO ALERT YOU THAT I HAVE MADE CHANGES TO THIS POST ON SEPT 9. I CHOSE TO MAKE THE CHANGES IN THE TEXT RATHER THAN ISSUE A CORRECTION BECAUSE THIS POST IS WELL INDEXED AND I DUNNO IF THE CORRECTION WOULD BE. I MADE THE CHANGES TO CORRECT A COUPLE OF ISSUES IN MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE CASE. THE CHANGES WERE MADE AS A RESULT OF THE COMMENT LEFT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST -- A COMMENT YOU SHOULD READ. I REGRET THE ERRORS.

A really interesting lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in CA Northern District Court. Against FaceBook and the various companies involved in its much maligned "Beacon" advertising program that debuted last fall and had to be changed from "opt out" to "opt in" several weeks later.

You see, the Beacon system transmits transaction info from the merchants to FB for EVERY purchase (or rental,) and then FaceBook parsed it to match it to members.

The lawsuit focuses on a number of counts. This is not a complete list, these are simply the ones I think are relevant to the typical readers of this site:

Electronic Communications Privacy Act

Suit alleges that the act of collecting the data was a violation of the above act. The act prohibits the interception of communications without consumer consent.

Video Privacy Protection Act

One interesting aspect of this is the role of Blockbuster, Fandango, GameFly, and Overstock, all of which sell or rent prerecorded media. Because video transactions are governed under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA.) The law was passed in 1988 as a result of the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, and the fact that his video rental records were obtained and published in a variety of media outlets. As I recall, Judge Bork's rentals were about as tame as they come, but the disclosure was considered such an invasion that the law was passed. So how could Blockbuster and the others legally participate in this program on an opt out basis? Or is the member the discloser to FB? Naturally, other sites that sold video would be in violation as well. That sound you're hearing is my head spinning.

I looked online for info about the VPPA -- what is unclear to me is whether ONLY video tapes are covered or if the law would cover DVDs and CDs as well. Based upon the info I found, it appears that the law was written in a manner that suggests broad interpretation is warranted, but I couldn't find any case law where the courts have verified that. Obviously, the breadth or narrowness of the interpretation would affect whether other companies named in the suit violated the law as well.

California Laws

Alleges that certain California laws offering fraud and privacy protection to consumers were violated.

What also makes this sue-overable is that if EVERY purchase and rental was sent to FB, then the purchases of people who WEREN'T members were transmitted. This is actually the most interesting bit to me.

You can get a copy of the suit, and a tight analysis, over here at Tech Crunch.

A number of companies are named in the suit in addition to FaceBook and the ones mentioned above -- the merchants that passed the data. Specifically:

Blockbuster
Fandango
Hotwire
Sta Travel
Overstock
Zappos
Gamefly

A FaceBook press release states that there were 44 companies participating at the time of launch -- ergo, the suit also names "john doe" companies who were participating but whose names are unknown.

Assuming that PII was exchanged here (and how could it not have been?,) this will be an important case to watch. It's the part about nonmember data that I am most interested in -- surely THEY have a decent case.

I tell ya, privacy and privacy law is a big rat's nest, ain't it?

And don't forget. I am the layest of laypersons. Not a lawyer. Just a marketing blogger trying to keep abreast of privacy issues.

Finally, as to the comments below about Dallas attorneys, I don't know what is relevant there, but would be grateful for insight.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write?

FaceBook #1

Web site Seeking Alpha has reported that FaceBook is now the #1 social networking site, with 132MM uniques worldwide in June. They also published this fascinating chart that shows you where the growth is:



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

The Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, Lawsuits, and the Portals

The Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, Lawsuits, and the Portals

Did you read that the Indian Supreme Court sent notices, to Google, Yahoo, and FaceBook warning them that if ads that market services that help aspiring parents preselect the gender of their child, they will be liable under the Act and subject to punishment?

Hunh, you might be saying?

The law is rather complicated but essentially prevents the advertising of services and techniques that help parents predetermine the gender of their unborn child. The law is not aimed at so called “medical” gender selection, which could for example enable parents to avoid having babies of a gender if their family lineage genetically predisposed them for an illness. Rather, this law is intended to curb what is euphemistically called “elective" gender selection where parents want to have one gender (read: boys) over another (read: girls) for political, economic, misogynist, or other reasons.

The law was enacted in 2000, and was successful in drastically reducing such ads in PRINT, but the web has not been targeted so intensely until now.

Interestingly, the Supreme Court also warned the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Communications and IT that they were also complicit because they took no action against the publishers.

This is a big stir both because of the nature of how web ads work (so many sellers and servers) but also because of the odious nature of this practice. Here’s an article about this vile custom. Over 900,000 girls are killed annually in India. That’s three St. Louses a year, people. What it's about is sexism, having to provide a dowry, and the traditional role of men as earners and women as expenses.

I’m frankly not sure how such tracking would occur given the distributed nature of ad serving, though there must be a way given that genitalia do not often greet our eyes on web pages unless we seek them. You could certainly reduce the number of ads drastically. But eliminate entirely would be tough.

Hey, it’s a country with a billion people – they get to decide how sites can operate in their borders. I mean, China tells them to block content and few even bat an eye. Certainly the number of these ads could be drastically reduced. But here’s an idea to go along with that that might enable the police to focus on the most pressing aspects of the problem: imprison more of the people that kill their daughters, and work to develop a society that values women equally. I’m not saying Google and Yahoo don’t have a role they can play in helping people rethink their misogyny, but using them as Western scapegoats for what is a vastly complex social ill is hardly addressing the real issue, is it?

And hey, I am well aware that the US has some absolutely deplorable practices as well – more murders in US HIGH SCHOOLS annually than in all of Britain, 1 in 101 people now incarcerated, judging the value of women by bust size or marketing t-shirts with slogans like these at the fine purveyors at Abercrombie and Fitch.



(BTW, I can't remmeber where I pulled this graphic from. If it was your site and you want a credit, just drop me a line.)

Oh and continuing to export Camels and Marlboros, and starting new smokers in the developing world as young as 8.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.