Category Archives: Social Networks

A Slap in the Facebook?

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Facebook’s recent announcement of their new advertising platform – one that is better targeted to the information they have about Facebook users – has not been greeted very favorably by several bloggers who are basically suggesting this is a “sell out” of Facebookers.    Matt Ingram has a clever post noting how *annoying* this type of advertising might get and also how annoying it is that Facebook thinks you can really meet a person’s targeted information needs running ads for national brands.    Valleywag and even CNET were more blunt about this, saying that Facebook just “bastardized” it’s user base.    

Yikes – I don’t want to be a Mark Zuckerberg User Base Bastard!  

The idea that my use of Facebook means I “owe” Facebook something went out with the massive monetization of the web.  My eyeballs have value to Facebook that, as of last week’s launch of Open Social and the MS Facebook deal, appears to far exceed Facebook’s value to to me.  Unlike Matt I do like Coca Cola but I’m eventually going to go with the social network that gives me a piece of their action.  Is it greedy to ask for that? Maybe, but only about 1/1,000,000,000 as greedy as Facebook or Google. I can live with that level of greed, and I can live without Facebook, or Google, or any single online environment.  There are hundreds more where you came from, and don’t forget that you big internet players, or if I have anything to say about it you’ll become … small internet players. 

My initial reaction to the Facebook revolutionary-never-been-seen-on-earth advertising news was basically in the “so what?” category because I think this type of targeting in social network websites is overrated, and Facebook’s Coca Cola partnership is an indication I am right.   Are they seriously telling Coca Cola they are profiling for pop drinking? Youth?  Caffeine addiction?  Obesity?   That’ll allow them to filter out, what, 14 people from the  50,000,000 users of Facebook?   “Mr Coke we’ll only be running those ads on our the super targeted Coke drinking Facebooker user base of 49,999,986”. 

Hyper targeting of online advertising works extremely well when peole are searching for information about a topic, especially information related to purchasing a product.   Google’s built an empire with the profits from this approach which uses targeted pay per click advertising called Adwords (at Google search) and Adsense (at other publishing websites).    However intuition and some indications from current advertising failures suggest that Social Networking is not very fertile ground for high value advertising.    There are exceptions to this – at a recent conference I talked to a marketer of a very targeted national educational service who said Myspace offered him great ROI and a huge number of leads.   There, the demographic matchups seemed to overcome the tendency of people to simply ignore advertising while socializing.   

Google to everybody: Open up and say “Google”

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Matt Ingram  has it right again – Google sees Openness as a competitive advantage, but Google is also correct that Open Social networking and open cellular software and hardware are in the best long term interests of the internet community.

The tech blogosphere has been abuzz for several days now with Google’s message of Open Social Networking (Open Social) and Google’s gPhone / Google Phone / Android / Open Handset Alliance.   Open Social will bring a very open architecture to websites and networking while  Android will craete very open software and presumably unlockable and open hardware for the mobile market.

Is Google being generous?    Not really – they correctly see this as a path to even greater Google profits from advertising.    Google scoops up some 50% of all online advertising revenue now, and this is likely to continue until Yahoo and Microsoft get their advert-asses in gear, which does not appear to be happening anytime soon.    So, while the long term consequences of openness are very unclear the short term benefits are going to go to … Open up and say it loud … GOOGLE!*

* No, I would not recommend buying GOOG at $700 per share.   This pretty much anticipates a smooth transition to a Google world, which seems unlikely.  The internet, after all, is not driven by rocket science … it is driven by … advertising.

Open Social challenge – Guilt by Open-Social-Association ?

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Don Dodge has an excellent post today where he suggests the Open Social hype machine has spun out of control.    I don’t really agree with him because I think Open Social is a sincere effort by Google to create the truly open social networking many have been wanting for some time.    At the same time I would say there are a lot of challenges with Open Social, and it certainly was an aggressive move to kick Microsoft in the Face-book and take the winds out of the Microsoft Facebook partnership deal.    Google is remarkably good at being sincere, innovative, brilliant, and ruthless all at the same time.  In fact it’s become a hallmark of their success though they never seem to acknowledge the ruthlessness of some of their decisions – it’s kind of a collective delusion at Google that what’s good for the Google is good for the gander.   This is often true, but not always.

Back to Don’s interesting point:   What happens if a friend of yours – on whose profile you appear as a “friend”, goes over to a porn site which is using Open Social networking.   Does your smiling mug and name wind up appearing next to objectionable material?   Yikes – you could lose your job, wife, and family all in one fell Open Social swoop and you never even did anything !     

Although I can’t say be sure I’m confident this problem has been solved.  Probably via some form of content controls or content ratings for sites that are allowed to participate.  Will there be bugs in this?  Of course, as Don notes Plaxo already had a problem with their Open Social implementation, but on balance I think it’s still reasonable to see this as a social networking sea change, albeit one that will take some time to shake out.

Mark Cuban on Open Social v Facebook: He’s being lazy, not smart.

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Mark Cuban generally has great insight about the online landscape but I think he’s just being a lazy social networker to suggest that Google’s Open Social is too late to the social networking party – a party Mark seems to think is going to be run by Facebook regardless of what the other players do.

Don Dodge of Microsoft also seemed to be thinking along these lines when he noted that 50 million users is nothing to scoff at, and suggested the rumors of Facebook’s death have been greatly exaggerated (agree with that).    Mark also correctly points out that those 50 million are mostly “real people” with real profiles, sharing important personal information that would make most advertiser’s drool over the targeting prospects.

But as I noted over at Mark’s place:

Mark I don’t follow why you think Open Social is “too late”. Facebook only has 50 million people. Within a few years there will be billions of people with social profiles and even if Facebook opens up (as they must), a lot will choose to enter this from other social networks or websites that have “socialized” via the Open Social.I don’t see why Facebook should get all the social glory – they weren’t first to the table and they are by no means the last viable way to socially empower yourself online.

Dude…I just think you are lazy and don’t want to set up all those friends again for next year’s Dancing with the Stars.

[Mark has thousands of friends on Facebook and had asked them to vote for him during his recent performances on the TV show “Dancing with the Stars”.    He’s out now which, to me, is yet another tiny indication that social networking is still very much in its infancy.

Why Blogs are better than Google.

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Today, as I searched for some breaking news and technology insights, I was struck by how much better informed you tend to be after reading a few blogs targeted to a topic (and following related links and sites and ask questions) than when you simply search Google (or Yahoo or MSN or, if you enjoyed the silly and short lived TV campaign, ASK).    

Don’t get me wrong – I like the search engines and I love the way you can quickly winnow through billions of pages down to the handful that are relevant and good for your topic.     But I’m noticing how increasingly I wind up turning to blogs *first* for the best news, links, and insight.    I’m beginning to understand why I’m doing that, and why it’s a big deal.

There are the obvious advantages to blogs over websites.   They are fresher (ie recent and new content) – especially compared to Google searches that often yield so much old content.   They usually offer some community components so you feel like you are “where the action is” on topics.   This is usually true for major blogs.  TechCrunch is a key watering hole for startups, HuffingtonPost.com for liberal political folks, etc.

However these advantages are secondary to the fact that as blogs mature they offer an excellent “human powered search engine” for your niche of interest, and as we all know humans still beat out computers in terms of understanding what information is most relevant to our inquiry when it is a broad field of interest.

Again, the TechCrunch Technology blog is a great example of this.  A search in Google for “startups” or “technology news” or “venture capital” will give some good results, but even a careful study of those results won’t give you nearly the insight you’ll get from a one hour session at TechCrunch.     Even a Silicon Valley startup new arrival – or distant silicon startup wannabe, could sound like a veteran if they simply kept up with the parade of posts from Mike Arrington and his clever crowd at TechCrunch.

I think this blog advantage breaks down as you move into very specific topics, but it’s going way up as an advantage in the study of general topics as blogs explode and gather traction and community.     Of course there are caveats to this.   Learning in any form takes time, and you would never simply stuble into a blog about a topic without checking other blogs and sites related to that.   But my point is that once you find “the key blogs” about a topic, even if it is a contentious one, you’ll find through those blogs links, references, breaking news, and a community of other interested parties.   This complex, interactive, cross referenced community experience is how humans learn best, and the internet is making that type of learning exponentially easier to obtain.     

Google Phone – gPhone’s Android is landing?

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Google is *incredibly* good at keeping secrets, and the rumors of a new gPhone or Google Phone have been flying for some time.   However CNET’s Tom Krazit is reporting tonight that Google, on Monday, will unleash “Android”, an open source approach to mobile phones.     As they have with Open Social, Google will unveil an open source approach to development of mobile software.    How do you know it’s going to be good?    Google does not do bad software.   In fact the Apple iPhone’s most compelling feature – mapping – was driven by Google software.

As I noted before about  Google’s Phone ambitions this is another brilliant move which is clearly seeking to dominate the mobile advertising space rather than try to develop and market new hardware.   

Google’s mantra could not be clearer if it was listed on every home page on earth:  “Free software by anybody and for everybody.  Monetization by ….. Google.

The Social Network Reality Show: High stakes, big money, false rumors.

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The game is social networks.  The stakes are very high, and the news and rumors are flying fast, furiously, and inaccurately.   Here is the latest in the saga of Google’s Social Networking entry which, with Myspace’s participation, is the new Social Networking juggernaut (though it remains to be seen how all the participants will use it). 

More on the Open Social vs Facebook battle for the hearts and minds of developers and, far more importantly, users:

1)  After a 240,000,000 partnership with Microsoft the blogs (including here) lit up soon after suggesting that Facebook recieved another 500 million from two other private groups.   This was false.   It is very conspicuous in my view that the rumor rose and spread so fast, and that Facebook did nothing to quell that rumor.  This news is still shaking out over at TechCrunch which reported the rumor of the 500 million and now reports it was false.   Another example of how news at the speed of real time may not be news at all.

2) Google says Open Social is open to Facebook and all are welcome (I believe them).

3) Facebook says Google was not keeping them in the loop on Open Social (I believe that as well)

4) Facebook says they may join the Open Social movement, but suggest they have their own great stuff coming shortly.    I’m skeptical they can “out open” Google, though they probably could come up with some great new social networking applications quickly.  

However on balance I think Facebook really is in big trouble here.     Much of the recent hype – which was overdone anyway – assumed that Facebook would be the key beneficiary of the boom in social networking.   The reasoning suggested that although Myspace is  bigger than Facebook it was a “closed” environment, favored by a demographic that has far less value to advertisers.    Facebook, that thinking went, will continue to grow explosively, open up gradually, target advertising very directly, and become the dominant social networking platform. 

Then there was Facebook’s refusal to sell to Yahoo for a reported 1+ billion.  This was followed by big negotiations with many key players, culminating a (much overhyped) 240 million deal with Microsoft to cooperate, run MS Live searches, and drive some MS and Facebook advertising.    Then came the false rumor of 500,000,000 more in capital which for many seemed to solidify Facebook’s valuation of 15 billion – a somewhat sloppy projection of the Microsoft partnership price.

So, what is Facebook worth in an Open Social world where even Myspace is a Google partner?   No, the answer is not 15 billion.

Myspace to join Google’s Open Social. Facebook’s value plunges.

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It is a mildly risky but potentially brilliant counterstrike against Facebook’s rising popularity.  Myspace will announce shortly that they are joining the Open Social movement spearheaded by Google and which is now officially a social juggernaut of global proportions.    TechCrunch seems to have the latest on this breaking story.

If Facebook was worth 15 billion yesterday I’d suggest it just dropped by more than 50% in value.   Why?   Without Myspace’s hundreds of millions of users Open Social looked like it would be a third player in the field, struggling to catch up with the user bases of Myspace and Facebook and keep up with Facebook development.   But  not any more.  With Myspace, Open Social instantly becomes the key social network, dwarfing Facebook by any reasonable measure of prominence.   Can new Facebook partner Microsoft help sway onliners and developers to stick with Facebook’s “partly open” architecture instead of defecting to what appears to be a very open Google architecture?   No way.

Google Open Social – wazzup?

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It seems like the code for Google’s 3 “Open Social” APIs should be at Google Code but I can’t find the Open Social APIs, or even any mention of Open Social, at Google yet.   Maybe it’s been delayed or maybe TechCrunch’s earlier reports of a Nov 5 launch, rather than today, were correct?

It’s a typical internet deal where everybody is talking about something that has not even hit yet. 

  

Google Open Social opens Social

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Google’s OpenSocial launches Thursday and will be a set of 3 APIs that will allow interface with a stable of early partners in the project incluing Friendster and LinkedIn.   Unclear to me is if the big social network players – Myspace and Facebook – will shun this solution in favor of trying to keep most  of the balls in their courts.   Eyeballs that is.  

The really provocative challenge in Social Networks is whether to close them up and try to keep everybody inside your own network (Myspace’s approach), or to open them up somewhat and hope developers will create applications to interface with your users, but still try to keep everybody playing in your application environment by your rules (Facebook), or to open things up even more as Google will do on Thursday. 

Google seems to be everywhere these days.  The Google Phone or gPhone will be out soon and I predict the Google Phone will be a spectacular success.  They may even launch their own cellular carrier network and seem to be on a tear all over the online space.   

For Google Social the partners are big, important players including linkedIn, Plaxo, Friendster, Ning, and more, but absent are the two key players in the social place, Myspace and Facebook.  If Myspace and Facebook keep doing their own thing it is going to be hard to predict how all this will shake out.   Google historically has been a fabulous tech company but conspicuously failed with their “Orkut” social network which never took off in the USA though it remains popular in Brazil.    Will Google Social turn all this around?   I just don’t know, but will be sure to check it out when available, and hope to be able to develop a travel application for the new Google Social.

TechCrunch has details.