MaestroJ - digital strategy & new media

The other day, I got asked to join a group on Facebook called “I don’t care about your farm, or your fish, or your park, or your mafia”. Of course, it was a reaction to the news feed updates that flood Facebook screens from friends playing a number of different social games. The group has over 5 million members to date, suggesting many Facebook users don’t appreciate the spammy social gaming updates.

If it’s annoying for over 5 million users though; how many more actually enjoy these games to cause such a reaction? The Information Solutions Group has done a great research paper on social gaming. They conducted a survey of 5,000 online users from the US and the UK. You can download the paper here.

Some key findings are below, including some very surprising ones (check the average age):

• Among the nearly 5,000 consumers who responded to the survey, more than 1,200 indicated they played games on social networking sites and platforms at least once a week

• Social game players average 43 years in age, with those in the US being significantly older (48) than those in the UK (38). Females are slightly more likely to play social games than males (55% vs. 45%).

• More than half (56%) have been playing social games for at least one year, with fun and excitement (53%), stress relief (45%) and competitive spirit (43%) being the primary reasons cited for playing social games.

• The majority (95%) play social games multiple times a week and log into Facebook or another site specifically to play social games about half of the time.

• 62% play social games with personal (real world) friends, while 43% play with a relative. The majority (76%) play with people their own age (+/- 10 years).

• Beyond the social interaction of social game playing people, like the competitive nature the most (59%), followed by the interactive game play (49%) and the opportunity to win prizes (35%).

• A combined 57% rely on word of mouth to learn about new games, followed by 38% who learn about new games from ads on the social networking sites. Those in the US rely more on recommendations, than those in the UK.

• Social gamers have played an average of 6.1 different social games. Half of those who have played PopCap’s Bejeweled Blitz feel it is more fun than other social games, 43% said it is more fast paced and 32% said it feels more like a pure game experience.

• The majority of social game players have reconnected with old friends, classmates and relatives as a result of playing games on social networking sites, while others have met new people who they continue to play games with in addition to corresponding and in rare cases meet in person.

Very good webcast (it’s a little lengthy so be forewarned) about the Science of Social Media Marketing from Dan Zarrella:

If you’re someone who tries to keep abreast of technology and new media developments; calling something the “latest” seems like a moot point even as you write it. In fact, this blog post comes months after the two mobile applications I’m writing about have already launched. In any case, the “latest” social networking phenomenon is mobile, location-based social gaming. These applications track your location via GPS on your mobile and lets you notify your friends, sharing reviews and tips through your networks. The two most popular at the moment are Foursquare and Gowalla.

The basic premise of each game is similar. You “check-in” to a specific location and notify friends and networks. It allows you to socialise where you are at any given time, encouraging you to “explore your city” and “discover new things” with friends. There are different incentives for different actions performed; such as earning points, earning game-specific titles, and collecting and sharing objects.

 A quick glance at some statistics reveal that Foursquare is slightly ahead in terms of number of iphone downloads: Foursquare is #27 in the Social Networking Category, while Gowalla is #85 (data as at 25th Jan from Top App Charts). Both games are pretty fun. I’m not going to turn this post into an analysis of the sociological implications of these games, there are other articles for that. I’m a little tired of the circular argument between online social media as a new frontier in community development versus the argument that it’s actually making us more anti-social.

Instead, as a recent user of both, I’ve listed down some things that I like and don’t like and encourage you to check them out for yourself:

FOURSQUARE 

Like

• You get to be Mayor of any location! Possibly the coolest incentive to check-in.
• Badges are fun too; although a better understanding of how to earn some of the badges would be nice
• It requires more from the user; it’s up to users to tag venues instead of pre-set categories. It has a “Shout” feature, which is a short messaging facility you can use to accompany a check-in. I find that it’s more “open-ended” than Gowalla and therefore encourages more usage and exploration.
• “Off-grid” check-in; want to check-in to a location to earn some points but don’t want to let people know where you are for whatever reason? No problem, there’s option for that.
• “To dos” allow you to “review” a particular venue. Tips, tricks, good and bad experiences are all at the mercy of the discerning four-square user. This gives enormous power to users as any tip made is instantly communicated to their friends once that friend checks in to the same venue. Bad service beware!

Foursquare badges

Dislike

• Google maps API integration is still a bit buggy; many venues are a few streets off even with the correct address and cross streets set.
• Duplication - there’s no facility to ensure that there’s only one of each specific venue. People can add the same location more than once.
• Foursquare doesn’t validate your location for check-in. You can be way out West but still check in to a location far east.

GOWALLA

Like

• It looks very sexy. It’s clear that a lot of design work has gone into the application. There are many, varied and well-realised icons for different types of venues, spots and for the random items to pick up.
• You have to actually be in a “spot” to check-in to it; or at least be very close-by. Gowalla only allows check-ins for real GPS-tracked locations. It makes all those check-ins a bit more credible and prevents over-zealous users from cheating just to get a title.
• “Featured spots”. It’s all fun and games in the beginning but at some point location owners will want to take charge of their own venues; or at least find some way of leveraging the audience to help market themselves. Gowalla’s “Featured spots” is a great opportunity to do this. Having a explicit “featured” area is a great way of promoting a company/business in an official capacity in a way that doesn’t have to interfere with the game’s mechanic, or isolate users who have spent a lot of effort being a “mayor” or a “founder” or a “creator” only to be kicked-out because the business wants their location profile.    

Gowalla "spots"

Dislike

• For some reason Gowalla seems to take a while to load. I’ve checked with friends with other providers and they found the same thing. It could be because Gowalla’s beautifully designed interface and icons have higher file sizes? I’m really not sure, but for an on-the-go mobile app, it could mean the difference between being bothered to check-in and use it or not.
• You can’t seem to add suburbs. To add a venue it has to have a specific street address. One of the fun, and no doubt a competitive driver of Foursquare is that you can be the mayor of your own suburb.
• “Trips” haven’t been extended to Australian locations yet; so this feature is practically useless here.
• I still don’t really understand the concept of “items”. So you pick them up and then drop them somewhere else, or exchange what you have for others that’s in the venue. You do that to become a “founder” of a venue apparently…but why again? There is a big potential for brands and products to leverage this “item” facility. However, I’m just not convinced about their usability yet.
• Correct me if I’m wrong but there doesn’t seem to be a “off-grid” check-in option on Gowalla. That is, if you want to check-in to a location but don’t necessarilly want to let people know about it; Foursquare gives you an option that doesn’t show your check-in on your friends’ feed. Gowalla doesn’t have this.

“Pepsi is giving away millions in grants each month to fund great ideas”

In an amazingly bold move, Pepsi have opted out of their long-standing advertising relationship with Superbowl and have chosen to launch a social media campaign instead.

The Pepsi Refresh Project will launch January 2010 and asks users for ideas on how to “refresh” their communities. Voting for the best ideas begins February 2010 with an expected value of US$20million given to the community.

The Big Money has released the Top 50 brands using Facebook Fan Pages.

Their approach:

First, we defined a universe: A company did not qualify for this list unless its Facebook page(s) had a minimum of 200,000 fans. Within that universe, we rated the companies using a variety of criteria: how often they update their Facebook offerings; the level of engagement demonstrated by their fans; how fast a company’s site has grown; and how creatively the companies are using their Facebook presence, as evaluated by a distinguished panel of outside judges.

Richard Millington is an “online community builder” working for the UN. Note how he used the term “builder” rather than “manager” or “director”. A post of his really sparked my interest and got me thinking.

The post, in summary, asserts that amateurs build better online communities than businesses. Amateur communities don’t concern themselves with things like budget, timelines, deadlines, ROI, targetted growth; but solely on participating in the community.

Firstly, I believe it’s important to clarify the terms “amateur” and “business”. The more I think about it, the more complicated it can get. Let’s take Facebook, for example. Facebook is a business, valued at US$10 billion earlier this year. The large percentage of its members are amateurs, who don’t often talk about Facebook or Facebook services, but simply use the platform to participate with their own networks. You could argue, that Facebook is an “amateur community”. Certainely, many businesses are now harnessing Facebook in an effort to develop communities around their brand, and Facebook supplies advertising solutions for businesses to target groups of users; but the majority of users are still “amateur” individuals, talking and sharing personal concerns and ideas.

However, Facebook is also a professional outfit which most certainely concerns itself with budget, timelines and growth. It is not an “amateur” run platform. There is a large team of paid employees that ensure Facebook remains functional, innovative and competitive, and most importantly, run a profit. Doesn’t that mean that it’s a “business”?

So how do you distinguish? Is a community defined by the people who facilitate it, or the people who participate, it’s “members”? Aren’t they one and the same? Maybe Facebook is the wrong example. It’s more of a tool to help build community rather than a community per se.

Perhaps looking at examples will help, and also narrowing it down to specific niche communities. He’s provided examples of “good” online communities here.

For the purposes of this post, let’s just say that “amateur” is any community with a shared characteristic (purpose/location/interest) which has been created with no explicit profit-generating objective; while “business” is any business using social media tools in an attempt to develop a relationship with their community, with the overall intention of generating more profit for the business. “Profit” is the key differentiator.

I should note that I’m leaning away from the definition of “amateur” in the “not professional” sense, i.e. having negative connotations. That’s not the point of this comparison.

Having worked with both amateur and business community development initiatives before, I would have to agree with Richard that amateurs overall, do it better.

There are some businesses that run successful online communities but many companies suffer from large setbacks which prevent them from properly engaging their online community. Repressive company cultures, inter-departmental politics (who “owns” the community - Marketing, PR, Internal Comms, Product), egos threatened by social media exposure, “experts” ambushing each other for a larger piece of the pie, are only some, very real examples of roadblocks companies face with community development.

Recently, I worked with a non-profit to develop their community strategy. There were so many challenges attached: a next to nothing budget, limited operational capacity, a fickle and periodically brutal target market, but the differences were noteable. “Community” for them was not a vague term printed and copied into a strategy document, tossed around during presentations. It is lived and experienced, almost difficult to articulate because it is taken for granted as a given. And that is perhaps the major difference. Many businesses talk about developing communities, they see it as a task. Amateurs see it as an essential ingredient to strengthen their relationships within their network.

For those businesses who have had a hard look at themselves and are attempting to engage their community, I’ve picked out some key points from Richard’s post:

Commitment
“Amateurs don’t abandon the community when they find a new job, or get given a promotion, or their work load picks up. They make the time every day (or evening) for the community.”

Trust
“Amateurs are typically passionate fans with lots of friends they can tell about their new online community. This helps a lot. They have trust and respect from the people they want to join.”

Quality vs.quantity
“Amateurs don’t try to grow big. They focus on making the community fun rather than huge. If they don’t want more members, they don’t try to get any more members.”

I wanted to spread the word about a great competition that I stumbled upon this week. Hyderabad, India will be host to an amazing conference February of next year- Tech 4 Society: Innovations that serve the full market and change the world.

Tech 4 Society will explore the cutting edge of global technological social change. “It is an event where rural meets urban, low-tech meets high-tech, and where the lines between business and social, education and creation, begin to blur”.

As part of the conference, they are looking for someone who blogs about technology, innovation and social change to provide in-depth coverage of the events during the conference. The winning blogger will be sent to the conference all expenses paid, and they will also be the official social media representative.

It sounds like a fantastic opportunity for bloggers who are concerned with technology and social change/entrepreneurship. Full competition details can be found here.

WHAT IS IT?

Twitter lists is a new feature which lets you organise users you’re following into lists. The feature allows you to compile the Twitter streams of selected users into your own categories. The groupings are of your own choosing. For example I’m in one called “special” - which needs to be taken with a grain of salt, I’m sure. You can create lists for your company, high school friends, thought leaders, hobbyists, essentially any category of your choosing. Some examples of how organisations are using it are here.

THE GOOD

Meaningful categories. The feature is essentially a huge filter for the increasingly populated Twitterverse. By organising users into meaningful categories, it’s a lot easier to navigate and make sense of their tweets in the context of each category.

Less egocentric. Creating groups puts less emphasis on individualised self-promotion. You can follow a list of interest without following individual personalities. For example, I’ve never followed Ashton Kutcher, because I personally think he’s a bit of a douche, but might follow a “celebrity” list of which he’s a part of.

More trusted directories. Because lists are created by other Twitter users you already follow and probably know or have a relationship with, they can arguably be seen as more trusted. This is different from third party directories like WeFollow which often bases ranking on number of followers. Number of followers will also be given less signifance as users create lists with members that have real value/meaning/context to them. Having said this, other directories for the Twitter lists are already popping up, including Listorious promising the “BEST lists” and “#1 thought leaders” etc.

Discovering new topics and users. With meaningful categories organising Twitter users, it’s a lot easier to look for new areas of interest and interesting people. There are a number of ways you could find new, interesting users prior to Twitter lists; recommendations, third party directories, hashtag based events and topics, #followfriday, which are often focused on specific individuals. Now, lists allows for groups/multiple users to be showcased.

THE BAD

Feature limitations. You can only have 20 lists per account; a list can only have 500 members each. I’m sure these are temporary restrictions however to ensure the new feature is manageable.

“Negative” lists. Because lists can be created for any category, you may end up in one that could have negative connotations. Even if it’s all in jest, a cheeky mate of yours might put you in his “asshole” list, (I’ve seen this) which could be misconstrued by other people, a potential employer perhaps, or is just generally seen as inappropriate. There is also the danger of being in a list that you just don’t want to be affiliated with, or don’t agree with. At the moment, the only way to prevent these is by direct action from the list creator, or by “blocking” the list creator.

Laborious? At least initially. Those that are following thousands of profiles might struggle with indexing and categorising them. My own initial hesitation comes from not wanting to label why I follow certain people and not others.

THE UGLY

More egocentric. In the same way that number of followers as an indication of value is a problematic presumption (think of @kyleandjackieo), there might be those who scramble to get on as many lists as possible, making it nothing but another popularity contest.

Passed over syndrome. Lists have limitations and not everyone can or should be included. Following someone back is an easy enough gesture, but putting a user in a list is an endorsement, a proclamation that the user has some value for you. Not being put in a list, could therefore leave some people feeling, well, left out. Chris Brogan wrote about how this necessary exclusion could be less than ideal. Who is in and who is out may be seen as being divisive and exclusionary. Personally, I think anyone who’d feel this way is just a little silly, but still, validation is a great feeling.

I’ve been giving Facebook Fan Pages a rap recently and I was glad to discover a whitepaper devoted to it. Moreover, that the case study was Australian, which we need more and more of.

Mudo Media presents their work on a branded Facebook page for a client with some amazing results. The quote I like the best, which I think also helps to give perspective when presenting to others is comparing a real-world equivalent of online numbers:

“The client’s brand and products are being exposed to a near full capacity football stadium of consumers (40,000+) who love their brand, every day.”

Read the full whitepaper here.

As part of Blog Action Day, this post will be dedicated to climate change (their ‘09 theme) relating to an online subject (my blog theme).

I started out thinking of writing a harrowing account of hazardous climate change effects and how the internet can help tackle it, but then Al Gore had already done that (not the internet part) and ever since reading the book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, (highly recommended) I’m convinced that negative reinforcement is not the way to go.

So my thinking then moved on to writing a totally-awesome-extremely-inspirational post about Green 2.0 and how online initiatives are helping address climate change, give some accounts of organisations already doing it, and relate it back to you, dear reader. But then I must be all out of inspiration juice at the moment, because the draft copy of that post, was, well…uninspiring.

So I stepped back and thought, why don’t I just make it about a single topic, that permeates with everyone online, and is still relating to the environment and climate change from an online perspective. And so I decided on spam.

Spam, the much maligned, irritating, dirty, and energy guzzling plague of the internet. McAfee released a report earlier this year stating that spam energy use annually“totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours…That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes”.

Furthermore, that the average GHG emission associated with a single spam message is “0.3 grams of CO2… when multiplied by the annual volume of spam, it’s like driving around the Earth 1.6 million times”

Those are pretty astounding statistics. Even if the environment isn’t a concern (and it should be) the fiscal burden of spam on industry is also enormous. You can view the full report here.

The insidious nature of spam, spam bots, zombie PCs and the servers that power them make it a very challenging thing to tackle. Action really needs to happen at an enterprise and government level.

But being a smarter online user doesn’t hurt either. You’d be surprised at how many friends I hear about still fall prey to the flashing “1000th user winner” banner, or get their vanity tickled by promises of revealing “who has a crush on [them]“. According to the report, much of the energy consumption is when users have to actively view and delete spam.

Below are some thoughts on being a smarter, spam-free citizen of the internet:

1) Be aware. While researching on this topic alone, I came across 5 different supposedly “anti-spam” sites that I’m 99% sure were spam themselves. Be mindful of the sites you’re landing on and whether they could be potentially dangerous. Verify that suspicious email you got. Spam file sizes are often small and contain random links. Hover over the link and check that the page url doesn’t look suspicious.

2) Protect your email address. Don’t fling it around in public forums and sites. There are often safer, more private ways of passing it on to others. Consider using multiple addresses for different purposes. Use an image file or type out the @ symbol “at” to prevent nasties from indexing it.

3) Report spam. Many webmail services have a built-in spam filter. If any find their way to your inbox, use the “Mark as Spam” option rather than deleting it. This will help the filter work more effectively. Even Twitter just recently stepped up their fight on spam, adding a “Report user as spam” link for each profile.

4) Use filters. Any webmaster or site owner will understand the value of spam filters. Make sure you have the most effective one for your needs.

5) Never, ever reply, click or open that attachment. If you’re unsure or suspect something is spam, then just stop right there and hit that “Spam” button. It’s not worth the hidden malware that burrows into your precious hard drive just to see if Lady Gaga really is a hermaphrodite.

6) Be responsible marketers! Yeah, I’m talking to you. Be aware of the Internet Industry Code of Practice, the Australian e-marketing code of practice and the Spam Act and Code of Practice. Check that your database comes from genuine opt-in sources and use targeted, relevant messages. Your budget and your users will thank you for it.