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A Trip Down Facebook’s Timeline

May 18th, 2012 8:52am by Nick Sweeney

With Facebook's IPO becoming available today, we thought it'd be interesting to see their own Timeline.

It's always interesting to see how websites evolve. It's a trip not only down memory lane (to quote Ben Folds, we're getting nostalgic about the last ten years before the last ten years have even passed), but down online and pop-culture fads as well.

Enjoy the ride.

2004

Banking on the popularity of such "The" bands of the time as The White Stripes and The Strokes, The Facebook - as it was called when it debuted - was about as 2004 as Hoobastank. Here's some Facebook Trivia for you: the picture in the upper left-hand bar was Al Pacino from Scarface.

2006

Al is still hogging the upper left-hand corner, but now we're starting to see some more personal information, such as Favorite Music and Favorite Quotes. It's interesting to see that the site is still university-focused (Mark went to Harvard), and we're starting to see some ads crowd the experience. And on the profile page of all places.

2008


No more ads crowding up your profile page. Instead, we see Gifts (the beginning of the apps!). Notice that everything your friends typed was preceded by the word wrote. Well, duh.

2010


Now this is starting to look like Facebook. Ads on the right (using limited colors), chat boxes on the bottom right, and notification bars on the top. The News Feed changed the way many of us interacted with Facebook (nearly a third of our Facebook time is spent there). 

Today



With Timeline, you can now track everything you've ever done with Facebook. Ads now take up nearly a full fifth of the page, and apps are everywhere. Some people like the Timeline, other have yet to change (yours truly included).

It'll be interesting to see what the next 8 years bring us with Facebook. 

Who knows, maybe they'll bring Al back.

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Posted in f-commerce, Facebook How-To, Technology | No Comments »

Does a Paid Facebook Post Miss the Point?

May 16th, 2012 8:46am by Nick Sweeney


Pop quiz, hot shot: What's the difference between paid advertising and earned
advertising?

For nearly a decade now, we've been hearing all about how the former is going away in place of the latter. The best and brightest companies "earn" their customers through engagement and working with their customers. It's the true power of social media.

Right? Exactly how much is creative, engaging content worth?

Two dollars, apparently. In a move that sounds akin to a bank looking for "innovative" ways to tack on fees to use your own money, Facebook has been beta testing a feature that allows users to pay $2 for a post to show up higher and stick to your friends' (or fans') News Feeds longer.

Forbes calls it "sad", and part of me agrees. It's like paying for friends when what you say isn't captivating enough.
But another part of me says, great. It gives small businesses a chance to announce something important and get it seen.

Unlike the Facebook ads, which nearly 60% of users say they don't click on.

And at two bucks a pop, it's some of the cheapest advertising out there. Maybe that explains why GM is pulling $10 million worth of ads from Facebook. Although I think the real question is why GM spends up to $40 million on Facebook marketing.

With all of the hub-bub about Facebook's IPO coming this Friday, it's no wonder they're looking for revenue streams under every rock.

So, maybe the $2 posts are kind of sad. Maybe Facebook are social media heretics - how dare they add paid ads into my Facebook stream! (that I don't pay for)

Or maybe, we're all forgetting that social media is a tool, not a revolution. It's how you use it, not what it does.

Two dollar posts may be good for small businesses who use it sparingly, or it may end up being detrimental to companies who over-use it so much that they go back to talking at their customers, and not with their customers.

It's all in how you use it.

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Posted in Advertising, f-commerce, Facebook How-To, Marketing, social media, Technology | No Comments »

Google+ Hangouts On Air is Now Available. How Will You Use Them?

May 14th, 2012 9:41am by Sean Grace

Since debuting in the summer of 2011, Google Plus has consistently rolled out feature after feature to improve the user experience of their network, and allow people an easy way to connect and collaborate with others. After testing out G+ Hangouts On Air for several months with a few key users, Google is now rolling it out to the masses.

The Hangout feature on Google+ provides a video conferencing platform for you and 9 other people at one time. While hanging out, it is easy to include other Google products such as Google Docs and YouTube (you can view and comment on videos as a group).

The addition of Hangouts On Air is a big deal. For businesses, the ability to directly communicate with others face-to-face makes it possible to easily engage with colleagues, customers, and prospects at no charge. The On Air function now provides a way to use Hangouts not only as a collaboration tool, but as a real marketing tool. 

Imagine hosting an event, launching a new product or service, taking a tour of your facility, or delivering a how-to demonstration. You can now easily broadcast this valuable content to your audience, and allow them to comment in real time. What's more, you can record these Hangouts, and store them on your YouTube channel for continued viewing.

Google+ Hangouts On Air are offering brands a great new opportunity to broadcast their content and interact with more people at one time. How will your business take advantage of this?

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Posted in Branding, Marketing, social media, Technology | No Comments »

‘Brand’ is Real, Whether or Not You Believe In It

May 9th, 2012 8:21am by Sean Grace

After reading a quote from Dyson vacuum founder James Dyson on Ad Age where he states that he “doesn’t believe in ‘brand’”, I started a discussion on LinkedIn to see if my colleagues thought his view had any merit (or was actually how he felt). It turned out to be a popular conversation thread, with several people in the marketing and branding industry astounded that the exec either did not understand or was unwilling to admit to a strategy using marketing tactics to make his product successful.

What Dyson appeared to be asserting with his comment was that ‘product’ was the most important thing to a company, and that without a consistently strong product an abstract ‘brand’ could not survive.

True. I guess. However, that brings about the point of what ‘brand’ actually is. Is it abstract? It can be. Oftentimes it can even be idealistic - consumers themselves can perpetuate this too if they really believe (or, want to believe) in a product. But, that idealism doesn’t stick if the product or service doesn’t live up to the expectations given to customers. And, brand still remains. It may change. It may be adjusted, damaged, and repaired. But, it is still there.

A company doesn’t have to believe in, or accept the reality of ‘brand’ for it to exist. A brand exists in the mind of the consumer. It is whatever they say it is. The look of the logo, the cleanliness of the building, the smell of the food, the friendliness of the staff, and on and on. It is all a part of the overall brand image displayed in the mind of the customer, and communicated to others when they talk about it.

Businesses that care about the message being received and passed along by their customers take the time to communicate their values and deliver on their promises. They take an interest in telling customers what to expect from them. That’s branding.

Dyson may not believe in the term ‘brand’, or that it can exist in the absence of solid innovation and products that work. But, making and distributing innovative products is what his brand was built on. It’s his promise. One that he strives to deliver on continuously. He’s playing the game even if he doesn’t want to.

Where does ‘brand’  fit in to your overall strategy? Are you framing the conversation your customers will be having? Or, are you sticking your head in the sand and pretending ‘brand’ is a myth not to concern yourself with?

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Posted in Advertising, Branding, Marketing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Leadership, Innovation, and Disrupted Business Models

May 7th, 2012 9:30am by Nick Sweeney

Take a minute and think about innovation; think about what it means - creating something new and exciting that moves an industry forward. 

Now think about leadership and what it means in business - anticipating the changing tides and adjusting a business's sails as the wind shifts.

Think about all of these things while reading the following:

"You lie awake at night worrying about what is that which will disrupt your business model."

That's Randall Stephenson, the chief executive of AT&T talking about his own customers.

That's not very good executive-speak. Business models after all, are just that - models. The reality of business sometimes doesn't line up with "models".  If something is disrupting your model, you have to change or perish. You don't hear computer companies lamenting the loss of the floppy drive. 

The disruptive technology Stephenson was talking about in particluar was iMessage, the iPhone app that let users text each other without using data from their data plans. 

This "disruption" - users using a free service to bypass a service (SMS) that costs carriers next to nothing to implement - is something that a good executive should anticipate.

He discusses his lack of sleep after openly regretting the "all you can eat" pricing structure for data that was initially offered with the iPhone. "Every additional megabyte you use in this network," he laments, "I have to invest captial."

But isn't that what a company should do as it grows - invest in its own growth? This, coming from a company that made $6.1 billion in revenue from mobile data alone last quarter. This from a company that has been infamous about its lacking network and its dropped calls. 

The irony in all of this is that Stephenson was once a visionary leader - he took a chance on the iPhone in 2007, and the gamble paid off - it single-handedly changed the company from earning money from cellular services to earning money from mobile data.

A good executive should show leadership and vision, not complain about a company's biggest windfall. At the very least, he shouldn't blame his own customers for his company's success.

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Posted in B2B, Customer Service, Economy | No Comments »

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