The Next Web » Ayelet Noff

10 key insights into Google+

Ayelet Noff — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:44:56 +0000

For the last few days, Google+ has dominated the news. We are impressed with the interface, real time updates, and of course the Circles but the service still leaves us wanting. Here are our top 10 insights into Google+ so far:

1) Google+ came to take the place of Facebook and Twitter, no doubt about it. And it may just do so. This has happened before (i.e. Friendster, 6 Degrees, MySpace). But it won’t happen so quickly or easily. It will take a long time to capture the hearts and minds of 700 million users.

2) It’s ridiculous that Google Apps doesn’t currently work with Google+. Yes, it’s coming. But to launch Google+ like this is not savvy. “End of story, no debate,” as @GaryVee would say.

3) With Google’s search capabilities, Google+’s search is going to be outstanding. Facebook must start working on its search capabilities and quickly.

4) Google+ is rolling out its messaging functionality slowly, so not everyone has it yet. However even for those who have the feature, they will find that the messaging system lacks basic email features which Facebook already has (i.e. attachments). We are certain that at some point Google will find a way to integrate it’s Google apps for businesses and Gmail for the rest of the users with outstanding mail capabilities built into the platform.

5) Users have always complained about the inability to separate their professional and personal identities on Facebook. Google+ enables users to share different information with different circles. So you can share a funny video with your friends, a professional article with your work colleagues and a photo of your newborn with your family. This is the reason that makes Google+ Circles a more user-friendly tool for the workplace as well, in comparison with Facebook.

6) Google could very easily enhance its Android offering with specific perks and features only to be provided on Android devices.

7) There are currently no commercial brands that I came across on Google+. No form of advertising either, though we are certain that it’s coming.

8) On Google+’s mobile version, there is the ability to check out Nearby streams. The fact that users can receive an organized stream based on geo-location is a killer feature.

9) Hangouts (pictured right) is also a stellar feature. Google+ makes it easy for users to watch Youtube videos together with their friends and we can think of a million and one ways that Google will develop this feature even further.

10) With so many top entrepreneurs snooping around Google+, it’s hard to overlook its potential.

Here’s just a short list:

Larry Page, +Sergey Brin – Google
Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook
Tom Anderson – MySpace
Pavel Durov – VKontakte
Evan Williams – Twitter
Reid Hoffman – LinkedIn
Paul Buchheit – Friendfeed
Chad Hurley – YouTube
Michael Dell – Dell
Mark Pincus – Zynga
Caterina Fake – Flickr
Adam D’Angelo – Quora
Anne Wojcicki – 23andMe
Drew Houston – DropBox

Kudos Google. You impressed us plus one.

Quick tip: If you’re on Google+, you probably noticed your ugly URL with lots of digits. This is Google’s way of avoiding letting spammers get a hold of your email details. But alas! You can already get your vanity URL using the gplus.to tool. Check out how to use the tool here.

Many people are tired of Facebook and happy to embrace a new platform, although many believe that Google+ will not succeed because people don’t want to work hard and start adding their friends, relatives, colleagues to Circles. If you haven’t yet, check out our post on why Google+ is worth your time.

It will be interesting to see how Facebook responds to all the buzz around Google+ (no pun intended). We hope that Facebook is up to the challenge and will give Google a strong fight:

What’s Next in Social Media

Ayelet Noff — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:33:18 +0000

At the beginning of the month I was asked to speak at a panel that discussed Social media, Social Networks and “What’s Coming Up Next”. In research for this discussion, I came up with a few insights on what I foresee coming up next in the world of social media.

Here are my top 10 insights:

1) The physical and digital worlds will be more highly connected than ever before – already today we are able to run in the park and track our progress online while sharing it with our friends or track our weight loss, or even our ovulation (well, some of us, that is) with iPhone apps that connect to our Facebook and twitter profiles and enable us to keep track of our progress as well as share the data with our friends. Robert Scoble had a brilliant presentation on this topic at the last TNW Conference in Amsterdam. You can see it here.

2) Facebook, Twitter and other major social networks will become increasingly what Fred Wilson coins “Social Dashboards”. In essence, Facebook and Twitter are social channels on which other companies can grow and develop their own technologies and businesses. Both Facebook and Twitter have created economies far larger than many nations. Take for example, companies like Stocktwits, Tweetdeck and Zynga, (amongst others) that have gained huge profits “piggybacking” on these two platforms.

3) Until now, brands have been very concerned with bringing as many people as possible to their pages. Consumer brands can now finally reap the fruits and build social commerce stores where Facebook users (all 700 Million of them) can purchase products on their favorite social network without needing to go to any destination site. Facebook will become one of the major channels of future online shopping.

4) Companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon are currently collecting information about each any every one of us: Our likes and dislikes, our interests and disdains. Soon in an age of Web 3.0, an age of Semantic Web, we will no longer need to search for information on the Web as information will find us based on all this data which companies are collecting. The right information will be served to the right people at the right time, saving us all a lot of time, effort and energy.

5) Mobile technology will become more dominant and NFC technology will be developed further enabling it to offer us special promotions, coupons and tips based on our geographical location and the interest graph we discussed in insight #3.

6) Human Relationships will no longer be as physically dependent and we will befriend and hang out with people from all over the world and all walks of life, all ethnicities and all beliefs, creating a worldwide melting pot.

7) We will no longer be passive media consumers. Media will interact with us in dynamic ways on all platforms. Just like gamers playing WOW today, we will all become a part of a virtual world unknown to us yet where we will all be avatars in the game of life.

8 ) As the Web is overloaded with more information, the content that we are exposed to will become more and more customized to our needs as companies will large sums of money to companies like Facebook and Google, making sure that the information we are exposed to is highly targeted to our interests. Rather than experiencing information overload, we will actually experience the opposite effect.

9) Companies will understand better how to measure the ROI of social media and realize that social media is not about the number of people brands have in their communities but rather the amount of engagement that they see on their page and the overall online sentiment they faced this month as opposed to the last. See Gary Vaynerchuk’s response to how companies should measure the ROI of social media in the video link above.

10) Services will become increasingly crowdsourced. Whether it be the way that we get from point A to point B (Waze), the way that we find answers to our questions (Quora), the manner in which we test our Websites (uTest), the way that we get things done (Fiverr) or the way that we share information (Wikipedia).
All of these insights are of course complete speculations based on my years of experience in the world of social media and following of trends occurring all over the digital space. Do you agree with these speculations? Is anything missing? What do you think is coming up next in social media?

Do I Need A Website Or Can I Just Be Social?

Ayelet Noff — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:50:03 +0000

In today’s social networks, particularly Facebook dominated world, many companies are asking themselves: Do I need a destination site or can I move all my online activities to the social networks I am on?

Here’s a great blog post I found from a year ago which predicted the decline of the Destination Web vs. the Social Web.

The Reasons Why You DON’T Need A Website:

1) Why work so hard to bring traffic to your website when Facebook alone has 550 million users? Do you know how long it would take you to get 550 million people to come to your site utilizing SEO efforts and buying ads? Today, companies can engage with potential customers and current customers on their Facebook page far better than on a static site, with many more social features of engagement than anyone could have ever dreamt of.

2) On Facebook you can integrate all of your other social activities right on your page by creating specific tabs for your twitter profile, YouTube channel, FAQ’s (Get Satisfaction) and specific landing tabs to expose your promotions, such as this one.

3) On Facebook you can even open an online store and sell your products. It’s called F-Commerce. Take for example, Pampers web store and Toy Story Facebook page.

4) Facebook’s Photos application is one of Facebook’s most popular apps and is the most popular photo directory in the world. On Facebook you can feature all of your product photos in nicely organized albums for the world to view.

5) On Facebook you can create company events – whether virtual or offline – and integrate them with the rest of your activities.

6) On YouTube you can aggregate all your videos and create a channel where you can feature special videos and create your own customized channel (though you can and should upload your videos to Facebook as well).

7) On LinkedIn, you can target all of your business contacts and initiate contact with them unlike on a static website

8 ) On Facebook, users can view Facebook Insights (or analytics) for all your pages. Here you will find information regarding your monthly active users, number of new likes, members’ demographics and page views.

Here Are The Reasons Why You DO Need A Website:

1) Image is everything. And in today’s world, a company without a website is a company without a face.

2) Building your own database of – users, clients, names. What will you do if tomorrow Facebook closes your page and you are left with no database of your own? You will be lost. You must have a database of your customers.

3) Search – people today still search Google when looking for things – a hotel in Paris, a new coffee-maker, etc. You want to be high up in those Google search results when they do their searching.

N.B. It will be interesting to see what happens with FEO (Facebook Engine Optimization) when search comes to play a more major role in Facebook’s existence.

4) Blogging – creating a company blog enables you to make a name for yourself in your field. Look at Mint for example and what a remarkable job they did with their blog. Their blog got so popular that it was bringing tons of traffic to their site and increasing their brand awareness.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the cross-promotion of your different properties and maximized utilization of each and every one of them. Each of your social channels is supposed to promote your destination channels and vice versa. Your blog should be promoted on your Facebook page. Your Youtube videos should be promoted on your Twitter profile. Your Twitter should be promoted on your blog and your Facebook should be promoted everywhere. Take, for example, Skittles’ amazing website which basically acts as an access point to all of Skittles’ online social activities and acts as a catalyst of virality. Hopefully not only you will be promoting your different properties but others will as well and this will in turn help your SEO and increase the traffic to your site while also helping your social profiles thrive.

We live in a world where word spreads fast. Take advantage of certain technologies and applications which you don’t need to develop on your own while understanding which basic utilities and functions you do need to program on your end so as to not only properly function but even succeed as a business.

Social Media Engagement Trends of B2B and B2C Companies

Ayelet Noff — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:59:14 +0000

Many companies are reporting to be increasing their social media spending in the upcoming year. What you might be curious to know is what type of companies are primarily behind the cash flow. Instead of getting too deep into the nitty gritty of industry breakdowns, let’s stick to the classic matchup of B2B vs. B2C. There are already quite a few papers which contrast B2B and B2C performance in social media with findings showing that B2B companies use social media tools more than B2C companies. Surprised?

Of course, both B2B and B2C are heavy users of all social media, but if we take a look at the above breakdown of social media tools, we will see that, surprisingly, most social tools seem to attract more B2B “types” than B2C – with the exception of Facebook and MySpace. But why?

The graph below shows that smaller companies are more likely to use social media than larger ones. Generally speaking, small companies, especially freelancers (the largest group using SM) are by and large B2B type operations. To be profitable in a B2C world requires high volume, which in turn requires lots of man power, i.e. large companies.

For a one-man-show type company, social media offers a grand opportunity, finally affording the small time operator the ability for mass market exposure with no more cost involved than the time invested in learning how to utilize the tools effectively. Compare that to the entrenched nature of large corporations with equally large budgets, and it’s no wonder that the scrappy and flexible small businesses have embraced social media far faster, and more wholeheartedly than their larger counterparts (while there are exceptions, the numbers speak for the norm).

Unfortunately, large companies usually need a wakeup call in the form of a disgruntled market base before they start to realize that maybe they should be paying more attention to the socialscape. Why not learn from smaller businesses and utilize social media for things other than mere damage control?

The truth is larger companies are slowly starting to embrace social media and this trend will probably begin to snowball at some point in the near future. How much opportunity is there for B2Cs in social media?

The answer: A lot.

Most of the social profiles are as equally geared toward B2C as they are to B2B, if not more so:

Facebook- I already mentioned that Facebook is more heavily geared toward B2C.

YouTube- B2C companies should definitely be jumping on the YouTube train, especially after the success that OldSpice and Lionsgate Films have achieved through their efforts to connect to the public in this way.

Twitter- This should be a no brainer. Twitter is an excellent way for companies to disseminate information and develop a relationship with their market base. However, big companies should be sure to learn the etiquette of social media to avoid being labeled as spammers.

LinkedIn- LinkedIn is clearly geared toward B2B, but clever companies might be able to capitalize on this fact. There are many industries which are B2C but have a B2B type feel, like trading stocks or Forex, both of which are heavily represented in LinkedIn groups. Clothing retailers could for example instigate discussions about “dressing for success” on this network. LinkedIn groups love to throw in their two cents on lighter business culture issues as well, taking a break for a change from the otherwise “drier” side of mainstream business topics. This is far from a ready-to-go campaign strategy, but the point is clear – even LinkedIn has much to offer B2C.

These days both B2C and B2B companies can enjoy different channels of direct dialogue with their customers and potential customers like never before. Whether you’re a B2B company or a B2C company, you need to decide which social networks are best for your brand and nurture these communities like you would any customer base. The sky is the limit as far as what you can do on these networks. It’s your turn to shine and grow your business utilizing the most cutting edge social media tools available.

The New Facebook Groups: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Ayelet Noff — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 15:55:59 +0000

I love the new Facebook Groups as they allow you to engage in an open forum with others who share your interests. They do remind me a lot of FriendFeed – as Martin Bryant points out FriendFeed has finally gone mainstream:

“Like FriendFeed, Facebook Groups have the ability to share and discuss text, images, photos, videos and links in realtime. The ability to import feeds is missing, as are other “advanced” features of FriendFeed like cross-posting, exporting RSS feeds, posting via emails and the like, but by stripping those out what we have here is essentially FriendFeed’s vision gone mainstream.”

Now all of you that know me, know what a strong advocate of Facebook I am. However, I’d like to point out two major things I don’t like about the new Facebook Groups:

1) Spammy - Each time someone writes something in a group I belong to, I get an email notification. In order to edit notifications, I need to go into each specific group and change my settings. I think it would have been a better product if I could just remove the group notifications via email from my general account settings in one click.

2) Automatic Membership - When someone adds you to a group, you automatically become a member without any need for your consent. This will eventually lead (and for many of you, has already led) to many spammers abusing this feature just like they do now with tagging you on specific photos just to get your attention or promote on your page. Apropo photos, I am hoping that this abuse will soon be resolved with the new facial recognition technology Zuckerberg talked about during Facebook’s last press conference.

After you were added to a group, the only way to leave it is by actually going to the group’s page and hitting “Leave Group”. Why is that? Shouldn’t I need to confirm my desire to become a member? With almost 5000 friends, I am fearful of what my future Facebook user experience will become. This leads me to wonder that perhaps Facebook is doing this only for a limited time to increase number of page views, traffic, and the overall viral effect of Groups.

I posed this question on the Tech Leaders and Influencers group on Facebook and Justin Shaffer, head of the Facebook Groups project replied:

“Ayelet: today, with a list of friends email addresses, you can create both a Yahoo group and a google group, and they will be immediately opted-in for email. Or, you can just send them email. If you’d like to join a mailing list, you’d submit your email address – similar to requesting to join a Facebook Group.”

But Yahoo to me is not the equivalent of Facebook and I don’t think Facebook ever intended to be the new Yahoo Groups. I live on Facebook and spend a very big chunk of my day on Facebook. I don’t live on Yahoo. Yahoo is not my social network. I don’t spend hours a day on Yahoo nor do I have thousands of friends there. Most of my Yahoo emails actually go to an inbox I almost never go into. I don’t think that Facebook wants this to happen as well, right?

Don’t get me wrong, I am very much in favor of Facebook Groups. I just think the product can be improved. I think that Facebook Groups are a game changer and will change the way people utilize Facebook for good and bad. I am sure it will also increase our usage of Facebook as a place of dialogue and communication as well as increase Facebook’s data about each and every one of us. On the downsides, I do think that Groups will soon emerge as a vehicle for spammers to get your attention and this is not a good thing for Facebook. This will especially damage the Facebook user experience for those of us who are deeply rooted in the platform. I hope that Facebook listens to people’s feedback and responds accordingly. I have all the faith that it will.

UberVU – Your Social Conversations Monitor

Ayelet Noff — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:34:32 +0000

In my other life as the founder of a social media agency, it’s important to always be up to date on what people are saying on the Web regarding the brands we represent.

I was introduced to UberVU at SeedCamp Paris last year, by its founder Vladimir Oane. UberVU collects all the conversations happening around your brand from blogging platforms, microblogging, social news sites, forums and social networks, and makes music by stringing it all together in a highly intuitive interface. Some of the sites that UberVU covers:

UberVU includes simple graphic indicators in their insights to give you an overall view of the kind of buzz or “the sentiment” your brand is generating in the social sphere. Basically you now have the tools to determine at a glance whether people love you; find you about as pleasant as a bad rash; or somewhere in-between. The question remains whether UberVU can pick up on the subtleties of syntax – meaning, do they understand sarcasm, metaphors, short hand and the like. Especially in the communist world of 140 characters for all twitterers regardless of class or station, the ability, or lack thereof, to pick up on such things can make a big difference in the size of the discrepancy between assumed public brand sentiment and reality. This is why UberVU wants to get smarter and is now asking users to help train its sentiment meter. If you ever find a mention in your stream which was incorrectly assessed by their sentiment measurement feature, you can now “teach” it otherwise.

UberVU’s services are divided into a few categories:

Data Collection

The way UberVU works is very easy. You just pick your search term and voila, you will receive all this information either by going to the site or signing up for email alerts. You can decide how often you’ll receive alerts regarding new mentions about your search term/s.

And now look out James Bond, I believe we have ourselves a corporate espionage feature. UberVU allows you to keep track of the sentiment around your competitors and see exactly how it compares to your own; where are they stronger; where are their weak points – Perhaps the 3.0 version will feature an ejector seat where you can launch the competition out of their desk chair and into the roof of their startup garage, if you get the urge.

Analytics

You will receive all the reports and charts that you ever dreamed of. The uberVU charts are interactive – you can drill down to specific days or zoom out as much as you want. You can filter information by platform (i.e. twitter, Facebook), language, location and even sentiment.

Interaction

You can reply to people’s comments right from UberVU. UberVU also offers translations for mentions because not all mentions will be in your native language. All mentions can be translated into your language of choice, or even filtered to arrive directly in your own language, allowing you to respond to tweets, posts and comments immediately without having to cut and paste to a third party translator. The significance? You can now have conversations with foreigners. Not correspondence, conversations.

Exporting Data

UberVU also includes seamless report making features for charts, PDF’s and the like. Reports like this can really come in handy when you want to show others in your company some of these beautiful analytics.

UberVu recently unveiled three new features; Geolocation, Share Of Voice (SOV) and the Daily Sentiment Breakdown:

Geolocation allows you to see exactly where in the world people are talking about your brand and provides you with a very cool visual heat map:

SOV shows you specifically on which platforms your brand is being talked about the most (i.e Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, etc).

Daily Sentiment Breakdown is really an add-on of UberVU’s core sentiment feature, only now the results can be broken down across a 24 hour period. What this allows for is the tracking of specific daily initiatives so that users can make incremental adjustments to the tone and direction of campaign strategy – slowly turning that frown upside-down.

In a world that’s trying to assess social media’s ROI, there is no specific platform yet which provides a complete, comprehensive measurement tool. However, I have to say that UberVU is one of the best tools out there right now. For anyone managing a social media campaign, both third party and in-house, there are a couple of social media conversation monitoring services – the most expensive of them being Radian6 and the cheapest of them being Google Alerts, which is free. There’s also an Israeli solution called Tracx. However, for the relatively small price UberVU costs, it is able to provide as comprehensive and insightful a solution as you’ll find out there at the moment. Stay tuned for more cool features coming from them soon.

The Value of a Social Media Fan….Priceless

Ayelet Noff — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:09:27 +0000

As social media continues to win respect and legitimacy in the hearts and minds of executives across the world and more companies than ever are looking to open up a Facebook page to take their brand “social” -a question that is repeatedly asked by brands is: What is the value of a fan? (or a “liker” in today’s terms).

This question is often asked by two very opposing camps. For those against social media, there is an inherent derogatory tone and a cynical smirk they like to use when they ask this question, however when discussing old media outlets, they never raise this question.

Allow me to explain: When a prospective client wants an indication of the value of a commercial time slot on a given network, the network will generally provide him with viewership stats, meaning, on average, how many viewers of a prized demographic can the client expect to reach during their 30 seconds of air time. These statistics are gathered and measured against market demand, and translated into a monetary figure. Major Television events, like the U.S. Super Bowl, can reap more than 1 million dollars for a few seconds of airtime.

When you take that criteria and transfer it to Facebook, it’s quickly recognized that demographics and numbers are already a feature which the client gets automatically as soon as he begins his social media path . The demographics are super targeted as members have to opt-in to become “likers” and the numbers are plainly visible for all to see. Yet for some reason, because these “viewers” (to borrow a term from television) are not viewing the commercial (post) during an actual television program, their value is presumed by social media naysayers to be less significant. If anything, the interactive nature of Facebook fans should make them more valuable, not less so. For old advertising to assume that stats and demographics are not enough information to warrant a value estimate for social media, is a clear double standard and downright hypocrisy.

“That’s right!” champions of social media will chime in, “Facebook fans far outweigh the value of any television viewer”, and thus you see such value estimates floating around the blogosphere ranging from $3.60 to $136 for the average Facebook “fan”.

The first value is based on a calculation put forth by Vitrue which takes the number of fans and multiplies them by a presumed average of 2 Facebook posts per day. You then take the resulting number of impressions and divide it by an estimated CPM model, meaning Cost per Measure – or 1000 impressions. Vitrue performed their calculation based on a fan page of 1 Million members with a very conservative $5 CPM value to come up with $3.60/ fan. I decided to see how Blonde 2.0′s (my personal company) fans’ value would measure up. Taking our own fan base of 4,270 members X (2X30) = 256,200 impressions per month /1000 X $11 (the average CPM value according to ClickZ) = $23.24 X 12 months = $279 /4,270 = $0.065 representing Blonde 2.0’s average fan value per year based on this formula.

I can tell you, being intimately familiar with Blonde’s fan value, that this figure is not anywhere near the vicinity of being accurate. Our fans are our greatest ambassadors and much of our business is generated though their word of mouth. Now how do you measure WOM? Vitrue’s model falls short in accurately predicting fan value for many companies and this makes sense given that CPM models are generally used to price traditional media ads which represent only a monologue selling a specific product and are not customized to measuring the overall value of social media. Facebook “impressions” are a completely different kind of media where more often than not, the post should be as divorced as possible from trying to make a sale and are more about creating dialogue, brand awareness and positive social conversation which indirectly leads to higher sales.

Then there is the second value model based on a report compiled by Syncapse. They are the ones who came up with the $136.36 figure stated earlier. To get this figure, Syncapse canvassed 4,000 fans from 20 major brand pages on Facebook to find out why they were fans in the first place and how they would describe their purchasing behavior. They used the accumulated data to estimate the fore stated value. The problem with this study is that individuals are notorious for inaccurate self depictions. Compound that little snag with the fact that much of advertising and branding is subliminal in nature, leaving the brunt of its effects to go unnoticed by the viewer, and what you have in the end is a very tenuous figure at best.

So, if these figures do not represent the true value of a fan, what does? The problem with answering this question is that it assumes there is some sort of generic value that every “fan” has. The truth is, there are different types and qualities of fans. There are diehard fans who are dedicated to the brand and would do all they can to promote it and there are passive fans who basically just like to be updated on what your brand is up to – and everything else in between, making a generic figure next to impossible to conjure up at this point. Nontheless, it should be noted that all Facebook “likers” of your brand are more valuable than TV viewers or any other old media audience because they themselves opted to be your fans and part of your community whereas in other media channels they were “forced” to view your brand’s messaging because they fit the criteria of your target audience.

Another important point to emphasize is that the kind and quality of likers that your page attracts is, in large part, within your sphere of influence and control. Through expert social profile management, careful cultivation of budding fans, well timed campaigns and well placed media – likers can be converted from passive viewers to your most active cheerleaders in a few short months. The operative word here is “expert”. Many companies are hearing all this buzz about social media, and fall under the impression that the mere act of opening up a Facebook page will bring in adoring fans like Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams. The truth is, it is far more complicated than that, and takes acquired finesse that only develops with time, experience and expertise.

The value of a Facebook fan is more than just a number. It is equal to the same value you would place on someone who has agreed to become a part of your brand’s daily on-going activity for the long term and even promote it to his friends and family on occasion. The value of a Facebook fan is the same value you would place on someone who actually cared enough to show you he likes you or your actions. The value of a Facebook fan cannot be measured using the same measurement system as old traditional media. It calls for a new form of measurement which takes into account a whole new set parameters including the “liker’s” level of engagement with the brand, duration of being a “liker” and more. The value of a fan in my mind, well, is priceless.

The Value of a Social Media Fan….Priceless

Ayelet Noff — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:09:26 +0000

All About Freedom, Decency and Responsibility In A Social Media Age

Ayelet Noff — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:10:58 +0000

Social media channels such as social networks and blogs present powerful tools to spread information to the masses . However recent events involving an Ex-Israeli soldier who posted pictures of herself while on military duty, have led me to think about how democratic countries should handle this sharing of information now that they are faced with real-life threatening situations which may jeopardize their national security.

I have heard numerous stories of companies that checked up on potential job candidates and dismissed them based on information the companies found about the candidates on the Web. This age of openness where anything and everything can be shared has created a whole new more careful and cautious breed of social media users. Or has it?

A quick search on Google of people who have been fired for social media revealed this shocking and reasonably comprehensive list of people fired due to blogging, Facebooking or Tweeting.

The length of the list is shocking yes, but not scary. What is scary is what’s been happening lately in terms of social media affecting national security. The case of an ex-Israeli soldier is nothing compared to what happened on April 5th, 2010. WikiLeaks – the website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational, or religious documents – leaked footage of a US Apache helicopter attacking civilians in Iraq in 2007. WikiLeaks again sparked controversy on July 25th, 2010, by releasing thousands of documents called the Afghan war diaries, which went into classified details about the state of the US war in Afghanistan.

The debate on how far freedom of expression should extend is an old one. Yet social media appears to be adding a whole new set of factors to be considered in this discussion. The ability to instantly disseminate information in a viral fashion has created a very real dilemma for institutions and countries that require a degree of discretion to survive. The problem stems from the fact that it is not possible to police and control the entire internet nation. Furthermore, in a nation without borders, who would be in charge of such policing?

As it is with all new and powerful tools, it will take time for the rules and regulations of social media to work themselves out. However it is obvious that democratic countries now face the issue of whether or not they will enact some sort of measures which will keep social media users from jeopardizing national security.

The fact that social media’s mandate will have to be defined by governing bodies in some manner over time is a certainty. Social media is one of the most powerful tools out there today, with great corporations, and even political trends, bowing to the power of its collective force – but in the great words of Spiderman’s uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility. ” Most of these instances of social media run-a-muck can be avoided with users utilizing some sort of common sense. For example, if you’re serving in the military, it might not be a good idea to check-in on Foursquare. The same unwritten laws of human decency, courtesy and responsibility, still apply even after the birth of social media. In an age where “sharing is caring” – how much sharing is just too much sharing and how should institutions/countries control this endless sharing of information without becoming dictatorships?

LowKick – A Case-Study In A Startup’s Fight For Differentiation Using Social Media

Ayelet Noff — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:16:35 +0000

For those of you who haven’t yet heard of MMA, it probably sounds like some form of fancy business degree from the Wharton school of business – But for those of you who count themselves among the fighting aficionados of the 21st century, you must know that MMA stands for “Mixed Martial Arts”; the global phenomenon that combines such sports as Boxing, Kickboxing, Wrestling and Jujitsu, into one multidimensional adrenaline fest.

Even if you’re not a fan of violent tests of human will and ability, one can still learn a lot form MMA as far as what it can teach us about businesses fighting for recognition in a hot new industry where no one yet has any particular edge. In other words, how a company can effectively peacock to make itself an obvious standout from the rest of the pack? As a case-study, I would like to run through a quick inventory of LowKick, one of many MMA companies, but unique in its decision to take the road less traveled by, in a clear gamble to achieve its desired differentiation.

The potential market value for MMA is huge, and for good reason. MMA is gaining traction worldwide as the latest global sensation, and is already considered to be the fastest growing sport in America- hands down. It edged out NASCAR for the coveted slot in 2009, and added it to a growing list of yearly accolades. These include a record breaking $222,766,000 of Pay-Per-View earnings in 2006, and an impressive trouncing of boxing in betting revenues for the first time in 2007. It’s no wonder so many companies are looking for a piece of the action. A quick search on Google for MMA websites will turn up a veritable directory of MMA portals, with such industry recognizable names as SherDog, MMAFighting to name but a few. So what is LowKick’s strategy to earn a spot all its own amongst such tough competition?

LowKick, is a relatively new MMA community portal founded in 2007 by Itai Librider and Itai Arbel. From the get-go, the Itais realized that any attempt at being recognized as the best MMA portal at doing the same things as everyone else, would basically amount to an exercise in futility. Even if they did succeed, it would be like being the best Vuvuzela blower at the world cup, no one is really going to notice.Instead, the boys at LowKick decided to go in a completely different direction. As opposed to trying to be recognized as the authorities on MMA commentary, they passed the torch on over to the fans, granting them the soapbox rights to stand and be heard. Their efforts go way beyond the traditional forum model, where diehards engage in heated debate in the back annals of sports history which no one will ever see, hear, read or care about.

A mind boggling 60% of LowKick’s content is fan generated. With such a model, there is always the question of how to control site quality? – LowKick solved this issue by tapping into the natural competitiveness of the MMA fan. Essentially, the members themselves vote on what is considered the most quality driven content through their mouse, with the most popular content being featured on LowKick’s home page. So although the content is very similar to that of other MMA portals, with fans being able to upload anything from opinion statuses, to entire articles, pictures and videos – The degree of respect given to fan generated content and having it serve as the driving force behind the sight, is certainly unique.

LowKick’s understanding that their golden goose lies in their fan base, has led their site to resemble a sort of MMA version of Facebook in many respects. Even their competitions are reminiscent of the social platform giant, only with a little more testosterone built in. You won’t see an MMA fan playing “Name that tune”, even if it will win him a shiny new iPad. What you might see though are MMA fans crashing your server to play “Name the tune of Brock Lesnar’s walk out theme”.

Perhaps the most telling feature in LowKick’s arsenal that demonstrates this fan focused mentality is their “Picks” section. If there is one thing MMA fans like, its predictions. They like making them, they like hearing them, and more than anything else, they love the 20/20 hindsight ability to debunk them. Fight fans agree that MMA is the most exciting new development to hit the combat sports since Athens beat Sparta in 371 BCE, but agreement basically stops there. From which fighter is the pound for pound greatest athlete to hit the octagon, to which gym produces the best fighters – ask any two MMA fans a question and you’re bound to get three different opinions. That’s why LowKick’s fan picks are so exciting for the average MMA fan. Every fan is given the fighting chance to have their opinion reach the top of the rankings. Whenever a member makes a prediction on which fighter will win in an upcoming bout, his pic’s are tracked and tallied so that he can earn prediction points over time. Aside from winning cool prizes, a member with an accurate track record can build a homegrown reputation as a professional pundit, commentator and critic – and people will start to listen.

What you’re basically looking at then, when you summarize LowKick’s business model, is the functioning reality of an MMA based company adopting social media. There are already countless blogs, vlogs, fan made websites and fan based Facebook pages dedicated to MMA. There are also a plethora of professional MMA communities. LowKick though, is perhaps the first example of an MMA portal leaving the controlling stake of their portal’s direction in the hands of the fans.

This bold experiment of LowKick’s; to pin their hopes of success on the adoption of a social media based strategy in a fiercely competitive industry, is definitely a gutsy one. They have certainly managed to differentiate themselves, although the jury is still out on whether or not this uncharted approach will yield results. However, there are some telling indicators that point to their being on to the right track. LowKick already boasts a healthy 1.8 million monthly views and a 45,000 member fan base – But the most powerful indicator might be the $250,000 dollar round of angel investment LowKick has recently procured. If there’s one hint that companies look for to let them know they’re moving in the right direction, it’s whether or not investors are willing to put up the capital. As fight promoters have always told agents looking to get their fighters on a good card, it’s all about what people are willing to pay good money to see – The old saying rings just as true when it comes to gauging a startup’s chances – “Money talks”.