Social Hallucinations

What is Facebook Places?

Facebook Places has been launched in US and will soon reach probably the rest of the world. Some deaths are being discussed (Foursquare) as we try find out what Facebook places will mean for people and marketers.

Facebook for marketing as other geo-location services has a huge potential but how the potential turns out depends on the inventiveness of companies in adding more meaning to checking in. Checking-in is fun, especially in the first phase. It is like a game. The thrill of becoming a mayor, getting the badge. Then comes competitiveness. Ousting your friends from places and taking over their mayorship. Trying the first specials...and it appears there are no more specials near you. You just check-in less and less often. You ask yourself - why I should check-in. You lack the purpose. I believe the success of Facebook places for business will depend on the sense of purpose it manage to deliver to people.

As it goes for people, Facebook places will make geo-location accessible to broader audience. It will be another tool for sharing with friends where we are and what we are doing. As my colleague Lara wrote in her post on privacy: "Places provides us with another way of keeping tabs on our friends, of letting people know what we’re up to, of sharing what is basically unnecessary information with anyone and everyone we choose. It’s also another foray in to our private world, and will no doubt meet harsh critique from users who suddenly realise that what is actually private about their lives is diminishing at a very rapid rate."

Watch how you can check in with Facebook Places

 

The Future is Anchored in the Present

Once we used to believe it will be Google and Amazon who share the power and newspapers will be dead. We had no idea about the role Facebook will play. Why? Because we are anchored in the present. We believe in linear development of media and technology. We believe that some of them will progress and evolve undisturbed, while other become extinct. Well, fortunately the universe and people are full of surprises. It is interesting though to watch this video from 2007 and see how things have already took a completely different route.

Hat tip to Helge Tennø

 

The World is a Global Village

Marshall McLuhan explores how electronic media are changing society moving from individuals of print culture to tribes of electronic media culture.

The old media aren't replaced by the new ones, the just change the role they play in people's lives and society along with cultural changes the new media trigger. Evolution.

It is incredible to see that 50 years old interview and experience how future proof are some McLuhan's thesis.

via Wabi-Sabi Lab

Making is Connecting

The new promise of creativity and innovation by connecting digital tools, activism, happiness and social capital by David Gauntlett

Digital tools aren't really worth much unless they are enable people to do stuff, innovate, initiate the change. Brilliant.

Are People Turning into Distrusted Media?

Definition of media got extended significantly over many years, starting from newspapers to social media that are media disseminated through social interaction or even people. Are people media? Are we the mere instruments conveying information that are currently losing trust of other people. Can our communicative abilities be reduced to objects that transmits information?

I don't agree with Armano's theory of decreasing trust in people as the result of overall decrease of trust in media, the correlation doesn't imply the causation. Following Armano's deduction, we could easily come to the conclusion that we are on the way to slow social disaster of mistrust and alienation along the growth of social media. This is oversimplifying of human relations built on trust. Trust is essential to human relations and is fundamental for social interaction and their development. The question lies in how far circles of trust stretch. 

"Trust surveys"  suffer from the lack of understanding of what people define as friends/peers. Those surveys deliver mere numbers without any understandings. Facts.

As I wrote two days ago, the main culprit here are "friends" and our language. We should maybe look at the decreasing trust in friends / peers as the result of the devaluation of friendship caused by media as Facebook. We have experienced rapid growth of our circle of friends with people who were in fact strangers to us. 

I say it once more: we still trust "people like us" but we are simply not sure whether Johns we follow on Twitter are really like us...

Homo Skepticus?

The couple of last years we've been sticking to mantra "people trust people like themselves" (Edelman Trust Barometer) to convince business establishment to jump into social media wagon, to understand better how people act and activate the power of WoM.

We've always trusted the circle of friends, so called significant others and their recommendatiosn mattered a lot us as the key influential factors. We've done this and will keep on doing this as anything else would break the social ties and lead us to alienation.

Edelman comes with the new 2010 results of the Trust barometer and something interesting happens - friends/peers as those whom we trust drop from 45% in 2008 to 25% in 2010.

 
It is quite natural the question about our skepticism and our ability to trust arise.

I don't think we trust less our friends and peers. I don't think we've become more skeptical. I just think we are in the phase where we rethink the word friend / peer. The word friend got stretched widely due to social networks. We call friends people we've never met in our lives and people we have no common history with. We do have hundreds of friends on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo...whatever you call it. The social networks devalued word friend. Anyone can be my friend today. It just costs one click and you have a new friend. But it ain't so easy and we are aware of that. We are aware that social networks bring also "virtual friends" we can't really trust because we simply don't know them, don't know their agenda and there is no really point of reference between our and their lives. Who are really those hundreds of people we follow on Twitter, we connect with on Facebook? We know the faces, we know the key facts we can find out from info tab and status updates. What really connects you with other people are common experiences...

Web revolutionized our lives for sure but there are still some barriers we need to overcome, like integrating online lives with offline lives. Meeting people we know online, exchanging offline experiences will be the way to create trust. Online relationships won't replace face to face time and sharing of real time experiences.

We still trust "people like us" but we are simply not sure whether Johns we follow on Twitter are really like us...

Photo by mek22

via AdAge

Online takes your gifts offline

Fantastic postal service: SendSocial. I love the idea. It makes sending gifts so easy and hassle free. The only disadvantage of the service is that it is only available in the UK At the moment, but they are working on expanding into other territories.

Help me choose

Having choices is what we want and expect, but having choices isn't easy. The more choice we have the more difficult is to make the decision and the more irrational our choices become. It's like the very old Polish fairy tale about donkey who got food: oat in one crib and hay in the other crib.
It smelled and beckoned wondering where to start with? Hay or oat? Oat or hay? A difficult choice that made the donkey stay up all night and finally die of hunger. (A. Fredero).

Choice can paralyze us. The advantage companies can gain lies in delivering services that help people to handle the choices they are facing. the services that will deliver emotional experiences, allow overview and give the feeling of having control, making the decision process less stressful.

Here is a good example: Razorfone: Interactive Retail Experience.

Razorfone Interactive Retail Experience from Razorfish - Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.

Danish Mother Seeking - Update

Video was removed was YouTube .... well it just proves all my points. However video can be seen here.

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Danish Mother Seeking is busted! Karen26, Danish mother seeking... was hired by Visit Denmark to promote Denmark abroad. This is rather disappointing that such a good idea that would work really good to promote safe sex, was used to promote Denmark. That's also pretty shocking that such an angle was chosen to tell the story of Denmark. 

After finding out who was behind the campaign, I must say I asked myself about the ethics - not about the ethics of use of social media, but about the ethics of the content, about the way the governmental company chooses to present Denmark for the world. Respect is missing.

Let's look at aftermath first: over 1 million views, over 5.000 comments and lot of commotion on blogs and in mainstream media...primarily in Denmark. It is pretty understandable Danes are shocked over the way their compatriots have chosen to promote their country. It is like a bad reality show. The comments from Visit Denmark and agency behind - Grey Copenhagen heats the situation even more up. I heard Peter Helstrup, strategic director at Grey Copenhagen say:

"I think, this is the most effective campaign, that was ever created for a danish company" 

Well, this is impressive viral campaign that used controversy, fake & real approach and delivered over million views in just 3 days. As I wrote yesterday views, buzz has nothing to do with effectiveness, it has nothing to do with social media. This is just a tactical and short-term solution, deeply rooted in traditional media thinking focusing on creating controversy in order to boost up views numbers on YouTube (views are still shiny objects for so many). They could as well just show bare breasts. (Btw I would like to hear more about the goals that were set up for the campaign apart from views and appearance on TV2)

What about relevancy of the campaign? I keep on asking myself, how this campaign is relevant for Denmark? Isn't Visit Denmark's major goal to attract tourists to Denmark? It seems like the major efforts were put into promoting this video in Denmark. Apparently, Denmark is where the most response came from. I googled this morning to find any comment, any blog post about the campaign outside the boarders of scandalized Denmark. I found one at Mashable titled: Danish Woman’s One Night Stand Video Is a Government Hoax. Not to mention the comments that appeared on YouTube.:

"its amazing to see all the foreigners who have lived in denmark for a long time (decade or more) come out and slam Denmark. I lived there for a decade too, and was disgusted by the petty racism and xenophobia. Not to mention shallow women who will fuck you but not even hold a civil conversation."

"Lets get to Denmark, and get laid! that its all folks! Nobody is interesting in little right wings shiit Denmark!"

No one can deny it - the campaign has backfired and it seems there is no plan to handle the crisis situation. I've heard around that Visit Denmark is deleting comments from people that criticize the campaign.Is it true?!

This is where public engagement begins and we can talk about social media marketing and Visit Denmark seems to be unprepared to handle it. This is when the real things happen - not while the views counter is going up and people leave comments hoping she will find the father of the child, but when the discussion gets heated and opinions about content appear all over the Internet.

Visit Denmark got blinded by the shiny promise of millions of views and lot of buzz. They got those views along with disgusted, disappointed, shocked people and apparently no plan how to handle the bad response video generated.

Companies and agencies chase the shiny objects like buzz and views, missing the big picture and opportunities that are available for creating the public engagement and relationships. Using social media tools will not make you social. We keep on mistaking traditional media campaigns using social media with social media marketing. Social media marketing is about ideas that are rooted in understanding of human behavior and emotions and that get people together, make their lives more exciting or easier. Social media marketing is about people (not views)

Is the next episode coming: Danish Tourist Agency Seeking the lost trust...

Busted Buzz - The Story of Karen26

A few days ago video of young and very cute Danish mother seeking for the father of her baby appeared on YouTube.

Funny story that made Danish socialville into the detective quest on proving the video is a scam. They succeeded in a very short time. Found the actor who played mothers role and now speculates on what company is behind. It is impressive how good people are today at using internet to solve advertising mysteries in a real CSI style. Just read it here, here, here, here and here. It takes us definitely towards more and more transparency and helps us to avoid being cheated by companies making fake ads. It requires pretty good skills to hide the evidence from the ominous eye of internet panopticon nowadays.

What's interesting about this story is to see how hype gets build along the social media experts and mainstream media pick-up the story and boost the hype even more and drive traffic to YouTube video and "campaign website".

The video raised even the question about ethics! You can read about it on Mindjumpers and Virkeligheden blogs. I find the ethical aspect rather misplaced in a situation when we talk about campaign which focus is on creating buzz, not any public engagement. YouTube here is just a channel that is used to present the content balancing in the grey zone, on the verge of mystery and reality. This is not social campaign, this is broadcasting that gets people to view the video and talk about it and wonder whether it is real or fake. The fact that buzz marketing is using social media tools like YouTube or Facebook doesn't make it social marketing. As Anders on Virkelighedens blog wrote - the video fulfills the requirements for viral campaign. However, it is not a social campaign, as it doesn't involve any interaction with people, as I mentioned before it doesn't create any public engagement. This is very tactical viral solution aiming at creating fast response.              

Of course, it still needs to be ethical, meaning being respectful, which I can't see violated in this case. There is also the question of deceiving people, as there are many people who express the compassion with Karen26. Yes, people get deceived in this video, but we have seen this before - blurry boarders between reality and fiction are broadly used mechanics in viral videos - Quicksilver- being the most popular example. There were plenty of people all over the world who were convinced it really happened. Videos gain viral effect from creating speculations - fake or real and the viewers tend to accept this as this is the part of story telling. The rule of tactical buzz marketing is: the more controversial you are the more people respond (see examples from Cult and Fleggard) and Karen26 seems to get it.

Anyhow, video with Karen26 is entertaining and it would be great buzz for "De unge mødre" TV show (Young Mothers), but I doubt it's them. My guess goes for condom producers.

The Media are Merging

People love to divide. According to the old motto: divide and rule, we seem to believe the more distinctions will be made the more power and control we get. But dividing world creates limitations.

There is the huge power in integrating. You extend the abilities, you add more power and chances for creating something new and unexpected are higher than when we stick to one way thinking where no air or light from outside has access.

I think this is refreshing example of what happens when you mix two, apparently so different media - print, that is the incarnation of analogue technology and digital. It is an interesting idea showing that boundaries between media today are blurry. Placing screen into paper and showing movies? Sounds a bit crazy, but it is possible. See the video at Ad Age about CBS and Pepsi to run video ads in print edition of entertainment weekly.

Instead of taking lives of traditional media, we should look at how we can improve or enhance the experience they give by engaging digital opportunities. Time will show whether they will last or not. The only we can learn about it is by trying and mixing.

Privacy Continues

Sometime ago I wrote a post about public privacy - tendency to show off all the aspects of personal life to the public. No filters are applied, we demonstrate the exhibitionistic attutide and invite everyone to peep and follow 24/7. Today I stumbled on this article in New York Times that demonstrated to contrtendency - prohibiting sharing the bits and moments of private life -  Party On, but no Tweets. It seems like there is the group of peope who aren't keen on being tagged on Facebook and twittered about, therefore invitations to parties includes note that it is not allowed to share any information online. Being exposed can be annoying, especially when you didn't ask for being exposed.

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• New York Times: The Paradox of Privacy (boxofmeat.net)

How People Share Content On The Web

Facebook leads sharing but whats interesting is how many people use Twitter to share - it is the same percentage as per mail, which is interesting taking into the consideration the fact how many people use mail vs. people using Twitter. After all, Twitter is tailored for sharing as it makes it easy, accessible and fast - just exactly as sharing opportunities should be.

found on CHART OF THE DAY

Social(istic) Media or The Rise of the New Capitalism?

From now and then, there are voices talking about the digital media and the possibilities they bring - the driving force behind the new socialism era. But the question is whether the possibilities created by the digital media make socialism possible, or whether what we see is the rise of the new capitalism.

Image via Wikipedia

Socialism (latin societas - community) is the ambiguous term, referring to attempts to reduce social inequality and the spread of social services, treatment or management of social control through state institutions, local government, corporation or cooperative). What's common for various types of socialism is partial or total rejection of  the idea of capitalist free market, the restriction of private property and promotion of the idea of social justice. The aim was to build a socialistic society without poverty, where market forces are not the primary mechanism for distribution of wealth and where the functioning of society is based on common ownership, mutual cooperation and altruism. Beautiful idea but never proved to work (or fail - as it is not compatible with human nature). We are herd animals, but every herd needs the leader and clearly defined roles to ensure the proper functioning and survival of the group.

The whole problem with socialism is that the idea of socialism looks good on paper:

You have two cows. The government takes them and puts in the cowshed with other cows. You have to look after all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

Image by publicenergy via Flickr

Then you have the real socialism (which I experienced and would never recommend to anyone as one of the most humiliating systems to an individual and humanity):

You have two cows. The government takes them and puts in the cowshed with other cows that is taken care of by a former poultry farmer. You have to deal with the chickens, which the government took away from the farmers who are in charge of cowsheds. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as law allows, not as much as you need.

Third option is the national socialism - total exploitation, mean capitalism in disguise:

You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to care for them and sells you the milk with the flag state.

Sharing, cooperation and collaboration that are characteristic for the social media aren't quite working in the socialism, because there are always institutions watching and controlling the sharing or collaboration and trying to regulate those with laws. Maybe not a bad idea, but where regulations and power are involved, the inequalities usually emerge.
Of course there are also some positive sides in socialism, because it focuses on the common good but I can't see its chances to thrive in the world where people value their privacy and right to property. We are too independent and focused on our own success and own profits, driven by our needs. The value is YOU. Youniverse & Meritocracy are what drives the digital media evolution.

What we observe today is the rise of the new networked capitalism with intellect as the form of social capital that increases with use and the new digital opportunities are facilitators that drive the intellect growth. The value of the corporations in the new capitalism era - cognitive capitalism - comes from their ability to create new communication tools (Google), connect people (Facebook, Twitter), etc. Personal drivers as taste, creativity plays a huge role in the production process (Nike ID, Aston Martin). The property rights in relation to intellectual property also dramatically change (Napster).

In the industrial capitalism machines sucked workers in, depersonalized and automatized work, today computers / software sucked our knowledge, mashed it up and customized it getting it available and usable / reusable at every click. The question is not longer how much you produce but how much you manage to seed. The more you seed the more growth you create. What justify the existence and enhances the power of our ideas are their ability to spread and inseminate other minds (self-promotion happens to be quite effective insemination technique when used right) - twitter, blogs etc. being the tools helping on the way. It means social media has nothing to do with socialism except first 6 letters, they are the new capitalistic means of production and seeding. The question whether they contribute to the common wealth or satisfy egoistic needs and ambitions, I will leave open for now...

Image by diankarl*www.diankarlina.com* via Flickr

Sources:

Capitalisme cognitif (Le):nouvelle grande transformation, Moulier Boutang Yann

The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online, Wired

Are you the new jumbo shrimp?

Image via Wikipedia

"People heading up social media initiatives with almost zero online footprint is the new jumbo shrimp" (David Armano)

The way we work with social media needs to be professionalized. The more serious and results driven approach is needed. Social media aren't about easy solution that you can put on your marketing & media plan and check it as "done". Facebook pages driven by "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" strategy using the available place and attention to talk about the mere product can't be the standard for communication with people via social media. It is like placing wings on the car in order to create the new type of flying vehicle.

It ain't going to work. There are no quick copy&paste solutions. If you are looking for "cheap and easy way to push your message", social media shouldn't be your choice.

"Social media is like a pair of shorts. Hip. Cool. But not suited for all occasions ;)" (@benkunz)

It may be social media aren't for you cause you are not ready.
If you want to work with social, start with listening and understanding who your people (aka consumers) are, what do they like, need, what drives them (I keep on repeating myself over and over again, but drivers behind human behavior are the key to creating meaningful and effective communication) and what you can do for them to satisfy their needs & fuel their motivations. Then find out what's your goal, what do you want to achieve. What is your success criteria, your ROI and how are you going to measure it. And finally how the social media fit with the rest of your brand strategy (social media aren't stand alone)? Do you communicate towards the common goals via mainstream media and social media?
Don't be too quick to create Facebook pages and Twitter accounts without ever considering how and why are you going to use them.  There is the need to cut the crap about the successful Facebook cases (usually produced by people who call themselves social media experts):

XXX:  "we have great Facebook case!
YYY: "What case? Can you tell me more about it?"
XXX: "Yes, we have 1500 fans! It is great!"
YYY: "Sounds great! What were your objectives?"
XXX: "Er, er...what do you mean, we have 1500 fans!!"

You can't measure the success without knowing what you wanted to achieve. It is like deciding to take a part in the marathon, getting the t-shirt with number, meeting at the start and never start running. Making up your mind to run, doesn't make you a runner. It is about training and commitment.

We need to stop thinking about social media as silos otherwise we produce just spam. Nobody wants to be spammed. We need more long-term social and sustainable ideas that will make a difference for people out there and then also for you and your brand.
I made myself a couple social media mistakes but I never called them "great cases", I learned from them and gained deeper understanding of how to act out there where social norms and people rule.
You doesn't need to get it right from the start. It may take a few tests, some failures but with a right dose of dedication, right insights and truly social approach and ideas, you will make it. Amen.