My.Barack.Obama: The Ins & Outs of the site...

The 3rd Place

I attended the Media 09' conference last Friday and was pleasantly surprised at the high caliber of speakers & the content of their presentations.

One such speaker was Will Price from WidgetBox who introduced to me the concept of 'The 3rd Place' which i found fascinating & simple = fascinatingly simple.

Meet Ray (Oldenburg). Ray is an urban sociologist from Florida.

He wrote a book called 'The Great Good Place' in which he talks about 'The 3rd Place'.

Ray believes that humans are essentially social creatures & that to meet our basic social needs we need to exist in 3 different environments.

1). Home

2). Work

3). The 3rd Place

'The 3rd Place', whilst sounding like a Sci-Fi channel show, actually refers to a an informal but public gathering place.

He argues that bars, coffee shops, general stores, and other "third places" (in contrast to the first and second places of home and work), are central to local democracy and community vitality.

However, modern life and our increasingly busy day-to-day schedules force us to exist predominately within our 1st (home) and 2nd (work) environments whilst decreasing the time spent, or in some cases omitting, the 3rd place from our routines.

Now in case you think i've switched fields from advertising to psychology over night, fear not, there is a link!

The rise of social networks and the velocity of their growth can be entirely linked to the decrease of our exposure to 3rd places in the real world due to our busy lifestyles.

Therefore social networks can also be described as a 'virtual 3rd place'.

Social networks & digital communities are filling a visceral need within our society they are virtual villages, pubs, cafes & general gathering places where we can satisfy one of our instinctive social needs to meet with others in an informal, familar & highly accessible way.

Cue 'Cheers' intro....

Sounds cheesy but it's actually very accurate.

People are now reaggregating in these virtual 3rd places such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Niche online communities etc etc....

So it shows you that the stories may change with new technologies but the human stories and context/content remain the same.

Youth audiences expect more from TV

The makers of hugely successful online dramas KateModern and Lonely Girl 15 have called on production companies to wake up to cross-platform content in order to keep young people watching.

Miles Beckett, co-founder and CEO of Eqal, the content company formed by the team behind the web dramas, urged traditional production firms to integrate online with TV during the commissioning process.

He said: "Younger audiences expect it now; this is how they want their content."
Beckett added, "If you look at the most popular shows around today, they all have an interactive element, even if it's as limited as texting in to vote for who you want to win a singing or dancing show. They're about encouraging the watcher to participate and get involved."

I completely agree, the youth audience are constantly on the go and are experts when it comes to multi tasking & interacting with multiple platforms - so how do we engage them? Fewer and fewer are going to sit and watch TV shows that don't offer engagement, especially when they have so much control over online content.

I am not for one second suggesting that teenagers don't watch TV because they do, BUT, they watch it in a different way than the previous generation.

They want it to be interactive and fun & participatory.

So what does this mean?

It means that traditional production companies & TV channels need to embrace this new behaviour and move forward with it, because they not only risk losing the audience but advertisers as well.

Of course TV still plays a big part in teenagers lives and will continue to do so but to take a UK example: Hollyoaks (teen drama) gets 2m viewers, but 40% of the TV audience also engage with the show online - that's huge!

This is such a rich & exciting area for advertisers to be a a part of but we need the production companies to jump on the bandwagon first.

Social TV

MySpace, Intel and Yahoo are partnering to let users interact with Myspace via their TV sets.

Access to MySpace will be available through a new Widget Channel, co-developed by Intel and Yahoo.
The aim of the Widget Channel is to develop mini-applications that can complement TV viewing with information from the Internet.

MySpace users will be able to communicate with friends, read and reply to messages, receive friend requests, publish status and mood updates, see updates from friends and browse profiles and photos on their TVs while watching shows.

The MySpace Widget is being introduced in conjunction with Toshiba, which is promoting a new line of TVs powered by Intel chips that are designed to connect to the Internet.

TV 2.0, or social TV, is the next step on the road to full convergence, where the oft-quoted vision is for content to be accessed from every screen, whether fixed or mobile.

Social networks have been quick to incorporate video into their communities. Now the TV industry is now keen to see if it can build community around its content - so what does this mean for the future of TV viewing? Can it revive lagging numbers by encouraging TV 'participation'?

The other point to consider is that coupling social network profile data with TV content delivers personalised media access which should prove a boon to advertisers, who can tap into defined niche communities and deliver tailored brand experiences......

It's exciting stuff!

Social ROI

US - The goal of many Super Bowl advertisers in recent years has been not only to make a splash during TV ad time, but to generate online discussions but determining the ad winners and losers from an online buzz perspective isn't always clear cut.

Social media research company Networked Insights argues that advertisers should be able to determine ROI when it comes to their presence in Web conversations.
"Popularity is one thing...but that's a one trick pony," said Networked Insights CEO Dan Neely, who thinks advertisers should be asking, "Can I actually convert that into some form of revenue for my company?"

As advertisers reduce ad budgets and aim for efficiency, such questions will become more important.


The firm looked at online interactions mentioning Super Bowl advertiser brands to determine what it calls Social ROI.
The metric gauges the increase in social interactions online for every $1 million the advertisers spent on Super Bowl ads. In the end, the research firm concluded that Teleflora, Cash4Gold, CareerBuilder.com, and H&R Block topped the list of big game advertisers according to Social ROI department.

Teleflora's rose 488 percent, Cash4Gold's was up 246 percent, CareerBuilder.com's increased 99 percent, and the social media return on Universal's investment for its upcoming "Land of the Lost" film was up 48 percent.

The company measured 3.5 million conversations each day on 17,000 social sites; in addition to large social sites like Facebook or MySpace, they measure niche sites where online conversations occur, such as Fan Forum, RapMusic.com, and The Knot.


The top social ROI gainers, however, barely made a blip on the screen as far as TNS Cymfony's social discussion volume index is concerned.
Teleflora, Cash4Gold, and CareerBuilder.com didn't even make it in its top 10 rankings, measuring the volume of social media discussions mentioning Super Bowl ad brands. During the first 36 hours following the Super Bowl, Cymfony found that Anheuser-Busch, Dreamworks's "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," and Paramount's "Star Trek" and "GI Joe: Rise of Cobra" garnered the highest volume of discussion around their brands online.


The difference in the two firms' findings, said Neely, in part stems from what is measured. Networked Insights measures Web content and social media interaction beyond postings -- looking at links, invites, and other instances of online sharing. "Those are the things that are high value and make social media social," suggested Neely. "We measure the vocal minority and the silent majority," he said, arguing that other systems only look at initial postings, what he'd call the "vocal minority."


Cymfony's Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Jim Nail argued that measuring volume of postings matters. If no one is actually creating posts about an advertiser, then there won't be anyone sharing that information, either, he said. "Any [increase in social interactions] they get, even if it's small is going to result in a huge percentage jump," he said.


Arguments over methodology will persist as long as research firms are around. However, in the case of measuring buzz around the Super Bowl ads, social media consultant Dave Evans contended such reports offer limited value to advertisers.


"When you apply these social measures to an awareness platform, which is the Super Bowl spot, you're going to get measures that vary widely depending on what [methodology] you're using," said Evans. He argues that metrics like those from Networked Insights or Cymfony can be "extremely valuable" when applied to gauge conversations that take place regarding brand attributes, or when consumers are considering product purchases.


However, because many of the post-game conversations tend to be about the ad creative and entertainment value of the advertising, as opposed to the brands themselves, applying metrics for measuring conversations about brands is inappropriate. "Yes the Super Bowl spots generate huge conversations. But they're about the spots; they're not about the brand," said Evans.
One outlier may be in the case of films such as "Transformers" and "Land," both of which showed up on Cymfony's "most talked about advertisers" list, and Networked Insights' list of social ROI gainers. In such cases, conversations were predominately about the brands -- or the movies --themselves.

Woolworths: battered & bruised but not done yet...

I'm British so i was devastated when i found out that a British highstreet icon had succumbed to the economic crisis.

Woolworths was a local town favourite with everyone, it sold crappy bits & bobs, cards, chocolate, CDs but most importantly it sold pic 'n' mix (and i loved pic 'n' mix):

So imagine my delight when today i found out that Woolworths was coming back and even more delighted that it was to return as an online only brand!

Woolworths will officially relaunch online middle of this year after being rescued by the owners of Littlewoods Direct.

The high street chain, which went into administration in November, has been bought by Speke-based Shop Direct Group for an undisclosed sum, with a view to reopening its website within the next six months

The move will see the resurrection of Woolworths’ children’s clothing label Ladybird. But plans aren’t expected to extend to the high street, meaning most of Woolworths’ 30,000 staff are unlikely to get their jobs back and they will not be selling pic 'n' mix online :-(

But this is great example of how online can save brands & give them a new lease of life. Woolworths was founded in 1909....100 years on and they have been reincarnated in the virtual world.

Bebo launches tools to build mobile social networks

Bebo has launched a global mobile initiative to enable operators to use its platform to roll out their own social networks.

Bebo Open Mobile aims to extend the site’s reach by giving operators, handset manufacturers and software developers a set of tools to help them build, distribute and promote a tailored version of the social network.

It launched an online Open Media platform last year and is now looking to replicate this on the mobile platform.

Partners can develop a Bebo mobile site with customised navigation, mobile advertising support and reporting data. They can also use a mobile development API to build applications and widgets to plug into the site.

Sean Kane, global head of mobile for Bebo, said the move was a way to grow the reach of the social network. “The suite of tools is designed to move mobile communication and user relationships forward by delivering a simple and ubiquitous experience to users,” he said.

Bebo’s Open Media platform launched online in November 2007 with a series of partners including Channel 4, MTV and Turner in the UK.

The social network now claims to reach 50m memebers.