Sep
23

Facebook, Redefined

by Feedback

We’re not going to lie. The social network was starting to bore some of us.

Such a case of Facebook fatigue is not a good place to be when your core business is online media. But if we were tired, it was obvious other people were, too. We began rethinking future digital strategies: would Facebook continue to be the place to be? If its usage among the masses slows, what will replace it?

As it turns out, Facebook was replaced this week by a brand new Facebook that brought with it the introduction of a new home page and an extraordinary overhaul to profiles called Timeline. And in an instant, the magic of Facebook returned.

In short, here are the features, and what we think of them.

Profile becomes Timeline. Essentially, the old profile turns into a timeline of your life. You’ll see status updates you made years ago, comments people made about you, and your life history – for better or worse – laid out before you. You can even go back and add more content from your past, all the way to birth. Cool video of Timeline here. Timelines launch Sept. 29 to the public.

Liking and Verbing. You can still Like stuff, but you’ll also be able to do stuff. Anything. Developers will ow be able to “Eat” something, “Watch” something, “Play” something.

Ticker and News Feed. Smaller news items go to the ticker, a sort of news feed inside the news feed in the top right corner. Status updates and photos stay in the main News Feed.

These changes have us supremely excited in Facebook again, and thinking about how it will work in the future for people and companies. With Verbs (called “Facebook Gestures”), instead of “Liking” a movie, you’ll say you “watched” or “are watching” a movie. It’s a whole new way of interacting with audiences.

The update also has us thinking, for the first time in a long time, about Facebook applications. Facebook Apps now have the potential of competing with the iTunes app model. Facebook’s apps were once clunky add-ons to the service that had been marginalized out of existence, but now, they look to feature prominently in the new Ticker. The apps are what will bring on the Verb’ing of Facebook and these more significant connections. In fact, we’re more inclined to recommend apps now than just simple Facebook Tabs on a company’s page because the latter is just a splash page, whereas the apps are true branded engagement. Just like iPhone (or Droid or BlackBerry) apps, simple but significant features work best, especially given the new Verb environment.

As for the Timeline, where to begin. When you make the switch, prepare to take at least an hour looking at your life. It’s amazing. You may find yourself going total Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on your profile, deleting status updates from exes or erasing opinions you may have had years ago but view differently today. It’s a bizarre but ultimately superb update to Facebook. Timelines will usher in a whole new era about Identity, the Internet, human behavior, and personal history.

What’s more, company pages will likely convert to the Timeline at some point, so companies should start preparing for that.

Facebook is new again, and has proven that it is truly an innovator and not a passing fad. This update just bought the company several more years as the reigning champion of online communities.

- Dean (@dbrowell) and Jeff (@jephkelley)

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Sep
20

A Look At The Inc. 1

by Feedback

The vacations are over. Back-to-school sales have come and gone, while big yellow buses rejoin the fray that is my morning commute. Talk of football fills the airwaves and Facebook feeds, letting us know that fall is (almost) here.

For me, the annual September release of Inc. magazine’s top 500 private companies (stretched to 5000 online) has been an autumn rite for as long as I can remember.

For the uninitiated, Inc.’s list is ranked by the percentage of revenue growth over a three-and-a-half year period by privately held, for-profit independent companies that meet some qualifying financial requirements. Some companies appear on the list briefly before going public. Other companies are stalwarts, like North Carolina software maker SAS, which has appeared on the list each year since 1981.

At Feedback, we’re frequently charged with surveying the social media landscape of entire industries, clients and competitors alike, to evaluate the overall usage and uncover best practices. For the purpose of this post, I thought I might do a quick audit of this year’s Inc. 500 No. 1 fastest growing company, ideeli.

If by chance you haven’t heard of ideeli, you’re certainly familiar with the concept: a members-only online retailer, a “Flash-shopping” site, with regular-if-not-daily emails offering merchandise for greatly discounted prices. While ideeli counts sites like Gilt Groupe, Rue La La and HauteLook among its main competitors, it’s a short leap to their much-ballyhooed geo-specific daily deal siblings, Groupon and LivingSocial. Most of ideeli’s thousand brand partners are in the fashion world, though offers for such things as travel present growth opportunities they are just beginning to explore.

So how is a company of this size and potential using social? At first glance, the answer is quite well.

On Facebook, multiple daily posts reflect their assets via pictures, as well as their sponsors and items of general interest to their more than 170,000 fans. Likes by the hundred and comments by the dozen are common within hours of posting.

The effort on Twitter is strong as well. Having cultivated a base of almost 26,000 followers with over 20,000 tweets since September 2008, the content and interactions really flow here. Chances are if you direct your message to @ideeli, you’ll get a personal response. At the time of this writing, there were twenty direct responses to individuals tweeting their questions or affections for this shopaholic’s dream.

In addition to their regular offerings, they also do what they call “Flash Friday” giveaways for an unspecified and far briefer time period that you can only participate in by following on Twitter and using the appropriate hashtag in your messages. Clearly, there is some serious social media savvy within the company’s Manhattan headquarters.

As a business that contacts its consumers regularly via email, you could give ideeli a pass if they failed to make use of a blog along side their other efforts. However, the clean design and presentation of information, as well as the availability of multiple RSS feeds at blog.ideeli.com provide a strong complement to the other promotional efforts, though it would seem with less traffic and far fewer interactions. I am somewhat surprised – given the adoption of Tumblr within the fashion community – that ideeli has not embraced that site and its potential to further engage with its clientele. A presumptive search for ideeli.tumblr.com gets forwarded back to the main site, where an unformatted page lies begging for completion and content (I know some who would be willing to help them out with that).

I’m somewhat obsessed with deal websites, so I was surprised to see a site that I had never heard of (though competitors Gilt & Rue were on my radar) top the Inc. 500. Who knows where they will place on next year’s list: Maybe they’ll go public or be bought out and no longer qualify. Or maybe they’ll find a goldmine in other retail sectors and continue to grow at this torrid pace.

Either way, I’m sure they’ll be keeping up with their strong efforts in social. If you’re looking for an example of a private company doing it right, look no further: ideeli’s the real deal.

-Thomas (@thomasmcdonald)

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Sep
15

Now Taking Subscriptions

by Feedback

The word “subscribe” is about to enter your daily vernacular with the addition of a new feature on Facebook that will allow users to better personalize their online experience.

Facebook has unveiled – in an attempt to curb the growth and keep up with features of Twitter, Google+ and others like it – a feature called “Subscribe,” which will allow Facebook users to, well, subscribe to the news of others. You’ll be able to begin hand-picking the content you want to view on your wall, thus fine-tuning the Facebook experience to your liking instead of having to see the somewhat random mess of updates from an array of people.

Subscribe is completely optional; if you don’t use it, Facebook will continue to run as it always does.

But for those who choose to use Subscribe, the benefits could be many. Like Twitter, instead of “friending” a celebrity or someone you’re really not friends with but are otherwise interested in, Subscribing will let you simply follow their updates (provided the person allows subscribers) without getting all their personal details. Subscribe means that popular or up-and-coming performers, writers, singers or comedians will see their stars shine a bit brighter. Self-proclaimed social media gurus will begin to measure their self-worth on the number of Subscribers they have. And you may find yourself with people you truly don’t know who are interested in what you have to share.

Subscribing may be the answer to keeping people on Facebook while tightening the experience to meet the demands of what people are looking for in today’s social networks: greater control, a more personalized experience, and a reason to stay at Facebook instead of another service: the people.

Facebook, unlike the rash of other services available, already has the critical mass. Yet if you take the pulse of savvy web users and even everyday Facebook users, you’ll hear stories of Facebook fatigue, the desire for more control over content, the need for privacy, or simply that they’ve done everything they can do on the site and are moving on. And while it is still growing, that growth is perhaps slowing (even dropping by 6 million users in May, Inside Facebook reports). It’s no death knell, but it could be telling.

For these reasons, we’re seeing more niche, focused communities pop up on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Path and other platforms. They are more private, and the people on them more difficult to find.

This “privitization” of social networks is a trend we’ve been watching closely. And Facebook is about to board this train in a big way.

Not all of this is new, revolutionary or mind-blowing. But Facebook Subscribe is a bit of a mind-blower when you apply what this is and does to the masses of the social network, the paradigms in play in digital media, and the ever-increasing complexity of the modern identity.

Does it mean everyone will use and understand Subscribing right out of the gate? No, but its very existence is a product of some other trends and thoughts. For months (which is how we count technology time) people have been organizing their lives into separate places: Twitter for public thoughts, Tumblr as an extension of that community or to share personal interests with others, photo-sharing apps like Path or Instagram to share slice-of-life pictures and video.

Up until now, Facebook wasn’t really adequate in separating content as well as simple privacy. But with Subscribing, now even the non-savvy can start stratifying in new ways. People will share more, and less. Lives will take new shapes to certain people. And therefore, so will identities.

The layers of social soil just got more interesting for your garden.

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Sep
09

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week (September 9, 2011)

by Feedback

The social space online changes rapidly. Feedback stays on top of emerging media news so you don’t have to. Here are the must-read social media articles of the week of September 4, 2011.

Read More »

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Sep
07

A Culture Emerges

by Feedback

At Feedback we are constantly exploring various demographic and geographic differences as they pertain to our clients. As a part of that, we also explore the various channels these audiences prefer, shun or flourish in at a given time.

There’s been quite a bit of chatter surrounding Twitter demographics and ethicity, however uncomfortable broaching the topic may be. One of the most interesting statistics to come out of it all are the levels of African American users on Twitter, because the figures are so disproportional to the overall U.S. representation.

A study done by Pew indicated that as of May 2011, 25 percent of African-Americans use Twitter as compared to 19 percent of Hispanics and only 9 percent of whites (note: these figures reflect the percentages of Americans as a whole who use Twitter, and not the actual makeup of the service, which is about half white and a quarter black).

A humorous but factual presentation by The Onion’s digital director, Baratunde Thurston – bluntly titled “How to be Black Online” – noted that while less than half of African-Americans have high-speed Internet at home, they dominate mobile broadband usage – nearly double that of their white counterparts. And the ease of Twitter (140 characters or less to update) and access to other people within the service makes it popular for use on mobile devices.

And lastly, a study suggested that Twitter adoption among African-Americans was based on the finding that they are more likely to have a greater interest than other ethnic groups in celebrity and gossip news. And thanks to the fall of MySpace, Twitter has become the online outlet of choice for celebrity drama. Plus, you can shout at them.

In my opinion, it’s the age of user as opposed to race that might be most indicative of how people are using Twitter.

The younger generations (teens and young twentysomethings) of Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos, and others generally use Twitter as a public instant messenger. It’s more conversational than Facebook, and they can not only message their friends, but also tweet celebrities and read their tweets in real-time. Like Myspace, users can also personalize their pages with colors, designs, and different backgrounds.

Thurston also makes mention of the Twitter trending topics that dominate many evening chats (such as, #thingshoodratslove, #ghettohurricanenames, or #waystogetoffthephone) in the U.S., referring to them as, “blacktags.” It’s even a subject that has entered the halls of academia. From Slate:

Brendan Meeder thinks he’s got a good hypothesis about what’s going on. Meeder, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, has downloaded the tweets of more than 100 million users. (Twitter gave him special permission to do so for research purposes.) He’s been probing this collection to see how Twitter users interact with one another; he’s particularly interested in how trends begin and spread through a social network.

While analyzing his database a few months ago, Meeder noticed something strange—he found a cluster of hundreds of users whose profiles were connected to one another. When he looked up the users, he noticed that a lot of them were black. It’s in exactly these kinds of tight-knit groups that Twitter memes flourish, Meeder says.

“It’s my impression that these hashtags start in dense communities—people who are highly connected to each other,” Meeder says. “If you have 50 of these people talking about it, think about the number of outsiders who follow at least one of those 50—it’s pretty high at that point. So you can actually get a pretty big network effect by having high density.”

These kinds of bonds are obviously not unique to social media – rather, these are cultural distinctions we are merely seeing reflected inside. The nation’s African American community is finding its voice and community on the web, and that platform of choice is increasingly looking like Twitter.

In coming months, we’ll explore ethnicity, age and other personal traits and how different cultures interact online.

-Brittany (@britgary)

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Sep
01

Support in Your PJs

by Feedback

Until recently, support groups tended to be local and face-to-face. Yet as people become more familiar with technology, the trend toward more online support groups is growing. And for good reason: there are countless benefits to seeking support of others on the Internet.

Throughout research for our various clients, particularly those in the healthcare space, we’ve uncovered a variety of these support and “mental health e-groups,” which are often started simply because the creator needs an outlet to talk to others with the same experience.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates that 18 percent of web users who are living with an illness or going through a personal situation participate in an online discussion or group forum. That percentage is much higher for those who are simply Googling for answers.

Connecting with others online is a still a new concept for some, though, and there can be benefits, including:

Immediacy & Anonymity: There is something to be said about receiving an almost instant response from someone going through the same issues halfway across the world. By reaching out to others online, you have the flexibility of connecting when it is convenient. E-support groups have opened up a new world for those that were previously too nervous to go to a local support group, where for some the barrier was a lack of anonymity, or being unsure where to find others going through similar issues. People tend to be more open and honest online, leading to a better discussion.

Abundancy: Seeking out online support groups instead of a local group means reaching out to perhaps even thousands more human beings going through the same situation. The topics of these groups are abundant – from mothers caring for special needs children, to people recently diagnosed with serious illnesses and adults dealing with aging parents.

Ability to be helpful: Assisting others through the tough times has become an important part of the therapy process for many. Many people participating in online support groups have found a kind of second family; a family that understands the ups and downs, the good times and the bad.

There are, of course, downsides to turning to the web for support. Nothing will ever replace human interaction, be it with a family member or friend or psychologist. But turning to peers on the web certainly doesn’t hurt, and may be just the push someone who needs help requires to get them out to talk to someone in the flesh.

Dealing with illnesses or life transitions is never an easy thing, and the support of others – online or off - who are going through the same experiences can make all the difference.

-Caroline (@carolineradom)

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