Embedded is a presentation that I have put together which gives an overview of how businesses can and are using social media and looks at some of the tools and platforms available. It mainly examines how businesses are using it to engage externally but it also covers how businesses use social technologies internally in their organisations.
Feel free to comment, be interested to get your feedback
Interesting piece in VentureBeat today claiming that Facebook has rejected a valuation of $4 Billion dollars. The social networking site is the fastest growing social site in terms of numbers – Comscore estimated in January 2009 that it had over 276 Million unique users. In the UK 47% of the online community use Facebook with the fastest growing cohort in the 35-49 year old bracket. It has taken a lot of flak recently on a number of fronts. Firstly it changed the terms and condititions that users subscribe to, essentially turning ownership of all asssets and content (photos, videos, relationships) explicitly to Facebook. They rolled this back after a major online revolt errupted.
Most recently they have changed the user experience trying to make the site more real-time by introducing feeds from friends and subscribed sources. This change results in a lot more information being displayed to users, especially if those friends have active lifestreams connected to their facebook profiles. It is generally agreed that the new changes are good for businesses who want to ensure that fresh content is presented to users as often as possible (to keep their profile in front of as many users as possible) and very active social media participants. These changes have been seen as a play by Facebook to capture the ground stolen by the likes of Twitter, which offers real-time participation and also most recently be the beta version of friendfeed. However, the majority of Facebook users are not power users and consider excessive feed information as pure Noise and have registered their displeasure in droves. In a move to counteract this, Facebook have now made a semblance of reaching out to the public by courting their ideas on changes to the platform. But this has been circumscribed by a time limit and a quorom of 30% of the active Facebook community, which is unlikely to be reached.
That said, it is undoubtedly the big beast in the social networking space in 2009. MySpace figures are dropping – 2% since the start of 2009 accompanied by a lot of organisational distraction. Twitter is the only other site generating the same level of mainstream interest, but in terms of numbers is in around 14Million, which is no mean feat considering it had about 700,000 users this time in 2008.
It will be interestng to watch what Facebook does with its dominant position and likewise it will also be very interesting to see what happens with Twitter. Both of them face monetising issues. Facebook, for its massive user database generated only approx. 350Million dollars in revenue. Not a lot. Twitter still has yet to monetise itself. Most recently a lot attention was paid to the fact that they seemed to have sponsored applications advertised. But they have disabused the market of this saying that it was not the case. So the market looks on and tries to figure out what form of monetisation it will embark on.
Here is the Dominos pizza video that is causing all the stir at the moment. Its pretty grim, you most definitely would not like your take-out getting the same treatment. This was posted up on YouTube over the Easter bank holiday weekend, and by Wednesday had over 600,000 views. Dominos have come out and condemned the video and have fired the employees and say that the police have been notified and that a warrant for their arrest is awaiting. There’s some debate on whether the statement they have posted lacks sensitivity and contrition in general, nor does it address the whole issue of hygiene or the lack of it when it comes to the human part of the process. Other commentary is that Dominos should have posted a response in the medium that the “attack” was posted i.e. video – they should have posted a video apology by someone in authority in the organisation, along with an offer of some sort to try and re-build trust. Because essentially that is what has been ruined here. When you think of Dominos after watching this, you will be hard pressed not to conjure up the image of a couple of bored staff in the kitchen interfering with your food. Dominos have been active on social media channels such as Twitter for a period now. So it is all the more surpising that they have been wrongfooted on how to deal with this video. Which goes to show that even though you can be well versed in the rudiments of using social media tools, when push comes to shove and an organisation is faced with a thorny issue, that they revert back to the old way of handling problems, which inevtiably means lawyers, PR and time. Which does not translate well in to the real-time world of social media. A lesson for all businesses.
UPDATE – CEO of Dominos responds by a video post to apologise for the video. See below.
Also this weekend Amazon got into some trouble with the removal of gay and lesbian related literature. A major brouhaha erupted on Twitter tracked by the hashtag #Amazonfail which topped the daily twitter trends keeping it in full view. Amazon eventually came out and gave a fairly mild response to the controversy saying that it was a glitch and they were dealing with it. Surprisingly this did little if nothing to calm the whole affair. The lesson to be learnt from all this for brands is that they need to be listening to what is being said about them 24/7 and when re-acting to a crisis (real or perceived) to dispense with the PR spin and respond in a human voice.
CEO of Dominos responds by video:
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