It’s a valid question if not rhetorical.

What is paper.li?

Simply, per their site, “paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy-to-read newspaper style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag (hashtag).”

Why social rocks?
My first foray into social media some years back, I was confronted with a channel that seemed so vastly different than what I’ve come to know in my years as a digital marketer.  I became enthralled with the notion of relationships driving business; with transparency and authenticity integral to delivering value.

Willy Loman’s character in Death of a Salesman is about a man who is self-obsessed with the notion of greatness, and even in his later years convinces himself that success is directly attributed to “greatness, popularity and personal charisma”.

Contrary to that notion, many successful businesses have been built on a simple handshake, the unspoken trust built from years of understanding customers, and responding to their needs. Customer relationships have been at the core of convergence. This is not new… but in the digital space, it is the absolute core to business sustainability.

And I have bought into that. I have come to emerge as a purist in social media and while I understand this continues to be a test and learn channel, I have not necessarily given up the principles that have accompanied the true merits of this channel: credibility, community, engagement and its undeniable result: sustainability.

Nowadays you can buy social… but that’s counterintuitive to why social exists

In recent instances I have come into contact with social networks that have tried to sell me media across blog networks, consideration into networks with strong exposure to the longtail audience.

While that piqued my interest, it became apparent that “access” to niche bloggers, particularly ones with influence, would really mean buying ads on their sites. There was no real opportunity to engage with these influencers, nor develop a really strong program to build brand engagement among the follower base. It was simply pure play media. The argument that comes back to me from the media sales guy, “…but it’s still media, and it doesn’t come free!”

The quest to monetize social networks

It seems to have been the age-old question. If these networks are to exist and be maintained, how are they going to make money?

One of the reasons that Yahoo! reduced its investment in 360, Geocities, and Answers was that it struggled to combine online ads into a user-engagement environment ie the two environments could not effectively co-exist. Ad performance was poor because users didn’t want them there.

There are some networks doing an ok job at monetizing the medium:

• Google, fortuitously recognized a subscription model that users were willing to pay for to help justify their acquisition of YouTube.

• Slideshare and Scribd expects users to pay to maintain their presentations ie brand presence on its network. Downloads lead to business leads, hence the reason to be here.

• The contextual advertising Facebook offers is very relevant to its members, however I don’t know how good the click-through rates are compared to traditional media. I would suspect that the low CPMs indicate that it’s still not a pervasive medium to buy ads. I’d like to be proven wrong on this one. My friend at Facebook and I have had endless arguments about social ads and the oxymoronic way Facebook has chosen to monetize its network. I argue it’s still blatant advertising and it’s the reason people have gone away from the portal model  ie Yahoo! AOL and MSN — to get away from the intrusiveness that has come between the user and his/her consumption of content.

• Twitter’s model is, by no means, relevant to its users. Twitter ads run in the user’s timeline and does not target users based on profile, interest, tweets or followers. This article,  states, “ We want to display Promoted Tweets in a way that’s both useful and authentic to the Twitter experience”.

I’d be interested to hear what other people think. Do we expect that emergence of more ads in our social footprint will this be accepted by users in the long run? Or will it necessitate yet another change that undermines this trend?

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About Hessie Jones
I am an online marketer who has worked in the technology space for over a decade. I am addicted to new technology and cannot do without my Macbook or my iPhone.  I  am  currently at Due North Communications creating experiential catalysts for word of mouth influence. Previous experiences include Isobar NA, Yahoo! Overlay.TV, Citibank, CIBC, Ogilvy and Rapp Collins.  I have views on advertising, emerging technology including video, and social web applications. I’m living and breathing in the social web space and cannot consume as quickly as this space evolves. I follow politics, environmental initiatives, and music (mainly the old stuff pre 1990). Some quick notes about me: Marketer… Cellist…US Politics watcher…Twitterer, Yoga-er??!… Fave coffee: Tall Non-fat Caramel Macchiato – Starbucks…Michael Jackson fan…Jeffery Deaver fanatic….sap for human interest stories..Rubik’s cubist…dabbled in pointillism… interest in caricatures and nude painting…can say the alphabet backwards…know most world capitals… hockey and soccer mom…

Find me: hessiej.com, twitter, facebook
 

Just checked out the new Myspace. Looked promising as I started to explore options, customize my background and profile etc.

I’d have to go through the site more thoroughly but first half hour into it, and yeah..actually ‘feels nice’. More exploring to come!

The one thing I wish they’d do is tone down the animation.  The swirling is sad and annoying.

But yay Myspace. Let’s see how it goes, right?

The one most vociferous contention I’ve raised to date against FB is in reaction to a ReadWriteWeb post upon the launch of ‘Places’ and how FB’s overall agenda is to quite literally own the social web and all forms of data it can harvest.

To me, this notion of ‘sole ownership’ to a universal social graph is highly presumptuous and reeks of hubris and arrogance. This intentional agenda not only stifles competition and innovation but also, and perhaps more importantly, automatically predicates Facebook as the singular, iconic social channel and data source from which the social media revolution is meant to be fashioned and is intended to evolve going forward.

Popular definition
For most, when they see social media, the immediate association will likely be Facebook. Heck, and never mind the movie, the overdriven hype alone (good or bad) has already fast-tracked the social site to iconic status. But again, here is where opinion based on popular vote appears to dominantly define what the perceived norm is or should be. For some, if not a few, they know better.

In principle—and I do hope this is the last post I am compelled to write on the subject—it’s not FB itself that I personally find appalling. And I can’t speak for (nor would I choose to criticize) the characters of Zuck or any of his developers or teams. But I do find its privacy-related blunders to be entirely avoidable. It’s no wonder FB gets such a bad rap when it comes to this.

Nice try, but not quite
A couple of thoughts on FB you’ve probably seen articulated before but deserves repeating:

• Facebook’s “collective wisdom” is too fragmented to be semantically useful at this point. Maybe FB does have a shot at developing a function as a recommendation source over time. But look at your “friends” on FB now. Do they all provide meaningful feedback and information to you on a regular basis? Do your interactions really influence how you behave offline? Is the “collective wisdom” of their Likes, comments, recommendations really going to sway how you make a decision about what movie you plan to see next, how you’ll go about exploring your career path or what mobile device you’ll choose to buy?




• Facebook’s design is not conducive for business collaboration. We know the successful impact of Facebook on B2C brand campaigns (e.g., Coke). Targeted brand loyalty campaigns offering cachet and easy access by the broader public is a winning formula no matter what platform you choose to carry it out. So achieving critical mass in participation is easy. Add gaming techniques to the mix and sure, “Everybody Loves Facebook”. All this activity is driven and influenced through the day-to-day random socializing you do on FB. It cearly addresses your personal interests as a consumer. And while I respect marketers who are in this space, I’m not convinced that their sensitivity to jabs taken at FB are meant as being protective of how FB could be leveraged as a business collaboration tool, nor the technical programming that makes FB its own, dare I say, kettle of fish.

Now a certain Twitter follow—who happens to be a Forrester analyst although this post has nothing to do with him personally—notes three reasons to stop demonizing Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. What do you think?

Beyond America
“Demonizing”, “fearmongering”, and some pretty dramatic statements to Facebook’s defense left me wondering if I should be sympathetic to the “stop being mean to FB” propa— er messaging. There are at least three separate statements on said post that I find heavily coloured with subjectivity and to which I fail to see strength or substantive value in premise, including:

“Faulting Facebook for getting big and successful through legal and entrepreneurial means is, well, downright un-American.”

Er ya..the world does not revolve on whether or not one’s approach, stand or opinion is un-American (no offense to my American friends). But clearly, when you are writing about social media, you are writing about how it affects the web. Last I checked, the web appears to be something of a global phenomenon.

What about you? Can you say “faceshmook” and hold back a smile?

images sourced from michellesmortgagemusings.com and telegraph.co.uk respectively

Gowalla, Foursquare, BrightKite, Whrrl, Scvngr and now even Facebook’s Places (see my less than stellar impression of this) are among the tech companies driving this wildly popular bandwagon.

There have been clear and useful leverage of LBS for B2C strategies both for large, enterprise-driven brands as well as small businesses as covered by a story in the New York Times.

To date, successful B2C efforts focus on reinforcing brand loyalty and increasing client base through active, frequent participation via check-ins and obtaining rewards in the form of discounts, give-aways, coupon redemptions etc.

As Foursquare demonstates adeptly, a game-oriented element is characteristic of LBS apps. This automatically serves as incentive for users (customers/prospects) imprinting a behaviour that becomes a natural day-to-day activity.

Smart, huh?

But how might one imagine applying these principles to a B2B model? Below are some thoughts that may give you reason to try it out—all of which involve embedding an LBS layer to events.

1. Improve attendance / enhance participation: In addition to confirming attendance (typical email invite), have them check-in to the venue (your corporate office, a conference hall etc) and award swag or a complimentary product or 1/2-hour consultation service to the company with most check-ins (i.e., most number of attendees).Granted, the numbers may not necessarily be in the thousands. But this is why I think LBS use for B2B will need to be very targeted (i.e., done thoughtfully to events where active client participation is a key component such as an unconference, trade show or special event where there is more emphasis on networking than talking heads blasting content at participants).
2. Extend brand visibility – complement your corporate blogging initiatives by posting a special event that centers around promoting a book launch by one of your authors or a product launch/refresh.Wanna get really creative? Announce a photo essay contest around the book/product launch on your blog and have attendees capture photos, provide commentary on their experience of the event itself (yes, this would be an indirect plug for @Gowalla and yes, it’s my preferred LBS app). And then do a follow-up post on the winner along with all other entries and feedback you received.
3. Showcase CSR campaigns – in a similar vein as #2, imagine a community outreach campaign where you’d rally up volunteers—both from your internal employee community and the external public community—and get them to check-in at the event and have a scavenger hunt, photo contest, etc. Again, using a similar follow up process as #2.
4. Internal employee engagement – see #3 but use within the context of an internal culture shaping activity or morale-boosting exercise like a day long company-wide summer event or even regular get-togethers that encourage interaction, socializing and team-building.
5. Brand distinction (AR component) – if your org is really keen and want to push the envelope, why not consider making available an augmented reality (AR) element to an event (see Exhibitor Booths section – it’s an old post but one of the few that comes close to B2B application). But imagine if attendees had the advantage of knowing your booth is AR-ready: Innovate. Differentiate. Leave a lasting impression.

There’s only one thing: so far, most LBS apps appear to be mainly developed for (and the user experience conducive to) touch screen devices like iPhone, Android. A February post from ReadWriteWeb confirms this.

But perhaps these figures have since changed. And while RIM is the dominant enterprise tool, perhaps the majority of your B2B target audience prefer the “best of both worlds” and are looking for opportunities to explore and learn from location-based technology as well.

What do you think? Is LBS purely consumer-based and oriented to enhance the brand power of physical products?

Earlier in March another ReadWriteWeb article suggests LBS usage to penetrate enterprise within two years.

So I tweeted the question today and asked if anyone else has had specific success in this area. All I got: crickets.

Have you tried any of the above? What has your experience been? What else would you add to this list? How straightforward would it be to execute and measure? Lemme know.

images sourced from justanotherapp.com and fastcompany.com respectively

Title of this post was partially inspired by the title of that film, Le déclin de l’empire américain, and the overriding black comedy flavour I personally see in some (okay, many) of today’s blog posts.

Just yesterday, a Forrester study notes that social networking users are creating less content. Now if you look past the stats and imagine that among these key “creators” are bloggers (like  me) think of it this way: none of us are actually creating new content. End of story. Right?

Why do I think this?

To illustrate—and I mean to purely illustrate through combined semantic and literary analyis of a  given post which struck me (I mean, literally hit me over the head)—why I think the above may be the case, I will extract certain phrases from this blogger’s post and provide my own take on the excerpts.

My interpretations are and always have been purely visceral. They are in no way meant to offend, mud-sling or willfully antagonize any blogger or the one whose content I’ve chosen to use as an example.

The quality of diction is..well, should not, be strained

Some of the more impressionable statements that gave me pause for thought and concern are noted below. I am concerned that the overall tone of these statements tend to border on generalization.

That in an attempt to generate some line of argument, certain states and conditions, which have long pre-existed prior to blogging and social media, are being “exposed” as detrimental to the intricate characteristics of social behaviours the majority of us actually find commonplace and expected.

Again, my own musings. Not directed at any one in particular.

“The world of social media still has a credibility problem in business.”

Hmm..so all those folks I’ve been talking to online and offline about their orgs wanting to be part of social media—whether diving head on or gingerly dipping their toes in—must either be brainwashed into having this inexplicable need OR they actually see the potential for the medium to be credible..and valuable.

“We talk too much about the value of our time rather than putting it to good use.”

For this one, I’ll refer to a comment to bring light to my reaction. I do agree with Angelique btw. Need I elaborate?

“We cannibalize our own.”

Is that phrase meant to say “We are mean to each other?” ‘Cannibalizing one’s own’ is actually redundant. See point #3 of “Influence, Idolization and Idiots“. But seriously, is this really that outrageously unacceptable a phenomenon that it begs further examination and insight?

“We talk about conversation, but we focus a great deal on the tools. And, on ourselves.”

I hesitate to say how overwhelming ironic that statement is, but I suppose by virtue of me stating my reticence, actually makes it pretty self-evident.

The long and short of this post is this: bloggers should be mindful to stick to data and interpreting such data, and to leave the in-depth social analysis to sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, researchers and the like.

Over-analyzing social behaviour for the  sake of crafting something to make it appear as if it’s a whole new thing or ball game is a sure step to demise..of all things borne of educated observation, supported by empirical analysis and expressed with literary clout.

image sourced from ozap.com

That about sums it up doesn’t it? Well, almost. It’s a starting point, and I doubt one equation adequately encapsulates the full dynamics of a personal brand.

Now, you ask, “Why would I care about a personal brand?”

The age of online networks
The Internet is growing exponentially. Proliferation of online activities are giving way to highly interactive behaviours, creating many social circles (communities)—circles which in turn affect and influence real life individuals and communities.

Establishing a recognized personal brand permits you to navigate through different communities fluidly. You are easily recognized for who you are and what you represent. Your brand is proven and trusted. In effect, your network expands and your relations and reputation become more robust.

A healthy and extensive network not only bodes well for you, but also for those with whom you are associated.

So what does it take to develop a personal brand? My experience to date tells me a lot of it has to do with staying true to yourself and letting things happen naturally, almost by chance.

Branding your own person not persona
Knowledge, expertise, charisma and useful insights make up a successful personal brand.

Although I would add that a trusted personal brand is organically cultivated—not contrived—and emerges as a result of a fine tuned, transparent voice.

What does that mean? In my view, it means a number of things. And they all occur or come together simultaneously, at times serendipitously, including:

• producing content that’s largely inspired instead of canned pieces churned out of an editorial calendar
• inciting productive dialogue through constructive opinions that attempt to examine what’s beyond the obvious
• sharing a variety of topics and news that reflect your interests and viewpoints, e.g., in what you tweet (granted, I’m a bit biased with my interest in technology..just a bit)
• conversing with and listening to your online follows; being helpful, encouraging and getting to know their voice (who  are they? what are their interests and concerns?)
• showing a sense of humour (sometimes sarcastically—yes, marketing snark can be entertaining), at best for comic relief, worse, to express displeasure and/or concern; although I would advise that resorting to wit and intelligence is more effective than the shock value of words fueled by raw emotions
• being sincere and genuinely interested in the ‘man/woman/logo behind the avatar’; earning their trust/respect and encouraging an opportunity to connect offline
• staying real and being yourself instead of overworking what it takes to be perceived as unique. The natural development of your voice alone will define your identity.

Your personality, knowledge/expertise, the content you create and critical thinking you offer, are core ingredients that the determine the quality of your personal brand.

Blogs should not only serve to be useful to others but also provide a view into a host of personal perspectives including your creative and philosophical predispositions. Concurrently, your tweets should amplify certain tones that echo your personality and reflect whether or not you choose to nurture your identity online and reveal how approachable you are.

How you help connect others online as well as the connections you yourself make offline are proof of your serious investment in online interactions. The success of these interactions and connections close the loop and attest to the effectiveness of your own sociability and the visibility and reach of your personal brand.

This is the stuff of networking today.

Can you imagine how it will further evolve? Do you chase after opportunities or allow your personal brand to draw them out?

image sourced from www.avschool.edu.vn

Now there’s nothing wrong with that—if you’re inebriated with hubris and your beer belly betrays a sordid tale of wanton avarice.

But this brief post is not meant to stigmatize FB (ya, @so_char, it’s not all about bellyaching) since FB itself has done a splendid job of doing that through its own awkward mishaps.

Rather, Facebook’s oversized popularity coupled with a series of  knee-jerk like changes to its features make me think that social greed has come to typify its mantra.

ReadWriteWeb notes:

« While it’s true that there is value to the end user in the commoditization of location data, it’s a commodity that many location-based companies likely did not want. Until now, they’ve been able to compete not only on features, but also on the richness, accuracy and completeness of their own geo-location databases. That selling point is now going to disappear, thanks to Facebook. Hopefully, the location-based startups have a few other ideas for retaining their users in this post-Places era. »

Whether or not Facebook’s recent foray into geolocation will indeed stymie the growth of already established players like Gowalla and Foursquare remains to be seen.

That Facebook has set out to aggressively conquer almost every corner of the social space to date is indeed a testament both to its purchasing and staying power. Bravo.

Oddly, despite its incredibly powerful brand and mass appeal, Facebook strikes me to be more concerned about hoarding data than actually sharing it. The iconic face of social media it most certainly is not.

image sourced from lostinyourinbox.com

An awkward and somewhat disappointing experience (as fresh and recent as of the date of this post) with one social media guru (who shall remain nameless) compelled Jared to share his quandary with me. I’ll skip the details but will instead rail against— I mean, cite some thoughts with respect to the title of this post.

Sympathy for the Devil? Not here.
From the perspective of someone who already has a hard time stomaching the perceived clout of social media evangelists (or socialebrities as @ChristinaKudym once coined in a tweet) I admit that I am somewhat biased (somewhat).

Having said that, here are my 2 cents:

• Influence is largely a visceral experience that cannot be quantified.
  There. I said it. So can we stop hemming and hawing about whether or not we can measure it? What influences me to want to connect with and further nurture relations with a professional, colleague, educator, friend, etc. is not something that I look up and calculate. It’s typically driven by a combination of empirical assessment and instinct.
• Admiration is healthy. However, admire the knowledge more than the person.
  We’ve all been in awe at some point over someone’s presentation or speech or whatever content they were sharing that made our eyes sparkle and that bulb light up in our head. Neat, huh? Well, the person who effectively delivered the insight(s) may be awesome, but what was our brain really after? Uh-huh.
• Even the best of the highly educated, enlightened and amicable people are fallible and emotional.
  The road to hell is paved with social media gurus— I mean, half-hearted intentions. None of us are perfect, model social creatures. The collection of Shakespeare’s dramatic works portray the more sanguine human foibles that educate us to accepting our fallibility. So yes, even your most venerated guru will spit on your face if they’re feeling paranoid that day or cornered into a conundrum with the world’s microscope breathing right above them. Meh. We all get that way somehow.

There are many great shakers, movers and even influencers around. And to me, sharing and dialoguing with them are perhaps two of the most useful and gratifying experiences.

I don’t need a signed book, t-shirt or doll to make me fully appreciate the impact of experiencing their um so-called insights.

graphic sourced from www.rachelkashon.com

But before I bullet-point the meaty parts of this post, a stroll down memory lane and some fun facts:

Revolution and dialectics
I refer to ‘synthesis’ within the context of Hegelian dialectics, which in principle characterizes the structural elements of most societal revolutions (this tidbit, brought to you in part by an invisible data log wedged in my brain from when this concept was first introduced to me in high school).

Thank you, George Wrobel, wherever you are now..you are the best history teacher ever.

Now that we are spoiled by Wikipedia, I am able to further explain (copy and paste) that Hegelian dialectics is comprised of “three stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction; an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis; and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis.”

Ergo, the reference to ‘synthesis’ above, which now provides context on the thrust of this post.

Apparent novelty
My initial branding of this blog as “reflections on the social media revolution” speaks to a time when social media was still in the thick of the thesis-antithesis stage.

And quite frankly, the idea of social media gaining mass visibility at the time was certainly very exhilarating and ‘revolutionary’.

Now, social media is in the mainstream.

And by that I mean, it’s no longer a novelty: everyone’s on the merry wagon waving their flags, catching their breath or quickly scheming away at how this so-called “social media marketing” model can benefit both personal and financial interests.

But is social media revolutionary?

Inevitable awareness
So here’s the thing: yes, there are some strong revolutionary aspects to social media. It aims to democratize. It fosters openness. It breaks down barriers to entry. It connects people (and now things!) together and in remarkable ways which only few of us were aware since the dawn of the Internet.

And there’s the rub: the Internet. Our experience of connectedness, our heightened awareness of ‘things in motion’ and ‘things to come’ are all possible because of where it they’re all happening: the Internet.

Inevitably, with or without the ‘revolutionary’ descriptor, social media would have taken place organically because of how the Internet has thus far evolved.

The face of ‘synthesis’
So here are some bullets on what this state of ‘synthesis’ may end up looking:

• Social media will simply be media. McLuhan’s words ring no truer: the media is the message. And that message has gotten far too many of us distracted. A few experienced and well studied folks out there and online understand what this means. That we call it ‘social media’ now is purely referential; it gives us a common way to explain what this once seemingly novel phenomenon really is. Will it matter if we call is something else? Not really.
• The ‘Internet of Things’ will make data (and objects) reign supreme. ReadWriteWeb portrays and monitors this movement very closely. In brief, the way RWW portrays the ‘Internet of Things’ may be described as a state in the future where there are more things (i.e., physical objects, sensors) wired together (interconnected) on the Internet than there are people.
• Business will be personal; personal will be our business. Business is already frantically revamping its old institutionalized models as a combination of socially and economically driven factors and influences (thanks in part to social media) conspire to force the way we do business with each other. Conversely, ease of both creating our content (personal or otherwise) and accessing such content is forcing us to make it our own personal business to ensure we understand what private and public lives really mean.
• Relativity will finally be understood and highly valued. As a species, we can be remarkably bright or hopelessly dense. This is a function of our highly evolved brain and that’s fine; not much we can do about that. But what often strikes me most is our indomitable desire to accomplish countless feats and to do so successfully, preferably in states of perfection.The preference to be perfect comes with a degree of obsession with the absolute, which also happens to be a function of scientific endeavour. (I know I seem to be digressing, but I’ll wrap it up shortly)Social media and the Internet will force us to constantly question, re-evaluate and transform (a) traditional schools of thought, (b) established mores, and (c) longstanding theories and models as well as consensually pre-conceived and accepted modes of behavior.Why? Because we will finally come to realize that we live in realms of relativity yet are forced to obtain absolutes. Once we really appreciate and understand this, then there would be a really good reason to make a blockbuster Hollywood film that captures it all. Oh okay, maybe a book first. Or graphic novel.

What do YOU think will be next for social media? Do see it going beyond the obvious and predictable?
graphic sourced from photobucket.com by shibby999955