When discussing social web and how it relates to marketing, the focus is mostly on consumers and the communities formed around products and services. Engagement, immediate feedback and responsibility, empowerment of fans, flexibility and having a human voice are the blueprint for companies when interacting with consumers.

Photo by Julia Manzerova, under a CC License

The discussion on how these values translate on a Business-To-Business scenario is quite recent, with companies like Dachis Corporation or recent initiatives by SAP exploring these brave new waters. But one thing is to have a 10000 feet view on social business, another is having to deal with day-to-day operations, from procurement to human resources.
We all have heard stories about greedy managers or other forms or corporate assholes, that don’t care about the latest social technologies and are usually control freaks, oblivious about our oh-so-noble concepts of social capital, long tail or crowdsourcing. And worst, they push businesses into a new form of Prisoner’s dilemma.

The prisoner’s dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory that demonstrates why two people might not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to do so

Even if we have the best intentions and try to collaborate with other business, the fact is that the amount of effort we put on using social technologies isn’t returned with the same level of commitment by other companies which we deal on a regular basis. Much to blame is the selfish need for maximizing shareholder value that still prevails on many companies (despite having caused the recent economic crisis), forcing stakeholders not to invest in values and technologies more supportive of innovation and social responsibility.

Unlike Business-To-Consumer markets, the reason why i find this dilemma still stands on B2B is because of low adoption of public publishing platforms. Even if we consider Yammer or Linkedin, most of business conversations are shielded by corporate guidelines with a veiled interest on lack of transparency.
When will we see the corporate equivalents of Facebook and Twitter? Where companies cooperate in their best interests, with no hidden payoffs and in a transparent market, where the conversations are regarded with the same importance as in consumer markets. It’s time to replace the traditional industrial complex of pushing goods for the markets with a more design and socially responsible model, where hidden agendas are hard to maintain under public scrutiny.

Yes, i know it’s a dream. But so was landing men on the moon.

It’s been a while since my last Shamess PromoTion, where i highlight projects created by friends, mostly from Portugal. The project i’ll be describing today was developed by SAPO, where some good friends managed to deliver one of the most solid web applications i’ve seen lately, specially considering that Lisbon isn’t exactly Silicon Valley.

So, what’s Pond ?  It’s an aggregator and publishing tool for social media services, that allows anyone to manage their social graph on a single place. You can import your friend list from social web services, merge friend contacts and update your social web status on the web, mobile or desktop.

The wide range of platform support is certainly the highlighted feature:  Besides the web, Android, and Symbian mobile apps are available (iPhone soon) and desktop software (Mac, Windows and Linux) will also be released.

Currently Pond supports Twitter, Flickr, SAPO Fotos, YouTube, SAPO Vídeos, Facebook and SAPO Blogs, as well any RSS or Atom feed. It will surely be a great way to introduce the power of social web to a wider portuguese audience, since the application is sponsored by TMN — the largest mobile carrier in Portugal (disclaimer: TMN is a Fulllsix client) — PT Comunicações and Meo (it will be interesting to see a social app on a IPTV service: social TV).

With smartphones becoming more affordable, growth on the social web will be fueled by mobile web with centralizing services like Pond or Vodafone 360 taking full advantage our digital identities. I only wish i could add more metadata to my friends info, like birthdays, tags or events. Give me that, and i’ll be a happy ? Ponder ?

Great work, SAPO team!

P.S.: the service is on beta — invitation only for the moment — with early registration for TMN clients.

Taking place in Lisbon, the next November 14th, Upload 2.0 intends to discuss current web trends and their impact on Marketing and Communication strategies.

Organized by a team of active participants on Portugal’s social web, the event gathers several practitioners sharing their experiences and ideas on a series of short talks about the role of new media, consumer empowerment and new models of publishing. From marketeers, students, journalists, bloggers or just people with passion for the new social web, you’re all invited to register.

I’ll be giving a short talk on UFOs (Unidentified Flashy Objects). If you find the title unusual, then show up and listen the rest of the content.

Speakers also include Ricardo Teixeira, Rodrigo Moita de Deus, Filipe Carrera, Luís Rasquilha, Fernando Batista, Daniel Caeiro, Vasco Trigo, Paulo Querido, and Sérgio Bastos with panels moderated by Rodrigo Saraiva, João Morais and Domingos Pereira.

There’s no excuse of being at work (it’s on a Saturday) or being expensive (ticket at 28€ / 20€ for students). Find all about it at UploadLisboa.com or get the updates at twitter/@UploadLisboa.

P.S.:
Speaking of events, today it’s Ignite Portugal, where Alt.Prt.Sc will be recording a special videocast and my colleague Tiago is giving the Ignite talk “How to manage impossible projects with agility”. See you later.

Since 2006, Web 2.0 and the growth of accessible publishing platforms, the microsite (also called hotsite or campaign site) has been on life support, with a near death as new forms of interaction extend to multiple touchpoints. Many have declared the death of the microsite — hyperboles are good linkabait — as the social web became increasingly important, both for consumers and companies.

The age of microsite featured the usual broadcast tactics, pushing “shiny flashy objects” and applying the usual recipes of “spray-and-pray” or “build-it-and-they-will-come”. From those days, the web graveyard inherited thousands of zombie pages that became lifeless, after broadcasting their ephemeral commercial message.

FWA 2005 Site Of The Month: 4 out of 12 are no longer online

The kind of campaign websites listed above, is pretty much careless of what happens after the “campaign” ends. Not even the decency of doing a simple 301 HTTP redirect, with users stumbling upon a parked page, filled with AdWords by someone with a sense of opportunity. Don’t tell me that a company can’t spare a lousy hosting bill for an old sucessfull campaign or $10USD for a redirected or masked domain.

But enough about microsites, that i personally call “the web’s non-recyclable garbage”. Fast forward to 2009, where one would expect that some lessons from the previous days would turn companies more wiser when defining an integrated Internet presence. Well, not quite.

Photo by Laughing Squid under Creative Commons

Meet the social zombies

These are the kind of corporate presences on social web platforms and services, created only to serve a temporary tactical purpose. As with microsite, they’re nurtured during a few weeks with fresh blood (regular updates, a widget, a viral wannabe), but then left dying on the same kind of web graveyard. But now with a more bloody consequence, taking with them all the community (fans, followers, viewers, etc) that they’ve built while alive.

Examples include the usual Twitter account created for the yearly event, a Facebook page activated only for a new product launch or a YouTube channel with the 500 views viral wannabe. This “social media bribery” is again leaving pieces of rotten digital flesh all over the web.

DharmaWantsYou.com (An ARG for TV series Lost) has won a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy, but is now defunct (or should i say lost)

A sustainable solution could be a wiki on the same domain, highlighting the narrative and interactions.

Sometimes it’s just brands experimenting and failing, and i’m ok with that. The problem is not caring to clean the mess once finished, on a bad example of interactive sustainability (how’s that for a buzzword?).
The social web is also about brands creating a sustainable presence on conversational destinations and managing the digital footprint for the long run (Google doesn’t forget). Once a campaign ends, don’t stick only to analysis, with the follow-up also including a post-mortem curation, by informing (updating the bio or description) or reaching out to the community (Tr.im open-sourced their service). And please, don’t just limit yourself to profile euthanasia.

These days we had our share of new social web services, with Mashable or Techcrunch feeding us daily with some new shiny object. Nonetheless, some brands venture into this competitive territory and create their own experiences, particular when there’s one dedicated set of consumers who share a common passion.

Such is the case with Nation of Go, a Google Maps mashup sponsored by BF Goodrich, which you can get a short video overview:

There’s also a free mobile app to track drives, trails and racetracks and automatically upload them to one’s profile, with support for geo-tagged photos.
I’m a sucker for branded content and applications, and though suspicious of branded social networks (it’s like having a private talk on a crowded bar), this one from BFG really impressed me. Shame it’s only for North America.

Source: Creativity Online

The Charlatans – Oh Vanity

On other related stuff, millions of Users and Businesses Register Facebook Usernames in First 24 Hours of Landrush.

I’m with Chris Messina. We really need to stop this namespace race and just stick with a plain old
TLD.

From ManyEyes.

After all, it’s been one month since you questioned the long term sustainability of Twitter, so I wonder if you actually stood longer than what you claimed on your research. By now, if your 60% Twitter churn rate was really credible, there was a pretty good chance that you were no longer microblogging. But look, you’re still around and have been pretty active the past weeks.

Asking the right questions

Jonah Lehrer in “How we Decide” explains the way audience research is flawed: when presented to the pilot shows of Hill Street Blues or Seinfeld, focus groups reacted with bad reviews, on what was mostly a response against novelty. On this particular behavior, Brian Graden of MTV Networks rightfully says “Quantitative data is useless by itself. You’ve got to ask the data the right questions”.
The main concern when judging similar situations should be “to sort through these emotion mistakes so he or she isn’t misled by the audience’s first impression. Sometimes people like shows that actually stink and reject shows that they grow to enjoy”.
As with Twitter, people might not always get things on their first time, but it will grow on them, they’ll get used to it and eventually find their own way to enjoy it. Oh, wait: that’s the whole story of the Internet.
Nielsen is acting like TV exec that misinterpreted the data. From the fact that most of the Twitter traffic is done by the API on desktop or mobile applications to the hidden truth that many people do comeback a few months later (see graph below), I felt misled when reading the original link-baiting report that lacked any careful analysis, and when later clarifying the report (i wonder why), they still kept comparing apples and oranges.

Understanding the Twitterverse

Nielsen did a fine job of getting the data, but showed their lack of knowledge about the Twitterverse (the twitter universe, both the ecosystem and the platform).
The service itself is low on friction, which explains part of the dropout rate. But if you think closely and have been around on Twitter for a while you realize that many of these dropout users are lurkers, spammers, pseudo-consultants, squatters, etc. They seek instant gratification and are all about their narcissistic broadcasting practices. No wonder the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets.

Source: TechCrunch

The platform also hides many of the massive usage from desktop or mobile users. Ask any user that has been using the service for longer than one month and they’ll tell you they mostly use Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Nambur, Twiterific or the sorts. Realizing that users are more active once they learn about these tools, Twitter now promotes apps on the sidebar, a win-win for both developers and the service.
It’s been said before that the “what are you doing” claim is so not about Twitter as it has changed the way people interact using the web, being simple but versatile enough to be used in multiple ways, with a level activity that surges ahead of some high level websites like NYTimes or Digg. Beginners feeling the service is over simplistic and mundane, it’s kind like asking on late 90’s regarding mobile phones, “Why would I ever carry a phone around when I have one in my kitchen?”, as Biz Stone says.

No Media Hype to see here, move along

I’m being a bit too negative on Nielsen, but perhaps that’s because i’ve seen great web services being misunderstood by the ad media, that loves to have a good startup bloodbath.
Media hype has already caused their share of problems to ideas like OLPC or Second Life, but other products and companies like Google or Facebook have managed to float above this by focusing on people and building great products. If Twitter keeps focusing on building a great product, supporting the ecosystem and letting on thousand apps bloom, they will get by this kind of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and then achieve mainstream adoption.

Old media will keep having a vetted interest in downplaying the importance of digital communication, from reports about the bad consequences of social networking to the cyber-bulling threat. New technologies are hard to understand at first, but as they get adopted and new behaviors more widespread, Twittering will soon turn into a common verb. Just google it.

Having finished recently Jonah Lehrer’s book How We Decide, it became clear that too much information often causes you start having decision paralysis. That insight also combined nicely with one my favorite idiomatic quotes:

Jack of all trades, master of none,
though ofttimes better than master of one.

Having worked in marketing and programming, project management and motion design, this may even seem a personal counter sense. In fact, trying to pretend you do or know a lot of things on several disciplines induces mediocrity, by not excelling in any of them.

Relax, my cat wasn’t harmed for the photo shoot

The same reasoning applied last Monday while commenting about “who owns social media“, as i stated that only users own social media. Not PR agencies, not ad agencies, not SEO experts. Everyone and his dog cat is trying to get  a piece of the cake, even if we’re all clueless about it. We’re all learning as we go.

So stop pretending your agency knows all about social media when they just don’t have the skills or human talent. If you try to be jack-of-all-trades, you risk being regarded as master of none. Be a PR agency. Or a Design Studio. And work with the best partners to provide the best social media strategy.
As for the so called Social Media Experts that are becoming more usual nowadays, beware. Ask what they did for the community, what social web tools do they use besides Facebook or Twitter, demand for examples.

This is not the end of it, yet.  Just this morning, as i was thinking about these subjects and the way they relate to my professional experience, i tweeted:

Don’t get offended by the mention of parasites. It’s actually an evidence in nature, stated by the the much wiser author Kevin Kelly on his latest post “Increasing Specialization”, on what was a personal closure on this specialization subject. It’s something that works for nature and i believe it should apply not only for professionals but also for organizations.

We can’t all be a Renaissance Man. We can’t all be as good writer as we are engineers. We can’t all be companies that are both creative and perform six-sigma. You’ll only make a fool of yourself when facing someone who actually knows about the subject.

Digital Marketing will have a hard time being respected if every 15 year old kid proclaims himself as a Social Media Expert. Or worse, if companies actually hire them because they don’t respect the discipline enough or just can’t find the talent to work on it. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all be interested about it:

Be absurdly great at one thing. Be curious on all things.