WOM and Social Networks

We were recently directed towards Twarketing: Twitter Marketing Case Studies, who just completed a case study write-up of WOMMA Member Quicken Loans. We must admit, we feel almost like proud parents. Simply put: Quicken is everywhere.

Places to find Quicken: Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo! Answers, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Zillow, LinkedIn.
Blogs Quicken runs: What's the DIFF?, Quicken Loans Insider, Quicken Loans Community DIFF.

That is a lot of social media. We acknowledge the unabashedly promotional quality to this post, but there is a good reason: Quicken offers some very good lessons for big brands. They're connecting, they're doing it in-house, and they're doing it successfully.

How social networks are creating a potentially transformational change in consumer behaviour Social Networking has been the global consumer phenomenon of 2008. Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit a social network or
blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10% of all internet time. ‘Member Communities’ has overtaken personal Email to become the world’s fourth most popular online sector after search, portals and PC software applications.

The story is consistent across the world, ‘Member Communities’ has taken a foothold in every major market from 50% of the online population in Switzerland and Germany to 80% in Brazil.

If you're too busy for social media, then Shel Holtz has some "good news. Adopting social media can actually make it easier to do more with less. If you take a strategic approach, you can reallocate to social media some of the work you have been doing using less efficient tools and channels. In this regard, social media is like any other technology. Its adoption is spurred by the fact that it makes it easier to do things you’ve been doing all along with older, less nimble technologies."

Holtz breaks down the time-saving advantages of social media into a few key sections:
Monitoring: PR academics call it “environmental scanning,”
Reach the press: Multiple studies support the fact that mainstream media has glommed onto social media.

Shaq Twitters about his post-embarrassing-loss insomnia, which he dubs "Shaqsomnia." Lance Armstrong made sure the world knew about his 3 p.m. Hawaiian massages. Dave Matthews wrote about flatulence, and Erykah Badu's boyfriend even Twittered about the birth of their daughter, down to the specific details of "Water broke" and "I can see the head, it's covered in hair." So, why are the stars doing this? Many times, it's to "control [their privacy]." When a star shares their "details on Twitter, it's not going to stop paparazzi from stalking [them].

A few months back we reported on Kmart's foray into the world of blogging and social media; their campaign derived equally from a hope to connect with more socially networked persons, as well as a desire to to overturn some preconceived notions about the quality of Kmart merchandise.

Today, three months removed the December campaign, we can take an objective look at the Kmart campaign, and delve into the whys and hows of its decisions. More importantly, it is critical to glean from the Kmart campaign that, without question, the social media results were measurable. At our link to the case study below, take a look at the campaign and at the measurement involved in assessing the campaign.

Hopefully you've visited TED.com (TED Talks, "Ideas Worth Spreading") in your lifetime. If you haven't, you might consider it a repository for all things inspirational and educational. A warning: it's also incredibly addictive.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and is an "an invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration." TED just held its 2009 conference last month in California, and one of the featured speakers was Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter.

Wait, what's Qzone you ask?

"The site, part of the larger Tencent internet portal, claims to have had more than 200 million monthly active users in January, according to China Web2.0 Review (a translated version of the release is also available at the Web2Asia blog). Facebook, otherwise considered the largest social network in the world, self-reported 175 million monthly active users earlier in February."

If this self-reported number is to be believed, then in fact, Qzone is the largest social network in the world. We were surprised too.

VentureBeat points out that web traffic analysis is quite poor, and that Chinese investors generally don't trust third party analytics based in China.

In the wake of the Facebook ownership scandal of the last few weeks, many people have probably taken a step back and looked at their social network usage. Most of those individuals did not remove their Facebook profiles. But some did, and it's useful to look into the reasoning behind leaving a powerful social presence.

We've selected one such case: http://krustallos1.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-i-deleted-my-facebook-account.html, and we encourage you to read the post, and the comments.

The post is broken down into a few sections:
1) Why did I do this?

AOL announced today that it was adding a "lifestreaming" feature to Bebo, AOL's version of an online social networking service.

What is "lifestreaming" you ask?
"Lifestory uses a zooming technology to look at various times, using text, music, videos and photos and can be done with many contributors. It also includes a feature called Social Slider, which allows a user to have more granular filtering control over who sees what is in Lifestory."

The giant elephant in the room is the question: Hasn't this been done already; as in Facebook's NewsFeed?

Well, yes and no. It is a similar service to the newsfeed, but Bebo "will automatically import all of your friends’ activity on the different services you register, even if those friends aren’t Bebo users.

By now, you may have already received a few invitations for Facebook groups like "People Against the new Terms of Service (TOS)."

If not, here's the scoop: "This month, when Facebook updated its terms, it deleted a provision that said users could remove their content at any time, at which time the license would expire. Further, it added new language that said Facebook would retain users’ content and licenses after an account was terminated."

As you might expect, an uproar ensued.

If you're a Manx worker, that is to say, a worker born in the Isle of Man, you might want to check out Manx Graduates at http://www.manxgraduates.im, because your government is calling for you to come back.

"Manx Graduates is a careers and networking portal for students, graduates and qualified professionals who are looking to pursue a career on the Isle of Man."

The free social and career networking site, founded by the Isle of Man's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), has launched the network with hopes that it will encourage Manx graduates and other skilled workers to return to the island after they have completed their studies.

Last summer professional social network LinkedIn began its internationalization efforts by launching a Spanish language version. Then in November they launched a French version. Now LinkedIn is introducing a German version, appropriately called LinkedIn auf Deutsch. According to Kevin Eyres, Managing Director Europe at LinkedIn, the network already has over 9 million members from Europe alone, so it only makes sense to offer more European languages.

We'd like to share some research on influence from Harvard University that may pique your interest (assuming of course, that you received this newsletter firsthand or secondhand...well let us explain).

Nicholas Christakis of Harvard and James Fowler of UC San Diego have found that the ability of a person to influence another lessens greatly as degrees of separation mount; this probably doesn't shock you. What is surprising, however, is that after the third degree of separation, there is no longer any evidence of influence.

Take this passage, as quoted from the Harvard Business Review:
For example, the risk for smoking in a person connected to a smoker (that is, at one degree of separation) is 61% higher, on average, than would be expected as a result of chance.

Friendster, the "original" north American social network, which debuted one year before MySpace and two years before Facebook, is no longer an American company. In an attempt to sustain growth and find a consistent revenue source (a problem faced by the North American power players Facebook and MySpace as well), Friendster is now being run out of Sydney, Australia.

Another chief reason the social networking company chose to head south was to move closer to its realistic home base of users.

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, written by John Broughton, is for sale on O’Reilly.com for only $29.99. The Missing Manual gives you practical advice on how to create articles and collaborate with fellow editors, how to improve existing articles, and how to work with the Wikipedia community to review new articles, mediate disputes, and maintain the site.