Posts Tagged 'facebook'

No one can deny the impact social media has had on the world over the last couple of years. Facebook and Twitter are now the staple diet of over 40 million people in the UK, a figure that is not decreasing anytime soon. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, took to the stage at the eG8 conference last year to explain why social gaming company Zynga is now worth more than EA. It’s because companies like Zynga and Playfish understand that people want to play games with their friends, so they develop games with social knitted into the core of their design, incorporating TV, films, music, books and news. “People listen to music with friends; you watch TV, read the news and discuss it with friends. These industries can be rebuilt from the ground up with social”, says Zuckerberg. We are now starting to see these industries thinking more socially and when you make these companies social, the opportunities are a lot broader than they are in their current form.

Leading by example there are many apps that broke through in 2011 on the forefront of social design. Spotify, the music streaming application, lets you share songs with friends via an inbox, posting playlists and sharing what you’re listening to, while Pinterest is an online pinboard to share your favourite photos, products, designs or anything that fascinates you. Yet another social platform, BranchOut acts as a recruitment app that lets you share and recommend jobs to your friends. The list goes on with Instagram, Path, Flipboard, GetGlue and so on…

Over the next year we’re going to see more industries tap into the social nature of humans by building social design into the principles of their hardware and software. The core of social design and development is that focus is placed on the people – the way they act and engage online in a more natural way through communicating, interacting and sharing with friends, friends of friends, friends of their friends and so on. Facebook tapped into this early with features such as the friend request, “accept” or “not now”, rather than the traditional “yes” or “no”, therefore psychologically you don’t feel as bad when you decline ‘that’ request from your cousin’s friend’s brother whom you’ve never met before.

This inherently mirrors the social needs of individuals, and 2012 will see this viewpoint move into not only industries such as FMCG, retail and media but education, hospitality, financial services, insurance, real estate and construction. What industry is fundamentally not social? If my friend Bryan had his kitchen fitted by a good plumber, or my friend Jimmi recommends a good accountant he uses, this has distinct value to me. The social sphere is going to directly influence many of the decisions I make and if software is designed to help me in this decision process, then I’m going to use it.

What are some of your favourite social apps?

There is still discussion in bars, offices and around the web on the topic of whether G+ will ever be as big or bigger than Facebook?

Lots of opinions abound often reflecting the author’s view on the relative merits of the two platforms. Well in my view it doesn’t matter whether G+ gets there or not. User volumes are little more than bragging rights and more important to Social Media Strategists selling their wares than to the platforms.

What’s really important here is the “logged in internet”, the more a platform can get you “logged in” the better for them. Historically when you wandered around the internet, you weren’t logged in to anything (only your ISP and they didn’t pass that on). So you were in effect fairly anonymous, you had an IP address (that could change) and some cookies (which you could delete).

There are pros and cons to this depending on which side of the fence you sit. As a visitor you were anonymous and every page request is treated as a new request with no history, as a web site lack of identity makes life harder and means you have to address identity on a site by site basis which can’t be readily shared.

With the advent of Facebook and it’s always logged on model you are no longer anonymous, and therefore when you interact with “associated” sites, you are known, in more detail than you may care to contemplate. That’s why Facebook are so keen on getting 3rd party sites to support the Facebook Login.

Google on the other hand has been taking a data centric, data mining approach, trying to build up an identity for you from its records, which are sadly incomplete. The game now is to find as many ways as they can to have you logged in, so Youtube needs a Gmail account, Gmail needs a Gmail account, Google docs needs a Gmail account, and Android phone needs a Gmail account, you get the picture. And by being logged in (and with the new black bar always signposting the things you can do) Google starts to know much as much more about you and can smooth many transactions, building a more complete profile along the way, all the better to push targeted ads at you…

So Google’s game is not to make G+ bigger than Facebook, it is to make Gmail logins ubiquitous and to know more about you.

Does anyone still think that this is about building a better search experience?

I’ll bet I’m not alone in thinking that nothing beats the feeling of jetting off to explore a country unknown – but even the most intrepid traveller would agree that recommendations on what to see and do from those who know and love the country is the best way to make the most of your time away.

Of course there’s the trusty guide book, and don’t get me wrong it does a grand old job, although suggestions can be limited to the experiences of just a few people (paid to write the guides).

We knew there was an opportunity for Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) to utilise social media and its potential for collaborative storytelling to gather local knowledge from those in the know and share with anyone thinking of visiting one of Scandinavia’s capital cities to help them plan their trip.

Scandinavian Airlines’ (SAS) ‘Ultimate Experience’ campaign does just that – crowdsourcing on Facebook to get people with a passion for Scandinavia to share their local knowledge and help other travellers have a unique and unforgettable experience.

Over the past month virtual ambassadors of Scandinavia have been busy recommending their ultimate experiences of Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm. We’ve cherry picked some of their best recommendations to create 4 ultimate experience guides.

The guides can be used to tour any one of the cities and just to wrap the campaign up nicely, we’ve turned the guides into a Facebook application that gives fans the chance to vote for their favourite guide for the chance to win a trip to their chosen city.