Web Strategy by Jeremiah

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Lars Schwenk, General Manager of Cyworld Europe shared with me what it takes to be a community, we were at Forrester’s Consumer forum in Barcelona.

If you’re not familiar with Cyworld that have heavy penetration in South Korea, (50% of Koreans is a member — and that 95 percent of its target youth market is active -Marketwatch) where it was birthed. Find out his four components of community: Communication, Collaboration, Self-Expression and what he calls “Peeping”. Something I swear I’ve never done.

I asked my Twitter network (over 1700 of them) what questions to ask Lars, and David Berkowitz wanted to know what we could learn from Asia’s deployment of Cyworld and what it means to the United States. If you’re interested in social networks in Asia, I was recently in Singapore and asked their top bloggers (video), two months ago I was in HK and talked to many of the web leaders, check out this four part series.

Cyworld launched in North America yet adoption has been very low, I learned from my travels that social technographics vary by culture, so to simply re skin a website for regions doesn’t work. Web Strategists must understand the people who they want to serve first, one size does not fit all!

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At first glance, many are afraid of the minutia within Twitter. While the conversations may be more granular, I use Twitter in a few different ways:

1) As a ’shared feed’ reader. I’ll post up links of what I’m reading that I find is interesting in near real time, and give some commentary.

2) As a chat room. We collectively work out problems, issues, and I gain insight to other people’s viewpoints

3) Event capture: Lately, when I attend an event (like Mark Cuban’s presentation at BlogWorldExpo, or Teresa’s webinar on Facebook yesterday) I’ll fire off the top nuggets I learn/

4) Listening tool: It’s interesting to find out what others are sharing and talking about, from very personal to big concepts.

5) Traffic driving tool: I use it to direct people to this blog, sometimes (I’ll admit) a bit too enthusiastically. Google Analytics indicates this is one of the largerst referrers of traffic.

If you’re a Web Strategist at a company or agency, read Web Strategy: What the Web Strategist should know about Twitter.

I hope to see you on Twitter, if you add me as a contact, I’ll add you back.

So, how do you use Twitter?

Relax from the location of your own desk or home and listen in to learn how to best use social media tools to enhance your web strategy. Here’s a few upcoming webinars I’ll be participating in, please join me.

My first research report will be answering this topic, and I’ll be presenting my findings and give marketers practical steps to move forward. Many of you are already familiar with my extensive coverage of the social networking industry, and even this well read list of “white label social networks”

“The social networking industry is hot and hyped, leaving marketers confused on how to strategically engage. Marketers are being asked by their management to develop a Facebook/MySpace strategy without first looking at the bigger picture. With nearly 80 white label social networking sites available, some brands invest in building their own social network around their brand but, sadly, with no one showing up. Marketers need knowledge and strategy before jumping into a social network craze. This teleconference presents actionable steps on what to do before implementing a program”

This presentation is scheduled to begin on Friday, December 7, 2007, at 1:00 P.M. U.S. Eastern / 10:00 A.M. U.S. Pacific.

Steve Mann, SAP Total Customer Experience, Competitive Program Office, Services Marketing

Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Research Senior Analyst and Web Strategist

Seth Godin, Worldwide Best-Selling Author

Moderator: Robin Fray Carey, Social Media Today

Looking forward to seeing you online, and talking to you!

Background info: Social Graph
If you’re not familiar with the social graph, it’s a representation of our relationships in social networks. There’s a movement underway to be able to separate our social graphs from the social networks, so we can ‘transport’ our friends whatever website we decide to use –without having to re add them. Start with Explaining what the “Social Graph” is to your Executives.

Last night, at a roundtable hosted by the Conversation Group and new company called Something Simpler we conversed > debated > argued if the Social Graph can indeed be monetized.

Naysayers
Tom Foremski also fears monetization and suggests that “I think this could be the Achilles’ heel of social networks–if you push the monetization too far–you will lose your networks.” Tom wasn’t alone, as Om Malik suggested that the only way you could monetize the graph was to ‘pimp your friends’.

Hopefuls
Yet John McCrea and I agreed, I suggested that authentic, efficient, word-of-mouth can evolve to information no longer being advertising. I’m talking about natural endorsements. How could this work? It happens every day. Many of my friends tell me which brands they like by simply wearing the logos, driving a brand car, to outright telling me what they like. Can this truly be different on the web? Why does it scare us so? I mean just last night, Salim Ismail from Yahoo’s Brickhouse (also on the panel) whispered into my ear, he had questions about my new Nokia N95, I gave him my clear and honest feedback –without being paid by Karl Long, Nokia’s top blogger.

Even if we agreed, aggregating the Social Graph isn’t easy
The challenges continue to mount, besides the fact we can’t agree if we should move forward, trying to implement will be a challenge. Aggregating the social graph (which is what we’re trying to do) has many obstacles, here’s a few from a recent blog post on the topic:

-Social Network vendors scared to open up and let customers and their relationships easily move to other networks
-Agreement needed between all vendors and participants
-Ownership over project and data
-Lack of general market awareness
-User adoption (sadly, I think most users are sheep)
-Likely, a need for a single login
-Creation and costs of third-party silo
-Privacy concerns: many European countries may not embrace
-Multiple security issues
-Legal and government may get involved

Votes from around the room
If things weren’t cloudy enough, at the close, we went around the room to give our final thoughts and to answer “Can the Social Graph be Monetized?”. Chris Heuer was recording, and I hope he posts it up, yet I took a tally from the attendees.

Votes | Answer
3 - Users must engage with social graph first/ monetization comes later
2 - Brands will benefit by ‘pullling’ social graphs (communities) to their site
2 - Over advertising will kill it
1 - Embed in Value now
1 - Advertising (but must be honest) can work
2 - It can’t be monetized

Your voice wanted
Enough. Let’s turn it over to you. Can the social graph be monetized? Chime in the comments. What would make it work, what are the pitfalls. Can marketers make money in an authentic and trustful way using social networks?

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly summary, please send to your busy executives.

I’ve created a new category called Digest where you can start to track and access these going forward. Quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read summary for analysis, and click link to dive in for more. You can subscribe to this digest tag only, which filters only these posts tagged digest.

Need to make decisions about your web strategy? I’m here to help: subscribe to my blog, sign up for emails (right nav), follow me on Twitter, or add me on Facebook (I’ll add you back for each).

Web Strategy Summary
I’m starting to hear of OpenSocial creep into strategies of many brands, including companies that are briefing me. Privacy continues to be a major concern as users feel uncomfortable with how their data is being used, expect this backlash to continue as marketing becomes more personal. Money is starting to trickle into this space, from IPOs of older and existing social networks.

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Trends: The social web with the Giant Global Graph
Tim Berners Lee in his latest blog post, supports the Giant Global Graph (GGG), which suggests that what’s really important on the web isn’t documents or the data, but the relationships and people and topics that we’re interacting with. As we evolve and shift to the socialized web, we should expect to share content with peers online.

Privacy: Beacon cause concern, backlash forming
Colleague Charlene pointed out to me last week that she’s seeing how Beacon can really expose personal information to her online network –without her expressed consent. The problem may not be entirely on Facebook’s shoulders, as the third party companies that are partnered with this social selling program should be held accountable by allowing the service to be opt-in, and not opt-out. Respect of users is critical for success.

NewsFeed: MySpace to replicate Newsfeed –a nod to OpenSocial
In order for viral apps to spread among a community the newsfeed has been invaluable at Facebook. No surprise that MySpace appears to be gearing up to launch the same feature, giving developers in the upcoming OpenSocial movement an opportunity to quickly share.

Money: Classmates.com early Social Network to IPO
One of the oldest with a strong hold with baby boomers in North America is going to have an IPO –a rare exit strategy for web companies. They’re looking at a total 12M Class a Shares and Price at $10 to $12 Each. So that means a total an estimate of about $117.7 million after fees and expenses.

Advertising: China’s Alibaba seeks monetization
This recently IPO’d SMB online marketplace Social Network launched web advertising products. Alibaba, which calls this product Alimama (which has been tested) will have ties to blog advertising.

Performance: Yahoo 360 reliable, MSN Spaces not so much
With users spending an average of 20 minutes on some social networks, the need for dedicated website uptime is critical –especially when you’ve got paying advertisers or customers. This list compiles which websites have the best performance, where Yahoo 360 (an unremarkable social network) is followed by Facebook to lead the pack. MSN Spaces suffers from the most downtime.

Talent: Facebook is the “Cool” company
I live very closer to Facebook, and can drive to Google, and have friends working at both. While Google is still clearly the established leader, there’s been a few rumors being discussed as Facebook as the “hot” company to work for, and talent leaves. With Google’s stock prices being so high, many who join are interested in the great culture, and amenities, but the promise of ‘cashing out’ still is the desire for many Facebook employees.

Stats: LinkedIn and Facebook have largest growth
Take a look at the growth percent numbers of Facebook and Linkedin, both are way above the 150% mark. Myspace has single digit growth, but has an established foothold with a large audience. The other to watch? Disney’s club penguin, with small numbers, has over 150% growth.

Privacy: Youth not sensible, Political Crackdowns
Many of today’s youths are putting tremendous amount of personal information online without giving thought to future employers, colleges, fraudsters and the malicious. BBC explores the alarming trend of youth an their online footprint precedes their reputation. In a somewhat similar situation, the government of Syria is using information within social networks to track criminals –digital finger prints may just be easier to track.

Demographics: Facebook mainly women, US, UK, Canada
Great data here, this graph (click on image to see full size) indicates a breakdown of self-identified Facebook users, most from US, UK, Canada, and a majority are female. It would be great if the graph could further break down ‘penetration’ by country, so we can see which countries have the highest adoption rates.

Although I’ve been doing this digest for a while, I’ve recently become an analyst covering this space, so I need to know what’s happening. If I missed any stories (or if your company is doing something cool in this space) leave a comment.

Need to know more? Here’s 10 Web Strategy articles I wish you would read.