The Paradox of Social Media Marketing

If you spend any time on the Internet, you’ve probably heard quite a few people bandy about the term “web 2.0″ referring to the recent wave of Internet communities and services. If you haven’t heard me say this already, it bears repeating: Web 2.0 is still in beta.

Many of the applications and online services that we are using clearly describe themselves as beta versions. Even those that consider themselves out of beta still have a long way to go. Twitter needs to incorporate some of the features popping up in third party applications, Pownce needs users, Reddit needs to be more user friendly, StumbleUpon needs to address security issues. The list goes on and on.

Many web 2.0 applications and services are still trying to invent themselves. They haven’t quite found their niche or purpose.

Twitter asks us a question that web 2.0 sites and services need to ask themselves. What am I doing?

Many web 2.0 applications and services are still trying to invent themselves. They haven’t quite found their niche or purpose.

The thrust of this blog post is divided into two main parts, the provider and the user. I’ll tackle things from the provider perspective and then the user perspective.

Developing New Social Media Outlets

From the developer and provider point of view, things look like this:

1. Start with an idea of something people will like and use.

2. Get it to work.

3. Get people to use it.

4. Figure out how to make money with it. (While maintaining users).

5. Evolve enough to keep people interested and stay ahead of the competition.

We’ve got some good ideas floating around. Many break down quickly at #2. Twitter has received quite a bit of angst because of reliability issues in the past (although things have been a little smoother during the last few days). I have given up on a number of desktop applications that tried to integrate web 2.0 because the number of bugs present made the software largely unusable.

Number 3 is a tough on for some platforms like Pownce, which still seems to be floundering in Twitter’s shadow. Right now it just doesn’t seem to be generating enough buzz for itself or delivering enough content or connectivity.

Number 4 is a big sticking point for almost everyone, especially the caveat at the end about maintaining users while making money. Therein lies the rub. The two main modalities for income at this point are charging for use and advertising. Yahoo has some premium services and some ad driven services. Google is entirely ad driven. Pownce has an optional yearly subscription. For the most part, advertisement revenue remains the most widely used approach to bringing in money.

On the development side of things the paradox is this: The more you advertise or charge, the fewer users you will have. For many consumers free is better than a monthly subscription, and charging from the outset will keep people away. Charging for additional or premium services will most likely bring in only a small amount, as the vast majority will opt for the free services, however meager. If advertising becomes too prominent with popups, animations, sound, overbearing banners and email/IM/txt spam, the audience will get annoyed and look for less intrusive alternatives.

Google seems to have found a decent balance, with their text adds off in the margins, which aren’t overly intrusive. Gmail does read your mail and tries to match relevant adds to you which can be good because you’re getting personalized content, or bad because they are reading your mail. The image below indicates they scanned my message, picked up on the key word air, and provided me with links to airfare sites. Unfortunately Google wasn’t sophisticated enough to realized I was talking about a software platform and not flying.

Facebook has landed themselves in quite a bit of hot water with their beacon directed advertising. The number of complaints about privacy and intrusiveness of facebook as a whole has started turning users off. In facebook’s defense, they’re just trying to figure out a way to make a buck and I can’t really blame them for that, but their methods have been flawed. While I don’t use them personally, they provide an excellent example of the paradox and the delicate balance required to maintain revenue streams and a userbase.

Effective Use of Social Media

There is a lot of buzz in the Twitterverse and other online communication centers about marketers trying to get their clients to embrace web 2.0 and take advantage of the opportunities that are present. I’ve seen lots of statistics floated about number of users/viewers and amounts of advertising dollars spent in various outlets, mostly geared toward getting clients to invest time and money in web 2.0 discourse and advertising.

The basic process as I see it is thus:

1. Join the web 2.0 world.

2. Draw attention to yourself.

3. Maintain people’s interest in you.

4. Leverage the interest into revenue.

I personally haven’t seen very much effective use of web 2.0 sites and services as a marketing tool yet. I have seen quite a few instances of web 2.0 as a tool for excessive announcements and blatant advertising to the point where it borders on spam. I’ve “unfriended” and “unfollowed” several people on sites like Twitter and Pownce because I was getting overwhelmed with their constant streams of self promotion, business announcements and useless links.

Again we approach the paradox, but from a slightly different angle. A presence on the Internet is beneficial, but too much of a presence can steer people away. We end up with a dilemma that requires a very delicate balance. You need to get out there and be seen by people, but must be careful not to obstruct their vision.

If there is a company, website or online service I’m interested in, I’ll check out their blog or sometimes follow them on Twitter. I’ll gladly provide feedback, advice or constructive criticism if it seems that they will listen. If my email inbox starts getting flooded with their announcements or my Pownce page is nothing but links they’ve sent, I’ll quickly shy away and you won’t hear from me again. If we can have an actual two way conversation and develop even a brief personal dialog, I’ll feel a sense of rapport and a sense of investment. I might support your advertisers or think about paying for a subscription or recommend you to my other friends.

In the basic outline above, #1 or joining up is easy. It helps if you spend a little time figuring out where in the web 2.0 world you would best fit in, but a shotgun approach can work. The last step is often very easy. If people know about you and are interested, they’ll naturally visit your web site, store or check out your product. The difficult parts are #2 and 3. Getting noticed and maintaining interest can be very tricky and as I’ve explained before, overdoing it can be counterproductive.

Solutions for Providers

For providers and developers, current models are fragile machines that will require a lot of fine tuning to achieve the perfect balance. Subscriptions can be particularly tricky because if you are taking money directly from people, you are definitely more beholden to their needs on an individual level. Customer service can be a nightmare. The ad driven approach is less of a hassle, but user privacy issues, the presence of ad blocking software and the paradox of too much advertising can be tricky.

In my opinion, the real solution hasn’t been found yet. I think in the future we’ll see more of a direct tie in between social networks and traditional business. Businesses will hire social networks to perform various functions for them, and will likewise provide services to web 2.0 developers (which will in turn send web 2.0 users back to the business). I don’t have specific examples or concrete ideas of how this will work, but I believe the future lies beyond simple banner ads.

Solutions for Users

There is a lot of uncharted territory and untapped potential available. Individual users will have to figure out how to best tailor the many new resources available to suit their needs. There is one extremely important starting point here and that is the idea of a two way conversation. Announcements and updates are one thing, but true success will be found in personal dialog. This may be unfamiliar ground for many clients and companies and they will most likely need to find web 2.0 savvy individuals to help them out. To take advantage of web 2.0, you need to have a name and face behind the image. If you want to receive feedback, you need to respond to feedback. To take advantage of web 2.0 you need to be part of web 2.0, meeting and interacting with your target audience and customers on a personal level, in the places they frequent.

A developer from Microsoft stopped by this blog a few weeks back and posted a solution to a problem I was having with a piece of MS software. That was pretty darn impressive in my book. Now lets say company X comes along and engages its target audience on their blogs, says hi on Twitter, connects with them through Digg and gets to know the consumer just a little bit on a personal level. That type of relationship is pure win-win. It can be time consuming, but with a dedicated and proficient staff (for example yourself, a social media consultant, an web savvy PR employee) the sky is the limit.

That’s all I have for now. I hope reading my thoughts here has spurned some fresh ideas of your own.

Cheers!

Jeff

Pownce Disappoints

I’ve continued to check Pownce a few times a day, and try to reply to the posts of others and make interactive posts myself, but it just doesn’t seem to be working out.

It’s been a little while since my last blog post about Pownce and I’ve seen little improvement in the usage. A few new friends have stopped by and connected with me, but their posting has been minimal.

A few people are using Pownce heavily, but not in a way that appeals to me. Most of the Pownce activity I was seeing early on was from a few individuals who would constantly post announcements and links to random websites. Thanks, but I’ve already tried Digg and Stumbleupon and don’t need you trying the same thing with Pownce.

A select few people have replied to my posts and have made interesting posts themselves which I’ve replied to, but they are few and far between. I’m not implying that most Pownce users aren’t interesting, rather what I’m trying to say is that most Pownce users aren’t using Pownce. It’s still stuck in the early stages of sign up, add a few friends, check it out and say “Hmm, looks sort of interesting, but there really isn’t much here. Bye.”

The Pownce interface looks nice, but lacks real utility. There is no “replies” tab like the one that gets heavy use in Twitter. Individual messages take up a lot more room and take a little more time to sift through than with Twitter. Conversations are extremely difficult to follow. If you reply to someone, they will see it, but odds are that you won’t see their reply to your reply, or other replies after yours that may be directed at you.

This last bit really turned me off to Pownce. With Twitter, people usually just include an @someone to indicate they are replying to their post or replying to their reply. With Pownce, you need to go back and find the original post and look at all the replies to see if someone has responded to your reply. Frankly that is too much work for me.

I haven’t seen any improvements or heard talk of upcoming improvements, but I have heard quite a few unimpressed users express their apathy. Not a good sign.

I check Pownce less and less each day, and really don’t have any desire to post there anymore at this point. If someone develops a Twhirl or Snitter style application that can aggregate incoming posts from Pownce and Twitter, it may start seeing more use, but for now it remains a disappointment.

Twitter vs. Pownce: the Ultimate Showdown!

Apparently some people out there haven’t quite caught on to the microblogging craze, or are a bit confused about the differences between the two. Here’s a somewhat lighthearted look at the two in a no holds barred, knock down, drag out fight.

Lets get ready to rumble!

In the light blue corner, the reigning champion - Twitter.

Twitter has been around longer and has a large userbase. The number of clients, addons, extensions, related websites and methods of access is impressive. Lately though, the champ has been stumbling, suffering from extended outages and downtime.

The various clients available for Twitter, when working, are a great alternative to the web interface. My current favorites for Windows are Snitter and Twhirl, but both can be buggy at times. There are also multiple plugins for firefox available. If that’s not your cup of tea you can get at Twitter from IM or SMS. If you’re a fan of text messaging, this can be a fun way to occupy your time while riding the subway to work.

There are a large number of websites that extend Twitter’s functionality. Tweetscan lets you easily search Twitter for tweets containing certain text. Twitter Karma helps you keep track of who is following you and who you are following. Twitterpacks help you find people with the same interests as yourself. Tweetstats reports on your usages, and there are a host of other websites as well.

Reliability is an issue with Twitter, and drives people to Pownce during the downtime. Twitter officially broke up with Joyent recently, and some of the stability issues may improve. Time will tell.

In the green corner, the cagey up and comer - Pownce

Pownce has just come out of beta and has some catching up to do with regards to the number of users. A reasonable number of people have signed up, but a majority of them don’t use it much. Activity has picked up with the recent Twitter outages, but it is still far behind.

Pownce goes beyond the realm of just text and allows you to post pictures, videos, music and other files easily. Also, it’s remarkably simpler to add links just by clicking the button, compared to the usual cut and paste then tinyurl process with Twitter. Most of the videos are just youtube viral videos, but it’s a fun way to share amusing vids with friends. The ability to share photos is very cool. I threw up a picture of my dog, but there are some gifted photographers out there who frequently share some excellent material. I personally enjoy these very much. There is a lot more creative stuff being shared around on Pownce compared to the Twitter’s pure text and links.

There are a few fan created and third party applications and extensions for Pownce, but for the most part Pownce is still in the infancy stage for this category.

One cool feature in Pownce is the ability to group friends in sets. This can be useful when your friends list starts growing and you need an easy way to sort or separate them. I wish Twitter had such a feature.

Also, if you wish, Pownce has plenty of room to provide all of your other contact information like Twitter ID, Flickr, Facebook, IM, email, blog, homepage. I find this a handy way to find people on other networks. I just go to Pownce, click their profile, and presto, all the info I need. Currently Twitter just allows one link for each user.

Pownce has a nice interface for finding friends. It can easily scan your Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, GMail, Hotmail, AOLmail and Yahoo mail contacts. Twitter will only search email contacts (from the same 4).

Point by Point Comparison

Number of users/activity: Advantage Twitter, by a large margin. Pownce may slowly creep up, but Twitter has a huge head start.

Third party support, addons, and extensibility: Advantage Twitter, by a lot.

Reliability: Advantage Pownce. Twitter has been having problems lately and it’s trying people’s patience.

Accessibility: Advantage Twitter. Web, IM, Txt and local clients provide many options for getting connected.

Flexibility: Advantage Pownce. Videos, pictures, music, easy linking, and text sans the 140 character limit.

Friend Finding: Advantage Pownce. Both let you search by name, but Pownce has more options for importing from other services.

Tally

That’s 3 for Twitter and 3 for Pownce. OK, the numbers are misleading. Twitter wins, easily, if only because it’s what people are using right now.

In the end, it all boils down to what you want. If you want to share a variety of media types, you need Pownce. If you want more access options, Twitter is the way to go.

Personally, I’m still using Twitter most of the time, because that is where the action is. I also use Pownce on a daily basis and enjoy the different kinds of content that pops up there. If you into social networking and web 2.0, you should probably start using both.

Before long we’ll start seeing clients that aggregate both Pownce and Twitter, and by then there will be no reason not to enjoy the benefits of each.

-Jeff

Pownce Update

Over the last few days I’ve added most of my Twitter friends to Pownce and have about 25 people that I’m friends with (two way connection) and about 25 that I’m fans of (one way connection - either they haven’t bothered to log in and accept friends, or they don’t wish to follow me).

I have gotten updates from exactly 7 people. I have gotten private messages and replies to my posts. There have been a few general updates that I noticed across both Pownce and Twitter. The vast majority of the updates I’ve received have been from two “internet people”, tech news blogger and podcaster Cali and Mahalo guy Jason.

Most of the updates are small text messages (basic tweets) often with links and some but not all are shortened with TinyURL. One person posted an MP3 file and I posted an image just to try it out.

When clicking on the picture of one of your friends on the left side of the screen, you are shown their public updates, and all the public updates they receive. The most common thing I saw was this:

Which was the picture I posted over a day ago. Since I’m not the most prolific microblogger out there, this tells me that most people on my friends list aren’t exactly knocking themselves out using Pownce. Most of them have much smaller friends list than I do suggesting they haven’t imported friends from Twitter or another service.

I know it’s only been a few days, but Beta has been around for a while and Pownce certainly has been talked about for a good deal of time. I expect action to pick up slowly, but am a bit surprised that it hasn’t taken off quicker than it has.

I think the two main problems at this point are that Twitter has established the early lead as far as the messaging component goes. Where Pownce stands out it the ability to add other media such as files, MP3s, pictures etcetera. I get the impression that most users really haven’t figured out a way to productively use the added capabilities of Pownce.

One of my Twitter friends posted a link to her latest blog post, which was pretty bare bones, but at the bottom contained this image she was using for promotional purposes (there was a link provided as well).

What I’m wondering is: Why not stick this image in a Pownce post? Rather than just giving people a link to a page with the image on it, why not give them the image right up front in Pownce. I’m a very visual person and so using pictures and graphics is a good way to grab my attention.

Curiosity will still probably suck me into following your link, but placing an image up front grabs my attention and makes me take a closer look.

I think this is where the strength of Pownce will come in, but the people behind Pownce would be wise to get the word out there before other competitors start catching up. If they were able to better demonstrate how Pownce’s unique features can be better used, they might generate more of a buzz.

For straight text, quick updates, and TinyURLs, I like Twitter. I don’t see Pownce replacing Twitter, since Twitter has more experience under its belt, a much higher user base and much more more traffic.

If you would like to increase Pownce usage, and get more use out of it, start thinking outside the box a little. I know it often takes a momentous effort to get friends and clients just to warm up to new things like Twitter, and it won’t be easy, but I think there could be potential for the mutli-media microblog.

If you’re really connected to the Internet these days, you’ve probably got a Twitter account, a Flickr account and maybe you’ve even started using Seesmic or Utterz as well. Why not start putting some of that content up little by little on Pownce? Record a short MP3 message and post it. Put the latest picture of your nephew doing something silly up, whatever strikes you.

If you are promoting something, trying to get more traffic to your website, trying to get friends to join you for a night out or whatever, why not throw some multimedia advertising out there? The poster displayed above is a good example of something you could stick in a Pownce post. If you have any graphic talents, instead of just providing a link, how about a link and a logo? With a little thinking outside the box, or a slightly different approach, Pownce could be a cheap and easy way to get attention or at least add some flair to your microblogging.

Cheers,

Jeff

Pownce - A Quick Look

A few days ago Pownce went from closed beta to completely open. If you’re not familiar with it, Pownce is a social networking and microblogging site. It is found on the web at Pownce.com. There are a few similarities between Pownce and Twitter, and a few notable differences.

If you are completely unfamiliar with some of the concepts of social networking and services like Twitter and Pownce, I’ll give a quick rundown. The first thing you need is friends. Pownce lets you search for other uses by name, or you can quickly import your friends from places like Flickr, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL mail, and Yahoo mail. This will send out a friend request, allowing you to follow their public posts and if they accept your request, will allow them to follow you and allow you to see content designated for friends only.

Once you have a network of friends and fans (a fan is a one way friend, you’re following someone, but they aren’t following you), you are ready to start Powncing. You can post short messages, similar to a blog, and all of your friends and fans will be able to see what you’ve posted. Likewise, all of your friends latest updates will be displayed as well.

This is pretty similar to Twitter, allowing you to post random thoughts, updates on what you are doing at the moment or whatever strikes your fancy. Right now, it doesn’t look like there is support for IM integration or SMS integration, which for some is a big draw of Twitter.

What makes Pownce cool, and possibly more useful than Twitter, is the ability to share other types of media, such as pictures, videos, music and even files.

Here is a post with an MP3 file in it. You can listen right from the browser, or download to your computer.

Here’s an example of an attached file in a post

There are various other types of files and media that can be attached, and it looks like a great way to blog your favorite new music, pictures, videos or whatever else you are into.

Right now my circle of friends still relatively small and only about 1/4 of my Twitter pals are on Pownce at the moment. Many of those that do have accounts don’t seem to use them with as much frequency as they use Twitter. I think the number of people using Pownce and the frequency with which they use it will increase shortly, once people start seeing what you can do with the service. If the Mahalo Multisubmit extension takes off, we’re likely to see a lot more Pownce traffic as people submit their posts/tweets/pownces to multiple sites simultaneously.

I like Twitter for the rapid fire conversation and IM-like atmosphere, but Pownce has a great deal of potential for posts with a bit more depth to them, and looks like a great way to share things other than just text. It may even get me to start taking more photos and posting them online from time to time. I like the idea of sharing music (legal, free music of course) as one of my best sources of new music comes from friends.

Pownce is free to sign up for and there is also a pro account available for $20 per year, which gives you a bigger file upload size and a few other features. I’m currently using the free, basic account happily.

Check it out and let me know if you come up with other cool ways to use it. I’ll be adding my Pownce links and a button to my blog soon so feel free to check me out there and show off your stuff!

A Look at Twitter

I recently discovered Twitter and quickly developed a fascination with it. If you aren’t familiar with it, Twitter is a web application that lets you post 140 character updates to the web. You can follow other people’s updates and others can follow yours. You can update from the web, from a local application, from a cell phone, email, or IM.

After expanding your circle of followers and followees, it becomes apparent that Twitter is a bit of a close-knit community. It quickly became apparent to me that the people I was following were following each other, and their followers were following me and I was following them etc.

One person described twitter as being “incestuous” referring to the way everyone in this family follows each other. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

What people use Twitter for varies greatly. Some people do just update what they are doing at the moment, while others use it to direct people to their latest blog posts. Many people like posting random thoughts and commenting on the random thoughts of others. It also serves as a nice IM client, sending messages to all your friends and followers who happen to be online.

Twitter is frequently hampered by technical issues and often goes down for short periods of time. As things get ironed out, I can only see more and more people using the service and think it has enormous potential in the workplace (as more than just a time-waster).

-Jeff