The Rise and Rise of Social Media in the UK

Over at the We Are Social blog, Robin Grant points towards research from Hitwise showing that 10.09% of all UK internet visits over the Christmas period were to ‘Social Networking and Forums’:

"The successes of Facebook and YouTube, along with similar sites, meant that social networks accounted for 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits during Christmas week. For the week ending 27/12/08, our Computers and Internet – Social Networking and Forums category accounted for 10.09% of all UK Internet visits, the first ever time it has passed the 10% threshold."

Robin Goad, Research Director at Hitwise UK

Here's the graph showing the rise in internet traffic to social networking sites over the past 12 months:

UK Social Media traffic Dec '07 - Dec '08

The trend also applies to Twitter:

UK Internet visits to Twitter Jul '07 - Jul '08

The post on We Are Social pulls out another quote from Robin Goad that highlights the key facts about the rise in visits to Twitter:

"UK Internet visits to Twitter have increased by 631% over the last 12 months, with 485% of that growth coming this year. Twitter is more popular with Brits than Americans: last week the site’s share of UK Internet visits was 70% higher its share of visits in America. Twitter cannot yet be considered mainstream in the USA, but in the UK it’s getting there."

It all makes for positive reading for those operating in the space and I'm sure it won't be long before Twitter becomes one a 'mainstream' social network, as many are predicting.

The full set of in-depth data is available in Hitwise’s UK Social Networking Update. Thanks goes to Robin Grant for flagging the research to me.

Facebook for old people

I don't know about you, but I hope facebook is long gone by the time I'm old and grey.

First up, we have Pensionbook, where friends attend each others funerals, status updates include "Ted Stapleton is excited about his new cardigan", and users poke each other with walking sticks:



Then we have this classic YouTube video which shows you what it'd be like if you're Granny was on Facebook:

Come to think of it, there are probably loads of grannies on Facebook - let me know if yours is!

PR Event: Chinwag Live's Micro Media Maze

I piled in late to the Chinwag Live event last night, which took place at The Slug and Lettuce on Wardour Street, Soho. I managed to get a fairly good seat at the back though (complete with clear route to the bar), so got to catch plenty of the action.

The event was billed as follows:

"First the music track was decoupled from the physical product and the "long player" album, then the newspaper article was severed from the website. The same wave rolled over the blog post, the TV show, the photo, the vlog, and now the tweet...

It seems like everything's gone micro. As content is disaggregated into ever smaller pieces and syndicated and widgetised at accelerating speed, how is the media landscape being re-shaped, and who are the winners in this scenario?

Are media owners caught between a rock and a hard place? They've got to get their content out there, but context and branding work differently in the world of mashups and aggregators. In turn, the revenues they make from micro media pale in comparison to their staple money-making ventures (print, CDs, TV, DVD, film).

P2P culture is also firmly embedded, with iTunes and other digital retailers numbers' still dwarfed by ripping and filesharing. Now media giants like Microsoft and the BBC are using P2P technnology, but has their deeper modus operandi shifted? Are they fated to be outpaced and outgunned by innovative companies who play by different rules?

In turn, is the profusion of micro-content a recipe for meltdown, with information overload and competing "me-too" platforms delivering little but dumb aggregation which ultimately becomes a headache?

In this, the sequel to our groundbreaking Media Widgetised / Widget Week event in May 2007, our panel of experts will look at the issues and opportunities surrounding the explosion of micro media for publishers, brands, business, and culture more broadly..."

And the panel of exeprts were:

Umair Haque - Director, Havas Media Lab / Bubblegeneration
Umair heads up the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business models, and strategic innovation. Prior to Havas, Umair founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that helped shape the strategies of investors, entrepreneurs, and blue chip companies across media and consumer industries. Bubblegeneration’s work has been recognised by publications like Wired, Red Herring, Business 2.0, and BusinessWeek, and in Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, to which Umair was a contributor. He also blogs as a discussion leader at Harvard Business Online.

Gerd Leonhard - Media Futurist, Author, Entrepreneur
The Wall Street Journal calls Gerd one of the leading media futurists in the world. Co-author of the influential book The Future of Music (2005, Berklee Press), Music2.0 (Jan 2008, self-published paywhatyouwant pdf available), and of Open is King (Fall 2008), Gerd's background is in music (he won the Quincy Jones Award in 1986) as well as technology and the internet (former CEO of LicenseMusic Inc; currently CEO of Sonific.com). His work focuses on the convergent sectors of music and content, technology, communications and culture. His clients include SonyBMG, RTL, ITV, BBC, France Telekom, German Telekom, Orange, LebWeb3, Financial Times, TribalDDB, the European Commission, and Nokia-Siemens.

Miles Lewis - SVP, European Advertising Sales, LastFM
Miles launched his career in media at Haymarket publishing in 1988, moving to a consumer magazine role with IPC Media for their Leisure Network. Shifting to Good Housekeeping, a 5 year stint at the National Magazine Company included various roles across Corporate Business Development and finally Director, Advertising Sales at Esquire. Miles then became the UK’s first Head of Agency Sales at AOL (UK) Ltd in 2001. Five years on, Blake Chandlee (now at Facebook UK) brought Miles into Yahoo!’s UK and Ireland operations as Head of Agency Sales. Then CBS’s Last.fm came knocking and now Miles is charged with the strategy, direction and monetisation of Last.fm across Europe, Asia Pacific and Australia.

Mitch McAlister - Product Director (Europe), MySpace
In his current role Mitch defines and lead European product strategy and architecture to address market demands, revenue oppertunities, and user growth, identifying and building relationships with potential technology partners to enhance current product offering. Prior to Myspace, he was Project Lead at Universal Music Enterprises. With over 8 years experience in the internet industry Mitch's focus has been product and marketing, specifically on the social media side of things. He has built eBay stores, runs a weekly podcast, and has been working with MySpace for three years.

Neil McIntosh - Head of Editorial Development, Guardian Unlimited
Neil McIntosh is head of editorial development for Guardian.co.uk, where he has led the launch and development of innovative blog, audio and video services since 2004. He lives in London, supports Swindon Town FC, and blogs about it all at completetosh.com



CHAIR: Steve Bowbrick
Steve is one of Britain's most experienced Internet managers and entrepreneurs. A fifteen year veteran of dot.com boom and bust, of web site design, online marketing, technology strategy, capital raising and people management. Steve advises media owners (Channel 4 and the BBC), startups (Rememble.com) and consumer brands (King of Shaves) about social media and digital strategy.


Here's the skinny on what I managed to jot down whilst balancing a notepad on one knee and a hard-earned pint on the other:

Micro-media and social issues:

• We still see widgets as games, largely due to Facebook
• Last.fm and Myspace revolutionised the music industry, solving a problem along the way
• But there are more serious global problems, such as world poverty, health, education, rising food prices
• We are under an illusion, especially in London, that media is entertainment, but the media also educates and can be used to solve social problems
• Widgest and micro-media can offer a way to help solve these problems
• But you have to create value before you can capitalise on it, you have to have a purpose before you can profit from it
• Umair Haque's challenge for micro-media developers: how do we solve social problems and add value at the same time?

The media's control of micro-media:

• The media is starting to move to a model where they are collaborating with their audience
• The key is where they choose to loose control and where they choose to keep it
• The stakes and the risks are high for media organisations, but if they don't take these risks then it's game over for them
• If these "old dinosaurs" don't change their business moidel to address social problems then they will become extinct

How will revenue be generated?

• Media comapnies control billions of punds of spend
• But this money is being spent on where the audience is migrating to
• They are putting it into TV and search, which works for some companies but will not reach the right audience for most
• Old media won't die, people will just use it in different ways
• People still watch Eastenders, but they'll watch it on BBC's iPlayer rather than on their TV
• People used to pay for music, but now they get it for free by clicking somewhere
• The same has happened for software and phone calls
• No one knows where the next success is, the next "Google", but this is where we should be investing, not in traditional media

Brand Messaging:

• There is an assumption that brands will have to piggy back a message onto their widgets
• The CEO of Kellogs can't go to traditional media and say "Well, we've turned Crunchy Nut Cornflakes into a listening brand - what more do you want?"
• Micro-media is a slower process of engagement with a brand's audience

What does this mean for our culture?

• The BBC can't commission big budget dramas that people like to watch, e.g. 24, The Sopranos
• We must think carefully which content and functionality we push out into micro-media
• The BBC like to think that their content is good enough to push out to YouTube and iTunes, through which they can create a global voice

Last.fm have already created value - what percentage of your reve=nue comes through affiliates, e.g. ticket sales?

• Can't give percentage split of revenue streams
• But Last.fm is the world's largest on-demand jukebox
• The future will be taking data to agencies: how can data on listener's music tastes fit into a brand's efforts?
• For example, if dishwasher powder buyers like Madonna, and the advert plays a Madonna song, at what point does this affect sales?
• Listeners have been giving Last.fm their music tastes, but the challenge for Last.fm was to build a platform to keep this data safe
• But now micro-media will take this data away from the Last.fm site, which raises the problem of data security
  
• Some data is too personal to Last.fm - they are purely a music silo that benefits users when they give more data to the site
  

What financial incentives could there be for users creating content?

• The overhead for running user generated content is tremendous
• Myspace has 100s of people checking photos that are uploaded to the site
• Running this outweighs whatever revenue could be giving to content creators
  

The end of the night was the best bit, with plenty of good chat/banter, ideas developed and new introductions made, all lubricated by a healthy amount of alcomahol.

Among the crowd were Jonathan Hopkins (@jopkins), Claire W (@claire_w), Amanda Rose (@amandita), Dom Whitehurst (@domw), Katy Howell (@katyhowell), Robin Grant (@robingrant), and Will Mcinnes (@willmcinnes) - so a big hello to them!

I'm already looking forward to the next Chinwag Live event, but in the meantime I need to start building that micro-media application for this blog that will solve world hunger...

Update 1: Jemima Kiss blogged the Chinwag event at The Guardian's PDA blog.
Update 2: Jonathan Hopkins also adds some great insight into the event.

PR Event: Social Media - The Death of Print?

"Social media won't kill traditional media, but it's definitely strangling it" - Drew Benvie.

Taylor Bennett and Unicorn Jobs invited a group of us along to an event which discussed social media and how it relates to the mainstream media, called 'Social Media - The Death of Print?'.

The erratic and rather weather conditions obviously took a few casualties as the event wasn't as busy as the Facebook event page suggested, but it was a good event with a panel and audience that spoke with enthusiasm around the issues of social media and PR.

On the panel were:

• Drew Benvie - Director of Hotwire PR, blogger at Drew B's take on tech PR
  
• Mick Fealty - Blogger at Slugger O’Toole and the Brassneck blog at the Daily Telegraph.
• Simon Nixon - Journalist at BreakingViews.com

It was good to meet some of my online contacts in the real world, including Steve Waddington, Ged Carroll, Drew Benvie, Jaz Cummins, Sarah Stimson, and Alex Pearmain and Alain Desmier of the PR and Comms Network. I missed Justin Hayward, but I'm sure that there'll be more opportunities to meet.

Ged Carroll, who obviously kept much better notes than me, has a run down of the event which you can read on his blog, and Sarah Stimson also mentions the event over at her blog. Below are some of the key points that I took away from the event:

• When pitching to bloggers, know who they are and talk to them as though they were someone you knew. If you read their blog for long enough, you’ll know what they want.

• Since he started blogging, Mick has never read so many newspapers in hard print.

• Disaggregation is the key term. It involves the displacement of the editorial process: social media is turning disruption, the editorial process where traditional media filters news into one channel, into engagement.

• In the next 10 years, newspapers will find a way to grab value (revenue) from the niche markets in social media.

• “Lies get half way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on” – Tony Benn. Blogging is a chance for the truth to get its boots on and knock lies on the head before they get anywhere.

• The real value in public relations is in audience insight: social networks are an ideal tool to gain this insight.

• Bloggers are their own brand. Corporate brands are slowing, personal brands are growing.

• Find the yellow canary – the blogger who’ll warn you when something big is going to happen.

• Markets are conversations.

Looking back, these points perhaps aren't as poignant when placed out of context, so I recommend also reading Ged's post. But the debate was very useful to those who attended and I look forward to attending similar events.

Facebook Fatigue - Part 3

Says it all really.

Making PR a 'Golden Apple'

I've just finished reading a great article called "What makes Apple golden" by Betsy Morris, senior editor of Fortune.

The article argues that Apple, the creator of the iPod and iPhone, sets "a dazzling new standard for innovation and mass appeal, driven by an obsessive CEO who wants his products to be practically perfect in every way."

I couldn't help notice that Apple is a good role model for the PR industry. What I mean is that Apple has the same practises that innovators in the PR industry do, practises that those who want to succeed in the PR industry need to adopt too.

For example, the Fortune article states that Apple doesn't use focus groups:

"At Apple, new-product development starts in the gut and gets hatched in rolling conversations that go something like this: What do we hate? (Our cellphones.) What do we have the technology to make? (A cellphone with a Mac inside.) What would we like to own? (You guessed it, an iPhone.) "One of the keys to Apple is that we build products that really turn us on," says Jobs."

The current industy trend in PR is the advocation of conversation, especially in the realm of social media - social media is not a one-way dialogue as traditional media used to be, but a communal discussion. The PR industry also looks at what it hates (lazy PR practises such as poorly written and inappropriate press releases, misunderstanding and miscommunic ation between PRs and journalists) and makes 'products' to tackle these problems. In the examples given, projects such as the Social Media News Release, which has evolved the use of the press release for the web 2.0, and the Getting Ink Requests blog, just one example of a project designed to bridge the gap between PRs and journalists. As for turning people on, Twitter might be the closest a recent product has come to exciting PRs.

The article continues:

"Apple not only has upstaged the likes of Microsoft but has set the gold standard for corporate America with an entirely new business model: creating a brand, morphing it, and reincarnating it to thrive in a disruptive age."

This is also an area that innovators in PR understand well - the need to reincarnate brands to "thrive in a disruptive age." While for many this may be simply persuading a client to update their website, the innvoators are experimenting with the way brands can use the internet to create an even stronger brand identity. Social Networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are the most notable examples of this, but there are countless others - YouTube channels are being used to showcase video and further expand brands through video mashups; applications such as Twitter, are being used in ever more inventive and innovative ways, as used to great success by both Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton in the race to be the leader of the Democrats in the next US election.

That covers the tools that the PR industry is innovating with, but what qualities do the innovators themselves possess?

"The decade coincides exactly with the return of Jobs as Apple's maestro, bringing his particular mix of genius and obsession, as well as a tendency to play by his own rules. His utter dedication to discovery and excellence has created a culture that has made Apple a symbol of innovation."

I'm sure many PR innovators recognise themselves in Steve Jobs - an obsessive genius with utter dedication to discovery and excellence. But this obsessive genius even carries over to Apple's employees:

"You don't get a foot in the door here unless your eyes light up when you talk about your Mac... The place is loaded with engineers, but it's not just the skills that are important, it's the ability to emote. ("Emotive" is a big word here.) The passion is what provides the push to overcome design and engineering obstacles, to bring projects in on time."

When I've spoken to PR innovators about anything PR, whether it on social media, online communications, or even traditional media strategies, their faces light up and conversation gets going. And the most successful PRs the importance of emotion - it's how they develop their clients brands, position their messages and get them media coverage through grabbing the attention of a journalist, and subsequently the publication's audience that a journalist writes for.

Most PR innovators often belong to an innovative firm, a company that is prepared to experiment and innovate in order to gain a competitive advantage in the industry:

"Apple's philosophy goes like this: Too many companies spread themselves thin, making a profusion of products to defuse risk, so they get mired in the mediocre. Apple's approach is to put every resource it has behind just a few products and make them exceedingly well."

Sure, many big PR companies pile their clients high and knock out mediocre work for them, but the mosty innovative PR agencies exploit every resource they have to meet their clients needs, often going above and beyond the call of duty to deliver added value to their clients. After all, this is how they make their name in the PR industry and get their clients coming back for more

Indeed, as Steve Jobs himself says at the end of the article:

"Apple's DNA has always been to try to democratize technology," says Jobs, in the belief that if you make something "really great, then everybody will want to use it."

"If you make something really great, then everybody will want to use it." Which PR innovator wouldn't agree with that?

Facebook Fatigue - Part 2

A quick update from yesterday's post:

Facebook yields to users (again)

"After a flood of highly publicized user complaints, Facebook this week moved to make it easier for users to permanently delete their accounts and all the content associated with them by posting instructions on its user help page."

(Source: Silicon Valley Watcher)

For all its faults, at least Facebook is more than prepared to listen to their users and then act quickly upon their comments.

Perhaps I won't be deleting my account just yet...

Facebook Fatigue - Part 1

More and more users are reporting that they are switching off from Facebook.

Why?

There are many reasons (I hope that plenty of people will let me know if there any that I have missed), but I think that one of the main reasons is that Facebook has lost sight of where it came from.

I count myself quite lucky that I was able to experience Facebook while at university, before it opened up to anyone and allowed applications to be made and distributed.

As universities often opetrate in a 'bubble' - where there are very few of those outside a university community who are aware of the community tastes and trends -which made Facebook the perfect social media site for these bubbles. Only those from your network (or in this case university) where able to see your profile and what you were up to. Only photos, groups, the wall and events where active, meaning it was simple, easy to manage and very useful - without the daily bombardment of junk mail and applications. Facebook was a clean and simple alternative to Myspace - and that is how it should have kept itself.

As Heather Yaxley pointed out, in September 2006, founder Mark Zuckerberg saidFacebook’s mission statement was “to help people understand their world.” (Source: Green Banana)

Once Facebook was opened up to the public, the issue of random friends added you, and the subsequent spam they sent you, became apparent. How many friends" can you possibly know or keep in contact with?

Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” makes this point:

“The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us. Putting it another way, it’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.”

A person's cirlce of friends that once meant something on Facebook has now become so dilute as to become meaningless.

I think that the new social network sites that will undoubtedly appear in the next year or so will only be successful if they are simple and true to their target audience.

Privacy has also recently become an issue surrounding Facebook.

Indeed, some users have discovered that it is nearly impossible to remove themselves entirely from Facebook, setting off a fresh round of concern over the popular social network’s use of personal data. (Source: The New York Times)

As if there isn't enough to worry about, it turns out attorneys are using social networking sites as evidence and, in some cases, compelling disclosure of what a person has placed on Facebook or MySpace. (Source: Online Public Relations Thoughts)

If you needed any more convincing that Facebook is at its peak, it will comes as some surprise that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has stopped using Facebook. After Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook last year, Gates spent 30 minutes a day on the social networking site, but he signed off after getting more than 8,000 friend requests a day, and spotted weird fan sites about him. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

You may not have weird fan sites being set up about you, but I imagine that nearly everyone has (or at some point has had) some information placed on Facebook that they would rather not and it now appears impossible to remove it.

And that's not even mentioning the problems surrounding Facebook's Beacon programme. (Sources: Techcrunch, Marketing Shift, and Boing Boing)

Financially, Facebook is failing because it has yet to make money, as these figures show:

• 2007 Revenues: $150 million
• 2008 Revenues: $300 to $350 million (projected)
• 2007 Headcount: 450
• 2008 Headcount: 1,000 (projected)
• 2008 Capital Expenditures: $200 million (i.e., servers)
• 2008 EBITDA: $50 million
• 2008 Cash Flow (EBITDA - CapEx): negative 150 million.

(Source: Techcrunch)

This may well be the reason that Facebook as taken the 'innovative' approach of translating its site into various laguages by getting the users to do all the work. While it may be of benefit to users of different languages of the site other than English, fianically speaking it is only of benefit to Facebook and its various stakeholders. (Source: Techcrunch)

As Juan Pablo Sueiro notes, "Obviously, this will help and probably a new wave of members will join, but to get the “mass network effect” they will need to work hard and not only relay to “user workforce” to adapt their strategy for this new market. Also, some other core releases and a long term commitment is needed in order to adapt the site to the idiosyncrasy of latin and spanish speaking users."

Other bloggers have also noted of their fatigue of Facebook. Tom Hodgkinson took up his issues against Facebook in The Guardian and Neil McIntosh documented his Facebook weariness earlier this year.

Because of these issues, users will start to turn away to other social networks that are simpler and cater more for their niche interests.

While I'm not writing Facebook's obituary just yet, I think it needs to change for the better if it is to continue to grow, to become profitable, and ultimately, to keep on connecting its users.

And if you do know of any niche sites that are tipped to be the next big thing, or of any more issues as to why users are growing tired of Facebook, please let me know.

Redefining how to make a mistake?

Jeff Jarvis posted an interesting defense of Facebook over at his Buzz Machine blog last week.

He argues that Facebook is "redefining how to make a mistake". In an age where people vote on how successful a site is through clicks, web companies have to engage with their audiences or risk losing them. Facebook users complained about the newsfeed, but Zuckerberg explained what it was and users realised it was a good thing.

Another case in point is Facebook announced the ad program, they didn’t include enough privacy controls for the users. But after conversation with their users, they added those controls and improved the service to their users.

In a similar vein, HSBC were reminded of the power of Facebook when they were forced to change the terms of their student accounts after a protest group was set up on Facebook.

Whilst a lot of social media discussion is focussing around Facebook at the moment, I think that these examples can be applied to a wider sphere and serve as a reminder of the essentials of good communciation, especially in the Web 2.0 era - engaging in conversation with your customers/users, explaining clearly why changes are taking place and the benefits (and disadvantages) that the changes bring, and take stock of the messages coming through from thses conversations.

I don't think Facebook is redefining how to make a mistake, but merely how to recognise, react and respond when a mistake is made.