the facebookizing of twitter

after the last post where i gave my thoughts on the twitterizing of facebook i started thinking about how to facebookize twitter a little. i do love that twitter is so very simple and uncluttered, but i do believe they could be a bit more social. certainly not going so far as to diverge from the core of what makes twitter so great and loved, but to add a few features to enhance the overall experience.

here's some things i think could make twitter better:

more profile information
as twitter becomes more and more the virtual presence of people on the web (at least one of them), i think we could have the ability to feature more information on the person behind the @. it's pretty limited right now where you only have a 160 characters for your bio and a website link that gets cut off. i often see people trying to get around this by making a background picture with a lot of the info, but it doesn't always work. so just building it in makes sense.

more customization
i don't mean to the extent that myspace allows you to create such an ugly profile, but allowing users to make the profile more their own. could be as easy as simple blog type features to incorporate a few widgets or pull in rss feeds. just more personalization.

who's following who
as it is now, there's no easy way to know what new people the people you're following are now following. you could go to each of the people you're following and see if there's anyone new, but that's a bit cumbersome isn't it? especially if you are following more than say 50 people. it makes sense as your social network expands, and as the twitter user community grows, to continue finding those interesting people, that those you find interesting, also find interesting.

message threading
not only for the main stream, but dm's as well. especially dm's because right now, they are just a jumble without the ability to sort, group, file, etc. in the stream, some lessons from friendfeed in how conversations appear could go a long way.

groups
similar to how you can sort your news-feed in facebook and similar to how you can set up groups in tweetdeck. simply an easier way to manage your stream, prioritize people and separate like content.

a few thoughts. nothing i think strays from the core functionality of twitter and nothing i think detracts from the experience. maybe adding these features is a revenue route. charge a small fee to allow you to add these features to your profile.

the twitterizing of facebook

the internet is in uproar about the latest facebook redesign. i wanted to wait until i was able to use it for a while before i weighed in. well, i'm not alone in disliking it as a poll application on facebook has tallied 94% 'thumbs down.'

my issue with the change is how facebook is attempting to be more twitter-like. forget about how they're so openly scared of what twitter could do to their business, it's about moving away from what made them so successful and ingrained with people's lives in the first place.

the new redesign puts increased emphasis on the status update, attempting to match the tweet as a real-time lifestreaming tool. but it's been done to the detriment of everything else facebook is used for. i think this is too narrow for facebook users.

see, tweets were always far more reaching than "what are you doing now" as twitter purports to be the question driving what people do in the community. instead it's part 'what am i doing now', part sharing, part dialogue, part breaking news, part mobilizing people and part self promotion. facebook status was never that and would say still isn't except for those people who direct import their tweets as their status.

one thing facebook did add was the ability to comment on a status or 'like' it. great addition and one that i use heavily. it's great for conversation threads around a particular topic/status. where they fell short is that comments, which are the conversation and the power of social media, are not propagated in the message stream. no one knows you commented unless they happened to see the original update. a bit of a miss.

back on track. the part of the change that bothers me is that everything other than status updates and wall posts are in the news-feed. everything else is shunted into the never read right-side column. to me, this is a terrible move. facebook is so much more than a status update and yet that's all that matters now.

facebook was great because it was multi-functional. it allowed people to share so much of themselves and had great utility across all the interest points of social media. photos, link sharing, messaging, events, video, applications, notes, gifts, and chat amongst others. apparently these don't matter as much anymore. facebook long sold that they were the largest photo sharing site on the internet and now you're not alerted as well that people are posting them. you can still get at them and all that other stuff, it's just a lot less obvious.

my point in all this is why make for another twitter when you already have something unique and good already? other twitter clones have failed (pownce, jaiku) so why try to be somehting you're not? to alienate your user base? because that's what you're doing. if facebook users wanted twitter, they'd go to twitter. or maybe they think because they are so big now, they can force this on people and instantly create a viable twitter competitor where the others failed.

it makes even less sense when you factor in that facebook is a walled-garden. users can't get at the breadth of streams they can in an open environment like twitter. you can't hear from news sources, personalities, companies, celebrities, or non-friends in your profession on facebook as you can on twitter. yes, the new fan pages open up message streams, but generally people don't have that many fan pages (we ad types do because we're seeing what's going out there). certainly no one has fanned the number of people twitterers tend to follow.

it seems pretty unanimous that facebook should revert to what it was and leave twitter to their niche. facebook is so much more than twitter and that's a competitive advantage. what is wrong with the existing ability to integrate twitter into your status? just because the update didn't originate with facebook doesn't diminish it. the coming months should be interesting as twitter continues to explode.

in the end it boils down to how people will use facebook status. will they start using it like a tweet? will it ever become the twitter equivalent of all the reasons why people use twitter now? my guess is no. at least not in the immediate future because it's not how they've used facebook and, again, if they wanted to do twitter-like posting, they'd just go to twitter.

thinking visually

how do you think? visually i hope.

unknowingly, i started doing this last august when at work, i devised a few visuals to illustrate some key strategic points. only after that did i come across a gentleman who is a master at this art. his name is david armano and not only does he have a knack for coming up with great new ideas, but visually representing them. once i saw his work, i was converted.

here's armano's syllabus on thinking visually:

Thinking Visually

View more presentations from David Armano. (tags: storytelling presentation)

i'm writing this because the last 3 weeks of my job has been consumed with one project, that at every chance, i tried to apply visual thinking. i'd like to believe that the work was better and the points were made more effectively because of it.

thinking visually is all about communicating an idea not entirely through words, but with images diagrams, art, photos or line art. it's weaving these elements into a clear, cohesive and meaningful representation of a thought or idea. it captures the idea and all the context into a concise snapshot that people can easily recall. think of it as a packed box - everything goes into the box but simply looking at it with 'kitchen' written on it tells the entire story.

there's no official rulebook to thinking visually, but here are a few considerations that i came up with:

• words can't always be replaced, but use them sparingly
• save it for the big ideas so they stay powerful
• it's not just putting a picture on the page
• aesthetics complete the sale
• distill them, make them unconfusing and focused
• use words as tags and let the visual explain
• they don't always stand on their own - add context
  

armano has the gift of being a good designer and artist, which makes his visuals pop. unfortunately, i don't have those gifts. my tool of choice is a powerpoint. the latest version has some great tools embedded that will take you far in thinking and expressing visually.

i think this is a powerful way of applying yourself that makes what you have to say more compelling. it's more than just impressing people with creating eye candy, but conveying the idea in an interesting, thought provoking way. people will take more notice to your ideas, not because it looks pretty, but because the idea has been presented in such a way that is intuitive and more impactful than just words. from a guy who knows little brevity, visually thinking is a great way to condense what normally takes me a hundred words to do.

here are a couple of resources from armano himself that will start you off down the right path:

• blog posts
• flickr archive
• viz think
  

facebook's missed revenue

today facebook revamped their fan pages, the promise being they will be more socially integrated. when fist launched, the fan pages were promised to be social and bring companies and brands more into the fold of people's networks where the sponsored groups stood outside. well that didn't really happen and they are evolving again to try and fulfill that promise.

this time they got it right. but their approach is foolish and will likely end up ruining the space.

this move, while a great opportunity for brands and companies, is another in a string of missteps and bad plays by facebook. let's set it up. facebook, while experiencing tremendous growth, is struggling to make money. a recent lawsuit against them revealed that their valuation has been significantly downgraded from what was previously thought and what microsoft bought a 1% stake in. bill and ballmer can't be very happy. facebook's struggles are around monetizing the ecosystem they've created and the economy is aggravating the situation as advertisers are vacillating to spend advertising dollars.

so what's the problem with the new fan pages? well, facebook again missed a huge opportunity to add revenue streams and make their business viable as a free, ad-supported platform. this isn't the first time they've stumbled in actually bringing in money and not just bleeding it.

remember applications? yeah, no one really uses them anymore. the opportunity they blew then was not charging developers and companies a fee for developing and listing them. instead, they opened it up to everyone and that lead to their demise. they became trite spam engines that people stopped using after their initial glow wore off. after the last site design overhaul, they were relegated to a place of far diminished presence and importance. i don't lay blame on the developers for creating crappy apps, but facebook for opening the floodgates and allowing crappy apps to proliferate. they needed to be the gatekeepers to ensure quality control and real value was there for users. without a vested interest (ie. revenue stream) they had no reason to protect the space and as such it was ruined.

then there's the ads themselves, the only revenue stream they have. they aren't making any strides to make those much more compelling or interesting. i mean, it's a tiny static picture and 135 characters. not very interesting or compelling. they were okay when they were in the news-feed, but are now relegated off to the side where they can be ignored much easier. they would argue their engagement ads are the answer, but those still live in a place not many people care about. want proof, look at declining CTR and CPMs. also the ads that appear on your profile page and elsewhere are very often of poor quality and carry messages that are little more than spam companies.

facebook connect could probably be a pay model as well, but they missed out on that too. and while we're on missteps, let's also mention their most recent debacle around their terms of service.

that brings us to the new facebook fan pages. what facebook has done is make these look and act exactly like a person's profile. a fan page can now do all the things we do and have those actions be visible to the fans in their news-feed. that's a powerful proposition. brands and companies now fully integrated into their fans social network.

it's ripe for abuse. brands need to be very conscious of how they use these new communication tools. it'll be very easy to over-use them and spam the fans. and it's open to everyone again to do as much as they want.

how could this be averted so the entire facebook ecosystem doesn't become infested with overzealous brands turning people off from even logging on? well a pay model of course. this would have the side effect of actually bringing in money to the company.

i'm thinking first a pay to play system where there is a yearly fee for companies to create fan pages. something in the neighborhood of $50K to $100K. this is fairly nominal for any company to enter the space which provides them with such a robust offering to communicate with their consumers and most ardent followers. it also serves to weed out those who would likely abuse it.

second, to protect the space from over-use and ensure that the people who are there aren't spammed by the brands and companies they are fans of. the revenue model is a pay-per-interaction fee. so every post, or photo added, or comment made, anything really, comes at some kind of fee so companies are smarter about using them.

we could try and pass on the operating expense to the users and make it a pay model, but we've all been trained to expect to use facebook for free. so it will be hard to make that change. so it falls on an ad supported model or more precisely an advertiser supported model.

i'm just fascinated that facebook can continue to stumble through their operations like this. mark zuckerberg is a smart guy, but he is not a smart businessman. he's not proving to be good at making smart moves to make his company viable. i'll be waiting to see how companies use this new space and how facebook could have to backtrack because of abuse.

your credit sucks

apparently, you need to know your credit score - desperately. so a few pages browsed on the web in recent weeks would make you believe given the recent preponderance of credit score ads. that's only part of the problem. it seems we've taken a time warp back to 1995 when crappy online ads with flashy line art, blinking incessantly and generally looking like a 4th grader's attempt at making an ad for their daddy's company ruled the world. everything old is new again, and shoddy online ads have made a comeback.

here's a colossal collage of credit crap:


i guess i can't fault sites for accepting these ads. they are there to sell banner space and usually that's on a first come first serve basis. the credit score people were the first to the table, or maybe the only ones. you'd think that was untrue as the web was the one advertising vehicle everyone thought would weather this financial storm better than the rest, but the sheer volume of these ads has a different story to tell (something to be argued when numbers are available).

making a buck is one thing so you can be around when the dust settles on the recession/depression, but building a brand is quite another. i'm just going to put it out there: sites that accept these ads are destroying the advertising potential for everyone. and i mean for both sides of the ad game.

for advertisers, this just makes online ads even more of a turn-off for a site's audience and potential consumers. the few ruin it for the rest. ads become wallpaper even more and their impact lessens considerably. even their strength as branding vehicles erodes.

on the other side, the site itself, which is actually a brand that needs to be cultivated as any other. slowly these websites are compromising the quality of their brand and product. they are make it known that they have low standards and are in this for the revenue - value to consumers isn't a factor. that's a big miss. and it makes your site look ridiculous.

dare i say, websites have a responsibility to both their audience and advertisers - neither the site can survive without - to weed these types of ads out. it's not benefiting either. here's a handful of solutions to keep your sites at a high standard and not with a 'sell-out' plaque on it.'

1. offer discounts to higher grade advertisers to encourage them back in the market
2. reduce the number of ad units on the page. then each ad has more impact, position and effect. that and your site isn't junked up with meaningless ads
3. run house ads instead
4. bonus key clients more impressions
5. just run nothing, at least it will be cleaner
   

defending a-rod

alex rodriguez came clean yesterday on the allegations of steroid use. the right move for a bad decision. but does it matter? can he ever escape this? is his career tarnished forever?

i'll admit, when the mitchell report came out, or even before when bonds was under constant scrutiny for steroid use, i thought a-rod was exempt. i felt that he was one player who was above performance enhancing drugs. he's a pure talent, and still is. i guess jose canseco got it right a while back when he implicated rodriguez, but there was no evidence and no further scrutiny. i dismissed that as just more of canseco's wild accusations to cling to what little fame he had left. sorry i doubted you jose. you gave me no reason to, ever.

i'm in the camp to say that 3 years of performance enhancing drug use does not tarnish rodriguez's career. he is a natural talent. he was productive and a star before he took p.e.d.'s and was the same afterwards. look at his stats and he was just as productive prior to and after his steroid years. you could argue that without them he would have been just as effective. it's negligible. doesn't make it right that he took them, albeit under a cloud of non-policy by mlb, just that he shouldn't be forever villainized for his actions. if you want, when his career is done, wipe those 3 years from the record and he is still hall of fame worthy, and rightly considered one of the best ever.

the way rodriguez has played this out is that right way. he's admitting his actions, incurring the wrath, and seeking forgiveness from the court of public opinion. this is something no other player has done. not mcgwire, who refused to talk about it. not bonds, who says he never knowingly took them. not clemens or palmeiro who fervently deny it. he is trying to make it right. he's admitted fault, he's accepted his errors, and he will live with how he is going to be perceived. that shows a lot of strength of chracter. not just to come clean, but to have stopped using when he did.

i genuinely believe he is sorry for his actions and regrets them (some will say regret getting caught). he is human, and exercised poor judgement. rodriguez was sincere, and made himself accountable. he should be forgiven. if not forgiven, then not have his entire career diminished for it.

still there's three issues with all this which don't sit right with me.
1) not for public knowledge
the drug tests that led to this outing were supposed to be anonymous, sealed by court order. how did these test results get out, especially when the tests themselves and the players names were never supposed to be linked and lived in separate databases? i'm not trying to justify the actions of any of those 104 players, but they had a right to have this information protected.

the point is, steroid use was rampant and mlb was trying to stop it. the testing survey was done to gauge just how pervasive it is in order to establish rules and disciplinary actions. it was accepted practice and rodriguez, along with scores of others, were part of it because no rules were in place to govern it. good judgement and morality aside, that was the era these players were in and it was common practice. with all the influences (manager, trainers, owners, agents, etc) it was not hard to play the game.

the effect all this is having is to sling more shit at baseball and generally increase the ire around the sport. i don't think that's needed. mlb needs to reconcile with it's fans and people in general and this is a step backwards form that. i'm not saying brush it under the carpet, but the lessons have been learned, the course is correcting, let's move forward.

2) the faultless mlb
mlb has, and rightly so, only been praised for cleaning up the sport, while not being accountable or admonished for their role in the 'steroid era.' it was their inaction, non-policy, and general state of denial that led to an atmosphere where performance enhancing drugs were able to be as epidemic as they were. don't just tear the players down when you can't look in the mirror and accept your role in this situation, mlb. they too easily throw their players, their product mind you, under the bus while throwing their hands up and saying 'don't look at me.'

superbowl ads - fading away

is the superbowl still the cultural beacon for advertising anymore? i vote no.

because i live in canada, we don't get the privilege of seeing the real superbowl ads as they happen. i mean we broadcast the superbowl and try to parade our ads on it, but there isn't the fanfare, novelty and expense associated in doing so. thankfully the internet has made this cultural fascination more accessible. and therein lies why i don't think the superbowl is much more than the game itself anymore. we as marketers are losing the one day where advertising is elevated to a cultural phenomenon, spectacle and curiosity for all the masses to stand up and take notice of our great work. the day where everyday folk put aside their trite statements of "i don't pay attention to ads" and embrace the brandsell as entertainment.

so the day after the superbowl i mosey over to whatever site is making a big stink about the superbowl ads so that i can see for myself. but ever since the first media rumblings of the superbowl bubbled up in the media this year and last, it nagged at me that it's just not the same anymore. the game has changed.

not the destination it was
no longer do we accept content channels making destination viewing. a fixed time and channel for content doesn't hold the viewing audience hostage with the emergence of pvr's, torrents, online video and quicker to market dvd's. the new distribution systems make it so that we are not subject to someone else's schedule, network or otherwise.

we're not beholden to one day of the year anymore to see great work. it's out there, everywhere. brand produced or user generated. hours after the superbowl (or sooner), every ad was already circulating around the internet. by the following day, every media outlet and every joe with a recording device and the ability to encode it as online video has uploaded all the commercials and everyone else has watched them online.

so it doesn't need the big day. if advertisers created great ads and used non-broadcast distribution methods, the pickup is the same. with greater access it becomes less forced on the consumer and more in keeping with their preference to view as they choose. consumers can be more selective and an ad in the superbowl may not be that place anymore. advertisers lose the passive 'push' messaging, but in online get a more valuable engaged audience.

heightened expectations
even more of a factor than a populace consuming on their own terms is the content of the ads themselves. the superbowl used to be the meeting place where the best, funniest, most creative, wacky, random, highly entertaining and cool ads came to show off. that is a bygone time. television, even the superbowl, has been relegated to second fiddle in an internet video era where it is not only the channel of choice, but the new bastion of all that is great in video, ads or otherwise.

with access to the long tail of video content, consumer appetite has changed in what is truly breakthrough and salient with them. they still want the polish of it all, but have a very altered notion of what makes a great 30 second ad. they have been trained to want edgier, more interesting, more entertaining, more emotive, less branded and sell-y type ads. they have gravitated toward the subversive, where the brand is minimized, but the impact is amplified.

when we can take to the web and watch great work from every corner of the world, a tv spot faces greater obstacles to relevance and effect on the consumer. a place where broadcast standards don't apply and the risk/reward ratio is not as severe.

social currency
we still think of superbowl ads as something to be placed on a mantle and revered. truth is, they don't carry the same social currency as before. the ads within are brand messages, directed at viewers en masse, that through media investment, word of mouth can be engineered. the tectonic plates of consumer discussion have shifted though with the emergence of efficient and open distribution methods, and the democratization of content production. consumers are now in control of engineering what breaks through the din of all the brand messages in the media world.

only difference has been that somehow we equated a spot in the superbowl to mean it's going to be a great ad. that's lazy marketing because not all superbowl ads are great and not all superbowl viewers are your intended audience. these spots got attention because they were in the superbowl, not necessarily by virtue of their greatness. with the rise of alternative ways of viewing and a wider assortment of stuff to consume, truly great creative shines and becomes culturally significant because it's not being pushed on us, but because it talk worthy.

there is also how we share these ads and bring them into our own social fold. before we could only talk about them around a water cooler, having seen it just the one time. with the internet, we can go back to it, we can physically share it, we can comment on it, we can elevate it or diminish it in many places. it takes on a life of its own because it lives on, not dying after its lone airing.

the cost equation
every second of advertising in the superbowl costs $100,000. add to that the cost of making the ad, which often comes at a premium because of the special occasion and creative types pulling out the big guns. that's a lot to pay for something that has every chance to be a big success as it does to be a colossal failure. it also runs the risk of just being mediocre and lost in the shuffle. and quite often, that spot airs just the once, making it a pricey one-off.

compare that to online distribution methods. the likelihood of breaking out and having a real impact are just as strong and for 100% less the cost of a superbowl ad. i won't pretend that you can get it for $0, but technically you could. so for significantly less in cost you can put it in the consumer's hand, who always had the final say in just how far an ad proliferated the cultural consciousness.

the timing of it all
as i elaborated already on the distribution side of things, we are at a point where we don't need the big event anymore to debut a new spot. things move faster now and we can constantly innovate our approaches and iterate our creative faster. we can access our consumers quicker and take the great thing we built and release it to the world for accelerated return on our efforts. we can be more nimble in responding to successes and failures. the internet is as big a seeding ground for our efforts on an ongoing basis than any one day or game. the potential for groundswell and expansion on a continual basis is enormous.

of course this won't be the last year of a big commotion being made of the superbowl ads. but i think it will slowly erode and in the not too distant future almost cease to be a talking point anymore. it will be broadcast, it will have ads, but won't have the same fuss about it.