Broader and bigger is not necessarily better

By the end of 2007, global active memberships in social network sites were expected to hit 230 million. Experts expect this growth to continue through 2008, peak in 2009, and then level out in 2012. Furthermore, it has been calculated that revenue generated from social networking sites will reach $965 million by 2007 and grow to an estimated $2.4 billion by 2012.

Currently the social networking market is dominated by MySpace (consisting of 57MM US members or 45% of US social networking members) and Facebook (consisting of 22MM or 17% of US social networking members) who comprise 62% of the US market.

Given that MySpace and Facebook have a virtual choke hold on the marketplace, and experts. Given the strength of MySpace and Facebook, experts believe that social networking will continue to grow and maintain its momentum; the opportunity in social networking will be in vertically aligned niche sites that have specific audiences and a specific mission. These vertically aligned sites will need to integrate into the more broad-based sites like Facebook and MySpace, thus using these as a platform and not an end result.

I think the reason for this is that broad social networks like MySpace and Facebook are so big and so general; it is hard for the user (let alone the advertiser) to find the type of content that is really compelling to them. Sure, there are search capabilities on the networks and people create groups, but the overall sites have so much content and such a broad basis simply due to the number of people on the social network that specific vertical niches often get lost, which inherently de-values the impact of the people within those niches.

A vertical niche can be very powerful as well for advertisers as it provides them with a much higher quality lead as they have already shown an interest in the advertiser’s market. In these cases, I believe advertisers should not be so hung up on the pure numbers, but rather the type of content and the crowd effect of having ALL the members interested in the same topic.

For instance, my family is a horse family. My wife rides, my daughter rides, my sister-in-law trains horses, my mother-in-law owns a tack shop, and my father-in-law is on the board of the Texas Hunter-Jumper Association. All of this and I am severely allergic to horses. So I could be a part of my family’s passion, I decided to do something I know about, I started a social horse network (not going to plug it though as this is not the point).

The site was meant more as a hobby and to potentially connect a few horse enthusiasts (try not to say horse lovers as that brings some very unusual sites to the top of the list on Google). However, with nearly no budget, the site has grown to be 1100+ members in just a few months. Most of these come from Facebook as they were made aware of the site via some very cheap ($5/day) advertising and a Facebook application. Now my users spend more time on my horse network than they do on Facebook (according to the members). The reason for this is that the site is totally dedicated to their passion, which should be the highly motivating to advertisers.

So, from my perspective, going out and trying to compete with a Facebook or MySpace is a stuff chore these days, however, if the social network is vertically aligned and narrowly focused, there could be a lot of room for growth in the network.

Social Bookmarking: stop getting lost in your bookmarks.

STOP using your browser to bookmark sites! If you're like me and have a hard time remembering websites you visit infrequently, bookmarking the old way was probably only helpful when the list is short. Once my bookmark list got too long, finding sites was more of hassle than it is worth, and who has time to organize on the fly?

Social bookmarking puts your dog eared websites on a social network. You simply sign up and start tagging. There’s a short learning curve, but once you get accustomed to tagging sites, you will find social bookmarking to be very useful and almost a second nature to use.

Here is a video I found on YouTube that breaks it down quite nicely.

Okay, now you should understand why the old way is out dated.

Blinklist.com is the service I use. The layout is clean and the design intuitive. "Blinking" a site is simple once you have the plug in installed you simply use the new Blinklist menu in your browser tool bar and go to "Blink it!" a pop up box comes up where you add your tags and description for the site that you are on.

Some others I have tried are StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia and Furl all of which are clean and intuitive you will just need to find the one you like best.

For a more complete list go to eConsultant or my growing list of related sites

Also, try searching a social bookmarking site instead of the conventional search engines and you will get better search results. The strength in numbers properties that have made Facebook and Myspace so powerful will help enhance your search. The reason being that someone else has probably already added a site or multiple sites that fit your search and decided that the site is worthwhile. Your search results are now not only qualified to have the content you are looking for, but have been deemed noteworthy by your peers. They took care of most of the weeding through for you.

I’d love to hear about your thoughts or experiences with Social Bookmarking please add your comments here.

Jumpers and HP

Has everyone seen this by now?

The concept is smart – instead of using advertising to place products in movies, why not turn things on their head and integrate movies into TV ads, right? The idea has potential, but the execution is in this case is incredibly uncomfortable. Hayden Christensen as “David Rice” is hopping in and out of a boiler plate HP commercial - somebody famous’ torso with cool computer graphics illustrating how their lives are so much cooler, yet similar to ours because they use their computers to create visual representations that cannot be done with the software that comes in the box. I’ve digressed.

The discomfort comes in the juxtaposition of the jumper and the tried and true and honestly pretty cool look and feel of the HP commercial. Since you can’t see the facial expressions of Serena Williams (HP Hero) it feels very forced. Ultimately the two never explicitly and directly acknowledge each other, which is very awkward. There are a few attempts, Serena mumbles “Hey, get out of here” and Hayden responds “Yeah, yeah”, but it simply doesn’t work. The whole time you’re on the couch wondering A) How long is this freaking commercial, because I think they’ve gotten out of the huddle right now and I’m missing a blow out and B) Is this for real? What am I supposed to buy again? The former is a typical male 18 to 95 yrs old football enthusiast reaction, but the latter is due in part, to the fact that there are eight brands mentioned in this 1 ½ minute spot.

Count them:

1. 20^th Century Fox (starts off trailer)
2. Jumpers Movie (starts commercial as trailer)
3. Mercedes Benz (jumps through window at beginning of commercial)
4. Microsoft (remote control and logo on TV)
5. HP (Serena commercial)
6. Nike (Serena’s new clothing design)
7. Andre 3000 (weird, random mug-shot)
8. Aneras (Serena's clothing line at the end)

I’m not saying this isn’t a good idea. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like this in the Super Bowl this year. With :30 second spot pricing persistently shooting through the roof and the medium becoming closer and closer to cave man writings on walls it seems to make sense to split the multiple millions over a brand or two, but eight….seriously?

Cynically speaking – I noticed the ad, which to be honest at this point is all TV is basing their numbers on. I guarantee you that anyone with a full beer and two minutes’ worth of potato chips; since running out of one of the two of those are the only legitimate reason(s) to leave the couch during a football game; noticed the ad. So now we have the all too frequent advertising morality question – have we, the keepers of TV sunk to a new low in that it’s better to sacrifice the consumers’ opinion/experience with the brand for the sake of distributing air time costs to partners and thus there’s more money in the budget for……….crap? I’ve become considerably disillusioned with the over-the-top, primitive beer commercials that ran in the last two Super Bowls, but in all honestly, I’d prefer to see the stray dog longing to be the Dalmatian in the horse-drawn (don’t get me started) fire wagon then some confusing tennis commercial that makes me want to punch a grown Anikan Skywalker in the stomach for interrupting. Budweiser may have momentarily abandoned the pursuit of pointless hilarity, but at least they didn’t give the Clydesdales fleas.

Cliff Bar 2 Mile Challenge

Okay, this is a great site with a purpose. Cliff Bar has long been known as a great place to work with a decision years ago not to sell and keep quality of life under company control. This seems to have paid off handsomly and now they are working on getting quality of life for the rest of us through environmental activism. This 2 Mile Challenge seems like a good start at getting critical mass around what is typically a "complicated" issue that involved international relations, taxes, science and more.

One of the biggest issues the environmental movement seems to have had is marketing. Here Cliff Bar as simplified this with some facts and actions that are easily at hand. One being that 40% of urban travel is 2 miles or less. This sets a concrete number, puts someting easily attainable (2 miles, not switching to all uncooked foods) and puts up an interactive space with map, blog and so forth to connect all these "2 mile heroes".

Will this work? I don't know. I am sure there are other things to tie this campaign togther and other best practices out there. Let me know your thoughts.

Virtual Worlds Expo: Wrap-Up

Back home now, with the luxury of a little time to think about it, these are my main takeaways from Virtual Worlds Expo:

Interoperability/open standards: Everyone was talking about this, in all it's iterations:

* A shift from "walled gardens" to interoperability, which could mean the ability to move your avatar and/or identity from one world to another, from a virtual world to a traditional website and back again, from virtual world to mobile phone and back

* Making virtual worlds work like the Web

* Having a common client for virtual worlds

* Having greater accessibility to your online and in-world friends from any world, site, or phone

Measurement and research:

Who's there? What drives them? What keeps them coming back? There was a lot of discussion about the "early adopters" in virtual worlds, although to mind this is wrong -- the early adopter are just *now* getting there. According to the original Everett Rogers adoption curve, it's the Innovators who are currently best represented in virtual worlds populations.

Some thought-provoking numbers were put forward by those on the Demographics panel:

* Michael Cai from Parks Research had numbers (from a 9,500 user study) on what people do less of in the real world while they participate in virtual worlds. The runaway winner was "don't watch as much TV" with 60% -- implications for advertising and brands are very clear there. The number I found thought-provoking as well as amusing was "16% don't know what they do less of" which seems to indicate that a pretty large percentage of people just don't really know how they spend their time!

* Mary Ellen Gordon of Market Truths had some interesting research results (though from a small sample) that indicate Second Life is a good place for a brand, if done right: 57% of respondents considered buying a real-life product as a result of a recommendation they received from someone in Second Life (which actually speaks as much to the power of word of mouth as it does to the value of using Second Life as a marketing and branding platform). Additionally, her research showed that:

55% recommended a real-life product to someone they were chatting to in Second Life.
25% have gone to look at a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
9% have purchased a product in real life after seeing it in Second Life.
8% have bought a real-life product in Second Life.

Segmentation (or not) between entertainment and "serious" purposes

Across a number of different panels, but particularly in the Community and Customer Service panel, there was discussion of just what it is that "drives" virtual worlds, that makes them so compelling. The aggregate answer seems to be that virtual worlds' growth is fueled by community and narrative (or story). This would seem to suggest what at least panelist Raph Koster of Areae said out loud, which is that there is no real differentiation in virtual worlds between entertainment and "serious purposes". This is actually also true in the non-virtual world as well, but the virtual world, like gaming, is perhaps the first platform that started out that way.

To read all Awareness Is Everything posts on the Virtual World Expo, go here.

This link goes to a Virtual Worlds News wrap-up post that links out to a ton of conference coverage, including ours.