Archive for February, 2010
As many savvy marketers have already noted, all media is social. Especially when it works the way it’s supposed to. So what’s all the buzz about this term, social media, as if it’s a completely new form of communication?
Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon, etc. are just new communication tools. Tools that will most likely change and morph into new formats as technology advances and they improve their ability to create, manage and grow powerful online communities. Remember forums, chat rooms, even My Space? They’re all just tools that have enabled multiple-way communication, the core of what has changed.
We believe the term, social media, will go into the history books sooner vs. later. At least we hope so.
Will Twitter still be Twitter six months from now? Will the people longing for attention finally stop telling others what they had for lunch? What would happen if everyone reading a lame tweet responded with a “Please Stop Boring Me, I Don’t Care” response?
Then again, how much would we have known abut the election in Iran? Or the Southern California wildfires last year? Or updates on the earthquake in Haiti?
Is there a place for a tool like Twitter? Absolutely. If, for nothing else, the amazing data it is gathering. People think Twitter is just a tool for Narcissists to express themselves. But meanwhile, it’s building one of the most amazing LIVE, SEARCHABLE data bases in history. That’s what its all about.
It’s getting very noisy out here in the online world. One billion uploads daily to YouTube, 2.5 billion active blogs, heck even the average person’s inbox gets over 100 non-spam emails daily.
So guess what’s happening? People are starting to turn off and tune out. Especially those who’ve been trying to figure out how to listen over the past two years, when the amount of online noise has increased ten-fold. Oh sure, Facebook is growing. But users are becoming much more selective about who they friend. Meanwhile other tools, like Twitter and Friend Feed, are seeing 20% of their subscribers making 80% of the noise.
In short, quality over quantity is the new trend.
This is good news for smart marketers. With the proper tools you can find your perfect customers and they’ll be able to hear you. You won’t be fighting the equivalent of 1,300 daily traditional media messages the average American didn’t ask to see but the advertisers still paid for. Marketers will get to enjoy quality over quantity too.
Let’s see what happens when the noise quiets down and people start using all these wonderful (yet currently loud) online tools more effectively. It should be the best time good marketers have ever had.
You have those who don’t like Google, fearing it will take over the world. They’re already ragging on Buzz. Then you have the rest of us. The other 98% who say, aha, here’s where Twitter, Facebook and their long tail cousins might actually come together as one. Here’s where the noise that has become way too loud for most of us can get filtered. Best of all by the one company that knows how to do it best.
But let’s back up for a second and quit talking like everyone on the planet uses Facebook and Twitter. Let’s talk about the most used tool on the Internet that even non-techies use every day. It’s called e-mail. That’s where Buzz is brilliant. It’s right there with your email, on your desktop, laptop AND mobile device. It’s in an environment where the vast majority of online users still spend most of their time. It’s using Google search algorithms to help filter out content that you’re not interested in, and it’s quickly addressing the privacy issues that caused such a ruckus with Facebook users a while back.
So, do we need one more social publishing service? No. We need a few less. Maybe, just maybe, this will be it.
