Facebook is the king of the world!

Facebook doubles down on it's instant messenger app.  Developers now have the ability to build chatbots into Facebook messenger.  These bots turn into defacto customer service representatives and are able to take customer service queries, and even order items, without even needing a human at the end of the line.  There are currently 25 companies utilizing the feature including Walt Disney, Jet Blue, and The Wall Street Journal. This builds on the fact that people favor the messenger app's private one on one style.  

Facebook has promoted their messenger app for two years running.  They believe the app is the path to the future for the company.  Purchasing through a chat app has already caught on like gangbusters in China via weChat.  Chinese consumers are well accustomed to purchasing and inquiring about those purchases via the chat app.  Americans are behind on the trend but younger generations are picking up steam.  The Messenger app currently helps younger generations order flowers through 1-800-Flowers.  Often it is easier and quicker for them to order via Facebook Messenger than through the actual 1-800-Flowers app.

Right now American companies are relying on humans to be on the other end of the line of a customer service chat.  Facebook is moving in the direction of alleviating that need by rolling out chatbots.  The bottom line will improve for the companies who utilize this feature and quite possibly the service levels will improve as well.  There will likely be bad bots who have a hard time differentiating specific products from a plethora of similar items so it will not be all rainbows and unicorns for migrating users to this format.  However, it is evidently the way of the future.  

It should be noted that Facebook owns two of the largest messaging apps: Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.  Both of these apps are testing ways to communicate with consumers which will pave the way for both to bring in revenue.

Is being 'wasted' on Facebook damaging to your credit score?

In an article about social media and its effect on your credit score, NPR beautifully included the below excerpt from testimony that John Pierpont Morgan (as in J.P. Morgan) gave to the Bank and Currency Committee of the House of Representatives in Washington, DC in December of 1912. The committee was investigating the workings of Wall Street at the time.  The below quotes are between Morgan, "the uncrowned king of finance" (I would say so!), and Samuel Untermyer, the Committee's lawyer.

Untermyer: "Is not commercial credit based primarily upon money or property?"

Morgan: "No, sir, the first thing is character."

Untermyer: "Before money or property?"

Morgan: "Before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it."

Turns out there are many financial institutions that agree with him. Recently, the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) began implementing new strategies for assessing a consumer's creditworthiness. In addition to looking at the information offered on social networking sites, the agency will also be looking at smartphone records. They believe that if you look at how many times a person says ‘wasted’ in their profile; it has some value in predicting whether they’re going to repay their debt.  I guess it could be true that if you are 'wasted' on Facebook, it may damage your credit score.  FICO rebutted this FT article by saying they only view the data as being predictive about whether a consumer will repay their debt.

FICO went on to say that they are, however, using the data in determining credit worthiness for people who have been off the grid; in other words have no credit history. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that roughly 26 million Americans have no credit history which makes them invisible to the system.  There are 19 million more whose history is insufficient or outdated and thus not able to get a commercially available credit score.

Expanding on those with no credit history, there are companies cropping up, like Lenddo that are using alternative means to determine creditworthiness of borrowers.  This is especially key in countries like the Philippines where 70% of Filipinos do not have bank accounts and only 4% have credit cards.  It is not surprising that Lenddo is a Manila based company.  They use data from mobile phones, email behavior, and social media to determine a person's repayment behavior.

While ultimately I think that these are small steps for mankind, I do think there is an element of Big Brother here that is just a touch creepy.  More importantly, a base minimum of education about credit and compounding interest needs to be baked into lending to those that have not had access to credit before.  Heck, everyone would probably benefit from a little Consumer Finance 101!  In all seriousness, those who have new access need to be aware of what this means for them in the long-run...after the excitement of starting their company or buying a new home wears off.

Make it easy for people to buy your stuff.

That is, word for word, the tag line for Product Pins on the Pinterest business help page. This is how Pinterest drives eCommerce sales. Product pins include real time pricing, availability, and where the shopper can purchase the item.  Product pins are part of a family of six rich pins that Pinterest has created to help businesses include more information about the pinned images.  Rounding out the suite of rich pins are:

App Pins: Help People Get Your App

• includes an install button so pinners can download your app without ever leaving Pinterest
• currently only available with iOS apps

Place Pins: Take Travelers to their next adventure

• include maps, addresses, and phone numbers

Article Pins: Help Pinners Create Their Reading Lists

• include headlines, authors, story descriptions
• helps Pinners find and save stories that matter to them

Recipe Pins: Teach Foodies To Make Recipes From Your Site

• include ingredients, cooking times, and serving info

Movie Pins: Show Film Buffs Their Favorite Movies

• include ratings, cast members, and reviews

Rich pins stand out when pinners are using Pinterest.  Increased sales can be achieved by having store links to the product itself versus the user doing a separate internet search for the item they just saw on Pinterest.  This is big business for retailers.  

• In May 2012, Shopify did a study that showed an average sales order of $80 from Pinterest referral traffic, compared to $40 from Facebook referral traffic. Pins with prices were also 16% more likely to get likes than those without.
• In February 2013, Sephora found that Pinterest users spent 15 times more than Facebook users.
• In February 2013, Business Insider noted that Pinterest now has 25 million users, many of whom are wealthy young females who love to shop.

It is interesting to note that this research was done prior to rich pins being rolled out by Pinterest. The monetization will only increase for retailers as a result of the rich pins being implemented.

The End is Nigh - Instagram Changes Their Algo

Been seeing a lot of this in your Instagram feed lately?  The interwebs is bugging out because Instagram is changing their algorithm so that more popular posts will populate first in users feeds versus the feeds populating in reverse chronological order.  They say it is to improve the user experience; so "you'll see the moments we believe you care about first".  

Does anyone believe this?  Lest you forget, Instagram is now owned by Facebook.  Facebook conveniently has the same theory when it comes to their users feeds.  Pretty sure I am personally not seeing all that is important to me on Facebook so I am on the fence about how I feel when it pertains to the Instagram changes.  Even when Instagram does institute the changes, you can apparently circumvent the update by choosing to turn on notifications for individual Instas.  It is important to note that these changes are not in full effect yet.  All of the changes are being tested and will be rolled out slowly. 

That is not the point that matters though.  Why is Instagram doing this? Because they are basically telling brands to "Show me [Instagram] the money!!"   Essentially, they want brands to pay to play but Instagram will dispute this.  Their party line is the algo separates the wheat from the chaff for their users.  Brands, however, who are playing along with the new, now old, Facebook situation.. They have learned that the algorithm favors video.  So they, in turn, publish more video in the hope of gaming the algo and bumping up their status.  Gone are the days that a Like meant something... What will become of the Instagram heart and followers?

All Hail Kim Kardashian?

It pains me to say this but Kim Kardashian is, indeed, an influencer. Despite what your thoughts are of her personally; it is hard to dispute the fact that she is a shrewd business woman.  If you believe her recent tweet, in response to the hubbub surrounding her completely nude selfie posted on #internationalwomensday, she made $80 million (yes, million) off of her video game app alone.  

According to an older article on Huffpost she can command up to $10,000 per tweet to talk about brands.  Why you may ask...because she has almost 42 million followers!  People will buy things that she "uses".  We do not need to get into sheeple issues but still...this woman has figured out a way to monetize just being herself.  Um, where do I sign up?

In all seriousness, influencer marketing is big business.  It behooves companies to partner with non-competing leaders in their space to help spread their message.  Just this morning, Good Morning America ran a segment about an advertising campaign by Lord & Taylor on Instagram. Lord & Taylor hired 50 fashion "influencers" with huge followings to Instagram pictures of themselves wearing the same paisley dress from their Design Lab Collection. Each blogger received $4,000 for their "efforts". Two of the hired bloggers, Rachel Marie Iwanyszyn and Rachel Lynch, have 251K and 125K followers respectively.  The campaign was beautifully executed; unfortunately Lord & Taylor forgot one small detail: to have each blogger include #ad in each of their posts.  This landed Lord & Taylor in hot water with the FTC (Lord & Taylor eventually settled with the FTC).  

Advertising a la Minority Report - Are We There Yet?

A must for digital marketing is a personalized conversation with each customer across multiple channels. Customers are everywhere and do not often use every channel that is available to them.  It is the marketer's job to communicate the brand out consistently every time via every avenue. Even more important today is that the message is tailored to each customer.  A meaningful interaction with each customer on the channel of their choice is key in today's market environment.

How does a brand expand in an increasingly complicated multi-channel world?  How do company's have these powerful and seemingly one-on-one discussions that customers love and prefer?  There are several options out there to make sense of the quagmire: Lifecycle, Autopilot, and Customer to name a few.  These platforms make these "personal" conversations happen seamlessly.

While we are not  at the point where ads change fluidly as Tom Cruise's character in Minority Report walks by digital billboards and the digital assistant at the Gap asks about his last purchase...we are inching in that direction.  

Hopefully retinal scans will not become part of a marketing strategy in the future but then again hover boards only existed in Back to the Future movies a few years ago...

One Bot, Two Bot, Reb Bot, Blue Bot

There was a recent article in the WSJ discussing an uptick in programmatic advertising despite bots still being a nuisance.

Marketers are increasingly using automated ad buying in their advertising budgets.  According to Forrester, 79% of advertisers used programmed ad buys in 2015.  This is up from 35% in 2014.  It is also expected that this type of ad buying will grow another 40% in 2016.  

Despite these eye-popping numbers, 70% of the people polled by Forester said they were concerned about increasing levels of bot fraud prevalent in programmatic ad buys.  The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) estimates that advertisers wasted $7 billion (yes with a b) on online ads that no human ever saw last year.

Another concern that advertisers have is transparency into how much an ad actually costs when purchasing through an automated portal.  They are also starting to wonder if there is something to be gained from the voluminous amounts of information obtained via this approach.

About a third of the respondents said they would expand their in-house capabilities to manage programmatic buying in the future.  They will additionally request more detailed reporting from their agency partners.

Fighting Terror with Nice on Facebook

A recent Wall Street Journal Article discusses how Facebook has added a new tool, counter speech, in the fight against terror.  These speakers are meant to contradict extremist views and posts with nice comments directly on those extremist posts or in direct messages.  A 2014 effort in Germany was cited which organized 100,000 people to infiltrate neo-Nazi Facebook pages in the same manner.

Facebook is willing to provide ad credits up to $1,000 for those that are willing to counter speak. They have also teamed with the State Department and Edventure Partners to entice college students all over the globe to participate in competitions for counter-speech.  They were given $2,000 budgets and $200 in ad credits.

Counter speech needs help and money to help spread the proverbial word.  The extremists have done an excellent job of putting money behind their hateful propaganda.  Now it's time to try an alternate approach.

While counter speech is largely unproven at this point, perhaps this is a step in the right direction by thinking about solving the problem in a contrarian way...with social media!  Clearly the status quo of never ending war is not solving anything and may even be inciting more extreme terrorism.  In order for anyone to listen, words of peace, tolerance, and understanding need to be spread by people like you and me; the common people.  We have all had enough of the hot air from our governmental leaders.

Now Just 3.57 Degrees of Kevin Bacon

The omnipresent Facebook has done the math; we are all now just 3.57 degrees of Kevin Bacon. According to the recent article in the Wall Street Journal our degrees of separation from one another is shrinking thanks in no small part to Facebook.  

This is fascinating to me because while I do feel more connected to the people I know because of Facebook; I don't think it has brought me any closer to people I don't already know.  I have to admit that I am not an active participant in groups on the site.  Perhaps this would help me feel connected to people who are similar minded but we are not in the friend zone yet.  I would love to know if others feel the way I do or disagree wholeheartedly...

In other breaking news, Facebook published these revelations on their blog on their 12th anniversary. In order to celebrate the day they also created a new holiday called Friends Day.  Congratulations, Facebook, you have usurped Hallmark and created your own holiday.  In the future,  we will soon call these man-made holidays Facebook Holidays.

Twitter To My Flying Rescue?

Mother Nature has a funny sense of humor and she likes to royally screw up the best laid travel plans across the globe.  You often hear of stories where passengers were saved (albeit without the baptism) by tweeting the digital help departments of their carrier of choice when they are stuck in Timbuktu for various reasons.  This often happens without even needing to speak to a human live on the phone.  Case in point right here.


I thought I would give this option a whirl when I learned my Delta flight was delayed for hours.  Rather than dying a slow death in LAX waiting for my flight to take off, I thought @DeltaAssist would also be the answer to my prayers.

Alas, @DeltaAssist was not my knight in shining armor that day.  In fact, they did not even respond.  (Rude.)  However, the idea that I can resolve my travel related issues electronically without needing to spend ungodly amounts of time waiting in a hold queue on the phone is truly a delight.  Fingers crossed that this option actually works out for me in the future should the need arise.  Perhaps I need more than 16 followers for them to take notice?  Details, details...