Future of Google+

I read the Forbes and business insider articles:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/02/26/exclusive-sundar-pichais-plan-to-keep-google-almighty/2/

 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-breaking-up-google-2015-2?utm_term=10+Things+In+Tech+You+Need+To+Know&nr_email_referer=1&utm_content=bufferfae08&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

This seems to be a major announcement from Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome and Apps, mentioning Google+ could be broken down into different components.  Primarily, he meant that Google Photos and Hangouts would be separated from Google+.  At the same time, he also assured that none of the Google products are disappearing or closing down. This is especially interesting since from a social media perspective, Google+ could not make any significant impact as Facebook made. In fact, currently Google+ is not even in the top 5 in the list of leading social networks based on the number of active users. While Facebook currently leads with about 1.366 billion active users, Google+ is far behind at number 7 with 343 million active users. Please refer to the following link:

http://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

To understand the future of Google+, it is necessary to briefly discuss the history. I think most would have already forgotten Orkut by now. Orkut was a social networking website owned and operated by Google. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships, a social media platform. It started in 2004 and soon had many users world-wide especially in Brazil and India until 2008. Facebook also launched later in 2004 and ensured it was the most popular in the US and most of the Europe. Soon, Orkut could not match the advanced features and the tremendous growth of Facebook. At the end of April 2010, Orkut had 19.7 million unique visitors compared to Facebook, with 18 million visitors worldwide. Facebook grabbed the number one position for the first time in July 2010 with 20.9 million visitors, up 179%, a year ago. Since then, Orkut could never catch-up and had to be closed for ever last year in September 2014.

In addition to Facebook’s growth and its ease of use especially with mobile devices, I think another major reason for Orkut’s demise was Google was focusing on Google+ instead of enhancing and saving Orkut. Google+ was born in 2011. Google+ seemed to integrate in a better way as compared to Orkut on mobile devices but still has not caught up with Facebook yet. I think the key advantage is that Google+ provides a way to ensure users signed in to different Google services could have a common identity across all products. For example, if one is logged into his or her Google+ account in Chrome browser, he or she will be automatically logged into Gmail, Google Drive, and the Google's other services. This integrated user experience is critical for Google to ensure it has the accurate customer behavior. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Google+ is still very useful for Google even though it is not having a deep market penetration with active users as compared to the leaders such as Facebook. With that in mind, I think Google+ would soon be re-branded as an integrated platform for Google as compared to a Social Media network.

Reference:

http://knowtechie.com/google-plus-227/

http://marketingland.com/google-breakup-coming-photos-hangouts-119730

 

Can Moms Handle Social Media?

According to a July 2014 polling by Current Lifestyle Marketing--a PR and digital agency--social networking is not always so much fun for mothers. eMarketer states that United States mother social networkers account for 19.5% of adult social users in the country. This, however, is estimated to decline in the coming years. Mothers feel pressure to "create an image that their life is perfect on social media." This has been especially true for mothers on the younger end, whose peers are more likely to access popular social networks. 

Mothers are saying that they would like to "take a break" from social media, or stop using it altogether, due to the stress of feeling like they have to keep up appearances. Mothers are also influenced by their friends posting too much information too frequently. This is most true of women ages 18 - 24, who tend to feel "burned out" or "frustrated" by overactive social media use. 

While this study focused on mothers in the United States, these sentiments likely resonate with many demographics worldwide. 

SOURCE: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Do-Mothers-Need-Some-Time-Away-Social-Media/1011350/1

Here comes another social network: The Google plus

Google has been working on developing great solutions to engage the masses by offering free solutions to become smarter in today's internet addicted age. While social media is in boom, Google was working since last year to consolidate all their solutions like Gmail, talk, buzz, etc. into one social network that they named it as Google+.



It has been a while Google is trying to come up with a next generation of social network tool however it has not worked for them. There is a hope that by launching this new gadget that has not only features from Facebook but also introducing many other cool features like user maps, video chat, Huddle, Sparks and Circles.


For a complete article visit Google official Blog

This article is also published on my personal blog at Digital Strategist.

On the Do’s and Don’ts of Social Networking for Arts Institutions

I recently came across an interesting article on the Do’s and Don’ts of social networking for Arts institutions on the Founder of Art Journal, Don McLennan’s, blog Diacritical entitled “10 Ways to Think About Social Networking And The Arts (the zen of "free" as a strategy. ”  (Available from:  http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical/2009/05/power-in-numbers-there-ought.html)

In his post, McLennan begins by outlining some of the most compelling reasons for Arts institutions to adopt Social Networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter such as the need to replace aging core art audiences with younger audiences and the need to build strong brand connections in an increasingly competitive arts landscape. After establishing the context, he then proposes a list of the 10 most important things for Arts institutions to remember when they are about to get involved with social networking. This list includes: avoiding an “Institutional voice” in communication; providing incentives to membership such as discounted or last minute tickets to shows/events, or special applications; and resisting the urge to use social media exclusively as a tool to sell tickets by supplementing your sites with interesting links, feedback from the institution, video, photographs, etc.

As someone interning this summer in the marketing department of a museum, I found this article interesting because it tied back the issues we have been reading/discussing in class to Arts industry. I was also excited to see an article on social networking featured in a widespread Arts Journal because it demonstrates that Arts institutions are starting to become savvier about their marketing campaigns.  In my opinion, social networking is a very worthwhile tool that cash-strapped Arts institutions such as museums can leverage to promote their brands and connect to new audiences and that institutions that do not capitalize on this tool in the next couple of years will ultimately miss the boat.

Before signing off on this post, I wanted to just mention as an aside that McLennan just posted a really interesting post on the current Facebook Fanpage fueled battle between New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz and the staff at MoMA over the MoMA’s relative lack of artwork by female artists in its permanent collection entitled “When The Mob Turns Angry, What’s a Museum to Do?” (Available from: http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical/2009/06/when-the-mob-turns-angry-whats.html ). This post really highlights how viral Facebook posts can really damage an institutions reputation if not handled properly.

You've been tagged

Our discussion about picture tagging got me thinking again about an idea I've had on the backburner.

Imagine for me this scenario--

20 clustermates line up for a group photo and someone asks a passerby to snap the photo. Seems like an innocent request, right? But then the other 19 people ask, "can you take one with my camera too?" and a 10 minute photo session ensues involving a poor guy with 10 cameras hanging from either arm and a lot of people barking instructions on how to use their particular camera.

In the age of networked info sharing, doesn't this seem at all wrong to you?

Two solutions:

1. Camera Social Networks. The same way your iPod can talk with and exchange songs with nearby iPods, your camera can potentially do the same. One snapshot from one camera can be shared wirelessly amongst the other 19.

2. Useful Tagging. It is nice to receive the "you have been tagged" message from Facebook, but it really doesn't give you easy access to the original photo. What if there were a feature on Facebook or Flickr where you could with the click of button download all the full-rez pictures that you have been tagged in? Again, one person could upload and tag the group photo, and 19 people could easily download it.

There you go. 1 problem, 2 solutions. Now how to monetize?

Social Media Detractors Continue to Sound Off

Even as social media companies like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube continue to amass users, there continues to be no dearth of critics who doubt the value and sustainability of a service that to-date appears to have little revenue-generating capacity. Since simply railing against the service as being a meaningless social-contact medium for vapid youths hasn’t stopped the phenomenon, it appears that the scientific community is now weighing in.

Much like Hulu claims to want to rot your brain into a cottage-cheese like mush, to be scooped out with a melon-baller and gobbled up (Hulu, an evil plot to destroy the world), social networking sites, according to Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, may be contributing to the infantilization of the brain. She worries that “these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.”

Her argument is that if the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. When in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, perhaps we will see such behaviors and call them attention deficit disorder.

Of course, without a scientific report to back up her claims, the video game and social networking communities are content to ignore the claims.

Facebook Has a Monetization Plan?

So lay it on me, Zuckerberg! What is it, Facebook Social Ads? Compensating users for promoting products? Sponsored and paid search opportunities? The winner is....wait for it...selective marketing polls.

According to Telegraph, Facebook will soon allow multinational companies to selectively target its members in order to research the appeal of new products. Companies will be able to pose questions to specially selected members based on such intimate details as whether they are single or married and even whether they are gay or straight. The company's advertising department is marketing the new service to thousands of companies worldwide and it hopes the polls will go live this spring.

Like YouTube, Facebook has struggled to make money from advertising because of the unpredictable appropriateness of content adjacent to advertisements. Why does it matter whether or not Facebook has a strong and growing revenue source? Because until it does, everything they have worked so hard to build is at risk. If its business model is at risk, partners will be less and less likely to jump on board, compromising the site's network effect. Focusing on a primary revenue source will also signal to businesses building upon the Facebook platform which opportunities Facebook is not going to try to monetize, all of which adds up to opportunity for the developers.

Leveraging Old Media with New

Often we focus more on how digital is supplanting traditional media and less on how a nicely integrated campaign can leverage the best (or worst) of each. One area of TV advertising that has to-date remained more or less sacrosanct is the good old Super Bowl spot. While no longer breaking price records year-over-year, in an era of fading revenue the spots seem to be holding their own. But these costs create a new demand: in this austere media environment, how to maximize and measure the productivity of these budget-busting ads?

This short article (non-subscribers) in the Wall Street Journal discusses a number of innovative means of creating stickiness and/or measurability being tested by several of this year's advertisers. New (to me) is a product in the Canadian market that allows consumers to use their digital cable remote to watch a longer version of an ad or bookmark that longer version for later viewing; the revenue model is decidedly new media: cost-per-click. A simpler tactic among several being used by Castrol is the purchase of keywords related to their ad to assure primacy in post-ad search. Doritos is likely going to take the prize for a second year with their viral ad contest:

“…offering $1million to anyone who can create a Super Bowl commercial for its Doritos tortilla chips that scores No. 1 in USA Today’s …ad competition.”

And, finally, what marketing opportunity would be complete without yet another brand attempting to create an online community, (this one is about Pedigree dog food under guise of pet adoption) which lets you download a barking dog ringtone for your iPhone....

My bets? Simplicity wins. Harnessing true consumer passion for your product wins. Forced community, maybe not so much.