Can 600M People be Wrong About Facebook?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 9 Comments Tags: , ,

The Web is a funny creature. One day, you’re king of the world; the next you’re wondering where everyone went. Web users are fickle, willing to jump into the arms of another service in a heartbeat, and always looking for next shiny object.

Maybe it’s my eternal reservations about Facebook but I have a hunch there’s a chink Goliath’s armour. It may be small but Facebook’s dominance shouldn’t be taken for granted. The whispers start when hard-core social media users stars talking about how they rarely use Facebook because it’s “full of crap”. This comment was made by a PR executive who makes a living selling social media strategic and tactical services to clients.

Now you could dismiss this comment as simply a member of digital “elite” getting tired with his favourite toy. But another way to decipher this statement is it is an indication of a quiet movement starting to bubble up. One of the realities facing Facebook is the more mainstream it becomes, the less cool it becomes (assuming Facebook was ever cool!) As more companies and adults storm onto Facebook, its appeal among younger people diminishes.

At the same time, Facebook’s hunger to add more services (Places, e-mail, etc.) threatens to put it in “portal” territory -a place in which you can do everything without going anywhere else. (Anyone remember AOL?) It’s a compelling and potentially lucrative strategy but, at the same time, it is making Facebook a busier landscape with lots of bell, whistles and noise.

It is this cacophony that may start to drive people away from Facebook because every new service takes it farther away from its roots as a place for family and friends to share updates and photos. Maybe this explains why the person above lost his interest in Facebook.

Of course, millions of people continue to storm onto Facebook every week, and there are some people who believe Facebook will have one billion users by year-end. The thing about Facebook is it’s like a red-hot party – no matter crowded and uncomfortable, people keep on coming because it’s the place to be. But at some point, people may start to think there has to be another place with good music but room to move and hear yourself talk.

Facebook is far from reaching this juncture but it would be ill-advised to dismiss the concerns of people who are unhappy with the service. The only problem right now is there’s no other party happening with enough people to make it interesting. Until a legitimate rival to Facebook emerges, people leaving will be a dribble as opposed to a stampede.

More: If you’re looking for signs of Facebook’s growth, you can look no farther than its hunger for more office space.

The Looming War About Data Usage

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis, Uncategorized 6 Comments Tags: , , ,

For the past 15 years, the Internet has been an amazing all-you-can eat buffet. Not only have Internet access plans offered unlimited usage but the proliferation of free online services has thrived because there have been no concerns about how much bandwidth is being used.

The salad days, I’m afraid, look like they’re about to be a thing of the past. As consumers use more online services and, in turn, more data, ISPs providers smell money; a lot of money. To them, broadband services is the razor; the razor blade is the data that consumers need to satisfy their need to access online applications, games, video, telephony, storage, music, etc. According to someone on Twitter, ISPs are charging $1/GB of extra data – something that costs them one cent/GB.

The more that things move into the cloud, the more data we use and need. The cable and telephone companies have taken a long time to act on the new data reality but that’s about to change. Consumers should get ready for tiered services not so much based on speed but on data consumption. If you want to use online services, just be prepared to pay for the privilege. And boy you will pay because once ISPs have their hooks into data, they will squeeze this golden goose as hard and often as they can.

In Canada, ISPs have been playing this game with broadband access for the past decade. There’s no competition so prices keep going up. It’s a far cry from the sweet days of dial-up when there were hundreds of ISPs battling it out on price and customer service. Today, there are limited options so if you want broadband service, you pay for it.

The question facing consumers is whether they’re going to accept bandwidth caps without a fight. It’s important to remember that free and unlimited access to the Internet has been a key principle of its growth. The idea of actually paying for bandwidth AND access was never part of the mix. If ISPs are allowed to make bandwidth caps stick, the danger is innovation will be neutered because consumers will think twice about using new, high-data services.

It’s bad enough that there isn’t more incentives by the federal government to have more broadband competition. But the idea that bandwidth caps could become part of the landscape is troubling for a lot of reasons. My fear is bandwidth caps are here to stay. ISPs love them because it is another major source of revenue, particularly among telephone companies who have seen their local telephone business erode over the past five years.

So what are we going to do, take it on the data chin or fight?

More: If we’re looking for a friend to fight bandwidth caps, NetFlix looks like they’re gearing for major battle.

What About Social Media About Your Money?

By Mark Evans in Uncategorized 1 Comment

We live in an age of full disclosure. Using social media, people talk about their jobs, wives/husbands, children, coffee addictions, hangovers, travels, meals at restaurants, and content they’ve read/scanned. Heck, we’re even willing to broadcast the services and products we buy using services such as Blippy.

But the one thing we’re still not talking about is money. In particular, how much money we make. It’s one of those odd things; you can ask someone very personal questions, and often gets answers to most of them. But if you ask someone how much money they make, almost no one is willing to say anything.

Now, you figure that since social media has encouraged us to blab about everything and anything, it should no longer be taboo to talk about how much money we make. I mean, what’s a little financial information between friends, family and the entire social media community?

To help everyone get over the “ask but don’t tell” problem, I propose a new social media service called MoneyBook. It would be a social network in which people could openly brag about how much money they’re making or not making, the raises they’ve received, or contracts that they’ve won. It would be a place to tell the entire world that you’re oozing in cash or floundering financially.

Either way, it would be a user-friendly service to convince people that it’s perfectly alright to talk about personal finances. And, of course, it would feature lots of sharing options so your friends, family and perfect strangers could happily spread the world about how well or crappy you’re doing.

If I had the time – and the money – I would totally run with this killer social media idea. But as a gift to the social community, I’m offering it for free. Then again, you could pay me and I promise I won’t disclose how much….until MoneyBook officially launches.

Why Bandwidth Caps Kill Innovation

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis 8 Comments Tags: , , ,

Content may be king but when it comes to people being able to access content, the value lies in the pipes from cable and telephone companies. The broadband market is an oligopoly with a handful of players offering service. As a result, they can charge pretty much whatever they want. If you don’t like it, there are few, if any, alternatives.

In Canada, most consumers are lucky if they have two options – cable or telephone. Not only do Canadians pay high prices but the new golden goose being embraced by broadband companies is data. With video, cloud computing, social media, gaming and telephony becoming more popular, consumers are gobbling up lots of data

For broadband companies, it offers a great opportunity to charge consumers for the privilege to using lots of data. This explains why data caps have quietly been put into place. They are not something broadband companies are actively marketing – speed is still the sizzle they want to highlight – but data caps are becoming a fact of life.

Aside from being an easy cash grab by broadband companies, bandwidth caps pose a major threat to innovation and how Canadians can use and take advantage of the Internet.

It wasn’t that long ago Canada was among the world leaders in broadband access but our status as a global tour de force is disappearing. The lack of competition is a sad state of affairs, and the fact broadband companies can pretty much do what they want is troubling.

It is a marked contrast to the wireless market in which the federal government has bent over backward to make sure there was more competition, led by the apparent need for more innovation and lower prices.

What’s puzzling is the potential of Inukshuk building a nation-wide wireless network to compete against the cable and telephone companies was snuffed when the federal government allowed it to be purchased by Rogers and Bell.

This has left Canada with an uncompetitive broadband market in which one player simply has to keep up with the other player to keep customers from jumping ship. And while the cable and telephone companies have invested a lot of money to build out their broadband networks, innovation isn’t a word that is used a lot. For Bell’s marketing push about the speed of its Fibe network, broadband speeds in Canada pale to other parts of the world.

If the federal government was serious about broadband competition and innovation in Canada, it would create real incentives for more players to enter the market, while keeping the existing players at bay – much like it is doing in the wireless market. Maybe this will happen when the foreign ownership rules are relaxed, which could encourage U.S. companies to move begging for more choices.

In the meantime, Canada will continue to suffer from a broadband infrastructure that is, at best, good enough as opposed to world-class. As a result, it stifles the development of innovative new services that could leverage real high-speed networks to meet the needs of data and cloud hungry consumers.

The Social Relevance Ecosystem

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

In the my last post, I introduced a concept called “social relevance” that has been rumbling around my head for the past few months. It’s based on the idea that social media within the corporate context is not about shiny, new toys, it’s about how social media can be relevant by aligning it with a company’s strategic goals and objectives.

It’s straightforward proposition but one that I would argue gets lost in the mix amid excitement what do with Facebook Pages or how much engagement should be done on Twitter.

In my mind, social relevance is the foundation for everything that a company does with social media. It sets the stage for strategy, tactical execution, content, influencer outreach and monitoring/measurement.

Creating a social media strategy, for example, hinges on why a company would want to use social media rather than other tools such as advertising or e-mail campaigns. Is social media more strategically relevant that other options? If so, what are the objectives and how is success going to be defined?

These questions come before a company can even start to explore social media strategy because if it doesn’t have a strong graph on how social media fits into the overall corporate mix, it is difficult to effectively embrace social media.

Unfortunately, too many comes get into social media without a clear idea of why they want or need to do it, and how social media could be a relevant and productive activity. The worst case is the “shotgun approach” in which a company does a whole bunch of social media activity with no idea of what they want to get out of it.

In too many cases, companies are puzzled whey they’re not getting any traction from their social media efforts. The problem is they have no social relevance. As a result, they have no clue about how best to create content, reach out to influencers, engage with users, measurement/monitor activity.

Why Social Media Relevance is the Key

By Mark Evans in Social Media 12 Comments Tags: , , ,

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about Quora. I’m not as interested in whether the question and answer service is the next social media “star” as I am in what the interest in Quora means. To me, the giddiness about Quora has a lot to do with the hunger for new and shiny toys, as well as how well the Silicon Valley hype machine promotes its own.

With Facebook and Twitter now part of the “establishment”, people are looking for the what’s next. But I think the appetite for new is overshadowing a a far more interesting issue: Now that social media has broad acceptance and usage, companies are trying to determine what to do with it.

“What to do with it” is not about how to use the tools but how social media can be effectively leveraged to support and grow a business. Social media is cool but what is the true value given that being on social media is no longer a competitive differentiator?

After a lot of thought, I think it comes down to a key issue: relevance. Companies – and people – are now focused on how to make social media relevant, a completely different conversation than tactical execution or engagement. Relevance means harnessing social media to make a business operate better or gain a competitive edge. It’s a simple proposition but something that has received little attention amid the enthusiasm about the new tools.

While not taking anything away from people such as Brian Solis who have been hammering away at the importance of “influence”, relevance is more important because it sits at the core of why a company would embrace social media. Yes, social media is about engagement and conversations but why would a business do social media if there was no operational and financial benefit?

There’s value in influence but influence has much to do with reaching out to people outside the organization to support and boost your communication, marketing and sales efforts. In many ways, the focus on influence puts the cart before the horse because it does little to help a company figure out what they need to get from social media. It doesn’t matter if a company connects with influencers if its social media efforts don’t provide strategic dividends.

Truth be told, influencers are just the next social sexy. Whereas the tools used to be cool and sexy, they are quickly losing their lustre as more people use them. Content is invaluable but not terribly sexy. But influencers, now we’re talking sexy because if you can win over influencers, the world is your oyster – at least in theory.

Relevance may not be sexy but it’s fundamentally more critical. If a company can figure out how its social media efforts can be relevant to what it wants to achieve strategically and tactically, it can achieve its objectives and goals – be it a stronger brand, more sales and better customer service.

One of the benefits of having social media relevance is it can help a company connect with influencers because it offers a foundation and reason to pursue them. Truth be told, influencers have little value if they’re just baubles that come along with being active on social media.

I would argue the focus on influencers is being given way too much credence. Influence is an easy concept to understand and pitch; whereas relevance means spending the time to put social media into context so that it provides a business with a new and powerful way to grow and be more competitive.

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