A Wider Net

Here’s an insightful piece about a recent flak in the gaming industry concerning the rumored firing of an employee from top-tier gaming site Gamespot because he gave a game a bad review. The rumor contends that the game’s publisher offered a six-figure advertising deal in return for the reviewers head on a platter. Regardless of exactly why he is no longer with Gamespot, the piece really discusses the relative value of “professional” reviews versus the reviews and opinions of actual consumers. From the article, and the comments, it’s clear what this group feels - user reviews are far more valuable anyway.

While there are quite a few articles about companies scamming user reviews by paying people to pose as users in order to skew the user ratings, ratings from large volumes of legitimate users tend to overpower those efforts. At the end of the day, there is nothing more trusted than the direct recommendation of a trusted friend. That’s where everyone is headed - finding ways to connect buyers with the opinions of their friends and peers.

You can apply this to most any marketing and communications program - not just B2C campaigns. Attendees of a conference will find value in peer recommendations of breakout sessions, exhibits, hotels, and evening activities. Sales employees will appreciate knowing which tools and techniques have worked best for their teammates. A webcast audience will more readily choose to watch archived programs if their friends or coworkers recommend them. Building in the ability for people to rate, recommend, and review content as well as the ability to track the opinions of people they actually know, will ultimately benefit you as well as your audience.

Now, on a B2C note, I would be willing to buy this amazing robotic critter, only if I could find anyone I know who bought and loved it.

Google’s Open Social announcement last week has potentially significant ramifications to marketers trying to tap into the social networks of Facebook, Myspace, and others. First, let me explain what Open Social is and then we’ll go into the “why it matters” part.

Open Social is best explained on the official Google Open Social page and on this terrific “Open Social for Dummies Executives” page. Open Social is a Google-led initiative to bring some open standards to social networks that will allow applications/widgets to work across networks, and possibly utilizing and sharing the data unique to each. The new application standards will have immediate effects.

20 or so companies are on board with Open Social already. This list includes MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, Friendster, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, and Orkut. If you noticed that Facebook is missing from the list then you noticed the very reason that this is big news. Google seems to be intentionally fragmenting the social network business and preventing the dominance of a closed-environment player like Facebook. Google can’t sell ads to Facebook users (now that Microsoft bought those rights) and as more and more developers are devoting their time to building Facebook applications, Google is seeing too many people spending too much of their time away from the Google ad ecosystem (search and iGoogle). So, just when you may have opted to spend some marketing dollars building a cool Facebook app, Google goes and lobs a massive cluster bomb at you.

But you will soon have the opportunity to pay for a killer mini-application that can be developed once and deployed across all those other social networks. Most app developers are expected to develop each application twice - once for Facebook and once for the Open Social consortium. As a marketer, you will probably find better results in the Open Social sites which allow you far greater access to data mining and measurement.

Mark Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and recent co-founder of Ning, is apparently a major proponent of Open Social and Ning appears to have launched the greatest support for Open Social on day 1. Recent comments from tech analysts seems to indicate that Ning has tremendous momentum and a fairly unmatched toolset for creating feature and media-rich social networks.

I also recommend the analysis at Forrester.

I apologize - I’m a little late to the party with any mention of Google Android and the Open Social initiative that seems to be smashing Facebook with a book in the face. Honestly, things have been very very busy and I’m still digesting the big news from Google this past week.

Here are some of the recent happenings that I need to write more about, and a quick idea of what they’re all about:

Surface: Last Friday we were given a private showing of Microsoft’s Surface product. WOW. This is the most natural human-computer experience I have yet to encounter. I love this and can’t wait to offer it to customers for a variety of applications.

Google Android: This is a mobile operating system (sort of) and not the Google Phone everyone was waiting for. It has tremendous potential but was honestly a bit of a let-down. We have a while to go before the potential is realized, but it does appear Google is out to fragment another industry and keep it open (and keep it hooked on search). It may be the best thing to happen to the US mobile phone market ever, but I doubt Verizon is going to let it happen casually, since they will be less able to control the sale of overpriced ringtones and wallpapers.

Open Social - probably the biggest Google announcement - has immediate application. This initiative will (in theory) allow developers to make “widgets” or “applications” that work on any social network that supports the Open Social initiative. It will also allow users to share their data across all those social networks, making it easier to maintain just one “page” and “friends list”, etc. Social Network startup and emerging juggernaut Ning has already rolled out support for the platform, and almost 20 companies are on board immediately. Except Facebook. They’re clearly left out for a reason. Google seems to want people to stop flocking to Facebook and return to an open internet (where they still need Google and their advertisers). Open Social will be very important to marketers. More to come.

Today, I’m visiting Mobile Internet World and I may have a tidbit or two to discuss regarding the future of web marketing to handhelds.

Oh, I also recently visited Communispace in Watertown, MA - they have a truly remarkeable approach to building and maintaining highly focused and vibrant social communities for market research, brainstorming, and many other applications.

Catch you later.

First, Facebook snubs google and sides with Microsoft:

Update: Facebook chooses Microsoft over Google | InfoWorld | News | 2007-10-24 | By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

Second, Facebook is going to be accessible through Blackberries:
Update: Facebook teams up with RIM | InfoWorld | News | 2007-10-24 | By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service

While the Microsoft deal is significant, it was the RIM deal that gave me something to think about. Facebook users are using blackberries. That means Facebook is growing up (demographically).

The winners of the annual EIBTM Worldwide Technology Watch were announced last week. SpotMe 2, a handheld networking and communication tool, won top honors. The runners-up included nTAG, eTouches, Jambo Networks, and Jot Event Messaging Systems.

Shown below: The SpotMe 2

Complete details at MeetingsNet.

I’ve been meaning to post this link to Adrant’s coverage of marketing groups and their facebook participation.

Facebook still enjoys meteoric growth, in a clearly more meaningful way than Myspace, despite the fact that Myspace continues to add more members each month than Facebook. I guess the predictions that the masses would leave behind Myspace for facebook or Bebo were somewhat premature.

Regardless, check out the Adrants article - it links to several Facebook pages of interest to marketers. You must be a member of Facebook to view them, of course.

Continuing the topic of extending live events across the web, I thought it may help to list some of the essential elements of live face-to-face meetings and some technology solutions that can be deployed to allow remote audiences to experience those elements. To be clear, I include attendees as remote audiences, because they are only on site for a short while. Before and after the event they are part of the remote audience with everybody else. This is an important distinction because I find that many people assume that online components of an event, such as video archives, are directed exclusively at non-attendees.

Pre-Event

Networking: Social Networking. Examples: BD Metrics, Leverage Software, Ning, Intronetworks

Audience Alignment: Blogging. Examples: Lotusphere

Making a list of things to see: Social Networking and User Rankings. Example: Ning

During the Event

Conference and General Sessions: Webcasts. Examples: InAAU, Demo

Product Demonstrations: Video On Demand. Example: YouTube, Engadget

Team Building: Gaming (online and through kiosks) - couldn’t find an example…

Swag: e-Swag. Examples: Widgets, Desktop Wallpapers, Screensavers, E-certificates

Buying your client drinks: Buy Your Friend a Drink.com

Asking Questions: Webcasts, Webinars, Chat Sessions, Blogging

Post-Event

Measurement: Online polling. Example: Survey Monkey, Zoomerang

Course Credits: Webcasts with CE credits

Memories: Photo Sharing, Video Sharing. Examples: DragonCon on Flickr, DragonCon on YouTube

If you are interested in the application of social networking and social media for events and conferences, you might like this article of mine published last week in Mass High Tech.

Wiffiti, the offspring of Somerville, MA based LocaModa creates digital signs and website objects to which anyone can send text messages for public viewing. It’s a way of creating a comment stream, a shout out board, or a stream of requests for a band or DJ to play. Seems like events can use this as a way to capture the pulse of the show, as a stream-of-consciousness brainstorming exercise, or countless other fun activities.

LocaModa has a powerful offering for mobile-phone-controlled digital signs. Rather than deploy a touch screen, which is fragile, not-very-hygienic, and typically limited to one user, signs that use mobile phones as their control mechanism open up all sorts of interesting possibilities, including two-way communications, group activities, after-hours secure applications through windows, and so on.

Techcrunch had some coverage of Box.net, a new service that allows you to easily store and share files publicly or privately. Marketers may find it interesting because one of the ways you can use it is on your website or blog to make the sharing of relevant files really easy for users. The widget is completely re-brandable and you can decide whether to allow public file uploads. For example: