New joiners to Facebook go through phases – understanding privacy, etiquette and addiction. But what happens when they settle down? The functionality of Facebook is a “lite” version of many other social technologies many have come to know.
Facebook is growing strong, recently passing the 175 million members mark. I’ve seen many folks go from skeptic to addict in recent months. My parents are on Facebook. My neighbors are on Facebook. My high school class is now mostly on Facebook when 6 months ago it was the exception. My CEO, clients and colleagues are on Facebook. Campers from summers in the late 80s and early 90s when I was a camp counselor are on Facebook. Facebook dominates dinner conversation with friends, and Facebook regularly freaks out my wife when people she talks to know what I am up to.
Take a look at what people are doing in Facebook after they get through the initial connection streak:
The “25 things about me” meme is one of a dozen different types of viral “notes” going around. Isn’t this a form of blogging? I doubt many would claim the “Blogger” title though.
Over time, more people seem to use status updates more. I don’t have any scientific data to back this up, but I’ve noticed people slowly adopting using the status update for a funny anecdote, what’s for dinner, a victory potty training moment. The status update has many similarities to Twitter.
More people are posting and sharing links, photos, and other content. Enter (arguably) easy to use versions of Delicious.com, Flickr and Friendfeed.
For these reasons I think Facebook is an easy “gateway” for those who don’t use those other tools day to day and are building their communities – and it may even encourage more adoption of Twitter, Friendfeed and other tools down the road (especially with their integration to your News feed). All of these features add up to introducing core social media technology functions to the average Joe – who also happens to own a scanner and is sharing pictures of me from my senior prom. (The mullet was all business in front, party in the back, I swear).
Did Facebook introduce you or people you know to social media? How’s it going so far?
Charlene Li, one of the authors of Groundswell, pulled together a very thoughtful presentation on the future of social networks. She continues to be a visionary in the social networking space. I’ve been using LinkedIn for nearly 5 years, and Facebook for 2 – envisioning these applications and predictions coming true are not as far fetched as they may seem. What do you think?
Folks shy away from the term “social commerce.” Why? I asked the question on Twitter, “What’s the first thing that pops in your mind when you hear the term ‘social commerce?'” and I received quite a number of cynical (and humorous) responses:
@illig: “Social commerce: Prostitution, human trafficking and ice cream socials. In that order. But I’m not normal. : ) “
@heatherrast: ” (1)selling out your friends (like personal info?) (2) the cost of selling out your friends (3) revenue from adsense ads”
Taken out of context, my question also sparked a little debate about what social commerce is and caused friend Aaron Strout to weigh in with some great dialog happening in the comments.
Here’s the danger: People want conversation in social networks to be genuine and to avoid overt marketers hawking their wares. Social networks bring people to connect, not to shop. But as technology evolves and people look to leverage their networks as information sources, invariably those networks will turn to helping each other make purchases. I, for one, take a friend’s recommendation as an important information source before buying – and I have to admit consumer ratings and reviews are helpful and important to me.
Back to the Future
As far as I could dig up, one of the first posts defining social commerce was back on December 23, 2005. Steve Rubel wrote an intriguing post on 2006 Trends to Watch. Steve started to predict the trend of advertising and commerce shifting to blogs:
“Social commerce, however, is an area that I think holds a tremendous amount of promise as a way for bloggers to make money. It’s a win-win for the bloggers, product marketers and existing e-commerce sites.”
His post went on to show examples of how e-commerce sites had extended functionality to allow bloggers to take advantage of the Long Tail and bring the ability to conduct commerce on their blogs, beyond the innovation of Google ads. At the time, Yahoo!’s Shoposphere was the highlight, where users could collaborate on shopping lists. More posts went on about preparing for social commerce as the next big wave of innovation that would push the continuing trend of online shopping growth (combined with broadband adoption at home and at work along with the continual adoption of Web 2.0 technologies like Flash). But the term “social commerce” seemed vaguely defined to include innovation in customer experience on commerce sites, and overall the term remained nebulous.
The Year of Social Commerce?
Jay Deragon predicted 2008 would be the Year of Social Commerce. On January 1, 2008, he wrote:
While social networks continue to grow exponentially the next growth curve will be driven by the “holy grail of economics“, social commerce. Social commerce may actually become the dominant development in 2008 and subsequently turn business models upside down and inside out.
Jay is on to something here. While the last year brought the challenges of Facebook’s Beacon product, and there continues to be large debates about ways to monetize social networks, big ticket retailers are starting to get involved by adding functionality on their own e-commerce platforms. Already we have seen reviews, stories from other customers and ratings start to really permeate the online retail space – where retailers that don’t have them are becoming the exception. (Bazaarvoice is a business partner of my agency, Rosetta, and one of a few vendors who provide user ratings and reviews as a service to be integrated into a web commerce user experience.) In addition to sites adding this functionality – and receiving a bump in conversion % of visitors – here are some other examples of what vendors are doing:
Facebook Connect and platforms like Open I/D allow corporations to authenticate social graphs on their own sites.
IBM did a recent casestudy integrating the capabilities of Lotus Connections with Websphere Commerce.
Companies like LiveWorld have launched products to integrate social interactions directly on websites, like their recently launched LiveBar product.
Based on watching what vendors out there are doing, I’d argue that beyond the initial premise of bringing commerce to social media tools and networks,it appears the next wave is bringing the social networks back to commerce sites. Some companies like eBay and Amazon do this well, but I think more merchants will be trying to figure this out. Bringing customers together to help on purchase decisions can be a good thing if it’s handled properly and e-commerce companies engage their customers the right way, beyond just user ratings and reviews. What do you think?
New joiners to Facebook go through phases – understanding privacy, etiquette and addiction. But what happens when they settle down? The functionality of Facebook is a “lite” version of many other social technologies many have come to know.
For these reasons I think Facebook is an easy “gateway” for those who don’t use those other tools day to day and are building their communities – and it may even encourage more adoption of Twitter, Friendfeed and other tools down the road (especially with their integration to your News feed). All of these features add up to introducing core social media technology functions to the average Joe – who also happens to own a scanner and is sharing pictures of me from my senior prom. (The mullet was all business in front, party in the back, I swear).![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i2.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?w=730)
Danger?