Clash of the Titans

Google and Facebook have been keeping each other under focus for years. One being a social networking muscle and the other being the ultimate search engine, neither could have predicted that one day they will face off in such a direct competition over the internet savvy consumer.

Both giants of new Internet Age managed to build successful brands pursuing fundamentally different marketing strategies. Yet, many tend to forget that digital consumer market is highly fragmented, which gives opportunity to tap a market segment creating value within a single niche. They say that a fierce battle between Facebook and Google+ is about begin, but the question arises, is there a need to compete when both can enhance their platforms by sharing one common playground?

The younger Facebook, which has been holding the crown in social media since the fall of MySpace, knows what the young and tech savvy consumers want. Thus, FB succeeded in expanding its outreach through a set of digital devices of a modern digitally well equipped consumer, enabling social connectivity regardless of the external circumstances. It goes without saying that Facebook accomplishes its goal of maximizing social exposure of its users within various channels of its platform.

But then again, having realized the dramatic time shortage in modern society, Google focuses on a time efficient approach by creating a unified platform that helps not only access integrated ecosystem with a single sign in, but also navigate faster and easier within a real-time information stream. This is where Google+ jumps in facilitating the broadcast within selected groups in social context giving its users a freedom to choose the way they want to build their social connections.

Read the original article written by Judy Shapiro on AdAge

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/google-thing-happen-facebook/228554/

Twitter and the French market: a love story?

Quick overview

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that allows its users to send "tweets". Those tweets are text-based post limited to 140 characters. If we had to sum up, let’s say that tweets are online SMS.

The company was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and gained worldwide popularity, with over 300 million users as of 2011. The users are generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day.
(Source : http://blog.twitter.com/2011/08/your-world-more-connected.html)

In France Twitter started around the end of 2007. Although it started pretty slow, it is the website that has known the biggest growth at the beginning of 2009.
(1382% in February – Source Nielsen : http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitters-tweet-smell-of-success/)

But even tough 80% of the French internet users know Twitter, only 7% have an account, which makes about 2.4 million users out of 37.54 million French internet users. (Source Mediametrie in Journal du net - http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/le-net/nombre-internautes-france.shtml)

In March 2011, another study from Semiocast evaluates the number of French Twitter account to 2.4 million. This total also includes non-active accounts.




Compare to the 27 million of French Facebook users, Twitter is falling far behind. Even Google+ which only opened at the end of June has about 3 million users.
(Source : http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/audience-google-passe-devant-twitter-en-france-39765102.htm)


3 reasons for the limited audience in France

1) Twitter has a specific language

Although how it works is as simple as it can get, because the user only has to type in what is happening to him at any point in his day. It gets more complicated.
To use it, you’ll need to understand what “@...”, “CC”, “Twitpic”, “URL Shortener”, “#FF” and interactions are working. When you take the time to look it up, it is not that complicated, but it is still a barrier for some users.

2) Building a community is time-consuming.

To build a community in Facebook is simple. You just need to search and add “friends” and they will be able to see your post on their wall. It is mostly casual and does not need to be about a specific topic. You can be added regardless of the number of friends you have. Usually you will be in contact with person that you know In Real Life.
On Twitter it is quite the opposite. You need to have followers to be considered as “influent” and to be followed. People are mostly basing their judgment for who they follow on the number of people already following them… Therefore it is hard to start on it when you create an account with zero followers. It will be very time-consuming for the user to build a community and if you do not share a particular interest you will feel alone at first on the media…

3) Twitter is fast, too fast …

Does anyone have the time to spend its whole day on the Internet ? I do not think so. Facebook’s newsfeed allows people to check out very quickly what their friends have been up to during a day. With Twitter, there is no way to check out what happened during the whole day from the moment you start following more than a few accounts…



So yes, Twitter has some advantages (up to date information, professional contact, fan-follow, company visibility etc.), but the users have to put effort in the social network and for this reason only a few people will keep following their account after 10 tweets.

How Did Facebook Overcome MySpace?

And the undisputed champion is……Facebook. But how did Facebook seemingly easily annihilate the previous social network giant, MySpace? There are many different theories such as the one explained to us by Sean Parker, one of Facebook’s founders. Without any research, I was always under the impression that MySpace turned out to be a really immature website. On MySpace, users were constantly competing to have the most artistic page, to have the most friends, and even to be in each other’s top 8 friends list. I mean seriously, you had to rank your top 8 friends! That screams high school thought mentality.

Turns out, after researching more about the collapse of MySpace, I was pretty much right. MySpace catered to the very young demographic from 13-17 years old typically. When their market segment started to outgrow the website, MySpace was either unwilling or unable to adapt. The site started to become the thing that kids used. All the growing teens flocked to Facebook, the college age (at the time) social network. And if you know any young teenager’s thought process, you would know they love the thought of being seen as older or “college age.” Facebook, in deep contrast to MySpace, was a simple platform. You could upload photos, comment on friends’ walls, and cutely “poke” them, etc. No more battles for popularity. Once Facebook grew steam, MySpace didn’t stand a chance. MySpace tried to simplify itself and add features that Facebook already mastered but it was too late. The marketing management at MySpace did not adapt in time and they ended up paying the consequences dearly. They went from being sold to NewsCorp in 2005 for $580 million to being sold to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake in June 2011 for around $35 million.

Facebook is better equipped than MySpace. Facebook hasn’t marketed towards only one market segment except for the people that own a computer or smartphone. Importantly and most notably, Facebook has been able to integrate adults and older people into the site without losing that “youthful” brand appearance. I think this truly gives some security to the Facebook marketing department. Adults are typically more loyal to technological innovations than the fickle-minded youth. My grandma has a Facebook. (We’re not Facebook friends by the way) My grandma still has an AOL account which means that she sticks with companies, even if they are failing.

I think Facebook has and will continue to dominate the social media market. Unless Google+ has got some marketing strategy that will blow us all away. The competition will inevitably make social networking better. Just how much better is what we will have to find out…

Sources:

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/sectors/media/four-reasons-why-myspace-failed-to-retain-the-social-network-crown/3022208.article

The Science of Advertising

How does Facebook know I would be interested in the film “Drive”? How come my mom gets different ads, for example, to adopt a puppy or buy new fashionable boots? All because Facebook ads are tailored to your individual needs. Companies design their ads to be shown to the right people at the right times. Every time I enter information into “my interests” or “my favorite movies”, etc., I am sending a little hint to the advertising department at Facebook. You see, Facebook gathers information about you from all sorts of different sources. They accumulate information from your age (most obviously acquired), down to your actions (a little tougher to gather) on Facebook. Once all these different information’s are compiled, then Facebook can make a profile of you. According to my Facebook page, I am a 20 year old male student who enjoys Chicago sports, drumming, rap music, etc. Now, if Facebook has around 800 million of these profiles, companies are willing to pay top dollar to acquire this information. Companies want to advertise efficiently. They want to advertise to the right audience every time. When Facebook allows them to know my location and personal preferences, etc., then the companies can more accurately advertise and focus their message towards me.

Another key factor in Facebook’s profile of me is my account activity. Around 75% of all internet users use social networking but it’s estimated that less than half of them actively participate and have a big influence on their social network. The users that constantly update statuses, upload pictures, comment on friends walls, like every post, etc. are the users that companies market towards. These users have the biggest influences. These are the users that will see a company’s ad. Companies are trying to stay one step ahead of the consumer when trying to sell to them.

There are a lot of things going on in the background when I change my status. I just find solace in the fact that I don’t have to buy anything. Cheers!

Sources:

http://technology.inc.com/2009/01/01/online-advertising-through-social-media/

http://www.newfangled.com/how_to_use_facebook_to_promote_your_business

A Solution to Privacy Leaks?

The goal of social networks is for users to share and connect with other users. The last decade has seen the explosion of new social networks companies with the example of Facebook gathering all over the world 800 million addicts. 800 million people who share all kind of information on any topics they are interested in. By extensively encouraging us to be more “connected”, we have unconsciously started to give away all our private information to a gigantic database. Do I need to let my phone number be available to the world? Do people really need access to my phone number? Are they even interested in getting my phone number? Probably not. Yet, revealing our private information has become a norm in a society where all of our life can be found on the internet.

On the other hand, we get scandalized when Facebook (often) faces security issues. And there is more room to be shocked when we think of what they do with our data - including selling them to third parties. Well, it means that we still value our private lives. Four NYU students claim they found the solution to this matter and founded a new social network called Diaspora*. Diaspora* is based on the principle that we want to keep control over the information we share. When we post of picture on whatever social network we use, the information is directed to a centralized hub so we basically lose control of it. Computers are more powerful than ever, so Diaspora* proposes a decentralized social networking system where your information is directly sent to the people you want to share it with. Diaspora* already lunched the alpha version of their social network, the beta version should rise pretty soon. We can only wish them to succeed with this great idea. Check out the video for more information.

Cheers!

Sources:

http://www.helium.com/items/1835414-what-is-the-diaspor

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr

a-social-network

Social Networks - A small recap

10 years back, when I made a new friend, we used to share our house addresses, telephone numbers and write them in a pocket diary to preserve the details. If I were to make a friend today, I would just have to add him on Facebook. Yes, this is the age of the social network which has had an explosive growth in the past decade and has garnered quite a few eyeballs.

It is interesting to learn as to how social networks developed. Towards the close of the 20^th century saw the rise of many dating sites where users made profiles with photos and other information to contact other users. Meanwhile during this time existed various primitive social networking sites like Classmates.com (which had users belonging to common colleges) and also Six Degrees which closed down in a year. Some sites like Live journal took a different approach and built network around constantly-updated blogs.

Social networking took a leap with the launch of Friendster, which went on to add 90 million subscribers as of now. It helped people discover their friends, friends of friends, and so on. Within a year saw the launch of hi5, LinkedIn and MySpace. Hi5 is slightly different from Friendster, in the sense that a user’s network consisted of friends, friends of friends and so on. LinkedIn, though a social network was created for business people. Currently it is growing at a rapid pace and is a place for business people to interact and get to know each other. MySpace, launched in 2003 had a decent growth and it went on to become the most popular social network in the world. The specialty about MySpace was that users can customize their profiles.

The year 2004 saw the launch of Orkut and Facebook. Orkut was Google’s social network and it grew rapidly in Brazil, India. But it was later plagued with viruses and now the number of active users has gone down. Facebook, which was initially a social network for Harvard Students, became open to public slowly in 1-2 years of its launch. Currently it is the world’s most successful social networking site.

At present, Google is trying to stage a comeback with the launch of its new social network called Google+ . The launch of Google+ raised quite few eyebrows and it attracted many users to register for it. And with its launch, Facebook tweaked its functionality and has made changes which somewhat reflect the features of Google+. The war of the two giants has begun. But who will win this? Only time will tell.

Sources :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/10/the-history-and-evolution-of-social-media/

Social media user

Social media became a global phenomenon. It connects people with what they watch and buy. In the United States social media represent 80% of the internet users. Social media’s popularity is increasing.

Social networks ... the top online destination globally

According to a study led by Nielsen in the “Social Media Report, 2011,(page12)”, “In a look across a sample of ten global markets, social networks and blogs are the top online destination in each country, accounting for the majority of time spent online and reaching at least 60% of active internet users.” In Australia they spend the most time visiting social networks about 7 hours and 17minutes per person. In France, almost a quarter that is to say 9.6 million of internet users visited social networks. In Germany, internet users spend more time on social networks than on the other sites that is to say 12.7 billion minutes during May 2011. In Switzerland social networks represent 60% of active internet users. (Source: Nielsen).

And you, what is your time spent on social networks ?

Who is the typical user of social media ?

According to a survey led by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, from February 2005, August 2006, May 2008, April 2009, May 2010 & 2011, in the US the typical user is a woman aged between 18 and 29. There are no differences in the use of social media in regards with the race and ethnicity, household income and education level.

But social networks are not aiming only young people...

Another information which is interesting concerning the social media users is that now 65% of adult internet users use a social media like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn whereas they were 61% a year ago. (Source: Pew Research Center). So there is a growing interest of adult users in the social networks.

And what about social media users’ feelings about the subject?

According to the same study of the Pew Research Center, “Fun”, “Great”, “Interesting”, “Convenient” and “Good” are the top 5 words given by the users to describe their experience with the social networks.

Source: Pew Research Center

The use of social media is not about to end...

Who we are and What we do

Hi Folks!

We are six young students in the final year of our master degree fond of social media. Our specialization in Marketing and Business Development lead us to develop a strong curiosity about brand management. For the purpose of a class, we created this blog to share with you our ideas on social networks. Since people not using social networks has become a rare species, we thought it would be interesting to give your our inputs on the main trends concerning this industry. Our goal is to cover as much content as we can, from the users’ perspectives to the strategy of the main social network companies. The advantage of a blog is that we can create a community, so please feel free to comment any articles you’d like.

We hope you’ll enjoy the tour on Brand Warfare!

Stay posted people.