Open The Dialogue

Along with some of the immediate changes to Facebook, other changes will take a little bit of time for everyone to implement. The two new main changes will be in the form of Social Plugins and OpenGraph. Together these will replace the current Facebook Connect system that over 100 million people are already using.

Social Plugins Hook Facebook to the Web

Former FriendFeed CEO and current Facebook Product Director Bret Taylor was on hand to show off how Facebook is changing the way we connect with the web.  The first major change is how we visit the websites that we enjoy everyday. Facebook’s new Social Plugins are aimed at bringing the Facebook experience to the entire Internet and trying to do it in a simple way as possible.  Each of the social plugins that Facebook unveiled can be inserted into any website as each is one line of HTML. From a technical standpoint, the implementation is fairly simple.  Just drop the iFrame code into your site and voila! Instant connectivity.  You won’t have to login on each page and the plugins use cookies to tell you which of your friends:

• Liked a specific article. Through this Like button, even if you have never visited the site before, Facebook will be able to tell you which friends liked an article on CNN, a movie on IMDB or a song on Pandora.
• The Activity Stream plugin shows you what your friends are doing on the domain.
• Recommendations will show users which pages they should check out on the site next.
• With these plugins, Sign in with Facebook, will show you pictures of your friends who have signed in and if you want to bring Facebook chat to your site simply add the Social bar.

75 sites are currently partnered with Facebook through these new plug-ins and more are sure to follow soon.

OpenGraph Protocol

While Taylor’s unveiling of the plug-ins will change the way Facebook users will interact with sites, the OpenGraph Protocol he announced next will undoubtedly change the way that websites interact with Facebook. With the current Facebook system, if you linked to a new band or movie, that information would be passed through the News Stream and would be gone a day later.  Open Graph looks to change that throwaway interaction into a permanent one.

Open Graph runs on a type of code called semantic markers. When someone likes a certain movie on IMDB for example, this code will tell Facebook not only that Person X likes it but also that the film is of a certain genre, has a specific title and stars specific people.   Facebook will then automatically save this information on your profile page. That way if you like “The Godfather” on IMDB it will appear in your movies section.

But  a permanent mention is not the only goal of linking these profile pages.  Hovering over the link will pull in information from IMDB and clicking on it will send you to the page.  Perhaps more importantly is the fact that a site can update a user about their likes within the stream. For example if I am a fan of Ndamukong Suh on ESPN, when he is drafted by the Detroit Lions, ESPN will share that story with me in my Facebook stream.

This new API coupled with new features like the ability for developers to pull in Facebook searches, develop logins around OAuth and receive real-time instantaneous updates from Facebook will provide a whole new level of interaction on the web and on Facebook.

Closing

Zuckerberg closed his address with the idea that the web’s “default is social” and that these new tools will help all of the Internet become a more socially aware place.  Based on the ease of use and the capabilities that these changes may bring, I have to agree that the future does look a lot more social.

This week at Facebook’s f8 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the future of Facebook and how it interacts with the web. These new products combined with tweaks Facebook made before the conference kicked off will be critical not only in how we work with Facebook, they may change the way that we view the entire Internet.

Initial f8 Announcements

Facebook began their week of announcements long before Zuckerberg took the stage.  During the week they announced:

• Facebook Switches Fans with Likes.
  • While everyone knew this change was coming to your fan pages, the switch prompted some to question why it was a necessary change. Additionally the change clearly shows you which friends like the page, a feature that was not found in the original design.
• Community Pages allow Facebookers to share knowledge on topics.
  • Connecting to everything you care about is aimed at linking your interests and profile to more people on Facebook. Now instead of just enjoying cooking, you can link that interest to a community page.
• Facebook Shutters Facebook Lite
  • Facebook Lite was meant to be a smarter, faster way for power users to engage with Facebook.  In the end, Facebook used the Lite design to make the Stream more efficient.

Minor Announcements

Before getting into the meat and potatoes of Facebook’s next big thing, Zuckerberg shared some small changes that could have an immediate effect on how we interact with Facebook on a daily basis.

• One Step Permissions: instead of multiple permission screens, Facebook is changing its privacy logins to the simple click of one button.
• Expanding the Cache: Originally developers could only store information for 24 hours, causing people to have to log in everyday.  That protocol has been removed and now developers can store information until you sign back out.
• Universal Credits: Currently buying things through Facebook apps requires a credit card entry for each app. Facebook is working toward a Facebook currency that will allow users to store information in only one place.

Of course these aren’t the only changes that Facebook is currently engaged in building.  Instead these are changes that are already being rolled out to the system. Compared to the future changes of Facebook, these might as well be considered minor tweaks.

As Foursquare continues its takeover of social media, they’ve begun to partner with media sources such as the Financial Times to bring some semblance of synergy between social and traditional media.

With this new partnership, Time Out New York has checked-in with 30 New York City based locations and if you check in to four of those locations you get the Time Out New York Happy Hour badge! If getting a special badge isn’t incentive enough, these 30 locations will also offer happy hour deals. And of course, you can join Time Out New York’s Foursquare page for recommendations and news.

The increase in partnerships like this is indicative of a trend toward businesses and traditional media beginning to embrace geo-tagging services of Foursquare. This support is strengthening the belief that location-based services are the next wave of popular social media platforms.  If you aren’t already, keep your eye on Foursquare.

Go where your audience is. That’s what any company – or product, cause, individual, etc. – has to do to get their message out. And your audience is online. With more websites and social media platforms and apps blooming every day it’s challenging to cut through the noise. Even more challenging is to figure out what you actually need to politic online.

This week, at the Politics Online Conference, Microsoft unveiled its new platform for online campaigning, TownHall. There is relatively little cost involved in using the platform should a candidate choose to utilize TownHall and stay within its templates. A main feature of the platform is a discussion board style functionality. The campaign establishes discussion topics, users can ask questions or offer opinions and earn points for contributing. How you reward users with high points, I assume, is up to the campaign. This functionality gives the candidate/campaign a chance to respond to questions and/or concerns.

In this era of social media platforms, a campaign’s website features are going to become less important. In the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama’s campaign got it right. Yes, they had a website, but they were on Twitter, and Facebook, and YouTube, and an even bigger yes – there was an app for that.

Yes, TownHall is probably a great, inexpensive, program for local and even state level races. It’s also great for smaller non-profit and issue based campaigns. But every candidate and campaign has to recognize that his/her/its website is no longer the most important asset.

According to Alexa.com these are the top trafficked sites:

1. Google

2. Facebook

3. Yahoo

4. YouTube

5. Wikipedia

6. Craigslist

7. Blogger

8. Ebay

9. Twitter

10. Amazon

Considering this list, your audience is telling you where you need to be, and the platforms are telling you what you need to do. Yes, TownHall can be helpful, but these platforms are going to be more helpful than TownHall can ever be. Users are already comfortable finding and disseminating information on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and their blogs. They will find you, and you have to be there. Sure, they might go to your website a time or two, but with all of the platforms that users are on, if you are right there with them you will drive your message home more successfully.

If a voter can get all their answers about what the candidate thinks about healthcare on Facebook, the voter is going to stay there. There is no need to go to your website. If the voter can contribute directly through Facebook, that’s even better. If you don’t give your voters or supporters an excuse to venture away from your Facebook page, or from any of the other platforms, you will be able to engage them more. The more steps you add, the harder you make it, the more interest you lose.

Most of us working for the media have taken note to the recent activities in the social media space in the last one year. Twitter grew more than 1500% in mid-2009, Facebook has almost caught up with Google in web traffic, while the once-popular social network Bebo is on the verge of shutting down. In the meanwhile, marketers and agencies have been coping to keep up with this fickle, evolving industry. The power of communication has landed in the hands of the consumer, and instead of a traditional business to consumer marketing model, we are now faced with consumer to consumer conversations, pondering what are the best ways to insert our brand in those conversations. In this shifting ecosystem, roles for agencies has changed and the question has surfaced – who will handle the social media marketing for a brand? Is the traditional advertising agency, the digital shop or the PR agency?

Traditional ad agencies are not competing for this business. Most Americans still watch TV and the need for TV advertising will continue. The real competition remains between the digital agencies and the PR shops. During the recession, marketing dollars were reduced and companies scaled back on building fancy websites and expensive online media buys, affecting digital ad agencies’ business.  Social media marketing factors accountability, measurement, monitoring, impacting the Share of Voice – disciplines that online public relations excels in and have been doing so for a while. Brands are realizing that. In industry movements – Starbucks assigned most of it’s social media to their PR agency – Edelman. PR agencies are also welcoming those changes by staffing. To keep up with their client’s creative demands, Edelman’s Digital team bought David Armano on board, a creative advertising veteran, who created large scale web builds for ad agencies such as Digitas and Agency.com. We are going to start seeing these changes more frequently. And specific PR industry hires from the advertising field, brands rewarding their social media businesses to PR agencies are just the beginning of this change that has started to shake things up.

Coming from an digital advertising background myself (in fact – Publicis Modem and Agency.com, as Mr. Armano), I’m nervous that business model is losing to its PR counterparts. If brands need to focus on creating and measuring conversations and effectively execute social media programs – that is not the traditional advertising process. Sure, agencies for decades have been creating mind blowing creative campaigns, building brands, turning commercial jingles into household tunes – but while are approaching a Generation Y era, powered with Web 2.0 and iPhones and GPS mobile applications like Foursquare, the need for communication channels focuses on audience engagement and activation. Finding and recruiting influencers and making them brand evangelists are the true form of viral marketing. Being a digital marketer, everyday I encounter questions from our clients asking newer ideas on reaching their audience in unique and innovative ways, using social media. And in all honesty, I think a PR angle is far better equipped to answer that question than the standard advertising rationale. Communication and interaction will win over one-way messaging in today’s social media strategy.