Open The Dialogue

I’m sorry, but if Facebook really wants to “improve the user experience” then they’ll go the full nine yards and give those users a handy, easy to use “Delete” button they can use to erase their profile from the social network.

The ability to opt-out is one of those basic user rights I believe need to be part of any and all sites, platforms and services. That’s simply good customer service. There’s nothing to be gained by keeping a user penned in, not letting them leave and only honking them off. The only thing that results from that sort of policy is a useless number that, unfortunately, advertisers and analysts will be all too eager to buy into.

The number of active users in any given period is always more interesting and accurate than a generic “membership” number. Heck, I’m a member of Facebook but haven’t done much of anything with my profile in about two weeks. So I’m essentially useless if an advertiser has bought an ad based on membership numbers in that time.

Much better to let people leave when they want. Or at least make “deactivation” of an account mean something, with friend requests and other communications from the site actually ceasing. All of that, even the time someone opts to take off from actively participating on the site, is part of the user experience and policies need to be in place to optimize that.

Last week a report was released showing the extent to which reporters and traditional journalists felt their field was being impacted by bloggers, citizen journalists and other new media creators.

According to the survey that formed the report, 74 percent of journalists say new media outlets have “very” or “somewhat” effect on the speed of the reporting they do. So we can conclude from that, it seems, that journalists are feeling the eyeballs being trained on them and are speeding up their processes in order to make sure they get the story first.

But only 43 percent (and I say “only” lightly since that’s a pretty good-sized chunk of respondents) say that new media has had similar levels of impact on the quality of news coverage. 56 percent say little to no impact on quality has been felt.

The story ends with the author of the study saying journalists are at the very least turning to blogs for context and new ideas or angles for their own coverage, a topic I opined on before, bemoaning the fact that while they may get ideas and information on blogs, they rarely link out to or otherwise credit the bloggers.

Whatever impact journalists might feel blogs and new media in general is having, the tea leaves are aligning in such a way that it’s impossible to not see the tidal wave rolling around the bend.

(Mixed metaphor skillz: I haz dem)

Consider that political blogger James Pindell is leaving the Boston Globe for ThePoliticker, a new national network of such blogs. At the site a series of state-specific blogs will be brought together to form national coverage of the political arena.

Or that The New York Times of all papers is now openly soliciting for user-submitted photos of polling places during the primaries.

Or that magazine publishers are increasing the number of online features like social networking, games, and videos they roll out each year that not only make the sites more sticky but also allow for some creation of content by the visitor.

Or that this election cycle is featuring an incredible amount of new-media/old-media partnerships as each outlet looks to tap the other’s audience.

In an interview with New York Times “Bits” blogger Saul Hansell, he makes the case that blogging is not so very different from traditional journalism, at least not in the tools themselves. It’s the person wielding the tools and how they’re used that make some blogs - or even individual posts on a blog - what they are. Hansell acknowledges that the journalism world has changed to some extent because of the ubiquity of online publishing tools but that the worth of the outlet is determined more by the content than it is by the platform that content is published through.

Former Newsweek CEO Rick Smith, on the other hand, isn’t thrilled with how so many people with such easy access to publishing tools has devalued the news his magazine and others traffic in. Smith says that so much of the media people are now consuming is made up of opinion and not facts that the reporting is losing importance to readers - and the advertisers who want to be attached to breaking news.

I find more agreement with Hansell’s comments then I do with anything else. It’s always the content and the intent of the writer that trumps everything else. If someone puts out good stuff - be it audio, video or text - it will gain an audience and be taken seriously. If the content they’re producing is found to provide better context, be more relevant or in some other way more deeply and meaningfully connect with the audience then it will win the battle for eyeballs.

Instead of complaining over the injustice of consumer-generated content taking readers away from the reporting an established outlet does, it would be better for those editors to look at what they might not be providing to the audience and seek to address that shortcoming. Change. Adapt. Improve.

But still let your readers and other experts participate in the conversation. Allow comments on story and look to see who’s linking to you. Despite all the resources a newspaper or magazine might have (at least those resources that have survived the most recent round of budget cuts) there’s still going to be someone out there with a different take on any given story. They might live in the neighborhood you’re covering and know what their Alderman has just said on an issue. They might work in the industry and know that X was a direct result of W.

Traditional media no longer exists in a vacuum. They have to compete harder than ever for readers and advertisers. But there’s too much “Well we’re better” being proclaimed and not enough “Well we’re better” being practiced. The determination of your quality - whether it be media, consumer-packaged goods or anything else - comes from the number of people who shell out their money for what it is you’re producing.

(Afterward: I had this all written when I saw this pop-up - “How to get a job in journalism.” Lots of good stuff in there for the aspirational.)

Fox Interactive is starting to feel the heat coming down on MySpace. Monetization of the social network has been the key since News Corp. acquired it a while ago but that goal has remained elusive, with CPMs staying low for a variety of reason.

For one, the people on MySpace don’t particularly care for ads, and Fox has littered everyone’s profile with a ton of them. There’s also the fact that advertisers aren’t completely convinced putting brand messages next to pictures of the two hot chicks you met at Senor Tadpoles is a great idea. Add on top of that recent numbers showing membership is declining for the first time ever and that members are sticking around on the site for a shorter amount of time and you can see that the problem is going to become even more…ummm…problematic.

MySpace is also facing pressure from Facebook, which turned out to be much more of a competitor than they probably initially pegged it as. Considering Facebook just signed an ad deal with Microsoft that, I think, will help Facebook make many of the same mistakes MySpace has, that threat is only going to grow. As Ian Schafer says in the BW story, display ads on social networks just aren’t working out well and that’s where Microsoft is strongest. So expect the Facebook experience to decline in quality when this roles out.

But it’s not just Facebook that is breathing down MySpace’s neck. Friendster has decided to open up its platform for developers much like Facebook and others have and MySpace is planning to do. More than that, it’s decided to make the platform open to widgets and apps from other networks, meaning developers don’t have to re-create their work to bring it to the Friendster audience. And there are a host of niche-focused networks that cater to a passionate audience by providing them with a virtual meeting place to hang out with like-minded fans.

Social networks are, by their very nature, niche environments. It doesn’t matter if an ad or other marketing message reaches two million people on Facebook. It’s only slightly better if that ads reaches a group that’s setup for people who share an interest in that type of product or industry. What does matter is if you, as a marketer, provide value to the community. You probably don’t remember who has advertised to you, but you are likely to remember someone who, through their sponsorship or something like that, enhanced the experience you had on the site.

That’s why I think the best sorts of marketing I’ve seen on MySpace are the ones that have added functionality. All of the examples I have, unsurprisingly, come from movie studios. Warner Bros. upgraded people’s photo-album limit to market 300. Dreamworks let you edit your photos to market Transformers. Warner Bros., again, added a video slideshow tool to profiles to market I Am Legend. In each case the user got something out of the sponsorship.

The help provided by a marketer is going to stick in people’s minds much more than a banner ad that flashed at them while they were trying to leave their friend a comment. Provide value and the audience will assign the appropriate level of value to your brand. Provide no value and the audience will assign the appropriate level of value to your brand.

I know which one I would prefer.

MySpace will be integrating Skype’s VOIP service into its instant-messaging offerings come November. The two will split the revenue generated by MySpace users taking advantage of Skype’s premium offerings like Skype-out, but it’s unclear how that split will be structured. eBay, which owns Skype, is basically hoping that the extra revenue will help make up for the fact that, as it admitted earlier, it overpaid by about $1 billion (said with pinkie finger at the corner of my lips) when it bought the company.

But as the story points out there’s very little overlap between Skype users and MySpace members. If 25 million people are using MySpace’s IM client, and only 6.7 percent of MySpacers also use Skype and if only a fraction of that use the premium services, then we’re not talking about very many dedicated users.
It would be really interesting to see how many people actually use this and how. It’s also going to be really interesting to see if this service is adopted by the marketers who are so in love with MySpace and its very attractive user demographic. Let’s say I’m a movie marketer (what can I say, my brain goes there by default) and set up a MySpace profile for the flick I’m promoting. Would there be an advantage to my being available on Skype?

I think the answer to that question has to be yes. If you really want people to get engaged and entice them to see the movie you have to offer points of contact for interaction. If voice can be one of those then it’s a bonus. The fraction of people who would use Skype to get in touch with you are likely going to be people looking forward to the movie who might be having problems with the page or who have a question about the movie. People who fall in either category deserve to have their questions answered.

It’s at least something that needs to be considered as part of a larger customer service/new media maintenance strategy I think. It could be a tremendous opportunity to create another valuable point of contact and could actually add value to a MySpace execution that goes deeper then counting how many people you can get to say, “Thanks for the add!”

Remember last year when there were concerns over the legal issues that teens were facing by putting certain information on MySpace and other social networking sites? Well, the latest concern is that MySpace was reported to have booted 29,000 sex offenders off its network after vetting its own member list against publicly available offender lists, according to an item in AdAge by Jeremy Mullman.

It’s not the first time a concern such as this has come about with regard to social networking sites, but it’s one of the first times we’ve seen a big proactive response such as this from one of the behemoths of social data.

If I were Facebook (and if Facebook were a person and not a collection of HTML code) about a month and a half I ago I probably would have felt like I was sitting on the top of the social media heap. Sure, my market share still trailed MySpace’s by a significant margin but people seemed to love my cleaner interface, more efficient tools and especially my willingness to let people develop their own widgets to use with me. It was a great time to be a social network.

If I were Facebook just last week I’d be wondering where I it was I had just woken up and why I only had an extra pair of socks and a copy of Grapes of Wrath on me.

After an initial burst of positive publicity for Facebook as it became the darling of the social media space the tide seems to have shifted drastically. Where once people were praising the way it was allowing developers to add widgets and other features at will, now there’s a backlash going on about how it’s a “walled garden” and doesn’t let people out. It’s almost as if Facebook once completely open to search engines and such and then decided to shut the doors.

But that’s not the case. The fact that Facebook sends you an email alerting you to the fact that someone has written on your Wall but that you have to login to see that message is not new. It’s functionality that, at least to my knowledge, has been around since forever on the site. And why are we surprised by that, when so much of the discussion we have revolves around engagement value and pageviews as a sign of success?

I think the seemingly newly formed consensus that Facebook’s content-in/nothing-out model is a bad thing is more a symptom of groupthink than anything else. I think it was about two weeks ago when I started seeing one or two people say they were frustrated in their attempts to export contacts or some such from Facebook into another application. That evolved quickly into people decrying the existence of such closed ecosystems, as if Facebook and other such sites were going to bring down the very Web2.0 world they helped to foster.

As participants in the discussion it’s important that we make sure we’re not falling victim to just piling on someone else’s legitimate point in order to make ourselves appear so cutting edge or smart in a way that only we ourselves can fully appreciate. There are things that Facebook could be doing better, yeah, but let’s actually discuss what they are and how the company can achieve those goals in a way that’s consistent with the brand. There are things that a lot of companies could be doing better. Read TechCrunch for a week and you’ll see all sorts of new start-ups that claim to do X better than MySpace or iTunes or YouTube or any of the other established heavy-hitters. If you find a deficiency in the tools you’re using, take some time and peruse the alternatives to find one that more closely fits the experience you’d like to have.

Be warned, though: What you like the best might not be where the cool kids and A-listers are hanging out currently. So your choices are to hang with the in crowd or pave your own way.

On Monday afternoon, I caught this question on LinkedIn’s Answers system, discussing people who were “open networkers” on that system, meaning people who just connect up with anyone and everyone who asks them to. While I see some of the points for the pro-open network being valid, I think it ends up defeating the purpose of a LinkedIn in the first place, which was to get rid of all kinds of “unqualified” or “unwanted” sales calls, random pitches, or emails from people you don’t know or trust. Should LinkedIn halt the practice? Nope, there’s no reason to halt what these folks are doing in amassing 20,000 “connections” to their lists, just like regulating a lot of other things on the ‘net doesn’t make sense. But when I choose to connect up with people on LinkedIn, and I’m at about 250 right now, it’s to people that I either know pretty well in a flesh-and-blood kind of sense, have regular communications with online and/or off, or are a part of a group or organization with, and by design, have a level of trust in. That’s not to say that any person who has 1,800 links or whatever doesn’t “know” those people, but as you stretch yourself that way, the believability that one could potentially know enough about that many people to make a solid recommendation for a job inquiry, sales call, or interview request becomes smaller and smaller.

What do those of you who use LinkedIn think about this, and do you connect up with people you really don’t know at all just to build a list of connections?

[ed: as I'm about to post this at 2:07pm Eastern on Tuesday, LinkedIn is, of course, down for the moment]

Disney has gotten lots of press in recent days for the news that they’re finally redesigning their website, a site that’s looked the same for many, many years now. One of the key components to the site will be more social networking functionality that tries to emulate MySpace and position Disney as the place for kids and teens to hang out. I have to believe this was at least in part spurred by the success Disney had with its TV-movie-turned-brandname “High School Musical,” the campaign for which connected well with teens and kids by including a number of online components.

The problem, though, is that the social aspects of the new site are restricted to an extent that users might not find acceptable. Basically Disney wants parents to feel good about their kids spending time there and so have limited what users can put on their profiles and what kinds of appropriate subjects can be discussed in the chat areas.

It seems that, for all the marketing power they possess, Disney execs have not studied recent history. If they had, they would have realized that Wal-Mart’s attempt to create a content-restricted social network flopped because of those restrictions. They also would have read this story on how kids were abandoning rules-laden sites for ones that don’t suffer from the pressures of parental approval and corporate ownership, something that’s recapped well here (via Brian).

I know that social networking is a great idea, as is the desire to protect kids from less savory parts of the online world. But imagine creating a coffee house where a chaperone stands at every table making sure no one introduces any new ideas and no one uses any course language. Does that sound like the kind of place where a kid - or an adult for that matter - would want to spend large amounts of time? Neither do I.

If you want a 2007 prediction from me, it’s that we’ll be writing about Disney shutting down the social networking parts of this site by, say, June due to lack of use or complaints.

This isn’t a meme of the usual fare that you get tagged with, but I’ll bite on it anyway. From Fred Wilson’s A VC blog, this question from Viral Ventures CEO Jason L. Baptiste:

If you had to abandon one service, never to have it again (gone, deleted, not able to come back on,etc.), which would you get rid of, your Myspace page/friends or your AIM buddylist/screenname?

Without question, my MySpace page.

A big story on Tuesday is that Facebook is apparently shopping itself around, and is looking to take in a few more smackers than the $750 million that it was reportedly offered already. BusinessWeek Online’s Steve Rosenbush suggests that Viacom, purveyors of MTV and other cable channels that reach the younger set, might be up for this type of action. I don’t know about you, but I happen to be with Om Malik on this one. He suggests that perhaps that $750MM figure should have been snagged while it was on the table, because the site’s traffic isn’t exactly booming. So while it’s still a big number, overall, traffic doesn’t lie. Unless there’s some other type of cat hiding in the corner there, what’s the big shakes that are going to make someone pony up 267% of that offer? Let’s be honest here, having a “me too” product isn’t going to cut it in this space. It’s either got to be better, or have some sort of different feel to it for it to resonate with people.

Check out what Om’s got to say on this, I won’t belabor this point any further. Oh, and a stack more over at tech.memeorandum.