Why Facebook Messenger Is A Platform—And WhatsApp Isn’t

http://readwrite.com/2015/03/27/facebook-whatsapp-messenger-texting-platform

Because Facebook wants to own all the chats, everywhere.

WhatsApp doesn’t want to be a platform. Co-founder Brian Acton, on a panel Wednesday at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, made that very clear. Unlike its sibling service Messenger, which has started courting outside developers and businesses, all that matters to WhatsApp is that the service remain stable, simple and unfettered for its worldwide audience of 100 million monthly active users.

That matters to parent company Facebook too, but likely for different reasons.

WhatsApp—which sold to the social network last year for $19 billion dollars—offers an interesting counterpoint to Facebook's big Messenger push. Because with less redundancy between the two, the company could essentially own a decent chunk of the world’s conversations. 

The Network Effect

Imagine what it’s like using some of the most robust, dynamic mobile applications available today—complete with the sort of images, animated GIFs, music and videos that will assault Facebook’s Messenger app soon enough. Now imagine running that on a slow cellular Edge network straight out of 1995.

That’s precisely the patience-stretching scenario Acton imagines all the time, and it serves as a guiding principle for his work with the service.

In that regard, WhatsApp’s moves seem obvious. It became popular because it was built on some key fundamentals—namely no-fuss messaging that’s reliable, works in different languages and on as many gadgets as possible. Adding the complexity of outside integrations to the mix would only complicate things for a widespread service that has to work over a variety of networks all over the world—some of which can only muster rudimentary connectivity.

“The world is a very diverse place,” Acton told panel moderator and analyst Mary Meeker, "and networks can have any number of configurations and problems that impede or get in the way with messaging.” One of those problems, for a globally available texting service, is dealing with systems and networks in emerging markets—a key area for tech companies, including Facebook.

With Acton’s motto being “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity,” he can leave the complexities of media messaging to sibling services Instagram and Messenger.

The Big Picture

On Wednesday, an audience member asked when WhatsApp would release APIs (application programming interfaces) to let developers tie their apps to the texting service. Acton had bad news for him: "The answer I have is ‘not today’,” he said, later elaborating that APIs are not even on the road map for the foreseeable future.

But that’s not to say WhatsApp will stagnate. "This year, we’re focusing on voice, [and] we’re focusing on the Web product,” he said. "David [Marcus] is really championing the APIs.”

If WhatsApp leaves Messenger to handle Facebook's platform ambitions, that likely suits the parent company just fine. 

Messenger—Facebook’s other, homegrown messaging service—just unveiled a plethora of developer tools covering embedded videos, embedded posts, app linking and more. Marcus wants to give partners and other app makers the "opportunity to build on these platforms,” he said. And not just once, but often. 

“You want to build an app that will be there to stay," he said, "and you want to build creative tools that people will want to use repeatedly.” 

Some of those people will actually be businesses. Messenger looks intent on pushing its new vision of customer service that replaces logging into websites, punching through automated phone menus or waiting on hold, with chat threads. People could buy products, see their transaction info or receipts, shipping details, individualized promotions and other customer relations messages, all in a Messenger window. 

For now, Messenger doesn’t support cross-border transactions, so it's currently confined to the U.S. But consider it a first step in Facebook's larger ambitions. 

The two messaging services look like perfect foils for each other. While WhatsApp handles the fundamentals—making sure that anyone anywhere, regardless of phone or network, can use its service—Messenger can take on the more complex messaging tasks to satisfy users and companies on advanced networks. Between that and all the sharing that Facebook itself naturally manages, the company could have its fingerprints on an awful lot of conversations all over the world. 

"Build better" may be one of Facebook's F8 slogans, but it's the other one that suddenly has some extra context now: "This is only the beginning." When it comes to messaging, it certainly seems like it. 

5 Big Trends that Shaped Social Media in 2014

http://readwrite.com/2015/01/01/2014-social-trends

Messaging, following, and anonymity

When we're mobile, we're social. In 2014, we spent 45 minutes a day on social apps on our smartphones and tablets—the biggest use for our devices after games, according to Flurry, the mobile-analytics firm Yahoo purchased this year. Social applications—social networks, messaging apps, and other forms of connection—now account for 28 percent of our time spent on apps, up from 24 percent in 2013.

Facebook still dominates our usage. But in many ways, the Facebook-defined paradigm for social networking fell apart in 2014. Social connections aren't about one big place where we all hang out—it's about a fragmented landscape of apps with connections that are more provisional than Facebook's old friends list.

These changes aren't lost on the Web's dominant social network. Facebook itself has been a participant in and sometimes a driver of these changes. But the most interesting part of the social landscape of 2014 is the sense that it's no longer just Facebook's game.

Breaking Up Is Easy To Do—Even For Facebook

Smartphones, always pulsing with notifications and updates, break our attention spans down to mere seconds. The smart response by social networks is to break themselves into multiple apps, or for new apps to define their purposes ever more narrowly.

The app that epitomized this trend was Yo. Launched on April Fool's Day, the messaging app only sent one word to your friends: "Yo." 

And Facebook’s standalone Messenger app brought the fragmentation trend to the masses. Some objected to its mandatory imposition, but it allowed us to converse with friends without contending with updates from our noisy news feeds. Standalone apps are like shortcuts to different social features that, on the Web, might make more sense as part of one big website. 

“Connecting everyone means giving the power to share different kinds of content with different groups of people,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a conference call with analysts early this year. “This is something we focused on by launching separate mobile apps beyond the main Facebook app – Messenger and Instagram are great examples of this.”

Paper, a social news-reading app, and Groups, an app for Facebook-organized communities, are more examples of apps Facebook spun off this year.

Foursquare also pursued the break-up strategy, spinning off Swarm as an app just for location-based check-ins.

Messaging Dominated The Conversation

Facebook's $17 billion purchase of WhatsApp focused everyone's attention on the rise of messaging apps. Mostly free to use, these mobile alternatives to old-fashioned texting or desktop-based instant messaging attracted hundreds of millions of users. And there was no shortage of contenders, from WhatsApp to Snapchat, Line, Viber, WeChat, and others.

The reasons we used messaging apps in 2014 varied wildly, from the high cost of texting in Europe to the preference for visual communication with emojis in Asia to American teens' desire for a less-permanent way of sending pictures.

The truth is that each messaging app serves its own purpose for connecting with people. The inherent complexity of human nature means that no one app will be able to serve all of our needs for connection.  

The Rise Of The Anti-Facebook

This was the year we lost our innocence about Facebook. It was easy enough to ignore the abstract warnings about how the social network tracked users across the Web. It was harder to stomach the way Facebook researchers conducted a massive psychological experiment on almost 700,000 unknowing users for one week, tweaking the posts displayed in their feeds to make them happier or sadder.

There was also the incident where a disgruntled user  sought to kick drag queens off of Facebook by reporting them for violating a rule that the social network rarely enforced.

Facebook executives apologized for both incidents, but together, they lay the groundwork for the rise of new social network Ello. Marketing itself as the "anti-Facebook," creator Paul Budnitz promised an advertising- and tracking-free environment. 

It's not clear if Ello will ever attract a large number of users. But its very existence is a reminder that social applications must put users, not advertisers, first.

The End Of The Friend Request

Social applications are slowly but surely distancing themselves from one-to-one connections and the concept of the two-way "friend request." Now everyone from Instagram to LinkedIn and Foursquare encourages users to "follow" other profiles.

“Following” people, celebrities, and brands that interest you gives networks more opportunities to grow than when they limit you to a small, finite pool of real-life friends or two-way connections. There’s less friction, too, in waiting for someone to accept a friend request. 

No Names, Please

The ultimate form of connection we explored in 2014 was one where we didn't ask for names. Secret, Yik Yak, and Whisper all took off, showing the strong interest people have in online anonymity. This, too, was a reaction to Facebook's creation of a world where everything we do online gets attached to our name.

These experiments with anonymity had their downsides. Secret struggled with mean-spirited chatter, eventually putting in measures to keep users from including names in their posts. Whisper got in trouble when executives bragged to reporters about their ability to track posters.

It's clear that anonymity or pseudonymity, in a throwback to the early days of the Web, are staging a revival. Even Facebook got into the game with an app called Rooms, which isn't strictly speaking anonymous but instead uses instant-messaging-style handles.

What will 2015 hold? We'd love to hear your predictions.

Marketing in the age of Data for a New Customer

http://forbesindia.com/blog/technology/marketing-in-the-age-of-data-for-a-new-customer/

The Future of marketing with respect to digitization and the complexity of analytics that are required to make sense of the data are already dominating our lives. A number of examples come to mind when I think of how the art of classic marketing is changing with time and transforming itself to leverage technologies and drive a clear business benefit as well as customer engagement.

My Favorite example is one of the early engagements that Starbucks launched online called “My Starbucks Idea”. It was a continuous engagement for co creation where customers and prospects propose ideas for new products, packaging, marketing etc. These are rated by others and best ones are awarded as well as the company uses them to transform business. Acting on that information and doing it publicly are keys to the success of this campaign which has already generated 70,000 ideas. Thinking of ways to build your company is great. But directly asking your consumers what they want is better - indeed awesome!

Fiat Group Automobiles needed to determine the likelihood that future and returning customers would buy specific brands and models of Fiat cars, so that individual dealers could optimize the use of available marketing funds. The company also needed to better understand customer experience with dealerships and repair facilities. Using statistics, they were better able to determine the likelihood that a customer will purchase a specific brand and model and the related timing of the purchase. This improved customer response rate to marketing initiatives by 15% – 20 %, customer loyalty by 7% especially when customers are ready to replace their existing one.

In February 2012, The New York Times published an article by Charles Duhigg (Doo-hig) titled, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets”. The story simultaneously captured the future of marketing, some very interesting possibilities for all of us marketers and most importantly, chilling risks about the new responsibilities in this era.

Marketing is indeed finding a way to serve various customer needs even before the customer can voice his exact requirement. Marketing is leading to a pre-emptive action to impress upon the customer and result in a meaningful transaction. A huge element of data analytics, customer buying patterns and past history is making marketers arrive at a more precise conclusion on a customer’s buying pattern.

Today’s marketing practice requires building this ability to understand customers as individuals across millions of interactions. And it sets the conditions for marketing to play new roles in driving business success. The key capabilities that marketers need to understand customers as individuals include:

1. Instrumenting all the key touch points to gather the right data on each customer

2. Interconnecting social media data, other forms of digital data and transaction data to paint a more vivid picture of each customer.

3. Run the right analytics, at the right time, on the right customer to generate new ideas about whom to serve and how to best serve that individual.

4. Generate insights in real time that are predictive, not just historical.

5. Build the capability to do this on a massive scale.

We all see that there is an unprecedented amount of data being gathered at every meaningful touch point about each customer. The best brands are very strategic about which touch points get instrumented, and what kind of data emerges as the result. Question to ask: what is your clients’ instrumentation strategy?

The most skilled companies are combining social data, other web-based data and transaction data—and running precise analytics over them to gain new kinds of insights. In this world, the path to success is largely dependent on having comprehensive access to the data. You need to formulate these insights and strategies to discern the veracity of that data. Question to ask: what is your client’s strategy for attracting data? 

And finally, what is your customer’s next likely move—so they can appropriately pair their response with the next best offer, next best action, next need etc. Question to ask: how predictive must your clients’ insights about customers be in order to succeed in their competitive market?

 -  By Sindhu Srinivas, Practice Leader – Marketing Consulting & Services, IBM India/South Asia.In my next post, I will share with you how new age data tools are being leveraged to help brands interact better with customers.

Read more: http://forbesindia.com/blog/technology/marketing-in-the-age-of-data-for-a-new-customer/#ixzz3Czr4toCk

Facebook 2013 Status of Korean Market

http://www.slideshare.net/Innobirds_Media/innobirds-wisebirds-annual-report-2013#

2013 Facebook Marketing Annual report [Korea] - Innobirds,Wisebirds from Innobirds Media

14 Social Media Trends for 2014 [Infographic]

http://socialtimes.com/14-social-media-trends-2014-infographic_b142301

Twitter Launches Analytics For Twitter Cards

http://readwrite.com/2014/01/23/twitter-launches-analytics-for-twitter-cards#awesm=~otP7DXXffst5xg

Users can better understand how their Twitter cards are performing thanks to a new analytics tool the company announced today. Twitter cards expand tweets with photos, videos and links.

The new analytics tool will let users see how many people click or retweet their card, and in the case of cards that feature apps, how many installations resulted.

Top Digital Marketing Trends in 2014

http://socialmediatoday.com/anitaloomba/2035211/top-digital-marketing-trends-2014#!

2013 will be known as the year organizations began embracing different tactics for digital marketing in a big way. It will also be known as the year of the biggest social media changes:Twitter’s IPO announcement, Google andFacebook’s algorithm updates, and the list goes on. This trend of disrupting the digital marketing arena will continue into 2014 and beyond. Here is a roundup of what we predict in 2014 for the digital marketing industry:

Content continues to be king

Social Media Today reported that 78% of CMO’s believe custom content is the future of marketing. Most marketers have embraced and accepted content as a major resource in their efforts. Along with this, there has been an influx of content discovery apps which support the growth trend: Flipboard, Pulse, and Fancy (to name a few). If you’re not dedicating budget towards content development, it may be time to consider doing so!

Growth of video marketing

It goes without saying that videos have the ability to convey a message that is ten times more powerful than text content. Kony 2012 was proof that great video content has the potential of becoming an overnight viral success. Also, with apps like Instagram, Snapchat and Vine, videos are being created, viewed and shared on mobile devices. Facebook has also introduced and enhanced their mobile ads platform. Combined with the mobile potential, we predict that video marketing will grow even more in 2014.

Social media diversification

2013 has been the year of social media growth. We will continue to see this trend in the coming year. 93% of marketers already say they use social media for business, but in 2013 we also saw a surge in popularity of new networks like Pinterest, Vine and Instagram – and have become a part of everyday life. These networks are carving a unique niche for themselves, which means that businesses will continue to use different platforms to build their brands and connect with consumers.

These Are The Most Twitter-Crazy Countries In The World, Starting With Saudi Arabia (!?)

http://www.businessinsider.in/These-Are-The-Most-Twitter-Crazy-Countries-In-The-World-Starting-With-Saudi-Arabia-/articleshow/25396830.cms

In the wake of Twitter's IPO, we wanted to know which countries had the most Twitter-crazy populations.

Was it the U.S., Twitter's home market, or another tech-savvy country like Singapore or the UK?

So at BI Intelligence we analyzed the data to see what percentage of different countries' online populations actually used Twitter.

That yielded some surprises:

• An amazing 41% of the online population in Saudi Arabia uses Twitter, a higher percentage than anywhere else in the world. Indonesia and the Philippines were close.
• Almost one-third of online audiences in India use Twitter.India, with 36.6 million people on the social network, is also Twitter's third-largest market right after the U.S.
• 14 countries - including Japan, the UK, South Africa, and Turkey - have heavier Twitter usage than the social network's home market, the U.S.
• 84.4 million Chinese Internet users report having used Twitterthanks to various hacks despite the fact that it's blocked in the country (along with just about every other Western social media service).

We also looked at how big Twitter's audience was overall in each country, in the blue column. The data was provided to BI Intelligence by Global Web Index, which conducts quarterly online surveys in each country.

What are the growth opportunities for Twitter? According to Twitter's own forecasts, management expects user growth to come largely fromArgentina, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.

However, we know that Twitter's user growth is tied closely to mobile growth, so we see enormous potential for the social network in Brazil, Vietnam, andIndia.

This analysis is from a new report from BI Intelligence, in which we compare the world's largest social networks in two ways. First, we evaluate the biggest properties side-by-side in terms of total audience size. Then we analyze the markets where each has the most growth potential, and their demographics in terms of country-of-origin.

Twitter Reportedly Plans To Overhaul Its Private Message System

http://readwrite.com/2013/10/17/twitter-messaging#awesm=~okYsS3zvS5E5Gz

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Twitter wants make it easier for users to ping each other privately instead of publicly, AllThingsD reports. Although details are scarce, the microblogging service could reportedly launch an expanded private-messaging feature that would bring it more directly into competition with texting services offered by carriers and apps such as WhatsApp and KakaoTalk.

Coincidentally (or not), Twitter has made recent changes to its direct messaging feature that make it easier for users to send and receive private messages on its network. 

Image via petesimon on Flickr

Why Twitter's IPO Doesn't Change Anything

http://readwrite.com/2013/09/13/twitter-ipo-changes#awesm=~ohzqK26HNYb4cg

Twitter has filed papers to take the company public. This changes everything, right?

Wrong.

It's a momentous milestone for the six-year-old message-broadcasting company, to be sure, and a credit to the steady leadership of CEO Dick Costolo, who followed two of the company's founders in that role. But for users and developers, the IPO doesn't mean much.

Change Is Good—But Simplicity Is Better

As a product, Twitter won't change much following a public stock offering. The 140-character format of a tweet is set in stone, though Twitter has figured out clever ways to associate images, videos, and other forms of media with these short posts. Recent changes, like a more intelligent display of tweets sent as replies in the form of a conversation, seem more like obvious tweaks than big changes.

And while Twitter has grown more sophisticated in selling advertisements, ads on Twitter come in the form of tweets, albeit more prominently displayed, which keeps things simple. Where Twitter will improve its advertising products is in how they're targeted to particular users—for example, in conjunction with live events and television shows.

The Platform Is Already Locked Down

Ah, but won't Twitter crack down on developers after an IPO, as it looks for new ways to make money? Well, that's already happened.

While third-party apps for reading tweets face severe restrictions, developers are relatively free to build apps that send content into the Twittersphere. Analytics toolmakers also are making a mint.

Some developers may still be unhappy that Twitter won't let them create the apps they're dreaming of, but the boundaries are better defined than they were in Twitter's early days, giving less grounds for complaint.

Twitter Will Keep Snapping Up Startups

Right before it revealed its SEC filing, Twitter announced it had bought online-advertising startup MoPub in an all-stock deal. It's been on an acquisition spree for a while, buying up startups like Vine, the short-video broadcasting service, and Crashlytics, maker of tools for mobile-app developers.

Between the cash Twitter has raised from investors and the high valuation placed on its privately traded shares, it already has the financial firepower to buy startups to expand its business and its pool of talent. An IPO will accelerate that trend, but it won't change its direction.

Investors Will Get Rich

Twitter's venture-capital investors, like Union Square Ventures and Charles River Ventures, will profit enormously from an IPO (and from their patience in not selling). But it's their job to make money for their own investors—pension funds and other large institutions that need to diversify their investment portfolios. While it's great that VC firms are making money, it doesn't really change much for the rest of us.

Twitter Will Stay Independent

As a publicly traded company, Twitter has a better chance of staying independent. But it got too big to buy a while ago, based on the valuation its private investors have assigned to it.

Over the years, Facebook and Google made stabs at buying Twitter; there were talks with others, like Yahoo, that never went particularly far. That was billions of dollars ago. At this point, it's too hard for Twitter to sell. Its private valuation is estimated at between $10 billion and $14 billion; it will likely be worth more than that as a public company.

At the same time, that's way too much money for any public company answerable to its shareholders to spend on an acquisition, given the state of Twitter's advertising revenues. (Estimates vary in the range of $300 million to $600 million this year; we know that to file confidentially with the SEC as an emerging-growth company, Twitter's annual revenues must be less than $1 billion.) If Twitter will sell, it must first grow into the valuation eager investors want to assign to it.

What Will Change

The one factor that's hardest for Costolo and the rest of Twitter's executives to manage will be its people. AllThingsD reports that some Twitter employeesrecently received new stock grants to keep them at the company well past an IPO.

Some engineers, product managers, and salespeople who enjoy the wild ride of a startup simply won't want to stay at a company of the size a publicly traded Twitter will inevitably become. Were Twitter to find some way to delay its stock-market debut, they would likely leave anyway, as Twitter grew; that's been happening for some time, even as Twitter hires employees by the hundreds.

One thing to watch is Twitter's defense of its users' free speech against regulators and spies. The departure of longtime general counsel Alexander Macgillivray was disturbing to some, though he wrote that he "couldn't be happier" with his replacement, Vijaya Gadde.

If a public Twitter wavers in defense of its users against government agencies, employees could rapidly grow disillusioned. And that, in turn, could weaken the company's growth.

The good news is that going public may be the best defense Twitter has against such pressure. Acquired by a larger entity, Twitter might fold to protect some other aspect of the parent company's business. As long as those who buy Twitter's stock understand the legal risks it faces in championing free speech around the globe, little should change just because Twitter acquires a ticker symbol.

Lead photo of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo by Madeleine Weiss for ReadWrite

 Summary; Not anything that matters, that is.

Promoted tweets boost offline sales by 29%, Twitter says (and it’ll show you how)

Promoted tweets drive sales, Twitter said today. And not just for web retailers — they’re talking ice cream and razors and toothpaste.

In addition, the company announced a new program for brands to track the offline sales impact of their Twitter ads.

There were three key findings in a Twitter-sponsored study by Datalogix on promoted tweets, all of which will support Twitter’s efforts to get mainstream corporate America onboard with Twitter advertising.

First, Twitter users who engage with promoted tweets buy more. That’s unsurprising — if you retweet, favorite, or reply to a tweet, you’re likely paying attention, understanding what’s been promoted, and reacting to it emotionally enough to respond. That engagement, Datalogix’ study says, drove an average 12 percent sales lift across 35 brands with dozens of products in the study.

Perhaps even more significantly, however, even those who simply saw a tweet — without responding to it — bought 2 percent more often.

Second, users who are “exposed” to a brands’ own unpaid tweets buy 8 percent more than those who are not. This is probably one of those not-very-surprising results, since Twitter followers are inherently self-selecting. But the interesting part is that this buy-more effect increased almost 300 percent when users saw five or more organic tweets.

“The implication of this finding is that brands who actively build their follower base and regularly tweet to their followers can see an increase in offline sales,” Twitter’s Ameet Ranadive wrote.

Third, and most impressive, a brand’s Twitter followers who see the brand’s promoted tweets buy almost a third more than other followers who simply see organic tweets.

That’s huge for Twitter.

Essentially, this is data-driven validation of Twitter’s advertising ROI argument to brands. First, brands need to be on Twitter to get organic lift, Twitter’s data is saying. And second, they need to buy promoted tweets to maximize the effect and see optimal offline sales growth.

The most interesting part?

Twitter’s not just putting the study out there and claiming the impacts. Instead, the social network is clearly comfortable enough in the veracity and duplicability of the results that it is offering brands Twitter tools to measure offline sales impact themselves. Currently, that’s limited to consumer packaged goods advertisers in the U.S., and available only on a 1-on-1, case-by-case basis.

However, that’s still a massive validation of the effectiveness of Twitter’s growing range of ad tools.

Twitter is clearly preparing for an IPO soon, and it’s bolstering its money-making advertising options with retargeting options, geotargeting opportunities, keyword targeting tools, and much more. All of that means little, however, without the capability to prove that Twitter advertisers actually make money when they spend money.

That’s something that consumer goods companies like those that make Oreos and Trident gum desperately want:

“Twitter’s study is highly valuable to us because it brings social activity even closer to measurable sales impact,” Bonin Bough, the VP of Mondelez International, which own Oreos, said in a statement. “Many of our brands like Trident, Oreo, and Wheat Thins are very active in the Twittersphere, and with Twitter’s new offline sales impact capability, we will be able to measure the connections between our organic and paid Twitter activity and in-store sales. This is a significant step in evaluating the power of real-time marketing.”

Now Twitter’s adding that last little piece.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/08/promoted-tweets-boost-offline-sales-by-29-twitter-says-and-theyll-show-you-how/#zKS4ZLk4GowzxKL2.99 

Facebook To 6M Users: We Moved Fast And Broke Your Privacy

http://readwrite.com/2013/06/21/facebook-to-6m-users-we-moved-fast-and-broke-your-privacy#awesm=~o9WsOsLcwao0yA

Facebook, one of whose core principles is "Move fast and break things," appears to have done just that with the contact information of some six million users.

The social network admitted that a complex bug involving the way it stores user phone numbers and email addresses of its users may have "inadvertently" exposed that information to other users.

Facebook used this information to make friend recommendations and to make other recommendations smarter. For instance, it would match email and phone data to make sure it didn't prompt you to invite someone to Facebook if they were already on the service; instead, it would prompt you to add such a person as a friend.

Unfortunately, a bug in Facebook's software stashed some of that phone and email data in other users' profiles. Those who downloaded their profiles may have thus also saved off contact information they otherwise wouldn't have had.

Here's how Facebook describes the bug:

Because of the bug, some of the information used to make friend recommendations and reduce the number of invitations we send was inadvertently stored in association with people’s contact information as part of their account on Facebook. As a result, if a person went to download an archive of their Facebook account through our Download Your Information (DYI) tool, they may have been provided with additional email addresses or telephone numbers for their contacts or people with whom they have some connection.

[...]

We've concluded that approximately 6 million Facebook users had email addresses or telephone numbers shared.

Oops.

Summary; The social network may have inadvertently shared your email and phone number with people you "may have some connection" to.

SoLoMo Best Practices – Nike Case Study

http://windmillnetworking.com/2013/05/29/solomo-best-practices-nike-case-study/

Nike is a brand powerhouse… No matter what sport, you’ll probably see the ubiquitous Nike swoosh logo somewhere.

So (Social) Lo (Local) Mo (Mobil) is a powerful new way to connect… with a hyper-connected, hyper-informed, empowered consumer (not the first time I’ve referred to today’s consumer with these adjectives!).

So why is a top-tier brand like Nike in a write-up about SoLoMo marketing? Because a marketer like myself can’t help but get excited about creating a case study example of a large brand who demonstrates its grasp of the principles and value of the SoLoMo approach.

So, let’s dig in.

Traditionally, Nike’s marketing emphasis has been one focused on celebrity endorsements. Nike signs athletes who are outstanding in their sport then builds campaigns around their personalities.  These campaigns required spending millions of dollars on advertising around events like the Super Bowl.

New Marketing Landscape, New SoLoMo Mindset

Although Nike could have been content to coast and continue their tried-and-true marketing regimen, they realized that upstarts like Under Armour pose a threat to their status.

Nike understands their target audience is always changing and evolving due to constant market changes, driven primarily by technology and the Internet.

In response to their changing environment, Nike created a special group dedicated to designing technology products. This group was separate from the traditional shoes and clothing products Nike was known for.

The group’s mission was to find ways to connect and engage with consumers. Nike was willing to revamp their organization and redirect their marketing budgets to transform their brand in order to stay relevant.

The power of SoLoMo is a compelling consumer experience achieved through relevance not interruption. I think you will see that Nike has delivered on this.

Let’s look at some of the ways they achieved this.

Customer Centric Focus

The new effort is all about the consumer–their interests—it is not focused on product features.

The message is holistic. Nike has enhanced and expanded their brand using Nike Plus to provide a platform to engage consumers in a manner that is relevant, but still reinforces the core identity of Nike products.

First and most important, Nike connects sports and life. The play on words is significant, setting up a platform for Nike to talk athletics with just about anyone.

The Nike Plus web presence is clean and clear. The benefits describe the product and images reinforce the message. The invitation to join and engage is compelling but, (and this is most important) doesn’t ask consumers to shill for Nike products.

While tailored, the visual image is inclusive, quickly revealing a very broad definition of “athletics”.

Nike Redefines Mobile

Traditionally we think of mobile as a phone or tablet. Nike has added a new GPS wristband technology to the mix in addition to the mobile app experience.

Notice how Nike describes the product from the consumer’s point of view; and there is always a direct connection to activation.

This product concept is mobile. Mobile serves as the connection point between the brand, the consumer and the community.

The site is clear and compelling, there are videos designed to help with any questions. Consumers are always encouraged to share and challenge their friends; I’ll talk more about this later.

The Product is Social

Nike offers an invitation to join the community. The invitation makes sense in the context of the total user experience, this doesn’t come across as a veiled attempt to collect an email address so the broadcast marketing can commence.

Yes, there is a newsletter; however there are plenty of other benefits to connecting and sharing with others in order to live a more active life.

Nike taps in to the competitive nature of athletes with elements of challenge and sharing results; however, they wisely suggest that self expression is also a form of sharing.

Nike uses Local

Once again, Nike creates a local brand experience, one that is relevant and designed to help consumers find and share routes. Notice how the set up is thorough and inclusive without being a barrier. I appreciate the attention to detail and the recognition that anyone can join; even those who may not have a GPS device have an entrée into the community.

The local experience also has utility for experienced users. The site can be customized for familiar routes, the mapping feature is useful too; and there is always the option to explore new routes.

We often associate “local” with our specific surroundings, this feature allows one to tailor local to new destinations, for example, business travelers or those on vacation could continue to use this.

 

Nike Marketing SoLoMo Best Practice Summary

Nike has clearly embraced a whole new mindset, one that involved significant internal and external changes. Nike went from a brand that paid millions of dollars to reach millions of consumers at special events to a brand that can now connect with millions of consumers most anytime they want to through their social channels.

Interestingly, Nike has increased their marketing budgets; however, they have shifted the spending significantly to the digital channels.

The real power of the SoLoMo approach is the integration of multiple channels to provide a seamless customer experience.  While I have selected examples from each of the three elements to highlight those features, notice how all three elements are joined together creating a clear picture of an active lifestyle, one that is lived in community with other like-minded individuals.

Consistently Nike talks “with” and “to,” not “at,” consumers. You feel part of a community, and that is ultimately the greatest goal. While the site is all about community, Nike never loses sight of their goal to sell products; they simply choose to do this by helping and engaging, not selling.

So, what about you? Are you helping and engaging, or just selling? What would your customers say in response to this question? It most likely won’t take a major product revamp (like Nike’s wristband), and you probably won’t have to create a new company division (like Nike Plus), but what steps are you taking to market with relevance to today’s SoLoMo consumer?