The news is out this morning that literally overnight, Facebook has switched on facial recognition for tagging by default. Typically of the gargantuan social network, the onus is on the user to opt-out of this ‘upgrade’.
A few things on this - first, for the super-private, here’s how to do just that -
Step 1.
From the Facebook ‘Home‘ page, go to ‘Account‘ and then ‘Privacy Settings‘
Step 2.
From there, scroll down to ‘Customise Settings‘
Step 3.
Scroll down again until you find a section entitled ‘Things others share‘
You’ll find the setting you need to adjust (it’ll be the one automatically switched to ‘enabled’) right next to the above section. Done that? Right. Good.
To my second, and leading point/question – do you actually care?
Yes it’s easy to get annoyed about Facebook not asking permission to switch this on, as well as automatically assigning you the default setting of ‘Yes, I want this’. However, surely if you’re not an idiot when it comes to privacy, you’ve already got a certain amount of barriers and settings in place that prevent unwanted friends and tags taking place, right?
Surely, if you’re smart with your photo tagging (and with your friend requests for that matter), this new feature (whisper it) actually makes life easier.
Yes, tagging your friends in photos is fun, but it can take ages. Having Facebook SUGGEST [yes - 'suggest' - not 'automatically tag'] to YOUR FRIENDS that you might be in one of their photos really isn’t such a big deal.
This gorgeous, gorgeous piece of work from the smart chaps at Intel is one of the most perfect uses of the Facebook social graph API that I have ever seen.
Click through to the site, give up virtually all of your Facebook access privileges (we’ll come back to that one later) and just sit back and watch as Intel’s application accesses all of your photos, videos, friends, likes and links and displays them all in a glorious installation that even Getty would be proud of.
If you haven’t done this yet, click through and do it now. Once you’re done, come back again – we need to talk.
Right, welcome back. Done it yet? You have?
Perfect.
So exactly why is this beautiful application so damn good? Let’s explore further.
First, the sticking point: all those access points that the app demands.
I must admit that even I wavered there for a second.
Granting ‘access’ I have no problem with, it’s the ‘Post to my Wall’ part that niggles at me. But, forward you go – why? Because Intel aren’t some start-up off the street, nor are they a second rate newspaper looking for a quick way to proliferate their words and stories and, to be completely fair, if Intel do end up breaking my trust after I hit the ‘Allow’ button, so be it! I can still go back in afterwards and disable their access, right?
And of course, let’s be totally clear here: the combination of all of the above along with the fact that perhaps, just maybe, after the clicking of agreement above I might have my very own ‘Museum of Me’, is more than enough to tempt even the most doubtful of Facebook users – the ol’ ego stroke; gets us every time.
Moving on, what makes the The Museum of Me so special in its delivery is that – through the API access you’ve granted above – it delicately creates a uniquely personalised and deeply personal journey through your social graph in a way that one might perhaps hope their life might be celebrated after they’re gone. Through pictures, screens, connections – they whole exhibition is dedicated to you and it could only really be totally appreciated for what it is by you.
Just enough virtual praise to be flattering, just enough branding to be quietly understood and, to top it all, just enough subtlety in the sharing functionality to entice you to push it out to your friends.
You pushed the like button – didn’t you?.
Speaking of which, at the time of writing the app has been liked just shy of 7800 times. 12hrs from now? When it’s gone viral, who knows what number it’ll hit.
For me, the great thing about this work is that the idea is simple, but the execution is flawless. I can’t show you how great it is, because my version wouldn’t work for you. You have to experience it for yourself. And that – in today’s world of mass information and constant personalisation – is definitely worth three minutes of your day.
For most women, conversation with friends is the most influential type there is, because we make friends with people with whom we identify. We value their opinions, ask their advice and exchange views on everything.
We will always find ways to talk – but with whom, where and for how long is largely dictated by our life stage, not simply our age or SEG. In order to engage women for our clients, understanding and applying this dynamic to our work for clients is key. We talk, but how much and where changes over time. Take my experience:
In my twenties, life was one long social interaction between work colleagues, flatmates, clients, hairdresser, personal shopper and facialist (ok, I’m lying about the last two). Chat usually took place at work or in bars – rarely at home.
Things changed in my thirties, when the idea of a baby ceased to be The Worst Thing That Can Happen and gradually seemed like A Good Idea. Little did I know what I would be sacrificing. When my son was a newborn, my husband escaped on a business trip. I spent four days on my own struggling to come to grips with him (and him me…). I don’t think I spoke to anyone the entire time, and it was pretty much that way for the next four months.
Once things settled, I found I needed to engage with everyone. I had so many questions and so few answers. This was in the days before Mumsnet and there’s only so many times you can read ‘What to Expect’. I spent my time in parks and at baby groups seeking out like-minded women to cure my feelings of isolation and my thirst for shared experiences.
Two years later, what was left of my social life took an even bigger back seat. My time now consumed with a toddler and new baby, meet-ups would often end in frustration and aborted conversation. Instead, I acquired a computer so I could plug into Mumsnet during naptime each day, and keep up sporadic contact with real friends via email.
When the kids started school, I got out of the house again. I worked for a local agency with other parents and chat was family related and child-free! I no longer had the time to engage with Mumsnet, but my income did allow us to see our friends on Saturday nights for a few precious hours.
Now it’s on the up again. Being employed part-time means I can squeeze in the odd lunch or coffee with my girlfriends. We can have three families around for Sunday afternoon and the chat and wine flows while the kids amuse themselves. We are holidaying with two families who have similar interests. I am even a member of a book club that meets every Thursday (and which talks about the book for ten minutes exactly).
To my slight shame, part of me is secretly quite looking forward to the kids leaving home. I know I will mourn their absence, but it will mean exciting new interests, social engagements, trips away with friends, whole afternoons on Facebook if I choose, or three months on a cruise (well, have you seen where they go?).
And, like my lovely Mother-in-Law (who kindly provided me with this lifestyle blueprint), I will probably be letting everyone know about it. All the time…
Think about your life stages. Think about those of your customers. Where are the downtimes, the upsurges, the opportunities? When are they able to talk? When do they want to?
We like rewarding our engaged communities.
We also like being first…
As some of you may know, Facebook made some pretty interesting changes to the structure of their fan pages recently. These included iframe support for tabs; the ability to “like” and comment on other pages as your own page; and notifications when people comment on your page.
However, something that really caught our collective eyes was the new page layout which boasted images along the top of the page, just like user profiles:
From a community management perspective, it was good to see that Facebook had foreseen potential spammer problems with this release. Rather than sourcing the images along the top from fan uploads, they instead displayed the most recent five images uploaded by the brand, in random order.
Of particular note here are the words ‘random order’.
The pictures change order each time the page is loaded, thus making it impossible to create a montage image using the pics (like some awesome user profiles out there today). Most brands either defaulted to their logos or threw up some boring product images.
Here at 1000heads, we have been lucky enough to work with Nokia on their global fan page nearly a year now and, with around 2.9m fans at our disposal, ‘boring product images’ didn’t quite cut it.
Instead we decided to use the random organisation of the images to our advantage. How? Well there’s a clue in the image above…
First we created a Nokia.ly URL tracking link to a hosted image of an awesome device, the Nokia N8
Second, we took that URL and split it up into five images to post on the Facebook page
Once the images were posted (and here’s a key point) we didn’t update about them straight away – instead, we just let them appear along the top of the page in a random order
This meant anyone landing on the page would see this random jumble of letters and wonder what they were for (a conversation trigger)
Some socially-savvy proportion of those people would figure it was a URL
The URL was just the beginning. Once cracked – this is what it links to:
Yes, that is a Nokia N8 with a screen full of binary code. For those willing to take the time to transcribe and translate it (no mean feat as you can’t copy and paste) there is the chance to win a brand new N8.
This is a simple activity we put together that kicked off on March 11th, the day after the new fan page structure was rolled out universally across all pages (an optional upgrade has been available since mid Feb) – we believe we have helped Nokia become the first brand in the world to use this new image functionality in such an interesting and engaging way.
We’re ready to stand corrected if you can find another example, of course.
For those that are interested in the ‘Why?’ – the aim of this activity was not to drive huge numbers but to instead reward optimism and curiosity. As a fan of any brand you have to be very engaged to actually visit a page like this (90% of interaction happens in newsfeeds) but to go the extra mile of figuring out the URL and then translating all that code, you have to be someone who is both curious about what Nokia is planning and confident that this journey will take you somewhere worth going.
Has it been a success? Well the competition is still open and the entries are coming in slowly but surely, not bad at all bearing in mind it has an extreme barrier to entry and has deliberately not been promoted too heavily.
For us this kind of experimentation is important. It’s easy to chase numbers on Facebook – focusing on acquiring fans or getting 1000s of likes on an update (and judging success accordingly) – and, while this is important, it is worth remembering that if you chase simplicity and always set low barriers to entry you will never really engage or interest people at a high level.
On Facebook (just like everywhere else in social) a balance is needed between broad engagement with low barriers to entry, and deep engagements focusing on quality, not quantity.
This is what our client, Saara Bergstrom, community manager at Nokia Global says about it:
“Facebook is a powerful way for us at Nokia to strengthen our relationship with our customers. We take pride in not only coming up with fun things to do with the community, like the ‘Hidden Nokia N8′picture puzzle, but also responding to each and every question coming through to our page and channelling the feedback we get further within Nokia. We work hand in hand together with our brilliant word of mouth agency 1000heads on the creative ideas and engagement, including the Hidden Nokia N8 puzzle.”
Thanks Saara!
It is a pleasure working with a client that allows us to experiment like this – someone who understands what it means to be first out the gate as well as the importance of broad and deep engagements.
By hiding these easter eggs across different social presences, we’re encouraging fans to look a bit harder at what their favourite brands are up to. From now on, they’ll be looking out for the next hidden code or URL, thus spending even more time absorbing and interacting with other key messages too.
This isn’t the first time we have hidden an easter egg like this on one of our client’s pages and it won’t be the last – so keep an eye out!
As for what the binary code in the image actually says…
Why not translate it and see?
While some of the larger numbers within will be of no surprise to the more savvy social media practitioner, what’s interesting here is the idea that Facebook fan pages and ‘likes’ are the ‘new word of mouth’ [see slide 25] with stats like:
160% lift in brand recall
200% lift in message awareness
400% life in purchase intent
The numbers speak for themselves. But personally, if brands really are ‘reorganizing themselves around people’ then:
How does that manifest itself in an offline environment? It’s all well and good having a fantastically engaging fanpage, but if your member of staff at the point of sale is completely unplugged from your social media department, then your customer experience falls flat at the part that matters most.
How long do you think the 3rd party platforms being used to support these efforts will continue to do so free of charge? Yes, they make money from advertising, but will that really and truly always be the case? What happens when the well runs dry?
Finally, here at the ‘heads we manage some of the largest (and most vibrant) local and global Facebook groups in the world. If brands are continually seeing the success like that laid out above, then a larger education piece needs to be undertaken in pushing these wins out to the common man/brand. Here in London’s Soho, nearly all of the coffee shops and lunch houses can be found on Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, but what I want to know is; how do you get your local corner shop involved? Where are the wins there?
We have a running, semi-serious joke in the office that our ideal client would be a toilet roll brand. Social media works well within the technology products space, FMCG sees many successes too… But if you can get people talking (and subsequently build communities) around say, the latest velvet-quilted roll of loo paper…
Then the future is here and literally, anything is possible.
Well, if you chow down at Giraffe and love what you eat, you’d be able to tell all your friends. The popular restaurant chain has always used social media well: their Facebook page is crammed with regularly updated news, photos and demographic-relevant chat, their Twitter feed is both relevant and gorgeoulsy engaging (with a healthy 6,000 followers), and they’ve got 200 photos from around the UK on Flickr.
But I’ve also noticed a very nice, simple extra touch: every one of their online menu items includes a Facebook like button, and shows you other friends who like the same dish.
Oh, sure, it’s not rocket science. But this attention to detail reminds us that creativity doesn’t just lie in big engagement campaigns, but in making every tiny detail of your consumer touchpoints as conversational as possible.
In a similar vein, I also love The Breakfast Club, not just for their scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, but for the clever way they use their Twitter feed: replying quickly with personal responses, suggesting collaborations and creative ideas, and seeding in little challenges and activities to win kudos and freebies.
What brands have you noticed who really pay attention to the little elements that provide a personal or conversational experience?
Well, if you chow down at Giraffe and love what you eat, you’d be able to tell all your friends. The popular restaurant chain has always used social media well: their Facebook page is crammed with regularly updated news, photos and demographic-relevant chat, their Twitter feed is both relevant and gorgeoulsy engaging (with a healthy 6,000 followers), and they’ve got 200 photos from around the UK on Flickr.
But I’ve also noticed a very nice, simple extra touch: every one of their online menu items includes a Facebook like button, and shows you other friends who like the same dish.
Oh, sure, it’s not rocket science. But this attention to detail reminds us that creativity doesn’t just lie in big engagement campaigns, but in making every tiny detail of your consumer touchpoints as conversational as possible.
In a similar vein, I also love The Breakfast Club, not just for their scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, but for the clever way they use their Twitter feed: replying quickly with personal responses, suggesting collaborations and creative ideas, and seeding in little challenges and activities to win kudos and freebies.
What brands have you noticed who really pay attention to the little elements that provide a personal or conversational experience?
It’s the big question in word of mouth: what is an advocate worth?
Well, according to research Syncapse and Hotspex have just released on eMarketer, on average $136.38. The study looked at the Facebook fans of the 20 biggest corporate brands on the site, and calculated the fans’ worth from a combination of how much they spent on the products, loyalty, recommendations and earned media.
In fact, for many food and beverage brands on Facebook, fans spent more than double on the brand than non-fans.
This reiterates the findings of a study earlier this year, which showed that consumers were more likely to buy from or recommend a brand after becoming a Facebook fan or follower.
It’s an interesting start to WOM ROI, although of course the real impact of advocacy goes far beyond Facebook, to cover not just the other social media platforms but real life conversations too.
Facebook fans are a notoriously passive group, and just clicking on a ‘become a fan’ button represents none of the participation and opinion-giving that true advocacy entails. Of course, there’s an exciting implication here. If these guys earn so much for a brand, how much more valuable must the fans be who actually bother to upload photos and videos, write detailed, passionate reviews on their pages and blogs and forums, and take that enthusiasm to the dinner table and the school gates?
Working out the ROI of an individual advocate beyond a single platform is a mighty complex task, but we’re getting there. For now, research like this indicates just how powerful that proactive, cross-platform advocacy is.
They’re not particularly interesting, and nor, if I’m completely honest, are the people who hand them out. Some dress in funny outfits but they don’t attract a crowd, they certainly never have people clamouring to snatch the piece of low-end marketing collateral from their hand and most leaflets that are handed out end up in the bin or dropped on the floor very close to where they were handed out.
Men handing out leaflets certainly don’t have blog posts written about them, they don’t get videos on YouTube and they are not something you tell your friends about in the park later on.
Or are they?
These guys were promoting the Plaza shopping centre by dancing their way up and down Oxford Street in seemingly spontaneous (but amusing and well choreographed) routines handing out leaflets like the one below after every performance:
This certainly disrupted my Saturday afternoon and there was quite a crowd gathered when I ran into the dancing builders near Oxford Circus, I even videoed the dance and showed it to my friends later, many of them work near Oxford St and had heard about these guys already, so great offline WOM!
So this was a great way for Plaza to disrupt the act of handing out leaflets by making it more social then? Well almost…
The leaflets themselves are a bit dry, almost an anti-climax, there is nothing wrong with them but the dancing builders could have done something more fun and taken this idea much further, instead of a leaflet why not hand out some Plaza-branded builders hats or vests with the leaflet content printed on the inside, it would be great to walk along Oxford St to see all these people wandering along with yellow builders hats!
So it was good but could have been better then? Well almost… You see the first thing I notice when looking at the leaflet is a link to the Plaza’s Facebook page with the offer of free Pizza, great, I’ll take a look, only this page doesn’t work.
This is what I see:
Oh dear…
This seems to be the primary purpose of the promotion; to drive traffic to this owned location that doesn’t exist!
The only site we could find (after some decent searching on our part), was this Plaza Oxford Street group page which, at the time of writing, only has two members!
It’s a shame as the dancing builders were great, I am sure they drove some decent footfall to the Plaza and created some great offline WOM, it’s a pity the follow through online was poor.
Anyone can make mistakes, but this kind of thing – now five days in and counting – is just plain silly.
When it comes to Facebook, we’d recommend taking a look at this deck we found on Slideshare for some handy pointers
If you’re not yet familiar with Google’s next next-big-thing, Google Buzz, then have a quick look at the official vid below to get up to speed – or click through to one of the news, mobile and business sites which have been buzzing about Buzz for a while.
It all looks pretty exciting, but this new frontier of conversational integration is causing no end of controversy. There’s the obvious concern that it’s just a souped-up repeat of the Wave experiment, which rather failed to capture the public’s heart, and not such a great one at that; James has been blogging about the fact that the Silicon Valley-centric company have only integrated it with Android 2.0+ and the iPhone, leaving the rest of us mobile users unsupported.
But the main concern revolves around Google trying to ‘own’ online conversation by routing it through their own property. Now, we can’t be too idealistic about this. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, even the most obscure cabbage-soup-diet forum – these may be perceived as ‘independent’ social venues, but they’re business ventures, concerned with money and market share as much as the big G.
However, whatever the reality, it feels different when you venture out into individual, dedicated spaces, rather than filtering everything you do through one Gmail homepage. People are forever theorising about how to create the perfect single social aggregator, but there is real pleasure and profit in going out to others’ spaces to share rather than dragging everything back into your own. It’s an act of travel that helps us to move beyond our own mental hearths.
And it has become so easy to like, recommend and comment that it’s ever more difficult to filter the quality from the crap. Perhaps a slight element of effort is actually useful, ensuring that we really do want to highlight that bit of content, really do intend to buy that product, really do feel some emotional connection with that brand. As for our increasingly shaky online mental health, a bit of compartmentalisation can be a good thing. When you email, email. When you read, read. When you carefully choose that something is worth recommending, go for it – and therefore know that that recommendation has real weight.
Moreover, the likes of Twitter actively send us away into new spaces via outlinks, helping us collide with truly unexpected discoveries (not the inevitably irrelevant automated ‘recommendations’ Buzz offers from our friends); by posting up the videos and posts linked to in the same window, Buzz discourages us from investigating the original source.
In a similar vein, the option to only share things with selected friends will surely decrease our discoveries through people joined to us by random chance or weak links. Dunbar may tell us we can only maintain 150 ‘stable’ friends, but it has been shown that the unstable ones are the most valuable in widely spreading influential WOM. So Buzz is taking one of the most challenging attributes of Facebook for brands – it’s closed, inward-looking silos – and building them right into the fabric of the platform.
The irony, of course, is that I’ll probably spend much of the week playing with Buzz and pumping lots of social content out there into my network. Google, once again, have done the one thing that most businesses wish they could – stamped some ownership on the way people influence each other and are influenced.
However, this somewhat dystopian vision of Google nailing the model for the single open social network founders on the concept of openness. Google Buzz may look like it’s opening us all up to new WOM, but it it is in danger of locking us into a cycle of existing networks and second-hand discoveries, like stale air conditioning pumping through a password protected room.
For most women, conversation with friends is the most influential type there is, because we make friends with people with whom we identify. We value their opinions, ask their advice and exchange views on everything.
