Where smallbiz and socialbiz mashup!
My lifestreaming place.. Most of what will show up here is going to be the stuff that I am interested in.
How the Buzz team is listening and engaging in the conversation. Great Example
Below is an interesting conversation between some of the big time A listed users of Buzz talking about the speed of changes in the application and the expectations of these top Buzz community users. It is very interesting and then Bradley Horowitz VP of Google jumps into the conversation and let's everyone know what is happening. This a great example of understanding your community and engaging. Interesting is how Louis Gray is an advocate for Google in this conversation. He has the respect and trust that Google would not even have to enter the conversation and most of these folks would take what Louis is talking about as fact.
How many companies can say the same about their community and their engagement in it? Do you know where your community is and how they talk with each other? Is your companies culture ready to engage without your legal, communications, marketing, customer service departments having to have a conference over how to answer a question that is asked, or over an opinion expressed?
There is a business case study here that someone needs to do .... Any takers?
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Thomas Hawk - Buzz
- PublicPart of the idea of a perpetual beta is that things are improved very quickly. Maybe I'm expecting more than I should. But Buzz feels like it needs to be innovating faster than it is. With the perpetual beta, weeks should feel like dog years. Days should feel like months. Easy for me to say, right? Things like the annoying mute box shouldn't take a week to fix. They should take hours or a few...Expand this post »
5 people liked this - Louis Gray, Mike Doeff, Thomas Morffew and 2 others
Mark Cadwaladr - Reading http://www.google.com/buzz/louisgray/KG2L2rXUDKH/Designing-Buzz-for-a-Google-Free-World yesterday I'm inclined to allow the slow pace. Sure, stuff annoys me at the moment but I reckon my chagrin will be all but a fading memory in a few months and Buzz a whole lot more feature-rich. If anything at the moment I'm got enough on my plate working out how to get most value out of the combination of Buzz/Gmail/Reader/Twitter et al to worry too much.Tell ya what though, despite starting to read your tech-focused posts a good while back - linked from Scoble, who else - its only now using the excellent Buzz feature that I'm now seeing, appreciating and sharing your awesome photography. Thank you. Maybe it's me but I've never really gone out there looking at flickr etc but in here I'm seeing great stuff whilst reading articles without having to go elsewhere. Lazy me.6:54 pm
Rodney Mitchell - Exactly what I've been thinking. They've been good at the "we hear you" and "yes, we're going to fix that _very soon_" but, uh, where are the fixes?7:01 pm
Louis Gray - Solving issues at scale is hard. I think you and I got spoiled by the speed of FriendFeed's iterations. I would love it if Buzz kept improving at a quicker pace, but everything I've heard (and seen) is that this team has been going full-bore since launch.7:05 pm
Thomas Hawk - Mark, thanks, buzz does do photography well. Still here there are things that could be improved. (Why won't it feed in your last five photos of a flickr or picasa batch upload for instance). I just think that you get a lot of traction and momentum when you ship early. It's hard to compare FriendFeed and Buzz in some ways, but on a percentage basis FF had pretty awesome growth. I think in part that was because of the excitement of seeing things constantly getting better and better and the momentum that this provided for their earliest users. Part of what starts making you worry is that if you feel like not much has been done to improve some of the siginificant problems in the first few weeks then it makes you start questioning whether or not you really can expect much more in 2 months.7:06 pm
Thomas Hawk - haha, funny, Louis. I just was posting about the FF experience and you replied addressing that. You must be reading my mind. Q. Is Buzz bigger than FF was? It doesn't feel like it necessarily is to me. Is there a way to measure what the unique users are like we could look at FF on compete.com or something?7:07 pm
Louis Gray - Because Buzz is embedded (er... buried) in GMail, I think that would be hard to track. For instance, this URL is https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#buzz, where I am seeing your updates. Similarly, it has often been tough to track activity to Reader, as it is both a directory and a subdomain.7:15 pm
Hector Martinez - Have you tried submitting these issues and voting on them at the feedback app? Seems like they have ignored all of the bitching from the last couple weeks and are starting with that. Buzz has seen more stalls than Health Care and The World Trade Center rebuild combined.7:21 pm
Thomas Hawk - Hector, in part it's less even about my issues being fixed as much as it's about the fact that issues are being fixed. I think it's important that people feel momentum with buzz's development.7:29 pm
Bradley Horowitz - Thomas - we understand your sentiment. Due to the scale of Gmail and its focus on reliability, you'll see us push changes out in a principled way that'll be measured in weeks. In these pushes you'll see a number of improvements and changes batched up - trust that there is more activity going on than will be moment-to-moment visible. It'll show up soon. And we agree - we're working hard on shortening this cycle.8:10 pm
Thomas Hawk - Bradley, fair enough, thanks for the answer and glad to hear that we'll see batches of improvements. :) The feedback is great to hear on buzz. Just think of me as your three year old in the back seat of the car asking are we there yet over and over and over and over again. ;)8:36 pm
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New Chart> The Targeting and Measurement of Social Media Marketing
Another chart>>> always measuring the easy stuff. clicks and bucks when the bigger value is in the last 3-4 on the list. Those are tougher to measure and get a handle on also you have to do product and brand heavy lifting. Changes that cost money and effort at higher levels that those top ones.... You have to have a mission that your company is on, and a connect and affinity to the conversation that is happening. Which means game changers for most companies because most are not on a mission other than getting thru the day, week, quarter with the goal of more sales. Yes Sales makes the engine go and always will but now you have to dig deeper and it is tougher.
Content marketing is the new ads and few folks will say it but this is where things break for most companies because they can't consistently produce and converse in a meaningful way for their customers...I having a tough time in our company are you?
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Twitter Code Swarm -video> tell me that Twitter isn't a living thing......
via vimeo.com
Ecosystems- the code, the conversations, the developers coming in and out, the constant flow of everything just happening in real time... inner space- starting in one mind with a set of code then in a wisp of time more and more and then out into the outer world this hidden inner world all dependent on each other until it takes a live of it own- a force that becomes like @ev and @stone want it to be like electricity - just used and needed...oh our twitterverse and universe linked like all of us together and better for it.... IN my Humble thoughts.. An Academy Award for best geek documentary
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Developing A Social Strategy Webinar by Altimeter Group < 42 slides>
via slideshare.net
Curating great content on Social Business and It's integration. Follow link and make sure to see this groups other slidedecks...
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Social Technology Buyers Matrix: Broad vs Specialized vs Do It Yourself « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing
Low Cost Innovation Confuses Buyers With Excess Choices
As a Web Strategist, you seek to balance the three spheres of business, technology and community. Perhaps a challenging one is the %u2018technology%u2019 sphere as you%u2019re faced with the decision of build vs buy, specialized vs broad, cheap vs expensive. The choices are staggering %u2013there are over 100 community platform vendors, thousands of Facebook developers, iPhone apps, and Twitter apps being created each year. Despite the proliferation of innovation, one thing remains constant: the economics and strategy of buying doesn%u2019t change. As a result, the web strategist must first understand their strategy, develop the right parameters for buying and recognize the strengths %u2013and weakness of each type of partner.First, Buyers Must Understand Their Level of Sophistication
Companies that purchase technology and services must first recognize where they are in the sophistication curve. Those who are new to social technologies should seek out strategy and education first, and rely on external experience and expertise to deter risk. Those that are in mid level should focus in on specific needs %u2013forgoing unneeded services and features. Expert level companies are thinking of a holistic experience for customers and are focused on scalability, interoperability, and integration. In many cases, these expert level companies may be focused on building their own tools and resources %u2013rather than relying completely on third parties.For Growth, Focused Vendors Go Broad
Interestingly enough, some companies with rich histories in a particular vertical are also expanding to larger markets by rebranding efforts. Take for example 10 year old Neighborhood America, a community platform with strong background in government, local, and federal agencies as a vertical as recently rebranded as INgage networks %u2013giving them a broader reach to the enterprise space and international space --read their FAQ and watch their video to learn more.As Market Matures, Vendors Become Specialized
Radian 6, Visible Technologies, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, and TNS Cymfony have all broad reach across multiple industries by being fairly agnostic to any particular vertical. Of course, they each have experiences in particular verticals and likely have a majority of clients in one industry over another, but that%u2019s a contrary position to Revinate, a company I recently met with that focuses in on deep integration with the hospitality industry. Their listening platform, while it doesn%u2019t go as wide to cover the %u2018brand scope%u2019 comes pre-rigged with connections to travel rating sites like Tripadvisor, Yelp, and other consumer rating sites.Note that no vendor is perfect, and if they can do it all, you won%u2019t need all their offerings, and their price point will be high, as a result, understand the strengths %u2013and weaknesses of all.
Social Technology Buyers Matrix: Broad vs Specialized vs Do It Yourself
What it is Examples Benefits Downsides Broad Technology or service vendors that serve a variety of industries without a specific focus, Buzzmetrics, Radian 6, Visible Technologies, Cymfony offer a range of services that can be use with any variety of industries. On the community platform side, Jive, Telligent, Mzinga, Awareness, Liveworld* can meet the needs of many enterprises. Wide deployment ensures that the scope can spread to a large set of sites to crawl. In most cases, these companies can scale, and have a broad base of clients to learn from. Configuration and specialization for your particular market may require setup costs and configuration efforts. While features may go wide %u2013not all will be needed for your specific customer socialgraphic behaviors and industry usage. Specialized Technology or service vendors that offer vertical (or industry) specific skills, honed in on a unique market need. In the brand monitoring space, Revinate offers specific brand monitoring for the hospitality industry, and Kickapps*, Pluck, and Cisco EOS*, offer solutions for the media vertical and recently rebranded INgage networks has long history of serving Government %u2013although they are moving to the broad category. Faster deployment and features and deployments are pre-customized for deployment. Experienced teams that truly get the nuances of your particular industry. Vendors may not be able to go broader, feature set may become limited when it comes to scaling. Sometimes specialization increases costs of goods and services. Do It Yourself (DIY) Rather than rely on vendors, many companies prefer to build their own social media tools and processes and integrate with legacy CMS and WMS systems. A variety of brands have bolted on social features to their corporate website using BBS systems, Wordpress, or Drupal like platforms with extensive customization. Or, developers that build custom installations on .net, jsp, php, and other software languages and frameworks. Reduced up front cost and custom tailored integration with existing systems. A controlled environment not dependent on the product roadmaps of other SaaS companies and increased security measures. Constant rejiggering of features as the outside technology space innovates quickly. Often the soft costs and internal maintaince isn%u2019t always accounted for up front, and innovating new features are often not native to corporations. * The Altimeter Group takes pride in transparency and openness in research and analysis, as a result, the starred companies are currently clients, read our disclosure page.
Web Strategists Must Plan For the Long Term
Regardless of which path you choose from Broad, Specialized or DIY, there are a few baseline considerations the web strategist must factor into their long term planning, they include:
- Deploy systems that are designed to scale. Buyers must demand access to the product roadmap and understand where the company is headed at least in their 2 year plan. The benefits of a SaaS technology vendor is that you can quickly scale your deployment on a turn key basis, while on premise has it%u2019s upsides for conservative industries %u2013scaling can quickly become an issue and out-the-door fast deployment.
- Deploy systems that can integrate. Only buy systems that have protocols that can allow data to be accessed by other parties, and put into terms of service your data can be accessed at any given time, no questions asked.
- Analyze their partnership and alliance relationships. Selecting a company that has a healthy set of partnerships and alliances will ensure that they your company will fit within the heterogenous ecosystem of the social web. Yet, probe deeper, during initial sales calls, vendors will flash %u2018Nascar slides%u2019 with dozens of logos of partnerships, find out how many relationships are truly deep integration and aligned product roadmaps %u2013not just former one-off projects.
Although this post is buyer focused, technology vendors with a broad focus should start kindling relationships with channel partners that can resell and focus in on specific marketers. For example, Radian 6 is known for offering its service to PR and digital agencies who can then focus in on specific markets.
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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 9:42 am and is filed under Matrix, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Another great post--
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