Welcome to the home of Jesse Wilson. I'm a Master's candidate at USC, a Product & Marketing Specialist at Spark Networks, and a technology addict.
Ning Strategic Relationships Manager, Charles Porch, spoke to the class today. I’d never heard of Ning before so I was surprised to discover this social networking platform with 42 million users. It’s a web service that allows anyone to build a social networking with sections for videos, photos, chat, music, groups, events, forums, and blogs. Members of the network can do just about anything they can do on Facebook but they’re within the confines of your own social network. In 6 Ways to Use Ning for Business, Mashable describes how business owners can use Ning to quickly and easily collect feedback, facilitate discussions, present content & media, inspire customers like Martha Stewart, participate in existing communities like Travel Blog Exchange, and engage your evangelists.
Charles describes Ning as a place where users can meet people with similar interests who you don’t already know. It contains searchable web pages that will last and create a community around them. He offered some general advice on website development and what to avoid: slow loading pages, abuse of Flash, and clutter. Instead, tell people why they’re there and have a hook. 50 Cent for example has one of the most popular Ning networks because his is about hip-hop news rather than just a fan page.
Roger Jackson gave us some website design tips, advising us to design for the lowest common denominator, generally an 80 year-old grandma. Liz Burr graduated from APOC in ’06 and now works for herself as a new media consultant. She spends her time advising which platform to use for a website concept. Eddie North-Hagar graduated from APOC in ’09 and co-founded Citilista, which networks separate aspects of a local community into a neighborhood hub, enabling conversation between residents.
Today we met Micki Krimmel, founder of NeighborGoods.net. I created a profile at the website and was immediately impressed by the professional design, Google Maps API integration and the overall utility of the site. Right now I’m trying to pick up a free bean bag chair I found listed near my home. Micki acts as the Community Manager (CM) at NeighborGoods and offered some advice for the class. She has done consulting for many companies and the most common pitfall she discovered is that the CM doesn’t hold enough power in the firm. The CM is very important and needs to advocate for the users and have the authority to make big changes when necessary. They should always use their real names, which I noticed Micki does on her own site. Her model is to serve the community rather than just moderate them; she even goes so far as to call the users on the phone to ask how to improve. I would be shocked if a CM called me to discuss one of my posts – but flattered and empowered at the same time.
Heath Row is a Research Manager at Google. His general insight into online communities is that they police themselves if the users have a strong connection to one another, like within a circle of friends on Facebook. A community is fragile when the core group of users don’t know each other. He also emphasizes the significance of consistent community managers. People get upset or stop participating when the CM changes, and this fact contributed to Squidoo’s growth struggles.
Alex Asselin just graduated from APOC last year. She’s now a CM at NBC and manages EchoParkOnline. She advised us on keeping community moderators happy. She says they often work 60+ hours a week for free, just for recognition or the love of the community. The owner ought to provide cool stuff to unpaid admins who have assisted the most, so they feel like part of the management rather than a competitor with other members. I can certainly relate, as I got promoted to an OP in a few hubs on the Direct Connect network and found myself representing the hubs and helping members considerably more than before I achieved the elevated status.
Erika Shen moved from managing a CBS.com community to product development at Disney.com. She works to resolve struggles unique to Disney, including cleaning up the users’ “dirty chatter,” empowering moderators to advocate for the users to management, and balancing the demands of company execs with the reality of the self-engendered community.
Today’s speakers agreed that CMs should always admit their affiliation with the company, and gently nudge conversations to the direction you want them to go, working with them along the way. In order to scale, a website should empower users to answer one another in order to minimize employee time spent answering questions. In order to survive in the new media world, old school companies need to let relax their outbound communication model and allow themselves to learn from users to better serve them.
Josh Spector is Senior VP of Content and Marketing for Comedy.com. His start-up, whipitoutcomedy.com, was getting so much action that development executives began using his blog as a talent search site. Eventually Comedy.com bought the site and took Josh with it.
I asked how a start-up could afford such a premium one-word domain name, and I was surprised to hear that it may be more of a detriment to the site than a boon. Josh informed us that domain names should include the terms your target audience are searching for. “Funny videos” is searched for 75 times more than “comedy” so Josh’s advice about domain names is to think about the way people say things, be specific and niche, and don’t count on domains to save your site.
Curtis Jewell is President & CEO for MyCypher Inc. He just graduated from APOC in 2008 and created a global social media site dedicated to the Hip Hop community. The website is very clean and well set up, and I love the promo video on the front page. Curtis’s tip for start-ups is to stay niche (also Karen’s mantra) but think big, and to follow your passion and nurture the passion in others.
Ben Gigli is an APOC ’07 grad. He gets 300-500k viewers a month on his start-up 5secondfilms.com. His advice for start-ups is to go where the community already exists and figure out what they’re going to like. Connect with people where the dialogue already exists, and engage bloggers and social networks while abiding by their unspoken community rules. You can tap into games the natural community likes to play so they’ll start playing with you when you inspire them. According to Karen Ben is a genius with side projects and his web stats and advice certainly back up her claim.
Sean Stevens graduated with Ben in ’07. He’s a pro web developer and has created multiple niche websites, including wheresmytaco.com, hotgirlsandexplosions.com, and a local music website in North Carolina. He argues that it’s better to have a smaller community site than a giant site. His main position right now is with JDate, though I’m not fully clear on his role at that site.
Other notes I found interesting this class included: Don’t build your business on a platform you can’t ultimately control. Use simple customizable message board software. Karen thinks building a site just to flip it is a bad idea that’s probably going to fail, and the best way to get bought out is to build something that doesn’t need to get sold. Take advantage of an opportunity in which big companies are wasting money. We also briefly discussed namechk.com and getsatisfaction.com.
CouchSurfing is an international non-profit organization that has been connecting travelers with locals since 2004. Since then over a million people have met through the site, to share hospitality and cultural understanding.
The benefits of using the site are obvious for the “surfers,” or travelers. They get to stay for free while they travel and save a bundle of money they would have spent on hotels, probably more than $100 a night. They also get to experience much more of the local environment than your average tourist because the hosts show them the best attractions and nightlife. And the hosts usually have local friends who also help immerse the traveler in “the real Hollywood,” or whatever city they’re in.
The hosts’ benefits are a little harder to explain, so I’ll start with the obvious downsides. Most people would not want to be a host because it could put your home and personal safety at risk; after all, hosts usually let surfers into their home who they’ve never met in person. It is an inconvenience having a guest sleep over because you have to worry about door locking schedules, kitchen and common area messes, and quiet hours. The traveler has to use your shower and sometimes even eat your food. On top of all this the surfer doesn’t pay you a dime for your troubles.
Hosting, however, has been a rewarding experience for me. I love to host my local friends after a night of clubbing in Hollywood because I live within walking distance of the clubs, and I think I make a great host. I can’t explain why, but I feel great when I help my friends have a great night, make sure they’re fed and hydrated, and give them a safe and free place to crash. I don’t expect anything in return and don’t really receive anything in return.
Hosting travelers gives me a similar feeling. I know I’m helping the travelers maximize enjoyment and minimize expense, allowing them to travel longer and experience more than they would without my help. I also get to experience some culture they bring with them, view the same old Hollywood from the awe-struck eyes of the traveler, and, in my most recent experience, receive a fancy bottle of Scotch straight from the distillery.
Even to myself I find it difficult to explain my motivation for jeopardizing my property and safety on behalf of a stranger, but I find company in a quote by Adam Smith’s book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”
From January 22nd through the 24th, I had the pleasure of hosting Kim de Jong of Amsterdam. She has been a host before and had great reviews so I figured I could trust her in my home. She was traveling alone which made me feel a little more in control of the situation and less afraid for my property and safety. And just like on any review website, CS members don’t want to wreck their track record of positive reviews by doing something shady, so after a few email exchanges I figured I could trust her.
Kim flew from Europe to LAX and cabbed it to my apartment. Even after being up for more than 35 hours straight she had the energy to go clubbing with my friends and me on Friday night. We hit up My House and H.Wood with 4 of my friends, skipping lines and getting in free, saving us a combined $240 between the two clubs. She did return the favor by buying a couple rounds of drinks which are as much as $18 a piece.
Kim spent Saturday exploring Hollywood Blvd by herself, an easy walk from my apartment. Then Saturday night I introduced her to nine of my friends and we had a great time skipping the line and buying a table at Mi-6. None of us had been there before and we were all very impressed and had a great time.
Kim headed out Monday morning for San Diego and is still traveling in California today, almost a month later. We exchanged positive reviews on CS, which makes us both likely to get more activity on the site in the future. I learned as much as I could about life in Amsterdam and the differences in government and culture. Kim works as a Financial Analyst for a well known tech manufacturer, which, for some reason, allows her to travel a lot. In fact she has 24 countries listed in the Locations Traveled section on her CS profile.
I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and look forward to hosting travelers again in the near future. I also hope my positive reviews will earn me some credibility for the time I decide to travel and take advantage of CS host hospitality. I recommend making an account and exploring the site; and if you have it in you, I recommend hosting a traveler yourself.
http://www.couchsurfing.org/register.html
Research is the key ingredient in social media marketing. When deciding if and how to invest in social media marketing my company must first investigate where our consumers are conversing and participating. Out of thousands of thriving social platforms on the web, my job is to determine which ones my consumers are most engaged in and influenced by. This can be done effectively by searching for and reading posts, particularly by “influencers,” across multiple channels. For one, I can set up syndication on Google Reader to gather all recent blog and social news posts that mention my industry, brand or competitors, and then follow the discussion and gauge its influence. Similarly I can search Twitter and Facebook updates and follow their outbound links. It’s also important to study our competitors’ social media focus and speculate on their effectiveness.
I need to determine how to engage my consumers where they already converse. Bryan Wiener’s Playbook suggests that consumers will no longer tolerate being advertised at. Instead we must join the conversation where it already exists. He also demonstrates a big opportunity in harnessing consumer-generated media, where he says 20% of consumers’ time is spent and less than 3% of marketing budgets are spent. There seems to be a huge market opportunity there so I should seek out the influencers who generate media related to my industry and open a dialog with them about creating content for my company, mentioning my company in a subsequent video or app, and possibly consulting for or joining my company as an analyst or advertiser.
If my brand or industry is heavily conversation-worthy and a proper outlet does not already exist, I can consider creating the space for a new community within our own domain. I can install a forum for my core group of customers to publish valuable content for free. I can start a blog with useful information and resources my customers are after. Or I can provide a creative space for socializing and collaboration.
While Wiener argues that the greatest struggle in developing a successful online community is selecting the platform and method of engagement, Owyang suggests that growing the community is the real challenge. In his experience successful growth occurs when the members take leadership, then ownership, and eventually become caretakers. To do this the “host” of the community must involve the early members and treat them as special guests. The host should individually contact creators and influencers leading the charge at other social spaces and empower or reward them with special membership and public recognition. The community should be encouraged to share stories, problems or successes while I’m out recruiting new members with other marketing tools like email newsletters, newsfeeds, podcasts and blogs.
Ultimately, according to Mashable’s Brian Solis, the community will need to inspire transformation, improvement and adaptation from the inside out. Early on I can envision how my company might accomplish such outward influence and wireframe my site and social profiles to enable it. With the US social media audience reaching 122 million, I think the question is not whether to participate in online communities, but where and how to engage with our current and future customers.
In early 2009 a very large portion of my day was consumed by checking Facebook for wall posts, private messages, event invites, friend requests, and photo tags. I had a huge group of friends and frequently hosted parties with 100 people or more so I felt obligated to stay on top of it.
I went out searching for a desktop application to run Facebook so I didn’t have to constantly navigate my browser to the home page. I figured I’d probably save more than an hour a day if I could just be alerted when something happened instead.
The best I could find was the Facebook Toolbar. At the time it was very buggy and only gave me info that I didn’t care about, like how many group invitations and app recommendations I had. On top of that it only updated its numbers about once every 10 minutes, and that delay alone was a deal-breaker.
Soon Fishbowl was released, running on Microsoft’s Silverlight platform. I was thrilled at the thought that I no longer needed my browser to use Facebook and even more excited about an attractive new interface. I imagined the desktop app becoming a huge hit until I used it a bit and realized how much it was lacking. It used a ton of RAM, had very quirky window navigation and controls, and lacked much of what I needed from Facebook, like the ability to view and create events. It was fun to impress my friends with a Facebook toy they’d never seen but aside from that I abandoned it immedately.
Then in April Facebook developed its own desktop application called Facebook For Adobe Air (note that it requires Adobe Air to be installed first). I liked that this app was much less resource intensive than fishbowl and could sit beside my browser window as a tall slender bar on the side of my screen. At some point I changed my monitor resolution temporarily, which moved the Air window out of view. When I restored my resolution I could not get FB for Air to appear again. It was still running but there was no way to get it into view, even after uninstalling and reinstalling it and Adobe Air itself. So much for that.
Then just a week ago Microsoft released a beta development of the new Microsoft Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook (note it requires that Silverlight 4 Beta be installed first). The first thing you’ll notice is a brand new, dark and sexy interface. It doesn’t look like Facebook at all, and that’s exciting. It’s simple, fast and fun to explore. It finally lists upcoming events, though viewing the event still requires a browser window to be opened. When you’re reading a conversation in the inbox you can see the person’s lifestream in the right hand pane. It allows you to quickly scroll way back into wall post histories; actually I’m very impressed by this. It seems to be aggregating stories much faster than Facebook itself does in a browser. And it has a cool photo album explorer.
But it still lacks support for my mouse’s back button and keyboard shortcuts, its scrolling lags like it always has in IE, it doesn’t support apps, and its photo viewer doesn’t wow me as much as Cooliris. On top of that it’s using as much as 320 MB of RAM in Windows Vista.
While I do appreciate that MS is presenting the same old FB pictures and stories in a unique new way to bring some excitement back into the experience, I don’t think I’ll be using this desktop client for much other than novelty when showing it off to friends.
Fortunately the new Facebook App for the iPhone finally, as of a couple weeks ago, pushes notifications so I now know exactly when Facebook needs me.
Google Docs is my favorite and most used web app. I have 68 documents under just one of my Google accounts. I use them to keep track of debts between my housemate and me, my internet login credentials at 32 different sites, everything needed to maintain my 42 domains and hosting accounts, prospective band members to try out, entrepreneurship ideas, a couple of to-do lists, comparison shopping for furniture and other interesting stuff on Craigslist and eBay, potential job leads, real estate clients’ tenant ledgers, earnings and payments collected as an independent contractor for tax filing and invoicing, and a lot of other things.
In the past I collected lists such as these in far less efficient ways. I organized credits and debts between housemates on paper, whose data I could not reorganize and which I frequently could not locate when needed. I kept my internet credentials stored in an Excel file on my home PC so I was powerless and anonymous on the internet when I was away from home. And I had to save receipts and keep paper trails when invoicing clients, tracking tax deductions and receiving business payments.
Spreadsheet and document organization is enough of a reason to abandon my old methods but another revolutionary advancement is my ability to collaborate. My housemate can add debts to the same Debt Log when I owe him money and we can both view and edit the document simultaneously, which allows us to see exactly what’s owed without worrying about any revisions we haven’t seen yet. My bandmates add prospects to the list when they find a new musician and we can all see our progress in real time, which motivates us all to put in work ourselves. And my real estate clients can update themselves on when and how much their tenants have paid, which saves me a lot of phone calls and headaches.
Google Docs is an all-in-one solution to my paperwork organization struggles and many other issues I never would have known existed before I used it. Because it updates on the fly I never have to worry about losing my work in a power outage or computer crash. Because of its live collaboration feature and flexible permissions settings I know that my intended collaborators and I always have secure access to perfectly current data. Because of its Microsoft Office similarity and compatibility the apps are completely intuitive and make it easy to migrate data across platforms. Because the processing power and data storage is remote I don’t have to worry about my system specs and stability. And like all well designed websites I get a consistent usability experience in spite of varying hardware, operating systems and browsers.
I do many things to organize my life now that I would have never considered doing before Google Apps made it possible. I consider it an invaluable resource and I always try to help my friends, colleagues and clients learn to make Google Apps work for them like I have.
I’ve always been a fan of efficient website navigation that balances the greatest usability with the fewest clicks and least scrolling. If you spend as much time on Facebook as I do, you should appreciate these efficiency enhancing tweaks I discovered a few months back.
These tweaks are scripts which only work in Firefox, and only after you’ve installed the Greasemonkey add-on. After you’ve installed Greasemonkey and restarted Firefox, browse through scripts at userscripts.org.
My favorite Facebook scripts include:
Facebook Fixer
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8861
Description: Enhancements for Facebook: bigger profile pictures and photos, easier viewing of albums, links to download videos, showing people’s age and sign, Google calendar integration, keyboard shortcuts & more. Compatible with new Facebook and fully customizable!
IMO: This is a very powerful script. It requires a little customization but it’s totally worth it. After install, scroll to the top of any Facebook page, open Settings > Facebook Fixer. Read through the settings and experiment.
inYOf4ceBook
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8712
Description: Larger versions of thumbnails and profile pictures on mouseover on facebook.com.
IMO: Huge time saver. I no longer have to click through to new pages to see the full-resolution version of pictures. This duplicates a feature in Facebook Fixer but I prefer the way this works so I disabled the feature in Fixer.
Facebook Friends Checker
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/40027
Description: Regularly checks your Facebook friends to check whether anyone has removed you from their friends. When the script detects that someone you used to be friends with is no longer one of your friends, a message will appear informing you about who it was and giving a link to their profile page.
IMO: This works perfectly. When someone is no longer my friend it could be that they deactivated their account or that they removed me from friends. I know which is the case when I click their profile link. If I see their profile with the option to Add to Friends, I know I’ve been removed from friends. If their profile link just reloads my home page I know their account is currently inactive meaning they probably intentionally deactivated their account. It’s kind of sad how often I get removed as a friend, but at least now I know who not to invite to my birthday party.
Remove “Now Friends” Messages from Facebook Feeds
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/61160
Description: Remove “Now Friends” Messages from Facebook Feeds.
IMO: I don’t care who my friends become friends with. I have 723 friends and they make a lot of new friends. This doesn’t need to clutter up my Feed. Check out the “See also” section of this page for links to other feed hiders you might like, including Remove “Attending,” “Attended,” “Became Fan,” “Joined Group,” and “Now Friends” Messages from Facebook Feeds.
Facebook Show Age
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/59910
Description: Adds age next to birth date.
IMO: Perfect integration and works great. Age is far more important than birthday and it’s nice not having to calculate age in my head any more.
FBOnlineNow
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/59795
*ONLY works after you’ve installed this app: http://apps.facebook.com/invisible/
Description: Turn off Facebook Chat and use FBOnlineNow to see who’s online (active or idle friends).
IMO: I was a little confused at first but now i love it. After you install this you’ll see 2 chat pull-up menues next to each other. the original chat menu is between the new one and notifications; it’s confusing because there’s no icon on it any more.
Facebook URL Cleaner
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/29910
Description: Cleans Facebook URLs that don’t actually take you to a new page.
IMO: It works great. Now rather than http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=569919637#/profile.php?id=725831319, you’ll see http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=725831319
By the way my other favorite Facebook add-ons are Image Zoom and Download Statusbar. Cooliris is cool too but I usually have it disabled. And the most revolutionary, game-changing add-on ever made must be Addblock Plus. ABP deserves its own blog post though so look forward to that in the future.
If you try any of these, please comment and share your experience. Do you love these tweaks as much as I do?
An article on ReadWriteWeb discusses Facebook’s changing demographics, conveyed in the image below. The article focuses on the changing demographics, as the 55+ user base is exploding while the 18-24 range is growing least quickly. It questions how this change will affect Facebook’s market opportunities and whether its college-aged users – once the exclusive user base – is migrating somewhere new.
I think the site has already seen its explosion into the 18-24 base and is now enjoying a similar explosion in the 55+ area. If it had started out as a 55+ exclusive user base we’d witness the same trend in reverse, with 55+ growing slowly and 13-24 blossoming. This is because there is a finite number of people in each age range and the growth cannot continue to multiply at the same rate forever.
It would be interesting to see another study exploring the seeming exodus of college students. The site is growing in college-enrolled users at half the rate it did last year. Graduation should not be a factor because just as many incoming students can be expected to replace the grads. Are the students removing their college affiliation from their page? Or are college students deactivating their accounts on a massive scale?
I have a GreaseMonkey script installed which tracks my Facebook friends and alerts me when one is no longer my friend. Sometimes this means they deleted me as a friend and sometimes it means they’ve deactivated their account. They each seem to be happening at a rate of about 12 friends per month, out of 723 total friends. This trend implies that 20% of my friends are deactivating their accounts each year, though my GreaseMonkey script does not tell me how many of them reactivate their accounts. That is a surprisingly high number, but it doesn’t do much to explain the overall 55% drop in college-enrolled users.
Our first class kicked off with a fantastic speaker, Jeff Cole, Director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg.
He communicated a lot of info in a relatively short period of time about the evolution of mainstream media and what to expect in the near- and mid-term future.
Topics included:
Interesting facts and questions included:
We heard about clicker.com to find TV shows on the web and Telepresence for life-size video conferencing. We also heard from APOC grads about twiistup.com and kasamamedia.com.
Hi, I’m Jesse Wilson, a master’s candidate at USC studying online communities and entrepreneurship. I’m fascinated by technology, social media, and internet products. In this blog I discuss books, classes, websites and companies that I find interesting. I welcome you to contact me or comment on any of my posts. Thanks for your visit!
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