Online networks, including social ones, evolve and take on a life of their own. In the real world, for multi-celled organisms to exist a number of cells must work together to make something bigger. When individual cellular components work together multi-celled organisms evolve and these can evolve into complex life forms over time. A branch of these complex life-forms have evolved and eventually became humans. Human civilisation has in turn evolved to where we are now because we have mastered the art of continually grouping together into teams, tribes, cities and nation states to create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

Networking and collaboration are fundamental to what it means to be human. In our bodies are atoms working together to create cells and cells working together to create our organs. In our brains neurones work together to create our thoughts, feelings and language. In your company people are working together – to create something bigger and more exciting than the sum of it’s parts.

We can take this thinking and look at the development of the personal computer and see a very similar pattern emerging…

Before anyone had a computer or a smart phone, everything was a social event. Meetings were face-to-face, or over the phone at least, and communication in general was human to human based.

In the last 30 years things changed. Initially the personal computer made everything a private and secluded affair. Games, for example, could be played without the help of another human and work could happen sitting in front of a screen. The advent of the early internet showed how powerful many computers networked together could be, but from a personal perspective ‘computing’ was an insular activity.

The first social networks, forums and blogs worked with a huge number of anonymous users. While this was a step forward in person-to-person networking, the anonymity allowed people to behave in ways that they would never dream of in real life. This left many of these networks to be the domain of the very early adopters and special interest groups. The ‘rules’ that govern effective social networks were yet to be developed.

What has happened recently, particularly with Facebook, is that is has become far easier to transport your real identity around the web. This means that increasingly people are joining new social networks with their ‘real identity’: their real name; their place of work; and other details that define them as a person in a movement – sometimes referred to as the ‘Open Web’. Naturally this makes people think more carefully about what they say and how they behave on social networks – because they ‘own’ their comments the common rules of society come into play. When a person’s reputation is attached to what they say it makes them think carefully about what that comment might mean to others.

Of course people can still misbehave in social networks, like they can in real world networks, but the networks are now being governed by majority rule so this behaviour is quickly dealt with. This makes cooperation and collaboration much easier and because of this the barriers to entry are dropping at an astronomical rate. Companies can now start to feel more secure in setting up their own networks knowing that majority of users will join to get value out of the information that is provided and quickly deal with other users who lessen the overall value of that network.

So when thinking about why social media has become so widely adopted and pondering about where it is going avoid getting distracted by in the leaps in technology. These are important, of course, but it is the behaviour of the network and the developments of new social norms that are really driving the progress. Every individual in this massive network is doing what he or she is pre-programmed to do – communicate, collaborate and continue the march of our civilisation’s evolution.

The future of the Social Web will see openness and ownership of communication adopted on a much greater scale as the tools to do so become more wide spread and easier to adopt. The potential economic benefits of social media will force this to happen. Companies can and will want to access to increasingly granular data about their ‘stakeholders’ – employees, supporters and consumers. Knowing what individuals are saying what, how they are behaving and who is influencing them is critical and valuable information.

When Facebook releases it’s new developer tools in April this year there will be an even bigger push towards the Open Web – something that many market analysts are predicting will make the eventual float of Facebook bigger than that of Google’s IPO.

The rules governing online social networks are beginning to mature. Unsurprisingly they closely reflect those that exist in offline world.

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This is great news for us as we have been exploring the developers sandbox and are looking forward to incorporating Wave technology into our projects.

Foe more information about how Google Wave may effect marketers read our article here.

FOCUSING ON FUTURE MARKETS.

The 28th of May this year may end up being one of the most influential 24 hours periods in web history. It was on this day that Google launched a new communications platform called Google Wave, and if Wave lives up to it’s promise it may change digital communication forever. But while the web elite are all a-buzz about the impact of this new platform on the way we communicate Google has quietly been releasing a steady stream of new products and further improvements to their core product, the Google search engine and it’s related advertising tools. Google is not going to give us a road-map for what this all means but it is possible to look at the patterns and take a long view.

THE SEARCH LANDSCAPE.

There has been a lot of talk about the new kids on the search block, Wolfram Alpha, Twitter search and Microsoft’s latest entry, Bing (which is an acronym for “But It’s Not Google”). Some commentators have been speculating that many of the additions to Google search pages, such as the new “options” area where there is real time search among other features, are Google’s answer to real time search on Twitter search, and the decision engine promised by Bing. And while competition has undoubtedly accelerated Google’s release of features it is a pretty safe bet to assume that Google is not simply being reactive.
The fact is the Google owns over 70% of the search market world wide. Wolfram Alpha is designed as a computational engine which, in plain English, means it is an attempt to create a type of artificial intelligence and tease data out of the internet in a different way. Not really a direct threat to Google – in fact it can be seen as a complementary feature. Twitter Search is a real time search engine based on the collective conversations of every Twitter user. Interesting but also not a huge threat to Google search. Bing, combined with Yahoo, is really the only direct threat to Google. And, while Microsoft and Yahoo are spending a lot of money on marketing, they have a long way to go.

GOOGLE PRODUCTS ARE EVERYWHERE.

Currently Google has something in the vicinity of 200 applications and services available (for a full list go here), most of which are free. New ones seem to be coming out on a weekly basis at the moment. A few weeks back we saw the release of Google Squared, a very interesting research tool with loads of potential. A visual search tool for news, Flipper, is expected shortly.
It is fairly common knowledge that any technology Google develops is directed at increasing the usage of the web as a whole, thereby increasing the value of it’s main revenue stream, AdWords, the advertising medium based on relevance and consumer intent.
Forget E-Bay, AdWords is the world’s biggest auction. Every single search that is performed on Google is automatically analysed so that the most relevant “sponsored link” is displayed on the page and, of course, paid for by the advertiser. When you look at the cost of an individual click the numbers are small. But when you analyse the volume of searches that are performed it really starts to get impressive. Enough to net Google $21 Billion USD in 2008.
The temptation is to draw the line there… “Google is trying to get us all to use the browser even more, so we can do more searches, so they can make more money”. This is true – but there’s more to it.

I’VE SEEN THE FUTURE AND IT IS THIN.

The big difference between using Google AdWords and say print advertising – apart from the huge difference in volume of data you can extract; is that it levels the playing field. You can be a multi-national corporation with tens of millions to spend but if the copy of your ad is less relevant to searcher’s intent than an ad by a one man shop you won’t get the top spot. It is this fact that has seen online advertising for the SME market skyrocket. Naturally, Google is well aware of this.
The world wide web has become almost as essential as electricity and water in most of the technologically advanced areas of the world. In these societies the middle class are the highest users. But Google has spotted that poorer, less advanced countries present a huge growth opportunity. The current barrier to entry for this demographic is the window into the net: the computer.
Much of the cost of a computer is tied up in the processor power and the disk space. What Google is doing by creating free ’software as a service’ applications (or ‘cloud computing’ as it is otherwise known) is removing much of the technology requirement and cost. If all the processing is done at Google’s end the client’s machine need not be the latest and greatest computer on the market. The dramatic uptake of the NetBook is a great example of this. And the sale on eBay of the first generation of NetBooks for a few bucks presages the opening up of entirely new markets.
This is all about taking everybody towards a ‘thin client model‘. In this case the ‘client’ is the web end point – your window in the web – be it a NetBook, a TV, a phone, or just a screen plugged into the wall. The ‘thin’ part is the technology. Keep it simple and keep it cheap. The idea of the thin client model has been around for a while but Google is doing the most to advance it for the general population.

HOLD ON. WE’RE ABOUT TO TAKE OFF.

When the technology gets cheap enough the new target market for search related products will be most of the world . Google knows this and is already investing a lot of time into removing another barrier – language. One of the plug ins showcased when they launched Google Wave was a language translator that works as you type. This enables you to have real time conversations with anyone in the world. Together these innovations will bring information, education, and wealth to the masses in entirely new geographies.
As marketers we shouldn’t underestimate the size of this opportunity. Sure, we will have to learn new technologies and customs but we will also be able to market to entirely new groups of people with a new range of needs and wants – a part of the world that will grow in power and influence.
If you thought the first 20 years of the world wide web brought a lot of change to the way we do things, you haven’t seen anything yet.

That social networks are useful tools for connecting to friends or people with the same interests is now widely understood. Many people, however, still have trouble understanding how they can be utilised effectively for distributing marketing messages. They see social networks and the Internet in general as “just another media channel”, behind the likes of newspapers and TV. In fact social networks are fundamentally impacting and reshaping the newspaper and TV industries worldwide. In an earlier article, “What the newspaper industry needs to do to survive”, I explained the changing dynamics of the newspaper industry. In this article I look at where TV is headed.

In this article I look at where TV is headed.

For a very long time TV has been the master of the house. If you wanted to watch your favourite program you had to be in front of the TV at the right time. VCRs and later hard disk recorders like Tivo, or Foxtel IQ here in Australia, changed that. Now you can record your programs and skip through the ads. End users love it but advertisers were obviously frustrated with this development. There has even been a movement in the US to make sure the logo can still be seen while fast forwarding ads on a Tivo.

Enter Hulu. If you haven’t heard of Hulu don‚Äôt worry. It‚Äôs not available outside of the US yet. But I guarantee that it will be. Hulu is a website that is free to join, provided you hand over a bit of background information about yourself. It has video content to an extent never seen before. Almost every show that airs on FOX and NBC is available to watch whenever you feel like it. And when I say every show I mean every show. Every episode of the Simpsons ever produced, feature films, documentaries, dramas – anything you can think of – is searchable and viewable a day or two after it is aired on the network itself. Recently the networks have started to restrict a bit of that content but regardless you don‚Äôt have to worry about recording anything again. Hulu stores everything for you. Available ‚Äúon demand‚Äù.

What is really interesting about Hulu is the business aspect of it. Each show still has commercial breaks but each break contains only one ad but a highly targeted one. Using the information you have provided about yourself,  advertisers can tailor a message specifically to you, or as a minimum, make sure it advertises a product you are interested in. In fact, advertisers can even put your name in it. It may still be considered interruption marketing, but at least there’s a good chance that you’ll find it relevant and interesting. And who can be bothered fast-forwarding when it’s just one 30 second TVC? Even if you could. We haven’t seen it yet but there is nothing stopping the advertisers making these ads fully interactive as well.

Sit down in front of your TV and watch anything you want, any time you want.

Early adopters have already worked out how to get Hulu onto media centres like Apple TVs or Xboxes and are able to view it on their main entertainment screen. They are not meant to be able to it but it works. Considering how popular this seems to be it can’t be long before there is a “plug and play” version. Just think about it for a minute. Sit down in front of your TV and watch anything you want, any time you want. It could be the ‘total control’ moment we’ve all been waiting for since the birth of the internet.

The social networking interaction is fairly simple at this stage. Topic controlled forums where users can comment and vote on a show allow viewers connect with each other. This information has the ability to be analysed to make the advertising even more targeted. So it is likely that the social media aspects are only going to get further developed over time.

Hulu is doing well and is being backed by a range of big players. This technology is going to get even more interesting when Google, the owners of YouTube, joins in. You can bet your bottom dollar that YouTube is going to provide premium content with targeted advertising in the not too distant future. After all Google is no longer just a search engine; it is the world largest media agency and they know how to spot an opportunity, and they desperately need to find a way to make money out of YouTube.

As with all ‘disruptive’ technology changes there is going to be resistance at first. Large corporations don’t particularly like changing their business models, but you can guarantee this is where the customers will go Рso the networks and advertisers will have to follow.

Television content providers need to be preparing for a time where this is common place. It’s what the customer wants and forcing your customers to put up with old models is a good way to lose them. Traditional broadcasting quickly became a platform for advertisers to speak to their customers. This new technology will be a similar platform but the conversation will be one to one. It’s measurable and testable. It’s direct marketing for TV.

Further reading:

How the economic downturn will mature internet marketing.

Hulu is Catching Up With YouTube – Fast

Free, Legal and Online: Why Hulu Is the New Way to Watch TV

“This one has been developing for some time now right before our eyes, but the titanic nature of the faceoff between what are arguably the two most aggressive representatives of Web 2.0 ‚Äî Facebook and Twitter ‚Äî has only recently heated up to the boiling point.

As Brad Stone, of The New York Times, observed this weekend, Facebook’s leaders have recently taken the bold step of providing “a set of technology tools that will let other companies create programs that tap into the heart of the social network — the endless stream of photographs, status updates and comments that people post to the service.”

In doing so, Facebook is trying to catch up to Twitter, which already allows outsiders to have their way with its interface and its content.

Stay tuned. This battle promises to be the best since Microsoft and Netscape squared off in the browser wars a decade or more ago.”

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“As Owen Van Natta, the new chief executive of MySpace, starts his second week at the sprawling social network , he faces an acute demographic problem.

While Facebook is adding users, MySpace is losing them. Many user profile pages on MySpace are either cluttered or neglected, resembling a strip mall with pockets of empty storefronts. The users who remain tend to be younger and poorer, putting a drag on advertising revenue from blue-chip clients.”

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