I couldn’t help but use the tagline for the upcoming movie, “The Social Network” as the title for this post. It’s attention grabbing.
In theaters October 1st, 2010, The Social Network will tell the story of how Mark Zuckerberg launched a revolution in communication and became the youngest billionaire in history. Success didn’t come without hurdles and the film will also reveal both personal and legal complications that challenged Mark and tested his mettle.
I’m looking forward to giving it a watch this fall and getting to know the Facebook empire better. Digital communities and user behavior is fascinating to study, especially when going from 1 to 500 million members in 6 short years. Countless blog posts and articles have been written about Facebook, but this will be the first feature length film. Should be a fun ride.
With all of the buzz around social media, companies are searching for best and most effective ways to dive in and connect with consumers. For most the question is how to utilize social media in a way that will engage users and elicit/maintain a meaningful dialog, and for others it is providing those doors for users to consume and digest content in one location or central hub. In the later, companies approach this with developmental integrations. Microsoft has opened yet another door to the largest gaming network and the 20+ million active users on the Xbox LIVE! Marketplace. For those who are not familiar, the Xbox LIVE marketplace, available through the Xbox 360 gaming console is an online gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft. Xbox LIVE is an evolving entertainment hub with seamless integration between gaming and media needs. Through LIVE users have access to online gaming, streaming HD movies through Netflix, video chat with friends, photo sharing, and early access to content and exclusive discounts.
Microsoft has now integrated Facebook, Twitter, Zune, and last.fm. Users with an Xbox LIVE subscription will now be able to connect with friends, tweet, listen to music, and stream more HD media.
Facebook
Share status updates and photos with friends in real-time, as well as gaming moments right from the Xbox dashboard to Facebook. This provides gamers another avenue to share their achievements and favorite gaming moments on Facebook, and keep up with friends right from their console and TV.
Twitter
Read, reply, and post Tweets to Twitter through Xbox LIVE. See what friends and family are up to, connect to celebrities, learn about news as it happens, and follow online trends.
Last.fm on Xbox 360
With Last.fm, members can select music preferences to explore personalized radio stations with a library of more than 3.5 million tracks. Skip, “ban,” or ‘love” tracks to tailor the radio station to your tastes. Share music with friends, manage customized radio stations, and create personal soundtracks. A social component allows users to discover new music based on what other friends are listening to.
HD Entertainment with Zune
Zune on Xbox LIVE gives users access to full HD video entertainment, with the ability to rent and buy the latest movies and TV shows. HD content is in 1080p and 5.1 surround sound. A Party mode allows users to watch movies and share the experience with up to 7 friends in an online ‘movie theatre’ setting. Any download will provide the option to download again and watch on your PC or Zune HD player as well.
What does this mean for users? To the 20 + million subscribers, this is all the more reason to remain in one outlet digesting various levels of gaming, entertainment, and social. Instead of streaming music from your computer or switching off your console to watch a movie in high definition, everything can be done right from your Xbox console. You can keep all of your friends updated on what you are listening to, watching or playing.
What does this mean for agencies and their clients? As LIVE grows the plethora of services offered, so does the amount of time users stay connected, and the number of reasons they stay on LIVE. This provides us even more opportunity to reach these elusive demographics by volume in a highly targeted environment. Among the various search and display opportunities being utilized through Microsoft, with LIVE provides the ability to tailor campaigns using standard ad placements, multimedia such as video, audio and animation, as well as custom sponsorships/contests. Developing branded theme packs for users to skin their dashboards is also an option to engage the audience, essentially creating a downloadable homepage takeover for their dashboard experience.
As some of you out there have seen the commercial of three friends at TGI Friday eating Jack Daniels burgers, ribs, and whatever they can put that BBQ sauce on. Woody explains that if he gets 500k friends then those friends will receive a coupon for free Jack Daniels burger or 5 dollars off any Jack Daniels product. This social campaign has been going on for a little over three weeks and already he has over 700k fans.
On their twitter page Woody has 918 followers, which is a good start. The problem is they are not following anyone. In order to successfully use twitter you need to follow people and interact with them. It isn’t a one way street.
So these few commercial and a small reward (cheese burger for 5 bucks or 5 dollars off any other Jack Daniels product) has built a huge following for TGI Friday. TGI Friday can now measure the success of this campaign by the number of people using the coupons, which will be emailed from the application once a user enters an email address. Then when the coupon is used in the store, TGI will have an idea of how much money was spent along with the coupon and the number of coupons that have been used.
You can find Woody’s fan page at thttp://www.facebook.com/fanwoody and he also has a twitter page at http://twitter.com/fanwoody. You can also become a fan of TGI Friday at http://www.facebook.com/TGIFridays and check out their twitter page at http://www.twitter.com/TGIFridaysNews
What a smart way to get fans, giving out free Jack Daniels Burgers. People love free stuff…hint hint
Analytics company iStrategyLabs recently examined the demographics stats from Facebook’s Social Ads platform, and found some extraordinary results. In short, Facebook’s userbase, as a whole, is getting much older very fast.
The Numbers
Between January and the fourth of July 2009, the overall number of Facebook users between 18 and 24 years of age grew only 4.8%. In comparison, the number of users aged 25 – 34 grew 60.8%; the number of users aged 35 to 54 grew 190.2%, while the number of users older than 55 years grew a tremendous 513.7%!
Most of the users (20.3 million, or 28.2% overall) on the site belong to the 35 – 54 age group. The 18 – 24 group is now in third place with 18 million (25.1%) users. And during the six-month study period, the number of users in the 55+ group grew from 950,000 to 5.9 million.
Getting Personal
While there are obvious implications for advertisers in terms of whom they are trying to reach on Facebook, the phenomenon of shifting demographics took on personal significance in light of having recently attended my 35th college reunion. The ramp-up to the June event coincided exactly with the term of the iStrategyLabs study. And my experience as a participant in that event closely paralleled the meteoric rise in usage of Facebook among my 55+ cohort.
In January, an initial call to participate in a class Facebook page, and to connect to other potential reunion attendees went largely unheeded…”What’s a Facebook?” By March, various affinity groups (e.g., fraternities, teams, clubs) were starting to recruit classmates using Facebook as the vehicle, encouraging others to join and to submit pictures of themselves in their virile youth. In early June, people who had never had experience with social media were creating Facebook accounts, posting photos of their children and grandchildren (!), and making plans to meet on campus. After reunion, there was a seismic glut of new pictures, posts about shared experiences, and promises to “never lose touch again!” All that in six months.
So if 55+ is officially the new 25, can Boomer Tweetups be far behind?
I was on vacation last week and was surprised to see FaceBook had a face lift when I went to add pictures of my vacation to FaceBook. At first I was a little frustrated with the new designed, but once I got use to where everything was I started to like the new design. The new design is a lot cleaner, better organized, and has a twitter feel to it (some would say twitter-envy). I say twitter feel because they put all the status updates in one place. Everything else is off to the right. I have to agree with this because there was a lot of useless information in the main window before. I really didn’t need to know when my friends added the mob wars application and got to each level.
Coming into work Monday morning I knew there was going to be some back lash against the new design, because let’s face it, people can’t accept change on the web. When I sat at my desk and logged into FaceBook I had six invites to “Let’s get the old home page back 2 million members needed”. I wasn’t that surprised. I was more surprised that some of my friends could not see the advantages of the new design. Maybe I need some new friends, just kidding, sort of.
I have read some articles that say this new design was to incorporate more advertising into the site so FaceBook can make money. So the next time you are about to complain about the new design ask yourself would you rather pay a monthly fee to be on FaceBook or can you handle a little re-design so FaceBook can make a buck? Plus once you learn where everything is, it really is a lot easier to use.
Now that a week has gone by since the new FaceBook design so tell me what you think, do you love it? Hate it? Don’t care because FaceBook is not a part of your life (well it should be).
As some of you out there have seen the commercial of three friends at TGI Friday eating Jack Daniels burgers, ribs, and whatever they can put that BBQ sauce on. Woody explains that if he gets 500k friends then those friends will receive a coupon for free Jack Daniels burger or 5 dollars off any Jack Daniels product. This social campaign has been going on for a little over three weeks and already he has over 700k fans.
