Word on the street is that Facebook Applications are quickly loosing their luster. Increasingly users are viewing Applications as SPAM and Facebook itself is taking notice.
In our opinion, Facebook Applications have reached a stage of maturity where the novelty factor has worn off. Further discouraging some developers is fact that attempts at building Applications with value outside of a purely social/fun content have largely failed. For example, office and productivity applications generally have fewer than a hundred active users. It’s become clear that while may be Facebook a ‘platform,’ its a platform limited (for now) to ‘all things social’ and not a conduit to ‘all things online’ a la Google.
Taken at face value, what we are seeing is that that Facebook users consider Applications to be almost ‘mini commercials’ or “interactive advertisements” primarily pushing users to other out-of-Facebook applications and websites or forcing them to interact within very narrow confines. Developers need to understand this user mindset in order to be design successful Apps. In many ways, this new state of App maturity parallels more traditional forms of media marketing. Heights Media Group believes an interesting point of comparison for current Facebook Application is with television commercials. The attributes that have produced sustainable commercials throughout the last fifty years are likely to reemerge as key attributes for next generation Apps.
Below we have highlighted four strategies/characteristics common to the best television commercials. These same characteristics and strategies should be central to the development strategies of future Applications. If your goal is creating a “viral” application, you need to start with a compelling value proposition. Designing with the following attributes in mind can help you get there.
Introduce a New Product or Service
This is obvious. When you don’t know a product or service exists you don’t buy it. Initial [Early Facebook applications took advantage of first mover advantage and may have long-term sustainability achieved by economies of scale. However gimmicky Apps like Vampire Bites, while cool when they first appeared, can only be reinvented so often. Going forward, Apps designed to build an early audience for a new product or service (launch), or designed to target certain demographic can still be quite successful]
Provide Insight and/or Perspective
Sometimes as Ad brings out an “aha” moment: you realize you actually need a product because of how it’s demonstrated or pitched. Alternatively an Ad can introduce new data or facts you were previously unaware of. [Some of the best Facebook Apps provide insight – Visual Bookshelf helps you learn about new books for example. Facebook Beacon is another insight or data-centered element that will likely continue to grow and be tweaked. Applications that can intelligently mine data, make recommendations and connect users, or share insight have will always do well.]
Present a Compelling Contest and/or Give-Away
Television commercials can be successful when they create a sense of urgency, offer a give-away or entice the user to take advantage of a compelling opportunity. [For example, Applications for marketing Movies where movie tickets or merchandise is given away based on a variable (say the number of your friends who watch a trailer) is a great way to get the word out.]
Elicit Emotion (humor, inspiration, etc)
Lance Armstrong’s Nike Commercials and or famous political television ads tug at our emotions. Apple’s Think Different inspired us. These types of ads elicit responses and are types of marketing we desire to view over and over again — even to share with friends and family. Best of all, we often want to add ourselves into the dialogue. [This is a generation of Applications that we have yet to see realized. Certain applications, like those showing support for a cause (for example: Obama 2008) are Applications that are a good start. However, there is substantial opportunity for better applications that are able to elicit emotion.]
***Do you have a favorite application that falls into one of the four categories from above? If so we’d love to hear about it! Please add a comment
This is a request to be friends with Heights Media Group on Facebook. You can simply click this link and agree to this request, or you can rightfully ask yourself why you would possibly want to be friends with a company? What’s in it for you?
At first glance, it would appear not much. We’re asking you to be become friends with a company that you know little about and, well, it’s a company. But here’s the thing. This company is run by people you most likely know – Sam and Ben — and we’re cool guys. We’d like your support. But what’s more, you actually have an opportunity to help us by contributing to our strategies and offering us your guidance.
Heights Media Group is a young firm and we’re doing cool stuff. If you don’t know us, in addition to long walks on the beach, we also love innovation and creating new web products that are helpful to people just like you.
However, in order to be successful at this, in order to make products and services you might be actually be interested in, we need help. We care what you think. We care about stuff like opinions, innovations, feedback and suggestions. Think of this profile as a communications platform. It’s a place to talk. Essentially it’s a miniature version of our main website, but made to fit within Facebook. It looks pretty.
In exchange for your support, we’d like to think you’ll be getting something too.
First, you get to read our great blog. You can check out cool new products that we will be announcing. You can sign up as beta testers. We’ll invite you to events (Technoliday is coming up). Plus, you can tell us we’re idiots if that’s what you really think and that’s kind of fun.
Why did we bother to write all this? We don’t really know but we feel good about it. Maybe more companies should do things like this. It takes effort and effort is good. We’re going to be friends after all, right?
Sam/Ben
Heights Media Group has been working away…
Social Media Stream: Launched as an alpha, Social Media Stream aggregates the best in social media related blog posts, news and links by blending them all into a single feed. Social Media Stream launched on Thursday, November 8th.
PrepNY: PrepNY officially launched two weeks ago. Thus far the PrepNY blog has been very active and has featured several controversial articles focused on security flaws within current alumni database offerings.
Workstreamr: While still in stealth mode, look for the Workstreamr blog to appear soon. Development has officially begun.
HMG on Facebook: Heights Media Group has also created a profile on Facebook’s new advertising platform. Check us out here and be sure to add us as a friend!
Technoliday Party: December 12, 2007. Heights Media Group in conjunction with our partners at iStreatgyLabs are hosting the first annual Technoliday Party in New York City. We are close to securing a location and will have the full announcement soon. All proceeds from the event will be donated to the One Laptop Per Child Initiative.
Start-up, Ad-Air, says it has created what is the “first global aerial advertising network” - giant, billboard-like ads that will be visible from the air as planes approach runways.
Paul Jenkins, managing director of Ad-Air believes he’s stumbled upon an “incredible marketing opportunity.” Just think of all these passengers with “nothing else to do, staring down at the ground below” said Jenkins.
Ad-Air has secured regulatory and planning approval to set up ad sites near more than a dozen major airports, including London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Denver International, Los Angeles International, Suvarnabhumi in Bangkok, Haneda in Tokyo and Dubai International.
In conjunction with our partners at iStrategyLabs, today Heights Media Group is launching a new service offering for clients and prospects. Over the past several months, HMG has been tapped by interactive agencies, fortune 500 companies and startups to provide ideation on highly viral and value-added Facebook applications.
Resulting from these brainstorming sessions is a database of concepts HMG believes will add significant marketing and PR value to any company promoting a brand, product or service.
Each concept will be priced individually and includes the full specifications and product architecture necessary for a development team to immediately get started.
For access to the database, please email or call us.
via Neil Patel
As you can see below, the message in marketing and advertising originates from the author. However, in PR the message comes from a third party. PR leads to branding and in branding, the prospective customer/visitor is interested because of what someone else says
From the Wall Street Journal
“After years of worrying about how much time freshmen spend on Facebook, schools are incorporating the study of social networking, online communities and user-contributed content into new curricula on social computing. The moves, like other academic expansions into fields like videogame design, are part of an effort to keep technology studies relevant to students’ lives – and to tap subjects with entrepreneurial momentum.”
A sampling of courses at different colleges and universities that address social media:
- Designing Sociable Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- eCommunities: Analysis and Design of Online Interaction Environments, University of Michigan
- Online Identity, Social and Community Behavior, Rochester Institute of Technology
- Social Networks and Social Processes, Cornell University
- After Google, What? Information Management and the Academic Enterprise in a Networked Digital Age, University of California at Berkeley
The Economist recently covered Facebook and the concept of the ‘Social Graph.’
Here is what folks had to say via Del.icio.us…
This suggests that the future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the internet to replicate the millions that exist offline. No single company, therefore, can capture the social graph. (Adecarvalho)
article on the future of social networking, focusing on facebook. (ellen_dee_cola)
the future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities (almarrone)
“The future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the internet to replicate the millions that exist offline. No single company, therefore, can capture the social graph. (jaycollier)
But unlike other networks, social networks lose value once they go beyond a certain size. “The value of a social network is defined not only by who’s on it, but by who’s excluded” (mediaeater)
“Mark Zuckerberg, ten days after turning 23, took the stage in a San Francisco warehouse and announced that he was opening up Facebook, the social network he founded at Harvard University, to outside programmers. Anyone can now build little programs, or (stoweboyd)
There’s less to Facebook and other social networks than meets the eye (h3athrow)
Questioning the valuation of Facebook’s model/features (hanser)