Posts tagged "social networks"
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1 week ago
Don’t Forget The “Social” Part Of Social Media
Business and brands need to think of their social networking efforts as extensions of their physical/virtual stores. If someone walks into your store with a question do you ignore them? The same rules apply for social networks and social media, in order to be successful you have to be social.
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2 weeks ago
Avoiding The Initial Social Media Mistakes
One of the mistakes that I’ve witnessed many new brands and individuals make when first entering into social media is their attempt to bring their old media way of thinking along with them. This traditional way of thinking and attempt to squeeze into a different medium will eventually lead to failure.
Instead of joining a social network, listening to the community and determining how that particular community works, quite often instead they will instead join and begin quickly aggressively pursuing the members of this social network with their look at me and buy this now message. The community whether it be Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or some other community will eventually turn its collective back on the brand as abuse will only be tolerated for so long.
What brands and businesses new to social networks should instead be doing is:
- Join the social network using a real name or the business name
- Upload a real picture of yourself or your product
- Use the search tools to discover individuals who are already talking about you or your brand and friend or follow them
- Listen to the conversations that are currently taking place and learn what is and what isn’t appropriate conduct on that particular social network
- After gaining followers and have learned the rules begin to socialize with those in your network. It is after all called “social” networking.
- Answer questions, ask questions and offer genuine help to those people who may be interested in your product/brand/business
- Repeat
To put the above into perspective I present you with two very different scenarios:
- You’re at a party and there is someone there who’s had far too much fun already and is harassing everyone he/she encounters with loud drunken talk and push behavior. Eventually he/she is dancing on the table and puking in the planter.
- You’re at a party and there is an individual there who is walking around making small talk with all those in the room. He/she is asking questions, telling jokes, sharing stories and listening to what others around him are saying. This is an articulate individual who is facilitating conversation among the group and everyone seems to be drawn to him/her.
How do you want your brand/business to be remembered amongst the social networks? Do you want your reputation to be that of the loud drunk or that of the articulate well spoken individual?
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1 month ago
Could Google Buzz Be More Than Just A New Social Network?
Google launched its new social networking platform Buzz about five days ago and it appears Google has been listening to user feedback and has been able to close up some of the privacy concerns users had been voicing since its launch. Despite the fact Google has been attentive to its early adopters I am still not convinced that Google Buzz is a social networking platform and instead may actually be a real-time blogging platform.
Google has already built many blogging features into its Buzz service currently implemented by many of the other blogging platforms either by design or via a plugin system.
Features found inside Buzz that are similar to other blogging platforms include:
- Buzz pulls in all your content from around the web (Flickr, Picasa, Reader, etc…)
- With the major exclusion of Facebook Buzz is able to pull in most of your social graph
- Buzz allows for long form content to be posted where Facebook and Twitter both have limits on the amount you can post
- Built in commenting system
- Built in sharing system
- Built in upvoting system
- Tight integration with its mobile platform
So, what would Google need to do to become a real-time blogging platform?
- Allow customization/templating of your Buzz/Profile page
- Ability to use your own domain instead of the profile url
- Facebook integration into the connected sites
- Text formatting tools like those already found in Gmail
- Third party tools for posting
I don’t think it’s Facebook and Twitter that have anything to worry about as they have already reached a massive audience that will be hard to win over, but instead if I were Tumblr and Posterous I would be looking over my shoulder at the Google giant that is about to strike.
What do you think? Is Google Buzz a new social network or could it be more of a real-time blogging platform? Who should be most worried about Buzz? Is it Facebook and Twitter or Posterous and Tumblr?
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Notes: 1 / 1 month ago
What’s All The Buzz About?
Google has launched a new social networking platform heavily integrated into its webmail service Gmail. The new platform called Buzz is the latest effort by Google to enter into the social market. Google quickly began to roll the new service out to its current Gmail users and expects that all users will have the Buzz service within a couple of days.
As of this writing I do not have the Buzz feature integrated into my Gmail account but from reading the various blogs that covered the Google press conference this is what is known about Buzz:
- Auto-following
- Ability to change the privacy setting on shared content
- Status updates delivered to your Gmail inbox
- Ability to recommend posts to friends-of-friends
- Twitter style @ replies
- Integration with Twitter, Picasa, Flickr and Google Reader
- View image thumbnails within each post
- Real time updates
You can watch the Google Buzz demo video below:
Why Google Buzz Will Fail
Personally I think Buzz will be a failed product that Google will probably forget about in a year and here are my reasons why:
- Auto-following – I can’t confirm at this point but I assume what Google means by auto-follow is that anybody you have previously emailed in the past with a Gmail account you will now be following/friending them. If this is how it is intended to work this was poorly thought out by the Google engineers. There are email contacts in my Gmail account that I have sent messages to once and never again. Why would I choose to follow these people? Google and any other company getting into the social networking business should not assume and/or automatically sign you up to follow other users. This type of auto follow is going to lead to artificial follower counts much in the same way as the Twitter suggested user lists did before they changed the format.
- Facebook Is Missing - I couldn’t help but notice that during their demo video they mention integration with Twitter, Picasa, Flickr and Google Reader but strangely enough no mention of Facebook. How can Google Buzz claim to be truly integrated with other social networking sites when they don’t even integrate with the 400+ million user juggernaut that is Facebook? Oddly enough I see no mention integration with Google’s other failed social networking platform Orkut either.
- The Name – Buzz seems to be a poorly chosen name and one that I and many other people already associate with another site. Yahoo currently runs a social news site called Buzz that you can find at http://buzz.yahoo.com and with Google now choosing to also call its social networking platform Buzz this may lead to a fragmented and confused internet audience.
- Built By Engineers – I have looked at the Buzz profile page for a couple of users such as Mashable who have had access to the service. To be nice…it’s ugly. It’s a plain white page with what appears to be not customization. I realize Google is full of really smart and talented engineers who make a great search product but at some point you would think they could spend some of their billions on hiring some top notch graphic designers and usability experts to ensure they deliver not only a great looking product but one that can be used by your average internet user without help.
- Cross-Posting – Will Google Buzz be able to post to all my other social network profiles or will it simply aggregate that information to be posted solely within Buzz? If Google was smart they would grant users the ability to post a status update to Buzz and then have Buzz cross-post it to all the users other social networking sites.
- Email Only – Why did Google make the decision to allow access to Buzz only through Gmail on the desktop? I believe this will only work in confusing their users as most (including myself) thing of Gmail as an email destination and not as a social networking destination. Google is going to have a hard fought branding battle in ensuring that their users remember that Gmail is now more than simple email.
- Nothing New – Google Buzz adds nothing new to social networking that hasn’t already been implemented better on another site. What incentive is there for a user to leave their current favorite social site and move their social graph over to Buzz?
One Reason Google Buzz May Succeed
- 146 Million Users – Gmail currently has 146 million users and each and every single one of those users will be getting Buzz rolled out to them in the upcoming days. If everyone of those Gmail users decides to adopt Buzz as their social networking platform of choice that mean Buzz would have 1/4 the amount of users as Facebook only days after initial launch.
From my point of view I think that Buzz will fail as it adds nothing new to the social scent that hasn’t already been done and this feels to much like an effort by Google to show that “Hey, we’re here too, look at us” instead of an actual push into social networking.
Please leave a comment below with your opinion on Google Buzz.
- Do you think it will be a success or a failure?
- Have you used it yet?
- What are your initial thoughts?
For additional reading and sources of information I used please check out:
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1 month ago
Your social networking experience has very little to do with your friend or followers count, instead it has more to do with the quality of content and effort you put forth in engaging with the followers, friends or fans that you do have. The more you put into social networks, the more you will get out of them.
Like hockey? Check out the hockey social news network: IceColdNews.com
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