ImpactWatch Blog

As mentioned on The Bivings Report, last Thursday we launched a new instance of Slurp140 to track discussions on Twitter surrounding Facebook’s fairly well hyped “Project Titan” which CEO Mark Zuckerberg clarified is in fact, not a “Gmail Killer.”

Looking at the results of http://www.slurp140.com/titan/ a few things stand out:

1. Discussion about Facebook’s announcement were largely confined to a small and specific set of people.
In other words, total insider baseball.

For the Facebook announcement, the ratio between total number of tweets (13,813) and people tweeting (12,257) is much closer than breaking news stories we have tracked. When we used Slurp140 to track the story of a armed man holding hostages in the Discovery Channel building, there were a total of 16,665 tweets by 9,639 people- The majority of which happened in a shorter 3-hour time frame.

As for the reaction to the Facebook announcement, while @petershankman, founder of HARO was certainly not impressed, from reviewing the stream majority of tweets were informational in nature or related to questions about privacy and possible Facebook data mining: via @jeffsayre: “Facebook email? All they’ll need now is an online bank, restaurant and bathroom. No one will ever leave. #bigbrother #privacy”

Secondly, just like a photo rumored to be of the Discovery channel shooter circulated widely, misinformation and rumors about the Facebook email system did as well.  While I agree with Peter’s sentiment that applying for jobs with your new @facebook email account generally isn’t a good idea- In the strict sense this really isn’t possible. As Zuckerberg explained in the Q&A- the Facebook email system & spam filters are configured  for communicating within your current network of friends. In most instances, you’re probably not Facebook friends with your future boss. If on the other hand you are,  it might actually be a good idea to shoot them an email over Facebook inquiring about the job opportunity.

Third while concerns about privacy and data mining are of course legitimate, in comparing Facebook email to Google, Facebook is actually less intrusive. As Zuckerberg explained, Facebook’s ad targeting is based on what users list as their likes and interests, while Google actually does search the content of your email in order to display ads. In this case, Facebook is technically the more private option.

2. Spikes in conversations correspond to live video / main stream media coverage.

This seems obvious, but at the same time it has some interesting implications- Namely that while a topic which originates on Twitter can certainly gain momentum and become a trending topic, most people don’t tune in or join the conversation until the ‘traditional’ media picks up on the story. Secondly for any kind of press conference, seminar or major announcement, having some kind of live video stream will almost certainly lead to a bump in conversations.  This is evidenced by the smaller bumps in traffic when news outlets such as Reuters filed their first reports about the announcement.

Slurp140 stats for Project Titan are on the left whereas Discovery stats are on the right. In the near future we will be analyzing the entire archive of Tweets to determine sentiment analysis.

FaceoffIM has released a free, standalone chat client that allows users to connect to Facebook Chat while avoiding the workplace taboo of actually being on Facebook. The FIM interface is gray, blocky and utterly corporate.

Besides the too-boring-to-arouse-suspicion design, FIM features a “panic button” to quickly minimize the application to your system tray should your boss wander over for input on the TPS reports. Hiding the conversation doesn’t close it, so you can go back to planning your weekend as soon as the interloper gets distracted by free donuts in the staff kitchen. There is also a system tray icon that lights up to indicate incoming messages while the program is minimized.

FIM allows unlimited tabbed chatting to facilitate social multi-tasking. After all, you want to stay productive, right?

This will fit the bill for a lot of office workers and school kids pretending to do their homework on the family desktop. If you work in a software or tech firm, it’s probably not going to fly. The geeks are either going to ask where you’re hiding the mainframe, or they’re going to know exactly what you’re up to. Especially since I just told them.

Main Screen: Looks Like IM interface	Chat Screen: Looks like a chat screen

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Believe it or not, the 2k+ year old Vatican doesn’t shy away from new trends in technology. The Holy See’s website was developed 14 years ago and impresses both for its meticulous organization and for its incorporation of multimedia elements.

But this year the Vatican has lapped even some major corporations in its implementation of new technologies, especially social media, to communicate with its constituents.

Pope2You

Last week, the Vatican launched a new site called Pope2You which serves as a communications portal – featuring links to the Pope’s Facebook and iPhone apps, the Vatican on YouTube and Wikicath, a small quasi-wiki outlining the key points of the Pope’s message on World Communications Day. The site received almost half a million visits in the first day.

Facebook

Sadly, you won’t be friending the Pontiff anytime soon – the Vatican eschewed the classic Facebook profile and fanpage in favor of a custom application on what the Vatican calls ” the most important social network of the world.”

“The Pope meets you on Facebook” allows you to send the text of Pope Benedict’s Message for the 43rd World Day of Communications and a selection of 21 electronic postcards to your Facebook friends.

Although limited in features, the application garnered 10k uses in first day.

YouTube

Vatican Radio was launched in 1931 and the Vatican Television Center in 1983 (though they had been televising events for nearly 50 years). A few months ago, the video clips from these services were used to create a YouTube channel.

With 208 videos currently available, the Vatican aims to present the Church’s position on major issues through providing coverage of the Pope’s news conferences, speeches and other Vatican-related events.

Fr. Lombardi, the director of Vatican media, said in a press conference that the channel will offer a number of interactivity options: the possibility of sharing videos with friends, receiving new videos via i-google and a chance to send comments to the Vatican press office.

iPhone App

H2Onews, in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center and Vatican Radio, is offering a Papal video news service for iPhone and iPod Touch.

The application offers updates on the travels and speeches of Benedict XVI, as well as on key international ecclesiastical events by optimizing videos from the Vatican’s YouTube channel.

Each video is accompanied by a transcript and the application offers feeds in eight languages: Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, and Chinese.

Reasons to Reach Out

Rev. Claudio Celli, president of the pontifical council for social communications, told the press conference that it had been suggested that the Pope was “lowering” himself by appearing on YouTube. Celli’s response: “The Pope doesn’t lower himself by going on Google. It’s a question of having a strategic vision. This is a first small step towards becoming a church that enters into dialogue with today’s world.”

Even an institution as rooted in tradition as the Vatican can see the opportunity to use social media to:

-Increase and engage its audience
-Disseminate information and control brand identity
-Keep up with new communications and technology developments

But so far, the Holy See is using these outlets as broadcast-only. While an understandable start, considering not only the volume of information that such a large fan base could generate but also the controversy that surrounds some of the Church’s positions, there is a definite opportunity for the Vatican to use social media as a conversational tool.

What else do you think the Vatican could do to engage people online? Should they allow user feedback through commenting? Forums? Twitter?

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Earlier this week Facebook announced the general availability of an Open Stream API allowing developers to incorporate user’s activity stream into their applications. For instance, I use Tweedeck to keep track of all the people I’m following on Twitter, and now one of the columns I can display shows the activity stream of my friends and I on Facebook. I can see it all in the same interface. Another example is the third-party Facebook application Newsfeed RSS. Once I added that application and gave it access to my activity stream, it output a RSS feed link that I can use to pull that information into any feed reader I want. Not only could I keep track in my reader now, but it would be archiving that feed so I can go back and find status updates in the past.

This is a big step forward in convenience, and it seems that a lot of people in the blogosphere are talking about how great it is for you to be able to access your activity stream, and all the activity streams of the people who trust you as friends on Facebook.

But that brings up a big question. What about that trust?

I’ve always though it was kind of weird that if a friend of yours is tagged in a photo, not only can you see that photo, but you can see the whole album, even if the person who posted it isn’t a friend of yours. Newsfeed RSS pretty much makes that possible with your entire activity stream.

RSS output allows you to not only read it in your RSS feed reader, but theoretically you could publish that feed anywhere. I could set up a public website showing all of my and my friends updates, viewable by anyone without them ever having to log in to Facebook or have any of my friends approve of it.

In the past Facebook has always been considered a “walled garden” of information in which they could control the walls. While it would be socially unacceptable to broadcast all of my friends updates, and surely against the Faceook Terms of Service, they sure have made it a lot easier to technically do it.

This is going to get messy.

Tomorrow, Facebook will radically shift its gatekeeping policies and allow for Twitter-like access to its data stream. The immediate effects: Facebook support in Twitter apps, a social networking giant declaring the need for connectivity, and a flood of Facebook apps, remixes, mashups, thawed and reheated in the morning.

The huge implications for Twitter aside, it’s also a significant step towards real-time interconnectivity. What’s in the right now — the derivative — definitely seems to be the way things are progressing. A good indicator could be the largest player in social networking blatantly declaring through action, “I will give you all of my data. Right now.”

I am quite sure that other services and networks will morph towards this trend (many already have), and soon the different “genres” of services will all congeal into desktop or mobile based mega apps, supporting dozens of communications services, from e-mail to messaging to Facebook to the next big thing. You can quote me on that. It’s coming.

This is of course a logical move for Facebook, and analysts have seen it coming — avoid the costs of developing various interfaces, but still grow out the user base garnered by third-party developers.

Will Facebook be able to get past its reputation as a more personal experience and dip into Twitter’s celebrity, news, debate, and networking share of the market? Nobody can say for sure, but I suspect it has more than a fighting chance to become a huge participant. Considering the figures for Facebook’s growth demographics, Zuckerberg and his associates have surveyed a nice set of trends by which to gauge their investment.

Over the coming weeks, more details and trends will materialize and the races will commence — I’ve already got my tickets.

If you’re looking to capitalize on Oprah’s show last week as well as the publicity generated by Kutcher’s million user showdown with CNN, then you’re probably interested in getting involved with Twitter — a great place to increase your exposure to the social media savvy.

The trick to Twitter is to keep things targeted, and only Tweet with real “value” — snippets or links that people will actually find insightful or useful. Let’s face it, Kutcher and Oprah have an overwhelming advantage when it comes to Twitter — their own celebrity — and making the platform work for your organization is going to take some strategy, patience, and a bit of luck.

While is is nice to achieve a following of epic proportions, Twitter really won’t do anything for you unless the relationships you make on the site add value to your organization. The first step here is to identify influential Twitterers within our target niche (your organization’s target market) and begin conversing with them. Use Twitter’s search features to find content that relates to your niche or industry. While these people will certainly appreciate a ReTweet, adding insight to their postings and pointing them to relevant, undiscovered slices of the web will be the most direct way to get noticed.

How much  should one Tweet? There’s no straightforward way to answer this, and there are multiple correct responses. An account that has dozens of Tweets a day will annoy users and come off as “spammy”, but an inactive account won’t do you much good either. I would let quality be the barometer for what you should or shouldn’t Tweet; quotas might encourage lackluster Tweeting, or conversely curb quality conversation. As a general rule, if a Tweet doesn’t contain original insight, perspective, or content, I tend to pass on posting it.

Twitter is all about conversation. Responding to direct messages, Tweets, and mentions should become a daily occurrence.  Using a Twitter App might streamline your Twitter-related workflow.

Facebook is a completely different game. While they’ve recently been making efforts towards joining the real-time conversation, Facebook is more about a static presence and providing a reference for addicted users rather than the “here and now” of Twitter. Provide real contact details, and make sure your organization’s page looks friendly and professional. If you prefer, you can integrate Facebook to distribute your Twitter announcements — more on this in part 5, when we orchestrate our social media to work together as a well-oiled machine.

At this point, we’ve begun creating our own original social media with an overall strategy in mind, keeping good etiquette practices in mind. The next step will consist of expanding readership and exposure through news sharing services such as Digg and Delicious, and finally we’ll wrap things up in an involved, step-by-step example of integrating all of these web layers into our home URL.

The other day Hannah sent me a blog post titled 10 Things to Do Immediately After a Networking Event. There’s a lot of good information in there, and while I agree with most of it I’m going to have to take issue with number 2.

2) Connect on Facebook. My favorite strategy. I look the people up on Facebook using their business cards and add them to my network. Now, I know their birthdays, their occupation, and their day to day status (literally!). Best Rolodex in the world.

I know people use different networking sites in different ways. And I’ve been in a handful of arguments about the people I’m “friends” with on Facebook. But I can say that 99% of those friends are people I have actually hung out with casually outside of a networking event, conference, or business club. I wouldn’t consider somebody I wanted to form a potential new business relationship with as a Facebook friend candidate. It just seems a little too personal.

Then there’s LinkedIn. They don’t even call them friends, they’re “connections.” I consider that more of a professional network than Facebook and that’s pretty much what it’s intended to be. My LinkedIn connections are all people I’ve worked with in some capacity at one point or another, save for a few close friends that going to be connected to me on any networking site that I’m part of.

Last but not least, there’s the Wild West of social networking, Twitter. If I follow somebody it’s because I’m interested in what they have to tweet about. I’m not going to get my feelings hurt if they don’t follow me back. Part of the beauty of Twitter is that you can be part of the conversation without having to know somebody at all.

Am I alone here? Do you have boundaries for different social network “friends” or is it just a free for all now?

After this post, I pledge not to speak of Facebook at least until May.

With that out of the way, Facebook conducted a poll over the last week or so in an attempt to gauge user feedback to the new design changes.

Predictably so, the response has been overwhelmingly negative. 94% of about 800,000 respondents disliked the changes, leaving fans of the revisions (such as myself) outnumbered.

It leaves me wondering whether or not they should have even conducted a poll to begin with. They are well aware of historic negative feedback following redesign deployments; would it be easier to just let things settle? Or am I in the wrong, and is the new Facebook actually worse than it was before?

Facebook Poll, Screen capture courtesy of TechCrunch

Since its creation in 2003, Facebook has since become a household name, a verb, and a social medium by which millions are people are connected.  With unique visitors of upwards of 70M, it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.  In those years, several updates have been made: some good, some great, some…questionable.  Below is my opinion on what succeeded and what should have been avoided.

August 2006 – Notes (Never really that popular to begin with)

One of the first major additions was Facebook’s attempt to mirror blogging.  Using Notes, users could write their inner-most thoughts and feelings that a standard user profile couldn’t hold.  However, Notes have one major flaw: they mirror blogging, the most popular and widely competitive Web 2.0 nonsense.  Most users just stick to their own blogs and share the links in their profile.

September 2006 – News Feed (rose in popularity)

Ah, yes!  The controversial News Feed!  This baby started a riot when it was first introduced over two years ago.  People couldn’t stand that select private information from their profile was plastered for all to see.  The cries didn’t go unnoticed, and customizable privacy features were added.  Today the News Feed stands as a portal to the rest of Facebook; it’s the best page to look at when you’re just bored.

February 2007 – Gifts (Nosedived in popularity)

These cute little buggers above are called Facebook ‘gifts’ and when originally introduced, purchases of them automatically donated a portion to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.  Initially, these proved very popular, but in time the donation aspect ended and Facebook Platform (which I’ll cover in a bit) dominated virtual gift-giving with free options.  Most gifts rest stagnant in profiles as remnants of the once popular gimmick.

May 2007 – Platform and Applications (Declined slowly in popularity)

One of the biggest changes to Facebook was its attempt to give more creativity to the users.  With the new Platform system, any user could create an application for near-immediate use.  (For more on applications, feel free to check out my study on them located here)

These haven’t lost as much popularity as gifts, but they have certainly declined in interest.  What was once fascinating to users soon became irritating as invitations to new ‘snow ball fights’ bombarded inboxes.  Jesse Farmer of 20Bits writes about the decline of the Platform and how the developing forums are falling into disuse.

May 2007 – Marketplace (Stagnant)

There’s not much to say about the Marketplace other than it was overwhelmed by the same-month introduction of the Platform.  It’s simply Craigslist with one major difference: only users in your networks can see the listings.  Whether that’s an advantage or a disadvantage is up to you.

July 2007 – Attachments on Wall (Smart move, high popularity)

Facebook got it right this time!  Allowing users to add video, links, and more to friends’ walls was a brilliant and timely move.  I have no complaints about this, and I’ve discovered some great videos thanks to it.

April 2008 – Chat Features (Low popularity)

It was an interesting move for Facebook to add SMS-ish features to the system, which are now implementable in popular freeware programs like Pidgin.  Did Facebook users really need the ability to chat while they were checking in?  Not really, but Facebook hadn’t made a big update in a while, and nothing’s ever stopped this social network giant from updating just for the sake of updating in the past.

July 2008 – ‘New’ Facebook (Mixed popularity)

Eric wrote an extensive review of the new Facebook format when it was new.  It pretty much sums up what everyone thinks: meh.  It’s got a lot of good, but some bad.  Overall, users have adjusted to the new format well, and I personally like the less cluttered look.

December 2008 – New Signup Process (New!)

Facebook is currently testing a simpler signup process.  They’re hoping to close the gap between Facebook and MySpace by making it even easier to get a profile.  After the riot that resulted from the new terms of service agreement, it’s a wise move to offer something new/good.

As you can see in the graph below, Facebook is definitely closing the gap.

A few days ago 2009 – News Feed Facelift (Too soon to tell)

It’s a pretty controversial move to change the News Feed’s layout, especially since (as I stated above) it was one of most disliked changes when it first debuted.  The new feed layout is similar, except way more “Twittery” with real time updates and changes.  Also, in order to cram more information onto the feed, updates that used to say “Noah wrote on Anne’s wall” now simply say “Noah -> Anne”.

It’s also much easier to update your status with an obvious content box fitted snuggly at the top of the feed.  Yep: it’s Twitter-tastic.

I don’t care for the hyper-abbreviated notices for things like wall posts, but I do like the new organization of the fan pages, events, and birthdays.  Also, now all the thumbnails have rounded edges.  Now that’s just safer!

If you haven’t logged into Facebook recently, go ahead and take a nice gander. Things have changed quite a bit with their most recent design. Drawing quite a bit off of Twitter, the site is now truly up-to-the-second with updates, wall posts, messages — all of it merging into your homepage in a glob of real time conversation.

There are a lot of non-Twitter users on Facebook — and redesigns of Zuckerberg’s web portal are often met with passive aggressive resistance, such as the formation of anti-Facebook Design Team groups and status updates ridden with complaints against the change. Alas, once the masses use the new format for long enough, they accept that it won’t change back and even the late adopters hop on board.

This set of changes will challenge some users to think outside of their user experience comfort zone, in a way that is more drastic than previous redesigns. It changes the dynamic a lot.

That said, the changes are pretty logical and in the opinion of this daily user, a long time coming. This is the kind of change that will inform millions and millions off people on the ways of socially driven media, forcing them to become part of the real-time conversation.

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