Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

What's the Minimal Requirement to be Taken Seriously as a Media Company?

The story behind the story

I'm a big fan of Foursquare. I am a Level I Superuser who has contributed 291 tips and 756 photos over the course of 6,169 check-ins that earned me 147 badges. I own and love its shirts, both the English and Japanese editions. I've clearly been a fan over the years.

I guess I'm no longer their biggest fan. Well, I have had issues for quite awhile. Last November, after a reporter wrote a feature on a new ad product they put out, I wrote him, "I still can’t believe they avoid reporting active user #s. What are they afraid of?" He responded, "I’m thinking the #s must be very grim…" and later added, "I bet a lot of people would agree with you! (I agree with you!)." I told him, "Thanks for the encouragement. I’m wondering how to make it into a post that’s more than a few sentences, or if there’s anyone else that’s remotely as egregious, and thus looking at it as more of a trend piece."

Eight months later, Foursquare's just as quiet on user numbers, but it touts some grandoise claims. I don't think it's right, I don't think Foursquare the company deserves to be taken seriously by marketers until it discloses a bare minimum of verified information. When I was finally motivated to write a column, I turned to more sources than I had in ages: Foursquare directly, Ad Age reporters, comScore's Mobile Metrix, and eMarketer's media relations lead. No one had answers. For such a name brand in digital media, especially in terms of marketer awareness, it is the biggest black box that I'm aware of.

The column was recently published in Ad Age. As per usual here, the better, edited version is there, and this one had more edits than usual given the sensitivity of the topic and my own approach to writing it like a journalist even when contributing it as a columnist (to be clear, I don't receive any income from Ad Age or any other source as a journalist, and I have never made a dime from Ad Age).

I will also note that after discussing the story before it was published with a contact at Foursquare, I toned down the rhetoric considerably, well before it was submitted to Ad Age. I saved quite a number of versions of it, and the contact helped me keep a level head in terms of tempering any raw ranting and focusing this on a substantial issue that should be top of mind for media buyers and sellers alike. I have in turn heard some other people at Foursquare are none too pleased with the column, but they haven't reached out to be directly. Perhaps they'd at least appreciate that the first draft wasn't the final one.

Granted, any post that starts with "obfuscation" and ends with wondering why anyone would work with them isn't exactly a puff piece. Your thoughts on this are welcome. My final draft is below, with Ad Age's headline (since it's better than what I had).  

Foursquare, It's Time to Be Open about Metrics 

After five years of obfuscation, it’s time for Foursquare to decide it’s going to be a real media company, one worthy of marketers’ attention. The lesson for Foursquare and its peers on the sell side is simple: be open and transparent if you want to be taken seriously.

Foursquare has refused to release its metrics on monthly active users (MAUs) since it launched in 2009. I should know, as I’ve asked them repeatedly while representing two different agencies. Then, while writing this column, I had an exchange with a spokesperson from Foursquare’s communications team. I’m still no closer to an answer.

What prompted the outreach out to their press team was a message Foursquare sent to its first million users about a forthcoming update to the app, described publicly on its blog. The missive noted, “You’ve seen us grow from a tiny project to a 50,000,000-strong community.” The zeroes seems to carry a hint of self-aggrandization, and something seemed off, as did its liberal use of the word “community.” Who is really using it now?

When emailing Foursquare’s communications director about MAUs, he said, “We don't share our monthly actives or specific country-by-country breakdowns.” The geographical issue remains equally troubling for marketers – it should be one of the first questions buyers ask, along with requesting MAUs. I also brought up the 50 million figure, and Foursquare’s representative responded that more than 50 million people have downloaded their apps since Foursquare began in 2009.

I had further questions, such as whether Foursquare could confirm that 50 million referred to unique individuals as opposed to app installs. It’s hardly about semantics. I have probably installed Foursquare on ten different devices over the past five years, and at least two operating systems (iOS and Android), so does that mean I am counted once, twice, or ten times among the 50 million? Foursquare wouldn’t provide any clarity. When I followed up, the spokesperson said, “Just never felt the need to offer a deeper breakdown of our user community. One of the perks of being a private company, I suppose!” Why not add smiley face emoji, with an adorable little cartoon animal, if he’s going to be that flip?

Foursquare, the perk is over. This is a company targeting marketers, and it is holding back the most basic information that advertisers need. If a company can spend five years thinking it doesn’t need to share this, it’s deluded. Meanwhile, Foursquare won’t confirm whether it’s lifetime number refers to installs or true unique users.  Just what is Foursquare trying to hide? It should be honest with marketers, show the value of what it can be used for, and talk about the plans for growing its user base.

Marketers shouldn’t accept the status quo. In fact, marketers should be wary of conducting anything more than a pilot with a media company without that basic MAU and geographic information. This isn’t some secret project run by the Defense Department or Elon Musk; this is a company that has been courting the press and marketers for half a decade. In that time, Facebook and Twitter went public, Pinterest and Snapchat launched and garnered multi-billion-dollar valuations, and social media acquisitions have included Tumblr, WhatsApp, Instagram, and so many others. Facebook even acquired Gowalla, once billed as Foursquare’s top competitor, back in 2011.

Foursquare, meanwhile, seems to have idled. All the while, Foursquare has developed some compelling marketing offerings for local advertisers, whether small businesses or global advertisers looking to drive people to local stores. Broader campaigns for major brands, also running on Foursquare, don’t yet seem to be in its sweet spot.

Marketers, go ahead and run tests even without a lot of basic information. If a media property is brand new, great; it shouldn’t have to disclose much as long as it sets expectations. Find a partner with a relevant offering and get something in market. Even a company with a massive audience such as Snapchat can take its time releasing user data until it rolls out a well-defined offering targeting brands. If a company like WhatsApp doesn’t want to work with advertisers at all (as was its founder’s stance before joining Facebook), it doesn’t have to reveal anything at all.

Yet marketers should reward transparency and push back against obfuscation from companies that have been courting their attention, love, and money for years. If basic information isn’t forthcoming, there are alternatives. For marketers who need MAUs and other data for pilots, go on sites like AngelList, Crunchbase, Industry Index, or Partnered, and connect with more willing companies.

The free ride has to end somewhere, and a five-year anniversary seems like a great time to move on. I will try Foursquare’s app update and keep using Swarm, but Foursquare needs to finally earn my trust as someone representing marketers. If Foursquare starts treating marketers with more respect, then we can have a real dialogue. Until then, why would anyone do business with a company that considers its secrecy a perk? 

Should You Get Your Baby a Twitter Handle? A Look Ahead to 2026

I've been slow to post a few of my own bylines here, in part due to the reason referenced below -- the newest addition to my family. As I take a bit of time for paternity leave, I'll also be catching up and sharing some things I've meant to post. This post was originally published in Ad Age in April, and undoubtedly reads better there thnks to their editing. My slightly rougher version is below.

How to Digitally Prepare a New Brand for 2026
By David Berkowitz

Which types of digital media will matter in 2026?

I wound up in some spirited conversations about this topic with my wife after we welcomed our firstborn in February. It was only once our daughter was born, and we were fully committed to her name, that we started to discuss which digital identities we would reserve for her.

The focus of our conversations quickly shifted to 2026. That’s when our daughter will turn 12. She will be legally able to sign up for a lot of media properties and digital services herself. By then, she’ll also be well past the age where she’ll have strong opinions on which media properties matter to her.

To illustrate one family’s attempt at forecasting what will matter more than a decade from now, here’s how the conversation netted out:

Email: The only email service we considered for our daughter was Gmail, based on our own personal preferences. My wife started to register a new address for our baby, as we tried several combinations of our daughter’s first, middle, and last names. After we decided on one, my wife entered our daughter’s birthday in the registration form. Google advised that the service was only meant for people over age 12, and we paused.

It wasn’t that we cared about the age limit. Just last year, I helped my niece add a couple years to her age to get a Skype account. Rather, it made wonder why we were doing it at all. We weren’t going to send emails from our daughter to us or others; it felt odd creating some persona for this little person who was already developing her own personality. While I’d wager that Google will still be around for more than a decade, and email will exist in some form, I trust that my daughter will be okay with coming up with an address that suits her.

Social networks: Twitter seemed like the most logical social network when considering reserving a handle for a dozen years from now. Perhaps its most important asset is its deep integration with live television – another form of media that should soldier on. Twitter is also relatively unusual in that handles still matter. On Facebook, LinkedIn, and elsewhere, people are known by their real names, but on Twitter, you are your username (at least for now).

For my daughter, it’s possible to squat on a handle and do little with it until she decides to own it. Yet even if Twitter is still around in a decade, will she use it? Maybe by 2026, teens will think Twitter has some retro cachet. Or maybe Twitter will just be a boring news aggregator that some of their parents and grandparents use. If Twitter does have that kind of longevity, my daughter may not need her handle for 20 or 30 years, and by then, she can pick her own name. For a different approach, there are some parents who tweet on behalf of their children, but I can’t imagine putting in the effort that my former colleague Matt Wurst does for @LilWurst.

Websites: Even people who have never registered a URL have been asking me if I’ve reserved domain names for my daughter. This one seemed like a no brainer at first. A domain is an open book. She can ultimately do what she wants with it, and there may always be a little extra cachet to a memorable .com domain.

Unlike email addresses or social handles, however, domain names cost money, and so many domain names sit idle. My daughter won’t need her own domain if she wants to blog, run a Tumblr, contribute to Medium, post an about.me bio, or participate in whatever such services are popular in the years to come. And I’m not convinced that domains will be the default taxonomy of the web going forward. Ultimately, my wife and I settled on a compromise: we’d reserve one .com with her full name and a .me with just her first name, and hold it for three years. In 2017, we can revisit the decision.

That’s how rattled I am about how fast media is changing. Nothing should be taken for granted. Some form of email will prevail indefinitely, and that may look more like Gmail, Facebook messaging, WeChat, or something we haven’t encountered yet. Facebook has lasted one decade, but that doesn’t mean it will last two. For many brands and people, domain names are far less important than their social identities.

Let’s revisit this in 2026 and see how prescient these decisions were. I have no doubt my daughter will have opinions on this long before her twelfth birthday, and she’ll tell me exactly what she thinks of my decisions.

WhatsApp Recap: 5 Rules for a Post-Facebook World

Thanks to some exciting recent personal news, I've been a bit behind with posting a few things here, but after Facebook announced its $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, I was able to bang out a few words for Ad Age on what this means. 

Here's my original versio of the column below (meaning: the version on Ad Age probably reads a bit better). 

Five Rules for a Post-Facebook World

What would the world be like without Facebook?  Facebook isn’t just preparing for a world like this; it is now actively trying to create it. The $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition is Facebook’s most ambitious preparation for a world where Facebook loses its relevance.

It’s conceivable that Facebook as a destination and media property could disappear, and the company could thrive more than ever. What will be left? Backup tools for contacts and photos, a barebones event management service, and a valuable default login mechanism used to connect one’s identity across digital media.

With the acquisition of WhatsApp, Facebook came up with its answer to a popular internet meme: which would be more victorious in battle, 100 duck-sized horses, or one horse-sized duck? Facebook is now responding that it’s better to build and buy an army of horse-sized ducks. Those ducks include Instagram, which Facebook had to acquire. Facebook’s Messenger app is popular enough, but if it was truly successful, it wouldn’t need to sign 11-figure deals to acquire competitors. Facebook’s new news reader, Paper, has been generally praised for its design but is in a crowded field. As better mobile services arise for hosting photos and creating events, Facebook will probably try to acquire some of those too.

All of this points to Facebook spending billions of dollars to publicly ponder what would happen if no one regularly used Facebook.com or the core Facebook mobile apps. Mark Zuckerberg does not seem like a chief executive who will settle for dominance and ubiquity in certain fields, as Microsoft has largely done since Bill Gates left in 2000. Zuckerberg wants his company to stay relevant, and remain a meaningful part of people’s lives. Yet Facebook proper has never fully shed its old tagline that it was a “social utility.” If Facebook as a brand can’t escape that utilitarianism, its other brands like Instagram, Paper, and WhatsApp will provide the relevance.

This post-Facebook world has new rules that marketers need to understand:

1) Facebook can still matter even when it doesn’t. Maybe Facebook will thrive as a destination for years to come. But even if it doesn’t – even if the comScore charts on Facebook’s site and branded apps show traffic and engagement falling off a cliff – Facebook can still wind up being one of the world’s most successful businesses.

2) Facebook can survive as a Procter & Gamble or General Motors. Not a fan of the Chevrolet Equinox? That won’t stop you from buying a Corvette. The continued success of Instagram has shown that people are willing to compartmentalize their feelings about Facebook. Someone who has qualms with the social network is still likely to be fine using Instagram. That bodes well for WhatsApp.

3) Old business models may not apply. The best writing about WhatsApp’s business model comes from its CEO Jan Koum on the company’s blog. It’s about as scathing a rebuke to the entire advertising industry as has ever been written, but not as many people were paying attention to Mr. Koum in early 2012 when he wrote it. In the post titled “Why We Don’t Sell Ads,” he wrote, “No one wakes up excited to see more advertising,” and proceeded to call advertising “the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought.” Zuckerberg, who can afford to authorize a $19 billion acquisition because of his company’s success in selling advertising, said in the call announcing the deal that Facebook can wait to expand from its hundreds of millions of users to potentially billions of users before figuring out how to make money off of it. That means Facebook is heavily invested in a brand with a business model at odds with its own. Yet somehow, the arrangement makes perfect sense.

4) Other communication apps will fill the ad void. Not all communication app developers are as cynical toward advertising as Mr. Koum. Line, a competitor to WhatsApp, charges for its virtual goods (namely stickers to use in chats), and many of that content is branded. Aviary, which has a photo editing app and powers that functionality in other prominent apps, sells branded content. Others like Snapchat haven’t made it clear which way they’ll turn; the safe bet is they will find someone to make a suitable offer and pass the decision on to the acquiring company.

5) Marketers have never been this fortunate. Consider how many of these mobile properties reach hundreds of millions of users across international borders. It wasn’t long ago when a million users for an app was a big deal; now quite a few have entered the hundred-million user club. As daunting as it may be to initially distinguish a WhatsApp from a Line, the ad-friendly blockbuster apps should have advertisers lining up to take part.

It’s not all rosy. Jan Koum’s success will inspire other ad haters to try other models. But don’t forget who the big dog is in this story. And Mark Zuckerberg isn’t about to bite off the hand that feeds him.

 

 

Not Every Ad Has to be Social

Got it?

I had a few comments along those lines in this great story in Mashable, 4 Best Practices for Social Advertising, by Todd Wasserman: 

Take a look at most advertising you see. Is it something you would want to pass on to a friend? No. That's because most ads are not entertaining in themselves, but are either formulated to propose a call to action or as a branding exercise. "If you think of the typical ad with the shot of the car driving on the mountain against the sunset, there's nothing particularly social about it," says David Berkowitz, CMO of the marketing agency MRY. "You have to consider if there's anything social about it."

Read on to find out about the rest of the best practices, plus insights from Peter Goodman at Salesforce, and Jim Squires at Facebook.

 

What Marketers Don’t Get about Vine

This post originally ran in Ad Age Digital Next. The version below is somewhat different - more of a 'director's cut' as I chose to restore some edits that were changed in the published piece. You can also read a second post on Ad Age with 8 Vine artists you need to follow.

Marketers, repeat after me: Vine isn't a tool. It's a destination.

This is the biggest misconception that I hear about Vine from marketers, and it’s a misconception I had until recently. As I strove to learn more about why water cooler conversations are increasingly about the funniest Vines of the day, MRY’s Executive Creative Director David Weinstock stunned me. He said, “I spend 30 minutes a day watching Vines.” Yes, he spends a half hour every day watching 6-second videos.

Get into a conversation with people like him who are spending time on Vine, and you'll hear about a new, heavily engaged subculture. Vine producers tend to play within certain genres and styles, generally in fast comedic situations, and a really good Vine creator has his or her own fingerprint. It's an important part of the draw. If you've seen enough clips, In a split second, you know whose work you're watching. Engagement rates are often ridiculously high.

At this point, as a marketer, the time you spend on Vine should be less for sharing short videos there and more for understanding what this subculture can teach you about reaching consumers.

On Facebook, it's impressive if 10% of your followers even see your post. On Vine, top users can get that kind of percentage of followers engaging with a post. Some posts generate even more interactions than the creator's number of followers. Here's an example of how the chain works: QPark (421,000 followers) re-Vined a post by Jerry Purpdrank (673,000 followers) starring rising Vine celeb Mirella (11,000 followers). Mirella has a number of posts with more than 1,000 likes.

The chain described above shows another important aspect of Vine: it's a community. Vine creators include each other in their Vines and routinely share their favorite Viners' posts. It's a collaborative environment. Remember when it was such a big deal for the cast of "Diff'rent Strokes" to appear on "The Facts of Life" in a crossover episode? On Vine, this happens all the time. Stars are constantly looking to boost their friends' ratings. They're all in this together. And not just during sweeps week.

Some brands have figured this out. For example, Warner's Bras has 4,200 followers on Vine. Yet its series branded with the hashtag #getcomfortable routinely features Vine stars to generate far more likes than the account's number of followers. The series is filmed by Vine celeb Meagan Cignoli (332,000 followers). One post with actor and model Jessica Cook (338,000 followers) wearing a series of bras has 17,000 likes, 2,800 re-Vines (or shares) and 900 comments. A post starring Jessi Smiles (1 million followers) and Curtis Lepore (1.1 million followers) has 85,000 likes, 24,000 shares and 1,300 comments. That's a pretty good interaction rate for a six-second spot.

All of this is hardly an endorsement of the quality of Vine content in general. Watch enough top Viners, and much of it starts feeling derivative. Some are just doing crazy antics to get a rise out of people. You'll see range of storytelling styles from high-brow (think of Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude") to low (think MTV's "Jackass"). Based on New York Magazine's approval matrix, most of it is at the low end, with the top Vines spread out along the despicable-to-brilliant axis.

With more stars passing the million follower mark, and the likes and revines keeping apace, Vine is serving as a cultural incubator. Many Vine celebrities will achieve fame far beyond Vine. Spend time there and get to know some of the famous faces. Or just follow Warner’s Bras. That brand may well wind up getting comfortable with everyone you need to watch.

eMarketer Looks at Feel-Good Effects of Real-Time Marketing

eMarketer has a new report out on a topic near and dear to me, "Real-Time Marketing: Speeding Up the Creative Process" (read more about it in eMarketers' newsletter article on it). 

The chart below, via GolinHarris, shows this real-time marketing thing may actually move the needle for brands, whichever needle marketers are looking to move.

(image courtesy of eMarketer Inc)

I have a few mentions in the report. Here are excerpts:

When deciding when to pull the trigger on a real-time opportunity, Oreo's digital agency, 360i, considers three factors, said David Berkowitz, VP Emerging Media:

* Is the moment that is happening brand friendly?

* Are there influencers online and available to extend the message virally?

* Is there an opportunity to 'surpise and delight' the consumer?

Then...

"What's going to define it well is not the Super Bowl. I'm much more curious about what happens on a typical Wednesday. Making social currency part of the brand identity - that is a bigger challenge and bigger opportunity." ...

"The biggest thing we can do to speed up the creative process is generate trust from our clients. Trust and real-time marketing are interwoven."

It also brings to mind a conversation I just had on Twitter with USA Network's Jesse Redniss:

How much of the RTM Social content race is just "disposable brilliance" one and done? #socialTV #secondscreen #TV #marketing @dberkowitz

— Jesse Redniss (@jesseredniss) May 8, 2013

@jesseredniss the brands that get a reputation for consistent RTM are the ones that get a reputation for understanding culture

— David Berkowitz (@dberkowitz) May 9, 2013

Book Review: Return on Relationship by Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose

Ted Rubin was kind enough to share a copy of his new book Return on Relationship, which he co-authored with Kathryn Rose. I’ve known Ted for years and have learned quite a bit from him, whether through seeing him present at several conferences or catching up with him one on one. He is undoubtedly one of the great leaders in social media marketing, so I was curious to see what he put together in this book – or perhaps the non-fiction version of a novella (is there a word for that?). I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Kathryn yet but hope to change that soon enough.

The book is a quick read and a useful handbook, especially for those newer to social media marketing. It doesn’t go too deep into any particular aspect but is a good survey course when it comes to using social media to build loyalty, connect with content creators, and bolster customer service. One area where it struggles is to distinguish relationship marketing from social media marketing, so those who are already current enough with how to use social media for marketing purposes won’t find too much that’s new in this book.

Undoubtedly, there are thousands and thousands of people who will find this book a tremendous resource. There’s little to argue with overall. However, I do think they can add a bit of clarity in a few areas, and rather than just offer a love fest to Ted’s latest work, I’ll share a few thoughts on areas where my perspective differs with what the authors write:

Backward or Forward?

Rubin and Rose write, “The fact that building relationships has only recently become the focal point of marketing seems a bit backward, as relationships should always be the focus of our interactions.”

That seems to miss the point that digital media, and specifically the past decade where social media usage has achieved the necessary scale, has enabled relationship marketing to happen. In the 1980s, when I was a grade school student, I wrote letters to some major corporations to alert them about product defects, such as a promised pack of bubble gum missing from a cereal box, and I often received letters in return, but that was hardly an efficient way to build relationships for the consumer or brand. Similarly, direct mail marketers accumulated a vast amount of data on their customers, but direct mail is hardly the best way for most marketers to regularly engage in personalized communication with thousands or millions of consumers.

Not Just a Social ID

They also refer to “building your Social ID,” touching on five areas in particular:

1. Responsiveness
2. Thought leadership
3. Content creation
4. Relevance
5. Demeanor

It’s a great roundup of what can impact how a brand is perceived online. Yet by calling it a Social ID, the authors risk encouraging readers to create a Social ID that is separate from the brand identity. If Time Warner Cable is incredibly responsive online – especially to someone like me with a larger than average Twitter follower count or Klout score – but can’t string a coherent sentence together over the phone, the Social ID  means nothing. Or consider whether the brand stands for thought leadership. If so, social media can be an enabler of it, and offer new distribution channels for those leading thoughts. But if the brand comes off as a thought leader online and its products lag behind, it will lose its credibility. I have experienced this first-hand at my agency, 360i. When I was one of a number of people working on our Social Marketing Playbook that we released in 2009, we knew it only mattered if we were doing some of the best work in social media marketing. Otherwise, we would have risked alienating our clients. Thoughts mean little without actions to back them up.

Measuring the Return

This is a short book, but one area where I was hoping for more is in the measurement piece. I was very excited to see this addressed, but it didn’t go nearly far enough, especially when the book’s cover urges readers to “start measuring your ROR.”

Early on in the section, the authors quote Erik Qualman who, when asked about the return on investment (ROI) of social media, retorted, “How do you measure the ROI of your phone?” That reminds me of when Charlene Li wrote in her book Open Leadership, “What is the ROI on your fire insurance policy?” Fair point. But Li, who also co-authored Groundswell, has devoted numerous pages of books and reports to then go on and help businesses actually calculate the ROI of social media.

The ROR chapter ends with a sort of tautology formatted into something resembling a haiku: “Social media drives engagement. Engagement drives loyalty. Loyalty correlates directly to increased sales.” Then it closes with “ROR = ROI.”

There are two problems with this. The first is that social media can do far more and far less than drive engagement. Social media can directly impact loyalty beyond just using proxies like engagement, and social media can at times directly contribute to sales – though it doesn’t need to for it to be effective, most of the time. And social media doesn’t necessarily drive engagement at all. I go to all too many brands’ Facebook pages that post pathetic attempts at drivel and generate practically no engagement whatsoever.

Then there’s the ROR = ROI piece. If that’s it, then I’m really confused. Why read a whole book on ROR if I already know how to calculate ROI? What’s different about ROR? From the Zen koan of an equation, I have no idea. I’d love to see this fleshed out more in a subsequent work.

Post-script:

First, Ted and Kathryn couldn't be more gracious in their reception of the review. My first reaction to Ted over email when I read the book was very simple: "I'm not the target audience." He knew that, but he still encouraged me to read and review the book, and I'm glad I took the time to go through it.

Second, Chuck Kent penned a meta-review of this review, comparing it to one written by another friend of mine and Ted's, Drew Neisser. I've enjoyed reading Drew's writing and meeting up with him over the years, and next time I see him, I'll be sure to ask him more about what he learned from ROR, as I would be surprised if I didn't miss a few gems when reading the book.

Related articles

13 Questions With The Social CMO Ted Rubin: Listening, Relationships, and The Social C-Suite

What's Your #RonR? Five Takeaways from the new book Return on Relationship

10 More Social Marketing Experts Offer Key Advice

50 Thought Provoking Social Media Wishes for 2013

Research Highlights from CES 2013

Getting Return on Relationship: a Book Review

Twitter Changes its Twune, but Object to the Lawsuit

I've got a new byline in Ad Age on the latest Twitter controversy, as a startup doesn't like how Twitter is changing course. The column begins: 

Twitter has made plenty of enemies this year, but one just took Twitter to court and won an opening battle. As tempting as it is to root for the underdog in PeopleBrowsr vs. Twitter, the only crime Twitter may be guilty of is false advertising.

PeopleBrowsr, a social media analytics company, has paid for full access to Twitter's "fire hose" – its entire database of tweets – since 2008. Twitter cut off access, claiming it did so with the 30 days' notice required by its contract. PeopleBrowsr was not amused, so it took Twitter to court and won a restraining order that temporarily requires Twitter to keep the fire hose flowing to its longtime customer.

Read the rest of the post in Ad Age to see what this means for all those who depend on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Tonia Ries has an even more detailed writeup on the story in the Realtime Report. Go there for some great color to further get a sense of what this all means.

What's the Challenge with Mobile Social Media Marketing?

I've got a post this week in Digiday on mobile social media:

Mobile social media is like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of marketing: two great tastes that are even better together. Social media is all about communication, and mobile devices are designed around facilitating communication. Now, try to think of great mobile social marketing campaigns. How quickly do any come to mind? There seems to be a large-scale disconnect between mobile marketing and social media marketing, even though the two together sit at this sweet spot of an intersection of two of the fastest-growing marketing channels. 

There are 3 reasons offered for what's proving challenging:

1. Mobile and social are hard to define
2. There aren't clear owners of mobile and social
3. Technologies and publishers underserve marketers

Read the full article on Digiday for more, and let me know what you think.

10 Ways Facebook Has Changed Since 2004

10 Ways Facebook Has Changed Since 2004
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Facebook has earned a few degrees since it launched as Thefacebook in 2004. A Facebook media kit from the spring of 2004 recently surfaced, and it offers a glimpse as to how much has changed since then. Here are 10 quotes from the media kit that illustrate what has changed with Facebook, media, and online advertising.

1) “Thefacebook.com is an expanding online directory…”

This is so quaint. Remember the directory-centric era of the 1990s? As innovative as Thefacebook was, it was selling itself as a form of online media that was a relic by 2004. Months after this media kit was published, Google went public and accelerated the demise of browsing through directories.

2) “Additionally, thefacebook.com automatically adds to each user profile links to school news articles that refer to the user, the last user away-message in the AIM system and the last user access location…”

Facebook was a potential lightning rod for privacy lawsuits right from its birth. Did users realize this in 2004? Did they care? Even if it was only used by college students at the time, these students couldn’t have wanted to share all of this information with advertisers.

3) “Advanced search engine”

LOL. If Thefacebook had an advanced search engine in 2004, what the heck happened to it?

4) “Additionally, each user can add a friendship list to their profile, pending second-source verification of friendship status.”

Given Thefacebook’s birth in a dorm room full of Harvard computer scientists, it’s funny to see words like “second-source verification” slip in and overcomplicate simple ideas. Yet it’s also important to remember that in 2004, most people  -- especially those older than 25 -- had little idea what a friend request was. This was before “friend” was a verb.

5) “The mission of thefacebook.com is to expand to include most of the schools in the United States.”

The company’s publicly stated mission had nothing to do with world domination. It wasn’t even sure it would get to every college and university.

6) “With an estimated purchasing power that exceeds $85 billion, college students have money in their pockets for your services and products.”

As simplistic as it sounds, this is one of several cases where I wonder if Facebook lost something as it grew up. Here, the media kit included the kind of straightforward language that advertisers expect. It made Thefacebook seem safer for advertisers, rather than some entirely new paradigm.

7) “Unique Users,” “Traffic,” “Pageviews”

Facebook was selling eyeballs in 2004, as was nearly everyone. Now Facebook is known for engagement and building relationships. None of that was possible on Thefacebook eight years ago.

8) “You can target users using traditional horizontal/vertical banners, links and other more contextual ad placements.”

Facebook hates this today. The media kit was created before the current era of native ad formats. Now it’s a badge of honor to sell proprietary units and offerings, and Facebook was one of the most adamant promoters of going native. Yet Facebook hasn’t fully evolved from its eyeball-oriented past. By cramming seven small ad units on the righthand rail of a page, Facebook today is a master at devaluing its own inventory.

9) “House/Dormitory,” “Sexual Orientation,” “Number of Intra/Inter-School Friends”

These are some of Thefacebook’s ad targeting options --  just three of 16 listed. At the time, targeting by one’s number of friends made sense, as online popularity could be assumed to be a proxy for influence; that notion has since been refuted.  Facebook has evolved considerably. For instance, earlier this year, Facebook made a change to let advertisers target broad categories such as small-business owners, U.S. Hispanics, people who recently moved, and expecting parents. This is one significant way where Facebook has improved ad offerings to give advertisers more of what they need.

10) “Mobile”

Actually, this word isn’t in the media kit at all. In 2004, Facebook wasn’t a platform, it wasn’t a social utility, and it surely wasn’t mobile. Selling mobile advertising is hard enough today, though it’s increasingly profitable and scalable. Back then, it wasn’t part of the plan.

It didn’t need to be. Thefacebook was a site for college kids to engage in second-source verification, and advertisers could run banner ads targeting the most popular heterosexual or homosexual kids in certain dorms. Facebook maintains some of Thefacebook’s roots, but with about a billion users, it’s something quite different. What isn’t clear is exactly what Facebook is. Some younguns these days take forever to figure out what they’ll be when they grow up.