The Power of Facebook

The Power of Facebook

Getting the most out of the Web’s hottest property

Some Facts

• “Social Utility”

• Over 50 million users

• Started out as a college-only network, then opened earlier this year.

• 134% growth from September 2006 to September 2007

• More than 50 million users.

• 41% of users over the age of 35, fastest growing segment

• Platform for application development, over 6,000 apps currently running

• Supposed to be worth US$15 billion

The Coolest Thing About Facebook: Your Friends

• Reinforce and expand upon real-world social connections

• Do things to and with your friends inside of the walled garden

• See up-to-date information about your friends at a glance

• Share information with your friends

• See what your friends find interesting

• Meet your friends’ friends

The News Feed

What’s everyone up to?

Professional Etiquette: Friend Requests

• If your relationship is above the dotted line, a note may not be necessary.

• If your relationship is below the line, attach a note explaining your request. Be specific!

• Men approaching women, be particularly forthcoming.

• Sucking in address book can get you “sandboxed” if you send too many requests.

• Promise yourself that you’ll view profile contents in context, especially if you’re the boss.

Family

Professional Contacts

Close Friends

Peers in your Team

Other Coworkers

Reconnecting

Superiors/Subordinates

Professional Etiquette: Friend Requests

• If your relationship is above the dotted line, a note may not be necessary.

• If your relationship is below the line, attach a note explaining your request. Be specific!

• Men approaching women, be particularly forthcoming.

• Sucking in address book can get you “sandboxed” if you send too many requests.

• Promise yourself that you’ll view profile contents in context, especially if you’re the boss.

Family

Professional Contacts

Close Friends

Peers in your Team

Other Coworkers

Reconnecting

Superiors/Subordinates

Professional Etiquette: Friend Requests

• If your relationship is above the dotted line, a note may not be necessary.

• If your relationship is below the line, attach a note explaining your request. Be specific!

• Men approaching women, be particularly forthcoming.

• Sucking in address book can get you “sandboxed” if you send too many requests.

• Promise yourself that you’ll view profile contents in context, especially if you’re the boss.

Family

Professional Contacts

Close Friends

Peers in your Team

Other Coworkers

Reconnecting

Superiors/Subordinates

Your Profile: The Barry Bonds of Business Cards

• Create a hub for your content.

• List your professional qualifications and job description.

• Post photos that showcase your humanity.

• Share items of interest both individually and publicly.

• Share books, music, movies and television, but keep those items below the fold.

• Use a mobile client to make a friend request on the spot instead of exchanging business cards.

Groups

Conversations are Communities

Groups: Facilitated conversations

• Pasting an unsolicited link to your site on a group’s wall or shared items section is poor form.

• Instead, develop list of interesting content for group members.

• Post the list on your blog.

• Then post in the group and tell people why they might find your research useful.

• You drive traffic and you’re not being too commercial. Yes, you have commercial motivations, but you’re adding value at the same time.

Driving Traffic by Participating in Groups

Sharing Photos and Videos: Reinforcing Shared Experiences

Posted Items

• Sharing content facilitates relationships

• Download the Facebook toolbar for Firefox and use the share feature

• You can either send the news item to a specific person or group, or you can post it to your profile.

• My friends’ shared items feed on Facebook is where I get some of my most bloggable content. I can subscribe in RSS.

• My friends add value for me, and I add value for them by sharing items.

Facebook Culture: Vestigial Organs

• Poking

• Hookups & Random Meetings

Facebook Culture: Immature Applications

• Poo-flinging

• Zombies and Vampires and Werewolves, oh my!

• Virtual Pets

• More useful than meets the eye

“What Zuckerberg and the widget-makers have wrought is mostly silly, useless and time-wasting and the kazillion users of these widgets are pretty much just acting like little children.” - Kara Swisher

Successful Applications

• Leverage social context, friends want to connect with one another

• Start simple

• Respond to user input quickly

Widget Marketing on Facebook: Reaching Your Audience

• Who are they and what do they want?

• Are they on Facebook in large enough numbers to justify the investment?

• How can you help them connect?

• Be useful!

• Think almost altruistically about serving their needs.

Facebook Fridays: Leveraging Facebook Internally

New Features: Facebook Pages

• A brand can have fans.

• You can create a hub around your brand for content and interaction the same way that you do with your profile.

• Don’t just use it as a directory entry.

• This is not just another place for users to download Mountain Dew wallpapers, as the “Ad-Vocate” says.

• Creates a “social experience” where your friends can give honest feedback about brands and you can see that information associated with a brand.

New Features: Facebook Ads

• Adds social action to ads, so you can see when your friends have relationships with the brand that’s being advertised.

• Allows targeting by age, gender, geography, interests, marital status and more.

• Goal is to make advertising more relevant.

• I still want a Pandora for advertising.

• Some backlash regarding legality of using people’s likenesses to sell products without their consent.

New Features: Sucking in Stories from Affiliated Sites

• An action you take on an affiliated site is brought back into Facebook as a story.

• For example, I buy a new pair of BCBGirls slingbacks at Zappos.com and that information can show up on my Facebook profile.

• Privacy backlash: should be opt-in instead of opt-out.

• Users have to approve outside news stories twice before they are associated with profiles.

“When [Facebook] started to lay bare its intentions to have advertisers get strangely close to users, the whole picture began to look real creepy, real fast. Creepy-drunk-uncle kind of creepy.” - Paul Glazowski

“[Facebook is] still working more items into its system - apps, gadgets, extras, you name it. More utility. More stuff.

Ever get the feeling that it’s all just too much? That it’s all happening too quickly. There’s a palpable sense that there’ll come a time - relatively soon, in fact - that the whole operation will trip over its own shoelaces, lose its bearing, and just fall into disarray. And I have to say, that’s something I definitely see happening. Pretty soon, too.” - Paul Glazowski

• December 5-6, 2007

• Keynotes by Jeremiah Owyang and Lee Lorenzen

• Only a few seats left in the overflow room.

• More information: www.webcommunityforum.com/conferences

Questions?

teresa@webcommunityforum.com

http://www.webcommunityforum.com

http://teresacentric.com

http://tetesagehen.go2fb.com

http://twitter.com/tetesagehen