The Third Place

The Third Place and the Inversion of Web Marketing

Will PriceCEO

wprice@widgetbox.com1

Overview

• Why are social communities growing?

• What is the Third Place? And, how can it help us understand the power of community and today’s web?

• What if you are the 4th place?

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Community is the Killer App

• Community enablers are dominant:

– “Twitter is one of the fastest growing phenomena on the Internet.” – NYTimes

– “Facebook community hits 150m.” – The Times Online

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Facebook: Up 86% y-o-y

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Twitter: Up 750% y-o-y

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Why?

• Why are these sites growing so quickly?

• Is it a technology phenomena?

• What core needs are these companies addressing that help to explain their success?

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Who is this guy? How can he help?

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Ray Oldenburg, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Sociology at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. Best known for writing The Great Good Place and for the concept of the Third Place.

The 3rd Place

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1st Place: Home 2nd Place: Work

3rd Place: Informal Gathering PlacesEx. Cafe, pub, etc?

Why We Need Third Places

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Modern life (suburbia, highways, commuting) is privatizing life – i.e. limiting communal interactions.

Making it hard, expensive, irregular, and painful to gatherVibrant communities are extraordinary

By nature, humans are social creatures

We need the means to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably

The loss of Third Places leads to a sense of isolation and a cycle of home to work and back again

For Many Today: Only Two Places

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1st Place: Home2nd Place: Work

No Third Place

Characteristics of Third Places1. Free or inexpensive

2. Highly accessible

3. Proximate

4. Involve regulars

5. Welcoming and comfortable

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”Sometimes you want to go Where everybody knows your name, And they're always glad

you came; You want to be where you can see, Our troubles are all the same; You want to be

where everybody knows your name.”

Offline Companies That Understand the 3rd Place

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Technology Foundations

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= of

Today’s

Facebook and Twitter: Villages in a Modern World

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Welcoming, Accessible, Free,

Regulars…

Welcoming, Accessible, Free,

Regulars…

Today’s Challenge: Brands and Media Houses are at best the 4th Place

• Audiences are reaggregating in 3rd Places

• 4th Places fighting a losing battle

• Users want to consume content and applications independent of the content’s source

How do content creatorsdiscover and reach their audience in the era of the 3rd Place?

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Traditional Web Marketing

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Drive Users to Your ContentDrive Users to Your Content

Marketing in the Third Place AgeDrive your content to usersDrive your content to users

17Content + Syndication Platform = Content on 3rd Places

Widgets: Social Syndication

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More examples

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Conclusion

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• Social communities are here to stay• Most media companies are 4th Places….at best• Traditional web marketing needs to be inverted• Questions– How to best drive your content to your users?– How to move the definition of success from site

traffic to content consumed independent of location?

About Widgetbox• #1 Web Widget Provider

– First web widget company– 74m uniques (Quantcast)– 130,000 widgets– 700m monthly widget impressions– Funded by Sequoia Capital and

Hummer Winblad• For Publishers

– Widgetize content, network content for traffic and distribution, and monetize

• For Advertisers– Targeted reach, engaging in-widget

ad solutions, and IAB standard ad units

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Thank you

Will PriceCEO

Widgetboxwprice@widgetbox.com

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Growth Validates Premise

Year Widgetviews Uniques (Wbx data)

12/06 6,304,014 675,558

12/07 273,883,577 25,267,336

12/08 629,744,837 72,533,559

06-08 Change 99.6x 107x

07-08 Change 2.3x 2.9x