Facebook Search: Will BING swamp Google?

Earlier this week, it was reported by Hitwise and commented upon by Frisky Mongoose that Facebook had surpassed Google as the most visited site in the United States, capturing 7.07% of traffic in comparison to Googles, relatively static 7.03%.

This is significant for a number of reasons, not least of all, in that Google itself surplanted that rapidly declining social network in MySpace back in 2007 as the most visited site. Social networking has come around full circle again. The most significant step though is that this traffic data is supplying Microsoft, who invested $240 million USD  into Facebook in October of 2007 to overlay its Bing search tech over the Facebook web technologies. Microsoft’s Bing search is shaping up to be fundamentally different to Google in that it’s search is being driven by trending data as opposed to Google’s advertising driven Pay Per Click model which awards ranking (in the main) to business which pay for the priviledge of being top of the pops. Bing’s search is different as it is driven by the  influences of other media. To state simply, it references crowd dynamics and the rhythm and flow of what the community is focused upon. If people see a TV Commercial that is of interest, they will search for an answer of relevance. If people see a print commercial in a glossy magazine, they will search for an answer of relevance. People are spending time on Facebook and with 350+ million users, it is inevitable that some of these search queries will drive Facebook traffic and dialogue.

A great example that illustrates this: Consider if you ask the question “What is the best LCD TV?” to both Google and Facebook (and in turn Bing).

Google will report back blog postings, forums and advertised sponsor sites which have purchased the keywords “best LCD TV” and websites which Google’s myriad of algorithms (which change hourly) have identified as being “relevent”. This will include specific manufacturers who have paid for the privilege of being ranked.

However, if you ask this same question “What is the best LCD TV?” in your status feed on Facebook and you will get a wave of commentary from your friends – your trusted network, your go too people whose opinion and insight you value. Go one step further – What if one of your friends adds a link that is relevant to their opinion/comment? You are far more likely to click this endorsed link and look at this site, because it came from your trusted network.  Recent evidence also suggests this little cherub in terms of the traffic data: Facebook’s outbound links, those that people click on via status feeds is predicted to within the next 3 years to rival the search query link summary that Google serves every day in terms of click through rates.

And Facebook being a closed garden environment – Google can’t see a damn thing on what’s happening inside, nor where the outbound traffic is flowing from unless it’s own analytics is overlaid on the end user site. Microsoft can.

Hmmm. That’s a tasty spread of trending data for Microsoft to feed into its search tech and influence the Bing search results to its users. To paraphrase Zoolander  “It’s that damn Facebook! It’s so hot right now!”

6 Steps To Your Successful Digital Strategy

Reproduced from the Areeba Company Blog. Colin is the Director of Client Services and has been with Areeba since May 2004.

This is part 1 of a series focusing on the different approaches to a successful digital project. Colin Yeung, writes from the Client Services viewpoint taking an operational strategy approach.

Over the years, I’ve been invited to speak at a number of events and also engaged to deliver specific business focused analysis of an organisations operations, integration and the cultural aspects of embracing “digital” as a viable and contributing part of the business. Part of this is the often repeated question of what I define as “Digital”. Considering my background, my views are somewhat operational in approach, encompassing a more holistic view of the business and how it interacts. It is aptly summed up with:

Digital: any sort of information, business process, or data handling which is accessed and connected to the internet

No mention of CSS, HTML, W3C, CMS, ASP, API or any other acronym you care to draw upon. The strength of what we deliver is that we embark on the creation of systems which deliver business value across the organisation. Our team have a focus on the User Experience, which encompasses Brand, Usability, Solutions Architecture and Adaptability. Words like User Engagement, Process and Governance guide the outcomes of what we deliver.

Having the opportunity to present, opens up interesting possibilities in the dialogue that transpires in a group environment of individuals focused upon learning and demystifying the vagaries of what can be often considered a black art. What has struck me in the the Question & Answer session that follows after a presentation is the diversity of inquiry and the underlying limited understanding with which business in general apply the concept of digital to their day to day operations. It’s no understatement to say that I’m constantly floored by the view that websites are still online brochures, that are treated as a communication medium which is little more useful than a broadcast device. The process of getting to a successful website which interacts in a 2 way fashion with clients encompasses so much more and the learning opportunities that business have in-front of them to harness User driven outcomes are more plentiful than ever before.

With that approach in mind, area’s we’ve consistently identified that don’t receive the attention they deserve in web projects are:

1. User Audience
Too many assumptions rule the day here. Clients often believe a particular information set or demographic interact with their website. But they don’t know. The process of ongoing assessment, verification and validation of the audience and who they are is often met with blank stares and uncomfortable silences. If you go to the next level of what their audience is doing in reality, it falls into the next area below.
2. Analytics & Data
Massively and totally undervalued, underutilised and misinterpreted. I’m talking beyond Google Analytics and what page views a site visitor is clocking up. Analytics of data – what information is being served. Analytics of intent – what data is being inputted into the system. Reporting around the data and forecasting trends is another area which often falls short of the mark.
3. User Experience
Usability, User Interface Design, Content Design, Typography, Brand, Information Architecture. It’s not unusual for us to find that the extent of the thinking has gone to a Site map. Consideration needs to be given and thought undertaken in relation to the differing facets of a cohesive User Experience.
4. Business Goals
So many web systems are designed and developed in isolation from the overarching organisational strategy set at the executive level. A high quality web outcome is guided by a holistic approach to creating an organisation wide digital strategy. This also incorporates an internal as well as external social media strategy. A good quality digital strategy is a whole topic in itself, but at a high level, it encompasses the business values, goals, expectations and uses digital can play in relation to the delivery of business value.
5. Collaboration
Why is it so many web projects are owned by the “IT” or by “Marketing” departments? And further, talking to the other department is forbidden if you are interacting with either business unit? Organisation wide web projects that are rated as successful by the client in our experience encompass representation from all departments and each department has to act in a responsible fashion to each other, being of a collaborative and understanding outlook that each has its respective remit, but with the underlying driver of the success of the business as a whole the benchmark criteria.
6. Success Criteria
As trivial as it sounds, if the CEO likes the site, because it has enough “green, blue or pink”, than that can be deemed a success criteria, just as equally as if online sales are improved by 20% in the first quarter. Defining what a successful outcome is and the metric by which it will be judged and improved by needs to be considered.

On the basis of the conversations that I’ve had in the Q&A sessions, the question of what budget to allocate to a web development always arises. When you tell a client a figure based upon your professional assessment of their business and the opportunities available, unless they have an understanding of the process and rigor described above, you’re often left with the challenge of building out a project which has to take short cuts. Whilst this in itself is not a problem, the outcomes and the dependencies that can eventuate are.

The reality is that organisations which want to be serious about delivering digital projects with due consideration to the above points need to adopt a User Centric approach and be prepared for the variations that a creative development takes. It is our challenge as a service provider to ensure that we communicate in a common sense and practical fashion, project outcomes, goals and validation criteria which reflect a consideration of the risks and opportunities. Further, we strive to create an environment where there is a focus on quality and that the metrics of success are defined clearly and consistently referenced.

Find more in your workshop for a successful digital project:
Part 2 – a technical viewpoint: 4 Things To Know Before Building Your Web Site
Part 3 – the project management part to it: 6 Rules To Avoid Killing Your Web Project
Part 4 – the digital touch: 5 Principles To Effective Web Design

Social Media at Work: Yes or No?

Even accounting for duplicate and inactive account logins, collectively, there are 750,000,000+ registered potential users (that’s 750 million for  those of you that got dazed by the zero’s) that are spending time online frittering away their lives looking at what other people do and commenting about questions or circumstances that affect each of us. Or so our corporate parents within Corporate Communications, Human Resources, Management or the Executive would have you believe.

A quick snapshot of the registered users for each of the below social networks yields some serious numbers.

Facebook: 200,000,000+
My Space: 260,000,000+
Linkedin: 42,000,000+
Twitter: 25,000,000+
Windows Live Spaces: 120,000,000+
Bebo: 40,000,000+
Flixster: 63,000,000+

And these are only the ‘big ones’ as cited by Wikipedia’s Social Networking websites list on 25th June 2009.

Depending on the medium in question, accessing any sort of social networking website whilst at work is generally construed as a time waster and as such sites like this often get “blocked” by the IT Dept. And in all seriousness, your erstwhile corporate guardians do have a point, as it impinges on productivity and has a monetary cost both from internet bandwidth as well as the loss of efficiency in your staff.

However the problem is one of understanding around the use of such networks correctly, both at work and in your private time. I’m constantly taken aback by the number of people who complain about unfair treatment because they’ve blown off some steam and made a comment about their workplace, a colleague or some sort of negative reference to their place of employment, the place they are paid to do a job and act in a professional  manner reflecting their organisations values. Since when was blasting out in a public forum considered an appropriate means of self expression and immune to the influence and rules which govern your workplace? You’re asked not to swear, dress inappropriately or be dishonest whilst at work, why is it any different to when you are out of work? There is a massive difference to having a whinge to your buddies down at the pub on a Friday night, verses publishing on the web for all to see, comments about the eating habits of the guy 3 cubicles up, or the appalling dress sense of the girl over in X department.

Or worse.

As @danwwilson Twittered recently: “I’m amazed that some people continue to think that twitter has a magical privacy cloak.”

Social Media sites are very important, as has been shown because of the groundswell of popular/negative opinion that can race across your screen with your friends endorsement/derision, your work colleagues recommendation/warding off all driven off just good old fashioned crowd dynamics. Doubly important in recent times, it has become readily apparent that responsible use can yield useful information and influence peoples thoughts and behaviours because of the common thread of what is a “trending topic” emerging for people to critique and access. Responsible use by everyone, both at work and privately needs to be governed by the businesses in the first place, so that employees are encouraged to elicit a sense of responsibility and ownership for their employer and their place within the organisation.

Simplistically put, if an organisation respectfully manages the staff, the staff will in turn respectfully manage the organisation.

To this end, I often advise business to articulate a clear Social Networking policy, around access, acceptable  and expected behaviour with clear guidelines as to the conseqences and outcomes of misconduct. This is no different to 15 years ago when Email started to enter the workplace and personal emails were initially frowned upon. Or 10 years ago when doing online banking. Or 5 years ago when you wanted to book tickets to something. Anyone who has a computer with Internet access in the workplace is likely to have a role where there is some amount of time where they wait for something to complete, are having lunch or doing research online.

It is nowadays quite common and reasonably expected that in their lunch break, employees may do some online banking, check the online news or book a movie/aerobics class/plane flights. Access to Social networks should fall under the same umbrella, with the encouragement of responsible usage, behavior and ownership. The other side of this is with an older workforce (think the Baby Boomer or Builder Generations) having to learn the computer skills such as typing and just basic navigation around the computer, if they are encouraged to use it in a social context on their lunch break, there is a very real advantage around increasing their familiarity and comfort level with the equipment. Anyone under the age of 30 will likely use a computer naturally – type quickly, understand basic navigational functionality and key concepts like saving and archiving files. This basic concept of technology use is severely misunderstood by IT Depts and many large organisations and the result is poor productively, decreased efficiency and often cost intensive training programs and “work” endorsed and targetted training. Employers who shift the culture and thinking to use of computers as a tool for getting your job done more quickly and allow access to the spread of social networking functions will reap the benefits of a happier and more satisfied workforce.

Employees are a valuable part of your workforce – that is why you pay them. Being responsible adults, structured and clear governance of their access to such facilities with clear guidelines will be reflected in how they treat their role – with a sense of pride and ownership. The ultimate outcome will be a workforce which has less to complain about, and will have a deeper appreciation of their role within the organisation, as critically, they will be offered a sense of ownership and respect within the business.

Social Media at work? Yes.

With appropriate communication, you will have a happier and more productive workforce, who will feel valued and respected for their contributions.

Website Building Tools

Over the years I have collected a bunch of useful open source tools which have helped tremendously in building and maintaining websites. Most important – they are FREE! If you really want to go to town and have the funds get yourself Adobe Web Premium (Illustrator, Photoshop, Contribute, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Soundbooth)  and start looking at a software configuration management system, which manages your built environment with versions, baseline projects and affords the ability to build up a code base. But in lieu of burning some money, the free ones are below.

If you have any suggestions, I’d love to you hear from you and I’ll add the useful ones to this list.

File Transfer Protocol Program (FTP Client)
FileZilla http://filezilla-project.org

HTML/CSS Editing
Notepad ++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Image File Viewers/ Basic Editors
FastStone http://www.faststone.org – Slick looking interface. Really good for managing large numbers of images. Can bog down in network drive situations i.e. cataloguing images across multiple hard drives/server locations, however this can be rectified by dumping the Thumbnail database on a regular basis. Can view PSD’s.
Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com – Fast loading, non intrusive. Not quite as flexible as Faststone, it nonetheless is lightweight enough to run concurrently when you just want a fast preview of images sent to you i.e. email attachments.

Rulers for measuring windows, images, text blocks
Sizer http://www.brianapps.net/sizer.html. Brilliant, lightweight application for quickly resizing windows to any parameter you care to program in i.e. 1280X1024, 1280X 800 (laptops), 1024X768, 640X480. Will work with ALL windows, outside of the browser i.e. Photoshop, etc.
Screen Ruler http://wonderwebware.com/screen-ruler/ Configurable floating ruler pain which has X & Y planes with configurable transparency.

Firefox Browser Plugins
Firebug, Cooliris, Screengrab! I wrote about Firefox Plugins’ in my post Software: Firefox Browser Extensions

PDF for Finished Art
Cute PDF Writer http://www.cutepdf.com/ If you are producing print quality finished art or into publication of e-zines or editorial variants of a book, collected works etc, consider upgrading to the Pro edition. Significantly cheaper than Adobe’s Acrobat offering and I find the compression algorithm and font handling to be either equal or on better.

Evernote
http://www.evernote.com
Fantastic web based application which allows you to jot down notes, import images and manage articles in a secure, password protected environment. Once items are imported, they are indexed and you can perform searches on them. The ultra cool aspect about Evernote is the ability to import images with writing on it and Evernotes servers run Optical Character Recognition protocols on it, allowing indexing of the words in the image. So, you can take a photo of a business card (MAC = Photobooth, PC = MSN, Trillion, Logitech Cam etc) and it will index the details.

Contact’s Management
So you have hundreds of contacts, they sit in your iPhone or Blackberry. Store them securely online and Sync them with one of the below:

• Google Contacts in Gmail - http://www.gmail.com
• HighRise by 37 Signals – http://www.highrisehq.com
• Zoho CRM – http://www.zoho.com

My Space vs Facebook

Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch fame noted on his blog a couple of days ago the fact that My Space’s growth is stagnating compared to its arch rival Facebook .

Getting too it – why is My Space in decline?

Simply put – Usability. It sucks. I never got onto My Space because almost every time I visited it, I encountered the following problems

• Navigation moved around. One My Space site is different to the next, and the lack of consistent representation of the User Interface made it a nightmare to move through the site. I’m time poor as it is – I don’t want to spend it wading through and wrestling with navigation.
• Readability: Fonts and the use of crazy colours like white font on a yellow background (or vice versa) made it tough to read. Add to this the personalised backgrounds which varied from grim dense photos across to riotous  patterns made it nigh on impossible to read.
• Rubbish: Many My Space pages I came across were rubbish. I mean not even interesting rubbish. Just rubbish.
• Profile Picture Inconsistency – Portrait, Landscape, Big, Small – your friends lists looked like a mish mash of images stacked on each other. Amateurish.

I’ve always been of the opinion that My Space’s popularity stemmed from 2 key areas – Celebrity and Personalisation. The Celebrity aspect is that Hollywood A-List types, Rock Bands, Rap Singers, Soccer, Aussie Rules all got onboard, as the benefits from a distribution point of view and the relative low cost for the publicity and doing the “in thing” were all tangible and measurable in their benefits. Everyone flocked online, as the iconisation and ability to “friend” aspect were easy, accessible and straight forward. The Personalisation side is the ability to build your own page “just so”. That’s where the “Usability that sucks” enter.

Facebook on the other hand is positively anodyne in its austere interface. I’ve been on it for about 2.5 years now and watched it go through 3 changes. The current interface leaves alot to be desired, so much so, that I barely login anymore unless I’m wanting to see what is going on with friends who are travelling overseas. On the upside, the community is cohesive and a proper closed garden if you set your privacy settings correctly. The other strengths, or they were in the past, was that the interface was relatively persistent and most importantly, it was readable, putting the content as the focus. Usability and the subsequent User Experience went up, because, well it was easy to use.

And then when Facebook released the developer API in early May 2007, all hell broke loose, as Facebook’s own way of personalisation had entered the market, driven by the hot trends of the day – beyond the walls of the Facebook employee group, who whilst smart, could never hope to compete with the groundswell of applications from the global developer community racing to commercialise the next hot idea. Smart move Team Facebook.

And look who else has done good by releasing the API – Apple. iPhone. App Store. Is Good. RIM (Blackberry), Nokia & Sony Ericsson are playing catch up.

My Space has a MASSIVE user base. Right now. They need to start utilising it to maximise revenue by creating a community within its boundaries, one that embraces the individuality. They just need to fix up the Usability for it to work.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/18/myspace-is-in-real-trouble-if-these-page-view-declines-dont-reverse

Gruen Transfer – The Pitch

ABC’s Gruen Transfer, which screens each Wednesday night at 8:30pm charts the thinking, actions and rationale that drives the brightest lights in Australia’s advertising industry. Chaired by comedian Wil Anderson The Gruen Transfer has an industry based panel of notable Australian ad agency heavyweights, including Leo Burnett Sydney CEO  – Todd Sampson, George Patterson Chairman & MD – Russell Howcroft, Freelance Advertising expert Bridget Taylor and Neon Pidgeons Bram Williams. The program has received critical acclaim for its thought provoking commentary, observation and insight in bringing the formalised system and process which makes up the advertising industry.

One of the highlights each week is “The Pitch – Sell the Unsellable“. Top flight competing agencies are given a chance to show their inventiveness and creativity in communicating a succinct and clear message within the confines of a 30 second TeleVision Commercial (TVC). The opportunity to showcase creative talent for the respective combating agencies with more than 1.2 million viewers each week is an enticing draw card, particularly for the smaller, more agile and no holds barred outfits. Previous submissions to the Pitch have been creatively met, with some of the most memorable including: “Invade New Zealand” produced by the Marmalade & 303 agencies.

Invade New Zealand #1 = Produced: Marmalade

Invade New Zealand #2 = Produced: 303

In last nights episode, JWT & The Foundry were given the challenge to work out a way sell the concept of “Fat Pride” with the underlying premise of ending discrimination because of your body weight.

Fat Pride #1 = Produced: JWT

As can be seen by the above screening of JWT’s TVC, The Foundry’s own submission was kyboshed by the ABC’s censorship panel on the premise that it was racially, religiously and sexually discriminatory. The TVC was however posted on this ABC endorsed website, with the requisite bunch of warnings and cautions.

http://www.antiprejudicead.net

The entire 15 minutes is worth watching, as it has a spirited discussion with the incumbant panel members and the TVC’s creator, Adam Hunt from The Foundry

As stated by the above website, the below TVC was prefaced with:

“To provide a clear context for the ad, The Foundry and JWT agencies were asked to come up with a campaign for the idea of Fat Pride, to end shape discrimination and make overweight Australians feel less humiliated by the constant public disapproval of anyone who isn’t a size 10 or under.”

Fat Pride #2 (Banned for TV Broadcast) = Produced: The Foundry

A confronting ad by most peoples measure. It is confronting to mainstream society because of the visual composition and the context that every single one of the stated “jokes” or comments is something that as the TVC’s producer Adam Hunt has pointed out, something we overhear in conversation, whether contextually “as a joke” or in the undercurrents of fringe behaviour. The requisite reaction of disgust and dismay at the first three dialogues is placed into sharper context by the ending Fat Pride commentary and it makes you pause and think. What adds significant gravitas and impact is the context with which each dialogue is shot – it’s not in the school yard with the peer group pressure of inflated bragadoccio or the pub scene where a bunch of inebriated red necks are jostling nor the locale of “that suburb” out west. They are shot in your face, directly, with stark backdrop, which reinforce the conveyance of  intense facial expressions of hatred, contempt and derision. As noted by the panel, you flat out don’t like any of the people in the ad. The impact of this dislike is so palpable you are left feeling dirty, nauseous and ashamed. This baseline message of dislike and contempt is clear for all to see and interpret.

Interestingly, something I found curious was that in the above extended discussion with Todd Sampson, Bram Williams, Wil Anderson, Russell Howcroft and The Foundry’s Sydney Creative Director and producer of the TVC – Adam Hunt was that these guys actually spend in their day to day a whole lot of time thinking up ways to create TVC’s that are memorable, engaging and in the literal sense “safe” so that they don’t suffer reprisals and recrimination for their agency from the wider public. The Foundry’s approach by Adam Hunt in tackling the hard hitting approach would have tweaked the sensibilities of this particular audience as they are hyper tuned and aware of the currents which affect and influence popular opinion. His very real, black and white, no argument assertion that making “fat jokes” is wrong, no matter which way you cut it, and there being no shades of gray strikes at the very heart of what everyone is objecting too. The panels general consensus of belief that he has crossed the line by rendering being fat with the same gravity as discrimination against Jews, Gays and Blacks, is jarring their senses brecause they don’t see it as being offensive to joke about fat people in the first place. The point is, that in portraying “Fat Pride”, the notion that ANY sort of commentary about someones weight is just as serious as the previous comments is the hard hitting point he is not trying, but succeeds in making.

The argument that people who have spent their lives being prosecuted don’t want to see/hear such behaviour perpetuated, is a strong one, however more directly to the point, I think it is fair to say that the most important aspect is that they don’t ever want it to be forgotten. Ever. Take myself as an example, I went to a very Anglo Saxon primary school on the outer fringe of Melbourne and rocked up in Grade 3. Consider that my sister and I were the only Chinese students, so much so that many of my peers had never ever met a chinese person before. I had my fair share of being beaten up, teased, taunted and singled out. But you know what? It wasn’t any different to the red headed kid, the kid that smelt, the kid that had that weird lunch. But my character was such that I knew at the core, the jibes were on the whole born from ignorance and a lack of perceived understanding. True minority singling out that Jews, Blacks & Gays endure is in a different realm in that they have been persecuted to the point of extinction and forced to occupy the fringe. I think that that existence, which still in parts of the world extends to this day, is behaviour and a history that no one should ever, nor would want to forget. Being Fat in today’s society is met with prejudice, inconvenience and ostrasisement to the extent that people who are fat are often documented as being so depressed and locked in their homes that this in itself is tantamount to a lifetime of misery, solitude and little hope. This can be construed in one sense as a societally imposed torture. A big call, but being fat for some, if not most people is not an option. Society has put them there, so society should be responsible for it.

Whilst I understand the ABC’s view on not broadcasting the TVC and applaud the release onto the Internet, in a very real sense, it is a shame that they caught this one and prevented it’s broadcast, because the very mainstream behavior of deriding people for being fat is that same audience who would have benefitted immensely in watching this hard hitting commercial. Having seen this, and the rationale that Adam Hunt put forward, I’m left in no doubt why The Foundry has been nailing so much work lately.

It is a brilliant TVC and deserves due recognition for raising in a mainstream context the fact that being Fat still remains a societal stigma.