DreamGrow Social Media

Gartner: Social Software Is an Enterprise Reality

Gartner released a report “Predicts 2010: Social Software Is an Enterprise Reality” in which analysts offer predictions for the next five years. Concentrating on social software Gartner stresses five key points.

1. By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

This prediction is matches our own view of changes brought on by mass adoption of social networking sites. (Social Media Replaces Email and IM and 22 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2010). Gartner predicts that by 2014 about 20 percent of business users will use social networking sites as the hub of their business communications. We believe this number to be even higher as social networking companies will push to make this happen. On the other hand email provides will seek out ways to turn their user-base to social networks. These trends will blur the line between social and email.

2. By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.

Our view is that in-house corporate microbloging platforms will not see wide spread adoption. The main reason for this is that small user base will not generate enough social chatter to keep the interest up. The second obstacle in the adoption of private microblogging platforms will be the resistance from employees who see it as another “time waster”.

3. Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.

Well, this is a bit of a no brainer. We have seen it in our work and we firmly believe that IT-people should be kept away from making decisions about marketing communications. As Gartner puts it:

When it comes to collaboration, IT organizations are accustomed to providing a technology platform (such as, e-mail, IM, Web conferencing) rather than delivering a social solution that targets specific business value.

Social media communications is a business process. This process needs tools that come out of IT-department, but they do not define those processes. Business side must be very careful not to bend under the pressure from IT about what can or cannot be done.

4. Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.

Yes, mobile is big! It will get BIGGER. But the user experience on different devices will (hopefully) be driven by delivering the best user experience, doh. Gartner suggests that people are more productive on smartphones than on PCs due to better user interfaces.

The experience with these tools for all who use them will enable the user to handle far more conversations within a given amount of time than their PCs simply because they are easier to use.

We believe that small devices have inherently worse user experience than their desktop counterparts. This ensures that full size computers will continue to provide superior user experience. This will hold until we have perfected voice commands, HUD-glasses and other wearable computing technologies.

5. Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

The Gartner’s number 25 percent seems reasonable, but the reasoning does not. Privacy concerns will not hold people from analyzing social data. Lack of knowledge and initiative in the enterprise will do that. Our personal information is mined and analyzed in countless places and most of us don’t care. Agreed, social is more personal than that, but we believe that a lot of the benefits can be dug out from anonymous statistical analysis that doesn’t invade privacy. For more sensitive information consumers can trade privacy for benefits.

Social networking is in it infancy and the next few years will see a lot of change. How we communicate with friends and businesses, new business models and processes, new hardware technology, user interfaces, etc. But at the core of it is our need to communicate and belong. So, there.

Social Media Replaces Email and IM

In our social media trends post we suggested that people will use more social networks’ messaging instead of regular email and IM tools.

We haven’t seen any real research on this yet. In my opinion the convenience of using messaging tools without leaving the friendly social network will move a lot of email communication away from mail clients. I believe that this will happen mainly to personal email. When people talk to each other it’s only natural to use the tools that are right in front of you.

But not to fear, the email will stay with us some time yet. Businesses will continue to use email until some authentic way of private B2C communication channel becomes available for them on social networks. The second factor that keeps email alive is the rudimentary user experience of messaging tools in social networks. These tools are convenient but have only very basic functionality.

Now, a smart move for social media sites would be to include email in their environment. If a social network like Facebook would build a full-blown email client into its interface then Live, Yahoo and GMail would really have something to worry about.

In the instant messaging field the desktop apps have a lot more to worry about. The IM does not have 40 years of history behind it and the most used IM clients have only about 400 million users (Usage share of instant messaging clients). Well, in China they do.

The problems with social networks’ IM clients are similar to email. Rudimentary interface, lack of voice and video. But looking at my own IM habits it is not a problem as most of the communication is text-based and I don’t much care for the bells and whistles of the desktop apps.

Facebook can have a huge advantage by implementing these tools. So, what do you think when will we see the fully-featured email and IM clients in Facebook colors?

Social Media: Control Is An Illusion

In our recent post about 2010 social media trends we predicted that marketers will understand: the audience has the control. It takes time and I admit that feeling of ownership often gives me a sense the I have control. Ain’t so…

Today I thought that I will organize an event for one of the communities I lead. I thought that I will do it this way and that. Then I realized that I do not have any control over it. I can suggest or I can plead, but that’s it. If I try to force my views they will leave and gather somewhere else without me.

I have met with people who have a brilliant idea that let’s make a Ferrari (or any other big brand) page in Facebook and sell it to them. The thing is that there are hundreds of Ferrari pages on Facebook. One of them has more than 700,000 fans and another with 200,000 fans. I don’t think these are the “official” Ferrari pages. And that’s not all there are several Ferrari pages that have tens of thousands of fans.

The Coca-Cola fan page with more than 4 million fans was created by fans. Coca-Cola understood that this is something you need to embrace. There are still dozens of other Coca-Cola pages on Facebook, many of them have tens of thousands of fans. Right now the company supported page has the most fans. The fan pages created by fans pop up everywhere for brands large and small.

If the brand would start to wrestle for control with the fans then the fans may turn around and become uninterested. I looked for “I hate X brand” pages and there really aren’t many brand haters out there. This choice between being fan or inactive should be good news for marketers who are afraid that the brand will be doomed if they screw up.

So, in a sense managing social media is like kung fu, you channel the energy of others and look for openings, that would give you the best results. You can’t attack head on with cease and desist letters or intimidation.

Control is an illusion and if you think you are in control, you are missing something.
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Image credit Ferrari fan page with 57,339 fans

Social Media Will Penetrate Corporate Firewalls

Few weeks ago we posted our predictions for the 2010 social media scene. Now we will try to explain these trends in a little bit more detail.

Some of our corporate customers don’t have access to Facebook or any other social media in their offices. The reason is mostly that the important IT people think that Facebook and other social media channels are endless sources of exploits, phishing, spam and other evil things I don’t even dare to say.

My own view is a bit lighter and I believe that if the security framework is sound then social nets don’t pose much of a threat. But whatever the security people might think the pressure to open up communications will grow.

Direct communication with customers in sales, real-time support services, social media integration into CRM systems and other benefits will gradually help social media to reach behind the mighty corporate firewall.

Of course, there might be some negative effects. For example productivity may suffer because of the time that people use for personal social media activity. On the other hand this personal interaction might be seen as “being human” and actually help the brand to be more authentic.

Kipp Bodnar: 11 B2B Social Media Predictions for 2010

Kipp Bodnar is writing about B2B social media future. Here’s a summary of the points with little commentary from me. Social media will spread from marketing department to sales. This will make social networks prominent lead generation tools. Seth Godin has predicted that in a few years 90% of the B2B leads will come from social networks. These trends will increase the budgets for the inbound marketing. To gain credibility B2B companies will target influencers. On the other hand CNET study suggest:

Shape your marketing messages for the larger network of moderately connected users, not just the few highly connected individuals at the top. This involves considering this group’s emotional and informational needs, not just modifying the messages you used for the top tier. – Guy Kawasaki, The Myth of A Listers and Influencers

Understanding the importance of social data and the use of real-time search will make it clear that B2B companies have to get social to stay in the picture and engage prospects. Social media will mean business and this will bring down the firewalls that now block employees from accessing social networks.

The content of B2B social media communication will get more exciting. Video, audio, streaming media, interactive tools and other stuff you can play around with will be used more and more. The best tools will make completing your goals fun. This fun will hopefully spill over to corporate web sites that start to develop social elements. The ones who don’t adapt will soon become obsolete

The corporate website of the future will be a credible source of opinion and fact, authored by both the corporation and community. The result? A true first-stop community resource where information flows for better products and services. – Jeremiah Owyang, How To Evolve Your Irrelevant Corporate Website

As for location based services, I believe that they will have a lot of impact on consumer side but B2B decisions is less influenced by real-time and location based services. The same goes for the importance of mobile base content. The B2C will lead the way and B2B lag behind.
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Image credit: Carl Dwyer

European Social Media Trends

This slide show has up to date and detailed information about social media in some of the largest European markets. Thanks to Tom Smith for great presentation.

This is a presentation given to the IAB Europe council, exploring European trends in social media involvement, the impact of social media and the steps that need to be taken. Also looks at the future and why the passive impact of the social ecosystem is bigger than the immediately involved one. This is due to social recommendation and data informing all purchase decisions through search, augmented reality and will increasingly impact the nature of the content we consumer in all platforms.

You can make the presentation full screen for better readability.

Weekend reading: social media trends and studies

The trends that have cought my eye the most are:

• Real-time communication
• Local services and augmented reality
• Cloud computing
• Social gaming
• One sign in through large social sites

People will use social site anywhere, anytime, any device, tweeting after sex, trying to share experiences and entertain themselves. They will use on social networking site as a base and rarely go to other places. Smaller external sites will connect to larger ones by using login services and moving content.

10 Web trends to watch in 2010 2010
While Web innovation is unpredictable, some clear trends are becoming apparent. Expect the following 10 themes to define the Web next year. Pete Cashmore of Mashable giving his views on trends.

Social Media Trends: 2009 and Beyond
Social media trends presentation from Andy Carvin. Audio of the PRPD presentation on 2009 social media trends is here(http://acarvin.posterous.com/audio-of-my-prpd-presentation-on-2009-social ).

Top Digital Trends For 2010
In 2009, digital marketing experienced some major shifts in marketing opportunities, budgets and attitude. 2010 will see the hype calming around Facebook apps and Twitter campaigns and the development of ROI models around social media marketing. The following trends are based on thoughts we have shared with our clients and now share with DMB’s readers.

Looking ahead to 2010 with Shiv Singh
Shiv Singh, vice president and global social media lead for Razorfish, a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board and author of “Social Media Marketing for Dummies.” Social brands. Real-time brands. Identifying, nurturing and managing relationships.

Survey analyzes top goals for brands engaging in social media (PDF)
Their primary goalsfor using social media aside from increasing sales overwhelmingly include: greater customer engagement, mobilizing advocates to drive “word of mouth”, increasing brand loyalty. Customer reviews are seen first and foremost as contributing to customer engagement (61%).
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Image credit Erkin Sahin