Twitter + Yammer? What could have been…

3rd July, 2012

I’ve been thinking a lot about Enterprise Social Networks recently, and so should you if the figures about the potential size of the market over the next few years are to be believed ($6.4bn by 2016).

The news that Yammer has been acquired by Microsoft for $1.2bn therefore shouldn’t come as any surprise. Sure, it is a big sum, but I think this is a smart move by Microsoft. Whether the same can be said for Yammer is another question. Can Microsoft harness the power of ESNing? Time will tell and it is a subject for another post.

That’s because, long before the deal went through, I was thinking about the potential of a Twitter/Yammer tie up. It might seem strange at first but bear with me.

Is the idea of one unified profile to join work and personal social networking that ridiculous?

As a big user of Twitter and working for a company that uses Yammer, I often find myself dithering between whether to post on Twitter or Yammer or both. Sure, sometimes posts are clearly more appropriate or relevant for public or private-work but surely there would be some benefit in having a unified experience for both?

Clearly Yammer and Twitter won’t happen. But there are plenty of other options out there should Twitter consider this a wise move and, given its ‘finding a business model’ difficulties, maybe getting enterprises on board (and paying) through ESN, especially given the sums mentioned above, isn’t such a bad idea?

Danny Whatmough

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Google supercharges +1 button sharing

2nd September, 2011

For many content marketing and/or social media PR strategies, the concept of ‘sharing’ is pretty important. And ‘sharing buttons’ are a great way to enable site or blog visitors to distribute content to their likeminded friends or followers on social networks.

These are nothing new of course, with ‘tweet’ and ‘like’ buttons being included on most sites these days. Back in June, Google launched a +1 button, initially just on search ranking pages, but soon it opened this feature up so that brands and publishers could include +1 buttons on their websites too.

With the launch of Google+ I’d assumed that these +1 buttons would then automatically post +1ed content on your Google+ profile. And they did, but only in a separate ‘+1′ tab, not on your main content stream. Until yesterday that is when Google announced additional sharing functionality for +1 buttons:

“Clicking the +1 button is a great way to highlight content for others when they search on Google. But sometimes you want to start a conversation right away—at least with certain groups of friends. So beginning today, we’re making it easy for Google+ users to share webpages with their circles, directly from the +1 button.”

Google has also revealed that take-up of +1 buttons has been pretty enthusiastic with over a million sites including them and with 4 billion daily views.

The new functionality should work automatically if you’ve got +1 buttons already installed (try ours above!) on your site or blog. But it’s interesting to note that the buttons on search ranking pages don’t currently have the new sharing features; hopefully this will come in time…

Originally posted on the EML Wildfire Tech PR blog

Danny Whatmough

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Why Google has dropped the ball with Google+ business accounts

27th July, 2011

There’s a been a bit of a palava in the last few days with Google deleting hoards of Google+ accounts that violate its “community policies”.

There are two main reasons for this according to the new social (formerly search) giant:

Google has clamped down on ‘fake people’ or names that it deems to be ‘fake’. The problem is that this is very hard to get right. Mistakes have been and always will be made.
Google has expelled (most) brands and/or publishers it has found from the service.

The latter is fine insomuch as Google says it wants brands to wait until proper ‘brand accounts’ are available, but with brands clamouring to use the service and ‘official’ business accounts still a way off (albeit with very promising features), it seems very shortsighted.

Only an issue in the tech community?

Many will argue that, for most people, this isn’t really an issue and that it is another example of the tech community getting upset about something relatively small.

But these guys are very influential. Google+ has generally had an extremely positive reaction (in contrast to Google’s other social experiments), but many of these people are now changing their minds as Google cracks down. As Jon Evans over on Techcrunch says:

“It’s too bad that the service has sacrificed a pile of goodwill over the last week by repeatedly publicly shooting themselves in the foot,”

Google’s getting some bad PR on this one.

A lack of foresight

Google’s Vic Gundotra has admitted that the branded account issue was poorly thought through and many agree with him. It seems to me incredible that a massive, savvy company like Google couldn’t have seen that brands would want to flock to the service and therefore be prepared for this.

I could forgive a startup for not having everything in place, but Google has put massive resources behind this project.

Underestimating the importance of businesses for social networks

Perhaps the reason is that it underestimated the importance of businesses for social networks. But again, this seems unlikely. Google knows very well with Adwords that businesses are central to any online business model. It is also something that Facebook has eventually come to understand too. It has seen the success Twitter has had in attracting brands and has taken steps to cash in on this by increasingly opening up the network to businesses over the last few years.

Of course, in the long run, I doubt Google+ will suffer too much from all this. But it just goes to show that even a company as big as Google will run into problems when launching new products. I can’t help but feeling that a more open and considered strategy for branded pages would’ve been a good idea.

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Danny Whatmough

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Facebook to become the platform from which we run our (online) lives

14th March, 2011

I’m seeing an increasing amount of noise at the moment discussing the extent to which brands should have a presence on Facebook.

Sysomos had an interesting post recently arguing why websites shouldn’t be replaced by Facebook Pages and on NMA today, Reputation Online Editor Vikki Chowney discusses why brands should take a slightly different viewpoint and see Facebook as more than just an outpost for campaign led activity.

Brands flocking to Facebook

I can see why this is a topical discussion as it seems every day another company is announcing a new Facebook presence, a campaign page or even a whole ecommerce entity on the social network.

We’ve even seen Warner Brothers revealing it is set to offer movies for purchase or rent through its Facebook page.

Increasingly it seems brands are flocking to Facebook and, for me, the reasons are fairly obvious; it’s where the audience is!

Facebook engagement levels are pretty impressive with nearly 30 million users in the UK alone, representing around 46% of the entire population. In addition, 27% of these UK users are in that all important 24 to 35 age bracket.

Facebook as a platform

And so increasingly, I’m beginning to see Facebook more as a platform in itself. It’s somewhere where you can (or will soon be able to) go to play games, shop, watch films, use IM and check email.

One of the big arguments against this for brands is the ‘loss of control’ element but, as Vikki says: “Yes, you don’t have complete control of your data or your connections on the site (or most other social networks, for that matter), but that’s a reflection of what marketing and PR has evolved to become. A brand no longer holds all the keys or makes all the decisions.”

And, at the end of the day, if the marketing and conversion all happens on Facebook, it that really a massive problem or is it more a vanity thing?

For ASOS, is the fact that it’s target audience are going to be on Facebook a lot more than they are going to be on the ASOS website a problem or an opportunity? I’d suggest the latter.

The key for success for all

As I’ve argued before, Facebook is realising it needs brands as much as they need it in order to extract value out of the network. So I’d expect more moves by the company itself to encourage brands to increase their use of the site to create more engaging experiences for users.

The talk always focuses on how Google plans to ‘run’ the web with it’s Google OS, but could Facebook soon be the platform on which all web services exist?

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Danny Whatmough

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Changes to Pages signal yet another change in Facebook’s attitude to brands

15th February, 2011

I’ve blogged before about the differences between Twitter and Facebook.

The former is a very open platform where everyone is encouraged to see everything. Twitter is a blank canvas where individuals and brands (and fictional characters, animals etc. etc.) can decide how they want to use the tool (and the user generated creation of things like RTs, hashtags and even follow Fridays demonstrates this nicely).

Facebook on the other hand has, from the start, approached things from the opposite direction. Everything is more closed and individuals are encouraged to be themselves and only interact with those they know.

Are brands welcome on social networks?

There is a clear and understandable reason for this. Facebook, as anyone that has seen The Social Network will know, was created as a ‘private networking club’. A place where individuals can meet and engage with friends. The purest form of social networking.

But Twitter changed all of this. It welcomed (and encouraged) brands and they flocked to it in their millions.

For some time then, Facebook has been introducing more openness and, crucially, has been embracing the inclusion of brands.

Money, money, money

There are lots of reasons for this, but the main one is clear: money! Facebook and Twitter’s monetisation strategies depend on brands using the networks and using them to generate revenue from the user base.

The recent changes to Facebook Pages demonstrates the biggest move Facebook has taken towards bringing brands more fully into the site.

The inclusion of features like “Use Facebook as a Page” and the ability to “Like” other Pages is the clearest sign yet that Facebook is allowing companies to operate more like individuals on the site.

Personalising brands

Clearly there are still barriers to what can be done. Pages cannot ‘Like’ individuals or comment on their wall, for example. But, surely it is possible to see this as a potential next step.

Marketers will welcome this move, though as figures from Econsultancy show, brands still have work to do to convince users of the site to “Like” and interact with them.

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Danny Whatmough

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