The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report yesterday, “A Portrait of Early Internet Adopters: Why People First Went Online and Why They Stayed.” The report confirms a lot that we already know - people originally went online for personal reasons, social networking in some form has always been an important component of the Internet experience, and the Internet is the first source when people need information to help them solve problems. Two other elements of the report jumped out at me though.

They talk about social networking as nothing new, which I completely agree with, but they talk about it in the context of early Internet technologies such as bulletin board systems or Usenet. I think it is important to remember that social networks have always existed, and continue exist both online and off. Participating in my quilt guild or local kayaking club are both social networks that exist primarily offline, just as my twitter or facebook communities are online social networks. It is because social networks have always been an integral part of society that online social networks are so dominant now - they allow you to participate in more targeted and relevant communities and expand your reach like never before. This isn’t new, but rather an enhancement.

The second point that jumped out at me was around the personal connection that early adopters of the Internet feel as compared to early adopters of other technology revolutions. As opposed to other technology innovations, (TV, automobiles, and telephone are used in the report), Internet adopters see themselves more as co-creators instead of simply users. I tried to think of another technology revolution that could say the same, users as co-creators, and couldn’t come up with one. Interesting stuff…

“Besides the slowing user growth and declining time spent on these sites, users appear to be growing less responsive to ads, according to several advertisers and online placement firms. If advertisers can’t figure out how to reverse these trends, social networking could end up as a niche market in the online ad world, smashing hopes and valuations across Silicon Valley.” - BusinessWeek, February 7, 2008.

When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg came to Madison Avenue last November and proclaimed that “once every hundred years media changes,” he made sure to leave a lasting impression (whether positive or negative) on advertisers: Facebook plans to lead the way for social network advertising. Approximately four months have passed with the release of Facebook Pages and SocialAds and what do advertisers have to say? Well, there were some privacy concerns and laments over social network advertising effectiveness. In order to combat the less-than-expected reach of advertising on Facebook, the company released new case studies and photos yesterday about Pages and the corresponding integration to SocialAds and Beacon.

The Pages team have put together some helpful PDF’s available on their site, ranging from “How to Create a Page: Abbreviated Guide” to “Music: Dave Matthews Band Case Study“. For those who have never used Pages before, the abbreviated guide offers a lot of insightful tips: “Actions that can generate News Feed stories: Positive Associations (Becoming a fan), Wall Posts by user, Review by user, Photo Uploads by user, Video Uploads by user, Interactions with applications and Event RSVPs for attending (may attending.”

The team has also listed a succinct resource for best practices on Facebook Pages here. My favorite takeaway from that list is a note highlighted toward the end: “Facebook experts are all around you: in your family, on your staff, amongst your customers, at your competitors. Don’t hesitate to ask them for advice and to follow their lead when you see a successful strategy at work.”

Have you had success with your Pages?

P.S. You can also become a fan of Burson-Marsteller on our own Page.

It’s not everyday that you come across a registered doctor who only practices house visits. But what about a doctor who does house visits via instant messenger or webcam? Meet Jay Parkinson, MD.

“I am not your typical doctor,” his website reads, “I am easily accessible and mobile. I come to you when you need me with same or next day appointments.” As a certified doctor in New York state, Dr. Parkison is one of few (or maybe the only one?) who does e-visits. “Many problems can be handled virtually using video chatting, IM, digital photos, etc. It’s often more convenient, more efficient, and less time consuming for both us.” Sounded good to me - I had to try it.

I added Dr. Parkinson to my G-talk and contacted him via IM. He immediately responded, and we had a nice chat. Unfortunately he is only taking new patients in Brooklyn right now, but it was easy to do. We spend a lot of time talking to healthcare clients about the new model of participation, with the patient instead of the physician, at the center of the universe, and this e-doc clearly gets that. Time will tell if this approach becomes mainstream, but given how much of our other important communication is online, it is fine for me to talk to my doc that way too.

A dive into GroupM’s volumunious 2008 Worldwide Media and Marketing Forecasts yields plenty of interesting numbers for data junkies, not least regarding internet advertising (broadly defined as search, display and directory) spend across Asia, expected in 2008 to grow to the tune of:

- Singapore - 62%
- India - 60%
- China - 55%
- Australia: 40%
- Thailand - 28%
- Hong Kong - 25%
- Taiwan - 20%
- Japan - 20%
- Indonesia - 13%
- S. Korea - 8%

Aside from the massive disparity in internet advertising growth levels across the region, some interesting themes emerge:

First, while increases in internet advertising are expected to be very strong in China and India, they will account for less than 6% and 2.5% of media spend respectively, pointing to fairly conventional marketing cultures, despite considerable web 2.0 froth in China.

Second, the deceleration of internet spend in Singapore, Japan and S. Korea. According to the report, internet spend in Singapore has been growing at over 100% for the past two years, but is working from a low base and still only accounts for approx. 3.5% of media spend, so continued investment in this area seems likely given the relative maturity of the market and the potential returns of online marketing.

But what’s going on in Japan and S. Korea, held up as two of the most technologically advanced nations?

One explanation is that search marketing is not having the impact it is having in other countries due to the dominance of display ad heavyweights Yahoo! in Japan and Naver in S. Korea, although search marketing has been growing strongly in S. Korea in the last couple of years, led by Naver (disclosure: a B-M client).

Another reason is almost certainly the popularity of social networks and social media sites in these markets - digital nuts that advertisers and ad networks (including Google AdSense) have yet successfully to crack.

And this is despite both markets being buttressed by healthy investments in mobile marketing (see also Dentsu’s take on internet advertising prospects, with mobile advertising and mobile search advertising split out).

Third, while we might expect to see stronger online growth in more ‘traditional’ media markets such as Indonesia and Thailand, internet marketing is expected to account for no more than 1.5% of media spend in either market (cf. internet advertising in the most ‘advanced’ markets - Sweden and the UK - already weighs in at 25%+ of total media share).

However, the report does not include non-’measured’ media such as website and online community development, content development (a fair amount of which is promotional in nature - think downloads for mobile phones etc), online gaming, word-of-mouth, conversational and email marketing - areas of significant investment especially in China and N. Asia given the popularity of social media, networks and online communities.

Were it to, we might be looking at an even more encouraging set of forecasts (from a digital perspective), and further food for thought for organisations as they execute their marketing plans this year.

Interesting post on TechCrunch about the Spanish language social site Sonico. Brief recap if you do not want to read full story:

- Social networked focused on LATAM
- Over 8 million users
- Ranks 167 on Alexa
- Recently launched Portuguese version
- Tremendous growth in last six months

You may recall our recent Facebook post (about its Spanish version) - see the comments posted by Juan Pablo.

The blogosphere is buzzing over CNN firing a producer for blogging. The chatter ranges from conversations around freedom of speech to a dissection of his blog posts, and emotions range from anger over the unfairness of it all to glee from those who are have a differing political viewpoint. I first heard about this on Thursday, and my initial reaction was one of surprise. It seems very 2002 for a media property to fire someone over blogging, especially given blog readership and how many media outlets are encouraging their journalists to blog more. But then I read some of the producer’s posts, both on his personal blog and on Huffington Post. He covers topics with a strong personal point of view and no mincing of words, and could leave readers wondering how his personal perspective influences his work for CNN. To be fair, I don’t believe he had ever disclosed his employer on his blog, but he also didn’t have any disclaimers protecting them either.

So did he deserve to be fired? That isn’t for me to say. I’m curious to know what others think. In the meantime, it did make me realize how critical it is for companies to develop and distribute a policy on employee blogging. What are the rules of engagement, and what are the consequences for violating them? At Burson-Marsteller we encourage employees to participate in social media, although have a few guidelines that must be followed:

• If blogging personally about topics related to the PR or communications industry, we ask for a disclaimer indicating the point of view is personal and not on behalf of the firm.
• If blogging on behalf of the company, the blog must be reviewed before being launched for relevance, and then guidelines are in place around not mentioning clients without their permission, not disclosing confidential information, etc.
• We insist on full transparency when blogging on behalf of the company, and strongly recommend it for personal blogging and social media activities.
• We are willing to coach clients on topics and editorial style, but recommend they do their own writing for blogs. It really is different than other activities we conduct such as speech writing or internal communications.
• We support and abide by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics code around social media participation.

There are other points to the policy, but so much of this is common sense. Companies should develop policies with input from various groups - legal, human resources, regulatory (if applicable), digital, sales, marketing, etc. A frank outline of the risks and opportunities, with a discussion around acceptable behavior can save both companies and employees from difficult scenarios in the long run.

For the record, this post is my personal opinion, and doesn’t necessarily represent the opinions of Burson-Marsteller or WPP.

Update: This story is also covered on “For Immediate Release“. Listen here.

Today, The New York Times offers an interesting perspective into Twitter and its use for families. The author goes on to say that she had difficulty turning her children onto the new “microblog” or “multi-SMS” service:

“But I thought Twitter would be perfect for my purposes. The service allows users to text a message of up to 140 characters to an unlimited number of people simultaneously, from anywhere. Anytime.

In theory, the five members of my immediate family could use our cellphones to broadcast our locations, kind of like a G.P.S. with words.”

The problem, it appears, was trying to explain how Twitter works. (We’ve talked about Twitter before on the blog).

“To get things rolling, I sent my daughters and husband standard Twitter e-mail invitations (“slatalla wants to keep up with you on twitter”) that contained a link to the service’s home page. Then, while I sat in my car in front of my youngest daughter’s school, I sent an update on my whereabouts: “car pool dilemma will French horn and trombone both fit in a mini” Then?

Nothing.

“hello” I typed. Three minutes passed. Four. Still nothing. For the first time in the nearly 19 years since I first gave birth, no one wanted to keep tabs on me.

Then suddenly my cellphone buzzed. It was my first Twitter — a text message from Zoe, my 18-year-old daughter, how exciting — and so I eagerly opened it onscreen.

It said, “twitter?? what the hell is this?”

Like all new technologies and cool toys, early adopters prevail at first and then begin to plateau, hopefully reaching mass adoption. However, we don’t know how many users are actually within the Twitter ecosystem. “Nearly 1.2 million users visited Twitter.com in December, a 223 percent increase over the same month in the previous year, according to comScore Inc., which measures Internet traffic,” noted The Times. (Keep in mind that visitors to Twitter.com is different from registered users.) Compete shows about 550k users for Twitter.

Fellow strategist for Latin America, Felix Leander, asked “I wonder what the proportion of Twitter users are in advertising/social media and just use for fun?” I’d love to know that answer.

Last night I was talking with my wife when she received a text notification on her phone. Turns out it was our dentist’s office reminding her of an upcoming appointment - my dentist is cool, he freedives, but now he just became REALLY cool.

I have been going to his practice since 1999, and what impressed me then is that he had TVs and headphones in every room. What a pleasure to watch shark documentaries while receiving a cleaning and not having to listen to the high pitched sounds coming from the torture tools.

The office always seems to have the latest gadgets in dentistry, and while the idea of SMSing patients is nothing new, it is new to me (having actually received one), and in my mind only furthers the patient/dentist relationship. It is the complete experience that makes me feel comfortable, confident, and willing to recommend my dentist.

So here goes the shameless plug, If you live in Miami, go to: Jose R. Abadin, I wonder if I can pitch a web-redesign

A direct translation of Facebook in Spanish.

The social network launched its Español pages today. There are over 2.8 million Spanish speaking people on Facebook from Spain and Latin America making it the second most popular language. Facebook took a different approach from MySpace, who developed international sites and opened offices throughout various regions; Facebookers were asked to translate the content - over 1,500 FBers were recruited.

The Spanish pages will be populated if your IP address is “Latin” or you can choose the option in “My Account”, “Language” to change your primary language.

I wonder if Marcos Azucarcolina (Mark Zuckerberg) chose the right strategy in localizing or globalizing for that matter…I also hope the pages were not direct translations - as I did in this post

David A - what are your thoughts on this?

Behind the fanfare that was the Microsoft and Yahoo acquisition news yesterday morning as well as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s leaked financial results for 2007, Google quietly swept in with the announcement of a Social Graph API (Application Program Interface) for the web.

Brad Fitzpatrick, who was a driving force behind the promise and success of LiveJournal, recently jumped ship to Google to spearhead a project that details the web’s many social inter-connections. For Fitzpatrick, it was turning the web from a medium of information sharing and gathering, to one of communal value. Here’s his problem statement from August 17, 2007 before he joined Google:

There are an increasing number of new “social applications” as well as traditional application which either require the “social graph” or that could provide better value to users by utilizing information in the social graph. What I mean by “social graph” is a the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related, as Wikipedia describes and I talk about in more detail later. Unfortunately, there doesn’t exist a single social graph (or even multiple which interoperate) that’s comprehensive and decentralized. Rather, there exists hundreds of disperse social graphs, most of dubious quality and many of them walled gardens.

Currently if you’re a new site that needs the social graph (e.g. dopplr.com) to provide one fun & useful feature (e.g. where are your friends traveling and when?), then you face a much bigger problem then just implementing your main feature. You also have to have usernames, passwords (or hopefully you use OpenID instead), a way to invite friends, add/remove friends, and the list goes on. So generally you have to ask for email addresses too, requiring you to send out address verification emails, etc. Then lost username/password emails. etc, etc. If I had to declare the problem statement succinctly, it’d be: People are getting sick of registering and re-declaring their friends on every site., but also: Developing “Social Applications” is too much work.

This is exactly the reason why Google swooped up Fitzpatrick after leaving SixApart. He’s right, people are getting frustrated using numerous usernames and passwords to sign-up for various social networks, blogs and wikis. But isn’t the “walled garden” approach the bread and butter for Facebook? Read more:

Facebook’s answer seems to be that the world should just all be Facebook apps. While Facebook is an amazing platform and has some amazing technology, there’s a lot of hesitation in the developer / “Web 2.0″ community about being slaves to Facebook, dependent on their continued goodwill, availability, future owners, not changing the rules, etc. That hesitation I think is well-founded. A centralized “owner” of the social graph is bad for the Internet. I’m not saying anybody should ban Facebook, though! Far from it. It’s a great product, and I love it, but the graph needs to exist outside of Facebook. MySpace also has a lot of good data, but not all of it. Likewise LiveJournal, Digg, Twitter, Zooomr, Pownce, Friendster, Plaxo, the list goes on. More important is that any one of these sites shouldn’t own it; nobody/everybody should. It should just exist.

With this in mind, Fitzpatrick and Google have created, in theory, the most efficient and disruptive mechanism for social sites and applications we have seen. However, as Nick O’Neill points out, the numbers game don’t favor Google’s initiative: with over 70 million users on Facebook, the Social Graph API is limited to public spaces such as Twitter, SixApart and Flickr.

Until the day where social spaces on the web become open, this API will stay dormant. However, if this does change, Google and Fitzpatrick are certainly the ones to do it. What do you think?