There is nothing like a nine-month break from work to give you a fresh perspective on your discipline. In the world of digital media, where new hot sites and fads come and go quickly, I was afraid that I would be caught off guard when the question came up “what’s hot right now for digital?”. Yet, as I catch up with my colleagues and industry experts, the same web 2.0 suspects are talked about as nine months ago: Facebook, Twitter, mobile communications, etc …

What this reveals for me is that the key to digital media is not to know what the latest website is, or which social network or virtual world to enter, but instead to understand that their growth is due to some fundamental underlying societal trends. These trends – transparency, individuality, connection and knowledge – are the ones that every company should keep in mind when developing a communication program, offline and online.

The need for Transparency was already engrained in the demand for corporate social responsibility that emerged in the 90’s. Then, consumers required companies to be transparent about their impact on the environment and society. Now, consumers expect them to communicate in a clear and frank manner with them about everything, financial results, products, management… The same demand is also made of politicians, institutions, charities…

This is why consumers and citizens now put their trust in Individuals above all. Reviews on travel websites, opinions by a well-liked blogger, a quick text from a friend about a great product, will carry more weight as they appear free of any corporate involvement.

This is multiplied by the power of Connection. One piece of advice from an individual is interesting, but the same repeated by a community of trusted individuals definitely clinches the deal. Communities are the new social space where people build relationships. As people live in a dispersed world, both geographically and in terms of time zones, they re-create a social place online where they can meet regardless of the physical location they occupy and the time they can connect with each other.

This contributes to a new way of creating and consuming information. People build their Knowledge base via a mix of personal opinion that they gather on the net or via friends with what they get from traditional media in print and TV. Their knowledge is also more immediate. No longer do they want to wait for the six o’clock news (in the UK) or the “20h” (in France), they seek it via Twitter (see the recent explosion in the USA or the China earthquake rumoured to have first be told via the microblogging site) or their mobile phone.

So here you go: do you have what makes your consumers TICK? Be aware, they are already Ticking about you and your products. Have a look here: and input your company or brand’s name…

Offline the Latin culture is very warm and social – this seems to be translating online. According to Comscore and Analytics 2.0 the number of people creating profiles on social networks has increased by 103% from Jan 07 – Jan 08. The study included Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico.

Some interesting figures:
• Orkut - 12.9 million (up 27% from 10.1 million in ‘07)
• Sonico - 7.3 million (Sonico launched during the second half of ‘07)
• hi5 - 4.2 million (up 72% from 2.2 million in Jan. ‘07)
• MySpace - around 3 million (13 million users in all markets analyzed)
• Facebook - 2.2 million (up 4,152% from the Jan. ‘07 count of 52,000)

Says Ramiro Prudencio, Managing Director at Burson-Marsteller:

“The growth of social networks in Latin America is extremely important for those of us who manage brands and issues. People are engaged, sharing information and shaping public opinion – especially younger internet users – through these networks. If practitioners and clients think they will drive successful and effective communications programs through traditional media alone, they will be missing a tremendous opportunity. Moreover, there is an opportunity to quickly apply what we’ve learned from working in the US and Europe over the past couple of years as social networks have taken off, and offer clients unique insight as to how things are likely to trend in Latin America.”

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…

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?

It is likely that you have heard about the social network Hi5, then again maybe not. While it does not rank in the top 10 social networking sites in the US - it does rank very high in most Latin American countries (in some even as the top online destination). I am not sure if there is any real explanation for this, Google’s social site Orkut is a favorite in Brazil. Neither of these networks were specifically developed for the South American markets…they have just been “overtaken” by them.

I have a profile on both: my Hi5 network is made up of my friends I made in Venezuela and Bolivia while my Orkut network has all my Brazilian friends I met while working at Terra.com. A little secret - most of them are on Facebook too. The question is, will any one country or region for that matter take over Facebook. Honor Gunday, the founder of one the largest social networks in Turkey, Zurna, coined this possible phenomenon as Orkutization.

It is always worth while to check out which social sites are the most visited in your country - you may be surprised and find additional communication opportunities.

Two recent surveys highlight the state and nature of internet usage in mainland China:

The first, from CNNIC (aka the official China Internet Network Information Centre)’s ‘Survey Report on Blogs in China 2007′ (eng summary), reports that China now boasts some 47m bloggers, or one quarter of internet users in the country. Of these, a remarkable 36% can be classified as active bloggers. Interestingly, female  bloggers out-strip males by 57% to 43%.

The second (press release), by fellow WPP agency JWT, digs deeper into quite why China’s youth are taking to living their lives online with such relish (in contrast to young Americans, who are significantly less enthusiastic). The reasons given are not new, but are worth repeating:

 - in a environment where freedom of speech remains tightly controlled, the internet provides access to a range of information and opinion they would otherwise stuggle to find

- beyond this, China’s relatively (at least, relative to its mainstream media) unregulated internet and ability to post anonymously allows the Chinese to express themselves and gain a voice in ways they would not and can not in their offline lives

- the internet enables people with a personal and public outlet to discover themselves, develop their self-identity and experiment with different identities.

- in a highly structured society, online communities, games and other channels makes it easy to meet and build relationships with others with similar interests.

Fortunately for the authorities, the great majority of time online is spent on entertainment-related activities - celebrities, music, fashion are all the rage. In contrast to western style blogging, often done for personal brand-building purposes, bloggers in China restrict their output to records of personal thoughts and for their own pleasure - very rarely do you meet Chinese who promote their blogs, even to their friends.

Yet, the stirrings of a more activist citizenry are emerging. Last year witnessed a mobile-phone based campaign against the building of a new chemical plant in Xiamen via mobile phone and Zola Zhou’s well-publicised (online) lone battle against the destruction of the Chongqing ‘nail house’.

Like most surveys in China, the surveys require qualification: China’s internet population remains highly skewed to the top tier urban centres as the internet has not yet hit the country’s massive rural base (indeed, internet penetration remains limited to c.12% of China’s population - CNNIC).

But when it does, the social and cultural implications may well be startling.

Happy New Year! I can’t believe it is 2008 already, and wish you all the best this year.

I’ve been reading a lot of year-end wrap-ups and many, many blogs with detailed predictions on what we should all expect in 2008. As interesting as all that is, I’ve decided to dedicate my first post of the year to resolutions. My resolutions last year were largely work-related and i stuck to them for the most part. This year, my resolutions are more about balance - finding that work/personal balance that is often quite blurred for those of us who work in digital media.

I find it a challenge, and quite honestly would love to hear if/how others deal. I love social media, and spend a fair amount of time online from a personal perspective. The time I spend online is largely self-imposed, and I’m not complaining. I’m into wine and love reading the wine blogs or browsing online to find a hidden gem. I travel a bit and am always online researching my next trip and sharing stories with others. Those of you who follow my twitter (personal: www.twitter.com/erinbyrne and work: www.twitter.com/BMdigital) know that i could use a twelve-step-twitter program. I’ve been known to talk to my BFF on Google Talk late into the night over a glass of wine, and consume everything i can get my hands on relating to digital, politics, wine, fitness, music, quilting, and New England sports teams. Some people ask me how I can always be online. Duh - I love my blackberry and my iphone. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that the lines are completely blurred. What started out as research for my role as a digital strategist has become a hobby over the last few years. As I write this I have eight computer programs running, twelve browser tabs loaded, and three work emails started. It will be another hour or so before I even consider winding down, and that is largely due to the multi-tasking. So, my New Year’s resolution is to reclaim balance, and definitely to focus. When I’m working, I’m going to work. (Yes, that means I won’t be playing so much scrabulous during the day.) And, when I’m goofing off online for fun I will pass on the work-related activities.

This may or may not make a difference in my output, but at a minimum it should be interesting. If nothing else, it will be an exercise in self-control. Share your thoughts, and I’ll post an update on my progress in a few months.

I read on CNN yesterday about Yahoo and Google planning to offer social networking applications through their email page functions. Both companies have already made significant strides in allowing users to customize their home pages and aggregate content and functionality from various sites into a personal portal page.  However, I think that email is at odds with social networking given that email is inherently a personal communication.  Sure, I can block content from being seen by the world on social networking sites, but content is largely available to people I’ve marked as friends. Email is often more transactional then social, and that is a significant difference. I get the point about my email contacts being the genesis of my social graph, but no offense, there are some folks in my contacts database that I prefer to communicate with only on an as necessary and transactional basis.  Now, having widgets that tie my social networking information into my Google home page would be something I’d really go for. I’m all for the idea of a centralized home page that is aggregated, and eventually curated, just for and by me.  But leave my email account alone.

B-M has released a new survey indicating that ‘e-fluentials’ (active and involved individuals who make up around 15% of internet users) in the US are increasingly concerned that hired third parties are leaving biased opinions on consumer web sites.

As opinion leaders, e-fluentials shape many others’ perceptions of brands and products, so their concerns over diminishing trust in the online environment might be considered a harbinger of things to come.

On the surface, such a theory goes against the grain of received wisdom - after all, the internet is super-charging world-of-mouth, that most trusted and impactful of all forms of communication according to multiple surveys (see here, for example), and online consumer opinions are regularly rated as more reliable than other types of marketing, notably advertising of almost any description.

A combination of factors may be eroding this trust, from the open access models adopted by MySpace and other social networks that have made them manna to paedophiles to knowledge that marketers are pulling all sorts of tricks to gain people’s attention, some of them below the belt.

Yet, according to a recent Nielsen survey, this scepticism has yet to reach Asia, with users in seven Asian markets most likely to trust recommendations from consumers, notably Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, India, South Korea and the Philippines.

The study also suggests that Asians (especially South Koreans and Taiwanese) also place a high level of trust on consumer-generated content such as blogs - despite the persistant popularity of bulletin boards, where users are often anonymous and which account for higher levels of traffic than blogs.

One reason for this may be Asians’ respect for authority, a common cultural trait across the region, another could be distrust of print and broadcast media in many markets, which is seen as little more than government propaganda.

Yet another might be the comparatively high levels of security and privacy provided by homegrown social networks such as Cyworld and Mixi, where users can communicate safe in the knowledge that they won’t be pestered by unwanted intruders.

All the more reason for high levels of transparency and authenticity when planning online PR and word of mouth programs in the region.

I had an interesting day in Washington DC yesterday, spending time with Andy Mirsky of Mirsky and Company at his “Digital Lunch Group.” Every month, local members of the media, law and policy institutes meet and discuss current issues surrounding the intersection of digital life, business, and of course, politics. 

I had the chance to share some thinking regarding how digital fits into integrated communications planning, and more importantly, the opportunity for brands who are willing to become conversational and engage in social media.  I believe the risk to companies today is in NOT participating, and we discussed different ways that companies can scale their involvement.  Our goal (as reporters, lawyers, policy makers or public relations professionals) is relatively simple in theory but difficult in practice: engage in digital dialogue that influences as opposed to controls. 

We also talked a bit about the tendency for marketers to latch on to the shiniest toy - the toy right now being social networks.  Luckily, social networking sites and blogs exist to do such that. MySpace, Facebook and Bebo offer numerous possibilities for ownership of content and advertisements. Companies should not rush out to build their own network without considering the possibility first of participating where others are already congregating.

Michael Bassik, Vice President of Internet Strategy at MSHC Partners, Inc., explained how the web has become a pivotal political communication medium and targeted ad-serving database for 2008 US presidential contenders. Specifically, as ad-spending continues to increase on a yearly basis, political organizations and players are beginning to see the potential return on engagement and ownership in online media, although are still quite hesitant to embrace the opportunity at at spending levels that would be considered best practices by mainstream marketers. His presentation was compelling, and it made me look even more forward to seeing how the election plays out from a digital marketing perspective.

Great discussion this afternoon and thank you Andy for the invitation. For more information regarding the Digital Media Lunch Group and its next meeting at Burson-Marsteller’s office in Washington, DC, please contact Andy Mirsky at (202) 339-0303.