The Power of Influence

Facebook becomes a democracy

In a post by Mark Zuckerberg on the facebook blog he outlines how they are going to invite users into the pocess of developing TOS in the future .. smart move

Quote/Extract:

"Beginning today, we are giving you a greater opportunity to voice your opinion over how Facebook is governed. We're starting this off by publishing two new documents for your review and comment. The first is the Facebook Principles, which defines your rights and will serve as the guiding framework behind any policy we'll consider—or the reason we won't consider others. The second document is the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which will replace the existing Terms of Use. With both documents, we tried hard to simplify the language so you have a clear understanding of how Facebook will be run. We've created separate groups for each document so you can read them and provide comments and feedback. You can find the Facebook Principles here and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities here. Before these new proposals go into effect, you'll also have the ability to vote for or against proposed changes.

History tells us that systems are most fairly governed when there is an open and transparent dialogue between the people who make decisions and those who are affected by them. We believe history will one day show that this principle holds true for companies as well, and we're looking to moving in this direction with you."

Who is taking new media (digital and social) seriously? Answer P&G

At least for one night, Cincinnati is becoming the next Silicon Valley, as Procter & Gamble Co. summons the biggest names in digital and social media -- including top executives from Google, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter -- to its headquarters March 9 for a so-called Digital Night.

A P&G spokeswoman confirmed the gathering, referred to by some as "Digital Hack Night," though she said the "hack" part had been added by people in the digital-media world and did not refer to any interest by P&G in hacking digital devices or media.

A "Hack Night," one person said, sometimes refers in the industry to team-building efforts aimed at developing quick solutions or work-arounds, which, in this case, likely will be kept confidential by P&G.

The get-together in some ways resembles the Future of Advertising Stakeholders Summit P&G held in 1998, closer to the start of the digital age, bringing top media, agency and even competitor marketers to Cincinnati. The difference this time is that while agency and media executives are invited, competitors apparently aren't.

Keeping it quiet
Indeed, P&G has been relatively hush-hush about the event, asking at least some participants to keep it confidential and making invitations good for the invited person only so they're not transferable within companies. It's also not issuing an open invitation to its own marketing executives to the event, according to one person familiar with it, who said P&G is probably trying to keep attendance at manageable levels.

"It is about learning and engagement, and we're inviting in a broad range of digital people," the P&G spokeswoman said, including agencies and technology providers. "It's not just Silicon Valley," she said. "It's broader than that. And it's all about us being exposed to it, learning and engaging."

The effort, if nothing else, appears to settle the question of which side of the digital divide Marc Pritchard, who became global marketing officer last year, will occupy. It comes as P&G has been cutting marketing spending broadly in recent quarters, though largely maintaining internet spending.

Source: AdAge

The information based shopper

From WSJ:  With so much attention on psychological marketing these days -- finding new ways to tap into people's heads -- perhaps the single most neglected trend out there is the move towards more hard-nosed information-based shopping and purchasing.

The raw data for this can be found here

While elites were busy shoveling money into Madoff's black box these past few years, strapped consumers have been poring over product spec sheets, third-party reviews and expert blog sites. This past holiday season they watched every dollar. A special kind of consumer has taken a major role in the marketplace -- the new info shopper. These people just can't buy anything unless they first look it up online and get the lowdown.

These shoppers have the Internet at work, typically hold information-based or office-park jobs, have some college or grad school, and are often making ends meet with two jobs, kids, and pets on a middle or upper-middle-class income.

Microtrends
 Forget about huge, sweeping megaforces. The biggest trends today are micro: small, under-the-radar patterns of behavior which take on real power when propelled by modern communications and an increasingly independent-minded population. In the U.S., one percent of the nation, or three million people, can create new markets for a business, spark a social movement, or produce political change. This column is about identifying these important new niches, and acting on that knowledge.
They have become highly suspicious of many TV ads: in a shoppers survey we did, 78% of them said that ads no longer have enough information they need. So many of them search online for virtually everything. Window shoppers have become "Windows shoppers." They want, in the phrase often attributed to Dragnet's Joe Friday, "just the facts, ma'am."

Of course, there is still a healthy role for big emotional brand appeals and mega-advertising campaigns. For every trend there is a counter trend. But that's not the real new thing in consumer behavior.

A whopping 92% of respondents said they had more confidence in information they seek out online than anything coming from a salesclerk or other source. They believe the information they find, not in the information that is spoon-fed to them, and the vast number of clicks today prove that they really are devoting time and energy to ferreting out detailed info before they buy.

A good example of how information can transform a marketplace is the Dyson vacuum cleaner. Founder and inventor James Dyson took a commonplace item andtransformed it with new scientific principles. Sales took off -- and changed the marketplace for vacuum cleaners.

When we asked shoppers whether they would do online research before buying a vacuum cleaner today, a surprising 58% said that's exactly what they would do. He helped turn vacuum-cleaner buying into a largely information-based marketplace.

We have seen many of the big market areas convert to an information-driven model -- cars, homes, personal computers and medical care are areas where nearly 4 in 5 shoppers say they gather information on their own from the Web before buying. "Do-it-yourself doctors" (that is, info patients) show up at their doctor with the Web-derived diagnosis in hand, and a list of the medicines they need prescribed. Customers appear at the car dealership with the wholesale price and the model already picked out.

Information-seeking is not just an activity, it's a way of looking at the world. New info shoppers are proud of the progress they have made in putting facts over pablum. More companies should treat their customers as Dyson did and let them in on the secrets of their unique success. And they should invest more than ever in helping form their consumers into citizen corps, arming them with PCs, cameras and even asking them to use the phone's new video cameras to document their product usage and put them online.

But how many marketers today work back from what this new consumer is thinking and doing? Not many. Based on the advertising budgets in the U.S. where a typical company will spend 60 times as much on advertising than they spend on generating publicity, most lag way behind in creating a new model of consumers and the steps they take before they buy.

Some industries got it right away. Movies and restaurants have huge word of mouth and impulse components, but they are also very information-driven. Zagat's pioneered the concept of survey ratings and reviews, and smart restaurants use them. We're seeing the same in entertainment, where Metacritic and others provide professional and customer ratings of every movie.

Now this trend is spreading down the product chain. In our survey, 24% said they are doing online research before buying shampoo. The Breck Girl is being replaced by a shopping bot.

And they have questions. How does this shampoo work on different hair types, thicknesses and colors? Are the bottles recyclable? Has the product been tested on animals?

It used to be that the only time people expected 30-page, pre-purchase, inspection reports was when they were buying a house. Now some people want them just to buy a tube of toothpaste.

The point is that advertising isn't just moving to the Web, it's got to grapple with an entirely new kind of shopper and way of shopping. Marketers now have to balance traditional media, online media, and content that is generated by experts, bloggers and consumers themselves. An astonishing 70% of Americans now say they consult product reviews or consumer ratings before they make their buying decisions. Sixty-two percent say they spend at least 30 minutes online every week to help them decide what and whether to buy. Among Americans under 45, that number shoots up to 73%. Seventy-three percent -- that's more than four times the percentage in that age group who go to church every week. For some, smart shopping is more than a hobby. It's a religion.

Information aggregation sites – the ones that don't generate content themselves, but link to others' content, weaving a story about the industry and its products -- will become even more important. Much as the Drudge Report tells its readers where to find stories they will like, so consumer aggregation sites could grow and do the same for car buyers, PC buyers, and other consumer groups. Most of the sites so far have been too cheesy to really catch on.

Information shopping also means manufacturers have to get back to generating more information on their products, even offbeat factoids that are highly memorable if not always useful. Timex sold a lot of watches by showing its watches were still ticking after being thrown into a washing machine. To catch the eye of the info-shopping consumer, manufacturers should start hauling their wares up to Mt. Everest, drop them out of windows, put them in boiling water and reporting on how they do. In an info-seeking world, facts can again become the great differentiator.

New Info Shoppers are bigger than a microtrend. They represent a broad shift in the marketplace brought about by the Internet, higher education, and changing economic times. But the question is when is the marketplace is going to really catch up to them.

Amex says "We dont want you"

Similar to the Verizon story I posted about +6 montsh ago where Verizon fired 30,000 hard to please low profitability customers

American Express is offering some customers US$300 if they'll pay off their bills and cancel their credit cards. It's making the offer only to those it no longer wants to do business with. American Express says it will notify those eligible for the offer by mail.

Reported here

Why? risk reduction and NPS improvement - but is dumping your detractors the right way to lift you NPS score?  Probably only as part of a very carefully thought through bigger plan

I love the future ...

How's this for a really novel UI ...  Siftables

Broadband penetration hits 99% & makes Singapore the most wired nation in the world

Singapore has become the most wired country in the world as broadband penetration hit   99.9 per cent in the city-state at the end of December 2008.

The figure, supplied by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), means Singapore now ranks ahead of some of the world’s most connected countries including South Korea (92 per cent), Hong Kong (83.8 per cent) and Taiwan (76.8 per cent).

The figure also beats the Government's 10-year Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) masterplan to achieve 90 per cent penetration rate by 2015, which was set in 2006 to transform the country and economy by promoting the adoption of infocomm.

The near 100 per cent penetration rate does not mean all households in Singapore have broadband access as subscribers hooked on to portable modems are included as well. The count, however, does exclude subscriptions to 3G mobile data plans and Wi-Fi hotspots that are not home-based.

The high growth of broadband penetration in the Lion City is attributed to lower costs for higher surfing speeds - brought on by competitive pricing and broadband packages by telcos such as SingTel, StarHub and M1 here.

In Asia-Pacific, Singapore also boasts the highest reach in social networking.

According to comScore, Singapore led the region in terms of penetration, with more than 74 per cent of its online population having visited a social networking site in December 2008.

Social networking visitors in Singapore also posted the most visits per visitor to the category with an average of 19 during the month.

Social Networking in Asia Takes off

ASIA is experiencing a social-media boom - news and information spread, people connect and star bloggers rise and fall.

A staggering 456 million users in Asia - just under a third of the world's online population - have embraced social media, according to a regional study released recently by marketing agency OgilvyOne Asia Pacific.

Its study, Can Brands Have A Social Life?, highlights the vast differences in the adoption and use of social media by people in 12 Asian countries.

Here are nine case studies:

SOUTH KOREA

What's hot: Ubiquitous broadband access and competitive telco pricings have allowed users to create and post online content via high-quality mobile phones.

Favourite activities: Gaming, buying of digital music and sharing information on indigenous Wikipedia-like sites such as Naver.

Lineage II, Korea's most popular online game, has a reach of 14 million users ? double that of World Of Warcraft. Successful online gamers are paid professionals with celebrity status.

Choice platforms: Home- grown search engines Naver and Daum.

Favourite social-networking site: Cyworld, with 48 per cent of the country's market share. It is also the world's second-largest music-and-video retailer behind iTunes, earning a sales revenue of US$100 million (S$150 million) to date from song downloads.

CHINA

What's hot: YouTube-like video-broadcasting platforms with faster speeds than those in the United States.

What's not: Access via mobile phone. Less than 15 per cent of mobile subscribers use their devices to go online.

Favourite activities: Digital music (84.5 per cent of consumers), videos (71 per cent) and online games (58.3 per cent).

Choice platforms: Home-grown music-and-video broadcasting platforms such as youku.com and tudou.com, which garner up to 100 million views daily, and Bulletin Board Systems, with 10 million posts daily.

Favourite social-networking site: No company dominates the market, unlike in South Korea. Indigenous sites like Instant Messenger company Tencent and Facebook-like Xiaonei.com are favoured.

JAPAN

Favourite activity: Blogging - Japan has the highest blog readership in the world. Anonymous blogging and the creation of avatars indicate that the Japanese do not like to speak out or be seen as confrontational.

Choice platforms: Indigenous blogsites such as Hatena diary, search engines such as Kizasi.jp and social-networking sites.

Favourite social-networking site: Indigenous social networking site Mixi dominates, with 80 per cent market share.

But the Japanese prefer to maintain close personal relationships on social-networking sites, unlike their Western counterparts.

HONG KONG

Social-media scene: Even though over 72 per cent of its population has an online presence, social media is still quite a passive exercise for the majority of Hong Kongers.

Surprisingly, political blogs or citizen journalism, which are increasingly popular in mainland China, are practically non-existent, thanks to a relatively open society. Hong Kongers don't yet feel that they have to treasure or tap these new outlets to get heard.

Favourite activities: Home-grown forums, entertainment sites and celebrity blogs like those of Hong Kong stars Edison Chen and Eason Chan.

Favourite social-networking site: Split between Facebook - frequented by Western-educated users - and the locally targeted Xanga.

INDIA

Social-networking scene: India is one of the fastest-growing online markets with 60 million users, and is projected to grow around 18 per cent by 2011.

What's hot: Online and off- line tie-up of TV, Internet and mobile phones into integrated multichannel social media.

What's not: Blogging. Barely any local online content is developed, but social media is expected to take a new life in coming months with the launch of YouTube in India.

Favourite activity: Social networking, entertainment, finding matrimonial matches and job searches. Around 73 per cent of consumers use the Internet to find new jobs, even higher than for those searching for news.

SINGAPORE

What's hot: Over 80 per cent broadband penetration and ultra-high-speed digital-highway infrastructure. A high level of proficiency in English has helped Singaporeans to adopt Western social-media behaviours very quickly.

Favourite activities: Blogging, social networking and forums like hardwarezone.com

Favourite social-networking sites: Friendster - with 940,000 unique visitors per month - and Facebook, with 495,000 unique visitors per month. Social networks are a culturally acceptable way for Singaporeans to connect, and they are the most likely people in Asia to check out other people's profiles on a social network.

THAILAND

What's hot: Citizen-journalism blogs. Big events such as the opposition coup in 2006 have seen sociopolitical blogs transform into powerful news-sharing sources.

What's not: Internet penetration is at around only 20.5 per cent, with 13.4 million users. There are around only one million broadband subscribers in Thailand.

Favourite sites: News-related portals such as Pantip.com/cafe and Manager.co.th.

MALAYSIA

Social-media scene: Still in its nascent stages, with an estimated 11 million basic social-media users out of 13.5 million Internet users.

With tight government control over traditional media, Malaysians use the Internet to express themselves.

Social sites such as Facebook and Malaysiakini also play key roles in garnering support for political campaigns.

What's hot: Current-affairs blogs by established bloggers such as Kenny Sia. To subsidise the trend in blogging, blog- advertising agencies have emerged, such as Advertlets.

Favourite social-networking site: Friendster dominates the market with around three million unique visitors a month.

INDONESIA

Social-networking scene: While Internet usage is projected to grow four-fold by 2010, broadband penetration is still virtually non-existent. Around 94 per cent of consumers still tune in to TV for breaking news.

Blogs are starting to be used as a means of expression but government legislation introduced last March prescribes severe penalties for slander.

Favourite activities: Research, e-mail and instant chat.

11% of Adult Americans Twitter

More than one in ten (11%) online adults in the US say they have used Twitter - or a similar service – to share updates about themselves or view updates about others, and those who use Twitter have a greater affinity for mobile devices, according to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The most recent Pew study on the topic found that the number of tweeters, which was gauged in December 2008, appears to be growing quickly. In contrast to December’s 11%, only 9% said they had used Twitter in November 2008, and 6% of internet users responded yes to a similar question in May 2008.

Younger Users Tweet More

The research also found that, not surprisingly, younger internet users lead the way in using Twitter and similar services. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18-24 have used Twitter and similar services, as have 20% of online adults age 25-34.

Use of these services drops off steadily after age 35 with 10% of 35 to 44 year olds and 5% of 45 to 54 year olds using Twitter, Pew said. The decline is even more stark among older internet users; 4% of 55-64 year olds and 2% of those 65 and older use Twitter.

Given the youth of most Twitter users, it is not surprising to find that online Americans who live in lower-income households are more likely to use Twitter than more affluent Americans, said Pew.  Some 17% of internet users in households earning less than $30K annually tweet and update their status, compared with 10% of those earning more than $75K.

Wireless Users More Likely to Tweet

Wireless internet users also are more likely to be users of Twitter and other status updating services; 14% of users who access the internet wirelessly via a laptop, handheld or cell phone have used Twitter or the like, compared with 6% of users who go online but do not do so wirelessly.

Twitter Entwined with Social Media

The use of Twitter is highly intertwined with the use of other social media; both blogging and social network use increase the likelihood that an individual also uses Twitter, according to the study.  Adults who use online social networks are much more likely to say that they have used Twitter or some other service to update their status and read the status updates of others. Nearly one quarter (23%) of social network users say they have ever Twittered or used a similar service.

In comparison, just 4% of those who do not use social networks have ever used Twitter or updated their status online. The correlation between status updates and social network use is less surprising given that many social network sites offer opportunities to post status updates and read the updates of others, Pew said.

Blogging shows a similar pattern to social media: 27% of bloggers tweet, compared with just 10% of those who do not keep a blog. Overall, 13% of internet users have created a blog.

Characteristics of “Tweeters”

The demographic profile of Twitter users as a whole reveals some additional details about who uses Twitter and how they communicate and consume information, the study found.

Key findings about Twitter users:

Though Twitter users are young, their median age is 31. In comparison, the median age of a MySpace user is 27, a Facebook user is 26 and a LinkedIn user is 40.7.

Twitter users are slightly more racially and ethnically diverse than is the full US population, most likely because they are younger. Younger Americans are a more ethnically and racially diverse group than is the full population.

Twitter users are slightly more likely to live in urban areas, with 35% of Twitter users living in urban areas (compared with 29% of all internet users) and just 9% of tweeters and status updaters living in rural areas, compared with 17% of internet users.

Twitter users and status updaters are much more likely to be using wireless technologies - laptops, handhelds and cell phones - for internet access, or cell phones for text messaging, the research found. More than three-quarters (76%) of Twitter users use the internet wirelessly - either on a laptop with a wireless connection, or via PDA, handheld or cell phone. In comparison, 57% of those who go online but do not use Twitter, and 59% of internet users as a whole connect to the internet wirelessly.

Cell phone ownership among Twitter users is comparable to the online population as a whole, but Twitter users are more likely to use their cell phone to text and go online. More than four in five (82%) Twitter users have a cell phone and use it to send text messages, while 59% of those who go online but do not use Twitter (and 61% of the internet-using population at large) own a cell phone and use it to send text messages.

Twitter users are more likely to use their cell phones to connect to the internet; fully two in five (40%) Twitterers with cell phones use the device to connect to the internet, while one quarter (24%) of those who go online but do not use Twitter do the same.
Twitter Users Consume News on Mobile Devices

Along with communicating extensively via untethered mobile devices, Twitter users are more likely to consume news and information on these devices as well, Pew found. For many Twitter users, learning about and sharing relevant and recent nuggets of information is a primary utility of the service. While Twitter users are just as likely as others to consume news on any given day, they are more likely to consume it on mobile devices and less likely to engage with news via more traditional outlets. Tweeters are less likely to read a printed copy of a newspaper, but more likely to read a newspaper online (76% vs. 60% of non-Twitter users), and more likely to read a news story on a cell phone (14% vs. 6%) or on a smart phone (17% vs. 7%).

A similar pattern holds for video news consumption. On any given day, Twitter users are just as likely as others to watch news on a TV, and just as likely to watch video news on a computer, but more likely to watch a news video on a cell phone (6% vs. 1%) or on a smart phone (8% vs. 1%).

Tweeters Read Blogs

Regardless of the platform, Pew also found that Twitter users are also significant consumers of blog content. Some 21% read someone else’s blog ‘yesterday’ and 57% of Twitterers have ever read a blog. By comparison, 9% of those who go online but do not Twitter read someone else’s blog yesterday, and 29% have ever read a blog.

Twitter users also keep blogs at a greater rate than the overall online population; 29% of Twitter users have ever created a blog, and 8% worked on a blog ‘yesterday.’ In contrast, 11% of internet users have created a blog and 3% are working on their blog on any given day.

PDF of article here

75% of Europeans use Social Networking Sites – UK tops the list at 79.8%

I wish I could find data like this for Asia – anyone got any pointers?

Of the 282.7 million European internet users ages 15+ who went online via a home or work computer in December 2008, 211 million visited a social networking site, representing a penetration of 74.6%, according to data from comScore’s World Metrix.

Of the 16 individual European countries included in the study, the UK (79.8%) and Spain (73.7%) had the highest social-networking penetration. Norway (58.9%) and Austria (49.7%) had the lowest.

Crawl walk run ...

Here is nice simple explanation of how to "get going" in social media .. showing you the kind of activities and sequence that your brand should be engaging with.