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RSSHere's an easy way to understand it: marketers once aimed to have users "grab" a brand's widget and "place" it within their social media profile. But now, with feeds increasingly becoming the center of the social media experience at the expense of users maintaining and visiting profile pages, the goal instead is to share the links to branded content through feeds. Instead of publishing profile pages for their friends to come visit, users are granted access by their friends to program content that is fed (pun intended) directly to them.
OK, so now you can think of the world of social media as a world of millions of people programming content for friends, co-workers and total strangers, starting conversations and directing traffic. The question is how you get a critical mass of people to program your branded content into their feeds. Where the content lives is no longer important, as every destination is a mouse click away from the feed, most often behind a bit.ly URL. Add FacebookConnect and the other single login competitors that we talked about last week to a world of feeds, and we are fast approaching a world where destination doesn't matter. Everything is one click away -- AND your information and social graph come with you.
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You have to understand what's happening before taking on the considerable task of what role marketing should and can play.
Two must-reads this week:
1. Randall Rothenberg (Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO) discussing the battle between creative and media on the blog I, A Bee.
2. Garrick Schmitt (Razorfish Group VP) with the best "why social media matters to brands" presentation I have ever seen.
Thoughts on Social Media 2.0? Or is the feed and portable ID (and social graph) really just Web 3.0?
I appreciate everyone's thoughts. Leave a comment and add to the conversation, or hit me up on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joemarchese
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@ Steve - The idea of the widget being ported into the feed is a great point. Many people love the ability to enjoy a youtube video without having to click away, so point taken. You'll notice that I couch my statement in the first paragraph by saying "nearly" as certain content creators will need the ability to embed content in their pages, looking to offer a better overall experience, but they are increasingly the "head" and not the tail. I agree that being a "social media company" is a skill set that translates to proper usage of facebook connect and overall implementation of social media strategies. Least I forget, SocialVibe has millions of widgets out in the wild, they do great things, but the reality of the value to marketers is in the conversations generated, within those widgets (past) and within feeds (next) and onto whatever comes next.
@ Alex - As far as the destination not mattering, you are right that the content has to live somewhere, all I am saying is it doesn't matter as much where. i.e. It doesn't have to be in facebook in order for people to engage, with the click of a link and the usage of facebook connect, people can have an even better experience, with no more effort.
Hub-and-spoke widgets (MyBlogLog, WidgetBucks, etc.) will continue to thrive because they are functional and specific to the user/site. I do believe that the feed/stream/river/whateveryouwanttocallit has removed the need for widgets to have viral functionality, as once someone initially shares a widget into Facebook or Twitter, the virality occurs by having the widget jump from one user's social graph to another.
I'd also argue your statement about destinations not mattering. The links that go into the stream have to lead to somewhere, right? As not all links are tied to objects like videos and images which can be rendered within the stream.
And now onto the Widget. Dead, not yet. Top of mind in late 2009, no. Part of the 2010 MEDIA MIX, ???
Best, Jim
Once Facebook moved away from applications and focused on the feed, many of these applications got pushed to the back burner and the "widget" paradigm with them.
An astute observation and a shift that's going on every day.