Weekly Review - Facebook, Privacy, mCommerce and Freemium Apps

This week we’ll look at four topical items:

1. Changes to Facebook
2. Privacy Peering Forward
3. Mobile Commerce (mCommerce)
4. Freemium Apps

(1) Changes to Facebook

Last Friday we highlighted the changes being made to Facebook today relevant to developers and Facebook users, and the launch of Facebook “Places” last week.

“Places” has created a wave of new interest in the existing location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. Here’s an interesting comparison with comments from users as to which service they’d use for such services. Certainly arriving at a big event on Sunday, as a last-minute decision, it would have been good to find out quickly which of my friends were also there.

(2) Privacy Peering Forward

So much of our daily lives is being recorded publicly on the likes of Facebook, and recorded privately (we hope) every time we use a credit card or loyalty card. No wonder Google’s CEO Eric Schmitt this week talked about youngsters needing to change their name to escape their on-line past.

He also spoke prophetically about a whole manner of possibilities as we increasingly use apps on smartphones and other mobile devices to carry out our daily lives. For example, Google will be able to start reminding us of things we probably need to do, especially when passing shops and other premises. Spooky?

(3) Mobile Commerce (mCommerce)

Which takes me back to 2006.

Some of you know that my serious interest in the internet started as 1999 turned into 2000, and the availability of broadband speeds provided a rapidly expanding array of internet-based applications – a period usually described as the “dot com bubble”.

I ran 30 events between 2000 and 2006 called the “Thames Valley Internet Business Forum” (TViBiz), later known as the “BizTech Forum”. These events took a business-person's view of the internet. So I invited a lawyer to cover the latest legal aspects, and at least two guest speakers at each event on business topics such as eProcurement . During this time the dot com bubble burst and the internet became embedded in so many systems it was no longer a separate topic. As interest evaporated, the one area that looked anything special was mobile. But there wasn’t enough then. It has taken a couple of years, with the likes of the iPhone and iPad now hitting the headlines with an astonishing variety of “apps”. Whilst many are purely for fun, an increasing number have a sound commercial basis. For example apps are required to use Facebook Places and FourSquare on your smartphone.

The CMO of Pizza Hut US, Brian Niccol , is quoted as saying this week that mobile orders have actually surpassed orders via the Web from home, and mobile will account for more than 50% of orders. No surprise when you think about it, but it provides a strong reminder that if your business isn’t taking appropriate advantage of the power of mobile devices, your competitors certainly will!

(4) Which brings us to the power of “Freemium”

Everyone likes getting something valuable for free. “Free” is one of the most powerful words in marketing. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, is there?

Well there is in the world of “freemium”. Not a new concept, but one which is becoming the norm for PC software and especially now mobile apps.

The concept is that users are allowed to use a Lite version for free, which does a reasonable job, and may carry advertising. Users are then encouraged to upgrade to one or more paid-for Premium versions, eithe to lose the advertising and.or to gain funcationality. Getting the functionality balance and pricing right between the Lite and Premium versions is an art, to ensure the Lite is good enough, but a goodly proportion of users upgrade .

This isn’t the only method using a free element. Often users are given a full version on a free trial, and the author then hopes they will so want to keep it they pay the licence fee (the good ol' "puppy-dog close"). A good example of this in the PC arena is the dashboard gauges add-in for Excel.

For mobile apps, it’s only recently that Apple has cottoned on and is reported as providing apps on a free trial basis through the AppStore. However although many apps are free, as I write those apps on a free trial are not yet obvious.

So whether you are user or developer, the future’s bright, the future’s freemium.

I hope you have enjoyed this free Lite article. Do contact me for the customised Premium version, on +44(0)1628 632914 or by email to challisc @ camwells.co.uk (please remove blanks first)

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Social networking for businesses – managing visitors' comments

I mentioned last week that British Airways had set up two Twitter accounts, BritishAirways and British_Airways which they still actively use.

They also set up some Facebook accounts last year. These include two accounts, “British Airways” and “British Airways plc”. Both now say “We currently aren't commenting on this site”. How are these being used? What lessons can be learned?

People can click the “Like” button on a Facebook business site to become a “fan”. This allows fans to add comments.

BA have stopped fans from adding comments on the BA site (after some had been added), but comments are still allowed on the plc site’s wall. These comments are of three types:

• A few messages of support for BA
• But more people complaining about BA or the strikers
• People advertising their own business or passions

Stopping fans posting to your wall doesn’t stop you making your own postings (BA have simply said they are not going to do so any longer). It is also possible to delete fans’ individual postings. But people can return to add their comment again, so it doesn’t necessarily stop the problem.

So is it wise for BA to allow comments on their wall? What about your own business?

Social Networking - Useful or a Waste of Time for Businesses?

As we await David Cameron, Gordon Brown or someone else to form the next UK government, it’s interesting to see how the parties have used social networking for the election campaign:

What lessons can be learned for business? Is it worthwhile?

• All the major parties have used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube videos. None of these services were more than a glimmer of an idea at the last election in 2005
• Only the Conservatives and Labour have had a Facebook application that prompts visitors to forward a voting message to their friends. In both cases this was set up as the “landing page” tab that visitors first see
• Only Labour placed their “Follow us on” icons prominently in the top right hand corner. Most others hid them down out of sight when people visit the home page
• Only Labour and UKIP appeared to offer an RSS feed, which allows people to see news updates as they are issued, through services such as NetVibes
• Only the Conservatives used any other services (itunes, delicious and livestream)

It remains to be discovered whether use of these services made much difference to the outcome in each seat. But conversely none of the parties wanted to look “behind the curve” in not using these new tools.

So how are businesses using these and other social networking services? It’s fair to say many businesses are still hanging back to evaluate not only the benefits, but also the potential risks. But is it time to make a move? Or is doing nothing still a viable option?

Services such as Facebook and Twitter come from a “consumer” background, on which people typically register in their capacity as an individual. These services are therefore ideally suited to mass marketing of products and services that are bought by consumers (B2C).

But that doesn’t mean hard sell. Dell’s landing page on Facebook is about “Plant a tree for a friend”. Marmite’s is the “Love Party” manifesto appealing to Marmite lovers to spread the word amongst their friends.

In the B2B space, Logicalis (which supplies IT products and services) has a Facebook link on their home page which immediately prompts you to share their logo and web address with your friends, with whatever comment you want to add. That could of course be positive or negative! They also have links to StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg and Reddit to help “spread the word”. Their Twitter account is active to announce events, awards, white papers and the like, but there’s no link from their home page.

Another common feature is the RSS feed. As mentioned above, this allows people to receive news updates as they are published, through services such as NetVibes. RSS is an alternative to an “email alert service”, which can still be offered.

So should you be following suit? Not necessarily, but it’s worth considering these ideas:

(1) Registering company and brand names

Do you remember domain name pirates, who would register company and brand names and then charge for those businesses to take them? Recovering the names without paying the fee can be difficult, time-consuming and not guaranteed. Better to register what you want first. There’s a similar situation with social network sites. For example:

Twitter usernames (that appear in the “tweet” messages) are unique across the world. So British Airways has registered both BritishAirways and British_Airways.

Facebook lets you register a business in a variety of forms - businesses, brands, products groups and communities. Ordinarily page names are not unique, so can be added at any time. However that means that others can also register your names at any time, so it’s worth periodically checking if anything inappropriate is happening. (Note that unique addresses in the form www.facebook.com/name are available if you wish)

(2) Reactive usage

Obviously you don’t have to have any social networking registration for your business, brands and products to be mentioned in people’s postings!

Some people are saying that they get a faster response to a complaint if they publish it on something like Twitter than by ringing customer services. Increasingly businesses are monitoring what is being said about them, so at least they get the chance to respond.

(3) Pro-active usage

Clearly the main usage of social networking by businesses is for marketing. Some examples are above.

For Facebook, once a person “likes” your site, by default they can post a comment on your “wall”. The comment could be good or bad (and that’s the risk!). However it is possible to turn off this update capability if you don’t want comments or posts.

In addition, businesses are finding other uses for social networking. For example, for IT support, using Twitter to let users log support requests.

Proactive uses will be explored further in future posts.

IN CONCLUSION

So is social networking useful or a waste of time? It’s certainly not something that can be ignored. Individual websites may come and go. But the human desire to communicate means that some form of social networking will remain with us.

How your business needs to use social networking, reactively or proactively, depends on the business. But at the very least a presence is worthwhile, even if only to reserve your brand names.