No denying, the social web has become the new center of online gravity. Its immediacy, engagement, and user-created content have dramatically captured the web’s momentum. Proportionately, this third-wave web has radically slowed the growth of champion e-commence and web portals.

We’re at a fascinating, new inflection point. As illustrated, Google’s (April ’09) unique U.S. visitor count has all but flat-lined growing 1.8% YOY to 139.5 million. During the same period, Facebook’s unique U.S. visitor count increased an amazing 249.7% YOY to 104.1 million. [source: compete.com]

So strong has been Facebook’s gravitational pull that government’s use it to post news, information, and commentary. The Obama presidency is connecting with global audiences by publishing speeches on Facebook.

Given current trend lines, Facebook could best Google’s worldwide unique visitor count sometime in the next 24 to 36 months. Of course, much could change by then.

Twitter (... because you’re no doubt interested) grew 1,192% to 19.4 million unique visitors (YOY April ’09).

The social web fulfills the long-held ambition of “customer segments of one” It is much about self-branding ... truly a narcissist’s dream. It is driven by empowerment, transparency, and self-expression. It is intimate, unvarnished, and unpredictable. It is 24/7 conversations between real people sharing opinions, everyday insights, facts and perceptions. It is an interactive conversation with friends, strangers, the broader general public – even brands.

Social media – the sum total of what is created, shared, and documented – stretches from mundane and trite to the ultimate in genius and invention. It is wikis, mash-ups, participative gaming, and group ideation. It is the transportability of our social profiles, social web browsers, and social search. With new super apps, our identities and personalities become one ... and seamlessly transcend electronically ... forever.

Three giant portals – Google, Yahoo, and MSN – survived through the web’s rapid ramp-up and consolidation. AOL and others remain very weak sisters. New ones continue to arrive almost-daily. Their continuing innovation create all-new professions, energize lifestyles, and deliver unimagined personal control. They unleash an explosion of personal and professional collaboration, creativity, and content.

With the genie out of the bottle, web 2.0 (... and beyond) have become all about bookmarking, linking, tagging, web feeds, IMing, music-video-and-photo sharing, site search, blogging, and vlogging. New global brand identities like MySpace, YouTube, Plaxo, hi5, Scribd capture interest and participation. Driven by digitally-connected global cultures, they gained credibility, funding, and fans.

Currently, the #2 application on Facebook is Causes [or go http://exchange.causes.com/] – a grassroots platform for individuals to mobilize their networks to build social and political movements. With 18.9 million worldwide members, this viral platform is growing at a daily rate of 2.8%. That’s brand building! That’s the power of the social web.

Going Mainstream

Twitter’s gone “populist”... with politicians and personalities. On Facebook, mega-brands like Coke and Starbucks, as well as the Java Cafe in Davenport, Iowa (55 fans), are rushing to stake their claim on Facebook. Wikipedia is the new Encyclopedia Britannica. Newsprint is stumbling badly as we now Bebo, Meetup, Digg, Stumbleupon, SurfWax, Keotag, Xing, Twing, and PeekYou.

The “big bang” of social and professional web-based applications enable us to: Zimride (carpooling communities), Cramster (online study groups), Trailfire (community knowledge sharing), Meebo (community IM’ing), and Qitera (enterprise search). New levels of personal empowerment are created with applications like: Yuku (one account with up to 5 distinct profiles), Remember the Milk (online task list), Evernote (cross-platform content capture and search), Shazam (cell phone multi-media capture and sharing), and 5min (instructional videos for DIY projects).

Tough Questions

With all the glitter and excitement of this new-world social web, what tough questions follow for brand strategists and owners?

• Do we have a true, insightful, and proprietary social media strategy? Or, are we just the next brand into Facebook? Does “me too” participation get noticed?
• Is the social web core to our brand imagery, personality, marketing, and sales? Or, are we hoping for a free-standing plug-in?
• Does social media lead to all-new consumer segmentation? Does the user’s social personality affect the way brands leverage and exploit the social web differently?
• Are we leveraging a clear understanding of distinct social web dynamics? How does our brand translate onto social properties? What’s all new? How must we re-think relationships and brand engagement?
• How does the concept of “social” totally destroy the nicely-controlled, premeditated, and measured world of brand marketing? How does the old order integrate expanded social agents ... like front line service teams, employees (past, present), customers (happy, upset), licensees, franchisees, operators, vendors, strategic partners, lawyers, media, and elected officials?

Diving into the Social Web: Head First?

For all the frenzy, brands must urgently stand-back and understand the powerful dynamics driving this brave, new world. As marketers, we’re most comfortable with well-measured strategies, calendared promotions, and cohesive metrics. We are broadcasters – reaching out to target segments and motivating them to specific actions.

Oops – the social web is driven by a hugely-different set of dynamics ... few, if any, directly controlled by brands. To leverage the social web, marketers must re-group and envision all-new “opportunities” based upon these dynamics. Control, to the greatest extent, belongs to participants; and by-words like empowerment, immediacy, and transparency come-to-life with a viral spread that is tough to control or contain. Brands must become masters of listening, interpretation, flexibility, and agility.

Immediacy is the currency of bonding.

The following graphic highlights 10 social web dynamics we believe are essential to leveraging the social web. In this whitepaper, we review the first four. Our next one will tackle the others.

Engage

Engagement on the social web – just as in real life – is a process. It starts by capturing attention and, through bonding, takes us to a common purpose. Along the way, we learn, share, challenge, understand, and participate. It occurs mostly in free-form ... as values are shared and benefits of the relationship come true. In this sense, engagement occurs amongst individuals, within communities, and with brands. Actually, one could say that all participants in this process are “brands” demonstrating their values, attracting one another, and creating relevance.

Historically brands have broadcast their messages within well-defined markets. However, today’s consumer desires human interaction. People get excited when they share their brand stories ... especially if they know the brand is listening and appreciates them. Sustaining this engagement requires that the conversation be relevant and deliver real value. This demands bringing motivational drivers to life, providing valued content, and enhancing user sense of control.

Zappos.com, the online shoe and apparel brand, has grown primarily through customer and employee word-of-mouth. They’ve engineered online engagement through, among others, a proprietary YouTube channel, ZapposTV on Twitter, and brand blogs including employee tweets [see http://twitter.zappos.com/employee_tweets ]. With a tagline of “powered by service,” the brand has established an openness and rapport between and among employees and customers. This extends to a solicitation – at check-out – “... would you like to share your purchase details with your Facebook friends?” Despite the global recession, Zappos generated over $1 billion in sales and record profits in 2008.

Community

Communities are “what bind us.” From ad hoc to formal or invitation-only, their gravitational pull is shared beliefs, common interests, and / or mutual support. They satisfy the basic human desire “to belong.” Communities enable engagement and transcend geographical, cultural, lifestyle, and political boundaries. In this sense, the social web simplifies and accelerates discovery and bonding.

Citizenship is core to community building. Brands can both be participants and sponsors. But in all cases, the brand’s engagement must be real, nurturing, participative, and always adding value. Brand’s can be powerful sponsors of ideas, information, activities, and causes. It must be an honest and long-term commitment ... one not only tied to a simple promotion or passive placement.

Historically Walt Disney World Resorts relied on travel agents to convert lookers into bookers. With the explosive growth of e-commerce and the social web, they’ve recruited passionate loyalists (... with extensive Disney World knowledge) to interact and answer questions from potential visitors. Check out “momspanel” [http://disneyworld.com/moms/] where Disney-loyal panelists respond to postings. For a one-year commitment, Disney provides panelists a free, family Disney vacation and $75 in-park spending money.

Immediacy

While separated by 24,902 miles, the social web brings immediacy ... across timelines, across generations, and across media. The exchange of voice, ideas, images, answers, and experiences occurs uninterrupted, instantaneous, and across technologies. As in e-commerce, the social web brings an immediacy to everything ... and an expectation that nothing is too far, too big, or too complicated.

In this sphere, customers expect immediate and complete answers from Brands. Anything less is perceived as a lack of respect ... and a lack of expertise. 24/7 responsiveness is crucial to sustaining the conversation ... in that sense, immediacy is the currency of bonding.

Collaboration

The social web is radically redefining and expanding collaboration ... amongst people, for organizations, for causes, for ideas, and for brands. Its core is facilitating people’s working together. However, it is the social web’s open-platform with robust tools, applications, and the ability to connect with key resources and experts that is driving collaboration, innovation, and solutions to new heights.

Like never before, social collaboration is giving voice and power to even the smallest, most obscure of ideas, groups, and individuals. Brand’s likewise are exploiting this social platform to drive both internal collaboration and idea sharing, as well as involving customers and freelance experts in product design, testing, and extended forms of consumer research.

Social collaboration is an “opt-in” activity; and participants seek some level of fulfillment and accomplishment. It is also vastly expanding the power of semi-structured work environments. For businesses, there are 100’s of supporting tools and applications including Huddle.net (a collaborative environment for marketers), Confluence (enterprise-wide wikis), PlanHQ (group business planning), Solodox (document sharing and development), Tracbac (group workspace with IM and VoIP), and ConceptShare (share concept designs enabling participants to mark-up and provide feedback).

Vans, the millennial shoe brand [see: http://shop.vans.com], is leveraging social collaboration to allow customers to design personalized shoes – then share and invite feedback from their friends (... this via AOL IM, mobile phone message, and/or email). This application not only vastly expands brand buzz, but provides loyalists with tools to communicate the values, expertise, and personality of the Vans’ brand. Clearly, Vans is not only interested in capturing the attention and “worth” of individual users – but most importantly the worth of the individual’s network. Going well beyond personal lifetime value, “network worth” (... the monetary value of an individual’s social network) is a dramatic new economic opportunity driven by the social web.

Continued ...

Our next quarterly discusses the remaining six social web dynamics: transparency, discovery, interactive, self-expression, democratic, and viral. Visit socialweb2.htm

Rick Gonzalez & Scott Hall