5 Reasons Why Facebook is a Turkey

As Facebook gathers in it’s 7 billionth member – a few things are worth taking stock of and reflecting on (before you shell out on shares).

Just what is it about Facebook that makes it so great? Or not. Is it the next Google or is it the next MySpace? Or is it unique? Somehow I doubt it.

Facebook is a social utility. Nothing more. It enables people in real world social networks, most of which predate Facebook itself, to reconnect and maintain their ‘friend’ships. That’s all it does.

(Oh and it has an annoying wall ‘stream’ that prevents interaction between fans or friends – because recency (not relevancy) is the thing).

The idea of posting information on walls for other people in your network to see is nothing new.

So what has Facebook got exactly? It’s certainly got momentum. It’s certainly got a core base of ‘superfans’ (1% of users who live/breath Facebook) but is it viable and is it sustainable or is it just a bubble?

Here at the social network company we reckon it’s a Turkey. And here’s just 5 reasons why;

First, imagine a field full of Turkeys. (I know it’s hard but try..) “The future’s bright- the future’s rosy” they gobble to each other. “But what about the pig that got taken away?” Some say. “It’s different for us” says the Chief Stag. “And what about the Sheep?” others say. “We are not sheep” says Chief Gobbler. And he’s right. Turkeys are not sheep or pigs.

And then Christmas comes.

A Turkey born on the 26th December, on the 24th of December the following year – could be forgiven for thinking that life was pretty good and the future is rosy. The only difference with Facebook is that no-one knows what day Christmas will be.

So here are our 5 reasons or tell tale signs that Facebook is heading for a side order of cranberry sauce.

1. Goldman Sachs are involved. “Hey let’s value this at $10Bn, no $50bn …no wait…$100bn”. Now I’m not suggesting that Goldman Sachs always ramp and dump. It’s just that they sometimes do.. And the trick they seem to teach with ‘The Greater Fool’ is to not be holding the parcel when the music stops…. As my Gran used to say “you can tell a person’s character from the company they keep”, Amen.

2. MySpace. Enough said really. Victim of the Rupert Murdoch Anti-Midas touch. But lets not forget the others. Friendster (RIP), Friends Re-united (old value £175M, new value £20M), Bebo (old value £417M, new value £40M), MySpace (old value $850M, new value $100M).

Now I’m not Alan Sugar, but it seems the best way to make 10′s of Millions with online social networks is to start with 100′s of Millions…. Of course Facebook is different. Probably.

3. Facebook is a MeMe. As a narcissistic exercise in solipsism, Facebook is unsurpassed. But hey ho – we live in an attention economy based on self publicity and funded by advertising. But we also live on a hedonistic treadmill powered by the juice of the NEW.

Online Social Network forums are like bars or nightclubs – and as such they are prey to fashions and trends. Sure, there’s a metcalfe law thing going on, with a growing inertia, but they are still ‘bars’. First the exclusive-cool people go there, then the chavs arrive… and the cool people leave. And then eventually, the chavs leave. It’s not a new sociological phenomena.

There’s also not just a bit of the el-farol bar problem going on here. There will be a cooler site soon than Facebook. Much cooler. In this year’s colour too. And Facebook will one day look like your Dad’s favourite (shut) Music Hall where he used to do the twist. Again and again.

4. Danah Boyd said so. She of the website Apophenia is the guru of all things social. In a recent Bloomberg article, Boyd said “the thing about user adoption and user departure is that it’s not a steady flow – Think of it as if you’re knitting a beautiful scarf, and you’re knitting and knitting and you get a bigger and bigger scarf. Then someone pulls a loose thread at the bottom. And it all unravels”. Wise words. For some reason I can just imagine Danah knitting. Not scarves… but hats. Facebook’s Beacon project was a loose thread. There will be more.

5. Following on from Danah Boyd comes Duncan Watts, network scientist at Yahoo research. His latest book on Everything is Obvious: How commons sense fails takes a good pop at predicting the future – or not. Facebook’s success was all down to Zuckerberg .. or was it luck. Roll the dice 100 times and Facebook may only come on top once. So it’s not special after all…And if it’s not special it’s not invincible. It may however, be lucky. And keep being lucky for a while. It’s just unlikely to be lucky for forever. Not impossible mind. Just unlikely.

Completing our trio of doomsayers is Paul Ormerod. His great book ‘Why Most Things Fail” rather soberly points out that 99.9% of species that have ever existed are now extinct. And then goes on to show the same is true of business; banks, railroads, steel companies, pharmaceuticals – nothing it seems, is built for ever. What’ll do for Facebook will be some Caesar-Brutus like internal shennigans (endogenous shock) like wot-did-it for MySpace or some external meteor (exogenous shock) like the rock that wiped out the dinosaurs (Remember Olivetti? Netscape? Lycos, Altavista?). Either way the future’s not bright. For anyone.

So there we go. 5 reasons why Facebook is a Turkey – But on the bright side – it could be worse; battery chickens after all, only live for 40 days.

So what to do about a problem like Facebook?

Well I recommend that while there’s music & moonlight & love & romance , we should face(book) the music and dance. Sounds like a cheerful song….

Only – when (not if, but when) you lose your shirt (and your data) – Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Gobble-gobble.

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Marketing (Week) Catches Up

Back in ’05 (like 7 whole digital years ago which is basically a lifetime in development speak) we began trialling a brand new tool for mapping social relations in the workplace. The Social Network Company developed “MindNet v1.0″ to look at work networks, advice and information flow across companies. Instead of snooping on emails or hiring MI5… Read More →

The Twittersphere Explained – ish

What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?

At the social network company we often get asked about Twitter. Good honest questions like ‘wot is it?’ Fortunately it’s now possible to analyse the WHOLE twittersphere. But don’t do this at home. Downloading 1.27 Bn tweets from 41 M users will fry your brain & set your excel spreadsheet on FIRE. There’s a great explanatory slideshow from Haewoon Kwak here.

The Museum of Stupid, Narrow Minded Me

Many people assume that the web and social networks sites are an unalloyed good. Not so not so…

If something sounds too good to be true – then it probably is.

Turns out the web can make one (but clearly not you dear reader) narcissitic, thick and small minded – and if you’re unlucky (or just normal) all three.

Nice introduction to narcissism here at the Museum of Me ..
(which should shurely be called ‘The Museum of Me Footprints on the internet and Facebook which I don’t use much any more’)

Also interesting Radio 4 Start the Week interview here with Eli Pariser about the Filter Bubble effect on the web – sort of following on from Nick Carr’s ideas on whether the web makes you clever or stoopid (I’m sorry to break it to you – it’s the latter…)

Personalised web searches surprise surprise lead to a positive feedback loop of self reinforcing views. Well Whodda Thought? – This will of course come as no surprise to the self aware Daily Mail reader…

Turns out the saying ‘Birds of a Feather’ applies to thinking too. So not only does the web make you narcissistic AND thick – as a Sir Brucey Bonus it makes you blinkered too.. (Therefore National Front, of whom I’ve always thought with only one passport between them – just needed to get out a bit more…. )

Of course this tendency for groups to segregate into homogenous clusters is nothing new to aficionados of social network analysis (SNA). Remember Thomas Schelling won a Nobel Prize for this sort of insight way back in 2005 for his work way way back in the 50′s….

And why would the web be any different to ‘real’ life anyway ? Same actors, same aspirations; different tools.

The troubling question still remains – is the internet a Good thing or a Bad Thing? But the answer it seems, a bit like the French Revolution – is just too early to call….

Anyway, more great stuff from Eli on the downfall of filtering here at filter bubble

But enough about all that.
Have a look at this picture of my Facebook network map (courtesy of Social Graph).

Isn’t it lovely that the one common feature of the graph is that Me, Myself and I are in the centre of this strange universe.

How reassuring…

For my next blog post I shall update you all on why power laws and preferential attachment can lead to Asch style conformity.

Aren’t I clever?

Fools’ Gold (Marketing Week)

Is social media a mine of useless information? Or are marketeers useless?
The jury is still out but Marketing Week had a good stab at drilling deeper in March in their Data Strategy supplement.
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As for us (Interviewed in the last paragraph of the article here..) We reckon ‘There’s gold in d’em der hills” – you just need to know where to look….

And most marketeers are not just digging in the wrong place but using the wrong tools…

It’s like trying to find pyramids in Egypt using a pick and shovel when you should be using some nifty infra red satellite technology…

As Doctor Parcak from the University of Alabama said on discovering 17 new pyramid sites… ” Indiana Jones is old school”.

And so it is with social network analyis – a software enabled methodology that allows you to see the real team dynamics – like infrared allows you to see the soil instead of the sand.

Useful in business, critical in marketing…

Mapping the GoogleMundi

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Odd but beautiful.

What better way to spend a sunny, blustery, spring day than with my 5 month old baby daughter on Clevedon Pier? A pier voted by Stephen Fry as the most beautiful pier in Britain and star of the recent Keira flick ‘Never let me Go’.

Imagine my surprise then when the GoogleMap trike CYCLED up the no- bikes-or-scooters-or-rollerskates-allowed pier. Is nothing sacred? Is it one rule for us another for Google? Whatever next? The Queen on rollerskates?

How strange in sleepy Clevedon to see the monster Google’s tentacles at work. At all of 5mph.

In a speedy game of one-upmanship I thought it would be good to geomap the trike – after all, who polices the police? Who maps the trike? Turns out it’s me. I’ve taken the opportunity to juxtapose the Googletrike with the Mappa Mundi which interestingly pre-dates not just Google but AMERICA.

This sort of shows how far we’ve come. In a few short centuries (8-ish) we’ve gone from ‘There be Dragons’ to 360 degree panoramas of every nook and cranny on earth. Amazing. And there’s no doubt mapping is useful. We are after all visual animals.

Cartography of course is a simple way of codifying, simplifying & understanding landscape. A bit like social network mapping…

Just as you wouldn’t go in the forest without a map, why would go into a company without a social network map? After all – I don’t just want to know WHO people are – I want to know who they KNOW and how they connect – or not.

(It’s worth remembering here that often the ‘map is not the territory’ – as so many organisational charts prove…)

I tried telling this all to Baby Elodie but she just smiled, burped and threw up a little bit…

Some of us it seems are less interested in mapping and more interested in milk and of course seagulls…now those things are crazy.

Murdoch Befriender Beware!

Are you on Murdoch’s Social List? I’d think twice about that…

Mark Twain is quoted as saying “Don’t pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel” suggesting that those who control methods of broadcast, have great influence. We have recently seen an illustration of just how true that statement is, as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is revealed to have infiltrated, influenced and affected the lives of the Police, Politicians, and ordinary people.

It was interesting to watch a documentary recently where one of Murdoch’s assistants retold a story of a meeting between Rupert Murdoch and Arthur C Clarke. Murdoch’s eyes apparently lit up when Clarke explained the potential of the then new technology of satellite broadcasting to bypass terrestrial control.

People who can broadcast have huge influence. But now we have the emergence of “social networks” which have been credited with handing back power to the individuals – enabling them to organise, galvanise and mobilise. Facebook and Twitter have underpinned successful campaigns to keep the X-Factor winner off the top of the charts and topple a government or two.

Social networks are not doing anything new. Good ideas have always thrived, as they were shared by word of mouth. Now they are shared instantly and widely by word of mouse.
Social networks reduce friction in sharing an idea to the point it threatens broadcast as a method of dissemination of information. Arguably it’s more influential as each message is accompanied by a certain amount of trust between the sender and receiver.

In this new digitally connected world, commanding a large social network gives you great influence. Not only to propagate ideas, but also as the field of social media evolves, it is having far reaching implications. Right now, who you connect with on Facebook and Twitter is starting to influence your search results on Google.

Connection facilitates influence. Social Networks facilitate connection.

With all this in mind, I have to hand it to News Corporation. They have some super smart people working for them who are thinking ahead of the curve.

Research by my colleagues at the The Social Network Company suggests that we love using social networks as we are hard wired to status seek – to compare ourselves against others. A Facebook post is even called a “Status update.”

So if you were a power hungry organisation seeing your influence being undermined by a new social trend called social networking, you’d want to control that too. You’d want to create your own huge social network, so you can broadcast to them, influence what they see when they search, and leverage each connection’s social network.

You might in fact, create an innocuous service like “The Social List,” a Sunday Times initiative similar to their “Rich List” that allows you to “see your worth not based on money but on your social network activity” cunningly appealing to our innate desire for social comparison.

I’d suggest that this is simply a social media “land grab” which encourages you to give News Corporation significant rights to your information and your social network.

For example if I connect with the Social List using Facebook, (one of four supported networks) I give News Corporation rights to:
Access my name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends and any other information I’ve shared with everyone.
Email me.
Post status messages, notes, photos and videos to my Wall. That’s showing them to all my friends.
Access posts in my News Feed – That includes comments and content from any of my connections.
Access my profile information including my likes, music, TV, books, quotes, activities and events – A marketing smorgasbord of information.
Access my photos and videos. Photos uploaded by me, videos uploaded by me and photos and videos of me.

That’s a lot to give up in exchange for an ego boost.

So I’d suggest that you don’t connect to “The Social List” and be careful who you do connect to. If you have already done so, you can remove your connection using the Privacy settings of the relevant network. In Facebook, go to:facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a digital marketing advocate, and help my clients use social networks. I just think that people should consider carefully who they connect with, and the reasons behind the connection.

If you think this is important, do share this post.

The Social Network – a Movie about a Mark

The Film is here – The Social Network about Facebook. But here is an opportunity to clear up a few misconceptions on what facebook is and what social networks are and why they are so important to our survival and wellbeing. Lets start with the basics; defining terms. What exactly is a social network, social network software and what is social network analysis?

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