The Web Pitch
A blog exploring The Social Web – Learn. Explore. Profit
Next up was Trevor Johnson, Head of Strategy and Planning at Facebook Europe. His talk was entitled, “Social Changes Everything”. He discussed how a burglar stopped to update his Facebook status during a robbery! He was subsequently caught. “Social” is indeed everywhere and Facebook is a big touch point for so many of us.
Facebook is used by more than 400 million active users. Users spend on average 16 minutes on the homepage, and spend 28 minutes updating their profile during the day. Facebook has now also overtaken Google as the Web’s number one web property. Here are some others stats that Trevor shared:
· #1 property on the internet (time spent)
· 5 billion+ pieces of content uploaded every week
· 6 billion+ minutes spent online every day
· 2 million+ photos per second
· 250+ platform apps with over 1m active users
· 800,000+ websites use Facebook Connect
· 2 billion+ chat messages
· 60 million+ status updates each day
At the heart of Facebook is “Identity”. “Social” is built on 3 pillars (Identity, Sharing and the Facebook Platform). Identity is core, with real people sharing and connecting with their social graphs. Facebook is particularly focussed on the growing importance of identity & authenticity. And, opportunities that are driven by [Facebook] platform and technology. [Jas Note] Interesting, if Facebook wants to become the Identity on the web what comes next, the wallet?
Social gaming has growing significantly, games such as Farmville now have over 80 million users. Companies such as Evian, even have branded “virtual goods” now. Of note, the virtual economy is anticipated to be worth 10 billion this year, Trevor said.
Finally, Trevor showed a great example on how MySpace is using Facebook Connect to connect fans with music artists, using a viral video campaign called “Fan Video”. Take a look at the one I created here. Viral videos are now becoming personalised!
Key Summary Points (Simple steps for Marketers)
1. Make it social, leverage the platform and social graph
2. Keep it simple, get started and iterate
3. Don’t think in campaigns and silos, develop a conversational calendar
4. Think differently – harness new opportunities and experiment
Technorati Tags: Trevor Johnson,Facebook
Next up was Katy Howell from Immediate Future (IF) – A Social Media agency. Disclosure: My employer retains the services of Immediate Future.
Katy’s talk did not focus on Social Media strategy, but from actual “real life” experiences from the field, as Katy put it, “Nuggets from Pioneers”.
Katy asked the audience to “think beyond the tools”. A particular IF client lost their Flickr page mid-campaign! She warned that there are hidden costs and content risks when using social tools. (Who actually owns the data?) Popular social media sites may implement a charge model in the future. She urged the audience to “think about the influencer”. Influence is not uniform. The influencer is not a replacement for the word “audience”. Katy stated that there are different types of influencers – Authoritative, Popular and Collaborative.
Her note to Brands, “STOP SHOUTING!” Influencers hate to be shouted at. Real time conversations (Tweets) now appear in Google searches, (Bing too 
. These may be the first touch point to your brand, and if you annoy your influencers their comments will be seen by all.
Katy went on to discuss, that we are reaching to a point of “viral and app fatigue”. She presented the following stats:
Your video on YouTube…
· 3.1% chance of getting over 1,000 views
· 0.3% chance of getting over 10,000 views
· 0.001% of getting over 100,000 views
Your App on Facebook…
· Joins half a million of others
· Is one of 140 loaded daily
Finally, Katy stated that 74% of businesses feel that proving Return Of Investment (ROI) is the greatest challenge for social media today. Transparency is key, laying out KPIs and “showing out your working” is vital for senior management buy-in. Be very clear about your objectives and what you are trying to achieve. Education for senior managers is also important. She gave an example, where a company found a negative comment on a 3rd party Facebook page. The management team’s response was to shut the fan page down and call in the lawyers. This doesn’t work, as it only aggregates the original poster, and moves the conversation to another site.
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