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• Social Graph Symposium 2010 Posted Friday, June 11, 2010 Dan Richards 1 Comment

  
  I attended the Social Graph Symposium 2010 http://socialgraphsymp.com/ last week.  This was an event hosted by Microsoft & Rapleaf rapleaf.com and was a full day focused on a range of topics and issues involving social media, social networking, the overall social graph and societal implications.  There was some great discussion and some conflicting opinions on where this will be leading us.  I think it is safe to say that everyone there agrees that the implications of the social graph are significant for business, for politics and for society in general.

  Here is a loose collection of my thoughts from the day.

        The Gaming Industry has been leading the way on social activities and that the most advanced games today are about interacting with friends - real or virtual - and less about the game itself.  It is a social activity.  I liken it to playing monopoly or other such board games which are about the people you’re playing with.  Asteroids was more about your personal score and less about who you were playing with.  One question raised was whether there was a significant difference in when people are playing in terms of time of day, week, etc.  I believe the quote was: “Once you connect to a server you’re 24x7”.

        There was a clear theme that your reputation was going to be tied to the reputation of your friends.  Apparently, if your friends have bad credit, your credit rating is going to be affected…be careful of the company you keep!

        There was a lot of discussion about virtual currency and how that will be evolving over time.  I didn’t walk away with a feeling that there was any real consensus here except that everyone anticipates that this will be a $10 billion business in the 3-5 years - so it is something to definitely be paying attention to!

        It’s been obvious to me for a while, but there was also a clear consensus that the line between Mobile and Social is/will be blurring and to discuss one without the other is to be done at your own risk. 

        Marc Smith has created a pretty cool Excel add-in for generating a social graph maps in Excel, check it out here:  http://nodexl.codeplex.com/Thread/List.aspx 

        While the social graph will allow for “micro-targeting” for marketers, you are probably better off getting your message to a less targeted large group than to a very well targeted small group - 50% of 1000 is going to be better than 100% of 100!

        Just because someone has a lot of connections and appears to be an influencer, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she will be a difference maker.  Following that logic, there is a difference in the social graph between connections and position.  Like real estate, the most important characteristic in the social graph may be “Position, position, position”.  People who connect disparate groups may be more relevant and influential than someone with many connections and fewer cross-connects across domains.  I found this to be a particularly interesting concept to think about.

        Social CRM - no one has or appears to know what this really means.  Of course, no one really seems to completely understand what CRM is, so that is at least consistent!  In this context thought, some of key points were:
                - We don’t just want loyal customers, we want customers that advocates for our business/organization/etc. - those are not the same thing.
                - Advocacy then leads to user contribution - which is the holy grail of customer engagement
                - Stabucks’ willingness to innovate and take risks in the social/mobile space is admired and has made them a leader in this space
   
   
        Social and political activism are great examples of the social graph at work.  People are passionate about the causes they believe in and therefore are far more likely to engage, ask their friends to engage, etc.  Tapping into people’s passion’s is key to leveraging the social graph!

        Summary:
        The social graph and social media are different - the message can’t be as controlled and you have to rely on your customers, friends, peers, relationships, etc. on spreading the message.  How you engage can be as important as what you say and what you do.  Authenticity matters!  People, businesses, organizations that are not authentic will not create the same engagement as authenticity.  Corporate tweets and facebook updates are less meaningful than tweets and updates from real people with real personalities and with real connections to the people they are communicating with.

   

  The opinions expressed here represent those of the author and not those of Constant Contact, Inc. Read Blog Terms

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Comments (1) +comment on this post

 

• Cinta jarak jauh | 3:51 PM January 9, 2012

  cinta jarak jauh

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