Facebook’s Open Graph & the Implications for Market Research Recruiting
Posted by goodmind on May 5th, 2010
There has been much buzz about Facebook’s new Open Graph in the past few weeks. The “Like” buttons keep appearing on more and more of our favorite websites. Not surprisingly, privacy issues abound.
As market researchers, and more specifically as social media recruiters, the implications of the Open Graph for recruitment has us more than a bit curious.
For the past few years we have been utilizing social media to provide our clients with fresh, highly targeted, and insightful participants for their studies online and off. The Open Graph could potentially take this several steps further into targeting a person for a study. Having the ability to track what an individual has “liked” around the internet is pretty unbelievable.
Imagine, for example, that you are a company that markets products that allow people to streamline their travel planning and eliminate airport hassles. Now imagine you could talk to people who have “liked” the following things in the past few months:
You would not only have the “travel enthusiasts” you were after, but on top of that a more micro and fine-tuned understanding of your sample. It’s like looking into binoculars, kind of seeing a fuzzy representation of what you’re looking at, then turning the dial to put everything into focus.
And then you get to talk to these people!
What do you think? Think the Open Graph will change how we look at recruiting for market research studies? Think it should or that there will always be privacy limitations? This is new to us too so we’d love to hear what other people think!
the importance of ‘malleable social graphs’
Posted by goodmind on March 29th, 2010
Here at Goodmind, we try to keep as current as possible with the latest in upcoming trends in social media, new technology, tools, and software. We read about it, blog about it, and participate in it via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and here on our blog.
But the term ‘malleable social graph’, as blogged about by Robert Scoble last Thursday, really got us thinking.
First and foremost, what is a malleable social graph? Let’s quote Scoble:
Well, right now, if you are looking to go to a Napa Winery, or three, and you go to Twitter or Facebook everyone looks the same to you. But, now, check in in Napa with Foursquare and all of a sudden you only see people near you. I have more than 7,000 friends and when I tried this last week (I was visiting a startup near there) I only saw four other people. So, now I was talking with four other people who were on my social graph and who actually were located near me. Now, I bet I could text each of those four and ask them where to go and I’d get very good answers.
That is a malleable social graph. IE, it changes based on conditions you set in motion.
Make sense? Yeah, we gave ourselves the weekend to marinate on this… Although the idea is new, with a bit of imagination, the potential for people and companies (aka ‘malleable business graph’) is limitless.
Scoble goes on to discuss mini mobs (and referenced the video above) but we’ll save that dissection for another post.
Advertising + Word of Mouth = WOMI
Posted by goodmind on March 13th, 2009
And what exactly is a “WOMI”? The term was dubbed by SocialMedia, an ad platform for social networking sites, and refers to a “Word of Mouth Impression”.
From Techcrunch:
WOMI campaigns present visitors with ads asking them for some kind of input either though a multiple choice question or using a text field. SocialMedia then uses this input to customize ads which are shown to the user’s friends on the same social network.
For example, if an ad for Star Wars had a call-to-action asking if I was on the Light Side or Dark Side of the Force, it could take my response and then present my friends with an ad that said “Jason is on the Light Side, how about you?”. In turn, their responses are passed on to all of their friends, making this among the first kind of advertising with a viral element. This interaction makes the ads mini-social applications in and of themselves, and have proven to be very successful in trial campaigns.
In testing, WOMIs “resulted in increased awareness, favorability, and purchases for the Fortune 500 company running the campaign”. Social media marketing is finally being taken to the next level; utilizing relationships to pass on targeted content. We would love to see how use of WOMIs grows in 2009.
2009: The Year of the End User
Posted by goodmind on December 9th, 2008
Who needs a top ten list revisiting stuff that was big last year? Fast Company has 8 expert predictions on the evolution of Web 2.0 for 2009. Most of them are variations on the same theme -open platforms, increased portability and mobility of user data, etc, etc. Pretty safe bets, though a few experts go out on a limb and see advertisers finally getting social media marketing right.
In our opinion, founder of Hush Labs (and former CEO of Rackspace Hosting) Rick Yoo’s prediction is particularly prescient;
“I’m not sure that things will evolve the way people have seen in the past. I predict that it’ll mostly be about trying to figure out what users really want and what they find most important then fine-tuning things based on that feedback. The pace of evolution may really slow down by comparison, but the user experience will be far better.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
Show Dogs
Posted by goodmind on November 13th, 2008
We may never crack the code of what makes a video go viral. Still, if Shiba Inu Puppy Cam is any indication, cuteness is a huge factor.
The live video stream pretty closely approximates the experience of standing at a pet shop window, minus the puppy mill related pity. At the end of the day, what is successful video but a sanitized version of reality?
YouTube Video Games
Posted by goodmind on September 25th, 2008
Remember when it was “innovative” to issue corporate mea culpas on YouTube? Well this is a truly forward thinking way to use the video sharing site. Hexolabs, a mobile game development company has put the video annotations feature to good use, linking several videos together as different levels of a single game;
The rule is simple – a button will momentarily flash on your screen while the video is playing – you have to click that button before it disappears else your car meets a crash. If you click at the right moment, you jump to the next level.
This is where it gets interesting. The next level is actually another YouTube video clip that is linked to the button you just clicked in the previous level. Good idea. (via Digital Inspiration)
Great, now Google has a gaming platform too.
Social Networking Wars
Posted by goodmind on September 24th, 2008
Though we prefer to classify it as a “conflict,” this cartoon (via Current) titled “Social Networking Wars” is right on the money. Which is probably good since certain individuals have invested a good deal of it in some of these social networks.
Much thanks to Alison Bryant for bringing it to our attention deficit disorder. Come to think of it, given our own deficit spending on social sites, maybe “war” is the correct term.
Walk This Way
Posted by goodmind on September 17th, 2008
Google Maps for Mobile now offers walking directions, the convenience of which may make Google’s controversial Street View a bit more acceptable. Granted, it’s not as if GPS navigation made driving more popular, but we have to wonder if Street View level walking directions will help popularize pedestrianism.
Realistically, Google is probably just hoping the application will help popularize Android.
Dialed In
Posted by goodmind on August 18th, 2008
“Deep Dialing” is a service that might be more significant than Deep Throat;
Toronto-based Fonolo works by using transcriptions of the phone menus of large companies so that users can navigate them visually. Users simply pick the company they need to call, scan through the company’s phone menu visually, then click the spot they need. Fonolo will automatically dial, navigate the menu and then dial the user’s phone. When the user answers, they will be connected to the right spot in the menu—hence the name, Deep Dialing. (via Springwise)
It will be interesting to see if customer service satisfaction ratings will improve as a result of the service, as one of the most common frustrations is time spent on hold.
Building an Offensive Reputation
Posted by goodmind on July 14th, 2008
We’re not quite sure what to make of this rising trend in internet reputation-management consultants. On the one hand, there’s certainly a demand for these folks, particularly as Google search results take the place of a more thorough background check.
On the other hand, the act of “managing” an online reputation seems so…slimy;
In addition to making positive references to their clients more Google-friendly, they can also create entirely new material, including blogs, Wikipedia entries, YouTube videos, and even entire websites sprinkled with key phrases.
If a client prefers a stealthier approach, reputation managers can look for content about a person or entity with a similar name to their client’s, then create links to those sites. That can push those to the top of search results, moving less flattering information well down the list. (via Portfolio.com)
Outside of the mafia, managing an offline reputation by paying people to say nice things about you, or, quite literally, “burying” the bad stuff is absurd. The reasonable approach would be to reach out and connect with other like minded individuals, and engagement of this sort is clearly the flavor of the month, if you read enough blogs.
Then why are online reputation management tactics so decidely defensive, rather than offensive? Sure, you can micro-manage your positive Google hits with SEO, and aptly timed press releases, but an online reputation isn’t the sum of it’s links; it’s about networking and momentum. There are actually platforms for doing this sort of thing. You might have heard of them.
FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, et al. provide an infrastructure for maintaining, and sustaining a reputation online, and in a sense, supply the people who will follow your reputation too. Unfortunately, it’s mighty difficult to mobilize an existing reputation unless you’re Steve Rubel, or Michael Arrington, or the fake Steve Jobs. A reputation needs momentum, and that’s what most social networks are missing.
For $10,000 a month, we’d expect our internet-reputation management consultant to manufacture momentum as service, and build us a network of followers, not fiddle around with our Google link juice.
