Facebook addresses privacy concerns...(again)

Do you care who knows what about you? Of course you do; face-to-face, we all share different stuff with friends, family, work colleagues and strangers. It should be the same in social networks. I believe many social media users are guilty of 'unintentional oversharing' and that it is the duty of the social networks to remind people exactly what they are sharing with whom and to give them the opportunity to change their privacy settings easily.

I just read that Facebook now has close to 800 million users. Wow. Not bad in less than 8 years. But how much does Facebook know about you, your friends and your family? Are you completely comfortable with that? Do you trust them not to abuse this trust inadvertently? Or even not to go 'evil'? And do you always know exactly what details you are sharing on Facebook?

Recently a German Regional Privacy Watchdog, the ULD, took the serious step of instructing website owner sites in Schleswig-Holstein to close their Facebook pages and remove 'Like' buttons from  their websites. They have until the end of September to comply, or risk prohibition orders and fines of up to €50,000. Yeah: they can do that. Other regulatory authorities may follow. And not just in Germany.

But wait; check out this video. This new announcement suggests Facebook may, at last, be genuinely responding to users' privacy concerns in a major way. The Social Media giant is changing radically the way Facebook users control their privacy; starting immediately. In the new Facebook, items posted online will each have their own sharing settings, which will determine exactly who can see them i.e. each posting will have its own privacy settings. When users are tagged in a posting (eg a video or a photo) they will be able to confirm or remove their identity before it appears on their profile.

And there's more:

• Every item on a user's wall will have its own individual privacy options, (e.g. public, friends and custom). You will get the ability to remove a tag of yourself, OR to ask the person who tagged you to remove it, OR to block the tagger
• Users will be able to tag anyone, not only their Facebook friends. Then that person can choose not to accept the tagged post onto their profile. Users can ask for tags of them to be removed or have the content deleted completely
• Geographic locations can be added in all versions of Facebook, not just the mobile app
• The option to see how others see your profile will be added above the news feed
• When Facebook members share a piece of content for the first time, their default suggestion will be 'public' (instead of the current "everyone" setting). If a user selects a different option, that will then be their default. 

Of all the changes, pre-approving photo tags must be the biggest and should help to make Facebook even more attractive to many users.

Facebook has promised there won't  be any 'unexpected' changes to users' privacy settings as part of the update process. We shall see...

This new policy represents an attempt by Facebook to address persistent criticism about how members manage (or fail to manage) their personal information. Some have speculated that Facebook might be adjusting its privacy controls in preparation for the extension of Facebook to kids under 13; Mark Zuckerberg has previously indicated he thinks this is a good idea. Facebook have officially expressed the hope that the changes will safeguard users and counter malicious tagging, often used by 'cyberbullies' who like to add other people's names to 'dodgy' images.

Is Facebook only making these changes because it believes it must? Indeed some have suggested Mark Zuckerberg doesn't really understand the concept of privacy, since 'his life is his work' and that he thinks the people complaining are being over-sensitive. However this is to underestimate him. Zuckerberg is certainly not naive and he knows he needs to tread carefully here. For instance, Facebook now acknowledges that it is not acceptable to hide privacy settings in out-of-the-way places and hard-to-find 'account settings' menus.

Many will say these changes are long overdue. So why now? Some will suggest the real reason for the new Facebook 'selective sharing' is a response to the 'Circles' feature of the new Google+ social network...Facebook is not exactly waiting around for Google+ to catch up. It has announced its intention to complete 20 acquisitions this year (11 so far).

Marketers are naturally very interested in those 800 million potential customers and the mega 'dwell time' they spend on the Facebook site. If these new changes keep Facebook growing, advertisers will keep spending on Facebook Advertising and investing time in their Facebook pages, generating even more traffic and revenue for the site which would be good news ahead of its much mooted IPO (early in 2012?).

Whatever Facebook's beliefs about its members' privacy rights, I'm sure we can expect more changes from Facebook soon to strengthen its position and to try to see off the new challenger. 800 million is unlikely to be enough for Mr Z...

Google+. Tell your friends.

We are, anthropologists tell us, social beings. None of us is an island. As members of 'society', we have connections, of different types, with various fellow humans. These relationships are created and nurtured by communication, i.e. talking, writing and, in the digital age, by sharing content electronically. If we're the sort who likes to classify, we can imagine our contacts in groups; labelled (for example) 'family', 'co-workers', 'thought leaders', 'celebrities' and, of course, 'friends'.

We don't talk with everyone in the same way, or about the same things. We wouldn't share the same stuff with our mates, with Lady Gaga, with our Boss, with our Parents or with our Kids. Most of us dress for work. A night out with the girls or the guys might feature different content, and indeed vocabulary, from a family Wedding and from the Monday Morning Status Meeting at the office. That is of course why we have both Facebook and LinkedIn. Privacy is a flexible concept; most of us share selectively. (Could someone please explain this to Mark Zuckerberg?).

We're living in exciting times. Google+ has just been launched.

Well actually it hasn't yet; it's still in a 'Field Trial'. Right now, across the 'interwebs', Techies, Bloggers, Geeks and Social Media Gurus (if any really exist) are fighting to get their hands on an invitation and then obsessing about every granular detail of what is still an embryonic platform. There are of course plenty of other social networks out there and this one might turn out to be a dead duck. But this is Google, so we should pay attention. Google is being fairly picky about who gets hold of Google+ and we can be sure they're watching and listening carefully to see what we all think i.e. whether they've got it right. (Luckily they have Social Media Monitoring to assist and checking out G+ posts would be a good start). And it's still a work in progress; expect changes. We're some way away from a full launch; indeed Google+ will only really take off if and when friends start recommending it to friends in large numbers, at which time it could spread virally...Facebook better keep announcing 'awesome' things...

So what's all the fuss about? Well Google have had two previous attempts at 'cracking' Social Media; namely Google Wave (too complex) and Google Buzz (err...we went there but nothing happened; let's blame everyone else). Having played with Google+ for the past week, I'm here to tell you this is their best attempt yet. It might even be the first genuine challenger to the mighty Facebook which has recently appeared to stall in the US and Western Europe while still pressing on relentlessly towards 1 billion users globally.

The Google+ user interface is pleasing; Google has taken a lot of trouble considering the platform is still in 'Beta'; the design is clean and attractive and the usability is great; it's easy to navigate your way around.

But we know good ideas often fail. Can Google, at the third time of asking, persuade people to submit to the pain and inconvenience of changing their social networking behaviour by offering something whcih is clearly different and better? (and can it take hold faster than Facebook can copy its cool new features?) Well: it just might.

Google+ features Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and The Stream.

Circles

This is great: It’s a hybrid; somewhere between friending and following. You can put different contacts into different groups and target your updates at certain 'circles' only. This neatly resolves issues of what personal updates you don’t want prospective employers or colleagues (or your Mum) to see and, with this feature, Google+ could be seen as a threat both to Facebook and LinkedIn. You can put anyone in a circle, and they can choose whether to reciprocate. Crucially, regardless of whether someone you’ve added to your circles chooses to 'circle' you back, you'll see their public updates.

The animations for creating, deleting and modifying circles are nice and an incentive to move people in and out of your circles. If Google+ does take off, the circles idea could turn out to be its 'killer app'...

Unless of course it's:

Hangouts

OMG:  arguably the coolest feature of Google +, which currently gives it an edge over any other social network out there.

This is a group video chat function. Of course we also have Skype's new video chat service. But for millions of Google+ users, Hangouts could be a fantastically attractive feature. A casual, relaxed place for a video chat with your mates, family or colleagues. The future of social networking(?), this could be the 'clincher' for many Google+ users. (And could be a threat not only to Facebook but also to Fast Food restaurants, Bars and Shopping Malls, not to mention Second Life...)

Google has obviously put a lot of thought into the design of Hangouts, even letting users mute video or audio and giving you a second to make sure you’re presentable (clothes, hair and make-up) before joining the chat.

Not only does the group video chat feature function beautifully, but Google has neatly integrated YouTube into Hangouts so you can all watch a video together. (Remember how we all used to gather round the TV set?). There is a push-to-talk feature when you’re watching a video as a group.

To start a Hangout, you just press a button declaring you are open to hanging out, you choose which Circle(s) of friends to send the invite to, and up to 10 people can be in the room at any one time. The group can collectively talk or watch YouTube videos together. And it's so easy. It just works.

Video chat at last. Together with Facebook's Skype calling, this may mark the official turning point for this 70+ year-old technology. Indeed older readers may recall that video calling was predicted by Hanna Barbera in "The Jetsons" cartoons in the '60s, in which a family of 2062 talked on a video phone. In fact Space-Age housewife Jane Jetson never answered it in the morning without first putting her wig on. Pretty impressive futurism. (They missed email and SMS though...)

Skype, now the world’s largest telecoms company (measured by minutes of phone calls) has been offering free group video chat since last year. Facebook and now Google+ have just made it EASY. Suddenly: if you can Farmville, you can video-call any of your contacts with a webcam.

We can get ready for an almighty battle between Facebook and Google around video calling. And if you throw in Apple's FaceTime for iPhone and iPad2, we can include mobile video chat. Watch this space...

Sparks

With this feature, you can get a feed of things you love, then suggest things that interest you and encourage your circles to talk about them; these used to be called 'conversation pieces' but now we might say 'social objects'.

This is also a great idea, enabling users to list various topics of interest and monitor news about them in one easy-to-find place. No integration with Google Reader yet though?

The Stream

This is like the Facebook News Feed. But better. It pulls in posts made by the people in your Circles. You, and anyone following you, can also +1 or comment on any post. You can also sort your stream by Circles to view selective posts (e.g. work-related stuff or news from your friends), depending on whether you're in work or leisure mode. This for me again puts Google+ ahead of Facebook.


Overall? Exciting. Google+ genuinely appears to be offering something different (and better) on several fronts; some advantages might take a while to become clear e.g. it might also be big for in-depth discussion of news articles - you can write a longer comment than Twitter allows.

So what about Marketing? Already Brands have been all over Google, asking how they can join in the fun. "Not yet!", says Google; in my opinion, wisely. When Google+ is opened up to businesses (as we can be sure it will be), it will need to deliver immediately; that will need careful preparation. Let's remember that Facebook took the time to build a loyal and engaged member base before going all commercial ahead of its IPO. ("Sell at the top" as they say...)

Personally I'm already keen to use Google+ on a regular basis but I don't feel inclined to maintain separate profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+, so something has to go. Facebook? LinkedIn? Of course the tipping point will come when (if?) people start to delete their Facebook profile and switch to Google+; this sort of thing can become a stampede... just ask MySpace how it feels to wake up on the floor with a hangover and discover that the party has moved on somewhere else.

Google has achieved massive success in Search. Their Android mobile platform is at last really taking off. It is, of course, very early days, but Google+ could be their 3rd big revenue earner; suddenly Facebook looks vulnerable. How quickly things change in Digital...

I've noticed that most posts on Google+ are about...Google+. Understandably, people are sharing their experiences, their thoughts, hints and tips and advice. Which is, of course, what friends are for...

Email marketing: timeless classic or just horribly old-fashioned?

I recently chaired the Econsultancy Client Roundtable for email marketing specialists. Over an afternoon in London, we discussed email marketing - trends, challenges and best practice. Attendees were people who know; they do this stuff every day for major corporations and charities.

The discussion was very stimulating and wide-ranging.

The whole session was held under 'Chatham House Rules'; so I won’t associate specific comments with individuals.

For the expert practitioners who attended the Roundtable, the big issues in email marketing currently include:

Best Practice

·       Deliverability – still a problem: (ISP throttling, Sender Score, data quality etc.)

·       Email challenges with a range of email clients (e.g. MS Office)

·       Customer segmentation models (behavioural triggers and targeting)

·       E-mail as a customer acquisition tool is virtually dead, whereas for Abandoned Shopping Cart reactivation and customer retention, it’s thriving

·       Multi-channel marketing e.g. e-mail + direct mail, + call centres. Lots of evidence of 2=2=5

·       E-mail Video/ audio growing but still problematic

Research and Measurement

·        Open rates are not a great measure  (consider the rise of image-blocking software) but still widespread. Clickthrough rate is a better metric but not enough on its own

·       List, creative, timing make a difference: normally in that order

Budget and Resource allocation

* E-mail marketing still believed to be under-invested (money, time, people) given the revenue it generates. Attitude seems to be  “It’s not broken, so why fix it?” in some organizations

* Resourcing – What to outsource? Where to find people with the right skills? Generally an HR policy decision. Marketing needs to get more involved.

General Discussion

* Deliverability : do emails even reach the inbox? Still a challenge, with ISPs increasingly keen to protect their users from 'unwanted' commercial messages.

* Integration of email and social media – some suggest email is just ‘another social channel’?  Others consider Facebook and Twitter as eCRM channels. It was noted that you need an email address to sign up for Facebook…

* The rise of mobile email – becoming more important, and in some cases, more likely to be opened and read by a mobile user 'killing time'. But most email is still not optimised for mobile…  Few email senders seem to be treating mobile email recipents/ viewers as a separate segment (yet).

* Amazon's Simple Email Service – picture not clear, but may lead to big drop in deliverability prices?

* Gmail Priority Inbox: email marketers need to get their messages into the 'top part' of the inbox. Along with Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, email clients are increasingly providing webmail interfaces which make it easier for users to sort email and better integrate social media, videos, and photos. It’s all about protecting the user from 'less important' commercial messages, even if they’re not strictly spam…The challenge for email marketers is of course to get into the 'Important and Unread' section, preferably because the recipient actually wants to read the message.

* New Facebook Messages: can’t be ignored owing to Facebook’s scale, but consensus seems to be that the interface may confuse some users, that take-up of the new service will be patchy and that there is no guarantee that significant numbers of users will want to use the new @facebook.com addresses.

* There’s a general feeling that email has lost some status within digital marketing departments. It may not be as ‘sexy’ or fashionable as Social Media BUT: it’s still quietly making big money for those who know how to get the most out of it. CFOs like this, and they tend to come out on top…

Overall, email marketing appears to be alive and well. Perhaps we should bear in mind that in 1976 Punk Music didn’t kill The Rolling Stones, Elton John or Paul McCartney. (And indeed some might even suggest The Bay City Rollers weren’t such a big loss). In 2011, following the Social Media Revolution, email marketing is certainly changing, but looks to be here to stay.

2010: The Year Of The Tablet

What do you want for Christmas? Well apparently thousands of us will be hoping Santa brings us a tablet computer. Last year that wasn't really an option (btw how much am I bid for a 2009 netbook?). On January 27th 2010, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed "Netbooks aren't better at anything!" (although to be fair, Steve, most are at least pretty good at multitasking and many even support Flash). He went on, as had been widely predicted, to introduce a 'magical and revolutionary product': the iPad (not iSlate, iTab or Maclet - OK I made that one up). And the rest already looks like history. What a difference a year makes. 

Other tablets are already here and more are in the pipeline: e.g. Samsung Galaxy Tab, Archos 101, Blackberry PlayBook, plus offerings from Dell and HP, among others.

Apple has shipped 10 million iPads since April. Apps are selling well at around $5 each. According to a survey of 5,000 tablet users by Nielsen, 91 percent of iPad owners have downloaded an app and over half have paid for content. Early days, but looking like a success by any measure.

The rise of tablets has even offered the prospect of a new lease of life for the beleaguered Newspaper and Magazine industry, whose tough times have continued during 2010. We recently got the first results for the traffic on The Times and Sunday Times new websites with their new paywall (for a great analysis read this by Ashley Friedlein of Econsultancy). If Mr Murdoch can persuade large numbers of us to pay for the news, whether on iPads, Macs or PCs, the entire newspaper industry, and many outside it, will breathe a sigh of relief. And I, for one, will be surprised.

New iPad apps are currently being announced every day from a range of content owners including Wired, Sports Illustrated and The Washington Post. News Corp and Apple have said they will launch an iPad-only publication entitled ‘The Daily’, while Richard Branson’s new ‘Project’ will also be launched for the iPad only. Meanwhile, The Independent’s new newspaper ‘i’ will not be published on the web at all, rather it will be launched as a paid-for iPad app. The new Guardian iPad app is expected shortly.

Crucially, we should remember tablets are mobile devices and we are prepared to pay for mobile apps whereas we seem to expect everything we access on the web via our PC/ laptop to be free (eg. telegraph.co.uk and guardian.co.uk). Don't ask me why this is; I blame the BBC and The Pirate Bay (unlikely bedfellows, admittedly). Interestingly, the new BBC iPlayer international service is launching exclusively as an iPad app...For what it's worth, my prediction is that tablets and laptops will in time merge to form one class of machines with a wide range of specs and form factors. Until then, I'm sure Apple is happy to sell both iPads and MacBook Airs (often 1 of each to the same person!).

So much for the shiny new boxes and their glossy new content. But what about 'ads on the pads'? Check out Apple's iAd mobile advertising platform, launching in Europe this month and offering ads within mobile apps on iPad,  iPhone and iPod touch; brands including Renault, L'Oreal and Unilever are among the first to book campaigns through the network. Allegedly and in typically bullish fashion, Apple won't talk to UK agencies about advertising via iAd, its first ad network, unless they're spending £600k+. Possibly too expensive for a new initiative of this kind in this market. But if consumers continue to consume increasing amounts of content on tablets, make no mistake, we WILL find ways to drive brand engagement on these nice new screens; especially the full 9.7 inchers (and even on Samsung's and BlackBerry's smaller 7-inch models of which Steve Jobs has been so publicly contemptuous).

So, yet again, Apple has invented a new category of device. Tablets have changed the game: things will never be the same. Cue gratuitous link to my favourite TV ad of 2010, for Yeo Valley... over 1,267,000 YouTube hits and rising; 3,348 Facebook 'likers' (remember this is for YOGHURT!!!), narrowly beating (in my book at least) P&G's Old Spice Guy who started out on good old TV and then 'went social' (and indeed viral) at a much lower cost/000 (24,120,000+ YouTube hits, 1,166,000+ Facebook 'likers' and 120,000+ Twitter followers).

OK so maybe 2010 was the Year of iPad. And as for next year? Take your pick. Social Media. Location. HTML5. Mobile internet. Even faster Search. Windows Phone 7 (yes really). Android. Chrome OS. Facebook Places and Deals. Oh...and iPad 2 (new shell, camera, USB port but definitely no Flash).

Happy Holidays!

Happy Old Year

So that was the Northern Hemisphere Summer, huh? September already. Back to school. Brrr. A chill in the air. Colder misty mornings. Leaves turning brown. The year’s rushing by. Soon be time to start planning Christmas. OK: exaggeration. (?)

I sometimes wish I were a futurist; it sounds like fun to be able to make some predictions about the future and then run away (on to the next conference in a different continent) before anyone can hold me accountable. But let’s be fair. Just for a moment let’s pause and look back to January. What did we predict was going to happen in digital marketing this year? And has it?

I was recently re-reading my Blog post dated Jan 10 2010. Predictions for 2010 included:

The Androids are coming

Google's mobile platform is gaining ground fast. The first Android phones have sold well and more are on their way. HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and yes, even good old Motorola (who invented the category so long ago) are all getting in on the act. Meanwhile iPhone 4, after a few embarrassing birth pains, is selling well and it currently looks like RIM/Blackberry which is in danger of getting left behind in the smartphone race. The Android invasion is gathering momentum.

Location-based services/ augmented reality
Well this one was a no-brainer. Check out (or check-in?) Foursquare, Gowalla and yes, the new Facebook Places (damn - missed that one). Watch out for privacy issues though.

Rupert Murdoch to pull all his content off Google.
Well the Paywall is up for the Times/ Sunday Times and the UK ‘red-top’ The News Of The World is next. As to how many online readers have been lost, estimates average at about 50% but some suggest many more.  Are these few paying online readers a sufficiently engaged, high-quality audience for which advertisers will willingly pay a premium?  The Jury’s still out.

HTML5
If anything, Steve Jobs of Apple appears to hate Adobe’s Flash even more than at the start of the year. The iPad and iPhone don't support Flash. No apologies for this from Apple. All the Flash designers I know are learning HTML5 and quickly...

...and the Apple tablet
OK so we didn’t get the name quite right (iSlate? iTab? Could easily have been.).

But Apple certainly launched the iPad on January 26th and at a stroke defined the new tablet category, selling 3 million units in the first 80 days. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has just been announced and we await tablet offerings from HP, RIM (the "BlackPad") and even Toshiba. Game on.

Meanwhile downloads from the Apple App Store hit 6.5 billion. Apple also announced the iBooks app (for the iPad naturally) while iAds promises to disrupt (or should that be kick-start?) mobile advertising in a big way. In May Apple overtook Microsoft to become the world's biggest technology company. No wonder Steve Jobs seems to be enjoying every new announcement even more than the last these days, despite the odd glitch along the way.

Admittedly we also predicted a Facebook IPO (2012 apparently), that Twitter’s growth would stall and that Steve Ballmer would step down at Microsoft. But some of these weren’t really serious. And could still come true anyway. It certainly seems that Windows 7 is a better product than the bizarre launch promotional activity had led us to expect. Oh and News International has not YET done a content deal with Bing (but watch this space). At least we didn't predict 2010 would be 'The Year Of Mobile’ (as everyone knows, that will be 2011)...

Overall, then, not too shabby. We’ll try to do better for next year. With apologies to our Southern Hemisphere readers, (btw, anyone need a speaker in Cape Town?) let’s enjoy our digital Autumn...

End of the Hippie Dream: did business break The Web?

 
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a scientist and something of an idealist. Oh yes: and he invented The World Wide Web. I wonder what it says in his passport under ‘Occupation’…

In my book that's about as cool as having been in The Beatles. However I'm certain Sir Tim is worth less than Sir Paul (even without an expensive ex-wife). You see he has deliberately chosen not to exploit his invention for personal gain. Which (many would say) is also pretty cool.

When Mr B-L was working at CERN in 1989-90 he wrote a paper helpfully entitled ‘Information Management - a proposal’ which contained the breakthrough idea of combining the internet (a networked collection of computers scattered across the world) with the hypertext link; allowing one computer to directly (and simply) access information on another. He wrote his initial proposal in March 1989, and in 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau, produced a revision which was accepted by his then manager, Mike Sendall. The first 'Web Site' was built at CERN, was put on line on 6 August 1991 and the rest is history.

The vision embraced by TB-L, following the vision of earlier internet evangelists including John Perry Barlow, lyricist of The Grateful Dead (and if they weren't hippies then who was?) was of a great leveller; an empowering tool that allowed anyone to be a publisher, a record company or a bank. Almost at a stroke, the power to distribute information was taken out of the hands of the privileged few and handed to the many. This change has been described as the biggest transformation of society since the Gutenberg Bible, printed by Johannes Gutenberg circa 1455 and heralding the arrival of the Printing Press (btw why does no-one ever credit William Caxton these days?)

However in recent years, Sir Tim and other early web pioneers have expressed concerns about the way business has colonized the web and also about growing threats to our individual privacy posed by the sheer amount of personal information held by Google, Facebook, Amazon et al.

“We've noticed that people who browsed X..”

pleaserobme.com highlights the very real issue of how people thoughtlessly give away too much personal information online - especially on social networks.

But this doesn’t mean the web's become 'evil'. Sure, bad things happen online but generally they are caused by bad people. To blame the web is tantamount to shooting the messenger.  Yes terrorist groups have used email to organise, but so have disaster relief agencies. For all its faults, there has never been anything that has so enabled, empowered and connected the global population; even though only c.25% of the world is currently online (remember that!). And it’s good that people are concerned. In most wired countries there is data protection legislation in place and healthy debates about privacy and 'the cost of free' .

So did business break the web? No: not yet. And we don't have to let it. The web will bring benefits to millions more people in the months, years and decades to come which should far outweigh the costs (cyber-crime, loss of privacy, internet addiction etc). Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, created a product which has made shopping a whole lot easier and more enjoyable for millions of people. Facebook has 300 million users which would make it the 'third largest country in the world' (ahead of the US). These people choose to 'talk' to each other and it's free. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't force people to connect (OK so maybe he encourages them just a bit...).

Throughout history, the founders of successful businesses have, generally speaking, made a lot of money. The web can be a force for good which includes good business and if people like Bill Gates of Microsoft make more money out of it than they need, they can always choose to give it to Charity. (But that's a whole 'nother Blog post...).

So Sir Tim: thanks for the wonderful gift you have given us; and please don't worry. We'll do our best to use it responsibly (won't we?)

Social Media: What? We can’t measure it?

In the fast-changing world of digital marketing, one has to keep up-to-date. I recently attended a digital industry trade show/ conference: I met my client as arranged, we did some business and we said goodbye. I then walked round the stands looking for anything new and interesting. The ‘usual suspects’ were in evidence. There were various ladies with lots of make-up, wearing shorts and high heels, walking round in pairs giving out bits of paper (at a digital marketing event?) and smiling with as much sincerity as they could muster. There were the ‘mobile masseuses’ accosting bemused delegates as they staggered around with carrier-bags laden with bumph. A truly horrible cup of expensive coffee, then on to mingle with the massed ‘digerati’ at the free seminars.

Interestingly, the lengths of the queues varied: notwithstanding any bias in the show attendees, I suggest this was a good barometer of which topics within digital marketing are ‘hot’ right now. The approximate pecking order (in ascending order of popularity) was:

Affiliate Marketing
eCRM
Email Marketing
Web Analytics
Paid Search
Viral
SEO
Google AdWords basics
Social Media/ Online PR

In other words, if you wanted to hear an internationally-renowned, cutting-edge Affiliate Marketing Guru explaining his/ her craft, you were welcomed with open arms by the lady scanning your badge and ushered with a friendly smile to one of the best seats, whereas for “How smart marketers tweet - 49 Twitter secrets” (or something) they were queuing round the block for an hour beforehand (and even then many delegates were turned away with a different sort of smile and the suggestion they might "watch the presentation online" instead).

Social Media is certainly ‘hot’ right now. More and more consumers and business decision makers are spending more and more time on social networks (via Desktop PC, Mac, Laptop, Netbook or mobile device). For brands, it is undoubtedly possible to use Social Media to engage people in a very powerful way. For brand owners keen to dip their toes in the water, there is plenty of advice around. However: currently only a few of the self-proclaimed Social Media ‘experts’ appear to truly understand Social Media Marketing and even some of them are bluffing. These are still early days.

Suppose we open our favourite search engine and search for: “Social Media training courses”. We get a lot of sites (and even more courses) to choose from.

Bing: 29,200,000 results
Yahoo!: 36,900,000 results
Google: 86,100,000 results

So Social Media is what everyone wants to know about currently. Let’s have a look at what we mean by it, why marketers (and others) are so interested and how brands can participate successfully.

What is (are?) Social Media?

"Social Media are distinct from industrial media, such as newspapers, television, and film." Wikipedia

(but who ever heard of 'Industrial Media'? And if it exists, can we make money out of it?)

The use of the term 'Social Media' has risen steadily over the last couple of years. From a slow start, it has gathered momentum and now suddenly it's everywhere.

Social networks like Facebook or MySpace are online ‘places’ where people with common interests or concerns come together to meet similar people, to network, express themselves and share their thoughts. Brand owners can use social networks to understand what people are saying about their brand and to start a dialogue, a conversation with current and prospective customers.

Who are the players?

-MySpace

Launched in 2003 by a group of eUniverse employees including Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's starting CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's starting president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse. MySpace was the first true social network and grew rapidly; the parent eUniverse was acquired in July 2005 for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Interactive Media, part of News Corporation. Of this amount, approximately US$327 million has been attributed to the value of MySpace. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the US in June 2006.The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken internationally by main competitor Facebook in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors.Today,  MySpace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30% of its workforce in June 2009.

MySpace would appear to be in decline, possibly terminal.

-Bebo

Bebo, allegedly an acronym for "Blog early, blog often" is a social networking website, founded in January 2005. It is popular in many countries including Ireland, Canada, the United States, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. A Polish version was launched recently and there are plans for French, German and other versions. Founded by husband and wife Michael and Xochi Birch, Bebo had a major relaunch in July 2005 . It was bought by AOL in March 2008 for $850m (£417m). This now looks like a lot of money as Facebook and other networks continue to take users from Bebo….

-YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google. The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS and the BBC, offer some of their content via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.There are also 'official' brand-owned channels, where TV commercials and brand-related films can be viewed.

-Facebook

If MySpace has lost its 'Mojo', Facebook has grabbed it.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 with his Harvard University college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.Facebook recently claimed 250million active users (out of 300million registered users) with over 120million of these visiting the site at least once per day.The free-access social network lets people connect with their friends, post photos and videos, share links, plan events and learn more about the people they meet. Although Facebook started as purely a ‘social’ network, for brands, there are now opportunities to recruit and talk to users (='fans').These pages can be public and therefore 'crawlable'.

Facebook dominates Social Media (especially in the US and UK) and it continues to grow. Facebook accounts for 74% of all time spent by UK users on social networks (Nielsen, November 2009); this time itself is up 83% on 2008. It offers brands a chance to recruit fans via Facebook Pages, and also Facebook Advertising, where you can choose to pay per click (CPC) or impression (CPM).

Facebook's US monthly unique visitors grew from 92.2m in August 2009 to 95.5m unique visitors in September 2009. (comScore).

-LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals launched in May 2003. Users create a profile summarizing their professional achievements. They can then connect with former co-workers and professional contacts, adding them to their LinkedIn network. Through LinkedIn, users can search for jobs, find new business opportunities, and network to further their careers. As of October 2009, it had over than 50 million registered users in more than 200 countries.

-Flickr

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. Launched in February 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in March 2005, In addition to being a popular website for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. In April 2008, Flickr began to allow paid subscribers to upload videos, On March 2, 2009, Flickr added the ability to upload and view HD videos, and began allowing free users to upload normal-resolution video. As of October 2009 it claims to host more than 4 billion images.

and of course

-Twitter

Twitter is the Social Media sensation of the moment. In the UK, it has grown by an unbelievable 1,959% year on year (Nielsen). It has entered the mainstream with Celebrity ‘tweeters’ including:

Ashton Kutcher (3,945,588 followers)
Britney Spears (3,725,547 followers)
TheEllenShow (3,687,260 followers)
and
Stephen Fry (970,368 followers)

Twitter is, strictly speaking, not a social media network but a micro-blogging platform that enables its users to send and read messages (or ‘tweets’); text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers (= followers). Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The 140 character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging, and has brought to the web the kind of shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140 character limit has also spurred the usage of URL shortening services such as tinyurl, bit.ly and tr.im, and content hosting services, such as Twitpic and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters.

Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in 2006 has gained massive popularity worldwide. Twitter’s website attracted a total of 44.5 million unique visitors worldwide in June, 2009 (comScore); at this time it was involved in sharing the news about the Iran Election protests.

It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet” since the use of Twitter's application programming interface (API) for sending and receiving short text messages by other applications often eclipses the direct use of Twitter.

“What we have to do is deliver to people the best and freshest most relevant information possible. We think of Twitter as it's not a social network, but it's an information network. It tells people what they care about as it is happening in the world.” Evan Williams

Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide by Alexa's web traffic analysis. Estimates of the number of daily users vary: Twitter does not release data on the number of active accounts.

RJMetrics has suggested:
-Twitter's user growth has plateaued
-Over 14% of users don't have a single follower, and over 75% of users have 10 or fewer followers.
-38% of users have never sent a single tweet, and over 75% of users have sent fewer than 10 tweets.
-1 in 4 registered users tweets in any given month.

Twitter received 20.9m unique visits from US users in September (ComScore) but this number should be treated with caution as the report only measures traffic pulled in by the main URL, twitter.com, neglecting traffic on third party apps such as TweetDeck, which users access to monitor and publish tweets. TweetDeck alone accounts for an estimated 20% of all tweets. Twitter's audience, therefore, is certainly much larger. In total, Twitter has raised over US$57 million from venture capitalists. It is currently unclear how and when the company plans to monetize the service.

Social networking sites sometimes unexpectedly cross borders: pioneering U.S. site Friendster, for instance, has faded dramatically at home but has found new and growing markets in Asia, while Google's Orkut is the top network in Brazil. Many of Facebook's biggest rivals around the world are local homegrown sites. With 200 million registered users, China's Qzone claims to be the world's largest social networking site, while VKontakte is far and away the No. 1 in Russia.

-VKontakte

vkontakte.ru is a social network for Russian-speakers. It looks surprisingly like Facebook! VKontakte (Russian: Вконтакте), internationally branded VK, is the most popular social network in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. As of November, 2009, the network has more than 48 million users and averages over 1.5 billion daily pageviews and 9.5m visitors per day and is the leading site in Europe. As of March 19, 2009, VKontakte was ranked 28 in Alexa's global Top 500 sites. In English "V Kontakte" is literally translated as "In Contact" or "In Touch". Major Russian companies routinely send job offers via VKontakte. Most of the site's users are university and high school students. However, as the site's popularity increases, the demographic is getting older.

-Friendster

Started in San Francisco in 2002 but now draws 90% of its traffic from Asia. It has 105 million users. The top 10 countries accessing Friendster, according to Alexa, (2009) are the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, the United States, Singapore, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and India.

-Orkut

Another free-access social networking service owned and operated by Google.. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil. In fact, as of May 2009, 49.83% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 17.51%. Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base.

-Habbo

… is a hybrid social network and virtual world for teenagers; it combines elements of Second Life and Facebook. Some suggest the avatar-based interaction, networking in a space that feels real, using a ‘self’ that you can customize, points the way to the social networks of the future.

Back to the present: in September 2009 The top 10 UK Social Media sites measured by unique users (Nielsen) were:

1)   Facebook (22.81m)
2)   YouTube (16.25m)
3)   Wikipedia (14.20m)
4)   Blogger (7.71m)
5)   Yahoo Answers (7.28m)
6)   Twitter (4.43m)
7)   MySpace (4.16m)
8)   TripAdvisor (3.70m)
9)   BBC Communities (3.17m)
10) Bebo (3.15m)

-Blogs (=’web-logs’)

Notice that Blogger features in the list above. This is Google’s Blog platform; competitors include Wordpress, TypePad and Live Journal. Blogs are one of many internet-driven phenomena. Today, pretty much anyone can be an author and their own publisher (yes, even me!). The only ‘barriers to entry’ are basically access to a computer and an internet connection…

Technorati lists an astounding 112 million blogs in the world today, and adds, “there are over 175,000 new blogs every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.” With such overwhelming numbers, clearly it is necessary to prioritize blogs in terms of their level of influence; (how many of your target audience actually read them, how many comment, interact etc) in order to assess their importance in Social Media terms and to determine which should be monitored and how closely. Truly influential bloggers merit individual contact (and account management) if at all possible, they should be cultivated, fed exclusives and generally kept ‘on-side’ (although many, like the best journalists, cannot be ‘bought’!)

What are key issues?

There are various heated debates currently going on in marketing circles about Social Media. Of course everything is changing all the time. The networks are adding new features, revamping their user interfaces, forming partnership with content owners, mobile handset manufacturers, network operators. Major structural changes are anticipated, e.g. Google moving further into Social Media, Twitter further developing real time search, and/ or selling (to Google? Facebook? Apple?), MySpace and Facebook forming an alliance etc. etc.

1) Who should be responsible for managing Social Media engagement?

This is a current and very lively debate. Part of the problem here is one of definition. All marketing disciplines and channels are interconnected: Social Media touches both online PR and SEO. Press releases can and should be keyword optimized (so that search engines can find them once they’re published on various sites); Social Media mentions (e.g. in a tweet, Facebook post or blog post) can drive site traffic and conversions, as do Pay Per Click (PPC), Online Display and offline advertising. Since SM is a high-profile growth area, lots of people want a piece of it:

a) In Brand Owner companies
There is no real consensus as to which department/s should be responsible for Social media. Candidates include:
Marketing
Corporate Communications
Customer Services
IT

?The reality is that Social Media touches all these departments, since a disgruntled customer ‘venting’ on Twitter might have a customer services issue, but could be tweeting angrily to his/ her followers which could be undoing the efforts of the Marketing and Corporate Comms people. Equally the new TV campaign might cause a ‘spike’ in brand mentions on Facebook, cut-downs tributes and parodies on YouTube and extra hits on the website.

In these pioneering days, corporations, governments and not-for-profits are coping with this issue in a variety of ways. I would personally recommend that one individual should be made responsible as the Social Media ‘Czar’, with the full support of senior management and a mandate to work across departments to ensure a ‘joined-up’ SM strategy. Good luck to this person; exciting job however!

b) Agencies
What does a ‘Social Media agency’ look like? What skill-set do they require? PR agencies certainly have a plausible claim to be the best qualified, in an online extension of their traditional role as builders and defenders of their clients’ reputations, so long as they truly ‘get’ digital. Many PR agencies have successfully reinvented themselves for the digital age. And It’s not just about pitching stories to journalists via tweets rather than Press Releases. Crisis management has long been a PR agency specialist service, and a swarm of negative tweets can these days be the first indicator of a gathering storm, as can an irreverent video appearing on YouTube. SEO agencies would appear to have a lesser claim; after all, 'traditional' SEO (organic search) is about helping Google, Bing et al to find your site, not proactively engaging consumers and participating in conversations. Difficulties arise when you consider that SEO can include activity designed to generate inbound links; a process to which Social Media can certainly contribute. Full service digital agencies, having already grabbed design and build, online display, SEO and paid search (PPC), now see Social Media (web-based and mobile) as their next growth opportunity. And of course all the 'traditional' ad agencies are now into digital(!).

For what it’s worth, I believe Social Media should be managed by a brand owner client in-house with the help and support (where needed) of an external Social Media agency. This agency might be ‘pure’ Social Media or a more integrated Digital Agency offering a blend of Paid Search, SEO and Social Media. It could be one of those PR agencies who have fully embraced digital, so that they now genuinely offer ‘online reputation management’. It could even be a traditional above-the-line ad agency who have finally caught up with digital and now have the right people in-house, including Social Media experts. Anyway: however they label themselves, they’d better understand Social Media and keep on top of it as it changes, as it inevitably will.

2) Resourcing

However Social Media Marketing is to be managed, it is crucially important to allocate sufficient resource; internal or external. Indeed this is the main cost of Social Media marketing: the sheer 'person-hours' required to listen and participate effectively. It is also important to make it 100% clear how much authority the individuals involved actually have: i.e. can they make up ‘policy’ on the hoof? What must be referred ‘up the line’? And all the while recognizing that these platforms are inherently spontaneous/ immediate so that delays in replying while appropriate clearance/ sign-off is obtained don’t play particularly well.

To highlight the difficulties which brand owners face in deciding in how to empower front-line social media staff while at the same time retaining appropriate control, here are some notable Social Media PR disasters:

Domino’s Pizza (‘disgusting people’)

Ketchum/FedEx how not to use Twitter

British Furniture Retailer Habitat had some over-zealous employees manning its Twitter Account 

Dell had some problems with Social Media but ultimately made the necessary changes and is now a success story


3) How do you monitor conversations?

You can’t engage with your audiences until you know where your brand is being discussed and what people are saying about it. You need to know how to listen effectively. After all this is in effect ‘free’ market intelligence about your customers and prospects. You need to be aware of changes of ‘online sentiment’ as expressed in Social Networks (public pages only), ‘The Blogosphere’ and in Online News Media. Keeping on top of all this can be a big job. For a big, high interest global brand, there may be many millions of mentions to monitor; the requirement is for Social Media Monitoring tools which can provide a user interface or ‘Dashboard’ to enable the brand owner (or their agency) to make sense of it all for so that useful, actionable insights can be drawn from this vast mass of data. Fortunately several excellent ‘Buzz Monitoring’ tools exist: Brandwatch (which I would recommend), Spectrum and Radian6 are appropriate at enterprise level, whereas for SMEs and individuals, there are various free tools (e.g. Google Alerts, Twitter Search and Addictomatic. As Social Media itself grows, the monitoring industry is expected to continue to expand.

4) Metrics/ measurement

This is currently a massive area of debate and indeed concern. It is important to recognize that the ‘jury is still out’ as to exactly how to demonstrate ROI on Social Media. There can be no doubt that lots of positive mentions of a brand in Social Media must be driving traffic to the website (ie helping with SEO) which must be leading to an increase in sales; all this is good. The challenge is actually to quantify the value of all this positive buzz and to compare with the time and money spent to generate it, i.e. to measure Return On Investment (ROI).

“More research is needed to establish a tangible link between how many people are talking positively about brands versus the expected uplift in sales” - Econsultancy.

In a brand-owning company, the MD is likely to remark: “But you can measure everything online can’t you?” Well yes and no. We can certainly measure online behaviour (clicks, user journey, even eye-tracking on a given web page) but we can’t (yet) fully measure sentiment; how warm and/ or engaged people are really feeling towards the brand. Remember also that there are privacy issues; eg Facebook (unlike Twitter) is a closed community; only friends can monitor each other's updates and conversations. You can get excellent metrics on mentions in Blogs, Facebook (public pages), Twitter, hits on your videos on YouTube, Google/Bing/Twitter searches on your various branded keywords, generation of inbound website links etc but monitoring awareness and attitude shift, and turning this data into accurate ROI numbers is a challenge that hasn’t yet been fully met.

We need to recognize that Social Media marketing is still in its infancy. Let us remember that traditional advertisers have been struggling with this issue for more than 50 years. As Ad Agency Planning Directors have been saying since the days of the ‘Mad Men’  just because you can’t completely measure an increase in name awareness, or customer engagement or positive reputation with 100% accuracy, that doesn’t mean the activity was a waste of time and money. Note that no-one talks about ‘monetizing’ TV ad spend, although the metrics have never been 100% robust. Indeed certain traditional advertising research techniques can usefully be employed to measure the ‘awareness/ attitude shift effect’ of much Social Media activity.

Facebook and AC Nielsen have announced 'Brand Lift'  to demonstate the effect of Facebook advertising (including use of pre- and post- user surveys). Measurement Camp has been set up to develop open-source Social Media metrics. Unsurprising, we don't yet have a common currency to measure Social Media ‘engagement’. Expect big changes in this area in the coming months.

Who’s getting Social Media Marketing right?

As we have seen, the first step is diligent and intelligent monitoring of the social media ‘buzz’ around your brand which is continuously taking place on social networking and micro-blogging sites like Twitter and Facebook. The next challenge is to participate in these conversations, in order to gain positive exposure for your brand, product, or service, without ‘selling’ too hard.

Dell, Starbucks, AmericanAirlines, BMW Mini, Lenovo and Amazon (among others) are all using Social Media to spot and fix problems, getting on to complaints early, moving fast to turn detractors into advocates, joining conversations, providing information and product news and in some cases to actually sell.

And also, interestingly, politicians and governments. On Twitter, we find:

@DowningStreet,
“The official twitter channel for the UK Prime Minister's Office”
489,030 Following
1,548,053 Followers
on 2,094 Lists

@whitehouse
“Official WH twitter account. Comments and messages received through official WH pages are subject to the PRA and may be archived”
72 Following
1,428,305 Followers
on 6,095 lists

@barackobama
Location Washington, DC
Bio: 44th President of the United States”
750,808 following
2,617,634 followers
on 18,068 lists

and last but not least, 

@treatyoflisbon (European Union)
“Charter of Fundamental Rights to become law, protecting dignity, freedoms, equality, solidarity, citizens’ rights, and justice”
0 Following
211 Followers
on 7 Lists

Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign has been paraded as a classic digital marketing case history. My view is that he inspired a lot of people to give money, and a lot of people to work very hard on his behalf; he was smart enough to include Social Media and other digital marketing alongside all the traditional fundraising and vote-winning techniques. Scott Goodstein was the Campaign Social Media mastermind and has given interesting interviews/ speeches about his role in the campaign which employed MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. (If the election were today, then no doubt Twitter would feature more prominently). President (then Senator) Obama announced the choice of Joe Biden as his running mate simultaneously by text, email and on Twitter.

Indeed politicians and governments all over the world are getting wise to the need to engage with their electorate, their citizens, via Social Media and the many advantages this can bring. Social networks are not only for making friends…

“Last year YouTube received 11 million unique users from the UK and more than 35 million Britons visited a blog. People are using digital channels to talk to each other and to the Government. The Downing Street Twitter account is followed by more than 1.2 million people, more than the official White House Twitter and considerably more than the daily circulation on most national newspapers. It is vital that the Government understands the medium and uses it properly. If people want to engage with us online, we should be capable of engaging with them online.”

(UK Cabinet Office, September 2009)

What about the future?

Social Media will be interconnected. Today, online social interaction is imperfect and disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they are part of. In the near future, technologies that enable a portable identity will empower consumers to carry their identities with them, transforming marketing, CRM, and advertising. We are just seeing the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites (‘walled gardens’) into a cross-channel shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to be part of this. Socially connected consumers will form cohesive communities and shift power away from brands and their CRM systems; this will result in like-minded communities who will define the next generation of products. Forrester has spoken about the emergence of Social Relationship Management or SRM. Marketers will need to target these communities rather than individuals.

The future of Social Media is also mobile. This is natural and inevitable; people want to stay in touch; most of all when they are on the move between: home, work, school/ college, sports event, bar, friend’s house. The iPhone has changed the rules, the other smartphones have further empowered the consumer; all phones are getting more powerful and Social Media on mobiles will continue to grow. All the major social networks are working closely with mobile manufacturers and network operators.

Today brands are the sum of all conversations about them; the brand owners cannot fully control these conversations but they can influence them. It is essential to establish where these discussions are happening, to access these platforms, to listen, to understand and only then engage by joining the most relevant conversations where value can be added. That is social media marketing and as we have seen it is far from easy to do well and it’s changing continuously.

This is the time to get involved. Don’t wait. Tell senior management to trust you. You’re the visionary who's taking the time to read this post. Sure, we can’t currently measure the ROI for everything we’re doing in Social Media. But that doesn't mean we should stay away. On the contrary, strong and forward-thinking brands are already actively involved: listening, engaging, trying things, learning. These lessons will be valuable. Many are already paying back. It doesn’t need to be expensive (remember much of it is ‘free’ media), and it’s certain to be (part of) the future. These conversations about brands are going on NOW, whether the brand owners are participating (or even aware) or not.

As Social Media guru Larry Weber says: “It's time you joined the conversation.”

Microblogging: might as well face it, you’re addicted to Twitter

If we do something which we enjoy, it's entirely rational and indeed human to seek to repeat the experience to achieve the same gratification again; especially if one feels able to afford the money and time required and it apparently does no-one any harm. To some extent we are all susceptible; but when and why does an acceptable habit/ hobby become an addiction?

Of course it’s a matter of degree and it comes down to this: some people just have addictive personalities. If you have a basic susceptibility, you can choose from alcohol, narcotics, the slots in Vegas, Grand Theft Auto, porn, rewatching Season Four of Friends (“soooo much sharper on Blu-Ray”) repurchasing (again) the entire Beatles back catalogue (“sooooo much clearer with the new digital remastering”) or buying the new Manchester United 'Away Kit' for the boy (“he’d be bullied at school if he didn’t have it”).

Twitter is certainly the new social media phenomenon: its traffic has grown 900 per cent in just one year, politicians, celebrities, athletes and business leaders have made headlines with their tweets.

Twitter received four million unique visitors for the month of February, up from 123,000 from the same month last year. It's made a massive jump from 14th most popular social-networking site on the Internet to No. 3, behind Facebook and MySpace (for now).

And so it was inevitable that as Twitter took off, it would touch certain people who are natural addicts and yes you guessed it, they are now ‘Twitter addicts’. To use the slightly ‘naff’ jargon of the Twitterati (oops! there I go myself) they are Twitterholics. And yes, also inevitably there are online forums and websites to help such people.

The more light-hearted online mentions of this subject include 5 tell-tail signs:

• You name your first child @babygirl1 (and, naturally, you tweet during the birth)
• Your Mom joins Twitter in order to contact you
• You complain when your kids don’t ‘retweet’ you
• You never say or write anything using more than 140 characters
• You start to ‘unfollow’ people in real life (believe me, they don’t like it!)

On a more serious note, Tweeters can find themselves neglecting their responsibilities and suffering accordingly (family , friends, schoolwork , job) which is a good time to admit that you are spending too much time on Twitter and resolve to limit one's ‘tweet time’.

Many people I know are on LinkedIn for business and Facebook (or MySpace) for social interaction; most successfully separate the two and project suitably different personas in each; after all, we all dress for work (even if it’s polo shirts and chinos rather than white shirts and dark suits depending on where we work and whether our job title contains the word ‘digital’). With Twitter it can be difficult to tell where social stops and business starts and having two separate Twitter accounts is a step too far for most mortals.

I suggest each of us should decide why we are using social media including Twitter and set ourselves objectives; i.e. ask "what are we seeking to get out?" This is a necessary first step to evaluating against what we are putting in and so checking that the balance is working for us.

The reality is that sometimes it's necessary for us children to finish our homework before we go out to play. Of course it gets a bit more complex when the homework is actually blurred with play. In reality, few of us can be Madonna’s tour manager, the chief designer at Ferrari, or the lead technical developer on Oblivion 2 /The Elder Scrolls V and even if we are, we still need to compartmentalize and juggle our lives; work/ business/ home/ family/ friends. Twitter and other social media tools can be part of achieving that healthy balance. If we get it right we should be HAPPY.

OK that’s more philosophy that you usually get from this blog. Must get back to doing something useful…

So by all means follow me on Twitter ; just keep it under control, OK?