Apparently, it’s gone down a storm with fund managers and CEOs all around London. But based on a sample size of… umm, Matthew Robson and his mates, he’s succeeded in telling us exactly what those of us working in this space have know for the last few years…. no Twit Sherlock.

I think it all comes down to income – or lack of it, and the resulting fact that most teenagers will be on pay-as-you- go mobile phones; credit is more valuable than pure gold to most teens I know. Without fast, all-you-can-eat access to the web, teens won’t be online on the move, which means they are unlikely to use twitter on their mobiles – the primary communication medium – and if calls = credit, they are more likely to use MSN or XBox Live and Wii voice chat to speak with each other while they’re at home – it’s free.

The thought piece confirms many fears of digital marketers, but we already know that teens are an extremely hard audience to please, and the likes of Bebo have already understood that it’s about monetising content that this picky bunch will like. Last week I was at a New Media Knowledge conference where a Bebo spokesperson said that they no longer produce content unless they have secured 100% of the funding through a commercial sponsor. Its new Beat music show is racking up around 400,000 views and is sponsored by (Red client) Samsung. Yes, this is online advertising. No, teens don’t find it annoying, and the simple reason is that it’s engaging content wrapped up in brand engagement.

Accedo: This is more of an update from what they showed me at IBC, essentially, they’ve taken on the ‘app’ model for Facebook and Twitter so that you can view a cutdown version of these applications as a sidebar during your normal TV watching. In the same way that online applications such as thwirl and digsby recognise that some things need to be kept in the background while you’re focusing on your main task, Accedo will sit completely unassumingly until you want to share what you’re doing with your network. It also integrates with your EPG, so that just using the coloured remote buttons, you can update what you’re watching. Neat, look:

SeaChange: as a previous client of mine, I was curious to know what this middleware provider was up to in the world of web content.  They’re pimping Affinity, a social networking engine for video-on-demand, essentially a tool that allows you to make and take recommendations for stuff in a VOD library, the idea being that people will discover pay-per-view content that they might not normally find (= extra revenue for operator). The problem I have with this is that it seems that the recommendations are done via collaborative filtering (i.e. you share what you like with your friends and vice versa), which means that the solution is only good when your friends like the same stuff as you AND they happen to have an Affinity enabled TV service. If it was linked to a social network’s API, there would be a lot more value from this and it wouldn’t necessitate the latter point.

Ericcson: Yes they do TV, although apparently they don’t do web design so well. They were showing last.fm on TV – not the actual videos, but essentially, it’s an ‘app’ built for playing music through your TV when you get very bored of adverts for ringtones on VH1. I’m not entirely sure where it sits in the network because they don’t seem to be talking about it in any of their literature or website, which is a shame. I liked the demo though, it looks pretty slick and my TV has better sound quality than my PC, so I’m all for taking this particular service to the living room in another way (I currently use the last.fm app on my iPod quite frequently for that type of thing. Pic below:

CompleteTV: Now I have to say I’m more than a little disappointed with these guys. Despite having a fairly nice booth at IPTVWF, and splashing the YouTube Logo across it a couple of times, looking at their site, I fail to see how that was any more than lip service to online media making its way to the TV in any genuine form. Fear of content producers… perhaps. Now, that might sound harsh, but here’s the thing… CompleteTV makes boxes – not a great start… boxes for the consumer (even worse, since most of this stuff will migrate to the network in 3-4 years), which, with the whole wealth of social media goodness out there can do all this: “browse the internet and act as an email/instant messaging client”. Wow. I’m hugely underwhelmed, mind you, they’re way above Ericsson on the web design front.

Finally I wanted to quote a great article from the March/April issue of Future Media, in which Jonathan Webdale has interviewed Anthony Rose, one of the big cheeses behind the iPlayer, who said that “2007 was the year the BBC chose what you watched, 2008 was the year viewers chose what they watched and 2009 would be the year your friends choose what you watch.” As long as it’s not my Mistresses-watching colleagues choosing, I’m keen to see how it goes. It’s a great article (print only so far) which talks a lot more about TV going into social media (rather than what I’ve written here) so go read it now.

That’s paraphrased directly from Facebook’s new terms and conditions, which – as you can imagine – has caused not a small amount of discussion in the world of social media. From expelled students and Royal breakups to its over-intrusive Beacon platform, Facebook has been courting controversy rather more than it might like to admit over the last 12 months. On top of this, the social network has yet to answer questions around data portability in a convincing way. While reception to its interoperability platform “Connect” was positive, their spokesperson at Le Web in Paris was rightly called out by Michael Arrington for paying little more than lip service to the idea of open standards in social media. At its core, Facebook remains a walled garden and that’s unlikely to change any time soon.

These new T&Cs don’t help its cause one bit, but while those “in the know” will tut and shake their heads in despair, it’s unlikely that the average Facebook user will notice any difference at first – so why should they care? Well why not compare this attitude with Flickr’s “if it’s not public, it’s all yours” content policy – which, incidentally, terminates should you remove it from the site unlike the new FB small-print.

It seems that in the world of social media there’s an ideological debate going on where companies on the statist Left want to control and take ownership of content, while the open-source Right takes a more libertarian approach to it all. Of course there’s a balance to be struck, but this recent development only strengthens the argument of those who shy away from social media for fear details about their lives being controlled by or falling into the wrong hands. But perhaps the social network should be more concerned about the “what-if” factor… as an established consumer brand around the world, if FB trips itself up through misuse of the new “agreement” any time soon, you can expect the backlash to go beyond the online media set to its core audience of (so-far) contented everyday users.

This post was originally written for James Poulter’s Monday Mocha Musings, and can also be found at Shiny Red.

UPDATE (18/02/09): Facebook has since reverted to its old ToS, see the blog post here. The company has “decided to take a new approach” towards developing its terms. I wonder what that means.

            ]]> http://www.lewiswebb.com/2009/02/16/189/feed/ 2 http://www.lewiswebb.com/2008/06/26/social-media-its-about-us/ http://www.lewiswebb.com/2008/06/26/social-media-its-about-us/#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:35:06 +0000 Lewis Webb http://socialprobiotic.wordpress.com/?p=20 I first cut my teeth in the blogging world back in 2006 during a stint volunteering in the Dominican Republic. I was teaching English at a school, and the placement was done through an organisation called I-to-I. Since my trip, the site has gone all Web 2.0 with bookmarks, blogs and even a social networking aspect to it. They’ve also chosen to build a facebook page which now has close to 450 fans, taking on the idea that you can’t always get your audience to come to you online – most of the time you have to go to them.

However, a few months ago, I noticed that the Dominican Republic programmes had been removed from the website (see pic). I asked friends first, before emailing I-to-I and then eventually posted a question on their facebook wall. The response? Nothing – not a word or a whisper… after three weeks. I don’t think this type of behaviour is uncommon either. It’s a huge case of jumping on the bandwagon without knowing who’s driving and where its going. Clue I-to-I… we’re driving, and it’s going where we want it to go.

Setting up a Facebook page, or any social media presence and not maintaining it is like creating a hotline to a phone that no-one picks up. I’ll admit to not keeping all my online profiles up to date, I’ve not logged into Flixster for months, and my old blog died a death a while ago but that’s a personal page – it’s different. The social media mindset is one of engaging with your audience on their terms, taking part in an existing conversation and actually listening to what the public has to say. So I’m afraid after a valiant effort at looking the part, I-to-I simply doesn’t walk the walk.

B- must try harder.