SocialTimes.com

Posted: 21 Aug 2008 01:43 PM CDT

Hey this is Nick O’Neill and I’m here today to tell you about ….. me!!!!!! Yes, I am wonderful [END CLIP].

That’s about all I and thousands of others of people can seem to talk about when they are provided with 12 seconds to talk to a video camera. There is a sudden boom of social video services that enable people to record and upload quick video clips of themselves. I’ve found that the majority of the content is simply people talking about themselves. Is this a particular acute observation? Not really, if you didn’t realize this then you haven’t been viewing social media.

Social Media is Narcissistic

When I was waiting in line today to grab my Chipotle lunch I thought to myself that I’d post a tweet saying “Exhausted. Didn’t sleep much last night.” I’m not sure what exactly inspired this moment of deep insight but I can guarantee that absolutely nobody following me on Twitter cared whatsoever. They will simply ignore it in search of the next interesting post.

The problem with many of these services is that they were designed in ways that enable us to increase our narcissism. Who posted on my wall on Facebook? Did you comment on my blog post? Did you reply to my tweet? Me me me! In such an environment it’s no wonder that micro-celebrities are born because ultimately the only industry that rewards narcissism is the entertainment industry.

Where’s the Value?

It’s well known that advertising appeals to peoples’ desire to be a celebrity. When an industry develops tools for individuals to become their own celebrities, people rush in to take advantage of it. That’s exactly what social media has provided but hopefully some of these tools can turn into tools for good rather than simply tools for self promotion.

The only thing I can’t figure out about 12 seconds (and countless other “social media” start ups) is how are they any different from YouTube or most other video sites? Does 12 seconds really make much of a difference? Honestly, I think it’s relatively limiting and while I understand the 140 character limit for Twitter I have no idea where the value is for 12seconds.com.

How large can the industry get when people are only talking about themselves?

Could the LinkedIn iPhone App Replace Salesforce?

Posted: 21 Aug 2008 10:37 AM CDT

I spent some time poking around at the new LinkedIn iPhone application this morning and I was fairly impressed. The application is simple but useful. It enables you to browse through your contacts, view your contacts’ latest activity, search for contacts and update your status. Apparently status updates have become ubiquitous across all the social networks making tools like Ping.fm a necessity.

LinkedIn As the Simple CRM

One thing that I find interesting about this services is that it could easily compete with Salesforce. With a few additions, LinkedIn could be the CRM solution for those that don’t know what a CRM solution is. Let me explain. Imagine waking up in the morning to find out that you hadn’t followed up with a recent contact that you added in at least 6 months. Now would probably be a great time to follow-up so the LinkedIn application would automatically alert you.

Want to keep track of that conversation you just had? The call will be automatically noted next to the contact in LinkedIn and you can write a quick note about what you just discussed. While the application doesn’t currently provide these features, it’s something that has been needed for a long time and I have yet to find a simple yet useful contact management system that handles all of my contacts.

Race to My Contacts

The existing solutions are overly complex. One problem with LinkedIn is that when I add a contact, I don’t have a note about how I met that person. For the first time I have found the ability to do so (as “Edit Contact” is currently a beta feature on the site) but when I approve a contact it doesn’t automatically prompt me to enter those details as Facebook does.

I keep saying over and over that the social platform race is a race to my contact list but there still isn’t an effective solution! I currently subscribe to Salesforce.com but paying $55 a month seems like a lot of money to spend on something that isn’t extremely easy to use and offers 10,000 more features than I’ll ever use.

Conclusion

The new LinkedIn iPhone application shows the power of simplicity. It’s not necessary to build a feature heavy application to be successful. LinkedIn has only touched the surface of its potential and given its reach in the professional world, LinkedIn has the potential to become an amazing service that I can’t live without. Unfortunately for LinkedIn, all my contacts are now adding me on Facebook but that’s not to say I’m the average case.

This is a great step and it shows that the company is quick to adapt. Now the company needs to start rolling out new features so that I don’t need to continue relying on SalesForce.com as my overly robust contact management system. If you have an iPhone I highly recommend checking out the LinkedIn application.

Has the Hype Died Down for Widgets?

Posted: 21 Aug 2008 09:07 AM CDT

Yesterday Google announced that OpenSocial now reaches 350 million users, suggesting that the competition is still on to become the largest social platform. The competition may be slowing though as Stefanie Olsen suggested this morning. Rather than a large influx of new competitors, the “buzz has turned to a worrisome hush” and venture capital funds are drying up.

I’m not so sure that the lack of venture funding for Facebook application companies is big news. Technically social applications are not the same as widgets but that doesn’t really matter to marketers who are spending money in the space because they don’t know what any of this means. It’s now become the job of the sales and business development teams to sell the idea to marketers and advertisers.

There is also a lack of advertiser education and as such, even the large companies are finding it more challenging to extract a lot of revenue out of advertisers. This doesn’t mean that the interest in the area has died, it just means that it’s time to get back to basics and figure out how to generate substantial revenue (this was one of the primary drivers behind the launch of Social Ad Summit).

The biggest challenge for the space? Even the venture capitalists investing in these companies aren’t so sure. As Navin Chadda, “a venture capitalist with the Mayfield Fund, which invested in Slide and widget distribution network Gigya” said, “Can one application company on Facebook build a few-hundred-million-dollar business? I’m personally skeptical.”

Some of these companies have have more eyeballs looking at their products than television channels have but the advertising dollars simply aren’t stacking up. It’s time for the industry to get back to basics and figure out how to start extracting the big dollars.

OpenSocial Reaches New Landmark, Still Can’t Beat Facebook

Posted: 20 Aug 2008 06:37 PM CDT

When OpenSocial was announced last year by Google, it was paraded around as the system which was going to force Facebook to open up. While Google wasn’t necessarily putting those words in their press releases, insiders suggested that this was the goal. At first I called OpenSocial a “coalition of the willing” but ultimately there was a good shot at the standard gaining mass appeal. The company has now attracted MySpace, hi5, orkut and Friendster to join and as I previously thought, Bebo was part of it (Erick Schonfeld seems to think they aren’t yet part).

Whatever the case, it’s clear that the competing platforms to Facebook still haven’t attracted the same number of developers and haven’t experience the same blockbuster growth that Facebook continues to post. Facebook has around 37,000 applications and continues to grow rapidly. How many applications does OpenSocial have across all of their social networks? Only 4,500. That’s less than 15 percent the size of Facebook.

OpenSocial makes a lot of sense though and based on numbers that Techcrunch was provided, OpenSocial may be prepared to double in size before the end of September. One interesting that I found interesting was the chart that Erick Schonfeld included in hist post about OpenSocial growth (pictured below). There isn’t exactly the hockey stick growth that one would hope for. Instead, the only growth that is being provided is by expanding onto new networks.

Contrast that with Facebook where they maintain one platform yet continue to post continuous growth. I’ll be interested to see if OpenSocial can find their way on to networks that are posting spectacular growth. One company not included in the chart is imeem, who continues to post growth but did not launch with “Google’s approval”. I’m not sure why that’s required to be included in the chart but somebody definitely thought imeem wasn’t important enough to display!

It will be interesting to see if OpenSocial can eventually become the defacto standard for social applications.

OpenSocial Reach Chart