Social marketing: it's about building a relationship

"All this massive information is going to be filtered through your friends... the era of push marketing is over, or it's ending."- Paul Adams, Global Brand Experience Manager at Facebook

Paul Adams took the stage at Federated Media Publishing Signal San Francisco earlier today.  He talked about how marketers often misunderstand how social media marketing campaigns should be designed.  As he wrote in his recently published book Grouped, he emphasized that social media campaign is about building a relationship with customers, not flashing a sales sign in front of as many of your target audience as you can possibly afford.  Bigger and flashier is not what social marketing is about.  It's about building an emotional connection with customers and their friends.

Google Analytics: social ROI update

Earlier this morning Phil Mui, Google Product Manager for Google Analytics, posted a blog announcing social media support.  In addition to tracking number of website visitors, page views, conversions, visitor location and time spent, Google Analytics will soon track social media metrics that marketers and publishers have been looking for.

Here are social media metrics that Google Analytics will track starting in next few weeks:

Facebook and Twitter as mobile news curation platform

Pew Research Center has released an article outlining what Facebook and Twitter mean for news.  They conducted telephone surveys with a nationally representative sample of 3,016 adults in U.S. back in January 12 through 29.

We all know Facebook has much more active and larger user base.  When reading the below stats, you should keep in mind that Facebook has about 425 million monthly active users on mobile as of Dec 2011 while Twitter has about 100 million monthly active users as of Oct 2011.  Given the difference in user base, it's natural to expect that makeup of Facebook and Twitter users are different.  The article talks a bit about that, and it's not surprising.

Big Data example: predictive policing

I want to share an example of Big Data.  It's called predictive policing.  Idea is a simple one.  Instead of asking how to solve existing crimes, the system is created to answer a different question.  Crimes are going to happen.  Given that crimes are happening, what is the pattern in crime statistics?  How can we predict where and what kinds of crimes are to happen?

We may not be relying on "precogs",
but predictive policing may come close;
thanks to Big Data

It's not quite predictive as "precogs" in Minority Report.  But the idea is powerful one.  If all crime statistics are collected and plotted, there are patterns.  Shifting crime-prone area can be foreseen by someone looking at all data points.  Police department can then use the data to allocate resources at right places to handle anticipated crimes.

The next step can be seeing how policy presence affects the crime pattern.  Effectively this predictive policing system will allow policy department to track how well they are doing and how criminals react to policy officer's response.  Imagine iterating on this idea on matter of days.  That could have profound implication to improving the crime statistics.

One key thing that must happen to realize the benefit of Big Data is collecting data.  It must be easy for police officers to share data among multiple departments.  Once this sharing of data is in place, the next thing is navigating through data.  System must allow user to answer his/her questions.  System should also suggest questions for user to ask.

Although this example is about predictive policing, it can be applied anywhere Big Data modeling can be useful.  It could be used in employee turnover, grocery shopping habit and traffic accidents just to name a few.  This Big Data will be a tremendous area of growth as more and more data become available online and easier to aggregate.

Company culture is what keeps people together

We are hearing lot of stories of people switching jobs. Kevin Rose and his Milk team joined Google, Gowalla team joined Facebook, and James Whittaker switched from Google to Microsoft. In San Francisco Bay Area, it is difficult to hire good people with experience. It's even more difficult to hang on to them. Given that startups are powered by people, losing the key people is devastating. It can set back months of progress. Not only does it cost the company financially but also it can dampen spirit for the remaining team.

That is especially true when the person jumping the ship publishes his reason for switching as losing faith in the company culture. That's what happened with James Whittaker, ex-Googler who decided to join Microsoft last week.

Bret Victor: Inventing on principle

Bret Victor gave a talk to CUSEC 2012 (Canadian University Software Engineering Conference) back in January, and I stumbled upon it on Facebook Interest today.

Bret Victor's website (http://worrydream.com)
 is also worth visiting

Bret talks about how his personal principle drives his innovation and the way he approach his work on a Vimeo clip below.  He starts his talk by presenting how he approaches the problems by applying his core principle.  His core principle is providing immediate feedback to user of any tool.  He demonstrates how current software development and animation tool can be dramatically improved by allowing the user to get the immediate feedback, and allow the user to explore possible alternate scenarios.

He then describes how software developers should learn from Larry Tesler.  Larry recognized the problem with modes from text editor such as vi.  He saw this mode-based editing as impediment to making computer more accessible, and created modeless editor called Gypsy.  He invented click and type interface where you can insert texts by using mouse pointer to select text and type.  Now, his idea is so ubiquitous we no longer see any novelty.  But back in Larry's time, he recognized the problem which a few people recognized and has made it his personal mission (in Bret's term, principal) to fix the problem.

Bret's idea is directly applicable to organization as well.  Company needs principle or actionable mission statement.  With clear mission all team members can focus their energy on solving the right problem.  In addition it allows the team to gel together and helps them make it through 'trough of sorrow' of Paul Graham's Startup Curve.

I highly recommend Bret's Vimeo clip for anyone who's looking for personal principle or company mission statement.



Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle from CUSEC on Vimeo.

Startup is not for faint of heart

Since my brief stint at Microsoft, I have been working at startups.  I guess there is something in me that draws me to startup culture.  I think there are many facets of startups that appeal to me.  Among many, the most appealing aspect is building.  When working for a startup, a very little is defined and handed down.  There is no proven path that will work.  I have to figure things out and get it working.  But that's not all.  Just like any other challenging game, you are given a limited time and resources to get it right.

I find this startup process very satisfying.  I think it's the number one reason why I've been staying away from tech giants.  Although it's not the rule, bigger companies tend to move slower and have all kinds of help and fail-safe mechanisms to catch you if you are falling behind.  Startup is not like that.  If you run out of money before creating positive cash flow, either you fold or get out to raise more money.  It has brutal yet simple logic to its success.  To get to the next level, you must survive this round.

Paul Graham's Startup Curve;
Thanks to Fred Wilson for the reminder.

Luckily I don't manage runways or worry about burn rate, but I vividly recall the days where all team members were worrying about where the next paycheck is going to come from.  When you get that close to the brink of folding, it's only natural that emotions run very high.  Compare that feeling of despair with first setting sail after closing initial funding, you get the proverbial emotional rollercoaster ride.

When I saw Paul Graham's so-called Startup Curve, I think I was still recovering from the still fresh memory of our failed attempt at our earlier startup.  Now that several years have gone by, I think I can look at the curve little more objectively.

Startup is not for faint of heart.  Not only it requires you to focus and work crazy hours to get things done, but it demands you to be emotionally prepared for daily ups and downs and self-doubts.