You’ve seen the scantily clad cocktail waitresses in the casinos.  The sexy woman posed on the hood of a car.  We know that sex gets men’s attention.

But does sex actually sell?

A new research study by Brian Knutson of Stanford suggests the answer is yes; at least, that heterosexual men are more likely to take financial risks after being subjected to positive emotional stimuli—in the case of the study, erotic photos of a man and woman.

Why should digital marketers and publishers care?

As digital content and advertising become increasingly intertwined (here’s one of many posts on that topic), and marketers and publishers get better about measuring the effectiveness of their efforts (read more in our mini-eBook on social media performance management), we can expect the trend toward sex in advertising to be further invigorated (pun intended), at least in advertising that targets men.

And as social media becomes an increasingly effective marketing tool, we can also expect more of the digital equivalent of those cocktail waitresses.  The Stanford study alluded to the particular relevance in online gaming (gambling) businesses, and I noticed the effect firsthand when checking out XuQa.com, an online casual gaming community co-founded by Murtaza Hussain, co-founder and CEO of PeanutLabs and the subject of a recent DigitalPodcast interview.  Many of the most popular gaming rooms in XuQa are hosted by very attractive women (or at least hosts with photos of very attractive women), and the formula seems to be quite successful there.

By the way, for our female readers (my wife included) who by now are gloating over the superiority of your half of the species, beware:  Mr. Knutson is planning to test women’s responses in the future.

Andrew and Alex joined Forrester for its 2008 Marketing Forum, which focused on the challenge of customer engagement in a digital media world.  This second series of articles focuses on case studies of companies using interactive applications as the hook for building communities of superfans.

Creating Brand Advocates at Nike’s Jordan Brand
Emmanuel Brown, Director of Digital and Content, Nike’s Jordan Brand

Nike’s Jordan Brand has developed a couple of immersive experiences for highly engaged fans.  The experiences start with deep insight into these “superfan” needs, and build intense community engagement for these hardcore fans, but are small scale communities relative to the scope of the Jordan Brand.  Which raises the question, are these high ROI applications for engaging and activating superfans, or are they so focused on the hard core that they are failing to engage the brand’s mass market?  Read on and share your opinion…

Emmanuel began by sharing background on Nike, whose headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon is like a Disneyland for adults, and its Jordan Brand division, where Michael Jordan (MJ) still deeply interacts with the brand, the same way that he was engaged with the game of basketball.

Mentally, or digitally, cut to a stirring, inspiring Michael Jordan video (videos can be found at Nike’s site for the Jordan Brand, Jumpman23).

The Jordan Brand.  Nike approached Michael Jordan in 1984 to have a signature shoe built around him, a completely novel concept at the time.  In 1996, the Jordan Brand was born as a division within Nike.  The brand has 110 people versus the Tiger Woods Brand’s 400 people, and both brands support the same amount of revenue.  Nine out of ten people own (or have owned) Air Jordans, and the Jordan Brand is the second in the market behind Nike itself.

The Jordan Brand’s primary consumer is the core urban male 15-20 year old, highly competitive, a leader of the team.  These guys often know what the brand is doing before the news is made public.  The secondary consumer is 12-24 year old males and females, urban and suburban, not necessarily competitive.  Their consumers’ mind space includes social media, television, and the video game space.  The Jordan Brand does a lot of marketing through video games – with them, kids can see the entire line-up.  Most kids know what products they want before they get to the store.

The engagement philosophy for the brand is (1) to engage with consumers where and when they want (online!); (2) product and service together are critical to delivering a greater experience and engagement; and finally (3) the consumer decides.

The Jordan Breakfast Club.  A key platform for engagement is the Jordan Breakfast Club.  The challenge was to establish an authentic position for Jordan in the training marketplace.  Every morning, MJ and his teammates used to wake up and complete a workout regiment before he got to eat his four course breakfast.  So the Jordan Brand went after an unmet need of the target customer around training – everyone says that training is important, but no one tells kids how to train.  The Breakfast Club includes a simple peer-based assessment and a custom designed workout program that can be printed out or downloaded onto an iPod as videos for a huge number of possible workouts.  The Jordan Breakfast Club has 20,000 plus engaged users, and tens of thousands additional views on YouTube.  The Club also did a 10-city summer tour to reach thousands more at day long training camps.  The program won a 2007 Forrester Groundswell Award.

The Jordan Flight Club.  After building the Breakfast Club, the brand started getting more information about its consumers, and next started the Flight Club.  The Jordan brand has a huge “sneaker-head” following, and the Flight Club is about limited edition, one-at-a-time, high demand products for fiercely loyal customers who are willing to pay a very high price and avoid the disappointment of trying to get limited products through retail.  The brand got a lot of feedback from consumers in designing how the Breakfast Club would work.  Members of jumpman23.com got membership offers and the opportunity to invite two more friends – in others words, an “insider” offer for loyal customers only.  Demand went through the roof, with people selling their free invitations on eBay, and over 40,000 members joining in the first 45 days.

Emmanuel’s summary:  (1) create relevant experiences beyond the product, (2) service complementary needs of the consumer, (3) empower engaged consumers to be brand advocates, and (3) create and own communities where they are relevant and authentic.  The Jordan Brand’s next big challenge is to take these opportunities in the digital space and migrate them to the physical space, like the Jordan Breakfast Club tour.

Q&A Discussion

How do you share learning from the Jordan Brand throughout Nike?  We do case studies.  Things may work differently for us versus golf, and we use best practices.

The 15-20 year old market is refreshed every 5 years, so how do you target for the future, and specifically do you market to even younger (under 15) generations?  We try to communicate in a simplified format, keep MJ’s story relevant, and make great products.  We don’t market to the younger kids, but do try to emphasize success through working hard.

What do you mean that you’ve learned the hard way about ignoring customers?  We created a website where consumers could buy one-off products, and only created 6,000 units of a product that 1.6 million consumers tried to buy, crashing the site and generating hate mail.  We use sales data and forecasting to ensure that problem is not repeated going forward.  We’d rather overstock and deal with excess inventory than to have too little product and anger consumers.

For limited editions, doesn’t it help the brand to sell out so fast?  You have to appreciate the global effect of our brand.  Kids in Australia were getting their hands on US-only products; we responded to make the products available there.   We’re pushing to think more globally and satisfy demand, offering limited products in all parts of the world.

The Breakfast Club concept sounds great, but how are you measuring the true impact?  We’re not measuring the financials, but we do track the ongoing activities of the kids who sign up.  One of the Pro teams we visited adopted the philosophy as their primary means of training!

The Association for Downloadable Media, an organization whose purpose is to help provide advertising and audience measurement standards for episodic and downloadable media, announced today a proposal for advertising standards at Ad:Tech San Francisco.

A cross section of podcasters, agencies, device manufacturers and others interested in monetizing downloadable media have developed the proposed standards.

Why do we need standards for downloadable media?

• Lots of podcasts, lots of sponsors, lots of options and confusion
• Like IAB display ad unit guidelines for podcasts
• Allow sponsors to create 1 advertisement for multiple podcasts

The panel believed that the standards should be

• Simple
• Inclusive
• Acceptable

The group is proposing three types of ad standards: Insertions, Content Participation, and Collaterals

Insertions (as provided by advertisers)

• Definition: pre-recorded file provided by sponsor
• Time up to :10, ;15, :30, or :60 seconds
• Location: Pre-roll, post roll mid roll
• Frequency: Variable or time period
• Audio: 128k stereo/64k mono mp3, Sample Rate: 44.1 khz
• Video: H.264 MP$, Aspect 4×3 or 16×9 SD and HD

Content participation

• Definition: When an advertiser’s message is included as part of the audio or video podcast content.
• Time: Variable from :1 second to full episode
• Location: Pre-roll; mid-roll; post-roll; or integrated within one or a series of episodes
• Frequency: Variable by number of episodes per month; variable by number of insertions per user per month; or fixed per channel/feed per month.

Collaterals
All the other real estate that a podcaster has that may be included as part of an advertising or sponsorship package, or as separate items a lá carte.
Examples

• Show notes on podcast website
• ID3 tags in podcast episode file
• Album Art Cards
• Link and banner in enhanced audio podcasts
• Overlays, underlays in video podcasts
• Web banners, buttons, text links, hyperlinks (using IAB standards)
• Email sponsorships
• Press Releases
• Product sales (CDs, DVDs, merchandise)
• Signage/Outdoor (for retail)
• Brochures, flyers

The second area that the ADM focused on is developing a set of proposed measurement guidelines for audience traffic.

The Association of Downloadable Media is recommending compliance with one of two proposed methods to determine true download measurement. These two methods are Native Server Measurement or Third Party Measurement.

In order to comply with these guidelines, publishers would clearly state their download measurement methodologies to interested buyers. Buyers seeking to work with ADM-compliant publishers would be entitled to request and receive these download methodologies. The goal is to achieve high levels of confidence around the metrics for both parties.

Third Party Measurement (TPM)
A Third Party server is the intermediary between the Native Server and another Third Party Server. Third Party Measurement refers to the files measuring the initial download requests as received by a third party server to be delivered to the requester. Because the Third Party server is a constant, it may uniformly measure download statistics across multiple hosting services.

Data logged by third party servers include request information about the media being downloaded. Each request contains the following data that may be utilized for analysis.

• IP Address - Unique Internet address of the user consuming the media file.
• Time Stamp - Time at which the request was made for the media file.
• Request - The request specifies the media file requested and provides the method at which the request should be handled.
• HTTP Status Code - A technical code defined by the HTTP protocol that determines the status of the request.
• Referrer - Location where the request came from.
• User Agent - A unique value that identifies the service or application making the request. e.g. web browser such as Internet Explorer, podcatching agent such as iTunes, a web bot such as Google.
• Byte Range - This is the range of start and end bytes requested by the media consumer.

Native Server Measurement (NSM)
The Native Server is the actual end point where the media is hosted. Native Server
Measurement refers to the log files derived from the Native Server. It may include
the amount of data that was transferred in each log entry, and therefore may provide information to derive more than simple download statistics.

Data logged by native servers include request information about the media being downloaded as well as the amount of bytes transferred during the download transaction. All the data listed above (available to third party servers) applies to Native Servers. In addition, the following data may be utilized for analysis.

• Bytes Served - This is the amount of bytes that have been transferred to the media consumer in a given request. Depending on the type of request made, the bytes served may be less than or equal to the size of media file.

The data contained in either native or third party server log files does not necessarily mean that the data is analyzed. The method of analysis used varies.

Analysis Techniques and Factors

Both types of measurement include analysis techniques, in order to calculate download measurement. These analytic techniques are used to determine the validity of actual downloads (versus duplicated or aborted download attempts)

There are a number of factors used in any given technique to analyze log files.

• IP Address - The IP address may be used to determine if the request is unique or a duplicate. It may also be used to determine geographical information of the media consumer.
• Time Stamp - The date and time may be used to determine if the request should be counted.
• HTTP Status Code - The appropriate HTTP status code is examined to determine if the request should be counted.
• Bytes Served - The value may be used to determine if the media was completely downloaded. (Note: This information is only available from native server log files.)
• Referrer - The origin of the download may be used to determine if the request should be counted. e.g. media that is auto played upon loading a web page may be removed or reported.
• User Agent - The identifier of the application or service consuming the media may be analyzed to determine if the request is unique.
• Byte Range - The range of bytes requested in a given request may be used to determine what portion of the media is requested. When analyzed across multiple requests, the information may provide an accurate assessment to determine if the media was completely downloaded.

The ADM does not require a specific combination of factors or techniques, instead requires that you use analysis that’s appropriate to the business at hand in a way that provides high confidence data and you can explain the process used to create the data. It is left to any company following these guidelines to create techniques that fit their situation. However, it is strongly recommended to include the IP Address in analysis.

These types of measurements can be provided by services like Wizzard Media or PodTrac. UPDATE: ADM members RawVoice and Volomedia are also providing this kind of measurement service.

The proposed standards are open for public review and comment through May 16, 2008. Send to comments and feed back to info@downloadablemedia.org.

Once ratified will be reviewed bi-annually by ADM.

Technorati Tags: downloadable media, ADM, Association for Downloadable Media, Advertising, Standards

I came up with a short starter list of why Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Communications Officers should make social media a priority.

You need to know what people are saying about you. There is a customer to customer and press to customer conversation going on throughout the internet. Any company that fails to understand and act on this puts themselves at risk for getting blindsided by the conversation. At a minimum, they should be tracking the conversation. The best practice is to go beyond monitoring to building a social media strategy to influence the conversation.

You need to know what your people are saying. If your customers are using social media, it’s also quite likely that your employees are using social media. They will be doing it no only for themselves, but also to fill gaps in the company’s social media strategy. Left un-managed, this presents numerous risks to the company’s reputation and customer/competitive relations. Inappropriate information may get disclosed and comments about policies by employees may confuse customers. Further, it is not uncommon for information published by employees with good intentions to be poorly maintained and out of date. Every company should have a Social Media Policy and a plan for cleaning up/maintaining information published about them across the internet.

You need to make your marketing/communications more efficient. Customer and stakeholder attention is now in shorter supply than ever. Traditional marketing and communications approaches are becoming increasingly less effective and consequently it’s becoming more expensive to realize communication goals. Social media and community are two mechanisms to radically improve efficiency. It will take an investment, but this investment has much greater leverage than investments in traditional media. Traditional media content scales up linearly with cost and have diminishing returns. Social media content scales up with the size of the community and can have compounding returns. Any cost conscious CMO or CCO should be figuring out how to use these tools to make their companies more cost effective.

Tell us why you think CMOs and CCOs should make social media like blogging, podcasting and networking a priority.

PS - Click here to learn more about how the University of Southern California’s CCO is using social media by listening to this Digital Podcast.

Technorati Tags: social media marketing, marketing priorities

This panel at the Future of Television focused on user generated content, it’s role and the ways in which it can add value..

Panelists
Ken Todd, VP, Content, Showtime Networks
Richard Titus, Head of User Experience, BBC Future Media & Technology
Ivana Ma, Partner & President, New Media, Generate
Moderator: Rohit Bhargava, Author, Personality Not Included / SVP, Digital Strategy & Marketing, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

What’s the role of UGC?

Much of UGC is seem as being funny and somewhat irrelevant. However,the BBC gets lots of content from citizen journalists who send in content and blogs are some of the most heavily trafficked sites on the network.

UGC also has a major role in contests. Ivana described how when a music contest incorporated UGC and was framed as competing communities (eg, Colleges), really made the contest a much bigger success.

UGC also plays a role as brand evangelists. Ken spoke about how they used a site to have people write fan lit and have people vote on the content. He also spoke about a UGC contest using the them song from Weeds - Little Boxes. The prize was playing five of the songs on TV, with a grand prize of $10,000. He says it has proven very successful for Showtime.

What role do bloggers play?

Ken speaks about how they can play the role of uber fans (Super Fans). They can have a huge impact. Ken says they have started treating these uber bloggers as they would reporters, sending them press kits and advance on shows.

Richard speaks about how bloggers have now added a new voice to the conversation. He says blogging has made the BBC wake up and work harder.

Ivana points out that brands have taken an interest and started courting bloggers. Richard asks that since bloggers are more likely to be easier to buy off than the traditional media, does that make them more interesting to brand advertisers. ( What BS - like the auto mags don’t demand advertising for reviews.)

Is it money or is it attention and micro-fame?

Some do it to communicate, others want that small moment of fame. If they are doing it for money, its not there yet. You just have to look at the content and you will usually see what the motivation is. Richard points to the opportunity for blogs to generate huge momentary fame based on controversial content.

What about the cost of supporting UGC?

The cost of supporting UGC should also be recognized. Supporting this content is not free. It takes substantial moderation and infrastructure costs. Richard says that the conversation is going on and if the BBC wants to be part of it they will have to bear the cost.

Technorati Tags: Future of Television, user generated content

Michael Geoghagen, a leading figure in podcasting, has posted that podcasting is a community, not an industry. He focuses a lot of the attention of the difficulty podcasters experience making money via advertising supported podcasts and the failure of the podcast advertising networks to deliver real big dollars.

While I agree with virtually everything he says in the post, I find it funny that I never thought of podcasting as an industry. Publishing is an industry of which downloadable media is just one part.

It seems clear to me that podcasting is just one of the many channels that publishers have available for distributing content. And if we view the business as publishing then there is a much bigger pool of advertising money’s available for publishers.

But if we look at the publishing business, the first step is to build scale in audience and in ad sales. Publishers who make good money don’t rely on ad networks to provide their primary advertising revenues. The ad networks provide fill in ads for unsold inventory and the CPM from ad networks a much, much lower than ad inventory sold directly to advertisers. Podcasters who aren’t able to build significant audiences (big and/or valuable) and direct advertising sales will struggle to make much money.

Publishing is a tough business and all you have to do is look at the industry’s supply and demand curves to understand that impression based business models will continue to weaken. Even large scale publishers like Yahoo struggle to sell their inventory and have to resort to ad networks to fill in their unsold inventory. Inventory is expanding at a rapid rate and demand growth is severely restricted. That translates into deflationary pressure on revenue realization across the industry as the number of people dipping into the pie is increasing faster than the growth of advertising.

If you want to build a real publishing business, you better be prepared to go beyond advertising and think about how you build a valuable audience and provide them with lots of ways to pay you money.

Technorati Tags: podcasting, publishing, Michael Geoghagen

If you’re not watching what’s said at Twitter, you’re missing the real time news.

Twitter, self described as a “social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time”, has rapidly become a source of real time juicy material for reporters and bloggers straight from the crowd.

Twitter asks people just one question: What are you doing now? You get to answer with up to 140 characters.

The resulting Tweets can be monitored on a web browser or on your phone. The service has proven remarkable popular and become an interesting, real time new sources for news tips. Two very recent examples have the tech industry twittering away.

I witnessed one of these events on Twitter as it happened. At the SXSW conference, an interview of Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Sarah Lacy got out of control. The tweets started flying and the press and bloggers piled on here, here, here and a whole bunch more here. The Tweeting just made the event spin way out of control. Here’s Sarah’s response as posted on cNet:

And in an unrelated story, Techcrunch referenced some Tweets to point out a somewhat heated back and forth between the Six Apart and Wordpress guys.

Anil Dash, Six Apart’s Chief Evangelist, took aim at Wordpress users in a blog post today. Instead of upgrading to the new version of Wordpress, he says, consider moving over to their platform.

Now, it’s generally fair game to target your competitors, and Dash’s blog post was so tame that I can’t even find a good quote to pull into this post. But that didn’t stop Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg from going for blood. In a Twitter message, Matt says “six apart is getting desperate, and dirty.” Anil fires back almost immediately with “@photomatt desperation is resorting to name-calling and slander instead of substance — if there’s a factual error, i’m glad to fix it.”

Not only has Twitter become a source for news, it has also become a broadcast channel for people who collect large followings, which results in a strange co-mingling of news with Tweets about everyday activities like “waking up, making coffee”. The phenomenon of Twitter as a source of real time news can only grow as bloggers like Jason Calaconis, CEO of Mahalo, observe the growing importance of Twitter to blog traffic.

While Twitter has some great potential as a source of buzz and news, the real time mob effect is scary. Sarah, of the “train wreck” interview fame, may be getting lots of advice about what she could have done differently, but with Twitter the crowd will be talking about every real time event and it may not be nice.

Anyone doing this kind of interview or a speech better be aware that the crowd is talking, and when disgruntled people realize they are not alone, they tend to speak up like they did at SXSW.

UPDATE: I saw this on Twitter from Tim Bourquin who runs the New Media Expo. It says it all. Anyone running a live event now runs the risk of being Twitterfied :

Click here to follow me on Twitter  at http://twitter.com/alexnesbitt

Technorati Tags: Twitter

The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) announced the appointment of a special advertising agency liaison to the organization, along with the confirmation of a fourteen-member Ad Council, comprised of media professionals from leading interactive advertising agencies.

The council will act as a sounding board for the ADM committees, which are creating downloadable media advertising standards and guidelines. David Herscott, President of San Diego-based interactive agency MEA Digital, has been appointed the liaison between the Ad Council of media strategists and the ADM committee chairs.

The Association for Downloadable Media is focused on creating a landscape favorable to the commercialization of portable media. The ADM’s focus includes revenue generation from advertising and sponsorships of audio and video podcasts, (aka vidcasts, or vlogs), and other digital content distributed via RSS, ATOM, peer-to-peer, mobile devices, downloads from Web sites and other platforms to come.

The Association for Downloadable Media, formed to focus on monetizing consumer-downloaded content will be releasing initial ad unit standards and audience measurement guidelines for public consideration at the ADM Forum at ad:tech San Francisco April 16th from 9:00 am - 11:45 am at Moscone Center.

Chris MacDonald, Chairman of the ADM and Executive Vice President for Business Development and Operations, Libsyn PRO Enterprise Platform, said regarding this announcement: “People have been talking for years about the need for podcasting ad standards. We’re taking the first big leap on standards-setting and are working proactively to verify that the ad formats and audience measurement processes we set will work for both the buyer and seller.”

“Podcasting and downloadable content are the next frontier of digital media. The members of the Ad Council and I are excited to work with the ADM committees. Our work together will help brands leverage the amazing engagement we find with the audiences of downloadable content, says David Herscott, President, MEA Digital”

The members of the Ad Council are volunteering to be the sounding board for the ADM committees as they develop standards for monetization of downloadable media, making sure the standards dovetail with prevailing digital advertising best practices.

The Ad Council members include:

• Jonathan Adams, Vice President, Group Director, Media Digitas (Publicis Groupe)
• Kendall Allen, Managing Director, Incognito Digital
• David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy, 360i
• Jason Burnham, CEO, Burnham Marketing
• Jocelyn Griffing, Senior Vice President Online Media at ICON International, an Omnicom Company
• David Herscott, President, MEA Digital
• Tom Hespos, President, Underscore Marketing LLC, Underscore Marketing
• Alyson Hyder, Director, Digital Marketing Services, Avenue A-Razorfish
• Jennifer Kim, Vice President, Integrated Strategy, Sigma Group
• Susan MacDermid, Senior Vice President, Real Branding
• Stephen Smyk, CEO, Performance Bridge
• Jeff Adelson-Yan, Managing Partner, Levelwing Media

Technorati Tags: Association for Downloadable Media, ADM, ad standards

Last week I attended Graphing Social Patterns West and reported on the sessions that took place down in San Diego. It was a great event with lots of content.

After a bit of reflection, these are my top 10 takeaways from the event.

1. Hollywood and Video Game Players were MIA. I went through the attendee list and could not find anyone in attendance from traditional media or big gaming companies like Disney/ABC, NBC Universal, CBS, Activision, EA etc. The only person from a traditional media company was a developer from Condenast. Given the amount of time people are spending on these social networks and the growth of social gaming, the social networks are perhaps some of the biggest competitive threats and opportunities for traditional media. I was shocked by the chasm between the techies and the media.
2. The social application space has gotten big fast and will get a lot bigger. Over the past 8 months, the Facebook application space has exploded and real companies have emerged to take advantage of the space. This is only going to get bigger as OpenSocial opens up more networks and data portability finally starts being a reality.
3. Social objects are at the center of healthy micro-communities. I had not thought about this before, but social networks are not just about looking at each other, talking to each other and helping each other. Social objects like books, movies, cars, etc. are powerful mechanisms for building networks that link together people who don’t know each other.
4. OpenSocial apps will grow rapidly in next six months. For the past few months, OpenSocial has been in a development mode. In the coming weeks, it will be released at MySpace an other places opening up huge new markets.
5. MySpace will get Facebook like functionality. I got this from listening to what seemed to be a subtle conversation about the differences in the platforms and concerns by the Facebook app developers that MySpace had been self expression oriented and that Facebook had been communication oriented. Whether true or not, it seems that the effect of the open APIs will be to make all of the social networks more alike through the integration of third party applications that plug functionality gaps. No one talked about this explicitly, but when I brought it up with some of the leading developers I would get knowing smiles, but no comments.
6. There’s money to be made, and advertising is only part of it. Virtual goods and virtual currencies are a very important part of the social business model. Advertising will play a big role, but it’s not the only way to monetize the communities that are being built by these applications.
7. Social shopping is coming soon. Facebook will add credit card functionality and with it will come social shopping. Look for this to emerge later this year.
8. Social networks are a powerful new force for fund raising. Beth Kanter showed that she could use social networking and social media to raise $200,000. The Obama campaign seems to be using it to raise huge amounts of money. Every organization that needs to raise money should be paying attention.
9. We need better data. The data we get now is ok, but we need more if we are going to be able to learn and drive innovation systematically. We need data beyond page views. We need data that reflects on not just users, but also social objects.
10. Social application development is a learnable skill. Stanford is teaching it and I’m sure other schools will too. Stanford was able to teach students to develop 50 applications and learned a lot by sharing experiences. This means that others can do this too. This is good news for traditional media as their content can be at the center of the social object, and a good social object is the basis for the good application. It’s also good news for organizations that need to raise money or that want to use social networking to build their relationships with other stakeholders.

 

 Digital Podcast 42 [15:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (259)

Technorati Tags: gspwest08, graphing social, takeaways

Jia Shen, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of RockYou, and R. Tyler Ballance, lead developer of Slide’s Top Friends application, spoke at Graphing Social Patterns West about social application development.

Both Jia and Tyler flew through their presentations so I had a hard time keeping up. I have enclosed Jia’s slides below.

Jia focused on a three phase approach to application development that map to the lifecycle of the application. It starts with marketing and validation. You need to decide the target audience, the messaging you will use and the channels to reach them.

Understanding what audience you are targeting helps to define which social networks will work best based upon their demographics. Once you have defined the audience you need to determine what application verticals and what channels will be important. On Facebook, these channels include news feeds, notifications, email profile, news, email profile, invites, profile action nonuser pages, and profile pages.

On Facebook, these channels include news feeds, notifications, email profile, news, email profile, invites, profile action nonuser pages, and profile pages.

The next phase is the growth phase. Here you need to break the viral barrier and drive up the viral multiplier. You are seeking to get it up above 1 user causing at least 1 other user to install. From there, you need to tune growth. You can track every thing and look for the trends.

Next part of the process is engagement. You need to tune the application to improve engagement and drive monetization. In this phase, email, profile and non-user pages become more important channels. It’s important to balance virality versus engagement to maximize growth and retention.

OpenSocial giving ability to add functionality. Still open questions about will it help with distribution and monetization still an open issue.

The audience is different than Facebook’s audience with a different use case. MySpace has been more about self-expression. We need to find out what will be successful with OpenSocial.

Open social channels include news feed, profile main page, bulletins, messaging, invites, non user pages.

Tyler pointed out that we need to understand the platform - the functionality, the data models and relationships provided are different. This should drive differences in what gets developed.

Part of this discussion also hinted at the differences between MySpace and Facebook as it relates to activity feeds in Facebook that may cause more viral spread of applications.

SLIDES

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Technorati Tags: gspwest08, Graphing Social, social application development