Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Facebook Connect: The Portable Social Graph

Right after the election, I ordered some Obama stickers from MoveOn. When I went to their web site to complete the order, I was surprised to see the option of telling my Facebook friends about it the purchase as part of the transaction.  I installed Friends Connect and approved the information for my news feed.I  screen captured it for later reference. 

A few days ago, Facebook announced its Facebook Connect. It is being described as the next evolution of the Facebook platform that will allow the social activity that was happening inside of Facebook to be anywhere on the web.    It can pull personal data about visitors from Facebook - and send back activity reports to their news feeds.  It does this by having the user fill out a self-service application. It has been described by some as a "portable social graph." Google also implemented Google Friend Connect a few days ago - so the battle for access to your online identity and social graph is heating up.  (See Bryan Alexander's post.)

Some context first.  The term "social graph" may be unfamiliar. One of the best definitions that I came across was from Brad Fitzpatrick who defined it as  "the global mapping of everybody and how they're related."   (To better understand what a social graph is and why it is important, see this primer from the Read/Write Web.) 

In November, 2007, Google announced Open Social API.  I remember I was working two articles for TechSoup (Social Networking Options and Secrets To Effective Social Networking and considering how to one might explain open to their executive director.   At the time, the idea of ubiquitous social networks felt like it was a far from being a reality that might impact many nonprofits.  That has changed a bit in the past year as more nonprofits have started to incorporate social networks as part of their web strategies.

If you want a better understanding of what ubiquitous social networking is, read this indepth piece by Charlene Li  called "The Future of Social Networks" from March, 2007.   She says ubiquitous social networks will develop into the following: 1) Universal identities; 2) A single social graph; 3) Social context for activities; and 4) Social influence defining marketing value. 

Portable Social Graphs - Imagining their Potential

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: retail marketing)

Razor Fish created the above slide show to illustrate some of the potential for portable social graphs using Facebook Connect as the example.   Jeremiah Owyang points to this presentation identifies the following implications:

The social graph, when linked with traditional websites will radically change how we find, research, purchase, and support products.

Reviews, ratings, and critiques about products will become more relevant as you can start to get information from your own network.

Soon, social technologies will be pervasive and will impact every website –even if they choose not to participate

Brands, and their interactive marketing agencies, are starting to include social elements in all aspects of their marketing efforts.

Others in the social media technology industry don't necessarily think Facebook Connect is a step forward.  Marc Canter says, "Now over a year later we continue to see evidence that Zuckerberg and Facebook really think the web IS Facebook and that they would do everything they can to suck IN content and people INTO the black hole known as Facebook, and damn the rest of the web."   This is a view shared by Stephen Downes

Update:  Michelle  Murrain posted some thoughts about Facebook Connect - expressing the same opinion as Marc Canter and Stephen Downes:

What is most annoying to me is that Facebook Connect is proprietary, and it competes with an open standard, OpenID. They could have just as easily implemented the open standards - but they chose to go in a different direction. For most of the social networks except for Facebook, the walls of the gardens are coming tumbling down. But Facebook is basically just enlarging their walled garden.

What does this mean for most nonprofit organizations? Not a whole lot. This is going to take a long time to all of this to shake out, and only the most Web2.0 savvy nonprofits are going to be doing technology projects that will involve implementing either of these new toolsets.

For nonprofits that were early adopters on Facebook and have built up an network there, there may be some opportunities.  

Also this week, Scoble covered someting called PeopleBrowsr which is TweetDeck on steriods.   An application that lets you make groups of your contacts across social networks and see them visually.  It does a lot more, but it is pretty beta.  It's an interim step.

• Mark Zuckerberg's announcement
• Mashable Report
• Lost Remote
• Wired News

What do you think? 

Yahoo! Supports OpenSocial; Yahoo!, MySpace and Google to Form Non-Profit OpenSocial Foundation

 

Back in November when Open Social was announced, we had a round of discussions in the NpTech space that summarized on my blog.  Just saw a press release from Yahoo, Google, and MySpace about OpenSocial Foundation.

For now, here's the basics culled from the press release, official blog posts, and blog commentary.

The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008. The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction.

The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008. The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction.

The official blog posts from Yahoo and Google
Yodel Annecdotal
Google Blog

Lots of folks covering the announcement:
Read/Write Web
FaceReviews (includes analysis)
Examples of apps built on opensocial (ugh, Shelfari)

Marketing Pilgrim adds:

Facebook is steadily refusing to participate in OpenSocial or the foundation, choosing instead to support Facebook developers. Facebook is credited with starting and fueling the development of social network applications.

Google is emphasizing that OpenSocial is a community effort (or as Mozilla puts it, “a public benefit”) and not for Google’s benefit only. In true form, it has a web site (OpenSocial.org) built on Google’s new Google Sites platform. There’s also a Blogger blog for OpenSocial.

OpenSocial is creating a common API that works on multiple websites. According to the site: “The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the API and host 3rd party social applications. There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.”

Nick from Social Times adds:

My biggest problem with the standard so far has been that it’s not easy! There are multiple standards that must be supported to launch your application on MySpace and other social networks so far. It appears that this new foundation will focus on bringing together the community to help further the OpenSocial standard. A statement from Joe Kraus, Google’s director of product management, said “The formation of this foundation will ensure that it remains so in perpetuity. Developers and websites should feel secure that OpenSocial will be forever free and open.”

I look forward to reading what other nonprofit folks think the implications, if any, for nonprofits.  If you are the Internet marketing person or responsible for your organization's web strategy, how does this impact your strategy?

Explaining Open Social to Your Executive Director

The buzz has been going full blast about Google's Open Social API, from TechCrunch to ZDNET.  The nonprofit technology community is aksing: "What will Google Open Social mean for nonprofits?"

Allan Benamer answers: Not much because the average nonprofit does not have the infrastructure and skill sets that would allow for rapid adoption for new technology.   Michelle Murrain concurs "Most nonprofits haven’t even begun to take advantage of the Web 2.0 world in general, let alone the bleeding edge of OpenSocial." Allan also offers an analysis of the nonprofit micro-philanthropy applications, but says it is too early to speculate where things will be in the next 21 days or next few months.  One thing is clear, nonprofit techies will be watching, playing, and thinking about it.

Charlene Li has an analysis of the impact.  She notes that in the short-term Facebook isn't threatened -- for now. Application developers are going to go to where the heat is, and that heat is red hot at Facebook  But longer term, this may change.

What I am curious is how nonprofit marketing staffers are explaining this to their executive directors.  And, maybe this is only of concern to relatively small number of early adopters in the nonprofit sector.   Still, I'd love to know the answers to these questions:

• How do you explain to your executive director?
• If you are the Internet marketing person or responsible for your organization's web strategy, how does this impact your strategy?

What is Openness?

While some headlines might proclaim that Open Source is meaningless in the nonprofit sector, the issues as Holly Ross of NTEN says, "The  question isn't really about open source, but about openness."   

So, how do you explain Open Social  to your executive director?

Jeremiah Owyang to the rescue with this excellent post!

We’ve hit a milestone on how the web is becoming amorphous, data is about to be shared easily and quickly in a fluid way. Google and several other social networks in the alliance launched OpenSocial on Nov 1st. Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook are not part of the announcement (yet).

We’ve hit a milestone on how the web is becoming amorphous, data is about to be shared easily and quickly in a fluid way. Google and several other social networks in the alliance launched OpenSocial on Nov 1st. Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook are not part of the announcement (yet).

Four months ago, Facebook allowed third party companies to build mini-applications in their site, this is similar in concept, but now includes many other players.

‘Platform’ or ‘Container’ where your mini-application can extend to: MySpace, Bebo, SixApart, Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.

I like Christopher Penn's example:

Think for a moment what this means. You write an OpenSocial App for LinkedIn and it will run on Vox or LiveJournal. It will run on MySpace. It will run on Plaxo. Google’s OpenSocial API will give you the ability to cross social network platforms easily as a developer, and if you have the choice of writing for Facebook alone or writing for 12 platforms at once, including the most populous network on the planet, where will you allocate scarce development resources?

 

Here's the important concept that nonprofit marketers who are integrating the social web already know and need to explain to their executive directors:

Web Marketing no longer is limited to your corporate site. Let go of the concept of ‘driving traffic to your website’ as a sole measurement of success. The web, it’s message, and your battles are now fought on the open and distributed web. Trusted decisions between prospects and customers are made on these social communities and networks, savvy executives need to go there.

He also gives us the top line opportunities:

• Efficient development
• Harness existing communities
• Open standards help long term
• Your existing applications become social

The last point is a projection from Owyang about the future of organizational web sites - - that social networking features (friends and connections) will be integrated into organizational/corporate web sites. He notes, "We’re not there yet, but start planning on how that will look." 

And, of course the challenges:

• Unproven
• Open data opens risks
• Inconsistencies may emerge
• Cultural differences
• Future authority not known

The bottom line:   Although we’re at the unproven starting point, the opportunity is promising, companies wanting to extend their online presence should consider the distributed web (OpenSocial) into their 2008 web strategy planning.

The Here and Now Marketing Implications for Nonprofits

David Geilhufe said on an NTEN list earlier this week:  "Watch out for Google's Facebook killing strategy, OpenSocial. The technology here will better allow nonprofits to form relationships with constituents, independent of the social network on which the initial relationship is created.

It is unclear how long before that is actually in the hands of marketers and how much longer it  will take to get into the hands of nonprofit marketers

At podcamp, I attended a session led by Christopher Penn, who is a master at social networking and media strategie and is the CTO for Student Loan Network.   He shared his current thinking about Open Social and how it influences the here and now:

OpenSocial means something different to marketers, though. OpenSocial will immediately increase the value of each of the participating networks to marketers. Here’s an example.

In context, I have very different friends and friend data on LinkedIn and Plaxo. My friends in turn have different friends and contexts on the various services. OpenSocial will let me aggregate all of my friend data across networks to a data store, and I can then get a better idea of what’s on my networks.

More importantly - perhaps most important of all - I’ll be able to get common reference data across networks. This means, simply, that I will be able to cross reference data from one network to another. If a contact has a mailing address on LinkedIn, but is missing a ZIP code, and they have the ZIP on Plaxo, I will be able to aggregate the disparate pieces of data to develop a complete profile. Marketer’s dream? Heck yes.

What’s your marketing strategy for OpenSocial? Mine is to continue building and growing my presence on individual networks, targeting them for their demographics, and as the first OpenSocial developer applications come out, I’ll aggregate all the data together.

If you’re doing a targeted campaign, such as social network marketing, OpenSocial will make this process easier and faster. You’ll be able to amplify your marketing power across many networks, rather than just one, much in the same way TubeMogul lets you post your videos to 9 different video sharing sites at once.

But what if your organization is just getting started, what is the advice?

It is tempting to say that most nonprofits should just say no and ignore social networking.  Maybe look at some unsuccessful social networking efforts and proclaim it not worth your time. And certainly, if there are basic infrastructure and capacity needs challenging a nonprofit, certainly setting up a profile on a social networking isn't a magic bullet.   

But for those who have dipped their toes into the social networking river and have not seen results, I wonder if efforts that are not successful have not understood the key concept that Owyang states above:

Web Marketing no longer is limited to your corporate site. Let go of the concept of ‘driving traffic to your website’ as a sole measurement of success. The web, it’s message, and your battles are now fought on the open and distributed web. Trusted decisions between prospects and customers are made on these social communities and networks, savvy executives need to go there.

How can a nonprofit begin to implement a social networking strategy that is successful over time that does not waste resources?

1. Start with a small, low risk experiment on a social networking site.
2. Identify what you key success metric is
3. Enter one site at time based on how well the demographics fits with your targeted audience.
4. Don't sit set up the profile and abandon it - it isn't a billboard.  It means being part of the community and that means some investment of time.    Look at the cost/benefit of your time.  If won't invest the time, don't bother.
5. Give your experiment enough time.  A month is probably too short. 
6. Write down what works to grow your presence and profile on these sites.
7. Don't just friend collect, build relationships

What would you add to this list?

More References on Open Social (via Jeremiah)

Starting point:The official OpenSocial Webpage

Video: OpenSocial hosted an event on the opening night, this hour long video has demos of code and applications

What matters: Forrester colleague Charlene Li breaks down what is likely to happen, and why you should care

Developers: Ted, CEO of Dogster compares and contrasts the announcement.

Thinking Bigger: Six Apart sees the forest, this is development for the whole web, not just Google.

Opinions: There are many, many voices on Techmeme if you want more color

Update:  Why Google Turned into a Social Butterfly, NYTIMES