Opinions and Onions

FriendVouch: Creating Spammers of us all

FriendVouch launched on November 4th with much praise from a former Google exec Gokul Rajaram aka “the godfather” of Google’s AdSense. To say that I am not a fan of this service is like saying I am not a fan of getting kicked in the shins.

Positioned as a service that rewards the natural tendency of certain people to recommend brands to their friends in reality it is simply going to turn the mass population into an army of micro-spammers.

So what exactly is FriendVouch?

The official definition: FriendVouch is a community of people created to connect you directly to your favorite brands

Translation: FriendVouch gives your “friends” a way to spam you and get paid for it

Essentially FriendVouch pays subscribers if they recommend a brand to a friend and the friend then acts upon that recommendation. A typical offer that I, as a member of FriendVouch, could recommend to a friend is below:

Why do I have such a big problem with this service?…. Brace yourselves, here comes the rant

1.    They have totally misunderstood who their target market is

This has been heralded as a service which will give brands a platform to launch word of mouth marketing campaigns. Word of mouth marketing (W-o-M) is coveted by brands because it is a relatively inexpensive way to get a message to customers without making them feel like they are being advertised to.

Anyone who claims FriendVouch is the answer to brands W-o-M dreams does not understand W-o-M what so ever.

A W-o-M campaign requires 2 things to be successful:
1.    a decent message
2.    trust in the source of the message

It is up to the brand to satisfy requirement 1 and come up with a decent message FriendVouch claim that they will satisfy requirement 2 by providing Brands with access to ‘Influencers’, who are a theoretical segment of the population used by others as a reliable source of information on brands. For example everyone has a friend they go to for advice before buying a new computer.
(for further reading on this topic see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point)

But hold on a second… didn’t I just say that for a successful W-o-M campaign customers need to trust the source off the message? And Doesn’t FriendVouch actually undermine that trust by providing a monetary incentive for people to recommend brands? Of course it does!

The last thing an influencer is going to do is want to get paid for their recommendations as it goes against the very reason they enjoy being an influencer… that they get to ‘influence’ others by being a reliable and trustworthy source of information!

2. People will actually use it but for all the wrong reasons

So if ‘influencers’ wont use FriendVouch won’t it just die off?

No! Because people WILL use this site but not the ‘influencers’ as they claim. Instead people motivated by making money will use it and it will become a spamming engine. As it is free to send a recommendation people are incentivised to send the message to as many people as possible to get the best return. I promise I will un-friend anyone who sends me a brand recommendation and then gets paid for it. If you think I would like a certain brand then pick up a phone and tell me about it. The only people going to take the time to log into FriendVouch, create an account, upload their friends contact details and search for brands they can recommend are motivated by money and nothing else.

3. They ask you to upload your friend’s contact details

If I want to recommend a brand to someone I need to upload all their PERSONAL DETAILS!! They ask for:

Name
Email address
Phone number
DOB
Mailing address

Agghhhh!!! If I ever receive a recommendation from one of my friends I will know that they uploaded all my personal data and I will call over to their house with a big stick and spank them with it.


4. They aren’t even offers

The only saving grace for this service would be if the offers actually gave some value to the customer but they don’t. I looked through about 20 “offers” and no one was offering me anything of value. There were no 50% off or anything of that nature. Instead it was a list of brands who just said what their service does and wanted people to promote them.

Rant nearly over…

The reason I have such a problem with this service is that I actually think that it could gain market traction and that suddenly my network of friends will become micro-spammers running around giving out my personal details and spamming me with irrelevant offers.

If any of my Facebook friends are reading this and you have been looking for an excuse to unfriend me then simply log into FriendVouch and recommend something to me. But remember I may show up at your house stick in hand ready to spank you.

Facebook: victims of their own success?

The other day I received the following email conversation that had been intercepted and virally spread throughout offices in the UK. It is a conversation between an employee “Kyle” and a HR manager “Niresh”

Niresh: Hi Kyle, Please provide a medical certificate stating a valid reason for your sick leave on Thursday 21^st 2008. 

Kyle: 1 day leave absences do not require a medical certificate as stated in my contract, provided I have stated that I am on leave for medical reasons. 

Niresh: Usually that is the case, as per your contract. However please note that leave during these occasions is only granted for genuine medical reasons. You line manager has determined that your leave was not due to medical reasons and as such we cannot grant leave on this occasion.

Kyle: My leave was due to medical reasons, so you cannot deny leave based on a line manager’s discretion, with no proof, please process leave as requested. 

Niresh: I believe the proof that you are after is below 

This conversation highlights a trend that could spell the end for Facebook if they are not careful. As Facebook has become more popular it has also become more mainstream. Something that started as a private college network has now been adopted by people of all age groups. The issue here is that people are losing the ability to control their various versions of the “self”.

The “Self” 

(for further reading on this theory see http://www.delos-inc.com/Reading_Room/Articles/1/1.html)

The theory of “multiple selves” is very evident in all our daily lives. When I am at work I am a very different person to when I am with my girlfriend (for the purposes of this blog I am pretending I am not single!!), and again I am a different person when I am out with the lads. One person is no more my “Self” than the other, they are all parts of my personality which need to be nurtured. Issues arise, however, where 2 parts of a personality do not mix. For example; I may be happy enough for my girlfriend to see the “Self” who hangs out with the lads because she trusts me implicitly but I may not want my boss to see this personality. To a greater or lesser extent we all do whatever we can to protect the lines between these personalities. The problem with Facebook is that as it has been adopted by the wider population we are connecting and communicating in a uniform way with people we would usually show different selves to.

Almost everyone I have talked to have in the last year received a friendship invite from someone they would rather not see what their inner circle of friends sees. Facebook would argue that there are many security features on the site and you can protect other people from seeing parts of your profile. These “privacy” settings are completely useless as they totally miss the point and lead to 2 issues:

1.     It presumes that the level to which I want to communicate with different people is a linear scale ie that I am happy for person x to see 100% of my personality, person y to see 50% and person z to see only 25%. But as mentioned I have multiple personalities all of which I want to nurture but in a different way. So it is not ok to say Person Z can’t see my photos as i may want them to see certain photos but not others.

2.     It is very obvious when someone has restricted your view of their profile and as such the friend will feel they are not trusted. If my boss asks to befriend me and I only allow him see a limited profile he will not only feel I don’t trust him, he will also feel that I have something to hide.

Impact on Facebook and the future for social networking

I believe in the next 2 years one of 2 things will happen:

1.     Facebook will get their act together and introduce a user friendly way to allow people protect their different versions of “self”. A potential solution is to get people to assign each of their friends to a group and then when a user uploads a photo or a comment etc they can choose which groups of friends sees it. In the case of Kyle’s email mishap he could have set a different status for his work colleagues to see.

2.     There is a real risk that Facebook may not be able to make this functionality user friendly and if they fail to correct this then the social networking market will fragment with people using different social networks for their different personalities. People will then use a central social networking gateway such as Newbay’s “Lifecache” product which allows user upload and interact with multiple social networks from a central online location.

Conclusion

I do not believe Facebook will solve this problem any time soon as they are more concerned with getting a business model up and running than protecting their current audience... something which Myspace before them struggled with. In the case of Myspace they morphed from a social network like Facebook to becoming a content site. The question is if Facebook doesn’t solve the issue will they:

1.     Morph into something new like Myspace did

OR

2.     Lose their audience to a new batch of fragmented social networks

Either way the fact remains; this is a major issue for Facebook and they do not seem to be addressing it at all ... another classic example of a once user centric business losing touch with its customers.

What part should mobile play in your customer proposition?

In my last blog I discussed where I thought growth in the Mobile platform would come from. If this left you wondering how Mobile can help grow your business then below I have outlined a simple test designed to frame your thinking on this question. It should help you decide whether or not you should be investigating the Mobile opportunity further.

Before I go any further I must preface the below by saying that I am basing this on the understanding that in all investment decisions there are tradeoffs and so when I ask whether or not to invest in Mobile I am doing so under the presumption that by investing in Mobile you will sacrifice not just money but effort in focussing on something else.

So let’s get cracking...

THE TEST

The first thing you need to do is break down your customer proposition into its constituent service features e.g. if you are a social network you may break it down into:

1.            photo sharing

2.            commenting

3.            status updates

4.            etc

Have you done this? Excellent! You are now ready:

Question: if one of your customers is given a Desktop computer with a fixed internet connection and a Mobile phone, all things being equal which device are they more likely to use to complete any given service feature?

Scenario 1: if the answer is always or mostly mobile then mobile should be your primary battleground

I would be amazed if any of you land in this category because it would only be a complete idiot who would answer this and who would not already be servicing their customers on mobile. Also there are very few instances where mobile is fundamentally a better platform than a Desktop.

Scenario 2: some Mobile and some Desktop... then you should invest in mobilising the parts of your proposition which are best on Mobile and ensure a seamless experience across both platforms

There are some good examples of services realising that one part of their proposition can actually be delivered better by mobile than Desktop. The advancement in NFC technologies is spurning growth in this area.

Ticketmaster recently had a successful trial with O2 to do mobile ticketing which removed the need for customers to print out paper tickets. People will still search for and buy the majority of their tickets on the web but part of the Ticketmaster proposition (ticketing) was more suited to mobile and they correctly mobilised it.

Scenario 3: almost always Desktop...then you must ask yourself whether the user would get real benefit from having access to your service whilst they are away from their Desktop

The answer to this sub question is a matter of degree and you will need to make a return on investment decision but there are 2 general scenarios:

Scenario 3a: If you feel users will get real benefit from accessing your service on the go then invest in mobile and again ensure a seamless experience across platforms

Mapping and local information services are a great example of services where people would ideally use a computer, as it is faster and offers a richer experience, however often customers will want to use their service when they are not at home or at the office. See: www.rummble.com and www.streetmap.co.uk

Social Networks are also a great example of this scenario in action. Almost all social networking features are easier to do on a desktop but because people feel a need to be constantly connected there is a clear market for offering social networking functionality on the move. Sites such as Facebook have duly recognised this and are investing heavily in Mobile.

This does lead to an interesting question as to whether there is a market for mobile centric social networks. In my opinion if someone simply offers a Facebook alternative but on Mobile they will fail but if they manage to leverage the unique location based features of Mobile then there may be an opportunity. I do not believe there is a future for sites such as www.peperonity.com which offer an alternative to Facebook but on the Mobile platform.

Scenario 3b: if users will not get a real benefit from having access to your services on the go then you should not be focussing or investing in mobile

The services that fall into this category are generally services which users do not have any time pressure to use eg you may want to use ebay on the go because the auctions have time limits but you are unlikely to hunt for houses on mobile because there is no time pressure and the experience is better on the fixed web.

Hopefully going through this thought process has helped you structure your thoughts around what place mobile should play in your proposition. Feel free to drop me an email if you want to discuss the topic in more detail.

Mobile dying a premature death?!?!?!

There has been furious debate recently about whether the mobile phone as a platform for services is going to be the next big thing or whether it is going to die a premature death. Russell Beattie's recent pronouncement that it was dead led to debate in the blogosphere (response to Russell can be found here) and although this argument is specifically about the mobile web I believe the debate is having a wider effect on people’s view on mobile as a platform.

It has left a lot of people I talk to in a flumux (not sure if that is a real word but hey I am pretty sure you get what I mean) about whether or not to invest in mobile. I say the same thing to them over and over again; stop thinking about technology and start thinking about user benefits! The mobile is NOT the future, the future is giving customer’s the best possible service anywhere and at any time they want to use it.

 

To say that mobile is dying a premature death is an absolutely ridiculous assertion but at the same time mobile as a platform is not going to be the future for everyone. At the moment the mobile platform is not great; It is slow, the screen is small and it is unreliable and so people are not going to en masse ditch their PCs and access all of their favourite services on their mobile.

Service providers should be looking at how mobile sits alongside the fixed platform and should be looking at the unique benefits mobile can bring. Therefore the question that should be asked is not “should we be investing in mobile?” it should be “how do we give our customers the best possible experience whenever and wherever they want?”

Whether someone will use any given service on the mobile comes down to a question of motivation and can be outlined using a simple equation:

motivation > barrier = task completion

Or in simple terms: if someone's motivation to complete a task is greater than the barrier to completion then the task will duly be completed.

In order to increase the frequency of completion of the task one can either increase someone’s motivation or they can reduce the barriers.

The barriers to mobile adoption are definitely coming down:
1.    Mobile data transfer speeds are increasing – HSDPA roll out
2.    Handsets are becoming more powerful – eg Nokia N95
3.    Handset screen size and design is improving – eg Iphone

However the performance on mobile will never match that of the PC and the fixed web. The screens will never be as big and the connection speeds will never match fixed. With this in mind if we re-visit our equation then we can say that no matter how far the mobile develops users will always need some extra motivation to use mobile over the PC and the fixed web.

This motivation will come from 2 key factors:
1.    the mobile is always with you even when you are out and about
2.    the mobile knows where you are

Therefore, in general, the services which will succeed are those which take advantage of these factors. Location based services are an obvious opportunity but more importantly services which people want to be able to access at any time will have a position in the mobile world eg news services, access to communication services such as email. I must re-iterate though that the need to access a service on the go must be greater than the barrier to using it on a mobile. So if a service is very cumbersome to use on a mobile then people will only use it on mobile if they are in a bind and cant wait to get back to their PC.   

In my view mobile is going to be a huge growth area over the next 5 - 10 years but there is a real risk that we are moving towards a miniature (excuse the pun) dotcom bust as investment floods into the mobile space without real consideration of how mobile fits with any given proposition.

If you are trying to decide the part mobile can play in your business then check out my next post which will contain a simple test you can take to decide what position your service should take with regards mobile.

The democratisation of the consumer market

A couple of years ago I was asked to provide feedback on a friend’s new website he had built to promote his band. Being a person who likes to consider himself a good friend I told him I would be more than happy to. After a swift cup of coffee I rolled up my sleeves and hit the internet. When I landed on his site my enthusiasm was immediately sucked out of me. For some reason it just felt completely wrong. At the time I couldn’t really put my finger on what was wrong with it. I quickly got bored and reviewing the site had turned from a bit of fun into a laborious task.

So what was wrong, why did I have such negative feelings to the site?

That’s a good question. It had all the things you would expect from a music site:

1.    gig information
2.    track streaming
3.    merchandise store
4.    Press page
5.    Discography
6.    etc

I went back to my friend and, because I couldn’t quite figure out why I had the reaction, I just gave him some generic feedback on usability and design but I knew that wasn’t the main issue.

It wasn’t until I started working in the social media space that I was able to understand and dissect the reaction I had. It was a very simple thing that these days people come to expect from a website without necessarily being able to verbalise it…there was simply no interaction. All the flow of information was one way; from him to the visitor.
“But Shane” I hear you say, “isn’t being able to read about the band and download their tracks interacting with the band?” Well my answer to that is “NO IT IS NOT!”

Interaction must be 2-way.

This realisation is not a new concept at all. I have read other blog posts which talk of the virtues of having 2 way communication, such as commenting, rating, blogging, discussion forums etc, on websites. However what struck me was not that the site didn’t engage me, it was that I was positively turned off by it.

I realised that my daily use of sites such as Bebo, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, Flickr, Digg etc had given me certain expectations of any web experience and when I was confronted with a site which didn’t meet these expectations I was repelled by it. Some companies are starting to realise the importance of empowering their audience (eg www.bbc.com) however there are still so many examples of websites that don’t.

I am part of a new generation of web users who have been brought up with information at our fingertips. The web is fundamental to our lives and therefore it is the most important battleground for brands to compete in.

This generation has a new philosophy:

•    We believe that we own the brands that we use and that companies are merely custodians of them.

•    We believe that our needs are the most important and any brand which doesn’t do everything to meet them will fail

•    We are empowered by the ease at which we can compare products and the ease at which we can switch brands.

It feels as though we had been living in a Feudalistic market where the consumers were peasants, the big brands were vassals and the fiefs were the marketplace. Now the peasants are taking control of the fiefs and a new truly democratic marketplace is opening where the brands answer to the consumer.

Some people I have spoken to argue that these consumer philosophies have always been there and that this is nothing new. I would completely agree that human nature would suggest that we would hold these beliefs as true but up until now the consumer has never had the power nor information required to do anything about it. We now do and the latest incarnation of the social web has given it to us.

The most exciting thing is that this trend is only beginning. Only a small minority of the population of the western world were born with the internet at their fingertips. When today’s teenagers move up through the age groups the % of the population who subscribe to these beliefs will grow exponentially.

There is no doubt in my mind that the all businesses who operate in the B2C market will be majorly affected by this in the coming years. If you run a business whether it is a small cottage industry or a global enterprise and you are not actively keeping on top of the social changes occurring on the web then you are not just missing a great opportunity to fully understand your customers, you are also at risk of being left behind. This is a new and exciting age and I am glad I am here to be part of it.