Archive for December, 2010
If Paul the Octopus Can Do It…
Posted by nleong in Social Networking, Web 2.0, Trends, Web Security, New Internet, Compliance, Malware, Electronically Stored Information (ESI), FINRA on December 30, 2010
For you football (soccer as they say here in the US) fans, you’ve got to love the uncanny talent and skill (and maybe luck, too) of Paul the Octopus. He’s the eight-legged oracle who correctly picked all the World Cup 2010 matches, including the final one resulting in Spain being crowned el campeon at the quadrennial event.
I’m not Paul (nor an octopus for that matter, although my colleagues do call me interesting names from time to time), but I’ll take a stab at offering my predictions on what may unfold in 2011 on the technology side of the pitch. 2010 was pretty exciting (think iPad, Facebook, Foursquare – and the boss wants me to mention that England retaining the Ashes was pretty big, too), but 2011 portends to be at least as innovative and disruptive.
Mordor Won’t Go Away
The Lord of the Rings trilogy pitted good versus evil. This couldn’t be more apropos for technology as well. There are those who are good, and those who are bad. The latter are folks who are ever persistent in their attempts to hack computer networks in search of credit card numbers, passwords, personally identifiable information, or avenues to unleash the new virus they just created. It’s a continual game of cat-and-mouse that never seems to die. It’s like Jason of Friday the 13th fame meets Groundhog Day. Different dung, same day.
Look for these cybercriminals to continue to exploit vulnerabilities in social networks to deliver their malware. The popularity and trusted nature of users’ relationships with each other on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are perfect platforms for evildoers to ply their trade. Unified communications platforms like Microsoft Lync, OCS and Lotus Sametime are also ripe targets for new forms of malware, especially since many of these platforms support federation, which opens up corporate messaging systems to the outside world through IM applications (e.g., Yahoo IM and Google Talk). Because many of these communications channels operate in real-time, the spreading of malware can happen very quickly and very globally.
Oh, behaaaaave…
You didn’t think the regulatory bodies were just gonna sit around and let their respective industries run amok with respect to social media, did you? Mwha ha ha (that’s the evil laugh I’ve been practicing). The coming year (I’m furiously rubbing the crystal ball here and looking wise) will see the introduction of more regulations specific to social media and these new communications channels. It’s not just about email any more. There’s Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Google Talk, corporate IM networks, and the list goes on and on.
The financial services industry was the first to issue social media-specific guidelines, and the FDA began to hold hearings way back in 2009 to solicit opinions and advice on what to do for social media. The energy and utilities sector has FERC and NERC regulations that can be interpreted, if not explicitly, to encompass social media. Even the government, the poster child for rigidity and glacial-paced operations (oh boy, I really am going all out to get myself some form of government monitoring on this blog, aren’t I?), is starting to step up to the plate, as evidenced by the State of Florida and the US Department of Defense each releasing guidelines on social media usage and record retention. So, the trend is impacting all levels of government – local, state, and federal.
Smartphones: My New BFF
Look around everywhere, and people are texting away, playing games on the subway, or listening to some tunes on the beach – all with their smartphones. It seems everyone has an iPhone or a Droid these days, and who can blame them. These little gizmos are so loaded with features and intelligence that it’s hard to put them down, hence, BFF. It’s like having MacGyver in the palm of your hand.
From shopping to “checking in” to online dating, mobile phones have come a long way since the days of the “brick” phones. The globalization of the Internet and the rate of mobile adoption in every part of the world reflect the ongoing opportunities within this technology space. With so many business applications moving to the “cloud”, this opens up new potential markets for vendors looking to secure or manage communications via smartphones.
Partly Cloudy Forecast
We’ve already begun to see many businesses offer a hosted version of their software. Though the “cloud” concept has been around for awhile, 2011 may see a surge in customers opting for hosted solutions. With the widespread use of real-time collaboration tools, like Microsoft Lync and Cisco Webex, it’s very easy these days to hold meetings over the Web without needing to travel to a customer or partner site. This also makes it easier to accommodate remote workers, too, who may not want to travel to or live near corporate headquarters.
Especially in times where IT budgets are strapped and qualified IT professionals are difficult to recruit and retain, the cloud computing model has a compelling value proposition. When taking into consideration ROI and security enhancements, the model has more in its favor than at any time in its past. Such a confluence of factors bodes well for 2011.
Well, I’m not sure if I’ll do as well as Paul the Octopus, but, like all the World Cup participants, it’s all about soaking up the atmosphere and enjoying the ride. What are your predictions for 2011?
Gazing Back at 2010
Posted by nleong in Social Networking, Web 2.0, Trends, Compliance, FINRA on December 29, 2010
What a crazy year 2010 was for technology. Facebook’s CEO was named Time’s Person of the Year, the iPad hit the market in a big way, and location-based services took off. As we’ve been snuggled in for the holiday season and tossing back some libations with friends and family, we wanted to have a look back at what stoked people’s interests or got us freaked out in 2010.
Facebook: The Social Networking Beast
The hugely popular social networking site continued its meteoric growth in 2010, with the number of users crossing the half-billion mark. A movie loosely documenting its humble beginnings was released; Mark Zuckerberg was named Time’s Person of the Year (the dude’s only 26!); and it’s the gold-standard for social media platforms. Pretty heady stuff for a company that was founded just six years ago and had its roots as a way to check out your college classmates’ pictures and see where the eye candy’s at.
However, with this spectacular growth came heightened media scrutiny and shrill criticism from privacy advocates. It also became a tastier target for hackers and other evildoers. Despite these privacy and security issues, Facebook continues to be the platform of choice for third-party developers. To its credit, Facebook has listened to user feedback and has responded accordingly. That’s the beautiful thing about an open Internet that Zuckerberg likes to preach. Word travels fast, which can be both a blessing and a curse. And so far, his congregation is filled with believers.
Location-Based Services: I Know Where You Are (and Where You’re Not)
Thieves have got to absolutely love the booming popularity of location-based services, such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places. Marrying smartphones with GPS technology has spawned sites that let users “check in” wherever they’re at, notifying all their friends of their exact location at that moment in time. Great concept if your friends that you’re telling are truly your friends. Not a good concept if you’ve got folks on your “friends list” that shouldn’t be there or you’ve got the wrong privacy settings enabled on your smartphone, essentially giving a green light to applications like Foursquare to share your information with unauthorized folks. Yikes. Better make sure you hide that family-heirloom Rolex reeeeeeal gooood.
Collective Buying: Power in Numbers
The tough economic times of these last couple years means that bargain-hunting has become the norm for many of us. Enter Groupon and LivingSocial - a couple of sites that aspire to give the best deal on a broad range of products and services. The key to their success is scrounging up the minimum number of persons to partake in a deal. Once that threshold is crossed, everyone in the “group” gets that product or service at a great price. If the quorum’s not met, no deal for you (thank you, Soup Nazi).
iPod, iPhone, iPad, iCha-ching
Aside from the dropped calls you (allegedly) get if you hold a 4G iPhone with the bottom half of your left palm, held at a 27 degree angle, with partly sunny skies, and your mother-in-law is in town, Apple can do no wrong. Hard to believe this company was on its deathbed in the mid-1990s (for those of you who can remember). Now, if Steve decides to stick an “i” in front of its next product, run out and buy some Apple stock that day. The iPad is the latest Apple offering that it really didn’t invent but has marketed better than everyone else (both past and present). Now, if Steve could just figure out a way to outdo the Most Interesting Man in the World, then he may just be worthy of his deity status. (Norv’s boss would like you to know that these are his opinions and she makes no comment about buying stock or Steve’s deity status.)
Boxy but Good
People used to say this about Volvos. Not the sexiest car around, but they were reliable and were safe. The same can be said for the regulations starting to pop up now to address the social media phenomenon. People normally get a little drowsy when they hear or see the word “regulation,” but it’s one of those necessary evils.
Many industries, such as financial services, energy, and healthcare, are turning to social media to market their products and services and extend their brand reach. However, it was only a matter of time before the regulatory bodies started to catch up. Case in point: the financial services industry issued FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06 in January 2010 to provide guidance on what brokerage firms and its representatives are and are not permitted to do with respect to social media. And you can bet your bottom dollar/euro/pound that other industries will soon follow suit (we’re actually already starting to see this happen).
Social Media’s Playing with the Big Boys Now
When social networking first hit the scene, it was all about the hipsters and Generation Y’ers. It was supposed to be a fad, limited to folks with too much time on their hands. Well, I think it’s safe to say it’s here to stay. Corporate types are on-board, real money is being generated, and your grandmother might even have a Facebook account.
The bigger issue is, “how can companies utilize social media safely without having it blow up in their faces, like what happened to Domino’s in 2009?” This past year saw organizations, big and small, kick the tires and see what they could do with social media. They also poked around to see what kinds of controls, if any, were available from technology vendors. Just all part of the maturation process of a communications channel that promises to bring more excitement and innovation in 2011.
The above are just my musings on trends in 2010. What were the biggie ones you saw this past year? And don’t worry, you’ll still get your soup.
Bad Santa and Location-Based Services
Posted by nleong in Social Networking, Trends on December 28, 2010
The holidays are upon us (yet again), and this means droves of us are headed to the malls, Costco, Target, or even your neighborhood dive bar to escape the crowds. Coupled with the emergence of location-based services (LBS), the setting is ripe for Bad Santas to roam the neighborhood.
Sites such as Foursquare and Facebook enable users to “check in” at restaurants, stores, or wherever you may be at. It’s another way for users to stay in touch with friends and let them know where they are at any given moment. As cool as this idea sounds, there’s a downside. By announcing your location to your friends at that very moment sends a message of “Hey, I’m not home right now. Feel free to take my big-screen TV, my iPad that’s sitting on the kitchen table, and while you’re there, can you please leave some food out for the dog?” to the Bad Santas out there.
Lots of us take pride in having a gazillion “friends” on Facebook, but how many of those are ACTUALLY your friends? I’ll bet you a PBR that not all of them really consider you a friend. Maybe you’ve got an ex-girlfriend or a mother-in-law that wouldn’t hesitate for a nanosecond to “throw you under the bus,” if given a chance. That’s the harsh reality.
Compounding matters is the fact that applications like Foursquare and Facebook oftentimes access your device’s (e.g., smartphone’s) settings, giving the application permission to share your information with unauthorized folks. This is where the Bad Santas come into play. They know when you’re away from home and can thus plan on stuffing their stockings accordingly.
Worse yet, cyberstalking is also possible, beyond the expected house raiding. Identity theft and harassment are just two forms of cyberstalking that can result from revealing your location online. So, the Three Wise Men’s advice would certainly be to make sure your privacy settings are configured to allow only your true friends to know where you are and to not post that picture of the two-carat, D-Flawless, ideal-cut diamond ring on your Facebook page.
Not heeding the advice of the Three Wise Men may lead to a very Merry Christmas indeed for the Bad Santas out there. Ho…Ho…Ho… “Hey Rudolph, check out my bling!!!”
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Posted by nleong in Social Networking on December 16, 2010
Social media may be all the rage these days, but when you look at the stats, the majority of financial institutions are still considered relative newbies when it comes to social media. A study by Aite Group found that 21% of financial service executives surveyed describe themselves as “novices” and another 39% as “beginners.” Only 8% labeled themselves as being competent with social media tools.
However, 90% of firms said they’ll have dedicated budgets for social media by 2012. So, even though banks may not be chockful of experts just yet, they’re anticipating that the requisite expertise will be in place by 2012. Already, you’re starting to see social media-specific job titles and regulations crop up.
Whether it’s extending the corporate brand, promoting products, or just answering customer inquiries, social media has been proven to be an effective weapon for organizations prospecting for new customers or looking to inject themselves into the public consciousness. . . and to do so cost-effectively. However, care must be taken to ensure that this new form of marketing or customer relations does not backfire on a company.
The Internet is already awash with horror stories of organizations being done in or damaged severely by social media. Look at what happened when a large PR firm made some not-so-flattering remarks about the city of Memphis, shortly before presenting to the worldwide communications group at FedEx, Memphis’ largest employer. And, we all remember the Domino’s PR nightmare from 2009.
The bottom line is that social media can be your friend or foe. If managed properly, it can be a very good (and profitable) friend. That’s why banks are keen on embracing social media but only doing so if it can be done safely. What with all the social-media-specific guidelines that are emerging for the financial services industry, it behooves banks and brokerage firms to behave responsibly and respect these rules. It’s very possible indeed to reap the tidy profits of the good ol’ days while still operating within the law.
Which inevitably begs the question, “Well, how can they act responsibly?” Deploying platforms like FaceTime’s Socialite is a good start. Socialite enables organizations to monitor and manage social networking content, including the contextual archiving of the events and activities posted to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. In essence, FaceTime paves the way for financial services firms to safely conduct their business while allowing their users to engage in social media activities.
So, the question really becomes at this point, “Brother, can you spare me a dime so I can kickoff my social media plan and start making profitable inroads into the social world?”
Get Federated or Get Obliterated
Posted by actiance in Uncategorized on December 14, 2010
From Jae Kim – Director of Social Media Products, FaceTime Communications
About fifteen years ago, I was happy with my desktop applications installed. The computer was a glorified calculator, typewriter, and video game machine back then. When I powered up my desktop, I was either going to write quick proof-of-concept Pascal code, type up school reports, or play Doom. All executables and contents that I used were installed on my hard drive. Whenever I wanted to talk to friends, I picked up the landline and called. Whenever I needed references checked, I headed out to the library.
These days, the computer has turned into an all-in-one communications device. When I fire up my laptop, I immediately open my browser, check out the latest tech news on Twitter, read what my friends are up to on Facebook, and respond to emails. No longer do I have to pick up the phone. I just open my IM client to chat with my friends or use Google to look up the answer to any fleeting question that I may have at the moment. I cannot possibly imagine using a computer without a network connection. A computer without an Internet connection is as good as dead weight.
In this post, I would like to make a case that this increasing connectivity is not a trend isolated to computer networks, but applies to social networks as well. The urge to share things and get connected has deeper roots within our human nature. It is something that cannot be ignored and must be harnessed to make the leap into the next stage of networking.
I’ll give a few examples of what it means to technology evolution and how it impacts the adoption of new communications tools. I would argue that the same is true with social media and lay out the likely scenario for social networks to get federated.
For long term viability of social networks as communications platforms, I would argue that social networks must get federated to survive or face the inevitability of obsolescence and eventual obliteration.
1. Internal-Only Email to Email for Everyone
For those of you old enough to remember Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) must have used internal-only email and messaging systems. It used to be that workstations connected to the main server comprised the early intranet. When you wanted to see whether someone was available, you would type ‘finger’ or ‘w’ to see if the other party was online. If so, you were in luck. You could use ‘chat’ to have a real-time chat (what’s known as IM today). If the person was not online, then you had an option to send email using ‘mail’.
As server and workstations became popular, more companies started to adopt these internal-only email systems. Soon, it became obvious to everyone that linking these islands of email services made sense and would create disproportionately more value for everyone. Companies started to federate their email islands to their partners’, accelerating the adoption of the ARPANET mail format.
Some held back saying it would create security concerns in both leaking sensitive information and receiving unwanted files (viruses). Today, no one disputes the value of having a global email system and being connected to it. These concerns were valid, however. People have built solutions around these security issues, and they have given rise to the Data Loss Prevention (DLP), security, and SPAM-filtering industries.
2. AOL – the Walled Garden
America Online (AOL) in the late 1990s was unstoppable. They made the Internet easy for millions by simplifying the technical configuration required to sign up for a service and to dial in the AOL server farm. AOL essentially had the same network model as the LAN-based DEC architecture. AOL subscribers would log on to their servers and see other subscribers who were online, exchange IM/emails, and browse AOL-hosted company sites. AOL was a huge LAN network where you couldn’t access content outside of AOL.
At the height of AOL’s popularity, there were 30+ million subscribers. It became so popular that every brick-and-mortar store was buying AOL keywords to reach AOL subscribers (the similarity is striking with what we see today with Facebook pages, as Peter Yared points out on his Venturebeat.com article).
But AOL did not leverage the explosive growth of content outside AOL’s walled garden. As people found richer content outside the AOL network and companies realized they had to make separate investments to reach non-AOL users, users and content creators started to migrate.
Only after losing more than two-thirds of its peak subscribers did AOL start to retool itself into an Internet portal site, i.e., a gateway to an open Internet. In effect, AOL finally dismantled the walls around its isolated garden and federated with the rest of the Internet, albeit only after paying a heavy price.
3. Disjointed IM Networks to Federation
After ICQ became successful and acquired by AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google launched their own instant messaging networks. Again, people were chatting in a similar approach as the DEC server/workstation model. AOL users were able to IM with AOL users, MSN users with other MSN users, and so forth.
Unlike islands of email services, technologies were available to federate these services in their early days. However, each provider stood their ground and couldn’t work out an agreement to federate. It was only after enterprises started to deploy their own enterprise IM servers and federate with each other that AOL and others began to federate with other IM networks.
IM network providers refused to give up control over their user base to the detriment of the long-term benefit of doing so. But, the fact is that people have been getting around these disjointed networks by creating aggregator IM clients to combine AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and Google Talk networks (not to mention Skype and Facebook – check out IM+ for the latest attempts at building the ultimate aggregator). It’s futile to resist improvised user workarounds. You have to adapt your service to support these workarounds as valid use cases.
4. What About a Federation of Social Networks?
If we have learned any lessons from email, AOL, and instant messaging, it’s that social networks should federate with each other to create a global exchange of real-time status updates. It’s not a zero-sum game. As social networks federate with each other, the value of the resulting network is far greater than the sum of disjointed networks.
We are starting to see this happen already. Twitter has shared its feeds with LinkedIn and Facebook. MySpace is now connected with Facebook. Yammer, which has developed a social networking platform for enterprises, is connected to Microsoft Sharepoint.
But then there are signs of resistance, as evidenced by Facebook’s and Google’s policies not to share friends’ lists.
Walled-garden policies invite users to create workarounds. Just as islands of IM networks motivated users to create IM aggregators like Trillian and Meebo, preventing users from sharing friends’ lists is already prompting users to create workarounds, such as Facebook friend exporter. Rather than resisting federation, social networks need to embrace them.
In reality, however, those who are in control seld
om relinquish it voluntarily. History tells us that federation will be a gradual process and will pick up steam only when the perceived value outside Facebook outweighs what’s found within Facebook. For that perception shift to occur, someone must create a more compelling use case outside Facebook.
What might cause this perception shift? I have no idea. But I can tell you that it won’t be called social networking, but rather, something else. I couldn’t agree more with Pete Cashmore at RWW: it’ll be someone who introduces a different communication paradigm than what we know as a “status update” today.
When that next wave happens, users will start to see greater value outside Facebook and will force Facebook to fully federate with other social networks. Until then, I expect to see continued resistance from leading networks. And yes, Google will join the race soon, and things are going to get a lot more interesting before federation is a household term.
How to Bootstrap Your New Social Network
Posted by actiance in Uncategorized on December 13, 2010
From Jae Kim – Director of Social Media Products, FaceTime Communications
These days I seem to hear about the launch of a new social networking site every other day. There’s Neezz.com, the classified ads site; CollegeOnly, the site for college students; The Fridge, a social group site; Diaspora, an open-source privacy-sensitive social network package; and Path, a personal networking site. And the list goes on and on.
If you look at location-based social networks (LBSN) only, there are dozens of them starting out, following the initial success of Foursquare. It seems like every organization is either thinking about starting up a new social networking site or incorporating social networking features into their existing site.
This got me wondering. Is there any lesson that we could draw from failed social networking attempts, such as Google Wave and Google Buzz? What lessons can we learn from Facebook and LinkedIn’s success? What should be the strategy for new social networking sites to bootstrap themselves?
Here are nine bootstrapping strategies that all social media startups should consider:
1. Find a niche user base
Smaller, more focused user bases will allow a startup to tailor the new social networking site to its target audience. Launch the site with a specific use case in mind. In order to have a specific use case, the site must focus the user experience on a specific user base.
Great example of this is Facebook. It first started out as a Harvard social network, then expanded to include Stanford, Columbia, and Yale, and soon to all colleges. By focusing on college students, it was easy to tailor the entire site to a target audience. In addition, college students are more likely to experiment with new sites, and this also helped Facebook build its initial user base. This may be another reason why you see many social networking sites
popping up, geared towards college students, such as CollegeOnly and The Fridge.
You could argue that this is what Google overlooked when bootstrapping Google Buzz. Rather than trying to build a core user base, Google incorrectly assumed that users would flock to its new service, if you placed Buzz right on the Google Mail UI. Their strategy was to target everyone from day one. While Google Buzz had its values for some, not all Google Mail users found the value. User adoption of Google Buzz has been disappointing at best, and its
opt-out approach of targeting all Google Mail users was disastrous at worst.
2. Provide value to the target audience
Once a target user base is defined, the next step is to decide on the value proposition to the user base. In reality, what value to provide is often the first impetus to launch a social media site (e.g., “let’s build a professional networking site” in LinkedIn’s case). One thing to keep in mind when identifying the value proposition is the target audience. The site must have a feature that has perceived value from the target audience’s perspective.
A good example is Facebook. Facebook started out as a profile photo surfing site for college students. Facebook had a clear idea of what to offer, and it understood college students will spend time surfing friends’ profile photos. New social networking sites must understand what features would be valuable to their target audience.
Best way to do this is to build a site yourself. Just as Mike Zuckerberg understood college students’ needs as a student himself, you are far more likely to succeed if you build a site that you yourself would use.
3. Add signature user experience
User experience is very important. A great user experience is to a social media site what great taste is to a fabulous meal. In other words, a great user experience is a critical part of the entire package.
It used to be that websites were criticized by their available features (or lack thereof). But as more and more horizontal features, such as user-feedback platforms, recommendation platforms, and social connectivity platforms are shared and available off-the-shelf, features alone can no longer be differentiating factors. In today’s social network sites, user experience is one of the key determinants in attracting users.
Consider the MySpace user experience. Although MySpace hit its peak before Facebook did, MySpace failed to expand outside its core user base. It’s debatable what factors caused MySpace’s decline, but I would argue that one key area where MySpace failed miserably was its user experience. Does anyone remember how MySpace’s user profile page looked before their UI makeover?
It’s not surprising why MySpace hemorrhaged users.
On the other hand, one good example is hipmunk.com. It is yet another meta-flight search site, but with a very refreshing user experience. It is perhaps the simplest air travel site that I’ve seen on the Web so far. After selecting departure/arrival dates and airports with ease, it returns available flights in a Gantt chart showing layover and overall travel time. What a difference visual display of flight schedules makes. Add to this user experience an easy way to perform another search (i.e., adding a new tab to make similar searches) and you have a winning recipe.
4. Make it easy to join – use a Facebook, Twitter, or Google ID
When people visit a new social networking site, one of the most dreaded parts is filling out user information and creating yet another account, not to mention a password. This new account creation is often enough to turn the prospect off and have them move on to the next distraction. I am not sure why websites think that having a user create new accounts will be of value to anyone. It will be the case that most users, especially those who will be early adopters of the new site, will likely have dozens of usernames and a few passwords they use (if they are security-conscious), and dozens more that they’ve created but have forgotten.
Creating an account does no one any good. It does not guarantee any return visits any more than you handing out business cards to total strangers in a parking lot.
Instead use what’s already out there. Allow users to sign up with your service through their Facebook, Twitter, and Google IDs. Most successful social network sites do this, and more need to embrace existing user accounts.
5. Leverage Facebook and Twitter for viral advertising
Another reason to link with existing social networking accounts is to leverage the social net to launch viral marketing. Remember seeing one too many Farmville updates from your Facebook friends? Do the same (of course, with the user’s explicit permission). It’s unlikely that people will complain about too many of your new social networking ad bits (that will be a good problem to have). If you are offering enough value as discussed in #2, people will in fact thank their friends who introduced it to them.
Check out mentionmap of me. It visualizes the mentions of people and hashtags in the most recent tweets. Oh, don’t forget. They offer an easy way to retweet about them.
6. Make it addictive by adding games or gaming elements
Building value, targeting the new site to a specific audience, and making it easy to join with viral marketing is a good start, but often not enough for sustained growth. As a new social media s
ite, you’ll need repeat hardcore users; users like those who propelled Zynga to a billion-dollar enterprise within three years of launch. Your service needs to be addictive for users to spend lots of time and for users to spend lots of time, it needs to have gaming elements.
One of the huge windfalls for Facebook was Zynga’s success. With Zynga’s FarmVille, FrontierVille, Cafe World, and Mafia Wars popularity surge, Facebook was able to attract and retain those social gaming addicts. This explosive symbiotic relationship between Zynga and Facebook is something that Google has been working on to recreate on their social networking site.
Game-like features can be integrated within the site as well. Foursquare and SCVNGR are geolocation-based social networks (GBSN) that incorporates gaming aspects. Foursquare gives badges as you check in to places, along with mayorship to those hardcore users, which encourages users to compete with others. SCVNGR has added challenges to GBSN so that users can engage in ad-hoc games when they check in at places.
7. Embrace third-party developers by offering a useful API
While it is important for the site to provide value for its target audience, it doesn’t have to do all the heavy lifting in creating additional value. No one has exclusive right to creativity, and certainly no one understands users’ needs better than the users themselves. When tools to integrate third-party applications are available and developers see the value in targeting the audience that you are attracting, they will build applications to become the Zynga for your site.
Take a look at the iPhone app store and Facebook API. The iPhone app store offers the Facebook mobile application, which is arguably why people are buying smartphones like the iPhone. The Facebook API enables Zynga games to be integrated with Facebook, which played a key role in increasing active daily user counts since 2007.
8. Take risks to provide innovative features
When you have all of the above, you then have to innovate. It is far too easy for someone to copy what you are already doing. Just take a look at all the Facebook-wannabe startups just coming online. You have to take chances to build upon existing features to provide more value, above and beyond the feature that you started out with.
Look at what Facebook did. Starting out as a profile photo sharing site, it added an innovative feature (some might call it evolutionary, but no one did it as well as Facebook), News Feed. The idea of making it super easy for anyone to subscribe to a friend’s news was a huge hit. Initially, Facebook ran into some resistance from users, but they kept tweaking its features and look-and-feel to make it the de facto standard of all social networking platforms.
Facebook had their share of flops as well. Does anyone remember Facebook Beacon? What about its overly simplified privacy controls UI? But, Facebook consistently took chances with new features and responded quickly to user feedback to continue improving their features.
Facebook continues to expand their core feature set by introducing Facebook Groups, Deals, and Messages. Not all of them will succeed, but they will be the first to learn from these lessons and iterate on them.
9. Listen to user feedback and iterate fast to increase value-add
Fast iteration is the key. I discussed in my earlier blog entry about the importance of fast iteration, especially when you are entering a new market. You have to listen to user feedback and incorporate it into the feature as if it’s coming down from board members. Ultimately, it will be the users who determine whether your new site will succeed.
For the Love of Dodd-Frank
Posted by nleong in Compliance, Enterprise IM, Public IM, Social Networking, Unified Communications, Web 2.0 on December 9, 2010
There’s been a lot of chatter recently over Dodd-Frank, the act that was passed to promote more financial stability following the crisis of 2008-09. Designed to improve accountability and transparency in the financial system, it’s ushered in sweeping changes to financial regulation, unseen since the days of the Great Depression. So you know it must be a big deal if it’s keeping lobbyists and lawyers busy in the nation’s capital.
What’s it all about?
Under Dodd-Frank, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must create rules to establish a fiduciary duty for broker dealers and provide disclosures of material conflicts by broker dealers and registered investment advisors. If that statement is adopted, each broker dealer would be required to provide potential customers with a written statement, prior to working with them. The broker disclosure statement would require that the written statement given to customers outline such information as: description of the types of accounts and services that the broker dealer provides, any areas of potential conflicts with such services, disclosure of all financial and other incentives, and the limitations on the duties a firm owes to its customers.
Translation? Broker dealers must be completely forthcoming and open when they’re prospecting for new business or new customers. And they have to be very clear from the outset what kinds of services they can offer, any potential conflicts of interest, and other such items. This puts a tighter leash on broker dealers and you can bet that the regulatory agencies will be keeping a close eye on the content to ensure that relevant parties meet requirements on full disclosure. The US government is taking steps to avoid a repeat of what happened a couple years ago.
If you need to monitor the communications of broker dealers or investment advisors, then it’s now possible to monitor and archive instant messages, content posted to social networks, as well as BlackBerry SMS and PIN content. As there are so many ways for broker dealers to communicate these days, it’s not just about email anymore. That’s so 1990s. Now, you’ve got Facebook, Twitter, Skype, OCS, Sametime, SMS, to name just a few.
In fact, there are around 330,000 sales folks on LinkedIn who work in the financial services sector in the US. That’s a lot of people for regulators to monitor. Making sure broker dealers stay in line with the Dodd-Frank regulations is becoming ever more challenging, but at least now, firms can now leverage technology options to ensure that real-time communications are your friend – and not foe.
A Challenge for Enterprises in Adopting Social Media: Employee Privacy
Posted by actiance in Uncategorized on December 8, 2010
From Jae Kim – Director of Social Media Products, FaceTime Communications
There have been a couple of posts regarding privacy on this blog. Although these days people don’t seem to mind sharing lots of personal information on social networks, there are still many who feel uneasy about sharing data online. It looks like most teens and 20-somethings fall in the former category, while those in their 30s or older tend to fall in the latter. I suppose one reason why younger people are more open to sharing personal information is because they tend to experiment and are comfortable with stepping into the unknown.
When I think about privacy, I think of access control (I can’t help myself, I’m a software geek). Privacy is essentially hiding information from those who we don’t want to know and granting access to those who we deem appropriate. Take my birthday. It should be accessible to my friends and family, but it should not be accessible to a random stranger. By now, it should be clear that I’m in the camp that cares about privacy of personal data.
I think I take reasonable precautions when entering and sharing personal information online. Even before Facebook opened its doors, I was a user of many websites, such as Flickr, Youtube, AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo to name a few. I don’t recall all the sites that I signed up for, and I certainly don’t remember all the personal information that I divulged for instant gratification of what each site offered.
My means of privacy control? Information tampering to varying degree. Whenever I would sign up for a website that doesn’t scream “trustworthy” (don’t ask me how I determined what site is trustworthy or not – it’s just a gut feeling), I would simply give slightly misleading information. Instead of spelling my name as Jae, I would spell it as Jay, for example. After all, they both get pronounced the same.
People improvise and conjure up creative solutions to problems that they encounter in real life. If you don’t provide an official way of doing something that users feel comfortable with, they will create their own workarounds.
I see the same thing happening still with many social networking sites. People have multiple accounts on Facebook even though its terms of use explicitly bans the practice. Why? Because users feel the need to create multiple identities for whatever reason.
Sometimes people create two accounts, one personal and the other professional. Sometimes, developers create a separate test account to run tests against applications that they just created. Sometimes, people create a new account to get a fresh start. Sometimes, people create a hidden account with malicious intent.
Now all these practices are lumped together as “illegitimate uses” by Facebook’s terms of use. This creates tension between Facebook and its users as well as a host of other implications for enterprises who are trying to embrace Facebook.
As you might know, organizations are just starting to grapple with the ever-growing user base of Facebook and have been putting together corporate social media policies as a result. As a legal entity, any large enterprises (or SMBs for that matter) are sensitive to the legal implications stemming from employees willfully violating Facebook’s official policy. In order for organizations to make Facebook the official social networking site, they have to be aware of what kind of information is flowing in and out of Facebook. To do that, they will have to air this dirty laundry of ad-hoc privacy workarounds for all their employees.
But hey, this is private information. The reason why users created multiple accounts is precisely to avoid exposing certain pieces of information to certain groups of people and, most likely, that group of people includes your boss and HR team. Hence, enterprises are in limbo. They see the clear need to embrace popular social media, but it’s unclear to them how to address this privacy concern for all their employees. This is why it’s so important for organizations to develop and disseminate clear social media policies – try to eliminate as many grey areas as possible. Once they’ve educated their employees on the policy, then the matter turns to enforcement. Platforms like FaceTime Communications’ Socialite enable organizations to enforce the social media policies they’ve developed. Features such as granular application control, contextual archiving, and moderation are just some of the capabilities that make it easier for organizations to monitor and manage their users’ social networking activities.
With such a platform in place, both employers and employees know their respective bounds and everyone can go about their jobs accordingly. Ahhhh, ain’t technology a beautiful thang??
The Headmaster Has Spoken
Posted by nleong in Uncategorized, Social Networking, Compliance, FINRA on December 7, 2010
On November 11th, the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) announced that, starting in November 2011, mobile phone conversations by traders and other client-facing staff will have to be recorded (Policy Statement 10/17). Specifically, firms have to record all “relevant conversations” for a period of six months on company-issued phones. This new rule is designed to prevent market abuse and insider trading across the trading spectrum, including commodities, OTC instruments, futures, options, and ETFs.
Although at first read, it sounds draconian, when evaluated against the myriad accounting scandals and financial crises of the past fifteen years, the new rule makes sense. It really is just an extension of firms’ existing practice of recording landline calls. Whether it’s for risk management, dispute resolution, or compliance purposes, the need to record calls (whether landline or mobile) is real. These days, brokers and traders have numerous communications channels at their disposal. There are landlines, mobile phones, instant messaging, SMS, social media, peer-to-peer, and the list goes on and on. Yet, their end goal remains the same: execute deals, make money, clock fat bonuses. Doesn’t matter what communications modality they use. The raison d’etre of financial services firms is to make money. Simple as that. Any controls and regulations that are there to prevent global catastrophes, such as what happened in the fall of 2008, need to be evaluated objectively and with foresight to ensure that they meet current and future requirements.
Enter Policy Statement 10/17. Although some firms have shown resistance to this new rule, it really is a natural evolution of the increasing regulatory control over these new real-time communications channels. In the US, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has issued social media-specific guidelines (e.g., Regulatory Notice 10-06) for its 4,700 member brokerage firms and 637,000 registered securities representatives. The explosion of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter is taking the mobile phone one step further. They’re just another communications option for brokers and dealers to exploit. If a broker is tied up in a meeting and can’t chat on his or her phone, he or she can simply SMS, IM, or use Facebook to send a message.
Although PS10/17 may seem like the ornery ol’ Headmaster wielding a big stick, it’s simply a reflection of the ever-changing dynamics in the communications landscape for financial services firms.
