Oh, yes indeed, there is a paradox. There are two parts of my brain at work when I’m on-line: the marketer and the user. Who remembers MySpace? Not me, not anymore, for me, MySpace is a dying animal that begs to be put to death. Why? Because it’s chuck full of ads and used mostly as a marketing platform.
Social Networks work only as long as the ‘social’ part dominates. The instant that sly little marketers get their hands on a social network, its demise is almost assured. The paradox lies within that statement. Marketers only really get on board when a social network becomes large and ‘popular’, but the instant they do, that social network begins its death throws.
Facebook seems to be doing really well handling the influx of marketers. They listen to user feedback and they seem to understand that without ‘people’ they become nothing more than another sad MySpace story. MySpace is still alive, people still use it, however stats seem to indicate a major decline in ‘real’ users. What the stats tell us is how many people have pages, not how many people still use those pages, or what use they make of those pages.
And now, with the buzz of Microsoft taking over Facebook and Twitter, well, methinks that change is in the air.
There is a psychosocial component that few marketers understand, especially those that only recently ‘got’ the whole ‘Twitter thing’. Social networks are popular as long as they remain relatively underground. The more ‘public’ they become, the least attractive they become to the people that made them popular.
I remember fours years ago, before Facebook became so common that everyone’s grandma now has an account, when we suggested to a client that they should create a profile for their business. We also suggested that employees could become friends of the business and this would be an easy and efficient way to share information and stay in touch. Plus, there would be additional benefits: easy exposure, traffic generation, interactive content, basically what the world now calls ‘Social Marketing’.
Our client looked at me bewildered and said: “Why in the world would I waste my time on Facebook?”
I answered him, “Because everyone will soon be on Facebook, in fact, Facebook will become the main reason people will go on-line.” Nothing happened. Our client simply couldn’t understand this esoteric concept.
Skip four years ahead… 2009… End of October… Late adopters of Social Marketing are finally getting it… They know what Facebook is, they know what Twitter is, they hold conferences and pat themselves on the back for ‘discovering’ this wonderful marketing tool. Little do they know… Exactly because they ‘discovered’ it, there’s a whole generation of people switching to the next best thing… What is that next best thing?
Well, that’s for me to know, and for mainstream marketers to ‘discover’ in two or three years time.
I would like add a bit of personal philosophy: We can’t ever forget the ‘cool’ factor. People flock to the cool factor, but, what is cool stays cool only until it gets ruined by becoming mainstream (or gets bought by Microsoft). Let me give you an example that really turned me off Twitter recently. I was flipping through channels at home, hoping for something good on TV when I fell on CNN. Some ancient relic from days gone by just said enthusiastically, “You can now follow me on Twitter.” He then turned to his colleague and said, “Do you know how this Twitter thing works? I can barely open my e-mails.”
“Typical,” I thought to myself as the urge to delete my Twitter account filled my soul…
