As highlighted in National Public Radio’s story, “Facebook, MySpace Divide Along Social Lines“, Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace in 2005 at the height of its popularity in social networking.  Today, the tides have changed as Facebook and its estimated 95M visitors clearly dominates the social networking niche of Web 2.0.  This is so much the case that early this week the Financial Times broke a story where MySpace all but concedes defeat in the social networking arena and describes its future as an entertainment hub.  Though the facts are clear, there really hasn’t been much discussion on how MySpace lost its popularity nor the lessons learned in this curious case.  Well, we stumbled upon some insight during a podcast we did with Aaron Bollinger of KickApps who we came to find out during the podcast had written a book called “The MySpace Social Guide”.  We were so excited about a hallway conversation that ensued after our podcast with him that we went back into the studio and fired up the recording equipment to capture the conversation.

Join episode host Jerod Morris as he discusses the demise of MySpace and its brand with Aaron Bollinger.

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While on a few long international flights the past few week, I got caught up on my podcast listening.  Unfortunately, I got a bit behind on blog reading.  So, when I got back to my reading, I definitely felt a bit behind when I caught the news about Google’s Sidewiki on Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy blog.  Needless to say, the post immediately caught my attention.

Jeremiah is spot on with regards to this Google feature being a catalyst for the transition of power from corporations to consumers.  His strategy advice is also very accurate.  If you believe the statement, “Google is your new home page” then you’d probably concur that Sidewiki has just transformed your home page into an unregulated forum.  I have contrarian though, however.  I think Google will fail with this initiative long before it becomes relevant.

The following are 5 reaons why Google will fail with Sidewiki:

1. Where’s The Authority Component – Social Media is based on authority.  Whether authority is measured in followers in Twitter, friends on Facebook, or even Google’s own page rank indicator, today’s social media relies on it.  When social media concepts lack an authority component, they quickly become inundated in SPAM and irrelevant content.
2. First In First Out (FIFO) is for Accountants –  Sidewiki’s commenting system is based on a first in first out queue.  In layman’s terms, the first to comment gets the top position.  This is how comments work in most blogs and news sites.  Still, this simplistic approach significantly limits the dynamics of comment relevancy and recency.   Though this aspect of Sidewiki is very easily changed, it goes to show that Google has not thoroughly thought this one out.  (Editor’s Note – Post research has revealed that FIFO is not the case but Google is applying an algorithm to this.  I will still argue that this is far from social and we are already getting emails with tricks for beating the algorithm)
3. Name A New Idea Google Has Followed Through On – Google has a lot of ideas.  They really don’t follow through however.  Whether it be their half baked effort in the offline advertising space or their attempt to compete with Microsoft with a wordprocessor that still doesn’t support DOCX and a spreadsheet that barely rivals the functionality of DOS spreadsheet packages, Google wants to compete from operating systems to social media concepts and they’ve shown very little focus or follow through.
4. Advertisers Pay The Bills – Google makes its money from advertising.  When you open up a free for all on the very results page that corporate advertisers are pay for placement, big spenders will draw the line.  You can’t have it both ways.
5. Google’s Legal Department Can’t Keep Up – Sidewiki can only survive with the protections provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.  Still, CDA is being activity tested in the courts due to the abuses from sites such as RipOffReport.Com.  It is only a matter of time before holes are poked in this federal law.   In the meantime, Google’s legal department has gotten to the point of not even returning DMCA takedown notices nor attorney inquiries to orders from state courts regarding content in their index.  Sidewiki will open the legal flood gates to the point to where the class action law firms will begin to package individual complaints into legal maneuvering that cannot be ignored.

I wish Google were a bit more social.  I’d simply like to see a “view count” on search results similar to the way YouTube provides them.  Or maybe even an indexing of tiny URL’s that were associated with retweets in Twitter.  Sidewiki, however, lacks a true social media foundation.  Google should stick to indexing content including that produced by true social media sites before it goes on to try and make its flagship search service a social media platform.

Where small businesses strive to participate in the social media phenomenon, larger enterprises are looking to create a social media experience on their Internet real estate.  The conversations can start anywhere from the boardroom to the chief marketing officer’s office and almost always end up in the IT department.  This begs the question of whether to build or buy a social media platform.  So, we brought in Aaron Bollinger from KickApps to have that discussion.

KickApps is a early stage company that creates one of the industry’s premier social media platforms.  One way to look at it is that KickApps is to social media outside the firewall what Microsoft’s Sharepoint Server is to corporate portals inside the firewall.  Aaron Bollinger is a business development manager with KickApps based out of Austin, TX.  When he was on one of his regular visits to Dallas, Jerod and I thought we’d lock him in our studios to discuss KickApps and social media.  What we weren’t expecting to happen was a conversation that got so interesting that we had to cut a separate podcast for one of the topics—the demise of MySpace.

In this interview we learn about KickApps and discuss Aaron’s background prior to joining KickApps.  This uncovered the fact he was the author of a book on MySpace called “MySpace Social Guide“.   We also touch upon a very early career venture of Aaron and Jerod called Flash Sports Tonight.

Whether you are a professional marketer interested in learning about KickApps or have simply had a rough day and want to listen to an entertaining conversation, this is one of the best interviews we’ve done to date.

(FTC Disclaimer:  Aaron Bollinger conducted this interview as a courtesy to Orangecast Social Media; NO SPONSORSHIP has been provided by KickApps and any favorable comments we make about the platform are because WE LIKE their platform)

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Brian Clark, aka The CopyBlogger, examined the impact of social confirmation in his post “Social Proof: Herd It Through The Grapevine“.  As he explains in the article, his purposeful mispell of the word “heard” specifically highlights the  ”herd” mentality that humans can have.  We see this effect daily in our lives.  Last week, I was actually pulling out of the parking garage of a North Dallas mall and observed the center lane at a nearby stop light hosting a line of well over 75 cars.  The irony is that the other two thru traffic lanes were empty.  Yes, humans are sheep!  Back to Brian’s point, having higher numbers in terms of “retweets”, “diggs”, “comments”, and other social aspects of the “Internet” adds a sense of credibility and attractiveness to a digital asset.

The notion of social confirmation has driven bloggers to actually promote the thought of sharing.  New York Times writer Brad Stone examines the growing importance of content sharing as a means of driving Internet traffic in his article article “Share the Moment and Spread the Wealth“.  He observes the growing trend of site owners, big and small, that actively try to promote sharing of their content to increase exposure to their site.  In our experience at Orangecast, search engines are still the primary source of traffic for most websites and blogs; yet, social media links are quickly entering the top 5 referrers list for sites with authoritative content or with existing brand recognition.  In episode 12 of the Wealth Nation podcast, the CEO of web analytics upstart Woopra observed that from a sampling of their 90,000 monitored sites “50% of all the social networking referalls are coming from Facebook; 42% are coming from Twitter.”.  Co-host Cali Lewis added that traffic from social media sites varies across platforms and requires some experimenting.  ”Twitter doesn’t do anything for WealthNation.FM but Facebook is outrageous [in terms of traffic],” Lewis added to the discussion.  Still, site owners and bloggers who’s brands are less recognized or their content is more second hand in nature (like this blog) must make a time investment their presence on social media sites.  As time is at a premium for most bloggers and business owners, the million dollar question is “Where should one spend their time?”

In today’s social media landscape, there are literally hundreds of sites and services built on the premise of sharing.  Some of the more notable ones are Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Redit, and Stumble Upon.  Each of these sites requires an investment in time and even a certain level of brown nosing.  In the end, sharing is one thing; yet, action driven by click throughs should be a marketer’s goal.

When it comes to click through rates, the fact is that not all sites foster sharing and click throughs equally.  ”. . . . 18 Twitter users, on average, click on that link and visit the site. A single link to a story posted on LinkedIn, the professional social network, generates around eight visitors; Digg gets five clicks for every link posted to the site,” said Tim Schigel, CEO of ShareThis (source: NY Times Article “Share The Moment and Spread The Wealth“).

I posted the question to Tim Schigel on Twitter  ”@schigel What do you attribute Twitter’s click through rate as compared to Digg? Popularity or actual usage semantics and demographic?”.

Schigel tweeted, “@orangecast some platforms have sharing features that inherently promote pass along, or re-broadcast, also audience seems to make a diff.”

I agree with Shigel and will add that the pass along rates and click throughs in Twitter have nothing to do with the popularity of the site.  After all, Twitter isn’t really a site; it is an API with hundreds of platforms calling into it.  It’s flexibility promotes its use and this is the key to furthering the sharing process which exposes links to a higher number of viewers.  Unlike classic bookmarking sites (e.g. delicious.com), a Twitter message can originate from a URL, a thought, a retweet of another’s message, and more.  Furthermore, Twitter has the most flexible category taxonomy on the Internet–they are called hash tags.  Hash tags are a taxonomy mechanism that is “for the people and by the people”.  How many times have you wanted to Digg a story and you really couldn’t figure out the right category to pick from their limited list?  When the flexibility of message origin is combined with the open category taxonomy, messages can literally spiral through fragments of the Twitosphere and become exposed to tens of thousands of users instantaneously.  The drawback with Twitter is that the shelf life of the content and its associated links is very short.

Platforms such as Facebook provide a lot longer shelf life for content and links and in some cases a more captive audience.  Users go to Twitter not knowing what to expect because every 30 seconds on the site can be very different.  Facebook and its Fan Pages, on the other hand, provide a more predictable experience to a user.  In many cases, this can keep them coming back.

There is no one answer for the right social media platform.  Thus, when considering where to invest your time, consider the following additional aspects of a site and its community and ensure they match with your marketing goals:

1. The overall demographic of the site or communities within the site (see our Facebook and Twitter ROI Article for more information)
2. The overall receptiveness of the community to accept new members into their circles and share their information.
3. The life span of content and associated links on a platform.
4. SEO benefits from links on the site  (e.g. Twitter’s shortened URLs are not beneficial in SEO)

Last, a marketer should set a fixed period of time to invest in social media interaction and specifically measure the results through a web analytics program.  As with natural search traffic, consideration should be given to the overall number of referrals, their time spent on site, and conversions based on the action you’d like them to take.

As with all ventures on the Internet, there is a learning curve and a decent amount of trial and error.  Don’t be afraid to have a “controlled” failure online if you can learn from it.  As you refine your approach, you’ll be able to evaluate the ROI of your time investment and decide whether to continue to invest, consider increasing the investment, or pulling back to focus on other forms of marketing.