Ever wanted to reach Halliburton Employees, 30-65, from Texas?
I’ve been playing around with the Facebook advertisement system, even posting a few ads here and there. The most fun I have right now is using Facebook’s ad targeting tool to mine the demographic data from their user profiles.

A marketer can target users by workplace (ranging from the French Embassy in the US to Exxon-Mobile), countries (over 30 countries representing +39 million users) and interest (”A Clockwork Orange” to Judaism) and other data. For example, I can now target about 40 people who work for Halliburton (They have a Facebook Network?), live in Texas and are from 30-65 years old.

And more then that, I thought it would be interesting to get some high-level demographic data on Facebook in the following areas:

1. Top US Geek Cities and Facebook Users (Geek Cities as defined by Wired Magazine)
2. All Countries Facebook Advertising targets for by Population: From Lebanon to the Dominican Republic
3. US Facebook Users by Age Group: College Age Still Dominates
4. US Facebook Users by Educational Background: 21% are Highschoolers?
5. Largest US Cities and Facebook Users: 20% of Chicagoans on Facebook?
6. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask and Facebook Users: Where are the Ask/IAC people?
7. Microsoft Facebook Users by Age Group: Over 30% over 35 years old
8. Top Software Companies and Facebook Users (Software Companies defined by Fortune)

Top US Geek Cities and Facebook Users (Geek Cities as defined by Wired Magazine)

Note that while the data from Facebook is interesting, one should be cautious about the data:

• Self-reported profile data always has accuracy issues
• Many users do not report their age, workplace, full interests etc
• Just because there are 10,000 Microsoft employees on Facebook does not mean they are active on Facebook.
• Despite Facebook’s stringent policies there are fake and multiple profiles on Facebook

With that said, see more below graphs and data below.

All Countries Facebook Advertising targets for by Population: From Lebanon to the Dominican Republic

US Facebook Users by Age Group: College Age Still Dominates

US Facebook Users by Educational Background: 21% are Highschoolers?

Largest US Cities and Facebook Users: 20% of Chicagoans on Facebook?

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask and Facebook Users: Where are the Ask/IAC people?

Microsoft Facebook Users by Age Group: Over 30% over 35 years old

Top Software Companies and Facebook Users (Software Companies defined by Fortune)

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Move over SEO, Social Media Marketing has the Cash Now?

Talking with clients and those in the marketing industry, there appears to be an increasing interest in Social Media/Word-of-Mouth at the cost of SEO. Search Engine Optimization has been hot from 2004-2006, but we’re now seeing budgets being shifted to Social Media/Word of Mouth.

Is this true over your at agency or marketing/PR team? Leave a comment and let me know.

Some general observations…

Changes in the SEO Industry Landscape

• SEO and PPC resources are being shifted to in-house for corporations, with agencies working more as Search Marketing trainers and consultants
• SEO trends have become increasingly more reliant on Social Media; hence, terms like the “linkerati” coming out from the SEO world
• SES San Jose 2007 was an excellent example on the growing emphasis on WoM/Social Media/PR. SES had a whole track dedicated to Social Media.

Social Media Marketing & the Widget Economy

• Facebook and Widgets have hit the marketing mainstream with the O’Reilly report on Facebook making it officially the year of Facebook and widgets.
• San Francisco Bay Area hosted at least 4 conferences on Facebook and Widgets in the past 3 weeks alone: SNAP, Widget Summit, Graphing Social Patterns, CommunityNext Platform.

How will SEO adapt? Will it finally turn more into a philosophy of website design and positioning rather than a specific marketing discipline?

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Summary: Mayor Gavin Newsom & the Personal Brand

There has been a lot of talk on the need to develop the “Personal Brand” and to help build connections to the audiences, customers or even voters via Social Media.

While there is a lot of theory and experimentation, one great example of this has been the Facebook profile of Gavin Newsom, the Mayor of San Francisco. This posting will breakdown and identify what the folks behind Newsom’s profile have done so well.

Quick Background on Social Media and the Personal Brand

Todd Defren and his SHIFT team have developed some interesting approach to apply Social Media as “connection builder”, such us with their Social Media Press Rooom (plus a must see powerpoint).

On the Personal Brand side, there is are two thought leaders I’ve been following Rohit Bhargava, who has written extensively on it, and Brian Solis who recently wrote on how to approach Facbeook as a “Personal Brand” builder.

Gavin Newsom’s Facebook Profile: Social Media Press Room and Brand Builder

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Facebook profile, or who we call “Mayor McDreamy” at our office, is the first live example I’ve seen of taking “Facebook as Brand Builder” in a well executed way. While the profile is of Mayor Gavin Newsom, it is positioned as a profile for “Act Locally SF”, which is the official campaign group for Gavin Newsom.
The profile makes it feel very transparent on what Gavin Newsom’s interests and passion are and what he is involved in through simple “Notes” postings, “Group” associations, video, photos – the whole shebang.
At the same time, it is also an active profile: As his friend on Facebook, I’ve seen his status message change at least once a week (e.g. “Gavin Newsom is Proud of San Diego’s Mayor”) and received invites to charity events that he is involved in.

Let’s further break down the components that make the profile work:

Using Groups and “Causes” Application:

• Shows what Gavin Newsom is compassionate about, give a glimpse beyond what he cares about beyond local issues, such as “Doctors without Borders” and “Free the Jena 6″

Using the “Kyte” Application for Video Distribution:

• Use the “Kyte” application, to show videos of Gavin Newsom that also link back to his own video channel on kyte

Using “News” and “Post Items” to Inform the Community

• “Notes” and “Posted Items” acts as fliers on everything from what events Gavin Newsom is attending to job openings/volunteer opportunities

Flickr Photos on what Gavin Newsome has been up to

• This one is pretty self-explanatory

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Last Saturday, I attended the CommunityNext Viral Marketing conference in Silicon Valley. The Conference, by Noah Kagan and Adam Kalamchi, brought together an interesting array of speakers to talk about Viral Marketing – from tactics, strategy, philosophy to viral marketing as Facebook widgets to community building.

Most of the speakers ranged from the experienced serial entrepreneurs (Dave McClure: PayPal, SimplyHired) to founders of accidental start-ups (Eric Nakagawa of icanhascheezurger). The atmosphere was very much on the casual side, with some point reaching nearly 1990s dot-com humor with of Adam Rifkin of Booze Mail making a cocktail during a talk to clearly very sharp and serious with Keith Rabois of Slide.

Below are my notes on:

1. Widgets – Metrics, Key Points on Facebook Widgets
2. Notes from Keith Rabois, one of the most impressive speaker at CommunityNext (Definitely Read This)
3. Flickr Photos: Including PowerPoint Slides given by Speakers. Plus: All Photos of the event
4. Feedback for the next CommunityNext Conference

** General Notes by Theme **
The Power of Leveraging Existing Networks: iLike v. last.fm

• The long established music discovery service from 2002, Last.FM, has been quickly overtaken by iLike which grew quickly once it launched the iLike widget for Facebook. (Tom Conrad of Pandora)
• Leveraging Existing Off-site Networks: It is a simple feature for your product to ask if the user if wants to import her Gmail Address book (or Yahoo, etc) and see who else is on the site and to “friend” existing contacts.

The Appeal of Widgets on User Profiles – Unique, Media, not Technology (From Jia of RockYou)

• “It’s like the first day of highschool” and you want to show-off how you’re different.
• Think of Widgets as a Media tool and a product, not a technological gadget
• It is not about “being technologically cool” but “being cool to use”

Facebook v. MySpace Widget Marketing Channels (Flickr Slide)

• There are 14 channels (opportunities) for spreading widgets, such as from the mini-feed, refer a friend (shown when adding a widget) and the profile page. (From Jia from Rock You).
• MySpace channels were mainly focused on In-Profile, Profile Comments, Bulletin Messages (e.g. “Your Friend Daniel has added Widget X”), and Forums (not often talked about, but highly effective).

MySpace v. Facebook Differences, Openness (From Jia of Rock You)

• FaceBook: Users do not necessarily browse around by visiting profiles, they have more reliance on using the FaceBook Mini-Feed on keeping touch on their friends
• In FaceBook, you need to rely on the Mini-Feed to place your call to action, e.g. “Daniel Riveong has just added the widget ZYZ, you should too”
• In Facebook, a user can only invite 10 friends a day to add a widget, making the friends feel more special

UGC Challenges

• With Yelp.com: Debate the use of paid-reviews to seed reviews. How authentic is it?
• Use MyBlogLog, Friendster and Others: Spam. Black-Hat marketers will always look for cheap tricks to hijack a platform for spam marketing tactics.
• From Friendster: The need to constant “prune” bad content to help develop the culture of the community and thus the brand

Miscellaneous Viral and Widgets Metrics

• Booze Mail on Facebook was able to grow its userbase at 30% per day
• RocketYou achived 9 million users in Facebook in 1.5 months
• Friendster: For every 1 (Exhibitionist) profile, there is 5,000-10,000 (Voyeurs) viewers
• Development of Widgets: ranged from 2 days to 4 weeks, using 1-2 programmers.

** Keith Rabois of Slide **

Lesson 1: “Viral Growth is Really Hard”
A very, very good reminder that Viral marketing and growth (user adoption) is just not magic and not just putting a YouTube video of a “funny video” and expecting traffic. It’s a mix of luck and strategy.

Examples:
Only 1 really great viral video every 6 months
Facebook Widgets: LinkedIn and Yelp.com have 2 widgets each, all have so far failed to reach beyond 4000 users each.

Lesson 2: Knowing the Value of a User: Viral Marketing v. E-Commerce Projection
E-commerce (Online Retailers) have data on the “tangible of users”, and so there is no real need for viral marketing. They know how much they are willing to spend for each user.

In a space where the value of each new user value is unknown viral marketing becomes very attractive; it has potentially the “lowest marginal cost for user acquition”. It is the safe choice to go far, when you don’t know how much you should spend, so you spend as little as possible.

Lesson 3: Is PR helpful in Viral Marketing? Not Really.
Keith felt that the best PR is done in-house, based on his experience and from talking to others. He cites the story that out of 5-6 start-ups in a room, only 1 company raised their hand when asked if they were happy with their PR firm. Other speakers repeated a similar theme.

Lesson 4: Viral/Social Network Structures & Business Model Changes
Yelp was originally an “Ask a friend where to eat tonight” referral service. YouTube was more focused as a dating service, but changed after utterly failure in the Los Angeles market. Slides was originally desktop-based before going into the Widget space with Facebook.

** For Next Time: Suggestions for Improvements **

Noah, Adam and the rest of the CommunityNext gang pulled off a heck of a conference. So I’m providing suggestions here, but in no way are they intended to criticize either the CommunityNext team or their invited speakers. This is stuff both CommunityNext and the speakers will hopefully (I hope that is) find constructive and useful.

Overall, I think a quick 30 minute session on refreshing one’s presentation skill will go a long way in making many of the speaker’s performance. We all need reminders! Also, maybe invite folks from the Marketing Agency world too to talk about their experience, especially working with a client to understand the viral/social-media space…of course, I’m not suggesting merely me. :)

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Facebook is a Social Utility, Why isn’t Your Facebook Application?

One of the many important things to remember about Facebook is that it is a social network site (or ‘social utility’ as Facebook calls it). Any application should readily use this unique characteristic, rather than use the Facebook Platform as yet another widget.

Reviewing Sidestep’s Trips and Oodle’s BandTracker

Sidestep’s Facebook application called Trips let’s you list the future trips you’d like to make, the type of traveler your are (”back packer” or “master planner”) and you can place this list on your Facebook profile.

Oodle’s BandTracker, which is used to help promote Oodle for event ticket buyers, allows you to list the music bands you like and informs you of where they’re playing next and when, but it does it by smartly incorporating the many social features of Facebook (see below); BandTracker, all in all, actually has the basic 6 feature any Facebook Platform application should have.

Here is a snapshot of Sidestep’s Trips (too generic, how about TripShare instead?) on my Facebook account, which looks pretty dull and empty:

Compare this with the many interesting feature on Oodle’s Bandtracker (again, using my Facebook Profile). Click on the images for an enlargement:

What are the 6 Basic Features that Oodle’s BandTracker Has:

1. BandTracker: Recently Tracked
   Or Basically: What was just added?
2. BandTracker: Who likes what you like?
   Or Basically: Who has similar interests to you based on your selections?
3. BandTracker: Most Tracked
   Or Basically: What are the most popular entries?
4. BandTracker: Who I’m Tracking
   Or Basically: What you inputted as your interests
5. BandTracker: Who’s Upcoming
   Or Basically: News about your interests: events, special deals, etc
6. BandTracker: Who My Friends are Tracking
   Or Basically: What are my friend’s interests

SideStep’s Trips could of easily added many of these features, listing special deals if you plan on making trip to Croatia, what are the top destinations for the summer, what destination was recently added etc.

Closing: Of course, This doesn’t Apply to Everyone

For applications like Horoscopes or box’s Files, these rules don’t apply. But if you’re trying to do a poll like Washington Post’s Compass or anything where lists of things are compared, then Oodle’s BandTracker is the one to look at.

Disclaimers

I don’t know anyone at SideStep, but I might be infamous over at Oodle. Not only do I know a lot of the fine folks at Oodle, I once sent over a Dancing Panda to the Oddle office. Don’t believe me? Do a YouTube search for “oodle panda” sometime.

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