Would you buy stuff on Facebook?

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Sy

A subset of marketers now have it between their teeth that the next big thing is buying things using Facebook. This article at econsultancy gives the example of ASOS being the first to launch a fully fledged store front on their Facebook Page. Is this the future of commerce? – I think not, and it shows a misunderstanding of Facebook’s strategy.

When marketers look at Facebook they see

A big online marketing portal where customer interact with your brand
A proxy web page where you can interact with a customer without having to put them through a long winded sign up process
Flavour of the week.

To be fair to the marketers, Facebook is all those things, but if Social Commerce isn’t making ASOS any money then how should Facebook and Commerce go together? To answer that, we need to look at how Facebook see themselves.

What do Facebook see themselves as?

Facebook see themselves as internet infrastructure. The would like to own identity, meaning that you won’t have to sign up for another service again if you have a Facebook account. To Facebook it makes perfect sense that anyone starting a business today, would simply allow you to log in using your existing Facebook identity.

This gives Facebook a lot of data.

Facebook use their data to define the relationship between entities. So for example

Person likes Brand
Person listens to song
Person attends event
Person watches movie

Using verbs is the big thing I took from the #f8 conference. Going beyond like to “listened to”, “watched”, “attended”. As a brand, this is the next logical evolution of using Facebook. Not only can you engage your customers, you can see which customer interacted with which marketing activity or product. This is what Facebook call the “Open Graph”. It’s a word you’re going to hear a lot more of in the coming decade.

Where does this leave Facebook Commerce?

What’s missing from the list of entity relationships earlier?

Person buys thing.

“Person bought ASOS Black Shoes” is something I can see other people clicking like and commenting on. It happens today, it’s just not automated. Yet your developers can build that, right now. If you already have that data in your database, it needs to be in the open graph.

This changes Edgerank significantly, because there are a ton of activities that customers were unsure about clicking “like” or “share” with. This new lower friction brand interaction is where the money is.

What’s next for Facebook and Retail?

Brands get lost in the Facebook page and think of it as a landing page. Contrast this with the new Nike running mobile app which updates a customer’s timeline with each run.

Applying that to online, or bricks and motar commerce; I’d consider

What actions (verbs) to your customers do with your brand?
Which of those brand interactions can you capture via the open graph?
Which product interactions can you capture?
How can you use mobile and facebook to add value?
How can you use location and facebook to add value?

Imagination is the key. What are your thoughts for how to move someone from “viewed” to “bought”?

Hey Techrunch: This is What’s really happening in Payments in 2011

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Sy

So Techrunch have been spending a lot longer looking at Payments lately. Their high level overviews suggests that they just don’t get it yet.

The article suggests the 5 or flavors of the month in Payments (Facebook, Square, Apple, Google and PayPal) respectively, all have a viable play at the wallet. Which is fair, but misses the big picture. They’re not playing in whitespace. Payments already happen.

What’s really happening

Let’s skip right past the hyperbole and make a bold prediction.

2011 isn’t the year for payments at all, because nobody quite see’s all the parts of the puzzle. Bricks and Motar retail is a $4 Trillion industry. Online Commerce is a $400 billion industry. Mobile, Social and Virtual Currency payments combine to about $4 Billion in 2011 (US based figures, do some googling…).

Defining the Change

The likely outcome is that these will all converge. They can only converge by working with the infrastructure that already exists within western markets (emerging markets are a much more open play for startups). Try as they might in the West the start up brigade cannot circumvent financial institutions or the schemes.

By the same token: Try as they might, financial institutions can’t ignore the fact that a large percentage their customers are on Facebook.

What financial institutions need to do

So your customer is on Facebook, and everyone is gunning after payments, outsourcing CRM and your brand is losing value. Whether it’s PayPal, the Mobile operators or the startups, the squeeze has started. Your branch network and existing customer base is a great asset, but consumers are changing.

If I were a financial institution I would:

Develop a strong presence on facebook
Build your e-portal into the page on facebook
Talk to customers via the web chat / page
Help them with the e-banking portal
Speak to facebook about a revenue share on virtual currency payments funded via ACH / Direct Debit

What the startups need to do

Google are interesting, they’re making a more direct play at sitting on top of Mastercard, and working with verifone to win the physical card sales, and bring those into the searchable world. Selling advertising revenue to reduce interchange is smart. Facebook, Square and Apple all have some way to go to reach that point, with segmentation strategies. Amazon too have a horse in this race.

If I were a startup I would:

Work with schemes (Visa / Mastercard) under a revenue share
Develop an e-wallet capability
Sell that to financial institutions as a whitelabel, brandable product

The dream would be if you knew a company who already works with financial institutions for technology, that was able to do all of this for you. In my opinion there is a killing to be made, helping banks go social. Consultancies will spring up in this gap in the next couple of years. Although having seen a recent KPMG presentation on the subject. 2011 isn’t the year for payments.

I have my eye on 2014.

Your thoughts.

Who’s going to win the start up race?
Which banks are embracing social well?
Does anyone in the market have a holistic view?

Understanding Social Media – Four Steps to Social Media Revenue

Posted on January 2, 2011 by Sy

114

Social Media is very much the buzzword at the moment, because the board level execs, and therefore middle management have recognised the massive user base. Their thinking is along the lines of “We know there are a lot of users there, can we plug what we do today into that?”

In a word, No! It’s a very different space.

Before you can plug your product into a social space, your brand and business needs to be on there. You’re dealing with real people in a much more intimate way than via a call centre or your website. The rules are different. Before you can even think about making money from it, you have to accept you have some learning to do. Then we can talk about monetisation strategy.

Four Levels of Engagement

Joe Wiggins at Perfect Circle PR, lists the four levels of engagement in the financial sector.

Let’s Be Social – simply using social technology to build the brand and community

Enlightened Engagement – informing customers through reviews, experts or other respected sources

Store of the Community – customers help drive product selection assortment and merchandising

Frictionless Commerce – the buying experience is completely redesigned to create a fully customer-centric experience

Let’s be social

Step 1 “Let’s be social” whilst a starting point, is usually a siren of a business who’s marketing department convinced the board that they needed to “just put out press releases” because the competition is doing that. This is akin to using a telephone for morse code, a waste of potential, but a step in the right direction

Enlightened Engagement

This usually happens when someone high up in the business has the Eureka moment and gets it. It’s when the business recognises that their customers are talking to each other, and their friends about the business and interactions with your company.

It’s a paradigm shift. Not everyone outside your employee list is against you. In fact, some of them really like you and want you to succeed!

Social Media gives you insight to those conversations, and as an insight & perception management tool is invaluable. This is real time feedback, from people who want to help your brand or business.

Store of the community

Also known as an “App Store”, is a big topc in itself, and a massive investment for businesses that are not already on the cloud infrastructure route.

The idea of having an ecosystem and marketplace of developers vying to make your channels better, for free seems like a tempting one. It’s entirely possible with the developments in coporate IT Infrastructure and software to begin to make your services open for integration with clients, or 3rd party systems. PayPal X is a solid example of how to do this in a gentle, risk averse way.

An open platform a huge stepping stone onto the quest for the holy grail…

Frictionless Payments

I’m willing to bet everyone see’s the value in this, pay any merchant from any account, anywhere. On a pure technology roadmap, you could certainly get there without going social… but then how do you interact with this new world of Social Networks once you get there?

You may have the worlds greatest product, but if it doesn’t play well with social networks you’re stuffed. More importantly, if your business doesn’t support it on the human level, consumers won’t trust you, and the service will fail.

That’s why it is vital your business follows the social and open technology and values equally. It’s as much about how you do business, as the technology.

Spend time getting to know your professional and human audience. Listen to them. Interact. Then let them build the services they want, on top of your core value! In effect the community will do the integration for you, you just have to open the front door, by being a platform.

What do you think?

Will business truly embrace social?
How would you implement it?

CozyTweetup Leeds – How can social media ‘on the move’ benefit you?

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Sy

Leeds local & Caffeine superstar Ben told me an amusing story about how he found himself dictating on evernote to avoid the risky business of typing while driving. This kind of charming tomfoolery is not unique; there are plenty of people to share your knowledge with here in Leeds. Why not get out and meet some them? Leeds has a vibrant community of bloogers, freelancers & social media enthusiasts who get together regularly to help each other with these questions.

Cozy up to the locals

Whether you’re new to this social media malarkey or you’ve been around since the year dot, the ‘social’ part of social media, means getting out and meeting people. You can come and get your questions answered by the Leeds community on June 16th, over drinks at brb. Leeds natives Ben Mckenna, Jim Moran, Chris Baille & the eminently charming Phil Kirby will be joining us. Will you?

Vodafone have kindly offered to help out by demonstrating some new technology. They’ll also be available for questions afterwards.

The Details

You’re sold? Ok here’s how to attend. The venue brb is on call lane, we have the upstairs bar & events room. Big thanks to Wayne from brb for making this possible. We kick off at 7pm ( Wednesday June 16th), but recommend getting there for 6:30

Jakub Hrabovsky will be demonstrating the best practice use of the latest devices as well as helping with a Q+A session. Then we have an opportunity to meet local like minds in the bar afterwards. Perhaps you like Ben, find interesting ways to be social on the move? Or you want to meet some likeminds? If you’d like to join us, the eventbrite tickets are here.

Oh, and you’ll get a raffle ticket upon entry. One lucky guest will win themselves an HTC Desire!! Are you coming along? Do you have a story that can beat Ben’s? Let’s hear it.

Finally – time to chill.

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Sy

Yes that’s a kung fu squirrel…

The cold is wearing off, the panic and shock to the system of having to be up at 7am, working like a dog all day, then hitting the gym, then trying to have an evening… is finally letting up.

When something is rare, we tend to value it more. Except steak, that always has to be medium rare to be perfect. My point is; I’ve been busy, its the weekend & by God am I glad that first week is out of the way. Why I had to have the worst cold in a long time, during my first week of work in a long time I’m still unsure. It is mighty cruel though.

Things I’ve noticed. Getting up early is as easy as putting on a pair of trousers. It’s an old habit, that even if neglected for a little while just falls right back into place. Kudos to my Mum for making me go to school for all those years. Mad respek.

For the first few days I was in a virus and shock laden bubble. Nothing in the world seemed the same as before. It was always dark & I had way less energy. Which sucked, because I like being me. It’s fun, you get to look at life from a funny angle and go “heh, that’s weird” a lot. Which is just about my favourite thing outside Malteasers, and a good hips to waist ratio (you’d think those two are diametrically opposed, but no!).

Going into an office where everyone is overworked and super busy is a new experience. A growing company is a great place to be for your career & the kind of company that buys a Nintendo Wii as a raffle prize to raise money for comic relief… clearly is ahead of the curve. (Ohh, cliché, £1 in the cliché tin).

Which leads me to; it took THREE days before I heard a management cliché! No blue sky thinking, or outside the box crap. No synergy, very little touching base. It’s a good sign because people are being direct. Not the kind of being direct that is a “core coporate value”. The kind of direct where you ask someone to look at a database and they tell you “It’s broken, I will when it’s fixed”. Respek nummer two.

Now for a little break in my rant. Breathe. Take a little look out of the window. Yeah go on, it’s a nice enough day. Think about animals. I enjoy doing that.

So where do I go from here? Coventry? Alaska? The dark side of the moon?

Well promotion is earned not given. It takes daily effort & I’m more than happy to put that in. Can I? Will I? With every fibre in my body I’ll push. If there’s something to learn, google has the answers, the overviews & templates done by other people to steal. Living in the information age means knowing the question is now as important if not more so than knowing the answer. Fingers crossed. X marks the spot.

Scatterbrain

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Sy

Things running through my head:

Watching the new season of 90210 was weird. The old show looks so dated and kitsch now, but this new one has bright colours and looks like entourage. So I’m thinking “woah it got good”, but then it has the perfect family in the middle and can’t resist being cheesy. Heh.

Progress huh? There is this one girl who is mixed race, has amazing eyes. Anyways, her whole weekend was put on hold so she could hang out with her dad. Who turned up, gave her a car and left. She later founds out, he left because he’s having an affair on her mum. I just thought. OUCH. Take that materialism.

I promise myself and the universe. I’ll never be the guy that values money over my time. Time with people is all we have.

The new Rise Against album is amazing. I’m a huge fan of the band. It’s pretty easy to see why people wouldn’t be straight away. They sound like a lot of bands in there genre. Put them next to NoFX and they could be a clone. But there is something about the harmonies & the lyrics that is a different class. The patterns please me in a classical way, marry that with brilliant lyrics and you have yourself a good combo. Shame their politics are left of Mao.

We’re all ok, until the day we’re not
The surface shines, while the inside rots
We raced the sunset and we almost won
We slammed the brakes, but the wheels went on

Word to the Jen. Bowie is so smart she can like trashy tv ironically.

Is it just me, or do you ever get so stuck into something that seemed brilliant yesterday… that just isn’t today. Midnight mania is always best tempered with dawn doubt. Amazing how the time of day affects creativity, emotion & your reactions.

that’s when I told her
I love you girl
but I’m not the answer for
the questions that you still have

I get to see Russell Brand tonight. You’d be suprised how difficult it’s been to get people to come along with me. Spare tickets, may even go to waste! Shocking.

I need money