Joel’s Blog

Its been a year now since I started the OpenWine Consortium and during that time I've spent many many hours thinking about social media, whats good, whats bad, and how can OWC be great. I've learned more then I ever imagined and OWC has grown to 3000 people making all sorts of connections, business transactions, business expansion, and even helped to launch a fledgling magazine. Among the many lessons I've learned though, one thing is making me focus OWC and make it even better - SPAM. As a part of trying to make OWC better, I study other sites and social media to understand what makes them particularly effective communications tools. One thing keeps coming back over and over again - MOST of these sites really are driven to create revenue for the owner and almost every one without exception sees the only path to revenue as advertising. I am the member of dozens of these sites and almost without exception new social media sites are being used as a place to capture your email and send you advertisements. I started OWC with the mission of creating value for the wine industry by opening new avenues of business and networking using these new tools. I created an "ideas marketplace" where smart people in the wine industry can connect and create new things (profitable or otherwise) or make their existing things better. I plan on forging partnerships that continue to add and deliver more value and push the envelope for the community. The interesting thing with focusing the site (granted, OWC is more of a virtual trade association than a business and I don't rely on it for my livelihood so that makes a difference) is that by understanding that a social/business networking site creates value without creating huge "hits" or "uniques" is what seems to make OWC special. I've talked to owners of other big sites - social and business - and what I get back more often then not are a series of "hits" and "uniques" and "members at all costs" talks. It seems to me that people are creating social networks not to further benefit a business or community, but all to often targeting a community that may be inclined to connected in order to drive "hits" and "uniques". The inevitable byproduct of which are traffic generating techniques, which to the untrained ear sounds cool but to the uncreative site owner it turns a potentially interesting community into a fancy mailing list that gets persistent SPAM. I guess I'm just a little sick of sites that say "its really good to connect here because of XYZ" when in reality they want your "hits" and will use tactics that border on incessant spamming to get them. Put up a site with a purpose that creates value for the community and you'll make your money one way or the other. There are no short cuts in life, and that includes in social media. {seesmic_video:{"url_thumbnail":{"value":"http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/3NUNvzpbuv_th1.jpg"}"title":{"value":"New Whiz Bang Social Media Sites...same old SPAM!!! "}"videoUri":{"value":"http://www.seesmic.com/video/wcSxZiOnRC"}}}

So the topic came up today in the Twitter-sphere - Adwords, social networks (Facebook in particular), and their success (or lack thereof). I think its been talked about in the blogosphere or in conversations at various tech conferences but its worth repeating. For all intents and purposes, it boils down to what Adwords was intended for and the way it works versus the evolution of the web today. A few years back (eons in Internet time), the Internet was a super efficient way to find things - information, places, stuff to buy, etc. etc. etc. Google came along with a great way to search through HUGE amounts of data, create Google PageRank to make "authorities", and basically try to get you results that most closely meet what you're looking thus avoiding a huge number of porn links when searching on children's bedtime stories. The algorithm they devised was evolutionary (not revolutionary, one of the most overused terms in high tech) and it worked extremely well. As time went on, since the dominant behavior on the Internet was "searching", using the information gathered and the search algorithm Google created they devised an ultra -efficient way to advertise. They already knew that you were searching (because Google is a search engine after all) and they knew what you were searching for and therefore Google could simply place paid ads next to your search result that would turn up sponsors who had stuff related to your search. This was brilliant in its simplicity because it was (and this is the key) ADDITIVE to your current behavior. VALUE ADD - simple, straight forward, and very very effective. Google later expanded this to allow you or I to put ads on our site that would reflect something related to the information on the page upon which you placed the ads. Again, effective, but not as clearly value add because people on your site may not have necessarily been in "search mode". They may just have been reading out of interest. But since the Internet was still basically viewed as a giant repository for information and "stuff" that you sifted through, "search mode" is what people generally were still in and it masked the few times people weren't in "search mode". Now, with the advent (or rise) of social media, behaviors are changing. "Search mode" is still a dominant behavior but not what it once was. See, social media (blogs, networks, Twitter, etc. etc.) make the Internet more and more a place to "socialize". Behavior changes from "searching for something" to "killing time" or "marketing" or "making connections". Lets call this "hanging out" mode. Now if you're on a social network, you most certainly are not in a "search mode". So then, what happens if Google indexes my Profile page and serves up an Ad related to the content there? The answer? Who the hell cares! Why is that?  Because if I'm on Facebook or OpenWine Consortium or any other social network, I'm probably not "Searching" but doing some sort of "socializing" (BS'ing, networking, hooking up, whatever) - I'm in "hang out" mode. Indexing my page and serving up ads related to keywords and content is NOT additive to the social media experience or the current behavior so this ad will be ignored. Even blogs, which are chock full of information, don't see much return on Adwords because while they do typically report or inform they, more often then not, are sparking conversation or continuing conversation. Unless the blog is specifically reviewing something, in which case a few ads on where to buy that something may work, contextual ads are ineffective.  This inefficiency in the original model was masked by the fact that predominant behavior was searching.  Now with the behavior being socializing, Adwords and the searching optimization are only slightly more useful than putting up a static add. Even Google admits that it hasn't solved the social network advertising/monetizing behavior. Net-net:  Save your money.  Buying keywords is NOT social media marketing. Now, Google is looking to create a sort of "FriendRank", in a recent patent application.  They call it "Network Node Ad Targeting" and they intend to use a person's social map to determine the number and quality of connections they have (and therefore their influence) and pay those influencers to allow advertisers the serve ads to their friends.  Interesting, but we'll see how it plays out.  I'm sure they'll be takers, but I'll be awefully pissed if a friend or other contact is the source of ads I recieve!  Still not a value-add unless the friend somehow has the ability to control the ads that get served and influence what goes to our friends (i.e. some sort recommendation and reputation system).  Reading this patent, I don't think it cuts it at all. Cheers!

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