MySpace signs deal to screen BBC shows

SOCIAL networking website MySpace has signed a landmark deal with the BBC in a move that will bring it into direct competition with YouTube.

BBC Worldwide has launched a video channel on MySpace TV that features short clips from selected shows including Doctor Who, The Catherine Tate Show and Parkinson.

"This is the first global content deal that any social network has done," said Rebekah Horne, vice president of Fox Interactive Media and MySpace in Australia and New Zealand.

The BBC's clips will be up to eight minutes in length and will include archival footage.

MySpace Australia has also signed a major deal with the ABC to launch a channel next week with clips from Summer Heights High, The Chaser’s War On Everything and Enough Rope With Andrew Denton.

These landmark agreements reflect YouTube's 2006 foray into official broadcaster channels following a string of copyright disputes. Broadcasters use these channels to control and promote their online content rather than users uploading the content without permission from the copyright holder.

MySpace claims that it is offering a more social alternative to YouTube videos.

"YouTube's a video site, MySpace is a social network," Ms Horne said.

"You can watch a (MySpace TV) video, blog it, email it, and add it to your profile."

But these features only work for MySpace users – other viewers cannot email or embed the clips outside the social network.

With five million users in Australia and over 5000 people signing up to MySpace worldwide each day, MySpace offers a large audience for both the BBC and ABC.

"It's about being where people want to be," Ms Horne said.

MySpace is also in discussions to bring MySpace TV to Australian mobiles, which would increase the current number of 50,000-60,000 videos uploaded by users each day.

MySpace's expansion into video-sharing could be seen as an attempt to keep the website relevant as users migrate between social networks.

One blogger has declared January 30th "International Delete Your MySpace Account Day".

But MySpace doubts that this will have a great impact on their network.

"This Delete-Your-MySpace day is just about being controversial," Ms Horne said.

"MySpace is still the biggest social networking site in the world."

In the words of BBC comedian Catherine Tate, MySpace does not look bothered.

news.com.au

Social networks and conversations

Source: Microsoft Email
Author: Richard Huggins, regional sales director of Microsoft digital advertising solutions.

5 tips to maximize online marketing through social networks

How can advertisers make use of social networks to engage the audience with their brand?

The fundamental growth of social networking is based on having a simple and easy platform for people to stay connected. Sites such as Facebook, My Space, Windows Live Spaces and Friendster encourage and allow people to exchange information, while email and instant messaging help support this form of communication. Social media today provides an outlet for creativity, allowing users to express themselves whilst satisfying the need to be part of a community.

For advertisers, this platform spells new ways to engage the audience with their brand, while adding to a consumer’s overall online experience.

Power of social recommendation

A strong element of trust exists among online social networking communities. Forrester estimates that 80 percent of consumers trust recommendations from friends online -- that is three times as much than in advertisements via traditional outlets. From this alone, it is apparent that social networkers have a strong influence, so it is important for advertisers to identify who the key influencers are.

Advertisers also need to examine various ways to engage with these opinion leaders online. As with advertising in the offline world, digital ads need to reflect the environment within which they are placed, and ensure its relevance. This will enable brands to develop interesting content that consumers will forward directly to their contacts, and ultimately, express a positive opinion about it publicly.

Below are five tips to bear in mind when conducting online marketing through social networking.

1) Understand consumers’ motivations for using social networks

Through different online networks, users will have different levels of engagement. Advertisers need to understand the mindsets that are occurring within these networks and think about both the author’s and reader’s incentives. By tapping into these behaviours, advertisers will be able to fit more seamlessly in -- without intruding -- and create relevant messages that are appropriate for their target groups.

2) Express yourself as a brand

People are using social networks to express their individuality. Advertisers should allow their brands to express its character, too. To fit into this environment, a willingness to have a voice is important. The network can be used to express a side of a brand people don’t normally see and encourage them to interact with it -- but it needs to remain authentic.

3) Create and maintain good conversations

Individual social networkers are powerful content creators. Their ability to make, or break, a brand by starting a conversation or community online means that brands that are willing to have a dialogue fit more naturally into this environment, and could truly benefit from its viral power. Advertisers need to tap into those individuals with a clear call-to-action, so consumers can make a decision whether or not the message is relevant to them. The benefit lies in the potential to spread to other networks, so the message not only has a viral impact, but arguably more longevity.

4) Empower participants

Some networkers actually welcome brand association as it allows them to express their individuality and preferences within their chosen network. As marketers, we are entering a world of consumers who have been given the power to control what content they receive, and when they want to receive them. By associating the brand with these online communities, advertisers are immediately offered a welcoming environment and more importantly, relevance with their messages. However, it must be noted that, in order to truly become “part of the conversation”, brands must open up to interaction. Advertisers need to ensure that they have carefully selected the right reason to create an online dialogue, such as for product launches.

Brands that are willing to venture into the online space by opening up for public expression create a positive experience for the end-user, thereby extending its appeal to consumers.

5) Identify online brand advocates

Advertisers need to identify relevant networking sites, preferably one that includes a group who already use/buy a company’s product. The simplest ways to analyse the network and see which users bring in the most traffic is by examining the content to see what their areas of interest are. By researching blogs and comments on a product in forums, for example, advertisers can reach out to them in this environment and begin an outreach exercise, such as offering free samples or news on upcoming product releases.

This is the future of advertising: interactive ads that not only draw customers in, but makes customers, themselves, active agents in your advertising campaign. In this way, the new digital revolution is simply a light-speed approach to the oldest and most trusted form of advertisement: word of mouth buzz, passed from one trusted friend to another.

Warning: Social Networks are a Haven for Spammers and Scammers

Online communities are a hugely important part of the online experience. I have no doubt that their importance will continue to grow as people look to harness the power of the Internet to chat with friends, network and find new people with similar interests. Advertisers will also become more attracted to social networks and other online communities as their importance grows.

As a result of this growth, more and more social networks are appearing online. If you decide to set one up, you need to be aware of one of the major potential pitfalls: social networks are highly attractive to spammers and scammers.

Social networks: My definition

I define a social network as any type of membership based site that exists to bring people together. The Just Chat email penpals (http://www.justchat.co.uk/epals) section falls within this category - users register, fill out a profile and then search for and correspond with other members.

Social networks: The attraction to spammers and scammers

These social networks are a highly prized target for spammers and scammers because of the potential number of people they can gain access to. Unlike spam email lists which can be full of fake or no longer used addresses, a spammer or scammer can be pretty confident that the majority of accounts within a social network are linked to real people who will read their messages. Indeed, many social networks display information on when a user last logged in - this allows such undesirable users to only target those who are clearly genuine, active members of the community.

Almost all social networks are free to join - therefore the spammers and scammers need not make any investment other than their time in order to gain access to a site’s database of members. They simply sign up, and start sending messages to members.

How to combat spammers and scammers

Unfortunately there is no 100% fool-proof way of combating such users - not that I know of, anyway! To prevent such users affecting the Just Chat epals section, I take the following action:

* Every single new profile is manually approved before a user can gain access
* A limit is placed on the number of messages that can be sent each day
* Warnings against spammers and scammers appear prominently around the internal mail section
* Clear safety advice is provided, along with information on how to report undesirable members

Why you need to combat spammers and scammers

Manually approving or declining every single email penpals account is certainly a chore, however it is currently a necessary one. I would estimate that on average, around a third of all new accounts are set up by spammers and Nigerian 419 scammers. I am now pretty good at spotting these and cannot remember the last time a user contacted me to report such a member.

By keeping the epals database relatively free of such users, it makes the section far more pleasant for my users. Members do not want to be bombarded with spam and potential scams every day - if they are, they will soon leave the site never to return. One message every now and again may be accepted, as long as the member is aware that once they report the incident, immediate action will be taken. Once it becomes a regular occurrence however, you can kiss that member goodbye.

As an online community developer, you have an obligation to keep your members safe. Nigerian 419 scammers are no joke - on occasion they are successful at robbing people for every penny they have, and have been known to use violence to achieve their goals. You need to educate your members about such people, and the potential dangers of meeting people they only know online in real life. Similarly, you need to advise your members to never reveal personal information and to report any members that ask for such information to you immediately.

A spam free community is a happy community

Before establishing your own social network, you need to be aware that it will be a target for spammers and scammers. By being aware of this, you can draw up an action-plan on how you will combat them. A community that is harbouring such undesirable members will struggle to be successful, and your reputation will be at risk. If you don’t have a spam and scam-free community, you cannot expect to retain members.

Do you run a social network? How do you deal with spammers and scammers? Share your thoughts, opinions and experiences by leaving a comment below.

Martin Reed - communityspark.com

Social Networks Starting to Click

By Rebekah Tsadik

Studies show social networking growing in the b-to-b space, even as marketers acknowledge need for measurement.

As b-to-c marketers dash ahead adopting new media platforms—blogs, viral videos and social networks—their b-to-b counterparts struggle with questions about the effectiveness of these same tactics. While some count the downstream benefits social networks are believed to provide, such as brand- and relationship-building, others wonder whether the efforts are worth the cost and warn about unrealistic expectations.

Trade shows and events are two growth areas for social networks. One CEO, who belongs to nearly 30 social networks, thinks they're as essential to events as name tags.

"Social network systems provide a great way for people going to the event to find out who else is coming," said Elliot Masie, CEO of the Masie Center & Learning Consortium, a think tank that explores topics of learning, technology, business and workplace productivity for companies such as American Express Co. and Target Corp. The company has used social networks in connection with events for the last three years to create more connections among attendees before, during and after events.

The company created a social network for its Learning 2007 conference for senior executives in human resources and training for Fortune 1,000 companies in October. About 70% of the 2,040 attendees created profiles, adding video and stories about themselves and their companies. One attendee came with a stack of profile pictures she had printed of all the people she planned to meet.

Elsewhere, b-to-b companies are borrowing social networking ideas from the b-to-c space while creating measurements and tactics to fit their own needs.

New media apprehension

A joint survey by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB last year showed that marketers were apprehensive about adopting new media, with lack of experience and the challenge to find measurable ROI chief among their concerns.

The survey found that while most b-to-b marketers are using e-mail and their own Web sites to reach customers, only 10% viewed social networking as effective. Among the b-to-c marketers surveyed, 36% viewed social networking as effective. The b-to-b respondents said they used social networks, blogs and virtual spaces such as Second Life for brand-building rather than generating new leads.

"It's hard to put an ROI on it, and that's where there's some hesitancy," said Jonathan Mendez, founder and chief strategy officer of OTTO Digital and a blogger at optimizeandprophesize.com. The company tests behavior patterns and responses to online content to increase relevance for companies such as General Electric Co., IBM Corp. and Siemens Corp. Mendez has worked with Walt Disney Co. and T-Mobile USA to better configure their sites to audience behavior online.

"The value is the platform and the ability to listen to your audience, your customers, even to yourself and your own business," Mendez said. "That just requires new ways of measurement more than anything else."

But customers don't always want to be found. Masie gave an example of a social network user who may advertise the need for a learning system—typically a seven-figure product—then get bombarded by offers. The company limits the number of e-mails users can send to reduce spam within the network.

True, brand- and relationship-building play a large part in the professional world, as decision-makers use those relationships to filter product and vendor information when making purchasing decisions. But will people go online for those relationships?

"I have serious questions about whether [those relationships] actually form online," said Myra Norton, CEO of Community Analytics, who has worked with companies such as Microsoft Corp.

Norton pointed to research and interviews that highlight the important differences in the social dynamics that govern sites like Facebook and MySpace, where people find "friends" and create networks based on similar music tastes or other interests, versus those with a corporate focus.

In the business world, relationships that already exist offline may be nurtured online through social networks that encourage, for example, the sharing of best business practices or vendor recommendations.

"There's a lot of value there because those sites are providing a platform that allows a dialogue and the relationships that happen between people to happen faster," Norton said.

Measuring impact

But quantifying that value can prove more difficult. Page views, click-through and conversion rates, and customer retention decorate the measuring stick against which social networking is compared to other online media.

But how much a company values a conversation with its audiences, clients and employees "depends how you define success," Norton said.

A survey of clients of SelectMinds, which builds "white-label," or unbranded, social networks for corporations, showed that 70% of all employees said the social aspects of work are very important to their workplace satisfaction. And nearly half (46%) of workers ages 20 to 29 rated the availability of support/networking programs for employees with common interests as a very important factor in their decision to join or remain with an employer, compared with 36% of their peers.

For younger workers, especially, social networks help maintain connections to family, friends, fellow alumni—and business contacts. That thirst for connectivity speaks to recent increased feelings of isolation in the workplace. In fact, 87% of the employees surveyed said they are most productive in their jobs when surrounded by colleagues with whom they have a good relationship.

White-Label Networks

"Companies require lots of controls around who can see what information and have access to what people," said Diane Pardee, CMO, SelectMinds, which works mainly with b-to-b companies such as Dow Chemical Co. to create internal social networks as a way to connect global sales teams and share new product information. Like other white-label social networking software developers working in the enterprise space, SelectMinds has found data and security concerns to be top priorities.

According to SelectMinds, its clients say corporate social networking helped increased productivity on average 10.33%, new business on average 11.65% and retention on average 5%. Internal social networks provided a way for companies to connect global sales teams and share knowledge of new products.

Pardee said reinforcing online relationships with offline meetings is essential. SelectMinds' own statistics show that more internal solidarity increases employee retention, translating into millions of dollars in benefits for companies.

For some companies, former employees can provide valuable connections to new business prospects via the social network. These "alumni" may mediate connections between their clients and their former employer, generating new business. Other companies have used their social networks to create subnetworks—for instance, tying key developers to executives.

"We actually see social networks getting smaller and more focused," said Shaun Priest, senior VP-sales at Omnifuse, a white-label social network company. "Instead of saying we want to be all things to all people, how can we [reach] a targeted group?" he said.

Employee Intranets Growing

The largest growth of social network use is in the areas of employee intranets, software groups and associations, Priest said.

Take the case of CareSeek Inc.'s social network careseek.com, which has 1,000 members. The site allows nurses to review comments about doctors for patients, and will eventually include hospitals and care homes. The site was launched in September during the Health 2.0 conference. CareSeek's member profiles are designed to create a sense of trust among patients, caregivers and care providers. The 600,000 doctors in the U.S. are entered into the site already; whether they choose to join is up to them, as well as social workers, physical therapists, pharmacists and other eligible community members.

"Engaging people in this is a giant outreach for volunteers to contribute content," said Gale Wilson-Steele, an Omnifuse client and CareSeek's CEO and founder. She that the idea of an open dialogue can be uncomfortable in such a heavily regulated industry. "Feeding and care to keep it alive has to happen, and it has a big investment of time and money," she said.

CareSeek invested thousands of dollars in the platform, design, handling focus groups, redesign, branding and messaging. Including staff time and maintenance, Wilson-Steele said the site basically created its own department.

"I wouldn't say it's a get-rich-quick-scheme at all," she said.

Community Analytics' Norton, agreed.

"This is not `Field of Dreams,' where you build it and they will come," she said.

btobonline.com

Hate Groups Could Land Social Networking Sites in Court

Social networking forums, where users give full vent to their gripes about everyone from gas providers and airline companies to the local bus operator, have caught the eye of media lawyers, who warn that such postings may be leaving sites such as Facebook and MySpace open to libel actions.

Advertisers raised concerns last summer over the kind of user-generated content they could be associated with on such sites, and there are now growing fears over so-called "hate pages", such as Facebook's "I hate BT".

Under current legislation, if website owners remove defamatory material as soon as they are aware of it, then they are not liable. But lawyer Nick Armstrong, writing in Media Law, published by Sweet & Maxwell, sees serious legal risks in allowing users to establish groups and pages whose sole purpose is to invite aggressive criticism of organisations and individuals. He also believes that website owners need a better grasp of their responsibilities.

"Social networking sites are perhaps being too complacent about some of the risks in this area," says Armstrong, a partner at law firm Charles Russell. "There is a widespread but inaccurate belief that posters of defamatory material are liable rather than websites themselves, but this should not be taken as a green light for social networking sites to allow users to say whatever they please."

Risk of defamation

He argues that the courts may decide that current laws do not absolve sites of responsibility if they could reasonably have known in advance that libellous comments would be made.

"Sites would be safest if they didn't allow 'I hate' pages because a court is likely to say - however impractical it is - that Facebook, or whoever, should have known that there was a risk of defamation." They could be liable for, in effect, inciting users to post defamatory material, he adds.

That leaves social networking sites with two headaches. How do they close such groups, and is it really right to decide what users should and should not discuss?

Armstrong agrees that shutting down "hate groups" is not the way forward, but says that websites need to react faster when complaints come in - which can be difficult as sites grow.

"It's like something out of Kafka trying to get through to Google, for instance. The danger with these sites is that they are so big that a complaint might not be acted on fast enough."

Facebook would not say whether it had considered banning "hate groups", but a spokeswoman did point to the site's terms of use. Users are told they cannot post content that "makes threats of any kind or that intimidates, harasses, or bullies anyone, is derogatory, demeaning, malicious, defamatory, abusive, offensive or hateful".

guardian.co.uk

Researchers Plunder Social Networks

By Jon Stewart

Every day millions of students at college in America log onto Facebook. Like any other fan of the site they update their status, message each other, upload and tag photos, and link to their friends.

What they are not aware of is that they are being monitored by researchers, who are almost overwhelmed by the amount of data they can gather about tastes, preferences and relationships.

Sociologists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Harvard University in the United States are using the social networking site for academic research.

"We're harvesting information from Facebook. We have all the information on an entire class of students. We are gathering that data and transforming it into a dataset that can be easily used for all kinds of analysis" said Andreas Wimmer, professor of Sociology at UCLA.

"It's a wealth of data on who relates to whom, and who becomes friends with whom, that is quite unprecedented. Compared to the usual survey data it's a huge leap forward in terms of the precision with which relationships are recorded," he said.

Facebook users can set privacy controls, to limit who can see their profiles. But researchers say that currently most of the students they are looking at haven't chosen to make their sites private, and therefore they are knowingly making details of their lives public.

"There's just a phenomenal amount of work being done that takes advantage of what I would call this passive, massive, data collection effort" said Professor Nicholas Christakis from Harvard University.

He told the Digital Planet programme on the BBC World service that as well as Facebook, scientists are gathering data from all sorts of online activity.

"There are lots of people who are taking advantage of the fact that we leave digital traces nowadays. People have been mining all kinds of data. For example they've been looking at telephone networks, instant messaging networks, blog postings. Some people have machine-readings of hundreds of millions of blog entries.

"There is even a website that tries to track how people are feeling in different parts of the world - looking at whether there are there hotspots of sadness, anger or happiness in different areas" he continued.

Facebook is particularly useful to sociologists because of the way members accurately record relationships. Friends can add applications to compare tastes in everything from films to music to books. That can help researchers establish whether people tend to form relationships with others who are similar to themselves.

The study looking at the entire class of students is scheduled to run for four years. Early results are helping to shed light on how people make friends.

"If you look at the entire picture of who is hanging out with whom - or what are the principles of group formation in this college, then you see that the most important thing is co-residence, who people who have been thrown together with in the same dorm" said Prof Wimmer.

"It seems that since this 'opportunity' structure matters so much, what this college and a lot of others are doing, is mixing people from different backgrounds - racial, social-economic etc - in their dorms and their residences. It really helps to establish ties across these various divides."

Longer term the researchers believe the increased understanding of the way relationships form could help identify students who aren't fitting in, and who are perhaps at a greater risk of suicide.

news.bbc.co.uk

Facebook Is The Slowest Social Network

Facebook has been judged to be the slowest and most inaccessible social networking site, according to a new report.

According to research conducted by website and application monitoring service WatchMouse, despite its popularity amongst users, the network took the longest to load up.

Of 104 sites studied, 51 showed very slow loading times, achieving a so-called site performance index (SPI) of 1,000 or more.

In addition to Facebook, other social networks exhibiting slow performances included Twitter, last.fm and Friendster.

Commenting on the results, chief technical officer at WatchMouse Mark Pors stated: "It is interesting to see that popular networking sites turn out to have very bad performance.

"It is surprising they still have such a big fan base when they serve their users so badly."

The slowness of sites such as Facebook is surprising because they use Ajax technology, which is designed to increase speed and functionality, he added.

Ajax is a group of inter-related web development techniques used for creating web applications and is characterised by its ability to increase the responsiveness of web pages.

Summarising the findings, Mr Pors said: "For now, the sites will need to do a lot of work to remain popular and improve their performance."

Not all the networks performed badly, however, with Faceparty achieving an SPI of 303, meaning the site can be accessed more quickly by users than some of its rivals.

bigmouthmedia.com

A Mirror to the Way We Live Now?

Social networking, Facebook in particular, is fast becoming a dominant force in shaping the way people stay in touch, organise and spend their leisure time. A research study by Instrata flagged up some issues arising from this change, whilst raising questions about whether it is changing segments of society or simply highlighting the way things already are.

“It is difficult to say whether the changes in communication and models of friendship are caused by these sites or whether Facebook’s popularity is due to a timely commercial response to existing social changes such the flexible workforce that moves regularly and has wider, more dispersed friendship groups,” says Anita Mackenzie Mills from Instrata.

Ironically in the light of debates over social networking and the loss of a real social life, much of the success of Facebook has been its insistence on the use of real names and networks. These networks: academic, workplace and geographical, are where people identify themselves as being part of the previously distinct worlds of virtual communities and real life.

VOYEURISM OR STALKING?
The popularity of social networking in some ways is similar to that of reality TV, but with people you have met, or friends of friends. Part of the appeal is voyeurism, permitted and encouraged because people are happy to post their personal information, including photos, videos, contact details and lists of favourite films, music etc in the knowledge that it can be seen by friends or, depending on your choice of privacy settings, strangers in your networks. Stalking is a term commonly applied to browsing profiles. In this context stalking has begun to lose its very negative connotation, and even become a common in-joke amongst users. There is even a new term “Facestalk” describing this activity. The result is that friends can be very aware of what their contacts are doing, where they are going, see pictures of their nights out, and thus feel very in touch without ever seeing each other, talking or even directly exchanging messages.

PRIVACY
One of Facebook’s benefits is that profiles are less open than MySpace – unless you keep it open to the whole network, only friends you accept can view your page. Even so, during the two weeks when participants kept a diary of their social networking activities a surprising number of misunderstandings, arguments and difficulties arose. A school was having problems with pupils discovering teachers’ Facebook pages. One participant was upset that her boyfriend’s page still stated that he was single, another had suspicions due to her boyfriend’s numerous attractive female friends. A male participant posted a photo of a friend’s “harmless” flirtation on a night out, causing a rift in the friendship and leading him to decide to delete his own profile to avoid future problems.

Like any new communication tool, social networking needs time for users to formulate and understand the necessary unwritten rules of usage. Many of the initial problems have been exacerbated by the high speed of its adoption. There is a chance that these issues could inhibit the growth of social networking, but probably only in the short term while new models of acceptable social network behaviour are being worked out. As Dr Rachel Jones from Instrata says: “Whether social networking is a passing fad or a phenomenon that will change the way we communicate forever remains to be seen.”

usabilitynews.com