SXSW Interactive 05 Wrap Up

Some interesting bits…

De-centralizing Social Networks (and their Privacy Policies)

Many discussions focused on the social network at it lives today and how it will evolve tomorrow. The concept of de-centralized social networking came up a number of times.

The idea is simple:

• In the future you will be able to maintain a “liquid” profile that will not “live” on any one particular site/domain
• It will be easily editable, customizable and publishable to multiple locations.

This said, privacy policies came up in conversation because currently some sites own all information submitted into them. Many of the social networking visionaries speaking on various panels feel that this violates their freedom and hinders the advancement of de-centralized social networking.

Social Networking vs. Artist/Product Self Promotion

There is an inherent difference between Social Networking and Artist Promotion. This can be seen via the explosion of MySpace Music. MySpace allows artists/bands/djs etc. to create profiles and promote/link to as many people in the MySpace network as possible.

Case Study: Tila Tequila

Facts:

• Tila has 175K fans
• Tila has never produced an album
• Tila has 3 tracks posted on MySpace (and they’re terrible!)
• She gets the most daily page views than any other “real” artist on MySpace

Why?

Tila is responsible for her growth-she creates/posts content and markets herself to thousands of members daily. She spends numerous hours a day on MySpace building her brand. This is not necessarily social networking…

What’s the difference between Social Networking a Self Promotion?

According to Danah Boyd a ethnographic engineer at Google and a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, re: Social Networking:

• People can only gossip with (keep track of) approx 150 people at any one given time
• It is not humanly possible to stay up to date with more than 150 within a 30 day period
• Everything beyond 150 is noise

Some of the rapid growth on sites like MySpace can be attributed to Artist/Self Promotion.

Orkut’s Success in Brazil

As we know, Social Networking is growing by leaps and bounds overseas. Danah Boyd has been studying the success of Orkut in Brazil. Here’s what she learned:

• Orkut service started with a large member base in the US
• This was/is depicted via the country flags of the world on Orkut’s site
• To users, in Brazil this looked like a World Cup competition
• What did they do? They began telling their friends to join in order to “Beat the US!”
• The Orkut service began to grow rapidly in Brazil (especially b/t the two major metro regions)

Outsourced Marketing and Building a Brand

What is outsourced marketing? Remember the Budweiser “Wssap Up” campaign….the Burger King “Subservent Chicken” campaign?

All these campaigns were amazing viral marketing ideas and spawned a series of copy cat campaigns. Imagine if Budweiser and Burger King made the original video/image files available for people to use and create their own versions, or produce their own endings-this is outsourced marketing! The original campaigns would’ve been amplified even more and probably would’ve gained even more recognition.

How can Friendster use outsource marketing? Some ideas:

• Design a logo, shirt, skin contest
• Finish the story contest via blogs

Thoughts?

Copyright and Creative Commons

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. They have built upon the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright. They're a nonprofit. All of their tools are free. This could be a great way to allow blog authors to make their self-produced content available to other bloggers.

Comments

[Wen]

wow, you sure are good at marketing and internet stuff. Can't bit you.

[Terry]

Nice website. I like to be friends. Feel free to hear my tunes, & stuff.

Terry

http://fieryphoenix.us