Whether you realize it or not, I’m sure you’ve fallen victim to one of the most effective marketing tricks in the book – sucking people in by providing them with engagement statistics. It’s a tough concept to wrap your head around initially, but once you understand it, you notice it everywhere – the endless feedback loop of engagement statistics.
The draw of this is most apparent in video game addicts. Do you know someone who is obsessed with improving their XBOX Gamer Score or getting enough XP to level up their character in WoW (that’s World of Warcraft for you n00bs)? Do you know a Facebook addict that is consumed with seemingly mindless apps like Farmville or Mafia Wars? Why do they care so much about something that has little to no effect on their real life? Because their stats are constantly shared with themselves and their peers and it becomes a status symbol or competition of sorts. It also taps into the OCD in us all – a desire to make progress and accomplish things.
However, this isn’t just limited to gamers. Take marketers, like myself. Too much of my time is consumed with checking email because I hate to have things on my to do list or unread email messages. I also spend a lot of time on Google Reader making sure to keep up with my RSS feeds and to make sure I continue to share and read shared items with my peers. Actually, when I think about it, much of my online life is trying to suck me in even further with engagement stats and feedback loops: Twitter followers, RTs, DMs, @ replies and lists; Facebook friends; Netflix Queue lists and rated movie counts; and Foursquare check-ins…
There is a debate to be had about whether this is a healthy trend or not, but I’m not going there because I feel like there is no turning back now. People, like myself, enjoy being able to see statistics on our own behavior and being able to compare that behavior with friends’. However, I do recommend moderation and reflection on our behavior. Most people reading this blog consider themselves savvy marketers or advertisers, so we should be able to spot these techniques designed to encourage re-engagement. Feel free to get sucked into these binges of OCD behavior from time to time, but know when to say “enough is enough.”
On the other hand, from a marketer’s perspective, giving people access to statistics is a valuable tool to encourage re-engagement. Use it wisely.
IM, Chat, Email and Social Networks Gone Wild
December 8th, 2009 by Rory Partalis
Categories: Digital Innovations | Tags: all-in-one, api, buddy media, chat, comments, communication, content, dashboard, digsby, email, facebook, fan pages, friendfeed, google, google wave, IM, images, inbox, instant messaging, media landscape, mobile, open, ping.fm, pixelpipe, platforms, profiles, social media, Social Networks, status updates, trillian, twitter, video, websites | 2 Comments »
The Social Media Landscape has become so complex that something needs to be developed to help us manage all of our profiles.
There is a quiet battle brewing under the shiny-new-thing syndrome we all are guilty of from time to time. This battle grew out of the complexity and exploding number of websites the average internet user has profiles on today. Modern advertisers and marketers are especially plagued by the inability to keep up with all the comments, inboxes, and instant messaging clients we use to communicate with our family, friends, coworkers and clients.
This provides an opening for smart companies to build an all-in-one online communication dashboard. And this opening gets bigger and bigger as companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google keep rolling out more and more open platforms and APIs. This allows other websites, widgets and mobile apps to have greater access to content and information from those platforms.
Friendfeed was obviously the original social network aggregator, and Facebook mimicked their methods and then bought them outright. Now Google has ambitions with Google Wave, but there are still gaps for an all-in-one online communication dashboard that both pulls and pushes content from all other communication platforms.
I’ve seen a few emerging spaces where companies are trying to partially realize this dream. The first battlefield is combining IM, Email and Social Network communications and content into one chat client. The two rivals I’ve found in this space are Trillian and Digsby. Each are strong contenders and pull from many of the same sources. I am currently testing Trillian on my work laptop and Digsby on my home laptop. I prefer Digsby’s IM client and chat window layout, but like the look of Trillian’s pop-ups better. In my opinion either works fine for my needs, both are strong contenders in the all-in-one space, but neither are quite there yet.
The second area where I see a battle brewing is the content uploading battlefield. This is where you can login to one place and post text, images, videos and other content to all of your social network profiles. Both Ping.fm and PixelPipe have a lot to offer in this space and also push to many of the same sources. Both also have mobile apps, which is awesome for posting content on the go.
I’ve also seen a third battlefield begin to emerge after having a conference call with a company called Buddy Media. They provide a dashboard that manages the layout of Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter Profiles. Very cool stuff, but still in its infancy.
Have you seen any other similar tools like this that would make all of our online lives easier? If so, please mention them in the comments section below.
2 Comments »