NEW YORK -- Web 2.0 Expo -- The traveling Web 2.0 Expo has arrived in New York, bringing with it a merry band of startups and vendor pitches, most of which have just one earnest goal in mind: to advance the Web's social appeal. As if you couldn't have guessed it.
One company using its tech wits to spread sociability around the Web is LiveWorld -- a social media marketing agency that builds, operates, and moderates social networks and online communities. Launching today at the Expo is its new product, LiveBar, intended to bring the community aspect to any Web page.
"In a world where people live through social networks of all different kinds and are living through relationships driven by online dialogue, marketers need to know what to do with that, they have to be where customers are, and have to participate and act in conversations in very real time," says LiveWorld's Chairman and CEO, Peter Friedman.
LiveBar appears as an action bar at the bottom of a Web page, which, upon clicking, will rise as a translucent overlay on the page. This enables social networking on any site where it's deployed. "When we look at social networking... it makes things sticky, it engages," says Friedman. "But we want to get people more engaged with content pages than social networks do today, because social networks are a separate place."
Of course, new technologies like LiveBar assume a couple of things.
The first is that marketing folk truly want to hear what their customers think, out loud, on the Wild Web, whether good or bad.
While moderation is often necessary in a community to keep boards well-read and free from harassment, some take it to a further extreme, only allowing community members to speak highly of a brand. In that case, it becomes nothing more than an exercise in PR.
"We encourage clients to allow customers to be critical of brands, products... and to use this as feedback," says Friedman. "Most of them do that -- but some don't."
However, for the most part, he says, companies that aren't interested in critical feedback will decide not to work with LiveWorld or deploy community technologies on their sites anyway.
The second assumption is that Web users are interested in spending their social resources on consumer sites without getting something in return.
When we start to look at this practice from a marketing perspective, the users who communicate on these sites are essentially helping push a brand or make it seem more exciting by establishing a community around it. So it seems only fair and normal that, at some point in time, maybe users should get a little compensation.
Friedman doesn't see it this way, asserting that consumers value the "cultural experience" over the prospect of a pocket full of bills. "[Making money] isn't as powerful as cultural experience," he says. "I think we're going to see Websites which will have more incentives for people... that's not a bad thing, but that's small in comparison to branded cultural experiences."
Expect more talk of money's insignificance as the Web 2.0 Expo progresses.
Recently on NPR they were saying that Twitter is being used by some companies to listen in on what people are thinking of their company. Comcast was instantly available to help a person after their twitter message complaining about a problem was received by 5,000 people including a PR person from Comcast. Yes, it is money oriented because they were trying to look like a helpful guy and instantly seen as a person who truly cares about service. But without that web 2.0 tool not flying all over the country instantly affecting so many people at once no one would have listened. Web 2.0 at its best.
From an organization's point of view, the reason they have customer service is to try to have those customers buy again from them. If they were sure that wasn't going to happen, they wouldn't even bother (aside from the legal obligation).
Everything in a company must help the bottom line, profits.
I really like the Good luck wish you sent for Nicole!! A model is only valuable as long as the underlying assumptions remain true. So in this light i think liveworld had get to re-adjust that second assumption. We all know how much value a brand can have and helping to build that brand without some financial rewards for those involve in the building process certainly undermines his argument. I'm glad he mentioned tha some companies are now experimenting finacial rewards for users that are helping to build the band.
Does the livebar affects the quality and/or performance of the parent website?
Hi everyone - Thanks for your interest and posts related to our new product, LiveBar.
I'd like to clarify my comment about "money." Nicole was asking me whether or not users of a social network site need to be monetarily incented to participate in the site. There are some companies experimenting with this approach and it has had some positive response. Without diminishing that, my view is that connecting with other people and being part of a cultural experience is of higher value to most people than small amounts of money. I'll add in that context also the exchange of information and ideas. Time, emotion, ideas are the primary currency of a social network, and in many respects of our society today.
As Brian Newly points out, we did indeed learn much of this at Apple. But it applies to many brands. Examples of our clients and communities that are effective in this manner are MINI Cooper (owners club), Campbells Soup (cooking community), eBay (sellers and buyers), A&E (show fan clubs, history enthusiasts), and HSBC (community for startup businesses in the UK.)
This isn't to say social networks don't have to be monetized in some way. I was just pointing out that for the end user participant, the greatest value and reason to participate is the connection and sharing with other people, all in distinctive cultural contexts. For the site and the brand there needs to be an ROI. Most of our clients are building brand loyalty and relationship marketing venues which ultimately translate to more purchase of their products. For some they are providing higher quality customer support at lower cost. Others use the communities as part of their advertising based sites - drawing more users, for longer visits with more engagement.) Some use the community for insight and research. Some of this obvious in the traffic and $. One study showed that community participants return to a site 9x as often and stay 5x as long as non-community participants. Another study showed that community participants generated 54% more revenue per person on an ecommerce site than non-community participants.
Much of business whether consumer facing or business facing has been and is about building relationships. Social networks are becoming a mainline marketing venue to do just that.
How about accelerated product improvement while keeping and generating more traffic to the site..and at the end happier customer base, and increase in profits.
"[Making money] isn't as powerful as cultural experience"?
Ok Friedman, maybe you need to make further investigation and you will notice that money is as important as the so-called cultural experience. Customers are not leaving their feedbacks on the sites only because they want to socialize with other customers, but rather because they think that with their messages they can influence the improvement of the services they are given and then save and make money.
The model hopes are assumes users of a brand might want to convert that into a common rallying point. The CEO worked for Apple, so I can see why that may seem like a natural leap if you came from a company where the brand did inspire affinity. But I don't see it.
In fact, it's kind of hard to see anything with the company. When hitting the home page two different times, I was greeted with "A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive." If that's not enough to move onto the next vendor of social networks, the actual products don't actually jump out and grab you.
I'm not sure I'm through the knot-hole on the value of this, but I'll start my LiveBar watch to see how long before I first encounter a LiveBar site.
Money isn't important and my check is in the mail. Soc-networking is awesome - I'm a big fan. But without the ability to monetize it, it won't go anywhere and frankly, it wouldn't exist. I am not saying everything has to be driven by money - but there's always a financial impact... If nothing else it's about driving traffic or increasing your personal brand which still obviously has an undercurrent of money. Any conference or speaker that doesn't recognize and promote that is a bit hypocritical... doncha think?
Good luck getting through the rest of the "Money is not important" sessions, Nicole!
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