Gary Andrews

Words I never thought I’d write: Monday’s episode of Made In Chelsea contained something genuinely interesting, albeit something not in the programme itself.

At the start of the programme, there was an ident pushing viewers towards checking into the programme on Get Glue. It’s the first time I’ve seen the social entertainment network pushed in conjunction with a mainstream TV show, although Channel 4 did announce a partnership back in June.

Get Glue is, as Michael Litman says:

“…billed as a social network for entertainment. Think of it like Foursquare but for things you’re doing and not physical places. But it’s a similar mechanic. You can check in to TV, music and films and get badges and rewards to keep you doing it.

And just like that this whole social TV thing elevates itself to new levels. The last thing I can remember checking in to using Get Glue was the Royal Wedding. Thousands were doing the same too.”

Get Glue is certainly big in America. Logging into Get Glue last night (I’ve had an account for a while), Made In Chelsea was the 5th highest trending programme on Get Glue. It was also the only British programme in the trending list, bar Doctor Who, which was listed under BBC America, although it didn’t air during American primetime.

The American aspect is why it was a little surprising to see it on Made In Chelsea. Get Glue is very geared towards an American market, which is one of the reasons I’ve not really stuck with the service – it doesn’t feel as if it offers much for me as a UK TV viewer at the moment.

Even so, it will be interesting to see where Get Glue go with the activity check-in route. There’s the usual stickers and badges, but as we’ve seen with Foursquare, this in itself isn’t really a compelling reason to stick with the service and users need something else to stop them drifting off.

There’s also the huge backchannel that is Twitter. The microblogging service might not have set out to become a giant TV chatroom but it certainly ticks that box – just check the UK trending hashtags during primetime. Do users really want a second channel, just to check in to a programme.

That said, there are many social media projects aimed at TV bubbling under and there’s no doubt a lot of the main networks are looking at the best way to tap into this. One of my longstanding predictions is that social TV will be one of the next big advances in the social sphere. There is definitely an audience, as Twitter and Get Glue are showing, but it’s a question of finding the right service to hook people in.

Ironically, this could come from Facebook. The social media behemoth may be trying to ape aspects of Google+, but some of the predictions around F8 seem directly targeted at stealing Get Glue’s thunder. And this makes sense. People already use Facebook to talk about TV and are getting used to checking in with Facebook Places. A Get Glue-style service would be a logical and, potentially, well-used step.

It would be interesting to see what numbers Get Glue is doing in the UK, and how successful the E4 experiment is. There’s definitely a hint of the future there, at the start of Made In Chelsea. Whether that future belongs to Get Glue is another question entirely.

written by Gary \\ tags: E4, Facebook, Get Glue, Made In Chelsea, social tv

Monday’s Evening Standard contained a rather curious feature suggesting that Facebook was declining in popularity, while profiling the social products that could take Facebook’s place.

I say curious, because among those suggested were Instagram, the addictive fast-growing photo sharing tool, and Foursquare. Yes, Foursquare.

I suppose much depends on your definition of waning. Certainly it’s a little bit of a concern for Facebook to see 100,000 British users no longer active on the site (as opposed to quitting entirely, which Facebook makes it very hard to do), as global growth, somewhat inevitably, slows down.

But then when the company is still growing in emerging markets, has 700 million users worldwide, this number pales somewhat.

Secondly, it’s difficult to tell if this this dip is significant or the start of a long-term loss of active users, although it is the second month active users has dropped. The number of users no longer active may well decrease next month, and could be attributed to natural churn.

What the article, in a roundabout way, may do, is suggest that Facebook users use the site differently these days.

Proclaiming that Facebook is dying and a new network will take its place still feel wide of the mark.

Yes, you can point to Facebook eclipsing MySpace, but this was in the early days of social networks and before Facebook became all encompassing. It’s telling that most social sites or apps offering something that Facebook doesn’t, still offer connectivity with Facebook.

What the article does show, though, is the niche nature of the “challengers” and this is probably Facebook’s biggest weakness.

Facebook has shown us the value of browsing the web socially and, for many, has become a daily or weekly way of keeping up with friends and a social life, and for big-to-medium brands it’s a great tool. But when it comes to engaging in niche areas, the one size fits all approach that’s normally so effective for Facebook, falls down somewhat.

For small to small-to-small medium interests, websites, brands, etc, Facebook is a good news feed and traffic generator but may not necessarily be the best place to grow the community.

Certainly off Facebook you can see burgeoning communities develop, often through engagement on Twitter, as these communities look for the most effective way to get together (even if this does involve connecting to Facebook on occasions).

Facebook’s groups and fanpages are quite disparate and don’t necessarily make the easiest communities, which are often best when they grow organically.

That’s not to say it can’t, because there are some excellent groups, fan pages and communities, but if you’re really interested in something, chances are Facebook is a conduit, a means to an end, rather than that end itself.

Of the other sites profiled by the Standard as contenders for Facebook’s crown, many fulfill a service that is perhaps lacking on Facebook, or just does it better (and it’s a bit odd to see Google Places on the list).

Essentially, if we’re looking beyond Facebook – and the site will have a lifespan, although I don’t imagine it’ll collapse quite as badly or as quickly as previous competitors – we need to be thinking completely beyond what Facebook currently is.

It’s unlikely that we’ll see another social network, along the likes of Facebook and MySpace emerge. Like it or loathe it, Facebook is so firmly entrenched in our lives it would be difficult to totally shift.

But the new generation of smartphones and tablets may give us something social that we’ve not yet thought of that becomes as much a part of our day as Facebook has been. If that sounds vague, remember, 10 years ago we didn’t have any concept of Facebook or why it would become so important to us.

What’s most likely is you’ll see something new that becomes as useful as Twitter and as addictive and socially necessary as Facebook, but does something completely different, and sits neatly alongside them both, threatening their market share but also co-existing.

After all, Twitter didn’t kill or even dent Facebook. It’s unlikely Foursquare or Instagram will do either. They’re different beasts altogether, and fulfil different needs. And, ultimately, no matter how cool something is, users will go where their friends are. Because nobody likes talking alone online.

written by Gary \\ tags: Evening Standard, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, social networks

Last week the comedian Richard Herring tweeted a firm but polite message to his followers about requests for retweets and why he doesn’t retweet many links people ask him to.

“I am afraid I get asked to RT so much stuff for charity or whatever that I have to refuse all requests or my timeline’d be nothing but,” he said, before adding, “Also if all charity stuff gets RT then it would have no impact. Like to save it up for causes I am involved with.”

A fair enough explanation, it seems, although judging by the exchanges that followed, not all of his followers agreed.

Requests for retweets is something I’ve noticed a rise in lately, whether it’s retweets from people I follow with a message such as “Hi @celebrityorkeyinfluencer, I’m running this race in memory of my mum, please RT,” or “Hi @writerorjournalist, I’ve written a piece o the history of Eintracht Frankfurt. Any chance of a RT?”

Even I get a fair few requests for both charity and article retweets and I really wouldn’t consider myself particularly influential (indeed, if you go by my Klout score I sit somewhere between the invisible man and a chocolate kettle in terms of usefulness).

Given the amount I get, I can only imagine the volume of requests fired at celebrities or well-known tweeters and, in the politest possible way, it’s probably a bit of a drag to go through them all.

I’ll make an effort, generally, to read most pieces or requests fired at me, but I won’t always retweet, often because I don’t feel it’s appropriate or I don’t find it interesting enough. It’s my feed and, sympathetic as I am to a lot of the requests, I also like to maintain some form of quality or brand control (although those of you who follow me may disagree given some of the rather random stuff I tweet).

But what of those requesting the RT? It’s clearly important to them, but is replying to a large number of celebrities or influencers the best way to go about it?

In the real world, if somebody kept running up to you and constantly asking you to tell others about their views on a topic or ask for money for charity, you’d probably get fed up quite quickly or tell them to sod off.

Kate Bevan, who has written an excellent summing up of why she doesn’t retweet, says some of these requests can amount to little more than chugging.

For those who follow the habitual retweet requester as well, it can get a bit irritating, especially if you follow the same people. It’s a horribly delicate balance – on one hand, you want as many people as possible to see your link.

On the other, it’s a bit irritating for your followers and for the person you’re asking for a RT from, even a bit rude, especially if it’s something they don’t want to tweet but feel uncomfortable not doing so.

One of Twitter’s strong points is the lack of rules. Everybody uses the service in a slightly different way and gets something different back out of it. But, gradually, accepted etiquette has developed. And in terms of general politeness, I’d say that continually pestering for a RT goes against this (even if it’s really not my place to say).

But it is, as mentioned, a balancing act, especially when it comes to flagging your content to the right people. I will @ or Direct Message selected people if, and only if, I think they may find it interesting. And I’ll certainly never ask for a RT – if they think the link is good enough, chances are they’ll RT without being asked.

That said, if you’re just after hits and traffic, then the scattergun approach will probably increase your page views, but in the longer term, how many of those who’ve retweeted will continue to do so?

I’d argue that rather than adopt a scattergun approach with key influencers and celebrities asking for RTs, it’s worth taking time to build relationships with them, replying and interacting to their other Tweets.

That way, any occasional request comes across less mercenary (“oh, you’re famous or influential, you’ll send me traffic) and more friendly and meaningful (“I know we’ve chatted a fair bit on here in the past, so I thought you might be interested in this link.”). It may not work every time, but building up a relationship is a lot better than an unsolicited request.

Ultimately, somebody’s Twitter feed is, as much as anything, a reflection of themselves and their own personal brand. And just as a news website wouldn’t post an unverified story that’s been sent in by a reader, so it’s up to an individual Tweeter to curate content for their own individual feeds, and some of the RT requests just won’t fit.

As Richard Herring said, retweeting every charity-related request will diminish the impact of the causes he puts a lot of effort into – and that’s just one example of a tweet request not fitting a specific brand.

That’s not to say there aren’t times and places for asking for a retweet but they are, I think, few and far between.

Now, if you could all retweet this post, I’d be very grateful.

written by Gary \\ tags: relationship building, retweeting, Twitter, Twitter etiquette

I now own the latest Cornershop album, Cornershop and the Double O Groove Of. I wasn’t necessarily planning on buying it until an unexpected intervention.

I’d listened to the album a couple of times on Spotify and thought it really rather lovely. I Tweeted my thoughts on the album and made a mental note to possibly purchase a copy if I saw it for a decent price.

A few hours later, I had a retweet from Tjinder Singh from Cornershop, along with a quick thank you.

We don’t follow each other, so he must have been keeping an eye out for mentions of the band. I’ve never been personally thanked by a relatively well-known musician for complementing their music before, and that kind of tipped me towards buying the album.

As with most things Internet-related, it got me thinking about social media and communities.

One assumption I often come across with managing your online social media areas is that you have to use it to fight PR battles and crises, or to use them to launch whizz-bang promotions that entice new followers.

This isn’t to say this is a wrong attitude – these are both very valid and necessary uses for a brand’s social media.

But a good community manager also knows the value in the little things that show the large swathes of often silent fans they’re appreciated.

All community managers will have a set of vocal fans they’ll often interact with. These are often the brand cheerleaders and can be nurtured.

But it never hurts to say thanks to those who’ll pop onto Facebook and Twitter once to politely say how much they liked something. These are also relationships worth nurturing.

After all, the person who you say thank you to a couple of times or answer a reasonably easy query could be tomorrow’s brand evangelist.

And, yes, the new Cornershop album really is rather good.

written by Gary \\ tags: community management, Cornershop, Tjinder Singh

Social media’s pretty well established now but the question of who should take ownership for activity is no closer to being answered. PR Week have recently been attempting to answer this, making an argument for a host of different disciplines, while Econsultancy have argued that social media shouldn’t be owned by a PR or ad agency. I tend to agree with them.

Social media is a multi-faceted beast. It can be used to break stories, promote campaigns and brands, deal with reputation management, drive sales, and nurture and develop an enthusiastic community of fans and followers.

Just looking at this list it’s clear that there’s a whole host of potential stakeholders all of whom could legitimately lay claim to be the right people to drive this strategy forward.

Marketing will certainly be happy to push the message or the brand but may not be the right people to respond to a crisis or issues that might arrive.

PR, meanwhile, will be perfect for this and would seem to be the most natural fit but, although you have some excellent social PRs, may not be the most naturally inclined to nurture or build a community, while the community person may not necessarily be the right person to completely get across the message on the occasions that are required, or deal with social issues out of the community.

Then there’s the analytics, something that those on the media side of things are generally less inclined towards. Then there’s always the temptation for some companies to give it to “the web guy” or the most enthusiastic member of the team. But if they’re doing this on top of their normal work and don’t get the support from the rest of the organisation then this negates any savyness they bring to the table.

I realise this is a somewhat simplistic overview of the whole area – some companies have very evolved social practices and are happy to work in the grey areas – but it still shows the dilemmas and issues ownership of social projects.

It’s why, increasingly, I strongly believe that any company, organisation or group that has genuine aspirations of working successfully in a social space should be employing somebody whose brief is solely social media and is comfortable with all these disciplines (and, in fairness, a lot of companies are moving in this direction).

Ideally this person will have some form of media background or knowledge – they’d need to be able to communicate with the PR and marketing sides, and also comfortable writing and commissioning blog posts. They’d also have the time to integrate with a community, appreciate the sensitivities and, if they’re really good, use this to feed back and potentially help their employers produce something cool and well-received.

The other aspect of this is the social person being happy to delegate social responsibility elsewhere in the organisation. One of the temptations for social media is to give it all to one person.

But if you’re going to have one person overseeing social media then they will need to facilitate and delegate. There will inevitably be co-workers who are better placed to run Twitter feeds or answer questions on this topic, and, most importantly provide guidance.

I’ve worked in plenty of places and heard tales from elsewhere where social strategy and cool ideas were held up because several different departments wanted to make a land-grab for the social media rights and this internal jostling often ended up slowing the whole process down.

And, as we all know, social media isn’t exactly an area that’s inclined to hang around.

It’s all to easy to have assorted departments squabbling over who should take charge of social media. Instead, treat is as a separate discipline and hopefully you’ll see the benefits.

written by Gary \\ tags: advertising agencies, PR, PR agencies, PR Week, social media, Twitter

A new year, a new shiny toy to play with in the shape of Quora, the social question and answer service.

Since Tuesday, Twitter – and Quora – has exploded with hype, counter-hype, naysayers and people somewhere in-between trying to work out if this is the next big thing in social media.

There’s a few interesting points to be made around the bubbles around these services, which I’ll come to in a bit, but to answer the Quora question, my initial thoughts are probably not, but it’s an interesting and potentially very useful site that could gain a reasonable amount of traction.

Taking out the obvious self-publicising answers that appear on the site, the quality of the answers is very high and in-depth and there’s a very knowledgeable crowd on there.

There’s also potential for mainstream media and other companies to use it. For journalism, it seems like an excellent place to gauge opinion and reaction that’s likely to be more considered than, say, Twitter, as well as cultivating potential contacts.

You can also see how this could be useful for specific radio or even TV shows, while it offers good opportunities for brands to enhance their profile if they’re willing to engage with this community.

But – and I could be very wrong here – the strengths of Quora is also probably the reason why it probably won’t go mainstream in the way that Twitter did (and Gigacom also has a few potential pitfalls as well).

Firstly, the more users Quora gets, the greater the potential for the quality of the questions and answers to go down. The voting element adds a safeguard of kind, but if, say, you see the sort of mass adoption in the style of Twitter, then the user base changes.

Secondly, would a mainstream audience necessarily want to become regular Quora users? If there’s a lot of specialist knowledge there, will it discourage the average Twitter user from regular usage, if they just want to socialise?

Unsurprisingly, Quora is also very to-heavy with marketing, technology, PR, media and social media queries, which may put others off. The quality of answers is usually strong, and fascinating, for these topics, but stray away and the level of answers is somewhat hit and miss. Will this put off people who don’t specialise in these areas?

I’ve asked two questions – and followed several others. One was on SEO, which had short, sharp, snappy, useful replies. The other was a question on managerial sackings in football, which I’d hoped would attract a couple of thoughtful responses.

So far, I’ve had no responses and a quick look through the other questions asked around football aren’t exactly on a par with those in the social media section. That said, the growing food community on Quora is quite useful and interesting.

Perhaps the area, or social media site, that Quora could impact on the most is LinkedIn. The type of discussions are very similar to a lot of the groups I’m a member of and opening it up to a wider audience taps into even more expertise than individual LinkedIn groups can offer.

As with anything social media related, if the site, app or whatever is to break through into the mainstream it needs to reach out beyond the early adopters and those who rush to praise it off the back of this – normally the social media and tech community – without alienating those who have vocally supported it.

It’s why I’m not rushing to hail it as the future of social media or the next big thing from this area, although the amount of use and the ease with which the new users are embracing the service suggests this isn’t a flash in the pan. How far it can go is another question.

And this leads neatly onto a finishing tangent, which Quora neatly highlights. The big mainstream social media sites that are breaking through are few and far between now, despite everybody looking for them. But those, llike Qoura, that appeal to an informed niche will pick up a lot of traction.

Several years ago, I remember musing to colleagues that niche would be the next big thing. In hindsight, I was probably a bit too early but there’s no reason to reverse that prediction. The problem with networks or sites that appeal to a nice audience are they will never become as big or as sexy as Facebook or Twitter, but they have the potential for decent growth and even a business model.

Other than niche, the other obvious areas for exploding in 2011 are mobile apps and social TV. In the former, smartphone usage is becoming more ubiquitous (about half the people on my bus today had an iPhone). All it needs now is a social mobile app that changes the game completely. Foursquare isn’t quite it, though.

With the latter, you only have to tune into Twitter and Facebook during any TV show with a decent amount of viewers to see how important social media is as a backchannel. With Google and Apple moving into the TV market and a generation comfortable with social media as part of their everyday life coming into more disposable income, the potential for growth in this area is huge. When somebody makes the right product, that is.

Now, having said that, expect me to be shown up as the ignoramus I am as all these predictions turn out to be gubbins by December.

Additional: Vicky Chowney mirrors my thoughts on Quora in a much quicker, cleaner and more intelligent way.

written by Gary \\ tags: 2011 predictions, LinkedIn, Quora, social answers, social media

Who would have thought bath screens could start a good discussion on social media? On a National Union of Journalists mailing list, of the reasonably high-up members shared with us an email he’d rather mischievously sent to a DIY store asking for their review rates after they invited him to write a customer review of his purchases.

Although done in semi-seriousness, I don’t necessarily agree that it’s an area where the NUJ should be getting involved in. For me, although the quality of reviews can be variable to say the least, they are still a useful service and the company should be congratulated for trying to engage in a form of a two way conversation and even create a community, of sorts.

From a customer point of view, these visible levels of feedback are useful. Pre-web, any feedback would go deep into the company’s filing system. Even the small step of allowing reviews and comments opens this up to a new level of conversation (although the really good ones don’t just leave it at comments, they host and curate and foster a community as well).

I’m probably doing my manly image little good here by confessing DIY is something I know precious little about. To me, customer reviews from the similarly uninitiated are highly useful. A while ago a friend purchased a cabinet of sorts – several of the reviews on the site said it was a nice item but very fiddly to put together. She ignored the reviews and several hours after the delivery was cursing ignoring the reviews, and talking about adding a review herself.

This is, in my mind, hugely different from a journalistic review. I’d probably look at customer reviews first and, if still unsure, then search out a more professional view. Although whether there’s a publication that has a specific section on bath screens, I have no idea. Does that level of depth exist? I suspect the SEO for the professional publication would be much worse, and harder to find than on-site reviews.

To go further, there’s a strong argument for saying if there are paid reviews, they should be kept very separate from customer reviews on the site. At the very least they should be flagged as such. An unflagged paid review nestling among a group of unpaid customer reviews raises all sorts of questions, none of them good.

This isn’t to say companies shouldn’t include paid reviews on the site. It’s quite useful to have a neutral assessment of the product, especially for more subjective things, such as music. Whether the company wants a neutral, even critical, review of a product is another matter.

User-generated content hasn’t killed journalism, and neither will customer reviews either (you might as well argue that the BBC’s Have Your Say boards constitute opinion columns and should be paid as such). And if a company takes it on itself to create and curate a community of, say, DIY lovers that’s well-taken for the initiative (providing there is a genuine commitment to curating and keeping the community well-managed).

There’s undoubtedly an issue with profitable websites that will happily commission reviews for free when the cash is there to pay the journalist. And you can argue where the line should be drawn. I also appreciate the NUJ needs to protect the interests of its members, but I’m not convinced replacing customer reviews with professional paid-for reviews on every subject would be a particularly good way to go about it.

Others may argue this is just another way of letting amateurs into do reviews for free. I disagree. Although this skirts on area that touches on journalism, communities and the general sociability features of Web 2.0, there feels a world of difference – for the reason outlined above – between getting amateurs to fill in for journalists and getting customers to give feedback and nurture a community that can contribute positively.

The one area I’d definitely agree with the NUJ member on is the original email should have a proper contact (his reply just bounced back). I’d also be curious to see what the response would be, although I suspect we’d differ on agreement of the any reply. There are plenty of good battles for the NUJ to pick to protect the future of journalism. I don’t think this should be one of them, even if was done in semi-seriousness.

UPDATE: Comment from Sian below. I showed her the email, just to get things straight in my own head. I think she makes a reasonable point.

“The thing that bugs me about this, is that it doesn’t appear to be an NUJ stance, yet the guy who sent the email (the NUJ vice president no less) has decided that he’s going to use the weighting of his position to make trouble. “

written by Gary \\ tags: communities, feedback, journalism, NUJ, reviews