2. Businesses will be better in a connected world . That ’s why we connect 800M people to their friends and the things they care about . “ ” - Facebook
3. Changes to Facebook At the f8 conference on September 22, Facebook announced two major changes: TIMELINE OPEN GRAPH
4. Timeline: A new profile Timeline allows people to tell their life story through activities on websites and apps…
5. And for brands that want to tell a story, it ’s a way to paint a more complete picture Timeline: The story of your [brand ’s] life What Brand Page MAY Look Like Source: http://mashable.com/2011/09/29/facebook-timeline-brands/
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7. … thus making the acts of connecting and relating to things more meaningful Going beyond LIKING
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9. New apps for user experiences Communication Games Media Lifestyle “ cook recipe” New social apps will help brands become more visible to consumers…
12. Users can share experiences, such as listening to music, through the new Facebok Open Graph and the ticker. Once a social app has been granted permission, it automatically links itself to a users ticker or timeline. This means that a user ’s engagement with the brand app will be updated in real time, giving other users the chance to see it and co-experience it with the original user in real time. SPOTIFY EXAMPLE The real-time serendipity will help users explore new things… Exploring new things Lightweight activity in the ticker can be share and synced with friends in REAL TIME
13. Patterns in friends ’ activities help users find not only new, but also relevant things… Exploring relevant things News Film Music Brands Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3 Actor 2 Actor 2 Actor 3 Actor 4 Actor 5 Band 2 Band 2 Band 2 Band 1 Band 4 Band 5 Band 2 Band 1 Topic1 Topic1 Topic 1 Topic1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 5 Topic 4 Brand 5 Brand 5 Brand 5 Brand 5 Brand 4 Brand 1 Brand 2 Brand 3
14. Targeting your ads Further, Sponsored Stories will appear in the Ticker, giving brands an opportunity to use earned media in the Open Graph platform Source: http://www.allfacebook.com/sponsored-stories-appear-in-facebooks-new-ticker-2011-09
15. For brands, these changes allow for more detailed insights into user preferences, tastes, and attitudes Unprecedented richness of consumer data Source: http://www.hiboox.com/ (photo)
16. ThomasCrampton.com Asia-Pacific Director | 360° Digital Influence Ogilvy Hong Kong mobile: +852 6397 1662 e-mail: thomas.crampton@ogilvy.com blog: www.thomascrampton.com twitter: @thomascrampton
Editor's Notes
API Facebook Connect 2007: Social Graph – mapping out personal connections between human beings (people) 2010: Open Graph – allowing to map out the connections between all things by LIKING them (nouns) 2011: Open Graph – allowing to connect to anything in any way one wants (verbs and nouns) Not just liking things but describing activities (reading, listening, watching etc) Counteracts consumers fear of endorsing something. Liking = endorsing. Many people weren’t comfortable with that Social Graph: Introduced in 2007, Translation of real-world social networks into the virtual space of the internet. Described as “the global mapping of everybody and how they're related” Creation of richer online experiences by taking advantage of people’s relationships online “ Language of connection”: People Open Graph Introduced in 2010 Extension of the Social Graph, adding the function of connecting with and relating to virtual non-human objects by LIKING them Possible objects to connect to: vides, pictures, brand pages, newspaper articles etc “ Language of connection”: People and nouns New Open Graph: Introduced in 2011 Extension of Open Graph, adding the function of connecting with and relating to virtual non-human objects in a more differentiated, descriptive way WATCHING a movie, LISTENING to a song, READING a book, PLAYING a game etc Opportunity for users to “connect with an order of magnitude more things than before” “ Language of connection”: People, nouns and verbs Frictionless Experience Real-time Serendipity Finding Patterns
Solution for the second barrier: Instead of just giving consumers the opportunity to LIKE things, the New Open Graphs enables users to connect to and share things more meaningfully. From now on, users will be able to READ a book, to WATCH a movie etc. This will help users overcome the barrier of sharing since it takes way the issue of publicly endorsing things.
Facebook Platform Introduced in 2007 (together with the Social Graph) Framework for software developers to create applications that interact with core Facebook features. Examples: Gifts , allowing users to send virtual gifts to each other; Marketplace , allowing users to post free classified ads; Events , giving users a method of informing their friends about upcoming events; Video , letting users share homemade videos with one another. Open Graph Introduced in 2010 Platform that allows sites and apps to share information about users in order to tailor offers, features and services to each one ’s interests and tastes — even if that individual has never visited the site before. A more seamless integration of 3 rd party content into Facebook (THINK LIKE BUTTON) Social Plug-ins that allow users to see information from and about their friends and hence the opportunity for brands to become more relevant (XXX likes Nike +) Brands could hence increase users ’ willingness to share their stuff with friends by increasing usage convenience and by making content more relevant (tailored to the personal information brands had access to) New Open Graph Introduce in 2010 Opportunity to further increase users ’ willingness to share (addressed at later stage) Even more integration of 3 rd party content into a user ’s profile. A new generation of social apps will come! Frictionless experience: New permission granting process the first time an app is used; at later stages, apps will automatically connect with a user ’s profile without having to ask for permission again Real-time Serendipity: Through the increased integration of 3 rd party content into a user ’s profile, the proliferation of this content will be amplified manifold, allowing users to explore friends’ activities in real time
New Open Graph will enable a new class of social apps. First in the 4 categories of “communication”, “games”, “media”, “lifestyle” New Open Graph offers Frictionless Experiences Apps no longer have to ask for permission to post content to Facebook over and over again. Instead, a new Facebook permissions screen explains exactly what type of stories will be shared the first time you give an app permission to post to your Facebook. Once completed, it will no longer have to ask for permission. Updates through the new Open Graph appear in the ticker automatically, but do not appear in the News Feed unless it ’s an important event. This makes it easy to discover new content from your friends in real time. This allows brands to create apps that offer much more intense and seamless experiences compared to the current versions. In the case example of Spotify, this means that even user that do not use Spotify themselves can see what those friends who are using the app on Facebook are listening to and hence discover new things . This is a massive opportunity for brands to increase their awareness AND relevance at the same time because friends trump algorithms! Also, new social plug ins allow brands to completely customize their Web sites to make them more social by adding “ likes ” and sharing capabilities straight in to the site. Brands also have far greater control on how and when these appear, and how the users see and interact with it.
Here ’s what a few popular
2 barriers to sharing: 1. Users don ’t want to annoy their friends by flooding their walls and news feeds with unimportant stuff 2. People often hesitate to LIKE things online since this is perceived as an open endorsement Solution for Barrier 1: The ticker is a less intrusive form of sharing since it “bans” all lightweight activity to the right hand side of the screen. This way, it’s still visible but can be faded out by users who wish not to be interrupted. This gives brands the opportunity to increase user sharing and hence generate more earned media in the open graph
By tapping into the vast network of the Social Graph, the New Open Graph allows apps to harness the power of freind activity to offer users the chance of serendipitous discoveries of new things. This includes activities of friends and friends ‘ friends etc. Brand can thereby generate a huge amount of earned media Above this, the real-time nature of this sharing experience (e.g. in the case of media) creates a more intense social feeling than any other offering on Facebook to this day. Real time brand communities in the online world seem to have become possilbe with the New Open Graph.
Instead of just showing users what their friends are doing line (in real time), The New Open Graph allows Facebook to identify patterns in users ‘ activities. This way, Facebook can make sure that the information it shows to users is of increased relevance. While one song by Placebo that your friend listens to might not be a robust indicator that you might like that song as well, 8 songs by Placebo that your friend has listened to might make you wonder as to whether you might like that band as well. The same goes for movies, newsarticles, books and at one point very possibly brands. Brands can hence look forward not only an increased awareness but to increased relevance (twofold) as well.
Facebook is now displaying sponsored stories advertisements in the news feed ticker on the right-hand side of the home page. Putting sponsored stories into the ticker that Facebook is still testing gives added visibility to sponsored stories.Sponsored stories advertisements effectively create refrains of people ’s interactions with brands.By putting sponsored stories into the rapidly-updating ticker, “users will be hard-pressed to ignore” them, said Ryan Cohn, chief executive officer of What’s Next Marketing, in an email.He observes that ads become visible in the ticker:whenever a user returns to Facebook’s homepage from elsewhere online;immediately after a user interacts with the main news feed; andrandomly while the user is browsing the site.“Ads also seem to disappear after 40 new activities” show up in the main news feed, said Cohn.We’re curious to learn whether placement of sponsored stories in the ticker will further increase these ads’ already high click-through rates — which are almost 50 percent higher than other types of ads.Of course, that all assumes that the right-hand ticker is here to stay; that’s likeliest if Facebook determines this new feature boosts the performance of sponsored stories and other advertisements.
The functions of the New Open Graph allow users to share much more than they have ever before With this increasing amount of “ life-streamed ” personal information, brands will be able to generate new levels of consumer data along behavioural and psychographic lines to better connect with their current and prospective fans. However, the jury is still out as to whether consumers will find the new features too intrusive and Orwellian. Thus far, outcry never took long to quieten down as far as Facebook itself is concerned. Until this has happened, brands might want to exercise some care in how they treat this new level of insight that they have into consumer online (and increasingly offline) behaviour.
