Fifty years in, the global village is becoming clearer with each day. The pace, slow at the start if not confounding, has slapped into top gear on the autobahn in recent years as Social Media platforms has moulded a near perfect, borderless form. Thoughts, innovations and any telling of commentaries can filtrate through digital world with ease, providing a bold horizon.

The telling story of the above comment is that we are in the centre of the storm and for many, that horizon is impossible to visualize. Connectivity is instantaneous, yet for many its power is akin to a finely tuned twelve-cylinder engine idling in city traffic, is barely used or for that matter not focused in the right direction.

A quick gander through the maze of many Social Media and related sales efforts and the most telling absence is service and sincerity. While there are naturally many tremendous examples of using networking facilities to build and develop business relationships, there is equally a heavy drone of automation and sincerity or as I prefer to consider it, “devaluation of your asset model”.

Business rely upon a strong relationship with your clientele, genuinely caring that they are satisfied with your product or service, with the ultimate of tests being when you can look a person in the eye and be proud of your work. This little talked-of approach is the foundation of good businesses, not much different that your shopkeeper or candlestick maker, yet equally is missing in many now and very apparent within a world trapped in deep recession. For many years, marketing and “the sizzle” have won the race to sales but in the future, substantive service and products will return to the top.

This subtle elixir, where content returns to being king and mixed with service and the connectivity of social media, provides a stunning look at the future. Yet the bold business new world, jettisoned together, is looking in many like the old one where the quality of the product and the sincerity of servicing your clients’ needs is the determinant of success.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2011.
All rights reserved

While few would doubt it beforehand, the Goldman Sachs US $50 billion valuation of Facebook and subsequent US $450 million minority interest investment served notice of the not simply the potential social media giant but the enormous change in methods of communication.

Though the handwriting has been on the wall for quite sometime, the stunning endorsement of Facebook’s value should trigger to the entire business community, both large and small that lines of communication and relationships to the marketplace will continue to evolve as they have over the last decade. While hand-to-hand relationship marketing will always have its place, to ignore marketplace horizon is akin to business suicide. Those who do not respond and adopt proactive social media plans, with the aid of skilled professionals, will be a vestige of the past and quite possibly fighting for the business survival.

Social Media has went through a drastic serious of changes in the last decade from the networking of MySpace to the then upstart Facebook, with its youthful base. Despite the near shock of the valuation price, Facebook is undervalued at $50 billion. The massive “country” called Facebook with well more that 500 million subscribers, is well positioned for an IPO, with Goldman now in line to handle the deal. The maturation of Facebook from its early days has triumphed the financial growth of social media but more importantly for these purposes signalled the delivery of information, including marketing and news. With technological improvements and design changes to Facebook and heavyweight upstart Twitter, connectivity with clients has made the medium the first route for expeditious contact with the marketplace, the crystal palace of Marshall McLuhan’s Global Village where the medium is the message.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved

While the relatively new industry of Social Media pushes forward in the marketplace for progressive businesses, many companies still have yet to capture its enormous importance. The peculiarity of the sector is that unlike many business concepts, as “textbook” is written, much of it is already obsolete. Though that may baffle business leaders intending to stay abreast of the concern, given technological changes, public habits, as well as the present topical issue of privacy, this must be expected. Social media platforms face a future of changing consumer loyalty and businesses must understand the speed in which the market evolves. Business managers must adopt a plan that merges both online and offline content but in a variety of different tactics and mediums in overall brand development.

The once street feel of Facebook has all but disappeared as the frontier days of 2005 where you could sense a pulsing base beat of trends has been replaced with endless applications, multi-tiered selling tactics and rapidly aging population. The sheer volume of groups and pages, of which users have chosen to casually “like” have turned Facebook into a “tire-kicker’s” shopping mall, where they stroll by stores but never pull out the bill-fold and in many cases echo the voyeuristic problems that crippled MySpace. While it boasts a vast membership base, social media campaigns need to be cautioned that it is not an issue of simply running out your product but finding a route for regular interaction within your desired market and equally ensuring you are positioned correctly.

Twitter has its own unique set of concerns but diametrically the opposite of common marketing approaches and in many ways more of a brand awareness tool to facilitate the next step in the selling equation. The portal offers a youthful zeal, with speed of information and in combination with a natural private barrier allows for the building of a brand but in the bite-sized morsel. The hurdle for business to understand is by the sheer size of “followers” your reader is inundated with “tweets” and needs a hook that leads them to content or landing page within a small timeframe. While there are weaknesses to this platform, it offers a tremendous method of pushing information quickly into the market, leading them to your website. Twitter is not an answer on its own but rather an integral component for well-informed businesses to get their message out and begin the marketing cycle.

Shining brightly in the horizon is Tumblr, a subtle star in the Social Media sky. Boasting ease of use and engaging, the fresh faced blogging platform offers users a visual experience and at this stage, has maintained its edge that screams branding opportunity. The youthful energy rolls through Tumblr low and hard and works perfectly in the overall branding experience and needs to be recognized by businesses quickly.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved

While Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg attempted to defend the company’s privacy practices in an open editorial in the Washington Post, it lacked clarity in understanding the problem for the general user as well as long-term concerns for business.

Though Mr. Zuckerberg noted in a well-crafted statement the social media titan had “missed the mark” with its privacy controls and will be implementing changes to rectify the problem, it comes up far short in understanding the broader implications. Facebook, as he noted, “has evolved from a simple dorm-room project to a global social network connecting millions of people” and to control the flow of personal information might be impossible with commercial traffic.

Facebook, like the former giant of social media, Myspace, now relegated to being a punch line, has grown because of the super connectivity and the web of contacts with like interests. To pull those or at least place roadblocks on the network, starts the deck tumbling downward as it slowly dilutes the affiliations and ultimately business dealings are the coldest of cold calls.

In light of this recent turmoil and given the company is intended on a mega IPO within the next eighteen months, the company will “add privacy controls that are much simpler to use,” Mr. Zuckerberg claimed. While there is still a broad jump between statement and fact as the company say’s it will allow users to turn off third-party services, it quickly has the selling feature of sending out a bulletin on Myspace.  With the latter, it simply does not work and is merely an automated release that the overwhelming majority will ignore.

Regular users have seen this as since the halcyon days of 2005 to the now open door policy, the lack of privacy has gradually eroded the true connectivity to consumer. As the company chipped away at its privacy settings and saw a massive demographics shift it lacked a “cutting edge” and the organic relationship to user or for business, the consumer dissipated. With this lack of privacy, the ability to reach your consumer, without them feeling like they are under the looking glass is impossible, yet with it, new releases have the allure of a flyer at your doorway.

Though the jury is out on whether the company can rebuild its reputation with respects to privacy, there are significant questions ahead for business users. It must find a way to recapture its youthful exuberance that “Tumblr” exudes and the free flow of information the “Twitter” provides.

Yet on the broader horizon lays the message that business entities need to create their own self-sustaining campaign that invigorates customers to not simply enjoy the brand but become the brand. By creating a sense of a digital dialogue, the company not only allows its consumer to feel they are shaping its future but showing loyalty to the needs of core clientele. That reciprocal function sits at the root of a positive social media campaign.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved

On Tuesday, organizers of the upcoming London 2012 Olympics unveiled their mascots, two lovable characters “Wenlock and Mandeville“. As we would learn in the animated introduction that was reminiscent of the noted Children’s series “Thomas and Friends” from the 1980’s, they were forged from the last drops of steel used for the construction of the Olympic stadium and later re-tooled as a loving present by retiring worker, “George”, to his grandchildren.

A delightful tale, that went off the charts by any focus group of the intended viewers. Alas, poor “Wenlock and Mandeville” have not been treated so kind by the mainstream media but in an amusing turn of events, says a great deal of how far off course much of the business community is in understanding the present-day evolution in connectivity.

As per the Telegraph, Stephen Bayley, design critic firmly establishes the lack of touch with the present day as following his scathing review of the lovable duo, complains that they are, “appalling computerised Smurfs for the iPhone generation”.

While the “Smurfs” hit their heyday in the early 1980’s, with a modest revival in the following decade, making the notation a tagline for the generation looking to comfortable shoes and affordable prescriptions, comments such as these, sting with the inability to understand society is in the midst of the next phase of the Digital Revolution. Call it evolution or revolution but over the last decade the pace of change has pushed into top gear and those not realizing this, are left behind talking of, well pop culture icons thirty years past.

Equally, the “iPhone” generation comment is not only well off course in this situation but has the same residue that is fouling social media titan Facebook. With the latter, that now boasts its user base is growing exponentially; its largest growth demographic is women over the age of fifty-five. One very crucial point to remember in product launches, is should a new product get into the “wrong hands” and be associated outside of the intended market, it might never recover. While Facebook, whose success is based upon a pre 2005 paradigm, frets over public outcry on privacy that might be its greatest flaw. Facebook’s present demographics is a recipe to have your product, that tight new design, jettisoned into the wrong hands and killed off quickly before it ever gets a chance. With its now ever-present agricultural mayhem and other application’s it has lost its sex appeal fast and a product launch nightmare. With the power of the modern social media web, companies must now be wary that the wrong product placement will crush the launch straight out of the gate.

The evolution of the digital revolution is pushing quickly into an era, where product placement is at an entirely new level of visibility. The wrong move and your product could be associated out of its intended market and relegated to the discount aisle before it had a chance. The future of Social Media is reliant upon forward thinking and not rooted in the past and for that, the London Games have hit the target.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved

As the media has went from a modest simmer to near complete boiling over of Facebook’s change of privacy, founder Mark Zuckerberg is facing a sharp pendulum of public mistrust, a failure to recognize what made it successful and an aging corporate vision.

The success of the company, built upon the template provided from the original form from the Phillips Exeter Academy yearbook, explicitly tapped into a youth market but from the subtle twist of the present day decorum. Key to its growth was a freshness that represented a youthful coming of age in 2005 but in many way’s, or at least it appears as such in hindsight, it was simply by accident. It was “here”, “now” and not your parent’s dowdy yearbook with the requisite photos of band and a pimply faced world but was uniquely successful because its content was inherently by its readership.

Facebook’s success came via endless strains of interoperability the connected its users but with an honest edge that was contingent upon privacy. Though it seems impossible to believe now, the site once had a “pulse”, which drew you into the allure of the “right now”. Those halcyon days are long gone as the portal has either forgotten its youth or simply aged from the corporate top down.

The gavel has not sounded yet on Facebook but far off in the distance the gallows are under construction. The youthful dalliances that turned Facebook into vibrant source has shifted to the polar opposite, as the fastest growing demographic is women over the age of fifty-five and the site rarely edges towards key market information, much less the sales close. Though the company is quick to point out that active users are surging, the backlash over lowering privacy is creating a storm of deactivation but equally a testament to its changing feel. The issue of deactivation and even privacy is a debatable point on a company ready to launch an IPO in the next eighteen months with a value estimated to be US $11 billion but what is a problem is its usefulness, its connection to the youth and recognition of growing trends.

In an era where information moves fast and businesses hit the “tipping point” in a blink, Facebook is looking very much like a company that grew in its youth but is now weighed down with age and a burgeoning waist-line, complete with old brown shoes. The once powerful informational stream of the 18-24 market is a faint heartbeat and replaced by agricultural daydreamers and applications with a debatable flow through to a business bottom line. The company’s engineers may be ushering in a series of changes to features but their connection to the youth seems long gone. Mirroring the errors of MySpace, where the endless spam of bot-driven sites made personal walls and bulletins useless, Facebook is nearing a point of return if does not regain its youth, it will become a very modest vehicle for savvy businesses.

This should come as no surprise because like all businesses they must maintain a timeliness and exist within the knowledge of the present day market and forward thinking. With one glance at the iPad and the variety of competitive tablets, along with assorted applications, it should be clear that the shot across the bow has been made. Someone has recognized trends and along with making them, staying neck and neck with a vision of tomorrow, today.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved