I decided on the latter.

I think the situation it is relevant because it showcases how easily it now is for civlians to capture, create, upload and share exclusive content via facebook as well as how important civilian created content is becoming in terms of educating those around us as appose to more traditional news sources.

All of these videos were captured on Kao Sanh Road, Bangkok on the night of Saturday 10th April 2010.

NB - if videos don't work, refresh the page.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

In terms of speed, these three videos were uploaded as soon as I got home. It could've been quicker, but internet access was patchy for the last day of my trip.

In terms of educating, all of my close friends saw these videos and subsequently called, text or facebooked me to find out more about it. In explaining to them what happened and why it was happening, friends from all over the world were educated on a subject that they otherwise would have known little about. Would this have occured 6 years ago when a platform like facebook didn't exist? I doubt it.

facebook was the catalyst that enabled me to help my friends learn about an important cultural and political situation currently occuring across the otherside of the world.

It wasn't traditional media educating them, it was me, via the content I captured, created and then distributed online.

The power of an instance such as this I cannot, nor do I want to attempt to quantify, but I do see it as another good example of how social media is changing the world.

Research firm Gartner predicts facebook will have over 1 Billion users by 2011.

There are 1.73 Billion internet users in the world today.

The latest Nielsen stats indicate that users spend more time on facebook than Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Bing, Wikipedia and Amazon combined.

These numbers are giving google the jitters. So much so they released their best attempt yet at social media a few weeks ago.

The question is - if people had the opportunity to ask their friends, people they trust and know personally for information and get extremely relevant answers back - why would they use Google, a mechanical, impersonal, algorithm driven search engine?

We opted for a strategy that came to be known as a Syndicated Network Strategy.

Firstly we identified each of the branded properties they had online, then assigned each of them a role.

Online Store - EXECUTOR - Online retail store. Final selection and purchasing point.

Blog - INFLUENCER - Sets brand trends to consumers. Consumer influencer. Content rich news source.

facebook - DISTRIBUTOR - Live community of brand advocates. Content disrtibution channel with mass reach & exposure.

myspace - ENTERTAINER - Hosts events, competitons. Primarily an entertainment channel.

We then factored these four properties into a sustainable ecosystem.

The primary goals of the ecosystem was to

a) Expose consumers to branded content through social media channels

b) Get consumers to engage with the branded content

c) Position the properties so that when a consumer engages the branded content, a significant flow on or ripple effect occurs through other social channels (network syndication) to generate mass exposure and awareness to previously unconnected consumers.

d) Encourage mass consumer flow between each property by providing consumers with deeplinks to and from each property frequently (network syndication).

Direct traffic drives - facebook feeds a majority of traffic to both the blog and the online store. We do this by pushing linked updates at predetermined times. Consumers click on these links through their facebook feeds and get connected to the blog or the online store. Same applies to the blog itself. Once a user clicks a link within a blog post, they will be connected to the page on the online store where the purchased item is displayed.

Engagement, Content exposure drives (network syndication) - Both the blog and the online store are equiped with facebook connect. When a user buys an item through the online store, they are asked if they would like to share this news with their friends through facebook. Once the user accepts, a linked update will appear on that users profile wall. That linked update will now also appear on most of that users friends newsfeeds, thereby creating organic brand exposure and a linked traffic gateway for hundreds (possibly thousands) of consumers straight back to the online store.

When a user comments on a blog post, they will be prompted to share this information with their friends through facebook as a linked update. Same thing applies here as it does with the online store. A link to the blog post will now appear in that users friends newsfeeds exposing them to the article, their friends comment and a deeplink back to the article itself.

With the proper social connections and content drivers syndicated across the brands online network, traffic and engagement create themselves.

Its about consumers working for the brand, not the brand working for consumers - thats what social media is all about, right?

To tie into my main point, does this qualify as social media strategy that helps faciliate growth and awareness around our clients new online store or are we way off?

Below are just a few thoughts about how this development could really change things.

Creation of a 'per update' pricing model

Marketers now have a concrete and tradititional measurement unit with which to charge out facebook page management and update creation. The days of facebook pages being ambiguous and hard to sell to the boardroom in terms of reach and cost are effectively over.

Updates can now strongly be sold to 3rd parties

Now that page admins have access to the amount of impressions each of their updates receives, its conceivable that owners (brands) that have a large fanbase will now be able to sell updates to outside advertisers through a traditional CPM pricing model.

Realtime engagement monitoring

Being able to track feedback in realtime is incredibly insighful for fb marketers as it allows them to keep brands informed on consumer sentiment as it happens, effectively allowing them (the brand) to react instantly.

I think the biggest question that the market will begin to ask though is...how much is an fb update CPM worth compared to a traditional CPM?

Traditional CPM

• Usually targeted at a cluster of 'similar' websites that have a 'similar' audience.
  
• Your message can often be associated with content that doesn't suit your brand.
  
• It can be relatively unclear who is actually seeing and engaging with your message.
• There is no flow on (viral) brand effect when a consumer engages with your message.
  

Facebook CPM

• You know exactly what type of consumer your message will be getting exposed to, as the consumer connected themselves to the page, the relationship is voluntary, they want to receive the message from the page (basically the inverse to traditional CPM banner ad's offerings).
  
• You can monitor and communicate with consumers who engage with your message in realtime.
  
• You can see the exposure/reach the message is getting and how effective it is as it happens.
  
• There is significant flow on effect through facebooks social graph when your message is engaged by each consumer, increasing brand exposure throughout the platform.
  

I think a facebook CPM should inherently be more expensive than traditional CPM's because

1. the market they reach is more qualified
2. consumer sentiment data and reach are both offered in realtime
3. consumers can actually engage and share opinion about the message
   
4. brands can respond to consumers engaging with the message instantly
5. their is significant flow on effect for brand exposure, ensuring your message will reach more consumers.
   

Will facebook update CPM's become an integral part of the advertising landscape?

Will they will be more or less expensive than traditional CPM's?

What do you think?

Last week facebook made it mandatory for all of its 375M users to alter their privacy settings, in doing so determining who see's what of their personal data. Beforehand only connected friends could see your data. With this move facebook set the majority of your privacy options to 'everyone', meaning your boss, ex and/or known stalker would be free to view your personal information that was previously private. You do have the option to change the settings (the privacy tool helped you do this), however last time facebook introduced new privacy controls only 20% of users actually used them. That could mean only 75M of 375M users would understand and therefore implement the new privacy controls.

So why did facebook do it?

They want to be the Open Social Web

The Open Social Web is a world where anyone can find limited personal information about anyone, this information is self authored by the profile holder and is therefore the most authentic (true) information available on the web. *Take 20 seconds to look away from the screen and think about that last sentence, really try to contemplate a world where that can happen, because it's happening, right now* In order for this to happen you need a utility that holds the majority of the world populations personal information - facebook. Then you need that utility to make the information public - facebooks new privacy controls. For facebook this is step 1 in making more of your personal information public, expect steps 2-3 to be right around the corner.

The google monster wants you, facebooks going to feed (you) to it :D

Open facebook data is crawled by google and appears in search results. The more personal data of yourself that is open, the more you and your profile will appear in search results that match the right search criteria. The more your facebook information appears in search, the more people will click on it and view it. The more people view it, the more engagement and exposure facebook receives. The more engagement and exposure facebook receives, the more facebook ad's are viewed and then ineveitably actioned (clicked on). The more they are clicked, the more revenue facebook receives and facebook is in the game of making really, really big money nowadays.

They're creating a new marketing landscape, that they will control.

The more personal facebook data that becomes publicly available, the more marketers will target and/or create adverts towards you based on that information. Never before has such personal consumer information existed in the public sphere, expect those evil marketers to take full advantage of it. Wheres facebooks gain in this? They own all the data, therefore they technically have a right to any revenue generated off that data. How that will happen I don't know, but im sure the folks at facebook have a possible solution in the works.

So, why are you facebooks b*tch?

Because facebook will continue to make your personal information public, in a granular fashion, regardless if you want it public or not, you will continue to use it - because increasingly it is becoming the default utilty you use to communicate with family, friends and starting last week, possibly the world.

What do you think facebooks short, mid and long term goals are in regards to opening up more of our personal information and how do you personally feel about having your information made public? Please let us know in the comments :-)