Social Software Building Blocks (Social Software Honeycomb)
- Identity - a way of uniquely identifying people in the system
- Presence - a way of knowing who is online, available or otherwise nearby
- Relationships - a way of describing how two users in the system are related (e.g. in Flickr, people can be contacts, friends of family)
- Conversations - a way of talking to other people through the system
- Groups - a way of forming communities of interest
- Reputation - a way of knowing the status of other people in the system (who’s a good citizen? who can be trusted?)
- Sharing - a way of sharing things that are meaningful to participants (like photos or videos)
Underneath the main honeycomb are examples of three social websites and how they use the building blocks. The dark green hexagon is the focus of the system; the light green hexagons are the supporting elements.
This visualization of Social Building Blocks is from 2007, but still very accurate. Always helps with a project in the digital world.
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…if you want to exploit network effects, forget about Influentials.
A Workable Model
While the Influentials concept is a dud, influence is very real and we’re learning more every day about how ideas spread. While much of it involves complicated, often counter-intuitive network math, there are some basic principles that are easy to apply.
Passion:
Every movement is built on the passion of true believers and igniting that passion is the key to viral marketing. However, inspiring devotion is not new nor is it mysterious. Brands like Apple, Harley Davidson and Trader Joes, for instance, have been able to build an army of passionate followers without an “influencers” strategy.
Density:
It’s been a longstanding principle in biology that organisms grow out of a substrate. In a similar way, social messages flow through dense networks much more efficiently than sparse ones.
There are social analytical techniques that can evaluate connectedness, but in the interst of brevity, let’s just say that there is a good reason that movies are launched in NY and LA, before the rest of the country.
Empowerment:
Probably the most important principle of viral marketing is to give people a forum to share. It’s no accident that hi-tech brands like Apple and e-Bay rely heavily on low-tech events where the faithful can meet face-to-face. Harley Davidson, quite famously, has built an amazingly strong community from local clubs.
Social marketing, therefore, is not new, but we do have exciting new tools. Twitter, Facebook and Google+ offer us new possibilities to promote, encourage and track word of mouth marketing. However, that is no reason to abandon good sense.
Brands are not built by influential consumers, but by influential ideas.
” —Greg Satell “Exploding the Influentials Myth”
bit.ly/z6KVm1
(via wanderingwanderingstar)The Aporeticus: A Problem with Path -
Path is an impossibly beautiful social-network and app for the iPhone and Android; it’s the sort of software one daydreams about creating, replete with delightful surprises and deeply-considered design. Quite apart from its many visual flourishes, some of its nicest touches reflect enormous…
Thanks to everyone who stopped by today’s Poynter chat about Tumblr for journalists (and more thanks to Mallary and Joe for having me!)
BEST PRACTICES
The Tumblr community very much rewards authenticity, originality and social graces. I always reduce this to:
- Be Engaging: Have interesting things to say, and don’t talk simply about yourself. Respond to other Tumblr users, ask questions, etc. Remember that Tumblr is a visual medium (more than half of the 25 million things posted on Tumblr each day are pictures), so look for compelling images to tell your story whenever possible.
- Be Social: Tumblr is above all a social sharing platform. Use this space to show off your best stuff, encourage others to share it with their followers, reblog posts from other Tumblrs that you think your followers will enjoy.
- Be Yourself: No publication has to fundamentally change who they are to connect with people on Tumblr. The audience responds most to a personal, peer-to-peer connection with you; embrace that.
THE COMMUNITY
More than 105 million people worldwide see Tumblr blogs every month (43 million U.S.). Tumblr currently serves 13.3 billion pageviews every month; this time last year that was less than 2 billion. RIght now there are 35 million Tumblr blogs; at the current rate (nearly 3 million new blogs every month) we expect to have more than 70 million Tumblr blogs by this time next year. Those Tumblr bloggers are creating more than 45 million new posts every day.Top 10 US DMAs and monthly unique users of Tumblr blogs, October 2011:
New York: 5.2 million
Los Angeles: 4.3 million
San Fran/Oakland: 3.7 million
Washington, DC: 1.9 million
Chicago: 1.8 million
Philadelphia: 1.7 million
Atlanta: 1.6 million
Seattle: 1.5 million
Boston: 1.4 million
Dallas: 1.3 millionTop 10 US states and monthly unique users of Tumblr blogs, October 2011:
California: 10 million
New York: 4.4 million
Texas: 3.6 million
Florida: 3.1 million
Illinois: 2.1 million
Pennsylvania: 2 million
New Jersey: 2 million
Georgia: 1.9 million
Washington: 1.7 million
Virginia: 1.6 million
Ohio: 1.5 million
USE CASES
Washington Post Innovations
This is the best example of a Tumblr blog stitched into the fabric of the publication’s existing Website. The Post’s Innovations Tumblr blog has all the community and sharing functionality of a Tumblr blog, and it carries the navigation, look and feel, and advertising of a traditional Washingtonpost.com pagehttp://on.washingtonpost.com/
T Magazine
One of our favorite things about the T magazine Tumblr is that it’s big. Very, very big; the pictures are the star here, and they’re shown off in a way that’s hard to do on many traditional Websites. Nice voice, clean look, compelling images.http://tmagazine.tumblr.com/GQ
GQ launched in November with a Tumblr blog that has quickly become one of the best, most original and most talked-about of the media Tumblrs.Best uses: GQ uses the ‘ask’ feature better than anyone we’ve seen to create a real dialogue with readershttp://gq.tumblr.comCNN Money Tech
The idea of this really nice group Tumblr blog is that in every newsroom reporters email interesting tidbits and commentary around; this in essence puts the Tumblr audience on that email chain:http://cnnmoneytech.tumblr.comProPublica: Officials Say the Darndest Things
The problem for ProPublica was that as a non-profit news org, they had to be careful to not be seen as opinionated or partisan on Tumblr. The solution is this unique Tumblr blog of quotes from public officials that takes advantage of Tumblr’s community and content distribution features. http://officialssay.tumblr.comThe Gun: CJ Chivers
Excellent example of a journalist providing really great reporting from his individual Tumblr blog: http://cjchivers.comFind an incomplete list of media outlets and journalists here; please email additions to me.
THEMES
Art She Said: A project from Ann Taylor; when the promotion ended Tumblr users were allowed to install the theme from the project on their own Tumblr bloghttp://www.tumblr.com/theme/18357API
Guardian SXSW coverageUses the Tumblr API to pull in posts from multiple Tumblr bloggers in a single space on the Guardian’s website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/sxsw-2011-live-coverage
[video]
“Twine is the simplest possible way to get the objects in your life texting, tweeting or emailing. A durable 2.5” square provides WiFi connectivity, internal and external sensors, and two AAA batteries that keep it running for months. A simple web app allows to you quickly set up your Twine with human-friendly rules — no programming needed. And if you’re more adventurous, you can connect your own sensors and use HTTP to have Twine send data to your own app.” — Twine : Listen to your world, talk to the Internet by Supermechanical — Kickstarter (via slantback)
(via slantback)
28 low-budget new media initiatives for cultural institutions -
(Today’s required reading.)
(via williamlmoore)
fuckers
I understand why Facebook is doing this, but at this rate, they are going to be heading towards oblivion. The closed wall approach to the Internet is doomed to failure. Need more proof? Try Prodigy, AOL, et al.
As for me, screw Facebook. My community is on Tumblr and Twitter and other places I love like Ex.fm. So no, Facebook, I will not post links on my wall to my content on my blog. I will simply not use Facebook.
Ditto, I find myself contributing less and less content to Facebook.
This was a feature I had yet to implement for a client. Now they are forced to do the updates by hand. Not using Facebook when you are trying to sell something does not seem to be an option these days.