This week I’ve been attending the World Blogging Forum in
Bucharest, Romania and the comments of San Francisco-based French entrepreneur
Loic Le Meur should certainly interest those organizations pondering the merits
of an investment in social networking.
An Internet entrepreneur and blogger, Le Meur is the founder
of Seesmic, a popular Twitter-reading application that also aggregates other
social networking services, such as Facebook.
Le Meur told the conference attendees in Bucharest blogging
seems to have largely peaked as a medium and hasn’t reached as many people or
gotten as large as he’d hoped it would.
He sees micro-blogging and Twitter become bigger because it’s easier to
do and its open application programming interface (API) allows for easy
third-party development.
Twitter is setting the tend, confirmed by Facebook’s
Twitter-inspired redesign and LinkedIn’s move this week to add status updates,
but Le Meur said the future will be less about Twitter specifically more about
easily sharing on the social network regardless of the entry-point. We’ll
access the social network from one location, and will laugh at how today we go
to so many different sites.
Whatever form the social network takes though, at the centre
it’s about people, and it’s about communities.
“If Facebook is the new MySpace and Twitter is the new Facebook,
what’s the new Twitter?” asked Le Meur. “I don’t know, but what will stay the
same is you.”
Communities, not ads
Businesses need to change the way they brand and market,
said Le Meur. While a full-page ad in a major daily newspaper may be good for a
CEO’s ego, it’s more effective to build a community around your brand. If you
can have 10 new people each day supporting your brand and joining your
community, he said that’s more effective than any advertisement.
A brand, said Le Meur, needs 1000 fans or members for its
community. From that critical mass, companies can market and have it spiral out
for mass reach.
People want brand updates and news, and social networking is
an effective way to get that information to motivated people who will act on it
and spread it as trusted advisers to their friends. Le Meur said he sees more
retail stores and restaurants getting on Twitter.
For example, in San Francisco many food carts such as @sfstreetfood
are on Twitter, and have thousands of followers. A Crème Brule cart has 4000
followers, and will tweet it will be at a certain intersection at a certain
time. Over 100 people will show-up and he quickly sells out his stock, having
spent nothing on marketing.
“Anyone can create a business with a small community,” said
Le Meur. “I want to be able to tweet ‘this dish sucks’ and have the chef
answer.”
Future predictions
* Location will be big in social networking. Google Latitude
has added location history, that’s scary but it becomes a powerful tool. People
can see which of their friends have been to a city, or even a restaurant, and
tap them for advice. Multiple visits can make one a trusted expert on the
network.
* The Twitter vs. Facebook battle is one of an open
philosophy vs. a closed one. He doesn’t know which will prevail, but he prefers
the open model.
* E-commerce updates on social networking won’t work. People
don’t want the world to know how much they just dropped on a new pair of shoes.
It’s a guilty pleasure.
* Dating won’t work on Twitter or social networking. People
don’t want their dating history or reputation out there in public.
* If Twitter ever tries ads in the feed it will be too annoying
and the users will force them to stop. Monetization will be through premium and
business accounts with advanced features.
* Google won’t buy Twitter. The founders already have money
so it’s not about that for them, and they don’t want to deal with Google
anyways. So Google will start its own micro-blogging service, he predicts.
* We’re going to see more vertical Twitter
applications in the future, such as an app for stock information.
