Arnold Waldstein's Blog

I’ve been thinking a lot about my mother lately.

She’s 91 years old. Healthy. Spunky with a large extended family of kids, grand kids and great grand kids. There are people all around in her retirement community. In spite of this she appears lonely and bored…achingly so at times.

I sense she feels isolated from her past and trapped in an ever-shrinking present. Not abandoned certainly–but friendships and networks outside of immediate family that come to visit are just not there. And there is little productive to do.

Her communities, once very large, are evaporating. Connections outside of the family are gone mostly. And to someone whose father drove a horse drawn cab in NYC at her birth, computers are just not truly a part of who she is.

And she is not unique, but an example of many who live between the extended family structure of the immigrant family and the social reality of a networked world that many of us inhabit.

For most of us, social networks have flattened the world and community has taken on new forms, providing a huge umbrella of support. We have Facebook walls, niche interest groups, blog communities, and offline/online connections. We have numerous lingering touch points with contacts and friends in a way that my mother never had.

This is not about richness of life…my mother’s life has been very rich. It’s about something new and extraordinary that the social web has empowered. This ability to create community as a hedge against location, a hedge against aging to some degree and certainly…a hedge against isolation as it engenders friendships in new ways.

My mother’s world has been one of astonishing change…world wars, the great depression, air travel, empowered middle class, electric powered everything, but for her, it stopped at the networked world. We spring off where she stopped and nothing is more compelling or revolutionary that what the social web empowers around people and friendships and community.

My mother sends (some) emails. Plays computer solitaire…so it is not simply technology where we spring beyond her generation. It’s networks and the social possibilities that are the great chasm here. And while we understand intellectually the power of social and community, my sense is that it is just beginning and its power is just getting tapped.

Maybe when I’m my mother’s age…when the baby boomers succumb to old age…the body will not hold us back as much. And will not create isolation or lack of productivity as our physical reality becomes less limber and more confined.

Science has extended our lives and made the middle of life longer, more productive and not much different from the decades preceding. I’m thinking that a networked and community driven, intertwined off and online world, will extend that even further, enabling connections, productivity and support for an even longer, richer period.

Add the science of health aging to the empowerment of community and socialization in a connected world, and we have something new and powerful. Technology usually evolves from one thing to another. The social web and community is a revolution in how we live better…for far longer.

The game has changed obviously…but, it’s certainly not over.

Facebook is becoming what Microsoft used to be back in the 90s…essential to everyone, impossible to beat and feeling a bit like the platform bully.

They are smart to leverage what they have to the hilt. It’s just good business and I would have done the same, but like Microsoft, they will lose  (if they have not already) the passion and commitment of those who have no choice but to use their platform, which today is everyone.  This is starting to sound like Windows to me.

You can’t beat Facebook at their game…but you can build great companies that can win around them. Anyone in the gaming or multimedia or peripheral add-on space in the 90s will tell you the same. I have personal scars from this and am a veteran of the birth of coopetition.

The announcement (I watched the livestream on Facebook) was like a webcam in a frat house. Nonetheless, Facebook Places will certainly be a monster product and hugely successful based on the massive leverage of of the platform obviously. Their reach and numbers are poetic in their size.

And yes, I’m a power Facebook user, a fan, consult on how to best use fan pages to my clients… and am excited about Places even though underwhelmed by their lack of originality. I’ll certainly use it because the Facebook platform is core to how I live, but I’m still checking in on Foursquare for now.

I’m just a big believer in the check-in space and rooting for the underdog today. I believe in people who are inventive and I think the Foursquare guys are… and with spunk, smarts and yes, a good chunk of luck can potentially carve out something that makes sense, has value to the users and the merchants.

What’s the answer? I’m not certain but here’s Foursquare’s response in SAI today. We do need more of a answer from them though.

I like the intersection of the check-in and coupon space a lot. That’s where I’m looking for the next great explosion on the streets with check-in. I’m searching for apps that are at the intersection of these because I believe that the social commerce component is key…as it creates an open market and value potentially for user and businesses alike.

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Postscript thought

I’m starting to think that Om Malik may have it right that Facebook is after the local merchants and Yelp. His post is here. Thanks to @PS 98 for surfacing this.

Even though I still believe that the check-in space is embryonic, and even if Facebook’s focus is Yelp, the swishing of the giant’s tail still makes it a difficult place for Foursquare and the other players.

I’m a big fan of Gilt Groupe.

Even if you are not a shopper or a luxury brand aficionado…join Gilt.com buyer’s club and follow along. There is a lot to be learned from their perfect sense of brand definition.

It’s really refreshing to see a new brand spring up that just gets the relationship between what the company is providing and the needs of its customers. That’s why while at its mechanical core Gilt.com is a discount store; it is already a $400M business that feels like a 5th avenue boutique that never gets stale.

Gilt understands the viral loop and social commerce certainly…but that is not their pure play, as it is with Groupon and others.

Groupon and the group buying services take value, scarcity, group buying and geographical location and smartly shake them up…and capture the fun of treating yourself to something special, often with friends. Groupon’s brand is about the daily deal and the fun of buying…it’s an impulse not a luxury goods positioning. When done perfectly, as Groupon does, its magic…but it’s different from shopping for a Tory Burch handbag or an Armani overcoat.

Gilt really gets brand and e-commerce marketing and selling. They understand deeply the appeal of the brands they sell, represent them with glam and imagination and represent the why and how of their customers desire to buy…and the atmosphere they like to shop in. They are courteous rather than pushy, focusing on value rather than cost and always…brand appeal and how important it is to their customer.

There is scarcity and referral in their model but they eschew the freneticsm of a threshold pushed sale and feel more like a high-end rack runway at great value than a push-and-shove sample sale of a thousand folks grabbing at designer t-shirts.

If you believe in the value of luxury brands and feel good about owning or wearing or using them…this is the place. Value with no discount bin feel. Selection without the sense of buying seconds. Clarity of a luxury story at a price that you can afford.

There is no cookie cutter marketing or business model here. Only a great study of a company that understands the value add of brokering brands to brand conscious customers at pricing they can afford, without price being the major selling point.

Take a look at this marketing analysis of Gilt Groupe’s studied approach to finding customers and keeping them happy and returning and loyal. It’s a workable list that all business marketers should pay attention to. Every business and brand model is different (as it should be) but there is value to learn from those that figure it out…and Gilt certainly has for their audience.

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Thanks to @robinharper for sending the background post my way.

With 45M internet-ready TVs shipping this year, there’s a minor land rush in process adapting the building blocks for community and social commerce from the web to the largescreen TV and communal setting in the living room.

There’s a lot of buzz around EBSNs (Event Based Social Networks), bridging web-proven viral loops and social commerce to live connected sporting events and network premieres. This is an obvious direction for flash community gatherings around live broadcasts but doesn’t address the majority of legacy media content available to viewers.

I visited with Scott Varlard (co-founder and CEO) and Philippe Pierre (CFO) of SocialBomb, a NY-based social technology company that is figuring out how to build community and bring social value to the mostly time-shifted reality of TV and webTV content. These guys are betting that brands and fans are both interested in social viewing and sharing around their favorite shows and movies.

SocialBomb, if you don’t know them, is the company that provided the community and technology platform for the HBO release of True Blood Season 2 Blu-ray DVD. This HBO release pioneered scene sharing, social incentives and on-big-screen controls for the Blue-ray release of the blockbuster hit series.

Scott and Pierre walked me through the demo…cool stuff to be able to easily pair your Blu-ray to Facebook and Twitter, share scenes and engage with a bunch of social incentivized activities. I’m a bit geeky and a huge True Blood fan so maybe I’m an easy sell for this but there is real potential here especially as this paradigm moves to streaming catalogs as well as DVD-based content.

This was a gutsy leap of faith for HBO to try this even as a ‘quiet launch’…big win for SocialBomb to pull it off so crisply. Connecting a DVD and TV to the Internet is still the domain of the few and DVDs, in my opinion, are a legacy format looking for some additional life. But…rumor is that fans liked it, scene sharing was very active (the coolest part) and both the fans and HBO have deemed this a success.

My take is that this is a small but important proof point on how to create community events around time-shifted content. DVDs are a second tier choice after streaming for many, but if this provides social proof in the small, hard-wired world of DVDs, it should work well for the mass market as a streamed, built in and easy to set up media in millions of living rooms this holiday season.

Let’s imagine the not so distant future.

Take what SocialBomb has done and apply it to streaming content and connected big screen TVs with, as well, 2nd and 3rd screens on the couch and mobile devices thrown in wherever they may be. And where every title on Netflix or Hulu or Boxee is able to connect to Facebook and Twitter with scene sharing, some social gaming and merchandizing built in. You can watch and rewatch and share media content in a social setting on any screen anytime.

This means that every time I view Godfather II or Hustle and Flow, or Entourage, I will be able to create a flash community event, share scenes and participate in extending my passion for movies, a particular movie or TV show down to the scene level. And most likely, this will inspire others to download and view and share as well.

I think there is something here…maybe not exactly as I’ve described it or precisely as SocialBomb is working with HBO. But something…significant.

People on the social graph, 500M on Facebook and millions on Twitter are hungry for content to share. On Facebook alone, an average user generates 90 pieces of shared content equaling 30B shared pieces monthly (mostly photos). With a tangible connected TV footprint coming and flash community capabilities being developed by SocialBomb and others, there will be a lot of scene sharing and social gaming around what we all do a lot of…that is watch TV. Scene clips could be the next step beyond photos as shareable objects. And everyone has movie and TV scenes that they would want to send as a video invitation to their friends and communities to join in the fun…or watch later.

This is also an innovative solution on how to take the real-time community of the social web and our social networks and connect it with time-shifted movies and TV and sports media that we love and watch and rewatch over and over again.

I can’t see this as any other than a win for everyone…including of course the content owners.

I’m very positive about a real-time social environment on the big screen around legacy content. Certainly more questions than answers exist today, but having all media content available all the time and platforms like Facebook or Twitter seamlessly tied into my ability to share…just makes sense.

Sharing in a Facebook-powered world is a common bond across all networks. Daily and by the billions of posts, we let each other know where we’ve checked in on Foursquare for the best expresso and where we are traveling to and the restaurants we frequent. It’s a natural (and significant) step forward to share movie and TV content we deeply identify with at a scene level, plugged into the social graph and shareable across all of our communities.

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Thanks to my friend Jeff Blackman for introducing me to the SocialBomb team.

When I blogged on Groupon and the social buying model, I was blown away by the newness and inventiveness of this smartly social approach to commerce.

I’ve been wondering where the company goes now that they’ve conquered the major cities of US and Europe (over 50 by their count) and have brand recognition far and above the hundreds of imitators. ‘Groupons’ are so well known and commonly acknowledged that they have become a new noun.

Do they go vertical and build Groupons for highly targeted groups like women’s sports, or golf or art aficionados?

Do they white label or co-brand their hosted offering and offer it out to newspapers and businesses as a new type of merchandise and a new coupon currency?

Do they move to behavioral targeting of the opt-in subscribers to personalize each offer ala a Facebook approach?

Do they go true local like Foursquare and target neighborhood by neighborhood rather than city by city?

The recent G-team announcement from Groupon, still mostly under the radar, is making me wonder whether they are moving to make possible more than the current two-deals-per-day-per-neighborhood. Logically, the more they can push the limits of scarcity, the more deals they have per-day-per-place, the more revenue they can generate.

To understand G-team in Groupon’s words, click here. They position it as a return to their roots and a way for causes to use their coupon currency model. I don’t question their altruism but these folks are as smart social marketers and business people I’ve seen anywhere and I’m thinking there is a clue to a broader business change in the play.

It appears (and the information is really vague) that causes or ‘fun activities’ are given the nod by Groupon as acceptable and then the Groupon machine is brought in…infrastructure to host, launch and manage the promotion. A vast vendor base to match a deal with a cause.

I see this as the beginning of a new commerce structure based on social coupons for the business world. And it will solve a major growth hurdle for them.

Besides gobbling up every city on the globe (which they are), they are a bit cuffed by the need to maintain scarcity of deals and a social buying core. My take is that G-team is the beginnings of their attempt to move more and more targeted deals into areas. That’s the clearest way to get more customers and drive more revenue.

So maybe what G-team is about is a beginning of a bunch of changes and expansions:

1. Provide the Groupon coupon currency machine to causes or businesses so that more deals can be addressed daily through niche and socially inspired community fundraising or events.

Maybe the niche is not moms or racquetball players, but people who support animal rescue or clean-up-the-river or parks for kids. People will tolerate more deals with specific targets if they are causes for good. Revenue splits aside this is logical.

2. Vertically segment the opt-in list. People who believe or chose various causes are both a subset of their massive database and an expansion. One of the ‘can’t do’s’ for Groupon is to thin out the audience so thresholds don’t get tipped and filled.

3. Behaviorally target the deal recipient. What Facebook can do with advertising, Groupon can figure out for behavioral matching of a deal with a personal profile. They have a lot of customer data now; probably enough. Or they can partner with (or sell to) Facebook to make this happen.

4. Redefine local as proximity as Foursquare has and figure out how to localize from city to neighborhood based on subscriber density per location.

5. Move to hard goods not just services. They can move from services like a dinner to goods like TVs or computers or clothing with a slight twist to their methodology.

I’m fascinated with social commerce and the simple breakaway model that Groupon defined and owns today. But they will get to the point where they’ve blanketed all the cities, then the larger towns on the planet where the model can work.

Then what? How do they grow when they have everyone as a subscriber and only two deals a day?

I think G-team is a clue and some variation of my list of five above will happen…and happen soon.

With the Hulu and GoogleTV announcements, the promise of WebTV on the big screen seems within grasp of most TV watchers…which is basically everyone.

I’m in the market to buy a really big screen, connected with web apps so I searched on Amazon, the discount sites and made a trip to Best Buy.

Oy!

The promise is there but the mess of misinformation, lack of clarity, fear of buying proprietary hardware and overall feeling that this is still a geek’s dream, unfortunately seems still true.

I jotted down my Commandments as a guideline to help make this convergence a mass-market love fest with the least amount of pain. This is my wish list.

Six Commandments for a better connected TV world

1. Make it easy

It’s just not easy to display what you see on your laptop on your big screen TV. Even with GoogleTV, that need is not going away as to get real access, cabling to your laptop or desktop will still be necessary.

TV manufacturers are still somewhat clueless and shopping for a solution today is as confusing as home theater has been for a decade.

2. Make it multi-screen

Laptop. iPad. Smartphone. Big screen. All need to work together and share content streams from the big content cloud in the sky.

We need to be able to seamlessly move from TV to laptop to iPad to phone to watch a synced, stored, time-shifted program.

We need to be able to do different things on different screens around the same content.

3. Content is king; networks are history

The web is the metaphor for connected TV, not the other way around.

I want to watch True Blood and Entourage, not be forced to buy HBO. Being muscled to purchase network packages is TV legacy; being able to acquire content I want is the promise of the web.

I think that most of us will pay for value as long as we are in control. This is the iTunes learning. I will buy individual songs even if they add up to more than the original album…and be happy because it is my choice.

4. Search is a given

Searching for video content needs to be as simple as searching for info on the web.

We are almost ten years into the world Google powered and it is part of our nature. We demand information overload and search efficiency for video content for everything from TV shows to movies to YouTube to cam clips.

5. Community and social are essential

Friend referrals. Intelligent Facebook info streams. Checking in. Sharing.

The first screen most people use every morning to check on the day is Facebook. And we share our experience on our Facebook walls, Twitter streams, Foursquare friend lists, Disqus comments, Tumblr communities.

This needs to extend to the content we watch. If access to the open web is there, smart startups like Tunerfish are already figuring this out. Facebook will certainly play here even if FacebookTV doesn’t become a reality.

6. Every hardware purchase needs to feel good

We are going to have to buy things:

-We need to feel good about buying hardware…you know, like the iPad. Costs a bit but empowers and enriches life.

-We don’t want to worry about buying the wrong platform. The Betacam/VHS conundrum is just not acceptable as a rerun.

There are certainly other asks but this is my wish list of ‘must haves’.

This is a work in progress…what would you add?

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For additional blog posts on social and connected TV, please click here and here.

Everyone is abuzz over GoogleTV creating a paradigm shift in entertainment…. myself included.

What could be bad? All digital. Surfing from the couch. Social check ins. An easy-to-use time-shifted TV viewing reality.

I’m ready…but for those of us willing to live in the small laptop screen or geeky enough to hardwire the pieces together we have not all…but most of the promised goodness on WebTV today.

WebTV is well beyond its early stage already. With movies, TV shows, great new web content like ThisWeekIn… The web is fast becoming a digital video and TV frontier.

Whether you are on your laptop, wired from your Mac Mini to your large screen with Boxee, using Hulu…this is no longer a small niche by any standard.

New numbers on WebTV and TV watching online from eMarketer are enlightening:

• 33% of the US Internet population watches full-length TV programs today; growing to 39% by years’ end
• Hulu alone has 38.7 million unique monthly visitors. Largest video streaming site on the internet after YouTube.
• 14.6 million-web devices that can run TV applications shipped in last 12 months, increasing to 83.4 million in 2014
• 50% of everyone who watches any video online, will watch a full-length TV show

Mind-boggling actually…in the US, one in three connected people watch network TV shows online and one in two who use video in any way do some portion of their TV watching from the web.

In Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm way of thinking, we are just this side of an Early Majority position with WebTV and the chasm-crossing leap is only a holiday season away.

So with GoogleTV and the Boxee Box and every TV for sale with an HDMI plug, what’s the difference between now and…then, when these solutions launch?

The obvious changes will be:

1. It will be easy and inexpensive to purchase and install for everyone
2. More big screens will drive more content
3. Some built in widgets (apps) like YouTube, maybe Facebook and IMDB
4. Browsing and searching via Google from the couch position

Honestly, this is great but not a revolution. The iPad was a revolution, this is a big iteration pushing the web to the big screen WebTV experience. I like easy. I like larger displays. I like apps. We need search. But I want what I can’t imagine which is more than just the webification of the big screen.

Richard Kastelein, a friend, blogger and founder of AppMarket.TV believes that one of the big gaps to bridge is ‘lean back interactive in your living room’ versus ‘lean forward at your desk or laptop’. It’s the remote versus the keyboard and the mouse. Content will come. But seamless control of the web interactive elements of search, community and social are the mountains to scale.

Hmmm…So according the industry and folks a lot more in the know than I, the intersection of the widgets on the big screen (like an embedded app), a consistent interface for search, social attributes and some cool device like glidetv for surfing are the formula for the future.

I’m missing something here.

If interface and usability are the kingpins, then why not Apple rather than Google as the architect of the best solution? Steve Jobs, more than anyone gets usability and the mass market. Google is search but certainly they don’t understand GUI or social or consumers.

And I can’t imagine connected TV to be a single screen solution. We are all sitting on our couches with iPads and laptops and phones. This is not going to change. So why isn’t the input one of these devices, like an iPad as the control and with special social content?

Maybe an anecdote might clarify my uneasiness at settling with GoogleTV as the answer.

Recently I was watching ThisWeekInVentureCapital with Mark Suster and Mo Koyfman talking about efficiencies on the web. Mo made a statement that when you take an old industry and bring it online, you don’t just webify it or make it more efficient, you take the core of the old and its value and find something new…something better. This seems right on to me.

So…what is that leap to something new with connected TV?

Maybe it’s just more efficient. Maybe it’s a standard interface with some widgets and open access to a gazillion apps. Maybe it’s a perfect and closed and controlled Apple world of ease-of-use and locked down. Or maybe it’s just what we have today but bigger.

I don’t buy into this.

A year ago, I couldn’t have imagined riding on the subway or sitting in the coffee shop, watching TV and working and tweeting on my iPad. Or building distribution systems for my clients that connected their Facebook fan pages to their e-commerce storefronts.

I’m a video and movie aficionado and ever so ready for connected and social TV. See my post on this.  But the web is still figuring out social video and socialization around WebTV. It’s not necessarily the model to copy. The jump from laptop to big screen is fraught with opportunities for new ways of entertainment and needs more than a redo of the current web reality, retooled for the digital living room.

You agree?

What will make you and the hundreds of millions yet to buy, do so and enjoy in a new and more interesting way?

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Thanks to my friend Jennifer Fader for always finding interesting data before I do.

Everyone wants connected TV.

Whether it’s a Google or Apple solution or both, the upside to connected big screens in our living rooms hold enormous potential for everyone with a television and an internet connection….which is just about everyone, everywhere.

The time is overdue for this to happen. On the web side, video content and programming has exploded in quality and quantity, become easy to find and share, and mostly free to distribute and watch. Web video content is begging for more and larger displays.

On the broadcast TV side, we have great programming, thousands of channels on incredible displays that are locked inside of disconnected networks, frustratingly archaic search methods and a seemingly uncrossable gulf between the TV content on the screen and the laptops and iPads on our laps on the couch.

I’m really anxious and excited about impending connection between the big screen on the wall and the real-time web. It’s a game changer.

And I’m really curious about where social and community is going to play into this whole new  TV paradigm.

I remember early TV and it was distinctly a social experience. In fact, I recall my grandfather’s first TV set in our house. A very small screen with large groups gathering around to watch, chat and connect with each other in front of this early technology with funky programming. And this social activity went on for years!

Now with quality and varied TV programming, huge displays, HD and 3D…the immersion of viewing has gotten movie theatre quality but the experience, at least to me, more solitary and disconnected.

On the web, social platforms and community are the core of how we find and share information and ideas. Even commerce has become a referral-based economy and at its best, is social in nature. The social metaphor is predominant in entertainment, gaming, information networks and business.

So with the TV screen connected to the real-time web and content digitally distributed, at the very least we will be getting  a flood of more content which is easier to find, and finally, friendly and seamless control over what we watch and when. At a minimum.

But will TV as a social experience come full circle?  Will the connected TV experience mirror, with a modern twist, what  it was at its outset way back in the 50s and 60s?

I’m thinking… yes, but in a totally new way of course.

It takes little imagination to see a Facebook iframe on the TV screen to share and chat with friends. And it’s easy to see social commerce with a click to purchase on the TV screen just like a click to purchase on your laptop or phone.

And why not sports book-like communal gambling over a basketball game? Or real-time video chat with friends across the country while watching an episode of True Blood? Or some yet-to-be-invented social game that let’s you Foursquare-like check in and find your friends watching the same show and connect with them?

Google and Apple and Sony won’t  be the doers here. But game developers, social widget designers, and smart entrepreneurs will be rising everywhere to help us take connectivity from the couch and make it social for those around us in the living room and my friends across the globe.

Social platforms and online communities transformed information sharing  on the social web. Connect it to the big screen and it has the potential to lend its dynamics to the connected TV platform and make watching more active, shopping a bit more collective and natural and entertainment just more fun….with friends.

Move over George Jetson! Your cartoon future may just have started to get real!

A lot has changed in 30 days.

A month ago, I searched the open web and Facebook for examples of social commerce where community activity drove measurable transactions. Outside of social buying, ala the Groupon phenomenon, there was little of interest. My post on that experience is here.

But things are changing quickly.  Two global brands with innovative commerce initiatives are starting to get traction and attention.

Two examples of social commerce on Facebook fan pages that work

1. Disney Tickets Together Facebook application

The idea is built around sharing your movie going experience with your Facebook friends from the movie’s promotional fan page.

Tickets for Toy Story 3 are on sale only the Facebook fan page, weeks earlier than anywhere else. You let your friends know you are going and when, invite them to come along…and if you want, buy tickets as a group for the movie.

This provides a special incentive…and reward…to the movie’s Facebook fans as they can pre-buy early and participate in raffles for free tickets.

This is clever social selling and fun social buying wrapped into one. Reports of groups of 80 people buying this together indicate this is potentially the beginning of a trend that really works.

Tickets Together is the best example of social or community commerce I’ve seen. You are literally buying collectively with your friends on the Facebook fan page. Finally… something to do on a fan page that makes sense! And this is the first and best example of empowering a naturally social activity like shopping online in a community setting.

Disney’s market phrase for this is “…no friend gets left behind,” according to Oliver Luckett, general manager of DigiSynd, that manages Disney’s social networking presence.

It’s just social commerce to me, taking fan interest online and moving them to an offline event together, then back online to re-socialize it. An oft-repeated cycle of social proof.

2. Diesel-cam in-store Facebook runways

Live in Spain, Diesel has a fashion runway with a Facebook cam inside their stores.

Shopping is a core social activity, globally. You shop with friends and what your friends think influences what you buy. This is true for everyone; probably more true for teens and 20-30-somethings, the core audience for Diesel.

There is a Facebook runway just outside the dressing room. Customers try on jeans or an outfit, and stream a short video to their Facebook walls to show their friends what they are thinking of buying. Questions like…“Like it?” “Should I buy it?” are natural and this conversation drives sale’s decisions.

You can see a video of the Diesel-cam here.

Note that I’ve seen chatter online that the Diesel-cam is ‘stupid’ or ‘voyeuristic’. For Diesel and for the meaning of the brand, it couldn’t be more perfect.

It’s just smart commerce, matching brand to customer to commerce…and social and fun to boot.

Why I  think social commerce is a solution for Facebook fan pages

• It just works. Disney is selling tickets while building community favor. My bet is Diesel will be successful as well.
• Shopping is what we do with friends offline. It’s logical, when done with intent and creativity that it will work online.  Facebook fan pages are replete with community potential but are usually dull…maybe commerce is an answer.
• Social proof as a transaction based on the encouragement of your community is the first approach to social ROI that makes any sense to me.

Why Disney and Diesel as global brands are being socially astute

• They are taking commerce to where the fans are. Facebook becomes a channel.
• They are building commerce that matches the channel to the customer behavior…that is social commerce for a social platform.
• They understand that boring and dull doesn’t sell, and doesn’t fit their brand image. Fun and creative and social does.

I think that Disney and Diesel will benefit from a deeper connection with their fans, from a new strata of social proof to their image and, of course, from commerce.

How does Facebook benefit?

Having a fan page is free for brands and data storage and bandwidth cost real dollars. Maybe these brands will advertise more? Maybe not.

Facebook wins whenever anyone uses, returns, sticks around or invites friends to do anything at all on the platform. The more traffic they get, the more sharing happens and the more demographics are collected. And of course, then the value that Facebook can sell to advertisers and partners increases proportionately.

For Facebook and the brands and I think, the consumers…this is all a win.

I posted on Facebook and privacy the day after Facebook’s F8 Conference as a contrarian to the crowd hysteria.

Since then, I’ve been in numerous heated debates and found myself defending Facebook, then succumbing to annoyance over their adolescent behavior and momentarily siding with the crowd as the cavalier attitude of Facebook management became impossible to ignore.

But today, I still believe firmly as I did just post F8, that if you live in public, your life is just that…open to public record. And that acting responsibly is the coherent poise in a connected world. This responsibility is yours on the street, on Facebook, on blogs…everywhere

A BusinessWeek article lit up some interesting facts about Facebook worth thinking over:

• Traffic is 4.7% higher today than it was on May 1
• Facebook has 519.1M users, compared to 411M in September ‘09
• User activity level is still very high. An average user creates over 70 pcs of content each per month and connects to 60 pages or groups
• Facebook accounts for an astounding 8.5% of all Internet traffic

And as telling:

• The We’re Quiting Facebook campaign scheduled for mass cord cutting on May 31 has only 16,000 (out of 520M) people signed up

So what’s going on?

The blogosphere, the press and common knowledge all point to a semi-repentant Mark Zuckerberg who is hiding behind his youth and bowing to the pressure of US and European governments and a zillion hate posts.

Let’s be clear here…Facebook is acting irresponsibly and toying with its member’s feelings and trust. And there is a grating disconnect for a social network to have such anti-social and anti-transparent management.

So many ostensibly hate them but numbers and activities are increasing dramatically. Something is wrong or at least out-of-whack.

My take on why we can’t love Facebook but can’t imagine not having it

Facebook as the definition of ‘social’ just got it right.

It’s an almost perfect product because it filled a need no one knew they had. And created a situation, like we have today, where not having Facebook is an impossible thought for I bet, hundreds of millions of people. Including myself.

Most of the angst towards Facebook is expressed on Facebook itself. The news we read or videos we see about the privacy issues, rants, ‘how-to’s’ on setting privacy settings, and on and on are all done on our Facebook wall itself. Kind of like hometown politics on the only paper that people read about things that happen on Main Street.

While I support Diaspora and open social development, Facebook is not going away anytime soon. It is not going to stop growing or being an essential part of how we view the world and interact unless Zuckerberg does something truly stupid…and stupid he is most certainly not.

Or till whatever the next iteration of social, maybe unimaginable now, pops up and we migrate with our friends to somewhere else.

Our networks of friends from kindergarten playmates to people we met through our kids or worked with or dated or want to meet will never be erased. Migrated and moved perhaps, but we simply need that Facebook magic touch with friends is now natural and organic and isn’t going away. Thankfully.

What has happened is that we don’t and really can’t love Facebook like many did before. Like many loved Apple or the Mac as a solution or our smart phones when we first got them before they broke the second time.

Facebook, though brilliant and essential and integral to social life, has lost that love cause it trifled with our trust big time. It was like Bill Clinton…Oh so brilliant and oh so flawed as an individual. I would vote for him again in a heartbeat but never be surprised at enormous acts of personal stupidity. We aren’t breaking up but we are suspicious forever.

What’s inspiring to me is that Facebook added something to human social interaction. Yes, it really it has, and that is why from a mass of people in the know and early adopters who are rightfully miffed, there are hundreds of millions and hundreds of thousands joining daily around the world. Some know, some don’t. Some care, some don’t. Doesn’t matter.

And to be clear, I still hold that we need to be responsible for our own images and act responsibly. Facebook didn’t change that and that will grow as we do into a more connected social age. But, and I mean this seriously, Facebook did belittle the very attribute it created. We can forgive this but forget or trust completely…not at all.

What is great is that technology has enabled an extension of community. A new iteration of social for us all. It allowed me and everyone to connect and define relationships in new and fun and empowering and important ways.

Today Facebook is essential to multitudes. What it empowered and created is not going away but Facebook itself may when something new evolves that builds on it and really does respect what it created.

Who cares about Facebook? No one.

But everyone cares about friendship and community and platforms to build that on.

Today, that is Facebook for a global population of over half a billion people. Where those people are in 5 or 10 years, is up in the air. The fact that sharing in communities is important and will persist is undeniable.