Facebook says that you are a FANatical ConSUMER

Jeremiah (fellow Media 2.0 Workgroup member) has just posted the latest news from myspace and facebook about their new social advertising solutions.

From his executive summary:

Both Facebook and MySpace have launched profile and network targeted advertising and marketing products. As they both use member interests and the communities which they are part of, trust continues to become key in adoption as information is passed along the network. The sheer size of MySpace's member base, as well as the thriving local business membership will lead to success. Facebook, which brings a unique solution evolves advertisements to endorsements and encourages members to subscribe to a brand in what we are calling "Fan-Sumers" (an evolution of the consumer). As consumers share their affinities, brands can advertise using trusted social relationships.

Advertising as we know it is indeed dead. Word of mouth has always been more powerful than messages shouted from on-high. And now, with Media 2.0 reducing friction to zero and increasing visibility toward 100%, Word of mouth has never been stronger - or more important.

Your words now echo for all of time - and they get louder as they travel.

So moving towards a world where sites can enable brands to better facilitate and moderate the word of mouth network seems obvious. The problem, though, is with the fundamental thinking at these organizations.

For example, the name Fan-sumer is disgusting. FANatical ConSUMER? It's far worse than User Generated Content! Sure it's just a name, but it is a revealing insight into their line of thinking.

Word of mouth is not sanctioned, it just happens. Ultimately the best you can do is join in the conversation. Giving away 'free steak knives' to your friends only reduces everyone's credibility.

As I said on Jeremiah's post, however, the core idea is not a total write-off - but it will need heavy modification to align with reality - friends trust each other, and helping them spam each other does nothing for anyone

I wrote:

Fan-sumer? So now we are further reduced to FANatical ConSUMERS?

As usual, the underlying idea is interesting, but the execution is so user-unfriendly (the name alone reveals their true intentions) that they are just legitimizing peer-to-peer spam.

As a true social solution for advertising it is not a write-off, but the execution needs a lot of tweaking to be truly about engagement and personalization with a true sense of trust based endorsements from your friends.

Update: I have also posted about this on Blognation.

The Me Meme

Brian Caldwell over on EponymousX has written a fantastic and poetic post about the Me Meme.

He writes:

Our own personal lifestreams, or "public timeline's" if you prefer, are slightly more mundane that the one from Final Fantasy, however it can still be pondered in an analogous manner. Our lifestream threads together everything that we are. Where we go, what we say, who we interact with, how we express ourselves, concepts inside artwork that we create, symbolism that we identify. All can be considered "us" or "me" in some, hopefully non-banal, way.

We say "me" a lot in our lifestreams. Not always directly. Indirectly also. Off the top of our heads. Well thought out over hours of writing and editing. At the snap of the shutter on our iPhone. While visiting at parties and gatherings. By connecting/friending/following through social nets. Generating our APML wake and bow waves through the public timestream. We are the social seed for our downstream online and offline, everyone has a built-in personal wetware network and many people let this stream filter back online, forming a personal lifestream wake.

It's a great read full of all-too-familiar names and experiences. It reminds me of the little rant we posted at AreYouPayingAttention.com.

He also makes an interesting point. If the question of 'What do you do' becomes redundant at conferences, maybe we can move on to deeper conversations more quickly when we meet?

I know that I regularly talk with people I have never met. I trust them as much as people I have known in person for years. They are my advisors, my confidants, my partners and my friends.

The social consciousness is humming now. Can you feel it? Our Lifestreams and APML files are bursting at the seams. The best is yet to come. As our reach and reflection grows, maybe so too will our influence and insight into world affairs - both mundane and monumental.

Yes I love alliteration.

Social Bill of Rights - Media 2.0 Best Practices

A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web Authored by Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, and Michael Arrington has just been announced. Read it here.

It is an evolution of ongoing discussions that have been happening around the web for some time now and it's a welcome encapsulation.

I would agree with some of the commenters, however, that the scope needs to be a little broader.

I proposed something similar to the Media 2.0 Workgroup back on March 13 2007. Here is the email.

To: media2@faradaymedia.com
Date: Mar 13, 2007 2:31 PM
Subject: A project for the Media 2.0 Workgroup. Please send your thoughts

I'd like to propose a project for us all... something that will benefit the community and get a good discussion going. I look forward to your feedback!

This idea has come about due to a number of contributing factors. Many of you have expressed a desire to launch a project to focus our energy on something practical and useful to the community and through a series of discussions with Marianne, Jeremiah, Daniela and Ben here is my take on a great project we can take on together.

Media 2.0 Best Practices

Goal

To give emerging media platforms and participants an evolving set of 'Best Practices' to help encourage (or at least help define) open, democratic and transparent interaction. Further, to help participants who wish to engage with those platforms to know, at a glance, which aspects of the best practices they can reasonably expect to be applied to their experience there.

What's it look like?

I think that this could take the form of a Wiki and a Creative Commons style opt in process whereby we collectively define a set of 'pillars' and social media platforms can ascribe to the pillars they choose.

I think that the workgroup should be responsible for writing the initial version of this Wiki and then moderating it once it becomes public.

Some topics off the top of my head:

1. Ethics

a. Disclosure (sidebar vs inside the content)

2. Participation:

a. Allow comments

b. Moderation

c. Allow Trackbacks

3. Syndication

a. Allow RSS

b. Full feeds

c. Creative Commons

4. Marketing

a. Spam Vs. Contribution

b. Pinko Marketing

5. Privacy

6. Ownership

a. Export of Participant Created content and metadata via open standards

7. Revenue

a. Revenue share with participants

8. DRM

Can you think of any more?

We can then provide a Badge that site operators can add to their site (much like the CC badge) that indicates their level of (optional) commitment to each pillar.

I think we are collectively uniquely placed to do such a thing.

What is everyone's thoughts?

Cheers,

Chris

Whatever shape or form the rights take, however, I'd like to re-dedicate ourselves (Faraday Media and its products) to enabling user control of their personal information.

We are, of course doing this with APML (Attention Profiling Markup Language) and Engagd.com - the first open-standards based Attention Platform.