Went along to the NMK
Beers and Innovation event last night, topic was Social Networking by Design.
Speakers were Meg Pickard of AOL Europe, Tim Morgan of Mint, who set up the
Islandoo site for Channel 4 Reality TV wannabees, and Philip Wilkinson of Crowdstorm, a social shopping site.
Meg's talk was very interesting, she trained as an anthropologist and it showed - my observation is that people who have studied human structures are very perceptive about this whole space, and I thought some of her definitions were very thought provoking, such as the trends in social networks from the generic to the niche as communications mediums change.
Philip listed the number of players in various verticals in the space. Interesting, as the One Question I had gone with was whether these worthies thought that social network dynamics promoted "long tail" or "hit based" structures, as the economics are totally different but key to what will come to pass. Meg stepped up to the plate on this one with a view that there is a long tail of niches, but in each niche the structure is probably hit based.
Another point she made was about the social networks people made at University, where you joined various societies to "talk rubbish with people who were interested in the same thing, and get p*ssed". Thus the unsung role of Beer in the Design of Social Networks, of which more later.
My main reason for going however was to understand a bit more about Islandoo, as the "game theory" for this social network is different - it is to get onto the Channel 4 TV Reality TV programme Shipwrecked rather than the more day to day raison d'etre of most sites. It was interesting to hear Tim's views on the user base - apparently they are very creative, mainly very extrovert Type A's, are all excellent to each other, and stay on even after they know they won't be picked.
So, all on best behaviour then. No anti-social networking here....
The really interesting question that emerged here in the Q&A session (not just for Islandoo) was the "what do you do with a community like this when the original reason it exists is gone" and (subtext) you don't want to pay for running it any more.
Clearly every John Company and Jo Brand wants to get the buzz going when they have something to flog, and much heat is being generated doing this right now - but it also became clear (to me, anyway) that the thinking overall was much muddier about what to do once that objective is met.
This blends into the issue of what makes any one site popular and (more important) sticky. Someone coined the term "user ROI" to describe the concept of the user getting sufficient payback from the investment of time they put in to a social network profile on a site, and thus that leaving them high and dry was probably going to engender the opposite of loyalty.
In addition, research continually shows that the average pissed off customer is much noisier than a happy one, and with the 'Net as a transmission medium the disaffected can reach a lot of people fast, so I suspect that many of these Brands will find that, like all Affaires, these relationships are easy to get into but much, much harder to get out of without tears.
Les Liasions Dangereuses ?
There is hope though - work we have done with clients suggests that Social Networks are actually very powerful ways to build ongoing customer loyalty if done correctly. In fact they have shown themselves to be very good at reducing cost of customer service and reducing churn, even being able to pick up signs of customer defection before they leave.
I am continually bemused at the emphasis so many companies put on Getting New Customers rather than Keeping The Ones You Have. Company after company in industry after industry I consult to tell me that the cost of acquiring a new customer is many times higher than retaining an existing one, that the ROI of the customer is often 12 months plus, and yet, and yet......no one has (to my knowledge anyway) set up on Second Life to service its customers.
Clearly once the customer has paid, Les Affaire is over....
Now, back to the role of Beer in the Design of Social Networks.
I met
Deirdre Molloy who put together these (very interesting) Beers and Innovation programs and
Helen Keegan who runs a more mobile oriented event called Swedish Beers - and chatted more to Meg, Tim, Philip and various others over a beer (or three).
What became clear (as my vision got more blurred) is that beer is a remarkable substance, being both the oil and the glue of social networks. Maybe Meg knows of a PhD thesis somewhere that explores this role of beer in social networks? I do recall reading once in Scientific American that beer probably allowed early urban society to start, as water in those Mesopotamian cities was just too dangerous to drink.
Overall, the networking at these events, and the trading of ideas, is far more "full bandwidth" than the broadest broadband network. Perhaps for any virtual Social Network to really have longevity, a joie de vivre, to be truly sticky, it must have tangible points where people can interact tete a tete.
And drink beer, of course.....
