Mars this week launched a Facebook application which allows users to send their friends the gift of a real life Mars bar.  The “gift” will be in the form of a message which, once opened, asks the recipient to enter their mobile number and from this they will be send an SMS voucher which can be redeemed in a participating store.  Twix, Galaxy, Malteser’s and Mars will all be able to be sent with the sender paying via a Paypal account.  This is a bold venture by the guys at Mars but I cant help but think it is a desperate attempt to get involved in social media by a brand which doesn’t necessarily fit.  I am seeing all to often recently companies who know of the buzz around social networking and decide that “we need to be part of that!”  No thought given to whether their brand or product fits or whether the audience they are trying to engage with is part of the social environment they are considering.

To me, social media, social marketing, social networking or however else you want to term it is about engaging with your audience on a personal level, listening to what they are saying and bringing those learnings back into the business.  Too many people are deciding they want to be part of the social phenomenon without thinking whether it suits them, their audience and their product.  The first questions they should be asking are, what am I looking to achieve? Who am I trying to engage? where are these people interacting? Mars is a border line case and they have probably just about pulled it off but in many cases people are missing the mark by a long way just to be involved in the current craze.

It is the social networking phenomenon which has taken 2007 by storm but I have started getting a little bored with Facebook of late.  Now that the thrill of connecting with old friends has passed and the days of logging in to a potful of notifications is behind me I’m struggling to get excited by it all.  All I seem to get these days or invitations to join the latest application doing the rounds and numerous postings of those annoying chain letter style messages (for the last time, nothing bad is going to happen if you don’t pass it on, no-one is going to delete your profile and you aren’t going to come into any money!).  There are a few friends who I contact through it which make the process of logging in worth while but aside from that its all a little dull for me now.  Maybe I am alone in this feeling? I know for a fact many of my close friends are still wildly addicted to it and if they go a day without logging on they start breaking into cold sweats and having panic attacks.  But I just don’t get that feeling of anticipation when logging in anymore.  Sure, I still use it, but more out of habit than enjoyment and also the fact I use the internet all day everyday at work so have access all the time.  I certainly wouldn’t be too worried if I had to go with access for a period of time though and can’t see Id miss it at all.  Maybe this is the start of the great Facebook decline, where the casual user drifts away and only the hardcore remain, leaving thousands of redundant accounts.  This is how I see Myspace’s current existence, I haven’t seen their take up figures recently but I would imagine they are in sharp decline, part due to the rise of Facebook but also because they are no longer the flavour of the month and only the hardcore survive.  Facebook is a long way from this status as they are still in the stage of sign up growth but they need to keep one eye on the future and think about how to avoid the decline, either that or get out while the going is good.  As they say, timing is everything, but I doubt they will ever be valued at more than the current $15 billion so it may be time to cash in.

In last weeks media week Microsofts’s UK head of marketing, Alex Marks, discussed microsofts marketing strategy and attempted to justify the money they had pumped into Facebook.  Denying it was a simple land grab and a chance to hold of a Yahoo or Google purchase Mark’s validated the purchase by speaking about how Facebook satisfies a basic human need to communicate and engage with fellow human beings.  He also goes on to say how internet behaviour is becomingly increasingly commnuity based seemingly suggesting that the future of the internet lay in propoerties such as Facebook.  Apparently we are no longer talking about social networking sites but social utility sites much more than quirky communication tool and are becoming a tool for managin offline relathionships online.  With the sum totoal of its wares so far the exclusivitiy of banner advertising on Facebook Microsoft has a long way to go before they convince anybody that they got a bargain for their £118M stake.

Tags: facebook, microsoft, aquisition

Its finally happened after a long period of speculation. Facebook have removed the “is” from the status option. I speculated a while ago about what they may replace it with and I have to say I’m disappointed they went for the easy option and just removed it all together. I would have liked to have seen some imagination used into what it could be replaced with they have gone for the safe option and simply removed it.

It was reported on the social networking weblog today that Facebook is finally bowing to user pressure and using the “is” from the Facebook status function.

I have been wondering how long this would take to occur since the massively popular pressure group was set up within Facebook’s own network campaigning for it to be removed.  It has not happened yet and there is no indication of when it will happen but it will be interesting to see what it will be replaced with.

An obvious option would be to remove the verb all together and allow the user to write whatever they want after their name.  But another option could be to have a drop down list of verbs to choose from when setting your status so that there is one for every occasion.  This way the Facebook traditionalists (if there are any!) can continue to use the “is” yet those wanting more flexibility should be able to construct whatevere status they wish.

Tags: facebook, social networking