Social networks? Watch out for friends’ posts while you are searching for information online
Last week Google announced that it was planning to implement changes to its Google Social Search platform to include posts from people’s online friends into its standard search results. The social search results, which previously appeared at the bottom of the page, will now be mixed throughout the list of results based on their relevance. Another interesting change in the search engine functionality is that users will be prompted to connect their social networking accounts any time Google’s algorithms find a public account that might belong to the same user.
As social networking profiles become more interconnected, people will be able to see publicly shared links posted by online ‘friends’ and connect their Twitter, YouTube, Flickr or Quora accounts. However, the upgraded social search engine will not include posts from the social networking giant Facebook. This does not come as a surprise as the two companies have a long history of trying to ‘steal’ each other’s market share with Google tapping into social media and Facebook developing its own email platform.
Despite excluding Facebook, Google’s Social Search platform will offer access to much more information about users than it was previously available. Some people will question whether this is entirely a good idea. Google seems sensitive to the privacy issues and allows users to opt out of the social sharing service by not connecting their online accounts to the search platform. However, if any of your online friends is ‘connected’ and shares or retweets your posts, they will become publicly available in the search results. Moreover, it remains uncertain how you would be able to control who sees to your online posts once you have connected your social networking profiles to Google.
Overall these changes highlight a number of trends which will potentially impact social media PR and marketing. As social networks are increasingly woven into online search engines and online profiles can be easily linked, businesses will be able to reach wider audiences and niche customer segments. SEO practices will be adjusted to take into account the rising importance of social networks for placing content in the top ranking of people’s search results. This will result in more intricate and subtle integration of social media tools into PR and marketing campaigns and will place higher importance on online networks.
Multitasking UK: What will advertisers do next?
The UK has been named a nation of ‘multitaskers’ thanks to social networks and increasingly sophisticated mobile phones, according to new research from Ofcom.
The research reveals that a fifth of all media is consumed at the same time as another form of communication with people spending almost half of their waking hours glued to a screen, on the phone to friends or listening to the radio.
Although TV is as popular as ever, almost one-fifth of the time spent watching TV is now accompanied by laptop or mobile activity. A finding supported by YouGov this week which found that that more than half of UK respondents (58%) are regularly consuming at least one other type of media while watching television.
With television being seen as one of the staples of the advertising industry it will be interesting to see how they react and engage with their target markets moving forward. Brands could sponsor online elements of shows that incorporate your social network, for example real-time quizzes and voting amongst friends. Alternatively, e-commerce professionals as it could offer the unique opportunity to directly link products shown on TV to internet retailers.
Whatever the next generation of advertising will look like we know that the picture below will no longer represent the typical television viewers today.
Copy and Paste Culture of Social Networks
Mashable.com confirmed today the rumour that MySpace has begun demoing a completely redesigned version of its profile pages to select users. Despite a couple of nice new features (well new to MySpace anyway) is this really enough to turn things around?
Site analytics show the site has been in steady decline for the past 12 months and recent departures from the senior management imply a lack of clear vision moving forward. Facebook continues to lure away MySpace users whilst the rumoured entrance of Google into the space should also be cause for concern.
Although the introduction of these new features may interest a few users and capture some headlines this is unlikely to change the fortunes of the company. We have already seen this exact same scenario play out in the mobile handset world, where handset manufacturers look to emulate the features of the market leader (ok then, copy) instead of innovating and differentiating their product. It’s not they are bad, it’s just their competitors do it first and often do it better.
Facebook won’t be around forever and the next “big thing” is probably being developed in a garage somewhere right now, but with this copy and paste culture it’s unlikely to be from MySpace.
